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Someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was time. Bruford turned his head just in time to see Palstein stumble. The man steadied himself, wobbled and then collapsed. Security personnel rushed past, forming a wall against the chanting crowd. Bruford craned his neck. Was it a heart attack, a circulatory collapse, a stroke? He pushed forwards, holding his mobile up above the heads of the agitated crowd. It was an assassination attempt, it was obvious! Hadn’t people seen enough of that kind of thing in films! The stumble, a mishap. But something had jerked the manager around before he had fallen to the floor. A shot, what else? Someone must have shot at Palstein – that had to be it!

What Bruford didn’t know was that twenty minutes before the incident, while he was filming the girls, one of the security cameras had captured him for just a few seconds, albeit blurred and out of focus. When the police came to analyse the transmitted material, they simply overlooked him.

But the people from Greenwatch didn’t.

* * *

He could still hardly believe they had managed to track him down from just that snippet of film, on the snowball principle, as Loreena Keowa, the high-cheekboned, not particularly pretty and yet somehow sweat-inducingly arousing native Indian girl had explained to him. Greenwatch had quickly come to the conclusion that the men next to him, who were easier to make out on the film, must be his friends, and then one of them had said something to an old man in the row in front of them. It was Jack ‘pain-in-the-ass’ Becker of course, he could still remember that, because Becker had wound him up no end with his sentimentality. Unlike the others, Becker, who had worn his Imperial Oil overalls that day, had been captured sharply on the film, and Keowa clearly had contacts in the human resources department of the company. She had identified him, called him and showed him the recording, upon which ‘what’s-in-it-for-me’ Becker had named both Bruford’s friends and Bruford himself.

And now he was sitting here. It was a scary world! Anyone could be tracked down. On the other hand, there were worse things than sitting next to Loreena in her rented Dodge, fifty Canadian dollars richer, watching her as she loaded his blurry videos onto her computer. Loreena in her chic clothes, which didn’t seem quite right for an eco-girl. A number of things were going through his head. Whether he should have asked for more money. What Greenwatch intended to do with the films. Why
native Indian hair was always so shiny, and what he would need to do to make his that shiny for his career in Hollywood.

‘Shouldn’t we go to the police?’ he heard himself suggest. A sensible question, he thought. Loreena stared at the display, concentrating on the transfer process.

‘Rest assured, we will,’ she murmured.

‘Yes, but when?’

‘It doesn’t matter when,’ grumbled Loreena’s companion from the back seat.

‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head and made an expression of genuine concern, proof of his acting talents; he’d always known it, it was what he’d been born to do. ‘I don’t want to get dragged into anything. We’re obligated to tell them really, aren’t we?’

‘So why didn’t you do it?’

‘I didn’t think of it. But now that we’re talking about it—’

‘Yes, you’re right of course, we should reconsider the deal.’ Loreena turned her head towards him. ‘Do we know whether the material is worth fifty dollars? Perhaps there’s not even anything on there.’

Bruford hesitated. ‘But that would be your problem.’

‘But then perhaps it’s worth a hundred dollars, you see?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t you think, Sid? On the condition that a certain someone stops asking questions and worrying about the police?’

Bruford suppressed a grin. That was exactly what he had wanted her to say.

‘Sure,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I think that could be the case.’

She reached into her jacket and brought out another fifty, as if she had reckoned on this development. Bruford took it and put it with the other one.

‘There seems to be quite a nest in your jacket,’ he said.

‘No, Sid, there were only two. And perhaps they’ll have to go back in if I come to the conclusion that you can’t be trusted.’

‘Then I’ll just take something else.’ Now he couldn’t help but grin. ‘You have other good things inside your jacket that come in twos.’

Loreena glanced at her companion, who looked willing to resort to violence.

‘Okay,’ he muttered. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No problem. It was a pleasure meeting you.’

He understood. With a shrug of his shoulders he opened the passenger door.

‘Oh, and one more thing, Sid, just in case you do decide to call the police in a sudden passion of loyalty to the law: the money in your pocket constitutes withholding evidence for the purpose of your own personal gain. That’s an offence, do you understand?’

Bruford stopped short. He suddenly felt deeply offended. With one leg already on the pavement, he leaned back in towards her.

‘Are you trying to threaten me?’

‘Now, you listen up, Sid—’

‘No,
you
listen up! My job has gone down the crapper. I’m trying to get what I can, but a deal is a deal! Is that clear? I may have a loose tongue, but that doesn’t mean I shit all over people. So kiss my ass and look after your own business.’

* * *

‘What a snitch,’ said the intern contemptuously as Bruford set off down the street without looking back at them. ‘For another hundred dollars he’d have flogged his own grandmother.’

Loreena watched him go.

‘No, he was right. We insulted him. If anyone behaved dubiously then it’s us.’

‘While we’re on the subject –
shouldn’t
we hand this footage over to the cops?’

Loreena hesitated. She hated the idea of doing something illegal, but she was a journalist, and journalists thrived on having a head start. Without giving an answer, she connected her computer to the in-car system. The Dodge she had rented at the airport had a large display.

‘Come up front,’ she said. ‘Let’s have a look at what good old Sid has to offer first.’

‘It’s a bit of a blind bargain.’

‘Sometimes you have to take risks.’

They saw a blurred panning shot, a crowd of people, food stalls, the headquarters of Imperial Oil, a podium. Then Bruford’s friends, grinning broadly into the camera. Bruford had been filming straight ahead initially, then he started to swivel round. Two young women came into shot, noticed that they were being filmed and started fooling around.

‘They’re having fun,’ laughed the intern. ‘Pretty hot, too. Especially the blonde.’

‘Hey, you’re supposed to be paying attention to the background.’

‘I can do both.’

‘Oh, sure. Men and multi-tasking.’

They fell silent. Bruford had used up a lot of memory space on the two backwater beauties’ performance, in the course of which several people walked into shot, three policemen appeared, two of them took off again, and one took up his post in the shadow of the building. The girls contorted themselves into a clumsy performance, the significance of which Loreena couldn’t decipher at first, until the intern whistled through his teeth.

‘Not bad at all! Do you recognise it?’

‘No.’

‘That’s from
Alien Speedmaster 7
!’

‘From what?’

‘You don’t know
Alien Speedmaster 7
?’ His amazement seemed to know no bounds. ‘Don’t you ever go to the cinema?’

‘Yes, but it sounds like I see different films to you.’

‘Well, there’s a gap in your education there. Look what they’re doing now! I think they’re re-enacting the scene from
Death Chat
, you know the one, where those small, intelligent creatures go for the woman with the artificial arm and—’

‘No, I don’t know.’

The girls doubled up with laughter. This was disheartening. They had already looked at half of the material without seeing anything more than pubescent nonsense.

‘What are they doing now?’ puzzled the intern.

‘Would you just keep your eyes on the building?’

‘It looks like—’

‘
Please!
’

‘No, wait! I think that’s from the slushy love film that was hyped up so much last year. A bit cheesy if you ask me. That guy’s in it, that horny old man – you know the one. God, what’s his name? Tell me!’

‘Absolutely no idea.’

‘Yeah, the old bastard who recently got an honorary Oscar for his life’s work!’

‘Richard Gere?’

‘Yes, exactly! Gere! He plays the grandfather of—’

‘Shh!’ Loreena silenced him with a hand motion. ‘Look.’

From the side exit of the central building, two athletic-looking men in casual clothes came out, strolled over to the patrolling policeman and started speaking to him. Both were wearing sunglasses.

‘They don’t look like oil workers.’

‘No.’ Loreena leaned forward, wondering why she had a feeling of déjà vu. She played the section back again and again, zooming in on their faces. A moment later, a slim woman dressed in a trouser suit walked out of the building and positioned herself next to the entrance. The policeman pointed to something, the men looked in the direction of his outstretched hand, one of them holding something under his nose, which might have been a map of the city, and the conversation continued. In the background, a pot-bellied man with long black hair approached, wound his way towards the unguarded side entrance and shuffled inside.

‘Look at that,’ whispered Loreena.

A few moments later, the athletic-looking men shook the policeman’s hand and headed off. The woman in the trouser suit leaned against a tree, her arms folded, and then Bruford’s recording jumped. Sequences followed in which the girls continued
to get up to mischief, without anything happening in the immediate vicinity of the building, then the crowd of people and the podium came into view. Both uniformed officials and civilians were pushing their way forward, everything was hectic. Images that had clearly been filmed right after the assassination attempt.

‘The guy that disappeared into the house—’ said the intern.

‘Could be anyone. The janitor, the engineer, some tramp.’ Loreena paused for breath. ‘But if not—’

‘Then we just saw the killer.’

‘Yes, the man who shot Gerald Palstein.’

They exchanged glances like two scientists who had just discovered an unknown, probably fatal virus and could see a Nobel Prize glimmering against the abyss of horror. Loreena isolated a freeze-frame of the fat man, enlarged it, connected her computer with the base station in Juneau and loaded the Magnifier, a program that could do wonders with even the grainiest of material. Within seconds, the blurred features became more contoured, strands of greasy hair separated from white skin, a straggly moustache corresponded with sparse chin stubble.

‘He looks Asian,’ said the intern.

Chinese, Loreena thought suddenly. China was involved in the Canadian oil-sand trade. Hadn’t they even acquired licences? On the other hand, what would the death of an EMCO manager change about the fact that Alberta was lost? Or was Imperial Oil in Chinese hands? But then EMCO would have belonged to them too. No, it didn’t make sense. And killing Palstein certainly didn’t. As he himself had said:
Every unpopular decision I make reduces my popularity, but I’m really only the strategic leader.

She stroked her chin.

The sequence with the fat man alone was enough to justify a report, even if the guy turned out to be harmless. Yet it would make the police look a laughing stock. Greenwatch would have used up all its ammunition at once. A brief triumph that would cost them their decisive head-start in the investigations. The chance of solving the case by themselves would be blown.

Perhaps, thought Loreena, you should be content with what you have.

Indecisive, she rewound the film to the moment when the men with the sunglasses engaged the policeman in conversation. She zoomed in on them and let the Magnifier do its work, extracting details from the blurred image which, with all likelihood, came very close to their actual appearance. But even after that the policeman still looked unidentifiable, just an average policeman. The taller of the two men, however, looked familiar to her. Very familiar, in fact.

The computer informed her that the editorial office in Vancouver wanted to speak to her. The face of Sina, editor for Society and Miscellaneous, appeared on
the display. ‘You wanted to know whether any other managerial figures from the oil trade have been injured since the beginning of the year.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Bingo. Three, one of them being Umar a-Hamid.’

‘The OPEC Foreign Minister?’

‘Correct. He fell off his horse in January and broke his leg. He’s recovered now. The nag was suspected of having connections in the Islamist camp. No, I’m just kidding. The next, Prokofi Pavlovich Kiselyev—’

‘Who in God’s name is that?’

‘The former Project Manager of Gazprom in West Siberia. He died in March, a car accident, reported to be his own fault. The man was ninety-four years old and half blind. That’s it for this year.’

‘You said there were three.’

‘I took the liberty of going further back. Which brings it to three. There’s always someone of course, one gets sick, another dies, a suicide here and there, nothing unusual. Until you look at the case of Alejandro Ruiz, the strategic second in command of Repsol.’

‘Repsol? Weren’t they taken over by ENI in 2022?’

‘It was discussed, but it never actually happened. In any case, Ruiz was, or is, quite an important figure in strategic management.’

‘And now? Which is it:
was
or
is
?’

‘That’s the problem. We’re not sure if he can still be counted as being alive. He disappeared three years ago on an inspection trip to Peru.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Overnight. He vanished. Lost without a trace in Lima.’

‘What else do you know about him?’

‘Not much, but if you like I can change that.’

‘Please do. And thank you.’

Alejandro Ruiz—

Repsol was a Spanish–Argentine company, trailing at the bottom of the field’s top ten. There weren’t all that many points of contact between the Spanish and EMCO. Was she risking wasting her time? Did the disappearance of a Spanish oil strategist in Lima in 2022 have anything to do with this?