A Dark Perfection

by James, Mark

  He came to the third and laughed.

  †

  Myths do not exist in a vacuum. They are organic, existing through time like living things, each flowing into the next, the DNA of the former deep within the latter.

  The story of Noah and the Great Flood is sourced from the Babylonian deluge myth of Gilgamesh, created hundreds of years before. In turn, the flood story of Gilgamesh was itself derived from the Mesopotamian Epic of Atrahasis.

  In the Mesopotamian myth, the god Enki warns Atrahasis to build a large boat to escape another god’s plan to destroy mankind. Atrahasis is instructed to board the boat with his family and animals and seal the doors. After seven days of floods, Atrahasis and his family and the animals leave the boat and mankind is saved. The myth begins with the words, He who saw the deep.

  In the Christian Bible, the Anti-Christ is told as the Anti-Messiah, a man who makest thyself God.

  Unlike other myths, however, the Anti-Christ is found in no other religion, before or after.

  Some myths are stories to allay a civilization’s fears. Some myths are prophecy. And some are portents, a message from the past to the present.

  11

  They walked from Dr. Takamura’s lab and headed toward the exit. Scientists, technicians and trainees were leaving their classes for lunch and the hallways were filling up.

  “There’s a great Thai place around the corner. How’s that sound?” Mac asked.

  Jack nodded, “Sure, a hot curry sounds good.”

  A woman walked towards them and something about her caught Jack’s eye. She was searching her note pad, reading to a man walking next to her. She was petite with a white silk blouse and jet-black hair matching her knee length skirt. She had a gliding balance, as if she might’ve once been a dancer. There was something about her.

  Passing, he caught the corner of her eye – jade, turquoise towards the center, ringed in black.

  Only one person had those eyes.

  He turned. “Lani?”

  She stopped, as if she wasn’t quite sure she’d heard her name.

  She broke into a smile. “Jack? Jack O’Neill, is that you?”

  She said something to the man next to her and he went on.

  They walked towards each other. “What are you doing here?”

  “Same question here,” he smiled.

  They gave each other a friendly hug. They didn’t know each other well, but knew everything about each other.

  Detective Keialani Keno had been Maura’s best friend since their childhood on the islands. Jack had met Keno as a teenager during the summers he would spend on Kauai, but he’d not met Maura by that time and had never gotten to know Lani well, only in passing at the beach. He remembered that there had always been a flock of boys, and later, men, following after her.

  Still later, when Maura joined him in the States during law school, Maura would travel back to Kauai every year to visit Lani and he would use the time to visit his old friends. He would then hear everything about Lani and her life each time Maura returned. The last time they’d seen each other was at Maura’s funeral, ten years ago.

  “I’m here teaching a class for a couple of months,” she said. “And you?”

  He hadn’t thought up of a cover story for the interrogations and he turned to Mac, “I’m sorry. Mac, this is an old friend, Keialani Keno. Ms. Keno is a detective with the Kauai Police Department.”

  Mac stepped forward. “Nice to meet you, detective.”

  Lani recognized Osborne from the political shows and the evening newscasts.

  “A pleasure, director. Please, it’s Lani.”

  “No director here, just Mac.”

  Mac recalled seeing Lani at the funeral, for only a moment. That weekend had been so surreal, a blur. Probably for her, too. He hadn’t had his face all over the television by then.

  “We’re heading out for lunch. You free?” Jack asked. “It would be great to catch up.”

  She was about to accept when her cell phone rang out. “Sorry, Jack, it’s my department. They’ve been calling all morning. Give me a moment.”

  She turned and put her hand to her ear, “Yes, Harry, we must have a bad connection. You’ll have to speak louder.”

  “I understand,” she said into the phone. “Really, can’t we have Ellen handle this one? Sure, I know…alright, hold on and I’ll get to a better connection.”

  She turned back. “I’m sorry, Jack. We have a double homicide on the island and one of the victims is military. My department is overly sensitive about such things. And, they rely on me. I have to take care of it.”

  She bit at her lower lip. “Where are you staying? I’m at the Willard. I’m sure I won’t have to leave right away. Dinner?”

  He was scheduled for an afternoon interview followed by a late evening session with the terrorist girl and considered it for a moment.

  “There’s something I have to do later – can’t get out of it. How about drinks, around six?”

  “There’s a place around the corner from me,” she said. “The Cerrado Bar, or Cerrano Bar, something like that.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “Mac, it was good to meet you,” she smiled. “Jack, six, right?”

  She walked down the hall and they turned towards the exit. They walked seven or eight steps without saying anything.

  “Those are some eyes,” Mac finally said. “Surfer girl, you said, right?”

  Jack laughed. “Be careful, your wife will hear you.”

  Mac was the most blissfully married man that Jack knew.

  “Hey, just making an observation. Thought you might have noticed.”

  Jack only smiled.

  †

  Mac leafed through the file.

  “Not that I care,” President Walker said, “but Bishop over at DOD says he’s starting to hear grumblings about O’Neill, a little heat coming up through the Pentagon brass. How many times has he met with her, five, six?”

  Mac laughed, “What a bunch of hens they’ve got down there. Here’s the bottom line, the overarching metaphor: When you drill for oil, it comes up when you hit it, all at once. If you rush, you break the drill bit off so far down that you have to start over. It’s the same with this girl. Remember, she’s smart. Granted, not as sophisticated as she’d like to put out, but she’s still bright. If we go too fast, she’ll smell it and roll up like a ball.”

  “Drugs?”

  “That time may come. What you have to keep in mind, though, is that if you go the drug route, you’ll be looking at scattered intelligence – some good, but most random. And, worse, we won’t know which is which. Hell, she probably won’t be able to tell the difference herself. We need solid intel and we need to know it’s good when we get it. The Yemen bombing sorties were successful and we’ve verified the Sheik’s body – I think we still have some time.”

  “Agreed, I just wanted to hear it out loud.”

  “So you know,” Mac continued, “I was over at the FBI satellite lab with Jack this morning. We’ve scheduled an interview for this afternoon and then another one for later tonight.”

  “Both of you?”

  “No, only Jack. He wants to conduct a normal interview in the afternoon and then rouse her from her cell around ten o’clock tonight with a false fire alarm. It’s all set up – billowing smoke, running technicians and guards, fire trucks, lights beaming in. When the alarms go off, Jack will be with her in the interrogation room – watch her reaction, see if she reaches out for help. He’ll take her by the hand, so to speak, and lead her to safety, building up a bond. No fire, of course.”

  “Tricky, tricky,” the president smiled. “So, do you still see her? How’s that going?”

  “I’m just a foil for Jack. I play the typical dumb cop and she gets to ignore me. It’s a subtle form of bad cop. You should see the look in her eyes – she thinks I’m denser each time we meet. It drives her nuts listening to me drone on about America, apple pie and purple mountains’ majesty
. See, I told you I was the bad guy sometimes. There’s simply not as much meat on the bones this time around. It’s a play.”

  “After we talked this morning – and sorry for jumping away, it was Hightower,” the president said, “I looked at the file. Aisha Hada, right?”

  “Correct, she was a college student here. We matched her prints to a student ID from the University of Wisconsin. These colleges keep such shoddy records that it took the NSA computers forever to make the match. Turns out they smudged her prints when they first issued her the card, and so on. Lucky we found it at all. We couldn’t release her photo to the papers – I mean, we’ve gone with the play that she doesn’t exist – so we’re damn lucky to have the partial print fall our way.”

  “Any connections? Friends, contacts?”

  “Not so far. My guess is that she was already being handled. Her freshman and sophomore dorm roommates don’t even remember her name, one saying she was a ghost. After that, she lived alone in apartments. She was here on a student VISA and disappeared after that – no border crossings, nada. We have agents fanning out, but my gut tells me that the trail, if there ever was one, is dead cold. We’ll need to get the info from her.”

  “By the way,” Mac smiled, “Jack is going to drop her name on her right before the fire drill goes off. Should be interesting.”

  †

  Jack peeled the orange and discarded the rinds on the table, filling the air with citrus.

  He motioned down to the paper bag on the floor. “Want one?”

  Aisha looked him over, wondering where the trap was. “Isn’t that against the rules?”

  “What, they only feed you slop here?”

  “Don’t you know?” she countered.

  “Actually, no.”

  Her eyes laughed, “Well, I don’t believe you.”

  “I wouldn’t either if I were you.”

  “You tell me that I shouldn’t follow my people, but here you are, following them.”

  He didn’t answer and reached down into the bag and rolled an orange across the table. It stopped just before her hand. She couldn’t help but glance down.

  “Go ahead. It doesn’t mean you have to say anything. As I said, sometimes it’s just a cup of coffee, just an orange.”

  She refused to pick up the fruit.

  “Isn’t it your religion, your myth, that says the Devil came to Eden with forbidden fruit, for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die?”

  He noted her familiarity with the Bible. Genesis 2:17.

  He sighed and popped a slice into his mouth. “Too deep for me, dear.”

  She looked at him again. Where were his weaknesses?

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” she said. “Maybe you thought I would miss it, that omission? Tell me: my eating the orange, is it against the rules?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Don’t really care.”

  She squinted. Who are you?

  “Alright,” he finally said. “I’ll tell you the story, my story, if you eat the orange. Deal?”

  She eyed him like a poker player in front of the last pot.

  “Deal.”

  Their first deal…

  He chuckled, “I really don’t know any of these guys. Except Mac, that is.”

  “How do you know Mr. Osborne?”

  She felt that she was obtaining information, wending her way.

  “We’re old friends. We played sports together in high school and then met up later. I live in Chicago and he’s here in D.C., but we stay in touch.”

  He omitted their time together at the FBI. He wanted to see if she would find it.

  “But why you?” she probed.

  He decided to give it to her, like bread on the water.

  “We worked at the FBI together, a long time ago, interviewing people, catching bad guys, that sort of thing.”

  “What do you do now?”

  “I’m a prosecutor, gang stuff.”

  “And so, he brought you here to interrogate me…” she said, nearly to herself, as if finally seeing a deeper truth.

  “Well, I don’t know who brought me here, but, yes, he asked.”

  “And so here you are.”

  “Here I am.”

  He looked over his reading glasses and down at the orange. He didn’t need the glasses, but had decided to use them. More fatherly. Before trials, he would sometimes scuff up his shoes.

  She glanced down but didn’t move.

  “And so, you’re not one of them,” she thought out loud. “Why not?”

  He leaned back, relaxed. “Not my thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Too complicated. I like things simpler.”

  She paused, even quieter, “Why?”

  He gave it some thought. It had been a long time since someone had asked.

  “So I can…see better.”

  She didn’t ask, See what? She reached for the orange and pulled it to herself. She didn’t peel it.

  He knew she wouldn’t be able to tell her story until she felt a semblance of control, as if a safety net had been placed beneath her.

  He had let her be the interrogator.

  †

  The stairs fell down from the street, an entry into a past world.

  The Bar Cerrano was concealed, yet famous. Every effort had been made to recreate a 1920’s luxury speak-easy; low lights, sequined dresses, easy jazz added in. On busy nights, rare cigar smoke wafted up to the streets. Jack hit the brass doors and entered the bar.

  At this hour, it was nearly empty – a blonde woman reaching for a martini, a bow-tied bartender holding up wine glasses and spying for streaks, a corner piano being softly tuned.

  As he’d entered, a sign out front had announced a trio of piano, upright bass and sax for later that night. From the corner, the piano tuner forgot himself, cascading into a mellow riff, a la Bill Evans.

  Jack scanned the room. She was sitting in a stool-chair at the far end of the bar. With her black hair and black dress, she was only a silhouette.

  He walked past the empty tables, their white linen and glasses waiting for the night-owl patrons.

  Lani moved her head slightly, aware of the only person walking through the space. It was a sense that came to police officers over time.

  She spun slowly on the stool, turning halfway, the light from a wall sconce catching her face. She looked over her shoulder at him, her hand extended back on the stem of the glass.

  “Hey Jack. You found the place.”

  He noted that her martini glass was only a third full.

  “Not late, am I?”

  “No, I was out shopping. Came over a bit early.” She smiled, glancing back at her glass, “Actually, I might be a bit tipsy. I haven’t had a martini in years. Nice place.”

  He sat down and looked over the bar. “I could get used to it. And then, of course, there’s the jazz.”

  “I take it you’re still into your music, the 50’s stuff, blues and jazz? Didn’t you used to collect those old records?”

  “Still do. I’ve spent many a Sunday afternoon at a dusty record store, hunting through the LP bins. Flea markets, too.”

  She laughed, “Never thought of you as a flea market kinda’ guy.”

  “Well, it’s the nostalgia thing, the history. Mac ribs me sometimes, says that if I woke up tomorrow in the 1940’s I wouldn’t miss a beat. Not sure about that, though.”

  Her name – Keialani – it sounded like music.

  “Tell me again, your name. I remember, something about the sky, or the rain.”

  She giggled, but not in a girl’s voice. She possessed a face that was nearly serious, sultry, but when she laughed the smile became all of her, all at once. Some women’s smiles went into their eyes.

  The bartender approached, “Sir, anything this afternoon?”

  “Vodka martini up, olives.”

  “Bleu cheese?”

  “Regular is fine.”

  He turned back.

&
nbsp; “My mother gave it to me,” she said. “In Hawaiian, Kanoelani, means, the heavenly mist. Evidently, mom took some liberties with the spelling. She once told me that Keialani came off her tongue easier. She was a crazy romantic.”

  He smiled at her story. “It’s nice. Now, what’s this class you’re teaching?”

  “It’s a survey course. A few years back we had a case that led me into researching the cultural influences of psychopaths. You know, how a certain cultural orientation dictates a serial killer’s patterns of behavior, that sort of thing.”

  She smiled, “I guess being a cultural mongrel gave me a leg up.”

  Lani’s mother was native Hawai’ian and her father was Caucasian, a life that could sometimes prove difficult on the islands.

  “How are your folks?” Jack asked, remembering that her parents had both been teachers.

  “Well, mom passed away, a few years ago now. Still seems like yesterday.”

  She paused. “You know, mom was such a free spirit. We all assumed she’d go on forever. You never met her, but she was a real hoot. One minute she’d be laughing and the next she’d be down at city hall protesting something or other, some kind of cause. I don’t think dad ever thought about it – you know, that he might be the one alone someday. He stays busy, but I can see him missing her. Her spirit, I guess. I watched him in the garden the other day. It all seemed so quiet.”

  They shared the silence.

  Finally, she looked over and saw him staring into his glass. She knew the past he’d gone into. It was what they shared most deeply.

  “I miss her too. So much.”

  “Maura…” she finally said, wanting to hear the name out loud, even missing the sound of it.

  “It’s alright,” Jack said, “I know.”

  There was another silence before he began. “You know, Lani, I was reading a magazine a few years back, about a newly discovered Da Vinci painting, found under another canvas in some old museum. It was so interesting that I started searching around. First, I found out that Da Vinci was a vegetarian, never knew. Then I found this: that on his deathbed, his last words were, “While I thought I was learning how to live, I was actually learning how to die.”