Kill - Two

by Blake Banner

  Njal shouldered his way through the crowd on his long, lanky legs, with his hands thrust in his pockets, staring around him like he was looking for somebody. He found his position by the ticket barrier and after ten minutes, he took out his cell, too. I reflected for a moment on the sad truth that there is no better way to blend in today than by staring like a moron at your cell phone. But I didn’t reflect for long.

  Five minutes later, the 207 from Brussels was pulling in, slow and smooth as a giant, steel worm, to the platform just behind Njal. It came to a stop and after a moment the doors opened with a loud hiss and it began to disgorge long streams of people.

  I pressed the speed dial, heard it ring and put the phone to my ear. After a second, I watched Njal do the same. I said:

  “Hello darling, have you missed me?”

  “Yuh, no, this is kind of disturbing.”

  “Well, what do you want to talk about?”

  “Always with the confusing questions.”

  “You’re Norwegian, right?”

  “Yuh.”

  “I thought it was the Germans who had no sense of humor.”

  “Norwegians have great sense of humor, but only Norwegians understand it. OK, I have seen him, and if you give me just a few moments… Yuh, OK, I am on it.”

  I felt a stab of adrenaline, smiled and started to move through the crowd, trying to keep the pace that we had established the day before. Into the phone, I said, “Oh, but that’s fantastic. I must try and keep pace with you. Tell me if I’m going too fast.”

  “No, the distance is good and the pace is about right.”

  Now, across the bobbing sea of heads and bodies, they came into view. Timmerman was tall, angular and well-dressed in a pale gray suit. He had gray, well cut hair and a dark gray coat over his right arm. He was walking briskly, with an air of authority, toward the exit. Behind him were two gorillas, both well over six feet, with very short, dark hair and the obligatory shades.

  They were pretty much like clones of each other, except that the one on my left had a goatee. They were both dressed in dark suits and both had crew cut hair—and they both stayed not more than three feet behind their boss. I took that in at a glance, laughed and said into the phone, “Well, things are turning out just dandy. Listen, I have to run for my train, I’ll catch up with you later.” I hung up, but Njal had already put his cell in his pocket. I stopped dead in my tracks, fifteen feet from the approaching Timmerman, and boomed in a loud voice, “Jean-Claude? Jean-Claude?”

  By now he was just ten feet away, frowning and looking bemused. I held out both arms and cried, “Jean-Claude Timmerman! As I live and breathe! How are you?”

  He had slowed, frowning hard now, just seven or eight feet away. I made toward him with a big, happy smile on my face, closing the distance. “Well, don’t you remember me? At the Fenningers’? In Malibu?”

  He said nothing. His bodyguards moved forward, flanking him. Njal was six feet behind them. I dropped my arms but held out my hand to shake his. “Perhaps you remember my father, Bob Walker. You would have known him as Gamma.” His face went pale and he tried to step back. Njal collided with the two gorillas. I saw his hands slap their necks. They turned, anger on their faces. He was backing away, half shouting, “I am sorry! I am sorry! My mistake!”

  I ignored them, stepped forward and took Timmerman’s hand, squeezed it and pulled him toward me. “Walk with me. I have a gun pointed at your belly and a team in La Grandville, in Normandy, watching TV with your wife and daughters.”

  His mouth dropped and I guided him away, toward the metro and the public toilets. He looked over his shoulder. Behind me, I could hear Njal shouting, “Please! Somebody help me! Something wrong with these men. Help me, please! A doctor! A doctor!”

  Timmerman tried to pull back. I squeezed his arm, speaking and walking quickly. “Stay focused, Jean-Claude, your whole future, and your family’s future, depends on the judgments you make in the next five minutes. Get it right and you and your family will be reunited as though nothing had happened. Get it wrong, and everybody dies. Do we understand each other, Jean-Claude?”

  “Who are you?”

  They were the first words I’d heard him speak. His English sounded good, and that was encouraging. “You don’t answer a question with a question, Jean-Claude, especially to somebody who is threatening to kill you and your family. In a situation like that, you cooperate.”

  We were trotting down stairs now. Njal’s shouting had stopped and I could hear his feet approaching at a steady run behind me. I said to Timmerman, “Can I count on your cooperation?”

  “I demand to know who you are! What is this about? We will not negotiate with terrorists!”

  I stopped outside the public toilets and smiled at him. “I am not a terrorist, Jean-Claude, I am from Omega.”

  He went a kind of creamy, waxy color.

  “I am not here to negotiate. And if you don’t cooperate, the next thing you see on my phone will be Katrina’s finger being removed with a pair of pliers. There will be no more warnings.”

  He started to stammer something about, “No… wait…” but I propelled him gently in through the lavatory door just as Njal drew level with me.

  “OK?”

  I nodded. “Try and empty this place, will you?”

  “Yuh, I can do that.”

  I went in after Timmerman. There were half a dozen guys standing around, peeing, washing their hands and inspecting their faces in the mirrors. I spotted an empty cubicle at the end of a row and pushed my prisoner toward it. Behind me, I heard Njal, in his big, Norwegian voice, say, “OK, guys, everybody loves Larson’s chicken, right? That crazy look, in the empty eyes, right? Is like, is he gonna kill me? Or do some crazy shit? So, now, OK, explain this: nobody fuckin’ loves me. I’m the guy everybody walks away from. But I am talkin’ to you about Larson’s chicken! And everybody loves Larson’s chicken! So why don’t you love me?” As I locked myself in the cubicle with Timmerman, I could hear him whimpering, “Come back…I am talkin’ about the chicken…”

  Timmerman’s eyes were wide and his temples were beaded with sweat. I said, “Take it easy, cooperate and everybody goes home happy. I want you to keep repeating that to yourself. Cooperate and everybody goes home happy. I have no need to hurt you or your family. Got it? OK, now, take off your jacket and your shirt and turn around to face the wall.”

  He swallowed. “What are you going to do?”

  I snarled, “Do it.”

  His fingers were shaking so bad I had to do it for him. I took off his jacket and his shirt, spun him around and pushed him against the wall. Outside, I could hear Njal speaking to somebody. “No! No…!” He made a sound like a loud raspberry followed by the sound of vomiting, then added “Allez! Allez!”

  I slapped the cake of C4 on Timmerman’s back and secured it there with three strips of tape in a six-pointed star. Then I took the roll of tape and ran a single strip six times around his body, holding the charge in place. There was no way he could ever remove it now without a very sharp knife and medical help. I turned him around to face me. He looked like he was going to vomit.

  “Stay cool, Jean-Claude. You are not at risk. It’s just a bit of insurance. Put your shirt and jacket back on.”

  While he was dressing, I took his cell phone from his pocket and removed the SIM, then opened the door and we stepped out. Njal was leaning in the doorway. As we approached, he said, “We should go. I think somebody went to get security.”

  We stepped into the corridor. I said, “OK, take the metro. I’ll see you at the Gare de Lyon. You have your ticket?”

  He nodded and walked on ahead on his long, lanky legs. Timmerman still looked really pale and I began to worry he might collapse on me, but I couldn’t let up on him. He said, “What did you put on my back?”

  I took hold of his arm like we were old friends. “Jean-Claude, I need you to pay attention and listen very carefully to me.”

  “OK, I am listening. Just,
tell me what to do. Please do not hurt my family. I will cooperate.”

  I gave him a smile I hoped was human and friendly. “That’s good. OK, I have some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that there is nobody with your family in La Grandville.”

  He stopped in his tracks, closed his eyes and shuddered. “Merci, mon Dieux!”

  “Don’t get excited, keep walking. We’re going to get a taxi.” We started moving again. “The bad news comes in two parts. The first is that the option of taking your family hostage is still open to us if we need to do that, OK? The second is that I just taped a square inch of C4 to your back. It’s a shaped charge with a stainless steel back, and if it detonates, it will blow your heart right out through your chest. The tape I used is VHB. That means very high bonding and it is stronger than steel rivets. That means, when the time comes, it will have to be surgically removed.”

  “Fils de pute!”

  “Right first time, Jean-Claude, son of a bitch, that’s me. But there is more you need to know. The detonator is a micro-SIM. I have it on speed-dial one on my phone. I want you to assimilate, truly understand, that whatever you do, however far you try to run, all I have to do is dial one, and you will explode.”

  We pushed through the door out into the street and we headed toward the taxi rank. As we climbed in the back of the nearest cab, I told him, “I’m going to give you five minutes to meditate deeply on all of your options. I need you alive, so be wise.” To the driver, I said, “Gare du Lyon.”

  TEN

  At five to two, we boarded the train to Madrid and inched our way down the crowded aisle toward our seats. Timmerman squeezed in and sat opposite me across the table. He was still pasty, but he looked like he was beginning to get a grip. People were pushing back and forth past each other, shoving their bags in the lockers overhead, finding their seats, stepping out for a smoke before we departed. He spoke quietly.

  “What is it you want from me?”

  “For the moment, Jean-Claude, all I want is for you to behave, relax, enjoy the journey. Later, I will want your cooperation on some very particular points. But for now, just relax.”

  He studied me a moment with serious, calculating eyes. “You expect me to believe that you will blast me, here, sitting at this table with all these people around?”

  I shrugged and smiled. “I’d put some distance between us first. It will be very messy. But as you’re asking this kind of question, ask yourself this: How would they ever link your death to me? All the fingerprints will be boiled off the tape. The detonator will be fried beyond any forensic use. I personally have no idea who you are. Your ticket was bought online by one Henry Winter, a man I have never met and who has no connection to me whatsoever. It will be an inconvenience to me if you die, Jean-Claude, but nothing more than that, and I will simply move on to the next name on my list.” I leaned forward with my elbows on the table. “But you should know that if you force me to dial one on my cell, you will also force me to make an example of your wife and kids, so that the next name on my list, Eta, does not make the same mistake.”

  His eyes narrowed at the mention of Eta. “You say you are Omega, but you cannot be Omega.”

  “Why? Because Alpha, Beta, Delta and Epsilon were all killed in Malibu?” I smiled and sat back. “OK, maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m the guy who killed them all. Either way, it makes no difference to you, because what I am, without a doubt, is the guy with his finger on the speed dial.”

  A disturbance behind me told me that Njal had arrived and was shoving his bag in the overhead locker. He loomed over me, then slid into the seat beside Timmerman. I asked him, “Any problem?”

  He shook his head. The people around us began to settle into their seats. The doors hissed closed and after a moment, there was a small jolt and we started to ease out of the station. I took Timmerman’s phone from my pocket, slid it across the table with the SIM card and said. “Call your wife. Tell her you’ve been delayed. It’s those damned Brits demanding their independence. You’ll be tied up all weekend, but you’ll see her when they get back. Think very carefully, Jean-Claude. Think of the trouble we have gone to, think about how much I appear to know about Omega, think especially about the consequences to your daughters if you try to be clever. Ask yourself if it is worth it, when Monday, we will be gone from your life without a trace.” We stared at each other for a long moment. I said, “Make the call.”

  My French is basic at best and I didn’t understand most of what he said, but I could hear her voice in the background and she sounded a bit mad and a bit disappointed, but she didn’t sound scared or worried. I deduced from that that he had told her no more than I had told him to say. At the end he told her he loved her and blew her a kiss. Then he hung up, put the phone on the table and said, “Eh, voila!”

  I took the phone from him and removed the SIM card again. The train began to gather speed. I said:

  “We reach Barcelona at half past eight this evening, Jean-Claude. We have a few things we can talk about in that time.”

  “Why are we going to Spain?” he asked. “Why Spain?”

  “No, that’s not how we do this. I have a number of questions for you, but I have no answers. Let’s start by discussing a few generalities. You knew Ben, right?”

  He frowned, but I couldn’t make much of it. He said, “Ben?”

  “Alpha.”

  His face cleared. “Ah, you call him Ben?”

  “He was my brother.”

  He went very still, his eyes narrowed slightly. “You said earlier…” I nodded. “Your father…”

  “My father was Gamma, Bob Walker.”

  “My God…”

  “What does that mean, Jean-Claude? ‘My God’?”

  “Of course, it has sense, you are Lacklan Walker.” I didn’t say anything. I watched him in silence, trying to read his face. At last he said, “You killed your brother. It is very powerful, this, very strong.”

  I shook my head. “I did more than that. I beheaded Omega One and I crippled your research programs in the U.S.A. But now, I need you to explain something to me. After Malibu, you were quiet, you were minding your own business over here. You were leaving me alone, and I was leaving you alone. Then suddenly you put a contract out on me. What made you do that?”

  He sighed, muttered something in French and looked out the window at the speeding countryside. “You are asking me to explain…” He shrugged and spread his hands in a gesture that could only be Gallic. “It is complex…”

  “I’m not asking you to explain anything, Jean-Claude. I am telling you to explain.”

  He sighed again and jerked his eyes around the train, like he was looking for the start of the explanation somewhere. “Omega,” he said finally, “is not an organization. You must know this. You are part of the family. You have to understand, Omega is a protocol! It is the final protocol. When humanity is in it’s infancy, you have protocol Alpha: make tools. When you have…” He glanced around, spreading his hands like he was exasperated at my stupidity. “…par exemple, basic industries in bronze or iron, you have protocol Epsilon, make empire. Rome was following protocol Zeta, the unification of cultures and religions…”

  “What is this bullshit you are feeding me, Jean-Claude?”

  “You tell me to explain! I am explaining!”

  Njal said: “Listen to him.”

  “There are twenty-four protocols. Each protocol covers a period of social development. Each stage of technology requires a protocol. We are at the end of protocol twenty-three, Psi.”

  Njal asked, “What is protocol Psi?”

  “When you have the technology for mass production and mass distribution, expand! And stabilize free markets!”

  “And after Psi comes Omega.”

  “Omega is the end. When technology surpasses human understanding.”

  I was growing impatient. I growled, “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means when technology leads us to the port
al of magic. When we are touching God!”

  “Zeta had to be a Frenchman. You couldn’t have been German or Swedish.”

  He shrugged at me. “What?”

  “The portal of magic! Touching God! You’re making noises, Jean-Claude, but you’re not saying anything. God, magic, eyewash!”

  He sighed and nodded. “OK, OK… I will explain in Anglo-Saxon terms you can understand. Again, for an example, Susumu Tonegawa, leading a team of researchers at MIT, has managed electronically to implant—map—false memories into a mouse’s brain. These memories are so strong that they control the behavior of the mouse. Now, we can explain this in very simple terms, that certain neural pathways are triggered by certain stimuli and these, in turn, trigger behavioral responses in the muscles. Bien!” He gave a Gallic shrug, pulled his mouth down at the corners and nodded. “But this! This is to be blind. Willfully blind. Because when we remember—you and I and this man here.” He gestured at Njal. “What are we doing? Yes, we are making movies in our head, we are playing the recording of conversations, concerts, the sound of the ocean on the sand, my mother’s voice telling me ‘I love you, Jean-Claude.’ We are recreating smells, taste, sensations on the skin.” He leaned forward with real passion in his eyes. “But, my friend, we are doing more than this. Think about it. When you look around you, see the landscape, see the people, when you listen to what I am saying to you, in this moment, you are not living in the present! Nono! You are remembering! Because all of this! All of this! It happen one tenth of a second ago! Everything that is your experience of life, is just a memory! Even as you live it! Because the messages take one tenth of a second to be processed by your brain!”

  He sat back in his seat, staring at me as though he had just dropped an atom bomb, and wagged a negative finger, shaking his head.