by Sarah Lovett
Sylvia nodded. Then she turned to gaze out at the world.
Soon, dusk would fall over a city where urban prophets abounded—the turn of 2000 had done nothing to dampen predictions of doom. Ruin could come with natural cataclysmic events such as earthquake, fire, drought; it could come through riots and other products of social and economic breakdown; it could come through acts of terrorism. If the opposition was smart enough, powerful enough, rich enough, they might cripple a major urban center. Not might . . . would, one of these days. That time was coming, just like Luke had described.
He was on the same train of thought. He said, “Cities are born, they have a life span . . . economic, cultural, social. Cycles of growth and expansion. I think we forget the other side of the cycle. Eventually, they die. They survive for a while, but diminished. Or they blow away with the wind, wash away with the tides.”
Sylvia nodded. “We see it in the Southwest—the Anasazi ruins: Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, Canyon de Chelly.”
“That’s right,” Luke said softly. “Entire civilizations—with calendars, astronomy, complex trading patterns, religion, and family units. And they disappeared almost overnight. Mexico, South America, Africa, the Middle East—they all claim ghost civilizations, thriving centers of culture turned to dust. I don’t mean to sound grim, but even in the twentieth century, hurricanes and earthquakes altered the future of major urban areas. The hurricane that destroyed Galveston created another megahub: Houston–Dallas–Fort Worth.” He shrugged. “That’s life.”
Sylvia rested her elbows on the railing of the widow’s walk. All cities die. Urban energy shifts the way blood stops flowing to a dying organ—the brain reroutes it to more productive body parts.
But Los Angeles was a long way from dead.
Unless M had his way.
Light exploded off a strand of silver high-rises lining Sunset Boulevard—the last spark of day giving way to night. Sylvia closed her eyes, seemed to feel the city in every cell of her body. But she was already moving in another world.
New Mexico. A moonlit night in October . . . a walk in Chaco Canyon with Matt. Shadows cast, dark against light, bright as daylight. The cry of coyotes. She had led the way along the trail to Casa Grande. At one point an owl cried out, the primal call cut the dry night air. That’s how raw the sound felt . . .
For hundreds of years, generations had been born here.
And then they disappeared, leaving roads, calendars, ways to measure time, meetinghouses, graves. Leaving behind the ghosts of their endeavors for archaeologists to find and puzzle over.
She and Matt had stopped at the ruins of the ancient pueblo. Alone in the desert, they had taken shelter inside a small home, made love in the sand.
That night, back inside their tent, rain had woken her before daylight. For a few hours she thought she’d heard the whispered answers to ancient secrets.
“Sylvia?” Luke’s voice tugged her through space and time back to the present, back to urban reality. He appeared to be restless, ready to return to work. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay,” Sylvia said softly. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
Without a word he left the widow’s walk, descending the stairs two at a time.
She gave him ten minutes. In that time, the sun dipped toward the ocean, dimming the sky, until the city was draped in shadow.
Had the Anasazi people felt the end of their world?
M was excavating the past. If he had his way, how long would it be before Hollywood joined Babylon?
Like a sleepwalker retracing her steps along the expansive hallway, catching glimpses of great cities as art, she heard the click of the keyboard as she entered the map room. He had his back to her, and he was typing in commands. The screen flashed color, form, text—after a few minutes it seemed to settle on a solitary image.
“Hollywood-Babylon,” Sylvia said. “The map . . . try Babylon.”
Crimes against society include the acquisition of natural elements by illegitimate means; in such cases the criminals are far worse than common thieves, as their greed affects the future of the city. Forceful means of rectification are not only justified but necessary.
Dantes’ Inferno, excerpt published in the LA TIMES, November 7, 1999
4:48 P.M. M stands atop Ishtar’s Gate, staring out at the blight known as Western civilization. A shaft to the underworld runs directly beneath his legs. It is through this same hellish passage that the next beast will race—at his command—bringing destruction in its breath of fire.
The beast will travel to the top of this steel and glass tower, this hub of transportation, just as Moses once ascended the mountain of Horeb to touch the hand of God for one stunned moment.
He lifts his head and stares directly into the pulsing orb of the sun.
I’m here. Strike me dead if you exist.
That would be life’s great joke.
Of course, nothing happens, except pain as the sun irritates old scars.
False god. Bully.
No divine revelation, which is the penultimate burden after all. He should be grateful he holds no religious delusions. His laughter rings out over the sun-bleached rooftop. He lifts his arms, spinning slowly.
The soul was long ago burned out of his body.
Master of the day of judgment. How often he heard those words. They remind him of the taste of blood. His own. The men who prayed daily on hands and knees were also diligent in their torture. It does not take long to break a man. It can be done quickly, cheaply.
I sold them my soul, he thinks—and they believed they had purchased something of value.
I sold them air. Fucking air.
He walks to the edge of the building, standing so close to the drop he can feel the hot updraft between buildings.
A white bird soars past. A gull, scavenging in an urban sea.
He smiles, turning slowly. His jacket billows out behind him like a fabric wing. If I had a soul, I would fly off this edge right now.
The bird changes course with the swift shift of feathers.
But his course is set. He has spent months planning, collecting, preparing.
Just like last’s years project at the Getty—when he’d researched every step from conception to the night of the gala opening.
Building by building—grounds surveys and preparation, transportation-access mapping, utility infrastructure, foundation installation, structural erection, landscaping, garden design, and execution.
Along the way—in the company of modernist Richard Meier and abstract expressionist Robert Irwin—he had left his mark on one of the city’s prime cultural landmarks. None of his work was visible to the naked eye—at least not until the final coup de grâce. But whenever urban critics waxed poetic about Euclidean vision, Aristotelian structure, dogmatic unity, and thematic chaos, all at a billion bucks a pop—he had quietly enjoyed the knowledge that his seed had been planted, then nurtured, by corporate complicity. Collaboration was such a lovely thing.
As unwitting as the woman who carries a clumsy satchel on board an international flight after her revolutionary boyfriend sees her off with a kiss: Call me as soon as you get there, love.
This post-postmodern corporate bastion of classicism had been the repository of his artistic creation: concrete blocks stuffed with explosives and imbedded in the environmental control unit; additional sheet explosives lining a duct unit directly above the doctored blocks.
No one questioned a man who wore the uniform.
Finally, the motion-sensitive delay detonator using primary explosives, which were highly reactive even in beauty-mark doses, to initiate the less receptive main explosive. All packaged inside a magic box. A work of art. A bomber’s trademark.
Open, and oops. The perfect foreplay, the explosive train.
After many experiments, he had leaned in favor of his booby trap device that would trigger delayed motion initiation. Which meant that Pandora would have to lift the lid. Ah, but then she always did. Peopl
e died in war.
Boom.
“We’ll be signing off by six,” a voice yanks him back from the brink of memory.
The beauty of it: while these workers toil to build, he toils to destroy.
On the floor below, a dozen men are at work, finishing on schedule.
But by his records, running behind schedule by two days. This building will be shut down over the weekend—a high-rise ghost town. It’s official. It’s quakification.
He’s spoken to the supervisor, Jack, who joins him on the roof to say, “I’m counting on a clean bill of health on this thing. Otherwise . . . well, it could fuck up the next renovation we do.”
Jack pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offers one to M. Both men light up, sending more smoke out over the city.
“I wouldn’t anticipate any glitches,” M says, smiling. “I got a feeling you’ll roll through without a hitch.” He shrugs, sympathetic because he knows the drill—city permits, approval, payoffs.
“But hey,” he says, “seems like those guys always got to give you some grief or they don’t feel like they earned their overtime.”
“No shit,” Jack agrees with a rough laugh. “Government guys, far as I’m concerned they’re no better than getting welfare.”
“On the dole,” M nods. “Give me private sector any day.” Cigarette sending smoke from the corner of his mouth, he squats down and begins to unroll the first of the maps. “So . . . let’s just go over this stuff before I put it into our system. All this should’ve been done back in two thousand.” He squints under the bright glare of the sun. “The heating ducts run here . . . the water’s draining here . . .”
And so on . . .
After they’ve done an honest half hour’s work and supervisor Jack heads back down to reel in his crew, M stays on the roof thinking about his truckload of ANFO.
The World Trade Center . . . Oklahoma City . . . University of Wisconsin way back in the sixties. Ammonium nitrate—strategically placed near the primary weight-bearing columns—is still the most efficient way to inflict massive structural damage.
The bird emits a demanding screech; it dives close, nagging for scraps.
He sits on the edge of a girder and boots up his laptop. Caressing keys, opening files. The map appears on-screen. Full color. City of cities. Pinnacle of civilization.
Clicking keys, configurations, he begins his calculations. How much destructive power does he possess today? One jigger C-4. Three jiggers ANFO. Two jiggers aviation fuel. A party cocktail. Awaiting God’s touch: six hundred volts.
He keys in more commands and the screen goes haywire—colors and images flash, driven by a thousand-megahertz processor. A grid appears. A map of Los Angeles—but not your everyday street guide and directory. He’s got his hands on the nervous system of the city . . . from LA Harbor and San Pedro, from Inglewood’s LAX to Marina Del Rey, where Ballona Creek sends half the urban center’s storm runoff to the ocean, to the war room in Alhambra where fifteen dams are coordinated—this is the project that makes blowing up Ishtar’s Gate look like child’s play.
It’s all part of the universal urban karma, he thinks, smiling.
But first, life and death in the seventh circle.
7th Circle . . .
Farewell happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells, Hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor.
Milton, Paradise Lost
Saturday—12:12 A.M. Luke—sleeves rolled to elbows, hands behind head—was on the floor, staring up at the domed ceiling, which was filled with a city in miniature. He seemed exhausted, intent, and satisfied.
He said, “It looks as if M gave us the major boundaries of ancient Babylon after Koldewey. The expedition was famous—Robert Koldewey excavated between eighteen ninety-nine and nineteen seventeen on behalf of Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft. The map is a benchmark—cited in all the archaeological references to Babylonian times.”
Sylvia swiveled in the leather chair, letting it slowly tip back. While she watched, Babylon came into full relief above her head.
The city was rectangular, defined by walls, and roughly bisected by the Euphrates River. Streets, designed around municipal buildings, fed out of the city through gates. Sylvia saw Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, the Temple of Marduk, and the Tower of Babel.
“The map predates NAD-27—” Guessing that he’d lost Sylvia, Luke slowed to translate: “NAD . . . North American Datum . . . international standards were set in nineteen twenty-seven, then revised in nineteen eighty-three, with NAD-83. NAD was created for just this reason—there was no way to work with multiple maps unless you applied universal standards.”
“So without it—without, what, NAD—can you still work out the scale?” Sylvia brought the chair back to neutral to sip coffee from the rough-fired clay mug in her hands.
“That’s the million-dollar question.” From his prone position, Luke manipulated a remote mouse, flexing his left arm so the fish tattoo seemed to fly higher.
Sylvia tipped back again to watch the overhead show. Babylon faded and a red grid map of downtown Los Angeles was instantly splattered across the dome. Key points were delineated with bold geometric shapes. The lines and symbols overhead reminded her of planetarium stars.
Luke played with the images: Babylon; Los Angeles; Babylon. His voice, settled deep in his chest, emerged in a throaty bass. “If I had an array—four or five known points of correlation—I could rubber-sheet the good map—LA—and the bad map—Babylon. Line up the main intersections, main points.”
“I get the idea,” Sylvia said. “Can you project Los Angeles again?”
She was becoming mesmerized as she watched the changing images. “Since we don’t have correlation points, what about matching that general rectangular area?” She extended her fingers in the air, delineating the core of Los Angeles and the center of Babylon.
“Yeah,” Luke said, clicking the remote several times until the images lined up, Harbor Freeway to Euphrates River. “Or we can line up the Hollywood with the Euphrates . . . or we can line up the Tower of Babel with City Hall . . . or . . .”
“I get it,” Sylvia said, sighing. “We need an array.”
“You need to go deeper,” Sweetheart said, entering the room slowly. “We’re talking Inferno.”
“We’ll get to the underground stuff,” Luke said. “But we’re left with the same problem of endless possibilities.”
He clicked keys, frustrated when his fingers didn’t keep up with his mental commands. “The Euphrates could be the Metrolink tunnels, the Red Line, here. And Processional Way that leads to Ishtar’s Gate . . . What about this storm drain—it comes off the LA River’s downtown drainage system, which could represent the eastern boundary of Babylon.”
“Sunset and Hollywood,” Sylvia murmured. “That’s where D.W. Griffith created a massive set of Babylon back in 1910 or so.”
“Sorry, Professor,” Luke said. “I’m seeing stars—but no point alignments.”
“Don’t give me sorry, just give me results.” Sweetheart turned and disappeared.
Luke sat up, turning toward Sylvia. “I’m glad to see he’s in a good mood.”
A few minutes later, Sylvia followed Sweetheart.
The creaks and cracks, the soft complaints of shifting walls and footings reminded her of an old dreaming dog. Like a sleepwalker, she had no conscious cognitive chart to lead her to the narrow teak door at the end of an unfamiliar hallway.
Of course, she entered.
Inside was a war room where the battle had been fought and not necessarily won. It was square, with low ceilings, and an air temperature that literally ran a few degrees colder than the rest of the house.
Her attention was drawn to a large flat screen, where film images moved abstractly in gray, then in color, then black-and-white, and back to gray; brutal explosions of ever-changing targets: embassies, churches, buses, apartments, pubs,
schools, factories.
The eerie scenes of destruction had been caught on amateur video, surveillance satellite, security cameras, and they ran now on an endless grainy loop.
She felt his presence: Sweetheart. He was seated lotus style, still as a statue, on a tatami.
For an instant Sylvia thought he was sleeping. But he blinked—and his eyes moved, the whites gleaming in the shadows, tracking her movements.
She didn’t switch on the overhead lights, choosing instead to find her way by the low, lemony moonlight that spilled through two high windows.
She seated herself in front of a cold computer monitor, swiveling the chair to face him. When he didn’t speak, she turned back toward the desk.
Files—both hard copies and discs—were stacked neatly. She scanned the labels: Zaire, 1975; Paris, 1983; Kenya, 1990; Nairobi, 1987; London, 1988, 1981; Munich 1999.
She opened the first manila folder. Names lined a single page: Ben Black, Benjamin J. Bland, John Blake, Jean Bonai, J. Bonay—they went on and on, filling two columns.
Aliases of an international terrorist. Aliases of a dead man.
Two words echoed in her mind: Dead boy.
A chill ran across her skin like a breeze over water.
“What happened to the investigation?” she asked.
“Ben Black died,” Sweetheart said, his voice barely audible.
In this room, just as in others, the walls were lined with the maps, the patterns of Sweetheart’s MOSAIK—the gestalt of deciphering information from isolated data, of connecting the dots, of discovering the topography of the bigger picture.
In this case for the purpose of constructing a profile of Ben Black, a man who for decades had disappeared like mist, alternately reported dead, imprisoned, tortured, or working under the shade of Qaddafi’s and bin Laden’s wing.
Sylvia didn’t look at Sweetheart but let her voice fill the space. “If the war is over, why not shut the war room down?”