Blood Wine

by John Moss

  “My friends?”

  “In England. Miss Sturmberg? I believe she was a friend of yours. And the old mullah, Professor Ali Rashid Izzadine Al Sayyed, you visited his chambers in Cambridge. I believe you spent several nights with Miss Sturmberg, one in a sleazy hotel near Victoria Station and then in a rather pleasant B&B in Cambridge, with twin beds. From that I surmise you were lovers for a night and thought better of it the day after.”

  “What about my friends?” Morgan demanded.

  “Ah, yes, it is difficult to be dispassionate when you do not have the training, Mr. Morgan. Your work is so much different from ours, Miss Sturmberg’s and mine. We had much in common, I think, though she was a Jew. I had more in common with her than I did with the venerable Kurd. He was a true Peshmerga, a samurai, a knight. He was a Muslim and a scholar, he believed with his brain and his heart. I believe nothing. He was not trained, so he had to rely on education and passionate intelligence. That is not enough, or too much, perhaps. Still, he died without flinching. They held him by the beard and slit his throat. Ms. Sturmberg, on the contrary, she went down like a fighter. She died first, but she murdered two of ours in the process. There are many ways to be brave, I suppose. Cambridge chambers will never be the same. I’m told it was all quite messy. It is difficult to wash blood from such beautiful rugs.”

  Morgan remembered the rugs. “Miranda,” he said.

  “Do nothing, Ms. Quin. We will be dead soon enough. Then your flesh and mine will be one, once again.”

  “Savage,” said Morgan, “Disarm the bomb.”

  “It is many bombs.”

  “Miranda, shatter his kneecap.”

  Another shot exploded and the room shook like thunder. Savage whirled, and as he did so Morgan flung his arms under the other man’s flailing arms, pinning him against his own body so the man could not fall to set off the detonator.

  Miranda lunged forward and held Morgan’s Glock to Savage’s forehead.

  The man sneered through the pain. “Too late,” he said. “We are dead.”

  “Not yet. Miranda, would you mind cutting in?” She looked at the two men, embraced in a tottering danse macabre.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “If I’ve learned one thing through all this, it’s that high tech is limited by the mind that controls it.”

  “Morgan?”

  “Under his jacket, the Batman utility belt, Velcro. I’m betting it comes off easily. Don’t tilt it.”

  “You’re betting!”

  “Yeah, go for it. He’s a dead weight.”

  Miranda crouched down and fumbled around, then found tabs, but with her hands still encased in greasy surgical gloves she could not get a grip. She leaned forward, clasped a tab between her teeth, and pulled. Then another pull and the belt released.

  “Keep it upright, keep it upright.”

  “Morgan, I am. I’ve got it, you can drop him.”

  Morgan let Savage slide to the floor. The man rolled over on his side and lay still. Morgan took his gun back from Miranda. He was tempted to finish Savage off but thought better of it. They might need him, and he wasn’t going very far.

  “What do I do with this?” Miranda demanded. She held the ominous contraption between them, examining the wires and webbing and tabs. Morgan reached out and touched a wire.

  “It’s always the red one,” he said.

  “What?”

  “In the movies. It’s always the red one. The hero gets set to cut blue or yellow, then in a leap of intuition at the last second switches and cuts the red.”

  “Morgan.”

  “Yeah.”

  “There are four wires and they’re all red.”

  “You know what?”

  “What.”

  “Drop it.”

  “What, the belt? Don’t be insane.”

  “Give it to me.” He took hold of it but she would not release her grip.

  “Morgan, what are you doing, for God’s sake?”

  “Don’t swear.”

  “Pardon.”

  “Don’t swear.”

  “Shit, Morgan. If there was ever a time —”

  “It’s a decoy.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Here, you take it, you put it down — if we go up in a fiery inferno, it’s your fault.”

  He took the belt and gingerly set it in an upright position on a chair.

  “I thought it was a fake?”

  “Just in case it isn’t. So far, so good. So, what now?”

  “You’re asking me? You seem to be reading the situation pretty well.”

  “Miranda, I’m guessing there’s a real detonator. Savage knew we were coming. He monitored us in the lobby or out in the foyer. I think we’re inside a time bomb. I think that’s what we’ve walked into. And he set it going when we came through the door. He might have tried to escape but it isn’t his style. This Mr. Savage is all about style. I’m guessing we’re on a short fuse — he knew he wouldn’t have time to get away. He decided to pay us the ultimate compliment of sharing our deaths.”

  “How nice.”

  “Very good,” said Savage from the floor. His voice was surprisingly clear, as if he had dissociated from the agony of his shattered knee, as if they were friends in a conversation he had just dropped out of for a few minutes.

  Miranda looked down at him with utter contempt, not spitting because she knew from her mother’s knee it would reflect badly on her own self-respect.

  “We’ve got about four minutes left,” said Savage.

  “Why so long?” said Morgan. “Why not just press the button and take us out from the start?”

  “Because I did want to talk to you both, to renew my acquaintance with Ms. Quin and to chat about old times with you, Mr. Morgan.”

  “Morgan,” Miranda snapped, “don’t you believe him. You’re wrong about style, he’s gutless. He still thinks he can get out of here. The service elevator is closed, I’ll bet you anything. The emergency stairs are sealed off. They did it themselves to protect their storehouse. He needs time to get by us. If we’re inside a time bomb, I’m betting it’s got fifteen minutes to go, maybe more. He needs time to get away.”

  “I am not afraid of dying, Ms. Quin. Surely you know that.”

  “Bullshit, you’re petrified.”

  “Miranda?”

  “He likes to believe he’s no longer human, he’s one of the Borg — but he is a leader. Those are not compatible.”

  “The Borg? You’re talking Star Trek? We’re counting seconds.”

  “The Borg are an inexhaustible corporate entity, they absorb personalities —”

  “What about Seven-of-Nine?”

  “Barbie with brains, every man’s nightmare.”

  “Excuse me,” said Savage, straining to suppress his pain. “Have you lost track of what’s happening?”

  “Have you?” snapped Miranda.

  “No, no, Ms. Quin. I am human, yes, serving an unstoppable cause. And it, not we, not me, but it, will prevail. As the Borg say, Ms. Quin, resistance is futile. You now have approximately two minutes.”

  “You are al-Qaeda, the Borg in real time. But you think for yourself, Mr. Savage, and that is dangerous.”

  “For whom, Ms. Quin?”

  “For you. Morgan, this man is a pathological bully, he is pathologically terrified of women, he is a pathological coward. I’d say he has allowed himself time to negotiate.”

  “In that case, Ms. Quin, we will cut to the end. I will make a deal with you,” said Savage from his twisted position on the floor. “I will tell you how to disarm the detonator. I will unlock the door. It is steel and it is bolted. We will leave. It is over. I disappear. There is no hole in the heart of Toronto. You two become heroes.”

  “Morgan, it’s us he’s trying to disarm. I say we have lots of time, if there’s a timer at all.”

  “Let’s resolve the confusion,” said Morgan, motioning for her to check one of the be
drooms while he checked another. The first room Morgan went into was piled high with materials parcelled in ominous crates beside stashes of weaponry.

  “Morgan,” Miranda called from a study off the master bedroom, “in here!”

  “Yeah,” said Morgan, hurrying down the hall to her side. “He wasn’t bluffing.” They stood looking at a computer monitor with a digital display of numbers, counting down.

  “But I was right about having more time than he said,” Miranda offered.

  “Twelve minutes to go. Yeah, you were right about that,” said Morgan. “Let me fiddle with this — you think he’s a coward, maybe torture will work? Shoot him in the other kneecap.”

  “Maybe I should bring him in here first.”

  “Whatever.”

  Miranda rushed back to the living room to drag Savage into the study.

  He was nowhere in sight.

  She raced down the hall to the entry door but it was still solidly secured. Returning to the living room, she stopped and looked at the carpet where he had fallen. A smear of blood narrowed like a wedge in the direction of the two-storey window.

  He’s stopped the bleeding, he’s on the balcony.

  But she could see the entire balcony. There was no one there.

  She slid the glass door open. Squat summer palms rustled in the afternoon breeze. More blood, some on the railing. She stepped forward and leaned out.

  Savage was hanging over the side from the rail at the base of the balcony, fourteen storeys above Avenue Road. Technically, thirteen, since he was dangling below his own level.

  “Hello,” said Miranda.

  Savage took a deep breath. He clearly had intended to swing out and then in, onto the balcony below, but once in position he must have realized his arms against the edge of the balcony would throw his weight away from the building and he would fall. He gazed up at her, waiting for something to happen.

  “No gun?” said Miranda. “No, I have the gun. No time left? You’re right about that. Still, I’d rather blow up than fall down, down, down, thinking the whole way about what it’s going to be like to hit bottom. A nasty business, Mr. Savage.”

  “Najim.”

  “What?” said Miranda, leaning over.

  “Najim Mustafa Tanimi.”

  “Really. Najim Mustafa Tanimi. Is that your name, Mr. Savage?”

  “If you help me,” he gasped, the weight of his body compressing his lungs, “you will have righteousness on your side for rescuing me in spite of what I did to you.”

  “And if I do not, Mr. Savage, Najim, there will be righteous satisfaction in seeing you fall to your death, thinking about me all the way down.”

  “Please.”

  “What, Mr. Savage, what do you want?”

  “Help me. Shoot me. Do not let me fall.”

  “Perhaps you could explain how to stop the countdown. That would be very helpful to all of us.”

  “Yes, yes. I cannot. It is started.”

  “You can’t stop it?”

  “No, yes. Maybe I can. Help me.”

  Miranda braced herself and reached over. She extended one arm downwards and Savage released one of his hands from the rail, flailing upwards, and his fingers clenched around the glove on her lowered hand, and the ointment oozed and the material slid away from Miranda’s flesh in slow motion, and their hands pulled apart, his with the glove grasped desperately limp as his weight swung onto his other hand, down and away, and his fingers on that hand opened and, gazing up into Miranda’s eyes in astonishment, his mouth open in a silent scream, and he fell back into the air.

  Miranda walked almost casually back into the study. Morgan was staring at the monitor. Three minutes and twenty-eight seconds left, twenty-seven, twenty-six.…

  “I take it you didn’t get very far with Savage. Did you kill him?”

  He turned away from the screen and looked into her eyes. He could not recognize anything familiar. And yet she was there, not a stranger. He shuddered with an odd feeling of grief, realizing that she would not survive. His own death was more difficult to imagine.

  “Ring around the rosy, Morgan … husha, husha, we all fall down.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “You did what you had to do. I don’t think he knew how to stop this thing anyway. My dad used to say the bombardier can’t call back the bombs.”

  “Was he in the war?”

  “World War Two? No. Korea.”

  “Morgan, it’s the end of the world as we know it.”

  “It’s the end of our knowing it — husha, husha — what would Buffy do now?”

  “Buffy?”

  “Buffy.”

  “Morgan.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to have sex?”

  “You think there’s time?”

  “I don’t know, you might not respect me in the morning.”

  “Let’s chance it.”

  “I’ll settle for a hug.”

  “Me too.”

  “You ready for the world’s biggest orgasm?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Me too.”

  He stood up and they held each other for the first time like lovers. They rocked gently together. He smelled nice. She looked by him at the screen. Fifty seconds, forty-nine, forty-eight.… She glanced down at the tangle of cords under the computer. She looked back at the screen. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight.… she had lost ten seconds. Twenty-four, twenty-three, twenty-two.… It’s always such a viper’s nest, she thought. High-tech, and nobody thinks about the mess. Eighteen, seventeen —

  “Morgan.”

  “Yes.”

  She leaned away from him and smiled. “Let go.”

  “What?”

  “Let me go.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know the problem with all this electronic stuff?”

  “Yeah.” He kissed her. She rose to the pressure of his lips then pulled away quickly and dropped to her knees. She called up to him.

  “Morgan, if you hurry, you can get in the last word.”

  “Miranda?”

  She squirmed under the computer console, grasped two cables plugged into an electric outlet and yanked. She lay perfectly still, waiting.

  “Boom,” said Morgan in a soft voice. “You did it.”

  “I did?”

  “We’re ten seconds past Armageddon.”

  “Lovely. Get me out of here. Can you believe it?”

  “Yeah, I believe it.”

  He helped her to her feet and she leaned against him to extricate herself from the tangle of wires, then remained leaning against him. He drew her close and they breathed deeply in unison.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve replaced your broken cellphone,” he said softly into her hair as if he were mouthing endearments.

  “I imagine yours is at home,” she responded against his shoulder, without looking up.

  “What do you think the chances are there’s a working telephone here?” he asked.

  “One line, unlisted. Disconnected from this end, I imagine,” she answered with incongruous warmth.

  “As in, unplugged?”

  “As in, ripped out of the wall. A precaution when he knew we were coming.”

  “Yeah,” said Morgan, still whispering. “He needed us to find him. Somehow we became witnesses to measure himself, even if he intended to blow us up.”

  “But he figured he would survive.”

  “Otherwise the dummy detonator he was wearing doesn’t make sense.”

  “Well, we witnessed his death.” She breathed deeply. “Actually, we didn’t,” she whispered. “You were in here and I didn’t wait to see him hit bottom.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Morgan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re still holding me.”

  “I thought you were holding me. Do you want to stop?”

  “Not really.”

  They maintained a close embrace until their breathing slowed to normal, then pulled apart shyly, neither pre
pared to say anything that would destroy the intimacy, yet each recognizing the world had not come to an end and time was back to its normal flow.

  They walked into the living room arm in arm. Morgan noticed the door out onto the balcony was ajar. He saw blood on the carpet smeared in that direction. He said nothing. She would explain if she wanted. He turned to her and kissed her forehead. She reached out, bent his head down, and kissed him on the forehead with a loud smack. It was an expression of affection and a parody of what he had just done.

  “He did know we were coming, didn’t he?” she said.

  “Morgan, I think he’s known we were coming for a long time. People on the inside can see more than those of us playing the outside of the cube. He knows what’s in there, doesn’t he? Intersecting tracks, swivels, and pivots. Agents for this and for that, there’s not much difference among them. Tensions and alliances, Morgan. Swivels and pivots. I prefer it on the outside, lining up what you can see.”

  “Amen,” he said.

  “You all right, Morgan?”

  “For sure. I knew you were, too, when you called him a dweeb.”

  “Twerp, I called him a twerp.”

  “Yeah, and that’s when I knew we had him beat.”

  “Morgan — a sleazy hotel near Victoria Station?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Sorry. I’m sorry about Elke. We were friends in a way. And the old man, I’m sorry about him, Morgan. The wise old man in the ivory tower, he shouldn’t have suffered like that. Morgan, why do I keep saying your name?”

  He smiled. “I don’t know, Miranda.”

  “You never use my name. I’ll bet you don’t, even when you think of me.”

  “How do you know I think of you, Miranda? The old man, he was a warrior. I expect death was a reasonable price for his dreams, I imagine that’s what he thought when he died. And Elke, she didn’t believe she’d ever get old.”

  “And for us, this is as far as we go, isn’t it?”

  “How so?” Morgan asked.

  “Rufalo wanted a nice neat package. This is it. Savage is dead. All the details connect. Lots of leads for CSIS and the CIA and MI6 and God knows who. But there won’t be any convictions. The enemy is amorphous. It dissipates, lies dormant, mutates, regroups, who knows? If it doesn’t come back as al-Qaeda, it’ll be something else.”