by D. F. Bailey
“Which is where?”
“A place I knew I wouldn’t forget.” She smiled again, very pleased with her clever game. “Guess.”
He shrugged.
“Bottom of your underwear drawer, Darling.”
Her mood was infectious and Finch broke into an easy laughter. He went into the bedroom and retrieved the yellow sticky which Sochi had so carefully inscribed with the thirty-two character password.
“The guy had nice handwriting. A twelfth-century monk couldn’t have done this,” she said as she typed the code into the password box on the screen.
“There was a lot to like about Sochi.”
“Yeah. There was.” She waited a moment.
Finch wondered what she was thinking. He knew she’d liked Sochi well enough. They both had.
“All right, see if it works.”
She tapped the enter button. A message appeared on the screen: Enter the six-digit code from your authorized device. Below this message the cursor blinked in the first of six blank spaces.
Eve stared at the screen. “What does this mean?”
“Hell, who knows?”
“Damn it, I can’t bear any more of Toeplitz’s scavenger hunts.” She pushed the laptop aside and dropped her face into her hands.
Finch walked behind her to the French doors and stared into the gardens. A memory of the senator standing on his balcony, staring across the Potomac River, entered his mind. He’d been fixated by the gravestones, over four hundred thousand of them, he said. Perhaps he’d been thinking of his daughter. Then again, he didn’t talk much about Gianna. Perhaps Finch missed her more than her own father. Gianna was—
He turned back to Eve. “Gianna.”
She looked into his face. “What about her?”
“Her phone. Toeplitz’s email to her. Remember? He said her phone ‘was part of it.’ He must have set up a two-step verification for the bitcoin wallet.”
She raised her hands, palms up. “What?”
“The same process we used to get into Gianna’s email.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Where’s her phone?”
She glanced around the room. “In my bag, I think.”
Finch rolled his shoulders in a gesture of impatience.
“Next to the door,” she said and skipped across the carpet and grabbed her purse from the chair. She opened it, clawed through the bag with one hand. “Here. I’ve got it.”
She brandished the phone in her hand but when she clicked it, her broad smile sunk into a frown. “Shit. Dead … just like everything else.”
“Okay. None of that, all right.” Will tried to infuse a tone of composure into his voice. He smiled, then beckoned with his open hand.
Eve passed the phone to him. He plugged the phone into the charger next to the radio. A moment later a ping sounded. He entered the password into her phone: g-i-a-n-n-a. A text appeared. Enter this code to authorize your access: 545649. He passed the phone back to Eve. “Okay. Go ahead.”
She entered the digits into the verification box on the computer. The screen went blank and then filled with a cascading series of numbers aligned in three columns: Debit, Credit, Balance.
“Look at this,” he whispered. “It looks like a bank account statement.”
Eve stared at the screen with a growing sense of awe. “Like something Sochi might have devised. What does it all mean?”
“Check the bottom line.”
Eve scrolled down to the end of the file. Current balance: 350,628 bitcoins. “Will … how much is that in dollars?”
“Let me see.” Finch took over the keyboard and googled a currency exchange program. He read aloud from the screen: “Today’s exchange rate is one bitcoin equals three hundred and eighty-four dollars and ninety-two cents.” He typed in the bitcoin balance from the wallet and clicked the US Dollar converter.
He blinked. Eve gasped. Impossible.
$134,963,729.76.
※
Finch checked the clock as he padded from the bathroom into the kitchen. 4:27. Looked like he’d slept longer than most nights, he figured. Since Kirill, Witowsky and Malinin had been shot he was lucky to snatch more than an hour of sleep at a time. Usually he’d drift off sometime after midnight, then wake up in a shock. Dead awake, he called it. The words described his condition exactly.
The rest of the night he’d either lie sleepless beside Eve, move to the living room to read (Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human) or sit at the table and try to write. But no matter how he distracted himself his mind always turned back to the shootings. Malinin wasn’t the first man he’d killed. There’d been two others in Baghdad, during an attack that he never spoke of. Considering what he’d seen in Iraq, Malinin’s death paled in comparison. But the fact that he actually knew Malinin changed things. War was one thing. Killing your personal enemy, quite another.
From that bleak realization his mind inevitably turned to Buddy. Maybe Whitelaw was right. Finch had pursued Whitelaw in order to purge his own misery over his son’s death. Could it be? Was he that bent out of shape?
Maybe he should take the two-month leave that Wally proposed. Go down to Mexico. Live cheap. Write a draft of his book, find an agent who could ignite a bidding war for his story. Eve thought it made sense. But what, exactly, is “sense”? Even Nietzsche didn’t seem to know.
On his way back to bed he saw the message light blink on his new phone. He waited for a second blink, picked up the Samsung and entered his password.
A text from Fiona appeared on the screen: Around 3.45 this morning Toby Squire escaped from the SF General Hospital. SFPD aren’t revealing details. I’ll follow up. You may want to let Eve know. Hang in there. All the best, Fiona.
The message jarred him out of his sleepy fog. How could Toby Squire escape? And furthermore, what was Fiona doing up at this hour? He ignored the questions and read the text a second time.
“The idiots,” he whispered and turned his phone face down on the night table.
He pulled the cover from the bed and slid next to Eve’s inviting body. As she rolled into his arms he could smell the aroma of their love and passion still warm on her skin. Maybe this was all the sense he needed. Maybe it was the only sense that anyone could ever find.
“What’s up, Darling?” Her eyes remained closed, heavy with sleep.
“Nothing. Go back to Neverland.” He kissed her cheek and pressed his nose into the length of hair falling past her shoulder and inhaled the fragrance of his new life.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” he murmured. Until then, he told himself, you’re safe right here.
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For a special sneak peak of Fire Eyes,
a W. H. Smith First Novel Award Finalist,
turn to the next page.
FIRE EYES
1
The bomb went off a little after one in the morning. It was a beautiful thing. There was blues and greens and thick yellows that blended in with the smoke to make it all look like mustard gas in some World War I movie. And the sound of it was much louder than I thought. I guess it could have been the noise alone that brought the cops. But the look of it — the colors — they were much more than I hoped for. Damn it, they were beautiful.
But what happened to Renee, that’s something else. It was the last thing I expected. She tried to make everything so casual, carrying the bomb the way she did under her arm. First she spins around and smiles like there’s no care to the world and moves up the sidewalk in her dream of ballet. She points her toe to the ground once, twice — then, as she turns on one foot, the bomb explodes and breaks the night into a thousand smoking greens and yellows and reds, with a huge blast like a rocket burst echoing off the walls of the mountains. And then it’s all over before you can really see it and in the end she’s worse than dead because the bomb blew everything apart. There’s a crater gutted into the sidewalk and suddenly all the lights in the First City Electric building black out. A minute later there’s a flicker of light in the windows and then the power surges back to life. Only the front door has any sign of damage, two windows shattered from their steel frames. And along the sidewalk, halfway up from the road, her handkerchief rests where it fell. Except for that, there’s nothing left at all. Not even the baby.
Yes, she’s the one that didn’t come back. I remember her saying it would be like a war, and in a war there’s always some that don’t come home. I always thought she was talking about me. Specially when I put the bomb together in the lab.
“No, no,” I tell her, “I’ll be careful. I always tamp real careful when I’m making these things.”
Making the bomb is when the Power comes into my mind. That’s when the danger is worst. So I tamp the guts of it down into the shell with cotton balls. Cotton’s best because it keeps the moisture of my fingers away from everything so none of the electrics can short out. And it’s soft enough so I can build the most dangerous parts in a gentle way.
“Just be sure,” she says and backs to the corner of the room near the mattress. She thinks she can dive under it if anything triggers accidental. She doesn’t know that if something triggers she’d be dead before she could even see it.
“I am,” I tell her, “just don’t even breathe.” I can hear her footsteps backing to the mattress. It’s the kind of noise that gives me the Power. Everyone else backing off and there I am doing the impossible. Nobody else can touch it but me.
“Steady out your fingers,” she says.
“Just quit your talking.” Any interruption’s like poison. Finally I tamp the last of the explosives into the canister and seal the shell off with a waterproof cap. That way I can leave it outside in a pinch and if rain comes there’s no problem. Just wait her out till I’m ready. And I can either set it automatic or by remote. Hell, the remote’s a dream these days. Some even do it with one of those garage closers. I heard of one guy who’s triggering them with remote-control TV channel changers. That’s a tough one to believe. But can’t you see it? Parking a block down the road and just waiting till the cops come, then click it to channel 13 and WHAM! — they’re goners.
But there wasn’t a remote on Renee’s. I should’ve put one in but it was her fault, because she wanted it timed for thirty-three-and-a-third minutes. Just like a record, she says. That’s rule one. Never allow no one else in the lab. But she was a forceful one. She’d come in anytime she pleased and stick around and seldom do as I told her. You’ve got to admire that in a way, because most of these modern women’s bitches are just hot air and no bras. Not Renee, though, she’d stick it out to the end whether there was shit in the hole or not.
That’s why she took the shell instead of me. That and the fact she could pass the security check. It’s the one thing they gave her for working there three years: a little plastic badge with her picture on one corner that pins to her shirt so they don’t stick a knife in her guts just for walking in the front door after hours.
We drove there together and had the banger rolled in flannel blankets in the back seat. We even borrowed one of those baby harnesses that lock into the seat belts. If the cops stopped us then it’d look like some baby sleeping on the way home. Even cops wouldn’t disturb no baby.
“Roll it up nice and easy,” I tell her when we’re setting out.
“It’s so cute,” she says, “what’ll we call him?”
“Nothing. And you shouldn’t fix yourself on the idea of having a kid.” But to keep her happy I add on a new touch. “Or we could call it Billy Junior, if you really want to.”
She starts laughing like this is the joke-of-the-week. “When you name it after yourself it shows you’re egotistical.”
“Nothing wrong with a little pride,” I tell her as she pulls the blanket right over the baby’s head so he can sleep like a newborn kitten.
We drive to the electricity offices in the Camaro. It takes about an hour and a half altogether, when you add in the time for the stop at the 7-Eleven and then the half-hour stop we made when she started crying. At least that’s how it began. After that I think she went a little crazy on me. She was looking up at the stars and her whole face was wet from the tears and then she tried to explain everything between us. It’s the kind of thing you don’t want to dwell on. People will stop trusting you if you talk about the truth. Especially when you lay everything out person to person.
Anyway, we just about forget the bomb, it looks so much like a baby and the music blasting out of the radio is such a lure away from what we’re really doing. When we get to the building she grabs it up very softly, just like a kid, under the ass and around the belly. I sit back and watch her go up the sidewalk. She starts to dance a little, like she’s got one of those Fifties songs in her head, and pretends to be dancing at the prom. Christ, how ridiculous. Then a handkerchief slips from her pocket and drifts to the ground. She turns around without noticing it and pulls the baby to her chest and shows me how she’s breast-feeding the newborn like a good mother should do. For a second I even think about being that little baby and sucking on the mother-nipple and how good it’s got to taste.
She strides up the walk and does a little ballet turn. But it’s no place to play ballerina, so I get out of the car and whisper up to her as loud as I dare.
“Stop that assin’ around, Renee. Just drop the baby off and stop that jerk-off stuff.”
She smiles that devilish smile she uses when she knows she’s gone one step farther than I ever would. It’s like a contest between us. Sometimes we’ll try to out-chicken the other. When someone finally backs off, it shows where all the nerves really are. The winner gets to leer it into the loser and it’s a big deal until the next time comes. Then it’s really up to the loser. He’s gotta shine.
But with this baby there shouldn’t be no goof-assing. I’ve seen guys lose anything from their fingers to their life in one sudden flash. It’d be so quick you’d blink to shut it away, then open your eyes and the whole world has changed. A guy dead here. One guy with a hand off there. Maybe another guy with his stomach ripped open and his kidney flopped onto the ground. And it happens from no cause at all. Maybe God says, “Okay, now you blow up those combat engineers in F-squad. Them soldiers don’t matter no more.” Then the bomb just flashes and it’s over.
“Gentle that baby,” I whisper, “until you get inside.”
Then she smiles more heavenly than I’ve ever seen. The Devil part turns into something sweet and she does another ballerina turn al
ong the sidewalk.
And that’s where it blows. The gas colors pour out like mustard steam and for some reason my eyes don’t blink at all. They just suck it in like a mind volcano so I get to see everything flying apart.
First her smile washes out. Those angel lips fall off like the great hotels dropped by the real demolition experts. They’re there one second and the next they’re just gone. The whole wall of her face, smooth and clear as it is, turns into rubble and falls onto itself until there’s nothing left but a pile of broken bricks and bones. There’s no look of sadness, no idea that the end has come.
I run up the sidewalk after the first shock passes and look into the smoldering crater. I’m balanced there on the sidewalk, on my toes with one knee bent forward, like a wild deer in the forests ready to disappear into the night bush. But something pulls me in closer, down to where her body should be. The Devil is flying out of her and I squat over and take a good sniff of the blasting powders steaming up from the pit, then I look around and see everything perfectly. The brown brick building with two shattered front windows, the parked car, the grass and sidewalk, those prickle bushes next to the link fence. I know exactly how to run and break away like that deer in the woods, straight down the sidewalk jumping the lawns and shrubs, I hop the last bush and duck into the car and close the door tight and just listen. If there’s squad cars coming you sit tight and tell ’em sweet dick when they ask. But if there’s no cops then turn the key soft and pull out as sweet as you please.
And it works just like that. There’s no sign of a soul, so I pull out unnoticeable. I dump the baby harness off at the welfare office and no one knows the difference. It’s somebody’s free donation. Far as they’re concerned, some big-heart left it without a trace. They might even give up a prayer in the morning. Who knows how they think it through?