An Eighty Percent Solution - By Thomas Gondolfi Page 0,101

you know anyone that works for Vape Security?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I need to talk to their head officer as well.” Tony slid over another stack of bills.

“I can make those things happen, sir.”

“I knew you could,” Tony said sliding over yet a third stack of bills. “This is for you.”

“You don’t have to do that, Mr. Tony.”

“Yes I do, Jock. Here are two notes, each with the time, date, and location of individual meets.” Tony handed over three slips, two stuck together as if to appear as just two passed hands.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll make it happen.”

Tony walked out, Christine and Jackson at his side. The moment they reached the outside air, Jackson turned with eyebrows raised. “What was on the third note?”

“What third note?” Tony asked.

“I was dealing seconds before you were born,” came the reply. “You weren’t bad, but not good enough to make a living at it, though.”

“OK, you caught me.” Tony shrugged.

“Are you going to tell us anything about what’s going on? The rest of us have been on edge waiting for the last two weeks while you healed enough to move about.”

“OK, I’ll tell you this. The first two were just as described. The final card bore only the line, ‘Purchase as many puts on major corporations on next Friday as you can.’”

“We move on Friday? What’s the target?”

“You will find out next Wednesday, just like all the rest. I need to talk to the heads of those security firms, and one other, first.”

“If I were childish, I’d say that Wednesday is still ten days’ off.”

Tony smiled as he pushed through the street level crowds. “You’re right, that would be childish.”

Christine, as always, said nothing.

* * *

Nanogate sat quietly in his study in a 1960s leather wingback chair. No one kept him company. He clutched the report on the acquisition of Marineris Mining in his left hand, unread. His eyes tracked only the dance of lint specks in a shaft of sunlight through his skylight.

Not a single GAM incident had marred his daily reports in over a week. His corporate espionage reports told him his competitors weren’t circling around the lamed Nanogate as he expected. He didn’t know which report worried him the most. The lull reminded him of the quiet of a six-year-old coloring on the walls, a teen with his first narcostick, or that calm just before a squall’s first gust.

His sense of self-preservation, honed over many years in the cutthroat world of the corporations, screamed at him to do something—anything. He couldn’t think of a thing to do about either of the negative reports. Picking up the single malt scotch, he sipped it gently, brooding over his lack of choices.

It was times like these he particularly missed Mr. Marks. Marks and Nanogate existed in symbiosis, where Mr. Marks’s advice often complemented his own. It was a rapport he didn’t share with his new bodyguard.

Staring off into space, he noticed the sudden dimming of the light just before he simultaneously heard and felt a drop in air pressure signifying his floating home was no longer airtight.

An impressive man, clad in canary yellow tights, dropped rapidly through the perfectly round hole in the skylight to a rough landing three meters in front of him. The muscles bulging on muscles, so typical of steroid replacements, made the bodyguard a caricature of a human. A tiny Adonis-like face perched between massive shoulders reaching all the way up to his ears. On top of all that, the intruder wielded a wide-field gauss gun with apparently expert skill. Before he finished standing, he leveled it directly at Nanogate’s chest.

“Ah, a visitor,” Nanogate said, not moving from his chair. “I do have a door and an appointment secretary, you know.”

“I’ve come to deliver a message,” the unknown bodyguard said in a tone intended to cow any victim.

“Percomms work, too.” Nanogate nonchalantly took another sip of his scotch.

“This one requires your death.”

“So melodramatic. So who wants me dead? No, wait, let me guess. I like guessing.”

The bodyguard said nothing.

“If it were the Greenies, they wouldn’t have bothered to talk. They would’ve just planted a bomb or shot me from some distant window.

“If it were one of my underlings, they’d be too terrified to confront me, and even if they got the nerve, they would’ve just shot first and asked questions later.

“If it were one of my family, I would’ve expected poison, or perhaps electrocution in the bath—I hear that’s very popular now.

“Hmm…that only really leaves my contemporaries. As I’m guessing, I would