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Page 58.
Scene 26. Jack in Frankfurt: Message Received
 Jack Gray arrived in Frankfurt on a drizzly day, typical for the maritime climate of northwestern Europe. He rode a shuttle across the tarmac, amid light rain gusts, to a leading hotel chain at Rhein-Main International Airport.
Over a light breakfast of coffee, rolls, butter, and a selection of fruit compotes, he met with his assigned assistant from Sigma 2020. Miranda Coldstream was a British woman from the southeastern city of Exeter, Devon. She was young, pale, and pretty in a bland and severe way. Jack almost felt as if he had a school marm along.
She wore sensible shoes, shimmering nylons, and a brown skirt-suit. She wore a greenish, military looking windbreaker, and carried a chocolate colored umbrella. She seemed nervous.
And yet—she wore a large, sexy rhinestone ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, and she would look beautiful if she let her honey-colored hair down.
She introduced herself and joined him at a small table for two, with white linen and stainless steel service, in the first class dining room overlooking the runway.
"Nice view," he said, as huge tail fins of various airlines shifted around them.
"It is, Mr. Gray." She seemed nervous.
"Have you been read in?" he asked as he buttered a fragrant roll.
Her eyes moved left and right. "Here?"
"We're bug proof."
"How do you know?" She sat darkly glowering, hunched, with her fists between her knees.
"You new at this?"
Hesitantly, she replied: "Graduated from the new SIS Academy at Sandhurst just three months ago."
Jack Gray spread a dark berry compote on his roll. "Still wake in the middle of the night shouting slogans and standing at attention?"
She cracked her first smile. "Not after the first month back to normal life."
"You can smile now," Jack said. She did look pretty in an unadorned, rain-swept way, he thought.
She sort of fell apart in embarrassment, smiled, and looked down. "But the table might be bugged."
He made an allowing shrug. "Could be. But they'd have to bug every table at the airport, because I picked this restaurant and this table at random."
"Still…"
"Here, if it makes you feel any better." He leaned under the table to look for bugs, noting how her nylon knees were pressed together and pointed away from him. That was not an SIS or MI6 instinct, but a female one. Jack finished his search for bugs and straightened up. "Not a bug in sight. But here, if it will reassure you." He took his small carafe of water for breakfast tea—not used, because he preferred freshly brewed coffee—and dumped it over the condiments tray. Miranda jumped back. "There," he said. "If I were hiding a bug on this table, I'd do it between the salt and pepper shakers. I don't see anything sparking—do you?"
She shook her head, three feet from the table, where she had pushed herself, and now sat hugging her upper body, and pointing her knees away from him at the perpendicular.
A waiter in white top came rushing with a bunched towel in his hands.
"Sorry," Jack said, as he led Miranda in changing to a less western maritime table.
"I can see that working with you will be interesting," she said in a brittle tone.
Jack leaned sharply closer and said in a flurry: "Listen, you twit. I've been in this business since you were in puddles. Don't you go pulling academy or girdles or attitudes on me. You exist for one reason and one reason only. You are here to help me, to serve me, to do as I say, so that I can exercise my mature and superior judgment and make sure we do not both end up dead. Do you comprehend that, Agent Miranda Codfish? Or I will throw you back in the sea, and ask for another helper."
She looked pale for a moment. He thought she was going to cry.
Jack resumed fixing his roll. "Am I clear?" He took the first bite, and it was delicious.
"Yes." It was a simple statement, full of just the right meaning. He was proud of her at that moment. She got herself together, and looked at him with a steady gray gaze. She folded her hands on her purse on her lap, and waited for him to say more.
"Have a roll," he said. "The berry compote is exceptional. The coffee is dark roast, crisp without a hint of bitterness, and a faint buttery roundness effected by hints amount of turbinado and fresh light cream."
She smiled again, moved closer, and put a breakfast together for herself. "I'm sorry. I was so nervous I didn't sleep much, and I didn't have time to eat before I rushed to meet you."
"I'm touched. Now your number one mission will be to relax and not be nervous. It leads to mistakes. It’s essential to get a good sleep every night."
"You're right about the coffee. Mm, that's good."
“The cream does it. Can’t you smell the meadow grass?”
She laughed. “I think I just heard a cow mooing.’ She set her cup aside and buttered a roll. "I'm to brief you on what Sigma knows, which is not enough."
"It never is. But shoot."
She told him what he already mostly knew about the new player—a shadowy organization named BLUM, which stood for Black Umbrella. They had hijacked an Anaconda technology for killing people with a bullet fired from Low Earth Orbit, or LEO. Near as the analysts could figure, this was based on some rather old-fashioned spy satellite technology, only instead of shooting film, it shot bullets."
Jack said: "When you say bullets, I assume you mean some kind of delivery vehicle to low atmosphere, because a bullet would get lost or burn up."
"Right, that's what we figure. They assassinated a young artist just yesterday at the Tower of London, for proof of concept."
"And their bottom line—?"
"Anaconda wanted to sell us the ability to assassinate tin horn dictators in the tropics, and avoid costly wars. Now that BLUM have hijacked the technology, they are threatening to kill corporate heads and government heads of state unless the corporations all ante up 25% of their stock ownership."
Jack sipped at his coffee. "Hmm…that would give them a leg up on a controlling interest in the entire world economy."
"They must be stopped," Miranda said. “Lord knows what would happen to us all if they gained control.”
Jack set his cup down with a rather precise little chink of white glass on white glass. "Miranda, since we risk our lives at this, we always have to consider—is this something I want to die for?"
"But…our orders…"
"If you do not think for yourself, and think outside the box, and think independently, you aren't ultimately much use in this business. Yes, we have orders—but we can either resign our commission entirely, or ask for a desk job whenever we feel it's getting over our heads."
"But…"
"I know, orders. I decide to go in on this, partly because I'm not ready for a desk job or a permanent shady spot fishing at a lake I know, and partly because BLUM doesn't sound like a savory organization to me. The corporations are just another term for feudal baronies, but—well, think of that poor kid at the Tower, painting his flowers in chalk as you say, when they snuffed him out. Understand, Miranda—once you're in, you're in, to the hilt. You can't hesitate or have second thoughts. Once you go in the field, ready to kill or be killed, the lives of your fellow operatives will depend on you, and your life on their integrity."
"I got all that at the academy," she said drily.
He paused a moment. "Maybe I'm trying to psych myself up, more than you."
She laughed. "It's okay, Mr. Gray. We must think on the same wavelength."
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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