The real target has to be me!

I look in the mirror. My eyes look frozen over.

Twenty-Eight

Blake Law Barrington

‘Wars should be directed so that the nations on both sides should be further in our debt.’

—Amschel Mayer Rothchild, Frankfurt 1774

I swipe my hand on the steamed-up mirror and look at myself. My eyes stare back, a hard blue. I blink. I look the same. The corruption and the ugliness don’t show, but surely I must be morphing into something unspeakably ugly. All my life I have manipulated laws and morals to advance myself and those of my class.

It was all real simple. Fake money, built upon fake money, built upon fake money. We stole it all from right under your noses. How? Simply seize control of the top of any organization and the rest… You followed like sheep.

You were so easily led, so wonderfully predictable. So lacking in vision. Like a herd moving blindly, either with fear or hatred. It was all so easy. Placate the deliberately dumbed down masses with entertainment. Hundreds of channels of mush and the mindless instructions to consume, consume, consume. Like an addict you saturated your minds with violence, pornography, greed, hatred, selfishness and incessant bad news.

Then… Oh look…a terrorist. He’s coming for you.

Let’s put the whole world on militarized high alert. Let’s intimidate!

And you rose to the bait. Or did you just look the other way?

Yeah, it was grotesque. But you bought it. Even now you’re content with your subjugations, right? Your illusions of security. Are your eyes glazing over? That’s why it was easy. You made it easy. Yes, you. Feel the spike of shame? No? See, why it was so easy for me.

Anyway…

One day, I went one step further. I killed a man, one I called Father. Struck Daddy fatally when he least expected it. And now I am being called upon to execute my sister. And still I do not flinch. Is it because I woke up this morning and the pillow under my cheek was damp? I had cried in my sleep. Or is it simply because I am a monster, a sociopath? Or is it rather just the law of the jungle?

Eat your opponent before he lays his table.

I am of the jungle. I saw her setting her table. I saw it in her eyes. That flash of raw, vindictive hatred teetering on hysteria—unmissable.

Once she fooled me. I mistook calculated revenge for hurt and deep sadness, even madness, but now I am older and wiser. I am a husband and a father and woe betide anyone who threatens harm to my little family.

This time I got her number. Yes, she will return Sorab, but that will not be enough for her. She is baying for my blood. Perhaps even theirs. No, when I think about it, her revenge will only be complete when I am dead, and Lana is a struggling widow that she can play with. And she will.

Like a cat with a mouse.

There is no other way around it. I played softly, softly with her, but she will have none of it. Now the kid gloves come off.

When she looked at me, she was not looking at her lost love, but at a piece that stubbornly refused to conform to desire, to meld with her. It was as if I was a part of her that had been denied her and she wanted it back. She wanted it like mad. Until she has subjected me in whatever way her sick mind deemed would complete her she will not stop.

Unless I rehash an old battle.

Unless I stop her.

By killing her…

I leave the bathroom and go looking for my wife. She is in the room she has designated as her new office. She is on the phone and I stand at the entrance watching her. In the last two days some change has come over her. Suddenly she seems to have thrown herself into her charity.

‘Yes, I understand. But we really don’t need them,’ she says, and puts the phone down.

I raise my eyebrows. ‘What’s your charity turning down?’

‘Vaccines that are almost at the use by date. A woman representing the pharmaceutical giants wanted to flog these vaccines to us. And when I said no, she was willing to give them away for free.’ She scrunches her forehead. ‘What’s that all about?’

I smile. Maybe another time I will tell her about that scam. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m keeping busy,’ she says bravely, as two large tears roll down her face.

I wipe them away with my thumbs. ‘Good. You keep busy. Is Billie coming over?’

‘Yes, she’ll be here at ten.’

‘Good.’

‘So you’re off to see Jay.’

‘Yes. I’ll call you after and let you know what’s going on.’

‘Could it be a trick?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Oh, my darling, I love you so much.’

‘Wait for my phone call.’

‘Always.’

I kiss her on the forehead, breathe in the scent of her, to fortify me on the most difficult day of my life.

The meeting with Jay is over quickly. Obviously, he thinks I’ve taken leave of my senses—it is in every ‘uh’, ‘um’ and uncomprehending pause that finds its way into his sentences. But he is too discreet to come right out and say it. I leave his office clutching copies of the papers Victoria requested. Copies of Sorab’s return, copies of my freedom from the world I somehow became trapped in. I feel a flicker of excitement inside me, but I hold back.

Too much can still go wrong.

I get outside on the street and a long black limousine with heavily tinted windows stops in front of me. The back door closest to me opens. I am not afraid of death. I never have been. I’ll do what I have to do to keep my family safe. I bend down, look inside, take a deep breath, and get into it.

‘Monfort,’ I state quietly.

‘And what should I call you?’ he asks tonelessly.

‘Hopefully, you won’t see me again, and that will be a moot question.’

He smiles. In the daylight his skin is particularly repulsive. White and translucent, the veins grass green. Like the damp underside of a frog.

‘But you will see me again.’

‘After today I’m finished.’

‘I’m afraid your services are still required. Stepping off the train is a dangerous business.’

I look at my platinum Greubel Forsey Tourbillion, acquired for a cool half a million dollars at Christie’s Important Watches auction two autumns ago. I take it off and place the timepiece on the console between Monfort and me. To anybody not in the know the gesture is meaningless, but to the true insider and the practitioner of dark esoteric energy, he will understand it perfectly. The gesture is unmistakable.

Then I get out of the car, close the door, and begin to walk in the opposite direction. Ten yards away Brian makes a U-turn and stops beside me. I get in.

‘Take me to that bitch,’ I say.

Twenty-Nine

Blake Law Barrington

I turn away from the window when I hear her come in. Not fast. Slowly. This is the last part. I am almost free. The lock on the chain is about to break.

The door closes behind her. She is dressed in a black and white suit, and her trademark black pearls encircle her throat. Her hair is shining and loose around her shoulders. Our eyes meet. It is impossible to think of her as anything else but my greatest enemy.

I hold out my phone.

She doesn’t say a word. Looks at the papers I have spread out on the plastic table, and takes the phone from me. Our fingers don’t touch.

She dials, waits for the connection and says just three words: ‘The Speculative Woman.’ Then she ends the call and puts it down on the table between us. I sit and so does she. Neither of us says anything. After a while she picks up the papers that are on the table and casually, as if they are a magazine that she does not care too much for, glances through them.

I turn my head and look outside. It is a beautiful day. The sun is shining. I am so tense I feel the tension inside my body wanting to manifest in some physical way. I take shallow breaths and control myself. The only sounds are of her flipping uninterestedly through the papers. After a while even she cannot be bothered to fake interest in them. She tosses them on the table and looks in my direction. I don’t turn to look at her so she, too, turns her head and looks out of the window