From out of the City

by John Kelly

  Schroeder has by now swallowed so much vodka that he is staggering around the room, stumbling over chairs and talking in a drunken falsetto. He’s as horny as a three-balled tomcat but Paula keeps appearing and disappearing just as quickly. This rolling series of newsflashes is no respecter of anybody’s performance – hers or his. Stop cutting her off, you fuckers! Let her finish! Let her fucking finish! And so Schroeder’s last conscious act on the night that President King is shot is to trickle the last drops of vodka onto his tongue and suck it all up into the tingling roof of his mouth. And then, with the world in genuine crisis and the television at full volume, he passes out – on his knees, humiliated, his ankles shackled by his jeans.

  When he awakes, five armed men in black balaclavas and boilersuits are standing in the room. One of them is pointing a gun directly at his face and another is binding his hands with plastic ties. That gun is the last thing Schroeder sees as a sack is twisted down hard around his head and he’s dragged out into Hibernia Road and put in the back of a truck with hard seats of busted leather and foam. He can feel the intimate, pressured heaviness of male shoulders tight on either side of him and he knows that they have come for him at last.

  And what am I doing while all of this is happening? I am trembling. Military or Branch or UIA, they have finally landed and now they’re taking Schroeder to the Park where aircraft host on a pentagram of missile-lined strips, and itch like pipistrelles about to swarm from the concrete ruins of the zoo. Richard Rutledge Barnes King has just been assassinated in Dublin and Schroeder is now en route to his end. And I am watching from the window. I have lived in the manner I live for eight long decades and now I am impotent at last.

  FIFTEEN

  HOODED AND ALONE, Schroeder is held for three days – a period he estimates simply by the number of meals he is slipped and the feel of his beard whenever they lift his hood just enough to let him eat. The food also suggests Fort Phoenix – meat substitute in a tube and breakfasts of coffee and something approximating cornbread. And although he has seen no insignia, he is more and more certain that his captors are American. The total refusal of anyone to open their mouths suggests even further that, were they to speak, their accents might well be the Cumberland Gap. But then again, even if they are Americans, he still has no way of knowing who exactly they are. Exactly.

  The good news is that he hasn’t been drugged and this would appear to rule out the UIA. Their favoured method is to seize people on the way back from the pub, inject them with some knock-out serum and then drop them off in another country altogether, so pumped up on drugs that they can’t even remember who they are or where they have come from, condemning them to spend the rest of their lives bewildered and homeless on the streets of some provincial town in somewhere like Norway or Poland. But right now, as far as Schroeder can tell, he has been spared that one. At least he still knows who he is. Anton Schroeder of Hibernia Road Dún Laoghaire. No. 28. And he has some idea of where he is. Or, at least, where he might be.

  But what confuses Schroeder is that he’s still in his own clothes and his hands are no longer bound. The Yanks would surely have him in serious shackles by now and he’d be all dolled up in orange. And even stranger again is the fact that he hasn’t been questioned – something which soon begins to worry him more than anything. Because if he’s not being questioned then why is he being held? Perhaps they already have all the answers they need? Intelligence culled from his diaries and his notes, ripped from his hard drive and delivered to them by Walton? Or by Roark? Or by that old goat at number 26? Or maybe they’re just killing time? Waiting for some expert torturer to fly into town with his tools.

  What unsettles him most of all is that his anxiety (and it’s never amounted to any more than that) seems to come and go in gentle waves, sometimes diminishing to almost nothing as he lies and waits in the dark sterility of his cell. Eventually he starts to understand that he’s sleeping through most of it, slipping into a dreamless state which while seeming brief, might well be lasting for hours on end – a sensation a bit like dying perhaps. But, that said, dying quite comfortably. In a monitored hospital bed in some deluxe departure suite.

  On what Schroeder guesses is this third day, he is brought into another room and lowered, almost with tenderness, onto a wooden stool. When the hood is removed, he is facing three men seated at a fold-up desk. They wear suits and ties and all three are fiddling with broken pencils. The one in the middle seems more human than the other two and Schroeder decides to concentrate on him. He’s about fifty with blue eyes and sandy hair scattered meagrely on a brightred scalp. His teeth are bad. He’s a smoker. And Schroeder now recognises him as the man with the giant fists who searched his bag on the street. The Beetroot Man.

  – Why am I here? Schroeder asks.

  – I’m not authorized to answer that.

  Yes. The accent is Irish. Derry. Donegal. Inishowen. Buncrana. Maybe Culdaff. Maybe Muff.

  – Are these two Irish as well? Schroeder asks.

  The Beetroot Man sighs.

  – No more questions. Thank you.

  – They look like Mormons to me.

  No reaction from the Mormons. They’re not the type to rise to ridicule. They’re the type to shoot you in the forehead. And the Beetroot Man continues.

  – Mr Schroeder, he says. You are to be released later this morning.

  – What was I in for?

  – I’m not authorized to discuss that.

  – Well I didn’t kill the President of the United States if that’s what you think.

  – Nobody said you did.

  – I was watching it on the telly. Surely you know that.

  The Beetroot Man glances at one of the Mormons.

  – I’m not authorized …

  – Authorized by who? says Schroeder. These guys? UIA are they? The Mormon Branch?

  It’s at this point that Schroeder understands just how much he’s been drugged. He is obviously far too composed given the situation. Here he is, face-to-face with at least two UIA operatives, possibly three, and he’s being a smart-arse. And the only explanation for that is that they have him stewed on something potent yet selective in its effects. It would certainly explain all the sleeping, all the missing time and, most especially, all this unwarranted calm.

  – So where exactly am I? he asks.

  The Beetroot Man is clearly the designated speaker.

  – That should be obvious enough, he says, when you’re released.

  – So I’m in the Park?

  Schroeder looks at the other two. First one and then the other.

  – And the last rhinoceros in Europe. What became of him? And you two fuckers have probably eaten all the squirrels by now too.

  The Beetroot Man scratches his eyebrow.

  – You will be released in an hour’s time and I must inform you, sir, that when you return to your home you will find members of the press outside your door. It would be very advisable that you do not talk to them under any circumstances. And I mean very advisable. That you make no public statement.

  – Statement about what? That I’ve been here for at least three days and nobody has even spoken to me?

  – You have not been arrested, Mr Schroeder.

  One of the Mormons stands up without a word and signals with his pencil that the conference is over. Then the other one rises and Beetroot Man nods. As they leave the room the Beetroot Man turns and fixes Schroeder with a stare.

  – Don’t be a prick, Mr Schroeder. Under no circumstances whatsofuckingever make any reference to your time here.

  An hour later Schroeder is released into the Phoenix Park. He’s well beyond the perimeter of the base now, on a road which leads directly to the Parkgate Street entrance. Unsteady and unshaven, he begins to walk beneath the beech and the lime and breathe the new air untainted by leather, plastic and disinfectant. It’s a bright morning and busy too – joggers, cyclists and rollerbladers enjoying as much of the land as is still open to them, ignoring th
e dull rotors of choppers which regularly fill the air with whacks and thuds.

  To Schroeder, who has now actually been inside Fort Phoenix and has just faced at least two of the really heavy guys, there seems to be something extremely naive about all this recreation, something brainwashed even with life in the Park seeming to go on as if nothing has changed. As if King has not been killed at all, as if Walton and Roark are still alive and as if Schroeder himself has not been lifted and released unscathed.

  Obviously I am not a witness to any of this, but the following and indeed all the prior detail on Schroeder’s incarceration are taken – verbatim for the most part – from his own notes. Horse’s mouth and, as ever, I must insist, even if his actions or reactions seem to you unlikely or out of character, that no other account is possible. There is no other account to go on and so I’m working with what there is and uncovering only what I may – in this case a very confused Schroeder, released from Fort Phoenix and scuffing along the grass, trying to gather himself, to assess what has just happened and work out just how drugged he might still be.

  He stares high up into the sunlit leaves and closes his eyes tight, trying somehow to squeeze his mind into action. And just as he opens them again a rattling black streak of bicycle flashes past, almost knocking him over a low chain fence. It’s Chantal. Margaret Lynch. Whoever Chantal is. Whoever Margaret Lynch is. He’s about to call out but as he steps forward he realises that she’s dropped a rolled up copy of The European at his feet and that she’s definitely not stopping to discuss it.

  Schroeder looks around to see if he’s being tailed, but he knows that if he is being followed, then there’s nothing much he can do about it now. They will already have seen Chantal cycle by. And they will already have seen the newspaper drop and, in any event, they will have read (and possibly written) whatever is in it. And so, with all the appearance of a regular citizen in the Park, Schroeder sits down under a swirling ash and unrolls the newsprint. He’s ready for anything but even so, he takes a very deep breath. The headline is blunt. You couldn’t make it up.

  PREZ ASSASSIN IRISH PRIEST

  And then Schroeder sees a photograph of a grinning young man in a clerical uniform and he feels as if his brain is being pulled out through the top of his head. He shakes the pages hard and tries to focus on a snap taken at an ordination many years before when that same face had pressed itself against the cold marble and smiled at the very thought of being called Father Claude. Prissy little Claude Butler from across the street prostrating himself and making rash priestly vows he would never be able to keep.

  … a forty two year old former priest … born in Dublin … an address in Liverpool … not known to have any connection with any terrorist group … acted alone … close range … turned the gun on himself …

  Schroeder’s guts start to writhe and nausea rises in his throat. He closes his eyes and drops his head between his knees. Turned the gun on himself. Jesus. Dead at the scene. Schroeder’s heart thunders and a freezing sweat breaks across his back and his lungs start to pack up as he eats the air around him for even the slightest drops of oxygen. And then, turning the page, what he sees next is a bigger shock again – his own impassive face staring out from the newsprint. His author’s pic from the so-called promotional campaign for Lucky’s Tirade.

  According to Pat Rogerson, a mailman in the area, the killer had been in recent contact with his childhood friend … Hibernia Road, Dún …

  The paper is full of it. Father Assassin they’re calling him. On the very same page in history as John Wilkes Booth, Charles J. Guiteau, Leon Czolgosz, Lee Harvey Oswald, Stefan G. Huffman and Mike Bradley Hanley. Assassins all – or so they say – and now Schroeder is himself forever linked to them all. Page after page of it. More horseshit from the mailman, then profiles of Claude stuffed with details Schroeder neither knows nor believes. The priesthood, the exit, an affair with a married woman, a spell in a mental hospital, heavy drinking, living in Belfast, drug problems – Benzedrine of all fucking things – and all of it traced back to a “normal” childhood on Hibernia Road, Dún Laoghaire. And then a sample of what is definitely Claude’s handwriting. The full details of his endless letter writing to the White House. Deluded nonsense with Claude convinced that the President now relied on him to do the right thing. The letter published here is all about King being a good man and “the true revelation of the Kingdom of God” being his only purpose in life. Mad stuff. Garbled guff. The word RIGHTEOUS everywhere in blocks.

  Schroeder bins the newspaper and hails a cab in Parkgate Street. The driver clocks him immediately.

  – They seek him here, they seek him there.

  – What the fuck does that mean?

  – I said you’d be in the Park. They said you were in Shannon but I knew you’d be in there.

  – Just drive, will you?

  – You going home?

  Schroeder puts the window down.

  – Yes. I take it you already know where that is.

  The driver turns up the radio and some hypocritical rent-a-gob is singing King’s praises, saying he was less of a hawk than people realised and that, in fact, he might well have been on the verge of adjusting foreign policy towards a more conciliatory position. He was a product of his time, says some other dose. A man of principle. Tough but also, it seems, a doting father with a keen sense of humour. A pianist like Nixon. A golfer like Clinton. A gardener like Ramirez.

  – Would you turn that shite off?

  The driver obliges and begins to whistle something by Mozart, eyeing Schroeder all the time.

  – The funeral’s on Friday. That’ll be a big affair.

  – Which funeral? says Schroeder to himself.

  – What’s that, bud?

  – Just get me home, will you.

  – Can I just say one thing to you, bud. There’s no way he done it. Your friend. You can’t just kill an American President. It’s impossible. There’s no way he could walk up to the President of America in Dublin Castle. Carrying a gun? No way, bud. Another shaggin’ stitch up if you ask me.

  Schroeder says nothing. It’s a long road home. The inside of his head feels like cotton wool, somehow squeaky and soft. His lips are numb, his eyes dart in circles, his heart rumbles like apples in a bucket and as the cab turns into Hibernia Road, it seems to stop altogether when he sees the size of the crowd at the gate. About fifty people with cameras and booms squeezed between vans all sprouting dishes and cables. And as the cab comes into view, the whole thing explodes into chaos and they attack like baboons at a safari park. They’re all over him as soon as he opens the car door and questions start firing all around him.

  – Why were you arrested?

  – Were any charges put to you?

  – Why did he do it?

  – Were you involved in any way?

  – Will you condemn the assassination?

  – Were you and the assassin close?

  – Were you in contact with him on the day of the shooting?

  – Will you be making a statement?

  Without a word Schroeder burrows his way through the heaving bodies, now moving like crabs on either side of him. It might be the drugs or the shock or both, but when he finally makes it inside and stands alone in his silent hallway, he realises that he’s flushing with adrenaline. It takes him a moment to settle but after a quick shot of Stoli he starts to look around the kitchen. No sign of any search anywhere. No evidence of disruption, however subtle. And it’s the same in every room, as far as he can see. Things are exactly as he left them and even the Glock seems undiscovered. But surely they must have searched the house? Surely every trace, digital or dust, has been examined, catalogued and analysed? Surely every floorboard has been lifted? Every jar opened, every tube squeezed and every sock unrolled? Surely they’ve scanned this place down to the very last silverfish and microscopic mite? They must have. Surely. He lies three-quarters prone on his bed and tries to think. This makes no sense. None of it. If they haven’t se
arched the house and if they haven’t questioned him, then why not? And before he can advance even a basic theory, he slips like a gentle avalanche into total darkness.

  But I will not sleep now. And maybe I will never sleep again. I know that when the drugs wear off Schroeder will awake with some of the truth of his situation pounding hard in his brain and, without any mystery balm to soothe him, the dark lizards of paranoia will crawl all over his face once more and chew at the rash of his four-day beard. Outside he will hear a ratchety magpie, a car door slam, an ignition and zoom and the scatter-call of a spooked blackbird bolting for another hedge and he will be shaken by every second of it.

  He will realise then that there are two new arctic bodies out there in the world – one friendless on a slab in a Dublin morgue, the other lying in repose in the East Room of the White House. At first he will think he has dreamed the whole thing, but when he lifts the blind and peers into the sunshine, he will understand so very clearly that this is all very real indeed. He will see the microphone people outside his door like dogs at a kill. And one of them will point right at him and steaming coffees will be dropped at the sudden sight of the spectre in the window – Schroeder unsteady like an ailing Pope.

  And he will crawl back into his bed, pull the covers around his throat and stare up at the light bulb as if it were some agent of good counsel. But because this is not some nightmare of his own design he will have no idea of how to even begin to assess its components. He will swipe at screens and keyboards, and everywhere breathless reporters will be standing on the very same cobbles where Paula Viola had stood, and they will all be telling the world, in all the world’s languages, that President King is to be buried in Arlington Cemetery with full honours and that many world leaders are expected to attend.