‘Hansard … won’t send the money to my family … unless you’re all dead.’
And then Cole’s eyes went to Steinmeier’s lap, and he finally saw the remote electronic button, hidden within the mass of bloody viscera leaking from the man’s gut.
And then Steinmeier depressed the button, the house erupted in a huge orange fireball, and Cole’s entire world was consumed by flame.
PART FIVE
Applause rang out in the main chamber of Singapore’s Parliament House, a modernist building with a prism-shaped roof situated across the Singapore River from Raffle’s Place.
President Ellen Abrams breathed a sigh of satisfaction as she held the gold fountain pen and finally signed the Mutual Defence Treaty, which had now been re-modified to include a tripartite agreement involving the People’s Republic of China.
After her agent’s attempted assassination attempt and Mark Cole’s timely intervention and information, Abrams had managed to open up Danko and Feng enough to listen to her story.
To their credit, they had listened, and the three leaders had met soon after to discuss in depth what had happened, to establish the sequence of events, how things got out of hand so quickly, and what could be done in the future to ensure such a situation would not arise again.
Russia and China sent over investigative teams of their own, and Abrams’ version of events was finally accepted by all sides — it had been an internal coup, arranged by Vice Admiral Charles Hansard.
It was decided by all three countries to cover up what had actually happened — better that the world never knew anything about it. When the various members of Hansard’s group were located — some just asleep in bed, confident they would never be caught, others trying desperately to leave the country — they were offered plea bargains. They were forced to resign their positions, in return for secret confessions of their roles, and such information was critical in convincing Danko and Feng about what had really happened.
Because the entire incident was being covered up, the reason for those people leaving their positions was given as merely part of a general reshuffle of the US administration on Abrams’ part, due on the one hand to the assassination attempt on her life — which had been blamed on Mancini as a crazed, lone assassin — and on the other to the changing global power structure.
As the members of Hansard’s alumni left their powerful positions, it was seen around the world as nothing more than the usual political manoueveruing. Those business men and women in the group were also forced to resign from their respective companies, and a variety of false reasons were given for these resignations, none of which aroused the least bit of suspicion from the world’s press.
The group needed to be punished on some level though — and although many in the US, Russian and Chinese governments felt that some ‘accident’ should befall them, it was decided that this would perhaps not be wise in the long run.
Instead, the members’ assets and business interests were seized secretly, out of the eyes of the press, with near to two billion dollars of personal wealth being rescinded to the US government, which dispersed a large sum as compensation to the families of those killed in the attacks in Sweden, and put the rest towards administration costs for the tri-nation pact that was now being signed.
Abrams smiled as she sat back down in her straight-backed leather chair, watching as President Danko approached the gilded lectern to add his own signature to the treaty document. It pleased her immensely that the Alumni’s personal money, instead of helping fund, and then being heavily increased by, a new Cold War, was instead helping to bankroll a Mutual Defence Treaty between the three concerned nations.
As Danko moved to the side and President Feng took to the lectern, Abrams’ thoughts drifted back to the Alumni, and to Vice Admiral Charles Hansard. It was frustrating in the extreme that the man had not yet been found, despite the best efforts of the US, Russia and China. Their police and intelligence services had spent the last few months scouring the known world for the fugitive, but to no avail. It was as if he had simply vanished into thin air.
Abrams also thought it was regretful that Mark Cole — or ‘the Asset’ as he had been known to her all these years — seemed to have perished in Austria whilst trying to rescue his family. She had actually cried when the report had come through. It wasn’t just that he had saved her life; he had postponed reaching his own family to do so, and Abrams couldn’t help but feel partially responsible for their deaths.
The Force Recon team had got there too late. They had been armed and ready to go in hard, but on arrival they had discovered the whole place swarming with police and other emergency services, the house totally razed to the ground.
They had therefore left their weapons behind and walked in unarmed, showing their military credentials to the men at the police barrier. They had been allowed in and wandered about the site, noting the parachute canopy lying on the garden lawn, the six dead men in the tree line, the six spread around outside the house, empty cartridge cases littering the grounds.
Upon coming to the house, it was clear that evidence wouldn’t be quickly forthcoming; the onsite crime scene investigators told them that there were traces of a variety of different body parts throughout the burnt and collapsed structure, but due to the temperatures involved, it was doubtful whether they would ever be completely sure about who had been inside.
Further investigation back in the United States had shown Cole to be a diving instructor living in the Cayman Islands, but Abrams knew who he really was. The Asset was the United States’ own spearhead warrior, a top-secret resource that had been used as a precision weapon by the nation for many years.
It was a shame, she thought as she stood once more; he had been a good man.
But all three leaders were on the podium now, shaking hands and exchanging kisses on the cheek as the world’s press filmed and took pictures; for it was the most important treaty signing they had witnessed in their lifetimes, and one that would help ensure a more stable world in a more promising future.
Jerry Adams spat at the images on the television screen, disgust written plain across his face.
‘Sons of bitches!’ he shouted, slamming his fist on the wine table next to him, toppling his champagne flute.
The others in the room hardly noticed his outburst, as they all felt exactly the same way; it was their money that was funding this travesty! And now they had been left almost penniless, in a country — their country — that had climbed into bed with two age-old enemies!
All of the ten remaining members of the Alumni were gathered together in the Villa Beach Suite of the Hilton Cancun. They had been arriving throughout the morning, and some had already been drinking heavily as they watched the continuous press coverage of the Mutual Defence Treaty signing.
Their lives since New Year had been hell — they had lost their major assets, their business holdings, even money straight from their bank accounts. Forced out of their jobs, some had been forced to sell their houses, others their cars.
As nothing was known of their involvement in the recent goings-on, they were still making money on the after-dinner speech circuit, and some had written autobiographies; but the bottom line was that two hundred thousand a year was far, far removed from the billions they used to have, and the tens of billions more they had hoped to get in the very near future.