My life had been a real mess! For the last couple of days, I had no cases anymore; since the night before yesterday, I had no home, and on top of that, this morning, it turned out I’d lost my office, too. As soon as I went there—again because I didn’t want to stay in the miserable hotel where I checked in—I realized something wasn’t right.

Firstly, the guard in the reception booth down in the lobby was missing. Secondly, the two guys I met while climbing the stairs stared at me weirdly, making me wonder what was happening. Thirdly, and this was the most unambiguous of all, the door to my miniature office on the second floor was broken. The thing was forced brutally inside the room, but part of it still hung outside since there wasn’t enough space.

I stopped abruptly on the stairs and looked around, alarmed. The corridor was empty, but I saw footprints on the floor, which seemed chaotic and too numerous for a normal situation. I quietly kneeled to touch the mud—it was fresh. Then, I unholstered my Glock, goose-fleshed, and quietly sneaked behind the edge of the doorframe.

It was a useless precaution. I knew no one was in my office because no human being could hide with the furniture still there, and half of the door kicked in. Whoever had done this—presumably, the Chinese bastards—had already gone. I glanced inside—just in case—re-holstered my gun and slowly walked down the corridor, knocking on every door in turn without expecting too much.

It was also a useless act. The entire floor turned out to be “empty,” even though I heard ringing telephones, working coffee machines, and rumbling TV sets inside the rooms. I managed to get just two of my neighbors to answer their doors, but they said they hadn’t heard a thing. One of them even claimed he had come just thirty seconds ago, which was bullshit, of course, because I had been hanging in the corridor for five minutes and didn’t see him.

Nevertheless, I thanked both guys and went back to my burial chamber. I say “burial” because my career was now buried there. However, I could fully understand people’s reaction. After all, it wasn’t easy to bear witness to a crime if you had just seen a bunch of thugs with heavy guns refurnishing your neighbor’s office!

I returned to my room and carefully pulled the door, stepping inside. Things didn’t look so bad, actually, because the space was so crammed in the first place that the furniture couldn’t be disarranged too much. I looked around for my valuables, which was only a bottle of White Bear whiskey in the big compartment of my desk, but I found it broken. The TV set was broken too. Then I glanced around for one last time, stepped out, adjusting the door in the doorframe as much as possible, and hurried down the stairs.

The reception booth was still empty, and I briskly left the building, strolling to my car. Obviously, no one had called the police yet, so I gathered the assault was fresh. It wasn’t weird at all—people were probably afraid the Chinese might be around. I had no intention of calling the cops either, but it was for a different reason. There was simply no point because they couldn’t help me much in this situation. Besides, I couldn’t come back to that office anyway because I was going to be a living target for young mobsters to practice their killing techniques. Instead, I hopped into my Beijing and started the engine to leave downtown. Half an hour later, I pulled to the curb on J. Rose 35, outside the big house with a white wall.

Staying in my car, I thought about the nasty situation I had landed myself in. It was all very weird! If Sharon was really DuPont’s wife and after his money, why would she wait so long before coming to get it? And if Bobby was really his mistress, why wouldn’t she warn him that his ex-wife and chauffeur were plotting against him? Or maybe Bjornson had told him, but they both acted like they knew nothing about it, hoping to catch the plotters in the act. If that was the case, it would explain why Bobby and Sharon were constantly putting me between them—they just wanted to ruin each other’s games—but it didn’t explain why they were trying to set the Chinese after me. The last thing made my life a real mess, and because of it, I couldn’t work anymore! Speaking to Menelaus Henry DuPont was my only chance to get out of this horrible shitstorm, and that’s why I was here.

After a while, I sighed heavily, checked the Glock in my holster, and stepped out of the Beijing. I slowly went to the large front door, next to the gate to the yard from where Marty Cork drove out the previous day, and I pushed the doorbell. A few moments passed, but nothing happened inside the house—just as I anticipated. I waited for two more minutes and repeated the ringing—to no avail again. In the end, I turned around and went back to my car.

I kept thinking as I sat in the vehicle. Early in the morning, when I searched the Internet, I found out that Menelaus had really married a long time ago—or at least, almost married. At first, I didn’t believe it when Bobby mentioned it because I thought she was trying to get away from my questions, but she seemed to have told me the truth after all. Seven years ago, shortly after Couloongs’ arrival, the guy had a brief affair with a foreigner. During that period, he often visited the colony on Mars for business matters because his empire down here had just started becoming global. After one of these trips, he surprisingly returned married, but strangely enough, his wife—some Sharon Alebruggen—didn’t come with him. And what was even weirder was that she didn’t visit Earth later, either. On top of that, DuPont never went to Mars again, nor did he divorce.

I relaxed back in the seat, pondering it. It made no sense that Menelaus’ wife would suddenly have an affair with his chauffeur after all these years without an ulterior motive. It would have been too big a coincidence! One possible explanation was that Sharon Vorderbruggen and Sharon Alebruggen were different people, but this would also be too big a coincidence. And if they were the same person, why did Sharon Alebruggen introduce herself to me as Sharon Vorderbruggen in my office? Why didn’t she change her first name, too? Was it essential for her future plans, or did she deliberately try to make me suspicious to achieve something?

Incidentally, upon returning home, Menelaus made the whole mess with the wedding even more complicated by never confirming, denying, or revealing any details about it and never explaining why Mrs. DuPont wasn’t coming. At first, there was a massive fuss in the media because people assumed the event was an image campaign or a marriage of convenience—like the royal marriages in the past—but then it turned out the whole thing was actually bullshit. The problem was that Martian law had no effect on Earth, and up there, they simply had no marriages. They coupled only for sex, and their government was taking care of reproduction raising children equally in special homes. However, things eventually faded away without the persona of Menelaus’ wife. Somewhere around that moment, the rift between Earth and Mars had already worsened, and because of our problems with our colony, no one was able to follow the story. No one even knew what the bride looked like. I searched for her photo for nearly an hour, but only fakes emerged.

I stretched in my car, stiffened, and glanced wearily at my cell phone. It was eleven-thirty, and the waiting here reminded me of when I almost ended up dead after following Marty the previous time. At the thought of this, I nervously wondered what I should do if he drove his Corvic out of that gate again. Was I supposed to follow him and give him another chance to kill me, or did I have to stay put and wait for some less harmless guy to come out?

A minute later, while I was still thinking, something funny happened. I noticed my old pal—the silver rat—squeezing out of the same hole in the wall, trotting on the sidewalk. It waved whiskers and stopped at the curb to sniff at it. “Well, if the little creature is here, then someone else must follow soon,” I thought, hopeful. “This is the butterfly effect!” Feeling very optimistic, I grabbed my shades from the glove box and put them on, laying my hands on the steering wheel and tapping my fingers impatiently. The rat was already at the manhole!

Unfortunately, I soon realized that the butterfly effect was probably something completely different than I thought, or maybe history didn’t repeat itself as often as they said. To my disappointment, nothing changed. The animal lingered around for a few minutes, waving whiskers again and vigorously sniffing the air, but then it walked down the sidewalk unruffled and vanished around the next corner. Afterward, the street was as empty and peaceful as before. I sighed, disappointed, and took my shades off, returning to my thinking. I just had to wait until I met DuPont—I had no other bright ideas. I hoped he would help me persuade the Chinese that I wasn’t spying on them because, perhaps, he didn’t like them thinking so, too.

I knew it wouldn’t be an easy task, though. The guy was a maverick, and he was secretive about his deals. I was afraid he wouldn’t want to listen to me. His empire—GTS—was actually so huge that it had a couple of hundred offices around the world with headquarters down in Brussels, but most of his business Menelaus controlled from Greenland. He owned a massive ninety-floor office building downtown, and the last floor was his personal space. When I searched the Internet, I came across a few very interesting facts regarding his new projects.

For one thing, he had started buying up chemical factories all over the world, and since he already had a successful business, it looked strange to me. It was a possible reason for hiring Bobby in the first place. Another weird thing was that he recently acquired an entire island in the South Pacific, and when I read about it, I wondered if the purchase might have had something to do with Sharon and Marty’s aspirations. The place’s name was Olosega, and DuPont had started a gigantic project there, although no one really knew what exactly it was about.

In fact, I wouldn’t have paid much attention to it since the guy was a trillionaire, and trillionaires do such things, if something in the island’s name hadn’t piqued my curiosity. It sounded similar to what Sharon and Marty whispered in the bungalow. Even in this case, I still wouldn’t have been overly suspicious—mostly because I forgot the name almost immediately—if there hadn’t been another small island next to Olosega. It was called Ofu, and this one I remembered well. Back at the bungalow, I assumed the guys were talking about Corfu in Greece, but in the context now, everything suddenly made sense. It also explained their interest in that place.

I glanced at my cell phone again and reached into the glove box to find something to help me kill an hour or two. Naturally, I found nothing interesting because, in order to do so, I had to put it in there first. There was only an old crossword puzzle tablet. I hesitantly took the gadget out and tried the first level, but unfortunately, the questions were too hard for me. They asked about the last monarch of the former United Kingdom before the Emigrant Revolution burst, about the name of China’s first human cloning, some edible flower on Mars with golden petals and a red stigma, and a sex toy for Couloong ladies. I didn’t know any of these.

I played with the thing a bit more, but after a few minutes, I threw it back in the glove box, disappointed. The experience only made me feel stupid. I had just closed the cover and wondered what else I could do when I noticed a small stepvan coming up the street. I promptly dove behind the dashboard and watched the vehicle advance. It slowly climbed up the hill and stopped near a rose plant at the far end of the white wall.

At first, nothing happened at all. No one came out, and the van just stayed there. Since there was a light reflection on the front windshield, I couldn’t see what was happening inside. However, after a while, I recognized some shadows moving and maybe arms and an ass sticking out between the front seats. Eventually, they blurred, too, and for about three minutes, nothing happened again. Then, all of a sudden, the stepvan shook up, and I heard a short shriek followed by laughter. In the end, the driver’s door opened up.

In the following seconds, a really big fellow clumsily stepped outside, making me wonder how he had even managed to cram himself in such a small vehicle. His appearance immediately ended all my hopes of having a harmless guy to follow. The man could easily carry two younger rhinoceroses in his left hand and their old mother in his right one, and he also had an ill-hidden piece stuck in his pants on the back. It was bigger than an artillery gun! Fortunately, the bodyguard was not going anywhere but coming, which spared me the trouble of deciding what to do and putting myself in danger.

Right after him, a girl jumped out through the passenger’s door. She was a southern-type beauty—maybe Filipino or something like that—and she wore the knee-length black dress of a housemaid, garnished with a tiny little white apron with lace trimmings. She was gorgeous, and after fooling around in the car, she even looked a bit naughty in her uniform. The girl paused there to smooth out her dress and put her hair in order, after which she and the guard went to the back of the van. The guy opened the door, gave her a small basket full of washed clothes, and patronizingly slapped her ass. The girl briskly ran toward the wall like a young filly, and then, before I knew it, she just disappeared.

I jumped up in my seat, astonished. As it turned out, there was a small service door behind the rose shrub, but looking at it from my car, I couldn’t see it. The plant was crowning it entirely, making it almost invisible. Besides, the door was white—just like the wall itself. When the girl vanished into the yard, the guy grabbed two other baskets—much bigger and heavier—and followed his girlfriend, pausing for a while at the doorframe because he had trouble squeezing himself in. After a minute, he returned outside, closed the van’s back door, went around the car, crammed himself into it, and started the engine.

The vehicle moved to the main gate, which began slowly opening. Right before entering the yard, however, the van unexpectedly coughed a couple of times, and the engine choked. The guard tried it again, but to no avail, so he had to get out, frustrated, and move to the front hood to open it. Then he looked under. I waited a few seconds and stepped out of my car, leisurely approaching him.

“Hey, mate! You need some help with this baby?” I asked him when I got closer. He sharply turned his head toward me while still bending over the engine. The latter was an old tech consisting of many weird components—pipes, pumps, and wires—identical to the one I had in my Beijing.

“Fuck off!” The man bared his teeth, turning his head back.

“Mr. DuPont in the house? I need to speak to him!” I ignored his bad mood.

“Fuck off, I said!” He repeated, but his voice was louder and more aggressive this time. He didn’t even bother to look at me anymore.

I shrugged and drew away while glancing through the open gate inside the yard. I couldn’t see the house from where I stood, but the garden was truly spectacular. It looked like a paradise—full of exotic plants blooming even so early in Greenland’s spring. I hadn’t seen such a place before.

After I strolled back to my car, the guard got the engine working. He quickly drove into the yard, and the gate closed behind him. I waited a while, nervously pacing around my Beijing, and eventually approached the main door again. I didn’t want to give up because I knew the mansion wasn’t empty now. The Filipino was there, and I hoped she would come to answer the door. I had just pushed the doorbell button when someone shouted loudly. It seemed to be an angry cry coming from the inside. It sounded like the voice of the jerk whose “friendly” attitude I had just experienced, and I figured he was giving me his next “fuck off.”

I waited for two more minutes, just to be sure they wouldn’t let me in, and when I was sure, I returned to my car. Desperate, I started the engine and drove toward downtown to try Menelaus’ workplace. I had decided to start with his house because I thought I didn’t have much chance to find anything interesting at the skyscraper—it was just ninety floors full of strange people storming in and out. Now, I had no other option. Half an hour later, I pulled to the curb two blocks away from the massive building and went there, heading into the reception. It was a stupid idea anyway because I had no appointment, but I asked to visit GTS’s office on business matters. The receptionist looked at me weirdly, but she called to check it out. Unfortunately, no one answered up there, and I wasn’t even surprised. I kind of expected it.

After almost ten minutes of insisting on letting me check myself, I had to give up because the security guys became nervous and started giving me nasty looks. Eventually, I made my peace with leaving a message and turned around to go out, frustrated. I spent some more time sitting at a cafe nearby and trying to think of a single reason why the guy wouldn’t want to speak to me, but I came to no reasonable conclusion. In the end, my cell phone unexpectedly rang just before paying for the coffee and returning to my miserable and oppressive hotel room. It was Bobby.

©2016 S.T. Fargo
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(www.stfargo.com)