Sunday. 10 in the morning. I'm in the apartment making coffee when there is a knock on the door.
"Hey Man!" it is Simon Gray. "We missed you yesterday!"
"Oh, Simon, come on in, I'm making some coffee."
"Yes - we celebrated jeûne genevois yesterday, which translates to 'Genevan Fast' in English. It was around at Bradley Floyd and Jennifer Hansen's apartment. I was with Bérénice Charbonnier and we met Matt Nicholson, the new guy who will be working in your lab."
"Yes, he was also recruited in Cork and was actually hired a few days before me," I answer.
Simon says, "I'm showing him to the bus tomorrow morning. His first week will be like your, full of indiction processes. I doubt you'll see much of him until after the process is complete."
My coffee brewing is complete and I pour the coffee and we chink mugs together.
"So any new news?" I ask.
"Not really, we all had a fun day and could talk about you behind your back. Lucky for you that Matt arrived after you; the main topic of the evening was more about him than about you! Oh, I've asked him to join us on the bus on Monday, by the way. Hair of the dog, by any chance?"
He looks at me and pulls a small, discreet hip flask from his jacket. Then, he tips a splash into his coffee and offers to do the same for me.
"You know, I'm good," I say and smile across to him.
"Okay, message received," he smiles and puts the silver flask away, "Schladere - Himbeergeist - probably a bit rich for this time of day."
"I'll be having vodka on my cornflakes next," I quip back.
He chuckles then asks, "So what do you make of your first week at Brant?"
"It's that old expression about drinking at the firehose," I answer.
"Yes, the people are pretty intense and seem to know an awful lot," answers Simon, "Plus the politics. I know I work in the pharma part of Brant, but I still get to hear things. Amy van der Leiden is a great operator for you. By all accounts she protects your team from the difficult questions that Brant Head Office asks. Bob Ranzino is a man on a mission. Someone is apply ing the screws to him, speaking of which you'll also have noticed that there's action between him and Jasmine Summers."
"Is her name real?" I ask, "Only..."
"I know, she sounds like a porn star or something," says Simon, "but its her real name, all right."
"I feel as if I need a morality transplant to work on my current project," I say, "It is so - er - dark."
"You must be working with those Cyclone helmets? The future of warfare etc."
"Deeply scary," I say, "No wonder they pay so well."
"They want to monetise everything," explains Simon, "That's how Kjeld Nikolajsen operates. He knows that he needs to feed something back to HQ every quarter. The Numbers are everything at Brant."
"SO is he running some other projects too?" I ask, "Only I can't see the Cyclone being a quick enough Return on Investment?"
I'm mildly surprised how much Simon seems to know about my department, considering he doesn't even work in my building.
"The office telegraph says that Kjeld is a wily operator. He even split the Cyclone into three sub-projects so that he can talk about each one separately. He's running a few other projects too. Some of them are more like cash cows - the surveillance drones for example. His team use commercial drones and upgrade their batteries and motors so that they can carry heavier payloads. It's simple work but once it has been badged Brant, they can charge profitably for what has been done. NLEs, they call them. Nice Little Earners."
We both smile.
"But how can you know so much about what is supposed to be a secret department?" I ask.
"Brant leaks like a sieve," answers Simon,"Give it another week and you'll know all about my department too."
He pauses then asks, "Hey, fancy a walk? I was thinking about going around the lake on one of the boats."
"I'll give it a miss today," I answer, "I did exactly that yesterday."
"Okay, I'll move along then," says Simon holding up his coffee mug by way of a salute, "I may see you later, or else tomorrow at the bus stop."
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