The Mississippi Company

by Mark Kertzman

Chapter 11

The light dazzled Jon as he stepped out onto the street. Just then, his phone rang. He dug into his back pocket, finally holding it up and cutting off the incessant buzzing.

“Hi Doug. What have you got?” Jon answered into the phone’s lit screen.

“What the hell are you wearing?”

“Flak helmet.”

“Doesn’t do a thing for you.”

“What are you, a fashion critic? What’s up?”

“Got the results back from the claim search.”

Jon just grunted.

“What, you don’t want to hear about it?” Doug looked disappointed.

“All right. What did you get?”

“They filed two claims on asteroids, numbers 2057SB5 and 2061CT12. However,” he continued smugly, “Ceres Control has no mining activity on either of them. Not even a survey.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jon responded laconically.

“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”

“That registered office I got off the corporation registry was a dead end. It’s nothing but a desk and a phone link. There was nobody even there when we went in.”

Doug stopped to think that one over for a moment. “So it wouldn’t surprise you to know that the mineralogical estimate on both of those claims is low to nonexistent?”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Jon answered dryly.

Doug could see another man, dark-skinned and mustachioed, suddenly appear over Jon’s shoulder. The man was wearing dark body armour and a helmet identical to the one sitting awkwardly on Jon’s head. The man tapped Jon on the shoulder.

“Hold on a second, Doug.”

Doug saw a flash of khaki and black, then gray concrete, then sky. He sighed, leaning back in his chair. As he waited, he idly looked out of the office window at the Geneva skyline, admiring the mountains in the far distance.

“Jerk! Doug!”

Doug leaned forward suddenly. “Did you just call me a jerk?”

Jon was back on the screen, looking excited. His eyes were blazing beneath the low brow of the black steel helmet. “What? No. Listen. Local police got our contact records access. The lieutenant just told me that they traced a call made from Jim Nagra’s cell phone.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It was made to a cell phone listed in the name of Ravi Tankar, about two hours ago.”

“O.K. So?”

“So, you know where the originating point of the call was?”

“No.” Doug didn’t see where this was going.

“About fifty metres down the street from this building.”

Doug absorbed that for a moment. Finally, he replied, “He must have seen you go in.”

“Yeah.”

“Jerk.”

Jon just nodded.

“What now?’

“If Jim uses his cell phone again, we’ve got him. In the meantime, I want to go have a talk with this Ravi Tankar. I want you to add this Ravi’s name to the Red Bulletin. Watch both of them for any sign of activity. Get banking activity, credit cards, the lot.”

“Got it.”

Proceed to Chapter 12...