Out of the Shadows 003
A machine-augmented MIDNIGHT'S WAR novel
His mobile suddenly began playing a Bach oratorio, Entfliehet, verschwindet, entweichet, ihr Sorgen, better known as The Shepherd’s Cantata. He glanced at the number and frowned. He didn’t recognize it, and he subscribed to a service that was supposed to prevent spam calls to his number. But then he remembered that Blackrock might be sniffing around and decided he had better answer it.
“Hello,” he said, doing his best to not sound irritated.
“Good evening, Mr. Grahame,” a mellifluous male voice answered him. “I am instructed to inform you that you will have a visitor on Thursday night. An important visitor. Please arrange to be in your office at 10 PM.”
“A visitor?”
“Yes, Mr. Grahame. I assume you are familiar with the concept?”
“Of course I’m familiar with—look, who is this?”
“I’m merely the messenger, Mr. Grahame. Be in your office at 10 PM on Thursday night. I can assure you that you will find it very much to your interest and your profit.”
Elliott smiled. Now he understood what was happening. Blackrock, or whichever big player was behind the caller, knew they needed to play it quiet and low-key. Showing any open interest in HemaTech would increase the risk of the IPO being vultured from them, or at the very least, driving up the price of entry.
“Understood. Say, you don’t happen to be calling from a little town by the Bay, would you?”
A click was the only answer. Elliott frowned, momentarily annoyed, and then he burst out laughing.
Later that night, as the Asian markets were opening, Elliott finally felt tired enough to turn in for the evening. He picked up, and idly turned over, the paperback edition of Sodom and Gomorrah he’d been reading for the last three months. Then he put the book back down, not being in the mood to wrestle with the meanderings of Proust tonight. After three years, he was barely more than halfway through the seemingly endless French literary epic, but he was determined to finish the grand slog, if only to be able to say that he’d read the whole damned thing.
He went to the bathroom, flossed his teeth, brushed them, returned to the living room to pluck an Agatha Christie novel from a bookshelf, and began reading it as he walked to the bedroom. At no point in his routine did he notice the shadowy figure observing him through the window from his tenth-floor balcony, watching him in much the same way that a night raptor regards a field mouse scurrying across the ground far below.
