He retrieved the napkin from his pocket, thinking of another where and when, before the world became so jaded and the sky so aloof…
___
BEFORE
It was a small bar tucked away in a seedy part of the city. At two in the afternoon, the place was about as lively as a cemetery.
“Just keep ‘em coming,” Victor said.
“Long day?” the bartender asked. She was young, slim, and far too attractive to be working in a place like this.
“The longest.” He spun the glass in slow circles, taking his time. He was more interested in slowing his thoughts than getting properly drunk. He had plenty to think about, and plenty to forget, too—not least of all Sophia’s terrified expression as the needle neared her throat, her hair lying in thick locks at her feet.
The woman at the bar looked up as the door opened. Victor kept his attention on the glass. He’d known they would find him, sooner or later. Just a matter of time.
“Need someone to share that bottle with you?” Peter asked.
Victor twisted his neck to look at him. “And here I was thinking you’d send a few of your goons.”
“I prefer to call them lackeys.” Peter nodded at the bartender, who poured him a glass.
Victor watched Peter throw the drink back. Peter held it in his mouth a few seconds before swallowing.
“You know,” Peter said thoughtfully, “I have better liquor at home if you want it.”
“That’s a modest word.”
“Better?”
“Home.”
Peter rested his forearms on the bar. He was wearing a steel-gray suit, complete with vest and pocket square. A man of wealth and taste who liked to show it.
“I’ve always been intrigued by those who search for their conscience at the bottom of a glass,” Peter said.
Victor paused with his glass halfway to his mouth, then set it down. He wanted to be half-sober for this conversation. “At least I have a conscience.” His tone was matter-of-fact rather than bitter.
“You think I enjoy hurting people?”
“Do you?”
Peter smiled and let his gaze travel the rows of colored glass along the back wall. The young woman had moved a respectful distance down the bar, where she was now texting rapidly on her phone. Her thumbs were like a pair of birds darting after crumbs.
“You puzzle me,” Peter said. “I see such potential in you, such fire. I thought you wanted to make a difference in the world.”
“Not at this cost.”
“Everything has a cost, Victor. Everything. And the most important things cost the most. Who really wants to get out of bed and go for a morning run? You do it because it’s good for you. You discipline yourself.” He raised his glass. “It’s no different with your conscience.”
“That’s an interesting perspective.”
“Don’t bother attending my seminar. I just spoiled it.”
Victor snorted air through his nostrils. How could Peter be so charming, so magnetic, and yet so clearly flawed? Victor felt almost like they were Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby. Peter’s personality was not so dramatic as Gatsby’s, that was true, but they were both performers nonetheless. Maybe that was why Peter had come after him. He needed an audience.
Victor’s smile faded. “How far would you have gone?”
“With Sophia?”
Victor nodded.
“As far as necessary. I am not a man of half measures, Victor. Neither are you.”
“You held a needle up to her eye.”
The young woman stopped texting to frown in their direction.
“Do you know the difference between great men and common men?” Peter asked.
Victor shook his head. “No, but you’re about to tell me.”
“Great men are capable of bearing the burden of responsibility. Most people want someone to think for them, act for them, and take the blame for bad decisions. They want a scapegoat. You have been bearing this responsibility your whole career, Victor. You fly to parts of the world and deal with problems so others don’t have to.”
“Is that what you call what we did to Sophia? Solving a problem?”
“I call it a necessary sacrifice,” Peter answered.
“Yeah, well, I call it playing God.”
Neither spoke for a long time. Victor went back to spinning the glass, hoping maybe the motion would hypnotize him and he could forget where he was for a little while.
“I didn’t come here to change your mind,” Peter finally said. “You have to do what you believe in your heart is right.” He pushed himself off the stool, stood, and tossed a few bills on the bar.
“It was my fault, really,” Peter added. He drew a pen from his breast pocket and began writing on a napkin. “I thought you were ready, but it appears I was wrong.” He pushed the napkin toward Victor with two fingers.
“What’s this?” Victor asked.
“The number of a taxi service. They’ll take you to the airport.” Without a word of goodbye, he began moving toward the door.
“Oh,” he said, turning back. “Just know that if you leave, it’s final. The people who work for me must be fully committed. I’m sure you understand.”
Victor watched as Peter stepped out into the late sunlight. Then he dragged the napkin beside his glass.
Beneath the telephone number, Peter had written this quote:
“We are either kings or pawns of men” - Napoleon Bonaparte
Victor smiled to himself.
“What’s it say?” the bartender asked. She had drifted closer after Peter left.
Victor folded the napkin and slipped it into his pocket. “It says I’ve been playing checkers too long.”
Chapter 47
Staring at the roadside foliage as the cab wound along the serpentine roads, Victor honestly wondered if his future was his own to decide. It was a rare moment of vulnerability. Nothing had ever before felt to him so much like destiny as his chance encounter with Peter Krieg. And what if Peter was right to fear that someone out there was still trying to design a deadly virus? What if they built another laboratory, started the process over? If torture was necessary to save millions of lives, wasn’t it right? The ends had to justify the means sometimes, didn’t they?
Victor argued with himself back and forth as the ‘73 Audi dipped among the dappled trees, climbed along steep ravines, and buzzed past small vendor stands advertising wild mushrooms and smoked cheese. Something in the undercarriage of the Audi rattled persistently, but when Victor mentioned it, the driver only beamed at him through the rearview mirror.
A soft melody played through the front speakers of the car. It might have been an Italian opera. Victor rolled down his window, sampling the warm and somewhat humid air.
He had asked the driver how long it would take to get to the airport. The driver had replied, in choppy English, that it would take half an hour or so. Victor had then asked the driver to take him there, though he was not certain he was ready to leave Kerovia behind just yet. He hoped the fresh air would help him piece his thoughts together so that he could come to a firm decision before they reached the airport.
Thus far, however, his thoughts remained in disarray, like dandelion seeds scattered in the wind.
The car ground to a halt as a flock of sheep ambled across their path. As the car rumbled impatiently, Victor met the eyes of a young boy helping his father herd the sheep across. The boy watched Victor as if Victor were a strange species of fish in an aquarium, a creature with special abilities such as spinning webs or detaching a limb.
The boy was so distracted that his father began calling him. He was yelling at him, really, waving for the boy to get away from the road. The father’s frantic gestures made Victor uneasy. Was the boy in danger?
As Victor craned his neck to see whether any other vehicles were approaching, the passenger window opposite him shattered in a cascade of glass. He crouched and reached to draw his gun, then fell against the seat as the Audi l
urched forward. The sheep skittered, one was forcibly brushed aside by the car’s bumper, and then they were past the herd.
Victor peeked over the backseat just in time to see a round hole punch through the window. The car swerved, coasting as it drifted into a ditch. Victor bounced, bumped his head against the ceiling, and then slammed into the seat in front of him.
A horn was blaring. Victor lifted his head, momentarily dizzy. His disorientation lasted only a second before his instincts, honed by countless training exercises and live firefights, told him to seek cover. He risked a quick glance at the driver. The man was slumped against the steering wheel, unmoving, bleeding from his head.
Ducking beneath the windows, Victor pulled the latch on his door and pushed. There was a sapling just on the other side of the door, forcing Victor to squeeze himself through a narrow gap.
Outside, gun in hand, he leaned his back against the tire. Knowing the shooter might still be watching the vehicle, he slowed his breathing and studied the forest. Nothing moved. He could see the road twenty or thirty feet away, and based on the direction from which the two bullets had come, he believed the car stood between him and the shooter. The killer was probably armed with a scope. He had come to this isolated stretch of road, hidden himself, and waited for the car. Then, while the car was stopped, he had fired through the rear passenger window, probably aiming for Victor. The second shot, far more difficult since the vehicle had begun to move, had taken out the driver.
Victor did not suppose for even a second that the driver had been of any consequence to the shooter. The shooter’s target must have been Victor himself, which made Victor feel incredibly lucky that he had survived even though the shepherds had given the shooter a golden opportunity. If he survived to the end of the day, he would have one hell of a story to tell.
Victor moved along to the front of the car and risked a peek over the hood. He saw young birch trees, small bushes, a rusted car half-sunk in the litter of leaves. He considered hiking to the road. He could follow the road until he reached a house or encountered a vehicle, provided the vehicle wasn’t coming up the road behind him, since that would mean it might be the shooter. From there it would only be a matter of asking for a phone. He would call Peter and ask for his help. Peter would understand.
Instead of hiking to the road, however, Victor found himself rounding the front of the car and moving into the brush. He slipped from cover to cover, careful not to shake the bushes. Someone had hired the shooter to kill Victor, and Victor wanted to know who it was and why he was on their hit list.
Before long, he reached an open space along the road where the trees had been logged. The grass was tall and yellow, but not so tall as to hide his movements. He decided to risk it. He trotted into the open, moving parallel to the road and deciding where he would have set up if he had been hired to take the shot.
At last he came to a small hill set back from the road. He approached carefully, gripping the gun in both hands, only to discover an empty patch of trampled grass with a plastic bag half full of pretzels.
The shooter was gone.
___
Peter cocked his arm back, paused, and lofted the ball to his son. The bat cracked like bone against bone, sending the baseball dribbling across the courtyard.
“Is there really any question who sent the shooter?” he asked.
Victor watched the ball bounce across the cobblestones. There was an obvious explanation, if Victor wanted to take it. It went like this: Antoine Graves, for whom Sophia had been designing the virus, had taken umbrage at Victor’s and Peter’s interference in his plans. He had somehow found Victor (perhaps by first finding Peter), and then set up the ambush along the road. Maybe he had gone after Victor because he was a much easier target than a reclusive billionaire who contracted mercenaries and hid himself in a castle.
Victor had already worked through that theory in his head, however, and not all the pieces fit together.
“First of all, if it was Graves, how did he find me?” he asked. “I didn’t see any cameras back at the laboratory. And second, how did he know where that car was going?”
Peter watched his son race after the ball. The boy was in the midst of a growth spurt, not yet used to his lengthening body, and he seemed to throw his limbs more than move them.
“Maybe the driver was in on the take,” he replied with a shrug. “Maybe that’s why the driver was killed. Or maybe it was an accident. Who knows?” He caught the ball thrown by his son, then returned a few words in German. The boy’s smile gleamed like porcelain.
“I don’t like it,” Victor replied.
“You’re not supposed to like it. You’re supposed to be dead.”
“That’s what pisses me off.”
“All the more reason for you to help me track him down.” He tossed the baseball to Victor, who uncrossed his arms and caught it just before it struck his stomach.
“Vater?” the boy asked, frowning anxiously as he clutched the bat.
Victor looked at Peter, ready to pass the ball back, but Peter shook his head. “You throw it. Just don’t hit him—he’s my only heir.”
Victor faced the boy and rolled the ball in his hands, the roughness of the stitches and the smoothness between. It was an old baseball, more brown than white, with a signature faded to nothing more than broken lines of ink.
“Ready?” he asked.
The boy gazed steadily back.
Victor tossed the ball high overhead, giving the boy ample time to measure the distance. He should have hit the ball. Peter’s throw had been faster, tighter, while this time the ball seemed to hang languorously in the air, turning in a slow arc as it tumbled toward the end of its trajectory a foot in front of the boy’s shoulders.
The bat should have cracked the ball and sent it sailing overhead. It should have splintered a window or torn the nose off one of the winged creatures gazing down at them.
But all the bat hit was air. The ball thumped the ground a few times, struck a raised stone, and turned precipitously to the side. The boy dropped his bat and gave chase.
Peter frowned. “You made it too easy for him.”
Victor frowned as well, unsure what to make of this comment. “So,” he said, watching the boy scurry beneath the severe, angular windows, “where does this leave us?” He was thinking about how close he had come to deciding to just go home, wrap Camila in his arms, and forget he had ever left the country. He probably would have done so if he had not been ambushed. Peter’s decision to torture Sophia, not to mention his methods, had unnerved Victor. What troubled him most, however, was how easy it was to justify Peter’s actions in the name of the greater good. If torture could be justified, what was off-limits?
The boy came running back with the ball in his hand. Without pausing, he chucked it under-handed to his father, who immediately tossed it back.
“Go inside and practice violin,” Peter said in a business-like tone. “The men have to talk.”
The boy hung his head and trotted away without complaint. Victor watched him go, imagining he was seeing a little Peter who was only just beginning to dream how he would make his mark on the world. Charles, however, already had advantages that Peter had never known. Charles’s family was wealthy and successful, whereas Peter’s had been poor; Charles knew both his parents, while Peter had known only his mother. Still, despite the advantages, Victor thought he sometimes caught Peter’s roving, restless mind in Charles’s childish eyes. Perhaps Peter would have become a billionaire even if he had enjoyed a happy upbringing, though Victor had his doubts.
“Come with me,” Peter said. “I want to show you something.”
___
Victor followed Peter down the stairs and into the cellar, smelling the dampness that clung to the stones, the faint odor of old wines. They crossed to the painted door. Peter inserted a key into the heavy lock, and Victor heard the bolts slide free.
“Hold on,” Victor said. “Is there anything in there I’m going to regr
et seeing?”
“Worried about the skeleton in the closet?”
“It’s a fair question.”
Peter nodded, released the door, and stepped back. “I haven’t forced you to do anything yet,” he said. “I won’t force you now. So would you like to stand here talking about what’s inside, or would you rather see for yourself?”
Victor grasped the handle and pulled. The door opened soundlessly and a breath of cool air wafted into their faces.
The room could not have been larger than twenty by fifteen feet. A desk stood against the back wall, its top holding a few piles of neatly-stacked papers—Peter’s personal documents, Victor guessed. He imagined Peter shutting himself in this room in those moments when he needed to seal himself completely off from the outside world. A person could press their ear to the other side of the door and not hear a sound, not even if someone inside was screaming.
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