Just People

by Paul Usiskin

  Where am I?

  The Eliyon was due to sail for Cyprus once more, urgent meetings with the Cypriot government, a mix of debt purchase and gas excavation rights negotiations. A clear window in the weather conditions made for a smooth crossing. The engines were running so we’d soon be under way. I worked on, reviewing interests in Africa, market reports and analyses from New York, London, Frankfurt, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

  I wasn’t aware of anything different for maybe ten minutes. Then I noticed a silence. No engines gently rumbling through the decks, no knocks on my door, and one by one my monitors went off, my iPad screen went blank and there was no signal on my cell-phones.

  I left the stateroom and made my way up to the bridge. I met no one on the way. I checked in the room where the boy was brought on board, after he tried to escape. He and the female guarding him were gone. The bridge was empty. I had the impression that I was the only person aboard the Eliyon. I couldn’t see if our anchors were still down because the monitors were out up there too. But I did see four black vessels bracketing the Eliyon. They were Guardians, unmanned naval vessels designed by Bluestone, one of my subsidiaries. I also saw two drones monitoring the Eliyon. From the nearest Guardian’s PA system, an electronic voice instructed me to make my way down and board it. Its remote controlled deck gun followed my progress. I was accompanied by two mosquito drones, manufactured at Lodestone; I believe they were the weaponized versions. I boarded the Guardian and was told to put on the buoyancy jacket ready for me, and to hold on as we made our way to the jetty at the Maoz Yam Bay hotel. I wouldn’t have attempted to flee the Guardian, because it would have been pointless, it would have taken me out instantly.

  I saw no one as we approached the jetty and before leaving the vessel I was told to make my way to the hotel’s front entrance. To get there I knew I’d have to go through the tunnel to reach the elevator and I thought about going to another floor and escaping, because the mosquito drones could not be controlled in a subterranean context. The elevator at the end of the corridor rose to the ground floor automatically. The mosquito drones were waiting for me and escorted me through the lobby. There were no staff or guests. There were two UGCVs, Unmanned Guided Combat Vehicles, the Mark 3 version, another Lodestone product, hybrid engines silent, the door of the first open. I got in and sat down. The windows had been electronically shaded. I was told to put my watch under my seat where I would find a blindfold to put on. I had no idea where we were going or how long it took, at least a couple of hours, though the last stretch was over harsh terrain, either a track or a poorly paved road. The ride in the UGCV was comfortable nonetheless.

  When we stopped I tried leaving a gap in the blindfold so that I could see where I was, but was ordered to readjust it. Moments later I was guided inside a building, by a swarm of beetle drones, I did manager to peek at them, gently prodding me; very impressive. I smelled fresh paint. I entered a large space and was told to remove all my clothing but not the blindfold and then climb some steps. I did so and something closed with a gentle hiss behind me. I reached out ahead and touched a metal wall, backed away and came up against another, and found the same either side of me. I searched with my fingers for a door or a window and found nothing, no frames, no hinges, no handles, no recesses. The sound was dulled.

  I removed the blindfold and was sorry I did. Around me all was glaring white.

  No voice spoke. No sound came from outside. I was in a metal cube, possibly polished aluminum.

  Then white went to black.

  *

  The door to Dov’s hospital room opened and two people entered, Lana and Yakub. There was no slap this time from her and Yakub wanted to hug him, but Lana wouldn’t let him. ‘Aba’s had an accident,’ she said, ‘You have to be gentle.’

  ‘Can I give him a kiss instead?’ Yakub asked.

  ‘Of course you can,’ Dov said and Yakub gave him a feather light touch on his good cheek with his lips and lay his head so carefully on Dov’s chest. Dov couldn’t stop his tears and Yakub must have felt the tremors, and sat back as Dov wiped his eyes and smiled as Yakub told his story. Dov was hell of impressed with how he’d dealt with the camera in the ceiling light, once he’d worked out what it was. When Yakub came to describing being slapped, his voice dropped. No he didn’t know the name of the woman. He’d helped Amos and an Identikit analyst draw pictures of her and that was fun. He liked being on the big ship. He was more frightened of the men in black who came to rescue him.

  He asked if either of them had known of the red toy car with the message in it. Dov reached under his pillow, withdrew the car and put it in Yakub’s hand. The boy was delighted.

  ‘Who found it?’ His parents smiled proudly at him.

  Dov said ‘It was very very clever of you. Did you think that because you used wax crayon your message would survive in the water? It did, just. The sea took the toy car to the shore and someone found it. That was your plan, right?’

  Yakub nodded, delighted. ‘I chose that toy,’ he sounded dismissive, ‘because it didn’t let water in when I tried it in the sink. Will you thank the man who found it?’

  Dov nodded and he and Lana laughed at their son’s male-centricity. Another light kiss and one from Lana too and they were gone, leaving Dov to wonder why Hareven had held on to Yakub.

  Amos came by too soon after Lana and Yakub had gone for it to be a coincidence. ‘There’ll be extended surveillance on them both. We’ll decide when it’s safe to lift it, kind of depends on you...’

  ‘I’m not sure when that will be.’

  ‘Maybe not, but those you’ve antagonized have long memories.’

  Dov’s who-me face wasn’t convincing.

  Next day the nurse gave him a gift selection of Max Brenner chocolates. There was a card attached to the package. It read ‘Speedy Recovery, Orli x.’ He wondered how she knew where he was.

  *

  The black site was an old Mandate fortress in a forest in the Carmel hills south and east of Haifa. It wasn’t on any map. It was the same one Aviel had used for Dov’s son Yaniv during the Defense Ministry scandal. Though Dov had no hard evidence, he was sure it was Hareven who’d introduced the idea all too easily into the chain of command to take Yaniv, and Aviel had done as Hassid instructed.

  That he’d complied, Dov had never forgotten. Forgiven was a big word. Vengeful was not a word that sat comfortably with Dov Chizzik, no it wasn’t, that cap certainly didn’t fit his head, so he got on with his life. If there was an ‘accounting of the soul’ to undergo, then Aviel had owed Dov for extricating him from the Yardena Rotem fiasco, and Aviel had balanced the books by killing Nahum Brenner. Now Baruch Hareven was in a cube with no curtains and no windows. It was a modified security cell, used for ultra sensitive meetings, but where Aviel had got it and how the controls for it had been designed and integrated, Dov wasn’t about to ask.

  ‘Good morning Barry. How are you today?’

  It wasn’t morning. It was night, but Hareven wouldn’t know that.

  The voice was soft and soothing, slightly high-pitched. It wasn’t Dov’s, although it was Dov who spoke. It was Hareven’s. Two could play at electronic voice synthesis.

  Hareven was immediately alert to it. It sounded familiar but he couldn’t place it. On the screen in the studio, Dov and Aviel could see him via enhanced imagery. His heart rate and temperature were monitored and right now his heart was beating faster and his temperature had risen, for this was the first voice he’d heard since leaving the Eliyon, whenever that was, he had no idea of time, his disorientation was total, his survival uncertain. He had been fed, washed, shaved, toileted, but only knew that because his senses told him so. He had no recollection of how all that had occurred. He responded to the voice in a way that made him doubt his own sanity, which he’d doubted for the hundredth or was it the thousandth time since being brought here, wherever here was. The light level increased.r />
  ‘I’m fine thank you,’ he said.

  His doubt endured a while longer, because he genuinely felt fine and genuinely wanted to know who the person speaking was, and he had no control over his feelings.

  He couldn’t stop himself asking, ‘And you?’

  ‘I feel much better now, I really do,’ said the voice.

  Hareven’s feelings broke through his doubts. He was speaking English to a voice that had spoken English, but he thought he knew that voice.

  ‘I’m pleased to hear that,’ he said, and he really was.

  ‘Thank you, Barry.’

  The voice was so amicable Hareven wanted to reciprocate. ‘How can I help you?’ he asked.

  ‘Thank you for offering. Could you tell me where the antidote for Shimon is?’

  Hareven didn’t think before replying. He knew exactly, not the precise refrigerated unit, but the place where the unit was located, and the name of the scientist who had created it and tested it, the same individual who’d worked on chlorine gas and synthesized sarin gas, in the Stonemount drug manufacturing facility.

  He gave the scientist’s name and location of the lab.

  The voice said, ‘Thank you Barry, have a nice day.’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ Hareven said, ’and you too,’ and the light dimmed to black again.

  It was twenty-four hours before the voice spoke to him again, this time in Hebrew, but he had no idea of the passage of time.

  ‘Good morning Baruch. How are you today?’

  ‘I’m fine thank you, how about you?’

  ‘I’m fine too. I need to ask you a personal question Baruch, is that OK?’

  ‘Sure it is. What would you like to know?’

  ‘I’d like to know about your childhood in Valga and your parents and your sister Sophia.’

  ‘We were not a happy family,’ he said instantly and automatically, happy to comply. ‘My parents didn’t know how to enjoy life. They were Shoah survivors from the Klooga concentration camp. But they never spoke of that until, by mistake, I found a bank book with compensation payments from the German government in father’s desk drawer and asked what that was about and it was like I’d opened a tap that wouldn’t stop running,’ just like you are now, Dov thought. ‘They gushed with their stories, how the SS started killing inmates when the Soviets got near, how they were taken to a forest where the SS started shooting them and how apparently an Estonian police unit turned up and tried to stop them, and my parents were saved by the wonderful Estonian motherland, on and on, guilt at surviving when so many hadn’t, the pain and suffering through their memories, on and on about how I and Sophia were their own personal miracles. They believed we were angels, the saviors of their sanity or something crazy like that. How were we supposed to understand? I certainly didn’t want to, it all had nothing to do with me. They also believed that anyone who had been in a concentration camp was an angel, as if being in one somehow transformed them into perfect beings, producing honey from evil. It was all twisted and so were they.’

  ‘That’s very interesting Baruch. Thank you.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  The light faded gently to black again. And in its darkest depths, Hareven said, ‘No one likes to be told that they’re not good people, or even that it’s inferred. But it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care. That’s not what life is about.’

  As if it couldn’t get any darker, it did.

  *

  When the light came back up, Hareven was surrounded by small black holes. He tried to concentrate on those on the ceiling, count them, and found he couldn’t. Each time he tried they shifted, rolling infinitely past his eyes. He tried following them, but they kept moving, right to left. They were on the wall, moving up from the floor, on the opposite wall moving down, on the floor splitting apart only to reveal more coming from nowhere and they were on the wall behind him cascading endlessly.

  ‘Boris, Boris, wake up so we can play by the lake.’ The voice pronounced it Buhrees.

  Hareven, dizzy and empty, stiffened at his sister’s voice speaking in Yiddish.

  The holes stopped moving and disappeared into themselves.

  The light was whiter, sharper.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said frantically, ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Please Boris. Mama and Papa are at work and I’m here by myself, let’s go to the lake.’

  ‘Go away Sophia,’ he pleaded.

  The light dimmed again.

  Some time later, the light came up softly.

  ‘Hello Boris. How are you today?’ the soft obsequious computerized voice, inquired, in English.

  ‘I’m fine thank you, how are you?’

  ‘I’m good. I want to ask you about you. I’m fascinated. You’re such an enigma, tell me what has motivated you. I’d really love to know about that.’

  The more he spoke, the more the lassitude of the past minutes, days, hours, weeks, dissipated. ‘I’m doing what I do for peace.’

  ‘Really Boris, that’s wonderful. But you’re a very rich man, surely you mean piece as in a piece of the action, a slice of the profits?’

  ‘Why so cynical? You must understand that the more we capitalize on our natural resources, the more independent we are, the stronger, the easier it will be to make peace. Meantime Syria is at war with itself and that’s a perfect business opportunity.’

  ‘Yes it is Boris, for arms dealers.’

  ‘Mr Computervoice, you really are a cynic.’

  ‘And manufacturers of poison gas.’

  ‘The sarin you mean? It was another profit opportunity.’

  ‘And what about accountability?’

  ‘You’re boring me. Do you mean to the people?’ he asked heatedly. ‘They’re more worried about the price of cottage cheese.’

  ‘Oh I’m so sorry Boris, I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘OK. War makes people do mad things. They loose control, and control is what makes everything work. You imply I’m an opportunist. I am, for peace, and peace needs trade. That’s what trade creates, by fulfilling needs, and by creating new ones. War means business in a way you can never imagine and it’s so good for me. It’s more beneficial than years of pointless peace talks. There’s no incentive in them. But profit is a perfect incentive for talks about business opportunities, and as Oscar Wilde wrote, nothing succeeds like excess, the more such opportunities, the better. Everyone makes profit out of those. Peace talks cost money to get the participants to the table. The US is always ready to offer big bribes for that, or used to. I’m not sure since the 2008 crash America is willing to spend on those kind of talks. We don’t need bribes thank you very much. One state, two states, who needs either? I don’t. Peace is something that’ll never happen, there’ll never be true peace. But trade can create near normalization. And that’s what I do, I’m basically a trader in normality and what creates it, people want to buy, they always will, it makes them feel good...’

  His voice was strong and confident. He stamped the floor as he shouted, ‘Always!’ His pause was accompanied by his brow and his upper lip suddenly beading with sweat. ‘I need the tools of my trade. Where’s my iPhone, give me back my iPad, let me go…’

  The light went out. It was pitch black for a long time.

  *

  ‘Hello Boris, are you calmer today?’

  The holes had returned. The patterns didn’t unnerve him as much as the first time they appeared.

  Hareven said, ‘Hello Boris are you calmer today?’

  The voice ignored his mimicking.

  ‘I hope you’re calmer than last time Boris.’

  ‘I hope you’re calmer than last time Boris.’

  ‘Shall we play a game?

  ‘Shall we play a game?’

  ‘See if you can count these as they exit.’

  ‘Se
e if you…’

  He stopped mimicking and moments later he started to wail, low in his throat as the holes reappeared, but now ants were crawling out of them, across the ceiling, down the walls, along the floor all converging on him, over his legs and hands and arms and chest, on his chin and mouth and into his nostrils.

  His wailing was terrible and went on and on.

  The ants kept coming.

  Hareven passed out.

  The light went out.

  *

  ‘Boris. Boris. Boris.’

  The holes were back moving erratically as Hareven opened his eyes.

  ‘Why did you murder your parents?’

  Gone was the soft can-I-help-you tone.

  ‘I…’

  ‘Why did you murder your parents?’

  ‘They…’

  ‘Why Boris?’

  ‘It wasn’t…’

  ‘Why Boris?’

  ‘They wouldn’t let me go.’

  ‘Where Boris?’

  ‘Away.’

  ‘Where Boris?’

  ‘Anywhere but there. It was a nothing place Valga. There was no future for me there. They refused to let me go or give me money to travel.’