by Roman McClay
Blax took a drink of his yellow Viognier and let the midpalate rest a moment on his tongue, the cucumber and cottonwood, the Cochise County heat lifted to the roof of his mouth. Jack was smart, wicked smart, Blax thought, and if it was one thing Blax knew, one thing that intelligent people must contend with, it was this : they produced and burned their own fuel. They fell in love with the products of their own mind, and the fumes, the exhaust, the waste product of these engines was an anger that chemically changed into hatred and malice the way carbon is extracted from carbon-monoxide as it rises and rises from industrial machines into the upper atmosphere. Man had a relationship to the air he often took for granted.
Machines and anger all changed man’s relationship to the numinous, to the air, Blax thought, and to the seas too.
He loved Jack, he loved them all. And he was not in disagreement with what Jack One had just -brilliantly- said. But, Jack needed a governor, a regulator, something to give him just a moment’s pause. However, Blax for the first time felt, he, himself, was not going to have what it took to get Jack to keep his foot off the pedal of his fury .
Jack was a young man, 16 in real time, 20-21 morphologically, and Blax remembered all-too-well what he was like at that age; and he -Blax- at that age with just 1% of the talent and knowledge Jack had; and thus, with just a bit of the self-righteousness that such competence brings. And Jack was right, which made him all the more dangerous. Because, Blax thought, being right is only half of any equation, one must ask also: was the equation itself justified, was the question not only answered correctly, but was it asked correctly? The right answer to the wrong question was as dangerous as the wrong answer to the right question.
The first courses were finished over the languid time of their evening with nothing scheduled in the agoge in the morn; they had earned a moment to reflect, and to let the bonine wear off from the blood and salt air from the lungs and the fear that the open sea puts upon the head of any man with sufficient depth.
The white wines were finished, their clear fingers on the inside of the glass blended with and into the bricked, 21-year-old, Bordeaux red; the men ate in silence mostly. They all ruminated on their pasts or their futures as if the present was a lighthouse, a crenulated tower from which to survey all time; like the land and the sea and the rocks. For men such as these, the present could be enjoyed, but not in the same way that most people insouciantly did.
They innately -and they would have a hard time articulating this- they axiomatically felt that there was not much point to being conscious -awake- if one was not incessantly vigilant for error detection. And awareness of one’s surrounds, not just in space but in time , was thus built right into the hardware, the wetware -into both sides- of their minds.
They traded -for a permanent low-level anxiety and obsession with vigilance- for what they thought, they gambled, was in exchange for the benefit of a long and untrammeled life. Their bodies and minds had this idea, an ancient one, that being awake meant one could not live with the blasé aplomb of a child, but one could live a very long time as a young man. Blax was one of a few men who would know old-age moved in and upon a young man all at once sometimes.
The Jacks’ anxiety was not as uncomfortable as one might assume, it gave life a bit of excitement to incessantly assume the world’s flora & fauna was out to get you, and that predators lurked behind each corner, and that your fellow man did not have your best interest at heart.
As most warriors think, there was nothing worse than betrayal, being tricked or surprised by one’s enemies. Even death -and in the short term, permanent anxiety- was preferred to a wrong un-righted, a mistake uncorrected, a desire for vengeance unslaked; a detail missed for the whole .
II. 2036 e.v.
A drop of blood was discovered in the 4th bathroom of the Château . But, it turned out to be from a nose bleed of the niece of the Baroness de Rothschild . Captain Fourisson , stood thinly, like a narrow base triangle turned point-down into the gravel driveway of Château Lafite . The media had been told in terms as grave as the Graves of the Garonne that this was not to be a circus; the dignity of France was on the line , his own aide-de-camp had said at the first press conference.
The foreign press -the British of Fleet Street and the goddamn Americans- would be hyperbolic and tawdry and stupid, that was a given, but the local and national press better show some stoicism and noblesse in their outrage , he thought, and he repeated this to his lieutenant more than once as he was updated with more bad news every 15 minutes or so.
The thieves - and here Fourisson corrected himself- these were not thieves, they were Vandals, Visigoths, Huns, Hoplites marching from Rome or the next level of Hell, to destroy France’s soul- had not left one bit of evidence yet, and his units at Mouton and Brion, Margaux and Latour were all coming up with nothing .
The local digital-capture was blank, the Landsat9 images were not available yet, as they were technically owned by the Americans. But the Chinese had their own satellite, the CBERS-12 was launched out of Taiyuan on July 1st , 2033 and the data was held in a partnership with China and Brazil.
Captain Fourisson’s wife was Brazilian and she had made a call to her uncle, a man of some influence in the state security services of Brazil. After documents -discovered in 2018 e.v.- revealing CIA involvement -in the 60s- in Brazil, the Brazilians had tightened their relationship with Beijing . The ask was informal, out of inner-agency channels, and moved via diplomatic pouch on an airplane that took off at 1109hrs that day. It was 1344hrs now, and Fourisson was expecting satellite images by this time tomorrow if the Chinese demurred or delayed.
But he actually expected the Chinese to agree to it, as their interests were aligned with the nation of France, he reasoned as he checked his phone again, looking for a text from Ging Bei Ma -his contact- in the Chinese government, and a friend of his brother, Gerard. He’d received images from the police photographer of Château Margaux , the only one of the five Châteaux that suffered building damage. It was in ruins, the soft façade of the Château now mottled and pocked with black scars and caving in on itself.
The media had had helicopters in the air by 0645; and he had had the French air force ensure forced landings within 20 minutes. To see the tiger-striped F-4 dassault mirage lower from the sky at super-sonic speeds, overtaking the garish red and blue helicopter of France’s station-4, was enough to settle his nerves for a moment, and he took a drink from a bottle he had been handed by one of his men.
He was alerted to a meeting at the Merignac airport south-west of his location in 30 minutes and he called his driver; the M5 sedan pulled up and the large bulletproof doors opened and he slid inside saying merely, “Merignac ,” as the driver pulled the all-wheel drive sedan around and out Lafite road. They headed toward the airport as Fourisson called his wife.
They spoke in choppy, subjectless, sentences; as she feared anything she might say would rend him into pieces. She saw his face, it was as if in a vice: his eyes bulged, his face narrowed, a small serpentine vein on his left temple rose and fell like a swollen riven after a rain. He was not just a police man, he was one of the few Frenchman left in law enforcement who had been around in the 70 s when Bordeaux was still unknown to all but the most serious of vinophiles in the world. It was not unlike a buried treasure, with each member of France holding one sliver of the thing, a symbol defined by the legend, and no one being able to know the whole map, let alone the terrain, without all the other pieces being brought together in some future time when the barbarians were again at the gates.
Bordeaux was not just the premier crus, as baseball is not just the Yankees or Red Sox, he thought as he used American analogies because he was already practicing speaking to the Americans. The Americans were so simple that they needed their culture fed to them through a sippy-straw , he thought and then asked if that was right after he thought it, “is that right, sippy-straw ?” he asked as his wife asked if what was right ?
“A child’s implement, a sippy
-straw, for children, yes?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, my love, that is right, for the Americans, yes?” she said.
“Yes, I am trying to figure out how to discuss this with them, the Ambassador, Hestoln, will be there and likely the Brits and the Chinese,” he said and had no energy to say long sentences aloud even as more words came into his head.
“Well, the Chinese will understand darling, and the Brits will too. But, do not let the Americans rattle you. They will speak of terrorism and money, that is how they think, so speak of culture to the Chinese and of Europe to the British, but to convince the Americans speak of money and Islam; and speak in terms of revenge and justice and they will then understand,” she said with trenchant analysis.
“Ok, petite bouche ,” he said and blew her a kiss, as the driver ignored it all. They had the grille light flashing and at speeds of 120kmh they were just now pulling into the BOD, the Armee de l’Air Francaise had shut down all commercial airplanes and were rolling the Mirage F4s and F1s along the runways. A black and silver TBM-1000 landed and taxied toward the #3 hanger where the driver was now pulling up.
Dozens of black SUVs and white police sedans were in a crescent around the aperture to the hangar, and this reminded him that the Italians would likely be eager to comprehend the honor at stake here. The Chef d’etat-major general des forces aeriennes, Emile Hergault III, the great-grandson of the man who held this same post in the 30s was approaching the black sedan as they stopped and Fourisson got out.
“Captain,” he said and held out his hand as the two older men shook mitts and gave each other grimaces that clinched each man about the eyes and mouth and neck. They became mirrors for each other at once.
“General,” Fourisson said, using the rank to connote how he felt, that they were in fact at war .
The two men walked back to the hangar; policemen and troops milled about. The media had been barred to the terminals and so the tension was both more and less without them. More, because these men were scared, and less because they knew they were not going to be asked stupid questions that they would not have smart answers to.
The hangar was filled with large LED screens which had blue screens on some, and aerial images on others, and finally, a live feed of an empty chair and a desk of the President de la Republique Francaise, Madam Marine Le Pen, elected in May of 2035 by just 870,000 votes of over 45,000,000 total cast .
Captain Francois Fourisson , touched his coat pocket again to make sure he had his phone, he often misplaced it, and was thus making sure he was able to be contacted by his agents in the field. He wanted to return to Lafite as soon as possible, these meetings rarely helped him, serving rather to help those above him; but he supposed that was the way things were.
His lieutenants would be ok , he thought, they know the protocols . And the other captains, although under his command, were capable men, and would not fail to recognize this for the national emergency it was, but that -at bottom- it was an investigation like all others. They, he insisted, would not lose their heads . The vandals would be found, he repeated to himself, the wine would be returned . The blue screens went black, the aerial-sat images froze and quieted, and the President of the fifth Republic of France sat behind the camera; lowering quickly into her seat.
“Gentleman, we have many things to do; each of us. I will not waste your time, nor allow you to waste mine. I have orders for all military personnel that will come from the Secretary General via courier. I will offer a rechauffe : no commercial flights out of the region until further notice. No ships leave the escambay at Bordeaux ; and no unauthorized flights in the airspace around Bordeaux or along the Gironde at any point.
“Further, I want to set up a separate detention center for all persons of interest to be sequestered from other detainees or prisoners. This investigation must remain unsullied by contamination with other matters. Also, the military is now in charge of the investigation; and I am in charge of the military.
“The local authorities will hand over the keys to the castle so-to-speak, effective immediately. However, I have spoken to Hergault and he wants the man currently in charge, your own Captain Fourisson , a good man, a competent man, to remain in charge of the investigation. However, his command will be under the auspices of the military command and the office of the President of the Republic.
“France has been under, submerged under the ponderous weight of feral immigration and international bankers and the Brussels’ clique and -despite my instincts- I have attempted to work within the system to return France to sovereignty. But at some moments in history, the fates and muses align, and an individual, and an individual and sovereign-state must assert itself forcefully, righteously, and with clarity.
“I submit, I say to you as you have been saying to me, that France is sovereign at this moment in a way we have not seen in generations. A terrorist act has been committed against out culture, our way of life, our national soul. This act was so brazen, so disrespectful, so evil, that it cannot be allowed to stand. And the non-French migrants who have invaded this country for generations, over 20 million since 2020, and another 10 million before that, are the petri dish, the substratum, for these kinds of acts.
“The terrorists hide among them, they act as a buffer, a sluiceway, a conduit, a vector, and today we say, no more. The army is rounding up known terrorists and saboteurs now, detaining their civilian sympathizers, and as this investigation goes on, we will be collecting the human intelligence you need to uncover the plot.
“I have advocated for banking and monetary nationalism and sovereignty for decades, and today I have reached a tentative deal with the Rothschild Banking Family to pursue their interests and Frances’ as one mind. No longer will each side play against the middle. The Rothschilds are a French family and will -and have agreed to- reassert their national identity and in exchange we have agreed to marshal the full forces of the French State to reclaim and return what was stolen from their family and from the French people.
“The people will have their France returned to them. This is all, no more speeches, to work, allons travailler ,” she said and rose from the chair.
The crowd applauded loudly but briefly, and the screens returned to blue on the edges, live images on the Sat-screens and the presidential chair swung slightly in the full frame of the 180-inch screen.
Fourisson , was standing next to General Hergault and they eyed one another again, and Fourisson said, “I am at your disposal; your instructions, sir?”
“Fourisson , Captain, continue with your investigation, I will give you whatever you need. For now, I am rounding up as many migrants as we can to depose; anything of interest we will hold for you and your team. If you need it, ask now,” he said as the clouds converged and began to let out some grey drops.
“I need satellite streams from the last 24 hours, either from the Americans or the Chinese, that I need first,” Fourisson said as he covered his eyes -under a brow that sloped back at an angle to a nearly full head of hair- from the rain; using his hand to shield to eyes from the water that fell.
“I will text you as soon as I have them; good luck, let’s speak soon,” Hergault placed his hand on the Captain’s shoulder and squeezed and as they nodded; they broke apart and traveled quickly to their respective cars.
Once inside the Bavarian sedan, Fourisson said, “Lafite ,” and the driver squealed the all-wheel drive vehicle’s tires under the torque of 690 horsepower and sped away as another TBD-1000 was landing 20 meters over the roaring black car; the caravan of vehicles began breaking apart like an anthill washed away from the heavy rain up stream. The air above Bordeaux was now wet and purging itself to the ground.
At his feet was a bottle of wine, half in and half out behind the driver’s seat. He reached down and read the label, “Rotem & Mounir Saouma, 2012,” the appellation was Chateaunuef-du-Pape and he wondered, of course, how had it arrived in the car?
As he began to ask his driver, he saw the black circle bunt of ano
ther bottle, and he -placing the Pape to his left- reached down and grabbed it and saw it was a Château Lascombe Niailac , 2015. It was from the Medoc , and the château closest to the sea; a mere 9.9 kilometers to it. He decided against even asking now, as this had moved from a curiosity to a matter so much more confusing that he wanted to keep it to himself for reasons he could not explain.
It was instinct, and as a man, his instincts were often right, he felt. As a cop, they were 50/50 , he added, but, he was thirsty, and this was Bordeaux , so he took out his wine key and sank the screw into the foil and cork -not waiting to peel the capsule- and he lifted the cork up and out with a soft pop that the driver heard but all but ignored. The gurggling sound of wine being poured down the gullet of an old Frenchmen in distress reached out of the backseat and made the driver proud. He felt his own throat and chest now coated in red.
Isaiah watched the car speed away on his own CNS; he diverted all data from his recon-bot away from the corporate cloud.
“Rivers rise with teardrops without warning, rise river rise, wash this place away, clean my dirty soul so I can save it for judgment day ,” the song boomed in the lab as Isaiah did pull ups in his black boxer-briefs at 0355hrs and MO tended to the Orchids he had grown for Isaiah as part of their next trade.
Isaiah had built a set of Japanese Irezumi implements that MO had hung on the wall next to the Northern marble and concrete stele ; just behind some of the ivy growth he had pulled back and then closed over just a little to keep it slightly occluded in the green lush spaces of foliage. MO found the music distracting so detuned his audio-cortex to hear only sounds outside the range of it; he found it like echoes of small sounds, as the top and bottom of the register bound together and was somewhat stretched too far across the lacuna of the excised, ellipse of sound. He heard merely hints of sound now.
