Tibetan Cross

by Mike Bond

  Mort pinched his lips in the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. “Then you tried to kill me, a U.S. government official, wounded me, in fact, in the woods near Aix-en-Provence. In the dead German agents’ car, with stolen plates, you traveled to Germany, where we finally apprehended you.” Mort sat back. “Quite a scenario.”

  Cohen relaxed his arms, the pain of the cuffs subsiding. That's how it will sound, when they tell it. If they ever do. All I've done has been a waste, will come to nothing. He raised his head. “What do you want, fat man? You must want something, or you'd have killed me by now.”

  “For a start we'd like to understand your motives.”

  “Tell me, why were you sending a nuclear bomb to Tibet?”

  Mort dusted off his knees, stood. “That's a fantasy. To cover up what you've done. Not one person in the world'd believe you. Even Paul doesn't hand us that!”

  “Paul?”

  “Yeah, didn't you hear Lou? We have Paul, or Dr. Schwarz, as the code goes, back at the office. He's singing quite a different song.”

  Cohen retreated to the darkness, his mouth and eyes dry, a curious buzzing in his ears. How should I feel when the world's ended, when the last hope, the last child, dies? I feel nothing. I don't even care I don't care.

  From the death soon to come I resurrect the memory of the good I've known: mother, with her blue Kilkenny eyes; my father, with me on one knee, the Talmud on the other, teaching me what I've long since forgotten but still live by. My stepfather, robust and hard – like the battered toes of his boots the horses stepped on, the white barbed wire scars on his brown hairy arms – the man who taught me to win in a new country. Sylvie, who gave me her life until it wasn't there to give any more. Alex, eaten by the pain of Vietnam. Kim, gentle sister, who believed in the goodness of God. Andrev, who “not ever send person in jail,” who did not know his father's grave. The sad colonel in Oran, who tried to give me his best shirt, and when I wouldn't take it, gave me my freedom. Maria, sister of mercy, whom I dragged to her death at eighteen. My brother Paul, bound now in some hellhole of a torture chamber, in the hands of the white men who killed the woman he loves and make our country what it is today.

  He felt a nudge, glanced up. Mort stood there. “Speak. If you have anything with which to reprieve yourself, we're prepared to be indulgent.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Tell us your story – Paul's too.”

  “Perhaps you don't have him.”

  “Oh we do, we do. That's why we don't need you any more. Do we, Lou?”

  “They don't need him at the Chapel. But they want to know who he's talked to.”

  “So who've you told about all this?” Mort smiled patiently. “Let's tie up loose ends, shall we?”

  “This bomb, Mort, it'll end everything, including you. Don't you have kids? Don't any of you have kids?” Cohen looked at them. “What's so important it's worth killing everything?”

  Lou chuckled. “He seems stuck in a groove, Mort.”

  “Yeah,” Mort sighed. “Let's get him out of it.” He went to the head of the stairs. “Tim! You're on!”

  TIM CARRIED a suitcase up the stairs and opened it, a combination doctor's bag and electrician's kit. “Shall it be the trappings of honesty,” Tim grinned, “or the essence of pure truth?”

  “There's not much time,” Claire said. “If he's spoken to someone…he's got a big mouth. We'll have to cover quickly.”

  Tim unlocked a side pocket in the suitcase and filled a long syringe from a sealed vial.

  “What's that?” Cohen said.

  “Call it a little icebreaker,” Tim answered as he rolled up Cohen's sleeve, “to ease communication among relative strangers.” He shoved in the needle.

  “He's afraid of drugs,” Claire grinned.

  “Speak the truth and there's nothing to fear.”

  Mort glanced at his watch. “We've got a half hour to grab a bite in town. Jack, you stay with Ruby. We'll bring you something.”

  “Fuck kraut food,” Jack said.

  She crossed to Cohen, stared into his eyes. How evil now she seemed, although it was easy to remember what had trapped him in her pale luminosity, her high straight cheekbones, her amber-lashed eyes, the angle of whiteness narrowing from her neck past the diamond heart to the pear-shaped breasts pushing out the fabric of her blouse. The whites of her eyes were veined with red. “I'm going down, Jack,” she said. “Just let him be.”

  Her tawny hair disappeared down the stairway. Jack sat on the crate picking his nose. Cohen tried to break the mood of helplessness seeping into him. Is it because I've failed? Does it come from seeing her? Or is it already the drug? He tried to remember what it had felt like when he was first captured. It was beyond recall.

  He fought the urge to smile at Jack. They didn't seem so bad, these people. Hadn't Mort said, “We're all Americans?” Maybe the fault was his own, for not trying to help.

  Something was biting at his wrists; he tugged but they would not be free. “Jack,” he said. The word sounded thick, as if he had been drinking. He'd have to do better. “Jack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you help me? Something's hurting my hands.”

  “Sure.” Jack stood, his face in shadow. “I'll take your mind off it.” He kicked hard into Cohen's crotch. Cohen tried to double up but could not with the cuffs holding his arms. Pain roared through him, awful. He threw up. Jack took a black stick from the suitcase. “I used to play Triple-A ball. Could hit it four hundred and twenty feet over the left field fence. Know how?”

  Cohen tried to focus.

  “The trick is just a touch of uppercut. Like this!” Jack whirred the stick into his ribs, snapping the handle. He could not scream; he could not breathe the red waves of air that crushed him. Jack had picked up the broken stick and was hitting his head, his shoulder, his ribs, his shins. Someone was screaming. He tried to close his mouth, stop it, but the screaming went on. The hitting stopped. It was not his voice. He vomited, blood.

  She had the broken stick. She was screaming at Jack. He could not understand the words. Jack was shaking his head, looking away. She slapped Jack; it made a flat smack.

  She kept yelling and Jack went downstairs. He brought up a coffee pot of warm water and a towel and washed Cohen's face, rubbing blood and vomit from his shirt.

  “Asshole,” she was saying. “Asshole, asshole, asshole!”

  “He has it coming,” Jack mumbled.

  “First we need answers. Then do what you want. Asshole!”

  The word seemed to calm her in its repetition, and she sat on the crate, yanking at her hair. Cohen spit on the floor. “Clean up the floor, Jack,” she said.

  THE ROOM had changed colors. The wall behind her was a waterfall over which a rainbow cascaded. He closed his eyes but it was pouring down inside his eyelids too. Voices. Mort stood before him, a great balloon. “Do you know what Jack did?” Cohen tried to say, but the words were scrambled.

  She was talking to Mort. Jack was nowhere. The one with the hairy hands was peering at him. The face was wizened, an old monkey's. Cohen glanced down to keep from vomiting. The floor planks diverged like tracks in a switching yard. Their cloak of dust was marred by scuff marks and wetness. There were hammer marks around the nail heads.

  Mort would help him. He could see that. It was just a question of being honest enough to satisfy Mort. In his heart he sought something Mort might need.

  “Bring him water, Ruby,” Mort said.

  The water kept falling from his mouth down his chin. Mort sat on the crate, said, “Interrogation of suspect Samuel C. Cohen, continued 10:57 p.m., same team, place, and date.” He stretched. “How did you get here?”

  “I took Dieter's car to Basel.” Cohen smiled. Mort did not smile. “Did I say something wrong?” Cohen's voice seemed disconnected from his throat, as if it issued from the top of his head.

  “No, no. Continue.”

  Cohen remembered about Alphonse. He had promised the bo
y he would not tell, but Mort needed help. “Alphonse came with me.”

  “Who's that?”

  “Don't know. He was just here.”

  “Shit, where?”

  “In…that town by the border, where they kept the car. I can't remember it.”

  “Basel? Rheinfelden? Säckingen?”

  He strained in his effort to help Mort. Glee erupted in him. “Mulhouse!” Once more Mort was not elated. Maybe he's just pretending to need help. He tried to remember who Mort was, where he came from. “I can't place you,” he mumbled.

  Mort was taking off his suit coat. He removed his shirt. His enormous, glossy shoulder was swathed in white. “You did this,” he said. “I know it was an accident, but you hurt me.”

  Cohen was stunned. How could I hurt Mort? “I'll make it up somehow.”

  Mort looked happy. “Who'd you speak with, in Aix?”

  “Lots of people!” He would recall them all, for Mort.

  Again Mort seemed upset. “Did you tell them about what happened on the mountain?”

  “What happened?”

  “Sainte-Victoire. You killed the girl.”

  Cohen saw a headless doll. Its neck poured blood like a faucet. “I did?”

  “A Spanish Gypsy whore – it doesn't matter.” Mort's voice was consoling. “But did you tell anyone?”

  Rafters wavered in the pullulating heat. The heat itself was visible, waves of motion pouring thickly from roof to floor, rising then in steady spasms to swirl against the rafters. Now the rafters pulsed like rocker arms; the floor blistered, its boards wracked upward. Red slipped up between the boards, engulfing his ankles. He tried to scream.

  “Yes?” Mort asked solicitously.

  “The fire!”

  “Fire?”

  “The floor.”

  Mort nodded, glanced down. “Who'd you speak to, about Nepal?”

  “Nepal?”

  “What you and Paul did there, and how you were punished. If you talk about it, it'll be better, and you can see Paul.”

  “I can see Paul? Where is he?”

  “He's staying with our friends. He's very angry. You were supposed to meet him.”

  “It hasn't come yet!”

  “He says it's passed and you weren't there. I hope he forgives you.”

  “But it hasn't come. It hasn't.” Tears ran down Cohen's face.

  “Tell me about it. I'll try to explain it to him.”

  Mort seemed unafraid, standing in pools of fire. If I could be like him, Cohen thought. “It was on the Kali Gandaki ridge,” he began, “after we'd run.”

  The fire was rising, but Mort did not flinch. “Were you to meet in Nepal?”

  “In Katmandu, but I couldn't stay.” The heat was tearing at his throat; he twisted his head away. “I left him a message, for a fallback. The Serpent…”

  “The serpent?” Mort swam before him, in pools of fire, their eyes locked.

  “Stop it!” Cohen screamed. “Stop the fire!” It closed over Mort's head.

  She stood before him. The flames were enveloping her, yet she seemed calm. Her touch was sandpapery. “When you see clear light,” she said, “you can tell me.” She fell away into the fire. He writhed, holding his breath against the heat, tearing at the thing that pinned him until his chest and arms could no longer bear the pain.

  Through a veil in the flames he saw her sitting atop the crate. His vision cleared. She was unmarred. Heat roared in his ears. Past moments darted through his head. She was holding water. The flames subsided.

  Everything was sharp: a mole on her neck, her cracked tooth, a nail half sunk in a rafter, the bulb's filament. It was yellow, that filament, now white, now stationary, now dancing, in its sea, its universe, of light. Its echo rumbled in the floorboards, slower, duller. The nail hummed, motionless with speed.

  “He's shot till morning,” she said. “Jack blew it.”

  “I'll strangle the little cocksucker,” Mort rumbled.

  “No, no, we still need to know…”

  “I mean Jack.” With his good hand Mort patted her head. “Getting protective, aren't you, Ruby?”

  She started down the stairs. “I want him to live.” She laughed, sardonic. “For a while.”

  Mort switched off the tape recorder. “Uncuff his hands, Tim, so he can lie down. Cuff one leg to the post. Then cuff the hands again. You and Jack split the watch. Any way you like. If he gets away, or if one of you hurts him, I'll kill you both.”

  Blackness descended, an all-forgiving blanket. It would be centuries, perhaps never, till tomorrow.

  A QUIET PRESENCE at his side. “It's you,” he said. Hem did not answer. A brown-white bird drifted down beside them.

  “You and this killdeer,” Hem said, “have an eternal relationship. When you were eleven you shot her with your twenty-two, in Montana. She wants to know what matter of overwhelming importance made you take her life. Were you hungry?”

  “No.”

  “She's come to remind you that your task's unfinished, Koan. That every being is precious. Your task's to nurture life, nurture good, to battle evil. That's what you're doing now – although you feel you've failed. If you die, then die combating evil and nurturing good, nurturing life! Fulfill the will of God, Koan, who desires only good and not evil.”

  HE WOKE in the deepest depression he had ever known. His head ached; his mind whirled. His tongue pounded like a drum inside his teeth. The weight of the floorboards beneath him was monstrous. Each breath caused pain. He tried to stop breathing but that made the pain worse. His eyelids came unstuck.

  Jack sat half asleep on the crate under the patient glare of the bulb. Clattering dishes and aimless conversation percolated from below. Jack stood and rubbed his face. Footsteps mounted the stairs. Cohen blinked and tried to move his head. Glossy brogues approached. Mort's voice, “Get him up.”

  Jack shoved him against the post. They cuffed his arms behind it. Mort adjusted himself on the crate. “Turn it on, Jack. Continuation of conversation with same suspect, same place and team, Saturday, April 21, 7:15 a.m.” With a rheumy gurgle he cleared his throat. “Ruby, bring up my coffee, will you?”

  She stepped into the attic, humming.

  “Do you remember,” Mort asked Cohen, “a children's game called Twenty Questions? We'll play it this morning. If you do well, you'll end the day as an animal. If you don't, you'll be a vegetable, and soon after, just mineral. Let's begin with the simple. Where were you to meet Paul?”

  “Ask him.”

  “We have, and he's told us. Now we're asking you. Wouldn't it be a shame if someone were lying?”

  “You going to kill him?”

  “He won't die at our hands. Nor will you, unless you remain silent. Think of it: a life's in the balance, and you have the choice.”

  “We have no meeting. The last time I saw Paul he was headed north on the Mustang trail.”

  Mort scratched his nose. “Get Tim.”

  Claire shook her head. “If we want to shoot him again, that will wreck it.”

  “On the double.”

  Tim came up, frowsy and unshaven.

  “Wire him,” Mort said.

  As Tim attached wires by stainless steel clamps to Cohen's fingers and ears, Mort twiddled dials on a console that he took from the suitcase. “We have nineteen questions to go, after you answer this one,” he said. “Now, where were you two to meet?”

  “You don't have him, do you, fat prick?”

  Fire screamed in his face and arms. Arching his back, twisting from it, trying, begging to talk – nothing changed it. His tongue choked him; he could not see.

  It went away. “Where was it?” Mort whispered.

  “It wasn't.”

  It returned, insupportable, eternal. After a long time, he could speak. “I can't stand this,” he said. “I want to tell you, tell you anything.”

  “The fallback, son. Paul says you missed the fallback, this serpent thing.”

  “That's a lie. It hasn't co
me yet.”

  “When is it?”

  “Ask him.” A yell tore from his throat as the searing whiteness ate his bones, burned out his eyes and brain. “Sorry,” he gasped.

  “When and where?”

  He caught his breath. “It hasn't come yet,” he repeated. “Yes, it's due, in about a week, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “What day is it?”

  “The twenty-first. April.”

  “We kept it loose, for the last week of April, in case one of us had trouble.”

  “Where?”

  “If I tell you, you'll kill him.”

  “No, no, no. If Paul's lying, we'll be angry with him, but we won't hurt him.”

  “Then why'd you kill my friends?”

  “We didn't, son.” Mort drew the crate closer, his hand on Cohen's knee. “We're fighting a ruthless enemy, terrorists who'll do anything, anything. We're the ones trying to save you. You've gone astray but we'll still help you; we're all Americans. Had we known in time, perhaps we could've saved your friends.” He leaned back on the crate, sighed. “But it's natural for you to fear, given what you've been through. Now let's sort out this fallback problem once and for all. Where's this meeting?”

  “In Colorado.”

  “Where?”

  “South of Carbondale. It's hard to explain.”

  “Try me.”

  “In the mountains – a place we both know, from several years ago. I could show you on a map.”

  “This is Germany, son. We don't have a map of Colorado here at the moment.”

  “If you get one I'll show you the place.”

  Mort retreated to confer with the others. Tim descended the stairs. Mort sat on the crate. “Give me a description.”

  “There's hundreds of square miles there; I don't even know the name of the road – it's just a dirt road – that goes near it. Then you have to walk, or ride a horse.”