The Memoir

by Vaibhav Reddy IVN

  ‘Galvan, you must now hotwire Priority-1’s Ford and hand it over to the man in grey overcoat at the corner of that street. Once you do that, you stay focused on Priority-1’s movements very closely until you restore his car at three tomorrow morning. You will receive your next instructions at five tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  Santo had done far more complicated things than the job. Requesting his services for something so trivial tricked him into believing that they underestimated his skills after his nervous breakdown episode. Santo crossed the road carefully and approached the Ford parked outside the house. From the blueprint of the house he received, it was evident that the spot of parking was visible only from the living room, which he had ensured was deserted at that time of the night. After confirming it, he picked the lock of the car, hotwired the car and drove away noiselessly to the destined person. The man in the grey overcoat did not speak a word, got in and drove away immediately. The young face of the man was no match to the professionalism he displayed in his actions. Amused by the new talents in the field, he traced his path back to his van, where he retrieved his night vision goggles and walked to the window of the bedroom.

  The first thing he saw was the family photo of Priority-1, which accommodated a wife and a son apart from Priority-1. However, Priority-1 occupied it alone. Santo assumed that the wife must have been out of town, and stayed at the window wondering what fate awaited the man.

  OUTSIDE JOINT OPERATION FORCE HQ, KRAMINKO- ELEVEN DAYS POST THE JUDGMENT DAY

  Col. Fischer received a call from Lt. Waters, as he was getting into his car outside the JOF HQ. He gestured to the driver to get on the move and answered the call.

  ‘Good evening, sir. It is Lt. Waters,’ he said.

  ‘Yes Lieutenant, what’s the matter?’

  ‘There was another murder of a former member of Secret Affairs Force, sir.’

  He knew that it was not something Gen. Levisohn would be happy to hear, amidst the distress that had left him unsettled. It was the second murder of someone belonging to Secret Affairs Force since the beginning of ESAF reign. ‘What? Where did it take place?’ Fischer asked.

  ‘They found the body in the house, sir. The forensic experts have been over the place and they assume that he was murdered last night, sir. But they are not sure he was murdered there. His murder took place in a similar way. His throat was slit open with a kitchen knife, sir.’

  ‘Shit! Did you verify the division he served in?’

  ‘Not yet, sir,’ Lt. Waters said. ‘We just found his Secret Affairs Force badge in his closet. I contacted the people at database. They said that they would need the General’s orders to reveal anything about them.’

  ‘Fine, I will take care of it. Who’s supervising the situation?’

  ‘The Crime Investigation Branch, sir. Agent Barbara is here, sir.’

  ‘Ok,’ he said, ended the call and connected to CIB of JOF.

  ‘It’s Col. Fischer speaking. I need you to convey my message to whoever is handling the Secret Affairs Force murders. I need a complete report of the murders that took place so far. And, I need-’

  ‘Colonel, I don’t think you can call right away and pass your orders to us, sir. You need to follow a protocol,’ a woman said in an official tone.

  Fischer, who was already unsettled by the news, found himself on the other side of his temper’s boundaries. ‘Hey, listen! I don’t know who the fuck you are. But do what I said. There exists no fucking protocol. The ESAF has passed the new file to your headquarters, which defines your powers. But hear me, all it says in a single word is that JOF should obey the orders from the fucking military and that is what you need to do. I need the report by eight in the evening.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ she replied, her tone still unaltered.

  He ended the call, agitated at failing to evoke tension in her tone, and immediately connected to the General’s office and conveyed the message to the General’s personal secretary and quoted it as “Extreme Urgency”.

  Col. Fischer understood the effectiveness of his rebuke, when Agent Cooper and Agent Barbara from CIB arrived at 7.45 that evening. Lt. Waters accompanied them. They presented him with the report. He dropped the file on his table, folded his hands across his chest and glanced at them.

  ‘Can you take me through the events?’ he asked.

  Agent Barbara took the lead. She opened the file and began, ‘Colonel, there have been five murders, as you might know. And the first three took place within the previous month. The next two took place during the last ten days. The interesting part, which I learnt based on the report from the database, is that the first three murdered were the Head and the two Senior Field Agents of the East Division. Interestingly, the two Senior Field Agents were murdered in a robbery gone wrong. The next two murders were those of two field agents, who served in the same division during the period from March to September of last year. So, as far as I believe, I think this includes some kind of reprisal against some case they handled during that particular period.’

  Fischer nodded his head in approval. The details of her report, procured at such short notice, surprised him, apart from her beauty. ‘So, you believe that these murders are the deeds of someone affected by them. They must have prepared the reports of the cases they handled. Did you get them?’

  She threw him a look, which had many hidden meanings for interpretation. ‘Sir, the SAF itself was dismissed four months ago based on the allegations that it was formed to eliminate possible rivals of the Prime Minister and the ruling party. Off the record, SAF is itself flawed. They did not need to maintain any permanent records of their cases. They make a report at the end of a case and present it to the concerned officials and then, the reports are disposed off. So, everything that happened does not have any records on papers, except in memories.’

  ‘Do you mean that we have no strings to follow?’ Fischer asked, tapping his fingers on the table.

  ‘No strings or leads, sir. However, we can obtain something. The identities and whereabouts of the members and agents were top-secret. Therefore, obtaining them would not be an easy task. We might have to look for some mole in our system.’

  ‘OK, keep me updated about your investigation. I would like to get the details of the other members, alive or dead, of that particular division and from that particular time. Make it quick. Their lives might be at stake.’

  Barbara gave a meek smile and raised her eyebrows. ‘Colonel, I actually took the privilege of preparing the list and details of other members, anticipating your request. Here it is,’ she said, turning to a particular page in her report.

  He raised his eyebrows in awe. ‘Good work, Agent Barbara,’ he said, expecting her to blush. But she maintained her professional expression and tugged the report closer to him. He looked at the names, knowing that he wouldn’t remember even a single name and just counted them, which were marked “alive’. There were only two of them. Some names were marked “temporary” and yet some others were marked as “usual deaths”. He pointed at those names and asked, ‘What do you mean by “usual deaths”?’

  ‘It just refers to those, who were killed during the duty, sir.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘How, may I ask?’

  ‘Well, while they were on a case, their den in the Mercupo was attacked by Mercupo Liberation Society terrorists. Four agents died in those attacks. Those agents were replaced by four agents recruited from another division.’

  ‘Is there any scope of finding what case they were dealing at the time?’

  ‘If we speak to the remaining two, we can.’

  ‘You have done a great job. I appreciate your work. Now on, my people are going to take over from you.’

  ‘OK sir,’ she said, rising from her chair.

  ‘By the way, how do you happen to know so much about the SAF, which even I am unaware of?’ he asked, out of curiosity and to prolong her stay.

  ‘I was in the training phase for SAF, while it was dissolved. So,
I know them from my training.’

  ‘I see.’

  They left his office after their greetings and Col. Fischer sat in his chair, thinking of Barbara and the murders.

  THE MAN WHO LOST IT ALL

  MILLER’S RESIDENCE- SEVEN DAYS POST THE JUDGMENT DAY

  HIS MORNING MOOD, which the disturbance by the military’s daily city parade had already curbed by disrupting his sleep, improved by the news of murder of William Koz Hopkins. It was the only interesting piece of information he found in the newspaper. He found no maid around him in the room and took the privilege of reading the news aloud.

  ‘Private William Koz Hopkins, service member of Kraminko Division of Armed Military Forces was found murdered yesterday at his house in Hedwig Street of Kraminko. The forensic experts have confirmed that he was murdered during the early morning of September 6. Hopkins, a bachelor, was on leave for the past four weeks, and when one of the neighbors failed to get response from Hopkins, he sensed that something was wrong and called the cops. By the time cops broke into his house, he was lying dead in his bedroom, with his throat cut open. The CIB has promised to investigate the case and come up with promising results within the coming few days,’ he read aloud.

  By the time he was done, there was a wide grin on his face. He dropped the paper on the table and stood up. He walked over to the window and took in the sunlight. Even though the sunlight was blinding, his excitement clouded the discomfort it caused. He sensed the dust on the glass, drew four human figures in dust with his index finger, and wrote “S-A-F” above it. He crossed one of them and wrote “3 more to go” below them. The crossed human figure reminded him of Hopkins.

  I will take care of everything, Eve.

  THE MEMOiR

  He sat in a folding chair beside the bed and gazed at a sleeping Hopkins. The bedside table was crowded with an ashtray, containing about a dozen smoked cigarettes, and two bottles of beer and a bottle of aspirin. Jeremy took the beer bottle into his gloved hand and rolled it in his hand, thinking of ways to wake Hopkins painfully. He weighed the bottle in his hand and dropped it to the ground. Hopkins woke up with a startled look, which the horror in his blood-shot eyes replaced.

  ‘Good morning, Agent Hopkins,’ he said, waving his normal hand. ‘How you doing?’

  Hopkins licked his dry lips, as if he was about to speak, but only let out a gasp. Jeremy giggled and patted Hopkins’s shoulder. ‘Good to see you.’

  Hopkins looked in the direction of the door and fear crept into his face, when he saw Adam, a six-and-a-half feet giant with a pierced left eyebrow, standing in the doorway. Jeremy sensed his fear and said, ‘He is one of my men. I bet that he could crush your bones if you try to escape. So better keep your thoughts at bay.’

  Jeremy pulled his kitchen knife out of his blazer’s pocket and gently pressed its tip against Hopkins’s trachea. ‘A classic household homicidal weapon. You must have heard of the murders of the three members of your unit last month. I bet you were anticipating this moment. What a bad time to be on leave! The newspapers announced that the murderer had slit their throats open. Since I am uninterested in opening anything, I want you to speak out the names of your mates during the time I was a captive in your den. Or else, tomorrow’s papers would also read, “Serviceman William Koz Hopkins found dead in his home with his throat cut open”,’ he said, waving the knife in the air.

  William gazed at Jeremy for a second, made a sudden maneuver to his right, reached for his bedside drawer, and opened it. It was empty. He turned back and found a smiling Jeremy.

  ‘Do you think I’m stupid? Well, I don’t find it written on my forehead,’ he remarked, elevating his eyebrows.

  Jeremy shook his head and gazed at Adam, who came over to the bed. ‘Adam, pin him to the bed. Enough of this fooling around.’

  William tried to protest. Adam was too heavy for him and pinned his arms to the bed using the pillows to do so, instead of using his bare hands. William’s adrenaline made him kick wildly at Adam with his knees, but the effort did not suffice.

  Jeremy leaned in closer to William. ‘William, speak out the names and I promise you, you will die a painless death.’

  William stopped protesting for a moment and gazed into Jeremy’s eyes with a blank face. ‘Fuck you, son of a bitch,’ he yelled, spitting in his face.

  ‘As if I care.’ Jeremy leaned forward, and thrust the blade of the knife into the side of his neck and ran it to the opposite side. William struggled for a few moments and lay still in the pool of blood. Jeremy stood up from the chair and walked to the door. He stopped at the foot of the bed as the idea of spitting on William crossed his mind. However, he couldn’t leave behind his DNA in his saliva. He grinned at the corpse and walked away.

  BACK FROM THE PAST

  Jeremy glanced at the figures for the final time, wiped them off with his fist, and walked into the bathroom.

  MILLER’S RESIDENCE- TEN DAYS POST THE JUDGMENT DAY

  The clock in his room chimed, announcing that the time was seven o’ clock in the evening. The silence of the room was what Jeremy enjoyed. The sudden noise messed it up, which aggravated his headache. He sat up on the edge of the bed, holding his head in his hands. He knew that there was no going back to sleep anytime soon. He picked up his phone and called Ethan. He answered it on the first ring.

  ‘Hey Jeremy, how you doing, buddy?’ Ethan asked. Over the weeks, his voice had been the only source of solace for Jeremy since the accident and the tragedy that followed. Hearing his voice seemed to trigger a sense of euphoria, similar to smoking did.

  ‘Yeah, I’m doing just fine, man. I just called you to apologize for my behavior that day.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so fucking formal. We are friends, man. And remember, you already apologized for that. No need to do that again. So, what’s your progress with Wilson’s phone records?’

  ‘I trusted John with the responsibility. As you know, he is the most intelligent one of my men. But, so far, he hasn’t come up with any leads.’

  ‘No problem, we have to be optimistic, Jeremy. You take care of your health.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jeremy said.

  While they continued speaking on the phone, Jeremy received a call on his home-phone from Agent Jacob, the Head of his father’s security staff. Jeremy had called him that morning and asked him to meet him at his house. Jeremy kept Ethan on hold and answered Jacob’s call.

  ‘Hello Agent Jacob,’ Jeremy said.

  ‘Hello Mr. Miller,’ Jacob said, ‘I’m outside the door. Are you available?’

  ‘Yeah, come in. Kieran will attend to you. I will be down within five minutes,’ Jeremy said and ended the call. He promised Ethan to callback later and stood up to change his clothes for the meeting.

  Agent Jacob, the Head of PRIME MINISTER Miller’s private security, was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, unlike his usual suits, which explained his suspension more precisely. He was suspended following the assassination of Donald Jol Miller. He stood up, shook Jeremy’s hand and they sat down to get to business.

  ‘So, what is it you wanted to speak about, Mr. Miller?’ Jacob asked.

  ‘Jacob, many people must have asked you this question over the past few days. But as the son of Donald Miller, I would like to ask you this question one more time. Have you seen my father’s assailant?’

  Having faced the question repeatedly, the answer automatically kicked itself out. ‘No Mr. Miller, I am sorry. I have no idea, who it was. When the perpetrators sabotaged the backup generator and the transformer, I left four of my agents outside your father’s office, of which one was a black sheep, and left with the rest of the officers to inspect the situation. We sensed the intensity of the situation when we heard the shots. But by the time we returned, the damage was done. The-’

  ‘But, weren’t any of the agents present in the vicinity of the building during the firing?’

  ‘No, you see, the guards had to stay in their place outside the building’s door. But they too indulge
d themselves in unconcerned inspections with us. That particular day, everyone disrespected my orders, which ultimately brought about this tragedy. And The Invincible Army had their men swimming within the system, which made it difficult to find the son of a bitch.’

  ‘So you told them that you have no clue about the murderer?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what earned me my medal of suspension. I am not the kind of person to invent some cock and bull story to pull myself out of the shit. I could have pointed out someone and escaped this fate. But I told them the truth. I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Miller.’

  Jeremy wiped off his tears and patted Jacob’s shoulder. ‘Even though you failed to protect my father, I appreciate your honesty in the issue, unlike some people who weave stories and live them as their lives.’

  Jeremy stood up and escorted Jacob outside the door. Once he was inside his room, Jeremy’s expression changed. The agent’s words sounded too dramatic and cinematic. He sensed something twisted in his words. He had to call John to inquire about his progress with the records. However, John himself called Jeremy as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. The excitement in his voice was apparent as John spoke. ‘Mr. Miller, I think we have something here.’

  Jeremy too was excited. He kept his emotions at bay and asked, ‘What’s it?’

  ‘Wilson spoke multiple times to one person and asked him to meet him at his place.’

  ‘But, that could have been a friend or some relative,’ Jeremy interrupted.

  ‘Let me complete, sir. In one of their conversations, Wilson mentioned “a lead on Operation Rochen Fort”. So, we think he might be the one.’

  ‘Did you find the identity?’ asked Jeremy, not bothering to hide his excitement.