by Chad Huskins
But that’s getting a little ahead.
17
Roughly 4,000 miles away, a phone call had roused Shakib Rahman from his sleep. Well, not exactly sleep. He couldn’t sleep much these days. Insomnia had been a constant companion of his for the better part of a decade now. Still, when he shut his eyes, he entered a calm, meditative state which he liked even better than sleep. It helped to consolidate his thoughts. His father had taught him that. Running through “small orbit” exercises and channeling energy through his body’s chakra points.
Rahman took deep, deep breaths, and as he released each one he summoned energy to a region of his body. Some called it chi, some called it the spirit. Whatever it was, Rahman was able to sense it right between his eyes. And as he exhaled, he moved that tingling sensation down through his tongue, which touched the roof of his mouth, keeping the pathway open to the middle of his sternum, where he let the energy “cook.” Then, he passed it into his belly, just three inches behind the belly button, where some Chinese healers believed the soul resided.
Rahman listened to the phone ring as he moved the energy through his lower groin, up to the tailbone, then to the middle of his spine, then around to the nape of his neck, and then on to the top of the head before resting between his eyes again. This was called the “third eye” and, according to his father, it needed to have its energy restored in this way in order to maintain clear and wise thinking.
The phone rang some more. He finally opened his eyes. When he sat up, he flipped on the lamp by the bed, and then noticed he had an erection. He nudged the girl in the bed beside him. He forgot her name, but she was young and fresh. A real bargain from his people across the sea. When she woke up, she knew her job. She stood up and slinked around the bed, knelt in front of him, and took him in her mouth.
Rahman put one hand on her head, and answered one of the eight cell phones resting on the nightstand with the other. “Slow,” he told her. “Like how I told you before.” He put the phone to his ear. “Yes?”
“We have a problem.” It was Hamid, and his voice, always grave, was especially so now.
“What is it?”
“Our people in Moscow and Chelyabinsk are talking. They’re saying lots of networks have been compromised.”
“How so?” To the girl in his lap, he whispered, “I said, slow down.”
Hamid cleared his throat. “Many of their people were killed tonight. An unknown number. There were several hits.”
“By who? Local competition?”
“No, they’re saying it was an outsider. An American, acting alone.”
Rahman considered that. “The docks?”
“Completely destroyed and now being overrun by police. I’ve been told they’re trying to keep the information found there out of the hands of Interpol and other agencies, but our Russian friends don’t sound confident. Interpol is making them feel pressure from the international community.”
He nodded. “What else?”
“They think Zverev may be dead.”
At this, Rahman closed his eyes and sighed heavily. He ran through small orbit again. It took about three breaths, then he said, “Cut all ties. No more communication with the Russian families for the time being.”
“You were scheduled to move there next month.”
“I know, but obviously they aren’t as safe as I thought. I’ll stay here until I find other arrangements.”
“Understood.”
“Now, tell me about this American. What do we know? Is he law enforcement?”
“No. He’s a nobody, really. A car thief and a con artist, and apparently he had some grudge with the families before.”
Rahman felt himself about to climax. He gripped the girl by her hair and made her slow down. “Any family? Any points where we can apply pressure?”
“We’ve already looked into it, as have the families, and the man has some. But he’s also a wanted criminal in the U.S., and their FBI Most Wanted list says that he’s a psychopath. Clinically diagnosed. He escaped prison maybe a year ago, suspected of killing his prison shrink, and he’s been on a killing spree ever since.” Hamid sounded disappointed. “In this case, I don’t think applying pressure to his family will change anything. He’s one of those.”
A rabid beast, he meant, with no soul or family ties like a human ought to have. “Maybe not, but do it anyway.”
“As you say.”
“And Hamid?” Rahman added. “Zverev wasn’t a friend, but he was a business partner. We must have loyalty and professionalism when dealing with our partners. We must show solidarity with the rest of The Court in this moment. So find this man—what’s his name?”
“Palmer or Pellemer, or something like that.”
“Find this Palmer or whoever. Use whatever means. Contact our people in all regions, make sure they’re aware of this man. Have them all check the FBI’s website, memorize his face. I want to make him famous. If we can get our people in the media to run stories about him, do it. Find him. Find him and feed him his scrotum.”
“Of course,” said Hamid. “Blood and fealty.”
“Blood and fealty,” Rahman returned, and hung up.
He sat in silence for a time, almost forgetting the girl in his lap. When he stood up, she followed him, staying bent over and with her mouth wrapped around him. She knew better than to let his cock slip free. He walked over to the balcony and opened the glass doors, and let her walk out backwards. He stood in the cool wind. Four thousand miles away, his Russian colleagues were experiencing a blizzard and subzero temperatures, meanwhile here in Dhaka, it was a brisk 68° F. The blazing city lights announced to the world the megacity’s life and verve.
Standing naked on a high-rise in the most luxuriant district in the city, Shakib Rahman looked out over his kingdom, and saw that it was good. To have ascended from the slums that were so far away he couldn’t even see them from this view, he knew his father would be proud. Even his father hadn’t dreamed of rising this high.
The woman was still sucking him. Rahman closed his eyes, and ran through small orbit. He used it to enhance his climax. After his chi had taken several trips around his body, he finally focused it down his penis, out the tip, and into her mouth. He gripped her face in his fists and curled his toes. He thrusted violently into her throat, and he knew she wouldn’t pull away. She had seen what he’d done to her sister when she did such. Noseless, legless, she now begged on a street corner in Bokra Zela, the same slum district Rahman had escaped.
When she was finished, Rahman made her keep him in her mouth, sucking and cleaning him off, as he gazed out over his domain. Hamid and others thought he was trying to run from Bangladesh, his homeland, to hide in other countries. The truth was, this city was his fortress. It was one of the largest cities in the world, a vast sea of dark alleys, winding highways, packed districts and towering skyscrapers, and as long as he stayed in here, stuck close to his friends, family, and allies, no one could touch him.
However, things did get hot from time to time, and so Rahman and Hamid had devised a plan to bounce between cities for a time, around and around the world until authorities no longer knew where he was. Such plans could wait until he had this sorted out. He didn’t imagine it would take long. This man Palmer couldn’t be that difficult to find.
When the woman was finished cleaning him off, Rahman pulled her head away, and held her face in his hands, forcing her to look up at him. “Say it.”
She wiped her mouth. “The past is dead.”
“What else?”
“Blood and fealty,” she said. “For you.”
He nodded and gave her an approving smile. “Blood and fealty.”
Three blocks from the towering inferno, Spencer stood in an alley, freezing. He could see the smoke rising in front of the moon, which had finally decided to peek bravely through the clouds. The snow was letting up. Behind him, Detective Leon Hulsey had passed out again. Shannon was standing over him, keeping a bundle of stained red cloth pre
ssed to his empty eye socket. The girl’s tentacles had receded back into her throat like she was sucking noodles. It had happened almost as soon as they exited Tsarskiy Penthouses, her tentacles becoming weak, dropping Hulsey completely as they diminished in size, and vanished inside her. Shannon had passed out, and for a moment Spencer had tried to figure out how he would carry both of them, until the wee girl gasped and sat up straight, as if waking from a bad dream.
Spencer had lugged Hulsey in a fireman’s carry. They slipped out a side entrance and ran around to the back. They exited an emergency door, and Spencer found his Acura exactly where he’d left it.
They were now in a narrow alley between two small tenements, sheltered from the wind and each of them dealing with what they had seen in their own way. Spencer was thinking back on the multiple versions he’d become, wondering at the power of the little girl sitting behind him. It was one thing to alter herself enough that tentacles came vomiting out of her, but it was another thing to split a person’s consciousness between three separate bodies. If Shannon was able to do these things, what else might she be able to do?
Spencer had taken out one of the Sobranies he’d lifted from his enemy’s corpse, and lit it using his bear’s-head lighter. He sucked in the sweet, sweet smoke, savored it, and blew it out. He looked behind him. Shannon was knelt over Hulsey, who was moving his lips, and speaking madly about “can’t find Emerson” or some such nonsense. “Let him be,” he told her, looking back at the climbing smoke in the distance. “He’ll make it.”
Sniffling, she looked up at him. “H-how do you kn-know?”
“He’s got the grit.”
“Wh-what’s that?”
“Moxy. Cojones. Means he’s tough.”
Shannon sniffled some more. “It don’t matter how big or tough he is, he’s missing an eye and he got hit by—”
“Didn’t say big, said tough. Difference.” Spencer took another toke, and listened to the sirens screaming off in the distance. “Toughness doesn’t come from size. Toughness…it’s in here.” Touched his head. “An’ here.” Touched his chest. “It’s what yer sister has. Or had. She probably didn’t make it too long in that other world. Probably mince meat by now, like everybody in that building.” Even as he said it, he didn’t believe it. Kaley Dupré was his to kill, his and his alone; he felt it was a law of the universe, one of those that Sir Isaac Newton had left undiscovered.
“Why…?” Such a tiny little whisper, so pathetic.
Spencer turned to look at her. Shannon had buried her head in her hands. “Why what, little girl?”
“Wh-why does this…k-keep happening…to us?”
“Why does it happen to anybody? Everybody gets shit on. That’s a law.” Another one Newton had missed, no doubt. “The universe ain’t benign, but she ain’t malign, either. Savvy? The universe don’t even know you’re fuckin’ here. Pray all ya want, cry all ya want, nobody’s listenin’.”
“Th-the…universe…what…?”
“The universe is dark and cold. Those are natural. Light and warmth, those are the anomalies. One day, the suns will all burn out. No more stars, no more lights. Perfect zero temperatures. Eternal darkness an’ cold. We’re headin’ back to it. In the end, the darkness and the cold always win.”
Shannon looked up at him. “Th-then why…er…how does any of it matter?”
“Huh. A profound question for a little nigglet like you.” He reached to his waistline to adjust the pistol he’d taken off Zverev. It was empty, but even an empty gun had its uses. “Maybe when you’re old enough, you’ll get it. If you survive that long without your sister, that is.”
“Kaley…why did she…?”
Spencer took another drag of his Sobranie. Damn, but that was a good cig. You could say what you wanted about the Russians, but they knew their tobacco. “Yer sister did what she did to protect you. Now, ya need to hold onto that if we’re gonna—”
“But why?!” the little girl cried.
“Why what?”
“Why would she do that…throw herself in front of me when that man tried to shoot me, and then just…just…jump into the Deep?! Why would she do it, when she knows that there’s no way to win, no way to keep the darkness away? I couldn’t keep the darkness away. It took me over and…it…it won! Why would she even bother if she knew—”
“Because she believes in somethin’, you stupid little twat!” he shouted. Spencer loomed over her. “Because she gets tired of that truth. That undeniable little fact that one day, the darkness wins.” Then, he laughed at her, laughed at the dumb expression on her face, mixed with so much fear. “But not today, god damn it,” he chortled. “Not today. It’s gotta catch ya first, that darkness. Those men with their guns and their knives and their networks and their cell phones and their security cameras. They gotta catch ya first. And those monsters, those Others? Them, too. They gotta catch you. You could lay down, you could just succumb, but that’d make it too easy for ’em, and they’ll never remember ya.”
Shannon wiped a tear from her face. “Remember you?”
“There’s this bigass star, the biggest one ever found, called VY Canis Majoris. It’s a red hypergiant, and it’s 1,975,000,000 kilometers in diameter. It burns bright an’ hot an’ against the oncoming cold. It’s fucking defiant. I’ll bet the universe, if it has a consciousness, never forgets that fuckin’ star! Ha-ha!” He took another toke. “Yeah, your sister believed in that—deep down, she had that kind of fire, like Canis Majoris, and look what she accomplished. There are at least five lost children that are alive and free now because o’ her—I couldn’t give less of a shit about that fact, those aren’t the results I’m lookin’ for, but it’s the kind o’ thing she’s into, so there you have it.” He took another toke and shrugged. It seemed Shannon couldn’t look at him anymore, because she averted her gaze and continued weeping. “Dry it up,” he said. “Tears never got anybody anything ever.”
“I can’t help it!” she screamed. “Kaley’s gone and it’s all my fault! It’s because of me that she—”
“That she what? That she got pulled through a fucking membrane into another reality?” He chuckled. “Yeah, because you have control over something like that. Listen to me, little girl, the universe is full of anomalies. You an’ your sister are just another fucking one o’ those anomalies, like…like…like that gigantic black hole that’s too big to exist within the realm of physics, or that weird hum that the people in Taos, New Mexico, are always hearin’. It’s just you an’ your sister form, I dunno, some kinda confluence. A convergence.”
“But th-those Others…they came here b-because of me…”
“They came because your subconscious made a phone call; it reached out and touched someone who had similar interests and it did so without your permission. None of us can stop that. Inside all of us…there are these layers. Like the matryoshka dolls. Open one doll up, another little person’s inside. That’s the way it is. So quit yer bitchin’ and put it behind ya.”
“I sh-should’ve helped her,” she stuttered. “I should’ve found a way t-t-to help—”
“You sh-sh-sh-should’ve helped her?” Spencer mocked, grinning ear to ear. “You couldn’t change your own underwear, much less change your sister’s fate. Let me tell ya somethin’ I learned a long time ago. Don’t ever try to change the world. Just stop it from changing you,” he said, and took another toke. “I’m a fuckin’ thief and a killer, and I got no qualms about that. I can’t change what I am no more than you can change what you are. Not your sister, not him on the ground there, not them people back in that building, not the Prisoner, not nobody. Ya savvy, little girl? You are what you are. Learn what that is, deal with it, an’ move on.”
“I-I-I can’t…I don’t know what to do next. Wh-where do I go?”
“That’s up to you. Me?” He snorted, and pulled out the keycard he’d lifted from his whip-handed enemy. On the side, it read PROPERTY OF GRAND VIDGOF HOTEL. Beside that was a room number: 533. “I’v
e got some projects. Too many to count, to be honest. But here, if ya wanna make yourself useful, do this for me.” He had found a pen and paper in the Acura’s glove compartment, and scribbled down a message, which he handed to Shannon. “Give that to him when he wakes up.” He pointed to Leon. “Motherfucker’s gonna be confused as hell when he wakes up in Russia. Might even make the news. ‘UFOs Abduct Nigger, Drop His Ass in Bumfuck, Russia. Story at eleven.’ You an’ him both might be famous come tomorrow, an’ ya kind of have me to thank for that. Not a problem, you’re welcome.” He turned and walked away.
Shannon called after him. “Where are you going?”
“Bangladesh,” he called back.
“What’s in Bangladesh?”
“Work.”
The girl huffed, and then she screamed the only thing that mattered to her. “What about my sister?! Back inside the building you said you’d save her!”
“If she’s alive, I’ll find her.” I still owe her a death.
“Can you do it? Can you really find her?”
To himself, Spencer smiled and muttered, “What’s my name?”
18
Rideau checked her watch: 1:46 AM. He’s not coming.
It was a mix between a letdown and a relief. Part of her wanted to finish this tonight, and even fantasized about how it would go—she had gone through more than a dozen scenarios, certain that she had missed one and lunging at other possibilities even as she kept her eyes on the hotel’s entrance. But another part of her knew she couldn’t face someone like Yuri Shcherbakov, not the man that had done to Dubois what he had, not a trained assassin who had killed women and obviously had no reservations about killing Interpol agents.
Her phone buzzed. She answered, “Yes?”
“You never went to bed, did you?”
Rideau sighed. “No, Mitchell, I didn’t.”
“This whole thing got you thinking that much?”
“Yeah, I guess I am fretting. Patricia always tells me that, and I hate to admit she’s right.”