The Unseen

by Hines

  He stared at nothing, curled into a ball, until he heard the rumble of a train approaching the platform. He had no destination in mind yet; his plan was to simply ride the train for a while, collect his thoughts, make his plan. There was nowhere else he could go at the moment. He didn’t want to take another cab, because . . . well, because the Metro was part of his home. He needed to get back to some familiar territory, and the Metro was it. Yes, it was dangerous, but at this point, everywhere was dangerous.

  The train pulled up to the platform with a hiss, and he waited for the doors to open. He took off his backpack, chose a seat at the back of the last car, hunched down, turned his cap around again to pull it over his face, and tried to rest. As soon as his eyes closed, his mind began to wander.

  (Humpty Dumpty had some great falls.)

  The words hovered in his mind, but he let his thoughts go deeper as he listened to the shudder of the train join the rising Dark Vibration deep inside his own soul.

  Soon his mind took him back to the rooftop of the orphanage. As he crouched on the rooftop, the last vestiges of twilight disappeared into the dark purple of night, and the sounds of far-off activity—people laughing? people singing?—filtered to him on the breeze.

  He looked at the city, admiring the lights wavering in the dissipating heat of the day, and he knew those lights were close—so close he could touch them. And so he put out his hand, his small, ten-yearold hand, to grasp the lights that were so near.

  But then he felt the wetness on his hand. His hand wasn’t reaching into the night sky, but into a deep pool. A deep pool formed by burbling springs. And he wasn’t on a roof but on a stone walkway that ran beside the springs. Those lights, the lights that he wanted so desperately to touch, were deep inside the pool, and the water created optical illusions; each time he felt sure he was about to touch one of the warm, glowing orbs, it shifted direction, darting away from his grasp.

  Frustrated, he looked on the pathway ahead of him, sure he would see the backs of the couple walking away. Maybe he could call out to them, stop them, convince them to come back and catch the lights for him.

  But there was no couple on the walkway. Instead, it was an old man, sitting on a crate, battered guitar clutched in his hands. His fingers moved over the strings, and he rocked back and forth, his eyes closed in pain, as he sang.

  Got those crumblin’ down blues, baby

  Got me some crumblin’ down blues

  Got those crumblin’ down blues so bad

  Feel ’em clear down in my shoes

  Did me some dancin’ with the devil

  Said he’d have to take his dues

  Now I’m digging with that shovel

  Cuz I got them crumblin’ down blues

  As the man sang, Lucas saw it was true. He was crumbling, his hand cracking and turning to dust, and then his arm, and then his shoulder, and then every bit of him, disintegrating into dust and falling toward the deep lights in the bubbling spring.

  He awoke with a start, immediately holding up his hand and looking at it, as if to make sure it was there before his mind totally left the dream. He looked around him; there were only three other passengers in his car. Outside, unfamiliar terrain rolled by.

  At the next stop, he stepped off the train onto the platform and wasn’t surprised to hear the nearby wail of a familiar guitar, the hushed growl of a man singing.

  He followed the sound to the other side of a nearby bus shelter, and there he saw the Blues Man who had haunted his dream. His head rocked back and his right foot tapped out time as his hands slid across the frets, massaging sorrow out of every note.

  When the song finished, Blues Man opened his eyes and stared straight at Lucas, almost as if he expected him to be there. He nodded as he picked a few more notes on his guitar, an interstitial piece between songs.

  “Whatcha wanna hear, son?” the man asked.

  Lucas shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  The man smiled, closed his eyes as if concentrating on a pleasant thought. “That’s part of the problem, ain’t it?” he said. He tested a chord a few times, liked what he heard. “Howzabout I play you something you need to hear instead? Folks get too caught up on what they want, they don’t ever hear what they need.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he launched into the next song.

  Spinnin’, you got me spinnin’ all around Spinnin’ so much I ain’t never been found And when you tell me you don’t mean it I don’t mind much, baby, cuz I seen it So maybe I don’t like the way it sounds But the answer is I’m spinnin’ all around

  Lucas listened to the rest of the song, transfixed, the world around him forgotten. Finally, as the song finished and the man’s eyes opened again, Lucas pulled a five-dollar bill out of his pocket and threw it into the guitar case. “Thanks,” he said. “I think I’m spinning myself.”

  The Blues Man nodded but said nothing.

  Lucas started to head back down the tunnel, but decided maybe he’d spring for a cab again. Only one person to recognize him in a cab, as opposed to hundreds of people on the Metro. Especially people riding back to the heart of DC on the morning commute. People who would be thrilled to recognize him and help authorities.

  He smiled, thinking of Viktor’s words. People ready to be heroes.

  He hailed a cab, thankful when the driver barely paid any attention, then told him where he wanted to go. After that, he pulled out his TracFone.

  A few moments later, Saul answered. “Well, if it ain’t my good friend who can’t seem to keep himself out of the news. Kind of early in the morning, isn’t it?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “I’d say we do.”

  “That Java the Hut you love so much—is it open early?”

  “Open early, open late.”

  “Then I’ll see you there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay,” said Saul. “This time, though, you can buy.”

  09:27:13 REMAINING

  Saul was already at the coffee shop when Lucas arrived. He was sitting at one of the tall tables, his heels hooked on the bar of his chair, carefully blowing the heat off his latte. The lid sat on the table in front of him.

  “Thought I was gonna buy,” Lucas said.

  Saul shrugged, indicated the seat opposite him with a hand. “Let’s just say I’m not a man known for my patience,” he said.

  Lucas sat, noticing Saul had bought him a cup of coffee and poured him a glass of water. “Decaf?” he asked.

  Saul nodded.

  “Thanks,” he said, picking up the water and drinking. He gulped down half of it, feeling the ice cubes shift in the glass before he set it back down again.

  “Killing people at rest stops is thirsty work,” Saul said.

  “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “I know that. Unfortunately, the TV stations don’t seem to agree.”

  He paused, looked at Lucas’s head. “Nice hat.”

  “Thanks. Really goes with the glasses, don’t you think?” He tugged at the large glasses.

  Lucas looked around the coffee shop, paying attention to other customers. No one seemed overly interested in their conversation.

  “So what are you here to tell me, Humpty?”

  Lucas stared hard for a few moments. “I know.”

  “Know what?”

  “About your back-door deals. Your work with Guoanbu.”

  Saul narrowed his eyebrows together the slightest bit, picked up his latte, and blew over the rim again. “What work would that be?” Blink, blink, blink.

  The blink was this guy’s tell; like the kid at the convenience store, he wasn’t much of a liar. A wonder he’d ever made it as an agent. Lucas held up the bag he’d retrieved from Kennedy’s dead hands.

  “The work in these files,” he said. “Interesting reading. Your contact at Guoanbu—your cute code name for him is Beast from the East, I think—drops money for you regularly. In return, you’ve been giving him names of agents—agents, oddly enough, who all seem to ha
ve died.”

  Saul took his time stirring his hot coffee, continuing to stare at its creamy surface as he spoke. “And where did you come up with these files?”

  “Your offices, last night. Took them with us in the van, and then I took them with me after . . .” Lucas paused, swallowed. “After the shooter.”

  “I see. And what about the other files?”

  “What other files?”

  Saul smiled. “Don’t you ever watch TV? The newsers have been very careful to say authorities have recovered some files from the van, which are—hmm, how did they say it? ‘Important to the ongoing investigation, although details can’t be provided yet for national security reasons.’ Something to that effect.” Saul sipped his latte, grimaced.

  Lucas looked hard at Saul. “No other files in the van. I got all of them.”

  “So you said. But let’s get back to the fascinating subject at hand: this little matter of two sets of files. If you didn’t leave behind any files, someone else must have planted them.”

  Lucas took another drink. “How’d you do it? How’d you set us up at the rest stop? How’d you even know we were going to stop there?”

  “You’re sniffing down the wrong trail.”

  “Who else would it be? You knew what files we had from your office.”

  “If you took files from my office, they must not have been that important. I’m not missing them.”

  “And your home.”

  Saul flinched, the slightest bit, which brought a smile to Lucas’s face.

  “You’ve got a thing for cuckoo clocks,” he said.

  Saul said nothing but placed the lid back on his cup and drank. This time he showed no reaction. Instead, he changed subjects. “I said I wanted information on your friend Snake and the others, not that I wanted them dead.”

  “I didn’t want them dead either.”

  “But you had no choice.”

  “No, I didn’t do it. There was someone there at the rest stop. He killed everyone in the van.”

  “Everyone except you. You might want to practice your story a bit before they drag you in.”

  “What, like you don’t know all this? It had to be you, your Guoanbu contacts, at the rest stop.”

  Saul set his coffee down again. “You’re trying to hardball me. I can roll with that. But let’s not cry when the other kid on the playground punches you back.”

  Lucas switched gears and tactics. “Look. Here’s what it comes down to. I have these files, and I know you want them.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you’re being played. Sounds to me like a lot of different files floating around. What makes you think you haven’t been getting spoon-fed?”

  Lucas, stunned by this thought, sat in silence.

  “Fact is, the only thing you have I’m still interested in is contact with other Creep Clubbers. Although, at the rate you’re plowing through them, the Creep Club itself might not last,” Saul said. “So like it or not, you’re gonna have to trust me now; you’re in this deep, and it’s getting deeper all the time. Let’s just clear the air; start by showing me what you have.”

  Lucas smiled. “So these files are planted and mean nothing to you. But you’d like to see them anyway.”

  Saul stared. “It’s the only thing we’ve got.”

  Lucas thought for a moment, grabbed the bag, and pulled out the files, flopping them down on the table.

  Saul began paging through the documents, his latte forgotten for the moment. Lucas waited patiently, studying the man’s face. No reactions, as far as he could tell.

  Finally, Saul pushed away the files, leaned back in his chair, and pulled out a pack of smokes. He pulled one from the pack with his lips, tilted the pack at Lucas.

  Lucas smiled. “I think I told you before, smoking will kill you.”

  Saul lit his cigarette, put the lighter back in the folds of his jacket, and smiled. “I hope it’s smoking that does kill me.” He considered the floor while he spoke. “Where’d you get those files?”

  “I told you: your office. Last night.”

  Saul tapped some ash onto the floor. “What I mean is, who sent you on this trail?”

  Lucas stared silently.

  “This stuff,” Saul said, waving his hand, “is worthless to me. Means nothing to me. In fact, I can guarantee you the files found in the van are identical to these. And the person who sent you for those files, well, that’s who I need to concentrate on.”

  Lucas watched Saul take another puff of his Camel, unsure how to play his next move. He hadn’t expected a curve ball quite like this.

  What could he do to . . .

  Well, he could put Saul and Viktor together, of course. Play them against each other, watch the fireworks. But that was a very bad idea—he could get his hand blown off by that kind of fireworks.

  Not to mention his leg.

  “What? Like a meeting, you mean?”

  Saul looked at him, stared for several seconds without blinking. Amazing. He looked away again when he spoke.

  “That’d be a start. But you’re running out of time.”

  Lucas nodded, thinking about the bomb on his leg. If only Saul knew.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  08:58:22 REMAINING

  Lucas wandered aimlessly, unsure what his next step should be. Saul’s words had unsettled him. Was he really being played? Were there really two sets of files? Why?

  He shook his head. No, not possible. He, himself, had creeped Saul’s house, unknown to him, and found the hidden information. Saul was the one trying to game him now. Part of the territory. Saul had, after all, been very interested in the files at the coffee shop. And he’d immediately requested a meeting with someone who didn’t exist.

  Just as Viktor had.

  He thought, again, of putting the two of them together. For Viktor, Saul would be the mysterious heavy who was backing Lucas’s efforts to infiltrate his mafia territory; for Saul, Viktor would play the part of the double agent feeding him files. The two could cancel each other out, the world would be rid of a thug and a traitor to the U.S. government, and all would be right again.

  Of course, Lucas’s leg would explode, and he’d die in the effort. But the greatest heroes were always the tragic ones, weren’t they?

  It was no good; no matter how many times he ran it through his head, he saw nothing coming of a meeting between Saul and Viktor—let alone the vast entourages they would surely bring.

  These thoughts, along with snippets of his dreams, filtered through his mind when he found himself at his hiding spot near the Lincoln Memorial. The packages Saul had given him were still hidden there, behind the loose stones, but he knew his subconscious mind had brought him here for one thing in particular.

  The cube.

  He retrieved the cube from its hiding place and turned it in his hands, over and over, looking for some kind of irregularity, some kind of clue, on its surface. He found none.

  He put the cube in his backpack, knowing already where he was going next.

  Half an hour later, he stood in front of the giant brick church, the Blackboard waiting inside. The Dark Vibration was cycling up now, bringing him first to the cube, now here. And so he went inside the building, flipped on the lights that illuminated the giant wall of nails and strings, and stood in front of it. After a moment, he felt compelled to drop to his knees, and even though this was no longer a church, even though there was no longer a cross or an altar here at the front of the sanctuary, he closed his eyes.

  It wasn’t exactly a prayer, because Lucas knew, deep inside, he had no prayer. It was a quiet moment for a lost soul chasing a lost cause. But strangely, it was fine. He would fail, yes, but he would follow the trail to its bitter end.

  When he opened his eyes, he felt a warm spot on his forehead. Above, somewhere in the deep recesses of the church ceiling, a tiny shaft of light had pierced the darkness through a hole in the ancient roof,
and somewhere in the deep recesses of that room, the shaft of light had found his forehead.

  Perhaps startled by the sudden light, a pigeon flew from its perch above, dropping low until Lucas could almost touch it, then circling him a few times with a frantic flapping of its wings, and finally flying toward the open door of the church and freedom.

  As it flew, Lucas knew it was the most beautiful bird human eyes had ever seen.

  He stood. And suddenly, he knew what he had to do.

  08:01:19 REMAINING

  Amazingly, the fourth-floor space above Dandy Don’s Donuts looked untouched since he’d last been there. Lucas half expected everything to be gone, tossed into a Dumpster, but all of it was still there.

  His totems lay scattered as he’d left them, waiting.

  He leaned over and picked up the scarf. The faint perfume was still there, just barely, but it brought back memories of Tricia. Her effortless laugh as she shared jokes with her coworkers. Her tendency to bite her upper lip when she was concentrating on something. Her—

  He shoved the scarf into his backpack, forcing himself to stop thinking of Tricia and his invented memories for her. It was time to put this right.

  After the scarf, he bent and picked up the other mementos. The photos. The notes. The knickknacks. All of it. Last of all, he retrieved the photo of Noel and her kids, their faces caught in perpetual smiles on their camping trip. She had been the last one before . . . before all this had happened. So she was the freshest in his mind. He ran a finger over the frame of the photo before turning it over and putting it into his pack with everything else.

  He pulled out the TracFone and checked the time. Almost seven thirty, which meant the day was just starting for the people who lived in the open, the people who laughed and talked and celebrated the day while they sat at desks topped by photos of their smiling families.

  Not the best timing. He would rather do this after hours, but thanks to the manacle on his leg, he wouldn’t live to see the end of this workday. He was now sure of that. So he’d have to do it now.

  He found an old stocking cap, still stuffed into the hole in the wall near his old makeshift altar. He put it on, replacing the Washington Nationals cap, and adjusted the giant sunglasses once again. A stocking cap in DC during August wasn’t exactly the best plan, but he didn’t have time to cut or color his hair at the moment. He added a large bandage on his cheek, knowing it would attract more attention than the rest of his features. When asked to describe him, most people would say, “He had a big bandage on his face.”