Interlude 01

September 20th, Austin, Texas

On the inside, Fairfield was livid, but he went to great lengths to hide this from his assigned protégé, who was currently sitting in the passenger seat next to him.

About two hours earlier, Fairfield had been informed that the presumed incompetent lawyer Yvette Anderson was able to obtain, using what little funds she had managed to scrape together, somehow succeeded in locating her son. And, while the lawyer wasn’t deemed a threat to their operation, young Paul was another story. Not only would he be highly motivated to ruin his stepfather by exposing the man, but he also had access to crucial resources the lawyer himself could only dream about.

So, just to be safe, Fairfield immediately launched into a closer examination of the evidence Dallas had prepared for this case, and his trained eye spotted the screw-up with the jacket as soon as he saw the picture. Now this meant additional work he had not expected and consequently hadn’t factored into the number he gave the senator back in April. He hated working extra hours because of poor planning! It also didn’t help that he couldn’t really blame Dallas for this, since Fairfield had only given him the targeted timeline for this operation but then trusted that his protégé would be able to deal with the details himself. Lesson learned, and all that.

It was three in the morning when the both of them got out of the nondescript disposable car and walked up to Carver’s condo.

As was second nature to Fairfield, he opened the door without the need for a key, and without announcing their entry in any way. Without causing the smallest of noises, he found his way into Carver’s bedroom, with Dallas, who had to listen to the dressing-down of a lifetime on their way to this condo, directly behind him.

Carver slept peacefully in his bed as Fairfield placed the taser on his larynx. As Fairfield pressed the trigger, Carver’s eyes flew open. The precise placement of Fairfield’s weapon caused the vocal cords to be paralyzed within a fraction of a second, robbing his victim of the possibility to call for help or even alert anyone with a scream. After about five seconds, in which Fairfield had trouble maintaining the delivery of the charge over the violent convulsions of the body beneath him, Carver passed out.

“Now,” Fairfield started as he turned to Dallas with anger in his voice. “Open the bag I gave you. There is a fuse and a light bulb in it. Get to the breaker box and replace the fuse for the bedroom with the one from the bag. Then get back in here and screw the light bulb into the lamp on his bedside table. Once we turn it on, we have about two minutes before it shorts and causes a nice little fire.”

Ignoring Dallas’s shocked expression, Fairfield turned towards said bedside table and grabbed the half-full bottle of liquor Carver had placed there with an empty glass. According to the label, it was a forty-year-old Malt Whiskey.

“What a waste...” he moaned to himself as he leaned down to Carver’s face and opened his mouth. “Thank you!” he explained upon smelling the proof of where the other half of that bottle had gone. Then he filled half the glass on the nightstand with the liquor, taking care to spill most of it around the table, “accidentally” soaking even the curtains and bedsheets.

“But ... why!?” Dallas finally found his voice as he stared at Fairfield with wide eyes. “Nobody noticed the jacket! Everything went smoothly, just as planned!”

“Nobody noticed your mistake, yet!” came Fairfield’s terse answer. “What do you think how long this money-grubbing idiot will keep quiet when the son shows up, most likely with a few of his friends from that security firm he works at, and demands answers? This is on you! This job was your responsibility! You wanted to prove yourself and you screwed it up! Now you’ll be the one to fix it!”

As Fairfield spoke, he slowly moved towards Dallas because he knew what would happen next. While the vast majority of his employees came from various three-letter agencies, Dallas was one of the very few who previously worked in a private institution specialized in “corporate consulting”. While Dallas was anything but innocent, he wasn’t used to the unseemly side of this business.