“I say we say job complete,” Dawn pipes up. “Simple as.”
“You sound like Tecumseh,” Xiuying replies.
“Actually, I don’t, because he said that we should keep it on the table,” Dawn continues. “But that means finding something that goes against what the, um, Russian government, hmm.” She trails off mid-sentence. Striking to watch someone apply critical thought in real-time. “You know what I mean.”
“Why would they lie about this?” Jasmine asks.
“Exactly.”
Xiuying shrugs.
“How do you know he’s not faking it?” she asks. She taps her fingers on the stack of papers.
Dawn purses her lips, crosses her arms. The seams of her dress shirt strain against her deltoids. After a few seconds, it’s clear she can’t come up with a good answer.
“I’ll talk to him tomorrow about it,” is her only response, and it’s really the only one good enough. The commander seems like the kind of person to double-check everything. And it wasn’t like it was covered up, the TASS is the Russian government’s official news agency.
Behind this conversation, the other two from La Montagne, Desmond and Claire, sit and talk amongst themselves. Jasmine notices the heavy duffel bags at their feet. They’re filled with something, for sure, but Jasmine can’t exactly ask. Especially now, and especially to D’Ambrosia.
“Moving on,” Xiuying announces, and she rifles through the pages to the bottom of the pile. She pulls out a stapled stack of pages and hands it to Dawn. “That’s everything I could find on Permanent Solutions Security.”
“Those were the people protecting the ship, right?” Jasmine asks. Both of her teammates reply at the exact same time.
“That’s what Anastasia said.” :: “That’s what Tecumseh told me.”
Both of them look at each other. Dawn silently counts off three, and then continues.
“From what the people who were there said, yeah.”
“That’s also your employer,” Xiuying adds.
Farrah, who’s been listening in the entire time, butts in.
“Excuse me, what?”
Jasmine realizes that she is very out of the loop. She explains the basic nuances – she’s technically contracted to Permanent Solutions Security, she wound up in a shipping crate, that shipping crate wound up on a boat operated by the Southern Seas Shipping Company, and it dumped her here.
“How the hell did you wind up in the shipping crate in the first place?”
Jasmine pauses. Her memories are, in order: her time at Trinity, the signing of her contract with PSS, a fuzzy road trip to Houston, and then an indeterminant amount of time inside a shipping container. Then gunfire, Tecumseh Sherman, a hospital, Scott Davison, and then today. A sleepless night, Dawn and the rest, Xiuying, the library, a massage studio on the 30th floor of one of the multitudinous skyscrapers in this city, back to her apartment for a nap, then to here. She recounts them to Farrah.
“And why did they put you inside a shipping container? That’s the least efficient way to traffic people!”
“I know, right?” Xiuying replies. “Just put them onto a plane, have them overstay their visa and then threaten them with deportation if they try to leave.” What a strange conversation.
Jasmine has no answers. She remembers walking into a small office after a long road trip and then nothing in-between then and whenever she woke up. The stench of the crate hasn’t left her nostrils, either. The occasional helpless sob or dying croak. It all felt like a particularly bad fever dream.
“So, what exactly am I looking for here?” Dawn asks. Xiuying stands and points to something on the sheet.
“28 Tröxelgass,” she says. That’s in Schann, Lichtenstein. That’s from their own website, too.”
“Okay, so they’re based out of Lichtenstein. They don’t want to pay taxes, they’re just like every other company.”
Xiuying appears to have awoken from her sleepwalking state. Her eyes, set shallow in her face, widen and come alive. She quickly thumbs through the pages like they’re hundred dollar bills and pulls out a Google Streetview printout.
“Look at this.” She thrusts it in front of Dawn and the poor leader leans as far away as possible. “Look at it!”
“I’m fuckin’ looking at it! It’s a building!”
“You’re telling me they’re running an operation like that, theirs, whatever, out of that?”
Jasmine stands and peers over Dawn’s shoulder. Farrah does the same. Even Celine joins in. The image is of a simple, three-story office building. Literally nothing else. Brick and mortar, glass windows on all three floors. No identifying marks, no signs, just a nice-looking building.
“There’s no chance that they’re running whatever kind of operation they’re doing out of that building.”
Well, it looks big enough. Jasmine isn’t sure what kind of operation it is that they’re running. But they could have had a lot of employees in different regional branches. Maybe? She was confused by Xiuying’s logic. Given the way that Farrah was looking at her, the two new arrivals have arrived at similar mindsets.
Dawn whistles at the bartender and the large man walks over, drying a glass with a towel.
“Can you get her a beer, please?”
“No, I’m fine. I’m totally fine,” Xiuying protests.
“Guinness.”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“No!”
She returns to the ginormous stack of papers and grabs another stack of sheets, and the bartender places down another pint glass next to the pile.
“This is a list of every single operation that’s run out of that address.”
Jasmine takes a peek and sees dozens upon dozens of companies. Dawn flips through, and its screenshot after screenshot of companies stating that they’re headquartered at 28 Tröxelgass in Lichtenstein. The only two explanations is that there is some sort of void in space-time that allows over a hundred companies to operate out of that building, or...
“What are you trying to get at?” Farrah asks. “Its just a company avoiding taxes.”
“But it’s not,” Xiuying replies. “Where are there armouries? Or their training grounds?”
Farrah clears her throat.
“You’re a communist, right?”
Xiuying stares at her.
“Yes. Is that going to cause problems between us?”
“No, not for me. I’ll take ten of you over another fucking Saudi prince. I just feel like you’re letting your ideology, or your preconceived notions regarding this kind of thing, blind you. They’re probably there because they don’t want to pay taxes. Even if they’re just renting a floor, that’s enough space for accountants and lawyers and the like. If all the money comes back to Lichtenstein, then that’s less they have to pay in taxes. I doubt there’s some grand conspiracy. They’re a PMC, so in all honesty I’d bet that they’re too stupid to pull one off.”
Xiuying puts her hands on her hips. Recalibrates herself, and then takes a long swig of Guinness to finish the job. She wipes foam from her upper lip with back of her arm.
“But you get government subsidies if you’re in America. Why not there?”
“Aren’t there rules about PMCs in America not legally being able to take contracts from companies in certain countries?” Farrah suggests.
Xiuying takes the sheets of paper from Dawn’s hand, flips through them until she comes across a balance sheet for the year 2102. Two years ago.
“Look at this,” she says. “Look at their revenue!”
Jasmine looks at the company’s revenue. How much they take in, before expenses. She didn’t get a good enough look to comprehend the entire number but it started with 7 and had three whole commas.
“Billion-dollar companies don’t operate out of completely unmarked office buildings in fucking Lichtenstein! And they don’t share buildings with eight dozen other companies!”
Xiuying finishes off her beer, puts the foamy glass on the table, and looks at the bartender. “Can I have another?”
He smiles a bright smile and gets her a refill.
“I don’t open tabs.” His voice is deep and low.
Xiuying pulls out Ashara Wolfe’s card in response. He looks at it and smiles some more. He just found the real-life version of an infinite money cheat code.
“So what do you think is happening here?” Dawn asks, cutting to the heart of the issue.
“Two options,” Xiuying announces, like she’s giving a lecture. Jasmine figures that once she’s through here she’ll make a good instructor at any one of China’s Janissary schools.
“It’s either a shell company or a front company.” She looks over at Jasmine. “You know what those are, right?”
Jasmine nods. She doesn’t know what those are but if she’s honest she feels that Xiuying will take twenty minutes to explain the most minute details. She’ll figure it out along the way.
“How would it be a shell company? It clearly does something,” Farrah replies. “It's not there to accumulate debts that another company incurs, it clearly has employees and payrolls and the like.”
“Exactly. So it must be a front company,” Xiuying responds. “But for who?”
“Are we no longer operating under the assumption that this is an independent company?” Farrah asks again. She reminds Jasmine of the thesis reviewers. Her graduation thesis was the about the potential usage of straws, leaves, stalks, etc. to power a small, at-home power plant. She would’ve fit in well on that panel.
“Can you give me a reason to assume that it’s its own entity?" Xiuying asks back.
Farrah takes hold of the company’s balance sheet. Jasmine has no idea how to read it. Assets line up perfectly with liabilities and equity. Outside there’s the rumbling of engines, tires over pavement, something heavy atop the chassis. Nobody pays it any mind, it's probably one of the many hauler trucks dropping off a shipment to a nearby grocery store.
“What’s that?” Jasmine asks, reaching an arm over Farrah’s shoulder. Her finger points towards something.
The sheet’s assets side is subdivided into various categories – cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments, accounts receivable, other receivables, inventory, supplies, investments, PPE (property, plant, and equipment), and other intangible assets. Everything checks out, except…
Farrah follows Jasmine’s finger, which points to the ‘cash’ line. The company’s total assets are around seven and a half billion, give or take a few dozen billion. Their cash – not just bills, but directly in a bank account, or several bank accounts – reserves account for almost five billion of that.
Farrah’s eyes flicker from that to total assets, then to liabilities and equity. The two match up, but if you do basic subtraction…
“Without all that cash they’re underwater by almost five billion,” Xiuying says. “I don't think there's five billion dollars worth of cash in Europe. I don't think there's enough banks to hold five billion secretly. To get that much cash versus their other assets means that, A, they’re taking security contracts that are entirely up front, or…”
The unspoken sentence lingers over the Janissaries like a storm cloud. ‘Or someone else is propping them up.’ They have an awful lot of liabilities to cover for.
Farrah, for once, doesn’t have an immediate answer. Her lips separate, like the answer is on the tip of her tongue, but the door to the outside opens and all conversation halts.
There’s a bell above the door that rings when it opens, allowing an occupied bartender or server to know that they’re about to have a new customer. That bell rings continuously for about ten straight seconds as a posse of very strangely dressed men usher themselves in. They look like some sort of gang. They’re all wearing one or both parts of a tracksuit; some with the jacket and different pants, some with the pants but a differing jacket or sweater, and some with the whole ensemble.
They look patently absurd and if it wasn’t for the handguns tucked into the waists of their pants, very visible to all who look, Jasmine would have discounted them as just some strangely dressed gang of hooligans. Her instructors would’ve called them ‘antifa’ or something.
One of them stands front and center. He’s not wearing a tracksuit. Just a regular suit, black on black on black from shoulders to shoes like he’s dressed for a funeral. An extended clip sticks out of his handgun’s mag well, probably a machine pistol of some kind. Glock, maybe.
Jasmine scans her side of the room. Xiuying and Farrah look at them apprehensively. The tall bartender scowls at them bringing weapons into his establishment, crosses his arms over his chest. He has big arms. Reminds Jasmine of Tecumseh. The spindly server appears with what appear to be appetizers alongside another, younger man, about the same heigh and lanky with youth rather than naturally arachnid. Dawn cocks a head at the posse, intrigued by what shenanigans she’s about to witness.
“Check your wallets,” she mutters, nearly inaudible underneath the sound from below. “This is a nasty fuckin’ crowd.”
The three Montagnards each have looks of grim finality on their faces. At least Desmond and Claire do. Jasmine can’t read Celine’s face.
“Frenchies, right?” the man in the funeral attire asks. His accent is thick, vodka and snow and ice. Russian. This isn’t just some street gang. This is bratva.
Celine turns to face him, effortlessly hoists the two duffel bags. The bar falls silent. The distant, muffled sounds of drum and bass persist.
“C’est nous.” <
The leader of the group clears his throat. Pulls out the machine pistol, keeps it pointed down at the tile. Ready for a fight.
His goons all do the same.
One of them, wearing a bright, multi-coloured tracksuit – top red, bottom blue, the three stripes of Adidas a pure white – looks at Dawn. His eyes shine in the relatively dim light of the Osiris, lit intermittently by neon flares from the Duat below. He smiles, his teeth glittering gold. Even Jasmine knows it’s a grill of sorts.
The man in front stands up straighter, widens his stance like an old west gunfighter. He tilts his head from one side to the other – vertebrae pop and crack and echo around the silent room. He speaks.
“We’re here for our fucking money.”