Peel separated the two sides of the postcard that had been glued together to form a single sheet. Written in Arabic on the inside sheet were the words: Mercado Central, 8am tomorrow.
Peel spoke and read Arabic. So did Jordan.
He took a match to both sides of the card and watched them burn into cinders.
Then he was drowning, smothered by water crashing down on him as a huge spout rushing from grey, lightning-thick clouds. He was drenched, chilled, and he could see Jordan next to him, similarly smothered with salty water.
“What do you mean quantum entanglement?” Jordan said with urgency. “You’re the one who reads the science magazines, Peel. You tell me.”
There was a knock on his door.
In a daze, Peel answered without thought. He found Zoe Isles outside. She was wearing a bright summer dress and heels, a combination that highlighted the slimness and shape of her figure.
“Hi—what happened to you?”
Peel touched his shirt. He was drenched to the skin. He was shivering uncontrollably. “Um, just give me a minute.”
He let Zoe in, went to the bathroom, stripped and toweled off. When he realized he smelled of salt he showered quickly.
“Anything wrong in there?”
The door was slightly ajar. He hadn’t remembered leaving it that way.
“Um, no. Just give me a minute.”
When he was dry Peel came out wearing only a towel. He gave Isles the briefest smile before he selected a fresh set of clothes and returned to the bathroom. This time he made sure the door was shut.
“What’s going on?” she asked from behind the door.
“Oh, nothing. A bad dream.”
But it wasn’t a dream like any he’d ever had before. It was like he was really there, and the wetness and salty taste proved that.
A minute later he was dressed. Isle waiting patiently for him gave him a smile. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” he rubbed the back of his head. “I think I’m just a little haggard, run down.”
“Then do you feel like dancing, Harrison, to liven you up? They have a bar downstairs, and the Latin vibes are on.”
“I’m not much of a dancer.”
She held out her hand. “Neither am I.”
He took it.
Downstairs in the hotel bar there was indeed dancing. Peel recognized the beat as a Salsa. He watched several Peruvians and a few international guests twist their bodies in rhythm as men spun women around the dance floor. Peel ordered a beer, asked Isles what she wanted and she said the same. They both watched carefully that their bottles were opened before them. In their profession there was always the risk that their drinks could be drugged.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so tough on you.”
Peel laughed. “I’ve had worse bosses, but thanks anyway. I’m sorry that I’ve been complicating your mission.”
“Can we try and put all this behind us, start again?”
Peel took a sip of his beer, not sure where this conversation was really going. “Sure.”
“That’s great. Let’s start by you telling me about the Harrison Peel who isn’t a spook.”
“You really want to know about me? I’m not that interesting.”
“I doubt that.” She half-laughed before she said: “Go on, surprise me. Tell me something unusual about you, that isn’t related to the job.”
Peel couldn’t get the image out of his mind of Jordan and the wall of water falling on them. Talking about normal life seemed like a good idea to ground himself again.
“Well, let’s see. I was born and raised in Sydney, near the beach. I like watching and playing soccer. I drink too much coffee, but only good coffee, and coffee from Ethiopia when I can get it. I have a knack at languages. Sorry, that’s a job thing isn’t it?”
She turned from him, rested her elbows on the bar and looked into her beer. “You know if you asked me the same question I’d have given similar answers. Responses that don’t tell anything that can’t be easily verified, fluffy anecdotes that don’t really mean anything.”
He took her hand and she let him hold it, and he wondered again who was playing who. “Zoe, we’re spies. It’s our career to be obscure. Being bland nobodies is second nature to us.”
Her chuckle was sad. “Are you saying I’m bland?”
“Of course not. You are anything but.”
She turned to him, ran a finger across his shirt and his stomach where the C-shaped scar lived. “You know what happened to me; that got me into this game in the first place? My first Code-89?”
Peel didn’t say anything. There were no words that he could offer that would give justice to what she was about to tell him.
“It was before I joined the CIA. It was my brother, Daniel. When we were kids, he found this book. An old book that the previous owners of the house we had moved into had left behind. Daniel read something in it, and then he just folded, and folded again, and again taking the book with him, until he was impossibly small—”
She was no longer talking, and neither was Peel. She was leaning her head against his chest, her eyes moist.
Suddenly he was kissing her and she was kissing him. He didn’t care about anything that had to do with their jobs, the horrors they had faced, their wounds, their losses, or even how truthful they were being to each other, he didn’t care about anything. He only wanted to focus on her, her physicality, her scent, anything about her that could separate them from the rest of the world that terrified them both.
His hands were all over her. Her hands were all over him.
They raced to his room, tore at each other’s clothes until they fell onto Peel’s bed, half-laughing, half-sobbing as they made love with an energy and passion Peel had thought had been dead in him for a very long time.
* * *
Peel stirred when Isle’s cellular rang. Grey morning sunlight streamed in through the window, he’d slept late. She jumped out of bed, ran naked to the bathroom closing the door behind her. Her tone was urgent when she answered, then became muffled.
Peel dressed quickly. A moment later Isles returned. She left her cellular on the bed as she dressed. While distracted, Peel covertly checked her call log, recognized the telephone number from the private conversation she’d had on the flight south.
“Stay here,” she ordered, again the hard-nosed CIA case officer she had apologized about being last night.
“What’s going on, Zoe?”
“Nothing important. Well nothing important you need to know about.”
Then she was gone.
Peel followed her into the corridor only to find one of her security detail waiting for him. “Company business, sir,” was all the woman would say as she pointed inside Peel’s hotel room.
Peel didn’t argue. Alone again, he turned up the television so that another soccer match played. Then he went out onto the balcony.
His room was on the third floor and the balconies were spaced evenly, close enough so that it was little effort to swing down from one to the next. Five minutes of simple acrobatics and he was on the hotel grounds and out on the streets.
He walked with purpose, tightened his jacket against the morning chill. He’d studied enough maps of Lima on the flight south to remain orientated in a city he’d never previously visited. After hailing a taxi and negotiating a fare because there was no meter, he was off, taking an inconspicuous route into the heart of Lima and the Mercado Central.
Once amongst its crowds Peel hovered next to a stall selling pirated CDs and DVDs, acted like he was interested in them. He checked his watch from time to time while he debated over music he would never buy, waiting for the minute hand of his watch to sweep around to 8am.
“Hola, Senor Peel.”
Peel looked up. The man who had been examining the CDs next to him for the last five minutes, who he had mistaken as a Peruvian man, was in fact Jordan. He wore a fedora and had a large alpaca bag slung over his shoulder.
“J
ordan.”
“I caused a little smoke in a CIA listening station you are supposed to know nothing about. That will keep Isles and her team distracted while we talk.”
“You know they’re here to kill you.”
“Good luck to them.”
“I found you.”
“No Peel, I found you. I always find you. That’s the nature of our working relationship.”
Peel turned to the strange ex-special forces soldier who’d lived too long pretending to be people other than himself, he’d probably forgot who he really was. Peel liked Jordan, but they were never close friends, not when everything about the man was a pretense. “You want to get a cerveza? Normally I don’t drink this early in the morning, but I’ve had a long journey to get here and I suspect you did too, and we have a lot to talk about.”
Jordan’s nod was delayed and slight while he watched the crowds to ensure Peel had not been followed.
They found a café, ordered lagers and dishes of chopped steak served with onions, tomatoes, potatoes and rice. Once eating Peel realized how hungry he was.
“I’m not surprised the CIA roped in you to find me, Peel. In fact, I counted on it.”
The Australia looked away from the crowds and at Jordan. “You had a dream about me, and we were both drowning.” Then Peel saw something in Jordan he had never seen before, surprise.
“You’ve had the dreams too?” Jordan shook his head. “But I don’t think they are dreams.”
“I don’t think so either.”
“Peel, what is a naked singularity?”
“What?”
“You talk about it, many times when I see you.”
Since his first encounter with an alien intrusion Peel had been doing a lot of reading on quantum mechanics, astrophysics, cosmology and higher dimensional mathematics. He found this information helped him to understand them.
“A naked singularity, you say?”
“Are you going to explain yourself? You’re boss, Zoe Isles, is no fool. She’ll find us soon enough if we wait here too long.”
“Okay. Normally the terminology singularity is applied to the centre of a stellar object called a black hole. Its single central point has no dimension and is infinity dense. It is a point where the laws of the universe break down. We can’t see singularities because they are enclosed by an event horizon, and they protect the rest of the universe from their unpredictability. However, a naked singularity doesn’t have an event horizon. Anything is possible. In theory naked singularities don’t exist, otherwise the whole universe would start to take on unexplained phenomena on a massive scale.”
“That doesn’t happen now?”
“Not on the scale I’m talking about. At least we see no evidence of that.”
“And quantum entanglement?”
“You heard that one too? So did I. That’s a term normally applied to subatomic particles, where two particles that have interacted at some point in their lives then influence each other’s behavior in both the past and future for the rest of their existence.”
“That makes sense.”
“Does it?” Peel couldn’t understand why it would mean anything to a man like Jordan, who liked only to deal in hard facts, not bizarre theories, even if a hard fact was a salivating multi-mouthed tentacled horror trying to eat him.
Jordan swigged his beer. “At some point in the future, you and I are going to end up inside a naked singularity where we are going to get very wet and very cold.”
Peel shuddered. He understood now.
“Do these coordinates mean anything to you Peel: South Latitude 47o 9’, West Longitude 126o 43’?”
Peel did a quick calculation in his head. “That’s somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean.”
“Somewhere very cold and very wet.”
Peel went to finish his beer, only to realize that he had already done so. He wanted another one, but that would be a mistake. “What’s going on, Jordan? What’s with this vendetta you’ve got against Centaurus?”
Jordan smiled for the first time since their meeting. “Those coordinates I gave you, well Centaurus has a floating oil-drilling platform out there, been there for close to a year now. They’re extracting something out of the ocean and it’s not oil, a sample of which I first uncovered in Baghdad. It’s something biological but not terrestrial, and certainly nothing related to life as we know it.”
“Oh…”
“They’ve been shipping this substance around the world to various testing and manufacturing facilities. They are trying to make marketable products out of it, mostly in the fields of biological and chemical weapons where they’ve been successful, and pharmaceuticals and medical research where they haven’t.”
“Are you saying—?”
“Yeah Peel, Centaurus is yet another company fucking up the world by messing with something they can’t ever understand.”
Peel shuddered. He looked down at his half-eaten meal. He’d been hungry only moments ago, but not now. “You obviously wanted to meet. What do you think we—I can do?”
Jordan pushed his empty plate forward, then stood. “You finished eating?”
Peel nodded.
“Then let’s move.”
They headed into the heart of the markets mixing with the crowds at the fruit and vegetable stalls.
“You can do a couple of things. First, Ben Henbest, CEO of Centaurus is staying in Lima right now, and will be doing so for a few days. He’s here investigating the explosion on one of his ships that moves the Pacific product, which I hoped he would do.”
“The one you destroyed?”
“Of course. He has the penthouse suite in the hotel you are staying at, actually.”
Peel stopped dead in his tracks. “What the hell’s going on Jordan?”
“Someone is playing you, and that someone is Isles. Did you know that Henbest and Isles are friends, have been for many years? She’s working for him.”
Peel didn’t want to believe Jordan, and was about to say so until he realized that he was emotionally involved, and that he judgment could be clouded. If what Jordan said was true it was disappointing. He’d wanted to get to know Zoe Isles a whole lot better, but that didn’t seem like a safe option any more.
“I want you to visit Henbest, because I can’t, and find out what exactly he’s up to.”
“No one is running you Jordan, are they?”
“Not this time.”
“I was hoping that someone was. Don’t you know how insanely you’re behaving, how close you are to getting yourself killed?”
Jordan ignored him. “I need you to find out everything you can about the Pacific drilling operation, because that’s where I’m going next and I can do with all the intel I can get.”
“How?” Peel was frustrated. Jordan was acting recklessly and he was dragging Peel into his vendetta. Then Peel mentally kicked himself, he’d acted exactly the same way in the past when he passionately disagreed with the questionable actions of his supervisors. His friend needed him. “How are you getting out there?”
“The Russians. I know the Russians very well Peel. I’ll convince them that the Americans are testing a new weapon down there, or something. I’m still working out the details.”
“Are you trying to start a war?”
“I hope so, against Henbest and Centaurus definitely, and whatever it is the hell they are drilling the substance out of.”
“You said you wanted two things?”
“Yes, two things.” He handed Peel his black satchel, which Peel accepted. “I want you to tell the American’s what I’m doing, your boss back at NSA, preferably and anyone who is very senior in the Pentagon who will listen to you. They won’t listen to me. With any luck someone will send the fleet to the same coordinates looking for the Russians, if nothing else. Now open the bag Peel, and look inside.”
Peel went to reach inside but Jordan’s grip on his arm was fast and strong. “I said look, but don’t take anything out.”
Peel did what he was told. Inside there were two handguns, a Browning GP35 automatic and a smaller Walther PPK, old but reliable weapons.
“Put one of those weapons where we know no one will find it,” said Jordan when he saw the weapon Peel had his eye on.
Peel kept searching finding lock picks, a GPS tracker, a small headset CB radio, and several other items that together made up a modest field kit.
“You’re not looking, Peel.”
The last item Peel saw was a transparent jar with biohazard symbols plastered all over it. There was a milky substance inside that looked a little like clotted cream, until a psuedopod formed and leapt towards Peel, a mouth of teeth opening at its bulbous end, but the glass stopped it from advancing further.
Peel shuddered.
“That’s what Centaurus is drilling out of the Pacific.”
Peel nodded, not sure what he should do with the caged creature. He could try burning it, but it probably wouldn’t be enough to kill it permanently.
“That’s your evidence.”
“Great, Jordan.”
“There are rumblings down south. Get to Henbest and then get to that drilling platform. Whatever’s happening down there, we need to stop it.”
Peel had been transfixed by thing that was dissolving itself again into a shape of spoilt cream. He forced himself to look up, but by then it was too late, for Jordan had already vanished into the crowd.
He moved quickly, found an internet café where he logged on and dialed the number that he had memorized from Isles’ cellular telephone. Peel had been in the spying game too long not to be suspicious of Henbest’s close proximity to a CIA operation, but he wanted to be certain before giving up on Isles for good.
When the line was picked up, sounding distant, Peel knew his fears were confirmed.
“Hello, Amy speaking. This is the office of Benjamin Henbest of Centaurus Holdings. May I ask who is calling?”
Peel disconnected. Someday, somewhere, something good had to happen to him, but not today.
Cthulhu Unbound 3 Page 24