“You did us no favor! You are illegally occupying our department and you shall be severely punished!” Sheldon flipped the switch. “One billion ten million pounds. One billion twenty million pounds. One billion thirty million pounds. Say you’re quite sorry and I’ll turn you back on.”
“I am sorry!” cried the bureaucrat.
“That wasn’t so hard.” He turned it back on. “Now I want the people’s financial secretary on the line, along with the people’s defense minister. Unless I’m talking to them both in ten minutes, I flip the switch again.”
“I will NOT be blackmailed,” snapped the people’s defense minister. “Give me that.” He took the phone from one of his faceless drones. “Who is this?”
“This is Financial Secretary Kow.”
“Kow, why are you groveling to these English terrorists?”
“The economic repercussions are grave, General Sou. He has most effectively isolated our electronic data transfer systems. I suggest you cooperate, as well. We have less than seven minutes.”
General Sou made a laughing sound like a yelping dog. “I will not do it. I do not understand the ethic of the accountant class of peoples, but we in the military have some sense of honor.” He sniffed. His staff nodded more vigorously in proportion to the increased visibility of the general’s nostrils.
His nose dipped and his lackeys’ heads froze midbob when another phone rang
The general dropped the phone to the financial secretary on the desk and snatched at the dedicated line to the leader of the People’s Republic of China. “Good day. Premier.”
“Patch in Kow.”
The general didn’t know what the phrase even meant. “Pardon me, Premier?”
‘Patch in Secretary Kow for a conference call at once!”
Kow—that was the name of the number-cruncher he’d just been talking to. Had he hung up on him?
No, the phone was still on the table, but the general had no idea how to conference the call into the dedicated line. “Conference Secretary Kow into this call immediately.”
In all the scrambling that ensued, the connection was somehow made. “Hello?” asked Secretary Kow.
“Brief me on the situation, Secretary Kow,” the premier demanded, and Kow did, in just thirty seconds. “We now have less than four minutes to make the call. General Sou and myself.”
“I have informed the secretary that we will not negotiate with economic terrorists,” Sou stated.
“Premier, this man who claims to be Sheldon Jahn has penetrated our defenses expertly,” the secretary said. “The economic benefits to the People’s Republic suffer at a terrific pace when he interrupts the data transfer operations. Ten million pounds every three seconds is not an unreasonable estimate.”
“It’s absurd!” the general snapped.
“Not when you add up the lost trade, the lost banking transactions, the lost commodity trades and all the thousands of small business transactions that go through the wires every second,” the financial secretary argued.
“How could a British pop star have the wherewithal to turn all of it off and on at will?” the premier demanded.
Secretary Kow had trouble getting his words out. “The Hong Kong backbones have all been routed through our offices for better monitoring, Premier.”
“An extremely foolish strategy,” General Sou judged.
“Under your orders. General Sou.”
Sou felt cold. “You are mistaken,” he responded, too quickly.
“One of my predecessors was removed for vigorously resisting your orders to create the data pipeline, General Sou.”
‘Incorrect!” Sou shot back. He vaguely recalled having a handful of number-crunchers dismissed a few years back when they submitted a formal report that spelled out flaws in the ministry’s strategy to isolate possible data leaks. As if some accountant could tell him about security!
“No, I remember this myself,” the premier added.
General Sou said, “Premier—!” But that was as far as he got.
“It is beside the point at this moment. We will deal with this crisis before we deal with the security failure.”
General Sou couldn’t let the accusation go unchallenged. “This is a finance department failure.”
“Obviously, it is not,” the premier said offhandedly. “And did I not say that the matter would wait for later.”
A guilty verdict and a reprimand from the premier, in the presence of another official—what could be worse? Sou found out seconds later. “Secretary Kow, make the call and give the pop star what he wants. We’ll begin damage control immediately afterward. General Sou, you will be on the call with Secretary Kow and you will say nothing unless asked specifically by Secretary Kow. Understood?”
“Yes, Premier.” General Sou wished he were dead.
“Impressively timed,” Sheldon Jahn sang. “You called back in nine minutes, forty-one seconds. I once wrote a multipart anthem that was exactly that long. It was called ‘Take Me to the Conductor.’ Should have been my ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ You know, of epic proportions, selling records year after year, played to death on FM radio. A standard to measure other epic songs of the era against.”
