Powder Burn

by Blake Banner

After a moment, she said, “Jesus… Somebody us playing with your head, Lacklan. Ben is dead. Omega is dead in the U.S. and it is dying here.”

  “How many people know that Ben was my brother? How many know he was Alpha? Look at the name of the powder, for Christ’s sake! Alpha-G!”

  “Not many…”

  “You, me, I assume you told Gibbons, though you shouldn’t have. Who else?”

  “We don’t know who Ben told.”

  I sighed. She had a point. “Whichever way you look at it, Marni, in one form or another, Omega is back. But this time, we know jack about who they are or what their objectives are. We’re fighting Ben’s ghost.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  I didn’t answer for a while. Then I said, “I’m going to kill some people, then I’m going to burn down the emperor’s palace.”

  I was about to hang up but she stopped me.

  “Lacklan.”

  “Don’t try and stop me, Marni.”

  “I wasn’t going to. I just wanted to say, I’m with you…”

  I hesitated, then muttered, “Thanks…” and hung up.

  I crossed the George Washington Bridge at almost twice the speed limit. The DB9 has a top speed of 183MPH. Along the Palisades Interstate Parkway, I hit 160 MPH before I had to start braking to take the first exit for Palisade Avenue. All the way, I had the radio on. O’Brien had died instantly. He’d been shot once through the heart and a second time in the head. The killer, an unidentified man in his early twenties, had been shot twelve times by security guards and Secret Service agents. He had died at the scene without speaking.

  I left the car on Booth Road and pulled my kit bag from the trunk. It wasn’t large or cumbersome. In fact, Kenny had concentrated a very useful kit into a small rucksack, which I was able to sling on my back.

  Troyes’ house was encircled by an iron fence which, over the years, had become overgrown with trees that formed an almost impenetrable barrier.

  Almost.

  I followed the hedgerow at a steady run along Booth road and then into Lincoln Avenue until I came to a pine tree, not too far from the house, that had broad branches reaching over the road. A short run and a jump had me pulling myself up into the lower branches, and then climbing across over the lawn onto the other side of the iron fence.

  I dropped down and rolled, then got to my feet and walked to the front door, where I rang the bell. It was opened by one of the two sumo twins, who frowned at me just before I plugged two holes through his forehead with the Maxim 9. There were two soft phut! phut! sounds, and an instant later the back of his head erupted. In death he was as in life, immovable. He just stood there frowning. Then his knees folded and he went gently down and lay on the floor. I stepped over him and crossed the white marble hall to the drawing room. I pushed open the door and stepped in. The four of them were there, and they all four gaped simultaneously.

  I didn’t break my stride. I kept walking toward them, where they were sitting and standing around the fireplace. Sykes was the first to react. He reached for his weapon and started to run at me. The two 9 mm rounds collided with his head and stopped it dead before his feet could stop running. They went up in the air and he landed with a whoosh! on the Persian rug.

  I said, “Who’s next? You want to have a go, Fokker? No? How about you, Lucia? What was that last thing you said to me before you climbed in the Caddy? How’d it go?”

  She was sitting in an armchair by the fire with a martini in her hand. She had gone deathly pale. Fokker was on the sofa, half turned to face me. Troyes was standing, as he had been the other night, leaning on the marble fireplace. They were all goggling at me.

  It was Fokker who spoke first. “How did you get in?”

  I shook my head and sighed. I ignored his question and said, “I need you to understand that I am serious.” I shot Fokker through the head and his brains sprayed over Lucia, where she sat just beyond him and to his left. She started screaming hysterically and wiping at her face and dress. I ignored her and turned to Troyes. He was gaping at Fokker and his face was dissolving in tears. He was reaching for him and kept repeating, “No, Wolfgang, no…”

  I said, “Troyes, look at me. Look at me now and listen to me…!”

  His face turned. It was a grotesque mask of grief and unfathomable pain. It wasn’t till that moment that the nature of their relationship dawned on me. And maybe it wasn’t till that moment that Troyes was able to understand the pain that he had caused other people. Or maybe not even then.

  It was the ugly pain twisted across his face, and Lucia’s hysterical screaming, that prevented me from hearing the other sumo enter the room behind me and approach. His attack was simplicity itself. He levered the gun from my fist, then put both his hands around my throat and began to squeeze. Immediately, I couldn’t breathe. I knew I had a few seconds. My heart was pounding and that was using up oxygen at an accelerated rate. He had me at arm’s length, so I couldn’t head-butt him. I tried raking his shins with my boots, but I could barely reach. I dug my nails into his wrists, felt the blood ooze and heard him chuckle. My lungs were beginning to scream and I knew I would soon lose consciousness. If that happened, I would die.

  I let my knees sag. He didn’t ease up, but he shifted to an arm lock around my throat and lowered me into a kneeling position. I could feel my tongue swelling and my eyes beginning to bulge. I leaned forward, pulling his face over my right shoulder. Then, I reached in my pocket. My fingers were frantic. I found my Zippo, pulled it out, and the action was automatic. I flipped the lid and thumbed the flint. The flame caught and I gripped his hand savagely with my left and thrust the flame up where I knew his eye was. I felt his whole body quiver. I smelled the sickly odor of burning flesh. Then he was screaming, standing, pulling away and I was retching, rasping air into my lungs.

  But I knew I had no time. For one, maybe two seconds, I had a tiny advantage. I turned and rushed him, kicked him in the balls and in the knees. Still howling with pain, pawing at his eye, he back-handed me and sent me sprawling across the floor, with my head ringing. I could hear Lucia screaming, “Kill him! Kill him!”

  I looked over at her. The room was spinning. I could see Troyes on his knees weeping and wailing over Fokker’s dead body. I tried to get to my feet, but the lack of oxygen and the massive blow to my head made the room sway and turn and I fell to my knees again.

  Then the sumo was bearing down on me. Four hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and fat, and rage. He had both hands stretched out like claws and his face was a horrific, twisted mask of blackened gore and hatred. He grasped my throat again, and as he did it, I slipped the Fairbairn & Sykes from my boot. I keep it razor sharp and I slid it smoothly over his right wrist, and then back-handed it across his left. The arteries started to spray and as he backed away screaming, I went after him and hammered the blade home in the side of his neck. When I yanked it free, his huge, primal life ebbed away in a couple of seconds, and he died.

  I picked the Maxim up from the floor and pointed it at Lucia. “Like I said, I need you to take me seriously. So, do I have your attention?”

  She stared at me with wide eyes and a sagging mouth. “You’re… you’re a freak!”

  “Yeah, and you’d do well to remember it. Get him to his feet.”

  I jerked my head at Troyes, who was sobbing, “You did not ’ave to kill him. You did not ’ave to do that…” She helped him up and he shook his wet face at me. “What do you want from us?”

  “Your office. Now.”

  I followed them out into the hall. As we passed, he gestured with both hands at the dead sumo in the door and muttered, “Look at this… look…” We crossed the marble floor to another set of tall, walnut doors, which he opened, and we went in. It was what you’d expect, exquisite replicas of grotesque originals from eighteenth century France. There was a Louis XIV desk and on it there was a computer. I shoved Lucia in a chair where I could see her and told Troyes, “Sit at the desk. Access the login page for the
Ceres Network. Try to fuck with me and I will amputate your limbs one by one…” I showed him the Fairbairn & Sykes. “I think you know I’m serious. Do I need to prove it again?”

  He shook his head quickly and said, “Nononono… I will do whatever you say, anything…” He rattled at the keyboard and after a moment, he said, “OK, ’ere it is.” As I approached him, he wiped his face with his hands. “Look, Mr. Walker, I am sure we can reach some accommodation. After all, we are in a position to make more than enough money for all of us.”

  I snarled. “We’ll come to that. First things first. Write down the password to the network.” He swallowed hard and hesitated. I grabbed hold of his ear and placed the blade of the knife against it. He screamed like a woman. I waited for him to stop and said, “I thought you hesitated. Did you hesitate?”

  “No! No…”

  “Write it down on a piece of paper.” He wrote it with trembling hands. I photographed it, and the log in page, and sent them both to Phil Gantrie, with the message Stand by. “Now let me see you punch it in and gain access.”

  He typed in the password and was in. I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him to his feet, then threw him on the sofa. “Stay there.” I waved the gun at Lucia. “You, sit at the computer.”

  She approached and sat.

  “Your network at the university.”

  “Lacklan, don’t do this…”

  “Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because you’re a woman I will hold back. As far as I am concerned, you are not even human, let alone a woman.”

  She swallowed hard and went very pale. She wrote down her password, then went to the sign in page. I photographed both and made her sign in. Then I sent Phil the photographs and messaged him, Go! Release the virus now.

  When the message had gone, I said, “Lucia?”

  She looked up at me. Her eyes were scared, but somehow the fear had not made her more human, it had not given her a key to empathy of compassion. I said, “Was it worth it? All the pain you’ve caused, the death and broken dreams: was it worth it?”

  She gave her head a small shake, her shoulders a little shrug. She didn’t know what I was talking about.

  I said, “Why? Why did you need me to witness this?”

  They didn’t answer.

  “How did you get Charlie to do it?”

  Troyes gave a small cough. “It was zee product of his growing paranoia. It was easy for Lucia to plant zee suggestion that he should call for your ’elp. But when you were ’ere, they stayed in touch. Sexual jealousy, the suggested idea that perhaps you were an enemy, or you were ’ere to protect O’Brien…”

  I shook my head. “Why? Why would he want to hurt O’Brien?”

  He managed a scornful laugh. “With his paranoia, it was not hard to shift his suspicions from Lucia onto O’Brien. We fed him with the information he needed to make zee connections, and very quickly he had decided that it was O’Brien who was responsible for everything. We fed him all the information he needed, his duty to you, his sister, everything. Lucia’s betrayal by sleeping with you was the final trigger for his homicidal passion.”

  “So all along, the only one you were really interested in was Charlie…”

  Lucia said, “No, that’s not right. We were interested in the others, in what we could learn from them, but they could never go full term. They had to die. Charlie was the one we were going to use, though, from the start. That’s why I had him take up Tae Kwon Do, to stimulate his aggression.”

  “I never saw his face.”

  She half smiled. “You only saw the actor.”

  I said, “What about Ben…?”

  They looked at each other.

  She said, “Who is Ben, Lacklan?”

  “What purpose did I serve in all this? Who arranged for me to be here? Why? Why did you suggest to Charlie that he message me? Who told you to do that? And why?”

  They stared at each other, but they didn’t answer.

  I moved over to Lucia and put the gun in her face. “How did you know about Charlie’s sister? How did you know that I had helped Carmen? Who told you to bring me into this?”

  She looked at the gun a moment, then up at my face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Charlie told me about his sister, how you had helped her.”

  I shook my head. “But then, why bring me into it at all?” I pulled out my phone and showed her the message I’d received. “Who sent me this?”

  She swallowed. “I don’t know.”

  I went to Troyes and showed him. “Why was I made a witness to this? Why was I brought here?”

  He curled his lip and there was real hatred in his face. “So that you will realize that you are nothing. That you are just a small pawn on a big, focking chess board. You think you make a difference, but you are nothing! You are nobody! We can play you, Lacklan, any time we want. You are merde! Shit! We own you, just like we own everybody else. You think Alpha is dead? Let me tell you, scoria! Alpha is immortal!”

  I stared at him for a long moment, trying to remember the list. “Who are you, Zeta? Eta? Kappa…?”

  “Fuck you, American piece of shit!”

  I turned to Lucia. “Are you Omega?”

  She didn’t answer. I shot her through the temple, and then shot Troyes between the eyes. Even in death—such an ugly death—Lucia was beautiful. I wondered vaguely how such an ugly soul could produce such an exquisite exterior. Troyes looked as absurd in death as he had in life. A clown who was only ever funny when he didn’t intend to be. I wondered briefly if I had been right to kill them, or if I should have left it to society to judge and punish them.

  And then I thought, what society? The society they had bought, manipulated and twisted to allow them to commit the very crimes they were going to be judged for? I didn’t hold that society’s judgment above my own, not by a long chalk.

  I left two pounds of C4 on his desk with a remote detonator in it, and left the way I’d come in, over the hedgerow. As I began a leisurely jog back toward the Aston Martin, I pulled my cell from my pocket and dialed the detonator. Even at that distance, with the hedgerow in between, I felt the blast wave. It felt good.

  When I got to the car, I sent a couple more messages. One was to the editor of the Wall Street Journal. It said: Scoop - computer virus wipes out all Ceres Corporation’s research on controversial Alpha-G powder. Francoise Troyes and Wolfgang Fokker found dead at Englewood mansion.

  The other one was a reply to the message I thought had come from Ben. It said, I guess not.

  EPILOGUE

  What I should have done was to drive straight back to Weston, to Abi and Primrose and Sean. For some reason, I didn’t. I went back to my apartment, showered for half an hour, and then sat on my terrace, watching the afternoon turn to dusk and evening as I drank my way through half a bottle of Bushmills. Occasionally, I went in and switched on the news. There was chaos and pandemonium. Nobody could make head nor tail of it. Was it organized crime? The Russian Mafia? The Russian government (assuming they were not the same thing), Islamic terrorists or just pharmaceutical espionage gone mad?

  And in the midst of it all, Wall Street was reporting that the Ceres Corporation’s stock value had taken a nose dive following reports that the corporation’s research had been wiped out by a computer virus.

  I raised my glass to the TV, “Here’s to you, Ben, I guess you’re right. You can’t win’em all.”

  Then I thought of Abi and the kids. I had believed Omega was broken, and they were safe. I had been wrong.

  At seven o’clock, I passed out on the sofa, and awoke again at eleven thirty, feeling nauseous, with a mild headache and a crick in my neck. The doorbell was ringing. That didn’t surprise me. I had expected it, but I had expected it earlier. I took my Sig from the sideboard, gave my head a shake and moved to the door. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, but wasn’t sure if it was fear or anticipation. Had he come to kill me at last? How would I feel when I saw him, know
ing now that he was my brother? I found I wanted to ask him why he had never told me.

  I took hold of the handle and pulled the door open.

  It wasn’t Ben. It was Marni. She frowned at the pistol, then raised her eyebrows at me. “Is this how you greet all your ex-girlfriends?”

  “What the hell…” I dropped the weapon and decocked it. “Marni. What are you doing here?”

  “Yay…” She said in a small voice. “I’m happy to see you too.”

  “Of course I’m happy to see you.” I stepped back to let her in. “I’m just surprised. You were in Oxford this morning…”

  She came in. It dawned on me that she had a suitcase with her. She dropped it and stood looking up into my face. “I was in Washington this morning, actually. I was talking to Cyndi. Lacklan, you look awful. What the hell have you been doing?”

  “It’s been a busy day.”

  “So I gathered. I’ve been watching the news.” She shook her head and narrowed her eyes. “What are you like? Did you have to blow up the house?”

  I shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was only part of the house.”

  She started laughing. I laughed too.

  “What happened to your neck? It’s all black.”

  “A sumo wrestler tried to strangle me.”

  “I guess he’s dead now.”

  I shrugged again and walked into the living room. “A bit.” I fell into a chair. “So how come you’re here?”

  “Are you drunk?”

  I nodded. “Probably. I’ve been working at it. Numb is good at the moment. They were Omega, Marni. Troyes at least, and I am pretty sure Fokker was too. Probably Omega 2, from Europe.”

  She heaved a big sigh. “We’ll talk about that in the morning.” She pointed at my glass. “Have I much catching up to do?”

  I snorted. “About ten hours, but four of those I was sleeping.”

  She poured herself a whiskey and sat. Her lips were smiling but her eyes were sad. “For a long time I ignored you. I wasn’t there when you were in trouble, when you needed me, but you were always there when I needed you. I’ve done a lot of thinking and I realized that I was wrong to do that. You didn’t deserve the way I treated you. So…” She shrugged. “This is my way of trying to make up for that. As a friend. If I can’t do anything else, at least I can listen to you, hear what you’re saying, get drunk with you sometimes, or whatever is called for…”