The Way of Sorrows

by Jon Steele

  “Anytime, folks.”

  “VIP” didn’t begin to describe the way these people were coddled. No need to deal with the trials and tribulations of the little people, not them. No pat-downs or removing of shoes to board a flight. Lots of “Yes, sir” and “I’ll get right on that, sir.” And their flight plans were like state secrets to protect them from terrorists or kidnappings—or so it was said by the politicians in DC who made the rules the rich paid them to make. Which was why Agent Kerr had been hauled out of bed in the middle of the night to clear two unscheduled VIP flights. Still, standing in the cold wind waiting to be allowed to do his job was beyond the call of coddling.

  He kicked any offending dirt from his boots and boarded the aircraft. He felt a sudden blast of heat in the galley. Whoever owned this jet liked it kept warm. He pulled back the hood of his parka and unzipped the coat to reveal the uniform and badge underneath. He faced the cockpit door, stood where the pilots could see him through the spyhole. He banged on the door with his gloved hand.

  “Homeland Security. Anyone flying this thing?”

  The door unlocked from the inside; Agent Kerr pulled it open. He leaned into the flight deck. The pilot and copilot removed their headsets and turned to him. Their shirts and ties were black, like the jet. They regarded the uniformed man with indifference. Agent Kerr was used to it; servants to the rich often put on airs.

  “How long were you two planning to let me freeze my ass off out there?”

  “We assumed you would come to us when you were ready,” the pilot said.

  “Well, I’ve been ready and you’re late. I expected you three hours ago.”

  “Our sincere apologies,” the copilot said. “We were delayed at our last stop.”

  Agent Kerr removed his gloves, stuffed them in his parka.

  “Identification and flight documentation, please.”

  “Certainly.”

  The copilot extended his empty hands as if handing something over. Agent Kerr saw the TSA IDs of two American nationals, papers listing the aircraft’s registration and flight plans, passenger and cargo manifests. He took them, read through them. He could feel the texture of the paper on his fingertips.

  “From JFK New York via PDX Oregon. PDX is where you were delayed?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the nature of the delay?”

  “A faulty warning light in the fuel system. It needed to be replaced before takeoff.”

  Agent Kerr looked again at the imaginary papers in his hands.

  “Says here you have five passengers, all Russian nationals. Connecting with a turnaround charter from VVO Vladivostok.”

  “Yes.”

  “You two are staying in the States?”

  “We have accommodations at the Hilton and will return to New York tomorrow evening.”

  The copilot looked at his watch. “Pardon me, sir, is there any word on the turnaround charter’s arrival? Our employer is anxious for information regarding its progress.”

  Agent Kerr looked at the copilot’s watch, too. A man would have to be blind to miss it. A matte black Zenith with SuperLuminova-enhanced hands. Sapphire crystal back, four hundred thirty-nine parts. The world’s twenty-four time zones marked in the bezel for those who had to know the hour anywhere, anytime.

  “Last I heard it was inbound. I’ll be notified when it’s on final approach. Says here your onboard cargo is listed as artwork, a wood carving valued at sixty million dollars en route to VVO with your passengers?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I have the export documents, please?”

  The copilot made the same motion with his empty hands. “Certainly.”

  Kerr received the imaginary paperwork. He saw descriptions of the artifact, export and duty fees paid, photos of the artifact in a metal shipping container.

  “What is this thing? Because it looks like a casket.”

  “It is a tulo.”

  “A what?”

  “A religious idol of the indigenous people of Siberia, from the Heremchin tribe of the Lake Baikal region, to be exact.”

  “What was it doing in the United States? Why is it leaving?”

  “It was part of a private collection of indigenous artwork. Our employer has purchased it from the collector in New York.”

  “Your employer is one of the passengers?”

  “Yes, our employer wished to accompany the artifact personally.”

  Agent Kerr studied the imaginary photographs some more.

  “If he’s shelling out that kind of money for it, I’m not surprised. This thing is in the cargo hold?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll need to give it a visual inspection before it’s loaded onto the VVO flight.”

  Agent Kerr looked at the two pilots. Waited for them to respond, or blink even. They continued to regard him with an indifferent gaze.

  “Passports of passengers departing the United States?” Kerr said.

  It was the pilot who made the motion with empty hands this time.

  “Certainly. They are here.”

  Agent Kerr received five Russian passports. He flipped through the imaginary pages, studying them as he had the photos of the artifact. He nodded to the passenger cabin door.

  “Would you let the passengers know I’m here so I can confirm their identities?”

  “Our employer gave us instructions he was not to be disturbed until the Vladivostok flight is ready to board for takeoff. He is resting at the moment.”

  Agent Kerr was not amused at the piss-off.

  “I thought he was anxiously awaiting a progress report on the inbound. I can deliver the info directly and verify his identity at the same time.”

  The pilot coughed slightly. “I hope you understand, but we must follow orders. You know how that is, I guess.”

  “Yes,” the copilot said, “in lots of ways we’re just like you.”

  Flying a private jet with a gold leaf interior while wearing a $28,000 watch?

  “You bet.”

  A radio crackled.

  “Five Oscar Tango, Five Oscar Tango, this is tower.”

  Agent Kerr reached inside his parka, pressed the button on his radio handset.

  “Five Oscar Tango. Go ahead.”

  “Be advised VVO is on final approach and will proceed to Arctic X upon landing.”

  “Roger that. Will finish with N3287, clear VVO, and advise. Five Oscar Tango out.”

  “Tower out.”

  Agent Kerr backed out of the cockpit.

  “All right, here’s what happens, gentlemen. My truck is in the hangar keeping warm, it’s a mobile immigration and customs station. I’ll run the passports and paperwork and be back for the visual IDs. Then, and only then, will the ongoing passengers and goods be escorted, by me, to the VVO flight. In the meantime no one gets on or off this aircraft. Same thing goes for the inbound. Do it my way and your boss will be on his way soon enough. Are we clear?”

  Indifference again. Agent Kerr wondered if there was something other than jet fuel keeping these two in the air.

  “Sit tight, boys, I’ll be back.”

  Agent Kerr disembarked with his imaginary documents in hand. He tucked them inside his parka to protect them from blowing away. He hurried across the apron and disappeared into the hangar.

  Fifteen minutes later: A second Gulfstream G650, registration RA 9991, approached on taxiway H. Nearing the hangar, it made a one-eighty turn, then shut down its lights and engines. The two black aircraft were parked side by side; their long wings fluttered in the bitter wind.

  Twenty minutes more: The rear cargo doors of both jets opened simultaneously and red lights in the cargo bays bled onto the tarmac.

  Ten minutes later: Agent Kerr walked from the hangar and stopped in his tracks. There were four men in black leather coats at the tail of N3287. They were off-loading the metal shipping container he’d seen in the export documents. They lifted the heavy thing to their shoulders, two men to a side; they carried it
toward the VVO flight. They walked slowly, carefully.

  “Well, how do you like that?” he said.

  Agent Kerr pulled out his flashlight, switched it on, and marched straight for the parade.

  “Hey! Put that thing on the ground, right now!”

  The four men stopped. Agent Kerr circled them with his flashlight, his mind matching their faces to four of the imaginary passports. They had that same air of indifference about them, and like the pilots they weren’t big on blinking, either, not even when facing into the wind.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing? I said put that thing on the ground.”

  Then a paregoric voice wrapped in a Russian accent: “Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.”

  Agent Kerr spun around, saw a tall man with long silver hair. He wore a black sable overcoat and a black scarf around his neck. There were dark glasses over his eyes.

  “Where did you . . . What did you just say?”

  The tall man stared for a long moment from behind his dark glasses. Agent Kerr matched the shape of the man’s face and the color of his hair to the fifth passport. Had to be the one the pilots called “our employer.” Just standing there the man oozed wealth and power.

  “Tell me your name,” the man said.

  “What?”

  “Tell me your name.”

  “Uh, Kerr, sir. Agent Richard Kerr. I’m with Homeland Security.”

  “Thank you, Agent Richard Kerr. I will remember you.”

  Agent Kerr knew a rich man’s threat when he heard it. They had to be batted away with mink gloves.

  “Sir, I told the pilots no one was to get off the aircraft until I got back.”

  “I was concerned with the time you were taking in processing our departure. I asked my associates to transfer the artifact to hurry things along. The fault, therefore, is mine.”

  Agent Kerr glanced at the four men standing with the container on their shoulders. They had not budged; they were still staring into the bitter wind.

  “I’m sorry about that, sir, but processing a sixty-million-dollar antique for export requires a little extra paperwork. Now that it’s done, I’ll be happy to escort you and your associates to the Vladivostok flight, check the pilots’ passports and flight registration, and you’re free to leave.”

  “I would be most grateful,” the tall man said, turning away.

  “As soon as I make a visual inspection of the container’s contents, sir.”

  The tall man turned back and smiled. “Do you simply wish to cause me the loss of more time, Agent Kerr, or do you suspect me of criminal activity?”

  Kerr suspected every rich man coming through Arctic X Air Services of criminality, though proving it was like trying to pin a tail on a runaway donkey. Just once would I like to nail one of them.

  “Not at all, sir. It’s procedure, that’s all it is. And it’s for your own protection, too, to assure your indigenous religious idol is intact before it leaves the United States. I’d hate to think of the insurance nightmare you’d have if you got all the way to Russia only to find it was in pieces. Sir.”

  “Of course. You have your duty.”

  He signaled his associates to lower the container onto the tarmac, and it was done. One of the men leaned down to unlock the latches and lift the lid. There was the hiss of releasing air pressure. Agent Kerr leaned over with his flashlight. He saw a glass lid, and under the lid was a meter-long wooden pole carved with depictions of stars and moons, bears and eagles. It was topped with an oval-shaped head bearing an Asian-looking face; it matched the description and photos in the export documents. Agent Kerr laughed quietly to himself. Sixty million bucks for that piece of junk?

  “Are you satisfied with your inspection of the artifact?” the tall man said.

  Agent Kerr did not see what was truly under the glass. He did not see the circuits and wires, the breathing tubes and air tanks, the blinking monitors labeled HEART RATE, BLOOD PRESSURE, BODY CORE TEMPERATURE. He did not see the little boy with black hair strapped to a small hospital bed or the oxygen mask over the boy’s face, his eyes closed as if he were sleeping. He did not see the small blue rubber hammer in the boy’s right hand.

  “It’s all good. They can load it now.”

  The command was given. The container was sealed and carried to the jet bound for Vladivostok. For a moment, Agent Kerr was mesmerized by the sight of them, like they were carrying a coffin to a funeral. He snapped out if it.

  “Oh, one last thing, sir,” he said, sorting through the imaginary passports. He found the one with the photo of a man with silver hair.

  “I have a visual on your associates, but would you remove your sunglasses for identification Mr. . . . Excuse me, how do you pronounce your name, sir?”

  The tall man took off his dark glasses and revealed his silver-colored eyes.

  “Komarovsky. My name is Komarovsky.”

  SIX

  i

  Coming down the hill Harper saw Lac Léman through the taxi’s windshield. A passenger ferry was pulling away from the Ouchy docks for Évian. The French town seemed no more than arm’s length across the lake, but it was an optical illusion. In the real world it was a thirty-five-mile trip. Turning right onto Avenue de Rhodanie and cruising along the shore, another illusion played in Harper’s eyes: Évian sank under a watery horizon as if swallowed by a great flood.

  “I know the feeling,” Harper mumbled.

  At the roundabout the taxi got off the main road to avoid morning traffic coming into Lausanne. Amusingly, the detour took Harper by the International Olympic Committee HQ on Route de Vidy. He saw the windows of his old office above the entrance to the parking garage. He hadn’t been there in two years, but no one seemed to notice. His salary as a security consultant found its way into his mailbox on the twenty-fifth of each month like clockwork. After the cathedral job Harper thought someone should tell the IOC there was no reason to keep sending him a check. He ran the idea by Inspector Gobet; the cop was appalled.

  “The laws of Switzerland require all foreign residents holding a Permis B to show proof of meaningful employment.”

  “You could pull a few strings, surely,” Harper had said.

  “Mr. Harper, the Swiss are most adamant regarding their immigration laws.”

  The copper’s sentiment was backed up by the cabbie Harper hailed at Place Saint-François earlier, the one driving him by the IOC just now. Last week a referendum was passed in Switzerland calling on the government to renegotiate the Schengen Agreement with Brussels. The object was to stop an alleged invasion by foreigners, especially those from Eastern Europe and Africa. The driver couldn’t stop banging on about it.

  “Oui, we are in Europe, but it does not mean we wish to be ‘European,’ monsieur. We are Swiss. We do not want foreigners coming to Switzerland to steal our jobs.”

  Harper considered asking the cabbie’s opinion on creatures born of light who came to Switzerland from an unknown somewhere and hid in the forms of dead men while collecting a monthly check for doing fuck-all. That was when the cabbie went off on “those filthy Romanians.” Harper kicked the back of the man’s seat. The cabbie glanced into the rearview mirror, saw the palm of Harper’s right hand reflecting into his eyes.

  “Zip it,” Harper said.

  Harper dropped his hand and the driver went back to driving without a memory of the previous conversation.

  “Nice weather this morning, isn’t it, monsieur?”

  “That it is.”

  He looked out the window, watched the evenly spaced and perfectly shaped chestnut trees at the side of the road. As the taxi gathered speed the trees began to bend in the corners of Harper’s eyes . . . Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. The sound carried him back to the wee hours of the morning. In his flat, polishing off a bottle of Swiss red, watching Units of Time, Measures of Wonder, and the Scientific Method on the History Channel. It was a program on Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck. Born in Germany in 1858, he mastered the p
iano while learning to walk. He wrote complex pieces of music and several operas before finishing eighth grade. His parents hoped their wunderkind would be the next Mozart. Alas, young Planck was led astray by the muse of theoretical physics. In university he composed elaborate mathematical equations articulating his perception of the universe. At the turn of the century he wrote a paper on dimensional analysis in mathematical physics. The paper was Planck’s magnum opus and became the hymn of quantum theory. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918, every physicist on the planet already knew the score for Planck time.

  It looks like this:

  It works like this:

  5.39106(32) × 10–44 s

  Planck time equals the time it takes for one quantum of electromagnetic energy, traveling through a vacuum at the speed of light, to cross one “Planck unit” of distance. Theoretically, at 10–44 of a second, a Planck unit is the smallest measure of time possible. Empirically, it is impossible for a human being to perceive any measure of change from one Planck unit to the next. But as Harper was a creature of light hiding in the body of a dead man, his ability to perceive the measure of change was keener. Enough to flash Katherine Taylor’s face, one Planck unit’s worth, the moment Inspector Gobet pronounced her name on the crossing square of Lausanne Cathedral last night. Just as fast, Harper’s eternal being crashed through the microchip embedded in his brain and unscrambled redacted sequences on his timeline. He lifted one thousand frames before—wham—lockout. The surviving frames uploaded in Harper’s eyes and presto, he had 41.6 seconds of his timeline back.

  Hash.

  The cathedral job; two and a half years ago.

  Katherine Taylor on the crossing square of Lausanne Cathedral, telling Harper about her dream. A strange man wearing ragged clothes carries her into the streams of color flooding through the stained glass of the cathedral rose.