by Blake Banner
I said, “What happened today is too complicated to explain right now. There is too much to do and we have very little time in which to do it. I need you to trust me and believe that nothing is more important to me than your safety. This house is a fortress. All the windows are bullet and blast proof. There is a perimeter of alarms and booby traps not even I could get through.”
Sean grinned and I winked at him.
“But I’m not going to keep you here in a prison. I’m going to call an old friend who owes me. He’ll take you somewhere safe and look after you until this is all over. I will deal with it, and it will be forever.” I studied their faces. “OK?”
Primrose tried a smile and nodded.
Sean said, “Can I stay? Remember, I saved your life back in Independence!”[2]
“Not this time, buddy. I need you safe and looking after your mother and Primrose for me.” I smiled. “But you’ll like Bat, he was with me in the Regiment.”
Abi spoke in a very quiet voice. “Who is Bat?”
“Bat Hays, he was a sergeant. We worked together often. I can’t think of anyone I would trust more, outside this room.”
Kenny said, “Would you like me to contact him, sir?”
“Yes, tell him I said to drop whatever he’s doing and come here right away. Send him some money if he needs it. Tell him I need him here within twenty-four hours.”
“Lacklan…” It was Abi.
I glanced at Kenny and gave him a nod. He left and I turned back to her.
“Lacklan,” she said again. “We need to talk.”
“Yes, but first I need to make you safe. Now, until Bat arrives…”
She stood. “Will you please come into the study with me?”
I watched her walk out of the room and said to the kids, “Don’t go outside. We’re right next door. I’ll be back in a moment.”
I joined her in the study and closed the door behind me. She was standing at the window with her back to me, watching the shaving foam clouds shift across a luminous sky, above the bowing, tossing trees. Her voice, when she spoke, seemed to be disembodied.
“You said this was over. You said you’d put an end to it.”
“I thought I had.”
“Who were those men, Lacklan? Don’t lie to me. Tell me the truth.”
I made to move toward her, but she turned to face me and I found I couldn’t. I sat on the arm of an old burgundy chesterfield and sighed.
“I can’t be sure. I am assuming they are part of Omega. I’ve mentioned them to you in the past.”
“You never explained. You said they were finished.”
“I thought they were, Abi. It’s an organization my father was involved in. They used to wield a lot of power, but I have done them a lot of damage.” I hesitated, not wanting to tell her too much. Information can be power, but it can also be a death sentence. “When I met you, I decided to retire, but I also realized that they were not going to let me do that. They were going to keep coming after me until either they killed me or I destroyed them. So I…” I watched her face a moment, then said, “I cut off the head, and hoped that the body would die. I thought it had. All my associates thought it had, too. All the signs were that they were all but spent, at least in the U.S.” I shrugged. “Maybe they are.”
“If they are, then who were those men?”
“I keep telling you, I don’t know. The only thing I can think of is Omega, but Abi, I was ten years in the SAS. We hit a lot of people, from Islamic terrorists to drug cartels.”
She shook her head. “They were not Arabs and they were not drug traffickers. You know as well as I do that they were military. Christ, Lacklan, they were practically in uniform.”
“Look, Abi, I can’t have you and the kids involved in this. The less you know, the better it is for you. I’m going to have Bat take you somewhere off the radar, somewhere safe, until I can sort this out.”
Her eyes flicked over my face, reading it as though she was reading a letter, a letter that wasn’t telling her what she wanted to hear.
“It will never be sorted out, will it, Lacklan? It will never be over, it will never end.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You have taken on…” She shrugged and gave a small laugh. “You’ve taken on the world. There will always be a cruel, corrupt, power-hungry empire seeking to control the world, Lacklan. The Greeks, the Romans, the Vatican, Napoleon, the British, the Germans, us… they are all Omega. You are one man.”
I searched in her eyes. “Am I?”
She came up close and held my face in her hands. “If it were just me, I’d be out there with you, gun in hand. I love your passion and your belief. But it’s not just me. It’s me and my children. I can’t expose Primrose and Sean to this kind of threat. You know I can’t.”
“What are you saying?”
Her hands dropped to my chest, where she absently smoothed my shirt. “It’s not just me,” she repeated.
“I am going to make sure you’re safe.”
“I’m sorry.” She didn’t look at me when she said it. She moved away, back to the tall window, where she seemed to be dwarfed into a dark silhouette.
“Are you divorcing me?”
“I have to… we have to. That woman who was killed today, that could have been any one of us.” She turned to face me. “It could have been Primrose, or Sean. It could have been all of us. I can’t, Lacklan. I can’t have my children living like this. It isn’t fair.”
I went to her and took her shoulders. “If I fix it, if I can prove to you that I have fixed it, will you come back to me?”
She wouldn’t look at me. She said again, “It isn’t just me…”
“What do you mean by that? You keep saying it. You know I would do anything for the kids…”
At last, she met my eyes and shook her head gently. “That’s not what I mean, Lacklan. That’s part of it, but… But I know, Lacklan. It’s not just me, is it? I am not the only one…”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m in love with you, Lacklan, like a silly sixteen-year-old. I have loved you since you came into my bar that day, carrying poor Peggy. And I know you love me—us. I don’t doubt that. I know you are a good, honorable man…” a faint smile, “…in your own, unique way…”
I shook my head. “What is this? What are you driving at, Abi?”
She closed her eyes, heaved a huge sigh and sat on the windowsill. When she looked at me again, she said, “I know that you are not in love with me, Lacklan.”
“That’s not true!”
“Stop kidding yourself. You and I both know that you are in love with Marni.”
The room seemed to rock. I said, “No,” but my voice sounded odd, as though it was not my own.
“I have seen how you look at her, how you talk to her and listen to her. She has…” She shrugged, shook her head in a gesture of helplessness. “She has access to you, Lacklan. She’s on another continent and she is closer to your thoughts and feelings that I can ever hope to be. And it’s all part and parcel. She is a part of your world, of the risks and dangers which you take for granted. I love you, Lacklan, but I can’t live like this. I can’t do it—any of it.”
I said, “You’re wrong,” but it sounded lame even to me. Because I knew, I had always feared, that there was truth in what she was saying.
She reached out and took my hand gently by the fingers. “If you ever get her out of your system, if you ever get all of this out of your system, call me. Maybe I’ll be waiting for you, but I can’t promise.”
I gripped her hand. “This house—it will be very empty without you.”
She smiled, like she was smiling at a blind man who asks what the color blue is like. “It has been empty for us, Lacklan, all this time. We’ve been waiting for you to come home. But even when your body is here, your mind is away, and we don’t know where to reach you, or how.”
“I am so sorry.”
She stood, held my face again and
kissed me. “Sort it out. Decide who you are, and what you want. Then do it.”
There was a tap at the door. Kenny opened it and peered in.
“Mr. Hays is on his way, sir. He expects to be here by this evening.”
I nodded and he left, closing the door behind him. I went and sat in one of the chairs by the cold fireplace.
“You’ll employ my father’s attorneys. I’ll use my own. We’ll make it as acrimonious as possible, but we’ll keep it quiet, no publicity, no scandal. Omega will learn about… about it, from your attorneys. You hit me as hard as you can. You have to screw me for every cent you can get. You foul mouth me to your lawyers. You call me a son of a bitch, a two-timing bastard. You convince them that you hate me.”
“Lacklan…”
“I’ll come after you, too. I’ll try every trick in the book to keep my money from you. It has to look real. But we keep it from the kids. All we need is for Omega to believe that we no longer care for each other. It must be acrimonious and quick, and then you leave town.”
She nodded. “I’m so sorry, Lacklan.”
“No, I am. I didn’t realize…” I sighed. “I should have realized from the start that I couldn’t do this. Not yet. I thought, I hoped, I had come home.”
She came to me and gave me a long kiss that was full of meaning. Then she left the room. I sat awhile, staring at the empty grate, the dark, cold soot, and thought about the huge, empty house, and the silence that would settle in and make its home there. I didn’t notice the day grow old outside. I didn’t notice the shadows grow long across the lawns. I didn’t notice dusk creep in and turn the air dark, like cold soot in a dead fireplace.
Eventually, there was a tap on the door and I was surprised to see that outside, it had grown dark. The door opened and I saw Kenny’s silhouette stenciled against the light in the hall.
“Sir, dinner will be served in about half an hour. Mrs. Walker asks if you will join them for a drink before dinner. I anticipate that Mr. Hays will be here shortly.”
I nodded. “I’ll be right out, thanks, Kenny.”
“Shall I switch the light on, sir?”
“Yeah, probably a good idea, old friend. Kenny…?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You better get Henry Winter together for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
He switched on the light and left. The lights turned the glass in the windows black. In the black glass, I could see my ghost looking back at me. She had been right in what she had said. I had to decide who I was, what my purpose was. Maybe, maybe one day I could play lord of the manor, with a wife and children, but that time was not now. Now, I had to accept. I had to accept the reality of what I was.
So what was I?
I was what I had always been, since I was a kid. A destroyer, a killer, a dark force of destruction. The time had come to stop playing house. The time had come to open the gates of Hell and destroy every last vestige of Omega, or die in the enterprise.
I stepped into the hall as the bell rang. I looked through the spy hole and opened the door. Bat Hays was there, six foot four of solid muscle, grinning ear to ear in his broad, obstinate black face, laughing his deep, guttural laugh, with his kit bag by his side.
“What have you been up to then, sir? Who have you bloody upset now?” We didn’t embrace. British guys don’t embrace other guys. We shook hands like we were trying to wrench each other’s arms out of their sockets and slapped each other on the shoulder instead, while he stepped into the hall and looked around. “Is this your fahkin’ house? This is where you fahkin’ live? Bloody hell, mate! And you was always so tight in the mess, sir!” He laughed noisily, then stopped suddenly as I closed the door, staring at me hard. “What’s up? Why the call?”
I stood looking at him with my hand still on the door handle, suddenly pleased, happier than I had expected to be, to see a brother from the Regiment, something solid I knew I could depend on in a world that seemed suddenly to be dissolving into chaos. I slapped him on the shoulder and propelled him toward the drawing room.
“It’s a long story, Bat. You better come in and have a drink, and something to eat. I’ll introduce you to my…”
I faltered. He stopped and turned to me, reading my face.
“Oh, shit,” he said. “Women. Wherever there’s trouble, you can bet there’s a bleedin’ woman near by.”
THREE
Two days later, I was in the Zombie, burning up the I-80, headed for Los Angeles. The Zombie is a monster. To look at, she’s a matte black 1968 Mustang Fastback. That’s her chassis. But under the hood, she has two lithium batteries and two insane motors that deliver eight hundred bhp, one thousand eight-hundred foot-pounds of torque, straight to the back wheels. She’ll accelerate from 0-60 in just over one and a half seconds, spreading your face all over the rear windshield in the process, and reach a top speed of 200 MPH. And she does it all in deadly silence. With the modifications I had made to her, if you drove within the speed limit, she had a range of about five hundred miles, so I could make it from Boston to L.A., stopping just six times to recharge.
Now, I had the windows down, Led Zeppelin pounding out the Immigrant Song full volume on my sound system, and I was speeding west from Lake Michigan toward Iowa. I poked a Camel in my mouth, flipped my ancient brass Zippo and lit up. I took a deep drag and let my mind roam over the events of the previous day.
Bat had taken Abi and the kids to the New York apartment. There they had contacted my father’s attorneys to start divorce proceedings. It had been painful saying goodbye, but now, on the open road, though I missed her and Primrose and Sean, I had a strange sense of liberation, also. I realized that the fear for their safety, the responsibility for their wellbeing, had been a millstone hanging heavy around my neck. With them safely in Bat’s hands, and Omega believing we were estranged, I had only myself to worry about, and that felt good.
I glanced at the speedometer and saw the needle creeping up towards the century. I glanced in the mirror. There were no cops visible. The first strains of Hotel California sounded. I smiled and relaxed.
I was returning to Los Angeles, not because that was where I had managed to decapitate the U.S. branch of Omega[3], but because there was a man there I thought might be able to help me understand what had happened and, most importantly, what I could do about it. The man was Jim Redbeard, a semi-retired university professor, doctor of philosophy, clinical psychoanalyst and uncompromising anarcho-capitalist who had made a fortune as a best-selling self-help guru. He had helped me out in the past, and I was hoping he would help me out again now.
He was a big, anarchic, long-haired, red-bearded giant of a man with an appetite for beer, whiskey and cigarettes. He had told me back then that, like me, he was a destroyer, and what he aimed to destroy was the powers that sought to rule the world by taking control of our minds. He had a well trained, well funded organization and he had asked me to join it. I am not a big joiner. I joined the SAS, stayed for ten years, made Captain and that was about all the joining I was prepared to do in my life. Redbeard and I had parted friends, and I had decided I liked him. I had also decided that he and his organization could help me.
It took me the better part of two days to get there. I stopped twice to sleep for four hours, but other than that, I drove nonstop, and wherever the road was clear, I let the monster have its head. I set out at four P.M. on Monday, and at twelve noon on Wednesday, I rolled up outside Jim’s house on Paseo de la Playa, Malaga Cove.
It was an inconspicuous house, double fronted, beige, with a big rubber plant and a pine tree out front. I put my car in front of his double garage, blocking his exit, and climbed three steps down to his front door, which was partly hidden by a saguaro cactus and two yuccas. It opened before I could ring the bell.
I had forgotten how large he was. He was six six at least, with fair hair down below his shoulder blades and a thick, copper beard that reached down to his chest. His eyes were long, above high cheekbones, making his
face oddly diabolical. After a moment, he smiled at me. The smile was as diabolical as his eyes.
“I didn’t expect to see you again, but I am glad to. Come on in. Will you stay for lunch?”
“I just drove three thousand miles. I’d like to stay for lunch and dinner.”
He laughed and said again, “Come on in, Lacklan,” reaching for my hand with a huge paw. “You are very welcome.”
We shook and he led me into a broad hallway with stairs on the left leading to an upper floor. The hallway gave not so much into a room as a large space, or a collection of spaces, designed variously for talking, reading, cooking or eating. There was a smell of roasting lamb on the air and I noticed, in the large, open-plan kitchen, an attractive, dark-haired woman standing up from the oven. She smiled at me as I passed. Jim grinned at her.
“Maria is roasting a lamb. My intuition must have told me I would have a guest. We always have lamb on Odin’s day, but not always a whole one.”
He talked as he walked, with long, lanky strides, down two steps into a broad area with polished wooden floors, scattered with bull skins and sheepskins. Several logs burned in a large, open fireplace. Its mantelpiece was a huge beam of seasoned driftwood, seven or eight feet long. Comfortable, over-stuffed sofas and armchairs were scattered apparently at random around the fire, flanked by tables, some supporting large, interesting lamps. Everywhere, there were pages from newspapers, open magazines, and books stacked on top of each other. The walls were lined with books. There must have been several thousand of them, from floor to ceiling, on every conceivable topic.
To the left of the fireplace, there was an area that was obviously for dining. The table was solid oak, chipped, scarred and dented. It looked ancient and had six chairs set around it, each one different in some way. Each one, in its own right, a work of art.
On the right of the fireplace, a set of sliding glass doors stood open onto a decked terrace that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. A pleasant breeze moved the amber drapes that hung beside the doors. Outside, on the terrace, a large, pine table was set for two, with a large, wooden salad bowl and a loaf of bread on a wooden board.