EIGHTEEN
“I hope you’re not planning to stick me with that thing,” I said nervously.
“Nothing to worry about,” Johnson drawled. “Cosmic Cocktail, they call it, won’t hurt a bit. In fact, it’s kinda cool.”
“You’ve tried it, have you?”
“I used to be a guinea pig,” he smiled.
“How about putting it in a glass of water?”
“Sorry, man, it’s gotta go intravenous.” He held the syringe up to the light, tapped it a couple of times with his forefinger, then gently pushed the plunger up until a drop of liquid squirted out the end.
“You afraid of needles, Jack?” Fisher laughed. “He is. … He’s scared of the needle. That’s f*cking priceless!”
I’ve never been too happy about the sight of a pointed metal spike coming at me. One time in Kansas, I was broke enough that I tried to make a buck by giving blood, but I was out the door before the nurse could get anywhere near me. I even lived through the pain of a root canal rather than face the needle. I’m not embarrassed. Everybody’s got a phobia; that’s mine.
Johnson promised that I wouldn’t feel a thing, told me to take my jacket off and roll up my sleeve. He chuckled when he saw that I still had what was left of his cuffs around my wrists and I recounted the story of how I’d removed them, just to stall the inevitable.
“Christ, you’re lucky you didn’t blow a finger off,” he said, producing the key and removing the manacles.
“I hope that’s a spare,” I said.
“The original,” he smiled. “Little trick I do,” and he demonstrated by placing the key on his tongue, showing me his empty hands, swallowing hard and then producing the key out of his shirt pocket.
“Very impressive,” I said. “How about sawing Fisher in half now?”
“Why not?” he said amiably as he punched the needle into my arm, pulled the trigger back until blood surged into the barrel, then reversed the flow and injected the solution into my vein.
Things got very strange very quickly. The first thing I noticed was an odd, bitter taste at the back of my throat, followed by a gentle surge, like warm water passing through my inner ear and washing over my brain. The room didn’t exactly spin, it just moved, changed shape, kind of stretched itself out, pulling away until I was separate from everything, including myself. My mind was still clear at this point, but that was about to change. I was headed over the rainbow.
Time started to overlap and get disjointed. Johnson was standing back looking me over in the same moment he was in my face pulling an eye open and flashing a light onto the back of my skull. The beam exploded on impact and formed a million fragments of colored glass that became planets floating in whatever universe I was entering. Everything was foreign, including myself, and I wasn’t even sure that I still existed. The thought crossed my mind that they’d given me a lethal dose and I was already dead….
The next thing I knew, I was lying on a four-poster bed in a quiet room, looking up at the ceiling, with no idea where I was or how I got there. I didn’t know if seconds, minutes, or hours had passed. I tried to sit up, but aside from my eyes, I was immobile. I was back in my body, but not connected up yet.
I looked around the room. Heavy velvet drapes were drawn across French windows and soft flames crackled away in a big stone fireplace. It was first-class accommodation, although a bit bloodthirsty in decor. The heads of various beasts stared down from the walls and the marble floor was covered with the pelts of bears, zebras, tigers, that sort of thing. Above the fireplace was a dark painting of a naked man on horseback firing arrows into a wounded lion. I was having a déjà vu, feeling I’d been there before—not just the place, but the moment. It was the drug, I thought, causing a memory synapse to misfire.
I closed my eyes, exhaled, and tried to relax. There was something I wanted to remember, something important, but it kept slipping away. I let myself drift back into the dark….
Twilight on the canal, the lights of the city coming to life, flitting across the water like playful angels drowning in our wake. I was in the back of the boat, a blanket around my shoulders, feeling safe and calm, at one with everything around me. As the canal opened up into a broad waterway, we picked up speed. The sudden rush of air was exhilarating and I got lost in the moment.
Then I sensed something. I turned my attention back into the boat. Chase was in front, behind the wheel, Johnson in the seat beside me, his head thrown back, eyes closed. But there was someone else, too. … J leaned forward, looked past Johnson, and there, sitting head in hands, looking very seasick, was what I was looking for.
Horst. …
I sat up sharply. The son of a bitch had set me up. That’s what I was trying to remember. Horst had set me up.
Realizing that I was mobile again, I jumped onto my feet too abruptly, went light-headed, and had to catch myself on one of the bedposts. I lowered myself onto the floor and let it pass.
The pamphlets hadn’t come from Kovinski’s jacket! Horst had planted them so I would find the address stamped on the back and go to the warehouse, where Fisher and friends would be waiting to jump me! Horst had probably been in the middle of putting them in Kovinski’s file when I interrupted him. And I’d gone for it, convincing myself that Kovinski was just dumb enough to stamp the Company address on a piece of disinformation. The words hook, line, and sinker came to mind. But Horst was just playing spies, doing what he was told. The person who had truly set me up and sold me down the river was none other than Sam Clay.
He was right on cue. The door opened and in he walked. “I see you’re back among the living,” he smiled.
I pulled myself up off the floor and gave him a “f*ck you from the bottom of my heart” look. I felt betrayed in a way that I didn’t realize I still had in me. Sam had been my sponsor, my mentor, and even, I thought, a true friend. Not an idealist by any means but, I’d believed, a man with some basic principles. Apparently not.
“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”
“I saw Horst on the boat.”
“No shit? They said you wouldn’t remember a thing. I’m impressed.”
“I guess I should be, too. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
He drew a breath and frowned. “It’s complicated, Jack.”
“No, Sam. It’s not complicated. It’s simple. It’s so f*cking simple that I’m not even going to say it.”
He turned away and moved to the window, peeked past the drapery into the outside world. It wasn’t just idle curiosity. He was looking for something.
“Why’d you bring me here?” I said. “Why didn’t you just leave me doped up and put a couple of bullets in me at the appropriate moment? That’s the idea, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s the idea.” He dropped the curtain and turned back toward me. His face betrayed no emotion, just a cold hard stare.
“How’s it supposed to happen?” I asked.
“No idea,” he said with a smile. “Operational details are being held at a lower level.”
“Plausible deniability.”
“That’s right.”
“Which was created to protect the president.”
“Not this time,” he said blithely.
I tried to fathom what would make Sam sell out like this. Was he being pushed aside and didn’t like how it felt? He was too much of a player to call it quits and maybe this was his insurance. Without the game he had nothing, so maybe in order to keep his place at the table, he was willing to bet it all, including his soul.
“It’s wrong, Sam.”
“Sure, Jack, I know. It’s wrong as hell.” He looked out the window again. “We don’t have much time. They’ll be here soon.”
“Who?”
He moved away from the window, looked around the room. “You almost f*cked up the whole plan, you know, spooking Kovinski like that. He went off half-cocked.”
“I take it he’s history.”
“More like he never existed. You’re the one slated for the history books.”
“So I hear.” I was feeling kind of wobbly, but didn’t want to show it, so I stayed on my feet. “Whose bright idea was that?”
“Mine.”
“Great …” The room started to spin. “Always could count on you for a good time. …” I was heading for a crash landing, but Sam got hold of my arm, guided me over to the bed.
“That shit really did a number on you.”
“You could say that.” I fell back onto the pillow.
“You probably need food. I’ll order up some dinner when we’re done.”
“The Last Supper?”
“The Last Supper,” he echoed. “Funny. Is that a Judas joke?”
“If the shoe fits …”
“You gotta have some faith in me, Jack.”
“Faith?!” I laughed. “For Christ’s sake, Sam. I’ve been bitten, punched, tackled, arrested, shot at, drugged, double-crossed, and hung out to dry thanks to you.”
“That’s why you need faith.”
“Excuse me if I say ‘f*ck you’ instead.”
“Suit yourself,” he shrugged, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes. “Smoke?”
I was dying for one, and he knew I would be, but I hesitated. “Help yourself,” he insisted, flipping the lid open and offering them. I relented, propped myself up on one elbow, and tried to take one. I couldn’t get it out.
“Let me show you,” he said with a smile, removing a false top that had the tips of nineteen cigarettes attached to it. Underneath was a small barrel, the diameter of the missing Lucky, protruding from a metal box.
“It’s triggered here,” he said, indicating the side of the pack, “by this button underneath the wrapping. You have to give it a good push with your thumb. They didn’t want it to be too sensitive, for obvious reasons.” He held the pack in his hand, demonstrated how to fire it. “The tech boys say it’s accurate up to twenty feet, but I’d be skeptical about that. You want to be close in, I’d say, point-blank if you can.” He twisted the bottom of the pack open to reveal three pointed pellets—small, probably six-millimeter—stowed in a thin piece of Styrofoam. “They’re hollowed out,” he said, “and filled with hydrogen cyanide. It’s not pretty, but it’s quick. Five to twenty seconds, depending where you get your target. The closer you are to a major artery, the faster it’ll be. There’s one in the chamber already, so you’ve got four shots to work with. To reload you just drop one down the barrel.” He replaced the top and handed me the pack. “That’s it,” he said.
“What the hell’s going on, Sam?”
“Like I said, I know what’s supposed to happen tomorrow, but I don’t have a clue where or how.”
“And since I’m the fall guy, I have to be there, so I can use this to stop it….”
“That’s the idea,” he said.
“Well, it’s a f*cked-up idea, Sam. Significantly f*cked up.”
“You got a better one?”
“Yeah! How about we use these pellets on the a*sholes who thought this thing up! That’s who you’re waiting for, isn’t it?”
“Some of them.”
I paused, took a deep breath. “Just how big is this thing, Sam?”
“I’m not even sure myself,” he sighed. “But it seems to go in every which way. Including up.”
“How high?”
“I can only guess.”
“Christ, Sam. How’d you get mixed up in it?”
He exhaled, and sat down beside me on the bed. “Somebody in special ops came to me a few months ago, felt me out about servicing an outside client. I knew it was iffy, but I went along to see where it was going. I didn’t find out who the target was until about two weeks ago and then I realized how big the setup was. To tell you the truth, I didn’t really think it would come off until you came back with the information from the Colonel.”
I turned the cigarette gun over in my hand. It looked real enough. I put my thumb on the trigger, got the feel of it. “How do you know I’ll be close enough?”
“That’s one thing I do know. Iceberg’s my operation.” I gave him a look but he shrugged it off. “As you know, we’re providing the cover story, which includes you. You’ll be on-site, in the same general vicinity as the shooter. Johnson and Chase will be assigned to you, and a Secret Service agent who’s in on it will be close by. As soon as the president’s a confirmed kill, they set you loose and shoot you on the run. The Secret Service guy gets to be the hero.”
“When the president’s a confirmed kill? Jesus, Sam.”
“Well?”
“Johnson, Chase, and the Secret Service guy. What about the shooter—is there just the one?”
“Three,” he said.
“It gets better all the time.”
“They’ll be in separate locations. But if you get one, they’ll abort.”
“And if I do manage to pull it off? What about next time?”
“It’ll buy me some time. Maybe I can figure out who’s behind it before they put it together again.”
“Four bullets, four guys,” I said. “Not great odds, are they?” I dropped the pack onto one of the bedside tables.
“I’m sorry, Jack. I haven’t got anything else up my sleeve.”
I took a deep breath.
“You figure the world’s worth saving, Sam?”
“I dunno,” he said. “It’s f*cked up, all right. But it’s the only one we’ve got.”