State of Emergency (4 page)

The four men met in the flesh only rarely. Most of the time
they merely shared pixels. Today's encounter was another of
those virtual meetings.

At first glance, there was little that linked them. Granted,
they were all overachievers. Two were politicians of
significance, one was a resources billionaire, and the last a
media mogul. All were aged between 50 and 70. One was
very tall, six-foot-five; another very short, just five-foot-four.
Two were fitness freaks and buff. One, the 70-year-old,
weighed in at over 25 stone, with barely an ounce of muscle
on him. The fourth was broad-shouldered with a paunch.
Outward appearances, then, were entirely deceptive. Only
one thing drew these four men together – money. They
had met at a World Bank dinner for insiders, adjourned for
brandy and cigars in a side room at Gleneagles one warm
summer evening, and bingo – they had bonded.

At their next meeting, they decided what it was that
they would do together. And at the same gathering they
had shared a little black humour. They dubbed themselves
Death, Conquest, War and Pestilence – the Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse.

Between them, these men were worth more than $100
billion. They controlled three of the most important
sectors of 21st-century life – finance, the lifeblood of
the world; the media, the neural net of the age; and the
politics of the world's only superpower. At their meetings
they each donned a tie with the colour of their attribute
– pale green for Death, white for Conquest, red for War
and black for Pestilence. It was probably a little OTT, but
what the hell?

The Four Horsemen had a very simple agenda. Money
was not just power, it was
everything
. Ergo, anyone who
threatened their ability to make money was an enemy and
must be stopped. At their third meeting in Cincinnati, soon
after 9/11, they had joked about the old Wall Street war
cry that it was not enough to win, you had to destroy your
enemy. For them, the aphorism didn't go nearly far enough.
The enemy must be utterly annihilated, their families
destroyed, eviscerated, their corpses pissed on.

'So, what's the latest?' Death asked, his face large on three
wall-screens, in Berlin, Shanghai and Dallas.

'We have to make a decision. Our friend the senator is
growing more powerful by the day,' Pestilence responded.

'Very well,' Death replied.

'Is your plan really the only option?' Conquest adjusted
his white tie as he spoke.

'You seem nervous.' Pestilence smirked. 'Most unlike you,
my friend.'

'I'm not nervous – I just want assurances.'

'Oh, come now, Conquest. When is that ever possible?
Nothing in life comes with assurances, does it? But at least
we know we work for a noble cause. Human existence has
shown there is no greater God than the greenback.'

'Yes,' chuckled War, his chins wobbling. 'Just take an L
from gold and what do you have?'

The others stared at him stonily. They had heard it
before.

'So, the plan,' Death said. 'You intend using the Dragon,
I take it?'

'Who else?' Pestilence said. 'Actually, he's sorting out a
minor irritation as we speak – that little shit, Gordon Smith.
But after that, he could begin preparations. Disposing of the
senator will be an altogether trickier proposition.'

'So. When, exactly?' Conquest asked, and adjusted his tie
again.

'Soon. Do I have unanimous approval?'

The others nodded in turn.

'Champagne?'

Josh Thompson turned to see a smiling waiter holding a
tray of drinks. He had arrived late. The event was the launch
of the latest book by the art historian Anna Fitzgibbon, with
whom he shared a literary agent, Carl Reed of Reed & Stringer.
He noticed Carl accompanying a statuesque woman to a
podium at one end of the room. A who's who of the New
York literary and art scene were here to sip Veuve Clicquot,
eat expensive canapés, and cheer the celebrated author.
Away from the stage, they huddled in groups, sticking in
the verbal knife in hushed tones.

Josh was finding it hard to engage. He didn't know many
people here, but it wasn't that. It was the news on the radio
as he drove to the museum. The city of Charleston, South
Carolina, was facing the worst storm ever seen that far north.
Hurricane Nell was hours away from the city and showing
little sign of losing its potency. The Ashley River was at an
all-time high and the levee was about to break. A city of over
700,000 people was facing imminent disaster.
It was New
Orleans all over again
, Josh Thompson thought, as he made
his way to the edge of the small crowd clustered around the
podium.

Anna Fitzgibbon was a real pro, but Josh had never been
interested in the minutiae of painters and painting. In many
ways he was a down-to-earth character with simple tastes.
When it came to art, he could appreciate a good picture
for its own sake. He didn't have much time for what his
army buddies would have called 'arty-farty rubbish', and
he couldn't care less how the artist had arrived at his or
her revolutionary technique or what drugs were consumed
while they painted their masterpiece.

Josh surveyed the room, the well-fed tuxedoed, the
smug and the sequined. He drained his glass.
Right now the
waves will be smashing into Old Charleston
, he thought.
The
authorities would be doing their best to evacuate people. Brave
volunteers would try to stand up to the unimaginable power of
nature. At this very moment, people are dying.

Later, after the speeches and the toasts and the
backslapping, Josh found himself sitting alone on the front
steps of the museum. It was an unseasonable balmy evening.
From all around came the hum of the city, car horns, sirens,
the pulse of millions of individual lives.

He suddenly felt very lonely. The press of those millions
of people made little impression; it passed like a shadow.
He'd always been comfortable with solitude – especially
since Maggie had left him four years before. She always
claimed that the SAS had ruined him, had turned him into
an obsessive individual married to the army. But he knew
this was only partly true. He was indeed an obsessive, but
he hadn't been married to the army, he had been married
to his specialisation – cryptography. He was a multitalented
man and had excelled at many things, but what really
obsessed him was the study of codes and ciphers, the arcane
mathematical roots of the discipline.

And now he found previously unimagined pleasure in
bringing that deeply intellectual work to the world through
his popular books.
It was a shame
, he thought for perhaps
the thousandth time,
that Maggie never understood that side
of me
. Or perhaps it had been his fault for not illuminating
his true drives and ambitions. He had a sneaking feeling
his ex-wife would have liked being married to a bestselling
author more than an SAS major.

'Gets a bit much after a while, doesn't it?'

Josh turned to see Tania Boreman, a writer friend from
years back, lowering herself onto the step beside him.

'What's that?'

'Oh, the whole self-satisfied 'I love me' vibe. You know
what I mean.'

He laughed and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. 'It's
good to see you again, Tan. What've you been up to?'

'You know. Still looking for the perfect man. Still trying
to write the Great American Novel. The usual.'

'Well, you're not going to find either here.'

'Now really, what makes you think that?' She tilted her
head to one side. 'Impress me, Josh Thompson. Take me
somewhere cool and inspirational.'

Ten minutes later they were in a tiny subterranean
bar called See Emily Play on 48th Street. They found a
booth in a corner. The place had a 1960s mood to suit its
name, complete with subdued lighting, big cushions on
the floor of the booths, low tables, sounds courtesy of Soft
Machine, Cream and Pink Floyd. A beautiful long-haired,
long-legged waitress in a miniskirt and beads took their
order.

'You seem troubled, Josh. Not your usual ebullient self,'
Tania said, as their drinks arrived.

He shifted uncomfortably in his beanbag. His large
and powerful frame was not well suited to squatting on a
cushion.

'No, I'm fine,' he said, fixing Tania with his intelligent
brown eyes.

She gave him a sceptical look, but Josh didn't change his
expression.

'I don't feel I can talk about it.'

'Oh God! That's not fair. Now you
have
to tell me!'

He laughed, flashing his white teeth, and small wrinkles
appeared at the corners of his eyes. 'Let's just change the
subject, yeah?'

'Wimp!'

'Maybe.'

They had another drink and he started to relax. He
enjoyed Tania's company. They had met at a writers group
soon after he moved to New York, three years ago. They
hooked up occasionally for drinks, dinner, sometimes for
sex. No strings attached.

There was a lull in the conversation, and Josh suddenly
said, 'It's Charleston – I can't stop thinking about it.'

For a moment, Tania looked lost. 'The hurricane? You
serious?'

'Of course I'm serious. Why wouldn't I be?'

She shrugged. 'I didn't mean to sound . . . God, insensitive,
I guess. It's just that it's the last thing I expected you to
say.'

He felt anger rising and forced it away. Calmly, he said,
'Now you know why I didn't want to say anything. Forget
I mentioned it. Another drink?'

'No. Yes – I mean yes to the drink. But Josh, don't get me
wrong. I'm just a bit taken aback.'

He had regained his equilibrium. 'I know. It's dumb. I . . .
I don't really know how to put it. It's just, sometimes I find it
hard to simply . . . get on with things. Sometimes, I feel . . .
I don't know . . . the weight of it all. The logical, hard-nosed
part of me says, "Forget it – these things have nothing to
do with you, just deal with your own problems." There're
plenty of those, for Christ's sake!'

There was a silence between them for a moment. A Beatles
track – 'Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite' – came on the
sound system. Tania studied Josh's face as he looked into
the middle distance, tapping a foot to the beat of the music.
She had a lot of time for him. If it had been up to Tania,
they would have taken their relationship a lot further a long
time ago, but she always sensed that Josh was completely
self-contained. He flirted and seduced, and he loved being
popular. He was great fun to be around and he had an
attractive energy, a
joie de vivre
that she found very sexy,
but some sixth sense told her that no one could get really
close to him, that he had higher priorities than intimacy or
commitment to a woman. 'I understand,' she said at last.

'I'm not sure I do. I sound like a lunatic.'

'No, you don't.' She touched his hand and he wrapped
his fingers in hers.

They had another drink and paid the cheque. Josh left
his car in the lot and they hailed a cab on 5th Avenue. He
had a small apartment in the East Village above a shop that
sold designer shoes. Josh made them a coffee, but they both
knew they would not be sleeping much that night.

As they made love, he felt strangely disconnected, as
though he were looking down upon himself. Then, when
they finally drifted off into unconsciousness, it was only a
half sleep. He could hear voices. He could make out the odd
word, but none of it made sense.

A silvery light was beginning to filter through the blinds
when Josh finally snapped into the waking world. Tania
was asleep beside him. She lay on her side, her pale, naked
form beautiful and vital in the pre-dawn. He slipped out of
bed and went through to the living room. He switched on
the TV with the sound down. Charleston had been hit bad,
worse than anyone had feared. He watched the news report,
feeling cold and numb. Then he dressed and scribbled a note
for Tania.

Out on the cold pavement, the sun was coming up.
Shadows cut between the buildings like shards of dark glass.
Josh sat on a bench in Union Square, watching the joggers
pass. A dog cocked a leg and pissed against a tree. The world
continued revolving on its axis and moved a little further in
its orbit around the sun. A flock of birds flew low overhead,
the beat of their wings breaking the stillness. Slowly, his
thoughts fell into place. What he should do seemed obvious.
It had been obvious ever since he had returned from Tintara
a few weeks earlier. Pulling out his cell phone, he dialled the
number Mark Harrison had given him.

The truck was a blue Ford Ranger, a late model. 'Ace Pools
& Maintenance' was written in white lettering across the
doors on each side. In the cargo box at the back lay a
neat arrangement of metal trunks containing water filters,
chemicals and flexitubes. Alongside these was a chlorinator
in its box, a rolled-up pool blanket and a barracuda suction-cleaning
head.

The truck pulled up outside 19234 Sheoak Boulevard,
a hacienda built in the 1950s. The house had once been
owned by a now long-forgotten starlet. Apparently, two of
the Mamas and the Papas had met there at a party, and
Lenny Bruce once vomited on the doorstep.

The driver killed the engine and looked through his
aviators at the vanilla building. It was a huge property, at
least 10,000 square feet. The lawn stretching from the walls
to the road was an immaculate lush green, and a quaint
stone path wound up to the heavy studded-oak door. A line
of bay trees ran across the front of the house between the
ground-floor windows. The curtains were all closed, but even
from the street the thud of a bass drum and the crunch of
guitars from a cranked-up sound system somewhere at the
back of the house cut through the warm air.

To his employers, the man in the truck was known as
the Dragon. In their private universe in which they were
the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, it fitted perfectly.
Of course their favourite assassin should be known as the
Dragon – a pseudonym for the devil, a name, like theirs,
lifted from the Book of Revelation.

The Dragon glanced at the printout in his lap. It carried the
face of a young man, the latest to cross the Four Horsemen.
He scanned down the page, taking in the details. The
Horsemen had used a contact in Switzerland to convince
the head of a national bank to open a particularly precious
vault. The vault had contained a box. In the box had been a
single CD-ROM. The disk had been removed, and this simple
action had given the Horsemen the green light to call in the
Dragon. Now here he was outside 19234 Sheoak Boulevard,
ready to remove a fly from the ointment.

Gordon Smith believed he was the luckiest man in the world.
At school he had been the head nerd, bullied by the jocks
and teased by the hot girls. Now they would all be laughing
on the other side of their faces – he had posted his big news
on Facebook and MySpace, along with suitable photos, just
to make sure they would know.

A month earlier he had hit the jackpot. Aged 24, he had
become the first to develop what he dubbed Ecofuel, an
alternative to petrol he had formulated in his parent's garage in
Spokane, 230 miles east of Seattle. Ecofuel could be produced
without oil. It gave double the mileage of conventional
gas at half the price, and produced only one-tenth of the
atmospheric pollution. But there was something even better
– the fuel could be used in conventional engines, so there
was no need for expensive refits, no time lag until new cars
hit the market.

Gordon was a bright kid – very, very bright – and he knew
what he had discovered, the wonder of it, and the danger. He
knew he was holding a gun to the head of the fuel industry,
and that once the secret was out the oil companies would
be really, really pissed. So he knew he had to tread carefully.
He contacted a specialist New Jersey-based PR company,
Nero Holdings, and explained his work to them. They were
quick to see its potential. And it was Nero Holdings who had
secured him a $25-million deal – silence money.

But Gordon knew he could trust the oil companies about
as far as he could spit a goat. He placed a copy of all the data
associated with his work in a Swiss bank vault and, through
Nero Holdings, emailed every contributor towards his big
pay cheque, stating that if anything should happen to him
or his family, the secret of Ecofuel would automatically be
released to the media.

The enormous house in LA, with its pool and celebrity
connections, had come first, then the Porsche and top-of-the-range black Hummer, the Harley, the speed boat, the
gold Rolex and the smaller house for his mother and father
in a prissy Vegas suburb of their choosing. And now here
he was, reclining in the hot tub, Fall Out Boy very loud on
the expensive stereo a few feet away. And, snuggled up to
him, one each side in the bubbles, were Crystal and Sophia,
naked, their perfectly enhanced, perfectly tanned breasts
bobbing on the hot water. Just above his shoulder, beyond
the edge of the jacuzzi, lay a mirror with three fresh lines of
the best Bolivian. He pulled the mirror towards him, plucked
a hundred-dollar bill from under a crystal paperweight, and
stuck his nose in the trough.

Gordon Smith was a happy man. He had no idea he had
precisely two minutes and 22 seconds left to live.

The Dragon stepped out of the Ford. He was wearing a blue
boilersuit and a baseball cap with 'Ace Pools' emblazoned
above the peak. In his left hand he carried a metal toolbox.
He strode up the winding path to the front door of 19234
Sheoak and pushed the buzzer.

For several moments there was no response. Then a voice
came through the intercom – female, foreign accent. 'Yes?
Who is it, please?' the voice asked, straining against the
noise from out back.

'Pool man. Ace Pools,' the Dragon shouted back.

There was a click, the door swung inwards, and a tiny
Puerto Rican woman stood on the mat. She was wearing an
old-fashioned light-blue maid's uniform, clumpy trainers,
her greying black hair tied back in a severe bun. 'The side
gate's locked,' she said. 'Come this way.'

The maid turned and the Dragon stepped into the
entrance hall, dropped the metal case on the carpet and
grabbed the woman, one hand around her neck, the other
hard across her mouth. With an expert twist, he snapped her
neck between her C1 and C2 vertebrae. She slumped to the
floor like a water-filled balloon.

The Dragon picked up the metal case and surveyed the hall.
It was spacious, all marble and rare woods. Suspended from
the ceiling was a huge chandelier. A pair of spiral staircases
swooped upwards to a gallery. The thump of the music was
louder now. He paced across the marble and opened a door
into a long, wide corridor. At the end he could see daylight
and the glimmer of Californian sun reflected on water. He
walked along the corridor and carefully opened a sliding
glass door.

The garden was huge. A gravel path led to the pool, and
beside that was a jacuzzi sunk into the ground. As the Dragon
emerged onto the path, three heads turned towards him,
a young guy sandwiched between two peroxide blondes.
The man looked puzzled, grabbed a small black object just
beyond the edge of the hot tub, pointed it at a larger black
box a few feet away and the music died.

The Dragon smiled and gave a little wave then pointed
to his cap. 'Ace Pools,' he said jovially. 'You called about the
filter?'

Gordon Smith's look of irritation slid away and he broke
into a smile. 'Don't you mean, "You called about the filter,
sir
?"'

The Dragon looked down, shaking his head slightly, and
smiled. 'Apologies,' he said, looking up. 'That's just what
I meant . . . sir.'

Smith turned quickly to Crystal and then Sophia. 'Fuck, I
love this shit!' The girls giggled. 'Okay, dude.' He glanced back
at the pool man. 'Go right ahead, do your stuff.' He pressed a
button on the remote and a new song burst from the stereo.

The Dragon walked slowly towards the pool. At one end,
a set of three stone stairs led down to the pump housing. He
sat on the top step, placed the metal case on the ground next
to him, opened the latches and lifted the lid. The box was
lined with grey foam. Nestled in the centre was a Magnum
handgun, and beside it a silencer. He lifted the gun, pulled
on the silencer and twisted it into place. Then he closed the
box, stood and walked back towards the pool, the case in his
left hand, the gun out of sight in his right.

As the Dragon approached, Smith turned from where he
had been licking an erect brown nipple. He had no time to
speak or to even lose his blissed-out expression. The Dragon
fired a single bullet at the stereo and there was silence.
He then turned the gun towards Crystal and squeezed the
trigger. The Magnum bullet hit her between the eyes, and
her pretty face froze. The bullet exited just above the nape
of her neck, taking with it a chunk of skull and a cupful
of grey-red slurry. She slammed backwards against the edge
of the jacuzzi and slid under the water.

Sophia had spun in panic and was scrambling at the side
of the tub. Moving the gun a few degrees to the side, the
Dragon's next bullet hit her between the shoulderblades. A
plume of blood sprayed across the hot water, which already
was foaming with red. A second bullet smashed into the
girl's neck, almost decapitating her.

Gordon Smith's face was cocaine-white, his pupils huge.
They reflected the image of the Dragon, who was now
pointing the Magnum directly at his forehead.

'You didn't really think you'd get away with it, did you,
Gordon?' the Dragon said slowly.

'We had a deal . . . please –' Smith was shaking. Tears
welled up in his eyes. 'I've got money. How much do you
want?'

The Dragon gave him a disgusted look.

'Please – don't kill me,' Smith pleaded.

'Don't you mean, "Please don't kill me,
sir
?"'

Smith swallowed hard. 'Please don't kill me, sir,' he
croaked.

The Dragon smiled. 'Fuck, I love this shit,' he said, as he
pulled the trigger.