My mouth was dry, I watched the old man’s face closely, he meant business.
“Who is he, Sally?”
“Conrad Lietz, German, net worth, three plus billion, drugs mainly. But he has a chain of legitimate warehouses across Europe. They’re in Berlin right now.”
“Who’s Jimmy?”
“British, ex-SAS, gone bad, in charge of security for Lietz.”
“Whack Lietz.” I said.
I watched Conrad Lietz double up and grab at his chest, the six guys jumped out of their chairs and tried to stop him from falling. They lowered him to the carpeted floor. Lietz took his last breath. I watched him die, it was wonderful. Piece of shit.
“Show me Spiel.” I told Sally.
The monitor went blank. I looked over at Sally.
“He has one of those nuclear bomb shelters, I can’t penetrate it. He’s out of reach for now.”
“Where is he?”
“New Jersey.”
“He’s American?”
“Sure is.”
“Do you know who his CIA mole is?”
“No, I’ll have to monitor every CIA agent and see if someone says something that gives them away.”
“Damn. This isn’t as easy as I thought it would be.”
“What about the Russian, Verminov?”
“Same problem, he flew to Israel yesterday, he has a bunker there.”
“Shit! Was he on the list of eighteen?”
“Yes.”
“How many can you access, right now?”
Sally was quiet for a while. “Nine.”
“Are they all the same as Lietz?”
“Basically, yes.”
“Well then, in your words, take them off the table.”
Sally smiled at me, she looked excited. “Done,” she said. God, it was that easy.
I paced around the suite for a while, pondering the mess I’d just unleashed. I wasn’t going to be able to hide from the aftermath. Ten crime bosses, dotted around the globe, fall dead of the same cause, all at the same instance, was like announcing it on Twitter. Still this could only be a good thing in the long run.
“Sally, did the President pick a time to meet?”
“Ten a.m. eastern time tomorrow.”
“Okay, good.” I’ll tell him everything, get the US on board. Maybe they could help me with these guys?
“How’s the market doing today?”
“It’s down, media says it’s fear.”
That’s normal, no one likes the unknown. “Sell the rest of my shares and put half my money into put options, say three months out. Weapon stocks, I’m going to eliminate the need for guns.”
There was a knock at the door.
“Maggie,” said Sally, “you want me to go?”
“No stay, she should meet you.”
I opened the door and Maggie strode in, past me, I could feel a tirade coming. She saw Sally, sitting on the sofa. “Who’s she?”
“That’s Sally, I told you I’d named my computer. She’s a holographic image created by the computer.”
“Why does she have to look like that?”
“That was my choice, Maggie. Why not a beautiful woman?”
“Why not mum, then?”
I decided to fight back. “I didn’t want the hurt, Maggie, do you understand that?”
“You’ve changed Dad. I’m not sure I know you anymore.”
“How could I not change, sweetie, look what’s happened.”
“Why Dad, why?” she cried out and then began crying. “Why did you have to take on the whole fucked-up world?” She sniveled and sat down, in an armchair, away from Sally. “Why couldn’t you just be a hero, I mean, what those alien people gave you made you incredible? Why spoil it and try and fix the whole world right off the bat?”
“Let me explain Maggie. There’s a reason I’m doing this.” Maggie wiped her eyes and turned her face toward me, expectantly. “I asked the same question. Why did these people from a planet, millions of light-years away, who have been monitoring us for hundreds of millions of years suddenly decide to contact us now? What triggered their involvement?” Maggie concentrated on my words. “The Cirion people are human, also. Their planet formed millions of years before earth and they developed technologies that we just dream about. They’ve told me that there are many ‘human’ planets at different levels of development. They also explained that they feel a bond with all those different human races. They have been reaching out to all of them to form a union of humans in the universe. I know it sounds like a science fiction novel. It sounds crazy, but we believe there’s other life in the universe and we’ve been sending out probes for years attempting to make contact. The people of Cirion have a policy of non-interference, unless certain circumstances exist. Isn’t that a similar policy that this country has with the rest of the world? I know, in the past there’s been world wars, but in the past fifty-plus years we started to change. It’s early days for us on Earth but we’re moving in the right direction, don’t you think?”
“Get to the point, Dad.”
“So the question is why are they now interfering?” I stopped talking, I hadn’t told anyone this so far and I realized it would be very difficult to accept and I was finding it difficult to say. “The answer is that the only criterion for interference is a possible annihilation of a human planet and extinction of its inhabitants.” Maggie’s mouth dropped open, her eyebrows rose.
“Are you telling me that the end of the world is coming?” I nodded. “And you believe them? Dad, people have been predicting the end of the world forever. I bet if I googled it now, there would be a list of nutcases predicting every possible reason why the world will end.”
“Maggie, this is different, think about it. I’m not just some nutcase, as you call them, standing on a soapbox, spouting on about the end of the world. Look at me! Look at what I can do; look at what I’m doing. Doesn’t that bring some validity to what I say.”
“How do you know you can believe them?”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t believe us?” exclaimed Sally.
We both looked over at her. “You haven’t proved it, Sally, you can’t prove it, can you?”
“I can show you calculations, I can show you what happened to Cirion two million years ago.”
“What’s she talking about, Dad?” said Maggie.
“There’s a galactic storm heading for earth, similar to one that destroyed their original planet two million years ago”
“What do you mean, their original planet?” Maggie spurted out.
“They had to move.” I said.
“The whole fucking planet.”
I nodded my head. “What did you say, Sally? Only thirty-five percent survived?”
Sally said “Yes, approximately.”
“Wait a minute,” Maggie stood up and help her arms out. “I don’t understand. When? When is this storm going to wipe us out?”
“Seventy years or so.” I said.
“Oh, God, for one moment I thought you were going to say next week. So, we have seventy years?”
“If what the Cirion people say in correct, yes.”
“And what are we supposed to do?” Maggie was now very animated.
“Leave.” I said.
She glared at me and then at Sally and swung around, her mouth gapped open as wide as it would go. She spluttered, “What? Leave? And where the hell are we going?” She was facing me again.
“To another planet.”
“Jesus, Dad, what the hell are you smoking? That’s some heavy juice. You’re kidding, right?”
I shook my head and looked down at the carpeted floor. There was silence in the room for a moment. I waited for Maggie’s next question. In my mind I played a game, guessing the letter of the next word to emanate from her mouth.
“How?” she almost shouted out.
I smiled, inwardly, I was right. I told her to sit down, which she did, reluctantly. I explained about the spacecraft we needed to build, the two planets that the Cirion people had found that could sustain human life. That we would have to start again, rebuild, but with their technology. Maggie was dumbfounded. She constantly shook her head.