The Memoir

by Vaibhav Reddy IVN

  ‘Hello Jeremy,’ it said.

  When he turned around identifying the voice, he found Ethan, dressed in his usual black suit. Jeremy jolted backward and his back struck hard against the door.

  ‘You look good in my clothes, Jeremy. But, you should have gone for something comfortable than a suit.’

  Jeremy strained hard to speak, but he felt at a loss of words.

  ‘Do not be frightened, Jeremy. I am here to fill your loneliness,’ Ethan said, getting off the bed. As Jeremy stood perplexed in his spot, Ethan walked towards him.

  THE COUNTRY OF CHAOS

  BELFORT HARPER’S RESIDENCE- FEW DAYS BEFORE THE JUDGMENT DAY

  BELFORT STOOD FACING the calendar in his living room, as Mudassir Al-Mustafa continued speaking on the phone. Listening to what Mudassir had to say, he counted the days until the end of his leave. He counted eight more days. He raised his eyebrows convincingly and drowned the last few drops of his drink. The clinking of the ice cubes in the glass made him walk towards the table, to refill his glass.

  ‘So, does it leave us with anymore targets?’ Mudassir asked.

  Belfort thought for a minute and said, ‘No, as far as I remember, everyone is taken care of. The Senior Field Agents, Tom and Phil, were nosy bastards; so, they met with an unfortunate fate.’

  ‘I am not concerned with your fucking memory! I want to know if you have taken care of everyone who knows about our links!’

  This time, Belfort thought deeper and replied, ‘No, I have taken care of everyone. The cadets might not be aware about this. I would have taken care of them if not for the investigations and shit. I had great difficulty framing Tom and Phil’s murders as complications of armed robberies. The CIB is involved. So, we must be careful.’

  ‘OK, have you put men behind Sazyfan?’ Mudassir asked.

  ‘Yep, he is being followed closely,’ Belfort said, filling whisky in his glass.

  ‘OK, I will contact you if need be.’

  ‘OK,’ Belfort said and ended the call.

  Just as he settled on his couch after resuming the movie he had been watching, he heard the doorbell. He cursed the interveners for not giving him time to settle down and cursed Mudassir for his arrogance. He paused the movie and wondered who it could be. He had decided to stay at his farmhouse, to evade undesired disturbances, and had even sent away the guard. He wondered who must have come to meet him there at ten in the night.

  Suspiciously, he picked the gun off the couch and walked to the door. Peeking through the peek-hole, he found Daniel Shelby and Manyap Henning waiting outside his door. Wondering what they were doing at his door so late in the night, he opened the door. Both of them saluted in unison.

  ‘What’re you doing here?’ he asked, shifting his gaze from one to another.

  ‘Sir, there is something we would like to discuss with you. Can we come in?’ Manyap asked, stepping forward.

  ‘Come in,’ Belfort said, not bothering to hide his annoyance.

  Both of them stepped into the living room and waited for a formal word before taking their seats. Not receiving any such word, they settled together on the couch and crossed their arms across their chests, while Belfort stood in the doorway deciphering their behavior. He closed the door behind him, switched off the TV and settled in the rocking chair. He placed the gun beside him on a stool and grabbed his glass off the table.

  ‘Sir, you seem pretty unsettled by our presence. Is this a wrong time for us to visit you?’ Manyap asked.

  Belfort took a sip from the glass and shook his head. ‘I am not feeling good. So, what is it that you want to discuss with me?’ he asked, massaging his temples to fake a headache and anticipating them to end the meeting quickly.

  ‘We just wanted to talk about the murders of our Senior-Field Agents, sir,’ Daniel said, leaning forward and clasping his hands together.

  ‘Their murders? What is there to think so much about it? They were murdered in an armed robbery.’

  ‘It was pretty strange for the both of them to be present in the same place during an armed robbery, sir.’

  Belfort nodded, but remained silent.

  ‘Why are you so annoyed by that?’ Daniel asked.

  Daniel’s remarks raised suspicions, and Jordan braced himself for any unexpected questions, which might follow. ‘Daniel, remember my place in the system and speak carefully, god damn it!’ he yelled.

  Daniel smiled and shook his head. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and pressed a button. ‘You better listen to this,’ he insisted, stretching his arm forward.

  ‘Daniel, it’s me Senior Agent Philips. Listen to what I have to say very carefully. According to what Thomas and I were able to find out, Belfort Harper has joined hands with the Mercupo Liberation Society. He has been taking bribes from them to turn-in some of the information we learnt from the prisoners. We suspect that he knows that we know about it. So, our lives are at stake. I wanted to tell you this, in case something happened to us. I want you and someone you can trust to report this to the higher authorities. Don’t let us down.’

  Daniel pocketed the phone once the audio stopped and gazed at Belfort for any kind of reaction. ‘So, what do you think of this?’

  Belfort avoided eye contact with them and looked into his glass. He shifted the glass between both hands and listened to the clink of the melting cubes. Out of the blue, he raised his gun in the direction of the couch only to meet Manyap, who had predicted his move. He kicked Belfort’s hand, thus disarming him. Belfort swung his right arm in Manyap’s direction, thus landing his elbow in Manyap’s abdomen. When Daniel lunged forward, Belfort splashed the fluid from the glass on his face and pushed him backward.

  By the time the both of them recoiled from the assault, Belfort had reached half of the corridor leading into the house and stopped. He pulled the latch of the attic-door and it came down. While they expected him to climb into the attic, he pulled off a gun, which lay taped to the inside of the attic-door, and began shooting in their direction.

  They lunged sideways away from his line of fire to either side of the wall flanking the corridor. They pulled their guns off their holsters and got ready to counter-strike. Belfort shot at the walls, which splattered the plaster off its edges. Daniel and Manyap did not dare try a shot with fear of taking a bullet from Belfort.

  ‘Mr. Belfort, confess your crimes and surrender to the authorities!’ Manyap yelled.

  ‘Fuck you! Neither of you are going to get out alive!’ came the reply.

  In one of the plaster strikes, the dust arising from the broken plaster fell in Daniel’s eyes and he retreated away from the wall. As he moved backward, his legs stumbled against a table and he lost his balance and the grip of his gun. He heard Manyap’s voice calling him, when he collapsed on the ground. Daniel pressed his palms against his eyes to increase the secretion of the lacrimal fluid to clear the dust particles.

  It took him a minute to clear his eyes of the dust and when he finally got back his vision, he saw Manyap standing in front of him with his back to the corridor. In the blank screen of the TV, which faced the corridor, Daniel saw the silhouette of Belfort advancing towards them from the corridor. Daniel got back to his feet and picked up the knife from the dining table. He motioned towards the corridor and pushed Manyap away. Just as Belfort appeared from behind the wall with his gun pointing in their direction, Daniel swung the knife at Belfort, evading the aim of the gun, and the knife cut through Belfort’s internal jugular artery.

  As the incised artery gushed out blood, Belfort dropped the gun and clutched his throat in a vain attempt to stop the blood.

  ‘Fuck!’ Daniel exclaimed. ‘I did not intend to do that!’

  ‘I know. But, this bastard was trying to kill us,’ Manyap said, pointing to a bleeding Belfort and exhaling hard.

  Within the next few minutes, Belfort lay dead on the floor in a pool of blood, as Daniel and Manyap moved about the room, removing traces of their existence from the place. Once they removed all
the traces, they walked into the bedroom and opened the locker, which had more than a hundred thousand bucks stashed in it. They removed the money from the locker with gloved hands and bagged it. Then, they moved into the computer room, deleted the data from the system and burnt the equipment with Belfort’s whisky.

  After they made sure that they had removed every trace of their arrival, they left the front door slightly open and walked back to their car, thinking of an orphanage to dump the money.

  SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE SILVINKERIA- 1991, ONE DAY AFTER ROCHEN FORT BLASTS

  In her two days in their custody, Rachel Wud Jankis had learnt one thing. It was never to ask them questions and follow what they instructed her to do. The only thing that comforted her was the absence of her son, Michael, whom she had left at her friend’s before leaving to her conference in Kraminko. However, she had never reached the conference, for some people abducted her from her cab on the night before the blasts in Silvinkeria. They made her see the aftermath of the blasts on the TV, and repeatedly reminded her that they were the consequences of her husband’s deeds. She was totally confused by the remark and wondered what it was that made them say that.

  She repeatedly asked why they abducted from her cab. But what she received in response were the glares of the heavy tattooed men, who had abducted her. From the various conversations she had managed to eavesdrop, it became evident that they were using her to trap Ross in the scandal of the blasts.

  ‘Ross is innocent. Don’t trap him in this!’ she yelled, as she watched in the TV the mayhem caused by the blasts.

  ‘Look lady,’ the man, whom she had assumed as the group leader, said. ‘Nobody out there cares a fuck about your husband’s innocence. So, keep your mouth shut! You’ll be united with him tomorrow. If you keep yelling like this, I’ll make sure you never see him again. So, shut up!’

  Despite having her doubts about the man’s honesty behind telling her that she would be united with Ross, Rachel decided to stay calm and wait for what fate had to offer her. Waiting in the back of the van with blindfold around her eyes, and her hands bound behind her back, she wished for the best.

  After few minutes of waiting, she heard the whining of a truck. Then, someone roughly grabbed her arm and dragged her out of the van. After she collapsed on the gravel on her knees, she tried to ask what was happening. But the tape over her mouth made it impossible. She laid still as she heard the sound of an igniting engine and heard multiple vehicles drive away.

  Just as she began to assume that they had left her in a deserted location, she heard footsteps on the gravel, moving towards her. She tried to pull her hands apart, but the tape did not allow it. As she tried to get back on her feet, a pair of hands clasped her throat suddenly.

  My God, I am going to die.

  PRESS CONFERENCE- FEW DAYS AFTER THE ROCHEN FORT BLASTS

  Though not spoken openly, Donald knew that Godwin Nyl Sanders was the brain behind the planned execution of the blasts. Seated on the dais beside the Prime Minister himself, he felt his anxiety rising. Since his childhood, he had never had the nerve to speak on the stage infront of so many people at a time. Now, everyone expected him to speak his achievements and role in solving the mystery behind the Rochen Fort Blasts. He clutched the document tightly and felt the blood drain his hands. Observing his pale hands, Godwin placed his hand on his hand and tapped it. Donald managed a meek smile and revised what he had to speak.

  With the anxiety rising, he did not give attention to the speech of Ralph Gallitzin, who had until then bragged about the role of Explosives Unit in solving the mystery, and was now calling out for Donald to reveal his investigations. Only when Ralph called his name for the second time that Donald’s wandering mind came back to the auditorium, and he stood up. He walked nervously towards the podium and stopped beside it to let Ralph hand him the microphone.

  Ralph handed him the control of the microphone and leaned towards his ear. ‘Get ready to get fucking famous, my boy. I wish you the best of luck.’

  Donald clutched the microphone tightly as if it would slip out of his perspiring palm. With one hand, he opened the file and pulled off the first page of the file, which described the details of the explosive used in the blasts.

  ‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am Donald Jol Miller, chemist in the EU of EDDAOF. This here,’ he said, raising the paper, ‘is the paper describing the chemical composition of the explosive that triggered the blast in the car outside the Rochen Fort. For an overview, the composition used in this explosive is a strange one. As a member of Explosives Unit for the past few years, I haven’t come across such a combination in my career. But with quite an effort, I was able to decipher this. And here I stand with the combination in my hand. This achievement would not have been possible if not for the people at CIB, who provided me with the reports of a Ross Wud Jankis, who is an employee at the Ordnance Factory. Surprisingly, his reports had the same combination of the chemicals as I deciphered. So-’

  ‘Mr. Miller, why did you get the idea of acquiring those papers from ordnance factory?’ a journalist asked, breaking his flow.

  Donald had been so engrossed in choosing his words for the speech that he had not given much attention to other particulars of the incident. He stood still in front of the crowd, with his legs shaking behind the podium.

  ‘Maybe, it’s better if I explain this,’ Kevin Dormer, Director of JOF, said. He moved to the podium and took the microphone, while Donald walked back to his seat. ‘As you may or may not know, the first revelation of this investigation was that the car that went-off belonged to Mr. Ross Wud Jankis, who works in the West Division of Ordnance Factory. So, when we investigated about him in his workplace, we came to know that he had recently developed a new explosive for the RCAF, which was yet to be tested, but had disappeared a couple of days prior to the explosion. So we acquired his report about the explosive and it complied with the results obtained by Mr. Donald Jol Miller.

  ‘And, since you will question me about the implosion of Rochen Fort, I would like to announce that it was the work of R&D Constructions and Destructions Pvt. Ltd. They secured the contract to build the Rochen Fort for the government. During the construction, they have used explosives in the concrete mixtures. Therefore, when the explosives fixed to the support walls in the basement of the building went off, the flames ignited these explosives in the concrete and the whole building was aflame within a few minutes.

  ‘Ironically, Mr. Ross Jankis, who is a consultant for R&D Constructions and Destructions, was the one who assigned the explosives that were implanted in the basement. Mr. Seamus Kyl Mendes, who is the acting CEO of R&D Constructions and Destructions in the absence of Mr. Cleveland for the past two years, is also a member of Fremian Democrats Party and so is Ross Jankis. We believe that Fremian Democrats Party might be behind this. We will look into this matter further. As of now, the accused will be arrested as soon as possible.’

  All the perpetrators on the dais had the feeling that they had rushed things at far faster pace than they had intended to and worried about raising suspicions. Yet, the speech had an immediate impact as one of the assembled people stood up and voiced anti-Fremian Democrats Party slogans, claiming it a shoal of murderous pigs, and the rest of the crowd followed. The crowd stood up and began protesting.

  As Donald watched the people protest, his exhilaration took center stage. The aim of the conspiracy stood accomplished. Godwin patted Donald on his thigh. When Donald turned to Godwin, he saw a blank face. But he was not so stupid not to imagine Godwin’s satisfaction. At that moment, Donald mentally erased the line he had drawn between good and bad. He realized that it did not matter if it was good or bad he did, but his destiny that mattered the most, whatever the route.

  SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE SILVINKERIA- THE DAY AFTER THE ROCHEN FORT BLASTS

  Ross had gone in and out of consciousness for most of the time following the blasts. The sedatives had not let him experience the weight of the guilt he bore on his heart. Every
time he gained consciousness, the recollections crashed into his mind and he would shed the guilt in form of tears.

  Since he drifted in and out of consciousness repeatedly, he did not notice that he was in a truck. It was not even ten minutes after he gained his consciousness before someone shoved him out of the truck onto gravel in a silent locale. He heard the receding whining of the vehicles’ engines. He stood up with great difficulty and tried to steady himself. However, he could not prevent swaying to a side as if something pulled him from that direction. Luckily, his hands were bound in front of him, not behind his back.

  Within the next few seconds, he gained his balance and strolled aimlessly in the direction of a disturbance. He held out his hands forward and moved slowly, until they touched someone’s skin. Reflexively, he clutched the skin and realized that he was clutching a female’s throat. But the touch seemed familiar and he released his grasp of the neck. He moved his fingers upward and made contact with the tender lips after removing the duct tape. As he traced his way to the pinched nose, his hopes escalated. When he made contact with the scar on the forehead, he confirmed it was Rachel.

  ‘Rachel!’ he wanted to exclaim. He pulled the blindfold off her eyes and felt her eyebrows elevate at the sight of him.

  ‘Ross, are you alright?’ she asked.

  He nodded. He moved his bound hands down her right arm. As he traced downward, he found that her hands were bound behind her back. He turned her around and struggled with the tape. He dug his over-grown nails into the tape and finally succeeded in tearing it off with quite a struggle.

  Within few seconds after that, his hands were free, so were his hands and legs. When he removed the blindfold finally, he caught sight of her worn and sunken face, which escalated his excitement. He hugged her tightly as if leaving her would make her disappear.

  ‘Ross, what have you been trapped into?’ she asked, with tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘You are an idiot for not undoing yourself before coming for my rescue,’ she added, with a meek smile.