A Dark Perfection

by James, Mark

  “I take it he wasn’t much of a conversationalist?”

  “Nope, rotted to the bones. To be honest, he kinda looked like King Tut – couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. No notes, no family goodbyes, only the body. Cyanide is the assumption, like the other. Takamura has the body. We’ll have a better idea later today.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Well, he did have something clenched in his hand – a charm bracelet. A moon and a star.”

  The president looked up, “A what?”

  “At the end of the gold chain was a charm shaped like a crescent moon with a star. He was Muslim; it’s their symbol. I looked it up, wrote the quote down here, ‘Legend holds the founder of the Ottoman Empire, Osman, had a dream where the crescent moon stretched from one end of the earth to the other.’ Or, something like that.”

  “I thought Islam was against using symbols – idolatry, golden calves, like that?”

  “Well, don’t tell that to the Pakistanis; they have the same symbol right in the middle of their flag. Actually, the Islamists are split on it – half say that symbols are acceptable, the other half cry, heresy. Tribes fighting tribes, same old story.”

  “So, our bus driver was a neo-Muslim, sort of?”

  “Modern, yes,” Mac said, “like the Yemeni cell and Sheik Amadhi. “

  “So, what’s going on with our friends? You know who.”

  “Out-of-pocket, on the run. I told Jack what you said. However, as we discussed at the outset, Jack exhibits a marked tendency to, well, do what he wants.”

  “Jesus, Mac, they’re downright crazy. They’ll never make it without our help. I respect the chutzpah, I really do, but sometimes it’s just best to stay put.”

  “Agreed, but Jack has locked onto this theory that the Croatian accounts have nothing to do with the GMA, that it’s all somehow related to the ambassador’s murder and that other one out in Hawaii.”

  Walker shook his head, incredulous. Then something came to him, as if over him. “Well, this may sound equally crazy, but maybe we should take a closer look. What’s the status of the ambassador’s investigation?”

  “The circumstances are odd. Takamura says it was obviously a planned hit, as we discussed, yet still no leads. We’ve ruled out everyone, China, Russia, even the French themselves. As you know, the ambassador was a horrendous cad. Plenty of enemies out there.”

  “By strange, you mean the marks and…” the president began, then quickly turned to a sound at the door.

  Tazewell entered, flustered. “Mr. President, there’s something you need to see. It’s a direct transmission.”

  A flat screen rose from a credenza sitting along the sidewall. The transmission was sketchy and the Chinese reporter obviously on edge, her face streaked from smoke. Behind her, people were running in all directions.

  A White House translator entered and stood by the credenza. Her words trailed a second behind the reporter’s.

  “We are here…outside of Beijing, fifty-six miles north of the city…the destruction is immense. This is a rare event, as earthquakes are almost unknown here. The buildings are in rubble and we’re being told the military will soon arrive…in force, coming in transport trains…first reports also cite a meteorological event in the skies to the west, a bright…”

  The reporter’s voice began to crackle. They leaned forward.

  “…but this could simply be mass hysteria, as the…”

  The transmission cut off.

  †

  At rush hour, Jack and Lani moved through the crowds at the outlying London train station, the suits and dresses of the commuters reduced to colorful pieces of fabric for them to hide behind. “It’s harder for the orbs with more faces,” Guilford had said.

  They used the cover of the crowds to enter the escalator, the people moving in streams like paper dragons at a parade. Standing quietly on the stairs – one of the deepest tube stations, so deep it was used in WWII as a bomb shelter – they could feel their vulnerability increase when immobile. “Keep moving, always keep moving,” Guilford urged.

  They passed through the exit doorways and the crowd unraveled as it hit the light, exposing them. They could see that the rain had finally stopped; could see it in the puddles and in the drops from the lampposts falling into them, from the traffic lights. Yes, the traffic lights, Jack thought, looking up. “There’s one,” he whispered.

  There it was: a small gunmetal grey orb tucked into a corner where the light met the pole, as if hiding there.

  They looked down and moved on. “Remember,” Guilford had said, “don’t hold their gaze. They’re constantly looking to see if you see them. It’s one of their search parameters.”

  Another block down, staying within the mass of people, they see another orb perched on another light. On the way, did they see others looking down from the crest of that building?

  Lights and people whip past as they walk faster, only colored pieces of light. They pass a bookstore, maybe a gallery, the River Thames a flash between the buildings.

  They finally find an unoccupied taxi and flag it down.

  “Just drive,” Jack says, handing the driver a fifty Euro note.

  The cab driver, worn from the years, stares down at the note and then back to them. They are wearing British-style clothes, but have brilliant white teeth – Americans. And, they are breathing harder than one would expect from run-of-the-mill tourists, the woman looking out the cab window and all around, as if she dropped something outside.

  “We’re in no hurry, no rush,” Lani says, smiling at the driver, remembering what Guilford had said about the cars, “Don’t let yourself stand out, either with your speed or cadence. Don’t initiate evasion tactics unless you absolutely have to…”

  “No problem,” the driver mumbles and moves off the curb, joining the traffic towards Waterloo Station.

  25

  Inspector Biaggi reached for another bombolone, hot and steaming from the ovens that had been running through the night. “Excuse me, senorina,” he said, smiling over the shoulder of another morning patron.

  He came every morning when the bakery opened – had been doing it for thirty years – as the bread was always good at sopping up the stomach acid he’d been awakening with for at least that long. “Go to the doctor! What, you want to kill yourself!” Ilario continuously chided. “Mind your own business, you old hen…”

  Biaggi liked his habits – crusty bread, good wine, good cheer – and he planned to ride them to the grave. If God did not want him to do so, then why would he have made him this way? It was the simplest of philosophies.

  “Be safe today!” the bakery owner called out. “As always!” he smiled back, passing through the doors and hitting the soft light.

  He looked at his watch: 7:34 a.m. Should he show up early, just to rankle her feathers? It was always tempting.

  He entered his police-issued micro-car – another gift from the ever-shrinking municipal budget – and drove down an ancient boulevard towards the city center. Because motor vehicles were still prohibited in downtown Florence – a godsend, he often repeated like a rosary – he squeezed the car into a spot at the outskirts, put his police ID on the dash and began walking towards the coroner’s office.

  Across the piazza, he entered a renovated, eighteenth century building. The hallways smelled like chemicals as he descended the stairs to the basement.

  He checked: 7:52.

  Perfect.

  He offered a perfunctory knock and swung the lab doors open.

  Dr. Paola Alberghetti, Lead Coroner for the past six months – straight from Rome, for some unknown reason – looked up from the body. She no longer said, “Come in,” when she knew Biaggi was coming.

  Ah, he thought, walking across the lab, you’re just no fun anymore…

  “Good morning, inspector. You still have crumbs on your shirt.”

  “Your powers of observation do you credit, doctor,” he said, smiling.

  She looked up from
the midnight homicide. Sometimes, his wit could surprise her and she wasn’t always sure if he was as smart as he sometimes seemed, or had simply memorized some lines. It was hard to see past the crumbs, she finally decided. Obviously, someone needed to…organize him. Or, at least give him a good kick under the table now and then. She was thankful it wouldn’t be her.

  He glanced under the table as he walked towards her. Nice legs, he would give her that. Too bad they were ruined by that hasty attachment to such a dour face – grey skirt, grey face! Someone needed to show this woman what life was all about, that it was more than dead air and all of these dead bodies, that there was light in the world, you simply had to look up now and then. He crossed himself, thankful that it would not be him.

  He leaned over the body as she finished up, closing the chest.

  “I heard about this,” he said. “The overly friendly soccer player, correct? Knife wounds.”

  “Garroted, actually. No other marks and they tell me no leads. In any event, my job is done.”

  She finished talking into the microphone suspended from the ceiling, memorializing the end time for the soccer player’s autopsy and her tentative conclusions.

  “This way, inspector,” she said, walking to the other end of the lab.

  She entered the combination on the locker and slid out the aluminum slab as frozen air billowed out. On the slab was Dr. Gregory Anderson, covered over in a lab sheet. She pulled the sheet back and Anderson stared up, his eyes a faded blood red.

  “Scary look there,” Biaggi noted, leaning over and examining the eyes and then the infinitesimally small, charred hole at the top of the skull. “And what do we call this?” opening the hole wider with a probe. “Do you mind?”

  “The autopsy is complete. It won’t matter at this point.”

  She moved to join him at the victim’s head. “You’ve seen the photos I’ve been told. What do you think?”

  “That, doctor, is what I’m here to ask you.”

  She turned her head and smiled, “So, you have no ideas?”

  “I didn’t say that. What I said is that you are the coroner and I am here to seek your expert opinion.”

  Of course he had no ideas, but that was hardly the point. It was these types of exchanges that had earned her the nicknames back at the station. She was from Rome and no one knew her. She had no history with any of the inspectors. It simply came down to a matter of respect. Not that she cared, which was quite evident.

  “Well,” she said, nonplussed, “neither of us is an expert on this.”

  “Go ahead,” she said, motioning to the microscope on the far table.

  As he moved around her he could smell the perfume. He’d never smelled it before, or even sensed anything about her de feminine, and had assumed that she was simply immune to a woman’s desires. It caught him – hibiscus, a hint of musk.

  In the microscope viewer was the same image that Ilario had shown him at the scene – a small, squarish piece of some type of material, thoroughly burnt.

  “This is the chip, or whatever it is, that was removed from the skull opening, correct?”

  “Embedded in the third epidermal layer above the cranium, yes. But there’s more.”

  He looked up, surprised to find her standing quite close.

  “I took the liberty,” she said, “of forwarding the burnt material to an old contact I have in Rome, an intelligence analyst at the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna. He couldn’t be sure, due to the degradation, but said, if forced to guess, it’s most likely a tracking tag. A homing device.”

  Biaggi looked up, “And so the question becomes, who is tracking whom? And, why? And which, I have a very strange feeling, may have very similar answers.”

  †

  “There’s an accident up ahead,” the London policeman said to the taxi driver. “You’ll go no farther, I’m afraid. Only two blocks.”

  The driver began turning to make his apologies as the policeman looked back, having already decided they were tourists. “Just a short stretch of the legs, ma’am,” the officer said to Lani, offering a wide smile. “Sorry for the delay, but it can’t be helped. You’ll still have time – the Chunnel train doesn’t leave until the top of the hour.”

  Lani quickly looked over to Jack. Before he could speak, she turned back to the policeman, “Thanks so much, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

  They grabbed their bags, thanked the driver and exited the cab, trying not to look up.

  “Well,” Jack said, “at least we don’t have to worry about the hurrying part. Lots of people are late for trains.”

  Waterloo station was located in the London theater district and they noted the loud signs as they passed, The Lion Queen, third month running! The Clouds of Connemara, matinee tickets still available!

  The orbs were everywhere – on the lights, hugging every security camera at the theaters’ entrances, on the buildings’ ledges.

  Or were they? Or, were they just seeing things, making each dark blur, each peripheral shape, into something watching?

  Jack suddenly stopped about thirty feet from the station doors.

  “What is it?” she asked, seeing the look on his face.

  He cocked his head and held perfectly still.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  “Don’t tell me…”

  Just as she said the words, they both saw it: a blur of grey, hovering up high, hiding against the shadow of a building eave as if it knew there was a shadow behind it. It began coming down, its trajectory towards them, faster, seeing their frozen eyes staring up.

  Inside the orb, chips and transmitters began whirring, telling a man with a headset two thousand miles away that a contact had been made – a Level 5 contact. The Surveillance-Net main computer began automatically redirecting its worldwide focus to the small London street, harnessing its full power, feeling that power for a first time with its millions of eyes.

  They ran for the station as the orb accelerated. A group of Japanese tourists were blocking the entrance, milling and talking. Like an amoeba, the group began to squeeze through the doors and they melded into them and were carried into the station’s main lobby. The Victorian wood doors closed and they turned to see a grey apparition through the wavy glass panes, hovering on the other side. Then, in a flash, it disappeared.

  They looked up. At the eaves of the station, they saw nothing. Turning, they saw no orbs near the station lights, nor any over the signs.

  “Where are they?”

  “Doesn’t matter, let’s go,” Jack said, taking her hand.

  As they headed towards the ticket windows and the entrance to the bullet train platforms, they passed an elderly lady dressed in clothes from another century, handing out leaflets. In their haste, they missed what she was saying, over and over, “Vote yes, lever 2, for the referendum. Vote, yes, lever 2…”

  What they couldn’t know was that last Tuesday, at the monthly meeting of the Waterloo Station Historical Society, this same elderly lady had stood at the back of a room proudly hoisting a placard while the society president and their Greater London councilman had bickered, “I don’t know what these grey balls are for, as, clearly, you won’t tell me. But, sir, what I do know is that they don’t belong beside Victorian era fixtures and they certainly don’t belong in our station!” The crowd at the back of the meeting, all elderly ladies, had begun cheering. “But ladies, it’s not your station…” the councilman had started, not sure himself why more security cameras were needed. The society president stabbed at the air with near-religious fervor, “Check the contract, sir! We have final say-so over all historical and architectural plans. And we will bloody well protect our station!”

  Jack and Lani finally made it through the tourists, commuters and onlookers to the ticket line, the train tellers about forty feet away stamping tickets and checking identifications behind bulletproof glass. On either side of the platform entrance were two policemen standing watch and examining the crowd. In the li
ne in front of them, a college student absently sang with buds in his ears, the children from the lady behind them playing at his feet.

  Jack looked over at Lani. He’d learned that when she really became worried, she would develop this tiny furrow between her eyes.

  “How’re you doing over there, Ms. Patterson?” he smiled.

  She smiled back, the tension broken if only for a moment. She was trying not to look up, trying to appear as if they were just one more happy couple looking forward to a weekend in Paris, happy to be finally be away from their imaginary London jobs, happy to be finally alone.

  They stepped to the front of the line and passed the money to the teller, trying not to look at the police officers. Lani turned and smiled at the nearest officer, then down to the giggling children that were running past her, her expression like every woman who would one day like children of her own. Jack watched the teller as she examined their passports, looking up twice and then down to the photos. He nonchalantly eyed her other hand as it reached beneath the counter, wondering if she was pushing a button, activating a silent alarm.

  The bulletproof glass doors to the platform slid open and the teller smiled and handed back the passports, “Thank you, sir. Enjoy Paris.” They passed between the two policemen who were already looking past them. They were unaware that the Surveillance-Net has yet to be hard-wired into the Euro-Zone train computers and that the signatory nations were still in negotiations as they casually walked down the platform, bumping into each other like an old married couple. Lani could feel the ring on her finger, becoming less foreign.

  In their private sleeper cabin, they looked out the windows and wondered if the orbs had also been installed on the signal lights for the trains in the train yard. Would they, like a swarm, begin looking into each of the train’s windows for the people who looked back?

  They heard the groan of the wheels as the train began to inch forward, keeping to a low speed as it traversed the train yard. The train picked up as rows of tenements rushed past, finally opening onto pasturelands.