Hatched

by Robert F. Barsky

  “Yes. Yes.”

  He paused, and then under his own breath, and for his own self, for now, and forever.

  “Yes. I will. Yes.”

  Chapter 8

  When Jude turned off of Highway 40 and into the Nashville International Airport, he was sporting a remarkably revitalized Crackerbox that had made the New York to Nashville trip with an unprecedented degree of confidence. This was not altogether surprising, because not only did Ted pay the mechanic to fix what turned out to be a minor blown gasket, but he also paid for a complete revamping of the truck, from the alternator to the Z-cam. Ol’ Crackerbox had not run this well since Kennedy was in office.

  John Kennedy.

  Jude had been sold a bill of goods in regards to the precious commodity he bore, in a locked crate, and he rather suspected as much. But he had been richly rewarded, and understood that part of the reward included a premium for not asking too many questions. The obscene payment for the delivery had been Jude’s principle obsession as the clock made its way around, and around, and around, from a very early Manhattan morning, to a very late Nashville night.

  Ted had told Jude that the contents of the crate were documents and artworks belonging to Tom, who was anxious to hand deliver them to the extended family members in Nashville. He had also been told that although Tom had turned down the offer to join him for the long ride to Tennessee, he did want to be there for Jude’s arrival. There was some real risk inherent in this plan, and both Steve and Ted had tried to dissuade Tom from following through on the delivery. If something were to go wrong along the way, Jude might be forced to open the contents of his truck up for inspection, which would have been a disaster. Tom wouldn’t back down, and respecting the sacrifices they’d all made, the plan went forward as he had requested.

  Rather than make some kind of effort to hide the cash, though, they had agreed to just seal it in a container and hope for the best. If the truck broke down or, worse, if the truck was searched and the money found, they’d indemnify Jude, and immediately make the call to the treasury, in the hope of getting to the long-awaited negotiations rather than to the inside of a NYC jail.

  Luckily, there were no such problems.

  The newly refurbished truck made the ride in a remarkable fifteen hours, including stops.

  Jude was relieved, even jubilant as the final miles ticked off; but he was also totally exhausted. He rarely undertook such long trips, and had not done a serious distance in over a year.

  “Perhaps,” he mused to himself, “I’ll never need to again!” His wallet was bulging, literally, and he felt that the unexpected windfall might be the key to his ability to become an author, a real author, and, perhaps, the author who would be credited with finally writing the Great American Novel.

  “Yes!” he spewed at the thought of his eventual success and recognition. “Yes!” But then, as he pulled into the airport, twenty-five minutes early, he felt his body fading, his attention span paved under the thousand miles of asphalt he’d just traversed. Recognition later. Tonight: a really, really long sleep. He smiled to himself. In an extra-fucking-fancy hotel!

  Tom, by contrast, was serious, and even brooding. Inwardly, he was simply nervous, and deeply preoccupied.

  “Things have gone well,” he said to himself as the plane touched down. It was as though he needed to reassure himself. Jessica wasn’t there, and he’d promised Steve and Ted that he wouldn’t talk to her about the plan over the phone, and so they stuck to short conversations about love, about commitment, and about the perils that lay ahead, perils that could most certainly derail the fantasy of being together.

  He had moments when he thought to ring Ted and Steve up, and suggest that they just call the whole thing off. Selling the options would yield billions in pure profit, and if they wanted, they had many more billions in counterfeit currency, enough to satisfy their wildest philanthropic dreams. But no. The objective wasn’t short term, and if it had been, they didn’t need to undertake the plan in the first place. Long-term, the US was heading on a path that would ruin what each of them held dear. It was time to put a stop to the madness, and they had the perfect opportunity. Now. Right now.

  As Tom awaited the arrival of his checked luggage, he ruminated about the days to come. It was surprising that no unexpected impediment had hindered their march towards the US Treasury meeting. Here they were, five days away from calling in the stock options, and nobody had as yet recognized the implications of the plan. He once again took out his phone to call Ted and Steve. Instead, he chose the messaging app, and began to type.

  “Why hasn’t anyone noticed that the rare earth stock option clock was ticking?”

  He stared at “send,” and then deleted the message, fearing spyware of some kind. They had agreed to engage in all discussion face to face, in the warehouse if at all possible, which added a level of intrigue to their actions. At first, though, the exigency to speak face to face had been enjoyably anachronistic, as though all of the technologies of the past hundred years had been for naught. This rather quaint effort to rely only upon each other, in person, had made it difficult for them to explain their respective ever-lengthier absences from the offices they were used to frequenting. On the other hand, each of them had the autonomy that came with wealth, and the fortuitous ability to “work from home,” the mantra that had excited office workers, but then betrayed them. Most people who work from home do so after a long day of not working at home, so the net effect of the new technology was to further ruin the lives of the aspiring middle class. But it offered benefits for the haves, and Ted, Steve, and Tom fit that description. And so now, as Tom felt the need to figure out where they were before the balls of their existences came crashing down like so many New Years’ symbols, their orthodoxy about long-distance dialogue felt unrealistically confining.

  It was true that the attention in the media leading up to the election was mostly about the election itself, with a smattering of fascination, that would become obsession, in regards to these bags of money. And so the reason why there hadn’t been any warning signals to the impending rare earth calamity was in part because there was no reason to look at these rather obscure Chinese commodity options at this time, in particular because it was a sector of the financial world that had never been monitored closely. In fact, nothing untoward was happening in that sector; a group of companies, all dummy corporations set up by Ted through the combined purchasing blocks owned by himself, Tom, and Steve, had made significant investments in relatively inexpensive commodities—in China. Speculation like this went on all the time, and since 9/11 the US government was far more vigilant about “commodities of national interest” (CNI), like jet fuel and food, than they were about rare earth materials. The CNIs had been chosen in the wake of the destruction of the Twin Towers, and thus in a world that was rather different from this one. Nobody, not even Steven Fraser, had noticed this.

  Surprising.

  These thoughts were running through Tom’s head as he headed towards the ground-floor parking, where he’d agreed to meet with Jude. A text alerted him to the fact that everything was, as they say, going according to plan.

  Suddenly, Tom’s entire mindset shifted, and he thought of the community center where his father had sought solace, and found comfort. The madness of his plan made sudden sense, and he looked forward to the moment when he could finally embrace the people who his father had described as saviors, terrestrial beings with extraordinary generosity. They had taken his father’s cause as a kind of mission, and his father had promised recompense. Tom didn’t know that his fathers’ tears, his embrace, and his clear recognition of the Edgehill Community Center had been enough for the young Father Travis, who had taken the reins of the organization immediately following his master’s in divinity. Father Travis, no longer young, still directed the organization, and so when Tom picked up the phone to make the long-awaited call, Father Travis had answered. This was the second time that Father Travis had answered a call from Tom�
�s family. And now, Tom had reassured him on the phone, he would be rewarded for having done so.

  Chapter 9

  The news of the shooting was greeted with horror, and although there were several reports of the events leading up to it, the one certainty was that nobody was certain as to what happened that evening on Edgehill Road. It’s clear that Tom spent the night in the Union Station Hotel, and that his stay had been uneventful. Jude, desperate for luxurious surroundings in which to spend his riches, had chosen the historical option, the Hermitage Hotel. He had been lured by descriptions of its famous bathroom, which featured walls in gleaming lime-green-and-black leaded glass tiles, lime-green fixtures, terrazzo floor, and a gleaming two-seat shoeshine station. He had somehow imagined that “historic latrine” would be part of his own room, but learned that it was in fact in the bar, downstairs. As such, Ted also learned that Jude had spent an inordinate amount of time, and money, in that sacred space.

  The events of the next day were less clear. Tom, committed to delivering his “sacred package,” had relieved Jude of his cargo when he arrived at his hotel, and several hotel employees did attest to their having seen Tom with a rather unruly sack, with which he checked in that night. Hotel cameras also caught Tom leaving the hotel very late that night, apparently at around 2:00 a.m. He was seen carrying the same bag, but clearly less encumbered, suggesting that he had emptied out some of the currency, most likely in the interest of mobility. A taxi driver confirmed that his passenger had carried that bag right into the backseat of a taxi that dropped him off on the corner of 15th and Edgehill, the gateway into the projects. That same driver confirmed returning to the same spot one hour later, where a rather disheveled but considerably less burdened Tom gave orders to the driver to return to the hotel. The bag he had been carrying was, by the taxi driver’s report, probably empty.

  The next day, it was Jude who showed up at the hotel to pick Tom up, at around noon. The reasons were clear; Jude still bore a significant part of the cargo in his truck, and it was Tom’s intention to offer it to Father Travis in the name of his own father. After a brief stop in the hotel, apparently for coffee and a muffin, Jude drove Tom to the Edgehill Community Center and helped him to carry another large bag, presumably the remainder of the precious cargo. Jude was anxious to complete this short delivery as quickly as possible, since he was hoping to get back on the road to New York, and maybe even arrive on that same evening so as to wake up in his own bed the day after. Once he had helped Tom with the bag, however, Tom returned with him to the truck, and the two of them were seen talking in the cab. This was where the story became a tad incomprehensible.

  According to Jude, Tom was extremely agitated after delivering the bag to Father Travis, and had insisted that Jude speak with him in private. Father Travis, in the meantime, was standing outside the cab, anxiously waiting for Tom so as to be able to celebrate the amazing gift that he had brought to the Center. As far as Jude could recall, Tom had been enigmatic, ranting and raving about eternity and the divine, rather than simply carrying out the plan and returning to the airport for his flight back to New York.

  “Jude,” Tom had reportedly said, “you are now part of the plan. This generation offers sacrifices to false gods, who we will bring down!”

  “False gods?” Ted asked Judas to repeat the phrase in a phone conversation with Jude. “False gods? What the hell was he on?”

  “I swear, Ted, I don’t know,” said Jude. “He said that the plan was to bring down everything that was evil. Everything! I don’t even know what that means!”

  “Nor did he,” said Ted.

  “It’s, well . . .,” started Jude. “It’s not just the crazy talk. He also, um, he also seemed to be almost coming on to me.”

  “You?” asked Ted in disbelief.

  “Well, I don’t really mean it like that. Um, it’s not like he touched me or anything, but, well, he stared at me with really crazy eyes. It was as though he knew that something really terrible was going to happen.” There was a pause on the other end of the line.

  “How do you mean?” The line sounded dead. “Hold on a second, Jude.” Jude could hear that Ted was relaying information to somebody else, nearby, probably Steve.

  “Jude said that he was agitated, like he knew something was going on.” Another pause.

  “You still there?” asked Ted.

  Jude was in the lobby of his hotel, seated on one of the fancy sofas. His truck was packed and ready to go, and he was now held up by the proceedings in light of the shooting. He had been released from the clutches of the police questioning, but now he felt subjected to new levels of inquiry. He just wanted to go home.

  “Ted, can we speak about this when I get back?”

  “No, no, sorry, Jude. We need to, um, we just need to know where to go from here.”

  “I understand, I’m sorry.”

  “For what? Don’t be sorry, this isn’t your fault.”

  “It is. I brought him here.”

  “He paid you!”

  There was another pause, as the frustration of being in the middle of some incomprehensible transaction bore down upon Jude. Nonetheless, there was still that previously absent bulge in the front pocket of his pants, still substantial even after a night of ostensibly pissing as much of it away as he possibly could.

  “There were other strange things he said . . .,” began Jude.

  “I’m listening,” said Ted. “We are listening, in fact.” Steve had joined in the conversation through speakerphone.

  “He told me to, um, tell someone.”

  “Tell someone what?”

  “Tell someone, um, what was in the bags.”

  “Jesus!” That was clearly Steve’s voice, Steve who was always so resolutely effaced in contrast to Ted.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, Ted, I don’t, I swear. He said that I was part of a great deed, and that I would exceed everyone else.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know, I swear, but then he said that I needed to sacrifice the man that clothes me.”

  “That whats you?”

  “That clothes me. Clothes. Clothing.”

  “He was asking you to . . .”

  Jude paused. “Yes, that’s what I think he was saying. He was asking me to sacrifice him. He wanted me to, um, give him away. He said, um, this is going to sound crazy.”

  “I’m listening, Jude, take it easy. What did he say?”

  “He said that he needed to tell me everything, and that in the name of his father he had to act, but that his task would be done today. He said that I should behold the skies, for I was freeing them of the clouds, and that the star revealed in the wake of the clearing would lead the way.”

  “He lost his fucking mind,” murmured Ted.

  “He then left me there like that, in my truck. And walking back towards the community center, he—” Jude began to sob. “Walking back, he, he, walking, there were these pops, this sound, and he grabbed his stomach, and then covered his face, and fell down. Right there. He . . . he fell down. . . .”

  Chapter 10

  Americans were set to vote to return their president to office on November 8. One week before that election, two men wearing dark suits and carrying black umbrellas passed through the front door of the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a few blocks north of Wall Street. Preceding them through that door and into those hallowed halls were reports of an upward tick in consumer spending, an as-yet unheeded warning of unusual movement in the rare earth metals commodity futures, and an e-mail, still unread by any official likely to care, that the murder of a wealthy Wall Street investor may be connected to some larger intrigue. Intrigues, in the financial world, arrive by the truckload, as it were, and most will be discounted before ever being investigated. Tom’s death might have qualified for such an ignominious fate, but the presence of Ted and Steve assured otherwise.

  Once they’d cleared the metal detector a visibly shaken Ted turned t
o Steve, and for the first time since the news of the murder, he showed signs of his habitual humor. There was that grin, a grin of confidence, a grin that to Steve conveyed the fact that they were inside the treasury building, and that thus far there were no handcuffs, no armed soldiers, no assault. They had encountered uniformed officers at the door, but they were from some private firm with a name like Secur or Proteck or Investigatio, and were thus not to be taken very seriously. Ted and Steve followed their instructions through the metal-detecting station, past the pile of plastic bins, and into the inner sanctum of American capitalism. Even if fiscal policy is made in Washington, the actual machinations of the American financial world are put into play in this building. The US economy, and economies all around the world, had been bolstered, and, much more often wrecked, by decisions taken here, decisions with such far-reaching consequences that even the half-million gold bars stored in the basement were considered to be symbolic rather than reassuring.

  A brunette secretary sporting a formal, red dress and a collection of golden rings and bracelets invited the two men to sit down on the purple, leather couch. The bracelets adorned her wrists and the rings were on eight out of her ten fingers, and, upon closer examination effected by Steve’s discerning eye, could also be found to be looped into almost every possible ear piercing including, as he knew from a former girlfriend, her lobes, orbitals, auricles, daiths, conches, traguses, and rooks. As he pulled the fabric up on his silk, black pants in order to sit down, Steve discretely motioned to Ted with a flick of his head in the direction of this armored, golden goddess. Ted looked over at her, indiscreetly, and then once he had settled into his seat motioned towards his crotch, where he drew a small circle in the air with his index finger, as though inquiring as to whether her vulva was similarly adorned. Steve smirked. America had clearly taken a rather radical direction of late, it seemed.