“That’s why I’m here!” the man cried.
Above them, there was more clanging and banging, but this time, it was ignored.
“How serendipitous,” said Charles. He watched the word cause momentary confusion in the man called Doom.
“I am here to save the world from the ravages of men like you!” said Doom. Placing his hands to his white shirt, he ripped it open to reveal what first appeared to be a flak vest under his clothing. No wonder his suit had been such a bad fit…
“What the hell are you doing?” Charles tried to back away, but there was no place to go. There were more loud noises above their car. The muffled voices of rescue workers echoed through the metallic ceiling.
“Did you think you could go on raping the Earth forever!” Doom laughed, even adding a little melodrama by throwing back his head. “No! Not after today!”
“What did you have in mind, Doctor?” Charles knew it would be best to keep the guy talking. The more he looked at the vest and the spidery network of wires and circuit boards, he knew he was looking at some kind of explosive device.
“I have enough C-4 on me to take off the top of this building…” Doom grinned. His teeth were tiny, perfectly even, and seemingly all the same size. “…and that’s exactly what I’m going to do IF I EVER GET OUT OF HERE!”
“Calm down!” said Charles sharply as an idea slowly came to him.
Doctor Doom looked startled, caught up short by Charles’ sudden show of authority. “What?”
“Why do you think I was fired, you fool?” said Charles. “I wanted to stop the de-forestation of the Amazon rainforest; I wanted to stop the Colorado strip-mining and the nuclear waste dumps…”
Doom considered this. Then: “How do I know you’re not lying?”
Footsteps clumped on the roof above their heads. The red phone rang explosively and both men jumped back from it.
“There’s no time!” cried Charles. “You’ve got to trust me…”
Without waiting for a response, Charles answered the emergency line.
“This is Williams, Mr. Jameson. Engineering just ten-foured us…they say they’ll have you outta there in another minute, okay?”
“I’m afraid there’s a problem,” said Charles. “I’m being held hostage…” He looked at Doctor Doom, who appeared genuinely surprised.
“What’s that, Mr. Jameson?”
“You heard me right, now listen closely…”
When the rescue team got a look at Doom’s wardrobe by Dow Chemical, they became very cooperative, escorting the good doctor and Charles Jameson up the fire stairwell all the way up to the Executive Penthouse where Alan Markley, CEO, has agreed to meet with the mad environmentalist to “discuss the issues.” The obligatory SWAT teams, fire fighters, and support personnel had all taken up their positions on station below the Penthouse level on the top floor of the MegaCorp Tower.
That’s it, Mr. Markley, squawked the speakerphone on the CEO’s desk. Everybody’s been evacuated from the floor.
“Very well,” said Alan Markley. “I will call you as soon as my negotiations with Doctor Doom have progressed.”
The corporate demagogue keyed out the phone with a diffident air. Charles had to hand it to the old man—he was handling things very well. Even the way he referred to the mad bomber sitting in his leather desk chair as though he were a visiting dignitary. Markley adjusted his tie, and looked coolly into the eyes of his adversary behind the desk. Beyond them, corded drapes framed a glass walled view of the MidTown sprawl ninety stories below. Charles stood off to the side, watching the proceedings, waiting for…for exactly what he was not yet certain.
“How do we know you’re not bluffing, sir?” said Markley.
“I left a small piece of plastique in the elevator car for the good old ‘authorities’ to analyze,” said Doom. “Why else do you think everybody’s being so nice to me.”
Markley nodded, but said nothing.
“So, let’s talk about a few things, Mr. Markley, shall we?”
Doom looked more calm, more in control now, but his resemblance to a weasel or a ferret was stronger than ever. The vest-bomb with its wire-harness accents looked decidedly real, and the only way Charles was dealing with the idea that he could be vaporized in an instant was to utilize his Executive Awareness Acuity Training. He was finally grateful for those company-sponsored rah-rah retreats in the Adirondacks with motivational gurus.
“Go on,” said Markley.
“For starters,” said Doom as he pulled a handgrip from his pocket attached to a thick wire. It looked as if it had been fashioned from the handle of a joystick on a computer game. “I want you to get on the phone and stop the Brazilian operations immediately.”
“What!? That’s impossible!!” Markley’s voice jumped up the decibel range. “I…can’t! I won’t!”
Holding up the handgrip, Doom displayed a little red button. “You don’t want me to push this…”
Markley sneered. “You don’t have the balls…”
Doom jumped up from the huge, throne-like chair, rushed at Markley and thrust the detonator to within inches of the CEO’s face.
“No!” screamed Charles. “Not yet!”
Both Doom and Markley looked at him sharply.
“You haven’t gotten what you want,” said Charles. “You won’t solve anything by doing it now.”
“You’re right,” said Doom, lowering the detonator, but keeping it firmly in his grasp. “But don’t worry—even when I push this in, we’ve still got sixty seconds before it goes off. No way to reverse it after that. More dramatic that way, don’t you think?”
“Definitely a nice touch,” said Charles. He paused to breathe deeply, then to his former boss: “Go on, Alan, make that call. This guy’s serious as cancer…”
An hour later, after several exchanges with the SWAT Commander and the FBI goons, plus phone calls throughout the global satellite net, Doctor Doom had managed to halt the Amazonian deforestation, shut down MegaCorp’s worldwide plutonium plants, stop all their strip mining, save the whales, dolphins, and baby seals, and, just as an added treat, ensured free healthcare for the homeless. Doom acknowledged this last item was not really an environmental issue, but it was a deserving liberal cause nonetheless.
Pleased with himself, Doom had returned to the warmth and comfort of Markley’s throne. He looked at Charles and smiled his tiny-toothed smile. “Well, Charles, I think we’ve done it.”
Markley looked at his former VP with loathing. “You piece of shit!” he screamed. “You’re really in on this, aren’t you, Charles?!”
Jameson laughed. “You give me more credit than I deserve, Alan. But I have to tell you—it couldn’t have happened to a nicer company and a nicer bunch of corporate assholes.”
“You’ll pay for this, Jameson!”
Charles laughed. “I have no connection with the Good Doctor here. Any good attorney would have no problem establishing an airtight defense. What are they going to convict me of?—disagreeing with my boss?”
Markley’s face had become florid and his composure was falling away in great talus-laden chunks. A large vein in his forehead pulsed like an invertebrate beneath his flesh. The man’s blood pressure red-lined as his hands shook in frustration and rage.
Doom chuckled. “This is good. I hadn’t expected entertainment along with my adventure. You know, I’d really like to stay, but as they say, I’ve got a plane to catch—a helicopter, actually…”
“Shut up, you little…you little do-gooding nerd! Do you really think they’re going to let you just fly out of here?!”
“What do you mean?” It was obvious Doom had never considered any alternative.
“They’ll blow you out of the sky!” bellowed Markley.
“Not if you take him with you,” said Charles.
Doctor Doom’s confused expression brightened into one of instant gratification. “Yes! Yes, of course!”
“You bastard.” shouted Markley. The CEO sto
od opposite the desk literally convulsing like an amok wind-up toy, about to shake itself to pieces.
“Call the hotline,” said Doom. “Tell them to bring that chopper to the roof now.”
Charles keyed in the number to the SWAT commander while Markley unleashed a hot jet of profanity on both of them.
“Are they coming?” asked Doom.
Charles nodded, hung up the receiver.
“I’ll never go with you sons-of-bitches! You can’t make me! They’ll pick you off like a bird on a wire as soon as you set foot on the roof!”
Doom seemed to consider this—again it was something he’d not thought about too deeply. He looked at Charles as a bumbling monarch might seek out a crafty advisor.
“Not if you tie him to you…”
“Jameson! You fucking…you fucking turncoat! What’re you doing!?”
“Brilliant, Charles!” said Doom. “But how can we manage it?” Muffled by the glass wall, the subsonic thoomp-thump of the approaching helicopter punctuated their words.
Charles moved quickly to the floor-to-ceiling glass wall. In a single motion he grabbed the draperies and pulled everything down. Pulling the heavy brocaded tie-back cord from the mess, he held it up triumphantly.
Doom applauded and smiled. “Excellent, Mr. Jameson. You have a fine mind for this sort of thing.”
The bomber stood up and approached Charles. “Attach one end around my waist, if you would.”
Charles nodded, carefully affixed the cord in a double half-hitch of which any yachtsman would be proud. He turned to regard Alan Markley who was so flushed with anger, he looked like he’d fallen from a lobster pot. “Sir, if you would please step forward…” Charles said with his most deferential smile.
Markley was fairly well seething now. He tried to speak but he’d lost that ability as it was subsumed into the atavistic magma of his rage. He sputtered and gagged on his words as he lunged over the edge of the desk, his clawed hands reaching for Jameson’s face.
But despite the years of racquetball and Nautilus, Alan Markley missed his target. Charles had spun away in a move learned long-ago on the football fields of Princeton, and watched his former boss impact with Doctor Doom in the high-backed executive throne.
Everything happened so quickly, it would be difficult to reconstruct the sequence of events for the police, but it went something like this: Markley’s momentum propelled himself, Doom, and the huge chair backward on its well-oiled casters; like a runaway boxcar, the rolling mass shattered the glass curtainwall and slipped off the leading edge of the skyscraper; the cord in Charles’ hands snapped like a bowstring suddenly taut, almost pulling him out into space, but his grip hadn’t been strong enough. He stood for an instant, stunned, trying to assess what had happened, what was still going on. One end of the thick cord remained tangled in the mess of fabric still attached to the metal frame and motorized drapery track; the other held fast around Doom’s waist.
Walking cautiously near the wind-swept maw of the shattered curtainwall, Charles looked over the edge to see Doctor Doom dangling like a broken pendulum ten feet below. And hanging onto the twisting rope like a wharf rat was Alan Markley, an expression of exquisite terror etched into his face. Beneath them the side of the building sloped away to a vanishing point. Vertigo reached for him, and Charles leaned back, steadying himself.
“Jameson!” cried the CEO. “Pull us up for God’s sake!”
“No!” screamed Doom, trying to hold the detonator high to be seen. “Let him go, or I’ll blow us all to hell!”
Charles grinned as he watched the two men struggle at the end of the wind-whipped tether. Markley had wrapped his arms around the cord and his legs around one of Doom’s. The bomber had extended his detonator arm as far from the CEO as possible while using his free hand to stiff-arm Markley in the face. Time slowed and stretched as the two men twisted in the air-currents that criss-crossed the building.
As if viewing the action through a long lens, Charles focused on Doom’s thumb as it depressed the detonator.
“Sorry, Jameson!” yelled the madman. “No choice, really!”
“Christ almighty, Charles!” Markley’s voice sound puny and small in the wind. “Do something!”
“Oh, I will, Mr. Markley,” Charles said loudly as he stepped back from the edge. Making sure he was free of the debris, Charles pulled downward on the bowstring cord still anchored to the drapery track. His effort, combined with the weight of the two struggling men, was enough to break it loose.
It sagged downward with a sickening lurch, and he heard Markley scream. Then the cord snagged for an instant, jerking the dangling men like bungee-jumpers.
How much time? thought Charles. How long is a fucking minute?
“Jameson, no!” Markley wailed above the wind like a banshee.
Charles grabbed the cord, gave it the final tug it needed, then stepped back as the drapery rig rattled off the wall and over the edge.
If either of the men screamed, he could not hear them in the vortices of wind corkscrewing around the building. Tracking their descent, he estimated they’d plummeted more than halfway down before the plastique turned them into a miniature nova. Not enough to blow off the top of the building, as Doctor Doom had hoped, but more than adequate to light up the ennui of even the most jaded New York rubber-necks.
There is a company called Tekno-Books that is what you would call a publishing juggernaut. It rolls and clanks across the landscape like one of Wells “land leviathans” and it blows away all the competition when it comes to producing that great patron and benefactor of the short story—the anthology. Tekno-Books is headed up by a dynamic, hard-working guy, Marty Greenberg, who has discovered the secret of talking publishers into doing anthologies on just about anything you can think of. I have no idea how many anthologies Marty has created, but I am sure the number could be several hundred by this time. Many of his anthologies have been critically acclaimed and produced tons of award-nominated material.
As Darth Vader once said: “Impressive…”
But the best part is that Marty is a very nice guy. I met him more than twenty-five years ago at a Nebula Banquet when we were both rookies, and we’ve been friends ever since. Every once in a while he, or one of his minions, will send me a letter wanting to reprint one of my stories or ask me to contribute something new for one of his projects. No matter how busy I am, I always try to come up with something because Marty Greenberg is truly one of the good guys.
Now, concerning the story which follows, it was written for an anthology called The Conspiracy Files (an obvious ploy to capitalize on the at-the-time fascination with TV’s X-Files) edited by Scott Urban. Now, I have to admit this one had special appeal to me because I am one of those guys who wants to believe Oswald probably wasn’t even the shooter, that FDR was the architect behind Pearl Harbor, and well…you can dig it.
I like conspiracy theories, and I liked the challenge of coming up with a story for this project. The format of the story is again one I have used on occasion because it forces me to play an extra level in the writing game—create a series of inter-related pieces, and let the reader assemble them so a larger story gradually becomes clear. I also wanted to come up with a conspiracy that wasn’t a riff on any of the obvious or topical ones, so that forced me to stretch as well. I figure: if I’m going to dial up the energy to create a short story in the first place, I’m going to challenge myself and try to be as original as possible.
And so, the story that follows is part investigation, part indictment, part revelation as to why we have people running around with diplomas in their paws who cannot tell you what a decimal might be, locate Pakistan on a map, or identify the combatants of the Spanish-American War.
What do you think?
The Baltimore Sun (AP) It was reported by Lieutenant Detective Patrick Monaghan of the Homicide Division of the BCPD yesterday that the bomb blast at Saint Andrews High School in East Baltimore is now believed to be the work of what Monagha
n termed “professional assassins.” He said this after a preliminary investigation into the explosion which killed Brother Ignatius Sanborn, the principal of the non-sectarian independent school. “There are additional facts and some extenuating circumstances surrounding his death that are, at the very least, kind of strange,” said Monaghan. “We aren’t ready to divulge all the details yet, but I can tell you this—something stinks.”
From the PDX transcripts, 32nd Precinct, BCPD:
Call initiated 5:42:03 p.m.
MONAGHAN: This is Monaghan…
CALLER: Lieutenant, this is Special Agent Fred O’Brien, FBI…I was wondering if I could have a few words with you…
MONAGHAN: Sure, Fred…what can I do for you?
CALLER: The Sanborn case you’re working on…my office is going to be taking it over.
MONAGHAN: You’re kidding! You mean I was right?
CALLER: About what?
MONAGHAN: Professional job. That’s what I figured…especially after I saw the bomb-squad reports. So the Feds are going to be working with us from here on out, eh? Sounds like—
CALLER: Not exactly. I said we’ll be taking it over. Alone. You local boys are off.
MONAGHAN:…hey, wait a minute! That’s not how it usually works around here. What happened to the team-concept?
CALLER: Not on this one. Sorry. Can’t tell you anything else. Classified up to its ass.
MONAGHAN: Yeah, well it might be just that, but I’m going to need more authorization than a phone call from some guy I’ve never met. Why aren’t we going through channels here, Fred? Does my Captain know about this yet?
CALLER: Just you. I thought I would pay you the courtesy of telling you first…instead of getting all bent out of shape after you see the inter-office memo.
MONAGHAN: Yeah, I see. Pretty damned thoughtful of you, Fred. And you know what—? Just to show you how much I appreciate you being such a right guy, I wanna buy you some lunch when you stop by the Precinct House. How’s that sound?
Fearful Symmetries Page 37
