by Julian Folk
When the wine bottle calls Jan, she makes her way over.
“This set-up you FBI folks got is pretty good, Nikki,” she says.
Yeah, Nikki thinks, so long as Melody and the boys don’t show up.
Nikki sleeps downstairs in the tiny half-bedroom beside the washer and dryer. The ground floor has two bedrooms. So far the sleeping arrangements are kosher.
Jan fixes breakfast. Nikki used to think white gentiles ate their eggs with a side of either bacon or sausage. These white gentiles eat both bacon and sausage. Eager to not commit a faux pas, she does as they do, ignoring the pig squeals playing on her mental iPod.
What does she chase it with?
Jan brewed coffee and poured Nikki a cup. But coffee stirs tempests in Nikki’s mind. Her morning drink is green tea. Preferably gyokuro, the expensive one. Robert must’ve purchased some.
“Um, is there any green tea?” Nikki asks. “Did anyone notice?”
“I just saw coffee,” Jan says. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah it’s great.” Nikki sips and suppresses a wince.
No green tea. That’s a major oversight.
For lunch, they picnic underneath a big tree. Zero sunlight penetrates to the ground. The tree leaves show green but the temperature trends cool, a harbinger of fall weather. That scares Nikki.
Robert supplied a martial arts self-defense manual. She noticed it among Connor and Ayelet’s things. Teaches basic stuff. For Connor, it might mean the difference between saving his loved ones and losing them. Manual in hand, she approaches him.
“Connor, d’you wanna work on self-defense?” she asks. “I’ve been practicing martial arts my whole life. Some simple techniques could come in very handy for you.”
The prospect interests Ayelet:
“What is your, uh, martial arts style, Nikki?”
“Akido.” A white lie. “Judo.” Her charges would be frightened if she told them the truth.
“You should take advantage, Connor,” Ayelet says. “Look at how Robert’s strength saved him.”
Hearing her boyfriend’s name spoken aloud today makes Nikki’s body go haywire. Thanks to her training, she hides it. And smiles.
“I’d love to go all out and pull an overloaded snow sleigh like Rocky Balboa,” Connor says. Smug, arrogant, jackassy. “But I think it might be wise to use the burner to track down my high school friend E.J. and ask him if I bullied anyone I might’ve forgotten about.”
“They’re monitoring E.J.’s phone,” Nikki says. “They’ll find him, kill him.”
Jan prepares hotdogs for dinner. Nikki wonders whether she should tell them her father is Jewish, and she sort of considers herself Jewish even though she technically isn’t.
Connor calls E.J.’s family, and they instruct him on how to connect to this mysterious guy.
Connor shares with the cabin’s guests:
“E.J. lives in the Gabon jungle. He saves forest elephants. They’re being exterminated for their long straight tusks.”
“Put him on speaker,” Nikki says, “and don’t mention me.”
He asks his friend if they bullied anyone in school. E.J. says Connor wasn’t a bully but he made people feel really bad about themselves. “I’ll tell you the names if you pledge to fly to Gabon and fight the poachers this summer. Assuming you survive, dude.”
“But I’ll be a new dad.”
E.J. won’t budge.
“Do it, Connor,” Ayelet says. “Take your frustrations out on the poachers.”
He agrees. Nikki doubts the seriousness of his commitment. She hears a car pull up and doubts the hideaways will survive the day.
She pulls the Sig from her ankle. No other weapon feels so good on her ankle. She creeps along the side of the cabin and aims her gun at the driver, an old gentleman deep in the throes of illness. So gaunt, such sallow skin. Law-enforcement lifer. She reads it in his demeanor, posture, gait. He opens the passenger door for a woman.
Redhead, curls, southern-belle face Botoxed. A stripper’s super-enhanced body. Melody, Robert’s legit woman. The boys, seated three in the backseat of the Oldsmobile, hop out.
“Is that gun real?” asks Ashton, the oldest, of the gun aimed at the sick man who raises his hands up in surrender.
“My name is Hank, Nikki,” he says. “Years ago I was Robert’s partner. I’ve got a foot in the grave. Shoot me if you want. But take care of Melody and her sons.”
Robert showed her Hank’s picture once. This is the cancer-ridden version. That’s why she didn’t recognize him immediately. She lowers her gun.
Melody flashes the world’s nastiest look, as if their glorious threesome never happened.
Robert, you really fucked me.
A moment passes.
Jan and Jimmy empty out of the cabin and greet the newcomers.
Nikki’s anger at her boyfriend dissipates.
The threat is a black hole. Robert expelled his people from its event horizon. Then he dove in.
Chapter 15
Honolulu
CIA, FBI, NSA, DIA and more in one room.
The National Security community abhors certain kinds of news. Like the stories of the hacked-car-driven-in-reverse, SWAT-killings and attempted murder of an FBI agent. These people get to the bottom of things. Someone in Honolulu knows what’s up.
At the airport, Robert Google searches “Jasper State Department,” “Jasper FBI,” “Jasper NSA,” “Jasper Pentagon.” No results. He calls a geek friend and asks a favor: “Search classified databases.” No results. Jasper lacks a job title. No job title means no public accountability. And yet, the man holds sway.
Troubling.
Robert pops two Percocets pre-liftoff. He pops two more during the ninety minute layover in Salt Lake City. The flight from Salt Lake City to Honolulu affords him an extra inch of leg room. He pops another two Percocets above the Pacific.
The painkillers slacken his mind, which he usually runs as a boot camp. He shuts his eyes and relives the first time with Nikki. She was twenty-two, a month on the job. He was thirty-two, eight years on the job. Their cases overlapped. Shithead stalker on a watch list kidnapped a girl, drove her over state lines, Jersey to Delaware. Trucker found the body at a truck stop.
Nikki and Robert converged on the scene.
She said she was a virgin. He doubted the claim. Assumed she faked her lack of experience. Nope. She couldn’t make a decision about what guy to lose it to, or where: Bayside, Queens, where she grew up a nerdy outcast; NYU, where she went to college; or Japan, where she spent summers at her grandfather’s mountainside hideout and made friends in the village.
Robert sees Nikki, feels her, hears her, smells her and tastes her. He tells her he loves her. She says it back and asks to have his babies.
“If we kick them out of the nest at twenty-one,” he says.
“Not a day later,” she says.
“I won’t live under the same roof as my thirty-year-old kid.”
The druggy-daydream lovemaking climaxes. Nikki thrusts from the top, a style she devised on her own. The physical feats of her daily life scare Robert. Her Japanese yoga routine would snap his back. But he likes to daydream of himself impossibly contorted in those positions, making love to Nikki.
Robert moans aloud.
He opens his eyes on the flight and coughs and grunts.
Twelve hours of sleep in the hotel and he feels the same.
Minor nerve damage in his neck, some tissue damage in his throat, lingering effects of oxygen depletion in his brain.
At the NSA complex, a dude steps forward to shake his hand. He looks like a cross between an Italian model and a Hollywood action hero. Firmest handshake of Robert’s life. The dude’s dark brown eyes radiate extreme zeal.
He’s familiar yet exotic.
“Agent Yard, I’m Vincent DeSantis,” he says. “State Department.”
State Department my ass. This guy’s CIA or something I haven’t heard of. And he knows…
“
I was briefed on your family’s troubles,” Vincent says. “Jasper solicited my team. We did some digging. We’re eager to share our findings.”
“Great, man,” Robert says. “I hid everybody in West Virginia.”
“You can never be too careful,” Vincent says, zesty. “Especially in these times.”
The complex’s corridors suggest horror movie asylums.
“We locked this structure down,” Vincent says, “as you’ve seen.”
The lively, connected stranger lets loose a preamble on the increasingly interlinked worlds of terrorism, organized cybercrime and enemy states.
This guy’s grooming Robert for a major revelation.
Robert’s gut says this man has learned the identity of the perpetrators.
No doubt they’re untouchable, shielded by Iran, North Korea, or Saudi Arabia.
Vincent drops Jasper’s name again.
“Forgive me if I’m being rude,” Robert says, “but how is Jasper still in the game?”
“The man’s a dinosaur who ignored the extinction,” Vincent says. “Isn’t it amazing? Jasper was in the room at the formation of OSS, the World War II precursor to CIA.” Jasper. That geezer must’ve been eighty-plus when he interviewed Robert twelve years ago. “The Boss’s mind is agile,” Vincent says. “His wit is sharp and draws blood easily. But his body’s stiff as a board. Bump into him and he might fall over. My neighbors in Georgetown take pictures of him shuffling home from Whole Foods. The guy won’t let anyone help. God bless ’em.”
The zest, the verve, the knowingness.
Vincent peppers Robert with questions about his sons and answers a question he wasn’t asked: “Personally, I’d love to meet the challenge of raising kids, I’d love to accept the responsibility of grooming the next generation, but my work is—as you understand—all consuming.”
Such arrogance.
This guy triggers a creepycrawling feeling in Robert. Big Bro’s in the presence of a darkly eccentric person. Nobody who looks like this talks the way Vincent does.
Robert’s not too sure of this dude handling Connor’s case…
They exit the main building. The complex sprawls for tens or hundreds of acres. Few know what’s monitored and archived here.
Vincent walks with adolescent wannabe swagger and has no awareness of it. The guy is a dick, born that way, but, on instinct, you trust his competence.
Come to think of it, Vincent’s muscles are almost too big. He looks…chemically enhanced. And his form is almost too perfect. He has an Italian-American hunk-thing going on, while at the same time giving off a whiff of nerdiness. His nose is big and long and…contoured. His brow ridge is prominent but…lifted up a little, allowing his big brown eyes plenty of room to shine and make him look happy.
Actually, he does resemble someone from Robert’s past. But a different, improved version of that someone. Robert wishes he hadn’t swallowed the Percocet. Under the opiate’s influence, dots connect more slowly.
Vincent leads him to a small building.
If something was up, they would’ve taken Robert’s gun on a bullshit pretext.
Vincent opens a conference room door. An old man talks on the phone, his back turned. Jasper. He signals to enter. Vincent closes the door behind them. And locks it.
What the fuck?
The old man faces Robert. The decades have worn his skin threadbare, like the elbows of a wool sweater. No Botox, no vanity. Blue flames burn in his eyes. Ageless, tender flames.
The kindness in the man’s ancient visage pacifies Robert.
“None of this is personal, Robert,” Jasper says. “For me, at least.”
What?
Vincent leaps like a tiger:
“You had the option to do nothing,” he says. “You chose to intervene. Therefore, you chose to accept the consequences of intervention—”
“What?”
Vincent’s on fire: “Men of principle, men of integrity, do not attempt to suppress the natural consequences of their actions. They embrace them.”
“Dude, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”
“Actions have consequences,” Jasper tells Robert. “The action Vincent takes here is a consequence of past actions.” He trains his gaze on Vincent. “His action, too, will have consequences.”
“I hear you, Jasper,” Vincent says.
“Hold up, wait, my family’s under attack,” Robert says.
“Right,” Vincent says.
“Who’s doing that?”
“Me,” Vincent says.
“Why?”
“I’m a champion. Champions earn trophies. You’re my trophy.”
“Who attacked me in Connor’s bathroom?”
“Me,” says a fat shoeless man supine on the carpet.
The dyed black beard…
Robert reaches for his gun. Vincent flies at him. The gun fires at the floor. Vincent casts it aside. Robert punches him. The punch has nothing on it. The pills, the travel, the attack—Robert’s fists are impotent. And Vincent waited a long time for this…
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of Melody or whatever their names are,” he says.
He throws a hook. Robert’s forearms rise to block it. But not fast enough.
Robert hears his nose break. His eye sockets. His teeth.
He feels nothing.
“I’m at my worst,” Big Bro says. “Wait, man. Fight me at my best.”
“You’re at your worst,” Vincent says, “and I’m at my best, because of choices we made. Deal with it.”
You’re deranged, dude.
When he mounts Robert, looking down on him, Vincent’s natural face, the face that existed before the surgeries and hormones, becomes clear.
“I know who you are,” Robert says.
“Bullshit,” Vincent says. “You don’t know me. I change from moment-to-moment. I’m harder, smarter and deadlier right now than I was when I opened my mouth to say…Bullshit.”
He batters Robert’s skull.
“Let me up,” Robert says. “Give me a fair shot.”
“Sure. Why not?”
Vincent’s deranged glee mindfucks Robert.
“Had I known you would sabotage the Program like this,” Vincent says. “I would’ve fucked Melody, like I fucked Connor’s pig and knocked her up.”
Robert stands and seesaws. He forgets where his gun went. Blood floods his eyes and constricts his field of vision. He laughs, spits teeth and asks Jasper, who sits expressionless in a chair, hands folded, waiting for Robert to be dead, “Why is my government employing this lunatic?”
“Vincent is indispensable to your government,” Jasper says. “The threats against America grow graver by the day. Look at ISIS. Vincent’s our answer to ISIS.”
Vincent gestures to Robert: Attack.
Robert will die. No sense resisting it. The trick is to die fighting, to die keeping the secret of the cabin in the Northeast Kingdom. To be taken dead, not alive. If he had the gun, he could kill himself, which would protect his family. Without the gun, he’s screwed. Snapping one’s own neck or bleeding to death by biting one’s tongue—Nikki could do it, but that’s too advanced for him.
“My girl said I could give Melody another son,” Vincent says. “Have a child by each wife of a pussyass Yard. I’m taking it upon myself to raise Yard kids right.”
A note of plausibility in his claim to have knocked up Ayelet…
Robert screens images of his loved ones on his mental flatscreen TV: Mom, Dad, Connor, Melody, Tyler, Ash, Greyson, and last but not least, Nikki.
Dying saves the people I love.
Coursing with viciousness not native to him, Big Bro attacks. He throws the hardest punch of his life, but it only partially connects with Vincent’s hypertrophied trapezius and slides off and past the freak’s body. Vincent throws a tight right hook, hitting Robert square on the forehead—cracking the thick convex bone—and dispatching him to the floor with the vehemence of a body slam.
Vincent g
runts “YEAH” in a comical macho voice.
What a joke. This guy’s a bad seed, fucked up, irredeemable, and still a poseur.
Vincent falls to his knees, landing on Robert’s abs, seizes Robert’s head and bashes it against the floor. The softness of the carpet stops the rear of Robert’s skull from splitting. Robert orders his arms to punch Vincent. They neglect their orders.
The End Phase…
“Now you’re gonna tell me where in West Virginia you hid my new family.”
Robert covered his tracks for the affair with Nikki. That’s why no one knows about her or Vermont. Not even Jasper. Yeah, Big Bro covered his tracks well. And Nikki was trained in Japan by a group that doesn’t officially exist. She loves him. If they catch her she won’t speak a word. She’s immune to torture. As long as Robert dies no one finds them.
A machete hovers above Robert’s head.
His hearing deteriorates.
“Shame you popped those Percocets, bro,” Vincent says, or not.
Robert looks up and observes Jasper wincing at Vincent’s use of the machete. Robert feels coldness in his crotch. Vincent discards Robert’s black suit pants.
“You may have earned the balls you were born with,” Vincent says. “But you also had a responsibility, as a big brother, to help your little brother earn his. You didn’t fulfill that responsibility. So I stepped up. I tried. But Connor snitched. He cut my heels because I helped him.”
Robert senses his chest and mouth and cheeks heaving with laughter. He hardly feels tethered to his body. Kinda beautiful.
Externally, this is the most violent moment of his life.
Internally, the most peaceful.
Vincent uses a smart phone to prop the FBI agent’s mouth open.
Down below, Robert detects a scratch, a flowing fountain, soothing warmth that spreads everywhere.
From the ceiling of the cabin in the Northeast Kingdom, he watches his cock enter Nikki.
If she dies protecting my family we can be together.
He reminds himself this moment has nothing to do with the millions of others that preceded it. This doesn’t negate or take away anything. His life ends here the way it might have had he been captured by shitheads in Libya, Syria, or Iraq. It was a risk he took. There was always that risk.