A Dark Perfection

by James, Mark

  From the basement, he went upstairs and she could hear bedroom doors opening. “All clear,” he shouted down. He caught her half way up the stairs and relieved her of her bag, taking it to the back of the house and the master bedroom. She walked into the master bedroom and over to the picture window looking out over the lake, the first sunbeam joined by another.

  “I saw a guest bedroom,” he said, taking his bag that way. She started to say something as he turned into the room at the end of the hall.

  When he returned, he saw Lani without her shoes and curled up on the bed. He found a blanket on a chair and pulled it over her. He still needed to check the barn and the grounds, towards the back of the property where he’d seen a trail going into the woods and towards the lake.

  He lay down next to her, for only a moment he told himself.

  His first dream was of his home when he was seven, the abandoned orchard and the old rusted truck, the trail through the cornfields and down to the creek; his next was of Kauai and the mist and rain and wet, red dirt; the last was of her.

  Lying beside him, Lani was deep within her own dreams. Above, she saw the white star hovering, watching as the star’s light turned into her mother’s face, smiling like she once did, then into her father’s, then into his.

  †

  The Spanish assassin stood at the gas station counter waiting for the young man to focus himself and hand back the change. The attendant was taking his time, unable to keep from an old Will Ferrell movie on the corner TV while he fumbled around in the cash register till. The Spaniard held out his hand, prompting the boy-man to look down, trying to hide his annoyance as he shoved the change into the Spaniard’s hand. The assassin only smiled.

  Ordinarily, the Spaniard would have had his car prepared and fueled for such a trip. But he’d only expected to engage Garneau and the targets at the Paris park and hadn’t expected all of this. It was putting him behind for his scheduled vacation to the south, and from Emily, the girl he’d chosen to meet in Villefranche-sur-Mer. Emily, yes, quite beautiful, an American model on vacation. He could never remember her last name, though.

  As he walked to the car he looked back, as was his instinct, seeing the gas station employee once more absorbed by the TV, by the banal. For the Spaniard, the worker was simply another symptom of the stupidity that seemed everywhere these days. Or, had it always been there and he was now only noticing it more? No, he didn’t think so, as there seemed to be a marked rise in the less worthy, the dull, the painfully oblivious.

  It always surprised him, these disrespectful, oblivious ones. Didn’t they know that there were wolves in the woods: behind them at the ATM, in front of them in traffic, at the lonely lodges running through the lonely places, in this pitiful gas station with this man taking change?

  He knew others in his trade who were less restrained, ignoring the risks and taking kills along the way. One assassin from Lisbon had once veered from a target to momentarily kill a vacationing Texas couple because the man made fun of his shoes. His mentor, Gerard, once told him the story of an old killer who poisoned a night clerk on his way out, annoyed by the annoyed look on the smaller man’s face. Gerard had warned him, “One must always stay on target. When you deviate, you become one of them, a waster of energy, the stupid joining the inane. They are only a part of the terrain, no different than a column or a tree.”

  There was one assassin he knew, from personal experience, who’d been the worst. His missions were like winding roads, his anger from some place deep inside pulling him into kill after kill, each another distraction towards the target. After that fiasco in Hong Kong, he’d told Gerard never to offer him an assignment near the psychopath again. As he himself had deviated into an irrelevant killing before the Hong Kong mission, Gerard told him that he should then look at Hong Kong as a good lesson.

  The oblivious, didn’t they know that there were werewolves on the moors?

  He pulled up at the top of the ridge, at a higher vantage from Garneau’s summer home and began climbing down in the dark, coming from above like a raptor.

  His legs were wet from the long grass when he finally came upon the house and observed the driveway, empty.

  He climbed down the rock wall that bounded the driveway and stood, looking at the dark house and the quiet all around.

  It was clear: O’Neill and Keno had already begun moving towards their next lair. He looked down at the fresh tires marks in the red dirt at the end of the driveway. An owl hooted to his left and he looked up sharply, pausing two seconds, then back down. The ruts turned left.

  He began walking down the road, back to his car at the top of the ridge where the gravel met asphalt. Towards the southeast, still running southeast, where would they go?

  Once in the car, he scanned Garneau’s address book.

  On the map, he circled three towns.

  †

  “Bottom line? We haven’t found a damn thing,” Josh said, exhausted after working a week of nights in the lab. “Sorry Mac, really. We’ll keep working the symbols for possible meanings, but this Croatian encryption program is a brick wall. It keeps cycling; every time we get close, it re-encodes itself, moves two steps away. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a monster.”

  “Don’t sweat the accounts,” Mac said from his phone in the limo, “we’re working that problem from another angle. On the symbols, I can’t see the key being solely with the ambassador, or with that Army guy. I mean, Daniel Huff? Why Huff? Come on, Josh, he can’t be random.”

  “There’s some type of progression to the religious icons, no doubt. I can feel it,” Mac continued, thinking it through. “Ask yourself, what denominations do we have? Jewish – the ambassador. Christian – Major Grindel. Muslim – Daniel Huff. Although with Huff he was actually a practicing Christian. We only get to the Muslim angle with Jack’s idea that his adoptive father had converted. Not sure of that, it could be a reach. Problem is, the operational time frame is shrinking, fast.”

  Josh had only met Jack once, but he’d heard all of the stories and knew how Mac felt.

  “I sent you something from Interpol. Did you get it?” Josh asked.

  “No, just leaving the office now.”

  Mac accessed his classified email account and pulled up Josh’s last message.

  “Hold on, I’m pulling up the attachment. Your last message, right?”

  Mac stared at the matrix of dots. “And what’s that?”

  “We’re not sure. Do you see the attached coroner’s report? More than a intriguing…”

  The interior of the cranial cavity

  has been wholly effected…the

  effect extending through the

  hemispheres, their related lobes,

  and encompassing the cerebral

  cortex. Cause: unknown. Effect

  type: emulsification.

  “Our victims, they had burn marks. But here, in this Florence killing, it says the brain was basically gone, liquified,” Mac said.

  Josh laughed, “Hey – and this sounds more callous that usual, if that’s even possible – but tell me, if you’re whacked enough in the head to want to burn holes in someone’s brain, or, if you elect to simply fry it, does it really matter? I mean, how many guys are out there doing either? Back to the marks, the ones the coroner found on the underside of the skull – do you see anything there, in the pattern, religiously speaking?”

  Looking away, Mac was suddenly drawn to two faces on the muted TV screen in front of him.

  “Mac, you still there?”

  Stunned, he reached for the volume, continuing to stare at the familiar faces.

  The news anchor sped up, his voice urgent:

  It’s unclear at this time what involvement

  Mackenzie Osborne, Director of the NSA

  and trusted confidant of the president,

  has in this present, or past affair… the

  Congressional Committee headed by Rep.

  Chuck Daul has scheduled hearings f
or

  later this week, with charges coming from

  various congressmen that prior police

  records must have been doctored in an

  effort by the administration to hide

  Osborne’s actual role in this college

  assault and battery…there is much

  bitterness on the opposite side of the aisle

  that remains after they were shocked by

  President Walker’s re-election…

  “Josh, hold on a second.”

  His and Jack’s eyes stared back at him, from twenty years ago.

  “What is it?” Josh said, hearing the concern.

  “I’ll have to get back, Josh. Sorry…”

  Mac changed phone lines and the call connected. “Margaret, I need to speak with the president – immediately.”

  †

  Garneau pulled into his driveway. Three doors down, Ms. Daltry – an elderly woman always the first awake – waved as she walked to her mailbox in her famous and infamous blue fluff slippers. Across the street, Jacques Verdan, a retired accountant, chatted with their newest neighbor.

  Garneau was so glad to be home.

  Millie would be getting up, wondering where he’d been. And Elise would stir as she heard the front door latch, some part of her never quite asleep.

  Halfway up the steps, he paused and looked around, as one does in those rare moments in life, so thankful of a place.

  When younger, he’d always wanted to be away, off on some supposed quest or adventure, out trekking across the world. By forty, he’d learned to stop listening to those voices, both inside and out. By fifty, he’d learned to look here, in her eyes.

  He continued walking up the steps, pausing before the last.

  Something wasn’t right. Millie should’ve been scurrying behind the door, looking for her morning meal.

  It was too quiet.

  He turned the key in the lock, listening.

  Elise should have also been at the door, releasing the lock.

  He went back down and moved into the back yard, retrieving a spare key from under a rock by a tree.

  He inserted the key into the back latch. Still no sounds – no Elise, no Millie.

  Moving through the kitchen and into the front living room, he saw a CD case left open on the floor; jazz that Elise would never choose.

  His heart began to race. He climbed the stairs two at a time and veered into the bedroom.

  He found her on the bed, not moving: his wife, that girl who’d smiled at him like no one else at that jazz club thirty years ago, who saw through him, who, once knowing him, still loved him.

  “Elise,” he whispered, tearing through the duct tape as she struggled to release herself.

  He pulled the rag from her mouth and threw it across the room, “Are you alright?”

  She said nothing, merely holding him tight.

  “What happened?”

  “He was here…for your friends, I think. Where’s Millie?” Her voice was hoarse.

  Garneau turned sharply, looking towards the bedroom door. He moved towards the bamboo plant in the corner, removed a floorboard and withdrew a handgun Elise had never known was there.

  He turned to see her surprise. He held up his other hand, motioning silence, moved through the door and started down the stairs.

  He checked the living room and then into the kitchen, opening the back door and pausing. In the corner of the kitchen, something caught his eye: a large cardboard box, out of place, from the garage where he’d thrown it last week. He opened the box and Millie jumped out, her tail wagging.

  At a sound, he turned to see Elise standing against the kitchen doorway.

  He walked over, holding her again. He handed over Millie, and it all made her smile.

  He started to think faster, his instincts taking over. How did someone know he’d made contact with Jack and Lani? If someone had been following him, trying to get to them, then the ruse of sending Demais to the park should have been effective. From the beginning, had someone been monitoring him, or them? Jack had warned that the emails between them might have been compromised.

  He slowly paced around the living room. How would he warn them?

  Finally, he turned to Elise. “Gather your things, chère. Millie’s too.”

  There was no questioning in his voice. She’d never heard him this way.

  “It’s alright, we just need to go.”

  They needed to leave in case someone else was coming, in case the man who’d been here decided to return.

  He couldn’t call his colleagues for help, as he’d aided international fugitives. That would pull Elise in farther.

  He retrieved his cell phone and called Dr. Prevot.

  Prevot picked up on the first ring.

  “No questions, Etienne. Right away, I need a DNA sweep of my home.”

  †

  Jack took the blankets to the porch and looked out on the quiet evening, the sounds of swaying grasses towards the lake, the clearing night sky.

  “Give me a second,” he said, as Lani snuggled into the blankets on the swing.

  He went into the kitchen and put milk on the stove, mixing in the chocolate. He found two cups and took them out to the porch. On the way, he spied a bottle of mint schnapps on a bookshelf. “Anything you want, don’t worry,” Garneau had said. He gave each cup a splash.

  The temperature had dropped and through the front door the cups began to steam.

  “Here we go.”

  “Ah, perfect,” she said. “You’ve been reading my mind again.”

  “Watch it, they’re hot.”

  He sat down in the swing. He hadn’t been in one since a child and it surprised him, the imbalance and familiarity of it all.

  “My grandpa had a farm, you know. When I was young we used to drive down for long summer vacations, mid-Missouri. Slow nights, simple times. Or maybe I was just a kid. And the summer days, all drawn out in the heat. I haven’t thought about it for a while.”

  They were under the blankets as she leaned her head over, the swing creaking softly. Then, slowly, she sensed something, that soft moment when you realize something important was happening, a shift in your world.

  “I’ll get some more,” she said, getting up and walking inside, her socks quiet on the wood floors.

  Halfway across, she could sense him behind her, her ancient intuition. She paused, holding still. She could feel the warmth from the fire, the soft flickering across the ceiling.

  Suddenly, his weight was along her back, his breath at her ear, lips brushing across her neck as she turned.

  She looked up and their eyes merged, no words.

  He was then at her shoulder, the cleft of her collarbone, her breasts, his hand steadying at the small of her back, strong and certain. She arched backwards, unable to keep herself from moving.

  She’d only been close with one other man in her life – when she’d been very young, when the man hadn’t been old enough. For years afterwards, she’d told herself that it must have been love. Then, one day, she wasn’t sure anymore. For periods on and off, she would see other men, some of them wonderful people. And yet, for reasons she could never explain, they would always end in friendship, or in a strange unwillingness of some to accept who she was, her strength, her career. At night, alone in bed, she was beginning to have that conversation: what would she do if she never found him, the one her mother told her she would one day find?

  She could feel him inside of her, his muscles against her, with her. A wave came over and then another, her breath catching. At the end, when she couldn’t move – as she gave herself, as he took her completely – she felt another feeling, even more ancient, as if their souls had passed through each other.

  She’d never felt that before.

  34

  Lucien stared at the hologram image of Jessup’s head hovering above his desk – the larger than need-be lips, the occasional lisp at the end of the S’s betraying him as one of those still-
recovering stutterers. Admittedly, the German Nazi, Goering, had been a weasel of a little man, but he may have possessed a singular insight – that amongst our sorry species there were some that needed to be…culled.

  Yes, one day he would have to kill this Jessup creature.

  “Yes, yes, sir….” Jessup stammered. It was a reaction that only came upon him when talking to the director. Like a recurring childhood nightmare, it disturbed him to his core.

  “Is there anything else, Mr. Jessup?”

  Jessup wondered if Julius Caesar’s no. 2 had felt much the same. Fear could be a strong motivator, but also a strong inhibitor. He considered his position.

  “Only very preliminary, sir. We received a single ping in France, off one of the orbs. Some are finally going up in the medium-sized towns. Most aren’t activated, though, only installed. We’re waiting for the main computer array to operationally string them together.”

  “And?”

  “I think we got lucky. This particular orb had just been activated, still running through its startup programs. Here, I’m sending the images over now.”

  Lucien stared at the blurry image of a car, from slightly above and speeding past.

  “It appears the driver is at least two hundred pounds,” Jessup said. “Our analysts measured the load bearing for this vehicle type and compared it to the displacement of the car in the photo to arrive at that figure. Factoring in, of course, the passenger’s probable weight. We estimate the male driver to be between six-foot two to six-four, at most. It’s blurry, but you can also make out the passenger, she’s female, estimated at five-foot five, with slightly darker skin…”

  “Like Keno,” Lucien thought aloud.

  “No ID was possible on the vehicle plates,” Jessup continued, “and, frankly, there are way too many Opels out there to narrow it down. It was clearly heading southeast, though. We’ve detected no contacts after that. Assets are fanning out. As I indicated, though, no further results.”