Senseless

by Fitch, Stona

My life of a few days ago was remarkably predictable. I might have to go to a meeting in Berlin on short notice. There were regular rumors that IBIS was shutting down or merging with another agency. Friends had heart attacks or surgery and Maura and I visited them in the hospital. Calls from Roanoke told me of great-aunts and great-uncles who had died in nursing homes. Colleagues called to announce their divorces. Cars crashed. People were injured and got better. The low, flat terrain of my life had lulled me into believing that nothing was ever going to happen to me.

  Day 5.

  I carefully took apart my cardboard food cylinders and washed and dried them in the bathroom, the room least likely to be under surveillance. I scrawled a note – My name is Eliott Gast. I am an American being held hostage in the upper floor of the building with white windows. Please help me. I wrote the phone number of the IBIS office and my home number in Virginia. I repeated the same note on three different pieces of cardboard, which I hid in my back pocket.

  Back in the main room, I picked up one of the metal chairs and walked quickly toward the painted windows. Raising the chair over my head, I smashed it as hard as I could into the glass. It rebounded, leaving only a small chip in the paint. I raised the chair high over my head and struck again and again, the crash of metal echoing through the apartment. Sweat coursed down my face. I retreated to the far end of the apartment and ran at the window, throwing the chair as hard as I could. The chair clattered to the floor. My plan to drop the notes from the broken window seemed foolish. I bent over and heaved, the air thick and sharp, my mind burning with frustration.

  When I rose, I saw dozens of black cables had snaked out of the ducts and now waited, extended and watching, for me to continue.

  “Damn you!” I jumped to grab a cable, but it had retracted into the ceiling again.

  “I suggest you stop that immediately.” A woman’s voice came from somewhere.

  “What?” My voice sounded strange after so much silence.

  “The glass will not break. It is unnecessary for you to try.”

  “Where are you?” I demanded, looking up at the ceiling.

  “You needn’t shout,” the voice said in accented English.

  “I’m in the next room.”

  I walked across the apartment and stopped at the door of the far bedroom. Seated in the remaining chair was a small woman in jeans, a white blouse, and a black and white headscarf that hid all of her face except her eyes. My thoughts raced. Hezbollah. Algerian separatists. Fanatical Muslims. I was in the hands of true terrorists, not just kidnappers. I tried to recall anyone that might have influence. I had met Queen Noor once at a reception. I knew a handful of Iranian businessmen in London.

  “It is a costume, a disguise,” the woman said, divining my thoughts from my worried look. She pointed to the ceiling.

  “We’re being watched?”

  “Of course.” She gestured to the windowsill and I sat down. I noticed that the small scraped opening I had been working on had been painted over, leaving the smell of resin.

  She said nothing for a few moments and I waited. I suppose I expected a full explanation of why I was here to come bursting forth from her. I took a close look at the strip in the head covering that revealed deep brown eyes, the faint line of carefully shaped eyebrows, the delicate bridge of her nose. Her eyes glistened and held a familiar glow that I soon placed. Maura used to read diaries and memoirs for distraction from more substantial books. The eyes of my captor reminded me of Anaïs Nin’s dewy gaze on the cover of volume after volume of her diaries, looking for Henry Miller in a crowd of Frenchmen. And from that distant association came the name that I would call her.

  “Why am I here?” I asked Nin.

  She shrugged. “I am not here to speak of ideology. I am your liaison. Nothing more.”

  “Liaison to…”

  “To the others. They make the plans.” I noted the separation between Nin and the others, hoped that it implied that she could be reasoned with.

  “And what are these plans?” Again, she shrugged. “They will come about in time. For now, I am to check to make sure that your needs are met and that you are comfortable. Your accommodations, I assume, are pleasing to you?”

  I nodded. “For a jail, yes, I suppose it’s fine. But being detained illegally. I demand that I be released immediately.”

  She shook her head. “This is only the beginning. Undoubtedly, you are afraid. It is normal.”

  “My family will be very concerned. My wife will have alerted the authorities in the U.S., and my children will be…”

  “You have no children,” Nin stated flatly.

  I paused, taken aback. “Who is in charge here? What do they want from me?”

  “Again, your questions go beyond what I can answer.” Her voice was quiet and engaging, as if we were exchanging pleasantries in a café. “Perhaps you need reassurance. Know this, then. We are committed to our ideals, but we are not extremists.”

  “The difference?”

  “Extremists wear the bomb.” Her eyes brightened at this definition, as if it were a witticism. “We don’t even have a bomb. All we have is you.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “Perhaps you should be.” Nin shifted slightly forward and the metal chair rasped. “Your role is important. The most important of all.”

  “You make it sound like I’m part of whatever you have planned.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No. I was grabbed off the Rue du Marché four days ago.”

  Nin leaned forward. “Your arrival here was no accident.”

  I said nothing.

  “We’ve been watching you for some time.”

  “For how long?”

  “Since London.”

  Our operation moved from London to Brussels almost a decade ago. I shifted nervously in my seat. Nin stood up and walked toward me. She stood just a few inches over five feet. For a moment, I considered grabbing her and turning the tables. But it was just a passing thought. Heroics were beyond me. “We will speak again, Monsieur Gast. In the meantime, all I can tell you is that most hostages live,” she said with remarkable vagueness, then added a more cryptic note. “Unless they decide not to.”

  I laughed uncomfortably.

  She moved closer and whispered. “This is no time for humor. Something is about to happen to you, Monsieur Gast. Something that will change you forever. I advise you to prepare.”

  She turned and left the room. I stayed on the windowsill for a moment, then walked back through the apartment, the light fading. There was no trace of Nin. She had vanished beyond the walls to rejoin her invisible compatriots.

  Day 6.

  Time passed extremely slowly, even more so knowing that I was being watched so closely. In any empty moment, Nin’s words surfaced and sent a disturbing chill through me. Something is about to happen to you. Perhaps this declaration was the actual torture. Telling me that something was about to happen put me in a state of perpetual and uncomfortable anticipation. I stalked around the three rooms. Reading gave me little distraction. In the middle of the book on metallurgy, I slammed it closed and threw it across the room, disgusted with myself. I was not given to confrontation, but my questions had piled up until I could no longer get free of them without answers.

  “What’s going to happen?” I shouted up at the grate.

  No answer.

  “I demand that I be released.”

  Nothing.

  I threw Ships of the World at the grate and it fell to the floor, pages splayed and fluttering like a pigeon on the cobblestones of the Grand-Place.

  The afternoon was cloudy and the light filtering through the painted windows turned thin and pale. Gloom settled throughout the apartment. Maura would know something was wrong and would have contacted the embassy. I had faith
in her thoroughness and resolve. She would set about the search that would trace me here to this apartment and set me free.

  The lights came on one after the next, not because I needed them to see – I was through with metallurgy and ships of the world for today. They came on because they needed to observe me, their prisoner, their pet.

  I imagined Nin’s dark eyes taking in my unshaven face, my rumpled clothes. Perhaps she regretted telling me anything. She could have let me think that nothing was going to happen, that I was just an innocent bystander. But I knew this wasn’t the case.

  Day 7.

  A burning smell woke me. I looked over at the windowsill, where I kept my ashtray and cigarettes. Leaning on the windowsill was a man wearing a plastic pirate mask with a black patch over one eye. At the top of the mask perched a jaunty three-pointed buccaneer hat bearing a skull and crossbones. The bottom of his mask ended in a black plastic beard, followed by several inches of his own sleek, black beard. I could see dark eyes peering through small holes in the mask.

  Blackbeard smoked by holding the cigarette carefully in the mouth hole of the mask. When he exhaled, the smoke spouted from the mask’s nose.

  “You have good taste.” He pointed to the Dunhills with the cigarette he had taken.

  I sat up and got out of bed, pulling my trousers on, then my shoes. By the time I was dressed, Blackbeard had lit another cigarette and offered it to me. His hands were callused and his thick, earthy fingers ended in closely cropped nails. I took the cigarette and retreated to the corner of the room, where I sat on the box of bottled water.

  “I’ve heard that you are concerned.” With his accent, the first two words sounded like I’ve hurt. He was German, Flemish, Dutch. I couldn’t tell.

  “I’m concerned that I’m being held here against my will for almost a week now,” I said. “And I demand to be released.”

  Blackbeard waved his hand in front of him. “In good time, Eliott Gast. In the meantime, don’t think of it as being detained.”

  “Really?”

  “No. You are being punished.”

  “For what?”

  “Your sins, of course. Just as everyone is punished for theirs.”

  “And what exactly are those sins?”

  “You know what they are.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  He paused, flicked ashes on the floor. “Your work offends us a great deal.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” I looked away, and in that moment, Blackbeard left the windowsill and moved quickly toward me. He grabbed my shirt and threw me to the floor, then kicked me in the stomach. I fell on the floor, stunned, my hands pressing on my stomach. The blow was not particularly hard, but it surprised me. I listened to the wheezing of my fast breathing.

  Blackbeard leaned toward me. He smelled of cigarettes and coffee. “I insist that we speak directly, without any of your American insolence. Truly, it will do you no good here.”

  I dusted myself off. The hollow ache in my stomach faded. Blackbeard returned to his windowsill and picked up the cigarette he had carefully balanced on its filter.

  I stood. “I am not a spy.”

  “Yes, we know that.” His voice was deep and smooth, an actor’s voice.

  “You are worse.”

  “I am an economist.”

  “Then describe your work to me.”

  “I promote international collaboration and trade.”

  “For…?”

  “For corporations, mostly in the U.S. But any group interested in expanding foreign trade can join IBIS.”

  “IBIS.” Blackbeard laughed. “IBIS is your country’s economic CIA.”

  I shook my head. “Our work has nothing to do with politics.”

  “It has everything to do with politics. You know this, Gast. You make it sound like your are some kind of… of clerk writing numbers in a ledger all day. Your work, as you know, has much wider impact. You have directly contributed to economic globalization.”

  “Perhaps we’ve affected the balance of trade a bit,” I offered. “But I can’t say that it goes any further than that.”

  “Then you are being modest, as well as lying.”

  “Of what possible concern is my work to you?” I asked finally. “And what have I done to deserve this?” I pointed at the room. Blackbeard paced in front of me much like a middle manager about to draw a chart. Then he turned back to me, eyes glinting behind his mask.

  “You asked about our ideology. Perhaps this will help you understand, at least as much as you need to understand. Let’s start at the very beginning. Think back to the time of the initial talks about a European union. Recall that there were demonstrations throughout Europe.”

  “Yes.” I remembered a certain amount of dissent from the usual groups – nationalists on one extreme, ultra-left groups on the other, anarchists everywhere. The newspapers had covered the protests.

  “We failed to gain attention for our cause at that crucial juncture,” Blackbeard said. “And much of the blame goes to you and your group, the so-called IBIS, which steamrollered all of Europe into this farcical union.”

  I shook my head. “I had absolutely nothing to do with that.” I almost laughed at the thought. “Unification had been coming for decades. Since the Treaties of Rome in 1957.”

  “But accelerated by you and your friends. You can tell yourself what you want to, but your role is clear to us, and well-documented.”

  “As far as I know, the motivation came from Europe, not from the U.S.,” I offered.

  “But your financial incentives greased the wheels. And they laid the groundwork for globalization, didn’t they, Eliott Gast?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I wondered if Blackbeard had me confused with another, more highly-placed American diplomat.

  Blackbeard paced again. “Audio on,” he shouted up at the ceiling, then spoke again, louder this time. “The European Economic Community is an American ploy. What better way to weaken us than to join us together – like a marriage of cousins. It was invented by scheming Americans concerned about their own agenda – keeping foreign markets open, cultural domination, and the expansion of the American empire. Remember your history, Eliott Gast. They must have taught you this at Princeton. America today is like the England of Victoria. Except that its empire is hidden. Its battles do not take place on open seas, but in the boardrooms of the World Bank, the G8, the World Trade Organization, and your beloved corporations. Transfer of power does not take place on a battlefield, but via movement of enormous sums of money.”

  He stopped for a moment. “Here is the source of our anger. Once we are dominated economically, it will not be long until we are absorbed financially, culturally, and militarily. We are fighting to break up the union and return power to the individual countries that formed it. To do this, we are exposing the American economic conspiracy. In short, we are making an example of you.”

  “I think you could have chosen a better representative of American imperialism.”

  “Audio off,” Blackbeard shouted up at the ceiling. Then he turned to me. “That, like so many other things, is not up to you to decide. You have made your own choices, your own decisions about what you have done with your life, and now you must be willing to accept the consequences”

  “Whatever your opinion of me, my work, or my government, one thing is certainly clear. I am being held here illegally.” I spoke carefully. “You must release me immediately. Certainly it does your cause no good to take hostages.”

  “On that point, you are wrong, Gast. Capturing you is the best thing that’s ever happened to us. You are like the golden goose to us. The one that lays the golden eggs.” Blackbeard’s eyes crinkled behind the mask. “We will talk again. I enjoyed our discussion.”

  I didn’t bothe
r pointing out that there was no discussion, merely a lecture. Blackbeard’s position was laughable – a mix of conspiracy theory, tired anti-Americanism, and globalization mumbo-jumbo. But I found his commitment frightening. He was clearly a man who had developed an elaborate and misguided theory, one where I was being cast as a villain. Nin was wrong. They were extremists.

  “For now, get some sleep. Tomorrow is a very important day. A very important day.” Blackbeard stubbed out his cigarette suddenly and strode from the room, as if he remembered an appointment elsewhere.

  I sat on the cardboard box and wondered how I could possibly convince this group, whatever it was called, that they had the wrong man.

  Day 8.

  When confronted with danger, animals pretend to ignore it and blend into their surroundings. A rabbit may look the other way and hold stock-still until a cat is out of distance. An opossum might pretend to be dead. This survival technique for the animal world was known as Batesian mimicry. I had learned about it in biology class back in Roanoke and hadn’t thought about it since. But what could I do to elude them? The apartment seemed more like a prison. The group’s intent was still not clear, but it was far from innocent. Blackbeard’s rant still echoed in the room, his anger amplifying. All I could do was ignore it, the way fearful animals do. Instead, I went about my hostage business as well as I could. I awoke, ate my cereal, brushed my teeth, read a chapter on extracting iron ore from taconite. But all the while, I braced myself for their return.

  Late in the afternoon, they rushed into the room while I was chipping away with my twenty-franc coin. By the time I turned, three people stood before me – Nin, Blackbeard, and a man I hadn’t seen before, thin, wearing a long white lab coat. He wore a simple black Zorro mask over his eyes, one that did little to disguise him.

  “Showtime, Eliott Gast.” Blackbeard pointed to the metal chair. I sat down and the metal legs squealed. The lights went up to full force and the black cables lowered slowly from every grate in the room. My heart started to pound.

  “I’ve explained your role.” Blackbeard squatted in front of me. “Now it’s time for you to do your part.”