Thinking I’d been beaten, the crowd surged. The police commander gave the order for a baton charge. I made my escape through the chaos, half blinded by the sickening amount of blood and gristle that oozed into my eyes.
I know that my hideous disfigurements will be permanent. When the wounds heal the shape of my face will have changed as much as my facial features. But the sacrifice will be worth it. I will look different to the picture of me that keeps flashing on the TV news bulletins.
I smile through the pain. In their desperation to deny me my anonymity they have given me a permanent mask, behind which to hide my true identity.
~~~
These assassins, the self-styled Four Musketeers of the Apocalypse, had disabled most of the security systems but not all.
Le Duc had his raised tablet running and, narcissist that he was, always filmed himself throughout board meetings. The intruders must have known this as they took it with them.
Or maybe they were amateurish enough to believe that he kept all his financial data on this portable device, with perhaps just a light level of encryption. However, he also had micro-cameras placed within his Hugo Boss suit and these we have been able to retrieve.
Missed a trick there, guys.
I ran the voiceprints and had some potential leads to follow up. The visuals showed the assailants sporting penguin masks, which must have hampered their movements somewhat.
Their leader was using the latest shimmer technology which blurred his face to any onlooker. I’ve tried this cutting edge innovation: it’s expensive and requires military level training to use properly.
If you’re sporting it, don’t look in a mirror or you’ll be as mesmerised as your victims. I suspect that he applied it fairly late in the operation and that the penguin guys were highly disciplined in ignoring his disconcerting appearance. I have set my assistants to go back through everything we know about recent training camps – jihadists, revolutionaries, survivalists, supremacists, all the data.
Suit-cam gives us tantalising glimpses of the horror of the attack: Shouts, jerky movements, masked attackers, weapons, scuffles, barked orders, swift disposal of the minor characters, machine sounds like a dentist’s drill, blurred motion, agonising cries as the cutting away begins. No anaesthetics in use here, not even the gentle release of a couple of close-range bullets.
The Native American tribes reputedly scalped their victims. The current killers have viciously removed the face of the one they see as the world tyrant. I have seen much killing and even one beheading but the sheer depravity of this crime makes me glad that surviving recordings are only partial.
At one point the electronically disguised voice of the lead assassin can be heard saying, “Don’t look too close, guys. Get on with it and get out. Whatever you do, don’t vomit.”
Oh for some DNA evidence with which to entrap them.
~~~
The Le Duc facial flaying is undoubtedly what we used to call an ‘inside job’. At last, a new lead:
Exhibit Two:
Transcript of police interview four days after the killing:
Agent Castillo turned the mask over in her gloved hands. The disgraced security operative in front of her, Peter Bader, sat unmasked, his face shockingly naked. It was not a pleasant sight, overgrown with a day’s growth of beard and bruised from the earlier working over.
The agents who had carried out the brutality stood either side of the locked door in immaculate suits and dog-faced masks. Castillo’s distaste at the man in front of her could not be seen as her own mask’s features were expressionless. Even her eyes were covered by shades, and the mask was white except for painted red lipstick.
She put Peter’s mask in his face, opening it out to show the detail of sketchily painted flowers.
“These flowers,” she stated. Her voice was disguised to be as expressionless as her face. “Some kind of political statement?”
“No,” he said, shuffling back in his chair at the proximity of the mask, “my daughters painted them on before I left for work that morning. They did that a lot.”
“Yes, your daughters. Katie and Abbie. Ages 5 and 3. We’re holding them of course, along with Mrs Bader. Things don’t look good for them.”
Peter’s expression was defiant.
“They are no sort of leverage over me. I’ve nothing to hide, I‘ll tell you everything I know, which is very little. The deed is done. My part in the revolution is over, except for the martyring.”
“How can you be so cold about your own family?”
“They’re not my family. You think you have my mask in your hands? I am all mask.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Even this face under the mask was surgically altered to look like Lieutenant Bader. I don’t even remember what my original face looked like. I had my memory of my life before I replaced Lieutenant Bader wiped, in the event I was captured alive. Even I thought I was him, until I heard the code word. He was a good person to be. His family are good people and they’re nothing to do with me. Could you live with yourself, Sharon, if you harmed them? I know there’s a person under that mask.”
Agent Castillo made a fist of her hand, and gave an unseen scowl.
“Explain to me: why did you do this? You were on watch on Gate 43. You gave the assassins access to the palace. The President is dead, board members dead, all horribly killed by your accomplices. They all had families, and now more will die in the unrest this has caused.”
“Hope. Hope that the next government will be better, maybe serve the people rather than oppress them. I did it for freedom.”
“Most of the board is gone, but the shareholders will elect more members. Stability will eventually be restored. There will be a new president with a new mask; maybe this one will wear a smile rather than a stern frown, but the system behind it will be the same. You’ve achieved nothing except murder. Hassan Le Duc was a husband and a father too. Who are you working for?”
“I don’t know. I was contacted anonymously. Strip away the layers and all I am is a nucleus of hate and hope that is enough to lie, to kill, even die for things to change.”
“God save us from fanatics,” Castillo said, to the dog-masked guards. “Put his mask back on and seal it up. You’ll get your trial,” she said, turning to Peter. “More than Le Duc had.”
The guards put the mask over his head and jerked Peter to his feet. As they led him away, he pulled back, to face Agent Castillo.
“Wait!” he said, his voice urgent now, “the family. Whatever I’ve done is nothing to do with them.”
Castillo’s mask, eyes shaded as they were, hid her tears. She was sure that he had not even realised who she really was.
~~~
But I knew.
She had become part of my team some years back; a mostly expedient move. Gorgeous, wild in bed, fond of the expensive consumables. As untrustworthy as a vixen in a trash can. Now she’s gone off radar just when I felt she was becoming most useful to my investigation. So who is she working for?
There is an old saying maybe from some Ancient Greek philosopher that goes: Greater fleas have lesser fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em; and lesser fleas have lesser fleas and so ad infinitum.
My feeling has always been to the complete contrary: that every puppet master has another puppet master above them pulling the strings, that no matter how powerful you are there is always somebody exerting control over you. Even Le Duc might have answered to someone.
So Agent Castillo has been dragged offstage, an unwanted Judy in this end of the pier show.
As for Bader or the goon who’d assumed his mask – justice was swift and brutal and just a day after the interview he was declared a conspirator and had his mouth permanently sewn up by the silencing machine.
That horrific bit of kit that awaits all naysayers, gossips and subversives. He was last seen lying on a hospital bed breathing through his nose and being intravenously fed at the taxpayer’s expense. Which is time limited to a week.
; For my part, my paymasters are restless, demanding answers that I can’t give them. If I can’t satisfy them soon, it may be time for me to exit stage left. Pursued by a bear; or at least a bear mask and costume.
~~~
A new approach was needed. If the big wide world fails to satisfy, search closer to home. Specifically in this case, Le Duc’s surviving family. We slipped some truth serum to his waster of a second cousin. Here’s his testimony in full:
Exhibit Three:
The area near the Central Station is renowned for its twisting backstreets, its low bars, gambling dens and houses of ill repute. For someone like me, used to a rather closeted, sheltered, existence, it was a district to escape the gilded cage my father keeps me in.
I would go to the Club Harlequinade. I wore my most elaborate mask, a blank golden mannequin that displayed a mask itself, a little black domino affair. I pretended to be a gang member, a mugger, a jacker. I would strut and take my place amid the bird masked, moai heads and gas masked youths all pretending to be street toughs, pimps and whores but most, like me, the disaffected children of the elite class.
We danced, drank and took drugs like Smatz, Bliss and Oz. It was easy to get the drugs. You just ducked out of Club Harlequinade and walked down Samsung Road into one of the doorways at the back of a warehouse. Once the goodies were procured it was back to the club to share with whoever you favoured.
The dealers in the doorways wore the masks of normal citizens, functionaries, mediocrities. Except this once.
The night in question the figure in the doorway wore an actor’s mask, the stylised representation of a sad thespian. The dealer looked both ways and made off; just as he did he said something and, because of his disordered state, I had trouble understanding his hurried words.
Perhaps it was an insult: “Ain’t a genius pal.” Or a drug reference: “Stay vertiginous how?”
What I heard was: “Saint Genesius now.”
Saint Genesius. The saint who holds the mask. Patron of actors, clowns, comedians. Amongst other things.
I think perhaps something else entirely was said yet I made my way to the church and entered the dark interior. I bowed my head to the statue of the saint, Genesius the Roman actor – tortured and beheaded by Diocletian – holding in his hands the type of mask worn in the Roman theatre, a grotesque, villainous visage.
Further into the interior of the church someone emerged from the shadows; her mask was also an actor’s mask but this one was smiling.
When I made to speak she held a black gloved finger to her lips.
“You have been playing your part well,” she said, “Everyone believes you the spoilt little rich boy...congratulations.”
My laugh died in the dust of the church.
“Now,” she said, “You have the codes?”
“Codes?”
She slapped the side of my head.
“Don’t play games,” she said, “give me the codes and we can both be on our way.”
“I don’t…”
She took a step forward.
“My God,” she said, “how deep have you gone? Tell me. Quickly. Your father. What do you make of him?”
My father was a complex man. Stern and serious in broadcasts for the Wealth Net; at home alternating between indifference and tyranny.
I have always tried to respect him; I have always had the highest…and yet I had to live my life, had to have a good time. But was that it?
Then I knew. For so long he had suspected me of being merely a rather wayward and immature child.
“He is a board member of Wealth Net,” I said, “He works for his cousin, the despot Hassan Le Duc. He is our enemy.”
The realisation of it came from somewhere I hardly knew anymore. I reached inside my jacket pocket and took out the memory chip onto which I had downloaded the access codes my father used to enter Wealth Net headquarters.
Until that moment I hardly had a recollection of having carried out this act; or rather I hadn’t forgotten but it was just not something notable but merely mundane, like pacing a familiar corridor of my home.
She grabbed the chip and pushed me aside and ran. I ran too but I never found her. I have been running these past few days while all that has happened has happened.
Surely this has all been some sort of mistake like the misheard words, the mondegreen, which sent me to the church. I have misunderstood something about myself, about my father, about the world.
I have tried to account for all this but narrative is like a mask, concealing much beneath the obvious glamour of its surface.
So all I can do now is to pray for mercy to Saint Genesius, patron saint of actors, clowns and also, strangely, of torture victims.
~~~
It wasn’t him.
Another dead end and another patient for the silencing machine. A hospital appointment that no one would wish to keep. I felt some sympathy for the guy who was clearly just a puppet manoeuvred by higher interests in this tapestry of cover stories, this layering of masks. And yet there’s something there that I might yet be able to use.
In the meantime, the public mood has changed. The outpouring of grief and sympathy has dried up like last week’s cappuccinos. The quest for vengeance that took hold – wanting to avenge the untimely but, frankly, to be celebrated passing of a hated dictator – has cooled somewhat.
Now the jokes are starting. “Who Killed Hassan Le Duc?” mugs and drink containers are on sale at every transport hub. Two clicks on the Net and you can buy a flimsy Le Duc face mask, complete with ragged tears to indicate where they cut into his flesh. Maybe this is society’s coping mechanism: to begin to make fun of the unknown and the horror, the horror.
Yesterday I saw some kid wearing an outer garment with the slogan: “It wasn’t me but I wished it had of been.” Morons. Can’t even get their English grammar straight.
~~~
We had one more lead on the rebellious, self-aggrandising Four Musketeers of the Apocalypse: a penguin mask discarded in a crusher some eighty kilometres away from the scene.
Frantic DNA testing to try to pick up a lead, something, anything.
What we uncovered was artificial flesh. Were the murderers androids? Perhaps this will be the new focus for the rest of this century: not the battle between science and religion but the forthcoming conflict about the very definition of what it means to be human, what forms of intelligence deserve rights, what and who we call ‘alive’.
Unsolved mysteries itch at me like the remnants of an infection that I can never leave alone forever. JFK, Princess Diana, Jill Dando, Alexander Litvinenko…for the moment I will be adding Le Duc to that list. I tried my best.
I don’t say I’m finished or abandoning the investigation just that I might have to put it aside for the moment.
Who do I work for? I can’t say. Let’s just say they have no fear of masks for they are the makers of the masks.
No, not in a literal way. Learn to read the layer of metaphor or you’re doomed to stay in the slime.
And who am I? I can be anybody you please. I’m the impressionist I mentioned in my first paragraph, brilliantly imitating hundreds of celebrities alive or dead. If you want I can play the part of Hassan Le Duc as convincingly as he ever did.
My birth name would mean nothing to you. My aliases are plenty and some have nibbled at the fringes of popular culture.
But for now you can just call me Saint Genesius. Patron of actors, clowns and comedians.
The saint who holds the mask.
Or maybe I shall become the patron saint of silence.
HIS LAST PORTRAIT
Adrian Cole
Lewington walked slowly down the hall of his flat, pausing to enjoy the several portraits that hung on either side.
They were all by Louis Grapelle, the one painter he admired above all others. To Lewington they were unique representations of the form, the faces and their expressions capturing a depth that, for him, no other modern artist achieved.
/> Grapelle had a wonderful knack of revealing what was beneath, whether sadness or amusement, coquetry or aloofness. Something in the eyes of his subjects, the set of their mouths caught that inner emotion magically.
Lewington had purchased the pictures at a time when Grapelle was still working, almost ten years ago, and fortunately before they became highly sought after and thus prohibitively expensive.
Ten years ago, he mused. Then, as he was beginning to earn the success and adoration he so richly deserved, Grapelle had ceased production.
There were rumoured to be a few last private works, but the artist had abruptly stopped painting and had disappeared altogether. There were several theories, some of them ridiculous: the commonest view was that he’d died, but there was no evidence of that. Grapelle had become well known: dying would not have escaped the media’s attention.
Lewington made a final adjustment to his tie in the long mirror by the door. Today I need a calm face, to hide my uncharacteristic nerves. Grapelle would probably have seen behind the façade.
He left the flat, securing it behind him. Everything was lavishly insured and he’d spent a good deal of money on the alarm system. If he ever lost a single one of the portraits, it would be like losing a friend.
He nudged the gloomy thought aside and took the lift. Today he was buoyed up by the thought of the man he was about to visit. Laurence Slater of Slater, Slater and Byrne, a firm of solicitors to the very rich. The man had been brusque on the phone, not prepared to reveal much more than the address of the firm.
“I gather you’re interested in Louis Grapelle,” he’d said. “Would it be possible for you to pay me a visit?”
Lewington, an art critic and author of several acclaimed works on his subject, had long cherished a yearning to write a book about Grapelle. His publisher had been encouraging him, recognising the potential in the subject, particularly in the artist’s bizarre withdrawal from the world.
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