“The business dies without it,” declared Mr M with palpable anxiety.
“We know it arrives tonight, but we don’t know where.”
Nadia’s father and his associates were still desperately poring over a heavily coded message and a map when she snuck into his secret room. Suddenly, the door swung open. Nadia leapt for cover.
“What the hell Benny!” admonished Mr M, “knock 3, wait…knock 2, wait…How many times have I told you?”
“Sorry boss,” whimpered Benny, grasping for the pride he’d felt moments earlier after returning from the first meaningful task he’d been entrusted with; buying burner phones. He chose the ones with flame symbols on them, thinking that was why they were called burners.
Phones were hastily shoved into pockets and the men returned with increasing concern to the code and the map.
“Where is the drop site?!” Mr M demanded of his subordinates. Nadia felt her father’s anger and snuck out of the room. She didn’t know exactly how he paid her private school fees, but she had some idea what ‘hostile takeover’ meant in his line of business. She counted 10 seconds then burst back in with exaggerated clumsy innocence. An uncomfortable silence lingered.
“What about the Eels last night, eh” Mr M said eventually.
“Um…ah….yeah,” replied Stan.
“They’ll win the comp this year,” declared the boss calmly.
With doe eyes and rehearsed timidity, Nadia apologised profusely and asked for the day’s newspaper,
“…for the crossword.”
Her father thrust it at her and his boiling frustration swept her out the door.
Mr M didn’t understand his 13-year-old daughter’s obsession with cryptic crosswords, any more than he understood the code which hid the location of tonight’s shipment. When he emerged in a frantic search for whiskey, Nadia told him. He wasn’t convinced, so Nadia explained the hidden meaning behind each clue, and subsequently the precise location of the drop. Her father didn’t know whether to feel shocked, angry, usurped, proud, humiliated or impressed, so he succumbed to all of the above.
“You got lucky this time,” is all he could muster. Nadia smiled inwardly and returned to her cryptic as her father gathered his boys and rushed to the drop site.
“Move the second I call you on your burner,” added Mr M after he’d explained the meticulous plan to intercept Mr Smith’s shipment.
“Now spilt up!”
“How does the boss know so much about Mr Smith’s operations?” Benny asked Stan when they set off for their posts.
“They were partners until Smith crossed him, took every penny from their biggest haul years back.”
Truck after truck arrived.
The boss waited and breathed deeply. Revenge and riches were within arm’s reach. He was bursting with excitement and desperate to reveal himself to Mr Smith with the haul safely in his possession.
This is it. His trembling hands dialled the number and raised the phone to his ear.
‘Welcome to Flame mobile – your call has been placed in a queue and will be answered shortly…’
kieranblakewriter 