Green History - Page 2

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    It was into this wealthy family, already steeped in criminal interests, that the current head of the family was born in the early sixties. Hazel Green was relatively publicity-shy, mostly on the orders of her father, but his hopes of finding her a wealthy match to return a degree of respectability to the family backfired badly when her high-school crush hit the tabloids. Rival magnates gleefully drowned the young girl and her boyfriend in media coverage.

In more public arenas, sensing the writing had been on the wall for years in the family's manufacturing industries, she sliced them off and rapidly invested in microelectronics and fast food, cunningly parlaying the criminal drugs cartel into a respectable pharmaceutical company with astonishing speed. The old family shipping concern, once used to ferry steel, was instead tacitly given over to smuggling illegal refugees from ports across Asia and Oceania, notably Hong Kong and Sydney, handily proving the Greens with a source of indentured muscle.

With her assets firmly modernising, and with a new generation of "management" ready to respect her hands tightly on the reins, Hazel entered the 90s with her own agenda. Her technology and medical investments were reaping dividends in research and bringing in steady income on patents, but the point at which she saw the potential for less therapeutic uses for them is unknown. Regardless of cause, it was immediately after glasnost that she began recruiting ex-Soviet specialists and equipment in the realms of hypnotism and brain research, looting the infamous Russian "sleep laboratories" ruthlessly and offering the legions of destitute former scientists more work, provided they asked no questions about their research. Within five years, she had assembled a formidable team of dedicated mind control specialists, all of whom were quickly put to work on new and improved ways to dispense with the need for negotiation and bribery altogether. While information on their results is patchy at best, it is assumed that by now stable and dependable "co-ercive treatments" exist. Certainly the Green mansion is now infamous for boasting a docile gardening staff packed with former criminal masterminds, all of whom presumably angered the "Green Queen" in some manner.

It was this, and the public displays of power Hazel used to take over what few dregs of the Hong Kong triads she didn't control in the infamous pre-handover riots in 1996, that earned her the underworld moniker of "The Green Dragon" - later to cross the Pacific to the more public "Dragon" nickname now familiar to all but the Green-owned media.

Her current priorities appear to be a steady program of advancement into Eastern Europe, on both sides of the law, now that the Iron Curtain is down. Caspian Sea oil (and the decaying Russian industrial structure) would doubtlessly secure Green power on both sides of the Atlantic. Hong Kong's reversion to China (and the Chinese government's brutal purges of organised crime) may well be hitting her recruitment in the Far East, implying ties to the Russian mafia will fill the gaps. As to any more ambitious aims, the implications of her advanced mental research are extremely disturbing. Potentially, any or all of the hundreds of wealthy patrons of Green hospitality could be under their control, and exactly how total said control is remains unknown.

Given all this, it is ironic that the worst recipients of such techniques appear to be her own children, who claim Hazel uses the equipment to instil fear, respect, and (perhaps most telling of all) to quash any dissension especially where deviant activity is concerned. It appears the family drive towards a respectable image is not dead yet...