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I’d left the City offices and gone back up to the Prep Centre. I needed to talk to the IT folk about the other part of my plans. As usual there was a problem finding a parking place with Clegg Meat Products trucks all over the place.
Eventually I managed to squeeze the car in and headed into the building. “I’ve got an appointment,” I said to the receptionist. “Sebastian in IT?”
“Sure,” she said, punching a number into her phone. She spoke into the mouthpiece, “Seb? Visitor for you.” She put the handset down and turned back towards me. “He’ll be over in a minute. Take a seat.”
I’d barely the chance to thank her before a figure appeared through the door from the admin areas. He looked like Murdoc from Gorillaz. It ain’t a great look, even if you’re a cartoon, but he seemed friendly enough. “Hi,” he said, “you’d be Larry.”
“Yeah, hi. Have you got something to show me?”
“Sure,” he said, “come on through and meet the team.” He showed me through, back along corridors I’d seen when I’d first visited the Prep Centre. We got to a door. It had a card pinned to it, ‘Seb’s Harem’. Sebastian stopped. “Just before we go in, let me explain a couple of things. All the team I’ve got working on this are pick-ups, not staff. They all think they’re working their tickets too – Do a good job and the bonus is a free pass out of here. It isn’t true, of course but it’s a hell of an incentive.”
“OK,” I said, ”sounds like good use of resources to me.”
“Like your style, man,” Seb said and opened the door.
I saw what they meant by the sign on the door. The team was six girls, not one of them could have been over twenty years old. They all wore mini kilts in different tartans, they all wore white shirts, some of them tucked into the waist bands of their kilts, some loose, one with her midriff bare and the shirt knotted up under her tits. They all wore thin, straight, black ties, some knotted up to their throats, most loose showing beneath the collars that were routinely put on when pick ups were booked in to the Prep Centre.
I looked appreciatively as they busied themselves at their tasks. “I like your style too,” I said.
“Well,” said Seb, “I guess it’s a bit of an indulgence but a man’s got to give in to his enthusiasms. Come over here, I‘ll give you a demo – the site that is, not the girls,” he grinned. “214,” he called and one of the girls turned towards us. It was Jackie. She didn’t appear to recognise me. “Show us the site, please.”
Jackie slid between us and sat down at the keyboard. A few taps brought up a web site in her browser window. “OK,” said Seb, “this is the entry portal, it’s a pretty ordinary BDSM photo and video gallery site. All the usual membership features, forums, all that sort of stuff. This bits not finished yet but it’ll do for now. To get beyond this you need a security token and some souped-up encryption software which Jackie here has developed and when you’re in you get this…”
The page was headed up, “Larry Ross – My Control Centre”. Underneath were panels headed up “My Projects”, “News”, “Catalogue”, “Search & Snatch”
“Let’s deal with the easy ones first, said Seb. “The ‘News’ section is pretty self explanatory – they can get details of forthcoming auctions, special offers and so forth, we’d feature videos of the prize items in upcoming sales and they can select live web cams of particular cells to view lots as well. The section headed up ‘Catalogue’ is just a list of any of the stock that we have on hand at any one time with photos and the key details about them. There are sort options so they can view the catalogue by age, height, racial characteristics, colour of hair and so on. We can also put up a series of video clips for each of them too. I thought we might have a sort of rotating view as standard, a short interview and then anything that showed off particular skills.”
“Fine,” I said, “that sounds pretty much like what I had in mind. What about the other areas?”
“Well, you know you said people wanted to feel we were solving their problems, meeting their specific needs. The other two areas are meant to deal with just that. Look at this. I’ve mocked it up on the basis of your last few projects.”
I looked at the ‘My Projects Area’; there
was a short list: ‘
“Buyers can set these up themselves,” said Seb. They fill in a requirements form. They can get at a copy of that through here. Our progress reports and video footage – surveillance for example – gets published through here. They can feed-back on specifics as they see how things are going and using this we’d get their OK before any pick up. That should mean we have less redundant stock – we quite often pick up a girl for a specification and discover later that she doesn’t quite fit in some way; then she’s back in here for resale at whatever we can get for her.”
“Right, right. I could see that working. What about the ‘Search & Snatch’ area?”
“Now that’s the bit that’s really clever, thanks to my little team of lovelies here,” he gestured at the girls who had all gathered round to watch. “This is really intended to open up the buyers mind to the opportunities out there. Try it yourself.”
Jackie got up and let me take her place. I
clicked on the Search & Snatch button. Up popped a form.
Down one side was listed a series of links under the heading ‘My Saved Searches’ with the unpromising
titles of ‘Test 1’; ‘Test 2’, ‘Test Search Blondes’ and so on. In the middle of
the form was an array of tick boxes. At the top it said, “Search & Snatch : Explore our on-line database of a wide range of
possible
“Go on,” said Seb, “try it.”
I found myself thinking of Rebecca. Suppose I’d been looking for someone like her. I ticked a number of boxes; 26-30, English / British, 5 foot 4 inches, 110 – 120 pounds, blonde, flight attendant.” I hit the “search” button – it occurred to me after that ‘submit’ would hardly have been appropriate.
I’m not sure what I expected but I certainly hadn’t expected the response, ‘List Mode. Your search has found 124 entries. These are listed below by name. To select an alternative order click here. To refine your search please return to the previous page. To see this search in display mode click here. To save these search criteria in My Searches click here.’ Beneath the text at the top of the screen was a long list of names. I scrolled down. Sure enough there was ‘Hales, Rebecca’. I clicked on the link up came a page with Rebecca’s details and a photograph which looked as though it had come from her Atlantic Airlines personnel file. Under ‘Employment’ it said; ‘Last known employer 01/06 : Atlantic Airlines’. I went back to the previous page and tried clicking on ‘Display Mode’. The same list appeared but now with a short summary of each person and a thumbnail picture alongside.
“Extraordinary!” I exclaimed, “how can you possibly have all those on file?”
Seb grinned. “Tell him Jacqueline,” he said. “This has been your contribution.”
Jackie turned around in her chair. “The data comes from a number of sources. We haven’t built a database here. We plant a small programme, a virus I guess you’d call it, on the servers of certain companies. Then when we do a search we poll each of those servers. Our virus does a search on that database and sends the results back. The system at this end collates the results, combines data for similar looking responses and presents it to the user. Easy.”
“Easy,” I said. “But what are the target systems? I still don’t understand how you’re getting the data.”
Seb butted in. “Come on,” he said, “you used to be in the software business. What proportion of companies uses standard software packages?”
“Pretty much all of them these days, I guess. For some parts of business people still develop their own programmes but generally it’s not worth while.”
“So for personnel, HR, say?”
“No, you wouldn’t bother developing something customised. It’s going to be far cheaper to buy a package or use a service.”
“Exactly. So what we’ve done is to develop a virus that works with the five or six HR database packages that make up about 90% of the installed systems. Then Jackie here has managed to load that virus on virtually all of the major temp and executive placement agencies and a few of the major employers too. We reckon we can get access to around 250,000 records relating to women between the ages of 18 and 40 say; anyone who is on their books or has applied for a job via an agency. They’re supposed to clean off old data but none of them do.”
“But the photographs?”
“They all do that now. Take a digital photo at the interview, stick it on the file. We strip the photo out just like any other data. The systems ought to have sufficient security to stop anything like this but most of these guys have pretty sloppy security and even the people that do have good systems – the banks say – their focus is on keeping you out of financial applications not the HR stuff.”
“And as long as their security doesn’t spot us we can go on querying their data.”
“That’s it. And actually what we do is to keep a copy of the results for each query so that even if a system does go off-line in the future we’ll have built up a lot of data of our own.”
“Fantastic! The customer gets to choose from an enormous shopping list and we got quite a lot of data on which to go back to them with a quote to collect and supply quite quickly. We shouldn’t need to collect speculatively for auction at all.”
I was really pleased with the work that Sebastian and his team had done. I wanted to check it out with some customers, of course but it looked to me like we had a solid basis for a really innovative approach.
I went back to town to try and catch Freddie. I certainly wanted his OK before talking to any of the existing customers and besides I hoped he would help out at the event I had in mind. I was sat in my office starting to sketch out the programme when a knock at the door disturbed me. I looked up.
Normally the arrival in my office of a raven haired, blue eyed, woman with legs up to her armpits and a suit with tailoring so sharp you could cut yourself on it would be greeted with considerable enthusiasm. On this occasion, though, my pleasure was tempered by wariness. This was Ellie, Elspeth Grant – the head of Clegg’s legal department and according to most office gossip, Clegg’s long term partner in matters carnal. In fact, as far as I knew, she was Clegg’s only interest outside of his work. As a legal eagle she had a lot going for her, fine feathers and the sharpest of talons.
“Mr Ross,” she said extending a perfectly manicured hand towards me.
I reached forward and shook it carefully. Someone had advised me once to count my fingers after shaking hands with a lawyer; from what I’d heard about Elly I shouldn’t make an exception for her. “Indeed,” I said. “What can I do for you, Ms Grant?” I was hoping she wasn’t about to basll me out for setting Freddie up with Angie Dennison.
“Oh, please, it’s Ellie,” she smiled. I wasn’t sure whether I needed to be encouraged by the familiarity or not. “Freddie suggested I had a word with you.”
“Fine,” I said, still wary. “Take a seat.”
She sat down in one of the chairs beside the coffee table. “I thought you ought to get a briefing on what we do in Legal,” she said. “After all, I can imagine that some of things you’re doing might need our help.”
“Fair enough,” I said, “I hadn’t really thought about it. I guess that since to the best of my knowledge most of what we do is outside the law, your team’s main job was keeping the law out of everybody’s way.”
Ellie smiled tolerantly. “Well, there is that,” she said. “I do have a small team of girls to keep some of those who might cause us problems ‘on side’ so to speak. You needn’t worry about that though. Just think about it as part of FCE’s central services – canteen, mail room, photocopying, girls to shag the commissioner of police – it’s all the same thing.”
“You sound like you don’t feel appreciated.”
“Hmm, maybe,” she smiled, surprised that anyone should seem sympathetic. “You’re right, though. Freddie’s always been supportive but I don’t think many people see the value of what we do. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about contracts.”
“For the girls?”
Ellie laughed. “Oh no, of course not. They’d have no standing in English law. You can’t make a contract under duress and I fear that most of our products are under duress in one way or another. We do have some legal cover in that area. It’s all a little complicated; there were some oversights when the anti-slavery acts were passed in the nineteenth century but I won’t bore you with that. I’m not sure how well it would play in the courts if it came to it. We ought to win in the Crown Court, the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords here but if the European Court of Human Rights stuck its oar in then I think we’d have difficulty. No, we’re better off steering clear of contracts for the girls, I’d say.”
I must have looked relieved. I was. She
went on, “It’s contracts for the clients that I’m concerned about. We have a
standard sale agreement that covers purchase at auction, warranties, transfer
of entitlement to goods, payment terms, standard disclaimers, that sort of
thing. The Sale of Goods Act 1979 and the
I must have looked puzzled. “I’m not sure I see how it’s different,” I said. “We just end up with a sale at the end, same as at auction legally, I’d have thought. What sort of thing are you worried about?”
“There has to be a question of title to the goods in the period between collection and transfer to the client. Normally title remains with us to the point of auction but where a client is commissioning a collection – that’s your usual model isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Pretty much from a legal point of view.”
“Where the client is commissioning we should be careful to have a service contract that covers the research and collection phases. We’d want to ensure that any costs incurred are recoverable in the event of the client deciding not to proceed and that title remains with us until the client takes delivery and concludes a final sale agreement.”
“Sounds reasonable. Do we need one of those every time we engage with a client?”
“No, that’s not necessary. We could come up
with a standard managed account agreement if you like. Then we can simply add
schedules to it covering individual projects, the specification of the product
involved, agreed pre-collection activities and so on.”
“Sounds reasonable. We could add something similar to the website user’s agreement too.
Not that anyone ever reads them!”
“None the less binding!” she said with a
grin. “Harry’s team may like cable ties, rope and straps but I’ll stick with
contracts.” She got to her feet, looking at her watch. “Well thank you for that
Larry,” she said, bringing our discussion to a close abruptly. “I’ll drop you a
note on the things we need to do. Freddie said you’d be all right about it.
Thanks.”
And with that she left. I still had all my
fingers. I thought it had gone all right.
I went down to see Rachel. She’d done a
good job with the video and I thought that she deserved a thank you at the very
least. I’d kept my part of the bargain and told the guards she was off-limits.
She’d kept hers. No more stupid escape attempts and the script she had produced
was fine. I opened the door to her cell. She looked up
at me from her seat beside the table we had given her for her computer. Mind
you the table was bolted down. So was the computer. A light chain ran from her
ankle to a ring in the wall. The guards have given her some clothes, a loose
sweater and a skirt. They hadn’t let her have any shoes. She still wore her
collar but she wasn’t gagged. Even so, she didn’t say anything. Most of her cuts
and bruises had healed up, but she didn’t look great.
“I came to say thanks for the script,” I
said. “It worked well.”
“Terrific,” she replied sullenly. “What
happens to me now? Is this when you come to collect? Or do I just get put back
on the available list again and sold off when someone comes along and asks for
a piece of meat that can spell properly?” She was staring down at the table.
I sat down at the other side of the table
facing her. “I need some more stuff written,” I said.
She looked up, tired, desolate and silent.
“I need a brochure and some case studies.
How we’ve helped our clients that sort of thing.”
“Fuck off,” she said. “Why should I help
you? Why make it more likely that you’ll trap more girls like me?”
“Because you’re here. And the alternatives aren’t good.”
“Fuck off.”
I looked across at her. She was staring
down at the keyboard of the computer. It wasn’t going to work, I decided. She’d
been broken down by the rapes but there hadn’t been anything put in its place.
I’d spoken to Rick before I came to see her. He thought he might be able to do
sufficient orientation on her to fix things. Enough to get
her compliant but still able to write. I’d hoped that I wouldn’t have to
put her through it but I could see that she wasn’t about to become more pliant
without a lot of work by someone; and at least Rick’s team was trained to do
it. I got up and walked to the door. Two of the guards were waiting. I beckoned
them in. Rachel looked up terrified that she was about to be raped again. She wasn’t.
It would be much worse than that.
“Sorry Rachel,” I said to her; and then, to
the Guards, “Take her down to Orientation. There’s a programme set up for her.”
The taller of the two guards grabbed her by
the arms and pulled her to her feet. He jerked her wrists upwards and over her
head to fasten her wrist cuffs to the back of her neck collar. The other wedged
a gag into her mouth before she could protest. They unfastened her ankle chain from the
ring in the wall and hustled her, struggling against them, out of the cell. I
wouldn’t be seeing her for a while.
“The question is, can you do it?”
Word, it seemed was getting around about the willingness of Clegg Enterprises to take on apparently difficult projects. Peter Hananni was the latest of a series of individuals that had appeared with a range of challenges to Clegg’s research and snatch teams.
“I was put on to you by a mutual friend. The
“Yes,” I said. “The
“He does indeed but as I said, the question is, can you do this?” He smiled. He had almost as much gold in his mouth as on his knuckles.
“Well, Mr Hananni, I won’t give you an answer off the cuff. Give me a week and I’ll come back to you with a proposal or a no-can-do. I am sure you realise that this is going to need some level of ingenuity to execute.”
“Of course, Mr Ross,” said Hananni, disarmingly, “That’s why the
‘This’ was on the face of it a fairly demanding project. Hananni had a new business venture in hand; a game in which players gambled on the one to emerge victorious from a labyrinth of problems, dangers and other competitors. The game would be staged on a remote island. The competition was to be based on a popular computer game in which four buxom adventuresses strive to find the fabled Jewels of Nefertiti. My client’s request was quite simple he wanted us to supply the Jewel Questors; the actual Jewel Questors; the characters that the game was based on.
The only problem was that, for the first time since I’d joined Clegg, the Research team had drawn a blank.
Derek Johnson in the Research Centre was looking glum. “Larry, I’d like to help but I don’t see how we can. I’ll tell you what we’ve got but it isn’t much.”
I wasn’t that happy with the prospect of going back to the client and saying ‘no can do’ but I let him go on.
“Jewel Questors
is developed and published by NRT Games. They’re a British company and their
development takes place here in the
I nodded.
“The problem is that no-one know exactly who they are. The legends on the message boards say that they are NRT employees who were working in their development team when the game was devised. It’s also reckoned that the company paid to have breast augmentation surgery so that they would better match the interests of the game’s target players.”
“Adolescent males of any age?”
“Uh huh. So the four women that are used to model the game characters and who do the very, very few, personal appearances have never spoken publicly and we haven’t been able to find out who they are. We’ve been watching the company offices but seen no sign of them”
“So is there anything known on the company that would help?”
“Not much. It’s a private limited company so they don’t have to give out much apart from publishing accounts which don’t really tell us much. All we do know is that the second largest, shareholder, one of the founders and the Development Director is this lady.” He tossed a grainy photograph, obviously a blow up from a telephoto shot, across the desk. “Helen Stanhope, 43 and as far as we can tell the only person that has direct involvement with the Questors. She’s there at any event where the Questors do appear and it’s only ever her that’s there from the company.”
“OK, maybe some sort of in, there.”
“Well maybe, but she’s going to be difficult to get at. She’s more of a geek than her team is. Home – work – home; lives in an apartment in an old mansion that’s been renovated, trouble is the place is stiff with CCTV – and yes we’ve seen if we can crack it and the answer is no – and security. Seems like she’s one nervous lady. But maybe that’s what working on these games does for you.”
It wasn’t looking hopeful. I was groping around for some leverage. “Husband? Boyfriend? Girlfriend? Kids? Aged aunt?”
“Not that we’ve found. She divorced about twenty years ago, no kids; parents died about five years back in a car crash; doesn’t look like she has a social life outside the office or inside it either.” I was feeling glummer by the minute. “There is however, this.” He tossed me another photo.
The woman in the picture was in her mid twenties. She looked like a younger version of Helen. “Sister?” I said.
“Yeah,” said Derek. “Andromeda Stanhope.”
“Andromeda? What was with their parents? Too many holidays in
“There are some limits even to the capabilities of the Research Team, Ross,” said Derek, investing his remarks with all the pomposity of Q admonishing James Bond. But then he grinned. “We’ve no idea. But it would appear that younger sister is both accessible and a potential lever. She and big sis don’t meet up much but they do exchange emails every day, sometimes four of five times a day.”
“Is that healthy?”
“Who knows but it could mean that if anything untoward were to happen to little sister then big sister might be willing to help us to get access to the Questors. It’s about the only shot we’ve found so far.”
“Well we only need one. Do you want to do a bit more research on Andromeda, talk it though with Operations and work up a collection proposal. If we can invite young Andromeda around to a rock that she can be chained to then I’ll be happy to have a chat with Helen and see if she can launch four Questors in our direction even if she can’t manage a thousand ships.”
It was less than a week later when I had the chance to talk to Helen Stanhope. It was a pleasant day and we’d agreed to meet by the lake in St James’ Park. I was sitting on a bench at the agreed time when I saw Helen walking towards me along the path by the edge of the lake coming from Horse Guards Parade. She sat down on the bench beside me. I could tell she wasn’t happy with having to be there. I was pleased to see her, especially after she’d been so rude when I first phoned her. “Absolutely not,” she’d said, “Nobody gets to meet the Questors, especially right now. I don’t care how big your sponsorship offer is, we’re not meeting with anyone until after Jewel Questors IV is locked down and even then I’ll need something more convincing than some half arsed co-marketing idea to get interested. Call me back when your brain gets as big as your dick obviously is.”
Mind you that was before we sent her the emails showing her sister naked and in chains. I thought that the guys in the Prep Centre had done a creditable job of reproducing the scene from Jewell Questors II where the Questors have to free a hostage from a chamber in an underground tomb. I mean she was still pretty foul-mouthed about it all but this time she agreed to meet me.
“Good morning, Helen,” I said. She scowled back but said nothing. “I thought we might talk about happy families.” Still nothing. “How, let’s say, one sister has all the business skills but another one has all the ideas, all the stories, all the scenarios. How one is happy to plod away at a job but the other wants nothing to do with work. How one is currently enjoying the morning sunshine in St James Park while the other is in, shall we say, less salubrious surroundings.”
“Is she safe?” it wasn’t much of a conversation but at least it was something. She was looking straight through me.
I nodded. “And she can stay that way.”
“What do you want? Money, I suppose. It’s usually money?” She was getting more talkative.
“Well, surprisingly it’s not that. It’s just that, well, I’m a terrific fan of the game. Always have been, ever since Jewell Questors – The Golden Ankh, and I’ve always wanted to meet the Questors.”
“Nobody meets the Questors.” She cut in automatically but then stopped herself. “You kidnapped my sister so you could meet the Questors?”
“Kidnapped is a horrible word. I’d prefer to say she’s a house guest.”
“It didn’t look like she was really able to leave even if she wanted to from the pictures you sent me, you arsehole.”
I ignored the abuse. “Ah. Well, I hope you didn’t mind me using your sister’s email account to send those. It seemed the best way to make sure you read them. I’m sure you must get a lot of emails from all sorts of lunatics.”
“All sorts of other lunatics.”
“That’s rather unkind but I’ll ignore it. So when can we arrange my meeting with the Questors?”
“You’re assuming a lot.”
“Well, that’s what us lunatics are like but it doesn’t seem much to ask. You set up for me to meet with the Questors. Just me and the four of them and you too if you like. Just so I can see them in the flesh as it were. Well in character at least,” I smiled. “Then I can achieve my ambition and you can have your sister back. And then she’ll be able to let you have all the interesting scenarios she’s been thinking about for Jewel Questors IV. Some of it sounds very exciting. I’m really looking forward to it already. Oh, and of course that might help the IPO you’ve got planned. I can’t imagine that your prospective investors will be frightfully keen to discover that the creative energies of the company aren’t actually employed by it.”
“How do I know you will do as you say?”
“If you let me get to see the Questors then you and her get back together and I get to see part IV when it’s developed and NRT Games get to carry on. If you don’t then she’ll stay with me until she runs out of stories to tell – a bit like Scherezade – and by then I’m not sure if it will matter; NRT Games will have run out of time and, I suspect, money.”
“How do I know she’s safe?”
“I brought you a present.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a black iPod. “You’ll find some video to watch on there. I took it while she was watching the news this morning. The picture’s not great but it should be some comfort to you. I’d really like this not to be the last you see of your sister.”
She slipped the iPod into her handbag. “What do you want me to do?” she asked in resignation.
“I’ll let you know,” I said. “I’ll drop you an email. Might even send you some more video for the iPod. Just set things up so you can get the Questors to turn up. I’ll leave you to work out how to do it. Anyway, I must be off now; better make sure my house guest is still all right. I’m never sure if there’s really enough oxygen in those little boxes.”
Helen whimpered as I got up to leave. “Don’t worry,” I said as I walked away. “I’ll make sure that you and your sister get back together. See you soon
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