Carnival of Shadows

by R.J. Ellory

  Valeria shook her head. “You are sure, Agent Travis?”

  “Sure of what?”

  “Sure that you want to open Pandora’s box?”

  “Hit me with it,” Travis said, and leaned back.

  Valeria looked at Doyle. “Edgar—”

  Doyle raised his hand. Valeria fell silent.

  “I am now risking my life,” Doyle said. “Also that of Valeria here, most definitely that of Chester Greene and Mr. Slate. In fact, I am risking the lives of everyone here. I want you to appreciate what I am putting on the line here, Agent Travis.”

  Travis said nothing.

  “Do you understand what I am saying, Agent Travis?”

  “No, sir, I do not. I have heard nothing but theory and supposition. I have heard nothing that leads me to believe that you are anything but a dreamer, Mr. Doyle.”

  “Even after last night, Agent Travis? Even after what Chester said to you about your father?”

  “I will give you that one, Mr. Doyle. That was very astute of him. A little wild, a little off-the-cuff, but I have to admit that he took me by surprise.”

  “I don’t know that I have ever seen anyone fight something so hard,” Doyle said. “You really are terrified of what might happen if you open your eyes, aren’t you?”

  “I think you believe me to be someone else, Mr. Doyle. I am not terrified of anything you might say or do, I can assure you.”

  “Very well,” Doyle said, matter-of-factly. “So we shall open the box.”

  “Open away, Mr. Doyle. Let’s see what’s inside, shall we?”

  Travis leaned back. He put his hands on the table. He felt utterly calm, utterly relaxed, not the slightest bit concerned about whatever Doyle might say next.

  Doyle looked at him closely, and then he closed his eyes.

  The voice that came from Doyle’s lips was unmistakably that of Doyle, but there was an undertone, an edge, a harshness to it that was unsettling.

  “Don’t even open your freakin’ mouth,” Doyle said.

  Travis frowned. Who was he talking to?

  And then—out of no place at all—a vague memory began to stir.

  “Long day, dumbass workers, problems you could not even comprehend, and the last thing I need is to hear some bullshit whiny freakin’ bitch going on at me about how I’m late.”

  Travis’s intake of breath was clearly audible. His fists clenched involuntarily. He looked at Doyle; still his eyes were closed. Then he looked at the woman beside him. She was smiling in that same way that Doyle had done earlier—somehow sincere, somehow patient, somehow sympathetic, as if here she was the bearer of unfortunate news.

  Doyle opened his eyes and looked directly at Travis. “And I don’t need to see you sharing sideways fucking glances with her like you think you’re better than me. Don’t think I don’t know what you say about me, you pair together like snakes in a freakin’ basket. Get my dinner, get me a drink, and leave me the hell alone, all right?”

  Travis found his voice. “Enough!” he barked.

  “Tray and cup, fucknuts,” Doyle said, and Travis could see the face of the teenage Tony Scarapetto right there in front of him.

  “You done fucked the quiff, eh, boy?” Doyle went on. “I seen her a coupla times. Cain’t ’member when, but I seen her and figured she’d be good for a party. But you beat me to it, you old dog, and you only sixteen years old. God darn it, boy, you sure as hell is your father’s son.”

  “No! Enough!” Travis said.

  Doyle sneered, but it was not Doyle at all. It was as if there was a second face behind Doyle’s and it was that face that Travis could somehow see.

  “You think your mother would be proud of you? You think she’d be proud of you, kiddo? You done fucked her cousin’s widder. I didn’t do no worse than you’re doing right now. Hell, you are a sick kid, you know that? You think you have the right to judge me? You don’t have the right to even speak to me, let alone judge me, you self-righteous hypocritical son of a bitch! And I’ll tell you now, that ain’t never had more meaning than it does right now. Son of a bitch. You are a son of a bitch. Because she was a bitch, kiddo. She was a fucking nasty fucking bitch, and I hope she burns in hell forever…”

  Travis snatched a cup from the table and slammed it down. It shattered into a dozen pieces, one of which punctured his palm. The flow of blood was sudden and significant. It ran from his hand and started spreading across the linen tablecloth.

  Doyle snapped to, as if jerked back from reverie, and he just looked at Travis with a weary and somewhat saddened expression in his eyes. “You are your own shadow,” he said quietly. “The shadow you see in that field is you, and there is no crow, Michael. That’s the sound of you laughing at yourself… something you forgot to do a long, long time ago.”

  Valeria turned and looked at Doyle, then reached out her hand and touched the side of his face.

  Travis tried to stand, but dizziness overcame him.

  “You stay right there,” Valeria said. “I will fix your hand.”

  Travis did as he was told, unable then to look at either of them.

  Valeria went to the small sink and fetched a cloth. She pressed it against the wound in Travis’s hand, now evidently shallow, almost superficial, but still bleeding profusely.

  “W-w-what is ha-happening to m-me?” Travis stuttered.

  “You opened the box, Michael,” Valeria said. “That was all. You just opened the box.”

  Travis turned and looked up at her.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said, her voice somehow soothing. “Better to know than not to know, however hard the truth might be. That’s what we always say, right, Edgar?”

  Edgar Doyle nodded his head. “Right,” he said, his voice tired. “Better to know than not to know.”

  Travis felt his emotions unravel. He wanted to cry, but he dared not.

  “Do it,” Doyle said. “Just let it go.”

  And Travis did. He leaned forward, rested his forehead on the crook of his arm, and he just wept.

  33

  After a while, he did not care that they were there, watching him as he fell to pieces. For that’s how it felt, as if he were being pulled apart at the seams, and every carefully constructed rationale and reason for being the way he was seemed to count for nothing in the face of what he was experiencing.

  And the tears seemed to run out and the feeling of tension in his chest, his throat, in every muscle of his body seemed to ease, and he felt a sense of balance and composure returning. But he was different. He knew that. It was not easy to determine how he was different, but he was.

  Both Edgar Doyle and Valeria Mironescu seemed entirely calm. The look in their eyes was one of reconciliation, as if they had expected nothing less than this, as if this had been their intention all along.

  Travis looked at Doyle.

  Doyle smiled and shook his head. “No,” he said.

  “No what?”

  “The answer to your question. You were going to ask me whether or not I could hear every thought you had. The answer is no. No one can do that. At least not in my experience.”

  “But—”

  “Like that old expression, how people can wear their heart on their sleeve. People carry their past around with them, the things they’ve forgotten, especially the things they think they’re no longer affected by. I would even go so far as to say that the things that cause the most trouble for people are the things that are buried the deepest. That seems to be the way we are put together.”

  “I feel strange,” Travis said. “I feel transparent.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t like it. I don’t like this feeling at all.”

  “It is just new,” Doyle said. “You know, you are perhaps one of the most tightly wound people I have ever met, Agent Travis. The most su
spicious—”

  “Not suspicious,” Valeria interjected. “I don’t think Agent Travis is suspicious. Guarded perhaps, even cautious, but not suspicious.”

  “You’re right,” Doyle said. “Suspicious is not the right word. You are very grounded in reality, but the reality you have chosen as your anchor is perhaps the most fragile and insubstantial of all.”

  Travis shook his head.

  “An idea is more powerful than anything,” Doyle said. “Without an idea, nothing could exist. A building is a building, but without the idea for the building, there would be no building. The building is tangible, real, present, but the idea is stronger.”

  “I don’t know what this has to do with what is happening here,” Travis said. “I don’t even understand why you are telling me this.”

  “Because we have to trust someone,” Valeria said, “and we have chosen you.”

  Travis tried to stand again, but he was unable to find a sufficient sense of balance to make it to his feet.

  “Just sit there for a while,” she said. “Listen to what Edgar is telling you. What harm can it do to listen?”

  “Emotion,” Doyle said. “There’s another one for you. Which is stronger, the situation itself or the emotion it provokes? I’d say the emotion. You forget the details of location, time, even people, but it’s almost impossible to forget the emotion.”

  Travis closed his eyes. He could see his mother’s face, he could see Esther’s, and a wave of anguish swelled and receded inside of him.

  “You question everything,” Doyle said, “and the way you question things, the fact that you demand evidence that can satisfy your immediate senses… well, that is the reason that man is dead. You have to ask the question, why you, Agent Travis? Why you, specifically, and why alone, why not with a partner, as is ordinarily the case? Why did the FBI send Special Agent Michael Travis down to Seneca Falls to investigate this murder?”

  “Because that is my job, Mr. Doyle. Because that is what we do.”

  “No, sir,” Doyle said. “This is not what you do. Not in this case. This case is something else entirely, and if you really want to know the truth, then you have to understand that this man is dead because of you.”

  “What on earth does that mean, that he is dead because of me?”

  “Well, I’m sure he would have wound up dead sooner or later,” Doyle said. “But let us say that he died a little prematurely, perhaps. And he did not die here, Agent Travis. I can imagine that whatever postmortem might have been undertaken has confirmed that point. I am sure he was considered the most deserving of sacrifice for this experiment, and his body was brought here so Special Agent Michael Travis could come and investigate.”

  “Sacrifice? Experiment? What on earth are you talking about?” Travis looked at Valeria. “Are you hearing what he is saying? Does this make even the slightest bit of sense to you?”

  “It makes sense, Agent Travis,” she said. “I don’t want it to make sense, but the facts are the facts, and I know how much you like to deal with facts.”

  “That man was murdered, Agent Travis,” Doyle said. “He was executed, to be exact, and his body was brought here. From where, I don’t know. Perhaps he was in custody. Perhaps he was already part of some grand scheme that had been discussed and agreed at the highest levels. All I know is that you were sent here, not to investigate the death of an unidentified man, but to investigate us.”

  “What possible reason could there be for me to investigate you?”

  “The world always wants what it cannot have,” Doyle said. “Even when something is free, people want to own it, control it, dictate how it can and cannot be used. But you cannot own an idea, and you cannot put an emotion in a box, no matter how hard you try. The human mind and the human soul are not the property of the federal government, Agent Travis, regardless of what they might think. And the federal governments of this world have been trying to do this to people like us for as long as civilization has existed, and I use the word civilization in its loosest sense. You cannot kill the truth, and people will always find the truth even when the greatest efforts are made to hide it.”

  ‘The federal government has not murdered anyone,” Travis said. “There are executions, of course, but that is the law of the land, and the judicial system affords a protocol and a system to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and then a jury of peers will make the decision as to whether a man should be put to death for his crimes—”

  “Stop listening to what you have been told, and start listening to yourself,” Doyle interjected. “Seriously, you have no idea how ridiculous you sound. The world as you see it is not the world as it is. The world you see is built of lies and misdirections. You are being fooled and deceived on a daily basis, and have been for the whole of your life, Agent Travis. For some people, this is a game, but for people like us, people who are trying to exist, trying to go on about our business with nothing but the very best intention toward our fellow man, this has gone far beyond a matter of principle and has become a matter of freedom, a matter of life and death. You think that you are the first person that has been sent here? You think you are the first one to investigate who we are and what we are doing? You are not the first, and I am sure that if you do not give your superiors the answers they want, then you will not be the last. There is a difference this time, however, because they have never gone to such lengths before. There has always been some slight degree of subtlety, no matter how obvious their efforts might have seemed to us, but this time they have become desperate. This time they were prepared to kill a man in order to get you here.”

  “I am afraid for your sanity, Mr. Doyle,” Travis said.

  “I am afraid for yours, Agent Travis.”

  “I am not rambling about some incoherent and preposterous conspiracy theory.”

  “And nor am I,” Doyle replied. “You keep on fighting, don’t you? You really are one stubborn son of a bitch.”

  “Enough now,” Travis said. “I will be making arrangements for further agents to attend this case. I will make one phone call, and they will be here within hours.”

  “Somehow I doubt that,” Doyle said.

  “You know nothing.”

  “I know enough to know that you’re on your own, Michael. You make as many calls as you like; you’re going to get the same answer. There’s not going to be any more agents. There’s not going to be any backup or support or anything else. This is your baby, as they say.”

  Travis was angry beyond words, but he knew that losing his temper would merely disadvantage him.

  “You ever wonder how many people actually know you’re here?” Doyle asked. “I don’t mean us, of course. I mean those within your very special Bureau. How many people did you speak to? How many people wished you success in your investigation? How many people have contacted you since your arrival to ask for progress reports, updates, leads you are pursuing, suspects you have identified? Four days, Agent Travis. Four days and you don’t even know the name of that dead man. What little you do know came from your own industry and work. But what do you have? That he was Hungarian? That he worked for this Black Dog organization? That is all you have, and it is not a great deal, is it?”

  “You are beyond insane, Doyle,” Travis said.

  “So you keep reminding me.” Doyle looked down at the table, then sideways at Valeria Mironescu. “What do we do with him, my dear? What on earth are we supposed to do with such a stubborn and mule-headed individual? You think they could at least have sent us someone with a fragment of imagination.”

  Valeria smiled. “But surely they sent him here for that very reason? Because he possesses no imagination at all?”

  “How could I know about things that have never been spoken of, never been discussed, never even been verbalized outside your own mind, Agent Travis?” Doyle asked him. “Who else knows what your dead father said to you
in that house in Flatwater? It was Flatwater, right? That’s where you were born, and that’s where your mother killed your father, isn’t it? How could I know such things unless I am telling you the truth about who we are and what we are capable of?”

  “I have no answer for you, Mr. Doyle,” Travis said. He realized he was clenching his fists, his knuckles visibly whitening.

  “Because you really don’t know, or because you are afraid to acknowledge what is right there in front of you, as real as this caravan, as real as this field, as real as the entire town of Seneca Falls, and yet utterly intangible, utterly invisible, utterly inexplicable? Which one is it, Agent Travis? Which one is it?”

  “I am not answerable to you, Doyle. I am not answerable to anyone but myself and the people I work for—”

  “And did you ever stop to wonder about the motives and intentions of the people you work for? Did you ever take a moment to look behind the curtain, eh? You are having the rug pulled out from under you, as they say, and it is a most unsettling feeling.”

  “You are not saying anything that unstabilizes my certainty, Mr. Doyle—”

  “I doubt that is an entirely accurate statement, Mr. Travis. For someone so hell-bent on establishing the truth, it seems a little ironic that the individual to whom you lie the most is yourself.”

  “A man is tested by the opinions he hears in life, Mr. Doyle. The more you challenge what I know to be real, the more I believe in my own interpretation of reality.”

  “As is the case with most people, Agent Travis, and what desperately dull lives they lead. Fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all. The humdrum banality of everyday life is far less threatening than the possibility of something beyond what we see and hear and touch and experience with our five senses. There are worlds beyond worlds out there, each as real as the next, and yet we decide to imprison ourselves in this safety net of assumption and caution, and why? Because we are afraid, right? Afraid to think, afraid to question, afraid to feel, afraid to look. And then, just as we die, we finally have some small glimpse of what we have missed; we see how blind we have been…”