Page 52 of The Session

“Did anyone video it?”

Mark thought that was a bit of an odd question. “Not that I’m aware of.”

“You didn’t answer my question, though. What was the most interesting thing you saw today?”

“The security floor. That was something out of a movie. And Nichols, that guy gave me the chills, to be honest with you.”

“Yeah, he’s intimidating. Of course, that place is mostly for looks. The real security team is outside US jurisdiction.”

“Interesting.”

“That ain’t the half of it. You know we have our own private army, right? Constellation? Maybe you heard about it in the news? That’s one of ours. We had teams in Ukraine and other places. Military contracts are one of our biggest areas of growth. I’d love to get into that,” he confided.

“That wasn’t in the tour.”

Blaise took a small sip of his drink and spun the ice cube around. “Did you know we do KnR, kidnap and rescue extractions? One of my highest growth areas right now is selling kidnapping insurance to the crypto guys I work with. For them, it’s a real fear. We also, of course, provide private protection details. And in really dicey situations—which these morons would avoid if they kept themselves out of some of these shit-can countries—we offer other services.”

“Do you work with local governments in that case?” Mark asked.

“No.” Blaise chuckled. “Usually the local police are the ones behind it. In situations like that—let’s say places where we don’t exactly have concrete treaties—we send in the Canadians.”

“The Canadians?”

“They’re not actually Canadian,” Blaise replied. “They can barely speak English or French. These guys are from another part of the world that’s currently involved in a very long conflict. They give mercenaries nightmares.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“For guys involved in crypto, the world is a lot more dangerous. You’ve heard about the wrench attacks, where basically they show up in somebody’s living room and threaten to bash their skull in—or worse, their girlfriend’s—with a wrench unless they transfer $100 million in Bitcoin? That’s what the Canadians are for.”

“So they do kidnap rescue?” Mark asked.

“No, we use Constellation for that. These guys are what we use afterwards in certain situations,” Blaise hinted, obviously trying to sound interesting while dancing around the facts.

“Afterwards?” Mark pressed.

Blaise set down his drink and fixed the cuffs on his jacket. “Everybody has their own way of describing what Summit Strategies does. You’ll hear words like ‘trust,’ you’ll hear words like ‘sales.’ Whatever. To me, it comes down to reputation. Reputation can be destroyed in an instant, but it can also be created in a few seconds. You saw that video of you carrying that dumb cop out of the line of fire. No matter what stupid shit you do from now on, you’re going to have to do something exceptionally retarded to erase that image in people’s heads. And when it comes to providing security services, the thing I’ve learned is it’s not enough for the bad guys to hear that somebody uses private security as a deterrent. The name of who provides it has to scare them. I realized that while watching John Wick, but don’t tell anybody. You use the Canadians to make a point. So if somebody knows we’re protecting a client, they go fuck with somebody else, because it is going to cost you to fuck with us.”

Mark wasn’t sure how much of what Blaise was saying was simply performative salesmanship versus the real inner workings of Summit. But he suspected there was truth to it.

“Being the boss’s son is going to be interesting,” Blaise continued, changing subjects. “I can’t make up my mind if I should be jealous of you or feel bad. There are going to be a lot of eyes on you, and it’s probably going to be a lot easier for you to fuck up your reputation. No offense.”

“None taken,” Mark replied.

“Man, you do look like him.”

“Max Lightman?”

Blaise shook his head. “No. His son, Kevin. Real good guy. Fucking tragic.”

“He drowned, right?” Mark asked, not wanting to let on how much Tru had told him.

“Yeah, drowned. Drowned in some cheap-ass Chinese fentanyl. You can’t trust that island shit. Unless it grows in the ground. Don’t fucking touch it.”

“That’s really unfortunate. I would have liked to have met him.”

“Just what I need, two of you motherfuckers,” Blaise muttered. “Thank you, no. Rest in peace. One of you at a time is enough. The sad part is we all thought this was the time he cleaned up.

“Of course all the minions think he drowned, so I’d keep the drug thing under my hat. Already enough rumors going around about him.”