Mr. Clear

by Stewart, Graham

  Cole said nothing for the longest time and then shook his head. “I know nothing of my parents, Ben. The fact of the matter is you’re the first of our kind I’ve encountered who has spoken of even having a mother, let alone knowing her. In that respect, you’re very lucky.”

  After a moment Cole asked, “Tell me about her. What was her name?”

  “Eve.”

  Cole smiled. It was slight, but it was there. “Eve,” he repeated. “That’s a beautiful name. And it was just the two of you?”

  “We had friends. People who looked after us. They might have been called family.”

  “What happened?”

  “They died. Then it was just me.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Cole, holding his hand out. “Well it’s not just you anymore, Ben. You’re with family again.”

  Ben had been on his own a long time and had gotten along just fine. He wasn’t looking for sympathy, or family. Still, he welcomed the novelty of a face-to-face chat. Shaking the guy’s hand wasn’t going to do any harm. “Where did you grow up?” Ben asked. “Who raised you?”

  Cole poured the eggs into a saucepan and placed them on the heat. “Not in any place you could call home with a straight face, that’s for sure. And certainly not by anyone remotely like a loving mother.

  “None of us knew our parents, or indeed if we ever had any to begin with.”

  Cole looked around him and pointed to a huge L-shaped black leather couch. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

  Ben moved to the couch. It was new. Brand new. Still partially wrapped in the plastic it had been delivered in.

  “Wait, just a sec,” said Cole.

  Ben stood again as Cole dashed off through a doorway on the far side of the kitchen into what Ben guessed must have been a bedroom.

  Cole hurried back out of the room clutching a pair of jogging pants and a sweatshirt. He tossed them to Ben.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” said Cole. “Kind of weirds me out having a naked guy sitting on my couch.”

  Ben opened the garments in his hands and held them up.

  “Problem?” said Cole.

  “It’s just,” said Ben, “I’ve never-”

  “You’ve never worn clothes before?” said Cole.

  “They’d do me more trouble than good,” said Ben. “I’ve managed to get by.”

  “You must have a hell of a hide on you,” said Cole. “I mean, the climate in Miami is temperate, but it has its moments. Wind, rain. It can get kind of chilly in January, February.”

  “I’m used to it,” said Ben. He was sure there was a much more graceful and effortless way to go about getting dressed than the mess he was making of it. He’d heard the expression ‘getting dressed in the dark’. He guessed this must have been what it was like. After what seemed like far too long, he had managed to maneuver himself into the leisurewear.

  Funny, that in clothing designed to be flexible for the wearer, Ben’s movement had never felt more restricted.

  Cole looked past him, through the window to the cranes at the harbor in the distance, remembering. “We had absolutely no idea where we came from, or who our parents were. With no one but each other for company, we were lab rats. Forced to perform for food.”

  He sat down in the matching armchair opposite. “Also, unlike you, we were made to wear clothes all of the time. It was one of the rules. We were stitched into the things. They were made in a way that we could not take them off. It was a pre-requisite. Made it easier for them to keep tabs on us.”

  “For who?”

  “Our masters. Our keepers.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  Cole laughed. “Who do you think, Ben? The ones who pull all the strings. They don’t know about you. You’ve managed to stay out of their sightline, so to speak, to live off the grid,” said Cole. “But I managed to escape. And I’m hoping to stay escaped. We were cooped up in a pen like test chimps, being treated like test chimps, in one of their facilities. If they knew you were out here, they’d be after you too, believe me. They’d want to know all they could about you. Right now, rest assured, they’re doing everything they can to get me back.”

  “What about the others?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Cole. “I saw my opportunity and I seized it. But as soon as you and I are ready, we’re going to go back for them.”

  “How long ago did you escape?” Ben asked.

  “Ten years,” said Cole in a subdued tone. “It’s taken a long time for me to get my head together, to adjust. To acquire the means to ensure I stay free.”

  “Speaking of ‘adjust’,” said Ben. “How do you control it? Your… state.”

  “I discovered it by accident. And it’s a skill I’m going to teach you, Ben. You’re going to need to learn it, if you’re going to survive.”

  “I’ve gotten by just fine up to this point without it,” said Ben.

  “I’ve watched you, remember?” replied Cole. “You don’t get by. You scrape by. You want to see out the rest of your days living like that? Like a stray dog?”

  Ben didn’t answer.

  “What about your little friend on the train?” said Cole. “I saw the way you looked at her. The way you watched her leave. Are you going to try and tell me you wouldn’t like to be able to know her more? To take her out for dinner? In a restaurant maybe, instead of behind one?

  “Course you do,” said Cole. “I can give you that, Ben. All of it. And so much more.”

  This was all too good to be true. All happening way too fast. No catch? There was always a catch. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to do this for me?”

  “For you? No, no. With you, Ben. I need you. And whether you know it or not, you need me. We’d make a great team. Just imagine what we could do together.”

  It didn’t sound like Cole wanted Ben to imagine. In fact, it sounded as if he had some very definite ideas.

  “You know what?” said Cole, “I’m getting way too far ahead of myself here. I mean you hardly know me for Christ’s sakes.” He grabbed two plates from the overhead cupboard. “This is just about ready. How about we eat? After breakfast we can go have some fun, get to know each other.”

  Ben’s stomach rumbled at the smell of the food.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” said Cole.

  8

  On the face of it, a pedestrian tunnel may have looked like the ideal route from one side of the freeway to the other. But nobody in their right minds used them in this part of the city.

  Even during the day.

  So either the guy with the laptop bag slung over his shoulder was not in full possession of his mental faculties, or he didn’t know where he was.

  Either way, he presented Tone with an opportunity too good to pass up.

  The guy had strolled nonchalantly past him and his boys ten seconds ago, nodding in their direction and even muttering some kind of friendly greeting.

  Clearly he had no idea he was not in the presence of friends.

  The fool had maybe a twenty-meter head start before Tone decided he could do with a new laptop, and whatever else the guy had on him.

  With the chaotic hum of the traffic overhead, Tone knew the guy wouldn’t hear him approaching. He closed the distance fast, sliding the blade from his sleeve into his palm as he did so. He reached out his left hand, to grab the guy around the neck from behind, and drew back the blade in his right, preparing to drive it into the idiot’s side.

  But he never got that far.

  Somebody, at least it felt like somebody, it had to be, grabbed his hand in mid-air and twisted his wrist violently, snapping it. His knife hand was bent likewise up and around his back, the blade falling to the ground.

  Tone let out a yelp. The guy with the laptop bag turned around to look at him, equal parts confusion and surprise on his face.

  “Get out of here,” a voice growled.

  The laptop bag guy didn’t need telling twice
. He turned on his heels and started running.

  Tears formed in Tone’s eyes as whoever was behind him drove his arm further up his back, past the point where nature intended it to go.

  Shouts went up. Through the pain, Tone could hear the rubber squeaking of sneakers as his boys came running to his aid.

  He was almost getting up hopes of some salvation and perhaps a little retribution when he saw his right-hand man, Rez, somersaulting past him into a crumpled heap on the urine-stained ground.

  Tone’s captor released him and he slumped to the ground, lamenting after the broken bones in his arm.

  The rest of his crew stood around in bewilderment looking down at him and Rez in turn. One of them walked over and stooped down to pick up Tone’s blade, only to watch it shoot across the ground before he got a hand to it.

  “What the f-” the guy started to say, before being hit in the mouth with a force that sent his head shooting back and his ass on to the concrete, minus two teeth.

  The sight of Tone’s knife lifting into the air on its own and making stabbing actions at the rest was enough to send the last two standing members of his merry men sprinting in the direction from which they had come.

  ***

  With a chiseled jaw the likes of which was only found in razor blade commercials, and a shock of white hair that refused to move in even the most severe winds, the Governor of Florida was one of the most assured and confident performers ever to step in front of a television camera.

  Never one known to put a single step wrong when it came to standing up in front of the media, today had started out to be business as usual, but had then started to unravel fast.

  Things had gone from bad, to worse, to diabolical.

  After doing umpteen and one sound checks, the microphone had switched itself on and off intermittently as he delivered his speech.

  Then the teleprompter stalled. When it came around, it began feeding him the wrong speech, one packed full of expletives and defamatory comments about the sexual orientation of the population of Miami.

  Even so, he had done well. He could improvise with the best of them and felt he had ridden the storm well, until some kind of freak wind caught the glass of water on the lectern and poured it all over the groin of his khaki pants.

  Unbelievably, worse was yet to come.

  When he made a joke, and mopped at the water stain, his trousers came down, on national network television.

  Tonight, the footage would surely find its way on to one, if not all of the late night talk shows and, not much longer after that, YouTube.

  A man who usually wouldn’t break a sweat pogo-sticking through Death Valley, he now found himself perspiring and stammering like a geek at a Star Trek convention.

  ***

  The limited-edition Aston Martin was just one of the many fringe benefits of being maybe the most photographed celebrity in America right now. Famous for being famous, Kara made sure everyone, especially the guys with the cameras, were around to see her as she coasted, at not much more than walking speed really, along Ocean Drive.

  Stopped at the traffic lights to pose for the paparazzi hanging out of the windows of the minivans and off the backs of the motorcycles beside her, she thought for a second that one of them had jumped into the back seat when the convertible rocked side to side on its suspension. When she turned around there was no one behind her but some sweaty, big fat guy in a removals truck, who blew a kiss at her and did something disgusting with his tongue.

  Kara spent so much time driving around that she didn’t notice the fuel gauge creeping into the red until the car emitted some kind of beeping sound. Eventually figuring out that she was running on fumes, she turned the car into a gas station.

  She caught the attention of the guy behind the counter through the window, but all she got in reply from him was a blank look and a raised eyebrow before he nodded his head to the sign over the forecourt and returned to his magazine.

  Kara slid her eight hundred dollar sunglasses down on to the end of her nose.

  Self-service only? Really?

  Untrusting of the great unwashed, she eventually found the button that brought up the roof and slipped out of the car, walking unsteadily up to the pump in her five-inch heels. When she eventually found the gas cap, she started filling the car up with fuel from the green hose, hoping she was doing the right thing.

  But any questions she had became redundant when the engine started up and the Aston Martin took off in a squeal of rubber across the forecourt, leaving her pumping gasoline on to the ground and her face a shade of red as scarlet as her lipstick.

  9

  Tonight.

  The police chief’s belly sprawled across the desk. So much so that it looked like it and the mahogany were one. The buttons on the man’s shirt strained when he inhaled between sentences. His forehead gleamed with a thin coat of perspiration as he beamed at Powell, his chubby fingers interlocked in front of him.

  “I trust you’ve been afforded access to everything you need, gentlemen?”

  “Yes, Captain McGuire,” said Powell. “Thank you. Both you and your staff here have been very accommodating.”

  The guy sure held himself in high regard. The walls were a mosaic of every certificate and diploma he had received, since childhood by the looks of things, along with dozens of framed photographs of him shaking hands with various politicians and dignitaries. Even a couple of B-list movie stars. He was probably wondering if he could clear a space for him and Powell up there next. In fact, Powell was pretty sure of it.

  McGuire loved himself. The only thing guys like this loved more was having men with government badges roaming the halls of their precinct wanting their help.

  “Before we can conclude here,” said Powell, “as I mentioned earlier, I really would like an opportunity to speak with Officer Haye.”

  “Receiving you loud and clear,” McGuire said. “You don’t have to ask twice.”

  This was the fourth time.

  McGuire reclined in his seat and used the springs in the chair, or whatever was left of them, to help catapult him up into a standing position.

  Powell looked around briefly at Dyson and Morgan, marveling at how the man moved his vast bulk.

  McGuire threw open the door to his office and stepped out into the hall with more than a little degree of ceremony. Hands on his not-inconsiderable hips, he glared down at a figure seated outside, like a school principal standing over an errant pupil.

  Such theatre. And all so very obviously for Powell and his team’s benefit.

  A police officer with a mass of bandage on his nose stood. He maneuvered himself carefully around his captain into the office.

  Powell stood and smiled. “Officer Haye.”

  Before the policeman could answer, McGuire slammed his fist down on the top of his desk, startling everyone. The captain flared his nostrils. “Haye, it’s embarrassing enough for this Department that you go turn Miami International Airport into a three-ring circus, almost causing a major security scare in the process. But now I have these Government boys in, wanting to ask all kinds of questions, as a result. I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all. You give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have you clear out your locker right now.”

  Haye was getting ready to dig deep and apologize with everything he had.

  He was going to be no use to Powell broken. The police officer needed to know he was in his corner on this one.

  “One reason?” Powell interjected, disposing with the polite tone he had been employing with the police chief so far. “How about because very far from embarrass you and your fine department, Captain McGuire, as a result of Officer Haye’s dogged police work today, he may be in a position to help us apprehend some very dangerous fugitives. Men who pose a very real and imminent threat to national security.”

  McGuire’s face froze. It looked like someone had pressed the pause button.

  Powell put his hand out to Haye again. “I’m Agent Powell.
These are my colleagues, Agents Morgan and Dyson.”

  McGuire shuddered back into life, all smiles. “Well if there’s any way in which we can be of further assistance to you gentlemen-“

  “What would be great is if you could let us use your office,” said Powell.

  “Sure. No problem,” said McGuire, moving to sit back down.

  “While you go rustle us up some coffees,” Powell added. “I think I saw a place on the corner.”

  The captain looked between Powell and Haye, then finally got the message and left. When the door closed, Haye smiled. “You never told him what way you take it.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Powell. “None of us drink the stuff anyway. It’ll give him something to do. He could sure do with the exercise. I just hope he doesn’t go into cardiac arrest on the trip. Why don’t you take a seat?”

  Haye looked around the office.

  “That one’s free,” said Powell, pointing at the police chief’s chair.

  Haye shrugged and made himself comfortable. “I got to be honest with you guys,” he said. “Tonight at the airport? I think I probably have more questions than you do.”

  “I can well imagine,” said Powell. “Your chief already gave us eyes on the footage from the onboard camera in your patrol car, and the infrared the air unit recorded. But I want you to tell me what you saw, if you don’t mind. In your own words.”

  Haye held his hands up. “I’m not sure how I can help you guys. Sounds like you’ve seen a lot more than I did tonight.”

  “Go on, please. Indulge us,” said Powell.

  “I saw nothing. I didn’t get a single look at the suspects,” said Haye. The man was genuinely flummoxed.

  “How was the light in the car lot at the airport?” Powell asked.

  “Not great. But it wasn’t pitch dark out there either.”

  “The footage from the chopper showed you no more than ten feet away from one of the suspects at one stage, looking straight at him,” said Powell.

  “I know. The pilot told me. And I’ll tell you what I told him. There was something wrong with that camera. Because there was no one in front of me.”