Almost Complete Short Fiction, page 60
He looked at the Minister of Peace. “So,” he said, “first thing I wanted to ask you, how’s the nucular warhead supply holding up? We gotta have been going through those things like doodoo through a duck, now we’ve got this new front in Indonesia.”
The Minister of Peace took off his glasses and wiped them and put them back on. “Well, Mr. Antichrist,” he said, “here’s the situation on that—”
I quit listening along about then. It wasn’t anything interesting, just a bunch of numbers and names of places I mostly never heard of. Instead I watched Miz Babylon’s titties. The little ends always stood up and got hard when they started talking about dropping nucular bombs on people. I seen Brother Apollyon looking at them too. His fingers were kind of twitching in his lap.
They talked for a pretty long time. Finally the Antichrist said, “All right, I guess that covers it. Well, then.” He turned in his seat to face Boss Lady. “How are we doing on the information control front? Everybody falling into line?”
Boss Lady nodded. “The media never give us any trouble, of course. Still having some problems on the internet, sometimes it’s hard to track down these unauthorized—”
The Antichrist was holding up his hand. “Wait, wait. Hang on there, honey. All this talking is dry work.” He reached out and tapped on this silver button thing in front of him. “Let’s take a little refreshment break.”
This colored guy in a fancy uniform come in and everybody give him their orders. Boss Lady said she’d have a glass of white wine. Miz Babylon said she’d have the same. The Minister of Peace asked for a gin tonic. Brother Apollyon wrinkled up his nose and said nothing alcoholic for him, thanks, he’d have a Coke.
“Yeah,” the Antichrist said, “I’m pretty fond of Coke myself.” He grinned at everybody and they all kept their faces straight like they didn’t know what he was talking about. Even from where I stood I could see the little bits of white powder on his nose.
“Well,” he said to the waiter, “you know my usual. Just sparkling mineral water.” He give the waiter a big wink. I wondered why he wanted to go through all that silliness. Shit, he’s the Supreme Ruler of the World, he can do any damn thing he wants to, can’t nobody say nothing less they’re good and tired of living.
While they were waiting for their drinks him and Boss Lady talked a little bit about the movie she was going to make about him and how he got to be the Antichrist. Triumph of the Right was the name of it. It didn’t sound like the kind of movie I’d want to see but I did like the idea of being around movie stars. There was sure plenty of big ones left, too. The Rapture hadn’t got hardly any of them.
The colored guy came back carrying a silver tray balanced all neat and smooth in one hand, moving with that easy way colored guys can do, and set out the drinks. When he was gone the Antichrist said, “Now something else that’s been bothering me.” He picked up his glass and took a sip and set it back down on the table in front of him. “I’m disappointed in the level of cooperation we’ve been getting on the Mark program. Still got a lot of folks out there without the Mark.”
“That’s true,” Boss Lady said. “And even worse, I’m hearing stories about people faking it, making phony tattoos with ink that they can wash off afterwards.”
“There’s a lot of resistance,” Miz Babylon said. “It’s not just the Christian Underground. Some people just don’t like the way it looks. The ones that already have tattoos are the worst, too. They can’t stand the thought of having one just like everybody else’s.”
I noticed Brother Apollyon was shifting around in his chair. He wasn’t looking at Miz Babylon’s boobies no more. He was staring straight at the Antichrist. The look on his face was weird even for him.
“It’s all so inefficient,” the Minister of Peace said. “I wish we could drop this whole six-sixty-six business and go over to bar codes. Or better yet, embedded chips—”
Brother Apollyon picked up his Coke. It looked like his hand shook or something. Anyway he spilled some of it on the table and on his red robe. “Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry—”
He reached over to his left to grab a napkin. The Antichrist didn’t even look at him. “Yes,” he said to the Minister of Peace, “that would be nice. The chips especially. Normally I’d say that might be the nuculus of a good idea.”
I guess I was the only one that seen it, and I nearly missed it. Old Brother Apollyon had damn fast hands for a man his age. I’ve seen top card sharps and pickpockets that weren’t any slicker.
“But we can’t do it,” the Antichrist was saying. “It wouldn’t be allowed.”
There wasn’t no mistake about it, though. I couldn’t actually see what it was he dropped into the Antichrist’s drink, but I seen him do it.
“It’s in the Prophecy,” the Antichrist said. “ ‘And he causeth all to receive his mark,’ something like that. Anyway it doesn’t say a thing about bar codes or embedded chips.”
He shook his head and reached for his drink.
That was when I lost it. I let out a big yell and run around past Boss Lady’s chair and jumped up on top of the table and made a wild dive, knocking the glass out of the Antichrist’s hand. “No,” I hollered. “Don’t drink that!”
Well, naturally in about half a second I was flat on my ass on the floor with half a dozen Palace guards pointing guns in my face. I figured I was dead. If they didn’t kill me Boss Lady would.
But the Antichrist said, “Wait,” and everybody held still. “Let him up,” he told them, and when I was on my feet he said, “What’s this all about?”
I started to speak but before I could say anything there was this real high giggle, like a girl. Everybody turned and looked at Brother Apollyon.
He had his hands up to his cheeks. His face was the flat-ass craziest I ever seen on a human.
“The pellet with the poison,” he said in this creepy whispery voice, “is in the Palace that’s in Dallas.”
The Antichrist’s mouth was hanging open. He wasn’t the only one.
“It was supposed to be me, you know,” Brother Apollyon said. His eyes were all walled back like a spooked horse. “It was revealed to me long ago, in a vision. All I had to do was wait and do as Satan commanded, and one day I would be the Antichrist, the Great Beast that hath power over the kings of this world—”
He stuck out his hand, pointing at the Antichrist. “You robbed me,” he screamed. “After all I did for you, you robbed me of that which was to be mine!”
“Barking mad,” the Minister of Peace said. His voice was a little shaky.
“Out of his damn mind,” Miz Babylon said. “Crazy as a two-dick dog.”
By now the Palace guards had Brother Apollyon by the arms and were pushing him down on the floor and slapping the cuffs on him. They weren’t being none too gentle about it. He didn’t hardly seem to notice, though. He was carrying on now in what sounded like some foreign language or maybe that Unknown Tongue that they used to speak in Mama’s church.
The Antichrist was still setting there, not moving. He had finally shut his mouth but his face was white as a Zig-Zag paper.
“I could have been,” he said. His face worked some. “I could have been killed,” he finally got out.
“Be sure and collect a sample of that drink,” the officer in charge of the guards was saying. “It’ll have to be analyzed.”
The Antichrist was looking at me now. “You saved my life,” he said. His voice was like somebody with a bad sore throat. “You saved my life,” he said again, a little clearer. “Son, what’s your name?”
And so that’s how I got to be a big hero and got my picture in the papers and my face on TV and Boss Lady is even fixing it up for some people to make a movie about me.
Looks like the best thing that ever happened to me was getting left behind.
2007
The Contractors
We were six miles above the North Atlantic when my wrist watch began flashing, a soft pulsing green glow like a mutant firefly. I picked up the earphones from my lap and held one up to my left ear, and a familiar voice said, “Now.”
I waited a second but that was all. I thumbed the little button to make the watch stop blinking. A quarter to midnight, it said. Chicago time; I hadn’t reset it yet. Three hours later here? Or four? I wasn’t sure what zone we were in.
That time, anyway. I laid the earphones on top of the laptop on the seat beside me and unlatched the seat belt and got to my feet, glancing around at the darkened cabin. Up toward the front a couple of lights were showing, and the glow of somebody’s laptop screen; over on the far side a woman was trying to quiet a fretful baby. Most of the passengers, though, seemed to be sleeping. Or trying to; now and then you could hear bodies shifting restlessly, and an occasional muffled grunt.
I started down the aisle toward the rear of the cabin, taking the plastic pen from my shirt pocket and holding it down by my side. The lights were on back in the galley but no signs of movement.
I could see my man, though, sitting by the window, two rows ahead of the rear bulkhead. The seat next to him was empty, as were the seats behind him.
It was too dark to see him very clearly, but I’d already had a good look at him back while we were boarding: a skinny, swarthy young man with a thin scrubby beard—or maybe just badly in need of a shave—in a surprisingly decent dark suit without a tie. Now I saw he’d added a yarmulke-like skullcap to his ensemble.
He didn’t look up as I approached; I saw now that his eyes were closed. He was rocking slowly to and fro in his seat; he wasn’t making any sound but his lips seemed to be moving.
It would have been easier if he’d been on the aisle, but those coach-class seats aren’t all that wide. I didn’t even have to lean over to reach him. His eyes snapped wide and white when the pen touched the side of his neck and the spring-loaded needle drove home, and his mouth opened, but nothing came out. A little book fell from his hands and slid off his lap to the floor as he sagged back in his seat.
I closed his eyes with my fingertips and moved on down the aisle, not looking back or around; if anybody had seen anything, it was too late to do anything about it now. There were no sounds of surprise or alarm behind me, though. As I came up to the restroom door I saw one of the flight attendants, a slightly chubby redhead, asleep on one of the galley seats.
The restroom was unoccupied. I latched myself in and got a paper towel from the dispenser and wiped the trick pen, being very careful of the needle point, before stuffing it down into the trash disposal. The odds of anybody finding it, let alone checking it for prints, probably approached zero, but why take the chance?
I stood there for a minute exchanging red-eyed stares with my reflection in the mirror above the sink. The sight was less than impressive: lined jowly face, gray hair in need of a trim, overnight whiskers starting to show. I wouldn’t have bought a used roller skate from me.
Nobody was looking at me as I started back up the aisle, or at the body by the window. Everything was still dark and quiet; even the crying baby had settled down, leaving no sound but the great soft sigh of engines and slipstream as the big 747 bored on through the night sky.
I dropped into my seat, buckling up automatically, and sat back and closed my eyes for a moment, letting my pulse slow down a little. Then I reached over and lifted the laptop out of its case and set it on my knees. I stuck the button phones into my ears, took a deep breath, and opened the lid; and there was Himself waiting for me.
And he was doing the whole bit, too: the horns, the pointy goatee, even the reddish skin. Everything but the pitchfork and the flames. I suppose I winced; he laughed.
Grinding my teeth, I reached for the keyboard and typed:
Do you HAVE to do that?
“Sorry,” he said, grinning. The screen flickered briefly and he reappeared in his more usual form, minus the horns and the rest of the comic-book look. He’d kept the mustache, though. It made him look a little like Harry Reems.
“Cheap and obvious, I know,” he said. “What can I say? For a professional tempter, I’m no good at resisting temptation.”
I typed:
It’s done.
“Yes,” he said. “You did that well. Not that I ever doubted you would.”
I think we cut it a little close.
“I’m afraid so. He was definitely getting ready. My fault,” Himself admitted. “I was momentarily distracted. . .at any rate,” he said, “you were quick enough. Well done. A very clean bit of work, Major Hackett.”
I didn’t bother telling him not to call me that. We’d been there before; he was just trying to jerk my chain. I typed:
I don’t think anybody saw anything.
“No. You might have noticed that the seats in the immediate area were unoccupied. This,” he said, “was not coincidence.”
I should have known. I started to ask how he’d managed it and then decided I didn’t want to know.
He said, “I wish you’d relax. You need to get some rest. Things are going to get very stressful in a few hours.”
If not sooner.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. Who’s going to pay any attention to an unimportant passenger on an overnight flight, apparently asleep in the cheap seats? No,” he said, “you’ll see. No one will notice anything until shortly before arrival at Heathrow, when they hand out the immigration cards, and find that Mr. Wazir doesn’t respond to their efforts to wake him. After a certain amount of consternation and confusion, the young Scottish doctor up in business class will no doubt be summoned.”
His teeth flashed. “And almost immediately will discover that the deceased is wearing a belt of Semtex explosive around his waist; and then for a time things are going to become intense.”
No shit.
“Well, it shouldn’t be too bad for you. After all, there’s no reason anyone should suspect the truth. We’ve used that formula before,” he said. “Even a full autopsy won’t show anything but heart failure, no doubt brought on by extreme emotional stress. I tell you, that dear old woman at Johns Hopkins is worth every dollar I pay her. . .so no one will be thinking in terms of, ah, foul play. They’ll be looking for possible accomplices—and,” he added, hoisting an eyebrow, “you really don’t fit the profile, do you? So lighten up.”
Sorry. I just killed a man.
“Thereby saving several hundred lives.”
And your concern for humanity is well known.
“Touché.” He laughed. “But as I already explained, up on the first class deck are a couple of aging gentlemen who in their dissolute younger days once recorded a song expressing sympathy for me. One feels a certain obligation.”
He raised a hand and wiggled it at me. “ ’Bye, now, Major Hackett. Try to get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day.”
It was that. And it got a lot longer before it got any shorter.
Not that anybody leaned on me, individually. Himself had been right about that; middle-aged security consultants from Albuquerque clearly weren’t high on the list of potential terrorists. Early on they pulled a lot of passengers out of the waiting area—people with non-European-sounding names, or passports from Middle Eastern countries, or maybe just a vaguely Levantine appearance—and took them away for special attention; but the rest of us white-bread types mostly got to wait. Especially if we’d been in coach; naturally the first-class passengers were long gone before they even let us off the plane.
(At least there was one bright spot: the news people had of course shown up in battalion force, but the big story was the presence of celebrities on board, so only the rich and famous had to slog through the mikes-and-cameras jungle.)
It was the middle of the afternoon when they finally got around to me. A pleasant, ruddy-faced Scotland Yard inspector, about my age and size but wearing a much better suit, asked me a few questions about my background. Private security consultant, eh? And retired military? Hm, then I must be quite an observant chap. So had I noticed anything unusual during the flight? Any other passengers behaving oddly or suspiciously? Anyone talking with Mr. Wazir? No? Hm, well, too much to hope for, eh? Now where would I be staying in London? And for how long? Yes, well, officially he must warn me that I might be called upon for further questioning, but between us he didn’t really think it likely. Sorry about the delay; he hoped I had a pleasant stay.
And that was that. Only of course it wasn’t; there were still my possessions to be tracked down and reclaimed, all baggage having been taken away for examination. The young Sikh who brought mine, after another interminable wait, was interested in the laptop; he wanted one, he said, was this a good make? I told him only if he was prepared to make a pact with diabolical powers. When I left he was still chuckling.
The light was starting to fade by the time the cab finally dropped me off in front of the old red-brick building just off King’s Road. I knew I should go get something to eat, but I just wasn’t up to it. I went on up the steps and unlocked the front door and took the slow German-made elevator up to the fourth floor, feeling the fatigue come down on me like a heavy gray blanket.
The flat was looking good, with none of the musty smell of long disuse; the cleaning people must have been in recently. I dumped the bag and the laptop on the couch and went into the kitchen, wondering if there was anything to eat. I hadn’t used the place since last winter, but I seemed to remember leaving a few odds and ends on the shelves.
I found some cans—sorry, tins—of soup, and a still-sealed box of some sort of biscuits. Good enough; my stomach was in no state for anything more serious anyway. A few minutes later I had myself a saucepan of cockaleekie heating on the stove. While it warmed I looked around the kitchen, experiencing the usual dislocation at the familiar-yet-alien appliances and switches and plugs. At least the strangeness had a friendly feel, as if things were trying to look right but just couldn’t get the hang of it.
The contents of the saucepan began to bubble and I turned off the heat and carried the pot into the front room, not bothering with a bowl. And sat at the table having my cockaleekie—cockaleekie! The names these people hang on perfectly good food!—and watching the street get dark beyond the big front windows.
