Mindbenders

by Ted Krever

Ten

  At first, I assumed we were trying to get away.

  It at least made sense to try—the black vans were all around us and I could feel the thickness in the air as Max blocked all of us at once, locking us out of the collective unconscious of the neighborhood, trapping all our free-floating thoughts inside the narrow car. Or maybe all that was in my head—now that we were free, my shoulders and neck felt like they’d been released from a clamp. I ached all over from sudden relaxing.

  After ten minutes of changing roads and directions, I could see we really hadn’t gone very far. The airplanes were still close overhead. That got me real upset. I started sweating. We had to head back to the mountains, to the house on the cliffside. I don’t know why I fixated on that place but it all came rushing back to me at once. The wall of windows and the balcony and the crazy awning, the hillside I scrambled over like a maniac, trying not to get cut in half by Marat’s lightning bolts—and the town with the dance floor and Tess and Cindy. That whole memory was clear—I was in it, living in it. That was where we had to go. We’d be safe there, if only because that’s where they caught us, which made it the last place they’d expect us to go.

  Every few minutes, some new airliner threatened to land on the roof of our car. And then we came out of a sidestreet and Max bought a ticket and we were in the long-term parking lot at Dulles Airport. We circulated the rows until he found a Maxima he liked. It had one of those touchpad things on the door and he was able to fry it with his fingers; Tauber hot-wired the car in about seven seconds. And then we were back on the road again. But again, we weren’t making any effort to get away. Max made a series of turns, as though looking for a location.

  “Volkov lives ‘roundabouts,” Tauber said. “Miriam took me to his house when we first got up here.” He’d pulled a bottle of water from the center console and was holding it up to his puffy eye. “I was an idjit for staying with her.”

  Max shook his head. “You knew her—you didn’t know me.”

  “They want ya bad. They did everything to try to get your whereabouts out of me.”

  “Which they knew immediately you didn’t have.”

  “They didn’t trust my thoughts.”

  “Ha! Spies not trusting? I’m shocked.” Max’s look at Tauber was sympathetic and even grateful.

  “Volkov thought he could turn you,” Tauber continued. “Avery said you wouldn’t give, that they’d have to kill you. Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. We’ve got to get the hell outta here—they all live nearby, the whole area’s crawling with shooters.”

  “Shooters?”

  “Yeah—they’ve got drones and shooters. Drones send out messages and don’t remember a thing after. Shooters are Volkov’s strike force. There’s not many of them but they’re dirty tricks mindbenders—and killers.”

  “That’s what they wanted Stargate to move to,” Max said. “That’s what Dave objected to.”

  “A lot of us objected. Dave did it out loud, to senior officers.”

  “So now they’ve outsourced it.”

  “Anyway, they’re deadly. We’ve got to get going.”

  “We’ve got a little time,” Max said, “Right now, they’re scouring the highway to Shenandoah National Park for us. I’ve told them that’s where we’re going.”

  “They’re not going to buy that they’ve tapped into you. They know you’re not that sloppy.”

  “They think they’re tapping Greg,” Max said. “I’m sending out his memories.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “Your memories are cleaner than mine—mine are always mixed up with the rest of the neighborhood. And you’re more nostalgic for that place—with good reason—than I am.”

  “And they’ll believe,” Tauber said, giving me a thoughtful look, “they’re intercepting your thoughts.”

  “Well, that’s okay,” I said. “Couldn’t you ask before you just share my head with other people?”

  “Excuse me,” Max said immediately. “Would you like to live? Or shall I stop?” Theatrical pause. “That’s the choice.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You’re not my type,” he said. “If they know we’re here, they’ll be on us in minutes. And we have to stay in the neighborhood for another half hour or so. So we need your memories. Sorry.”

  “As long as you’re sorry…”

  “And remember this,” he ordered me. “This is what it feels like to send out a message or a suggestion. I’m doing it but it’s your head—so learn what it feels like. If you can recapture the feeling later, you’ll be able to start doing it yourself.” He pulled into a parking lot alongside a warehouse, nestled between several locked-up trucks. Looking around, I realized it was a good strategic location—we would be hard to see from the nearby streets but we had a good view out.

  “Why are we hangin’ around?” Tauber asked. “What’s the objective?”

  “Low-hanging fruit,” Max said, looking across the street at an apartment complex glinting in the light of the setting sun. “Strategic information.” He looked Tauber up and down. “Are you in shape to block yourself?”

  “I’m okay,” Tauber allowed. “Gettin’ the shit beat outta me lit the ol’ fuse.” He croaked out a laugh. “Nostalgia’ll kill ya,” he added and Max smiled.

  “Okay, we’re going across the street as soon as the sun goes down. Our subject is not powerful but she is alert. She’ll be able to read us so block yourself till we get into the apartment. You too, Greg. You know the feeling now.”

  “So concentrate,” I said, furrowing my forehead.

  “No,” Max said. “Don’t concentrate.”

  “Why not?”

  “Concentration is a conscious mind trick,” Tauber drawled. “If ye’re concentrating on being powerful, you’re reminding yourself that ya feel weak. The more ya concentrate on something, the more you feel the opposite.”

  “When you were with Tess, were you concentrating on anything?” Max asked.

  “You bet.”

  “That’s not concentrating,” he said and they both laughed. “Moments like that, you’re just soaking up the feeling. So just get back to that. Find the feeling in your fingertips and the tip of your tongue and the rest will come back to you.”

  We sat in the parking lot for about 45 minutes, while the darkness gathered and it began to drizzle. Cars came and went, a truck pulled into the lot, idled ominously for about seven minutes and then pulled out. Police cars flew by, lights flashing and sirens bleating.

  I was working on getting back to the house on the hill and I thought I did okay but it was more fun to work on Tess. At one point, Max turned to me and said, “You’re trying too hard. You’re working memory.”

  “Memory is useless,” Tauber sniped. “It’s shorthand for the conscious mind. It’s eating soup with a fork,” he spat. “Don’t remember; just feel it again. The feeling’s still inside ya, in places the conscious mind don’t rule. Feeling ain’t part o’the past—it’s alive right now. Get inside it, get one detail real clear, so it’s alive right now and POW! You’ll be back there.”

  “Where?”

  “There. In the middle of it. With her again, like it’s happening again right now.”

  I was probably looking at him cockeyed. “However you do it,” Max said, “what matters is, you won’t be here.” He opened the car door. “It’s time.”

  We crossed the road—it was a main drag and we were forced to rush across between tractor-trailers like elephants stampeding along the river. We were left in a thicket of trees and shrubs that seemed to have grown out of a bed of garbage—supermarket circulars, handouts for car washes and a traveling circus, beer bottles and water jugs, several cans of motor oil and two pairs of panties in the nook of a tree trunk. Stepping carefully took us over a low fence to the service entrance of the apartment building, where suddenly everything was pristine. In through the wide truck-delivery door and up a ramp we went, to a wide-mouth elevator. Max hit the button for t
he sixth floor.

  In my mind, I was trying to hold Tess’ hand, trying to pull the feeling of it out of the air. I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to do this without remembering. As I got frantic, Tauber suddenly shot me a look, leaned over my shoulder and cackled, “Pretend you’re holding her tit, son” and that I could feel right away. Which unlocked the door—once I felt her breast in my hand, other feelings…came to me.

  By the time we reached the sixth floor, I really wasn’t there at all—I was in the backseat of her car, feeling the sticky leather of the seats and the blast of the air conditioning turned all the way up and her scent and the way my hands and mouth were all over her and…well, that’s as much as I feel like sharing. I got out of the elevator but it felt like that was the dream, like I was just watching it happen, like I was along for the ride but somebody else was driving.

  Max rang the bell to the corner apartment, the one that overlooked the river. It took a few rings before a woman’s voice answered, approaching but still a few feet inside the door. “Hello? Who’s there?” Max motioned us against the wall away from the door. Tauber pushed me over where Max wanted—I wasn’t paying attention—and we heard the voice say “Hello? Hello?” and then the metal door gave a little groan as she leaned against it on the inside. As soon as she did, Max touched a finger to the surface of the door and whispered, “Open” and, an instant later, we heard the locks unbolting from the inside.

  It was Sam the blonde, the aide from L Corp headquarters, the one who seemed so chummy with Avery. She seemed to be holding her eyes open wide as we filed past her across the threshold—she wasn’t blinking. Apparently she was getting ready to go out—she wore a light blouse and panties but the rest of her clothes were laid out on the bed a few yards away. As we came inside, Max touched her forehead and her whole body relaxed. It was like she was standing out of habit. She followed Max’s finger on her forehead into the living room like she was stuck to it. He led her to a high-backed wooden chair and she sat without being prompted.

  “Hello Sam,” Max said.

  “Hello,” she replied like reciting off a page.

  “Tell me about your day,” Max said in the blandest of tones.

  “It was a mess,” she replied. “We had to evacuate because of you and Pietr was furious. He wants to know how you did that trick with the air, because he thought he knew all your tricks but he doesn’t know that one. He was ranting about it for like twenty minutes non-stop when we got back inside. Like we should have known air was a security hazard. And you stole his car which really pissed him off. It had Lo-Jak and the cops got it back but they didn’t get you and they’re trying to figure out what kind of car is missing from the long-term lot but all they have on the records is blue Nissan and the plate number but the plate number wasn’t written clear on the tag so they’re trying to find the guy who wrote it to see if he can read it or remember what it was but they think he’s on a bender because tomorrow’s his day off and that’s what he does when he has tomorrow off.”

  “This is called a brain dump,” Tauber groaned, “for obvious reasons.”

  “She hasn’t had a chance to organize her thoughts,” Max explained, pausing every few seconds to monitor whatever Sam was spouting. “By tomorrow morning, she’ll have everything capsulized but all the details will be smoothed over and the details are usually the things that are useful.” Sam was complaining now about the time that was spent trying to get good staff who wouldn’t drink too much or smoke pot too much and and and…Max finally touched her forehead again and she stopped.

  “You work for Avery—you’ve been having an affair with him—and you’re sleeping with Pietr as well,” Renn said, like they were facts.

  “I thought you couldn’t read anything in their headquarters,” I said.

  “No,” Sam said. “I flirt with Jim all the time but he’s never made a move. I don’t know why. Do you think I’m past my prime?”

  “Absolutely not,” Max answered, giving her a quick appraisal, then back to me. “I didn’t have to—it’s how Pietr works,” he replied. “He uses her to monitor Avery, to make sure Avery’s not looking too deeply into what he’s up to.” He returned to Sam. “What about Pietr? What is he up to?”

  “I can’t tell you. He’s locked me up so I can’t tell you anything about him.” There was a note of pride in her voice. “He figured you might want to talk to me and I’ll tell him you did as soon as I come out of this.”

  “Who says I’m letting you out of this?” Renn said. And waited. It took a few seconds for this thought to penetrate and then Sam’s composure visibly faltered. “I need information out of you now. After that, I don’t need you.”

  “You—” Sam’s voice wavered and then stopped. Her expression hadn’t changed, neither had her anesthetized tone of voice. But there was no mistaking the alarm in her all the same. “—you wouldn’t. Pietr said you didn’t—”

  “That was then,” Renn answered and the chill in his voice made me tremble. “This is now. Pietr’s trying to kill or capture me. He’s already killed my friend. All bets are off.”

  “Pietr would hunt you down,” she vowed. “Forever. He would never rest—”

  “Pietr would forget you in five minutes,” Renn answered harshly, cutting her off hard, “and you know it. He likes that girl in Asian section, the one he takes to lunch all the time. She’ll be sympathetic when he remembers you later.”

  “Don’t try that shit with me!” Sam insisted, her voice suddenly taut. “I know your tricks! Pietr told me about your problems with women!”

  Max’s eyes lowered at this and came up dark. “Well, it doesn’t really matter,” he said, “what you think of me, does it, as long as you don’t give me your password?”

  There was a pause then, for just a second, and the air freshened, like someone had thrown the window open in winter. I saw a look of recognition pass through Samantha’s eyes to Renn’s.

  “Barbie’s Dream House,” he said quietly and she slumped in the chair. Tauber grinned ear to ear. I must have been giving him the eye because Max turned to me to explain. “Like I said, trying not to think about something makes you think about it. I remind her she’s not supposed to think of her password so it’s the next thing she thinks of. Like sticking out your arm when you’re falling.” He turned back to Samantha, breathing quietly and peacefully now in the chair. “Barbie’s Dream House. What is the plan?”

  “Which one?” she asked, drowsy.

  “The one Pietr’s keeping from Avery. Or the one Avery’s using you to keep track of, the one he doesn’t admit knowing about.”

  “Pietr doesn’t talk about it much,” the blonde answered, now slouching across the couch, looking very sweet in her filmy blouse and panties, “and I don’t ask questions when he doesn’t want to tell me. He scares me. He’s made people squawk like chickens and lick the dust off the floor in front of me, just for fun. His fun. He’s not a nice person, really. I guess I like guys who scare me.” She looked at Max now and suddenly she didn’t seem anesthetized at all. “You’re a scary guy,” she told him. “I saw that when you first came in this morning.”

  “What do you know about the plan?” Max persisted. She smiled hopefully and he offered a sad-eyed smile in return.

  “Do you think I’m pretty?” she asked, her voice gone girlish.

  His face was almost tender—as close as he let himself get. “You’re very pretty. And much smarter than you let yourself be. Pietr could benefit from the advice you avoid offering.” His expression faded. “Barbie’s Dream House. What do you know about the plan?” Tauber returned from the fridge with a couple bottles of water—he kept one and handed the other to Sam, who chugged it like she’d been traipsing the Sahara for a week.

  “It’s soon,” she said finally, after belching and smiling like a child, “and it’s a big deal. He’s got a group of six training for it here. They’re not like the others; they’re the scary guys, throwbacks like the old mindbenders, I guess
—no offense. There’s Marat—you know him—a Russian, an Israeli, along with two Americans. And a Jamaican guy with dreads and the best weed in the world, Jesus. He gets his own room ‘cause nobody can think once he lights up.”

  “What’s the objective?” Max asked. His voice had gotten quieter but more distinct.

  “They didn’t say and I didn’t ask. I don’t want to know.”

  “You know more,” he persisted. “I know you do—and so do you.” She continued with her blank silence for about ten seconds, like she didn’t hear him.

  “You live in Pietr’s world,” Renn said, “and Avery’s. You like being in between—you like the danger. You think they don’t know about each other. I assure you they do. They’re both comfortable using you to watch the other. They both trust you to keep the confidences they actually want you to keep. Frankly, they both take you for granted. Their trust in you is justified by the fact that you’ve never used your position to play one against the other.” He looked at her searchingly, which seemed kind of comical, what with the dazed look on her face. “You could, you know,” he said and she nodded like a marionette.

  “I could,” she mumbled, half a second behind him. “I know.”

  “You know more. You know something you’re not supposed to know, that you didn’t even intend to find out.” As he said this, his voice deepened again, taking on that echo chamber sound. “Share that with me.”

  Samantha sat up and motioned as though writing on a pad. Tauber grabbed a pen and paper immediately off the table and put them in Sam’s hands—and she started writing strange. She started writing upside down, is how it turned out. When I looked up at her, her eyes were closed. And some of the letter forms were a bit garbled. But there she sat, writing it.

  “She saw him write it,” Max whispered, “across the desk.” He waited until he was sure she was finished and then took the paper from her. Turning it around, we all read: Sun 1230 IAD-CIA

  “’Sun’—It’s Sunday?” Tauber said. “Day after tomorrow?”

  “Yeah,” she nodded her head.

  “You’re working with CIA?” Max asked.

  Sam shook her head. “That’s what he wrote but it doesn’t make sense. Jim always says we can’t work with the agencies because that would put us on the radar, up for investigations. I don’t know who the client is.” She thought about it for a moment. “Actually, I don’t even know if there is a client. The other night, Pietr said—he’s a man, you all boast in bed—he said, ‘When this is done, we’ll be in the driver’s seat. They’ll dance to our tune.’

  “Who will?” Max asked. “Who’ll dance to our tune?”

  “That’s all he said.” Max and Tauber exchanged looks, perplexed and concerned. But they looked like they were going to stop there. I leaned forward.

  “What did he mean?” I asked.

  “He didn’t tell her,” Max hissed in my ear. “She has no facts.”

  “You said everybody mindreads,” I told him. “She’s been sleeping with him.” I turned back to Sam. “What’s your intuition tell you? What did he mean? Who’ll dance to our tune?”

  She stared blankly for just a moment and then, something inside her seemed to gather itself. She cleared her throat and said, “Everybody.”

  “What’s that mean?” Max asked.

  “Everybody,” she repeated, but now like she knew, certainty without proof but certainty nonetheless. “Governments, Business—Everybody.”

  And then it was quiet, for what felt like a long time. We waited to make sure she had nothing more to say—and to let it all sink in.

  “Okay,” Max said in his echoey voice, “you fell asleep while preparing to go out. You were stressed from the events of the day. Do you understand?”

  “Of course. I’ll tell him you were here,” she said cheerily.

  Max smiled. “Of course you will,” he replied respectfully. “But I didn’t get anything out of you because I couldn’t get the password.”

  “You couldn’t get the password,” she repeated half a second behind and you could see her relief at the thought, as his suggestion faded her actual mistake away, out of memory, out of existence. “You didn’t get it…” she murmured, fading away.

  “I didn’t get it,” Max repeated softly. “Tell Pietr you did well. You have every reason to feel good about yourself,” he ended, touching her forehead and she slouched back onto the couch, snoring like a buzzsaw. He led us out the door, down the elevator and back outside.

  “What now?” I asked, pulling the car out of the parking lot. “It’s Friday night. If they’ve got a big deal Sunday—”

  “What are they doing with CIA?” he demanded, handing the piece of paper with Sam’s writing to Tauber in the back seat. “Does that make any sense to you?”

  “Maybe if we knew who IAD is…” Tauber muttered.

  “It’s the rat squad,” I said and felt all eyes on me at once. “It’s on all the cop shows—Internal Affairs, the cops that watch the cops.”

  “That’s what I was supposed to do for Alan Hammond,” Max said, seeming to find the memory impossibly strange now.

  “So does CIA have a rat squad?” Tauber asked. “Is L Corp watchin’ CIA?”

  “How would that make everyone dance to their tune?” I asked.

  “Maybe they’ve got some secret—maybe they’re blackmailin’ CIA.”

  “Do they really want to cross the Government like that?”

  “It would explain why they’re meetin’ on a Sunday,” Tauber held onto his point. “Keep it off the record.”

  “They’ve already built themselves a position where the government can’t hurt them,” Max shook his head. “Why open Pandora’s box? Blackmail doesn’t make sense.”

  “And it’s not what she said,” I added, as surprised as anyone to hear myself speaking up. “She said there was an operation, that Volkov had a group of six in training and it’s Sunday. Blackmail isn’t an operation.”

  “—ya don’t need six black ops to handle it,” Tauber added. “Maybe they’re gonna steal something from CIA and blackmail ‘em with it. Maybe that’s what they’re doin’ Sunday.”

  “But what’s that got to do with Dave?” I asked. “Why kill Dave?”

  Silence. Several beats of silence.

  “It seems,” Max said, “that the only thing we know for sure is who CIA is.” He shrugged. “We’ve got to go someplace and dope this out.”

  “Someplace we can think,” Tauber added, “and this ain’t it—it’s a probe a minute around here. Where do we go?” Tauber asked and Max looked blank for a moment.

  “Ruben Crowell,” I said. “Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.”

  “Ruben?” Tauber exclaimed. His face got all screwed up.

  “You know him?” Max asked. “Good guy?”

  “One o’ the best, back in the day,” Tauber said. “Smart guy, kind of a rebel—part o’ Dave’s klatch. Now? Who knows? None of us are what we were. How about Marjorie, his wife? They were both in the program.”

  “Don’t know her,” I answered. “I just have Ruben’s name.”

  “What about him?” Max asked again. “How would he fit into all this?”

  “Let’s put it this way,” Tauber said. “I can imagine Ruben havin’ nothing to do with any of us. I can imagine him makin’ pizzas or analyzin’ nut cases for a living. I can’t imagine him workin’ for Jim Avery.”

  I could see a highway overpass ahead, the truck lights running off in both directions. Max shrugged. “Okay then,” he said, “North, Pancho.”

  ~~~~