The Einstein Equation

15 Rats in the Barley

The ever-resilient Aidan Glaston was a veteran journalist. He had been on many assignments during the Cold War, during the administrations of several crooked politicians and he always got his story. He opted for a more passive career move after he was almost killed in Belfast. Repeatedly, he had been warned by the people he was investigating at that time, but he had to get the expose before anyone else in Scotland. Not long after, karma took her turn, and Aidan found himself one of many injured by shrapnel during the IRA bombings. He took the hint, and asked for an administrative writer’s job.

Now he was back in the field again. His sixties did not turn out as well as he had thought and the rugged reporter soon discovered that boredom would kill him long before cigarettes or cholesterol would. After months of begging and proposing better perks than the other journalists, Aidan had convinced the fussy Ms. Noble that he was the man for the job. After all, he was the one who wrote the front-page article about McFadden and the most irregular meeting of selected mayors in Scotland. That alone, the word ‘selected’, instilled distrust in someone like Aidan.

In the yellow light of his rented hostel room in Castlemilk, he sucked on a cheap cigarette, writing his report draft on his computer, to formulate later. Aidan had learned well about losing valuable records before, so he had a fail safe — once done with each draft, he would e-mail it to himself. That way, he always had back-up copies.

I wondered why only some of Scotland’s municipal administrators are involved, and I found out when I cheated my way into the local gathering in Glasgow. It became clear that the information leak I tapped into was not intended, because my source consequently disappeared off the radar. From the meeting of Scottish municipal governors, I learned that the common denominator is not their profession. Isn’t that interesting?

What they all have in common is in fact an affiliation with a bigger, worldwide organization, or rather, a conglomerate of influential businesses and associations. McFadden, whom I was most interested in, turned out to be the least of our worries. Whilst I was thinking this was a meeting for mayors, they all turned out to be members of this anonymous party, one that includes politicians, financiers and military men. This meeting was not about petty town council laws or ordinances, but about something much bigger; the summit in Belgium we all heard about on the news. And Belgium is where I will attend the next secret summit. I have to know, if it is the last thing I do.

A knock at the door interrupted his report, but he quickly added the time and date, as per usual, before dousing his cigarette. The knocking became persistent, even urgent.

“Hey, keep yer pants on, I am on my way!” he barked impatiently. He pulled on his trousers and, to be spiteful to his caller, decided to first attach his draft to his e-mail and send it, before answering the door. The knocking became harder and more, but when he looked through the peephole, he recognized Benny D, his main source. Benny was a personal assistant in the Edinburgh branch of a private financing corporation.

“Geez, Benny, what the hell are you doing here? I thought you disappeared off the face of the planet,” Aidan muttered as he opened the door. In front of him, Benny D stood in the dirty corridor of the hostel, looking pallid and sick.

“I am so sorry I did not call you back, Aidan,” Benny apologized. “I was afraid they would find me out, you see…”

“I know, Benny. I know how it is in this game, son. Come in,” Aidan invited. “Just latch the locks behind you when you come in.”

“Okay,” the shaky snitch panted nervously.

“Do you want some whiskey? Sounds like you could use some,” the old journalist offered. Before his words were cold, a blunt thump ensued behind him. Not a moment later, Aidan felt the spray of fresh blood against his bare neck and upper back. He swung around in shock, and his eyes stretched at the sight of Benny’s cleaved skull, there where he had sunk to his knees. His limp body fell over, and Aidan cringed at the coppery smell of the freshly shattered skull of his main source.

Behind Benny stood two figures. One was latching the door and the other, an enormous thug in a suit, cleaned the nozzle of his silencer. The man at the door walked out from the shadows and revealed himself.

“Benny will not be having any whiskey, Mr. Glaston, but Wolf and I would love a tot or two,” the jackal-faced businessman grinned.

“McFadden,” Aidan sneered. “I would not waste my own piss on you, let alone a good single malt.”

Wolf grunted like the animal he was, annoyed that he had to let the old newspaperman live until told otherwise. Aidan met his gaze with contempt. “What is this? You could not afford a bodyguard who can form proper words? I guess you get what you can afford, hey?”

McFadden’s smirk dwindled in the light of the lamp, the shadows deepening every line of his foxlike features. “Easy now, Wolf,” he purred, pronouncing the thug’s name in the German fashion. Aidan took note of the name and the pronunciation, and deduced that it could probably be the bodyguard’s actual first name. “I can afford more than you think, you washed-out hack,” McFadden jeered, as he circled the journalist slowly. Aidan kept his eye on Wolf until the mayor of Oban rounded him and halted at his laptop. “I have some very powerful friends.”

“Obviously,” Aidan scoffed. “What splendid things did you have to do to while you were on your knees in front of those friends, Honorable Lance McFadden?”

Wolf stepped in and walloped Aidan so hard that he stumbled to the floor. He spat out the small amount of blood that pooled inside his lip and chuckled. McFadden sat down on Aidan’s bed with his laptop and perused his open documents, including the one Aidan had been writing before he was interrupted. The blue LED light illuminated his hideous face as his eyes ran silently form side to side. Wolf stood static, his hands locked in front of him with the gun’s silencer protruding from his fingers, just waiting for the command.

McFadden sighed, “So, you have figured out that the mayoral meeting was not quite what it smelled like, right?”

“Aye, your new friends are far more powerful than you will ever be,” the journalist sniffed. “It just proves that you are nothing but a pawn. Fuck knows what they need you for. Oban is hardly an important town… in just about any matter.”

“You would be surprised how valuable Oban will become once the 2017 Belgian Summit is in full swing, pal,” McFadden bragged. “I am at the pinnacle to make sure that our cozy little town is complacent when the time comes.”

“For what? When the time comes for what?” Aidan asked, but he was met with just an irritating giggle from the fox-faced villain. McFadden leaned closer to Aidan, where he was still kneeling on the mat in front of the bed where Wolf had sent him. “You will never know, my nosy little foe. You will never know. That must be hell for you types, hey? Because you just have to know everything, don’t you?”

“I will find out,” Aidan persisted, appearing defiant, yet he was terrified. “Remember, I found out that you and your fellow administrators are in cahoots with a bigger sibling, and that you are bullshitting your way through office by bullying those who see right through you.”

Aidan did not even see the order pass from McFadden’s eyes to his dog. Wolf’s boot shattered the left side of the journalist’s rib cage with one hefty kick. Aidan cried out in pain as his torso caught fire under the force of the steel reinforced shoes his attacker wore. He doubled over on the floor, tasting more of his warm blood welling up in his mouth.

“Now, tell me, Aidan, have you ever lived on a farm?” McFadden asked.

Aidan could not respond. His lungs were on fire and refused to inflate enough for him to speak. Only a hiss came from him. “Aidan,” McFadden sang to urge him on. To avert any more punishment the journalist nodded profusely in order to give some reply. Luckily for him, it was satisfactory for now. Smelling the dust from the dirty floor, Aidan sucked in as much breath as he could manage while his ribs constricted his organs.

“I used to live on a farm when I was in my teens. My father was a wheat farmer. Our farm yielded spring barley every year, but some years, before we took the sacks to the market, we would store them while we harvest,” the mayor of Oban recounted with a slow pace. “Sometimes, we would have to work extra fast because we had a problem with the storage sheds, you see. I asked my father why we have to work so fast and he explained that we had a vermin problem. I remember one summer when we had to eradicate entire nests burrowed under the barley, poisoning every single rat we could find. There were always more, when you left them alive, you see?”

Aidan could anticipate where this was going, but the pain kept his opinions inside his head. Behind the light of the lamp he could see the massive shadow of the thug moving when he tried to look up, but he could not twist his neck far enough to see what he was doing. McFadden passed Aidan’s laptop to Wolf. “Take care of all that… information, would you? Vielen Dank.” He returned his attention to the journalist at his feet. “Now, I am sure you are following my lead on this simile, Aidan, but in case the blood is filling your ears already, let me elucidate.”

‘Already? What does he mean with already?’ Aidan thought. The sound of his laptop being smashed to smithereens cut into his ears. For some reason, all he found concerning was how his editor was going to bitch about the loss of company technology.

“You are one of those rats, you see,” McFadden calmly continued. “You burrow in until you disappear in the mess and then,” he sighed dramatically, “it becomes more and more difficult to find you. All the while you sow havoc and destroy, from the inside out, all the work and nurturing that had gone into the harvest.”

Aidan could hardly breathe. His skinny frame was no match for physical castigation. Most of his strength came from his wit, his common sense and powers of deduction. His body, however, was terribly frail in comparison. As McFadden spoke of destroying rats it became explicitly clear to the veteran journalist that the mayor of Oban and his pet orangutan were not leaving him alive.

In his line of sight, he could see the red smile of Benny’s skull, deforming the shape of his staring dead eyes. He knew that would be him soon, but as Wolf crouched next to him and wrapped his laptop cord around his neck, Aidan knew that there would be no swift course for him. It was already hard to draw breath, and the only lament that came from this, was that he would have no defiant last words for his killers.

“I must say, this is quite the profitable evening for Wolf and I,” McFadden infested Aidan’s last moments with his shrill voice. “Two rats in one night, and a host of dangerous information countered.”

The old journalist felt the immeasurable strength of the German thug applied to his throat. His hands were too weak to pry the wire away from his throat, so he decided to die as swiftly as possible without tiring himself with a futile struggle. All he could think of as his head began to burn behind his eyes, was how Sam Cleave was probably onto the same thing these high profile crooks were stirring. Then Aidan recalled another ironic twist. Not fifteen minutes before, in his report draft, he had written that he would expose these people even if it was the last thing he did. His e-mail would get out. Wolf could not erase what was already out in cyberspace.

As the darkness enfolded Aidan Glaston, he managed to smile.