by Blake Banner
I dropped the automatic on the floor and stared at Njal.
“Now, you go your way and I go mine.”
He heaved a big sigh. “You should come and meet him. It…” He looked away and gave his head a small shake. “It is like, sometimes, you find something in life that is bigger than you are.” He looked back at me. “This is bigger than you are, Lacklan Walker. You need to meet him, and talk to him. Let’s go. I will take you, then I will take you back to your car.” He shrugged. “You meet him, you talk, you don’t want to be involved. No problem! But fuck, you know? Meet him. Is not such a big deal.”
I stood a moment, staring, then I pointed at him. “If I do that, you will then leave me alone and stay out of my business.”
He looked bored and raised both hands. “Yuh, yuh, yuh! Come on. Let’s go.”
Twelve
His Ford rental car was parked a couple of hundred yards up the drive, concealed in the trees. He turned it around and began a leisurely drive back to L.A., with the windows open and a cigarette hanging permanently from the corner of his mouth. I sat back and let the cool night air batter my face. I was desperate for rest, and kept telling myself there was no way I could stop what Fenninger was going to do next. All I could do was ride it and play it. To hope that the FMW could help me in some way was to buy into a fool’s paradise. It was worse than that. I’d be exchanging one noose, one set of chains, for another.
Whatever happened that night, Fenninger would die within the next twenty-four hours, and somehow I would have to deal with Njal and his pals. I turned to look at him.
“How do you know my name?”
He didn’t look at me. He just kept his eyes on the road ahead. “He told me.”
“Who told you?”
“You gonna meet him.”
It was a long drive. We turned left at the bottom of Topanga Canyon Boulevard and headed into L.A. At Santa Monica, instead of turning into the city, he hugged the coast and made his way down to Torrance Beach. There he turned onto Paseo de la Playa and drove to the top of the cliffs, to the edge of the Palos Verdes Estate. There he pulled into a short driveway outside a large, two storey house with a large garden out front, planted with giant rubber plants and jacaranda trees that completely hid the façade of the building.
We climbed out and I followed him up some winding steps through the garden to the front door. He had a key and he let me in. He closed the door behind me and switched on the light. We were in a broad hallway with stairs on the left leading to the upper floor. On the right the hall became a dogleg passage leading to the back of the house, where I figured the kitchen was. On the right a door stood open. Njal gestured that I should go through. It led not so much into a room as a large space, or a collection of spaces. Two steps led down into a broad area with polished wooden floors. A large, open fireplace stood cold. Its mantelpiece was a huge chunk of seasoned driftwood. Comfortable sofas and armchairs were scattered, apparently at random, around the fire. The walls were lined with books. There must have been several thousand of them, from floor to ceiling, on every conceivable topic.
To the left there was an area that was obviously for dining. The table was a solid piece of granite, polished on top to a high gloss, but raw underneath and set on a huge, gnarled tree stump. It had six chairs set around it, and each one was different in some way. Each one was, in its own right, a work of art.
Beyond the table a set of sliding glass doors stood open and the ocean breeze was moving the amber drapes that hung beside the doors. Njal pointed.
“He’s out there, waiting. You want a drink?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I could use a whiskey.”
He shrugged like I’d made a poor choice. “I will have a beer. Go. I come.”
I stepped out onto the terrace. It was large, maybe forty feet across, fifteen feet deep, with a panoramic view of the Pacific. The moon was suspended a few inches above and cast a treacherous, misleading path of light toward the sand below.
There was a large wooden table set near the parapet and a man sitting at the table, looking out at the view. He turned to look at me as I stepped out. He was in his sixties, though he had the physique and manner of a man twenty years younger. He was big, but not fat. He looked strong, but not just physically strong. You had a strange sense when you looked at him that you could somehow see the strength of his mind reflected in his face, his expression and the way he held his body. His hair was long, platinum blond, and he had a long, straggling beard that hung down over his chest. But the most remarkable thing about him was his eyes, which were set above high cheekbones, and were long and startlingly blue.
His voice, when he spoke, was deep and sounded scarred. “You are Lacklan Walker.”
I nodded. “Who are you?”
“Jim. My name is Jim Redbeard.” He pointed at a chair like he was firing a gun. “Take a seat.”
I walked to the table and sat. “Redbeard?”
“I was born Smith, but I liked Redbeard better. So I changed it.”
I looked at his beard. Unlike his hair, it was a coppery red. “What do you want with me?”
“I want your help.”
“What with?”
“You have some kind of vendetta against Aaron Fenninger and his gang.”
“What makes you say that?”
“We were watching him. We saw you stake him out…” He paused. “Very unprofessionally, I have to say. We were curious, so we started watching you, too. We saw that you took an interest in IIC. We became very curious because it seemed you were interested in all the same people that we were. So I had my guys look into you.”
“How?”
“We got your license plate before you switched it.”
Njal came out with two tankards of beer and a generous glass of whiskey. Jim thanked him. Njal sat and they both raised their glasses to me. I sighed, raised my glass and put it down again.
“I’m not easy to follow. I didn’t notice you. You must have resources.”
Jim chuckled and wiped his beard with the back of his wrist. “Yeah, we have resources. We are not amateurs, Lacklan. We are well funded and good at what we do.”
Njal snorted. “I think you have seen that tonight.”
“What do you do?”
“Ah…” He smiled at me. “Now that is the billion dollar question. And it is not all that easy to answer. I…” He paused and tapped a large index finger on his chest. “I am a university professor. I am largely retired these days, but I make a hell of a lot of money, more than you might imagine possible, from a whole range of self-help books and DVDs which I created under a pseudonym. That, and a few other immoral rackets I have going.”
“Immoral?”
“I use the world ironically. I am a professor of psychology. I trained as a psychiatrist, I trained as a clinical psychoanalyst and I have a PhD from Stanford in philosophy. I let go of the idea of moral and immoral a very long time ago. Instead, and this is important, Lacklan, I think that each of us is responsible for the things we do, and the consequences of the things we do. That is not an abstract philosophical concept. That is a hard fact.”
I took a deep breath. “Jim, that is very interesting, but I have a lot to do and I just haven’t got the time to sit here and discuss philosophy with you.”
He smiled. “Is that what you think we’re doing?” He shook his head. “No. I have about as much use for philosophy as I have for virtual sex or a whore with a condom. You see my point? It’s always going to lead to a fruitless exercise.” He frowned at his beer a moment and said, “I don’t want to waste your time, Lacklan. I have a personal agenda, and I know you have a personal agenda. I think we can help each other, and for that reason I want you to understand what my agenda is. Let me come at this from another angle.”
I was becoming interested in spite of my weariness. So I sipped my whiskey and sat back. “Sure, go ahead.”
I pulled out my cigarettes and poked one in my mouth. As he started to talk he reached out,
overhand, for me to give him the pack with my lighter. I lit up and handed them over.
“I began to ask myself, many, many years ago…” He pulled out a cigarette, tapped it on the lighter and lit up. He inhaled deeply as he handed back the pack and the lighter, then released the smoke as he spoke. “Who says?” He sat back and spread his hands. “It’s not an idle question. It’s a very precise, focused question, and it’s important. Who says? Let me explain.” He took another drag. “We live in a world that is full of rules. The first two, you mustn’t kill and you mustn’t steal. OK, so we don’t question these much because we are mostly pretty happy to live in a world where it is frowned upon to kill people and steal their stuff. So we don’t question it. But still, who says?”
I sipped and listened, wondering where this was going. He tapped ash and frowned at his cigarette like he was wondering where the ash came from.
“You ask a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Christian, they’re going to tell you, ‘God says.’” He sighed and shook his head. “Well, that’s not really true. I mean, find me one person who ever heard God say ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ You know? I knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy called Moses, who said…” He took a pull on his beer and licked his lips. “Still, we can at least say, the Church says, the Bible says, the Torah… You take my point. But Western society is secular. So, outside of the limited jurisdiction of the church, who says?” He stared at me a moment, like he was expecting an answer. He didn’t get one so he went on talking.
“OK, maybe we don’t feel like questioning who says killing is bad, who says stealing is bad. Maybe we all say that. But what about the million and one other rules and laws? Who says smoking is bad? Who says it is bad to offend social minorities? Who says it’s good to recycle glass? Who says single sex families are good or bad? Who says we should respect diversity of opinion?” He raised a hand like I was going to interrupt him. “I am not arguing for or against any of these precepts, Lacklan. I am asking, literally, who says? Where is this shit coming from?”
“You’re making a point, but I’m not getting it.”
“Go into any social setting, a bar, a restaurant, a group of friends and challenge any of those politically correct moral precepts that bind modern society. It doesn’t matter whether you have a good argument or not, you will be met with horror and opprobrium. These moral foundations to our society are deep rooted in each person, and there are more of them every year—the Strong Woman is the latest of them. All women must aspire to be Strong Women and men must view all women as Strong Women. Where are they coming from? I don’t care if they are right or wrong, I want to know where they are coming from. There are a billion people spread over the EU and the U.S.A., they all share exactly the same social, moral precepts, they adopt them almost simultaneously, and I am asking, where do they come from. Who says?”
Silence fell over the table. The breeze had turned chill and below, at the foot of the cliffs, I could hear the surf sighing on the sand. I wanted to tell him, Omega does, but something held me back. I guess I wanted to hear more of what he had to say. He picked up his glass and took a long pull. As he set it down again he said, “It is bad enough to have your freedom taken away. It is bad enough to be a slave to somebody else’s rules. But at least if that happens you can be defiant, even if it is only in your own mind.” He narrowed his eyes and wagged his fingers at me, sending small trails of smoke across the table. “But when the rules have been put inside your own mind by somebody else…” He shook his head. “Man, that? That is the ultimate crime against humanity, because that is a crime against the very essence of humanity: our minds.” He sat forward, laid his big arms on the table and stared at me. “I mean, what are we, Lacklan? What are we, as human beings, if not free thinkers? Take away the freedom of our minds and what have we got left?”
My cigarette hand burned down and I felt the heat on my fingers suddenly. I pulled over a glass ashtray and crushed it out. As I did so I said, “I had never put it in those terms before, but I have to tell you that you’re preaching to the choir. I don’t disagree with anything that you have said.”
He nodded. “I know. That’s why you are here. But I want you to know what I am about. Society calls me a terrorist. They are wrong. I have no desire to spread terror or achieve my ends through terror. What I am, Lacklan, like you, is a destroyer.”
“What do you know about me?”
“Enough. I know you were ten years with the best special ops regiment in the world. I know you made captain. That’s no mean feat. And I know what you did to Fenninger’s Intelligent Imaging Consultants. I know you are a very dangerous, destructive man. And I am pretty sure we share a deep hatred of those powers that want to control our minds.”
“Do you know who your enemy is?”
He shook his head, then shrugged. “In general terms. Those men and women who met famously at the Bilderberg Hotel. They meet each year in a different place and discuss how to manipulate our world, what wars to start, which nations to crush under their heels. It doesn’t matter what name they have. They are the forces of law and order gone mad. They are the enemies of individual freedom, and I detest them. What I do know, Lacklan, is that they use the media, computers, cinema, but especially television, to shape our neural networks and take control of our minds. My intention is to fight them to the death, and in that fight, to challenge people to wake up and see that they do not have to obey. That nobody, nobody has the right to tell you what you can and can’t do.” He leaned forward again and his long, blue eyes looked momentarily diabolical. “The only right they have is the right they take by force. They give themselves the right to inflict violence, and that makes them lawmakers.”
I sat smoking, sipping my whiskey and watching the moon rise over the vast darkness of the Pacific ocean. After a time I said, “Jim, I sympathize with a lot of what you say. But I don’t know how I can help you, and I am pretty sure you can’t help me. My mission is personal. It may help your cause, but I can’t have anybody else involved.”
He sighed. “I understand.”
I hesitated. “What you want, for individuals to be free in their minds, responsible for their own actions…” I shook my head. “It’s Utopia. It’s a long, lonely road to get there.”
“I know it. That’s what makes it worth walking.”
I smiled. “Contact Professor Gibbons, at Oxford University, and his assistant, Marni Gilbert. Tell them I put you in touch. Ask them to tell you about Omega.”
He frowned. “Omega?”
I nodded. “Now, I need to get some sleep. I have a busy day ahead.”
He threw me a card. “If you need any help, call.”
I looked at the card for a long time. It was tempting. In the end I put it in my pocket and held out my hand. He took it and fixed me with his strange eyes. “It was not the Greeks, you know,” he said. “Or the Romans. They didn’t bring us civilization. They were all about authority, despotism and monotheism. It was the Norsemen, they were the ones who brought the seeds of freedom to mankind, in their longships, with their axes and their swords. They were free men.”
I wondered for a moment if he was drunk.
He smiled and let my hand go. “Take care, Lacklan, and remember, when the time comes to die, die well.”
I nodded. “Yeah, you too.”
“I will, believe me.”
Njal had remained silent throughout the discussion, sipping his beer and watching the ocean. Now he got to his feet and said, “Yuh, OK, I drive you to the Chupacabras now.”
I followed him out to the car. We climbed in and slammed the doors. I noticed he didn’t put his seat belt on. He reversed fast out onto the road, peering over his shoulder with his cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, then we set off down the hill, toward Slauson Avenue.
“So,” he said after a moment. “I will be watching you. You don’t want me to, but…” He shrugged. “There is nothing you can do about it. If you get in trouble, I will help, yuh? Otherwi
se, you won’t know I am there.”
I was too tired to argue. I closed my eyes. “Best you don’t, Njal. Seriously. These are very bad people.”
“Yuh,” he said matter-of-factly. “Me too.”
I didn’t bother to answer.
Thirteen
I stood on the sidewalk and watched Njal’s red taillights disappear into the pre-dawn, headed back toward Palos Verdes. I climbed into the Zombie, pressed the ignition and slipped silently off toward Watts and El Toro. In the east the sky was turning gray and by the time I got to the guesthouse it was past four AM. I left my car down by the church and walked the short distance with the echoes of my footsteps following me through the empty streets. Inside, Maria was behind the reception desk with a ledger in front of her. She looked up at me and after a moment she frowned.
“Trouble?”
I shrugged. “Life.”
The corner of her mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. “Are you hurt? You need anything?”
“A large coffee, a shower and a sleep.”
She did a weird, slow blink and the twitch became a smile on the left side of her face. “I can help with two of those.” She stood. “Go to your room, I will clean up your cuts.”
I knew this was more trouble, but I was too tired to fight it. I crossed the small patio to my room, pulled off my jacket and my holster and poured myself a large whiskey. I took a large slug, sighed as the amber warmth eased through my body, and sat on the edge of the bed. I’d left the door open, and a moment later Maria came in, holding a basin of steaming water and a first aid box. I watched her a moment.
“You don’t need to do this.”
She glanced at me, but then seemed to ignore me. She had a soft cloth and now she dipped it in the water and started gently wiping my face. Then she said, “And if I don’t, who will?”
I was surprised. I grinned and gave a small laugh. “What are you, my mother?”