.
"Ms Wainwright, are you all right?"
Selina's eyes fly open as she starts in her seat in the gloom of the surveillance van.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, just dozed off for a sec."
She tries to hide the blush. Dozing off had little to do with it, but she is not going to tell a virtual stranger that she was daydreaming about the mind-blowing sex she had the night before. Normally, often as not, Bruce would let her take the initiative, delighted to submit to her wishes; this time, however, he would hardly let her lift a finger, insisting on being the most passionate and yet excruciatingly tender lover, his gentle hands and eager lips roaming her body all over, the proverbial calm before the storm adding a poignant urgency to the passion. What they may have lost in novelty over the past year, they have more than made up for in being, by now, perfectly attuned to each other, to be able to elicit intense pleasure with a single touch. She bites down sharply on the inside of her lip before her eyes flutter shut again at the memory.
Her companion du jour is one of four MI6 agents urgently summoned from Hong Kong and Dubai to help them catch Newell and, more importantly, recover the Matrix; Director Wrigley, who was, not surprisingly, called upon to make the big decisions, had to admit that a CIA HQ team could not make it to Singapore in time for Monday morning, with the 24-hour dateline difference working against them, and was forced to delegate. One of the men is now sitting with her in the van, driven by a trusted local freelancer, outside Newell's apartment complex; the second one is manning an identical observation post with Jamie outside the Pan Asian office; the third and fourth are, respectively, in yet another van parked just outside One Suntec, and in Jamie's office opposite, the last one armed with a sniper rifle trained on Mitchum's desk. Theo must be back at New Bridge Road in a radically different capacity from his previous stay there, talking to the local police chiefs, at this very moment; Wrigley was far from thrilled at the prospect of local involvement, but agreed to give the Interpol a limited mandate based on minimum need-to-know information to apprehend "an illegal weapon sale", which was enough to involve the Singapore police force and get them to have a SWAT team on standby, waiting to catch Newell as soon as Bruce gave them the location.
Plan A was that he would lead them to it using the gadgetry they had painstakingly prepared on Sunday afternoon, once he had come back from his shopping trip. His booty included a Hermes tie – he already had a smart suit and a silk shirt but the tie was a crucial part of the ensemble – an understated but obviously expensive affair with enough gold accents to make his second purchase, a gold tie pin, blend in. The pin was the real "crown jewel"; once Bruce and Theo were done with it, it became a masterpiece of surveillance gear, its onyx decoration replaced with an identical-looking "stone" with a built-in camera, the inside of its bend concealing a miniature microphone. The image and sound thus captured would be relayed to his associates via his third and final purchase, a smartphone, also extensively modified: they had opened up the inside lid covering the circuitry to install a powerful retransmitter and a second power source connected to a touchpad toggle switch at the bottom of the battery recess. That way, when the main battery was removed to ostensibly demonstrate that Bruce had rendered himself untrackable, both the main phone circuitry and the retransmitter would shut down to pass a bug sweep, but he could switch the retransmitter back on by discreetly pressing the toggle switch within seconds, as soon as he was reasonably certain he was out of danger of detection. If that should fail, the surveillance van outside Suntec carried a compact mid-range drone, and the respective agent doubled as a drone operator, so that, if Bruce was unable to transmit his data but was still brought to Newell, the drone could follow him there and relay the coordinates to the police. It was less precise, but was the best alternative as Plan B.
It is eleven AM by now. The three active screens inside the van show them the outside of One Suntec, with occasional latecoming employees hurrying in, the outside of PanAsian on a quiet side street just north of the downtown business core, and Mitchum's empty office seen through the window, from the respective PoVs of the other two vans and the sniper; for now, the respective audio channels are muted on standby. Bruce's PoV camera is still switched off; to conserve power, he will only enable it once he walks into Suntec from the mall where he is now waiting, and that will only happen once the Suntec van people send him a message when they see Mitchum walk into the building. It is virtually guaranteed that he will have been ordered to go there to ascertain the damage to the gadgets in his office, to placate any pushy bidders who may decide to show up in person at deadline time, and to generally play the unenviable role of the canary in the coalmine. The conclusion the four of them reached yesterday is that, most likely, Mitchum has never seen Newell face-to-face, the other man being careful to conduct most dealings through Kitty, and with only a disembodied voice to link him to Newell, his capture, be it by law enforcement or by terrorists, poses little risk to Newell himself so long as he can still pull off the deal in parallel.
At a quarter past eleven, one of the speakers crackles to life just as a figure is seen scurrying past the glass doors. "Mitchum's just walked in," the Suntec agent informs them. Bruce will have received a text with a seemingly meaningless letter sequence to inform him about the same; two minutes later, the fourth screen flickers on, zooming in on the reception and the guards from a PoV at his chest level.
"Good morning. I'm here to see Mr Perry. I don't have an appointment but I'm sure we'll agree on that once I talk to him."
His voice hits her without warning; deeply familiar, and yet completely different. Confident, arrogant, smug, condescending; the voice of a man who has the world at his beck and call and is perfectly aware of the power he wields. Everything Bruce Wayne never really was, but was known to be.
It is working. One of the guards picks up the phone.
"Mr Perry? Good morning." She hears indistinct bleating on the other end of the guard's receiver. "There's a gentleman here who would like to talk to you."
"Mr Mitchum?" Bruce takes over, oozing the same smug, unshakeable confidence. "I know there may have been a mistake. But I assure you I need to speak to you quite urgently. No, we haven't met in person yet; you've met an associate of mine, though. I'm sure you'll know who I am when you see me. What I suggest is," he lowers his voice as he turns halfway away from the reception desk, "look up Bruce Wayne obituary online, yes, that's right, print it out, and come down to the lobby."
A couple of minutes later a visibly shaky Mitchum stumbles out of the elevator and approaches the reception. As soon as his eyes lock in on Bruce he gives a start, his hand with the obituary printout flying up, his look darting from the face on paper to the man in front of him.
"Mr Way…"
"Wainwright, if you please," Bruce cuts him short. "I think you'll agree that we should talk."
"Y…yes."
Bruce makes a show of pulling out his phone and removing the battery; seeing Mitchum's distracted face, he does not hesitate to immediately switch the retransmitter back on, the one-second break registering as a mere glitch on their screen. Mitchum turns to the guards, asking to have the pass issued, and they walk toward the elevator bank at the back. Bruce enters first and gives the mirror – and his worried audience – a frivolous wink. Finally in his element, she thinks bleakly. Selina has never been keen on having kids, convinced that she was not cut out to be a parent, but she can just about get to the point of reconsidering, seeing him like this. After all, people with kids are usually much more careful with their lives.
Bruce follows Mitchum into the office; she gets a glimpse of the familiar inner reception room followed by the equally familiar office, this time in daylight and from a new angle, approaching the desk through the door rather than the window. Bruce sits opposite Mitchum on the other side of the desk; the sniper's camera picks up a long-range image of him as he settles down.
"Mr Mitchum," he starts again, in an easy, almost affable voice, slowly drawling out each sentence. "I apologise for disabling your surveillance equipment in here the other night. You see, it was important from my point of view that we could have this conversation completely unobserved." Oh, the irony. "I know you're surprised I know who you are. But you now know who I am, so I think it's only fair that we start our meeting on an equal footing. You may imagine I have… ways of finding out things. You can be sure I'm keeping this knowledge private, it's not in my interests to share this information. You've met my associate, or rather my freelance subcontractor, the Sivaparan woman." She sees a flash of recognition in Mitchum's anxious face. "She's been quite diligent, if a touch too careful with my money. Pity, as it will cost her her own success fee. I'll still pay her original commission, so she shouldn't complain. At any rate, I've decided to take this matter into my own hands. You see, I really want this asset you're selling."
"Why?" Mitchum manages, at last.
"When was the last time you had to file a tax return?" Bruce asks him, his voice dripping with condescension, and while Mitchum is still scouring his fear-frozen brain for an answer, Bruce continues. "Doesn't really matter, but I'm sure you'll agree it's a shameless rip-off. More so in my case than in yours, believe me. So two years ago I decided I'd really had enough of this daytime robbery, and moved to a more accommodating jurisdiction under a different name. I had ways of still benefiting from my US industrial holdings, you see, through various charitable funds I'd set up, where I was able to… harvest a good portion of the proceeds." It is amazing how smoothly he can blend in blatant lies with the truth, turning logic on its head and transforming his humanitarian efforts into instruments of theft and tax evasion. "It worked perfectly for a while, until some conscientious idiot at the IRS started getting too curious. And since they had no easy way of tracking me down and proving I wasn't dead, they dragged the CIA into this, seeing how it was an international matter and how much money was at stake, from their point of view. So now these narrow-minded fuckwits from Langley," Selina can hear the real anger in his voice; finally, Wrigley has turned out really useful, if only as a way of adding verisimilitude to Bruce's performance, "have started trying to corner me. I could, of course, give them what they want, but it would cost me a couple hundred million," she sees Mitchum's eyes flashing wide at the mention, "and I think I can strike a much better bargain. As soon as I'd found out you were selling their prized asset, I knew I had an excellent chance. I may not use it, but I'll make it known that if anything were to happen to me, it would go public immediately. The threat of public disclosure, or of my selling it on at a bargain price to their enemies, should be enough to make these people accept whatever terms I may feel like proposing. Starting with a tax amnesty."
Mitchum is staring at Bruce as if the other man were Einstein, or God.
"And then," Bruce delivers the coup-de-grace punchline, "I'll offer to sell it to them. Cheaply, something around ten or fifteen million, just to drive home the point that I'm not to be fucked with. And to give me a track record of the transaction as a guarantee of my future survival, seeing how embarrassing it would be for them if this whole affair ever came to light."
It takes a few seconds for Mitchum to find his voice; he is still too much in awe.
"Wha… what's your offer?" he stammers.
"Fifty million US," Bruce says lightly. "I reckon it would be at least ten mill above your current highest bid." Wild guess, but Mitchum's face registers no disagreement. "And I can throw in something extra to reward you for your goodwill."
To Mitchum's expectant stare, he continues. "You see, I've reckoned that the easiest and least suspicious way I could transfer the funds would be for the purchase of an asset here, let's say a portable but high-value object. So I've already put in place the arrangements for the transaction, a purchase of 50 million US Dollars' worth of bearer bonds here using funds in my numbered account in Basel. The transaction will be finalised at 3:30 pm this afternoon, as soon as the Basel bank is open for business. You'll then have a choice between the bonds themselves, or the object I was going to buy using them that is worth five million more. I already left a deposit with the sellers, and you will be free to use it toward the purchase, or cash it in as you may prefer."
While Selina is wondering what on earth Bruce could be talking about and whether that, too, is an inspired piece of bluffing or a real deal, Bruce pulls out a folded sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket and hands it to Mitchum. Mitchum looks at it as if he were admiring a holy relic; the five million Bruce is casually offering to throw in surely represents a significant multiple of the success fee Newell must have promised him for his efforts, or, to put it more accurately, to shut him up.
"Mr Wayne, I agree." He both looks and sounds completely sold; even the habitual fear has taken a back seat to his eagerness. Whatever may have been said about Bruce Wayne's person and lifestyle, he was always known as a man of his word in business. "But I'm not the person holding the asset. I'll call him right away – " Mitchum continues hastily, hearing an impatient sigh on Bruce's part, "and ask for an immediate meeting."
Bingo.
"You'd better also inform the other bidders," Bruce comments lazily.
"Of course, Mr Wayne." Newell may be holding the Matrix, but he is about to pay the price for having left the intermediate dealings to his cowardly minion; Mitchell will now be able to effectively pre-empt Newell's sale meeting by informing all bidders about a postponement. Sure enough, a minute later Selina's phone pings with a text delivered to the number she gave Mitchum. Decision postponed, will send details by 1 pm. He must have been too excited to have remembered to delete her name from the addressee list. She allows herself a tight smile as she shows the text to her MI6 van-mate and forwards it to Theo and Jamie.
Mitchum is presently on the phone to his handler.
"Good morning, sir," he bleats hurriedly. "I apologise for disturbing you, there have been some urgent developments. There's a buyer who has previously bid through Mrs Siva- through one of the current bidders who has now come forward with a much higher amount. He's offered fifty – " Mitchum pauses as Newell, presumably, asks him to repeat. "That's right, sir, and he's offering to pay it in bearer bonds or – yes, sir, he's a verified bona fide purchaser, I assure you. You can look up – " Mitchum glances down at the sheet of paper Bruce has picked up from his desk, where he has hastily scrawled a message, "the Gotham Times obituaries section for January 24th last year for his ID."
Must be an unusual way of identifying a bidder, but it's worked on Mitchum himself. Surely there will be several other obituaries there, what with Gotham having lost many prominent citizens in the weeks of the occupation, but there was probably only one wealthy enough to have been remembered on that day to be a viable candidate.
"Yes sir, it's him," Mitchum confirms half a minute later. "He can tell you in person – " he pauses, and Selina wonders what Newell is saying while Mitchum waits, phone at his ear. "Yes. We'll be there."
For better or worse, it is working.
"They're off," the Suntec van occupant tells him; presently the sniper joins him, his stakeout no longer needed. "I'm following them east-northeast, I think they're getting onto the East Coast Parkway…" He, of course, meaning the drone he has sent after the taxi they got into, once they were able to track Bruce's retransmitter signal down to it.
"Theo, you'd better tell your guys," Selina suggests.
"Already done," comes the reply, and if she were not so worried she would have been embarrassed for having pointed out the obvious. After all, Selina and her buddy, Theo, Jamie and the Suntec van people all get the same feeds, minus their own in the case of the van cameras. "But they'll be a few minutes behind."
How far behind depends, among other things, on where Bruce and Mitchum are going. The farther away the location, and the more deserted and visible the approach, the greater the distance that the SWAT team vans will have to keep between themselves and Bruce's taxi to avoid raising suspicion. Without a visual on the SWAT team vehicles, she can only guess.
Selina pulls up a map and does a quick check on the length and direction of the ECP. Going almost straight east after the initial northeast-bearing section, it stretches fifteen to twenty miles along the coast in the direction of Singapore's Changi Airport, other highlights in the vicinity including a Singaporean Navy base, an airbase, and a cluster of desolate-looking industrial buildings.
And on the GPS monitor screen showing a near-identical map, she sees the white dot of Bruce's retransmitter crawling along the wide arc of the highway, further and further away from the city centre, toward the end where a single road branches off to the left away from the coast, between the airport and the airbase, bound to be virtually traffic-free.
Not looking good.
xxx
"Mr Wayne."
Newell's voice is nothing like Bane's; drier and crisper and less jumbled. But the tone and the setting are still jarring enough to send spikes of fresh fear and old pain through her chest. Bruce is walking toward the far end of an enormous open space, toward what looks like an office tucked into a corner of what they now know is the Changi Exhibition Centre, a sprawling H-shaped building, currently deserted, sitting behind the airport on the northeastern tip of the peninsula of reclaimed land that is the Changi area, at the very end of Aviation Park Road, 20 kilometres east of downtown Singapore and mere paces to the international airport, guaranteeing Newell a quick and easy exit once the transaction is complete. Smart thinking, asshole.
Newell, an average-looking, middle-aged man with military-short hair, is waiting for him next to the office door, dressed in a cleaner's overalls, a cart stacked with detergents next to him concealing, presumably, a laptop with the precious database and heaven knows what weapons; or rather, what other weapons besides the gun he is quite obviously packing in his overalls pocket.
"Good morning," Bruce delivers his own greeting in a level voice when they are several paces apart, giving no hint of knowing Newell's identity. "I've taken the necessary precautions," he continues, seeing Newell reach for a sweeper paddle.
The image and sound go out for a long couple of minutes before abruptly cutting in again. By now they are in the smaller office space, virtually empty, with only a basic desk and a handful of conference-room stackable chairs.
"…has already told you the financial basics," Bruce is saying. "I'll have 50 million USD in bearer bonds available to pick up here as soon as my Swiss bank opens, at 3:30 PM Singapore time. You can either take these, or of you prefer, the bonds can be used toward the purchase of a high-value asset that can be either rendered untraceable or sold at a good margin to interested collectors. You can look it up," He motions either of the men for a pen, and when Newell hands him his smartphone instead, types up a word onscreen. "I'm happy to stay with you until the funds arrive, and have you or Mr Mitchum accompany me to the bank to ensure my cooperation..." He pauses as Newell takes back the smartphone to check the asset Bruce mentioned and probably also flight times, to accommodate the change of plan. When Newell nods again, Bruce finishes: "…so long as I can be sure that I'll be receiving the genuine article at the completion of our deal."
"You will be, Mr Wayne." Newell pulls out a laptop from the square plastic tub at the top of the cleaning cart and powers it on as he sets it on the desk. The password and fingerprint scan complete, he pulls out a thick black disk drive from the same hiding place and connects it to the laptop, once again typing in a sequence of characters and scanning his fingerprint. Presumably, Selina thinks, with a silicone pad attached, pretending to be someone else. "When our transaction is finished, I'll modify the code, adding you as an authorised user," Newell adds. "I need your fingerprint for that."
And for added verification that the man he is dealing with is actually Bruce Wayne, no doubt.
"Of course." Bruce sidles up next to him and offers his thumb for a scan; beyond the laptop screen, Mitchum can be seen fidgeting in the doorway, keeping an eye on the exhibition area outside the office.
For several minutes, Newell takes Bruce through the basics of the Matrix, and Selina watches the alternating screens through Bruce's camera. They look exactly like the ones she saw in Gotham; the same screens, the same database structure, the same commands. This, at least, is a relief.
"They're right outside," the agent next to her mutters. She has been too absorbed watching the camera feed and listening to the goings-on to pay attention to anything else.
"The SWAT team?"
He nods.
The problem is, of course, that with the huge open space separating the exhibition centre entrance from the office door, and with Mitchum on the lookout, there is no way the team can approach in secret.
"Are you satisfied, Mr Wayne?" Onscreen, Newell's sharp eyes turn on Bruce.
"I am. How and where would you like to receive payment?"
Newell looks thoughtful.
"The object is… very recognisable, and its purchase is bound to attract attention. I'll take the bonds, Mr Wayne."
"Very well," Still the same easy-going tone.
"We'll stay here until 3 PM. Which bank are you going to to pick up the bonds?"
"Sir…" Mitchum pipes up sheepishly. "I'll go back to my hotel now, if it's OK..." Newell sends him off with a shrug, confident in Mitchum's loyalty assured by the yet-unpaid success fee, but Mitchum hesitates. "Mr Wayne, if you give me the receipt, I can meet with you to cash it in afterwards…" No matter how great his fear, greed outweighs it.
Newell's ears prick up. "The receipt?"
"I've promised Mr Mitchum a small reward for his services," Bruce explains dismissively. "I left a five million deposit for the purchase of the object with the event organisers…"
Newell looks instantly pissed off. "Mr Wayne, your dealings are with me. I'm paying Mr Mitchum a commission for bringing me buyers, and he is not supposed to receive any other remuneration from anyone." This is delivered with a withering glare at Mitchum. "If you're willing to throw in an extra five million, I'll be happy to receive it." He holds out his hand to Bruce, who seems in no hurry to produce the slip.
"Sir…" Mitchum starts, with the closest approximation of indignation, but seeing Newell reach ominously into the side pocket of his coveralls, the vestiges of greed-fuelled courage leave him, and he darts off at a crazy run across the empty hall towards the outside exit.
This throws Newell off balance. He whips out the gun he was reaching for and points it in Mitchum's direction.
"Don't," Bruce says steadily from behind him.
What the hell are you thinking? Selina does not know whether to be angry or distraught. Let him shoot the bastard, what difference does it make? But of course, it always makes a difference to Bruce, even if the life he is trying to save is that of a worthless coward.
Newell's head snaps halfway back toward Bruce, one eye still on Mitchum, before he makes up his mind and once again trains his gun on the escaping man, cocking off the safety –
"Your game's up, Newell," Bruce says calmly, standing up and stepping toward Newell from behind the desk. "Don't make it worse by committing another murder."
Newell's combined anger and fear reach boiling point at hearing his name; his face distorted, he spins to face Bruce, the gun in his hand staring Selina in the face on the screen. The next instant she hears a deafening bang, and the camera feed picture shakes violently as Newell shoots Bruce point blank.
.
TBC
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The Changi Exhibition Centre is 100% real: see [http www] changiexhibitioncentr*com/siteplans*html, and other pages on the same site.