by Aidan Truhen
Yeah that would be my old office.
Those would be my colleagues from back in the day.
And yeah I’m guessing that’s Tuukka just crab-crawling around throwing them under trains and off of buildings and setting them on fire. Man’s a fucking nightmare is what. Fred’s gonna have to wind that boy in. Wind him right the fuck in you can do this crap in backwoods Bogotá and sure in fucking Sanaa on a Monday night but you cannot do it here. That is just straight up uncivilised is what and it’s inappropriate. Is it supposed to impress me? Why the fuck should I care? Why the fuck do I give a damn I never liked those guys even when I worked with them. I mean that’s the whole point right testosterone and victory and there’s no I in Team but there’s a whole lot of it in me.
Never liked any of them but most particularly not that asshole who didn’t take the elevator. So this all is fucking inappropriate is what. Just noise and waste and making a damn mess. Typical of this situation. I’m just a guy trying to get along. It’s not affecting me. It’s rude but okay if that’s what you want to do it’s fine. Fine.
It’s fine. I’m fine.
Later, in a vacant lot, dropping credit cards and phones and all my clothes into a stinking vat of something chemical. New clothes in a hurry, in the cold and the semi-dark of a sump corner tented and tarped. Now walk Jack. Duffel bag. Go to a crappy hotel out by the airport where no one spots new faces. Low on cash. No flow. Something of a pinchpoint coming going to have to do something about that. There are fifty places here where no one stays more than a single night and no one has a name. They won’t even spot me if I come back to one I’ve done before. No one cares: transit clients leaving at all hours, international hub. There’s a flight to Tokyo at midnight. Could get a passport and just go. Fred the demon PR guy might not even follow. Gotta be wishing he hadn’t bothered with me by now. It’s been fun but what’s the endgame? More of the same?
But Ando was pretty clear about that. Gotta figure he’s not a stupid man. He likes me but he has strong opinions about my suitability as a neighbour.
Gotta feel there’s a generally applicable truth there.
Crappy TV in my room in my crappy hotel and oh look Iceland is in the news. There’s something you don’t see every day because Iceland. Basically it’s Björk and volcanos and if you’re nostalgic then yeah way back when it was like the party flight to London but now not so much. It takes some serious shit going down in Iceland to get above the fold. When Reykjavik was the impact zone for the financial crisis that was just about enough to get our media to spell it right but not actually send someone over.
Now though.
Now Iceland’s got explosions and gangsters and that is all kinds of mediapathic so there are actual boots on the ground.
Seems like someone went over there with a bad attitude, some Russian grandmother with no sense of humour and this guy with a voice like a really white James Earl Jones, and these two have been exerting some entropic negativity on the general Icelandic hacker buzz. There have been deaths and things going splode and a great deal of screaming. Iceland has a population of fewer than four hundred thousand and they are not as a rule a hugely criminal bunch. Most people there have different jobs depending on the season. Like when I was there I took a tour with an undertaker who was also a guide and a hunter and among other things he showed me a maximum-security prison about the size of a hayloft with eighty inmates. Most of them had killed no more than one person and then in some kind of drunken jealous rage. Not saying that Iceland has no crooks just that the talent pool is relatively small and the number of eligible sociopaths with applicable physical skills is relatively low. I’m guessing they outsource that when they need to.
And then yesterday the backwoods began to explode. I cannot imagine how fucking cool that must have been and I am sad I was not there. Millions of euros of secret hardware in liquid-cooled sub-glacial server farms exploding up through the sheet ice and down into lava flows like fucking napalm in the morning like Apocalypse Now under a midnight sun. Men and women in privacy bunkers working for offshore corporations dragged out by this angry Rus grandma and thrown into the path of boiling volcano steam eruptions from the actual fucking molten core of the earth: bisected by a force somewhere between a tidal wave and a laser.
Karenina is definitely acting out and I got to admit I do feel a little twinge of discomfort in my testicles. She is kicking the world so hard there’s some kind of psychic scrotal resonance effect. Got to respect that.
Hands are shaking. Should have taken the elevator.
It’s fine. Take a breath. It’s fine.
Just feeling a little unloved is all like unwelcome in Tokyo and hunted in Iceland and you know. No one to talk to really. Just me all by myself.
It’s fine. Take a breath. I’m fine.
Should have taken the elevator.
PUTTING ON A SUIT TO MEET A MAN. White shirt black suit. Real cufflinks. Haven’t worn a suit like this since I was in coffee. Expensive suit and I paid in cash of course counting out the bundles. You want to get your spending under control you carry your money in a bag and know that when it’s gone it’s gone. That is a real sobering fucking moment of realisation. Much better than fucking numbers on a screen. That is your whole life right there.
Of course that is part of the point of my meeting with Mr. Driskol. I am looking to secure a revenue stream. Mr. Driskol was on the list of appointments I stole from Linden’s office. He is a very rich fairly evil old dude. Family money, slave money originally, then Depression finance and more recently arms and oil. I learned a few things from scrutinising Mr. Driskol, mostly that people get by with fucking twentieth-century security paradigms until some asshole like me comes along. Driskol works with Mr. Linden because occasionally he has to fend off suits from communist environmentalist anti-American conspiracy theory pressure groups in countries like Venezuela who have the nerve to object to one of his fossil fuel enterprises burning down a village or two although of course he is never personally involved in that sort of thing. In private life he gives out a lot of scholarships to young women who fit a very particular physical type many of whom he then dates for a few months on or after graduation. In short Mr. Driskol is like Daddy Warbucks if Daddy Warbucks was an on-again-off-again genocidal maniac with a fondness for girlfriend farming which now that I consider it nevermind.
Big black car comes to pick me up because Mr. Driskol is a traditional man. Thing’s got cigars in a humidor built in the door. Maybach, top marque, very expensive. Nice. Long journey so I’m talking to the driver.
Hi man I’m Price.
Hello Mr. Price.
(Voice like knocking on a castle door. Cute.)
You work for Mr. Driskol a long time?
Almost all my life.
He a nice guy?
I couldn’t say. He is a man of moods.
Moods?
Moods and parts and opinions. I believe that rich men generally are.
Yeah.
May I ask what is your business with Mr. Driskol?
Proposition for him. Kinda complex. Import export.
Would it be illegal sir?
Whatever gives you that idea?
This is the illegal business car sir. For legal business Mr. Driskol has another car. It is teal sir. This is the black car for illegal business. Occasionally there is a mix-up.
Not today.
As I thought sir.
So he does illegal business?
He does business sir. He does not greatly value the laws of man.
He a religious person then?
I believe he has a spiritual sensibility but not in the conventional sense no.
And he doesn’t mind you asking this stuff?
I would say not sir.
You’re Driskol aren’t you?
What gave me away Mr. Price?
&nb
sp; I don’t know Mr. Driskol I guess I was just lucky is what.
Shall we sit and talk Mr. Price? I own a property just around this corner where we can speak without interruptions.
Yes let’s.
(Little tiny gun called a pepperpot just against the back of his head.)
What are you doing Mr. Price?
Regrettably Mr. Driskol the nature of our business is somewhat different from what I led you to believe.
Mr. Price if you assassinate me you will assuredly get very little of my fortune. A hundred thousand in emergency petty cash in the house. Perhaps one million if you can extract from me some of my banking details but it is hardly cost effective when we could make considerably more. Add to that the fact that I will be missed within a week and it seems an exercise in futility.
Yes sadly I don’t take on partners and I have a temporary crisis of liquidity so a hundred thousand and short-term access to your home and identity plus this lovely vehicle will actually do fine. Plus I think you overestimate your profile Mr. Driskol. You’ve been very careful to disappear from the world and your life is arranged through a series of cutouts so I think I could be you for months before it was noticed but to be honest I doubt I’ll even need a week. Daddy Warbucks.
You are a moralist Mr. Price. How depressing.
(If it makes you feel better let’s pretend I lock him in the basement with whisky and some porn and let him out later. But let’s not imagine that is what I actually do.)
ON THE TV IT SEEMS LIKE THERE’S an epidemic of fucking commodities guys falling from buildings now and YouTube spots in which they scream. It’s really not that many. Not even double figures maybe. It’s just they play the same clips over and over and you can hear them all the way down. Can’t go anywhere without hearing people talking about it. Can’t go to bars can’t turn on the TV.
My hands shake all the time.
Fucking Fred is after my mind is what.
Fuck you Fred.
Fuck.
You.
I need coffee is all. Bar of the Regent Heights they have a roast so strong and rich it shows you the future and thanks to Driskol I can get a suite.
INCOMING SMS MESSAGE.
Hey Price you pointless asshole.
Hi Sarah.
What are you doing?
I’m wearing a dead man’s suit and drinking prophecy from a cup the size of your mouth.
You want to come round here and just drink from my mouth?
Yes.
You want that?
Yes I do. Fuck it. Let’s go. Tell me where.
Are you serious Price?
I said I was.
Fuck.
Yes that’s the plan.
You better fucking show up or I will come for you.
One way or another that’s gonna happen.
…Fuck yes.
Tell me where you are.
Fuck now I don’t know if that’s really you what if it’s them.
You’ve always known I wanted this and you’ve always pretended you didn’t and you actually don’t want it now but you also do because all of a sudden up is down and you’re hoping maybe down is also up. You want to know before you open the door that I’m not going to be a lazy asshole because if you do this if you basically defile your soul you want it to be fucking spine-crackingly good so that when you tell your grandkids you once fucked a multiple murdering drug dealer in the middle of a crime war you can say it was unequivocally great sex.
Sarah says: You arrogant prick it is you.
She tells me where to find her. I take Driskol’s car in case we need it for a bed.
TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS, LATERAL SPREAD. Very high-end. How the fuck did she get here? Sarah got some game maybe.
Put the car under the house in a space.
There’s an elevator up to the ground floor. Big elevator, lots of nice design. Mirrors. I can see me from the 90s reflected. 90s me on my phone selling coffee. 90s me on my phone saying:
Take the elevator.
It’s possible I may be a little wired and a little stressed out.
This is a bad idea this meeting but it’s only a fairly bad idea. It’s what Fred’s trying for, trying to shake me out of my pattern because my pattern is working. Ideally I should just get on with my thing. But I am a human being. Sooner or later you just need to see someone smile because of you and you need to be touched by a real person. You can’t just shrug it off and if you try the crazy gets inside you and then you make more and worse mistakes than this. So you choose a way to break the rules that won’t hurt you and then you get back on track. This probably won’t hurt me. Unless Fred gets lucky or Tuukka can smell my scent. Unless Karenina’s got her groove back.
Fuck you Fred.
Better yet fuck Sarah then kill Fred.
Prophecy bean in my blood. Heat and anger and fear and lust.
Coffee sex here I come.
I should have told her to drink some before I left.
FIRST APARTMENT ON THE FIRST FLOOR. Gold-plated rails high ceilings in the common parts. Like a museum or a Vatican-themed whorehouse or something in between. Deep rugs on the floors wood panels cut in Deco shapes or maybe a little earlier maybe Art Nouveau. Like elves from those movies about elves.
This is the door. Wooden door like real expensive real traditional real cool. Sexy. I can smell wood polish. Picture Sarah polishing the wood. Hands working over the flat brown surface. Hands working. Cheek pressed against the wood.
I grip the brass knocker and use it. Knock knock Sarah.
Door opens a crack. I can see skin. An eye, big and very wide. Brief flick of a nipple as she moves away: silver pink and very tight. Paler than you’d think. Flicker of a black lace gown. That watch. Door swinging open.
Step through. Hear it close. Look up.
The doctor says: Look at your hand.
I look at my hand. Weird blue print like printing ink on the palm. Shit. She rigged the knocker.
Doctor says: That is a suspension of—
Do I need to know what it’s called?
I was going to enjoy saying it. But no.
It’s going to kill me?
Eventually, if I allow it, yes.
I don’t understand.
Yes you do.
I—
If you kill me Mr. Price—if you do anything I do not ultimately approve—you will be consumed from within by an agony that passes your present understanding. That is now inescapable. On the other hand I do not propose that this thing should come to pass. It is merely my insurance for this meeting.
Where’s Sarah?
SLAP. Right in the face. Watching her do it is beautiful: torsion and twisting, the power in her. Blood in my mouth, cheek stinging. What a woman.
Rude Jack. Very rude. Sarah’s gone. I got her phone of course. I loved our correspondence but it was frustrating. I nearly told you it was me so many times. What would you have done?
No idea.
Look at me Price.
I look. The doctor is beautiful. I take a step closer and she smiles, turning ever so slightly as if I may run past her to the window and she will have to catch me. She presses her chest forward just a little, lets the movement shift her body. It’s a very good look.
Price you have not been talking to Sarah on your phone. Not since Fred tried to take her and she was not here. You have been talking to me. And I have been talking to you.
Oh.
Yes.
Why?
Because you please me. Your mind possesses an aesthetic. You did not kill my dog. Why not?
He’s a nice dog.
Fred would have killed the dog. You killed your cop friend and you fired his head into Johnny Cubano. What happened to Li Dong-ha is one of the worst things I have ever seen b
ut it was even worse for your assassin. You have broken him probably permanently.
I actually don’t feel great about that.
Exactly. You are not a sociopath. You experience the world like a normal person but at the same time there is no limit on your behaviour. Just as there is no limit on mine.
None?
None at all. I am interested in you. You are anomalous. You are attractive. It is not a common combination.
Her arms circle around my neck. I can feel her hips against mine, her body all the way up and down me. One hand on the mark on my face, stroking, loving the stamp of her anger. My mouth is watering. I feel her breath on my neck and make a noise that is not a word.
Oh, yes, she says. Exactly that.
Do you drink coffee?
All day every day Price.
Lips on mine. Thin lips that open into something that can’t be real, a mouth that understands and has no restraint at all: Come in. Come in. Come come come in. Now.
She steps back and takes my hands, moves them up and down. Holds them on her breasts and then away, around behind her. I elevator her up and she climbs on me, bearing down, gasps when my fingers find her, ripples against me, then growls and breaks free.
She leads me into her bedroom.
THE BED IS VAST AND THERE ARE NO COVERS on it just a wide soft sheet, soft cotton not silk. There are no personal effects, no clothes. This is a room with one purpose only.
The doctor stands at the foot of the bed and slips out of her gown. I kneel down behind her and press my mouth against the small of her back, my hands on her hips. I feel her tilt towards me and I can smell her body. I can feel her on my fingertips. I use my teeth and she hisses, presses into the bite.
Stop.
Okay.
From beneath the bed she withdraws a steel travel case. Click clack. It opens.