by C. T. Wente
And then suddenly the sky exploded above her.
Christina immediately kneeled down in fright as the intense flash of light erased the darkness of the Caribbean night, shrieking in terror as the shockwave of the concussion washed over her. She looked up to see fiery embers streaking overhead, trailing long fingers of ruby-red sparks that burned into nothingness as they fell towards the ship’s deck. A moment later, as the outer embers of red began to fade, a second explosion followed, filling the sky with a brilliant display of arching blue showers.
Christina quickly stood and straightened her dress, glancing around with an embarrassed smile as the rest of the party-goers stared transfixed at the unexpected fireworks show. She looked behind her to see Derrick still slumped awkwardly on the bow rail, gazing upwards with a silly, childlike grin on his face. Next to him, Max caught her stare and waved back politely.
A quickening tempo of explosions signaled the coming crescendo, and Christina hastily grabbed another flute of champagne from a passing server as the volume of the band rose with anticipation. She emptied the glass in a single swallow, feeling the effervescent cascade of bubbles tease her throat as they flowed over her tongue. Then, with a climactic display of exploding color and perfectly timed music, the show suddenly ended and the lights of the ship went dark. Christina and everyone around her immediately raised their glasses and roared with excitement under the beautiful starry night, clapping and cheering as the lights were slowly brought back to life. She turned to see Max standing at the bow of the boat, staring up at the smoke-filled sky as his massive hands clapped with the crowd.
Next to him, the bow rail was empty.
Christina’s mind seemed to process the moment in slow-motion as the color drained from her face. She took a half-step towards the bow of the ship as her eyes darted quickly across the faces around her. Derrick could have gone to get another drink she thought to herself, but instinctively knew this wasn’t the truth. From halfway across the ship, Max’s eyes dropped from the sky and locked onto hers. His wide smile suddenly faded as he read the terror in Christina’s expression. In an instant he turned his huge frame and seized the railing where Derrick had been sitting a moment before. At that same moment, beneath the vacuous silence
that had settled over the crowd in the wake of the fireworks, the sound of the Achilles II’s engines suddenly rose in protest as their props tore through an object beneath the boat.
Christina turned and walked calmly to the stern of the boat, moving quietly past the rest of the party-goers as they glanced around in confusion. She dimly registered the trembling of the ship as the engines were stopped and the anxious shouting of the crew as they frantically pulled ropes and rescue equipment from marked stations and ran past her. She seemed to float above her Ferragamo stilettos on legs that weren’t her own until her hands reached out and wrapped tightly around the railing at the back of the ship. There, Christina felt her body lean dangerously over the rail, and the scream that was lodged in the pit of her stomach erupted in a spray of champagne-colored vomit just as the ship’s spotlights illuminated the water below.
Thirty feet beneath her, the mangled torso of a man bobbed lifelessly in the wake of the ship, centered in a wide slick of black-red blood. Christina stared at the torn fabric that covered the floating remains and absently noted that it was Armani before strong hands grabbed her from behind and pulled her from the railing. The screams of the passengers around her faded quickly as she surrendered to the bliss of unconsciousness.
Part II
“Like an apex predator introduced to a new, prey-rich environment, the Corporate State will rapidly expand its presence across the global economic landscape; commanding a dominant share of both its core markets, while at the same time cultivating a new generation of corollary sub-markets. Ironically, it will be at this advanced stage of development that normal regulatory barriers such as domestic and international antitrust laws will have little real effect or meaning. The inherent legal and organizational complexities of the Corporate State, combined with its nearly limitless financial resources, shall thwart any normal means of governmental intervention.
This is the Corporate State in its mature form of existence – a massive and massively complex global business organism that possesses the financial, political and human resources necessary to control and consume at will.”
James H. Stone
“Predictions in the New Business Ecology”
21.
Leninsky Prospekt
Kaliningrad
November 12, 20:13
Planet Russia
Jeri-girl –
I left the bar last night in that most seductive of moments when lust and ambition wash over the rocks of fear and inhibition on the currents of nicotine and cheap vodka. I fell straight into bed and found myself trapped in a deep pore of musty, flesh-colored dreams where the women hovered elusive and kind and the men sat drunken and heated. Dark eyes were drinking me Jeri, and I wanted to drink them back. This was a place of restless hands and hot breath; sticky-stained tabletops and raw, twitching skin sweaty from the friction of impatient urges. Voices of strange tongues curled around the white cloud of my cigarette, as ethereal and haunting as the gummy, glistening sclera that flickered behind the veil of mascara-stained lids.
It’s the goddamn vodka Jeri, I swear it.
I know you keep asking yourself who this crazy handsome bastard of loose literary chops and oodles of air miles on Air Iraq must be, but this isn’t important. As for the ‘what’ I am, well Jeri-girl, we’re cut from the same fleeting fabric. Like you, I’m just a voyeur of the human condition, a lowly vending machine in the loathsome global cafeteria. Our professions may be different, but the endgame is still the same. We cater to the need, baby, and the need is all we need to know. If corporations were cigarettes, my love, I’d be the second-hand smoke.
It’s cold here Jeri, but nothing like the cold I knew before you.
Our kids will be gorgeous.
Ta!
- Mysterious Joe’s Last Stand Guy
p.s. You’ll be pleased to see that I finally got my full mug in the Polaroid.
p.p.s. The lamb shashlik at Podvorie’s was better than losing my virginity to Cindy Arlington in the fourth grade. Don’t order dog.
p.p.p.s. What are people saying about me there? I hope you placed my letters in the southeast corner of the bar. It really is the optimal viewing place.
∞
Jeri read the letter twice before pulling out the Polaroid and laughing out loud. In the background, a large, red-brick gothic cathedral sat at the end of a long courtyard flanked by rows of dark, leafless trees. In the middle of the courtyard, a lone man stood with his hands on his hips, his heavy winter jacket unzipped to reveal the Joe’s Last Stand Saloon t-shirt he wore underneath. A black wool scarf was tightly wrapped around his neck and lower face, and a massive fur hat covered the top of his face to his dark eyebrows, its ear flaps hanging comically down to his collar. Peering out from between the oversized hat and scarf, a pair of silver aviator sun glasses reflected the gray wintery sky, and Jeri could see the distorted image of a small, child-like figure holding the camera. Only the man’s nose, tanned and perfectly ordinary, was exposed to the camera.
Jeri stared silently at the photo for several minutes before a long, heavy sigh parted her lips. She stood from her barstool behind the counter and strolled slowly over to the southeast corner of the bar where the rest of the letters and photos were hung. As she pinned the photo to the wall, her eyes met those of the sunglassed man in the photo, and a quiver of excitement slid like the soft touch of a finger down the back of her spine.
22.
Tom Coleman looked up from the open folder in his hand and glanced at his watch. It was 3:32pm. He sat back in his chair and listened. The silence that filled the corridor outside his tiny office told him that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices were nearly deserted. Unlike Tom, his colleagues were already practicing
their early escapes from the office in preparation for the upcoming holidays. No doubt most of them were busy planning parties, buying gifts, and making the endless arrangements that came with this most wonderful time of the year.
In other words, their lives were now something of a living hell.
Tom shook his head at the thought as he closed the case file and placed the thick manila folder carefully on top of the “pending” pile on his desk. He opened the top drawer of his desk and found one of the small bottles of antibacterial lotion he kept in his office. An unconscious grin appeared on his face as he squeezed a large portion of the wonderfully sterile-smelling liquid onto his hands and began slowly rubbing them together. For reasons he couldn’t explain, Tom found the act calming. He methodically rubbed the strong disinfectant into his skin, happily imagining a billion little germs being purged from his body. With his hands clean, he grabbed another file from the tall stack of new cases and absently thumbed through the dull, photocopied pages. A few pages later, his concentration abruptly faded.
Something else was weighing on his mind.
He closed the file, stacked it neatly on top of the “new” pile on his desk and once again wiped his hands with lotion. He then turned his attention to his laptop. The latest reply in a string of emails between Tom and his brother-in-law, CIA Agent Alex Murstead, was still on the screen, and Tom found himself once again reading the tersely worded response.
Tom –
I’m not having this conversation with you any longer. The rules are the rules, and you need to stop entertaining any more ridiculous ideas for getting around them. It’s time to accept the fact you’re simply not cut out to work for the CIA.
There’s nothing wrong with working for the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a good job. It suits your skills. Hell, in this day and age you should consider yourself lucky just to have a job.
I’m serious Tom– stop pushing this. I’ve got far more important things to be doing right now.
- Alex
Tom closed the message with an agitated press of his finger. Nearly two weeks had passed since being told he’d failed the psych portion of the CIA entrance exams. While the initial shock of the news had subsided, a lingering feeling of anger still burned like a hot coal in his stomach.
And now he was on his own.
Of course, the realization that he was on his own wasn’t surprising or even intimidating to Tom. Quite the contrary in fact. He’d been trained from his first day in the Marines to overcome difficult, if not impossible, hurdles. Hell, his entire career up to this point was defined by obstacles he’d taken on and conquered. Sure, not every obstacle had been conquered without sacrifice – he quickly shook the images of Afghanistan from his mind – but he’d always managed to find his way out of odds-against-him shit storms alive and kicking. And that was the point. That was how he’d find a way to become an agent in the CIA. He’d tackled bigger challenges than this and survived, because that’s what he was – a survivor.
Hoo-rah, motherfuckers.
Tom leaned back in his chair and stared stoically at the ceiling, trying to piece together another solution in his head. Unfortunately, nothing was materializing. He sat deep in thought for several more minutes before finally curling his fists in frustration. If there was anything Tom begrudgingly admitted to himself, it was the fact that he was much better at investigation than strategy. As much as he hoped otherwise, a plan to get him back in front of the CIA was not going to come easily.
Conceding to this fact, Tom reluctantly decided to call it a day. He stood and quickly carried out his usual routine, straightening the stacks of files on his desk and lining up their corners neatly before wiping down his laptop. When he was finished, he cleaned his hands once more and grabbed his coat to leave. He was halfway out of the door to his office when he reached into his coat pocket for his keys and felt the sharp edge of a folded piece of paper. Puzzled, he pulled it out and unfolded it. Scrawled across the page was his own barely legible handwriting.
Guwahati, Assam, India 9/25
Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia 10/5
Port Harcourt, Nigeria 10/16
Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela 10/25
As Tom stared at the list of cities and dates on the paper, the memory of the night at the bar a few weeks earlier came slowly back to him. Against his better judgment, he’d ended up having more than a few drinks that night, and the details were now embarrassingly hazy. He remembered sitting next to an older man at the bar – what was his name? Skip? – and talking about some letters one of the bartenders had received. He also recalled reading the story in the college paper – how the letters had unexpectedly started arriving a little more than a month earlier, their cryptic, ranting tone, the mocking anonymity of their author, and perhaps strangest of all, the obscure photos of the author himself. Tom and the old man next to him had discussed it for some time, and he now vaguely remembered staggering over to where the letters were hung and jotting down the places and dates where they’d come from on the notepaper in his hand.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t remember exactly why he’d done this.
Tom wadded up the piece of paper and started to toss it into the trash when a nagging thought suddenly stopped him. Was there something more to this than he remembered? Hadn’t the old man said something else? Something about terrorism? He hovered in the doorway trying to recall before finally relenting to his curiosity. Cursing at himself under his breath, he turned and paced back into his office.
Dropping the note on his desk, Tom sank back into his chair and pulled up an online search engine on his laptop. He glanced at the first city and date on the list before typing “Guwahati terrorist attack September” into the search engine. The screen instantly flickered with the first of over 164,000 results. Scrolling through the first few pages, Tom found a few general articles on cases of terrorism in the city in the northeastern state of India, but nothing on any recent incidents. He typed in “Guwahati homicide September” and a fresh list of over 200,000 results popped onto the screen.
“Jesus,” he muttered to himself as he scrolled through the first few pages of results. He skimmed through several articles, several of which were written by human rights organizations. One article accused the local police of outright murder and cited a recent incident where a driver was pulled from his vehicle for speeding and mercilessly beaten by several officers before being tossed into a lake to drown. Another article described a freak accident involving two vehicles that collided and caught fire near a local market, killing a young Italian scientist. Tom shrugged dismissively and moved on. While the stories were tragic, he knew firsthand from his tours in the Marine Corps that police corruption and freak accidents were an everyday reality in third world countries like India.
Deciding Guwahati was a dead end, Tom glanced at the next location and date on the piece of notepaper and typed “Al Jubail terrorist attack October”. To his surprise, the search engine came up with a fraction of the results. Apart from a few cases of murder, including two men who were gunned down in public for displaying homosexual behavior, Tom found nothing of particular interest.
After a few more minutes of searching, he concluded Al Jubail must be one of the safest cities in the Middle East, at least for heterosexuals, and went to the next
city on his list.
The search results for “Port Harcourt terrorist attack October” exceeded 1,200,000. Tom shook his head as he started scanning through first few pages of results. He was beginning to think the entire effort was a waste of time when, at the bottom of the second page, a headline caught his attention.
“Terrorist Explosion Kills Petronus Energy Executive”
Tom clicked on the link and the browser immediately jumped to the bright colors and flashy graphics of an international news agency’s website. A large image of a luxury hotel atrium littered with dust and debris appeared beneath the headline. Inset in the corner was a photo of an older, distinguished-looking man in a suit and t
ie smiling at the camera. Tom read the caption beneath the image.
“The scene from inside the Garden Landmark Hotel in the city of Port Harcourt this morning, where an explosive device planted inside a guest room killed Shahid Al Dossari, a Director of Research for Petronus Energy.”
Intrigued, Tom grabbed a notepad as he quickly scanned the article. The first thing he noted was the date. The attack on the hotel had occurred on the 19th of October – just three days after the letter at the saloon had been dated from the same city. The second thing Tom found odd was the anonymity of the terrorists themselves. Contrary to most such attacks, no one had claimed responsibility for this particular bombing. He scratched down the name of the victim and the name Petronus before searching under the fourth name on the list.
The search results for Puerta La Cruz numbered over 400,000 results. After ten minutes of scrolling through a seemingly endless list of incidents in the coastal Venezuelan city, Tom paused and leaned back in his chair.
What the hell am I doing? he asked himself. He was poking blindly for a connection to a man he knew nothing about, and for whom he obviously had no evidence of being a criminal – let alone a terrorist. Why was he even suspicious? Because of what some drunken old man had told him at the bar? Admittedly, there was something about the older man that Tom had found persuasive, and yet the absurdity of it was obvious. A terrorist? Terrorists were maniacal, remorseless extremists that killed innocent people and disappeared into the shadows. Terrorists sent bombs in the mail, not letters. Terrorists didn’t write love letters. And even if they did, certainly no terrorist would write love letters to a bartender in fucking Flagstaff Arizona.