in on Dr A. Sutherland.
Of course all of this unpleasantness now, chasing around this shitty little country, could have been avoided if they’d let him finish that girl in the hotel room, back in New York.
Hypocrites.
They were preparing to orchestrate events that were ultimately going to lead to the deaths of hundreds of millions, and yet they didn’t have the stomach to witness the death firsthand of one solitary child. He realised, in some ways, he had more in common with this man before him, than the privileged and pampered elite that he worked for.
‘You nearly exposed them. You nearly won, my friend. The girl could have identified three of the Twelve for you.’
Ash knew then that he alone had a unique status . . . knowing more than any of the members of the lower order; he had been entrusted with an almost sacred confidentiality because he was their personal watchdog. He knew these twelve men, and they were not brave men; they were weak.
Knowing the identity of just one of them would be enough for this determined, tenacious little agency. They’d find a way to get to an identified member, they’d find a way to get him to talk, that wouldn’t be so hard.
‘You came so close,’ Ash said.
‘Fuck you,’ grunted Mike. ‘We know all about you shit-heads. ’
Mike tried to move, to reach out towards his gun, dropped on the landing just a few feet away. Ash kicked it casually across the floor and out of reach.
‘Stay still,’ he cautioned Mike, ‘or you’ll bleed out faster. I want you to know my friend, because, well . . . because you’ve earned it.’
The American could do little but nod weakly.
‘Know all about us?’ Ash laughed. ‘You don’t know anything. What you know is just the little bit you’ve managed to scratch off the surface. You think a group of fat industrialists in expensive suits are behind this, don’t you? It goes much higher. You can trace the reins of power up through banks that own banks that own banks to just a dozen names.’
Mike frowned, struggling through the growing fogginess to comprehend what he was hearing.
‘The world is owned by a dozen families headed by a dozen men, some of whom have surnames that even the mindless sheep on the streets would recognise, and other names that have always remained hidden.
‘And believe me when I say their influence, even before recent years, was pretty damn impressive.’ He leant over Mike, moving closer to his face. It looked like the American’s pupils were beginning to dilate, as he started his inevitable slide into unconsciousness.
‘These people I work for . . . you can see their fingerprints everywhere in history, Mike, fingerprints smeared everywhere, like a crime scene. Take the Second World War for instance . . .’
Mike’s breathing caught.
‘Oh yeah,’ Ash grinned, ‘that was their ill-conceived attempt to stifle the further spread of communism. They’ve never liked popular uprisings. They made Hitler, they paved the way for him . . . so long as he did what he was told, he was unassailable. But then, of course, he went off script, and the rest, as they say, is history.’
‘The war . . .?’
‘Yes, of course, it was orchestrated by them.’
Mike tried to gurgle something.
‘Did you know the American Civil War was a power struggle amongst members of the lower order? That war was just a squabble between two groups of business men. What about your War of Independence? That was them struggling to keep a hold of the colonies, via England. Of course, they lost that war. But then, instead, down the road they bought the country, through investment.’
Ash laughed gently. ‘Your history Mike, American history . . . don’t you see? It was written by a cartel of European families. The wars, the hundreds of thousands of dead young American boys, the poverty and hardship, the great depression, two world wars . . . ultimately nothing more than a boardroom struggle amongst the ruling elite; the growing pains, my friend, of their influence.’
Mike struggled to talk. A small trickle of black-as-oil blood trickled from the side of his mouth and ran down into his beard.
‘Why . . . this?’
‘What’s happening now?’ Ash cut in. The dying man nodded, but it was nothing but the weakest twitch of his head. Ash looked down at the blade in his hand, it needed cleaning. He wiped it along the length of Mike’s shirt-sleeve.
‘They decided it, Mike, it was something that needed