Jenny's troops were careful not to march behind her, they strolled careful out of step, not to present too military an image. Stan brought up the rear and looked at the team. All in fatigues, all prime specimens of humanity. They lined up before the veranda. Stan noted the goat staked out on the green sward, grazing contentedly. On the veranda Elizabeth sat, clad in a light sundress, next to a wizened little Asiatic man. Jenny looked at her troops, then bowed formally to Master Tsang.
"Sir, may I present my... my group. Tommy, ex-Marine, veteran of numerous combat missions. Linda, SWAT trained in three police forces. Charles, ex-Ranger, also a combat veteran, paratrooper and mountaineer. Lost an arm to an IED in Syria. Ramon, ex-French Foreign Legion, paratrooper. Tammy, National Karate champion, spent a year in jail for breaking and entering. She specialised in jewellery in luxury hotels. Stan, Intelligence specialist, veteran of three tours. And myself, Special Forces operative, also three tours, lost most of my leg during a failed operation in the sandbox."
They bowed and the old man stood up, bowed, then came down and walked up and down the line. He tapped Tommy on the chest, nodded, remarked: "Big man. Very strong? We will see."
He walked around Tammy, felt her backside, nodded. "Nice arse. Make good babies. Lots of anger here. Not good."
He looked Ramon up and down. "Flashy one, likes the ladies. Not big, but hard and angry inside. Anger gets in your way."
Elizabeth had warned them that he was going to provoke them and everyone kept a straight face. Master Tsang paused again in front of the group and asked in a quiet voice: "Take clothes off please. Everything."
Jenny took the lead in stripping naked, and the rest followed. Master Tsang walked up and down again, and only Elizabeth's experienced eye saw that he turned next to the stake to which the goat's tether was attached. A few seconds later the animal scampered away towards the vegetable garden while Master Tsang walked up and down the line, making remarks about breasts, buttocks, Jenny's prosthetic leg, Charles' prosthetic arm. Then he turned around and walked back to Jenny.
"Can your people catch that goat before he eats my lettuce? And you can hit me."
"Hit you? Are you sure?"
The team tried to corner the animal, who found the game amusing. Jenny looked at the scrawny man standing before her. She aimed a gentle blow. He was just not there to receive it.
"Try again. Hit me, not make love, ok? Try to hit hard."
Again her fist met air. And again. And again. Eventually he laughed and said:
"Better luck next time. Call the guy with the iron hand and go help them with the goat."
One after the other they tried to hit Master Tsang, and one after the other they missed him as he danced out of the way. A long and frustrating half hour later the sweating team were still running, naked, all over the sward, and the goat was having a lot of fun. Master Tsang clapped his hands and called them to him.
"Come, we need some new ideas here. Elizabeth, can you catch the goat please?"
She walked down the steps, ignoring the goat who kept a wary eye on her and the team. Master Tsang cackled. "Look, he is thinking of goat curry. Now, you will see how a confrontation is handled."
Elizabeth opened the wicket gate to the vegetable garden and the goat came trotting up. Carefully she selected a big leaf off one of the lettuce plants, held it out to the goat. When he reached to nibble she took a firm grip of his halter.
Master Tsang bowed to her and said to the team: "So, the first lesson: Violence seldom solves a problem. Now you need to learn how your violence can be controlled to hit the target."
That evening Elizabeth asked: "Guys, did you learn anything?"
Big Tom frowned around his forkful of steak. "That a little man could outwit every one of us?"
Linda laughed, a little uncertainly. "I think he was trying to teach us humility, indirect thinking, concentration."
Elizabeth smiled. "Look, I am not at all an adept at his way of thinking. I can tell you, that black goat's daddy let me a merry dance every time I got there. I think you are right, Linda. Humility, not arrogance, that's his way of thinking. He has a way of turning confrontation against you in ways I hope you never find out. He also will teach you, in some way I cannot explain, how to make your blows count, how to direct your aggression, your violence, in such a way that it makes a difference. That is, if you decide to use it. May I wish you a week of fun with the black goat?"
***
Nondescript house, peeling paint, garden in need of maintenance. A single, nondescript car in the driveway. He frowned, checked the address, then stepped out. His trained eye spotted a man doing unnecessary work on a garden fence a few houses down over the road, a movement in a neighbouring garden. Must be the right place.
The door opened as he was about to ring the bell. A diminutive girl greeted him, asked him to put down his briefcase and phone, expertly patted him down.
She showed him into the lounge and stepped out of the door. Six people were waiting for him. Nobody introduced themselves, one stood up and waved him to a chair.
"I believe you take coffee, Mr Nunes? We are having tea, there is soda as well."
A man with a prosthetic hand brought a tray, nodded, then also left the house.
Nunes lifted an eyebrow, and the bigger man smiled. "Looks like cloak and dagger, no? So, you were involved in a case involving a silver Mercedes and a woman dressed in silver, right?"
He nodded. "I am not sure what the relevance is, but I was pulled out of my work and checked to the fillings in my teeth. The Commissioner personally told me I am being sent on detached duty. What is all this about?"
A woman spoke: "We are following up on a network that may have infiltrated some of the most sensitive industries in the country. We believe there are many people involved, and the network centers here. We need someone who knows the area, can get us in touch with the seamy side of town, and can think laterally. Your name came up as such a person, and also someone who has faced danger. Are you interested?"
He looked at her, at the others, then nodded. "That's my job, isn't it? So tell me what we are doing?"
She smiled. "Let me then introduce us. I am Elizabeth Durr. A while ago I worked with a management consultant, doing an audit on a major corporation. We picked up a few irregularities, amongst others that the CEO had handpicked a team of men who took pleasure in denigrating and humiliating her. She had learnt to enjoy that while a student here. This team ran the corporation and squirrelled away money, sent sensitive technology overseas. The full extent of the damage is not yet clear. We drafted a report, and they killed my colleagues, almost killed me with a nerve poison spray. We were assured that the whole network had been rolled up due to my surviving and having kept a copy of our report where they did not suspect it. Then, a few weeks ago, someone tried to assassinate me. I am convinced the spider is still there, controlling other networks."
"Interesting, but why me? I know the streets, the immigrant community, but not the big corporate scene."
She sat forward: "Because I have a hunch you may already have a connection with our case. The case you were involved with, the woman wearing silver clothes who was murdered and crushed in the remains of her silver Mercedes? The report stated that the gang leader fingered one André as the person who had ordered the killing. Right?"
He nodded and she went on: "The woman at the heart of my case, Sondra, went to University here. In a cache of old documents in her mother's house was an invitation card to a Club Climax, an old, extreme sex club, signed by André. The club is long defunct, but we need someone to find us records, people who may remember."
Nunes nodded. "That should not be too difficult. May I bring in a few colleagues? One, Maria da Silva, is well entrenched in that area."
The man nodded. "Yes, you can bring in a few, but of course, for security purposes, fewer is better. At the same time we can task any police or other security instance to help gather information, and we have overriding and cross-linked networks to feed a special database. By the way, I am Stan Best, I am an intelligence specialist, but military intelligence, so I will lean heavily on you to guide as to police matters. My wife, Jenny there, she is in charge of our special action team, a few of whom you have met. They will do the heavy security should it become necessary, and also whatever breaking and entering or fighting we need to do. Terry Durr, over there, is Elizabeth's husband, he is our manager, setting up control structures, running the geeks who designed and operate our computer network, which by the way had made a few interesting points of collaboration, also based on some of your reports. For instance you filed a report on a vagrant that you had pulled in, who reported seeing the silver woman and silver Mercedes at the empty factory space, and who had a receipt for having sold a telephone he had found in the garbage there to a pawn shop. That telephone belonged to a vanished friend of Elizabeth's, Jessica. She was picked up in a small town by a woman wearing a silver suit, driving a silver Mercedes."
"Now how did you get that information? It was a footnote on a part of my report regarding the murder that was never used."
"But it was filed, and our data robots trawled it out. You'd be surprised what it comes up with."
Nunes laughed. "You cannot build a case on such tenuous facts, Stan. You know as well as I do that coincidence is useless when it comes before the courts. All you have is the name of André coming up twice."
"You are right, and you are wrong. At the moment we are looking at indicators, points to follow up. And we do that based on intuition, facts and analysis. Once we have identified where we need additional information we can target areas for further investigation. We have been going over a number of incidents in the industries we are interested in, and the data seems to point to this area too often to be coincidence."
