by Aidan Truhen
The ambassador of the K was a hairy nicotine-stinking motherfucker named Ferdi Albrecht. Man o’ his time is what because again back then it was all Carlos the Jackal and hijacked planes like all day every day. They called in Albrecht and said: “Okay Arschloch it is like this we have much shit that you will need like access to sewers and electrical power and free movement so you can attend your hairy-ass college classes and maybe one day some of you will get a fucking job but for now we will give you all these things in exchange for a trade treaty under which you pay an amount which will be mysteriously fucking identical to the rate of tax per capita calculated by an accurate statement of the population of your pocket utopia of Mary Jane and hand jobs. And since you wish to remain Swiss you will be a unique autonomous Gemeinde within the Swiss Federation but not within any specific canton because there is no canton, Bern included, that will sit still for your crap. There will be no border posts or any of that and you will not be part of the policing jurisdiction though you will absolutely call us in if someone is for example god forbid actually murdered but in exchange for this restraint we expect to get exactly no fucking backchat from any of you hippies and you will comport yourselves with the closest you can manage to dignity if you venture into our flowered capitalist streets. Does that work for you Ferdi Albrecht or shall we revisit the tank discussion?”
Albrecht was no dumbass and he took the deal, and the Kropotkinhaus has basically been a rolling criminal slumber party ever since.
* * *
—
Knock knock.
“Hau ab.”
That is to say get lost. I do not get lost.
Knock knock.
“Hau ab, Schlappschwanz.”
That is super-duper rude in Swiss. Do not mess around with saying it for a joke they will lock you the fuck up and bring your teeth along in a separate car. I hold up my bangles and say: “Dude I have a season pass open the fucking door.”
Door has in it what I would call a speakeasy grille but given the age of the house it is more like maybe a judas port or an arrow slit. Through this hole I can see eyeballs and one of those creases a certain Viking sort of physiology gets above the bridge of the nose and between the eyes. My friend Karenina who is now bio-anonymous slurry in the ocean under a tuna cannery had a crease like that and when she was drunk in bars back home and hoping to get laid with attractive waiters hoping to become movie actors at some time in the future she would put her credit card in it and claim to be a casting agent.
This did not work ever.
Guy behind the door makes a farting noise with his mouth and I hear big locks and the door opens. Big black door in a big black Dracula-looking house. All hope abandon yada yada but in fact I am reasonably sure it will be a broken pair of rigid stainless steel cuffs with custom Swiss-flag-pattern polymer overmold I am abandoning here so you know.
I go inside.
* * *
—
“Hi I am Jack hi so No Gods No Masters right viva la you know anyway I have this little problem and I—”
Before I can finish my hilarious riff I feel a hand across my face. Soft, fast hand, across my eyes so smooth like the lights going out. Another tucked into the small of my back and turning and turning. I am bent back and now I am nodding nodding like a toy dog. This way that way this way before I feel the wall on my shoulder blades and the air goes out of me like OOMPF and then there is a pressure on my mouth. Pressure. Fingers. Lips.
She’s so fast, the doctor.
So so fast.
And warm.
And now everything will be fine.
She holds me until I cannot breathe and then lets go and she is crying, which is so totally not like her and of course I know why and I have been avoiding it this whole damn time.
* * *
—
The room is big and the wallpaper is peeling and there are things living in the roof. There’s a bathtub with a shower and a screen curtain on wheels.
“Hi Doc.”
“Hi Price.”
“Wash me.”
“Yes ma’am.”
I wash Doc. It is like church and very sad. She washes me and changes the dressing on my leg. She puts her arms around me and tells me what I already know because I am not a dumbass. I do not cry because I do not.
Yeah. I guess you know it too.
Rewind the tape.
I said: “What the fuck is wrong with you man, you couldn’t aim for the fucking wheels?”
Volodya said Evil Hansel was lighter than he thought he would be.
I said I did not care about if Evil Hansel was lighter than Volodya thought he would be because right now I had about a thousand Swiss francs nailed to my leg with an oyster knife.
Volodya said: “I told you we should not come.”
bonk
And—
“I get off now Price you go on to end of line.”
He got in the train with me and he gave me a transfusion and Doc did not want him to do that because there was a bullet in him and he decided this was what he was going to do and he did it.
And he got out of the train halfway up and then he died somewhere.
He went out into the mountain and he fucking died.
Like in a blizzard or something like an explorer.
Log-cabin motherfucker doing his thing I guess. Doing his log-cabin-motherfucker thing and that is his choice that is what he chose to do.
* * *
—
Doc got everyone else over the border into Italy. She checked the Demons into a hotel there and she hired a kid named Matteo to take the dead lady’s stolen car and drive like hell to Naples and set it on fire. Charlie made everyone’s IDs disappear, just gone. Thermocline magic. Then Doc walked them all right out the back and around the corner to another hotel where they were other people, and the old other people who they were and are not now are notionally still in the first hotel because Matteo’s girlfriend is in suite 501 eating as much room service as she wants and making random calls to Indonesia until Friday when they’re both going on a four-week cruise.
When Matteo gets back, he will also be taking a suitcase full of money to a house in St. Gallen where there are two kids who just grew up hard and fast because their mother had a heart attack on a visit with friends in the capital. Dead-lady dues. Doc is nothing if not truthful. And then they came back over the border into Switzerland by train and back to Bern to look for me and they figured if I was not dead and the cops didn’t have me, then this was where I would be and they were right and that is nice and now everything will be okay. Business is business and everything will be okay.
“Volodya—”
Doc says that they found him already, that he threw himself into some kind of hoist machinery on a farm and got all cut up so no one could tell he was shot.
After giving me his actual blood.
Charlie already did a thing. Charlie of all people has friends here. She is known in the Black House and the Black House has gray connections because of course it does. That is a good thing although she seems to feel there may be personal friction if we stay for too long. Romance, man, go figure.
* * *
—
Task-management thing. Someone will collect his body for us. Store it.
On ice.
He’d laugh. Volodya would laugh about that he has a horrible sense of humor.
Guy eats corpse ham.
Not really.
Ate corpse ham.
Had a horrible sense of humor.
* * *
—
I don’t understand death at all it does not make sense and I have seen a lot of it but the more you peer into it the less you get it. People who die don’t go anywhere and there’s no mystery about it they just stop talking to you and stop doing anything else and
it’s really shitty if you like them because there is not them anymore.
I don’t get how that works.
He had a horrible sense of humor. Had. Had had had had had.
I used to do this at school. Where Jack had had “had,” Volodya had had “had had”—
Had had had.
And that’s all it’s just a part of—you know—it’s normal.
It’s completely normal.
Turnover is normal it is part of the conventional challenges of human resourcing in a dog-eat-dog sector.
This is what it is.
This is the life.
I’m not upset like personally I am just—
It’s professionally upsetting is what I’m saying like it’s inappropriate it’s—
This is not okay man. This is not okay. I am legitimately unhappy with the loss of a key man—a KEY MAN in my organization. That is a term of art there are contracts with those words insurance policies and shit it is professional to talk about a key man and that is all.
There are consequences in this situation there are bills that come due and there’s a—
That’s crime Jack. Someone always gets no chicken.
Right?
That’s just how it is I’m fine.
I’m fine without my Ukrainian chicken.
* * *
—
I meet some of the anarchists and they are quite nice although they all have these ridiculous names and shticks like I guess—though they would not like this description—they have anti-capitalist personal brands which speak to their personal struggle so for example Loob is a greasy little fucker like an emaciated seal and he does underwater welding as for example you would do on tanker and oil rig maintenance except that Loob is opposed to all such structures which are acts of violation toward Mother Earth and he is her warrior; Rosa is tall and thin and has a face like a kindly camel and she makes cakes for the mass of mankind and I greatly approve of free cakes; Fruit eats only a fungal preparation he makes himself, which he says is the future, and I have tasted the future and it is horrible; Thing has much hair; and we do not ask about Thong.
Ever.
* * *
—
The anarchists are kind and they know we are sad so after some mammal grooming behavior to let us know we are welcome in their space they leave us alone. We eat cheese and bread and we drink beer and we lie down in the bed. I think she drugs me but maybe she does not. Sex can be life-or-death it is both and humans are chemistry and Doc understands that in ways I do not.
I feel her skin against mine as I wake in the dark. My leg does not hurt. I feel as if I am on fire. So does she. We do not speak. She is all over me. She is in my mouth and on my chest. She is behind me and in front of my and everywhere and she is happy and then she is not. I don’t know how long it all lasts. It feels like hours but half the time I’m not there.
Then she lies next to me in the dark.
“Doc?”
“Jack.”
“Volodya—”
“Yes Jack.”
“But I mean—Volodya. I mean there is not Volodya anymore. Not ever.”
“Yes Jack.”
“I don’t understand how that works.”
“No.”
“Doc do— Never mind.”
“No Jack say it.”
“Doc do we have a future?”
“We have a present Price that is all anyone has.”
“Yeah but they also have a future do we have one of those too?”
“Price of course we have a future.”
“We do?”
“Do you want to know how I understand the world Jack?”
“Yes. I guess.”
“Every single one of us changes and vanishes second by second and when you wake up tomorrow you’ll be someone new and so will I so in a very real sense you and I were born together and we will be together for the rest of our lives. You are the only person I’ve ever slept with and in this moment between night and morning you are the only person I have ever known or will ever meet.”
“Jesus Doc.”
“What?”
“That is some nihilistic fucking shit right there.”
“It’s the truth Price and the truth is all the beauty there is.”
“Jesus.”
“Price?”
“Yeah.”
“Think about it.”
“No one exists and no one knows anyone? It’s like gazing into the fucking abyss is what.”
“Do you know what else it means? It means that death is meaningless. Death only happens to other people.”
“I dunno Doc I feel a close kinship with me.”
“So do I. Don’t worry. See you and I we’re a rhythm and a way of doing things and we are a dance. Ripples is what. And for as long as we are who we are we will dance around each other. The moment we’re not is the moment we part but that person—that person who does not feel what I feel around you—that person I have no feelings for she can fuck off and so can he. You and me Price we are the Universe.”
“Aw Doc!”
“Shut up.”
“You made a science pome about me!”
“Not what happened.”
“A romantic free verse pome with science.”
“I swear to you Price you better do some more sex stuff to me now or I will kill you.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Hhhhah ahh uh nnnm. Yes.”
“You made a pome.”
“The gluteus and quadriceps muscles are among the strongest in the body I will rip your head clean off.”
“Yes ma’am.”
* * *
—
And then we sleep and then it is morning and Volodya is still dead and I am not fine.
Beyond the obvious there is a problem here like an organizational problem like in terms of information availability and compartmentalization. That is to say that certain facts are privileged within the organization and our close partners in our enterprise and it is worrying very worrying that these facts may have been revealed to third parties in a competitive modality that is to say snipers.
There’s a problem.
There’s a limited number of people could have made the call to get someone in place. There’s us and a limited number.
This wasn’t one of us.
In the general run of things you work with criminals you assume some measure of betrayal as kind of ambient. There is ambient treason. But look: Charlie straight up liked the old guy and Lucille is so batshit crazy that it’s hard to say if he actually deals with the world in a sufficiently parallel fashion that there’s anything he could want that he could get this way. Doc doesn’t need to betray anyone because she is totally fucking terrifying and if she wanted us dead we would all die full stop no discussion. And then there’s Rex and if you had to say one thing for Rex you would say he is true to his friends.
That and he really likes blowing shit up.
It’s true that as a group we are variously and ambiguously involved in the sad death of Rex’s brother Big Billy but that was mostly Fred and Fred is now resident on the end of a stick. If Rex wants to get even with Fred he could have the stick. I have offered it to him and Rex says no that is fine he just likes to look at it from time to time and laugh.
* * *
—
Normally I would look at Saul because Saul is the new guy like the temp hire and although correlation is not causation you can always kill it and burn it with fire and just see what happens. But Saul does not know what we are doing here.
I would look at Calvanese but ditto and plus also if it was Calvanese we’d know by now because something else awful would have happened most likely Saul. While I do not know Saul well I believe it would be pretty awfu
l to have him happen to you.
So there’s a limited number.
A limited number and that number is three. In no particular order—
There’s Mr. Client. There’s Sharkey.
And there is the lawyer.
* * *
—
VoIP outgoing ring ringaling—
“Grüß Gott Herr Reinhard.”
“Hi Mr. Reinhard it is me Jack.”
“Oh hallo Jack what can I do for you?”
* * *
—
Wow you know what that is—wow. Did not see that coming at all. Reinhard has absolutely no notion I am supposed to be dead and tragically Lucille is in his house right now with you know something of a brief like an instruction and the worst thing is that I can’t really change that. I mean I can change that but—
“Mr. Reinhard I—gosh I am just so sorry. I should really have had Doc or Charlie make this call.”
“They are very charming Jack but—”
* * *
—
There is a noise that Lucille makes when he hugs. Nothing else makes the noise that that makes. I hear it now and I wish I hadn’t. It is not a noise you ever want to hear but somehow I never quite manage to not listen.
Reinhard says something. I hope it was a really amazing thing. Reinhard was kind of chipper but you know he was a professional but once he heard my voice he knew I was alive—well you know, operationally speaking, that can’t be allowed at this time.
I mean we could have kidnapped him I guess that would actually have been—
I am so off my game I should really have considered the possibility that it was not him. That is totally on me. Waste of resources but you know I am sad right now.
Well okay what’s done is done.
That leaves two.