DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

Barb had a problem. She had been trying to get into Benny's closed office for weeks. Benny's office safe had one of the three sets of building plans for McMurdo Abbott's Arctic port and mines projects. When Benny told girls he was an important guy in the company, he wasn't joking.

The second set was in an airtight vault on the thirteenth level, guarded 24/7 by armed guards. And laser beams to boot. No way to get in there.

Barb had Orson Bates to gossip about most topic secret company projects, through the simple expedient of sleeping with him, but she needed plans. And all that protected Benny's office was a wooden door and the lock on his filing cabinets.

But Benny's office door just would not open without the key. She couldn't even unscrew the hinges from the door. It wasn't that she was afraid she'd be spotted by the security cameras (she had used an override password to turn the nearest camera off, and force it to play a loop of routine surveillance video). The screwdriver's Barb tried just wouldn't work. The bits broke off; one even melted as she tried to unscrew the hinges.

Barb didn't know that even as an adult, Benny could be both sly and stubborn. He had magically locked the door, so that you needed a key to get in.

Benny and Ethan had both worked on their computer's encryption.

That foiled Quinton Haggard Yates' no. 1 corporate spy.

Barb had been installed in the chaotic March of 2020, when construction projects were shut down, plans shelved, international travel stopped, and the engineers and architects sent to work at home for the very first time. Rory didn't know he had been ogling the femme fatale who reported directly to Roger Yates himself. Nor did Rory know that Orson Bates was Barb's thirteenth floor "lover' and dupe.

Ethan didn't know. Post-Lucifractor, Ethan's powers had sometimes broke out of his control. So when he was curious or wondering, Ethan turned into a supernaturally-powered accidental eavesdropper in other people's private affairs. That sucked, making Ethan feel awful! Ethan had gotten things back control, so that once again the only surprise visions involved supernatural evils.

Barb's malfeasance had opened a vein of the corporate artery, causing millions of red ink to gush out from several McMurdo Abbott endeavours. But you couldn't call that a supernatural crime by any stretch of the imagination.

Benny didn't know the truth about Barb either. Benny always patted himself on the back for being important enough to have a hot secretary (that he shared with three other engineers). Barb diplomatically told Benny that they needed to have a professional relationship, between engineer and sixth-floor secretary. And they really didn't need to make the other engineers jealous.

But now Barb had more pressures on her. It wasn't enough that she had been a steady flow of financially lucrative information to Quinton Haggard Yates. But Yates was furious over Barb's failure, one which threatened to let all future Arctic diamond mine engineering contracts go into the experienced hands of McMurdo Abbott.

But Barb's suggestion Yates hire Benny as head of a new department was dismissed by Yates out of hand.

Yates' mansion looked like a solid block of dark limestone set in a manicured green lawn. The limestone was interrupted by narrow fissures where narrow plate glass windows extended from roof to lawn, sending beams or lights glaring into the darkness of the estate. This mansion was in the toniest part of Rosedale, the address was 100 Primrose Path. There had once been coniferous hedges and fir trees about the rim of the property, but Yates liked a Spartan look so he had them unceremoniously chopped down and fed to a woodchip machine.

The mansion was only eight years old. There had been an old house there before, a preserved Victorian home of red brick with black mansard roof, widow's walk, conservatory and cupola. 102 Primrose Path, the Flood House, was etched into the memory of Ethan, Benny and Rory. But it was just a meaningless empty lot to Yates when he built his dream house.

Yates dyed his grey hair black, had Botox to take away his wrinkles, and dressed as if he was still a teenager. He had a personal trainer, and did at least manage to look less than his fifty years through these and other contrivances. Yates was a widower, his wife had unfortunately fallen off the family yacht some years ago and drowned. Yates' twelve-year old son was in the toughest, hardest military school imaginable from fall through spring, and sent every year to the hardest most Spartan summer camp during vacation. Yates wasn't on speaking terms with his sister or kids, who lived in Belize, but he didn't really care. He had married only to ensure his inheritance from his father, now long dead and (figuratively) turning over in his grave.

Barb sat down in a low chair, crossing her legs seductively, knowing this impressed Yates.

Yates eyed her appraisingly, and leered.

"I'd sooner not have to share you with some of old man Abbott's low-level flunkeys" Yates said condescendingly. "But I've always known you've had high mileage on you, even if you still have a shapely body."

"Running up the mileage" Barb returned coldly, as she sipped her drink, "is one of the tools of my trade."

"Then how letting some more of those guys drive you" said Yates. "I know what you are and I know your price."

"Then you know I'm also a computer hacker, lock picker and safe cracker" Barb reminded him. "I'm a corporate research consultant, not a whore."

"And you know I'm one of the richest men in Canada" said Yates.

"Then we understand each other" said Barb. "You have me as long as you can afford me. And I have protection. I know your skeletons."

"I can far more easily send you to prison than you can expose me" said Yates acerbically.

Yates decided to sit across from her, for now and have a drink. He picked up an ipad, and looked through some files.

"So you've completely failed with the arctic diamond projects" Yates said.

"Your company can always try to compete the old school way" said Barb.

"We do, and do it damn well" said Yates. "But this is much better and far more satisfying. Benny Weirdman's in contact with his buddy in New York. Name of Egbert Merlin, Elroy Morgana, something like that. Also Albert Abbott heads the office there. Been up on the eighteenth floor scouting. The news is that McMurdo Abbott is going to snatch something prestigious, to make up for their losses to us in market share the last two years."

"The word is they're one of three firms in a partnership" said Barb. "But they're tight-lipped. I haven't anything else from my sources. Oh, and Benny Weir's friend is Ethan Morgan."

"Was either top of his class, or near it I hear" said Yates. "Hopeless nerd, you can tell by looking at the photo."

"Oh, I hear from Benny that his wife thinks he looks like a perfect clean-cut scout or even a Mountie" laughed Barb. "One of the other engineers on the sixth floor, Sylvia Jackson, she claims Morgan has some sort of sixth sense. Sylvia gives you an idea some of the psychos hired at McMurdo Abbott."

Yates' laugh was an off-key snicker.

"Well, when this . . . clairvoyant . . . Egbert comes back into town, see if you can get any info on the New York project" said Yates mockingly. "The man's young, and probably hopeless about girls. He's naïve."

"Perfect candidate for extortion, say photos of him, oh, naked with me, traded for company secrets" laughed Barb. "I hear that Sarah, his wife, is a black belt and believes firmly in girl power."

The two laughed.

"We'll put someone else in to manage the extortion of Elroy Morgan" said Yates. "Now, let's go to a project near and dear to my heart."

"Do you have one?" said Barb coyly.

"It pumps my blood, which is, after all, a heart's one and only purpose" said Yates. "But I'm talking about destroying the housing division of McMurdo Abbott. Sydney Baker may be small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, but it's developers like him that are the only ones keeping that division still running at McMurdo Abbott's.

"It is just a sentimental waste-of-space on the second and third stories" said Barb. "A high end engineering firm just doesn't design private homes."

"Baker leaves, it will be major embarrassment and end of McMurdo Abbott in the small-end of the architect's market. Major black eye, and a personal blow to Roderick Abbott. He loves that division, it was how the company started he says. Almost two hundred years before. So, so sad. The end of an era."

More discordant snickering.

"And Sydney Baker is a big man" giggled Barb. "In more ways than one. He's almost ready to jump ship. Two of the three architects on the file are pompous art school poseurs. Only one with anything of commitment is the team lead, Rory Keener. Architecture engineer. Has some talent, but a complete lunatic. I could have pulverized his stupid, blond mug when he asked me out. Naturally, he's a close friend of Benny's."

"How will you get this wannabe Romeo on our side?" asked Yates. "Sabotage Keener or seduce him? Did you set up a date with him?"

"Even I have standards" said Barb, with a shudder. "And it wouldn't work anymore. He's a one woman man, and he's been blind to me since he's just gotten engaged. You know, small town boy meets country girl. Hick geeks in love. Besides, if I were to try . . . and it would be torture . . . it would be too obvious with me already with Orson. Rory talks too much and is well liked."

"Talks too much? Tried extracting some information from him?"

"I did" said Barb. "But Keener must have some experience keeping secrets. He usually ignores a question he doesn't like, and prates about something that interests him."

"What?"

"Keener was promoted ahead of those poseurs he's working with. Beauchamp and Rosetter. The two designed a house of hilarity what they're nicknaming the Porthole special down on the second floor. Mousehole garage doors, verticle roof, dead-end hallways, and of course, porthole windows.

"Baker would have hated that" laughed Yates."

"Enough to earn the bargain of the year for staying at McMurdo Abbott" said Barb. "Baker ordered that division's McMurdo to put Keener in charge. And Keener's fellows architects are angry. They were going to play a juvenile practical joke in the hopes of scaring Keener away. But yesterday I got to know Rosetter. I've taken the opportunity to upgrade their little joke. Tomorrow morning, Keener's going to be taken breathless when he enters his office. If Keener lives, that will sideline him, the project, and drop Sydney Baker right into your lap.

"Good" said Yates, with a snicker. "But right now I want you in my lap . . . ."