Saving Mr. Player

2. Your Point?

The military mid cabin jet, carrying the label of ‘SIF’ landed at the airbase of Madrid at around 11:18 PM, third hour to the assassination of Davič, in the middle of the final match of The Champions Cup.

A news that had already created havoc all over the world. Not just news channels were questioning the security of players and stars within the country but also questioning the future of soccer in Spain. The entire media had gone in hysteria while every security force within the country was shambled and on their toes, searching through the entire town, going through every security tunnel to catch the shooter, while Italian forces were on Spanish forces’ head, asking to safely deliver their team Milan Rangers back to their hometown as it was no safe for them to stay in Spain.

The football players in Madrid were shifted to their hotels, under high and double security, where no one was allowed to even breathe without a high-level security clearance. Nothing was clear to anyone at the moment. There was a clear state of hysteria.

The ministry of defense and interior were shaken to their core administration, while the exterior minister of the country was himself present among the VIPs during the game. He was escorted out safely and was no in contact with the Minister of defense who was on the necks of the Spanish Intelligence Forces, who brief them over the unfortunate event that was going to decide for the future of their great nation.

On one side where globally fans were mourning the young star Paul Davič, who was killed during a game, people were holding Spanish forces accountable for poor security. There was a high moment of havoc, while the military plane had landed onto the airbase.

Standing underneath the jet hanger, were three tinted SUVs, while two had yellow flashing beacons on top of them, a Range Rover stood in the middle of the two, signifying it was a VIP’s car.

Just as the mid cabin jet came to a stop, the door with the in-built stairway rolled down. Fred walked out, wearing a crisp black suit jacket, looking fresh as daisy while Amy followed right behind him, wearing a blue button down over her faded blue jeans, paired with white sneakers.

They walked down, up to the Range Rover. Right outside the range rover an old man stood, he carried a French cut beard over his face, while his shiny grey hair rested in a small side puff over his head. He carried crystal green eyes, paired with a flattened Latin nose and freckled white skin. He had a scowl covering his face. He was commissioner of Intelligence Agency, Arturo Flores, Amy’s superior, someone she highly respected and put in place of her father.

“You better have something for me!” he said in a monotonous tone and got inside the car.

Amy and Fred shared an exhausted look. Fred extended his arm, asking Amy to get in first and she followed, groaning in exhaustion. She was already tired, when her prime target was shot dead earlier, making her fall far from her goal of catching Carmen and now she was onto another complicated case which was going to take a while to be solved, hence dragging her even more away from her goal of capturing Carmen.

She got inside the car, while Fred followed behind her, making sure to capture a gaze over the shape of her butt as she was bent forward while getting in. the guard standing outside the security SUVs did notice that but only shared looks of disgust among each other.

Settled inside the car, the two parties sat facing each other closely. While Arturo sat alone, Amy right next to Fred.

Arturo had his head down looking into his lap and Amy knew why he was extremely sad. It was not only the pressure of ministries over his head but also his grief over the loss of a young life that had a bright future in soccer. Soccer, Arturo’s favorite activity to do.

“I am sorry about Davič.” Amy began while Arturo only shook his head, lifting his face up, visibly showing tears. Amy held back an eye roll. The man had killed dozens of people at once but was grieved at one death, showing how sensitive he actually was. Amy knew that deep inside Arturo was a huge fan of soccer and not just Davič, he also grieved that The Champions Cup final was cut short and he couldn’t witness his favorite footballer Alessandro Ricci being crowned as the best player of the tournament.

Fred only sat back holding his laughter, clearly showing how shallow minded and hallow of a human being he is.

Swiping his tears off, Arturo cleared his throat, “What do you have for me?” cutting straight to the point.

“Well so far, I could only get the information that the shooter shot from the roof of the ‘DeLide Towers’. She took out a pad, out of her backpack and opened a video, passing it down to Arturo. “The direction of the bullet…” she showed him an X-ray vision image of the stadium from where the bullet was directed, “The only possible location in the direction of the image…”

Arturo sighed in annoyance, “Even the police could calculate that…”

“DeLide is an exquisite tower that has an underground casino operating in it’s top two floors…” Amy showed another abstract digital graphic structure of the tower she was discussing. This casino has exclusive games with only exclusive members. Here’s a list of all the people that were on for tonight.”

She showed the list of all the elites that were supposed to join the game.

“They were betting on the game tonight. It was supposed to be the biggest bet of the year with fifty million euros on the line, if The Royal Madrid lost…” Amy continued, displaying pictures of different businessmen and different associates from the mafia world. “Coincidentally the gamble didn’t take place at the casino, it was canceled three hours before the soccer match started.”

“And why was that?” Fred shrugged casually; he seemed the least interested in the entire conversation, probably off with the fact that Amy had collected all the information.

“Because one of the men who was a member of the exclusive club turned out to be Gerald Roman’s wingman. He was playing for him and the only member who bet against Royal Madrid...” Amy shifted through the screen, displaying pictures of a young man, with another bald one, who was suave and chiseled. “… even though Gerald has a clean slate… the club still doesn’t accept a mafia lord’s son, who apparently recently invested a large amount in Milan Ranger’s as part of his turning his father’s drug money into white money…”

While Arturo was going through the documents, thinking that Amy might have a huge clue in her hands that would lead to capturing the murderer, Fred sat unfazed.

“Your point?” he c****d.

Amy rolled her eyes that it was another on of Fred’s petty attempt at overshadowing her hard work as he would disregard all her analytical search, make two people brush around the crime scene and re-word Amy’s hard work as his own and emerge as the man who solved the case. She hated how typical sexism was his key to victory.

“My point is… that Gerald invested in Milan Rangers, made his man bet for the team. If his team was going to win, he was not only going to get a large benefit for his investments in the team but also win fifty million euros. It is a given, his attitude for gambling has always been a huge risk for him. He is known for acting out in casinos and later whoever won against him was found dead, framed in an accident somehow.” Amy proved her point with more evidence, showing case files and pictures and even some videos of Gerald yelling at tables in casinos where he lost.

“You can take a man out of mafia but you can’t take mafia out of a man. Gerald’s case is simple. If in any case his team was going to lose, he was going to lose it and he wouldn't tolerated it so when he saw his team losing and even himself losing, he simply had a backup plan where he had Paul Davic assassinated.”

“Oh please…” Fred snorted, making Amy and Arturo gave him a confused look, “You want us to believe this story?”

Amy held her urge of splitting Fred’s head as he was just on his usual ways with which he disregarded her research and purpose, “This is no story, Gerald is a dissociative gambler.”

“This is funny how everything is related with the Carmen Roman cartel for you even a soccer star’s murder!” Fred emphasized on the words necesaarily just to trigger Arturo against Amy and hence it did.

“The Barcelona job didn’t go well?” Arturo against out of nowhere and Amy knew where this conversation was going.

“Arturo… trust me it wasn’t even on my mind until I researched about the tower and found out everything…” she tried clearing the misunderstanding but one of her biggest flaw was that she was not good with words, she was never able to explain herself as she was never good at conversations and not the best with words.

“We can’t take any risk by jumping to conclusions in this case. It’s a matter of national security!” with those simple words Arturo dismissed Amy, who simple huffed and laid back on the head rest of the seat, annoyed how always she was shunned quite even when she worked twice harder than her male officers.

Fred looked at her condition and smirked, confident that he was about to solve this case within seconds. He extended himself ahead and saw how Arturo was still going through the information Amy had collected. He had seen Amy working all the way in the jet while he was busy flirting with the air hostess.

He took the iPad out of Arturo’s hand and put it aside, Amy noticed his move and felt irritated but ignored him and continued to look outside the window, the passing bright night lights of the city of Madrid. How they always reminded her of her home, her family… her father…

“I heard that Paul had a girlfriend in Croatia…” Fred stated and Amy rolled her eyes, silently snorted within her throat knowing how he was going to turn this into a regular soap opera, telenovela level story.

“What about her?” Arturo asked.

“I heard that they were together since high school and once Paul became a famous shot, he dumped her for some model and the girl recently moved to Madrid and she even tried contacting him back, she even visited his hotel in the noon where he was staying in the Intercontinental but of course the security didn’t let her pass by.”

“And you think the girl was heart-broken so she hired someone to kill Paul?” Amy asked holding back a laughter and looked up at Arturo who was actually interested in Fred’s theory. Amy sat back with pure astonishment but majorly irritation.

“You can’t be serious?” she looked between Arturo and Fred who were sharing a serious look. She groaned in annoyance and threw herself back at the leather seat.

“I asked my team in Madrid to track the girl down and they caught her in her apartment, she will be at the office when we’ll go there.” Fred stated.

“Good work!” Arturo appreciated which only irritated Amy even more.

Amy only felt irritated at the fact that no matter how hard she tried; she was never enough appreciated. And Fred just existed and was appreciated. As compared to her, his career sky rocketed, while all good, complex and soon-to-be-solved cases landed right at his desk, always creating great opportunities for him and he thought this was just going to be another one of those easy to swallow cases.

The car finally came to a halt and stopped in front of the large glass tower which was the Spanish Intelligence Forces Head Quarters in Madrid.

The three made their way out of the car, followed by being joined by three other people. Two men and a tall blonde woman, who shared a glance with Fred, followed by Amy. She had large breasts supported by her holster, held by the bra that was clearly visible under the thin sweater she wore. While Amy seemed thin comparably to her, due to her lack of plush breasts, her body was toned perfectly for her 5’6” height, with a normal proportion of curves and breasts.

“We got the woman that you asked us to bring, she is already inside, cuffed to the table.” Informed one of the men, who was short heightened, wore a side puff of his jet-black hair, covered his body with a blue shirt that emphasized rightly only his handsomely puffed body. His badge read his name, ‘Antonio Ricco’.

While the other man wore a t-shirt and round spectacles, held a military grade laptop in his hand and was only slightly taller than Amy, she walked ahead and greeted him, “Lance!”

While he nodded his head, extending his laptop screen towards Amy, “I got the surveillance image, mobile satellites and every other information you asked Benjamin for.”

“I think we should interrogate this woman first.” Fred interrupted Lance and Amy. His face held a captive expression, signifying that he was emphasizing on working on his strategy first because he wanted to show, how dominant and manipulative he can get.

The entered inside the white walled monochromatic building, where usually at that hour of the night where only certain security personnel worked or the IT department completed their night duty but at today it was different scenario.

People were rushing past each other even in the reception where call after calls where being transferred and traced, order after order was bustled from superiors and different ministries. The large squared reception area with shiny white tiles, was crowded with people in every corner, working on files, satellites and every other possible thing that could lead to any clue. The city was under a complete lockdown with high security alert. A strict military curfew was put everywhere in the city, the entire city of Madrid that hustled bustled every other night was now under complete silence, terrorized by the death of a man in the middle of thousands of others.  

 “We can’t waste time.” Amy argued and decided to leave with Lance.

Fred paused for a while and looked up at Arturo who stopped Amy, “We should interrogate her first. She is a prime suspect…”

“There is nothing to interrogate for me. I am working on a different angle.” She argued. Even though she was weak on words, she still had the guts to argue.

“You haven’t been assigned officially on anything yet, so you work on the angle I tell you to.” Arturo warned Amy, to not to make one the situation into one of her own, like she always did, whether she reached to the bottom of the situation or not.

She remained quiet and followed them in, thinking professionally that she was ordered by her superior. She had already failed a high-end operation unfortunately so she had no other option but to listen to Arturo.

They went towards the interrogation room. Arturo already decided to enter inside the monitoring room, which had the large one-sided mirror with the view inside the interrogation room and control panels on the table right underneath the mirrored wall.

Amy and Fred were about to go inside the room but being the petty creature, he was Fred stopped Amy right outside the door.

“She is my suspect. I think I should go alone.” Fred stated, with a smirk. He wanted to extract information out of the suspect on his own just to take the entire credit and become the hero who solved the case within seconds. Also, he wanted to put Amy down and later bask in the glory of his success. He could already picture himself giving the interview and being painted on every news channel and newspaper.

Exhausted and having no energy to argue, Amy extended her arm, “Be my guest.”

With that, she instead went ahead in the monitoring room, while Lance also followed her in.

Fred entered the room, where a young, small statured woman sat on the metal chair, her arms extended on the table with her hands cuffed to the metal rod fixed inside the table. Two other metal chairs rested opposite to the woman, who had her head rested on the table, while her short bob brown hair spread around her shoulders.

Fred removed one of the metal chairs and placed it far away from the table, making Amy shake her head, knowing it was him showing her that he doesn’t need her to solve a case. She was standing in front of the glass having a clear view of inside the interrogation room and Fred didn’t miss the chance of sparing a glance towards the mirror where he could see his own reflection but knew that Arturo and Amy were watching him.

Lance and Antonio sat back at the chair, where Lance worked on his laptop. Amy turned to him and ordered, “I want you to run a full check on this woman, her every activity, every person she has been in contact with. Also get the surveillance of every street near the stadium for the past month and match if she had been anywhere there.”

Lance nodded his head and busied himself in work while Antonio only watched him type keys on his workstation.

The woman heard rustling sound of the metal chairs and lifted her head up. She had small pointed swollen black eyes, with a straight button nose and puckered lips that were probably messed and dry due to her continuous crying. She seemed almost unconscious and tries adjusting her eyes to the bright white light hanging on top of her head.

“Please… why have you brought me here?” she cried in a small voice.

Amy turned towards Lance, “I want the list of everyone who works inside that tower where the sniper was and also everyone who was going to attend the gambling game tonight from participants to the croupier to security guards, everyone.”

She walked towards Lance, leaving Fred to interrogate the poor soul on his own. She sat next to him, “Show me the surveillance footage from the streets near the stadium.”

Lance passed her down another laptop form his bag and opened up the video footage from the stadium. Amy carefully went through the footage, surfing through it accordingly with time.

She was looking at a video of about two hours prior to the match, which was also an hour later from when the gambling game was canceled. In the video, the street was completely empty and quiet as the security had cleared all the streets and many people refused to get out of their homes, preparing for the match.

She watched as a man wearing a black leather jacket, black jeans paired with black boots, carried a bag back behind him and walked down the entirely empty street. His bald head was shining against the glowing dusky sky as he walked past the street during the setting evening. Amy paused on his picture and saw how his head was lowered on purpose ignoring anyone’s stare of surveillance. She then trailed him through the surveillance videos and saw him walk down the entire street towards the tower, so she immediately switched it to the Tower’s surveillance but the image came out empty.

“f**k!” she cursed remembering that Lance told her earlier that the CCTVs of the tower were hacked and the entire footage was deleted.

She took out the image of the suspicious man in black.

“Antonio!” she called, “Search this man and see if he has any connection with this woman.”

He obligated and took the image from Amy and went towards the computer system placed at a corner of the monitoring room. She then began searching through other files while Arturo called for her to watch as Fred made the investigation. Feeling exhausted she got up and stood next to him, tuning the volume up from the control panel, watching through the one-sided mirror.

Fred sat back relaxed while the girl was sobbing for her life… continuously crying what she had been saying since she was taken from her apartment by the Intelligence on Fred’s information and orders.

Somehow, Amy knew that the angle Fred was trying to search was a dead-end and they were only harassing the poor woman. She slightly leaned towards Arturo.

“What’s her name?”

“Aurora!” he confirmed back.

She nodded her head but she and Arturo both turned their heads towards the direction of Antonio’s computer where a loud noise of crowd was coming from. He was playing a zoomed in video of the match, where the camera was focused on Paul’s back and a fast flying bullet could be seen flying towards the field where the player was standing. A silhouette of the football star Alessandro Ricci could be seen behind him. The bullet came flying across the field and hit Paul.

Arturo felt agitated watching the barbaric act, “Shut this up!” he yelled at Antonio.

“Sorry, it was a footage sent to a news channel by one of the fans at the game.” He complied closing the video.

But something in the footage caught Amy’s attention. She turned towards Lance, “Do we have any other footage? From a different angle?”

Lance who was simply busy working in his laptop, looked up at Amy and nodded his head.

“Get me as many angles as possible.” She ordered and he simply obliged, beginning from the initial videos he had. He sent those to Antonio for him to play it at a bigger screen.

She stood behind Antonio and watched the videos of the gun flying across the field again and again.

“Wait pause here!” she ordered Antonio who immediately hit the pause button. The footage showed a side angle of Paul and Alessandro standing close by, at a distance of few feet apart from each other and the bullet was flying right in front of the camera, although the speed was too high to be noticed without slowing the video down. She had paused the video perfectly on the image, where the bullet could be seen directly aimed at Alessandro that if he took two more steps it would directly hit him.

“Now play it in slow motion!” She asked and Antonio did.

Slowly she watched as Alessandro took two steps ahead but immediately took one back, kicking the ball towards Paul who took three steps ahead and at the same time the bullet reached him.

“Stop!” she told him and he paused the video.

Something clicked her brain and she stood calculating the player’s movement. Like a bulb over her head, a realization clicked in.

“Where is The Royal Madrid team staying?” she asked the men in the room who looked at her with confusion. Even Arturo was now focused on Amy instead of Fred.  

“The Intercontinental.” Lance told her.

“Antonio run the man’s image that I gave you and see if he was spotted anywhere near the Intercontinental.” She ordered and he immediately began running some numbers, “Lance, show me the abstract of the building from where the shooter hit!”

Lance, immediately opened the file and handed it to Amy, slightly smirking knowing that she was onto something. She rotated the entire 3D image and finally rested on a corner, rotating it slightly downwards, she then zoomed out and studied the design of the stadium.

She clicked at a spot on the tower’s roof and then clicked two more spots in the stadium, which were approximately the positions where Alessandro and Paul were standing from the image she paused, where none of them had taken any steps. She then drew an arrow from the spot on the tower and extended it directly onto the spot of the stadium, it ended between Alessandro and Paul, just one foot away from Alessandro and two feet away from Paul.

“Amy!” Antonio called out, “The guy…” he pointed at an image captured in surveillance of a camera at Calle de Garcia de Paredes, street where the Intercontinental hotel was.

“Who is in charge of the player’s security at the hotel?” she asked Arturo, suddenly panicked as a realization completely dawned at her.

“It’s Richard…” he stated.

“Call him and ask him to tighten the security and make sure no one moves from their place and not to allow anyone anywhere near the hotel and call for immediate back up… the killer is out there.”

---------------------------------------------------