Chasm

by James Bruno

  Milan looked evilly at the bound and gagged B&B occupants. His eyes then fell onto the girl, still on her stomach weeping. He sidled up to her. He pressed the knife tip tight against her skin just below the left ear. “You move. You die. Understand?” The girl whimpered.

  He ran his free hand under her skirt, on her buttocks. Between her legs. His skin was as coarse and scarred as hers was soft and smooth. The girl squealed when his hand pressed her pubic area.

  “Yes. Beautiful. Very, very beautiful,” Milan gushed. A lustful grin and trance-like expression locked on his face. He unbound her legs and spread them apart. Quickly, he unzipped his pants.

  For the first time since he’d left Bosnia, Milan felt all-powerful. A rush of strength coursed through his being. Finally, again, he felt validated as a man. Totally free to prove his manhood, to vent an undefined, yet limitless, anger, to give meaning to forces in his nature which he did not fully comprehend. Yugoslavs could not constrain him. The United Nations could not constrain him. And, while his own leaders in connivance with NATO could sidetrack him — strip him of command, and exile him to America — even the great and mighty United States could not constrain him.

  He tossed his head back and shut his eyes. In his mind, Milan Branko was again free, to assert his power, to prey on the weak. Like a beast in nature free to exist and act as God had intended. The suffering and destruction he inflicted, the gagged B&B patrons, the injured and terrified owners, the damaged Victorian home, the sobbing girl whom he was violating, were the natural outcome of his unfettered freedom. In his ears and eyes, it was beauty, just as he imagined a field of carnage was to a lion after a successful hunt.

  For the Branko boys, the ends were not as important as the means. A few dollars, a ravaged woman, shed blood. These actually meant little in and of themselves. The means empowered them. And power meant everything.

  Ray D’Angelo was right. In the five hours Gallatin had spent already at the district office of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, there was only one thing he’d observed that they were good at: honing their analness. At least that’s what Gallatin imagined after one unproductive meeting after another with waffling functionaries so strung up in rules, regulations and their own incompetence that it was a wonder that anybody got into the country legally.

  He sat restlessly along with about a hundred others in a holding pen that somewhat resembled an airport waiting lounge but with even less comfort and ambience. Above a bank of interview windows was one of those electronic number displays used by the deli sections at large supermarkets. Each supplicant clutched a flimsy scrap of paper with his or her number on it. Gallatin had waited three hours at this particular waystop in purgatory for the system to work its way through one-hundred fourteen poor souls. His deli ticket was one-hundred-fifteen.

  Gallatin looked around. The faces were Asian, Hispanic, African, with a sprinkling of others, East Europeans, or Russians, he thought. Some had brought their kids, who raced up and down the rows of plastic chairs playing tag. The ones who could scrape the money together were accompanied by hired immigration attorneys, street lawyers with pinched faces and suits from J.C. Penney.

  Just as Gallatin’s bladder was reaching full-tank again, “115” flashed on the electronic counter. He gathered his stuff together and went briskly to the bank of windows. He shoved his paperwork through the slot.

  After thirty seconds, the female face on the other side wordlessly slid an information notification back through. In red ink, she had asterisked the section on fees.

  “You can’t be serious. I just paid $75 to some guy downstairs to try to get the information I want,” Gallatin, barely in control of himself, told the officious, middle-aged woman standing behind the security window.

  “That was Admissions. This is Adjudications,” she told him perfunctorily. “The only way we can begin a trace is for you to complete form OF-1546 and submit it with a check for $75.”

  “Look. I’m a professional investigator. I have this letter from the Cleveland police department attesting to my participation in their investigation of…”

  “Next!” the woman shouted to the long, snaking line of hapless immigrants behind him, each with his or her own special request to an omnipotent but impersonal agency.

  If it weren’t for the security window, Gallatin would have made this unpleasant woman eat form OF-1546. A hefty security guard, arms folded, stood watch over the crowd from the back of the large room.

  “Okay, okay.” Gallatin took his checkbook out from his inside jacket pocket. He signed it and handed it over along with form OF-1546, duly completed.

  The woman, affecting a well-honed expression of disinterested boredom, looked past him into space. She extended her right hand forward, palm upward and wiggled her fingers for more.

  “What?”

  “Well, information on applicants is protected under the Freedom of Information Act unless you have something official from a court or law enforcement organization stating that it’s needed for an investigation.”

  Gallatin fumbled with the letter that D’Angelo had written on Cleveland police stationery authorizing Gallatin to request all the information ICE had on the Brankos.

  Still focused on nothing in particular somewhere past the planet Neptune, the wretched woman tossed it back to him with no explanation.

  “Now, what?”

  “Need five copies. Notarized. Next!”

  “Now, wait a goddamned minute!”

  The security guard unfolded his arms and approached Gallatin. He placed one hand firmly on Gallatin’s tricep, pointing to the door with the other. “Do what the lady asks, sir,” he said unequivocally.

  “How long will it take before I get a response?” Gallatin asked lastly.

  “Six to twelve months,” the female functionary replied dismissively as she took on her next victim, a petrified Salvadorean clutching a wad of documents.

  “Jesus Christ!” Gallatin muttered dejectedly. At that point, he knew that he would need to go up the chain, to the source of the great American paper tributary: Washington, D.C.

  The evening news snippet struck him like a curve-pitched hard ball to the head.

  “Ten people perished in a spectacular house fire in Minneapolis early today in a crime scene law enforcement authorities describe as straight out of hell. The victims, an elderly couple who owned the B&B and eight guests, apparently had been tied up and tortured before the blaze, the result of arson, police say. The authorities are investigating,” the male correspondent said.

  The television screen lit up with scenes of the neat home engulfed in roaring orange and yellow flames, black smoke billowing to the sky. Fire trucks, police cars and ambulances surrounded it, their emergency lights flashing.

  Gallatin bolted upright from his TV dinner. It sounded all too familiar. He threw some things in a suitcase, jumped in his car and headed to Minnesota.

  The municipal police had set up barriers of black-and-white striped sawhorses draped in reflective tape around the B&B. Signs warned, “Off Limits Police Department.” The scene reeked bitterly of incinerated wood and furnishings. Gallatin walked back and forth along the sidewalk, assessing the destruction, but also the barriers. A young couple with a baby carriage strolled by. Gallatin directed his eyes forward and walked past as any person out on an errand.

  He about-faced at the corner and went back. Quickly, he looked around. No one. He sprang over the barrier and entered burnt shell of the house. Among the ashes and detritus of destruction were broken vases, chinaware, a smashed grandfather clock, crusted wires, glass shards and myriad signs of middle class life, now bent, broken and scattered.

  The stairs were gone. Something shiny caught his eye. He bent down and picked it up. A girl’s barrette, made of metal.

  “Get out!”

  Gallatin whirled around to find a cop, clearly on the cusp of retirement, staring angrily from where the front door used to be.

  “Can’t you read, pal?!” the c
op demanded, pointing with his billy club.

  Gallatin fumbled inside his jacket and pulled out his wallet. He opened it to reveal his work ID.

  “I’m an investigator. Erie Mutual Insurance. I’ve been sent here to conduct the investigation for my company.”

  The cop took the ID and squinted at it at arm’s length. He clearly needed reading glasses.

  “Uh, huh. Well, you gotta go. Get authorization from police headquarters before you do anything. Those are orders.”

  Gallatin played dumb. “Uh, sure. Most of our cases are pretty straightforward, not involving crime. Guess this one’s special, all right. Yeah, well, I’ll go down there to—”

  Another man walked in. He was of medium height, balding, nondescript, in a boxy rain coat. He stopped eight inches from Gallatin, keeping his hands in his coat pockets. “Who are you?” he asked.

  Gallatin delivered the same lie he’d just given to the cop.

  The man snatched the wallet away from the policeman and scrutinized it. He took out the ID and Gallatin’s driver’s license.

  “I don’t know who you really are or why you’re really here, friend, but I aim to find out,” the man said coolly.

  “All right, so I made a mistake. I’ll get right on over to—”

  “Shut up. USAA has the fire policy on this place. Not Erie Mutual,” the man interrupted.

  Gallatin’s blood boiled. “Who the hell are you, then?!” he blurted.

  Just as coolly, the man reached in his jacket and pulled out a leather holder. He flipped it open. “Special Agent Jack Holt,” it read underneath the glittering brass badge.

  “Special agent of what agency?” Gallatin asked.

  The man put his badge back in place. He gestured to the cop. The two men simultaneously grabbed Gallatin by each arm and began to forcefully evict him from the premises. Gallatin’s first instinct was to resist, then thought the better of it and calmly allowed himself to be escorted away. At the barrier, Gallatin’s controllers pushed him forward, causing Gallatin almost to lose his balance, and adding indignity.

  Gallatin brushed himself off. “I want my documents back!” he shouted.

  Special Agent Holt shouted back. “We’ll mail them.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The First Lady liked to hump in the Lincoln Bedroom. The sacrilege of committing adulterous sex on the very bed in which the sixteenth President had slept intensified the excitement. Her orgasms came deeper and fuller in that room. There was a practical reason as well. The heavy oak bed, virtually anchored to the floor, neither moved nor creaked as she quickened her athletic grinds and thrusts in the heat of passion, thus, minimizing the risk of attracting the attention of some alert White House worker.

  It was at this pre-orgasmic state that Tulliver braced himself, grabbing the mattress with both hands for all his life as the President’s wife rode him as she would a bronco on her family’s Oklahoma ranch. Manny Merriman was definitely a good fuck. At 40, the former Miss Kansas was in excellent shape. Physical fitness was her bag. She launched an array of fitness and sports programs aimed at America’s youth. She ran in the Boston Marathon. Tennis finals and golf tournaments were held in her honor. A delegation of deaf girl soccer players had that morning presented her with a ball which was used in a match they had won over a hearing girl’s team.

  Yet Tulliver endured these rigorous trysts in the same manner he did aerial turbulence on one of his diplomatic travels. While the First Lady was attractive, Tulliver was into younger women, early-to-mid-20s being ideal. He recruited a bevy of such young women straight out of universities to work on his staff. His luck in bedding any number of them was surprisingly good. He was an old-fashioned lover, preferring to take his time, perform languorously and to be always in control. He liked being in control whether practicing politics or the art of love.

  “Uhh. Uhhhh!” Mrs. Merriman groaned, a sure sign that the Big Event was nigh.

  She tilted her face down to Tulliver’s and bored in on him with her green eyes in a bobcat’s frenzied gaze. Her shoulder-length brown hair fell wildly over her face, accentuating a savage beauty.

  “You want it? Huh? You want it?…Tell me you want it. C’mon. Tell me!” she demanded teasingly of her prostrate sex-mate.

  Tulliver always disliked this stage of the lovemaking. He didn’t fancy himself an actor. And the New Hampshire-born Yankee never felt comfortable wearing his emotions on his sleeve, or, in this case, his bare wrist.

  “Ah, yeah. I want it—ouch!” The First Lady’s taut thighs griplocked Tulliver’s groin, sending a spasm of pain right through to the top of his head. Before he knew it, he had come, though pain replaced any incipient pleasure in the act.

  Manny Merriman scrunched her eyes shut, released a series of forced exhales, paused motionlessly atop the Deputy National Security Adviser, then collapsed on his chest.

  Relieved that the ordeal was over, Merriman glanced at the 19th-century brass clock on the dresser. “Christ!” he murmured.

  Catching her breath, Mrs. Merriman turned her head and said in a breathy voice, “What, baby?”

  “Uh. Nothing. I mean, I said ‘Christ.’ What an experience. It’s amazing. I mean, you’re amazing.” Tulliver’s clumsiness in intimate situations showed.

  She snickered. “You’re precious. Did I ever tell you that?” She rolled off him gently and snuggled against him.

  Mrs. Merriman usually metamorphosed from sexual assailant to a whimpering little girl immediately after lovemaking.

  Tulliver had appointments to keep. Sleeping with the First Lady, though as risky as smoking in a natural gas plant, definitely contributed to his fast rise in the Administration’s hierarchy. But it wreaked havoc on his schedule.

  “What do you think of me? Am I pretty?” Mrs. Merriman cooed in a little girl’s whiny voice.

  He winced slightly. Tulliver hated this part of their liaisons. “You are…you are special,” he assured her as he slowly moved to leave the bed.

  “How special?”

  “Er. Um. Like no other woman I’ve ever known,” he replied truthfully.

  “You’re a sweetie, Tully.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” He looked again at the old clock. Another fifteen minutes had passed.

  “You know, I told Graham that he’d be crazy not to make you National Security Adviser or Secretary of State once one of those old fartsies cashes in or quits.” She played with his hair.

  Suddenly, Tulliver had all the time in the world. He kissed her gently. “All I want is to be near you.”

  “Graham pays no attention to me any more. A woman needs confirmation, you know. My Daddy always made me feel confident and needed. And so did Graham till he got into politics. I need you, John.”

  And you need a good therapist, Tulliver thought to himself. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there,” he said.

  “You heard the President and Merwyn. Peacemaking is as important an element of the Administration’s foreign policy as peacekeeping. Part of the formula for maintaining the peace is keeping the chief troublemakers out of the way,” Tulliver told the interagency CHASM team. They met at the senior level once a month, more often if the need arose.

  “The Bosnians arrested three more Serb officers yesterday. Belgrade is threatening to back out of the agreement, saying this is the last straw,” the State Department’s Goldman informed the group. “Add to that the fact that these particular characters are on The Hague Tribunal’s list of wanted war criminals.”

  “Great. That’s just great,” Tulliver rejoined. “Guess who’s going to have to untie this Gordian knot just when the President is off to Africa?”

  They all looked at Tulliver expectantly. The deputy NSC chief was steadily building up his reputation as a Presidential envoy who could pull rabbits out of his hat. He had gone at it up till now with little public aplomb, so as not to upstage Fennimore, in Central America and South Asia. Behind the scenes, however, he had assiduously cultivated the media. As often as not he was the “
official who declined to be identified” in front page articles and op-ed pieces covering the major foreign policy issues of the day. In the process he had laid a foundation of success upon which to now launch himself before the public eye as a diplomatic Wunderkind. As Secretary McHenry’s physical and political health waned, Tulliver positioned himself nicely to succeed the elder statesman. All that remained to be done was to sway Merriman so that when it came time to name a successor, all eyes would turn to Tulliver, particularly those of the First Lady, Tulliver’s not-so-secret protector. But first there was Fennimore. He would have to be stepped over initially.

  As the Dayton peace accord steadily eroded over the months after its signing in 1996, the Administration had done everything possible to make it work. The CIA was tasked with being more aggressive in recruiting, bribing and threatening political leaders to cooperate. The key NATO allies either turned a blind eye or played their own games. All parties had too much at stake in the Balkans, or so they thought. From legitimate concerns over containing the conflict to winning elections at home, the European leaders were as eager as the Americans to keep a lid on the obstreperous inhabitants of the Balkans. A decade had now passed and there was no hope in sight of ending the multinational troop presence in the ex-Yugoslavia. CHASM, originally set up to remove a handful of troublemakers and intelligence assets from the scene, had been steadily expanded. Now war criminals by the dozens were being resettled. It was a cheap means to keep things on track — for a while, at least. And it was Tulliver’s brainchild.

  “The President’s Africa mission must be a success. The Sudanese and Darfurians must be persuaded to accept a cooling off period, to be followed by a Bosnian-style peace agreement. Otherwise, more bloodbath, a failed Presidential mission and grist for attacks against us in the next election,” Tulliver declared.