Mindbenders

by Ted Krever

  ~~~~

  “It’s called Tiber Island,” Kate said. Not that you could miss the place—a stone wall and concrete deck breaching the water like the prow of a ship, a collection of Renaissance buildings rising through thickets of palm and locust trees, awash in spotlights, the island curved into the elbow bend of the Tiber, Vatican domes in distant silhouette and two ancient bridges like a belt propping it up.

  Getting there, though, was like trying to push a ham through a sieve. Soldiers clustered behind concrete roadblocks at every corner starting a half-mile away, in visible body armor, over-the-ear helmets and automatic weapons at the ready. Each stop required ID, a body check and interrogation (Purpose of your visit? Press Credentials? So Late? We’re disorganized. No one in Italy seems shocked by this answer).

  “The bridge dates to 62 BC,” Kate narrated, reading the museum tour off her cell. “One story says the Romans killed a dictator, threw his body in the river and the silt collected around it to create the island. It looked like a ship so they added the prow and stern.” She was chattering, nerves on edge—I could feel it as well as hear it. Or maybe it was my own nerves I was feeling.

  The air had that stuffy, close feeling like when Max blocked us—I wondered if he was keeping tabs now. He’d run through several techniques with me as we prepared, step by step. When I said, ‘You think I can handle this?’ he answered, ‘Think how far you’ve come in a few days. You’re not the same man’ and I knew it was true.

  So now I worked the system, like a new driver obsessively checking the mirrors before pulling out of the driveway. Ruby. Emerald. Sapphire. Turquoise. Don’t look for anything in particular; don’t anticipate. Listen for words or rhythms of speaking in your head that aren’t your own. Just follow those and see where they take you.

  It didn’t take long. I started feeling paranoid and defensive and realized it was coming in waves; it only took a beat after that to realize it wasn’t my own paranoia but theirs, whoever they were. I relaxed into the vibration and suddenly it was coming from everywhere. Lingering in doorways and street cafes, watchful eyes from cars on strategic corners, waiters and newspaper sellers, students and telephone lineworkers, everywhere we went, the vibrations and those tiny green-tipped lapel pins. If I wasn’t successfully blocking myself, we’d find out pretty quick.

  Billy said he’d meet me at the bridge but two blocks early, a car pulled up alongside us and he jumped out the open door. “In!” he demanded, grabbing me and throwing me into the seat. He slammed the door in Kate’s face, crying, “One ride per customer.”

  And then we were off, weaving through a maze of alleyways onto a wide avenue past the Coliseum and Circus Maximus.

  “Your friends think they’re spies,” he said, rechecking the rear-view mirror. “Are they?”

  In the vanity mirror I made out an Alfa Romeo following at a respectable distance but I didn’t know the driver. I never would’ve noticed on my own.

  “Not mine,” I shook my head.

  Billy shrugged, “No matter.” A sharp right bounced us across a sidewalk and into an archaeological site marked ‘No Admittance’ in three languages. We detoured past a 2200-year-old arch and between 40-foot-high marble slabs fallen from a temple, then sped the wrong way down a one-way street onto a service road under a viaduct and into a warehouse district. There was nobody in sight. “If they are spies,” Billy remarked, “they’re overpaid.”

  He screeched to a stop in front of a shuttered plant, all graffiti’d walls and glass skylight roof panels. The whole district was shut tight, not a car or moving body in sight on a Sunday in the capitol of Roman Catholicism. Billy jumped out, punched a couple of keys on a touchpad and the front gate rattled upward. It closed automatically when he pulled inside.

  “Come on,” he said, politely, considering he was already dragging me by the collar. Up a metal staircase to a row of locked offices, dragging me like he didn’t care if I got hurt—or maybe preferred that I did.

  I don’t know what happened to me, but somehow I was taking this pretty calmly. Billy was taller and broader than me but that was a nice way of saying he was a pudgy media grunt, more used to bullying a word processor than a man. He was already puffing from climbing the stairs. A year out of the Army, I could probably take him. ‘Probably’ was a big word but it relaxed me a bit. Let him drag me around a little more, wear himself out. Let things develop a bit. Then we’ll see. The place was deserted; it wasn’t like he had three guys waiting to jump me. He counted the offices as we went and I noticed there weren’t any numbers on the doors. He dragged me to ‘Six’ and pulled me roughly against the wall.

  “You listen to me,” he gasped, jingling through a mass of keys on a White Sox keyring. “I don’t know how stupid you think I am but I don’t take this shit lightly. I made your fucking phone call. I know a guy at Intervento Speciale—the Italian counter-terrorists? I told him what you said; he dropped the fucking phone! I hear him scrambling around trying to pick it up, I take it as a sign from God. Duck down the back steps and by the time I hit the corner, there’s six military police cars outside my door. I haven’t stopped in one place for two minutes since.” He found the key and fumbled it into the lock. “They told me you lost it a year ago but I had no clue. This is fucking Italy! I’ll be locked up for weeks before anybody gets to talk to me! I could end up in fucking Baku getting waterboarded! So I don’t give a rat’s ass about your goddamn credentials—you’re going to tell me what, how and where or you can send me a postcard from Baku whenever you get a chance.”

  He was totally panicked and panic does scary things, even to sensible people. That’s what was going through my head when he threw the door open and flicked on the light and I stopped worrying.

  Max was lounging behind Billy’s desk; Kate was next to him in a straight-back wooden chair, sitting quietly, waiting. Tauber stepped from the darkened far side of the room, closed the door behind Billy and conducted him politely but firmly into another wood chair directly opposite the desk. When that was done, he took up a position leaning alertly next to the now-closed door.

  “Locking him up won’t help you,” Max said calmly. “And it isn’t necessary. We’ll tell you what you want to know. We just need credentials.”

  Billy’s eyes bulged. He kept staring from one unexpected visitor to the next, eyes like billiard balls. “How—how’d you get in here?” When no one answered, he gulped hard and said, “I had to tell them who told me. They won’t give you credentials no matter what.”

  “You didn’t get the chance to tell them—you were ducking down the back steps, remember?” Max said with that assurance that so impressed strangers. “It’s not an issue. You get us the meeting with the right people—I’ll take care of the rest.”

  Billy was still flustered, still mulling the previous question. “You—how’d you find this place? You didn’t follow us, I was watching.”

  “We got here first,” Max nodded. “So no, we didn’t follow you.”

  “So how’d you know…we were coming here?”

  “If your network will get us in, you can tell them later that I forced you. They’ll believe you, I promise.”

  “Why would they?”

  “Because that’s what I do,” Max said darkly. “I make people do things they don’t want to do.” He was using the quiet voice, which only brought out the menace in him. Billy sank into a chair next to the desk. Then he stared, alarmed, at the desk itself. Max slid away and held his hands up to show they were empty.

  “I haven’t opened anything. Your weed’s still in the top drawer and your revolver still in the leg. The emails from your publisher’s wife—”

  “That’s enough!” Billy yelled. “You had no right; this is a private—”

  “Check the locks,” Max said, stepping away and motioning. Billy showed no sign of moving from his chair. “I didn’t have to look. I knew you would tell me what’s there.” This struck me odd and I saw Tauber and Kate also staring at Max now. Wh
ere was he going with this?

  “You’ve been troubled recently by memories of a woman named Christina. You haven’t seen her in years but she’s in your dreams and waking thoughts. You’ve been trying to think of a way to ask your ex for her address but—”

  Billy was trembling now; it took a lot of visible effort before he was actually able to speak. “In the time you’ve spent monitoring me,” he burst, “you could’ve got the credentials yourself.”

  “How could I monitor something you haven’t said aloud? To anyone?” Max asked, as low-key as a hospital shrink. “I’m reading your mind, Billy.” It was shocking to hear him say it out loud. We just needed credentials—why give away the farm?

  “Bullshit,” Billy answered. I remembered saying the same thing…two days ago? Was that possible?

  Max stared him down for about ten seconds. “Twenty-five,” he replied coolly, responding to an unspoken question. “4672 Rogers Court, Medina Illinois. Dwight Eisenhower High School. There was a small mole on her left breast—left from your point of view, not hers.”

  “Fuck you!” Billy jumped from his seat and lurched toward the door. He never made it. He stopped dead, frozen in air for twenty seconds, hand outstretched for the knob but going nowhere. Slowly, tortuously, the hand turned, moving mere inches from his eyes, fingers outstretched and pointing. Billy was shaking, sweating, trying with all his might to control his own body, without success. I remembered how frightening that felt. After a long moment, the fingers folded up, one by one, until he was giving himself the bird at close range.

  Billy groaned and I cracked up but Max stayed focused behind the desk. “Like I said—I make people do things they don’t want to do. Why don’t you have a seat and we’ll talk.” No reply. “I’m not going to let you do anything else, so you might as well.” Billy finally, stiffly, returned to his chair.

  “If you can do this, what do you need me for?” he asked.

  “Our enemies are watching for us. We won’t get credentials without them noticing. On the other hand, a big network adding a crew at the last minute, even at the G8, is nothing special. But there’s more to it than that.”

  He glanced at me. “I’ve had time to think about this since you called Billy. The more time we spend in Rome, the more obvious it is—you felt it along the river just now. They’re everywhere, the drones. I don’t know why—all they need is one guy a few feet from her—but look at how many they brought. Even if we manage to stop them here, this won’t be over. And the chances of us getting out alive aren’t great.” I shivered, simply because there was no drama in him, in what he’d just said. He’d sized up our situation, assessed the odds and they weren’t good. He was being Max, following his blessed facts. “So someone has to put out this story, has to let ordinary citizens know what’s happening. The fight will have to get bigger. It can’t be just us.”

  “You see, Billy, you don’t look on the bright side. You’re worrying about what I might do to you. You’re missing what I can do for you.”

  Billy, hair heavy with sweat, shirt soaked through, didn’t appear encouraged. “Such as?”

  “I don’t know—what would make you happy? A Peabody? How about a Pulitzer?”

  It took a minute for Billy to get his breathing under control but suddenly he was making the effort.

  “How’s this for a story? Assassination. Governments toppled. Trillions in play. The fate of the World at stake. Mindreaders running wild, tipping the balance of power. Top of the News Hour and you tell our side of the story. Exclusive. ”

  Billy slumped. “Jaysus! Conspiracies, Psychic Phenomena. UFO’s killed Kennedy. Not worth shit.”

  “What if we can prove it? Pull back the curtain in public? In front of witnesses?” Billy’s face was cautious, but his eyes were ravenous.

  “But here’s the rest,” Max warned. “You can’t tell this story until everything’s over. You’ll win awards but you probably won’t be able to accept them—you might not survive the trip. You’ll have to protect yourself against threats from people like me—threats inside your own head. So there’s a pricetag—and it won’t be fun.”

  “I guess,” Billy laughed—a coarse, harsh cynical laugh. “Why would I want something like that?”

  Max smiled his sad smile. “We all want to matter. Most of us don’t ever get the chance to really affect things. It’s an evil world and the worst threats come from inside, the places we’re not watching. You haven’t been a journalist all these years for the money, Billy,” he said and Billy laughed again. “You love the truth, even if it doesn’t always love you back. We’ll feed you the facts, new stuff on a regular basis. And you’ll post the stories Gregg writes too.”

  “Me?”

  “You’ve been keeping a journal,” Max told me, fervent. “Tell people what it’s like inside our little team. We’ll need to get our side out. Eventually, we’ll need accomplices.”

  Billy was wearing the reporter’s gaze now. “What are you talking about? Worldwide revolution?”

  “Not against governments,” Max shrugged. “They won’t take sides, not openly at least. This will be a rebellion by people who’ve had everything taken away from them—their dignity, control over their own lives. It’ll be their way to matter. You’re an old Commie, Billy—you should like that.”

  Billy pulled a notepad off the desk. “What’s it all about?”

  ~~~~