Jack Underwood, chairman of Wide Horizons, felt increasingly desperate as Dreamstone’s bid churned steadily through its regulatory stages. Haris was still alive and well, despite his deal with the black man, and he knew Dreamstone’s jaws were closing. The whole world seemed to be turning against him. He suspected that the rest of his board was busily conspiring behind his back, and probably putting feelers out to Haris and Chapman in individual bids to save their necks. Michael Moss, Wide Horizon’s marketing director, had twice hung up on calls when he had pushed into his office unannounced, and had looked damned guilty both times. Bloody yid. Underwood disliked Jews, in all shapes and sizes. He was the son of a small shopkeeper in Bolton, who had fallend into debt, and borrowed from moneylenders. His father had mortgaged the shop and the house that went with it, and lost the lot. He blamed the moneylenders, though others doubted his business abilities, and instilled his son with a virulent anti-semitism, though the moneylenders were, in fact, Greek Cypriots. But they collected their debts through a man named Bloom. Underwood consequently nursed certain bitter enmities. He had brought Moss in to help beef up the group’s Elegance fashion chain alongside Barbara Hanson, because Moss knew his rag trade – yids always did. But their relationship was strictly business, a pure matter of making cash, and now the cash was blowing out of the window. He sat in his office, gazing glumly at a screen tuned to stockmarket prices, and knew disaster loomed increasingly large. Bill Laidlaw had promised to stir up things in the Midlands, but Laidlaw was only thinking of his own skin. He wondered what had happened to the nignog.
He decided to take a stroll, out of the Wide Horizons building, and use his dodgy mobile again. His search took him the best part of an hour, in a chain of outgoing calls seeking information, and incoming calls checking his bona fides, but he finally managed to make contact with someone in a position to know, and a voice promised to call him. He returned to the Wide Horizons building with the empty feeling that came from having a bad, bad need for information, but being totally in the dark, and decided to find out whether Smith and Laidlaw had made any progress.
He found Wide Horizons’ financial director talking to a young woman sitting at a computer screen in the corner of his office. The desk was new, and he had not seen her before. Smith looked up, and Underwood’s gloom deepened, for Smith’s body language made it plain that he did not much want to introduce them. He stood waiting. He was still chairman, and he still had some rights.
‘Hello, Martin.’ He tried to sound jovial, though he felt anything but bright, and took a good look at the girl out of the corner of his eye, though he did not stare at her openly. He realised that the girl was also taking his measure. She was demure looking, in a black trouser suit, with her hair in a neat bob, and only a touch of make-up. But Underwood sensed an animal quality about her, a raw sexuality hiding behind a veneer of convention.
Smith scowled. ‘Julia has joined us to help fight Dreamstone.’
Underwood looked magisterial. ‘You’ve come at the right time.’
Julia looked down. She could tell that the newcomer outvoted Smith, and she was a girl with a strong belief in priorities.
The two men stood for a moment in silence, with the girl demure at her desk, and Underwood sensed that she recognised his seniority. He held out his hand.
‘I’m Jack Underwood, the chairman. What are you going to do for us?’
He felt the girl’s hand soft and warm in his, and held it for a fraction longer than might have been conventional, but she did not draw away.
‘I’ve built you a new website.’
‘Good.’ He searched for something to add, for the girl seemed to be waiting, but his mind was elsewhere. ‘I hope we win. We’ve got a tough fight on our hands.’
Julia smiled slightly. She liked men competing for her. ‘I’m sure we will.’
Underwood heard his dedicated mobile buzz inside his jacket, and jerked back into anxiety. ‘I must go. We must talk again.’
He did not see Julia smile to herself as he hurried out of Smith’s office. Her smile might have cheered him a little.
He walked quickly to the end of the landing connecting all the directors offices, making sure nobody else was within earshot.
The voice in his ear was soft, perhaps another black man. ‘Mr. Underwood?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry. Your assignment has been cancelled.’
Underwood frowned. ‘Cancelled? What do you mean, cancelled?’
‘The gentlemen involved cannot go through with it.’
‘Why not?’
‘He’s dead.’ The mobile paused, as though considering whether to provide further information. ‘He had an argument. He came out the loser.’
‘I see.’ Underwood did not see at all. He wondered about the downpayment he had made. ‘What happens now?’
‘Nothing happens, Mr. Underwood.’
‘What about my down payment?’
‘Nothing happens, Mr. Underwood. Your man is dead, your deal is dead. That’s the end of it.’
The mobile clicked off. Underwood did not bother to try tracking the call back. He knew there would be no trail. Industrial unrest was now his last hope, and he would have to swallow his pride, after having been deliberately cool about wanting to stir up trouble on the floors of Wide Horizons’ Midland engineering plants. He had always pinned all his hopes on his own plan: Haris and Chapman in coffins would have totally trumped unrest on all fronts. But now his plan had crumbled completely, and he must perforce clutch at straws. Dreamstone was moving progressively closer and closer to victory, and soon Haris and Chapman would have the keys to Wide Horizons’ front door. When that happened, his own days as a free man would be numbered, and some dodgy acquaintances would also start counting their losses. He was unfazed by the prospect of a short stay in prison, but he had absolutely no desire at all to meet a bullet on his return to the world of the free. He must talk to Martin Smith, as a last hope, and then check on flights out of Britain. He had worked for a while in Brazil as a young man, and spoke a little Portuguese. He still had a few contacts. His wife Shirley fortunately owned their house in her own name, and he had squirelled away some cash in a Swiss numbered account. He might decamp, if events proved too fraught, and have Shirley join him. He might even vanish without trace.
He found Smith still talking to the girl, but this time did not wait. ‘Can we have a word, Martin?’
He did not speak again until he was safe in his own own large, comfortable suite. The suite reflected his status as top dog, with an elegant Chinese coffee table and a couple of comfortable sofas, a couple of minor French impressionists and a nice bust of Napoleon. He might have preferred a good bronze of Hitler, but people could be funny. Napoleon set the right kind of tone. The suite looked out through a plate glass wall across Wide Horizon’s gardens, sloping down gently to a lake with a small wooded island. Underwood had liked, in better times, to row around the island for exercise, and sometimes entertain visitors to island picnics, for it housed a small Grecian temple, complete with basic kitchen facilities, a couple of toilets, and a small meeting room with a large couch ideal for extra-curricular pastimes.
Wide Horizons’ directors all worked on the same floor, stretching out along a wide landing, with Moss at the furthest end. All worked in rather smaller suites. Smith had once, out of curiosity, looked at plans of the building, designed by a firm of leading architects close to his boss. He had smiled wryly on discovering that Wide Horizons’ chairman had allocated every director exactly the same amount of space, but taken two of the spaces for himself.
Underwood settled himself on one of his sofas, and Smith took the other, without waiting for an invitation. Underwood stared at his financial director. He could sense his chain of command starting to disintegrate, and the knowledge compounded his fear. ‘Has Bill stirred up the unions yet?’
Smith nodded. ‘The shop stewards met this morning.’
Underwood waited.
‘They’re having a mass meeting on Thursday morning, and they’re expecting the media. They’ll send a delegation down to picket Dreamstone the same day. They’ll come down by coach.’ Smith spoke wearily. He had spent a good deal of time making phone calls, to no great avail, for Laidlaw had not been much use, and most of the workforce in the group’s Midland plants already seem reconciled to finding themselves jobless. Only a small anarchist grouping had shown much enthusiasm, but he mistrusted wild men. It smacked too much of supping with the devil.
‘You got the Trots?’
‘They’re the ones who are coming.’
‘Maybe they’ll take direct action.’
Smith made a face. ‘They’re not up to much. They won’t storm Dreamstone’s offices and hand you Haris and Chapman’s heads on pikes.’
‘Wasn’t there a girl at the Dreamstone press conference?’
‘She works for a red rag called New Proletariat. Fierce, but very marginal.’
‘You don’t think she could put some fire into them?’
Smith looked doubtful. Then he smiled wryly. ‘You’d be better off trying Julia. She’s got some weird ideas.’
Underwood looked at him quickly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Talk to her, and you’ll find out.’ Smith had now spent some time with his new recruit, and admired her skill and expertise with a computer. But he had also backed away from taking any warmer interest, because of some strange things she had said. ‘She’s a very bright girl, and she’s brilliant with a computer. But she’s also a bit of an unguided missile.’
Underwood glanced at his watch. Time was moving on through the afternoon, but Shirley never questioned him on his movements, especially now that he was under pressure. ‘Okay, send her in.’
He got to his feet as Julia walked into his office suite, waving her into the sofa facing him. They both sat down, each carefully inspecting the other. Underwood cleared his throat. ‘Martin says you are very bright.’
Julia did not reply. But she flashed one of her special looked at the man facing her, and it was a look that combined a question with a possible offer. She had never met a company chairman before, and she fancied the idea of adding a prestigious scalp to her collection.
Underwood smiled slightly. He understood her look perfectly, but he was too old to be picked like an apple from a tree. ‘Tell me what you are doing for us.’
‘I’m building defences.’
‘Martin must think you’re good at that.’
‘It’s my purpose.’
Underwood frowned slightly, echoing her words. ‘Your purpose?’
Julia was silent for a moment. She knew, when she began speaking about herself, that she sometimes waxed over enthusiastic. It was the way her mind worked. People might ask her whether she liked cats, or children, and she could give simple answers. They might ask her to explain her work with a computer, no problem at all. But probing questions could open doors in her mind that brooked no closure. Questions on her view of herself, on the way people, the world, should treat her, demanded explanations, and she knew that once she has started on explanations that she had to complete them. She smiled. It seemed her safest defence.
Underwood tried again. ‘Do you think you will find your purpose here?’
Julia shrugged. It was a simple question, engaging nothing. ‘I hope so.’
‘And will we…’ Underwood wondered how to continue, and grasped at an idea floating in the back of his mind. ‘Will we fulfill it?’
This was nearer the mark. Julia stared at him, trying to fathom whether he would understand her if she replied, whether he possessed the capability to comprehend her, to reach down, below the surface of her words, and penetrate the walls she had built around her self. She knew that he desired her. But she does not know whether he possessed the power to close her circle of search, and location, and cleansing. ‘I have a mission.’ She spoke very softly, almost as though to herself, and Underwood had to lean forward to make out her words.
He smiled encouragingly. The girl was intriguing, albeit a little intense. Possibly a girl with a religious bent, or – and possibly more interesting – a girl with a knot somewhere in her brain. He had met a couple of such women in his life. They generally wanted a man to pray at their side, and then lay them out flat and bonk them to heaven. He decides to play the girl at her own game. ‘Will your mission save us?’
‘Do you want me to save you?’
Underwood stared at her, and the fierce gleam now lighting her eyes. He sensed an idea starting to coalesce in his mind, but its edges remained cloudy. He nodded slowly. ‘I think that I do.’
‘Will you believe in me?’
He nodded again, playing into her game, though he was now beginning to think that she was demanding a great deal of commitment. He would have preferred simply to undress her, and lay her out on the couch in his small Grecian temple, and take his pleasure of her until she could pleasure him no more. But now she appeared to be casting herself as some kind of Joan of Arc, some higher being. And yet his idea was growing, and hardening, and taking form. He would play along with her, for a moment, and see if their paths met.
‘How can I save you?’
Underwood started. The fierce gleam had gone, or been pushed back, and Julia’s voice was now normal again.
‘There’s a man in our way.’
‘Just one?’ She looked surprised.
‘Just one important one.’ Underwood decided to focus on Haris, and ignore Chapman. Haris provided Dreamstone’s main energy, and the monkey would be lost without its master.
‘What kind of man?’
‘He’s called Levon Haris.’
Julia was silent for a moment, and then reached into the pocket of her suit to hold up a card. ‘This one?’
Underwood stared at her, dumbfounded. ‘How do you know him?’
He wondered whether he has been caught in some kind of trap. The girl might be some kind of Dreamstone spy, a hitwoman sent to eliminate him, just as he planned an elimination. He tensed. He was still a powerful man, though perhaps a touch overweight. He had the strength to overpower her, unless she carried some hidden weapon.
‘A friend of his helped me get a job here.’
‘To help you fulfil your mission?’ Underwood glanced towards the door of his suite. He could probably make the distance in a few hurried strides.
‘He knew nothing about it. I met him by chance.’
‘A matter of destiny?’
‘Perhaps.’
Underwood relaxed. He did not appear to be in Julia’s sights. But he also sensed that she harboured a fury seeking release, a volcano bubbling to be free. He got to his feet. He had read, in his youth, a good deal of mythology, tales from the times of ancient Greece, and Rome, and the Sagas.
He walked to the glass wall of his suite, looking down at the island in the lake below with its small Grecian temple, so conveniently furnished with a large comfortable sofa. ‘You have come to the right place. That was your temple.’
Julia looked up at him uncertainly. This man seemed to be reading her mind, to be casting her for a role that extended her vision of herself further than she had ever thought to extend it. ‘My temple?’
‘I will take you down there, and I will be your acolyte.’ Underwood surprised himself at the ease with which he fell into a kind of quasi-religious patter. ‘We will focus your strength against evil, and you will know what to do.’
Julia was silent for a moment, and then she turned, lifting her face. She knew she had found her man, her mentor, and the force that would guide her. ‘You want me to kill him.’
Underwood bent to kiss on her forehead, between her eyes. ‘He’s a yid, and he’s evil.’
Julia frowned. ‘A yid?’
‘A Jew.’
She nodded slowly. Everything was now coming to pass in a mosaic of progression. She would be a sword in the hand of this man, and wreak the doom he was willing on her, and then she would herself devour him, to close a circle of condamnation, and execution, and redemption through fire, and her flame would cleanse her, and burn itself out.
Underwood took her hand. ‘Let’s go down there.’ He was already lubricious, and his desire was burning. He would take this girl to her temple, and light a sacrificial fire in her, and keep it burning until he has achieved what he sought.