A Dark Perfection

by James, Mark

  “And you’re saying that all of these intel dumps are coming from the GMA, through some type of leaking?” Hightower asked.

  “Yes, but not through leaks,” Mac said. “It was handed over to us directly, to the president’s office. It basically showed up on our doorstep, dumped. No one else knows about it. The question is, of course, is it real?”

  Hightower shook his head, “Why? I mean, why not just release it to the press, or have their lackeys in Congress start shouting about it? That would cause a stink. I mean, it’s clear that’s what they’re trying to do, embarrass the administration, cause a war within the executive branch.”

  Hightower read through the synopsis of the information again, having a hard time believing that the vice-president would be so bold, so stupid. It outlined an ongoing conspiracy emanating from the vice-president’s office that had been attempting to both sabotage and usurp Project Invisible Hand.

  “So, let me see if I have all of this straight,” Hightower said. “Phone taps – illegal ones, mind you, presumably by the GMA – place Palmer on his phone talking with a source at Aero-Con discussing, well, all of this. You’ve got this down pat, you’re sure of it?”

  “Voice print analysis is 93% conclusive – it’s Palmer’s voice and that of Aero-Con Chief Technical Officer, Peter Gomber,” Mac said. “As far as why, vis-à-vis the GMA, by dropping this in our lap they put us in a box: one, we either pursue Palmer, which will lead to a special prosecutor at the very least, and impeachment of the VP at the most probable, or, two, we bury it and deal with Palmer ourselves, force his resignation. The problem with the latter is that we become entwined with him while, at once, this outside actor, the GMA, can release the info when they want. It would then look like we’re part of a coverup. That may be the real trap here.”

  “We’re not going down that road,” President Walker said firmly from the far end of the table where he’d been quietly listening. “I don’t do coverups and I don’t let the GMA dictate choices. The only truth here is that the vice-president has attempted to undermine the authority of this office, to run a shadow weapons program. He has sabotaged data on the aerial robots, making us think that the flying problems were insurmountable, while at once moving with this Gomber character on a parallel development path inside Aero-Con. He wants his own weapons, only at his command. He’s lied to this country, to me, to everyone – it’s that simple. And gentlemen, that constitutes treason. He needs to be prosecuted and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  “What’s going on now?” Hightower asked.

  “Select Aero-Con staff in the company’s technical division are being interrogated,” Mac said. “The operation appears to be compartmentalized. Witnesses say it’s all Palmer, nothing on Présage or that gopher of theirs, can’t remember his name. And Gomber is being flown to Langley.”

  Mac thought that right about now he could use Jack in these interrogations. Admittedly, old Jack had his own problems.

  “We have to be absolutely certain this info is genuine and that it’s not all part of a bait-and-switch operation trying to get us to go after the VP – because that would be a political disaster, eating our own. The tapes are heading to the NSA labs this afternoon and they say, to be absolutely certain of authenticity, they need two days. We’re then looking at the president going on-air sometime Monday night. It needs to be handled very carefully.”

  “What a horrible week,” Hightower said, leaning back and slowly running his hand over his shaved head. “The San Fran earthquake, the O’Neill thing and now this…”

  “Speaking of which,” the president said, turning to Mac, “what’s the latest on Jack and Lani? They’re at the hotel, right?”

  “Yeah, I received the Croatian account documents this morning – they look good. Jack and Lani are waiting at the hotel safe room, the one we always use for the diplomatic overflow. With the U.N. meeting next week, it’s good cover. Plus the room is clean: electronically swept, cameras, etc. Jack pushed me for the document release today, just wanting us to dump the docs on the press. I told him tomorrow at the earliest, since arranging airtime on a non-national security issue takes twenty-four hours or so. On the other hand, maybe he’s right, maybe we should just dump it on the Congressional Committee, let them choke on those warrants?”

  “Tempting,” Walker smiled, “but let’s stick to the timetable: as planned, we release the Croatian account information tomorrow night, after the afternoon ceremony at Arlington. It will be clear they were framed and it will then put immediate pressure on those outside the administration, those against us. That will also give us more time to have it all in good order, line it up, just to be safe. And the bonus is it’ll put the story flat on Congress’s plate for the Sunday talk shows. Then, the next step, we disclose the intel on the VP on Monday night, break into the evening shows. Let the people decide.”

  “And then we move on the GMA,” Mac said.

  The president nodded, “Then we move on the GMA…”

  †

  When Lani first saw the hotel room she didn’t know what to say, the contrast between yesterday and today as between perfect darkness and perfect light. They’d come through the shadows of Croatia, through their run from the Maryland cottage to Scotland, from Paris to the French farmhouse and their climb over the mountains, all to be here: in this suite with its perfect light streaming through tall, beautiful windows, light off the rich carpeting, light off the silver pitcher holding coffee on the cart, the cream perfectly cold, the napkins perfectly folded. It all seemed so far away from their night on the freighter.

  But not so far away, she suddenly realized – not so far away from the memory of that innocent boy’s eyes, of the refugees that had entered that ship. Where were they now?

  “What are you thinking?” Jack asked, coming around her, holding her.

  “Oh, how lucky we are. I guess that sounds strange after everything.”

  They laid down across the bed and ate the croissants and jam, the fruit and the small chocolates and drank the coffee, it all feeling like nectar, and then fell asleep still in their robes from their showers, curled up as if it had never happened.

  Deep into sleep, Jack saw himself on a ship, wooden and ancient, standing on the prow like a Viking, the scarred armor of a warrior. Then, in a flicker, to another place: the Roman forum, standing and talking with someone at a vendor’s cart, his robes white and his hair black with curls. And then to another ship, even older and in an unfamiliar world: thousands of ships on a calm sea, flags unfurled, waiting for battle.

  Each of these places seemed connected, like a string falling down to the present. As if each experience was a bead on the string that had brought him here.

  It was the third time in his life he’d had this dream.

  What had brought him here? For what purpose?

  What had Lani said to him, back at Engel’s farmhouse as they lay in front of the fire?

  Dreams are what we make of them…

  41

  Coming up to it, it was a city that one couldn’t see. In a nation of skyscrapers, Washington, D.C. hid itself until you were almost upon it.

  Was it designed that way, Jenny Huff considered, passing another traffic light, another scattered group of early blue-collar workers trying to hide from the spitting rain? She turned her wipers up a notch and then back down, unable to find the right cadence. The weather had been this way since Pennsylvania; a massive low pressure system moving out of Hurricane Becky, out and over Florida, into the Ohio River Valley and now here. The summers and autumns were much longer, but no one had ever heard of such a storm so late. It gave the people something to talk about as autumn left for good. The world felt like these wipers, off kilter, unable to find its center.

  Yes, Jenny Huff thought, that’s it, that’s exactly where I am: I’m an entity off kilter, trying to find its center. She’d been trying to figure this out – this place she was at – since passing through the Poconos: the soft hills, the ru
n-down diner at the bottom of a curve, the soft-serve ice cream in Freeland, the broken down truck in Stroudsburg and the nice farmer she’d picked up.

  She’d taken to picking up strangers, she didn’t know why: that farmer, then a young man with a backpack thumbing, who’d told her about his alcoholic folks not being there for him anymore and of his dreams of New York and that he had a friend there, and the couple stuck in a ditch, going off the road near Hackettstown right in front of her and just needing a short drive to her mother’s where they were visiting for the weekend, and, no ma’am, they’d be fine, her dad had a truck with a good winch. She seemed drawn to these people, or them to her. She knew she should have been afraid, would have been before, but wasn’t for some reason, as if some type of fear had gone out of her. The world felt like that, like when you were a child and put your hand out the window speeding down the highway, your dad in the front telling another story, mom smiling.

  And then the images would rush back: of her children, of Senator Barrett, his face on that television ad asking everyone to do something for him as he did nothing for her. And Dan…

  She remembered the last phone call with her mother-in-law, someone hanging up on someone else, her crying. How long had it been?

  It was predawn as she approached the Washington D.C. suburbs, the outer circle, and a soft drizzle had restarted. Stopping at a traffic light, she saw a form ahead, furtively moving behind a car. Closer, she saw a woman in a business suit drenched and crouched by the car and wrestling with a wheel.

  She pulled in behind. “Are you alright?” she asked, rolling down her window as the wind picked up and began blowing rain into the car.

  The young woman turned, surprised that someone had stopped, her hair dripping under the trench coat she’d loosely pulled over her head.

  “I’m trying to get into the city,” the woman said, trying to shout through the increasing rain.

  Jenny waved for her to come on back, to get in. “I’m heading there. You need to get out of this rain. It’s getting worse.”

  The woman retrieved her business bag and put her caution lights on and entered Jenny’s car, smiling, “Thank you so much. No one is out this early and I really need to get into the city.”

  The woman began drying off with a towel that Jenny retrieved from the back seat. “I’ll take you anywhere, dear,” Jenny said. She felt sorry for the young woman, who was obviously shaken. “I’m going downtown too. Where do you need to go?” As Jenny Huff said the words, she felt the urgency inside of her wane, as if something was finally letting go of her. It was the same feeling she’d had with each of the people she’d picked up. This time, though, much more.

  “The White House,” the young woman said.

  “Really?” Jenny laughed and it felt like the first real laugh she’d had since the funeral.

  The girl laughed back, “The truth, I swear.” She held out her hand, “I’m Jennifer O’Connor. I’m an intern for Mac Osborne. And I’m really running late. He needs me there early today. This whole Iranian thing.”

  Jenny O’Connor didn’t tell her the other reason.

  Jenny Huff smiled back, taking her hand, “I’m a Jenny too. Jenny Huff, from San Francisco.”

  “I’m from San Francisco too!” the young woman beamed, “Oh, I miss it so much. Two Jennys from San Fran – this has to mean something, right?”

  Jenny Huff pulled back onto the road and headed into the downtown district, dropping the young woman off at the White House. They’d talked all the way into town – about the young woman’s husband, a writer, and about all of the famous people she’d met and how it was all such a great experience and that she was so thankful. Jenny Huff didn’t tell her about the funeral and Jenny O’Connor didn’t tell her about the dark part of her internship, about how she’d been blackmailed with photos she couldn’t understand. They exchanged phone numbers and she watched the young woman run up to the White House, then turn with a final wave before slipping inside the gate and disappearing.

  Alone again, Jenny Huff looked down at the photo of Senator Barrett that she’d placed back on the passenger seat and at the address scribbled next to it. She paused, listening to the cold rain on the windshield. Her feelings were somehow different. Barrett had refused to take her calls and it had incensed her, driven her all the way here, along with the images. But now the feeling seemed gone.

  She steeled herself, pulling off the curb and heading towards the senator’s private office. On the way, she began to think of Dan and their children and their home, her home. The images no longer arose in clicking flashes, but were fluid again.

  Pulling up in front of the senator’s office, she looked down at Barrett’s photo. Somehow, she now saw something different, something deeper. He was only a man – only the next someone saying what he needed to say to get where he needed to go. Then, once there, saying and doing it all again. Just human.

  The sun was rising and the rain had stopped, a pale rainbow brushing off the horizon. She pulled the car back onto the road, heading back west to California, her only home.

  †

  Lucien preferred coming into his office early on Saturday mornings, when the people weren’t around, nor any of their sounds. When the world was, for the moment, only his. While most people fought against the night – against loneliness, against being alone, against death – he felt cocooned in the shadows, free within the vastness of voids.

  The added bonus today, of course, was that no one would be filing in around noon, as they usually did – some working, most currying favor – due to the ceremony at Arlington Cemetery, another cardboard president standing beside the next gauche tribute to more dead people. These unknown and formerly known people, the dead, weren’t they already gone, in hell or heaven or in some lost void, so who cared about them anyway? It was like caring for carcasses or carrion. A waste of precious energy, these pathetic icons and statues and memorials only existing to help the living forget, forget for one more precious moment that they were all going to die. Didn’t they know that there was nothing that could stop it?

  What would they fucking do then?

  He looked up from his desk at the painting he’d bought at auction seven years before, a self-portrait by Lucien Freud, looking straight ahead and back at the viewer, looking into them. It was either of a man or a beast, or a man turning into a beast, perhaps turning back into himself, contorted on the surface, writhing inside, the paint writhing with it. It disturbed visitors and he liked that reaction. Only two people in five years had turned and mustered the courage to say, What’s that? And, of course, he’d hired them. But most sat there and subconsciously squirmed. He found it amusing.

  Lucien Freud, his namesake, had been tentatively classified as a transitional expressionist, the academics saying that his works showed the inner glow of magical realism. But Viscount Lucien disagreed. These so-called scholars had missed something – a darkness in the swirls of paint, a cinder at the bottom.

  Lucien reached for his coffee and took another sip. Pulling his hand away, he saw it tremble. He watched the trembling as if his own arm was apart from him, its own entity. Then his shoulder locked into a spasm. He tried to rise, felt an instinctual urge to move, to seek cover, but couldn’t as every muscle in his body froze. Still warm, but utterly frozen, as if he were trapped in a robot’s body. Only his eyes could move.

  He watched slowly as the door opened and a man entered. He was tall, agile.

  The killer moved into the room and looked around. It was the same as when he’d been here the three previous times: first, when disabling the security systems, then when removing the electronic trip-wires, and, finally, when placing the poison in the coffee creamer. Each time, he’d sat down in this same leather chair in front of this same desk, imagining this moment, a moment holding a scepter of quiet power. The eyes of Lucien, trembling, met his own. He held the gaze, reveled in it – the eyes of the falcon over vermin.

  Locked deep inside, Lucien’s brilliant min
d began to reel: I know this man, have read his dossier dozens of times. Why would he do this? What was he actually doing?

  “Well, Viscount…” the killer began, “or can I call you, Lucien, now that we’re about to become such close friends?”

  Lucien’s eyes began to shiver, his mouth struggling as if a muzzled animal.

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” the killer continued, bringing up a wood box and setting it on the desk. It looked like a case for dueling pistols. Lucien’s eyes looked down, following the case to the desk and then quickly back up.

  “What, you wonder?” the killer said, bemused with his theater. “Well, I’m quite proud of it, actually. My own cocktail, you see, discovered it by chance. Or maybe, by design, who knows. It’s equal parts Dendrobatoidea venom – Amazonian dart frog to you – and a dash of that White Orchid resin they found. Marvelous stuff, not sure why, but it buffers the venom, keeps it from killing you. Or rather, killing you right away. Essentially, it anesthetizes the subject, working to suspend all major muscle groups. Leaves the pain receptors fully active, though. Fully sensitive, if you know what I mean. And the eyes and ears, of course. It still lets you see and hear. That’s the bonus.”

  The killer opened the case and turned it around so Lucien could search down.

  “I bought this at auction several years ago, couldn’t resist. A macabre little subculture, that one. They said it once belonged to Perry Smith. They recovered it from his belongings after the murders. You remember, In Cold Blood? You can still see a brown stain at the hilt. Do you see it? I had it authenticated last year – yes, the DNA from the stain matches one of the victims, the teenage girl, Nancy Clutter. She’d gone to Holcomb High School and was hoping to study art at KSU. When they found her she still had on the bracelet from her high school sweetheart. Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, both ex-cons out on parole, first shot her parents, then her brother and then her, all at point-blank range with shotguns. They actually never used this, only the shotguns. No one is quite sure how the blood arrived on the pick – maybe Smith had it in his pocket when he leaned over her, to feel if she was still breathing, the blood then soaking through his front pocket onto this, who knows. November 14th, 1959.”