Max Arena (6 page)

‘Thank you,’
Elsa said simply.

‘Now, I think I
should probably go and check the state of play out in the world. I
suspect my list of return phone calls is building, so if there is
anything else?’

‘I have one
more question,’ Elsa said.

‘Please?’ the
Prime Minister replied.

‘We need to get
back up to Brisbane tomorrow morning to see someone. Can we do
that?’

Max turned to
look at his wife.

‘Of course,’
Joe answered. ‘Like I said, whatever you need is yours’. You don’t
have to tell me who you need to see or why, but it would help plan
the security detail.’

‘Oh, I’ll tell
you. We need a personal trainer for Max and I know the perfect
person.’

Joe raised his
eyebrows. ‘I hadn’t thought about it, but now that you mention it,
you will have access to all of our military resources and in there
somewhere is probably the ideal training solution.’

‘Thank you and
maybe you’re right,’ Elsa said, ‘but like Max said, we don’t
readily trust just anyone and this person I have in mind is the
absolute right person for this job. Whether or not she agrees is
another thing, but Max needs a trainer and I think it needs to be
her.’

The Prime
Minister studied Elsa’s face for a few moments and then said, ‘As
you wish. It obviously means a lot to you, so by all means. I’ll
send Peter in to discuss the travel plan. As for the rest of today,
you are welcome to stay here. Your rooms are made up and treat the
house as your own. I will catch you when I can.’

With that, the
Prime Minister stood and left the room, leaving Max and Elsa to
watch him go. The room was silent except for the giggles of the
children outside.

‘I meant what I
said,’ Max stated. ‘He has a good feel about him.’

‘I think so
too,’ Elsa replied. ‘Funny thing is, I now feel guilty that I
didn’t vote for him.’

Max smiled and
wrapped an arm around his wife’s shoulders to gently squeeze
her.

1
^st
July (15 minutes later). A New
Enemy

‘Are you sure
that’s him?’ the younger man in the crisp, charcoal coloured suit
asked, leaning back in his leather chair as he scanned the hardcopy
photos spilling out of the manila folder on his desk.

‘Yes,’ replied
the more elderly Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, US Army General
Robert Stratton, from a lounge across the office, ‘and his name is
Maximilian Augustus Dyson.’

The man behind
the desk looked over at the aging soldier from under his arched
eyebrows. ‘For real? That’s his name?’

‘Yes, it is.
Read it right off his birth certificate as my car drove through the
White House gates.’

‘Wow. His mum
and dad had a real Roman fetish thing going on. Must have sucked
going through high school with that mouthful.’

‘Wouldn’t
rightly know as we can’t find any evidence he ever went to school,
let alone who his parents are,’ the Chairman added.

‘So, he’s a
John Doe?’ the younger man asked, returning his attention to the
photos.

‘Not exactly.
His parents are a mystery, but we got all the routine stuff on him,
no problem. He’s an average guy. Wife, two kids and lives in a
regular neighbourhood. Runs a small landscaping business on his
own. Pays his taxes every year and seems to keep to himself.
Nothing special, until now.’

The man in the
suit, Charles Ingot the Third, dropped a photo back down onto the
pile and rose from his chair. Walking around the desk, he crossed
the room to a sideboard and lifted the glass coffee pot out from
the percolator. As he picked up a mug he said, ‘General, I didn’t
get all the way into the White House to be Chief of Staff to the
President by being dumb.’ He finished pouring his coffee and
replaced the pot. He then turned to face the Chairman. ‘I got here
by knowing more than anyone else about everything and right now, I
don’t know nearly enough about this Maximilian guy. You tell me
he’s a regular Joe, but that clearly is not the case. You don’t get
randomly selected out of a global population of over six billion to
be champion of the world against an alien race. You get chosen to
be champion because of something
specific
. No, he is not
just a regular Joe. He’s
somebody
and
you
need to
find out who. Now, tell me you know where he is?’

‘He’s with the
Australian Prime Minister at his residence in Canberra,’ the
Chairman returned, non-plussed by the Chief of Staff’s verbal
belting. ‘Those photos are sourced from Prime Minister Tollsen’s
own CCTV network at his residence, courtesy of our boys at the NSA,
who hacked them out. The pictures are an hour old, but we believe
this Mister Dyson is still at the same location.’

‘So, our
mystery man is being hosted by Prime Minister Tollsen?’ the Chief
of Staff mused.

‘Is that a
problem?’ the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs asked.

‘I don’t know,’
came the reply. ‘He’s a classic politician and while there’s
nothing wrong with that, it means he’s a lot wilier than we want
him to be. He might hand this Maximilian over to us willingly for
the greater good because he knows we can manage him better
or
he might hold out because he doesn’t trust us. I don’t
know him well enough yet to judge him.’

‘And I thought
you said you knew more than everyone else about everything?’ the
Chairman said as he rose from the couch, collecting his peaked cap
from the coffee table as he did.

‘Don’t play
with my words, Mister Chairman,’ the younger man said coolly. ‘You
just get me what I need to know.’

‘And what about
POTUS?’ the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs returned. ‘Now that you
know where this guy is, what will you propose to the
President?’

‘When it comes
to the President, I’ve always found the concerned big brother
approach works best. If the world needs saving, then the United
States are here to lend a hand to our little brother, so why
shouldn’t Australia hand this Maximilian over to us, so we can make
sure he’s kept safe and fit until he needs to set foot in the
arena? Who else would you trust with that job other than the only
true super power left in the world?’

‘And if they
do
hand him over,’ the Chairman added, ‘while you’re busy
keeping him safe, you’ll also interrogate him to get the truth out
of who he is and why he’s so interesting to these aliens and in the
process, see if there is any scope to access alien technology and
get a jump on the rest of the planet. Does that match your
thinking?’

The Chief of
Staff to the President of the United States fixed the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs in his gaze and said, ‘All in the name of peace,
my friend.’

‘Sure,’ the
Chairman said as he turned for the door, a wry smile slicing across
his face. ‘We wouldn’t want some jumped up little backwater country
like Australia out showing America when it comes to saving the
human race now would we?’

‘Just get me
that intel, General.
Pronto
.’

The Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs let his smile harden as he opened the door, his
eyes steeling over. The two men locked gazes for a moment just long
enough to tighten the tension in the room and then the General was
gone. The Chief of Staff watched the door close and then turned
back to his desk and the photos strewn across it. His eyes bore
into the face. He would have this man. He would
own
this man
and then after he had his secrets, he would kill him.

9:57am, 2
^nd
July (the next day).
Kris

Kris Blake sat
alone at the corner table inside the cafe, her abandoned cappuccino
steaming away untouched in front of her, while she methodically
slid the screen of her iPad upwards to read another news article.
The cafe was essentially empty with herself as the only paying
customer and one other person, the owner, who sat quietly behind
the counter on his lonesome, reading his own iPad.

The sound of
the front door opening startled the owner into action, prompting
him to jump up and grab a menu, ready to dash out and greet his
second customer. Meanwhile, Kris remained transfixed to her iPad.
The newcomer looked around the room and spied Kris, then walked
across the room to where she sat.

‘Hey, good
lookin’,’ the newcomer said brightly.

The spoken
words raised Kris from her reading and she looked up, a smile
immediately adorning her face.

‘Hey, yourself’
Kris replied. ‘What are you doing here, Elsa? I thought you were on
holidays?’

‘Yeah, we
were,’ Elsa said, pulling out a chair to sit down, ‘but this whole
alien invasion thing and the end of the world kind of got in the
way.’

‘Hmph. Aliens.
Always showing up at the wrong time.’

Elsa smiled
back and then saw a shadow appear by her side.

‘Good morning,’
the owner of the cafe said, failing miserably to hide the over
eagerness in his voice. ‘Can I get you something?’

‘Ah, sure,’
Elsa replied, smiling back at him. ‘Latte, please, and...one of
those apple and cinnamon muffins you’ve got there?’

‘Of course,’ he
replied quickly. ‘Won’t be long.’

Elsa turned
back to Kris and found her smiling again.

‘That was
charitable,’ Kris said. ‘Normally this place is chock full, but I
don’t think he’s going to get much business today. I don’t think
any of his staff even turned up.’

‘Are
you
working today?’ Kris asked.

‘Yeah, but not
yesterday.’

‘Not yesterday?
Why not? Monday’s normally your busiest day in the gym isn’t
it?’

‘Yep. Normally,
but I doubt anyone turned up. Most people probably stayed home like
me just in case things got a bit hairy out in public.’

‘What do you
mean hairy?’

Kris tilted her
head slightly askew and replied, ‘Haven’t you been watching the
news?’

‘No,’ Elsa
replied, shaking her head. ‘Long story. We’ve been a bit busy since
the, you know, the alien thing came up. We had to ditch our holiday
pretty quickly yesterday morning and haven’t really had time to
stay on top of things.’

‘Well, you’ve
got
plenty
of catching up to do then,’ Kris said, closing
the lid of her iPad cover and placing it on the table next to her.
‘As soon as this alien news broke on Sunday night, the crime rate
ratcheted up. Break-ins. Assaults. Arson. Lots of random stuff, so
there was no way I was going out yesterday, busy day in the gym or
not.’

‘And what
brought you out today?’

‘Have you ever
seen so many police on the streets? The Prime Minister sure lived
up to his word and if we ever get a chance to vote for Joseph
Tollsen again, he’s got my tick.’

‘The Prime
Minister? What did he do?’

‘Wow,’ Kris
said, eyebrows raised. ‘You really
are
out of the loop. He
held a joint press conference late yesterday afternoon with all the
state premiers and promised to fix this spike in crime by flooding
the streets with police and
voila
, the streets are flooded
with police and the crime rate’s back down again. Still a bit
dodgy, but safe enough for me to come back to work.’

Elsa let her
gaze wander away as she recalled their conversation with Prime
Minister Tollsen yesterday and his excusing himself to attend to
something important. Now she knew where he had gone. He had gone
out and made a promise to keep everyone safe, just like the promise
he had made to her and Max. Elsa nodded silently as she felt her
trust for the man deepen even further. Prime Minister Joseph
Tollsen was a man of his word.

Movement next
to her pulled Elsa from her reverie. A plate hosting an over-sized
muffin appeared on the table in front of her, followed by a lightly
steaming latte in a tall ceramic mug. Elsa turned and smiled up at
the cafe owner.

‘Thank you,’
she said.

The owner
smiled back, a hint of something deeper than gratitude behind the
expression, almost like he was just happy to see a smiling face let
alone a customer in his empty cafe. Then Elsa realised her
perception of what was happening around her was unique. Her and
Max’s perspective on the situation was from the inside looking out,
knowing and understanding the truth of the emerging global crisis,
but out here in the public it was completely different.

Everyday people
everywhere were experiencing this affair in ways she had not
imagined. Yesterday, Kris had stayed home out of fear for her
safety, but had then been “rescued” by the integrity of a
politician. Meanwhile, the cafe owner was just happy to see a
friendly face, with Elsa’s smile as therapeutic as the comforting
words of a skilled councillor.

Elsa needed to
start paying attention to everyone around her. Society was on the
brink and if it deteriorated any further, even if Max won in the
arena, the world might already be too far gone to save.

‘So, if you’re
here to do a gym session,’ Kris began, bringing Elsa back to the
present, ‘that muffin’s not going to be your friend.’

‘Oh, no,’ Elsa
said, waving the comment away and breaking the warm muffin in half,
releasing a faint bloom of steam. ‘I’m not here to go to the gym. I
came here hoping to talk to you actually.’

‘To
me
?’
Kris queried, picking up her coffee and taking a sip. ‘What
about?’

‘I need your
help,’ Elsa said directly, also picking up her latte and fixing her
gaze on Kris, looking over the rim of her mug, ‘and in return, I
can help you.’

Kris paused,
her response coming carefully. ‘Are you in trouble?’

‘Sort of,’ Elsa
replied, ‘but first let me tell you how I can help you and then we
can talk about you returning the favour.’

‘Okay,’ Kris
answered slowly, leaning back in her chair. ‘Why do I need
help?’