“And what we believe in is actually beside the point,” Wylings continued. “I’m not going to take chances against whatever it is, lads. It’s good at what it does and it might be stalking us this very minute.”
“So what do we do about it?” Sykes asked, showing a little genuine concern for the first time.
“You do nothing about it, except what you’re already doing,” Wylings said. “I’ve got extra defensive measures ready to deploy, so to speak. I need you to keep the debate going in parliament. The world thinks England supports the recolonization and nobody wants to pick a fight with Great Britain. The one thing we cannot afford at this point is to get a declaration from parliament that says we’re not sanctioned.”
Sykes and Dolan looked at each other.
“Bad news on that front, Wylie,” Sykes said.
Sir James Wylings sat alone in his private study after his old school chums had scampered off to parliament.
He was disappointed in Sykes and Dolan. They had performed their roles without ambition—and that failure dated back to their years at university, where they had failed to throw themselves into their careers as completely as they should have. They did well, but they were never driven in the way Wylings was driven.
If they had been truly ambitious they would have formed more solid relationships among the political elite of Great Britain, and they would have been better prepared to exploit those relationships when the time came. Oh, they had done well enough, sowing seeds of uncertainty among members of parliament about the legal basis of the recolonization movement Parliament had been arguing the point for days, but Dolan and Sykes should have had the influence to stall a vote indefinitely.
Wylings didn’t need to consider his next, drastic move. His plans for this eventuality had been set in stone a long time ago. Once the British officially came out against the recolonization efforts and declared that the colonizers were not acting with the authority of British law, then the reprisals would come. The Ayoundis would try to take back their country, even with the head of the nation and all his ministers held hostage. The Canadians would march their Mounties into Newfoundland and take back their precious province.
The American bastards wouldn’t waste a moment before they flew choppers into New Jersey and decimated the capitol building, taking back New Jersey in a shocking, awe-inspiring onslaught of destruction.
Wylings was ready. He would make sure that there would be another reason for the world to keep its distance. He still had enough hours to make it happen in just the proper way. The news would break just after the news of the parliamentary vote.
Sir James Wylings was off to Ayounde.
He was met at the airport by his pilots. Wylings owned them. They knew how to keep their mouths shut.
The big jet lumbered down the runway and settled onto its route to Africa. The jet made this run each month. Air traffic treated it as a routine flight and never noticed that the jet was making unusually rapid progress en route to Sierra Leone.
Air traffic control in Africa landed the Wylings jet without delay and James Wylings debarked unseen, boarded a smaller, private jet and zipped away again. It took him twenty minutes to reach Ayounde, where he was granted landing permission without delay.
A taxi took him to the international bazaar. Wylings was relieved to see the street almost entirely deserted.
“Most of the stores not even bothering to open up again,” his Ayounde driver told him. “Nobody coming to visit Ayounde yet. Ayounde people can’t afford all this expensive things.”
“Too bad,” Wylings said, but he was delighted. He didn’t want to have the blood of a lot of outsiders, especially Europeans, on his hands.
He used his pass code to enter a private door to a private flat above a shuttered shop selling one of the most expensive French designers. The rented flat was small, unfurnished and dusty, but it did have a loo, with a bathtub.
James Wylings drew himself a bath, then pulled a weapon of mass destruction out of his bulging trousers. The small metal cylinder rested inside three sealed, flexible plastic capsules, the largest an inch in diameter and eight inches long. Inside each transparent capsule was a metal tube, as narrow as a drinking straw.
Wylings pulled on his rubber gloves and bent the capsule in his hands. The plastic should twist without breaking, but the cylinder would open up—eventually. He bent the plastic the other way, then back and forth. The crimp in the metal was getting easier. It had to give way sooner or later—
The metal broke, and a clear, viscous fluid leaked from the tube and seemed to fill the inside of the inner-most plastic capsule. Sir James Wylings stood there looking at it, flooded with terror and fascination. He felt as if he had just summoned the Grim Reaper to the surface of the mortal world, which was more or less true.
