Mark shook his head. "No, unfortunately it’s not that easy. If Lynch can consolidate power, he'll be able to put himself in a position where our chances of taking him down dwindle to nothing. We're only two people, we can't stop everything at once. He'd have the manpower and the overall power to just flood the streets and take us out by sheer force of numbers. Secondly, if we take him out directly.... well, put it this way. Let's say a week after we get back, I find out he's going to be in public and I take him out. What do you think happens the very next day?"
I nodded, seeing where Mark was going. "All of his lieutenants and underlings go nuts trying to overtop each other, fighting for their scrap of his empire."
"Exactly. It would be a street war the likes our city hasn't seen since the Roaring Twenties. It'd make the Los Angeles Gang Wars of the eighties and nineties look like patty cake. There would be out-of-towners coming in, street gangs trying to move up the pecking order, and general chaos. There would be a lot of innocents caught right in the middle."
"So we go back."
Chapter 2
Mark
Stepping off the Lufthansa Airlines jetliner, it felt strange being back in the city. I knew that Sophie and I weren't being hunted by the authorities. After all, Mark Snow had never been fingerprinted in his life, and Sophie White had apparently accepted a job with a Christian missionary group providing health care in Southeast Asia, thanks to a little maneuvering. Besides that, the passports for Marcus Smiley and Sophie Warbird were totally legit, and totally clean. I'd paid good money for them, after all.
Still, we were back in enemy territory. Regardless of if the belfry tower was still secure or not, there wasn't any place in the city that we couldn't be found. Not between the Confederation and Owen Lynch. So, our plan hinged on something totally different, hiding in plain sight.
"Mr. Smiley! Mr. Smiley!" the newspaper reporter called over as soon as we left the baggage terminal. "Do you have any statement about your coming to town?"
"Of course," I said, grinning. "I'm glad to make this city my new home. With the opportunities that have been provided for me, I am certain I can provide plenty of opportunities for the people of this city as well."
To get this, you gotta understand my new identity. Marcus Smiley was an Internet millionaire. Starting with a small website, he built it to massive levels of traffic before cashing out, and reinvesting in various technology firms. Moving capital strategically around the globe, every company he touched seemed to turn to gold. Similarly, every company he pulled out of turned to dust almost as quickly. He'd been investigated by financial agencies all over the world, and with each of them he was as clean as freshly washed sheets.
The reality is, most of that money was pushed around within my own network of shell corporations. I'd always had Marcus Smiley in mind when I set up my retirement plan, along with a few other identities, and my accomplishments in his name were enough to set the media abuzz when the "reclusive business mogul" suddenly declared he was setting up his newest venture, along with a new home within the city. He was even buying the old Mount Zion property from a local corporation and turning it into his personal home. The buzz within the technology sector, and the buzz within the society pages ensured our arrival would get local press.
The reporter looked next to me, where Sophie was smiling through a pair of sunglasses. "And who is this lovely woman next to you?" he asked, his eyes continually pulled to her hair. It was the most effective element of Sophie's disguise. As Sophie White, her most noticeable feature to most men were her large, perfect breasts. As Sophie Warbird however, while still perfect, attention was diverted from her breasts to a shock of electric purple hair that ran all the way down to the middle of her back.
"This, my good man, is Sophie Warbird, my fiancee and vice president of Smiley Holdings. As you can tell, she's not only beautiful, but has the best sense of personal style in the entire East Coast." The purple was Sophie's choice, and I have to give her credit, I was inspired. We had both dyed our hair, me going to a dirty blonde while Sophie decided to go super extreme. Not exactly inconspicuous, but that was our plan, to stay in the open. In our bags though, she also had a long black wig that she would use when she needed to not be recognized. That and a tight sports bra would hopefully combine to make her invisible at times. "We're both excited to be in town."
"Miss Warbird," the reporter said, swinging his little tape recorder away from me. "Anything you want to say to the people?"