I owe her that much.
“Izabel…you are going to die today”—my hands begin to tremble and sweat—“…and…and there is nothing I can do to stop it.”
I see Izabel’s chest fall, followed by her eyelids; tears seep from their confines and stream down her dirty cheeks. If only I could kiss the tears away, just one more time.
I am sorry Izabel. I am sorry for the day we met, for not taking you back to Javier Ruiz’s compound, for not handing you over to Izel when she came for you in the motel; I am sorry that my weakness has put your life in peril; I am sorry that because of me you will die long before you have had a chance to live your life. A real life. A life untouched by the pain and the horrors in which suffocate me and the only life I know. I am sorry for falling in love with you. I am sorry for everything.
These words I wish to tell her.
But I cannot.
I cannot because…I am afraid.
I look down at the soiled stones beneath my feet as if they can comfort me somehow. But they turn their backs on me instead, leaving me not even a shoulder.
“No need to scare the girl,” I hear Apollo’s voice distant in my ears—mostly all I hear are my thoughts. “You didn’t have to tell her the truth. And I wouldn’t have said anything, bro. As a courtesy. But whatever. Your fuckup, not mine.”
“I will tell the truth about Marina—I will tell many truths on this day,” I announce, but then turn my face to Izabel. “But let it be known that I will do this only because Izabel deserves to know the real me.” I look away from Izabel and glare at Apollo. “Nothing that I say is because you want me to say it.”
He smiles.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he says, laughter in his voice. “If you know you’re gonna die—that she’s gonna die—then why dig your grave that much deeper? You’re a fucking enigma, Victor.” He laughs out loud.
I look Izabel in the eyes again, and all I can think about as she stares wordlessly back at me, is if she will be able to forgive me for all that I have done.
But in her eyes I see nothing but pain; no accusation, no confusion, no more desperation. Just pain. And it tears me up inside.
Apollo wants more than my death as revenge for his beloved twin sister—he wants the woman that I love to know the real Victor Faust; he wants to expose me to the one and only person in the world who can hurt me; he wants the woman whom I love to suffer in place of his sister who loved me deeply, and died because of it.
He wants me to suffer. And on this day, he will get it.
“You have the stage, Victor Faust,” Apollo announces, pulling me out of a guilt-induced trance.
Izabel shakes her head, her way of telling me that I don’t have to do this.
I nod at her once, slowly and with repentance, telling her that, yes, I must.
Softly she closes her eyes.
Softly I close mine.
And regretfully, I open the doors wide to my past, and let in the sterilizing light.
Victor
Two years before Artemis…
Safe Houses, to me, were not exactly what they were meant to be. In the beginning, I used them for their purpose, I hid out in them in various parts of the United States, and the world, while on missions, and I took advantage of their benefits the way many men, and women, would. But when I met Marina in Safe House One, hidden deep in the Oregon wilderness, I got my first taste—since I was a child—of what the outside world was really like. What I was missing from it.
Marina was a beautiful woman of twenty-nine, with a voluptuous figure like a 1940s movie star, and long, curly blond hair like Marilyn Monroe. I had never seen a woman like Marina before; I had never been bewitched before, but Marina, emerging from the doorway of her tiny house like a goddess from a bed of feathers and gold, cast such a spell on me that I came close to losing everything I had worked so hard for.
“Why do you always come to me, Victor?” Marina asked in a voice of silk; she nuzzled against me in her bed; the smell of her perfume mingled with our sex made me want to take her all over again.
Her fingers danced along my chest, over my collarbone, and found my mouth.
I held her hand and kissed her fingers.
“I like coming here,” I told her, and kissed her fingers again. “You make me forget about…everything out there.”
Marina raised her blond head from my chest; I could feel the cottony softness of it tickling my side.
“I know you probably won’t tell me,” she said, “but what exactly is it that you do out there? You know, that makes you want to forget.” She batted her thick black eyelashes at me, but it was in no way an act of seduction; Marina always batted her eyes when she spoke.
Running my fingers through her soft hair, I looked up at the ceiling, and I thought about telling her. I wanted to, more than anything in that moment, because it was just she and I alone in the house, far away from the world, and I felt like I could trust her and could tell her anything. I had never had that before. I could not even talk to my brother about my life.
But I told her nothing I had not already told her.
“Does anyone really enjoy their job?” I moved around the truth. “Unless it’s a billionaire, or one of the lucky few who make a living doing what they love, no one likes to work, and everyone complains. I am no exception.”
Marina smiled carefully at me, leaned over and pressed her plump lips to my nipple, and then sat up on the bed next to me. I watched with admiration—and lust—how her long hair fell around her powder-white shoulders; my gaze secretly took in the fullness of her breasts, the roundness of her hips and butt—I always wondered what compelled women to be so thin. Not that’s there is a thing wrong with thin, but…well, there was just something about Marina.
“You always say the same thing,” she said, but did not hold it against me.
“And you are paid to know only what I tell you,” I say, also in a kind manner.
She smiled again and got up from the bed, slipped her soft arms into a white see-through robe that fell to the middle of her thighs. She lit a cigarette. I never liked cigarettes, or women who smoked them, but…well, like I said, there was just something about Marina.
“How do you feel about me, Victor?” she asked, and it surprised me.
I sat up on the bed too, watching her as she gazed at herself in the mirror on the vanity, patting down her sex-frizzed hair; a coil of smoke rose from the end of her cigarette.
When I did not answer soon enough, she turned from the mirror, looked right at me, and then said, “You don’t have to answer that. But if I were to ask you to help me get away from here”—she stopped abruptly, her big sultry eyes becoming more childlike and afraid—“I mean…would you help me if my life was in danger?”
I got up from the bed immediately, and walked naked across the room toward her, but she put up her hand and took two steps backward.
Shocked by her fearful reaction, I came to a dead stop.
“Marina, what is it?” I tried to approach her again, more slowly, but for every step I took forward, she took one backward, and so I gave up.
“Please don’t kill me,” she said.
“What?” I was so shocked that for a moment it was all I could say.
She took a long drag on the cigarette and then set the rest in an ashtray on the dresser, left it burning. I noted that her hands were trembling—she was shaking all over.
“I know that if I ask too many questions,” she began, “and especially if I ask you to help me, there’s a good chance you’ll kill me for it.”
“I’m not going to kill you—”
“How do I know that?” she cut in.
“Because I have no reason to kill you,” I said. “And because…I care about you—now tell me, Marina, what is going on? Why is your life in danger? And if you thought I would kill you for asking for my help, then why did you ask?”
“Because I’m desperate, Victor, and because the only way I’ll know is by asking. It’s a risk, I k
now, but a risk I’m willing to take because I have no other choice. No other way out except through you.”
“Why me, Marina?”
She paused, swallowed nervously, and said, “Because you’re the only one I trust.”
She came toward me then, just a few steps, but stopped short of being in reaching distance. She looked me deeply in the eyes, held desperately onto my gaze. “Because I believed in my heart that you cared for me, on some level—I just felt it. It’s why I asked first how you felt about me. Look, I don’t have much time.”
Now I was the one looking in different directions, feeling paranoid about having unwelcome eyes at my back.
“Marina,” I said calmly, but in a serious manner, “I need you to sit down and tell me what this is all about.” I took another step toward her. “Please. Sit with me and talk.”
It took her a moment, but finally she relented. I reached out my hand to her and reluctantly she took it.
We sat down on the edge of the bed together. I held her hand.
She looked over at me.
“You know my past,” she began. “I was honest with you when I told you I used to be an exotic dancer. But I didn’t tell you the truth about how I ended up here, sharing my home with strangers who I know nothing about other than every one of you carry guns and probably have killed a few people. I know only what I see, and believe only what I can assume is the truth. But I need to tell you the truth about how I got myself into this—it wasn’t like I told you: there was no mutual agreement—they threatened me, The Order.”
I thought I knew the answer before Marina told me. I knew about Safe Houses and the men and women who occupied them, about how they were mostly civilians who knew little to nothing about what the people, like myself, who sometimes stayed in them, did for a living. But it was with Marina that I began to see the truth about how some Safe House residents were recruited: more with blackmail and threats than with willingness, and substantial financial offers.
“A man came into my club one night,” she began, “and he came with a lot of money. A lot of money, Victor—for a private dance he paid me more than I’d ever see in a lifetime.” Marina lowered her head in shame. “I started sleeping with him—for the money, of course. I’d never done anything like that before; sure I danced for money, but I’d never degraded myself like that.” She paused, took a deep breath as if to release the memory by way of her lungs, and went on.
I sat and listened, and with every word, I wanted to help her that much more.
“After two weeks,” she continued, not looking at me, “the man—he said his name was Brant—well, he started to change, became more aggressive with me, even slapped me around. But I wanted that money; I probably would’ve let him beat the hell out of me as long as I kept seeing that money.”
“What did this ‘Brant’ do?” I knew that was not his real name as much as she did.
Marina glanced over, but could not look at me for long; she began to nervously move her fingers about within her lap. I reached over and moved her hair away from her shoulder so I could see all of her face.
“He came to my house one night,” she said, “and told me that my life was no longer mine, that from that night forward it belonged to him. Of course, at first I just thought he was an obsessed maniac—I had a few guys come into the club who I had problems with; one even stalked me for a while before he pissed somebody off and got himself shot—but Brant, I found out real quick that there was something different about him, and that he was much worse than any of those guys.” Her breathing began to quicken, and she stared straight out ahead without blinking. “He reached into his briefcase and took out a few pictures. My mother watering her plants. My little sister in California walking to her dorm.” She looked at me again, and this time held her gaze firmly. “They were the only family I had.”
“Had?” I asked, thinking the worst.
Marina nodded. “My mother died last year—cervical cancer. My sister is still alive, but…”
She looked away again, down at her hands, her trembling fingers interlaced.
“But what, Marina?” I rested my palm on her back; her skin was warm. “Tell me.”
She swallowed, hesitated, and then worked up the courage.
“I’ve been talking to her—in private, of course—and I told her, in a way that no one but she would understand, that her life is in danger. We made plans to go on…vacation, if you know what I mean, but really we just want to leave the country. Go somewhere they can’t find us, and start all over”—she turned to face me fully, took my hands into hers and squeezed—“and I know you can help us start over, Victor. New identities, all of that stuff.”
I shook my head, looked away.
“Marina,” I said, “we cannot be having this conversation; if they find out—”
“They won’t.”
I knew that was not true—they already knew.
She jumped off the bed and crouched in front of me, cupped my cheeks in her hands. I could not help but look into her eyes and let her speak; I could not help but listen to her pleas and continue to fall deeper and deeper into a hole that my subconscious mind knew I would never be able to crawl out of. Because I did truly care for Marina. I spent months visiting her. She was easy to talk to, and she understood my struggles without having to know exactly what they were; she gave me advice, knew all the right things to say, and I never told her anything about what I did. Marina was to me more than just my friend—she was my lover, my conscience, and my only link to the outside world in which I craved. I was not in love with her, but I wanted to be, and I was not ready to give up the relief and excitement and anticipation I felt when I knew I was going to see her again.
But I knew I had to. What I wanted did not matter.
She began to gasp for air; her slender, womanly hands reaching, grasping for anything, her fingers digging into my neck as my arms tightened around hers. I could not look at her; I somehow shut my ears off to the desperate sounds she made as she struggled in my hold. I squeezed tighter. I could feel the breath from her nostrils rapid and shallow against my arm; the violent beating of her heart bursting through her jugular vein; the life slipping from her like water slipping through my fingers.
I held her limp body there for a long time, staring into her dead eyes, mourning her life and her beauty and her innocence that I stole from her.
“I am sorry, Marina,” I whispered. “I am sorry…”
Carefully I laid her body on the floor, and I sat back down on the bed again, with her at my feet. Killing Marina was, at that point in my very short life, the hardest thing I ever had to do.
My cell phone rang on the nightstand. As I knew it would.
“Faust,” I answered.
“You did the right thing,” the voice on the other end said. “I thought I’d have to send someone in and deal with her—and you—myself.”
“Was this a test?” I asked.
“Actually, no,” he said. “But her house has been bugged since day one. I’ve been listening to the conversation. I always do.”
It was a significant detail that I should have remembered—all Safe Houses run by The Order are bugged, or were at least supposed to be—but because of Marina, and how easily she clouded my judgment, that detail completely slipped my mind on this night when she started talking. How could I have been so stupid to forget such a thing? How could I have gone so far in The Order only to come so close to letting a woman destroy everything I had gained? But the second Marina said the name ‘Brant’, the memory came back. And I knew that what I did to Marina could not have happened any other way. My and Marina’s relationship, whatever kind of relationship it was destined to be, was doomed from the very beginning.
“Pack up and check into a hotel for the night,” my mentor said. “Report to me in the morning; Vonnegut has a new job for you in Los Angeles.”
“What about the girl?” I inquired about Marina.
“A Cleaner will be sent in after your car l
eaves,” he said. He paused and then added with a tinge of humor in his voice, “Are you all right, Faust? I know she was an irresistible woman, but this is the way things are.”
“Yes sir, I know,” I said. “And yes, I am perfectly fine,” I lied.
“Good,” he said. “Well, I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
“Wait—I am curious,” I said, stopping him.
“About what?”
“Why you chose the name ‘Brant’. You always use the same one.”
He chuckled.
“It was the name of the first man I ever killed,” he said. “No other reason than that, really—it’s sort of like a trophy. Why did you choose the name ‘Victor’?”
I paused and said, “Victor is my real name.”
“Ah, I see,” Brant said. “Well that’s as good a reason as any. Pack up and leave the residence, Faust; the body ain’t gettin’ any fresher.”
I set the phone on the nightstand. I spent another ten minutes with Marina, apologizing to her in my mind, before finally getting dressed, grabbing my belongings, and leaving the tiny house in the Oregon wilderness that was the only place I felt at home since I was a boy and was forced into The Order.
Present day…
Apollo shakes his head and smiles.
“And why did you kill her?” he asks, already knowing the answer, but wanting Izabel to hear it. “It wasn’t because you thought you were being tested, was it?”
I give only Izabel my attention, because as hard as this is for me, she deserves to know.
“I knew that Marina was telling the truth—I saw it in her eyes, I felt it in her touch, heard it in her words. The truth is that I cared about her…too much.”
Izabel does not appear to blink for a long time; she just looks at me, and I cannot read what it is in her eyes. And then finally she shuts them softly and takes a deep breath. And I know—I know that she is disappointed, that she is hurt, not because I cared about a woman other than her, but because I killed that woman, and why I killed her.