A Dark Perfection

by James, Mark

  She looked around at the surrounding forests, hearing the owls. “Beggars…no doubts, that would be us.”

  The driver took a key from a ring of keys and turned it in the keyhole, pushing at the door as it creaked back. Turning, he offered a weak smile, “Really, not as bad as she looks.”

  Bags in hand, they stopped in midstep and looked at each other. Jack shook his head, smiling, “And now for our second feature, The Ghost and Ms. Keno.”

  She laughed.

  They stepped through the enormous wooden doors and into an equally cavernous hall, abandoned and darkly shadowed.

  The driver slid a stone away on the interior wall, pushed a button and the entire space became flooded with modern lighting from hidden places. The light showed the hall to be clean, at odds with the exterior.

  “Well, it seems someone has been staying here after all,” Jack observed. “Sure looks like a safe house to me.”

  “True enough,” the driver said. “Even the royals have such needs. And even when they’re seldom required. It’s quite well camouflaged.”

  For the first time, Jack noted the driver’s pronounced British accent, a Londoner, east end.

  The driver gestured, “Over there, against the wall, a refrigerator – not much left inside, a couple of oranges, some grapes, a tad old perhaps. And some cheese – good cheese, actually. And then the crackers atop the ‘fridge. Bottled water and canned goods are stacked in the basement. Sorry, only electricity throughout, as the gas was turned off last week and we thought it might be too much of a tell to turn it back on – GMA ears all around these days. But you’ll note the fireplace. Kindling in the far corner, dry wood in the barn. The loo is tip-top – around the corner. One shower within, all modern with the heater hooked up to the electrical. A bit tricky on the temperature, I’ll warn you. No beds – taken out last week, as we weren’t expecting visitors for a while, just about to clean up the food myself. Unfortunately, you’ll have to make do with the bags. All in all, enough to get you through.”

  “Through to what…” Lani whispered to herself.

  The driver – who’d been in many dangerous places – nodded, “To wherever it is you are going, Ms. Keno.”

  He turned and walked to the still opened doors, “Good luck to you both,” pulling the doors shut with a hollow thud that echoed through the hall.

  Lani dropped her bags and glanced over.

  “It could be worse, right? ” Jack said.

  He reached into his bag and pulled out a bottle. “Ah, look what we have here – in vino veritas. ”

  She smiled.

  The bottle was just his next prop to keep her spirits up. Perhaps, he smiled to himself, his too.

  “I’ve been saving this little Bordeaux for ten years. Something told me to throw it in the bag. Celebrate in good times, celebrate through bad, right?”

  “And this would be?” she asked coyly.

  “A bit of both, I suppose. It’s always a bit of both…”

  “Or,” he continued, “we can tuck it away and make a pact that we crack it open when we get through everything.”

  She looked at the wine, knowing that it could make time slow for a moment, take the edge off. On the other hand, they might need that edge.

  “Very, very tempting…On the other hand, maybe we should keep our wits about us.”

  He nodded, “Smart girl.”

  Looking up, she smiled, “I like the pact idea, though.”

  He replaced the bottle and walked towards the front door in search of the sleeping bags. “Even with the bags, it might still get a bit rough on this floor. Hopefully, though, not too bad.”

  For Jack, sleeping on a forest floor was fine.

  He came back with the sleeping bags. She looked down at the floor, hard and knotted.

  “I’ll look around and see if there’s anything we can find for more padding. First, though, let’s unpack some of this. And, to be honest, I wanted to take a closer look at that laptop, the one that Mac hijacked off of Josh.”

  He threw the sleeping bags toward one side of the fireplace and walked back to the rear arched entry. The fireplace matched the massive interior with an opening ten feet across and gaping. The surrounding stones were smoothed.

  She walked up to the opening. To her, it seemed as if out of a medieval world, now caught here, having been preserved by the wealthiest through time. “It has character,” she said, looking down into the blackened embers. “It’s beautiful, actually. How old did Mac say this place was?”

  “He didn’t – not Mac’s thing. Maybe sixteenth century, maybe a bit earlier. The side buildings are more recent.”

  “Do we have a closet historian amongst us?”

  “Not here. You remember my grandmother? Well, one of those summers she carted me all over Europe. We didn’t miss a single castle or museum. I was one of her little projects. Everyone was, I guess.”

  “She was a nice lady,” Lani said, remembering back. “I met her once at a charity fundraiser on the big island. She was a brilliant sculptor.”

  “That she was. And a wonderful person too. Those were great summers.”

  “Did you ever get to work with her?”

  He laughed, “I remember one summer – I was about sixteen – I’d hid a six-pack in her pool, my grand plan being to stash it and to keep it cold until the weekend. She caught me, of course, and put me to work as penance, carving and polishing the floors in her living room. My God, I think I was down on all fours for five weeks! She had a topographic template of what she wanted and she would come into the room every hour or so – no, a little more carving there, no, a bit more sanding over here. At sixteen, the only thing I could think of were the guys down at Hanalei Bay – I could see them surfing out of the back window. It looked pretty sharp when it was done, though.”

  “That’s the so-called, ocean floor, the one that looks like water, right? I saw it in a book once.”

  “That’s it. She did all of the finishing, so I can’t take credit for the art, but, I’ll tell you, whenever I’m back in Kauai and walk across that floor...”

  “So then, the big question: did you learn your lesson?”

  “Hard to say. I certainly learned not to mess around with grandma’s pool!”

  “And?”

  He thought back, “Sure, I learned. I’m proud of that old floor. When people open the art books they see a floor, they see a thing. But when I look down, I see all of those days together. Maybe when you live around beautiful things, it rubs off. You start to see more grace – in art, in people, maybe even in the world. She gave me some of that.”

  “You have the house, you said.”

  “A few years now. I bought it from my parents. After grandma passed, they lived there for a couple of years, but island fever set in and they started missing their mainland friends. And I think that’s where they wanted to end up. My owning it allows them to go out for vacations whenever they want. Me too. It’s worked out pretty well.”

  Lani folded her arms, feeling a chill.

  “Here, let’s get that fire going.” He retrieved the kindling and split wood and arranged it in the fireplace.

  “I’ll get the blankets,” she said. “Where did the driver say? Maybe we could make something to eat too. I’m starving.”

  “The blankets are in the big duffel, the blue one. I’ll check the ‘fridge.”

  He came back with cheese, crackers and some grapes. “Actually, the grapes are still in good shape. I found in the basement this tin of baked beans too. It seems there are two cases of it down there. Admittedly, a strange combo.”

  “Right about now, anything sounds good.”

  “There’s plenty of water,” Jack said, “but only a week’s worth of food. That makes me wonder how long Mac thought we’d be here. He said not to worry – he’d get supplies to us at some point. Remind me to ask him later.”

  She spread the cheese and he threw more wood on the fire, stoking it, the flames growing into the hearth
and throwing panes of light off the walls and ceiling.

  “I guess I was hungrier than I thought,” he said. “How is it?”

  “Delicious,” she said, popping a grape in her mouth. “Funny how mortal danger makes this the best grape ever. Here’s some cheese.”

  They finished and leaned back.

  “I’m absolutely stuffed,” she laughed.

  He gathered the hay he’d retrieved earlier from one of the barns and placed a blanket over the pile, creating a makeshift backrest they could lean against. She looked into the flames and slowly became pulled into the strangeness of it all: of being in this romantic manor before a roaring fire, a brave man next to her – many a young woman’s dream. And it might have been a dream for her too, if she’d been anyplace else in her life.

  A flame tried to escape the hearth as embers crackled throughout the room.

  The silence stretched out as they both laid back into their exhaustion. She closed her eyes and began drifting back to the green Kauai mountains and the endless blue seas.

  As a child, she would lay back on her surfboard looking up at the clouds, the waves lapping against her sides, lost in a languid world.

  He looked over, “What are you thinking?”

  She smiled softly, “The waves, all of the waves…”

  †

  Lucien brought his fist down hard, cracks spreading through the glass like a winter branch.

  “I don’t care about your minor fears, Agent Riley. Simply do what I say, when I say it. I want those phone taps, tonight.”

  What Agent Riley understood was that there existed a dark place where agents disappeared to, as if swallowed, a rumored place.

  When Riley initially said the words – Sir, the vice-president and his men, I’m not sure they’re the types to mess around with – he knew the wrath that might come, he’d been warned. But what the director was now asking for was impossible: extending the Surveillance-Net technologies into the vice-president’s office. There’d been rumors that the director was becoming increasingly focused, like a predator locked on prey. His fervency, his intensity, it was beginning to concern the agents in the ranks. Riley opened his mouth, preparing to prostrate himself once more as the line went dead.

  Jessup rested on the couch opposite from Lucien, waiting. The director’s outbursts could charge a room like lightning. Jessup knew it was only his imagination, his own projected fears that made it seem so, and yet, sometimes, he could swear that the sensation was nearly physical.

  Lucien leaned back, considering. He knew that Palmer and his lackeys had been making inquiries about his GMA Agents on the Hill, asking the Select Committee if they could be utilized in “emergency circumstances.” Yes, he and the vice-president were circling each other, each coveting pieces of the other, searching for slivers of further power.

  Jessup ventured carefully into the silence, “I don’t understand why Palmer wants at our operatives. I mean, he has his own. Everyone knows Palmer runs his own wet-work operations out of the VPs office. Everyone except Walker and Osborne, that is.”

  Forgetting where he was, Jessup laughed almost too loud, “Man, those two are dense…”

  Lucien’s hand came down hard again, a shattering sound.

  Jessup sat upright, shocked stiff. He could feel a crackle through the air.

  “Never underestimate one’s adversary,” Lucien said, his voice matching the tension in the room. He whispered, “Therein lies the path towards ruin…”

  By the end of the sentence Lucien had already begun to float away, when another thought came to him. It was the one he’d been waiting for. The insights, they were coming faster and faster, as if he were caught in a slipstream, a quickening.

  “Where is the vice-president located at this moment? Have the surveillance protocols been activated?”

  They’d placed a tracking tag on one of the vice-president’s aides. Gaining stealth control of a satellite capable of tracking the tag had been more difficult. Eventually, they’d requisitioned a weather satellite for, allegedly, a drone strike over Somalia. Now rising across Siberia, the satellite was nowhere near Africa.

  Jessup punched the last numbers into his hand-held computer pad, trying to access the satellite. He’d been trying all morning.

  The encryption program began unscrambling the letters.

  “Yes, here it is…a-l-a…”

  Lucien turned, visualizing the answer.

  Jessup could see it coming. He’d been so concerned about the meeting, about how he’d explain the satellite not working.

  As the last letters rose, Jessup turned his computer pad towards the director.

  Lucien leaned forwards.

  a------l------a-------s------k------a.

  He knew its meaning.

  †

  Dr. Norbert stood at the expansive viewing window overlooking the frozen lake, only snow-swept ice and pines as far as one could see. When he needed a quiet place to think he would always come here, before the other scientists awoke. He’d been troubled recently, both during the days and within his dreams, and the serenity and vastness of the land seemed to comfort him.

  His heartfelt joy over the reprieve of Project Charybdis hadn’t lasted long. It was a psychological phenomenon that, as yet, his scientific mind – not adept at reflecting upon itself – hadn’t been able to fully comprehend. Shouldn’t he be cocooned within the scientific equivalence of rapture? Hadn’t their victory been everything they’d hoped for, prayed for, for months on end? Now, dark questions were drowning out his joy, stalking it like the nights on the arctic days.

  The original protocols dictated that only the president possessed the power and authority to activate the HAARP device. They were practically written in stone. What had changed? Norbert had made his inquiries and had been rebuffed by Palmer’s office, curtly reminded of his position. But was the president really that busy?

  Norbert needed his world to be organized into straight lines. Now something felt incongruent, out of tune.

  What had changed?

  As a scientist, he knew that it wasn’t his place to question, but his analytical mind, always searching for resolution, kept bringing him back to these questions.

  He felt a tap to his shoulder.

  “Ah, there you are,” Dr. Pederenko smiled, standing above him. “At your window again? Ready for breakfast?”

  Pederenko, an ex-patriot Russian physicist, was his closest colleague at the lab and they shared breakfast almost every morning. Momentarily, Norbert looked back to the lake.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Pederenko said in his thick accent. “Like a moon of Jupiter is beautiful – yet still so dangerous. Beauty and danger, grace and darkness, whites and blacks, ones and zeros, that is our way in this world, is it not?”

  Pederenko was a poet as much as a scientist and his singsong words had always intrigued Norbert, even if he didn’t always understand them.

  Norbert rose, smiling, “You see more than me, dear friend. I’m afraid I’ll have to stay with the ones and zeros.”

  Pederenko put his hand on Norbert’s shoulder as they turned to walk down the hall. “You should give yourself more credit, Emil. Tell me, who was it that came up with the idea of the aperture extension last week? That was you.”

  Yet truly, did he ever see enough, past all of those straight lines?

  In his dreams, there was the star and the forest of HAARP satellite dishes, in their metal immune to the frozen vastness.

  What had changed?

  22

  Jack looked down from the third floor of Voil Manor, the silhouette of the forest looming left, mists from the loch stretching right. He’d climbed the wide stairs of the main foyer and began investigating room after room. Beneath the surface, the manor had been allowed to stay much of itself – the windows wavy and opaque, the walls rough-hewn and chalky. Looking out below, he saw the remnants of times past – a croquet lawn grown over in a rectangle of weeds, a statue pushed into the ground half-buri
ed, a sundial rusted and pointing nowhere.

  He moved into another room – a den or reading room. He tried to move quietly, the old stone and wood betraying him, echoing back his presence. Across one wall, a shard of tapestry hung from an iron rod.

  He heard a sound – like a cup dropped in a basement.

  He turned, listening closer. Sounds echoed in this place, hiding their origins.

  A creaking sound wafted up the stairway. He followed it, taking the stairs down two at a time. At the bottom, he crouched, then spun towards a draft coming from his left, instinctively reaching for his waist.

  Fifty feet away, the large wooden doors of the front entrance slowly began to creak. Jack looked to the far side of the room where Lani was inching along the wall and taking up a position behind a column. She looked over and nodded.

  In the dark opening of the doors stood a tall silhouette, erect like a Giacometti statue. At the top of the figure was the shape of a bowler hat. A thin arm slowly reached up, removed the hat and the shadow stepped into the room.

  The face, craggy and hallowed, spoke in a formal English accent, nearly old world, and leaned towards the column, “Is that you, detective? No need for that.”

  Jack relaxed, “Mr. Guilford?”

  “Exactly, sir.”

  Lani came out from behind the column.

  “Sorry,” Jack said, “old instincts. We’re a bit skittish these days.”

  Mr. Guilford began walking across the room without saying anything further, as if the last conversation had never occurred. He was a creature of precision, unconcerned with anything that distracted from his thoughts. To him, such behavior was futile, beneath his station. Jack observed the upright gait and stiffness of the man as he walked. How a person holds themselves – how they relate, or resist the relation, to the world around them – tells you who they are, their motives, their potential actions. All of these things were now important to Jack.

  Guilford approached the middle of the room and opened his briefcase. Inside, there rested gleaming instruments: surgical knives, a dental-like prong, another like a spatula, each tucked into its own leather sleeve. At the bottom were pouches: some containing clear substances, some beige, others a soft rose.