by Jason Kasper
“That’s only two.”
“I’m assuming neither of those participants had the hacking skills required to alter the biometric records in my Outfit file.”
“Interesting theory.” She shrugged noncommittally. “I have no comment on the matter, Mr. Rivers.”
I corrected her in a reassuring tone. “Now, now, Sage—you faked my death, kidnapped me, and are dumping me in a remote cabin. You’ve earned the right to call me David.” Then I nodded toward the supplies. “So where are you hiding the alcohol, Sage?”
“I need you sober. And please don’t try to leave. There’s no way in or out except ATV, no civilization within hiking distance, and enough bears and wolves that you’d get killed if you tried.”
I turned my palms upward in frustration. “So what am I supposed to do?”
“Make sure your arm is fully recovered.” She nodded toward my sling. “You’re going to need it. Wait for my return and—”
“Who was Nikolai?”
She stopped abruptly.
“A willing participant,” she answered at last, “and one well-compensated for his role.”
“You mean his life.”
“In this case, the two are one and the same. You have some reservations about benefitting from his sacrifice?”
“Enough reservations to wonder why you’re going through all this just to save me.”
“Then I’ll be blunt.” She faced me, staring into my eyes amid the dim light of the camping lantern. “I need someone who is willing to die, can kill wantonly, and is thought to be dead.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Like my own job qualifications, finding someone with one or two of these isn’t a difficult task. But the combination of all three is next to impossible.”
I felt my throat closing. “And you need me to do what, exactly?”
“I saw it in your eyes the day I picked you up at the Complex: the desire for vengeance, the despair when you realized he wasn’t on the plane. Do as I say, David, and you’ll finally get your chance.”
“My chance for what?” I asked.
“To kill the Handler.”
I watched her blankly as she continued, “I’ll be back for you in a month or so.”
“A month or so? What if a truck hits you before then? Who else knows I’m here?”
Sage smiled grimly, saying nothing.
Then she turned and hurried down the stairs, and the ATV fired up and pulled away. The sound of its engine fading into the night was soon replaced by the warbling cry of wolves howling in the darkness all around me.
SOLITUDE
Hic sunt dracones
-Here there are dragons
4
February 1, 2009
At daybreak, I stood in the cabin doorway, preparing to exit for the first time.
Sunrise revealed the cabin to be tiny and dilapidated, scarcely bigger in square footage than an average bedroom or two. A single tin chimney extended upward from moldy wooden roof planks, and a porch outcropping was held up by shaky boughs. The windows were thin panes of splotched glass that provided no more reprieve from the outside temperature than the frail walls. At best, the cabin would block wind and rain, but little else.
Just outside the door, I found the ax that Sage had mentioned. It was ancient and resting head-down near the top of the stairs. Its iron head was caked in untold layers of rust but nonetheless bore a honed-enough edge to chop wood, albeit a bit imprecisely. Lifting it with my right hand, I found it weighed over ten pounds—it would be of no use to me for months, until my left arm healed enough to support a double-handed swing.
Setting the ax back beside the door, I walked down the steps and into the wild.
The cabin was set in a small clearing, the overgrown surroundings marked by rounded humps of granite-flecked quartz that broke the earth in scattered formations like a pod of whales. The silhouettes of treetops loomed over the clearing like apparitions in the mist, a ghostly presence watching me from all angles.
I chose to venture up the steepest hill to begin my exploration.
The specter of rolling white clouds parted at times to reveal vibrant green hills guarded by the spikes of a thousand pines slicing upward. At one point during my climb, the ground suddenly dropped away from me into a steep downward slope that extended a seeming eternity into a lush green valley, the mature pines dotting its depths appearing small as toothpicks. A wave of fog rolled in from one end of the valley, blanketing the forest below and giving me the feeling of sudden flight, as if I were looking down upon cloud formations.
My progress slowed as I neared the top of the hill beyond the cabin, where boulders rose into craggy formations, restricting my progress to damp, lichen-covered channels between them. Eventually I emerged above the mist and found a lake to sit beside, which would become a daily ritual for me during my time in isolation.
The placid crystal lake pooled in a neat circle that reflected the trees rising over it. At the far side, a break in the forest revealed a glimpse of distant mountain peaks, sun-bleached expanses of snow coating their slopes. Their beauty was mesmerizing, erasing from my mind the slings of my current plight and banishing the solitude, or at least allowing me to willingly embrace it for a time.
As I caught my breath from the uphill hike, a dark, looming cloud rolled overhead, creating a ceiling so low I could almost touch it. Something caught my eye, and I scanned the dark emerald formation of pine boughs and bushes until I made out the furry silhouette of a large gray canine head, wide-set eyes watching me closely.
The wolf whirled and vanished soundlessly into the forest, leaving a single swaying pine bough in its wake.
The fog didn’t clear until nightfall. Innumerable stars twinkled beyond the blotted tree cover, pinpoints of light across a purple sky so startling that I remained outside long after my hands had lost feeling and my ears tingled with cold. I’d soon be able to venture inside, where winter clothing and a thermal sleeping bag would allow me to reclaim warmth. But for the moment, the sight above transfixed me after my long weeks of containment in the Mist Palace, after my path to execution had instead ended in the wilderness.
A guttural, otherworldly growling noise came from the forest behind me, turning my blood to ice. I ran to the cabin, snatching the ax beside the door and catching a glimpse of shifting darkness as I slammed the door shut.
My flesh was rippling with goose bumps, every hair standing on end as I heard something massive moving outside. The rustling of thicket was underscored by a low grunting, and I glanced out one of the ramshackle windows to see an immense black shape passing through the shadows. It must have been an adult grizzly, the curve of its back rising almost as tall as the cabin ceiling.
I clutched the ax with my right hand, feeling ridiculously impotent with my left arm contained by the sling—the ax was far too heavy to effectively swing one-handed under normal circumstances. But I reasoned that the surge of adrenaline following a grizzly breaking down the door would allow me at least one good blow before I was mauled to death and eaten.
I remained stock-still with my back to the flimsy cabin wall, facing the door with a white-knuckle grip on the ax handle for a seeming eternity until the bear completed its investigation and left. As the night fell silent, I waited for the hammering of my heart to subside and, finding that it didn’t, remained awake with the ax in hand until the bleak golden glow of dawn seeped through the windows.
In my first week of solitude, I was periodically bumped by depression like driftwood floating at sea—that claustrophobia of the soul that revisited me, rendering the threshold of sleep an impenetrable wall, condemning me into isolation with my thoughts. No reprieve with alcohol, that magic elixir that made my waking hours interesting, fulfilling, bearable in so many ways that sobriety could not. I didn’t suffer from depression—we simply coexisted. Together we were the last two patrons of a bar at closing time who decided to go to bed together for lack of options. Every night was a struggle of the mind, a flip of
the coin to see if sleep would come or not, the mental pressure of walls closing in around me.
The songs of my incarceration were the rustling whistle of a mountain breeze through the cabin’s edges backed by birdcalls by day and wolves howling by night. I yearned for bourbon, lusted for the golden-brown bottle the way a dying man sees a mirage in the desert. I remembered staggering through the sunset Somalian desert alongside Jais, being continually convinced that some forgotten store of water was contained in my meager belongings. Then I began fantasizing about suicide again. According to Sage, I could simply wander off into the woods and be torn apart by wild animals, and, barring that, the craggy outcroppings of the nearby cliff were more than sufficient—one last stand at the edge, a final BASE jump without a parachute.
By the second week I became intensely frustrated: with Sage, with my situation, with Ian’s helplessness. With the Handler, though that much was nothing new. I began reliving moments of penetrating shame and doubt: betraying Parvaneh’s trust, letting Ian get captured. Before Somalia he warned me I was too overconfident and underestimated the Handler’s capabilities; before Brazil, it was my turn to warn Ian that he was being too brazen. Now we were both ensnared.
My mind became paranoid with delusions so repetitive that I had to remind myself aloud of what I knew to be true—otherwise, I’d find myself growing certain that Ian was already dead, that Sage had stuffed me into this cabin as part of some intricate plan concocted by the Handler, and, finally, that Sage wasn’t returning at all. She’d been compromised and killed, or reassigned elsewhere, or had decided the suspicion against her was too great. In the event of any of those things occurring, I was going to survive here until the seasons warmed, then outfit myself for a cross-country hike toward the coast in a desperate bid to find civilization.
During my third week in the cabin, something broke in me. I’d wept in front of the little girl in the slums of Rio, an inexplicable reaction to nearly dying alongside her when a kill team had slipped past our hiding spot. For years before that, however, I simply couldn’t remember crying. Yet during my isolation in the cabin, I cried not infrequently, though I had no idea why. Sometimes a grief-laced memory would evoke tears, and sometimes my eyes would sting at the sight of a particular wilderness vista. Or I’d be trying to go to sleep, thinking of nothing in particular, and feel my eyelashes growing wet.
At first I marked my time like a prisoner with a death sentence, countless miles of wilderness containing me as surely as cell bars. But by the fourth week, the delirious mental pressure of isolation began to lift. One day I simply awoke and flittered about the cabin and surrounding landscape with a lightness I’d never before known—devoid of anyone or anything requiring action, reaction, or appropriate conduct, I simply existed. It was as if the combination of wilderness, solitude, and sobriety had caused my mind to process and reconcile much of the pain endemic to my existence.
The stack of paperbacks Sage had left for me became a welcome reprieve, a distant touch point, however fictional, to people, to civilization, to the web of human relationships that I was stranded from. And so before each sunset, I would re-enter my cabin to read by headlamp until sleep came at last.
5
Six Weeks in Isolation
March 16, 2009
It took Sage longer than a month to return. Forty-four days, by my count, and I had few commitments beyond physical therapy and adding hash marks to a mildewed piece of wood on the cabin’s interior wall.
I was lucky to hear the faint approach of her ATV—it was shortly before noon, and I was clambering down the slope from my now-daily visit to the hilltop lake.
I walked around the front of the cabin just as she pulled up, the flat black ATV hauling at a fast clip before she braked and entered a sideways skid that brought her to a sliding halt after ten feet.
The sight of her was dizzying, the very glimpse of a fellow human sending me into an almost delirious sense of full-body bliss. I became acutely concerned about my ability to communicate well, whether my voice would be raspy from disuse. My words felt awkward and clunky as I called, “Welcome back to Casa de Rivers. You really know how to handle that vehicle.”
She dismounted her ATV, a fleece jacket hugging her curves. She sported a long ponytail, frail threads of hair displaced from her ride.
She brushed a loose tendril of red hair behind an ear. “One of many such skills.”
“Don’t tease me.”
“I never tease, David. And you’re supposed to be in your sling for another week.”
I flexed the fingers on my newly liberated left hand. “Must’ve misread the instructions.”
“C’est la vie. I like the beard—it’s a good look for you. Help me unload some supplies, I don’t have much time.”
I strode down to the ATV, then assisted her in unstrapping the boxes attached to the rear. I caught a whiff of her shampoo, and the scent was tantalizing in its novelty. My sense of smell had become uncannily acute while at the cabin. I unequivocally knew, sight unseen, when a badger or wolverine was near—the faintest trace of musky odor was as detectable to me as a blast from a foghorn.
To my embarrassment, the boxes were too heavy for me to support their weight with my still-healing left arm. Instead I grabbed a single box with my right and, following Sage into the cabin, asked, “How is Ian?”
“He’s well.”
“I want proof that he’s alive.”
She set her boxes down and turned to me with an incredulous smile. “Proof? You misunderstand your situation, David. And mine. I’m your only link to the world outside of this wilderness, and I placed myself in grave danger to save your life.”
I leaned against the cabin wall, folding my arms. “I didn’t ask for your charity.”
“This isn’t charity, it’s a business transaction. I invested in your survival because when the time comes, I’ll need you to perform a very specific task for me. Ian’s life is leverage to achieve that, and while I will make good on freeing him if—and only if—you perform your mission as ordered, that doesn’t put you in any position to make demands.”
“I’ll perform whatever the hell you want, if Ian is alive. What’s to say he’s not dead already?”
Sage examined my eyes, seemingly taken aback at my suspicion. “The Handler doesn’t waste talent, David. Ian is very much alive and working in the Intelligence Directorate. Your concern should be whether he’ll want to be freed. After a time, people begin working for the Handler of their own volition—they go from slaves to willing servants.”
“Ian will never turn. He hates the Handler more than anyone.”
“There’s an analyst who’s been there for five years who started as a captured spy. He’s quite happy now.”
I shook my head distantly. By the Handler’s own admission, Ian had successfully evaded surveillance for months, right up until the moment of his capture. If anyone was smart enough to defy the Handler from within, it was Ian.
“All right,” I conceded. “So Ian is alive and gainfully employed. What about Parvaneh?”
Now it was Sage’s turn to cross her arms, squaring off against me with a piercing glare. “Are you in love with the princess?”
“Hilarious. How is she?”
“Miserable. The Handler was never so distraught as when she was missing in Rio. He hasn’t let her or her daughter, Langley, leave the Mist Palace since.”
“Does Parvaneh think I’m dead?”
Sage balked at the question. “Rest assured, she has not forgotten about you, and I don’t mean that she thinks of you fondly. She was waiting for me to draft my statement about your death, then snatched it from me before I could deliver it to the Intelligence Directorate. I think her only disappointment was that she couldn’t kill you herself.”
The words caused a spike of shame within me. It was inevitable, I supposed—by using her favor to attempt to assassinate her father, I’d deceived her beyond the point of recognition.
“Moving swiftly
on,” I changed the subject, “your supply run seems a little light.”
“There’s new books, and—”
“I’m not concerned about reading material.”
“I brought you some fresh food, figured you’d be tired of the field rations—”
“There’s something I want from you, Sage, and it’s not food.”
An eyebrow shot up as her demeanor shifted from professional to amused. “That’s very forward of you, David. Have you spent too much time in the woods?”
“I wouldn’t kick you out of bed for eating crackers, Sage. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I keep listening for liquid sloshing in one of these boxes.”
“I didn’t bring you any vodka.”
“Good, because I’m hoping for bourbon. And thank you for saving me, but abandoning me in the cold clutches of sobriety seems a cruel fate.”
She shrugged indifferently. “You appear to be making do.”
“Well,” I muttered, “if there’s no booze and your clothes are staying on, let’s move to priority number three. Shall we start planning the Handler’s death?”
“Planning?” She released a muffled gasp of laughter as she lifted herself to sit atop a stack of boxed rations.
“Something funny?”
“You’re a shooter, not a strategist.”
“There’s more to being a shooter than killing people. I’d challenge you to react to a five-man hit team like I did in Rio.”
Her brow wrinkled in an expression of skepticism, but she said nothing.
“All right,” I admitted, “so humility has never been my strong suit. But still.”
