The Hand of War

by Blake Banner

  “Come in.”

  He crossed the threshold and I closed the door. He said, “Have you got Marni?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Where is she?”

  I walked into the living room and poured myself a whiskey. “You want a drink?”

  “Sure. Whiskey is fine, straight up.”

  I poured him a glass and handed it to him. I was still wondering whether to kill him. He took the glass. He was watching me with curious eyes. “Where is she, Lacklan?”

  “Safe.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I am seriously debating whether to beat seven bales of shit out of you and then throw you over the terrace.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend that.”

  “I imagine you wouldn’t. Now how about you quit asking me questions and start answering a few of mine?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Don’t tempt me.” I fished a Camel out of the box and lit up. I let the smoke out slow, taking a hold of my anger. “You said you’d take care of Abbassi.”

  He walked over to a chair and sat, crossed his legs, and studied my face, like he was wondering which of a number of answers to give me. Finally, he said, “So?”

  “You didn’t take care of him.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I’m running out of patience, Ben. Answer one more question with a question of your own and I will kill you.”

  He nodded and sipped his drink. “I wasn’t aware you had asked a question, Lacklan. It sounded like a statement to me. What is your question, exactly?”

  “Why didn’t you take care of Abbassi?”

  “I told you to leave it to us.”

  “That isn’t an answer.”

  He sighed. “They have a part to play.”

  “What part is that?”

  “It is none of your concern.”

  I took a deep drag, let the smoke out, and took a pull on the whiskey. “Let me see if I can get through to you, Ben. I don’t work for you. You don’t get to tell me what to do.” I gave a small laugh. “And you sure as hell don’t get to tell me what is and isn’t my concern. Now, what part does Abbassi play in this game?”

  “I have no reason to tell you that, Lacklan. Join us, and you will be a party to the whole thing.”

  I studied his face for a while. He really believed I might do that. “Aatifa Gafoor, Ali Kamboh, Hassan Barr and Abdul Abbassi.” His face went hard. I went on. “They are planning to detonate a bomb at the United Nations on Friday, during Gibbons’ and Marni’s talk. It will be a dirty bomb and it will infect everybody there with SF2, within weeks the casualties might be counted in hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions. Two of those casualties will be Marni and Gibbons. Now I want to know, what part of your plan is that?”

  “How did you come by this information?”

  “Fuck you. Answer my question.”

  “That is no part of our plan.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “No, Lacklan, I don’t expect you to believe it. You are too stupid and obstinate to believe it. But you might try thinking. In what possible way could this further our interests? Just think about it, Lacklan! Why could we possibly want Marni and Gibbons dead? And, if we wanted them dead, do you really think it would be that difficult for us?”

  I felt the anger welling up inside me. “Then why the hell didn’t you act on Abbassi when I told you about him?”

  “We did. We were watching him. He has hardly moved out of Prince Awad’s house!”

  I moved to the other armchair and sat. “When Gibbons challenged Hennessy, at the UN.”

  “What about it?”

  “You and Hennessy used Muslim activists to disrupt the debate.” I waited. He didn’t answer. I went on, “Then you and Hennessy were taken in Prince Awad’s car back to his house.” I shook my head. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you did anything at all about Abbassi, because I think you knew about him all along. I think you’re in bed with Awad.”

  He sighed again. “Lacklan, you are a problem. You are becoming a problem. I like you, I am trying to help you, but you are becoming a problem.”

  “Just answer the goddamn question, Ben. Is Omega in bed with Awad?”

  “You are asking me questions that I cannot answer for somebody who is outside of Omega, and you know it.” He sat forward, earnest and eager. “Just take up your father’s position and I can answer all of these questions for you, and more! Join us! And anything you want can be yours: wealth, information, power—Marni! But as long as you persist in this absurd, lone wolf position, you are doomed to failure.” I didn’t answer and he sat back in his chair. “Do you really think you hurt us at Turret? Do you really think that the setback at the Biosphere in Arizona harmed us at all? Not even this conference, with Marni and Gibbons threatening to disclose her father’s research—not even this is a serious threat. It’s an inconvenience.” He shook his head again. “You are swimming against the tide, Lacklan. More, you are beating your head against a brick wall, and all the blood you see is your own. You are hurting no one but yourself.”

  I thought about it for a long moment. Finally, I said, “Bullshit. You’re a liar.”

  “How did you find out about the attack on the conference?”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s not your concern. Join me, Ben, and I will tell you everything.”

  He smiled, drained his glass, and looked at mine. It was empty, too. He said “May I? You have excellent whiskey.”

  I gave a sour nod. “Sure.”

  He stood and held out his hand. “Can I get you a refill?”

  I gave him my glass and he went to the sideboard to refill them both. While he was there he asked me, “Have you killed Aatifa, Ali, and Hassan?”

  I thought for a moment, then said, “Yes.”

  He came back and gave me my drink. “Is that your solution for everything, Lacklan? If somebody is a problem, just kill them?”

  I sipped, savored the malt, and swallowed, feeling the pleasant burn as it went down. “If it were, Ben, you’d be dead by now. You may not have noticed, but I am trying to cooperate with you. You say you don’t want Marni and Gibbons dead. If Abbassi goes ahead with his plan, Marni, Gibbons, and maybe a million more souls will die.”

  “You’ve answered your own question, haven’t you? If that is the case, why would we be in bed with Awad?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I am trying to find out. You seem awful cozy with people who should be your enemies.”

  He smiled. It was a tolerant, patronizing smile. “Like you? Here we are, drinking whiskey and chatting like old friends. But am I cooperating with you?” Before I could answer he went on, “So you saw the cell as a threat, you tracked them down, and you killed them?”

  I nodded, “Yeah, but I tortured Aatifa first.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “To find out where Abbassi was, and where the bomb was.”

  “And did he tell you?”

  Did he tell me? It wasn’t an easy question to answer right them. I frowned. I felt very tired. I saw the glass between my fingers slip and fall on the carpet, and wondered if that mattered at all, if it was important, if anything was important anymore. My breath was heavy and warm with alcohol. I frowned at Ben and sighed a big sigh. “No,” I said. “No, he didn’t know. It’s a cell. A need to know basis.”

  “So you killed him.”

  “Yeah. I killed him.”

  He was hazy and kind of far away, but I could see he was shaking his head. “You are a problem, Lacklan,” he was saying. “I try to help you, like your father asked me to, but you make it so hard. You’re a problem, a real problem…”

  And then I blacked out.

  * * *

  I woke up with a bad hangover in a room I did not recognize. I wasn’t so much thirsty as dehydrated. My mouth tasted as though a medium-sized rodent had gone in there to die, and my stomach felt as though its
mother was decomposing in my bowels. My head, on the other hand, felt as though they had both impaled blunt axes in my skull before they scurried off to die.

  I shielded my eyes from the glare that was shouting at me from the open window. As I adjusted, I became aware of green hills and forests that did not correspond to Riverside Drive. I levered myself onto one elbow and waited for a wave of nausea to wash over me and pass. Then I levered myself the rest of the way up. There was a glass jug of water on my bedside table. Beside it there was a glass. I managed to spill half of the water into it with a hand that hadn’t shaken so badly since Mindy Sinclair took me behind the bike shed when I was fifteen.

  I sipped some of the water and looked around the room, trying to link up random, unhappy thoughts. There was a bathroom en suite. The walls were off-white. The door had an institution look which was enhanced by the presence of some kind of chart on a clipboard hanging on it. There was a sage green vinyl chair with wooden arms between my bed and the window, angled so that anybody sitting in it could look at me and feel sorry for me. To complete the picture, there was another clipboard attached to the foot of my bed. The bed was made of metal tubing painted white.

  I was in hospital. I looked out the window again. I was in hospital outside New York. I tried to remember. I tried to remember what I remembered and I didn’t remember much.

  I swung my legs out of bed and realized I was wearing one of those hospital gowns that expose your ass to ridicule. As I realized that, my stomach lurched toward my mouth and I staggered to the john just in time to vomit convulsively, but to little effect. After a couple of minutes I rinsed my mouth, drank a little more water, and returned to fall on the bed. I began to shiver and covered myself with the sheets.

  Shortly after that, the door opened and a pretty nurse in her late twenties came in and smiled at me.

  “Aha,” she said. “We’re awake!”

  “What, both of us?” Even when I’m sick I can be a wiseass if I have to.

  She ignored me and asked, “How are we feeling?”

  I repeated my joke, hoping she’d get it this time. “What, both of us?”

  She winked. “Well you can’t be that bad if you’re being a pain in the ass, can you?”

  “What, now it’s only me? We’re not both pains in the ass?”

  “I’ll let Dr. Banks know you’re awake. Can I get you anything?”

  “Yeah, something to stop me feeling sick.”

  “I’ll leave that to the doctor.”

  She opened the door. I said, “What’s your name?”

  “Nurse Rogers.”

  “You free after work, Nurse Rogers?”

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “In your condition? I do enough nursing while I’m on duty, tough guy. After work, I like to be nursed.”

  I smiled and she left. I lay back and closed my eyes. I wondered for a moment if I even knew who I was. I did. I was Lacklan, Lacklan Walker. I was rich because I had inherited a fortune from my father. He had died. I hated him and he had died. Because Marni had killed him. She had killed him because…

  The door opened and I opened my eyes. There was a black woman in a white coat. She looked oddly like Oprah. She had her hands in her pockets and her head cocked on one side. “How are we feeling?”

  I managed to raise an eyebrow. “You too? What’s with the we? Everyone in this hospital has blue blood or what?”

  She smiled on the right side of her face, where it looked both tolerant and ironic. “Oooh kaaay, how are you feeling?”

  “Like shit. Can you give me something to stop vomiting?”

  She nodded. “Sure. I came prepared.”

  She stepped closer, popped a pill from a plastic sheet, and handed it to me with a glass of water. I pushed myself up again and took the pill and the water. As I swallowed both, she started talking again.

  “The nausea will pass quickly. It’s the after effect of the drug you took.”

  I frowned. “What drug?”

  “Yeah, you probably don’t remember much. It will affect your memory for a bit too. That’ll pass.”

  “Where am I? What happened? Who are you?”

  She crossed her arms and watched me for a moment. “In reverse order, I am Dr. Banks, you took a large dose of Benzoacetalokine. It knocked you out for a good few hours, but it has side effects, like making you feel like shit and wiping out your memory.” She waited a moment while I frowned at her and tried to remember. Then she added, “The pills will reduce the inflammation in your stomach and your intestines fairly quickly. The rest of it will take time.”

  I shook my head. “I have never even heard of Benzo…”

  “Acetalokine. Probably not. But you took it.”

  “Hang on… I was at home. Ben. I was with Ben. Did he call you?”

  She nodded, but not in the affirmative, more like she was agreeing with her own thoughts. Then she said, “Try to get some rest. Can you manage some food? It’s the best thing you can do, if you can keep it down.”

  I answered absently, telling her yes, but not really listening to what she was saying.

  She left and I lay back and tried to search in the amorphous grayness that was my mind for details of where I was and how I had got here. But my thoughts drifted into vague irrational sequences and without realizing, they became dreams in a world of sleep. I don’t know how long I slept, but I awoke feeling better and stronger, though still confused.

  Nurse Rogers was there. She had pushed up the overbed table and placed a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and pork sausages on it, with a large mug of coffee and a side plate of toast. She smiled and winked in a weird replay of the way she’d left last time I saw her. “Good morning, sleepy head.”

  I pushed myself up and she adjusted the cushions behind me. “Do you patronize all your patients, Nurse Rogers, or only the ones who want to sleep with you?”

  “Now why would you want to sleep with me, silly?” She asked it with a big, friendly smile. “Surely it would be more fun if we were awake.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “All of them.”

  “What day is it?”

  “Monday.”

  “Date?”

  “14th of May. Anything else, Herr Walker?”

  I smiled at her. “Yeah, wiseass. Where are my clothes?”

  “Somewhere safe, where you can’t get them.”

  I cut into a sausage and she made her way to the door. I said, “Nurse, I took a sleeping pill. Why am I in hospital?”

  She stopped and turned back. “I’ll let Dr. Banks explain that. She’ll be ’round to see you soon.”

  She left and I ate hungrily, then drained the mug of coffee and felt good. As soon as I felt good, I felt impatient. I wanted my clothes and I wanted to be up and out of there. I got up and opened the door to look out. There wasn’t much to see. A corridor that on the left made a right angle and on the right led to a desk with what seemed to be a reception area. Dr. Banks was leaning on the desk reading some papers and looked up when I stepped out. She put down the papers and came toward me.

  “You’re looking better.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know why I’m here. I need some answers and I need my clothes.”

  “Of course you do.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Let’s step inside and get you sorted. You have a visitor.”

  I yielded to her pressure and moved back into the room. “A visitor? Who?”

  “Your nephew.”

  I shook my head. “That’s a mistake. I haven’t got a nephew.” A small ache in my head and a memory. “I only had one brother. He’s dead. He never had kids.”

  She smiled. “Well, that’s what he said. Now you just rest while I get you something to wear, and then we’ll take you down to the garden.”

  I felt a stab of anger. “I don’t want something to wear, Dr. Banks. I want my clothes. And you don’t need to take me anywhere. Just tell me where it is and I’ll go. And then I’m out of here.”

  She
gave a little nod. “That’s not a problem, Mr. Walker. Nurse Rogers will bring you something to wear right away.”

  “Something to wear…What happened to my clothes?”

  “She’ll be right here. Try not to get upset. Everything is going to be fine.”

  I went and stood by the window, looking out. I barely registered the view. I was remembering. Ben. I had been drinking with Ben, discussing something… I had fallen asleep. Ben had said it was a problem. There was a problem, but I couldn’t remember what the problem was. Marni? Had Marni been the problem?

  Then there was a face, a sobbing face with a large beard. I shot him in the head, even though he was bound. Bound with coat hangers. And bodies, dead bodies upstairs, with their throats cut. I was aware my heart was pounding. The door opened and I turned to see Nurse Rogers, still smiling. Over one arm she had a toweling dressing gown. “I got you something to put on while we sort out your clothes.”

  I growled, “What the hell do you mean, sort out my clothes? What do you need to sort out?”

  She didn’t falter. “Well, we had to wash them when you were brought in, didn’t we? Now, do you want some help to change?” She winked.

  I snarled. “No, get the hell out of here.”

  “Rude! Just call when you’re ready and I’ll take you to see your nephew.”

  “I don’t have a nephew!”

  She laughed. “Well, you’d better tell him that!”

  She left. I stripped off the nightgown and put on the dressing gown. I looked for some slippers or shoes, but there weren’t any. I yanked open the door and shouted, “Nurse Rogers!” She peered around from the desk down the corridor. “What am I supposed to put on my feet?”

  She disappeared and reappeared a moment later with a wheelchair and a pair of fluffy slippers. I stared at her. “You have got to be kidding.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Walker, it’s hospital policy. Our insurance company insists upon it.”

  “You can tell your insurance company that they can shove that chair and the slippers right up their corporate ass. Now where is this guy who claims to be my nephew?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t tell you. I can take you there.”