I arrived back at Marco’s hidden home a few days later with a briefcase in one hand and a crate filled with empty glass bottles in the other. The door was already open, and Marco was waiting with a group of three other people. I briefly panicked imagining an ambush where I was dragged away and held for ransom.
Such fears were unfounded for the time being. Marco saw me as a piggy bank who willingly gave him money versus a bargaining chip against one of the richest men in the world.
He introduced me to them, “Maria, this is Benny, Jack and Farhan.”
Benny, who was the heavyset man at the front with a shaved head, whistled and clapped his hands together; “You’re working with the big-time nobles now, Marco? What happened while you were locked up in the slammer?”
“Nothing happened while I was in jail. They didn’t make an inch of progress on getting me to trial either. Turns out that little miss Walston-Carter here has need of our particular services.”
Benny didn’t buy that explanation, as he was right to. Marco didn’t want to go through every twist and turn in the story that led us here. He wanted to get his bag and go home, especially since that previous job with the local gang leader had gone south and left him broke.
“What did you tell them?” I asked. I put the case and the bottles down on the table.
Marco waved his hand in the air, “The basics. What they are going to be doing.”
Benny snickered, “You’re lighter with the details than you like to think, mate.”
Marco produced the list and handed it to me. I unfurled the paper and held it out for the three captains to see. They leaned in to get a closer look at the text that was on it.
“Gerard Verner Welt is causing a lot of trouble at the moment – and I intend to ensure that he never sees his plan to fruition. I have here the locations of the weapon stashes and hideouts he intends to use to launch his takeover of the government, helpfully provided to me by a contact in the police.”
“There are too many addresses here for us and the lads to cover,” Benny worried.
“You don’t have enough people?”
“I pulled as many favours as I could. Some of them were busy, and others refused when they heard how dangerous the job was,” Marco explained.
That would make our lives a little bit harder than they needed to be. Again, I knew that this scheme would succeed in the end, but I couldn’t abandon my due diligence because of that. Any problems that arose would still demand my wit and planning to resolve. ‘Future’ Maria might have called more people into the fray or taken care of some of the warehouses herself.
“All we need to do is light them on fire and escape. I take it that you’re all experienced in the fine art of arson?”
“It’s not complicated, lass,” Jack said snidely.
“Then I expect that all of you will be capable of achieving the objective,” I shot back, “The warehouses are divided into four different areas around the cities. I want a group of men to handle each one, following the addresses on the list and burning them all to ashes as quickly as possible. I would not recommend being near them when they go up. They’re filled with ammunition and other flammable goods.”
Marco stroked his chin, “If words gets out about the attacks – then they’ll be put on the defensive. We should time the assault carefully so that they never get the chance.”
There were going to be a lot of moving parts. Everything had to work perfectly, but that was never a given when dealing with crooks like Marco. He was a gun for hire who brought in his friends and allies regardless of how good they were at the job. It took a single drunkard or hothead to throw the entire plan out of sync.
I knew what time we would need to launch the attack. The earliest hours of the morning on the day where we killed Welt. When he arrived at the warehouse to seek assistance it was already burning and I was there to rescue myself. I had three days left to whip them into shape and make it go off without a hitch.
“Do you think they can handle it?” I asked.
Marco nodded, “They can tell the time, no problem. You don’t think very highly of us.”
“There are thousands and thousands of things that can go wrong. I’m asking if your regular allies in the field are capable of adapting and keeping their nerve. I am not implying that this is an easy job.”
Besides, I had brought a reward along that I hoped would coax them into behaving how I wanted. I sought out Franklin during the week and pulled some strings to get cash that was beyond my normal allowance. I flipped the latches on the suitcase and revealed the grand prize for Marco and his friends.
A collective gasp filled the air. The gruff gangsters were all infatuated with the sight of the cash that lay within the trunk. Row after row of one-thousand Walmark bills, the highest denomination that the central bank produced. They had probably never seen so much money in one place before.
“Eight-hundred-thousand marks, with four-hundred-thousand more once the job is done. Divide that up between all of your men and it should work out to a fairly handsome payday, correct?”
Marco couldn’t believe his eyes; “You’re paying us one million marks?”
“One point two, all totalled...”
“Are you insane? Where the hell did you get so much money from?”
I shrugged, “My Father wipes his buttocks with this kind of money. It’s a rounding error, a decimal on the balance sheet, he won’t even notice it’s gone.” As for the ‘insane’ allegation – Marco was already equipped with the answer to that. I was not going to take no for an answer.
Marco glanced at his buddies, “I thought you wanted a discount for the rescue.”
“This is the discounted rate. Considering the risks involved and the number of people required – it only felt right to offer a competitive wage for the labour.”
“She is insane,” Benny said in awe, “No sane noble would ever say that.”
Jack was more aggressive in his questioning, “What’s the bloody catch? Is all of this money counterfeit? Are you going to turn us over to the coppers and say that we stole it from you?”
“I can’t offer you an answer that you will believe. By all means, if you feel that the prospect of accepting this job is too risky, you can simply turn it down.”
There was no requirement for me to argue on his terms. He had decades of experiences and views that I could not easily navigate or argue against in the short window of time that we had. I was familiar with his type, so instead of trying to make a stubborn mule change his entire view of the world I appealed to the strongest force in his id. He did not want to miss out on the chance to make a lot of money.
Farhan joined the fray on my side. He picked up a bundle of notes and held them up to the light creeping through the shuttered curtains.
“They’re real. Where would a prissy noble get counterfeit cash anyway?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not eliminating the possibility. All of this stinks. A teenage girl asking us to run a dangerous job for a lot of money? This entire contract is a warning sign.”
Benny shrugged, “I guess we get a bigger share of the pot then...”
Jack was incensed; “I never said I wasn’t going to tag along! Marco’s vouching for her.”
Marco gave off a sour expression that silently stated that Jack was overstating how hard he was ‘vouching’ for me to his regulars. He just wanted to save face and stay on the team by passing the responsibility off onto him. There was no trust in the room with us – which was why an ironclad contract and a good monetary reward were quite literally on the table.
Jack found it hard to make his case now that everyone in the building was on the same page. He could either submit to peer pressure and come along with the plan, or he could leave and miss the chance to get his cut of the pie. It was obvious which course of action he was going to take – but he made a show of looking displeased about it.
“Fine! I suppose if Marco is willing to accept this job, I can’t say no. I hope you’ve done your diligence in making sure this is all on the level.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Marco nodded knowing that he hadn’t done any diligence at all. He probably wasn’t even sure if I was going to come back to the house after he asked to meet me again. That giant trunk of money could paper over a lot of cracks in our working relationship.
“I can also provide you with some extra weapons and ammunition if your other members don’t feel safe. We shouldn’t need them for what we’re trying to do though,” I offered.
Marco waved it off, “It should be okay. We have a list of addresses and the element of surprise. They won’t be able to stop us from torching the buildings unless information about this leaks out to them. I’m only contacting the people I trust.”
“Okay. Then allow me to go into detail.”
Over the next hour, I went through the in-and-outs of the plan for each of the leaders in the room. They would lead their designated group of crooks to the districts in question and dispatch them to the warehouse addresses with a Molotov cocktail or alternate incendiary device in hand. At twenty minutes past three in the morning, they would let loose and set the fires.
There weren’t enough people to burn them all down at once, so some would have to pull double duty and run to the next before the alarm could be raised. None of them were to stick around and watch the fireworks. All of them would have to escape into the night before the watchmen came looking for the culprits.
That was all the easy stuff. Routing them to get there and escape, and affording them enough time to reach their stakeout spots was the hard part. We couldn’t have them linger outside of the building for an elongated period of time. It was likely that there would be a night watch at most of them.
Discipline would be key. A single person acting out of turn could scupper the entire scheme in an instant. I also had to create contingency plans in case someone screwed up big time. Ideally, we would still be able to target and destroy most of the warehouses even if the alarm went out. The list was a complete catalogue of every warehouse in the city – but what Marco and the others didn’t know was that the ones marked with a red X had been burnt down a few days from then.
There were two on the list that had not been destroyed, which was an incredible success rate on such short notice. I wavered between telling the goons to stay away from those ones to be safe, or sending them anyway and letting things play out as if I didn’t possess that knowledge.
It would be dangerous for the men assigned to that role, and it was unfair of me to use them as game pieces on a board, but excluding two of the targets without a solid reason would arouse unwanted suspicion from a group I was already treading on eggshells with. The perfect plan didn’t exist.
For their part, Jack, Benny and Farhan all understood the plan as it was. These three along with Marco would be leading the charge, while I handled the inner-city area so that I could be in the right place to catch and kill Welt. That entire firefight by the warehouse was a blur – but I was fairly certain that Frankfort or I were about to be turned into paste by one of his mages...
“So, you know the stakes, you know the reward, and you know the plan. Is there anything else that has to be addressed, or are you all happy to take the job?”
Benny shrugged, “I do whatever Marco wants, usually. Hasn’t led me wrong yet.”
Farhan was the same; “I’m not turning this one down. Money’s too good.”
And my strategy to isolate Jack from the group worked like a charm. He said nothing but nodded in agreement with the other two. The allure of the payout was overriding his scepticism about the job. Free-market economics at its finest.
The only thing left to do was wait and find a good place to watch the fireworks. I had a spot in mind already. I just had to gain unlawful entry to the spire and set up my stuff.
----------------------------------------
Three days passed quickly.
I didn’t feel anticipation for what was about to happen. When I said that this was a job for me to the others, I meant it. Did a working man feel nervous when he clocked in for his nine-to-five on a foggy winter morning? My emotions only ever came alive when I was in the thick of it and things were going wrong.
I was hidden on the top floor of an abandoned chapel close to my first target. It was cold – but the view was worth the discomfort. I could practically see both twin cities from where I was seated. The chairs of political and industrial power in Walser were connected across a broad river and sprawled outwards for miles on both sides.
A blanket of fog had emerged before my eyes. Lanterns and electric lights illuminated the urban areas, defining the classical architecture of detailed stonework and eccentric statues clinging to the corners of the buildings. Giant smokestacks broke through the canopy and reached high into the air. It was a sight to see, completely unlike any I could have found back on Earth in my past life.
I was in a contemplative mood, and the almost whimsical view I enjoyed made me consider what the benefit of this second life even was. I was always so focused on stumbling from one crisis to the next that I never had the chance to enjoy myself. I was always playing my role, or getting into danger, or worrying about what the other important characters were doing.
This was a pretty good view. I decided to enjoy it as much as I could before the party started.
The tones of grey, black, blue and yellow were joined by a more vibrant shade of orange. It seeped through the fog and tinted it strongly. More and more of those orange splotches started to appear in turn across the city, and after that smoke began to rise from each burning building. I used Adrian’s watch to keep a close eye on their pace. Right on schedule. Nice to see that Marco brought his best for this one.
More than two dozen fires sprouted across the city within four minutes. This was followed by the ammunition stockpiles inside being burnt up with them, causing small and deafening explosions that furthered the damage the flames caused. Soon after the fire bells started to ring, and volunteers assembled to control the blazes.
I crossed my fingers and hoped that bystanders wouldn’t get caught up in the fires, but we couldn’t sit back and allow these stockpiles to fester. They could cause a lot of death and destruction using those weapons, far more than the fires Marco’s men were setting.
I donned my mask and my box of cocktails, walking down the winding steps and out onto the street. I moved quickly but quietly – slipping through alleyways and taking the road less travelled until I reached the first building. I was certain that all of the addresses were accurate. The police had double-checked them, and this was taken from Welt’s personal record of where they were located.
I had three locations to take care of. The first building was easy. There was an open window near the back which I could reach through and pull aside the shutters. I stared through the glass and ascertained that crates of ammunition were being stored inside. I struck a match, lit my cocktail and dumped it through onto the nearest box.
There was no time to stick around and see the chaos unfold. I ducked out of the alleyway and headed across the opposite side of the block and over a small bridge to the other side of the district. Near a set of riverside docks was the second target. There was a man sitting on the front porch, seemingly unaware of the chaos unfolding across the bridge and throughout the city.
That lack of awareness would cost him and his friends dearly. I kept out of his field of view and skulked down the alleyway next to the warehouse. This building was unmistakably the one I was searching for. The police had marked down the exterior features when they compiled their own list, most notably a large sign out front from the previous owners that had never been removed.
I lit my second bomb and tossed it through the nearest window. The reaction was immediate – with a rush of hot air blowing through the shattered glass. Unlike at the last location, the guards here were already awake. I could hear them panicking from inside as the fire spread rapidly from place to place, turning the boxes of supplies into deadly hazards that they couldn’t risk touching.
I was already gone by the time they got out onto the road to wake the night guard from his nap. The last destination was the most important. I crossed the bridge on the other side of the island and headed deeper into the dense, residential areas that were nearby. The buildings became taller and more ornate, a visual depiction of the value of each property slowly increasing the further away I was from the warehouses and other small-scale industries.
I could already hear the gunshots as Frankfort, Veronica and I cut a swathe through the guards in Welt’s apartment. There were eyes peering through the curtains of the buildings, curious as to why such a rancorous gunfight was happening in the middle of the city.
When I first saw myself arriving on the scene to save the day I presumed that I had waited in the wings to make it as dramatic as possible. I did not have a flair for the dramatic unless it assisted in achieving my goals – so it was becoming clear that the real reason was because I legitimately cut it very, very close.
Burn the building and get out of sight.
I lit the final cocktail and tossed it into the nearest window. It gracefully arced through the air and crashed through the thin glass, before exploding into a warm orange explosion on the inside of the storehouse. It went up like a box of kindling. The drugs and ammunition inside, combined with the wooden frame that held the building aloft, quickly caught alight and started to hollow the entire building from the inside out.
The men on the inside panicked, but this location was less protected than the others. I counted four distinct voices. One of them was the mage who would have killed me or Frankfort if not for my usage of Adrian’s watch to get here. I could understand why it was such a treasured family heirloom. It possessed an incredible amount of power, even more so when combined with a battery made from demon blood...
I counted down the seconds until we arrived. I hid in the fog and tried to keep myself out of their line of sight. Welt staggered through the mist with a look of pure desperation on his face, which only worsened when he discovered his potential salvation going down in flames.
The fight was unfolding. I could hear every detail and recall it in perfect detail. Frankfort was trying to get the killing blow, but at that moment an enraged mage leapt from the smouldering wreckage and struck her arm with a bolt of magic, sending her sprawling onto the ground and endangering us all.
I stepped forth and stopped him with my patented spell, severing his neck and dumping him to the ground. I drew my gun and pointed it in Welt’s direction. He screamed and held out his hands in a useless effort to keep the inevitable from occurring.
“Wait, you can’t do thi-”
I didn’t have time to listen to him beg. I pulled the trigger and flinched at the recoil. I pushed my hand forward with each pull, urging the bullets to hit their mark just that little bit faster. Welt was ripped from side to side by the force of each gunshot wound, tearing at his flesh and shattering bones. I almost emptied the entire magazine before he finally fell into the gutter, his formerly white bedclothes stained red with his blood.
I have to say – it was cathartic to be the one killing him this time around.
In a similar sense, I got some satisfaction from being the one holding the cards. I was confusing my own past self, and it took a lot to resist the urge to tease the group after such a harrowing experience. I needed to explain and get them out of there.
Veronica glanced between me and me.
“Why the hell are there two of you?”
My old self sighed; “Adrian gave me his watch. I suppose this means I have to go back and set all of this bullshit up in advance?”
I nodded and handed over my cliff notes of the previous seven days, sans the exact locations of the warehouses. I never got around to making a copy of the list because Marco wanted it while he was organizing his people. It didn’t matter though, Claude had to visit the police station and meet with his father, and it wasn’t a big deal to do so.
But from that moment on I was flying blind. I didn’t know what was coming.