by Blake Banner
“You look like a cop.”
“I’m not a cop! I swear! You want me to bring my lady? She can’t walk she’s so bad.”
As I spoke I brought the Maxim up and shot him in the leg through the door. He swore violently and staggered back. The second round took out the chain. I pushed the door open and stepped inside, closing the door softly behind me.
He was lying on the floor gripping his leg. His face was pasty and yellow, like candle wax. He looked up at me and there was a dangerous mixture of terror and rage in his eyes.
“Should have opened the door,” I said.
“Are you insane? Do you know…? Who the fuck are you?”
I hunkered down beside his knees. My first shot had gone into his thigh but the bleeding was not profuse. I pointed at the sodden, red hole in his jeans.
“You were lucky. Looks like I didn’t hit anything important. But you know what? Not inviting people in, asking a lot of questions, that kind of thing is going to get you shot again.”
“What the hell do you want?”
“That’s better, see? Right now, I don’t need to blow your kneecap. Let’s try and keep it that way. Now, once a month, I know that you cross over to Chicago in your van. I know you buy a stash of H, blow, grass and hash, and I know that has got to set you back a hundred K just for the blow and the H.”
“You’re full of shit.”
I looked into his eyes and knew that this guy was hard. I put the Maxim away and drew the Fairbairn & Sykes from my boot.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I haven’t got time to waste, and I am going to have to convince you that I am serious.”
There was real terror in his face. I knelt on his right wrist with my right knee and placed my left knee on his neck, forcing his chin to one side. I let him feel the razor edge of the blade on his thumb joint and said, “I am going to ask you once. Where is your money for your next buy?”
Gasping for breath, he half screamed, “Fuck you!”
I levered down with the knife. There was a sickening crunch and his thumb came loose from his hand. He screamed, thrashed and kicked his legs. But the thing with Canada is, it’s so cold in the winter all the houses are triple glazed and, like space, nobody can hear you scream.
He was sobbing and weeping and repeating, “Oh, God… oh God…”
I said, “That was a mistake. I am going to take each of your digits off, and then I am going to butcher you like a pig, till it’s just your head and your body, sitting here weeping and looking at your limbs piled up against the wall. I am a very, very bad man, Wolf. So don’t waste my time, because I have no time for you to waste. Where is your stash for your next buy?”
I pressed the knife between his index and middle finger. He went rigid and started quivering and screeching, “N…n…n…!”
I said, “Where’s your money?”
“In the bedroom! Wardrobe! There’s a false bottom!”
“You know what I’m going to do to you if I come back…”
He didn’t let me finish. “It’s there, man! I swear!”
I stood. He was bleeding badly from his thumb. If he tried to get away he wouldn’t go far. I crossed the living room. It was seedy and dull, with a TV and a 1200 CC bike engine in the corner. There were bike magazines and assorted trash lying around. I went through to the bedroom. It was dark, with the drapes closed, and a powerful smell of pot. I opened the wardrobe, pulled out the false bottom and found a sports bag. It was full of cash. At a glance I figured there was about a hundred grand there. I pulled it out and slung it over my shoulder. When I got to the hall, the pool of blood from his thumb was about three foot across and he looked like he was about to pass out. I hunkered down beside him. His voice was small.
“I need a tourniquet, man. I’m bleeding out. You got the cash…”
“You’re a parasite, Wolf. You played tough all these years, backed up by your Angels. But all you’ve ever done is feed off people who were weaker than you, sell drugs to kids, destroy lives and destroy families. I have no reason to give you a tourniquet. I have no reason to save your life. You know, the Buddhists tell you that your dying thought conditions the nature of your next life. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But my advice to you, right now, is to think about all the ways you could have had a more valuable life than you did.”
I stood and shot him in the forehead, and for a moment I hoped that the Buddhists were right.
Six
I wrenched open the rear passenger door of the truck and dumped the sports bag on the seat next to Diana. She frowned at it and then shifted her frown to me.
“What did you do?”
I slammed the door and got in behind the wheel, then pulled out onto 18th Street, moving south.
“Open the bag.”
After a second I heard the zipper and, “Jesus! What the hell did you do?”
“We need cash. We can’t use cards because they can be tracked. Drug dealers are an easy source of untraceable cash.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
I snorted. “Is that an objective assessment from a position of sanity?” She didn’t answer so I said, “Give me a hundred bucks.”
She handed it over and I stuffed it into my pocket. At the intersection with Richmond Avenue I turned east and after half a mile turned into the Co-op gas station. There I filled up, bought some water and fruit juice and a couple of coffees and took off east again. At the exit from Brandon I took the 110 north for five miles and picked up the Trans-Canada Highway again, and we left the lights behind us and plunged into the dark vastness that is Canada.
At just before six AM we bypassed Winnipeg on our left, and picked up the highway again just north of Deacons Corner, with the sky hinting at gray on the eastern horizon. Dawn came as we were entering the Whiteshell Provincial Park, with the sun rising blood red over the vast pine forests. We didn’t stop, then. We drove on with the sun climbing steadily to the midheaven through forests and lakes that seemed to stretch on forever.
Finally, at shortly before one PM we came out of the woods and into broad farmlands, and shortly after that we arrived at Thunder Bay. I didn’t stop there because there were too many people. Instead I turned north and followed the coast for about ten miles until we came to an un-signposted intersection where a small, wooden sign said there was a motel on the shore of the lake. I turned right and found a cute stretch of road with pretty holiday houses right on the shore, and among them a motel glorying in the unfortunate name, On the Beach.
We checked in for the day and the night, dumped our stuff in the room and went to buy Diana some clothes, look for a UPS office on Memorial Avenue, and the Hodder Tavern on Arundel Street and Hodder Avenue.
Along the way I noted the boats and yachts moored along the shore of the lake. Some were pulled up on the mud, others were farther away, anchored maybe a hundred or two hundred yards out on the dark water.
Diana had come up front with me. There was no longer any point in her sitting in the back. They were either still tracking us electronically, in which case there was no point in hiding her, or I had managed to throw them off in which case we were less conspicuous as a couple. She saw me staring out at the water and said, “What’s on your mind?”
“The border. It’s twenty-five miles out on the water, about eight to ten miles from Pie Island.”
“You’re crazy enough to want to swim it, or steal a launch from a drug trafficker…” She trailed off. I didn’t react and she said, “Jesus, you are actually thinking of stealing a boat.”
“Couple of hours and we are across the border, in five or six hours we can land in Michigan, just west of Houghton. That puts us two hundred and fifty miles, as the crow flies, from Minneapolis. Say three hundred by car. Three hours, four tops. If we don’t screw up, we could be in DC while they’re still looking for us in Canada.”
“What about the border patrol?”
“We won’t use a motorized launch. We’ll use a twenty or thirty-foot sail
ing boat. The chances of being detected are almost nil.”
“Can you sail a boat?”
“Of course I can sail a boat.”
“Of course you can.”
At the UPS office I sent Diana’s phone and the ID cards I’d collected from the four CIA officers to the brigadier for analysis. Then we went to the Hodder Tavern for lunch. I ordered a draught beer and a burger and Diana surprised me by ordering the same. We sat at a table in the half light of the afternoon and ate and drank in silence, with the TV in the background filling the silence. All they talked about was COVID, vaccines, shutdowns and social distancing. It was like there was no other news in the world. I was aware she was watching me watch the news and after a while she smiled. That made me look at her. It was the first real expression I had seen.
“You ever been hypnotized?” she asked.
I thought about it and decided I didn’t want to answer. I said, “Why?”
“When you hypnotize somebody…,” she paused, “I’m not talking about bog-standard, run of the mill hypnotherapists who just relax you and make you feel good. I’m talking about real hypnotists who know how to get into your unconscious, your autonomic system, and make changes.”
“OK.”
“When a real pro hypnotizes you, he is going to tell you three things that are true: ‘you’re sitting down, your eyes are closed, all you can see is darkness…’ OK?”
“Yeah, so?”
“And then he’s going to tell you something he wants you to accept. ‘All you can see is darkness, and that place you had as a child, where you used to go to be alone. You can begin to see that now, and as time flows slowly by, you see it ever more clearly…’”
“I get the idea.”
She tapped the right side of her head. “Your unconscious processes all four statements together, and accepts the fourth as a truth, just like the other three. He’ll do the same thing if he wants to give you instructions.” I was watching her and listening very carefully while I chewed. “He’ll tell you to do two or three things you have to do anyway: ‘Keep your eyes closed, breathe nice and steady, be aware of your body lying there, and as you are aware of your body, notice how it begins to relax, more and more deeply…’ Same thing. Your unconscious registers all four sets of instructions together. It obeys the first three because it has to, and the fourth because it is part of the package.”
“What’s your point?”
She shrugged a small shrug with very slim shoulders. “I’m just trying to have a conversation with you. Can’t we have a conversation?”
“Sure, I just don’t happen to believe that you ever do anything without a reason.”
“That’s a pretty harsh judgment. But I guess there is some truth in it.” She picked up her burger and made to bite into it. “I was just thinking,” she said, as she made ready to bite, “about this lockdown and the whole COVID phenomenon.”
“You don’t believe it’s real? I happen to know it is.”
“Oh, it’s real…” She nodded ponderously, gazing into my face. “It’s real. Just like the first three statements of the hypnotist are real: ‘You are wearing your mask, you are keeping a safe distance away from other people, you are listening carefully to your TV and your social media so that you know exactly what to do when you receive your instructions…’”
“Sure, and the destruction of the Twin Towers was plotted at Bohemian Grove. But your conspiracy theory doesn’t wash…”
She ignored me and kept right on talking, “…and your next instructions are that you will go and get yourself vaccinated. And as so many nice billionaires have donated so much money to creating that vaccine just for you, you will take it and accept it gratefully, and scowl disapproval at all those who refuse to take it. Because it is they who are making this world unsafe for everybody else.”
I shook my head. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“Nothing, I’m just making conversation. But the COVID pandemic is the best piece of social engineering I have seen in my whole life. Sixty years ago we were the most disobedient people on the planet. Now we all wear our masks, we all observe the safe distance and we all happily went out to clap at eight sharp every evening, like good little sheep on their way to the slaughter.”
“Yeah? So what’s the final instruction we are all being conditioned to take?”
“I already told you: take your medicine.”
I studied her face for a long time. She held my eye. Finally I asked her, “Is that what this is all about? COVID-19?”
She shook her head. “No, I was just making conversation.”
“Conversation…”
“About obedience. It’s what life on Earth is all about, right? Power. Psychology tells us all relationships are power relationships, and obedience is one of the foundations of power, right? Remember Chuck Klosterman?”
“No.”
“All relationships are fundamentally power struggles, and the person in power is always the one who cares the least. If you don’t do what I say, I will leave you. People who are afraid, people who are afraid to face the future alone, people who are afraid to face the unknown without strong leadership…”
“This is about COVID…”
“No, dumbass.” She said it with absolutely no feeling. “I’m telling you plain. It’s about power! Look at you and me. I am terrified to make the journey to DC alone. You don’t let the fear affect you, and you don’t really care much if I get neutralized on the way. You’re just doing a job. So that makes you the powerful one in this relationship. COVID is just another example, a parallel: the population of the Earth is in abject terror of an invisible killer that floats through the air and attacks silently and invisibly. Only venerable, ancient Oxford University, aided by the godlike Bill Gates, can save us. So we obey. But you can change the threat into infinity: Germans, Communists, Chinese, Islam, a virus, aliens… As long as people are too chickenshit to rely on themselves, and turn to those in power for protection and guidance, that small cabal of mega-nerds and billionaires will continue to rule the world. Democracy tried, but failed, because people are still sheep.” She gave a small laugh. “You can cry wolf as many times as you like. For the sheep, every time is the first time.”
I knew she was telling me something, but I didn’t know what, or, for that matter, why. I also found that, broadly, I agreed with what she was saying. I took a big bite out of my burger and chewed, speaking as I did so.
“So this is an area of research for you? You’re a social psychologist…?”
She made like an android and said, “No.” And then, after a second, “I’m a physicist.”
“A physicist?” My voice said I was skeptical.
“Physics is all about power. Nobody, absolutely nobody, knows what energy is in physics. Did you know that? We talk about energy all the time, and we know very precisely how most energy works. But not a goddamn soul knows what it is. Energy is power. You have fear on one side, weakness, and courage on the other, strength; you create a flow of power from a positive to a negative pole.”
I swallowed and took a pull on my beer. “Yeah, you said that. What branch of physics?”
There was a slight narrowing of her eyes. I realized she hadn’t lied. She was scared of aggression. She said, “Nanotechnology.”
I watched her expressionless face for a long moment, then said, “Engineering with the building blocks of the universe…”
If I was hoping for some kind of reaction I didn’t get one. She just said, “Precisely.”
“So why the interest in social dynamics and political power?”
She bit into her burger and while she chewed she held up two fingers. She spoke around her food.
“Two reasons. One, I have an IQ of one sixty and I find just about everything interesting, and two, those are the bastards who are hunting me and want to kill me. The best way to get power over somebody who has power over you, is to understand them intimately.”
That was true enough, up t
o a point. I gave a nod and said, “Those are the bastards who are hunting you and want to kill you. Feel like being more precise? Another part of power is that union forms strength.”
“And how do I know you are not with them?”
“You just witnessed me kill three of them.”
“Yeah.” She took a pull on her beer and waved the empty glass at the barman. He looked at me and I showed him two fingers. Diane went on. “‘Them’ covers a multitude of meanings. I know you’re not CIA. But just because I know who you’re not, it doesn’t mean I know who you are.”
I grunted. She had a point. “But if I wanted to kill you, I could have done it a dozen times over by now.”
“Sure…”
The waiter came over with a couple of beers and set them on the table, then left. She picked up her glass and regarded me over the edge. “But you also ask a lot of questions. You take a lot of interest in who I am and why these people are after me. What makes you so interested? You have a job. Do the job and shut the fuck up.”
She smiled, but it was only a pretend one.
I raised an eyebrow and smiled back. It was a real one. “It doesn’t work that way. I’m not fixing your plumbing. I’m saving your life and trying to stay alive while I do it.”
“So you say. On the other hand, maybe you’re earning my trust so I’ll tell you all about me, and then you’ll plug me full of holes.”
I sucked my teeth and pushed a piece of burger bun around my plate with the tip of my knife. When I was done doing that, I pulled off a quarter of my beer and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
“I was just starting a holiday. My boss called me and said he had a job he wanted me to do. He wanted me to escort a woman from Calgary to DC. After some discussion, I agreed. That is all I know. The fact that there are men after you who want you dead, motivates me to want to know more about you, and why these people want you dead, but simply because that knowledge can help me to protect you. Aside from that, I have absolutely no interest in you at all.”