No-one need be spared

 The beach at Baida fil-Einek was short and wide and had pristine white sand in a rough oval contained by the sea and limestone escarpments.  The waves were small and gentle and the beach quite gradual which would have made it ideal for parents and children.  The sun was pretty much exactly overhead and the sky was a deep azure that was common for much of the summer.  The heat wasn’t yet at its worst, but it was hot enough to make the sea look increasingly inviting.

At the back of the beach, dug into the escarpment so that yellow-white limestone, marred here and there by blue-green lichen, overhung the terrace, was a café.  Expensive designer chairs were set cautiously around equally expensive tables; no table had more than three chairs at it, and the chairs were always spaced as far apart as possible.  Two of the tables were occupied other than Chretien’s: one had the Minister of Finance in deep conversation with suited men who Chretien did not recognise, and the other had one of the two Ministers of the Interior sat with her Deputy.  Potted plants were laid between the tables to form sound baffles; Chretien could see, if a little indistinctly, the people at the other tables, but their conversations were murmurs at most.  Occasionally a word might escape the maze of greenery and fall into his ears but rarely enough that they were essentially meaningless.

He sipped a non-alcoholic cocktail and tapped at the iPad nestled in his lap.  Messages from the security details for both Ministers present were updating in real time.  Soon he learned that the Minister of the Interior had been coming here with each of her Deputies all week under the pretence of conducting performance reviews and that the Finance Minister had declined to update his security detail with any more information than that he was meeting important foreigners.

“Corruption as usual,” murmured Chretien to himself.  He touched the button on the top edge of the iPad to turn it off and sipped his drink again.  The sea produced more noise than the other conversations and he rather liked the soft rushing of the tiny waves breaking on the beach and the lacy patterns of foam they created.  Each design lasted mere seconds before breaking up and fading away, but there was always another to replace it.

The iPad lit up briefly; a new message had arrived to tell him something banal about European football results.  He noted only that the first team was AC Milan; this meant that Mahrie im-Mantis, Mistress of the Treasury, was arriving for their scheduled meeting.  Twenty-five minutes late, but a lack of punctuality was one of the hallmarks of the im-Mantis family.  He walked inside, carrying his drink, and when he returned holding two drinks he found Mahrie approaching the terrace across the white sands.

He returned to his table, where the iPad was now discretely tucked in at the side of his chair, and set the drinks down.

Mahrie was short and dressed as though she were taller.  Despite everything her tailor attempted her skirt was too long and too heavy for the heat, her blouse was overbroad in the shoulders and her chest was flatter than she wanted it to be.  She had a green jacket slung over her arm and a black leather handbag dangled from her fingers and she gave the impression of having learned how to dress from a book.

“Cretin,” she said.  She never bothered to use Chretien’s actual name and barely even bothered to look at him now; her eyes were on the drink.  “Did William make this?”

“Yes,” said Chretien as she called out to the barman loudly, ignoring him and drowning his response.

“William?  Did you make this?”

When the affirmative reply came from the bar, muffled by the plants and seating arrangements, she sat and tasted it.  Her lips pursed a little; Mahrie im-Mantis only really liked Champagne and so had all other alcoholic drinks made equally as acidic.

“Why are we meeting here?” she said.  She met Chretien’s gaze briefly then looked away again.  She clearly disliked him but all of his attempts to find out what the cause was had met dead ends.

Chretien placed the stained envelope containing the demands that Allabar im-Mantis had refused on the table in front of her, and then took a clear plastic case from his pocket and set that down next to it.  Her son’s shrivelled finger was nestled inside it in cotton wool.

“Qasqar’s finger?”  She sneered and returned to her drink.

“The demands in the letter are quite clear,” said Chretien.  While Allabar refused to read almost everything his ex-wife was compulsive about gathering information.  “Allabar has provided his response.  I am curious only if you have anything to add.”

“I agree with Allabar that the perpetrators of this crime need to be found and brought to justice,” she said.  “The Fort is appropriate.  Other than that, I do not see why we are meeting here.”

Chretien sat back and tasted his drink.  The barman had topped it up with water so that it looked fresh; now, diluted, it was less pleasant.  The Mistress of the Treasury looked at him after the silence drew out to a surprising level, and then she looked around more carefully.

“Ah,” she said.  “I see that Mehrab is here, with people I have not been informed about.  This… finger is a pointer, isn’t it, little Cretin?  You think you’re so clever, so sneaky, and yet all I have to do is ask a question and I find the answer.”  She sipped her drink; despite seeming to only sip the glass was already half-empty.  “I can replace you any time I like, Cretin.  You’re only still here because my hus— ex-husband — finds you useful.  You should remember that.”

“My concern,” said Chretien, “is simply to ask if your ex-husband should be advised against his current course of action.  Such advice would carry more weight if it came from an office equal to his own.”  It was, he reflected, nice to be able to use proper words instead of having to choose from a restricted list more suited to tabloid newspapers.

“You are not to tell him that I want anything other than what I just said!” Mahrie’s reply was as fast as a striking snake.  She was now watching her Finance Minister, moving her head this way and that to try and get a better view of the people he was entertaining.  “I want Qasqar revenged and that is it.”

“The letter is quite clear that they may attempt to harm Qasqar again if no ground is given,” said Chretien.

“Empty threats.”

“They have managed to show signs of competence.”  Chretien rubbed his hands together beneath the table.  Playing mental chess was certainly more interesting than listening to the blunt stupidities of Allabar im-Mantis but, he reflected, it would be nice if sometimes he could just be blunt with Mahrie.  Bluntness however reminded her of her ex-husband and made her recalcitrant. 

“Rubbish!  Qasqar was stupid and paid the price.  You’ve increased his security?  You’ve certainly increased mi— ah, Mehrab is getting up!”  She half-rose, hesitating until the Minister of Finance had gone inside.  “Don’t wait for me.”

Chretien set his still-mostly-full drink aside and picked up the iPad.  He waited until he heard hints of Mahrie introducing herself to Mehrab’s companions and then unlocked it.  He opened the browser and went to a bookmarked page, selecting an article from it seemingly at random and then sent an encrypted message containing only the link.  To all intents and purposes it looked like he was simply commenting on the outcome of a chess tournament in Las Vegas.  The coded message, to those who understood the code, was simply no-one need be spared.

Choosing sides

 “What is the meaning of this?”

Allabar im-Mantis held up a red-stained envelope in one hand and then, with a disdain that his advisor could only envy, the middle finger of his only son.  The finger had been neatly amputated from the man’s hand and the stump end had dried and shrivelled somewhat.

“A demand,” said Chretien, im-Mantis’s advisor-without-portfolio, “and a middle finger.  I expect you’re supposed to take it metaphorically, though the fact it comes from your son would seem to make it less offensive that you would otherwise expect.”

“What?  Speak normally!”  Allabar had spent much of his adult life spending money that, strictly speaking, wasn’t his, and he had enjoyed it.  He was obese, struggled to get in and out of bed by himself, and got short of breath just walking from one office to another.  He travelled everywhere in a bullet-proof limousine and was growing steadily more fearful of the world around him.  He was also getting steadily more impatient with everyone and everything.

“It’s both a warning and an insult,” said Chretien.  He waited for im-Mantis to think about that.

“I get the insult,” said Allabar testily.  “I think I can see when someone’s giving me the middle finger!”

“This is your son’s middle finger,” said Chretien.  He waited again, resisting the urge to drum his fingers on the folder of paperwork he was carrying.

“My son wouldn’t dare give me the middle finger!”

Chretien nodded.  “And that is the insult, Sir.  Your son is, if you like, being forced to give you the middle finger.”

“Bah!”

“And it is s-also a warning,” said Chretien, narrowly avoiding saying ‘simultaneously’.  “That if you do not take the demand in the letter seriously then your son might come to more harm.”

“Where is the little idiot?”  Allabar looked around the long, narrow office as though expecting Qasqar to be hiding beneath a desk or in a cupboard.  Chretien allowed himself a tiny smile at the thought that if Qasqar were here he would almost certainly be trying to hide from his father.  “Why have I only got his finger?”

“Qasqar is still at the hospital,” said Chretien.  He had received a report an hour earlier from one of Qasqar’s security guards that the man was refusing to leave until he was certain his father had calmed down.  “I believe they are dealing with his… injury.”

“They’d better be regrowing his damn finger!  Why’s it taking so long?”

“I have no idea,” said Chretien.  “I can ask for an upda—“

“Leave it!  What is this demand about?”

Chretien nodded again, mostly to himself.  He had expected Allabar’s concern for his son to last for less time than it had.  “As you have read yourself,” he said, knowing that Allabar rarely took the time to read things, “the letter is a demand for changes in the way the country is run.”

“I’m not stepping down!”

“Quite.  In fact, the demands are more about socio-political policies, and the release of Jacques Humtaine from prison.”

“Absolutely not!” Allabar’s face reddened.  “He conspired against me!  And he’s still not told us who his conspirators are.  He can stay there and rot for all I care.”

“And the policies?” Chretien didn’t bother trying to explain the demands as he was sure what Allabar’s response would be.

“Nothing doing!”  Allabar glared about the office as though still trying to find his son hiding somewhere.  “I’m giving in to nothing.  Double the security on Qasqar and myself and find out how they managed to get to him.  And then have the people who let it happen sent to the Fort.”

“I have already taken the liberty of increasing security about you and your family,” said Chretien.  Allabar im-Mantis was separated, officially, from his wife but had been unable to remove her as Mistress of the Treasury and so some of his everyday frustration came from their sniping at each other as they attempted to run the country.  “However, I cannot send Qasqar to the Fort.”

“Of course you can’t!  I didn’t tell you to, I told you to send whoever failed to protect him!”

“That would be he himself, Sir.  He dismissed his security guards, went to the Hotel Amadeo, and drank heavily there.”

“So blame someone in the hotel.”  Allabar stamped over to a window and stared out of it.  Chretien shifted uncomfortably where he was standing; the window actually offered a view of the Hotel Amadeo and he wasn’t sure if Allabar knew that or it was just chance.  “They have security themselves, don’t they?”

“They do,” said Chretien.  He had spent several hours earlier that day reviewing the security cameras in the hotel, and talking to the guards and the barstaff.  “Unfortunately the incident cannot be placed with them.”

“Of course it can!  Just make something up!”

Chretien sighed.  “Sir,” he said firmly, “your son was alone in a locked bathroom when he was assaulted and his finger removed.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, did everything they could to keep him safe and he still managed to lose a finger.  The only person I can reasonably blame here is Qasqar.  His security guards would have joined him in the bathroom if they had been there.”

Allabar turned away from the window and Chretien noticed that the reddening of his face had increased and his neck was almost purple.

“Make.  Something.  Up.”

“I see,” said Chretien.  “Yes, I shall do that.”  Privately he decided that he would make up having made something up.  Allabar rarely checked unless there was money involved.

“At last,” said Allabar.  His shoulders sank a little as though he were relaxing.  “I don’t know why I keep you around, Cretin.  Sometimes you’re as bad as Mahrie.”

Chretien said nothing.  Allabar often called him ‘cretin’ and occasionally told him it was just a little joke between old friends.

“Laugh.”

Chretien forced a laugh that might have been a cough.

“This is boring,” said Allabar.  He dropped the letter and the finger on a nearby desk.  “Find out who’s behind this and put them in the Fort.  And quickly, I don’t want to have to see security guards everywhere I go.”

“Indeed,” said Chretien impassively.  “There is the small matter of other paperwork—“

“Later,” said Allabar.  He walked over to the door and just before he reached it, he looked back.  “You’re annoying me.  Make it tomorrow.”

“Very good, Sir,” said Chretien as the door closed behind Allabar.  He waited, unmoving for two minutes according to his phone and then sat down in an empty chair.  He scrolled through several news reports on his phone before selecting one that seemed innocuous, something about the rise in inflation rates and the cost of living, and sent a link to it to a number he had to type into his phone from memory.  The real meaning behind the message was that he had picked a side.

A dirty business

 The assassin lay quietly on the bed, his hands folded across his ribcage so that his fingertips just barely touched, and concentrated on his breathing.  It was slow and steady, each intake of breath measured in seconds and each exhale as gradual as the rising of the tide.  His muscles were relaxed and his mind was alert.  He paid attention to the hardness of the mattress he was lying on and the narrowness of the bed.  The air in the room was warm — it was in the low thirties outside and the air-conditioning in the building did not extend here — and there was a smell of cloves mixed with coffee.  There was a faint hum of white noise which was the sounds from the hotel bar adjacent to this room and which rose and faded irregularly.  There was also a sense of stillness and he appreciated knowing that in that peace he was a coiled spring, well-looked after and ready to unleash stored energy at a moment’s notice.

His phone beeped.  It was on the floor next to the bed.

He rose with the least movement he could achieve: he swung his legs around and off the side of the bed, lifting his chest and shoulders as he did so.  He reached down and picked the phone up, silencing it with a click of button and not needing to check the message: something banal from the bartender, some comment about the news or the weather, whose actual purpose was to let him know that Qasqar im-Mantis had gone to the toilet.

He left the room barefoot and walked unhurriedly along the beige-marbled corridor outside.  He allowed himself a half-smile; the marble was known as Mantis marble because the im-Mantis family still had a business importing it as cheaply as possible.  There were cracks in it already yet the building was barely a year and a half old.  At the end of the corridor was the outline of a door but no handle.  The assassin pressed on a part of the wall that looked no different to any other and waited until he heard a soft click and then pressed on another part.  The wall swung inwards silently and revealed a janitor’s closet and another door.

He left the secret door ajar and opened the janitor’s closet door into the public toilet.  This was also done in Mantis marble though the floor was polished concrete.  There were mirrors but they were over the sinks and Qasqar, a florid man who wasn’t yet thirty but looked to be forty-five or even fifty, was leaning against the wall and pissing into a pristine white urinal.  The smell of it rankled the assassin’s nostrils and the sight of the man — a clear roll of fat around his waist covered by expensive but poorly cleaned clothes, shabby unpolished shoes and sweat stains spreading out from his armpits and across his back — was offensive.  He was the son the so-called Prime Minister, a dictator in all but name, and dressed and acted like a near-homeless alcoholic.

“Qasqar,” said the assassin.  The handle on the door to enter the toilets rattled but the door had been automatically locked by the bartender at Qasqar’s request.  Someone banged on the door and yelled about hurrying up.

Qasqar’s head jerked up and then fell back, bumping gently on the wall.

“Not done,” he mumbled, struggling to produce coherent words.  A smell of alcohol briefly pushed the acrid notes of piss away and the assassin shook his head; the change in stench was not an improvement.

“You will be,” said the assassin.  He waited several seconds while Qasqar’s sluggish brain worked out that the words weren’t from outside.  Finally the man lifted his head and turned it.  Dull, bloodshot brown eyes squinted at the assassin, trying to focus.  When they finally managed it he half-moaned a question, “Who-ooo?”

The assassin reached down and pulled up his left trouser leg to get to a suede-leather sheath and removed a knife from it.  The fifteen centimetre blade was blackened and nearly invisible in the dim lighting of the toilets but Qasqar had no trouble guessing what it was.  He turned his whole body, now spraying the floor with his dark-yellow, stinking piss, and his sallow face managed to turn paler than it already was.

“You’re disgusting,” said the assassin.  He didn’t often offer personal commentary as his opinion wasn’t paid for, but im-Mantis had stepped over the line where he felt obliged to hold back.  He stepped forward, his body language switching from neutral to threatening in a single pace.

“Whaddya wan’?” Qasqar was so drunk even terror couldn’t sober him and unslur his words.  He tried to to back away but sat down heavily in the urinal he’d just been using.

“You,” said the assassin.  “You’re to deliver a message.”

“I’m rich!” Qasqar’s brain finally seemed to understand the situation.  “I can pay.  I can pay!”

“You mean your father will pay,” said the assassin.  “Or perhaps your mother.  Depending on who you tell first, yes?  I don’t care, and my clients don’t care.  You are, however, requested to give either of your parents this.”  He now slipped his free hand inside his shirt where, unusually, a pocket was sewn.  He extracted a white envelope that was as smooth as expensive paper could be.  He set it down on the counter where the sinks were.

“Give it to me,” said Qasqar.  He was starting to sober up, the assassin noticed, and his eyes were starting to shine and dart about.  “I’ll give it to both of them.”  He tried to stand up but his hands slipped on the porcelain of the urinal and he fell back again.

“In a moment,” said the assassin, taking another step closer, watching Qasqar carefully.  Even a drunk could lash out and get lucky.  “We need to know that the message will be taken seriously.”

“It will!”  Qasqar’s dread was now engraved on his face, deeply inscribed in his tired, alcohol-soaked skin.

“Indeed.”  The assassin looked to the left and Qasqar’s eyes followed instinctively so when the assassin’s hand leapt out like a salmon leaping upstream to seize Qasqar’s right hand im-Mantis didn’t even notice until the hand was pressed against the wall, stretched out by the length of his arm.

“No no no no no,” gabbled Qasqar, his eyes now locked onto the knife in the assassin’s hand.  “No, please no!”

The assassin pressed the point of the knife against the middle knuckle of Qasqar’s hand and pressed inwards until it popped.  A little jiggling and then the knife cut through the skin and tendons, severing the middle finger.  Qasqar’s scream echoed around the toilets and he struggled, trying to pull his hand free.  The assassin held it easily in place until the finger dropped to the floor, then let go.  As im-Mantis clutched his hand to his chest, blood staining his already filthy t-shirt, and moaned to himself the assassin picked the finger up and set it delicately on the envelope.

“Don’t forget to pass the message on,” he said.  “Or next time it’ll be something you value more.”

He walked back through the janitor’s closet and closed the secret door behind him.  Taking his phone out, he sent a message to the bartender, a random Instagram picture whose actual meaning was that the task had been achieved, and then went to find somewhere to wash his feet.  Dealing with the im-Mantis’s always seemed to be a dirty business.

Strike!

 The Aide looked down at her papers.  They were a mix of official documents, some stamped with ‘Confidential’, ‘Secret’ or ‘Miscellaneous’ (the classifications secretary was apparently feeling ambitious) and print-outs from various web-sites because the Minister refused to look at a screen that wasn’t showing his own image.  She shuffled them a little, pointlessly as she already had the ones she wanted on the top, and then looked up at the Minister.  His eyes were on the television mounted on the wall behind her, but they were drifting away indicating that the news report of his latest speech had ended.

“Well?” he said, as though he hadn’t been the one to stop the conversation in the middle.  “My train to the Midlands on Thursday?”

“There are none,” said the Aide.  “The unions are on strike.”

“What?  That’s ridiculous!”

“Minister, that’s the consequence of your policies on public transport.  You announced funding cuts, you’ve announced your intent to pass new laws to castrate the unions, and you’ve announced a new mandatory retirement age that is seven years higher than anything even your most cynical critic predicted.   All public transport workers have gone on strike while they still can.”

“Castrate,” murmured the Minister.

“Yes, Minister.  And, while you will probably have to mean that metaphorically and not literally in order to get the law passed, that is still quite drastic.  You are being compared with Draco in the popular press, which is quite astonishing as it means they are taking the trouble to explain to their readers who that was.  You’ve also been compared with Nero, Caligula, and at least three of the Borgias.  Whether you intended it or not, the country is getting quite an education as a result of your policies.”

The Minister smiled.  “So if they’re on strike, the trains aren’t running at all?”

“No, Minister.”

“Then just commandeer one.”

The Aide opened her mouth, and then hesitated.  This hadn’t come up in the pre-briefing meeting she’d had with the Minister’s Secretary or the saner members of the cabinet.

“I don’t think I can,” she said slowly, wondering if she could.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” said the Minister. “Official government business can’t be held hostage by the peons, and if there’s no other trains running there’s no danger of collision.  I mean, how hard can it be to drive a train?  They run on rails!”

The Aide, who had spent several hours with the Minister’s speech-writer trying to make sure he never made a statement anything like what he’d just said, stretched a smile across her face with an effort.

“It’s not just the question of speed,” she said.  “There are signals to be considered, and the state of the track — which, as you know, you’ve been cutting the maintenance budgets for in the past three years —“

“Yes well, they only spend it on alcohol, don’t they?”

“…probably not, actually Minister.  Or there would be a lot more train accidents than there already are.”

“Hmm,” said the Minister in a way that the Aide had come to dread.  “Train accidents.  If there were more, it would contribute to our populations crisis, right?  As well as lowering public confidence in public transport?  Which would boost support for the idea that we should all just use helicopters to travel around the country, right?”

The Aide, try as she might, had been unable to find out who had put the idea in the Minister’s head that only people who could afford to fly in helicopters should be able to move around the country faster than walking pace but she was persisting in her attempts as it was especially galling for her.

“Our population crisis is that it is decreasing, Minister,” she said.  “We need more people, not more accidents.”

“Not old people,” said the Minister cheerfully.  “We’ve got too many of them.  We just need young people, and young people like helicopters!  They’re exciting!  Fun!  They go fast!”

“The trains would go fast if you didn’t keep cutting the track maintenance budget,” said the Aide, knowing full well that the Minister wouldn’t listen.  “Why don’t you fly to the Midlands then?  There are airports there.  Somewhere.”

The Minister waved a hand as though swatting a fly.  “Too soon,” he said.  “Let’s thoroughly discredit public transport and the unions first.  So commandeer me a train, and let’s break this strike!”

“Very good, Minister,” said the Aide sombrely.