16 Cold Wind Blowing
Standing with Vinnie at the raw edge of a newly dug grave, John could feel the burner in his pocket vibrating. Once. Again. He had to steel himself not to answer it. It was a Duane Reade special and the only other person who had the number was Jane.
As the two cemetery workers left their hearse and began twisting the crank that lowered the white wicker casket out of view, Vinnie turned away. Behind his back John whipped out the phone for a quick look, but he didn’t recognize the caller. Bernie Somebody. A New York exchange. Obviously a wrong number.
They were on the wrong side of a broad field pocked with half-melted mounds of snow and bristling with tufts of desiccated hay, slogging back toward a stand of trees along a graveled track against a cutting wind. Vinnie blew his nose.
“This green burial thing. Very cool. No fuss, no muss, no embalming.”
“No Feds,” John observed.
“Kind of hard to get a Crown Vic this far off the beaten track,”
“The Caddy made it.” John cast a quick look back at the hearse.
Vinnie dodged a puddle. “Yeah well, let’s not forget about tomorrow. They’re all on special detail now, gearing up for the big changeover. Between tight budgets and shifting priorities, it could be you’ve fallen through the cracks, my friend. Lucky you.”
“John L. Doe. ‘L’ for luck – or maybe Lazarus.”
“The letter we should be talking about,” Vinnie said, “is ‘V.’”
“As in ‘V’ for vendetta?”
“Don’t get ahead of me.” Vinnie held up three fingers. “The real reason you and Jane became a problem. Reasons. Vulnerability. Visibility. And Virtue.”
John looked at him without comprehension. “Say again?”
They were so engrossed in their conversation they scarcely noticed that their path skirted a homeless encampment where maybe thirty people were living in tents and makeshift lean-tos. The transients were gathered around a series of campfires at that hour and watched in silence as John and Vinnie passed.
“Turns out once you married that particular honey-bunny you instantly became too vulnerable and too visible for our line of work. Not to mention too apt to compare notes and question some of the games going down.”
“But, come on, you know neither of us knew –“ John objected, throwing up his hands.”
“Which brings us to the real fly in the ointment - your kill profile.”
“What the fuck?” John paused to let a converted bike-taxi peddle past. It had a large white refrigerated box where the passenger seat should have been. “Finger Lakes Food-Not-Bombs” was stenciled on the side of the box. The driver dismounted near the campfires and opened his box to reveal dozens of Styrofoam food containers. A ragged line began to form, unusually quiet children clinging close to their stiff-faced elders.
“I kid you not,” Vinnie insisted. “They actually track that shit and everybody gets a score. Your IQ plus your Oscar-Meyer-Briggs plus how many of what type of assignments you accept and complete. Jane, you? Very weird. Spooky weird. Eerily identical. Before we all got canned, someone somewhere leaked a report showing both of you went for the worst of the worst, time after time. Every hit you ever made – clear villains. No gray hats, no heroes of the people. Just very dangerous, very powerful criminal types with no redeeming social value. The dregs of society. Talking about his father-in-law, here. Works at Goldman-Suxx,” Vinnie reassured a man who mistakenly assumed Vinnie was speaking to or about him and whose expression said more clearly than words that he was at once shamed and mortally offended.
“Hold on,” John tried to get his head around it. “You mean to say we got in trouble for being good good guys? Or bad bad guys?”
“Now see,” Vinnie said, “There’s your problem, right there. You don’t want to over-think these things. As long as you aren’t good and dead guys…”
They swerved to avoid a backwoods-looking group of men and women preparing to butcher a bound and shrieking wild pig. Emerging from the woods onto the cemetery’s parking lot, they found that their small and intimate funeral party had grown. Vinnie’s car was blocked in by three shiny black Crown Vics.
Startled, Vinnie put a hand out as though to steady himself or hold John back. “Yeah, OK, this was going to happen at some point, right? This was totally in the cards. But I wasn’t finished yet, amigo.”
John seemed totally unruffled. “I told you not to leave those jelly doughnuts on the front seat, man.” He shook his head and reached inside his coat. “Good-bye, Bolivia. Hello, Australia.”
About this time, a distant rumble that had been building just out of earshot intensified to a deafening roar that resolved visually into a 1969 souped-up Chevy Camaro. It blew in off the highway and peeled across the parking lot, throwing a door open as it screeched to a halt in front of John and Vinnie, effectively cutting them off from the men in black. As the Feds started to get out of their cars, two women in the Chevy fired stun grenades and tear gas canisters to hold them off. Vinnie grabbed a semi-blinded John and pressed his own gun on him.
“Careful with that,” Vinnie entreated. “It was Mom’s favorite.”
“I thought I was Mom’s favorite.”
“Cut the crap and aim at something non-essential.” But John was too disoriented to realize what Vinnie wanted him to do. So Vinnie placed the gun against his own upper arm. “It’s true. We always hurt the one we love.” He squeezed the trigger and a shot rang out. “Dammit!”
Vinnie pushed John into the car and clutched the spot the bullet had just creased as the Chevy careened away, the two women laying down more flash-bang and smoke bombs for good measure. Vinnie was rolling on the ground, choking and holding his blood-soaked arm when the Feds found him and hauled him roughly to his feet. One car, then another, took off in fish-tailing pursuit. Several agents made frantic cell phone calls while others handcuffed Vinnie.
“What? Oh really?” Vinnie remonstrated. “I all but hand him to you on a plate and this is – THIS – is what I get? Ow! No more Krispy Kreme for you!”
17 I Travel
Per Swiss regulations, the airport was closed by the time Jane and James arrived. The glass façade of the terminals glowed mint green as the taxi dropped them off. The exterior sweep of the Zurich Circle was desolate at that hour. Even the guards and janitors had retreated to inside jobs and stations. James flashed his wallet at the first security kiosk and was waved down the echoing concourse without a second glance. All the shops and concessions locked up at curfew and only a few unfortunate travelers, stranded between flights, dotted the day lounges and waiting areas. James steered Jane toward the charter flight deck. It was quite a long walk. Without the usual commotion of human herds in transit, there were moments when you felt, followed by the sound of your own footsteps and looking up at the exposed conduits and soaring cross-struts, as though you were touring a post-industrial cathedral.
As they approached the last set of escalators, Jane stopped short beside a hall leading to some public restrooms. James looked at her. She looked at James.
“Alright. Alright. Phone and passport.” He held out his hand, and, when she hesitated, waggled his fingers impatiently.
“A little trust?” she said.
“Mmmm. Does that work with John?”
Jane flashed a siren smile and made cat eyes at him. “Baby, everything works with John.” She leaned in to hand over the goods and whispered in his ear, “Don’t be boring.”
In the starkly spotless restroom, Jane darted into a stall where she pulled out her wallet and plucked, from among her business and credit cards, a Samsung miniphone. With all the care and precision that such a minute device required and all the haste her companion/captor’s vigilance demanded, Jane tapped out the briefest of messages: “@ZRH. Late? Must run by Walmart.” And a heart symbol. On second thought, she erased the heart symbol and pressed ‘Send.’
&
nbsp; When she rejoined him, James was playing a game of ‘Pirates’ on Bernie’s Blackberry.
“And down ye go to Davy Jones’s locker,” James exulted, handing it back to Jane. As they began to climb the escalator, which like everything else had been shut down for the day, she casually dropped the phone over the side into the cylindrical maw of a shining silver waste bin.
“Yes, I wondered why you had the SEC and the Playboy mansion on speed dial,” James noted.
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m a zombie banker from the planet Lesbos,” Jane was looking at the ceiling, the very portrait of detached ennui.
“Now, see,” James admonished, “You say that like it’s a bad thing…”
18 Life During Wartime
Flying up back roads headed north through the gathering dusk in the front seat of the Camaro, John closed his eyes to try and clear his vision. In the tense atmosphere no one was speaking, but before long he was able to recognize his rescuers. Beside him in the driver’s seat was a woman he chiefly identified as a member of the wedding - Jane’s maid-of-honor, the woman who was her b-fri and co-worker. Or had been, in their previous life. Whitney Somebody-or-other? Behind him in the back seat, leaning forward and biting her lip, was his former techie wizard Jen. Mousy, prickly, grungette Jen. In a mouse-colored hoodie.
“Ladies! Long time no see.” John tried to sit upright.
For reply, Jen crowded him toward the door. “Hold that thought,” she said, reaching across him for the handle, “and get ready to jump.”
“Next curve!” Whitney warned. She slowed the car from eighty miles an hour to maybe thirty.
“Uh,” John started to say.
“Go!” Jen barked. And John went. Followed a beat or two later by Jen. Onto the verge, mercifully padded with brown snow and leaf mold, and down a sloping embankment. The Chevy tore off and disappeared before they reached the bottom. They lay there flat, hardly breathing, waiting for the pursuit cars to rip by. Which they did, within minutes. Like twin beasts, powerful and predatory, the cop cars hurtled out of the gloom, one after the other. Their engines wound to a howl of rage that stopped the heart and lingered in the ear canal long after their taillights had receded.
Comparative silence settled over the countryside and a flock of crows returned to roost in an orchard across the road. John and Jen got to their feet warily and brushed off the worst of the slush and the compost.
“This isn’t going to help your career advancement, you know,” John said.
“You’re welcome,” Jen replied, pulling out a nano-flashlight and scanning the ground ahead. “They axed our whole division, including yours truly. By email, by the way. So I’m like - there are no bridges that can’t be burned and no porch lights that can’t be turned off.”
“Hell, I don’t even have a porch,” John said.
“Yeah,” Jen said flatly. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something else. A critter of some kind skittered away in the underbrush. “That - was an eye-opener and a tipping point for a lot of people,” she said at last, starting forward through the cordon of ash trees that lined the roadway and keeping her voice low. “When the rectal cranial inversion factor turns homicidal, game over. Besides,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m not really here. I’m on my honeymoon. In Iceland.”
About fifty feet onward the trees gave way to an open field. John stumbled, narrowly avoided tripping over a furrow. A thin rind of moon was no help at all. The cold was intense.
“Jesus!” John swore, more from surprise than pain. He had not seen the gnarled and leafless shrub directly in his path or the wire connecting it to its neighbor.
“Mind the grape vines,” Jen cautioned, shining her flashlight back along the row so he could avoid the trellis. “We’re almost there.”
‘There’ was a winery parking lot, almost entirely deserted at this season and this hour, but lit at its center by a lone mast lamp that hummed like a hive of killer bees. In the halo of the lamp, a psychedelic Geek Squad VW bug with DC tags awaited.
“Hell yeah,” John commented before climbing in. “We won’t be attracting any attention in this baby.”
Jen turned the key in the ignition and the bug shuddered to life. “Au contraire, mon frère. This is what invisible looks like. They’re scouting for Special Forces types, not four-eyed brainiacs.”
From the back seat she pulled a white button-down and a black clip-on tie identical to the ones she was wearing under her hoodie. Dropped them in John’s lap.
John examined the shirt dubiously. “What, no pocket protector?”
“Glove compartment.” Jen jerked her chin. “Smartass.” Semi-amused, John fished it out, plus heavy black-framed glasses and a baggie with what looked like hair in it. He threw Jen a mystified look.
“Soul patch,” she elucidated.
John stuck the soul patch on without even looking in a mirror. Taking off his overcoat was no picnic under the circumstances and it was so cold he decided to wear the button down over his Che t-shirt. He caught Jen giving him a quick sidelong look.
“How’s your girlfriend?” he asked, trying to match buttons and buttonholes in the dim light of the dashboard.
“You mean my wife? Like I said, we just got married. I left her in Iceland, banging on a can and raising hell about the banks. More to the point – how’s Jane?”
“How is Jane?” John struggled to get at his cell phone to see if there was an update.
“Hold your horses, there, Kemo Sahbe. Use mine. GPS disabled.” Jen quick-drawed from the hoodie’s kangaroo pocket and offered John her handset. He waved her off.
“Who’s a noob? It’s a throwaway. Uh oh.” John scanned the text Jane had sent from Zurich. “Looks like contact has been made.”
Jen looked at him aghast. “They’ve got her?”
“Unclear. She’s left Davos and there’s some sort of hitch. She didn’t use the panic code.”
Jen started pounding on the steering wheel and cursing softly in about nine different languages: “Sk?ta, skit, kak, paska, shiesse, and merde!”
“Don’t take this wrong, Homeslice, because obviously one of us should be on the verge of some kind of hysteria here, but – what’s it to you?”
Visibly upset, Jen gripped the wheel. “Didn’t Vinnie tell you anything? Oh my god. I assumed you were in.”
John shrugged. “He said – I dunno – we were too good at our jobs. Or some such shit.”
Jen stared at him in disbelief. “In what universe does that make sense?”
Looking out the window, John admitted, “I’ve had that down-the-rabbit-hole feeling for quite some time now.”
“Then it’s about time you found out what’s on the other side of the looking glass,” Jen said. She took a deep breath. “OK, here goes.”
19 2 + 2 = 5
As Jen began her history, speeding south in the geek-mobile, James was telling Jane a bedtime story over cocktails in a jet somewhere over Germany.
Jen: Listen up, boys and girls. Not long ago -
James: Once upon a time, shall we say about forty years ago?
Jen: Around the time of the Great Depression -
James: A number of very wealthy people -
Jen: A bunch of fucking powerful dudes -
James: Got together and decided -
Jen: Looked around and said -
James: You know, things have gotten so screwed up -
Jen: This democracy crap is so inconvenient -
James: Wouldn’t it be better -
Jen: What if we -
James: And they came up with a plan -
Jen: OK, was it a plan, was it just how the system came together? The machine…
James: It wasn’t hard. A think tank here, a trade pact there –
Jen: Death of Bretton Woods, IMF, GATT, WTO, Bilderberg, tax cuts, tax havens, corporations without borders, central banks, Glass-Steagall, derivatives
, media monopolies -
James: To set things right -
Jen: To really fuck shit up -
James: And they called it the New World Order.
Jen: The goddamn mother fucking New World Order.
Well into French airspace, James paused to survey the five-star entree that had just been set before him. Meanwhile, Jen and John slid into a booth in a Waffle House. Jen continued talking as she perused a syrup-sticky menu.
Jen: The deals have all been done -
James: Actually putting on the finishing touches as we speak -
Jen: The trap is slowly swinging shut -
James: A better world – security, stability, prosperity -
Jen: Endless war, extremes of wealth and poverty, a police state -
Her fork suspended in mid-air, Jane raised both eyebrows. “Come ON.”
John, equally dubious, could only manage, “Ummmm…”
20 When Two Worlds Collide
John cut his eyes toward the unshaven cook framed in the pass-through window and the tired waitress mopping up the counter.
“This is just –“ A TV in the corner emitted the Twilight Zone jingle and John pointed to the set. “What he said. Look, it’s been – real? But I need to see a man about a wife. And thanks for the get-away.”
Jen hesitated, then pushed the car keys across the table. “OK. Go. Just go. We’ll call it a scrub.” She put her face in her hands a moment and then rubbed her eyes under the glasses she was wearing, exhausted and disappointed. “You’re on the list, you know.”
“I sorta figured. Tell me something I don’t know. Like why.”
“I’ve been telling you why.” John made a rude noise. “Look, at some point you’re going to have to choose. You don’t see it yet, but you will. They’ve as good as told you which way they think you’ll go.”
“They. I never figured you for a wackjob, Slick.” They were silent a moment as the waitress wandered by with more coffee. Jen leaned forward as the waitress went back to filling sugar canisters.
“A superclass of around six thousand. Who control one hundred and forty-seven of the biggest corporations in the world and are maneuvering to own just about everything else on this increasingly hot, crowded, and shrinking planet. Along with the politicians they’ve bought and the various assorted fucknut fundamentalists, four-star generals, and media whores who support them. And you’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you. Why did they try to take you out? Why are they trying to round you up and why do they have Jane? Because if you fall the wrong way, that could be a problem for them.”
John gazed at Jen through narrowed eyes. “Oh, really?” He tossed the keys up and down, reflectively.
Jen pulled off her glasses and polished them with the end of her tie, squinting through the grainy overhead light to see if they were really clean.
“Just sayin’…” she said.
21 Good Night, Bad Morning
The jet touched down at Dulles about an hour before daybreak. When the flight attendant brought their coats, James took Jane’s and did