by Blake Banner
She turned on me, with bright, angry eyes. “This is war, Lacklan! You should know that! In war there is collateral damage!”
“Collateral damage! Are you serious? He is not collateral, Marni! He is a human being! A good man!”
“A good man that you were prepared to kill less than a week ago!”
“To save your life! Not to save my conscience!”
“Well, maybe I am a hypocrite after all!”
“Maybe you are!” I stood and threw my napkin on the table, went to the credenza and poured myself a whiskey. I took a swig and turned to face her. “What will you do? Escape back to England? Shack up with Gibbons in Oxford? Oh, no, he’ll be dead! You’ll have to find another academic to use! You know what they’ll do to me, right? After they have framed me for murder, they’ll kill me, too. So that’s two men you will have got killed, Gibbons and me, but hey, don’t let it worry you. At least your conscience will be intact.”
“You are one vicious, sarcastic bastard.”
I leaned forward, half-shouting, “You are going back on your promise! You are sentencing two men to death!”
She stood, shouting louder, “A promise made under duress to an organization that plans to exterminate and enslave the human race!”
I shouted back, “No! A promise to me! To stand by my side! To be my wife! And instead of honoring that promise you are sentencing me to death!”
“Oh for crying out loud, Lacklan! Enough with the melodrama!”
I stared at her. “Melodrama? Melodrama…? You are the one talking about exterminating and enslaving the entire race! We don’t even know if that’s true anymore! We have been offered the chance to change the direction Omega is moving in. You won’t even try! You won’t even give it a chance! You are so concerned with your fucking conscience, you are prepared to sentence two men to death and walk away from the one realistic chance we have of changing this organization!”
She didn’t answer. She just stared at me. Her eyes were resentful and her mouth was sour. I drained my glass and put it down. “You know what, Marni? I have had it with you. I have had it with chasing you, with your stupid way of doing things, with your lack of trust, with your screwed-up priorities. You killed my father, now you’ve killed me. Well, fuck you!”
I grabbed my jacket and my car keys and walked out of the house. I stood a moment in the driveway, looking up at the stars, feeling slightly sick. I lit a cigarette, climbed into my car, and slammed the door. I sat a moment, smoking and thinking, before I fired up the silent engines and pulled out onto the road.
It was a short drive, just fifteen minutes down MacArthur Boulevard and into the city. A left just before Washington Circle and I was on Pennsylvania Avenue. I pulled up outside her block and sat staring at it for a long time. It was a strange, red brick corner building, with arched windows and a jumbled tower at the top. Eventually, I lit up another Camel, pulled her card from my wallet, and dialed her number.
“Hello? This is Dr. Lara Banks. Who is this?”
“Hello, Dr. Banks. It’s Lacklan Walker.”
“Mr. Walker!”
I allowed an ironic smile into my voice. “I think when you’ve had a man kicked half to death, you’re entitled to use his first name.”
“Where are you? What do you want?”
“Don’t be afraid. I am not coming after you. Things have changed. Have you spoken to Ben?”
“Yes…”
“I’m in a fix. I need your help.”
“My help?”
“I know. Life is full of little ironies like that. It’s not just me. I think Omega will be grateful. Can we talk?”
She was silent for a moment, like she was thinking. Then, “Yes. Of course. Where are you?”
“Outside your front door. May I come up?”
“Yes.” Then, again, “Yes, of course, come on up.”
I hung up, flicked my cigarette out the window, and sat thinking for another minute before I climbed out and crossed the road. She buzzed me in to a luxurious brass and mahogany lobby, and I rode the elevator to the top floor. She let me in as soon as I rang the bell.
The apartment was a collection of vast, open spaces rather than rooms. The décor was all in black and white. The floor was black wood with a high polish, and white rugs were strewn here and there, apparently at random. The ceiling was paneled in white wood, and the walls were painted white, except for one, in the area where she had her sofas, chairs, and TV. There, one entire wall was white marble streaked with gray, and set into it was a black marble open fireplace. In the middle of the floor, a black dining table sat on a white rug, with twelve chairs set about it, and a white candle in the middle.
I stood looking around and she closed the door behind me.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“No. I told you. I need your help.”
“It was brutal what you did to my nurses.” She came and stood in front of me, frowning up into my face. “And to Nurse Rogers. You raped her.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I missed the part where she said, ‘No.’ How much do you know about the deal Dr. Gilbert and I made with Ben?”
She shook her head. “Not very much.”
“There is a lot riding on it.” I gave my head a quick shake. “It’s impossible to overstate how important this deal is.”
“I see…” She gestured at the sofas. “Shall we sit? A drink?”
“Yeah, I’ll have the same as you, and if you don’t mind, I’ll watch you pour it.”
She poured the drinks, and after she had sipped, I took her glass and gave her mine. Then we sat.
“Dr. Gilbert has got cold feet. We had just got engaged, this afternoon. We’d reached an arrangement with Ben, with Omega, that on the face of it met with all our demands and theirs.” I hesitated. “Yours…?”
She nodded. “Yes. I am Omega.”
I shrugged. “We were celebrating, and suddenly she started backtracking, getting hysterical, accusing me of betraying everything that we had fought for. I explained to her that she was putting my life and Professor Gibbons’ in jeopardy, but it made no difference. In the end, I walked out.”
She was frowning, like she was trying to understand what I was saying. When I’d finished, she said, “What I don’t understand, Mr… Lacklan, is why you have come to me.”
I sat back in my chair, crossed my legs, and returned her frown. “I would have thought it was obvious, Lara. You specialize in manipulating people’s minds. That is basically all about persuasion, or am I being naïve? I need you—Omega needs you—to persuade Dr. Gilbert, Marni, to honor the commitments she has made to me and to Omega.”
She combined a smile with a frown and made it look like skepticism. “OK, assuming for a moment that I believe you, which is not necessarily the case, why this miraculous turn around? A couple of days ago you were killing us off like flies. And today you are trying to persuade me to recruit Dr. Gilbert onto the team?” She shook her head. “That is not credible.”
I snorted. “It’s not credible and it’s not true. Believe me, Lara, if I had my way, I’d nuke the lot of you. But I am a realist, and the last phase of every war in the last two thousand years has been the phase of negotiation. I know when I am outgunned and out-maneuvered. I also know I can hurt you very badly—but I can’t win. So we negotiate. And through negotiation, maybe I can achieve my ends.”
She studied me for a few moments. Her expression had changed. She made a face and said, “You sound like a man who could be an asset.”
“That’s what Ben thinks, and it’s what I am beginning to think. But Marni thinks that is hypocrisy. I need you to change her perspective, make her see it differently.”
She spread her hands. “Well, do you want to bring her to see me tomorrow?”
“No. We haven’t got that long. It has to be now.”
“Right now?”
“Right now. If Ben and Hennessy find out about her change of heart, it could cost me and Gibbons our lives. And that i
s just the start of it.”
She sighed. “What do you expect me to do, Lacklan? I am a psychiatrist, not a magician!”
“I don’t know, Lara! But you have to do something. Talk to her! Try to persuade her! She won’t listen to Ben, she won’t listen to me. She sees us both as having a vested interest. But you, she doesn’t know you. She doesn’t need to know you are Omega. You are just a friend of mine, somebody impartial. Tell her I used to see you when I got back from England, as a therapist. Just use your techniques to make her see the consequences of what she is going to do!”
She sighed again. “Very well, but I can’t promise anything, Lacklan. I honestly think you’re clutching at straws.”
“If straws is all there is, then that’s what I have to clutch at, right?”
She stared at me, then nodded once. “Alright, let’s go.”
We left our drinks virtually untouched. She grabbed her coat and we left.
As we crossed the road toward the Zombie, in the dull amber of the streetlamps, I asked her, “Have you told Ben I am here?”
She shook her head. “Not yet, but I will have to.”
I studied her a moment across the roof of the car. “Just wait till you’ve talked to her, will you? Let’s at least try and make this work. It’s not too late yet, but once you tell Ben…”
She nodded. “Let’s do it.”
We drove in silence, moving through the city toward the river. Soon the city lights were falling behind us and we were in darkness, surrounded by dense trees, a deep wall of blackness against the night sky, and only the amber beams from my headlamps to show the road ahead.
Unexpectedly, as the darkness closed in around us, Banks said, “You scare me, Lacklan.”
I answered without thinking. “You only need to fear me if you’re my enemy, Lara.”
She stared at my face, but didn’t reply. Shortly after that, I turned onto Chain Bridge Road and a couple of minutes later, I pulled into the drive. The lights were on and I could hear music. I killed the engine, climbed out, and opened the door. Banks was just behind me. The music was big band jazz from the thirties and the forties. There was a lot of clarinet and it sounded like Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw. It was happy music and made a weird contrast with the stillness of the room. The table was as I had left it, but Marni was sitting in an armchair holding a martini, staring at the fireplace, where the flames were dying down to embers.
Banks closed the door and I went over and switched off the music. Now the only sound was the desultory crack and spit of the burning logs. She still didn’t look at me, but I said, “I’ve brought somebody to talk to you.”
She raised her eyes to mine for a moment, then turned to look at Banks, who was still standing by the door. Marni asked, “Are you a friend of Ben’s?”
I said, “No, this is Lara. She’s a psychiatrist.”
Marni threw back her head and laughed out loud. “So because I don’t agree with you, I need a shrink? Boy! You really have joined Omega!”
I sighed. “Don’t be absurd, Marni. Lara helped me a lot when I left the Regiment, to deal with all the issues I had back then. She has nothing to do with Ben or with Omega. I thought, if you could talk to somebody objective—if we could talk to an objective mediator, we might be able to resolve this, come to some resolution before it’s too late.”
Marni looked at her skeptically. “You just happened to be in Washington?”
Banks smiled at her. “No, I didn’t just happen to be here. I live and work in Washington. This is my home.”
Marni turned to me. “How come you’ve never mentioned this before?”
There was an edge to my voice. “Maybe because we have never actually spoken, because every time I have tried to get close to you, you have run away.” I sighed. “Do you want a drink?” She shrugged. I looked at Banks. “Will you have that drink now? The one you were going to have at your apartment?” She smiled and nodded, and while I poured, she approached Marni and said, “May I sit?”
“Sure.”
“Do you mind if we give this a try? I think it’s worth it, don’t you?”
I handed Banks a martini. She took it and sipped. “Thank you.”
I handed Marni hers and for a moment our eyes met. I smiled. “I guess the first thing is that I need to do is apologize. I said things I should not have said, and which I didn’t mean. I guess we have both been under a lot of stress.”
I raised my glass. “Here’s to fresh starts and new beginnings!”
We all three drank to that. But then Marni sighed and shook her head.
“Look, Lacklan, Lara, I appreciate what you are trying to do, and believe me, Lacklan, I do understand why you’re mad. But I am sorry, I just can’t go through with this. I cannot collaborate with the enemy. I can’t and I won’t.”
Banks sipped and then sighed. “Marni, you know, often, when a situation looks simple, black and white, and our options seem limited, a small change of perspective can suddenly throw up a lot of new options. I believe you love Lacklan, don’t you?”
She shrugged and stared down at her glass. “Of course I do.”
“And you understand, from what he has told me, that if you pull out of this agreement, it will probably cost him and some other people their lives…”
Marni nodded, still staring at her glass.
“Then can we at least agree this much, that it is really very important for us three, tonight, to reach some kind of arrangement that satisfies your conscience, but also ensures Lacklan’s safety?”
Marni drained her glass and handed it to me. “Can I have another, please?”
I took the glass and looked at Banks. “You want a refill?”
“Sure.”
She drained her glass and I refilled both of them at the sideboard. When I handed them back their drinks, Marni looked me square in the eye and said, “No. You have survived till now, fighting and killing, you can continue doing that. To quote your words just before you left, Lacklan, fuck you.”
Twenty Four
I stared at her, then bellowed, “What the hell is the matter with you, Marni? Have you gone out of your mind?”
“Fuck you!”
“Just talk to me!”
“Fuck you!”
“For crying out loud, Marni! What’s got into you?”
“Fuck you!”
“You had better stop saying that Marni, or so help me God…!”
“What? So help you God, what? What are you going to do? Kill me? Is that your fucking answer to everything? Kill! Kill! Kill! That’s all you know how to do, you fucking animal! Well, fuck-you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”
She got to her feet, walked to the French windows and stood looking out.
My voice was cold and quiet when I said, “It was you who killed my father…”
After a moment she turned to face me. “And he murdered mine. He was a murdering bastard, just like you. You are your father’s son, Lacklan. Fuck him and fuck you, too. Fuck you both.”
I walked away from her, out into the hall, out into the drive, to my car. I opened the trunk and pulled over my kit bag. I found the Smith & Wesson and loaded it with five 700 grain rounds. I walked back into the house to where she was sitting, with her eyes closed. There was a savageness, a madness to my voice.
“You think you can use me? You think you can tell me you love me in the morning, and then sentence me to death in the evening? You think you can write me off and sentence millions of others to death just to salve your fucking conscience? Well you can’t, Marni. Maybe you’re right, maybe I am a killer. But when I kill, it’s for a reason—a better reason than moral vanity!”
I aimed with both hands and blew her head off at near point blank range. I emptied the five rounds into her, then I went to the garage and collected two of the gallon gasoline cans I had seen earlier. I brought them back to the living room and doused her body and the chair with the contents of one, and the rest of the room with the other. Then I took the candle, went to the
door and threw it in.
I climbed in my car, lit a cigarette, and drove away into the night, not following any particular road, just heading north and west, following the Potomac, into the dark, toward the wilderness.
After about an hour, when I had reached the outskirts of Bedford, I pulled over to the side of the road, in the cover of some trees, and took Banks’ phone. I sent Ben a message from it.
“One thing I can’t forgive, Ben, is betrayal. Marni betrayed me, after I was willing on so many occasions to give my life for her. I have killed her, and I have taken Dr. Banks hostage. If you come after me, I will kill her. Allow me to disappear and I will let her return to you when I am safe. It’s over, forget me.”
I pressed ‘send’. Then, I climbed out of the car and threw the phone into the trees. After that, I spent half an hour finding the bugs in the car and throwing them after the phone. Finally, I climbed back into the Zombie and smiled at the beautiful woman sitting next to me.
“Before you go, I want to show you my house in Wyoming. We’ll spend a couple of days there. A honeymoon for the wedding we never had. Then, I’ll take you to San Francisco, you can fly from there.”
Marni nodded, leaned forward and kissed me.
“I will come back. We will make it happen. I promise.”
“I know. We’ll never give up.”
“Not till we’re dead.”
* * *
It was the next morning, while we were having an early breakfast of coffee and scrambled eggs at a service station in Indiana, that we heard it on the news.
“…in a week that has rocked the world, we have barely recovered from the revelation that a United States-made tactical nuclear device was smuggled into the United Nations, armed and set to detonate, with sufficient power to take out most of lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn, we are barely recovering from this devastating shock, when we now hear that a bomb has exploded in the very heart of the Pentagon, killing three people. But as if that were not enough, we are now hearing that the identity of one of the victims has been confirmed as that of former President Dick Hennessy. A tragic loss to the nation, that has left us utterly, utterly stunned. We can’t help but wonder what new horrors are in store for us, and pray, Bill, that this nightmare will soon come to an end…”