Still, when the time had come, it had been hard to manage. The old man was near death, but still some panicky instinct drove his body to spend its last energy struggling. And with two uncoordinated hands, it wasn’t easy to hold the pillow down long enough, hard enough, to complete the suffocation.
The cards now before them bore carefully handwritten notes in felt-tip block letters:
POTUS
PM OF U.K.
PM OF JAPAN
CHANCELLOR OF GERMANY
PRESIDENT OF CHINA
PM OF INDIA
It would be a global strike. The six most powerful political leaders on Earth. Taken together they ruled half the human population. Three-quarters of the world’s wealth. Virtually all of the world’s technology.
An argument could be made for including Russia, France, and South Korea. Indeed those three cards were set aside for future use.
“Ambitious,” Charles said.
“Too ambitious?” Benjamin asked.
“Burnofsky made good arguments for a more incremental approach,” Charles said. “And with McLure dead maybe he is right. BZRK will be crippled without access to McLure money and facilities. Perhaps we have more time.”
Twin monitors moved on robotic arms, keyed to their movement. Each monitor had its own camera, and each camera focused on one side of that too-broad face. It allowed them to see each other’s face, to speak not just beside each other, but to each other—eye to eye to eye.
The surface of the desk was a touch screen with identical menus to left and right. From here they could call up cameras everywhere. The fifty-ninth floor, where the twitchers worked. The twelve floors of laboratories, the testing facilities on the twentieth and twenty-first, the business offices on the lower floors, the model gift shop at ground level, the subterranean garage, the dedicated elevators that serviced the Tulip.
They could also call up sight and sound from the main offices of Nexus Humanus in Hollywood, and the satellite offices in Washington, London, Berlin, Moscow, Buenos Aires, and just blocks away in Manhattan.
And, too, they could see the hundreds of Armstrong Fancy Gift shops in airports and train stations and on tourist streets around much of the world.
And they could watch the homes of key employees, see who came to visit, observe their families, watch as they fought or showered or cooked dinner or made love.
Their empire came to them through a thousand hidden cameras, a system for them and for them alone. Charles and Benjamin Armstrong, who could not go out into the world, watched unseen and unsuspected.
But for now they watched each other. Watching his twin’s eye, Benjamin could see that Charles was not very serious, that he was playing devil’s advocate. Benjamin smiled tolerantly.
“The longer we wait, the greater the chance of discovery,” Benjamin said, walking back through their decision making. Reiterating. Like it was a liturgy. It was reassuring. “We’ve had several close calls.”
“At any moment the technology might be discovered,” Charles agreed.
“We know the FBI had possession of a nanobot. What if we had not managed to retrieve it?”
“And we know that MI5 is actively investigating.”
“There have been repeated efforts by Anonymous to penetrate our AFGC networks as well as Nexus Humanus,” Benjamin said.
“Oh, yes, the hackers are after us.”
“The FBI is thwarted for now. But MI5 persists.”
“Indications of Mossad interest.”
“An attempt by Swedish intelligence to penetrate Nexus.”
“Too many eyes are turning toward us, brother.”
That image troubled both men. They watched: they were not themselves watched.
“BZRK is weakened by McLure’s death, but not defeated,” Benjamin cautioned.
“Fuck BZRK,” Charles snapped.
“Fanatics.”
“A death cult.”
There followed a long silence, during which both men looked down at the cards, and the third eye wandered lazily. Beneath the cards the table screen showed a lab worker entering data.
“Time is short.”
“The time is now.”
“If we are to succeed, brother.”
Another long silence.
“Six targets,” Benjamin said with a deep sigh. When he sighed, it stretched the flesh between their heads, slightly distorting Charles’s mouth. “Four men, two women, all surrounded and watched. Each requires a fully resourced team, a main twitcher, a relief twitcher, housekeeping, security … a minimum of ten people per team. And each is a potential target; each presents the possibility of discovery.”
Charles sighed. “Bug Man. Kim. One-Up. Alfredo. Dietrich.” Pursed lips. “Burnofsky. Six at the top level.”
“Average age, what, seventeen, if you leave out Burnofsky?”
“Twitchers,” Charles said, and made a snorting sound. “Young and arrogant, intelligent, and unstable by definition.”
“Twenty-two more at the second level. Seventy-one at third level.”
“Risky and useless respectively, for this kind of work.”
They looked down, all three eyes now, at the cards.
Benjamin placed his finger on the one that read “Chancellor of Germany.” And pushed it to the side. “He’s likely to lose in the next election. A waste of resources.”
“Five, then,” Charles agreed. “U.S., China, Japan, India, and the U.K.”
“Five.”
“Not later, but now.”
“Now,” Benjamin agreed with finality.