by Layton Green
Grey’s eyes fluttered open. He was lying on his back, his head on a pillow, staring at a finished concrete ceiling. After a moment of disorientation, he remembered what had happened and sprang out of the cot.
His prison had concrete walls in the front and the rear, and glass walls on either side. To his left, Lana was sleeping on a cot in a similar cell.
To his right was Nya.
She was lying on her side on the cot, facing him, dressed in cotton pants and a fitted white sweater. When he saw the rise and fall of her chest, he almost swooned with relief.
She looked unharmed, but it was hard to tell. He beat against the thick glass and called her name. She didn’t stir.
Lana was facing away from him, also unmoving. After making sure she was breathing, he turned back to Nya. The relief faded; the nightmare had come true. The General had reached into Africa and plucked her away, the second time she had been abducted on Grey’s watch.
Hands pressed against the glass, he slumped against the wall facing her cell, willing her to wake up. Seeing her there felt like a pit to the abyss had opened inside him, and his soul was teetering on the edge, counterweighted only by the knowledge that he still had a chance to help her, slim though it might be.
The only woman he had loved, and he had brought her nothing but misery and pain.
When she didn’t stir, his eyes found her bare feet tucked into the cot, the narrow brown toes and the curve of her arch. Roamed the length of her long athletic legs, past the narrow waist and the torso that he knew bore the scars of the N’anga’s knife, then up the firm but graceful sweep of her neckline to the face he longed to cup in his hands. There he lingered, remembering past nights by candlelight, her sculpted features cast in amber.
His hands slid down the glass and he watched her for a very long time, lost in the sight of her, trembling with love and rage, unwilling to accept that he could not sweep her into his arms and carry her from this place.
Someone was unlocking Grey’s door. Nya stirred, and he assumed she had heard a similar noise. As his door opened, he evaluated the situation. The first guard came inside dangling handcuffs. He had no weapon for Grey to swipe. The weapons, M-16 rifles, were in the hands of two guards behind him. Smart.
A guard shook Nya awake. She sat and looked at Grey. A sad smile appeared on her lips. She didn’t look surprised, which meant she already knew he was there. He wondered how long he had been a mindless sheep.
On the other side, a guard shook Lana awake. She stumbled to her feet and looked at Grey, then past him to Nya. Lana’s eyes widened and then narrowed. She hadn’t known.
After handcuffing Grey in the front, his captors waited until Nya and Lana were led out of their rooms, then prodded Grey into a beige hallway. They walked him past a bathroom and down a long corridor, through a door at the other end and up a set of stairs, then down two more hallways and through another closed door, into the rear of a banquet hall filled with people.
Grey blinked. The sudden commotion took him by surprise. There must have been two hundred men and women inside, sitting at circular tables with blue tablecloths, talking and laughing and drinking out of beer mugs. Firearms hung at their sides or rested on the table beside them, and they had the straight-backed bearing of soldiers. Most looked Latino, but Grey saw white, black, and Asian faces sprinkled among the crowd.
At the far end of the room, Nya and Lana sat behind a semi-circular wooden table facing the crowd. There were six chairs. Both women watched him with expressionless faces, though he didn’t think either was still drugged. He thought they were keeping their cool.
The people at the tables gave him sidelong glances as the guards led him to the front. A few smirked and toasted him. His captors placed him between Lana and Nya on the left side of the table, leaving him in handcuffs.
“Grey,” Nya whispered, placing a hand on his knee.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered back.
He forced his gaze away from her and absorbed his surroundings. The ceiling and walls were glass, showcasing a stunning vista. They were perched on the side of a mountain, facing another mountain covered with the grey smudge of ruins, so close it seemed he could throw a baseball and hit it. Mist swirled around the latticework of old stone.
Tall peaks rose out of the cloud forest in every direction, and in the distance, the tops of snowcapped volcanoes loomed like swaths of white paint. Far below, he saw a river winding through a gorge.
Plush rugs covered the room, dyed in natural colors. Peruvian tapestries and cured animal skins hung on the walls. Track lighting provided illumination.
“Any idea where we are?” he asked Nya.
“I woke up in that cell two days ago. I’ve been to the toilet and nowhere else. They drop food off and leave.”
“No one’s touched you?”
“No.”
Grey’s fists unclenched, then tightened again. Stay in control, Grey. Going berserk helps no one. “Do you know how long I’ve been here?”
“A full day. A man came in three times with a needle. I could see them interrogating you.” Nya nodded towards Lana. “Her too.”
“Jesus,” Grey said. “Lana, meet Nya.”
Lana spoke without turning her head. Grey knew she was canvassing the room, looking for a way out of the impossible scenario. “What’s she doing here?” Lana said. “Insurance?”
Nya lifted her chin as she responded, her gaze every bit as confident and commanding as Lana’s. “As I said, I’ve spoken to no one.”
“I think we got close enough that he needed to know what we knew,” Grey said. “He knew you would keep plowing forward, but wasn’t so sure about me, unless she was here. And,” he said softly, “he was right.”
“So what’s this?” Lana said. “The Last Supper?”
Grey inclined his head towards the door through which they had just entered. “We’re about to find out.”
The commotion ceased as three people entered the room. The first was a tall and thin indigenous woman wearing a sleeveless embroidered dress and a garland of white flowers. An assortment of tribal jewelry adorned her neck and wrists. Though her hair was graying, she was still quite striking.
The man in the white sport coat and open-collared shirt next to her was the man from Rolando Ganador’s photo, and from the CIA file. He was about Grey’s height and much thicker in person, with the chest and shoulders of a bull. He had short gray hair and metal-rimmed glasses, and everything about him, from the size of his hands to the weathered lines of his face to the spring in his step, suggested vigor.
The third person was Lucho, wearing green camouflage pants and a black sweater, his right pinky in a splint. His flat eyes met Grey’s, and Grey could feel the hate pouring outward like heat from an open stove.
Behind the first three were two female guards who made Grey grip the edge of the table. The two women, dressed in black khaki pants and long-sleeved shirts color-splashed with indigenous dyes, looked like twins and could have been the older woman’s daughters. They carried spears, knives, and blowguns, and the exposed parts of their bodies were covered in blue body paint. From a distance they looked identical to the assassins who had come after Grey.
“My God,” Lana said. “That’s . . . that can’t be.”
Grey kept looking back and forth between the older woman and the two younger ones. “He’s breeding them,” he said in awe. “Different generations to keep the myth alive. Ready replacements if one dies.”
“What is this, some sort of incestuous harem in honor of that girl who died at Jonestown?” Lana said. “Twisted bastard.”
The General waved a hand, and the commotion resumed. A man carrying a guitar followed the blue women inside and began strumming a ballad.
Like an emperor taking the throne, the General strode to the other side of Grey’s table, sitting between the older woman and Lucho. The two women in blue paint walked behind Grey’s section of the table. Out of the corner of his eye, Grey saw them standing a few
feet back, hands poised on their weapons.
As soon as everyone was in place, servants scurried forth from the wings with wine bottles and glasses. They poured glasses of Chilean Malbec and then retreated.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” the General boomed. “What do you think of the view?”
Grey held up his handcuffs. “I don’t like any view with chains.”
The General shrugged and waved a hand. “So try it without them.”
Another of the servants ran to uncuff the three of them. Grey rubbed and flexed his wrists below the table.
“Better?” the General asked.
Grey didn’t answer. He knew he was being toyed with, and that he wasn’t going anywhere. Not with a room full of mercenaries and two assassins, trained by an ex-CIA agent, standing at his back. The General also had the ultimate trump card, and she was sitting right beside Grey. He had been outmaneuvered, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Why bother letting us wake up?” Lana asked. “So we can fawn over your empire?”
The General swirled his wine. “I’m a civilized man, and prefer civilized endings. I also wanted to congratulate the adversaries who have come closest to besting me. Like any man of action, I prize a well-fought battle above all else. Of course,” he said calmly, but with an edge to his voice that was like a laser cutting into glass, “I prefer to win.”
Grey tilted his head towards Nya. “Let her leave. She doesn’t even know where she is. Drug her and send her home.”
“Ah,” the General said, “there’s no one as selfless as a man in love. Trust me,” he said, spreading his arms to the room and winking at the woman beside him, “I should know. Or,” he mused, barking a laugh and slapping the table, “is it no one’s as self-centered as a man in love?” The General took the chin of the woman beside him in his hands, and they exchanged a loving glance. He looked back to Grey. “Your request is reasonable from your perspective, but she’s seen too much. I do apologize, but none of you will see the dawn.”
It took all of Grey’s willpower not to throw himself across the table to try to reach the General, to try to inflict some measure of pain before he died. He swallowed his rage. In addition to the women at his back, Lucho was watching every twitch Grey made, his hand on his gun, begging him to move.
Instead, Grey smiled at the General and tried to inflict another sort of pain. “I understand your agony in Jonestown all those years ago, your fury, but that jungle full of dead children is yours now. How many people have you killed? How many drug babies have you fostered?”
Grey didn’t get the flash of anger he was hoping for. Instead he got, behind the squinty blue eyes, a glimpse of a man who had seen and done everything in life, who knew he had sunk into his own dark fantasy and didn’t even care. A man to whom life had become an experiment and nothing more.
A man Grey didn’t know how to reach, except with violence.
“My people will be here any second,” Lana said. “There’s still time to make a deal.”
The General sounded bored. “The portable tracking devices in your phone and your purse were destroyed before you left the village. Which is hours from here and quite useless as a reference point. Do you have any idea how inaccessible this part of the world is?” He waited as the waiter refilled his wine glass, and he raised it to Grey. “You were right to come for her. Had you not, I would have killed her and taken you another day, and you wouldn’t have had your good-bye.”
The appetizers arrived, wontons stuffed with goat cheese and a platter of olives and prosciutto. The woman beside the General placed an olive into her mouth with dainty fingers. Before the servants retreated, the General snapped his fingers. “Bring the folders.”
A servant disappeared and returned with two thin manila folders, which he placed in front of Grey and Lana.
“A little dinner entertainment,” the General said. “I think you, Lana, will find it particularly enlightening.”
Grey opened the manila folder. Inside was a printout of the same CIA file he had seen on Lana’s computer screen, except that nothing was blacked out.
Lana seized her copy. “The name in small print in the top right wasn’t there in the other version. That’s the author.” She looked up at the General. “My God, he was your handler.”
Grey’s eyes moved upward to read the name printed in the corner. Jeffrey Lasgetone.
The current Deputy Director of the CIA.
The General gestured as if shooing away her words. “Please, keep reading.”
Grey read the classified portion of the report. The gist of it was that the CIA had predicted exactly what would happen at Jonestown when Congressman Ryan arrived. The socialist cult was considered a propaganda nightmare and there were even contingencies in place to trigger a mass suicide—of American men, women, and children—should events not take their own course. Also in the report was the directive to send in a cleanup crew to whitewash the evidence. Near the bottom of the page, Jeffrey Lasgetone gave his analysis that Devon Taylor had been compromised and would be a liability after witnessing the death of Tashmeni and their child, and recommended he be terminated if he survived.
Grey closed the folder and found Lana staring at the General. “This was never about insecure borders,” she said. “This was about revenge. He knew you’d ruin his bid for election.”
“Oh no, I’ll wait until after the election. He’s doing well in the polls. I’ll ruin his presidency.” He nodded towards the paper in Lana’s hands. “Turn it over.”
Grey flipped over his own copy and saw a few more paragraphs detailing the cleanup at Jonestown. Marked with an asterisk was the description of an empty cassette tape found next to the body of Jim Jones, along with an unsigned note.
I think you know what this means.
From now on, Devon Taylor is dead.
“The tape is a full confessional,” the General said almost sadly, as if sparring with children, “including recordings of Reverend Jones’s conversations with Jeffrey, who was his contact at the CIA. The CIA allowed the cult to survive long enough to study it, knowing how it would end. Even the American public will be horrified. I’ll ruin Jeffrey, I’ll ruin the CIA, I’ll ruin the credibility of your government. I’ll finish the game he started so very long ago.”
Lana looked as if she had seen a ghost, and turned the paper over to read the report again. A few minutes later the main course arrived, medallions of beef ladled with a garlic cream sauce. The General and the woman cut into the meat with relish, but Lucho sat with folded arms, his eyes never leaving Grey.
Grey had left his food and wine untouched, as had Nya and Lana. During the meal his eyes roamed the room, searching for an angle. When he scooted back in his chair to cross his legs, testing response times, one of the women behind him placed the tip of a blowgun on his back.
Nya reached for Grey’s hand and intertwined their fingers. “I’m sorry I left you,” she said, low enough for Grey alone to hear. “It was myself I hated, not you.”
“It’s okay,” Grey said. “I always understood.”
“It’s not okay. It never was. I want you to know I see the beauty inside you, your soul. I know who you are.” She squeezed his hand and met his eyes. “I love you, Dominic Grey.”
Her words washed over him, a purification before the burial chamber. He couldn’t even speak, could only hold her hand in silence as shivers of emotion rippled through him, while the madman across from them finished forking bites of filet mignon into his mouth.
After the General drained the last of his wine, the servants brought chocolate mousse and a bottle of Argentinian port. The crowd was still boisterous, Lana was still gripping the report, Lucho was still staring at Grey.
The General dipped his spoon into the mousse, then offered it to his partner. She gazed at him with longing as the spoon neared her mouth. When it touched her lips, a projectile crashed through the glass and an explosion rocked the room, shattering the windows and caving in the ce
iling.
Men in black masks and combat gear stormed inside, spraying the mercenaries with bullets and tear gas. Screams and shouts filled the air. Half of the General’s people had been knocked out of their chairs, and the dining hall was in shambles.
Grey didn’t hesitate. He dove to the floor behind him, ignoring the shattered glass, reaching for the knee and ankle of the blue woman at his back. Knowing she was distracted by the commotion and not expecting such a low maneuver, Grey yanked her off her feet with an ankle grab, then hit her so hard in the face with his open palm that she was out cold before her head hit the floor.
The other blue assassin raised her blowgun, the weapon Grey feared most. Grey flipped to his feet, knowing he was too late, but before the blowgun fired, Nya smashed her in the face with a wine glass, then kicked her into the wall. Grey sprang on the blue woman like a leopard and finished the job with a blow to the head.
Taking Nya by the hand, Grey picked up one of the spears and dashed for the nearest hole in the glass. Lana followed. Bullets flew through the room, filling the air with the smell of sulfur. Though the tear gas was concentrated on the other side of the room, Grey covered his mouth and nose as they crossed the fifteen feet to the shattered glass wall.
When they reached the outside, a ray of late afternoon sun blinded him. He shielded his eyes and saw people in combat gear storming the hill. Three choppers hovered overhead, whipping dust into a frenzy.
“Are they yours?” he asked Lana.
“No,” she said, confusion lacing her voice.
One of the assailants noticed Grey and the two women. He pointed his gun at them but didn’t fire. Before anyone could speak, Grey heard a spray of gunfire and their confronter pitched forward. Behind him, Grey saw a contingent of the General’s men, led by another of the blue-painted women.
To his left, the chaos had left a gap in the swarm of assailants, and Grey took the opening. He nodded at Lana, grabbed Nya’s hand again and sprinted for the line of gnarled trees twenty yards away. They reached it without incident, then stopped to survey their surroundings.