Zig Zag

by Jose Carlos Somoza

  "I know what they called it," Carter said, interrupting in clumsy yet comprehensible Spanish (Elisa had no idea he even spoke it). He leaned against the wall, arms crossed as though waiting for someone to challenge him to a brawl. "They called it, 'If anyone knows what the fuck this is, speak up.'"

  "That's what 'idiopathic' means," Jacqueline said.

  "But what does that point to?" Victor wondered aloud.

  Blanes took over.

  "First, that the time in which the crimes were supposed to have been committed bears no relation to how long the victims were dead. Craig and Nadja were killed in less than an hour, but according to the tests, their bodies had already been dead for months. I repeat, their bodies. Neither their clothing nor any of the objects around them had decomposed at all, and that includes the bacteria on their skin—which explains the absence of putrefaction that Jacqueline mentioned."

  No one spoke. All heads turned toward Victor, who raised his eyebrows.

  "That's impossible," he said.

  "Correct. But there's more," Blanes replied. "Another thing that every case had in common was a power cut. Not only the lights, but all of the energy sources stopped functioning. Battery-operated lamps, motors ... That's why the secondary generator at the station on New Nelson, for example, never kicked in. And the same thing happened to the helicopter that plunged to the ground midflight and produced the explosion. Its motor suddenly stopped working right when the garrison floodlights went out. That was when Mendez died. And something similar happened in the pantry, with Ross's death, and at Craig's and Nadja's houses. Sometimes the power cuts are more extensive, covering a larger area, but the epicenter is always the scene of the crime."

  "It could just be surges." Victor Lopera was a physicist, and his brain had gone into overdrive. He knew nothing about cadavers, nor did he want to, but with electric circuits he was in his element. "Sometimes power surges suck all the energy out of a system."

  "And the batteries from a flashlight not connected to the electricity in any way?"

  "I admit that that's pretty odd."

  "Indeed it is," Blanes agreed. "But somehow it serves as a point of departure for us. Zig Zag and the power cuts are related one way or another. It's as if he needs those cuts in order to act."

  "The dark," Jacqueline said. "He always comes in the dark."

  That seemed to spook everyone. Elisa noticed them all glance at the dim glow that the reading lamp cast over the table. She decided to interrupt the deep silence.

  "OK, so Zig Zag produces power cuts, but that doesn't explain what could have been doing this to us..." She fidgeted, anxiously smoothing out her hair. "Tormenting us, murdering us. I mean, this has been going on for years now."

  "Well, as I said, Reinhard is going to give us his final analysis. But I can tell you one thing: Zig Zag is not some supernatural being, he's no devil. Physics created him. We're talking about something demonstrable, something concrete that Ric Valente created on New Nelson." Amid the stupor that this news was met with, Blanes added something even more outlandish. "Valente might even be Zig Zag."

  "What?" Victor noticeably paled and glanced at them all in turn. "But Ric ... Ric is dead..."

  Carter stood before them, his arms crossed.

  "That was another one of Eagle's lies, the easiest one. Valente was never found guilty, and there was never any proof of his death, but they decided to blame the murders that took place on the island on him so no one would ask any questions. His parents buried an empty coffin."

  Elisa stared at Carter, aghast.

  "As far as we're aware, Valente is still around, though his whereabouts are unknown."

  HE heard a humming noise, felt his stomach tingling, and experienced the slight dizziness of descent. His ears needed to pop. The cabin lights, dimmed for landing, gave off a soft golden glow. Any frequent flier would realize they were preparing to land.

  Suddenly, the speakers crackled.

  "Ten minutes to landing."

  The man across from him stopped talking to his partner and gazed out the window. Silberg did the same. He saw a dark expanse, the lower part of it dotted with lights. He'd been to Madrid several times, and he loved that uniquely small "big city." He pulled back his sleeve to check his watch: it was 2:30 in the morning on Thursday, March 12. He thought of all the things that would happen after those ten minutes had passed. The plane would land, the Eagle men would escort him to the house, and from there he'd be transported with the rest of them to the Aegean base ... or who knew what remote part of the world. They'd have to work out an escape plan with Carter. Only if they managed to break free from Eagle's talons could they come up with a way to confront the real threat.

  But what could they do? Silberg had no idea. He wiped the sweat off his face with his jacket sleeve as he felt the landing gear engage below him.

  One of the men leaned over toward him.

  "Professor, do you know what the..."

  That was the last he heard.

  The lights went out midquestion.

  "Hello?" Silberg called. He heard only his own voice.

  No reply.

  Nor could he hear the Northwind's engines. And his vertigo was gone.

  For a second, he thought maybe he was dead. Or perhaps he'd had a brain hemorrhage and still had a sliver of consciousness left that would slowly fade out in the dark. But he'd just spoken, and he'd heard his own voice. Besides, he now realized, he could feel the armrests, and his seat belt was still on, and he could barely begin to make out the shape of the cabin in the dark. But everything around him was quiet and still. How was that possible?

  The Eagle men must have been just a few feet away. He remembered both of them. The guy on the right was taller and pudgier, with sideburns down to the middle of his cheeks; the one on the left was blond and burly, with blue eyes and a marked harelip. At that moment, Silberg would have given anything to see them again, or at least hear them. But the blackness before him was too dense.

  Or was it?

  He looked around. A few meters to his right, on what must have been the cabin wall, there was a faint glow. He hadn't noticed it until just then. He inspected it carefully. Wondered what it could be. A hole in the fuselage? A diffuse, peaceful light. The spirit of the Lord, floating over the water. Nothingness. Philosophers and theologians had tried for centuries to come to terms with what his eyes were taking in at just that second.

  As a child, Silberg's passion for Bible study had often led him to wonder what it would be like to witness a miracle: the parting of the waters, the sun freezing, the walls crumbling as trumpets rang out, the body coming back to life, the placid lake in the midst of life's storm. What did those who lived through those things feel?

  Now you know. But this isn't one of God's miracles.

  In a flash, he realized what that circle of light, and the stillness around him, meant.

  Zig Zag. The angel with the flaming sword.

  He'd known all along, of course, and simply refused to accept it. It was too horrific.

  So this is it. Even on an airplane.

  He brought his left hand to his hip and groped for his seat belt, but he couldn't get it unfastened. The flap and buckle seemed to be all one piece. With increasing desperation, he yanked it forward, the belt cutting right into his flesh (he seemed to be wearing no clothes), hurting him, making him wince and whimper in pain, but the thing wouldn't budge.

  He couldn't move. But there was something far worse than that.

  Worse than that was the feeling that he wasn't alone.

  It was an absolutely chilling sensation on that still, eternal night. More than a feeling, it was the certainty that someone or something was at the back of the cabin, behind him, by the restrooms and the last row of seats. He looked over his shoulder, but between the darkness, the back of his seat, and not being able to turn his head, he couldn't see a thing.

  Still, he was certain that the presence was real. And it was approaching.

  It came
down the aisle.

  Zig Zag. The angel with the...

  In an instant, he lost the cool he'd maintained up till then. He was overcome by utter panic. Nothing—not the thought of Bertha, not his Bible study, his education, or his courage— helped him get through that moment of sheer terror. He trembled. He whimpered. He burst into tears. He struggled insanely with his seat-belt buckle. He thought he would lose his mind, but he didn't. He had a sudden realization: insanity cannot conquer the brain as quickly as anxiety. It was easier to cut off an extremity, extract entrails, or rip flesh from bone than it was to strip a healthy mind of its reason, he deduced. He intuited he was to remain mindful to the end.

  But he was wrong.

  A moment later, that became clear.

  It turned out that in fact there were things that could strip a healthy mind of all reason, in an instant.

  IT was a fragile night. A dim, black patchwork of tiny lights. The Northwind's pointed nose sliced through it like a blade of ice. The hydraulic shock absorbers took the weight of the aircraft as the brakes halted its propulsion with a deafening roar.

  Harrison didn't wait for the plane to stop. He left the airport official standing there and nodded to the van parked on Terminal Three's runway. His men jumped in, silent and efficient. The last one slammed the door shut and they cruised over to the plane. There were hardly any commercial flights at that time of night, so they had no fear of interruptions. Harrison had just received a report from the pilots: no incidents to report. The first part of his mission—bringing all the scientists together—was taken care of.

  He turned to his right-hand man, seated beside him.

  "No violence, no weapons. Understood? If he refuses to hand over his briefcase, we'll let him hold onto it for now. We'll have time once we get back to the house. The main thing is to get him to trust us."

  The van stopped; the men piled out. Wind swept across the grass around the runway and ruffled Harrison's snowy white hair. The staircase was attached, but the plane's hatch hadn't opened. What were they waiting for?

  "The windows...," his man said.

  For a second Harrison didn't know what he meant. But as soon as he turned to look at the plane, it dawned on him.

  All of the windows aside from the cockpit, the five porthole windows on the luxurious Northwind, looked as though they'd been painted black. He couldn't recall that model having smoked glass. What were the passengers doing in the dark?

  Suddenly, the windows lit up as slowly and softly as streetlights on a lonely road at dusk. Light seemed to float from one to the next. Someone was carrying a flashlight around in there. But the weird thing was the color of the light.

  Red. A dirty, uneven red.

  Or it looked that way because of what was covering the inside of the windows.

  A tingling in his gut rooted Harrison to the spot. For a second, time stood still.

  "Get onto that plane," he said. But no one seemed to hear him. He took a deep breath and gathered his courage, like a general addressing his troops before an imminent defeat. "Get onto that goddamned plane!"

  It was as though everything was frozen still and only he could move. He stood there, screaming.

  27

  "SERGIO Marini planned everything. We were both fully aware of the risks, but he was..." Blanes paused for a moment, searching for the right word. "Well, maybe he was just more curious. I think I once told you, Elisa, that Eagle wanted us to experiment with the recent past, and I refused. Sergio never agreed with me about that, but when he realized he couldn't change my mind, he seemed to capitulate. I suppose I was vital to the project, so he had to fake it around me, but he spoke to Colin behind my back. He was an amazing young physicist; he'd designed SUSAN and he wanted to make a name for himself. Marini was probably saying, 'This is our chance, Colin.' They started talking about how to go about it without my finding out, and they had a brilliant idea. Why not use one of the students? They chose Ric Valente. He was the ideal candidate: a brilliant student, ambitious. Colin knew him from Oxford. At first, I'm sure they just asked him to do little things: learn how to run the accelerator and the computers, that sort of thing. Then they gave him more explicit instructions. He worked almost every night. Carter and his men knew that; they protected him."

  "Those noises I heard in the hall..." Elisa murmured. "And the shadow..."

  "That was Ric. In fact, he took things a step further, surprising even Marini and Craig. He had an affair with Rosalyn Reiter so that if he ever got caught lurking around the barracks at night, people would think it was because he was going to her room."

  Elisa's memory returned to that bedroom on New Nelson. She heard footsteps and saw the shadow slipping by the peephole in her door. And there was Ric, again, staring down at her with that haughty, condescending smile. What she had just learned fit right in with the Ric she knew: the ambition, the need to shine even brighter than Blanes. It was all Ric to a T, especially the way he'd used Rosalyn so callously. But what kind of thing had he made during those nocturnal trials? What explained those dreams and those visions? How had Ric been able to devastate their lives to such a degree?

  Jacqueline seemed to be reading her mind. Raising her head, she asked, "But what did Ric do to unleash all of this..."

  "All in good time, Jacqueline," Blanes replied. "We still don't know exactly what he did, but I'll tell you what Reinhard and I think happened the night of Saturday, October 1, 2005. The night Rosalyn died and Ric disappeared."

  They all sat around the table again, the reading lamp their island of light in the center. Everyone was exhausted and hungry (the only thing they'd had in the past several hours was water), but all Elisa wanted to do was hear what Blanes had to say. She knew her adrenaline was surging, and guessed everyone else's was, too, including Victor's. Meanwhile, Carter came and went, sending messages and receiving phone calls. He'd asked Victor for his ID, explaining that he'd need a fake passport if he wanted to accompany them. Now he spoke to someone in the hall. Elisa couldn't hear what they were saying.

  "As you recall," Blanes continued, "that night they forbade us to use electrical appliances due to the storm. No one could go to the control room or turn on any equipment or computers. Ric must have thought he'd never have a better opportunity to experiment on his own, since no one would bother him. He didn't even tell Marini or Craig. He just got up and stuffed a backpack and pillow under his covers to make it look like he was in bed. But something unexpected happened. Actually, two things. First—well, at least this is what we think—Rosalyn went to his room to speak to him. He'd tired of the pretending, and she was desperate. When she tried to wake him up, she realized what he'd done and searched the whole station for him. Maybe they met in the control room, or maybe she didn't get there until he'd already left. Regardless, that's when the second thing happened, the one we want to prove, which is that Ric did something unusual (or maybe Rosalyn did, but it's unlikely; she probably just suffered the consequences), or did something wrong. The rest of this is just conjecture. Zig Zag appeared and killed Rosalyn, and Ric disappeared." After a pause, he went on. "Marini and Craig later erased any sign that the accelerator had been used so we wouldn't suspect anything, or maybe the blackout did that by itself, I don't know. What I do know is that Marini kept a secret copy of Ric's experiments as well as his own. Not even Eagle knew about them. The specialists used drugs to interrogate us, but Carter confirmed that no drug can make you confess something you're trying to hide if the questions asked are not specific enough. They never found out about those files. Sergio hid them, probably because he began to suspect that what had happened was related to Ric's experiments, although maybe he wasn't really sure until Colin died. He was the first one of us to find out, which proves he was paying extra-close attention. And remember how nervous he was on the Eagle base, demanding protection?"

  "That bastard," Jacqueline said. Her chest and bare stomach heaved in fury. "That bas-tard..."

  "I'm not trying to excuse him," Blanes
murmured after a pregnant pause. "But I suspect that what Sergio went through was worse than what we've had to suffer, because he thought he knew how it all started."

  "Don't you dare feel sorry for him," Jacqueline's voice was hard, icy. "Don't even try it, David."

  The physicist turned to her, eyes narrowed.

  "If Zig Zag is the result of human error, Jacqueline, then we all deserve a little compassion. Regardless, Sergio kept those files on a USB flash disk that he hid at his house in Milan. Carter has been suspicious of him for three years. He sent several pros to search his apartment, but they never turned anything up. And he didn't dare go back again. That would have risked Eagle catching on. But yesterday, when he learned that Marini had been murdered, he took advantage of the situation by combing the place with a team of his own men. He found the flash disk in a false-bottomed box Marini had from one of his magic tricks, and sent the files to Reinhard. I had to come to Madrid to prepare for this meeting, since that was how we'd arranged it. Silberg is the only one who's seen the files, and he spent all night and day going through them. He's got the findings of his study with him now. That's why it's so important that we speak with him."

  "But Harrison knows," Elisa pointed out.

  "We had to tell him so that he wouldn't get suspicious. In fact, Carter told him himself, but he blamed Marini, saying he'd gotten scared and sent us the files on his own. Silberg knows Harrison is going to confiscate them, but Carter can get them back."

  "And then what?"

  "Then we'll run. Carter has an escape plan. First, we'll go to Zurich, and from there to wherever he says. We'll stay underground until we ... we find a way to solve the Zig Zag problem."

  Elisa pursed her lips. Yes, it is a problem. Look at us. Look at what we've done to ourselves, what Jacqueline and I have become: scared little rats shaking in our boots and dolling ourselves up so that the "problem" will let us live one more night. She couldn't help but think that Blanes, Silberg, and Carter might have been just as scared or more so, but there was no way they'd gone through half the shit that she and Jacqueline had to deal with every damn day.