Last Gasp

by Trevor Hoyle

  A huge brown face on the screen was mouthing introductory platitudes. Chase couldn’t decide whether he was a fawning delegate or an unctuous TV anchorman until a four-foot-wide caption came up: Senor Jose J. Messina, UN Representative, El Salvador.

  Chase hardly listened as Senor Messina spoke on and on.

  He finished his drink and went to the bar for another one. He normally never drank during the day, but there were exceptions to every rule, today apparently being one of them. Of course he knew why. He should have told Cheryl where the money was coming from and he’d chickened out. She had a right to know the truth. Their relationship from the start had been totally honest, and now he had betrayed that trust.

  As he added a splash of soda he heard the door click and glanced around, expecting it to be Prothero. Anything less like Prothero it would have been impossible to imagine.

  The youth was hunched, deformed, his head shaved so that the bumps and faint blue veins were rather obscenely displayed. He wore ridiculous bent wire-frame spectacles hooked over pale flapping ears, and his eyes, moist and bulging, were magnified grotesquely. White scrawny arms extended from loose black robes, one bony fist gripping the door knob.

  Chase and this apparition stared in silence at each other for several long moments. From the TV came the polite rippling of applause as Senor Jose J. Messina ended his speech and the face of Ingrid Van Dorn appeared on the screen, as big as a billboard. The youth turned his head mechanically toward it, pale knife-blade features expressionless, protruding eyes immobile and unblinking.

  There was something reptilian about him, scaly and cold-blooded, that sent a shiver down Chase’s spine. He almost expected to see a forked tongue flick out from the slit of a mouth.

  The door closed and Chase was left alone with the image of Ingrid Van Dorn and the sound of her husky voice. But he wasn’t really listening: He was thinking hard, trying to remember. What was the name of that religious sect? He’d heard of them before. The Faith. So what was one of them doing here, today of all days, wandering around the UN building? A hunchback kid in black robes ...

  Chase discovered that he was holding the soda bottle. It felt clammy in his hand. He put it down and ran to the door. The corridor was empty. In the distance he could hear the amplified voice of the secretary-general. His thoughts were racing too fast for his brain to keep up with them. An instinct, a gut reaction made the sweat break out all over his body. He became possessed of a morbid fantastic fear concerning that kid in the black robes, his unemotional and deadly purposefulness, those cold dead eyes behind the bent wire-frame spectacles.

  Jesus Christ, where the hell was Prothero?

  Chase went to the telephone, punched the operator’s button, and asked to be connected to the secretary-general’s office. He waited, fist clenching, opening, clenching again. Senator Prothero, he was informed, had left with Madam Van Dorn for the General Assembly thirty minutes ago. From there he was to have met someone in the Kurt Waldheim hospitality suite.

  Chase slammed the receiver down and stood looking at but not seeing the TV screen. In the corridor he turned toward the sound of the distantly echoing voice. His stride lengthened into a run. He turned a corner directed by a blue plastic arrow and leaped up a carpeted stairway, three at a time. Prothero was in the main chamber, had to be, and there at least he was safe, in full view of the assembly and the world’s media. Nothing could happen to him there, surely not in front of all those watching billions. It was inconceivable. Wasn’t it? A pyro-assassination attempt there?

  Oh, please, God, pray he was wrong.

  He turned a corner and stumbled up a short inclined tunnel that ended in black empty space. Sweat stung his eyes. He blinked it away, the lights in the domed ceiling fragmenting into splintered stars. The voice of Ingrid Van Dorn boomed loudly in his ears. To his left were rank after rank of white blobs fading into darkness. To his right and a little above him, Ingrid Van Dorn stood in the converging beams of a dozen spotlights, surrounded by microphones. Behind her was the UN crest in bas-relief. Behind and above that, on the upper dais, sat several rows of VIPs and UN officials.

  Chase scanned every face there, not seeing Prothero among them. He looked to his left, seeing black faces, brown faces, pink and yellow faces all smearing into a creature with a thousand eyes, noses, and mouths. Where was he? Where?

  A hand touched his shoulder and he spun around, his heart crashing in his chest.

  “Sorry I wasn’t there to meet you.” Prothero leaned forward, speaking into his ear. “I felt Ingrid deserved my moral support.”

  Chase grinned stupidly. The man he was seeking had been sitting above the tunnel exit in a triangular wedge of seats, not five yards away.

  Prothero was staring into Chase’s sweat-drenched face. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  They withdrew a little way down the tunnel, out of sight of the auditorium. Chase spoke rapidly while the tall, immaculate senator listened gravely. Chase was beginning to feel that his suspicions were imaginary, rather ludicrous in fact, though Prothero took it all very seriously. He suggested that they return to the hospitality suite, post two guards outside, and watch the rest of the speech on TV. “You may or may not be right, Gavin, but I don’t believe in taking risks.”

  Back in the suite and with the guards outside, Chase wondered whether he was experiencing the thin end of paranoia. He’d been edgy to begin with and now he felt foolish.

  Prothero stood in the middle of the room, his long tanned face pensive, eyes fixed on the large screen. “Who are they?” he asked without turning his head.

  “I think it’s a religious sect that calls itself the Faith.”

  “Black robes, shaved heads?” Prothero glanced swiftly at Chase, who nodded. Something was evidently troubling Prothero. He said, “There was a mob of them at the entrance as I came in earlier. If it was me they were after they had their opportunity then. Why risk coming inside the building to make an attempt?”

  Chase didn’t know. He tried a weak guess. “Perhaps that was a diversion. Perhaps they were hoping...” His voice trailed away. He’d run out of weak guesses.

  Prothero gave him a long searching look. He went to the telephone and lifted the receiver. “He was a kid, you say, the one you saw?”

  “Eighteen, possibly even younger.”

  The furrows in Prothero’s forehead deepened into crevices. “They’d send a young kid to assassinate somebody?”

  “What better age for a fanatic? Their ideals are still potent and their convictions unshakable, and at that age violence is the one sure answer. It’s only as you get older that the issues change from black and white to murky shades of gray.” Chase’s voice had an ironic lilt to it. He realized that he was speaking from personal experience, defining his own present dilemma.

  “The answer to what though?” Prothero said, punching buttons. “What are these fanatics hoping to achieve? What is it they want? It can’t be simply religious belief that motivates—” He broke off, requesting a full security alert and a thorough search of the building.

  Chase listened, his eyes on the larger-than-life Ingrid Van Dorn in glowing color; even the giant screen didn’t do her justice. The TV director cut from a close-up to a long shot of the podium. On a normal-size screen the background detail would have been lost, but here Chase could make out the features of the people on the dais behind her and even the faces of some of the audience on the extreme right of the platform, just within the arc of lights.

  Something flashed and winked like two bright silver dollars. Light reflecting on spectacle lenses. Chase stiffened. He took a step nearer, staring, his eyes aching as they probed the picture for detail. And there—there it was—shaven head on the stalk of a neck, glasses flaring light. The kid was in the auditorium. He was watching his victim: Ingrid Van Dorn.

  “It isn’t you, it’s her!” Chase was pointing. “Can you see him, watching her, waiting!”

  Prothero was turned to stone. He held the phone below the
artful silver wing of hair, mouth half-open, arrested in midword. The mouth worked but no sound came out.

  “Tell security,” Chase said rapidly, “for God’s sake they’ve got to stop him.”

  “Go!” Prothero shouted. “Go!”

  The two white-helmeted guards, quietly conversing, were thrust apart as Chase charged from the room and ran toward the main chamber. He shouted at them to follow him but didn’t waste time glancing over his shoulder to see if they had obeyed. He bounded up the stairs, along a corridor, turned a corner, and ran headlong up the short tunnel into the daylight brightness of the auditorium.

  For one frozen panic-stricken instant he was disoriented. Left of the platform or right? He swung around and back again. Then got his bearings. Left, you bloody fool, left—the opposite side!

  Chase leaped onto the platform. The dignitaries and officials seated behind the podium gaped. Ingrid Van Dorn looked up, her voice faltering and dying away until the auditorium was filled with a vast silence. It was as if time had stopped for the twenty-three hundred people in the main chamber, who sat transfixed.

  Nobody moved except Chase. Oblivious to the silence, the ranks of watching people, the TV and movie cameras, he ran across the platform under the blazing lights, momentarily dazzled as he plunged off into the surrounding darkness, glimpsing a pair of skinny white ankles scrambling up the steps toward the nearest tunnel exit. The kid knew he’d been spotted. He was getting out fast while he had the chance.

  It was then that the auditorium came suddenly, explosively, to life.

  There were shouts and screams. Some of the delegates dived down for cover while others scrambled over seats, trying to get clear. Ingrid Van Dorn stood motionless and staring behind the microphones, spectacles in hand. All at once there were security guards everywhere, converging on the platform with weapons drawn. Whereas no one had noticed the black-robed figure, the sudden appearance of Chase was in the classic pattern of the lone assassin. At once he became the prime target of the security force—like the guard who now confronted him, standing straddle-legged at the top of the steps, Police Special aimed unwaveringly at the center of his chest.

  Chase stopped halfway up and immediately threw up his hands. His breathing ragged, hair plastered damply to his forehead, he really thought he was about to be shot and killed because he couldn’t get the words out.

  “That kid—black robes—you must have seen him! Skinny kid ran down the tunnel—”

  “Hold it! Don’t move!” Hard eyes under the shiny white brim of his helmet. Eyes and gun didn’t waver an inch.

  “You stupid bastard, he’s getting away!” Chase lowered his hands in a forlorn gesture of despair. Already it was too late.

  “I said don’t move!” The tranceiver clipped to the guard’s white belt beeped, but he ignored it, watching Chase like a hawk.

  “Answer it,” Chase implored. When the guard made no move he snarled, “Answer the fucking thing!”

  “Shut up and don’t move.” The guard unhooked the transceiver, thumbed a button, and held it to his ear. He listened hard-eyed to the rapid squawking babble. The gabble ceased, and the guard rapped, “Name?”

  Wearily, Chase told him. The guard lowered his gun. He still didn’t seem convinced. He straightened up and said, “We have instructions to give you every assistance. Which way did he go?”

  Chase gestured toward the tunnel. Perhaps it didn’t matter all that much. The assassination attempt had failed and there was no way the kid could get out of the building without being spotted. Let the security people deal with it—they were armed and trained for this kind of situation.

  Breathing easier, yet feeling his age, Chase went down the tunnel, even more in need of the drink he’d been about to pour himself twenty minutes earlier.

  On the large screen an announcer was making bland apologies and filling in time. Chase added soda to his whiskey and leaned back against the bar. In the whirlwind of events he’d almost forgotten why he’d come to the UN in the first place—there were still arrangements to be finalized with Prothero and Ingrid Van Dorn. But that could wait. First things first.

  He raised the glass to his lips, noticing a shadow obscuring the announcer’s right shoulder, and as the shadow vanished Mara came out from behind the screen.

  The glass slipped from Chase’s hand, spilling its contents down his shirt and trousers and bouncing with a dull hollow thud on the carpet.

  Crouching, the black hump weighing down the frail body, Mara extended his right arm to reveal a metal nozzle in the palm of his hand, connected to a plastic tube that was taped to the inside of his forearm, disappearing into his robes underneath his armpit.

  Chase stood as if paralyzed, incapable of movement or sound. His one conscious physical sensation was that of whiskey and soda soaking into his shirt and trickling down warmly into his groin. With his back pressed against the hard rounded edge of the bar he watched Mara take a lighter from the small leather pouch and raise the metal cap with his thumb.

  Meaningless noises floated in the air.

  “ ... not possible at the moment ... security clampdown ... UN completely sealed off... soon as we have further... will of course... in the meantime ...”

  Flick.

  A small blue flame sprang up, like a pilot light.

  Mara’s hand closed around the brass nozzle, thumb and forefinger turning the valve tap. There was a soft hissing sound, like that of a reptile preparing to strike. With a mechanical action, as if preprogrammed, the hand holding the lighter jerked forward and applied the tiny blue flame to the end of the nozzle.

  Chase slid along the edge of the bar as the propylene ignited and spewed a molten sword of flame that bathed the room’s tasteful furnishings and silken drapes in a fierce bright sulfurous yellow light. The heat was tremendous. Chase turned his face away, feeling his skin scorch. There was no escape. He was trapped. The door was on the other side of the swathe of fire.

  Mara’s eyes were hidden behind two brilliant circles of light. Impossible to know what he was feeling or even where he was looking. Pressed into the corner between the bar and the wall, arms raised and crossed to shield his head, the bitter injustice of his predicament shrilled like pain inside Chase’s brain. To have saved Ingrid Van Dorn from pyro-assassination only to become the victim himself! What a monstrous black joke!

  Mara was on his knees. He seemed to be praying, his lips miming soundlessly. Then his lips peeled back and dropped off to reveal his gums and teeth, the flesh of his skull bubbling and shriveling like melting cheese as he directed the nozzle into his face. His robes caught fire and flared up. In seconds the flames had consumed his scarecrow body and he continued to burn long after the nozzle had fallen from his charred black fingers. The fire spewed out across the carpet, setting alight a gilt chair, which as the horsehair stuffing caught fire poured out thick ringlets of smoke.

  The luminous dial of his watch read 4:17. Chase squinted at it and lay back on the pillow. He touched his hair, feeling the crisped and blunted ends where he’d leaned too close in turning off the gas nozzle. Bloody stupid thing to have done: He could have been fried alive, like that other poor devil.

  He stared up at the shadowed ceiling, knowing that sleep would never come. There was too much on his mind. Cheryl knew he was holding something back—her silence told him that. He had expected the worst but the worst hadn’t come, not yet, though the silence was forestalling the inevitable.

  Slipping out of bed, taking care not to disturb her, he put on his dressing gown and went into the living room. He didn’t switch on the light. The bottles on the cabinet gleamed temptingly, but instead he fumbled his way to an armchair and sat down.

  Sooner or later he would have to tell her. The inevitable was near; in fact it was here and now, he realized, when he saw her pale form in the bedroom doorway.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Chase said unnecessarily. “Sorry if I woke you.”

  “You didn’t.” Cheryl came into the room. “
Do you want some coffee?”

  Chase shook his head before it occurred to him that she wasn’t able to see him properly. “No thanks.”

  He heard a rustle as she settled herself on the arm of the couch and arranged her robe to cover her legs. Neither of them spoke for a minute. “Why didn’t you tell me, Gavin?”

  “Tell you?” he said obtusely.

  “Yes,” Cheryl said deliberately. “Tell me. You. Instead of Nick.”

  “You asked him?”

  “Yes, I asked him. I knew there was something wrong. But I was hoping you’d tell me yourself. You didn’t.”

  “I had to think about it, get it straight in my own mind first.”

  “Get it straight?” Cheryl said with mock astonishment. “Get what straight? Gelstrom is funding the project. What the fuck was there to get straight.”

  “It isn’t that simple.”

  “It’s very simple,” Cheryl contradicted him, folding her arms. It was a sign of battle. “Do I really have to remind you? A man who made a fortune supplying toxic chemicals to the army, who for years was in collusion with the Pentagon hatching a cozy little plan called DEPARTMENT STORE to kill every living thing on this planet, and who now—sweet Jesus, this is poetic justice in spades—who now because he’s been stricken with the disease he wanted to inflict on everyone else suddenly has a change of heart, and—surprise, surprise—wants to switch sides, to become the savior of mankind instead of its executioner. Have you got it? Is that straight enough for you?”

  “Gelstrom is dying,” Chase said quietly. “Nothing can save him and he knows it. He’s not doing this for himself.”

  “Oh, I see!” Cheryl exclaimed with ponderous sarcasm. “This is a—what do you call it?—a grand final gesture. Oh, well, sure, that changes everything. By all means welcome him back into the fold. Forget the past and let’s all be buddy-buddy. Sure, why not? I expect he’s really a great guy at heart, fond of his gray-haired old mother, had a difficult upbringing, and so on—”