Firebolt

by R. M. Galloway

  “Oh, I see. Because I’m a professional researcher, I must be some kind of Big Bang Theory stereotype. I have to be some sort of expert on science fiction as well as actual science.”

  “I read it myself,” I said. “Occasionally.”

  “Well, I don’t. I used to like it when I was a kid, but these days all the scientific errors in it just irritate the crap out of me. I mean, warp drive? Come on!”

  “So what do you read, then?” I asked.

  “Nonfiction, mostly. History, science stuff. Every now and then a pulpy detective novel.”

  “Huh. And do you think those are any more accurate to real life?”

  “Not being a detective, I wouldn’t notice if they weren’t,” he said.

  “That’s valid I suppose. I’m going to have to figure this out. I’ll research it a little the first chance I get.”

  “Make sure to be careful.” he said nervously. “If Kohl sees you looking up stuff about tungsten…”

  “It would give you away. I know, don’t worry. I know how to be careful. I’m a highly-trained professional.”

  “If you knew how to be careful, you would never have ended up here,” he said.

  “That’s valid too. Let’s get back to the game. I don’t want to put off the dubious joys of impending defeat.”

  The easiest way to shut him up was to give him another chance to win.

  Chapter 29

  “Okay, folks, here’s the job,” I said. I was standing in front of a dry-erase board in our little conference room upstairs, where my security crew gathered for important meetings. If there is any such thing as an important meeting.

  “Our employer Mr. Kohl has a brother who is also named Mr. Kohl.”

  Everyone just stared at me. Barbara looked like she was trying to figure out whether or not I was trying to be funny. Jesse looked like he wanted to spit at me, but then he almost always looked that way. But did I stop? I did not.

  “The main difference between the two Mr. Kohls is that one of them is a tech guru and the other one is a politician.”

  Here I pointed over at the dry erase board, where I had drawn cartoon figures of Vitalius and his brother Herman. Vitalius looked like a Simpsons version of himself and Herman looked like a Simpsons version of a nineteenth century politician, complete with stovepipe hat. Cartoon Vitalius was labeled “tech guru” and Cartoon Herman was labeled “politician.” There’s a reason they never put me in charge of anything at the FBI.

  “The other big difference is that one of them is named Vitalius and the other one is named Herman.”

  Here I uncapped the dry erase marker and added their names beneath their labels.

  “Everyone on the same page here?” I asked.

  Barbara stuck her hand up, a bit hesitantly.

  “Yes, Barbara?”

  “You okay, boss?” she asked.

  “Better than ever. Now here’s the thing. Herman Kohl, the politician brother, used to be a Minnesota state senator and is now the actual Senator for Minnesota. As far as everyone knows, he doesn’t get along with or have any contact with his brother Vitalius and may even have had some harsh things to say about him in the past.”

  Harsh things like “feeble-minded” and “degenerate,” but he hadn’t meant it or didn’t keep meaning it. I didn’t know the details, but as far as I could tell, he had been close to Vitalius all along and might even share his twisted belief system. One way or another, Vitalius had raised Herman’s daughter Jackie.

  “That’s all bad blood under the bridge at this point,” I said. “And the politician Mr. Kohl chairs an important Senate committee that is meeting this week to discuss some regulations that will more or less determine the Quod Corporation’s ability to move the Quod Glasses project forward. Don’t ask me for the details on that, because I don’t know.”

  “What’s our involvement?” asked a man named Bill Cobb.

  “We already know what the committee is going to do. They’re going to recommend the actions Vitalius wants, and he’s going to be holding a press conference in D.C. as soon as they do so. Our job is to handle the security for the press conference, which is straightforward. We do that sort of thing all the time. But we also have to handle the security for a private dinner meeting between Vitalius and Herman later that night.”

  I took the marker out again and drew a stick figure bodyguard next to the cartoons of Vitalius and Herman. I labeled it “bodyguard.”

  “Now this is an inherently sensitive situation. The two of them are likely to be talking about things you would never be exposed to in the course of your ordinary duties. And the purpose of this meeting is to emphasize something I’m sure you already know.”

  I took the marker and wrote SEE NO EVIL over Vitalius, HEAR NO EVIL over Herman, and SAY NO EVIL over the bodyguard.

  “You’ve got a funny way of making your point,” said Barbara. “But I get you.”

  “We all get you,” said Bill Cobb. “Because we already knew that.”

  “Well here’s the thing,” I said. “I’ve never been to a work meeting in my entire life that served any sort of useful purpose. Have you?”

  Chapter 30

  One night over dinner in a D.C. restaurant, Vitalius and Herman sat eating lobster. It was a film noir scene - low lights in a back room and low-key bodyguards, two low-life men with a lot of power. Quiet voices, quiet menace. We watched everything and saw nothing, listened to everything and heard nothing. But not me of course. I wasn’t really a bodyguard, just a semi-fired FBI agent pretending to be a bodyguard. So I listened in.

  “Do you know where she is?” asked Herman quietly.

  “You gave up any right to ask that a long time ago,” said Vitalius. “But no, I don’t. She’s more than smart enough to stay hidden if she wants to, and you know that. More importantly, it isn’t what we’re here to talk about.”

  “Do you really need all these… tough guys?”

  “You have no idea how many people have devoted their lives to finding me and killing me. One of them is in this room, now that I think of it.”

  “Wait, what?!”

  “Never mind. I have him tamed.”

  “It just doesn’t make me comfortable.”

  “That doesn’t matter. It makes me comfortable. Or what’s the word? Delighted. It feels delightful, to take things whole as Sun Tzu says. To take men whole.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I never did.”

  “But you don’t need to, Herman. All you need to know is all you have ever needed to know. And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.”

  “You shouldn’t… shouldn’t quote scripture like that.”

  “Why not? Shouldn’t I be quoting scripture all the time?”

  “It’s just upsetting. It upsets me to be around you, Vitalius.”

  “Not important. By which I also mean highly entertaining to me. But I will show you some mercy. Let’s get down to brass tacks, my brother.”

  “As you already know, we’re moving things ahead for you. But my people want to have a timeline. They’ve been backing your moves for years now, and they just want to know what to expect. Or when to expect it.”

  “No man shall know the day or the hour, Herman. Let’s not stray over into blasphemy here.”

  “They just want to know if they should have their affairs in order. Or if it is once again not yet the season.”

  Vitalius snorted. He was visibly amused. “Your people are just afraid they’ll bump their heads on the ceiling if they happen to be at home when the Rapture happens.”

  “That’s… that’s just…”

  “Don’t worry, Herman. I’ll let you know. I’ll let you and all your friends know with at least enough time to pull your cars over and step out onto the street. Agreed?”

  Herman didn’t look happy, but he nodded sullenly. Vitalius
picked up his lobster and cracked its back, looking his brother directly in the face. His smile looked big enough to eat the moon.

  “There wasn’t really any need for that meeting of yours, boss,” said Barbara quietly, as we were getting into our vehicles to go to the hotel thirty minutes later. “I didn’t understand a word of that anyway. Did you?”

  “Not really, no. I guess the rich really are different.”

  She chuckled, which might as well have been a belly laugh as far as Barbara was concerned. Vitalius himself walked up behind me, muttered something about having to deal with idiots like that, and got in the car.

  “Let me ask you this, Gavin,” he said.

  “Mmm-hmmm?” I was staring out the window, watching the bright lights streak by through the city.

  “Does it make any sense at all to base your entire life and all your actions – to the extent of justifying appalling crimes – on some obscure Greek text from the second century AD?”

  “No, it doesn’t.” I said, my voice dry as dead skin.

  “Quite right, Gavin. Quite right. It makes much more sense to base all your actions and all your crimes on an eleventh-century Tibetan text. Or a twelfth-century Italian one.”

  “Let me guess, Vitalius. Mahakala and Joachim of Fiore again?”

  Back in Hennington when he was pretending to be Andrew Mann, Vitalius had briefly become obsessed with the prophesies of Joachim of Fiore. Now, of course, he was all about this Tibetan Time god. He was kind of predictable once you knew how his mind worked.

  “I think you’re starting to understand me, Gavin!”

  It was all a black joke. Everything Vitalius Kohl did was a black joke, even when people died because of it.

  “This is just like that conversation about shamans all over again,” I said.

  He laughed a little. “Nonsensical, isn’t it?”

  Coming from a guy who thought he was a Tibetan deity, that was really saying something.

  Later that night in my hotel room, I booted up my laptop and checked my Facebook. No need to use the VPN for that, so I didn’t bother. But there was a message there from Ericka Android, my nonexistent millennial friend.

  Hey loser, it’s me! I know you don’t like mixing your two worlds up or whatever, but you’re my favorite Old Guy friend and it looks like you’re in town, so how about it? Meet me at the Bloody Nails show?

  Typical of Emily Alvin to play it that way. The last time I had seen Bloody Nails perform, I had been meeting with Bill Barnar as part of my underground attempt to find Jackie Cole. This was probably her little way of telling me she knew everything. But the joke was on her, because now she would have to watch Bloody Nails perform just to meet with me at all. I checked the Internet for details on the show, and was not surprised to find out that the band was playing a few blocks away from the hotel. All I had to do was slip out of the room, and I would get to enjoy a little of the show myself – but even more than that, the look on her face.

  Chapter 31

  The rock club where the band was playing was half empty when I arrived, with no sign of Emily Alvin. The crowd was much smaller than the last Bloody Nails show I had been to, and the energy of the band was suffering for it. They were playing one of their old favorites – “Apocalypse Row” – but you could hardly tell it was the same song because it sounded so limp and soggy.

  Nowhere to go!

  I just don’t know!

  Wasting my life on Apocalypse Row.

  Nothing to do!

  So fuck you!

  Fuck your rules and your system too!

  It was like that in my old band, so I understood. When Chaos Factor played to a full house, I would bounce around the stage like a screaming jumping bean. When nobody showed up, I had to get twice as drunk to even perform the songs at all.

  I went over to the bar, and there was Bill Barnar – an old friend from the punk scene, but a friend no longer. His skinny bald face was bent over a glass, but when he was done wiping it off with a bar rag, he looked up and frowned at me.

  “Gavin Holder. I was hoping I’d never see you again.”

  “Didn’t know you were here,” I said. “How did that happen? Aren’t you doing the underground thing anymore?”

  “I wish I was. The shows kept getting raided so often I bought this bar. I thought it would make it easier to put on hardcore shows without interference. But it just isn’t the same.”

  He gestured in the direction of the stage and the sad little crowd.

  “I’m sure it’ll pick up,” I said.

  “What do you want from me, Holder?” he asked. “I know it’s not information this time. You fucked that up.”

  “I got fired, yeah. But it’s okay. Now I’m twice as punk as you’ll ever be.”

  “Whatever, Holder. What do you want?”

  “Just a beer. PBR maybe.”

  He handed me a can, and I wandered up to the stage to watch the band. They played “Bloody Nails,” their signature song. They played “Red Rags,” a song about their lead singer’s experience as an Army medic in Mogadishu. They played “Citizen on Patrol,” their anti-cop song. The last time I had seen them, I could still feel it. Years and years had passed, but I could feel the punk. Now I just felt old and tired, as old and tired as their singer was acting.

  Worse than that, I was drawing attention. There was no mosh pit, but an aging punk with huge pink liberty spikes deliberately bumped me as if he was dancing and then kept doing it. He had the whole dance floor to himself, but he kept bumping me anyway. I ignored it at first, but I decided to kick the guy, then I just stepped back and looked around for a table to sit at instead. There were open spots, but people made a point of putting their feet up on the available chairs or dropping their backpacks onto them as I approached. They thought I was a cop, that much was obvious, and they were letting me know I was unwelcome here.

  My daydream about the look on Emily Alvin’s face was not panning out. Instead, it was looking more and more likely that I would end up hitting somebody by the time she even got here. I went back to the bar, and put my empty can down in front of me. Bill gave me a full one without saying anything, and I sat down on a stool and slowly drank it.

  Or not so much slowly as instantly. I finished the second one and bought a third, and it was only when I was halfway through that one that I felt a woman’s hand touch my back.

  “Don’t turn around. I don’t want you to see my face.”

  Her voice was hushed, but it sounded familiar. Like the woman, I had met in the brothel, perhaps?

  “You’re not Emily Alvin,” I pointed out. It might sound stupid, but at the same time, I felt like it needed to be said.

  “We hacked her personal computer months ago and cracked that ridiculous Facebook code of yours in about three seconds. You should really be more careful.”

  Something hard and cold pressed against my left side, and I realized she was pushing a handgun against my ribs.

  “It has a silencer,” she said. “No one will even notice.”

  Chapter 32

  I looked around for Bill Barnar, but he was suddenly nowhere to be seen. The bar was unattended, and an irritated patron slapped it loudly in frustration before stumbling back toward the stage. He fell down halfway there, and I heard him hit the floor, but I didn’t dare to turn around. The band kept playing, and it was obvious no one had noticed anything. She had the drop on me, and if she decided to pull the trigger, she could walk right out the front door and disappear afterward with little fear of being caught. Time slowed down, and I noticed every detail of the next few moments, right down to the lyric Bloody Nails was singing:

  You’re as good as dead

  That’s what I said!

  Four malt liquors and a hole in your head!

  “I’m pretty sure you don’t have any reason to kill me,” I said to the woman holding a gun on me, but the truth is I wasn’t sure about that at all.

  “That’s what I’m here to figure out,” she repli
ed. “I need something from you. What happens next depends on how that goes.”

  “Well, shoot… no wait, I mean don’t shoot! Don’t shoot. But go ahead.”

  “Two of our people have gone silent recently after being in steady communication with us for a long time. Is there anything you’d like to tell me about that?”

  “They caught Maria Guttierez,” I said. Bloody Nails kept singing.

  You’re as good as gone

  But you carry on

  Five straight vodkas and a head like a bomb!

  She breathed in sharply, then prodded me with the gun a bit harder. “Who caught her?”

  “My security team upstairs. They brought her to me, but because they brought her into the underground bunker, there wasn’t anything I could do for her.”

  “And why is that?”

  “I don’t control the security in the underground bunker, that’s a special mercenary corps that answers only to Father.”

  “They answer to Mother,” she said. “Not Father.”

  “You keep saying stuff like that,” I said. “But if Ultima Thule is a matriarchy, I’ve never seen any evidence of it. Mother never comes out of her room in the bunker. I haven’t seen her even once since I got there. I’m not even convinced she really exists.”

  “She exists alright. And she still makes all the decisions about life and death. But that’s beside the point. So the mercenaries took Maria away with them?”

  “Yes. They were taking her to the Ja Lama.”

  “The Ja Lama handles interrogations?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t make any sense to me either,” I said. I could still hear every word the band was singing.

  You’re as good as buried

  But there’s no hurry

  Six bottles in the fridge, no need to worry!