The Council of Ten

by Jon Land

  Up ahead, the trees were blurry, indistinct in the pelting, windswept rain.

  For an instant it seemed that the awful fluttering in her chest had subsided and Doris sighed gratefully. Then the agony came, like a huge bursting blade being jammed into her chest and held there. She tried to scream, but it seemed that the horror had trapped her between breaths. She was aware of her mouth hanging open and of muddy water rushing in unobstructed. I should cough, she thought, feeling that choking was a very real possibility until she realized that she had no air left to be choked off.

  There was one last tremor before the darkness of the mud enveloped her, and Doris let herself sink deeply into it.

  Part Two:

  Drew

  Chapter 4

  DREW JORDAN HADN’T been looking for a fight, especially with the Ryker brothers on a Wednesday night at Clyde’s in the middle of his second VO and soda. To begin with, the Rykers were a feared force in Georgetown, in spite of the fact that no one knew what they did for a living. Some of the Clyde’s crowd insisted they were hit men for the CIA, or Secret Service fielders responsible for keeping committed crazies off the president’s tail. They certainly looked formidable, both big and heavyset with shoulders barely confined by their expensive suits.

  It had been Drew who’d given the two men the title of the Ryker brothers, named after the villainous clan from Drew’s all-time favorite movie, Shane. Forget Clint Eastwood and the bunch. Nobody could deliver a line like Alan Ladd with his lips squeezed together seeming to take in air through only one side of his mouth.

  As it was, the fight had actually been precipitated by Jabba the infamous Hutt. Named for the slobbering sluglike beast of the third Star Wars film, to whom he bore more than a passing resemblance, Jabba was another enigma within the Georgetown community. The best sources said he was a former Georgetown University professor who had been released after several losing bouts with the bottle, although a dead wife was rumored to be to blame as well, along with a homosexual affair. In any case, Jabba frequently settled his obese bulk in a corner booth at Clyde’s, buying drinks for anyone who tossed him a kind word, holding court over those thankful or drunk enough to listen to his dissertations on the state of the world. Drew felt genuinely bad for Jabba, a lost soul who attempted to find himself at Clyde’s among all the grad students and yuppies.

  Drew wasn’t sure where the fat man’s problem with the Rykers had begun. Apparently one of them had told him to shut up so they could eat in peace. Jabba had apologized profusely, which didn’t amount to “shutting up” at all, and by the time Drew got back from the bar the brothers were dragging Jabba by either arm in the direction of the front door. The fat man tried to resist, staggered, and ended up face-down in some patron’s Caesar salad.

  The Ryker brothers laughed and kept dragging.

  Drew was in motion by then, taking the Rykers from behind and totally by surprise. It was over very fast, much faster than he had expected considering the Rykers’ reputation in Georgetown.

  He grasped one of the brothers at the shoulder and spun him around. Nothing fancy next, just a straight punch square into his jaw that sent him reeling backward. He crashed into a table and toppled over its side, conscious long enough to consider the loosened teeth in his mouth.

  The second brother came in fast and swung for Drew’s face. But Drew turned in time to block the strike and smash his free arm into the brother’s gut. When the expected whooooosh of air didn’t come, Drew knew the man was well muscled, although not much of a fighter because his next move was to try and grasp Drew in some sort of lock. Drew stepped inside the motion, immediately behind the brother, grasping his head and bringing his face down in the same Caesar salad Jabba had ended up in, only much harder. The brother stiffened and slumped to the floor, unconscious.

  When he was sure both of the Rykers were down and out of the way for good, Drew turned to check on Jabba. The fat man was already enclosed by three others and seemed to be adoring the attention.

  “Welcome home, Drew my boy,” Jabba greeted him. “Let me buy you a drink.”

  It was late when Drew and the fat man finally had the booth to themselves.

  “My tab is yours for a week,” Jabba told him gratefully. “A modest payment for a great debt owed. But use it sparingly, please. The pension check’s a bit late this month.”

  Drew shook him off. “No need.”

  “Need has little to do with it. A man who has committed such a locratiously nonself-serving act deserves payment of a sort, even one this slight.”

  “Aren’t you the man who claims every act is self-serving?”

  The fat man’s bulging jowls puckered. “Exceptions exist for everything, my boy, even the rigid dogma it has been my toil to teach for these long years. Sometimes you must use near vicivious insistencies to gain the attention of your audience.”

  Drew smiled. Jabba’s pompousness made him a treat to be around, especially after a few drinks. First “locratious,” then “vicivious.” When he couldn’t find the right word to fit a situation, he’d make one up that sounded right, never hesitating or questioning his own choice. Drew found this more sad than funny, though, as if Jabba’s once brilliant mind could recall only part of the word and had to invent the rest. Drew wondered what he had been like before the alcohol set in.

  “And how went things at your Georgia assassin’s camp, pray tell?”

  “Mercenary camp, Jabba.”

  “Semantics, my boy, semantics.”

  “I came in second this time. Mace killed me.” Then, as an afterthought, “He’s the best.”

  “Quite good with plastic paint bullets and rubber knives, is he?”

  “He’s a real professional, Jabba. Makes his living off his skills and comes back to the camp regularly to make sure they stay sharp. He even worked with the Timber Wolf once.”

  “Ah, the best of them all …”

  “He told me all about him, at least as much as he knew. He said that if the Timber Wolf came to camp, the other twenty of us wouldn’t last a day, even Mace himself.”

  “I thought you had given up plans for a story on the famed Wolf.”

  “I did. Years ago. But I still think of him.”

  They lapsed into silence and Jabba sipped his brandy.

  “You know, Jabba, thinking back on it, I never felt more alive than when Mace killed me.”

  The fat man rolled his eyes. “Your words, my boy, are enough to make a man reconsider his drinking.”

  “No, hear me out. I came in second. All those pros and vet mercs and I came in second. Everything considered, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more sense of accomplishment in my life.”

  “Excuse me for not embracing such a dicdactium, but my mind still recalls a country torn by lads not much younger than you over something called Vietnam and war in general—games or not.” Jabba shrugged. “But I suppose I should be grateful for your skills for they are, after all, what saved me from the dreaded Rykers. And if I can’t make it up to you in renumical thanks, let me make it up to you in trade. There must be something …”

  “A question,” Drew told him.

  “Ah,” Jabba breathed, leaning forward, “the universe, Georgetown, politics—for you, anything.”

  “Who are the Ryker brothers, really?”

  Jabba patted Drew’s shoulder with a huge, flabby hand. “What you know of them is all you need to know. Hired killers, contract assassins, men who dabble in a world of sterile exchanges—”

  “I mean the truth,” Drew broke in.

  “Because it is all you know, you must regard it as the truth. Man is indeed a special creature, my boy. So much of what he postulates is made up of inadvertent and closiquil lies because his knowledge is insufficient to speak the total truth. But is he lying? Not consciously and thus not at all.”

  “But you’re avoiding my question consciously, aren’t you? Come on, Jabba, there’s not a man or woman regularly between these walls you haven’t got a bead on. Now te
ll me about the Rykers.”

  Jabba’s eyebrows flickered. “Worried about possible vengeance, are you? Beware. They might give you the long form to fill out in 1993. They work for the census department.” And when Drew’s features fell, he added, “I suppose that lowers your appraisal of what you did.”

  “It doesn’t exactly make me heavyweight champ.”

  “A diminishing of the heroic self-image.” Jabba sipped his Hennessy, savoring his last glass of the night. “The Ryker brothers being professional killers would have let you feel what you want to feel: being a true hero. But it is not the determination of the act that matters as much as acceptance of it. When you moved to save me, your perception of the Rykers was based on the myth I helped foster. Therefore, in that context it was truth.”

  “Stop twisting words around.”

  “They seem quite clear to my brandy-soaked brain. It’s turned to mush I tell you, my boy. When I die, they’ll take it out and find tiny Hennessy labels etched all over it.”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Was I?”

  “As usual. We were talking about heroes.”

  “I thought we were talking about you.”

  “Come on, Jabba, we’ve both had too many drinks for this.”

  The Hutt smiled at him. “There are two things a man can never get enough of.” He tapped his stomach. “The rather prodine endowment I’ve been given renders me incapable of the first since it requires a willing partner. But the second is drinking and that requires simply a bottle and glass.”

  “You take a long time making a point.”

  “Points are made in the minds of the people listening, not speaking. An important lesson, my boy. Remember it.”

  “Your answer to my first question was not satisfactory.”

  “Then pose another.”

  “It’s about you.”

  Jabba tried to laugh. “So unworthy a subject… .”

  “What did you really do before you settled here at your table in Clyde’s?”

  “Obviously, my tales of spending years in not altogether unpleasant academia have not satisfied you.”

  “No, they haven’t.”

  “You would prefer me to be a retired spymaster, or better yet an active spymaster who runs his agents from a corner booth in this very establishment.”

  “The terminology, you know it all.”

  “The vernacular of the spy world is due mostly to myth, specifically thriller novels available to everyone for under four dollars apiece. Hardly classified information. As a writer yourself, you should know.” And Jabba’s eyes sharpened. “Ah, now I see. Perhaps you fathom a story in the old Hutt, a piece that will demand front-page attention in all major dailies, perhaps a Newsweek cover. Well, fear not, my boy, the Hutt will tell all as he always does … but as always don’t expect too many people to listen.”

  Drew sank back in his chair, feeling deeply sorry for the old man and even sorrier for having pestered him so. He was hiding out here, comfortable holding court for patrons who had enough drinks to listen and on slow nights offering his endless tab just so people would sit close and pass a kind word over.

  “But I haven’t answered your question,” Jabba was saying.

  “You don’t have—”

  “Ah, but I do. I promised. The status of enigma suits me, don’t you think, my boy? I prefer shadow to substance. Nothing concrete people can hold me to. I repeat my earlier statement to you that truth lies only in context. As the context changes, so does the truth. I can be whatever people want me to be—a drunk, a bum, a closet genius, embattled teacher, spymaster—anything. And because I allow each context its own freedom, the people around me are comfortable, certain they have everything all figured out, even if no one else does.”

  Drew smiled softly. He’d heard all the stories and rumors and supposed that none of them were true in total but at least a portion of each held some merit. The Hutt himself had often said there were no myths from which some truth could not emerge.

  “Leave me my table and my court, Drew,” he said, shocking Jordan with the use of his first name. “And leave yourself room. Most people want simply to be more; you want to be most.”

  Drew rose and shoved his chair back. “I’ve got to get going. See you … next time.”

  “I’ll be here,” said Jabba the Hutt.

  The drive home was difficult, Drew’s concentration waning and wavering. The VO was partially to blame, although Drew figured more of it was due to the lingering excitement of the fight and Jabba’s vague reflections on life and all things related. They shouldn’t have been unsettling, but tonight Drew found them to be.

  Yes, the Hutt was hiding at Clyde’s, but when you came right down to it Drew had to admit that he himself was, too. He had graduated from Georgetown four years before, after a decent academic career with a grim determination to become a writer. Writing meant freedom, being your own boss, not having to take orders or work overtime at the office. His writing was competent enough to land in several major magazines. But magazine editors quickly became bosses after you had written a few articles for them, so Drew soon fathomed that the way to go was books. He had an idea all prepared and was ready to plunge in.

  In fact, he should have been working further on the research angle tonight instead of wasting time at Clyde’s. He had stayed in the Georgetown area after graduation because he was comfortable there. Drew could walk M Street and still feel young, still feel he was a part of the college life-style he had refused to abandon. Clubs and social events had landed him plenty of underclass friends during his senior year, but now even the freshmen from back then had graduated and Drew felt older than he wanted to.

  Accordingly, he continued to wear his dark, wavy hair over-long in more of a college style, fretting over that inevitable day when the line would show its first signs of receding. He worked out at Nautilus and jogged regularly to keep his frame youthfully toned. Only recently had he found the first slight wrinkle lines beneath his eyes, an event greeted with no small degree of paranoia.

  Fortunately, through it all there was the Clyde’s crowd to refresh him, providing a new and welcome outlet. They were mostly about his age, a group of lawyers and politicos who gathered regularly to wile away the night hours, many coming straight from work without even stopping at the apartments or condominiums they called home but seemed forever inclined to avoid. For his part, Drew adored his condo on 33rd and O Streets, a layered brick townhouse complete with garage. It did not bother him that there were fifty or so just like it within a three-block radius. In fact, he liked it better that way. For Drew, Clyde’s offered a place he could go and be assured there would be plenty of people he knew. He supposed that maybe the success of Jabba’s court lay in providing people with a secure place to loiter while they waited for others to arrive.

  Of course, there was also Pam, and Drew blessed his luck there. They had been going out for six months now, Drew’s longest stretch ever, and their relationship was remarkably unstrained and comfortable. It was all new for Drew, who had never been much good at relationships, thanks to partners who demanded too much or not enough. With Pam he had found the happy medium. She was a grad student in biochemistry across the city at George Washington University. She had her own apartment and insisted even after their relationship turned serious that they not share his. She slept over regularly, mostly on weekends. But she had her own life and left Drew to his. People were far better together when they were more comfortable with themselves, Pam reasoned, and Drew couldn’t have agreed more.

  They had met, ironically, at Clyde’s through a friend of Drew’s who wanted to show off his new girl friend to the gang. Apparently he showed her off too much. Drew may have lost a friend, but Pam was well worth it. Only because of her did he at long last feel comfortable not being in college anymore, the crutch of M Street no longer as sorely needed, although Drew was not yet ready to let go cold turkey.

  He pulled his 325e into the driveway o
f his condo and noticed Pam’s Escort parked by the curb. She said she might be coming over to run some material through his computer, and Drew was all too happy to oblige. The only thing he was using it for was the compilation of research on his latest and only book, which was presently suffering from an acute case of procrastination.

  Stepping through the door of his condominium, he noticed the bare minimum of lights on. Pam was an energy stickler, a detail-oriented person all the way. The condo was composed of two floors with a full kitchen, dining, and living room on the first and a pair of bedrooms on the second. Drew had first planned to convert the second bedroom into an office, but working on the second floor depressed him so he moved his work area down into the living room/den.

  His Apple IIe held a sacred corner position and he saw Pam hunched over it. At first he thought she was working intensely. Then he realized she had dozed off. He walked over and squeezed her shoulder with firm tenderness.

  “Ah,” she sighed, coming awake, “my landlord returns. Hell of a machine you’ve got here, boss.”

  “The work must have been boring.”

  “Just tiring. What time is it?” She stretched her arms out.

  “After one.”

  “Late.”

  “I got talking to Jabba.”

  She gazed at him closely. “Your face has looked better.”

  “See, there was these two guys and one of them must’ve got in a lucky shot… .”

  She looked at him disapprovingly. “Yeah, I think I’ve heard this one before.”

  “You don’t sound too pleased about it.”

  “Why should I be? You go out with your friends, get shitfaced—”

  “I wasn’t shitfaced.”

  “Fine. Just don’t expect me to be impressed with your macho bullshit.”

  “What was I supposed to do? Let Jabba get his head kicked in?”

  “You didn’t have to enjoy it.”

  “Who said I—”