She gave Halpin a hard look and a cold smile.
“Do I make myself clear?”
With just a nod of his head and a resigned sigh, Norris Halpin became another unwilling member of the Wrecking Crew.
Sitting next to Halpin was Gordon McIntosh. Born and raised in Scotland, he still spoke with an almost unintelligibly heavy Glaswegian accent. A short man at just over five and a half feet and incredibly thin; unshaven and with a head thinly covered with grey hair, he had the unhealthy pallor of someone who ate too little and drank too much. To even the untrained eye he radiated the appearance of someone with a history of drug abuse and mental illness. With his shoulders hunched and eyes down, he sat uneasily at the table, constantly moving and twitching as if he were itchy or uncomfortable. His arms and hands carried the tattoos and scars that recorded every bar fight and prison term of his forty hard years, while his nicotine stained fingers constantly manipulated the matchbox that had earned his seat at the table. Gordon McIntosh was the Wrecking Crew’s arsonist.
Directly opposite Becka sat a serious looking woman; she was holding the latest model of computer tablet, and staring intently at the screen. She wore a modest dark wool suit, along with a perfectly pressed blouse and a carefully knotted tie. Although she wore some make up and nail polish, it was understated. Her long brunette hair was tied back in a simple bun that along with her black plastic framed eyeglasses, added to her professional, business-like appearance.
Now aged in her mid-forties and still unmarried, Helen Atkins had been a successful city girl, making heaps of cash as a futures trader in the London stock exchange during the boom years. Like many others, she and her employers fell foul to the deadly combination of high commissions and lax financial controls, and when Barings Bank was declared insolvent in 1995, she lost her job. Under-qualified, over-paid, and tainted by the legacy of a few disastrous trades, she struggled to find work in an environment where suddenly opportunities were scarce and the competition was intense. Fortunately, she had invested her own money more wisely than she had that of her employer, so Helen Atkins put the enforced sabbatical to good use and retrained as a forensic accountant.
Fifteen years later, she was working for an insurance company and forensically examining the financial background of a man whose business had conveniently burned down, saving him from certain bankruptcy. The trail had been difficult to follow and the money hard to find, but she was making good progress and had finally amassed enough evidence to be sure of a conviction. Clearly, the businessman was crooked and incompetent. His business was recycling cardboard; it was a stable and profitable business with several long-term contracts and almost no competition. However, he had a gambling addiction that had devoured the company’s profits and after a disastrous trip to Las Vegas, he no longer had the cash to pay his staff, the bank loans, or the loan sharks. Clearly, the wolves were at the door and he had decided to take the cowards’ way out by torching his warehouse and defrauding the insurance company.
As she continued her forensic investigation, one particularly suspicious group of transactions had caught her attention. Why would someone in such extreme financial difficulties suddenly decide to make two large contributions to a charity? Even more suspiciously, the two payments were of identical value and made on either side of the date of the fire. Suspecting some collusion in the fire at the warehouse, she switched her attention to the financial affairs of the charity. Her investigation was making good progress when she had a visit from the handsome and extremely well dressed woman.
Physical threats are realistically only effective as a deterrent, and although Atkins had no skeletons in her closet that could be used as leverage, she did have a certain moral flexibility combined with a fondness for collecting money. In the end, her visitor found that it was surprisingly easy to win Helen Atkins as a new recruit for the Wrecking Crew.
She quickly became a trusted employee, using her unique blend of knowledge and training to manipulate financial reality. To meet the needs of a client, she could remove or alter records and information, lay false financial trails, or when necessary, subtly influence the markets to undermine a competitor’s share price. By simply reversing her forensic accountancy skills and applying the computers and other resources available to the Wrecking Crew, Helen Atkins had become a deadly financial assassin.
The final team member present at the conference table was Peter White. He was a tall, lean man in his early sixties who usually wore a fine Harris Tweed jacket to complement his distinctive goatee beard. White had always wanted to be a successful actor. However, he lacked the good looks, talent and luck required to make it big, and eventually became disillusioned and dissatisfied with a succession of bit parts and crowd scenes in ‘B’ movies. For a while, he made some decent money in California playing an English gentleman in soft-core videos, but his lack of essential equipment precluded any chance of big money in more hard-core films. He was also a competent magician, but lacked the flair and presentation skills to become a successful entertainer.
Eventually, desperate for money, he returned to his native England and performed in bars and on street corners, picking up money wherever he could; usually it was from someone’s billfold. Magicians rely on sleight of hand, manual dexterity, and misdirection to perform an illusion; the same skills are needed to pick pockets, and Peter White was a very capable pickpocket. His route into the Wrecking Crew was slightly unconventional.
One sunny afternoon in Reading Town center, Peter was caught trying to pick the pocket of a violent and vindictive man who was also one of the Wrecking Crew’s security men. By pure luck, Kitten’s twin brother Bunny, happened to spot the skillful theft. Peter thought he had gotten clean away, until a massive hand closed around his arm like a steel vice; then he thought he was about to die. For once, the two Neanderthal bodyguards acted with some initiative and kept the hapless pickpocket in the trunk of their car until they could speak with their boss. The Fixer immediately realized that this hapless thief had skills and contacts that could add value to the capabilities of the Wrecking Crew, and he made Peter White an offer he could not refuse. Join us or die.
For Peter, it was a good decision, regardless of the alternative, as he soon became a successful and respected member of the crew. As production manager, he was responsible for most activities that involved getting someone close to a target. Carefully put together and rigorously trained, his regular team of over fifty people included actors, magicians, pickpockets, prostitutes, and former military personnel. They had an excellent performance record, and were skilled in the arts of surveillance, theft, intimidation, and bribery. At first sight, the cast may have seemed overly large, but to use a theatrical analogy, many of the players would only have walk on parts.
Even the apparently simple act of planting a bug in someone’s house to gather information for a client could require a team of ten or twelve people. First, the target (or ‘mark’) must be followed to ensure that the people planting the bug are not discovered. If you want to covertly observe a mark who is out walking, you cannot just put on a hat, a false moustache, and sunglasses, and walk behind him; you are likely to be spotted within a couple of minutes. Successful surveillance would require a walking box of at least four people, surrounding the mark at varying distances of up to thirty feet, almost like an unseen security detail. To prevent the mark from seeing any player too frequently, these four close-in players will move around within the box and randomly be replaced by players from a second team acting as a wide perimeter. All of the players would be in constant communication, via micro radio receivers, with a central controller who can visually monitor and direct the mission.