by Darcy Fray
As he approached the Stoli bar, he immediately spotted John’s men. The first was wearing a black bespoke suit and the other a similar style gray one. It was their tailored attire that gave them away. Every other attendee seemed to be wearing ill-fitting clothing extracted from an early ’90s Midwest time capsule. Gordon made eye contact with the black-suited man, who subtly nodded toward the entrance.
On cue, Gordon turned and retraced his path back to the front of the hall. Head down, he focused on his classic coffee-colored saddle shoes, allowing him to avoid any further discussions with admirers and drunken associates.
He tried not to consider the unanswered question he had asked his father in the car, but it kept prying its way back into his already crowded thoughts. Based on his father’s hesitation, he knew the answer was “no.”
Gordon ached for his mother at that moment. The visceral heart pains he had experienced upon learning of her death returned all at once. The day had touched upon every one of his emotions. It was certainly a departure from his usual cerebral routine. Though daunting, there was something thrilling about it all; he felt his blood coursing through his veins and each breath tunneling through the passageways of his lungs. He felt present and alive.
Gordon left the Expo and headed back in the direction of the Grand Hotel Europe. He never once turned to check on John’s men, who followed at a safe distance behind him. His brain was flooded with thoughts of Jurek, Dmitry, John, the journal, the woman on the bus, and of course, his mother and father. How was it possible that less than a week ago he was living an uneventful existence as a college professor? His life suddenly felt unrecognizable.
Lost in thought, the walk to the Grand Hotel Europe seemed to pass by in a mere moment. He walked through the lobby without making eye contact with anyone and boarded the open elevator. A pleasant-looking young woman in a hotel uniform stood just inside the door patiently awaiting its departure. As the elevator doors were about to close a voice called out, “Hold that, please.”
The hotel employee held the door and the gentlemen in the black and gray suits both entered the elevator. Gordon noticed that the hotel employee had already pressed the button for his floor, the third.
“What floor?” the woman asked of the two gentlemen.
“Already pressed, guess we’re neighbors,” the gentleman in the black suit responded, in an unexpectedly thick Southern accent.
The elevator doors closed and the four trapped souls rose to meet their fate.
•••
Six Months Earlier - Undisclosed Location
Dmitry gently swung back and forth, suspended from the heavy chain that hung down from the ceiling. With his arms fully extended above his head and his feet hovering inches above the cement floor, he was in excruciating pain. Filthy and emaciated, he bore no resemblance to his former self.
His captor stood directly in front of him, flanked by a hulking man with a thick chocolate beard and clean-shaven head.
“The answer is simple, Dmitry. The next time you see your wife she’ll either be breathing or not. The choice is yours.”
“I already told you,” Dmitry pleaded, struggling to find the strength to even speak. “My theories failed in the laboratory. My work was shut down by the KGB. I swear to you.”
“We believe you are lying to us, Dmitry. We believe it was your little experiment that took out the Institute along with the entire city block.”
“I wasn’t even working that night. I left early for a dinner with Sarah. You can ask her yourself. Dr. Belikov was alone.”
“I’m afraid Sarah is in no condition to be answering questions right now, and Dr. Belikov is dead. Unless you are experiencing some sense of urgency to join him, I would suggest that now is a good time to start cooperating, Dmitry.”
“What have you done to Sarah?” Dmitry struggled against the chains, but the resulting swinging motion caused him even greater pain.
“She probably has another few days left before she will die of dehydration. She seems so thirsty,” he laughed.
“What is it that you want?” Dmitry asked, slowly feeling his resolve slip away.
“We inherited a device, so to speak. The device is very, very special, but it requires a power source beyond what we are currently capable of supplying. That is where you come in.”
“Will I see Sarah if I help you?”
“Sarah will see a glass of water if you help us. How’s that for a start?”
“If you let her die, I will never speak. There will be nothing of me left to torture.”
“That’s very poetic, Dmitry, but I’m afraid you are in no position to be making demands.”
His questioner exited the room through the fortified door, allowing it to slam shut in his wake.
The large bearded man spat in Dmitry’s face, effortlessly lifting him far above his head. Dmitry’s bound hands were unhooked from the chain and he collapsed to the cement floor, where he lay sobbing like a motherless child.
•••
Saint Petersburg, Russia - Grand Hotel Europe
Gordon, Wilkinson’s men, and the female hotel employee all exited the elevator together, their destinies inextricably tangled like an ancient Rasta’s dreadlock. A palpable feeling of tension clouded the air.
Gordon was at the head of the pack, which only served to heighten his anxiety. He stopped to tie his shoe so that the others were forced to pass him. The woman in the hotel uniform brushed by and continued down the hall, with the man in black following closely at her heels. The man in gray lingered behind Gordon, pretending to check his phone.
After triple-knotting his shoelaces Gordon rose and proceeded to room 305. He pulled out his keycard and inserted it in the digital keypad. As the light flashed green, the man in gray gently pinned Gordon back against the wall, motioned for him to stay put and surged past him into the room. Gordon remained in the hallway, knowing full well that there were FSB agents inside, awaiting his return. As he stood next to the door, he glanced down the hallway and saw the man in black and the hotel employee both disappear around the corner at the far end of the hall. Gordon was alone.
He listened intently for what felt like hours; his room remained silent. Gordon always had difficulty judging the passing of time, especially under stressful conditions where moments seemed to stretch to minutes. He had no idea if he’d been standing against the wall for ten seconds or two hours. On an impulse, he entered the room...his instincts had served him well earlier in the day.
He walked down the narrow unlit corridor that led to the living room. As he reached the halfway point, a jarring thunderous chord sounded from the piano. He reeled back in horror, and every muscle in his body went rigid. The dissonant chord resonated ominously, followed by two loud thuds. Then silence. Gordon inched along as if walking a tightrope strung between the world’s tallest buildings.
He tiptoed into the living room. The tiniest sliver of moonlight peeked in through the curtains, barely revealing the two bodies lying on the floor near the grand piano. An unsettling quiet gurgling sound emanated from one of them. Gordon approached the man in gray; the sound was coming from his slit throat, which simultaneously gushed blood and leaked every breath he attempted to inhale.
He looked up at Gordon and used his last moment of life to warn him. “Run,” he whispered.
Gordon didn’t waste a single moment. He tore back through the living room and down the corridor. As he erupted through the doorway of his suite into the hotel’s hallway, he launched into the woman from the elevator, who took flight and violently impacted with the opposite wall. Her limp body crashed to the ground and a snub-nosed pistol flew from her hand. Gordon picked up the gun, a silent Russian MSP, and ran down the hall. He burst through the fire exit door, nearly stumbling over the body. The neck of the man in black was bent at a peculiar angle, and his glazed eyes were wide open and fixed on the ceiling.
Gordon took the fire escape stairs five at a time and reached ground level in what seemed mere se
conds. He pushed the fire exit door open and spilled directly out onto the snow-covered sidewalk. He looked down the street in both directions. The now-waning snowstorm had carpeted the entire city in a foot and a half of pristine snow. He found a misplaced moment of serenity in the virginal white landscape. The stillness. His mind wandered and he imagined liquid nitrogen frozen pumpkins falling to the ground in slow motion, releasing the most perfect of triboluminescent sparks. His ringing phone reeled him back to the chaos.
“Gordon?” It was his father.
“They’re all dead.” The tension, fear and anxiety coursing through his veins decayed as quickly as the sound of his voice. Fatigue hit him like a Joe Louis right cross to the jaw. Suddenly, his legs felt leaden and incapable of taking another step. The pistol escaped his weakened grasp and fell to the snowy sidewalk. He almost wanted it to all end, right here, right now.
“Gordon, stay with me. There should be a taxi parked about a hundred yards due east of the hotel entrance. Do you see it?”
“Yes.” It was the only taxi on the street.
“Get in it. The driver knows where to go. When this call ends, remove the battery and destroy your phone.”
“Will I see you again?”
The line went dead.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Pyramid
North Hollywood, CA - Crisp Residence
FLETCHER STRUGGLED, RED-FACED, dangling from a chin-up bar mounted in the entranceway to his modestly-sized living room. He had already done eighteen pull-ups, but he considered his morning a failure if he didn’t make it to twenty-five. He managed to get through nineteen, twenty and twenty-one, before the computer alert chimed. He swung off the bar, walked down the short hallway and entered his office. A blinking green cursor awaited his response.
t<
f<
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Fletcher re-read the message more than once, hoping that it would eventually start to make some sense, but his mind never really progressed past the word ‘nanomesh.’ Googling the word led him directly to its Wikipedia page:
The nanomesh is a new inorganic nanostructured two-dimensional material, similar to graphene. It was discovered in 2003 at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
It consists of a single layer of boron (B) and nitrogen (N) atoms, which forms by self-assembly a highly regular mesh after high-temperature exposure of a clean rhodium[1] or ruthenium[2] surface to borazine under ultra-high vacuum.
And so on…
It was even more confusing than the message from Veritas 22. Fletcher resigned himself to the fact that the subject matter simply extended beyond his rather rudimentary grasp of the sciences. It made him think of Jane. If she was here, she would surely be able to explain all of this to him in a manner he would understand.
Her patience had been extraordinary.
Fletcher recalled the night they met – it was August 23, 1985 at the Horse and Carriage, an expat pub in Sherman Oaks, California. He was visiting the U.S., interviewing with private security firms. His shattered femur forced him out of the British SAS on disability, and he was seeking a cushy job in the States, where the girls were prettier, the summers longer, and the pay higher. It was his last night in LA and he had arranged to meet a few mates along with some California blondes they had charmed at the beach earlier in the week. The drinking began in earnest early in the evening and they were all fully intoxicated by sunset.
Jane was enjoying the last of her summer break with a few collegiate, intellectual types at a nearby table, when Fletcher’s stopgap girlfriend began to gag in an attempt to hold back a fountain of vomit. Fletcher, his mates and the other girls were in no state to care for anyone beyond themselves. Jane, ever kind-spirited, escorted the girl (whose name Fletcher couldn’t even recall) to the bathroom, where she proceeded to throw up at least a half dozen times. Jane stayed with her the entire time, offering reassuring words as she held back the girl’s long blonde locks.
When they finally re-emerged from the bathroom, Fletcher was the only remaining member of his party. Jane said goodbye to her friends, who all looked at her like she had lost her mind, then offered to drive both the drunken girl and the car-less Fletcher to their respective destinations.
Fletcher had sobered up quickly. He carried his blonde friend to Jane’s car, a timeworn Toyota Corolla, parked a short distance from the pub. He and Jane engaged in some pleasant chit-chat and soon discovered they were both leaving town the following day, Jane to resume her studies at Cal Berkeley and Fletcher to return to England. Fletcher Sherlock-ed his semi-conscious blonde friend’s home address by rifling through her purse and extracting her California driver’s license. Candy Goldman. Not even twenty-one. As they pulled up to a new-money mansion in the hills of Encino, Fletcher realized he would have to face Candy’s parents.
Jane could see his mounting concern. “Why don’t you just let me walk her to the door?”
“Do I look that frightened of Mr. --“ Fletcher gazed down at the girl’s last name, “Goldman?”
“Frankly, yes.”
“How about you pretend to be my girlfriend and we can just be a couple of good Samaritans from the pub?” Fletcher offered.
“Unlikely, but we can give it a shot.”
They knocked on the massive door, with Candy draped between them. Much to Fletcher’s relief, her mother answered. She thanked them profusely and invited them in for a cup of coffee. Fletcher and Jane politely declined, opting to escape while luck was still on their side.
They returned to the car. It was just the two of them now. The odd circumstances had cemented a quick bond between them and the conversation flowed. As Jane pulled up outside the apartment where Fletcher was staying, she had the strange urge to just drive away with him and never look back. Instead, they sat in her car, talking for hours.
Jane learned that Fletcher liked pubs, rugby, football, mountain climbing, flying helis, and Clint Eastwood movies, while she preferred the more refined symphonies, theater, tennis, chess, and Woody Allen films. It appeared they had nothing in common, yet their attraction was unmistakable. Jane pulled away from the front of the apartment four hours later at two a.m., not knowing if she would ever see him again.
She tossed and turned the rest of the night, regretting that she hadn’t been more forward with Fletcher. They had exchanged addresses, but how likely was it that they would become pen pals? It sounded stupid even considering it. After about four hours of sleep, she peeled her eyes open, made a strong pot of coffee and finished packing her things for Berkeley. Her father dropped her off at LAX and she made her way to Terminal 3, Gate 13. An hour early, she sat and studied a chapter from one of her biology textbooks.
“Jane Meyer, please report to the desk at Gate 13.”
Jane looked up from her book. She couldn’t quite believe her eyes. Fletcher was standing at the Gate 13 desk scanning the room. As their eyes met, they both started laughing. She left her things at her seat and just barely held herself back from running directly into his arms. That would be silly, right?
He met her halfway.
“Shouldn’t you be in the International Terminal?” Jane asked, hardly able to contain her excitement.
“Technically, yes. But I missed my flight.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I just spent the last two hours running through Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 trying to track you down. You forgot something.”
“What?” Jane couldn’t imagine what he could have been referring to.
“This.” Fletcher gently placed his hands o
n either side of her face and kissed her unsuspecting lips. It was the most perfectly romantic thing that had ever happened to her. She wanted to scream with joy. One kiss turned into two, which turned into three and before long, the whole terminal was cheering them on.
Fletcher cleared the memory from his mind with a quick shake of his head. He knew where that kind of thinking led, and it ended at the bottom of a bottle followed by a week of not wanting to get out of bed. Many years ago he’d promised Harper that he would not allow himself to engage in such self-destructive behavior anymore. Occasionally he faltered, but a man like Fletcher needed to drink his demons away every now and then.
He looked back at the blinking green cursor. Best leave this one to Harper. He returned to his pull-up bar, where he continued his morning routine...twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five.
•••
Fatino, Russia - Farmhouse
Gordon and the taxi driver had not spoken during their nine-hour journey. What had started as an awkward silence became their natural state. Gordon felt certain that spoken words would merely bounce off the impenetrable barrier that had grown between them. He had little desire to test the theory.
The silence allowed Gordon an hour or two of light sleep, followed by hours of heavy reflection. It seemed that every stray thought led back to his mother. His gut told him she was dead. Even without knowing the circumstances, he blamed his father for her death. Why was he the one who survived?
The world sailed by, an endless blanket of white, broken by snow-covered trees and the odd house. After nine hours of traveling south on the M10, they were deeply ensconced in the Russian countryside. Finally, the driver exited the freeway and turned up a freshly-plowed narrow dirt road. Gordon was hungry, tired and confused. He hoped his father would be waiting at their destination. He needed answers.
