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and I was in agreement’ He pursed his
lips and closed his eyes for so long, Delić thought he was nodding
off.
    ‘We have
given him too much….. latitude.’ Pechev continued, and Vidmar
noticed the change from ‘I’ to ‘We’. The big man never took
personal responsibility for any mistake.
    ‘Dr
Gorski knows not only the innermost workings of our company, he is
also absolutely integral to its functioning as smoothly as it
always has. We have made the mistake of allowing one man to hold
power over us all. So, you must find him. A little game of hide and
seek. It should not be hard for men with skills like yours. You
have the company technology at your disposal, of course. There is a
catch, however. If you should kill him in the course of your
pursuit, I will not be pleased. Gorski is carrying 100,000 in
unmarked cred notes. If you find him and bring him to me alive, I
shall return that money to you five-fold, gentlemen. Half a million
cred.’
    Delić sat up in
his seat, and practically licked his thin lips. Vidmar picked at
something under his fingernail and feigned indifference.
    ‘I want
Lek Gorski in this office by the end of the day. We need to fit him
for a shorter leash. That is all. Thank you gentlemen.’
    Delić bolted for
the door.
    What a prick,
thought Vidmar.

Chapter 7
    Lek
tapped his Dynagym membership card between his teeth as he hurried
down a quiet side-street. He had a vague sense of the direction he
was taking, but having never had a re ason to be in this part of town, he couldn’t be
certain. He passed a skypephone box and thought about calling
ahead, but paranoia was gnawing at his insides again and he wanted
to keep moving. Cesar will be there, he thought, that gym is his
life. Cesar has to be there.
    In 2029,
one hundred years after the Wall Street Crash, the bottom fell out
of the energy market in the UK and plunged the country into the
deepest domestic recession it had ever known. Like all disasters,
it began with a butterfly flapping its wings a thousand miles away.
In this case, the butterfly’s name was Forsvinna Hagen and she was
the fiancée of Anders Berg, the Norwegian oligarch. Berg was an
unassuming man who had inherited his father’s oil and gas empire at
the tender age of 28. Although he had never wanted for anything
during his childhood, he was unprepared for the responsibilities of high office, not to
mention the trappings of wealth and success, so that when the
beautiful Forsvinna, a former Miss Norway, attached herself to him
at a charity ball in Oslo, Berg, weak-chinned and balding
prematurely, found himself powerless to resist her blatant
advances, regardless of their true motive.
    Norolje,
Berg’s company, supplied the UK with 21 percent of its total crude
oil, and as such, Berg was often asked to attend corporate events,
trade conferences and board meetings of the various companies he
owned throughout the world. It was the success of his football
team, Tranmere Rovers, however , which had once again topped the Starbucks Europa Premier
League that season, that earned Berg and his fiancée an invitation
to King Charles’ tenth annual Garden Party in the grounds of
Buckingham Palace. Forsvinna was overjoyed at the prospect of
finally meeting British royalty and spent weeks and huge sums of
money visiting the finest boutiques in Norway with her retinue of
personal shoppers, secretly hoping that she might be the one to
catch the eye of Prince William: still Europa’s most eligible
bachelor, after his on-off engagement to Kate Middleton finally
imploded following the Mail’s undercover reporting of a
particularly wild weekend with his brother in Monaco.
    On the
afternoon of the party however, the Prince was not in attendance,
choosing instead to visit some backward village which had been
devastated by the hydra plague in Botswana. Forsvinna was similarly
devastated by the turn of events and spent the afternoon sulking
and sweating in an over-the-top vintage teapot outfit