Greed, page 7
‘We just have to stick it out for long enough,’ the Gaul seconded him, but his expression was uncertain and he was now deep in the red.
‘You gamble?’ Jan attempted to revive his conversation with Fitzroy.
Tails.
One woman only had amassed more than a thousand points. Her next toss came up heads, whereas Jan landed on tails again.
The game went on, Fitzroy keeping score. The way things were going, he’d only need to double one stake; he could keep the rest. He was doing all the maths in his head, quick as a flash. On the other hand, no one could really predict what the outcome would be.
By now only the decimals were changing in Jan’s score and each one of them could toss a coin like a pro. Jan was about to flip again when Fitzroy sat up with a jolt.
‘Take a look at this, will you?’
Jan gave a start and the coin slipped off his thumb.
‘There are ten people playing, four of you as good as broke. Three still have a tiny bit in the bank. Two are hovering around their starting score, and only one person has made any real gains.’
That was a good summary of the situation. Jan belonged to the first group, unfortunately.
‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ Fitzroy said. ‘That spread of points is fairly representative of the actual distribution of wealth among the population. Forty per cent have no cake at all, another thirty to forty per cent have a tiny slice. The upshot is that a small number have a great deal without having worked any harder for it than the others. A toss-up. Pure chance.’
Where was this leading? To a lecture on economics?
‘And if it continues, you’ll rake in every one of our bets,’ the Gaul said. ‘So what are you in your comparison? The banks? Marie-Antoinette?’
Fitzroy laughed.
‘This can’t be right,’ another person mumbled. ‘In a random distribution, there ought to be a relatively normal range of scores. So why are most of us in the red while one person has all the points?’
‘Let’s carry on,’ Fitz said, grinning. ‘We haven’t finished yet.’
But Jan had – with this particular game, anyway. His head was throbbing. From the gambling or from his unwanted encounter with the side of the car? It was time for him to talk to Mr Peel in private.
‘I’ve got their faces,’ Jack’s voice announced via the earpiece. El had shifted his position in the room several times and treated himself to some lemonade. They had been tossing coins for half an hour now. ‘You can find them in the team folder.’
Top facial recognition software, professional IT skills, access to a few decent databases and a few people who knew how to use all these things: it wasn’t rocket science.
‘The Samaritan is a nurse called Jan Wutte. He’s eighteen and from Berlin. A few minor misdemeanours like noisy parties and joints, but nothing serious.’
El checked his phone. He scrolled through the pictures Sam had taken and the accompanying captions. Two women, seven men and the Samaritan.
What the hell are you doing here?
Something had bothered El on his first flick-through. He swiped back and spotted what it was – the guy with the shaved head. If he’d understood Sam correctly, and his own eyesight was to be trusted, he was the croupier. All the others were locals and had German names, but the croupier was British. Fitzroy Peel. A peculiar name. A professional gambler. El was about to read on when the voice in his ear said, ‘One of them’s flashing dark red. He’s the only Brit in the group.’
‘Fitzroy Peel.’
‘There’s more though. Have you read up on him yet?’
‘I was about to.’
‘Look at the pictures at the end of the report.’
El scrolled down. Two pictures of two young men beaming at the camera. In one they were wearing black graduation gowns and mortarboards, in the second they wore expensive suits, looking like young investment bankers.
The two of them seemed about ten years younger and yet El immediately recognized the men’s faces.
One was gambling at the table over there with the Samaritan. The other had been hanging upside down in a crumpled limousine a mile from here an hour ago, hoping the Samaritan might save his life.
18
‘So you’ve come to the summit to gamble?’
Fitzroy studied the kid next to him from the corner of his eye. He was nosey. A good-looking beanpole – the word ‘loose-jointed’ popped into Fitzroy’s head – despite his awful haircut, cropped short underneath and long on top, which reminded Fitzroy of the Hitler Youth.
‘Same as here? Is that how you make your living?’
The kid had been the last to join the game.
Four heads, six tails. Fitzroy wrote down the scores, most of them in decimal figures now. With one exception: a woman.
‘From gambling? Not really, no.’
The kid didn’t seem remotely affected by his losses. Fitzroy had a nagging feeling he was after something else.
‘Why not?’ the kid asked, pointing to the pile of money in front of Fitzroy. ‘A few hundred euros in less than an hour. I wouldn’t say no to that kind of income.’
‘Watch and learn.’
Eight heads, two tails. No great help to most of the players, including the two bigmouths who’d enlisted the others. Even the lady who’d had a couple of hot streaks had just seen her score drop from over two thousand points to around one thousand two hundred.
As far as Fitzroy was concerned, the only surprise was that the pub staff had left him alone for so long.
‘There’s something going on here. You’re cheating!’ the fatter of the two wise guys yelled at Fitzroy.
‘Yeah!’ a second man howled.
Other voices joined in with the recriminations. It was amazing it had taken them so long; he’d known rowdier groups.
‘Your coins,’ Fitzroy reminded them. ‘You flipped them, you accepted the bet and you did the maths.’
‘Exactly. That’s why I should’ve earned more by now!’ the fat wise guy said.
‘Maybe you got your sums mixed up?’ Fitzroy remarked. ‘Maybe you calculated the wrong average?’
‘The wrong …?’ the man murmured in bewilderment. ‘No way!’ He leaped to his feet and, reaching across the table, made to grab Fitzroy’s collar. Fitzroy had seen him coming, though, and dodged him with ease. This only enraged the guy further, his neighbours also jumping to their feet, yelling accusations and starting to get physical.
Fitzroy sprang to his feet too so he wouldn’t be caught on the defensive. He was definitely as tall as the fat guy and certainly in better shape.
‘You’re running an illegal gambling session!’ the man roared. He struck out at Fitzroy again, but once more his fist met nothing but thin air.
‘What about you, eh?’ Fitzroy said with a chuckle. ‘It takes two to tango.’
‘Give me my money back, you cheat!’ the fat man shouted. As expected, the other players backed up his demand.
Fitzroy pointed to the woman who was still in the black. ‘So she doesn’t get to keep her winnings?’
This brought them up short for a moment.
‘We made a bet,’ Fitzroy reminded them.
‘I don’t give a shit!’ the fat man thundered, his face dark red. ‘I’m reporting you to the police, you bloody con artist!’ He thrust his hand into Fitzroy’s pile of money.
‘All right,’ Fitzroy said with a nervous laugh, ‘we’ll break off and everyone gets their money back—’
But the fat man was no longer listening, far too aggrieved that his calculations had somehow turned out to be faulty, and too conceited to admit it. He leaned forward, one knee on the table, and took a swing at Fitzroy’s head. The croupier ducked, but there was such a throng of people pressing against him from behind that he couldn’t properly get out of the way and the punch grazed his lip. The other players were busy trying to retrieve their coins, grab some of Fitzroy’s stash of cash or join in the assault. Nothing he wasn’t used to.
Once again El scanned the ceiling of the room for surveillance cameras, as he’d done on entering the pub and several times since. There were none.
‘This is our chance,’ he told Jack and Sam over the headset. ‘Our Samaritan Jan Wutte and Fitzroy Peel won’t make it out of this punch-up alive, I’ll make sure of that. But watch out for smartphone cameras.’
Fitzroy Peel was almost a head taller than the Samaritan and most of the other gamblers. Nevertheless, at least four of them were attacking him with others preparing to follow their lead. Peel raised his arms in self-defence, chuckled and cried out, ‘Stop! Stop it!’ as if it were all a joke.
His victims were no longer interested in what he had to say. Their ringleader, a tall guy with quite a beer belly, landed a hard punch flush on Fitzroy’s nose. He staggered backwards into several other guests. Beer was spilled, people tripped over one another and screams of pains rang out. Within seconds a tangled mass of arms, legs, bodies and heads lay writhing on the floor. Previously uninvolved parties were also now starting to jostle because someone had shoved them or covered them in drink. A waiter cleared a path for himself, but even he could no longer prevent the kerfuffle from escalating into a full-scale brawl. More and more hands were jabbed into people’s chests, and fists slammed into stomachs and faces. The Samaritan did his best to escape the pandemonium, but the crush of bodies was too great.
El gave the order. ‘We’re going in!’
Jan was trying his best to avoid the swinging fists and escape the fighting. The back of the pub where they had been playing moments earlier had descended into all-out war. Staff members had abandoned their attempts to calm the situation. Two were engaged in excited phone calls behind the bar, presumably with the police. Not again! Jan could really have done without any more hassle. The place was so jam-packed still that non-combatants had little hope of getting out unscathed. He’d lost sight of Fitzroy Peel. Bottles and glasses flew through the air, followed soon afterwards by the first chair. Even people well away from the battle zone were being hit, extending it further out. Jan was closer to the exit to the toilets than he was to the more peaceful area at the front. To get there he’d have to pass at least twenty brawlers, a horde of anonymous faces in the half-darkness. He’d be running the gauntlet. He spied Fitzroy in the midst of the fray, defending himself against Mr T-Shirt and two other men.
It must have been instinctive. Images seared into his unconscious by the intensity of the moment allowed him to recognize one of the faces, as though it were picked out under a dazzling spotlight.
Anvil Chin. Standing behind an unsuspecting Fitzroy, brandishing a broken bottle which, any minute now, he would slash down on the Briton’s head. A second assassin in dark grey clothing stood with his back to Jan, his silhouette also familiar. He was charging Fitzroy as well, a twinkling blade in his hand. Jan sprinted towards him and launched himself on to the man’s back, shouting, ‘Behind you, Fitz! Get down!’
The torso beneath Jan felt like a stone clad in fabric. The man didn’t even seem to notice his presence.
Hearing Jan’s warning, Fitzroy ducked. Anvil Chin’s lunge with the broken bottle missed his neck by a hair’s breadth and slashed open Mr T-Shirt’s arm instead. The fat guy screamed, and his blood spattered over them all. Jan’s mount brought up his arm to plunge the knife into Fitzroy’s back. At least that’s what Jan thought until the man twisted his wrist, swung back his arm and tried to stab Jan over his shoulder. He managed to swivel to the side at the last moment so the blade only nicked his jacket, but he was thrown to the floor.
Not content with this, the man now switched his attention from Fitzroy to Jan. He was much taller and weighed twice as much as him, a block of pure muscle and still with the knife in his hand. Jan was scrambling for the exit when a rabbit punch knocked the wind out of him. He crumpled to his knees. Something hard and cold smashed into his face and Jan toppled on to his side, caught against the legs of the brawlers surrounding him. The shouting all around him came to him as if filtered through cotton wool. The next second, a punch to his stomach like a wrecking ball forced the last remaining air from his lungs. Black spots danced in front of his eyes, blurring his vision. Vague shapes leaped at him. Shadows darted in all directions. Steelfingers grabbed his hair and pulled his head back and now the cold edge of a metal blade pressed against his throat. His legs kicked out and his arms whirled but everything seemed to happen in slow motion. He’d seen hundreds of horror films and gory thrillers. He’d never watched any actual terrorist videos online, but had read enough about them. What the bloody hell was happening?
Jan’s warning had saved Fitzroy’s carotid artery from being severed by the broken bottle. Now the wound the madman had slashed in the fat guy’s arm gave Fitzroy an opportunity to strike back. A well-aimed kick to the side of the man’s knee and it buckled, before a chair to the skull sent him tumbling to the floor where he just about managed to cushion his landing. The reptilian part of his brain fighting for survival, Fitzroy had no time to think. His gambling had often got him into trouble, but he’d never experienced anything on this scale. These men in dark clothing weren’t just here for a good old punch-up – they hadn’t even been taking part in the game. Fitzroy had escaped bleeding to death by a fraction of an inch.
The fat guy’s screaming and the shower of blood drew everyone’s attention in their direction. The other attacker had thrown Jan off his back and, along with another beefcake, was pounding the kid to a pulp. Then Fitzroy spotted the knife against Jan’s throat. The chair Fitzroy was holding was only half broken, so he reduced it to matchsticks over the assailant’s head. The second guy must have annoyed a few people in the crowd, or else someone was still desperate for a fight, because three other men immediately set upon him. Jan’s would-be killer could swat them aside like flies, but had to let go of his victim for a moment.
Fitzroy grabbed Jan’s wrist and dragged him to his feet. Jan’s knees were like jelly. Fitzroy threw his new mate’s arm around his shoulders and fought his way to the toilets. There was an emergency exit out the back; he’d checked before the game. They burrowed through the crowd that had gathered in the corridor to escape the fighting. Everyone recoiled, horror and disgust written on their faces. The pack closed behind them, shielding them from the prying eyes of potential pursuers. Fitzroy knew his height might give them away and so kept his head down. Gradually Jan began to support some of his own weight again.
The grey metal emergency exit door was open. It led out into an alleyway packed with people, some of them standing around in groups, staring at the pub, having presumably fled the mayhem inside. Others were the usual revellers or perhaps demonstrators. Leaning on Fitzroy still, Jan gulped and gasped for air before a coughing fit shook his frame. Eventually, he took one last deep breath, then stood up straight and looked Fitzroy in the eye.
‘They were trying to kill me,’ he croaked. He glanced around anxiously, then thanked his companion.
‘Thank you,’ Fitzroy replied. ‘If you hadn’t warned me, I’d be lying inside with half a bottle buried in my neck.’
Jan tugged Fitzroy along the alley by the arm. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
He pushed the Brit into the entrance of an old building. The gate was ajar and led into a passageway that ran through the courtyards of a block of houses. There was no one in sight and the courtyards were only dimly lit.
Fitzroy let out a sigh of relief. ‘What the hell was all that about?’
19
El and Sam chased their two targets along the corridor, past the toilets and through the emergency exit out into the open air. El didn’t believe in bad luck, only bad preparation. Or hubris. They had underestimated the two men’s will to survive. Our mistake. And the dynamics of the pub brawl – more violent and more participants than expected. Innocent parties had stumbled into the middle of their attack. Not good. Mistakes were part of their business. They only had to be rectified. Their client need not find out about this.
Escapees from the pub were mingling with night owls in the back street. There were no cars or bicycles to be seen. They couldn’t have got far. It was at least seventy yards to the nearest junction. No one running. Were they street-smart or just fast? Sam and El zigzagged through the crowds until they reached the next crossroads.
A bigger road. More people. Even more opportunities to disappear.
El had a quick think. Jan Wutte wouldn’t go home, given that he was on the run from the police. He would have to reckon with some unpleasantness if he did. He glanced through the data on Fitzroy Peel. One important detail was missing, so he contacted Jack, their man for online research.
‘I need Fitzroy Peel’s current address in Berlin.’
They were barely making any headway, even with the flashing blue light they had attached to the car roof – or maybe because of it. The people in the street made no particular effort to make room for the police car to pass. Jörn was driving right on the edge of the law. They listened to updates on the demos on the police radio. The main one had been peaceful so far. Only on the margins and in Kreuzberg were black blocs skirmishing with the police, while right-wing extremists were throwing stones and shouting Nazi slogans in Friedrichshain.
‘I can’t believe they authorized these demonstrations,’ Jörg was ranting.
‘You mean the rich should be free to assemble, but no one else?’
Radio news: heads of government and experts were conferring at the reception in Charlottenburg Castle. Groups of negotiators were going to work late into the night.
‘How long will it take us to get to the Golden Bar?’ asked Maya.
‘Ten minutes or so,’ Jörn muttered. ‘I can’t fathom why you’d take that story seriously.’
‘We’ve been through this already. For the time being, “that story” is our only lead. Golden Bar. Fitzroy Peel. Chantal.’
‘We’d probably have been quicker on foot,’ Jörn grumbled to himself.
Maya turned off the radio and used her phone’s voice-activation function.
