by Winona Kent
“This room,” Giselle began, not wanting to say. “It is used by the followers of Shirda, to test their worthiness. They come here and kneel—the same thing you do now—sometimes all day, all night. They meditate.”
“And then what?”
“And then,” she said, “as a sign of their absolute faith, they receive the mark of the Shirda.”
Anthony searched her face. “What kind of mark?”
“It is burned on.”
He kept his gaze steady. “Where?”
“On your arm. Both arms.” She unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, past his elbows. “Here.” She touched the soft skin, inside, above each wrist.
Anthony lowered his eyes. “Great,” he said, laughing a little, his voice reckless, and suddenly frightened. “I’m going to come out of this looking like Kung Fu.” His stomach was turning cartwheels; he tried to imagine what it would feel like.
“I wish I could get you out of it, Anthony. I cannot. Not without placing my own security at risk.”
He didn’t say anything. Giselle got to her feet. She was leaving him, abandoning him…
“Bye,” he called, softly.
She returned, and silently touched the top of his head—like the Pope, he thought, bestowing a greeting from God. And then, she was gone, and he was alone again, with the hateful blue light.
“Oh, no!” Robin gasped. “It’s Rolf!”
Randy leaned over the steering wheel, staring out of the Prelude’s front window. “So that’s the guy,” he said. “Mr. Rock and Roll.”
“He’s going into the station. What’s he doing here now?”
“You gotta get out there and stall him, kiddo. It’s up to you.”
Robin looked at Randy. “I don’t know what to say to him. Let me think.” His eyes flew around the interior of the car. “OK, OK—got it.”
He pushed the door open, jumped out, and sprinted around the fence to CGUL’s parking lot. “Hey!” he yelled. “Dad!”
The owner and general manager of CGUL interrupted the walk from his own car to the front door of his radio station. That had sounded suspiciously like one of his children. He checked behind him. Yes, there was Robin, steaming toward him from the convenience store. Obligingly, he waited.
“Where do you think you’ve been?” he said, as Robin reached the doorstep. “Your mother’s anxiety levels went up about twenty points this week.”
Robin tried to look remorseful. It didn’t really work; his heart was pounding too hard. “I went skiing,” he said. “It was a last-minute kind of decision.”
“So I gathered,” Rolf replied. He was playing Father this evening: Robin recognized the signs. A certain sternness had crept into his voice.
“I already got the lecture, thanks.”
“Then you can stand still for another one. I was under the impression we had a level of understanding in the house, Robin, in operation for as long as you decided to live there. What you did was irresponsible. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” he sighed, “yes.” What was he going to do—ground him, like he had when he was sixteen? After what he’d just been through, it would be a damn holiday.
Rolf, however, was preoccupied with other matters. He had his key out; he was edging toward the door. Robin scanned his watch. Seven twenty-seven. Evan had to be through by now. He’d said forty-five minutes.
“Want to go for coffee?” he asked quickly, hoping he sounded conciliatory enough.
Rolf was impatient. “Not now,” he replied. “I have some work to attend to. Business. Perhaps later.”
“I came by the station earlier—I wanted to talk to you. About a job.”
Rolf was observing him with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance. “For heaven’s sake, can’t it wait till we’re at home? I told you. I’ve got some business to attend to this evening. I can’t spare the time. We’ll schedule a conference together for tomorrow. All right?”
Robin scanned the skies for an answer. Wait—wait—
He allowed his stepfather to get the front door of the station unlocked, then tackled him one final, desperate time.
“I was thinking of being an op again.”
The door was yawning open. “Fine. Talk to me in the spring.”
“I meant—for a living.”
“With a degree in English, Robin? Don’t you think you might apply yourself to something a bit more relevant?”
“It could lead to management.”
“Sales would be a better choice.”
Robin made a face. The last thing he wanted to do was sell air time to brake shops and fitness centers. “I know. What about copywriting?”
Rolf turned around and confronted him. “Are you doing this on purpose, Robin? Are you deliberately trying to delay me for some reason? If not, I suggest you go home, and quickly—if you know what’s good for you.”
Robin opened his mouth, and then shut it again. It was past seven-thirty; he had to let him go. He waited outside the station until he was certain his stepfather was all of the way inside, then ran back to the car.
“No sign of Evan?”
Randy shook his head. “Give him another five minutes. What’s up with Rolf?”
“Nothing,” Robin muttered, slamming the door with an angry jerk of his arm.
His father was, at that precise moment, sitting at Rolf’s desk in his darkened office, listening to a reel-to-reel tape he had discovered in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet.
He watched the green sine waves dancing on the tiny screen of the oscilloscope. At the end, where the stalactites of light should have dissolved into an unbroken, flat horizon, there was instead a burst of luminescent activity on the monitor. There it was.
Uncertain whether simply hitting the lever labeled “Record” would result in the tone’s complete erasure, Evan decided to take the tape with him. The boys downtown would very likely want to have a closer look at it, anyway. And Ottawa would never forgive him if he didn’t produce some sort of hard evidence for them.
In the outer office, where Rolf’s secretary kept cute postcards of fluffy white kittens in her top drawer, there was a noise. Evan looked up. Hell. Pulling the reel off the machine, he dodged over to the safety of the dark area behind the door. Perhaps it was only the Filipino cleaning woman.
No, it damn well wasn’t the Filipino cleaning woman. Evan held his breath as the door creaked open and Rolf walked into his inner sanctum, flicking on the lights. There was going to have to be a confrontation: Evan couldn’t see any way out of it. He’d trapped himself.
The door was still open. Evan decided to risk trying to slip out, undetected. He stepped out of the shadows, realizing too late that Rolf was onto him and was in the process of spinning around. He froze, training taking over from instinct. Rolf had a weapon aimed at his stomach.
“Hi,” he said, feeling altogether foolish. Allowing himself to be caught in the middle of what should have been a routine exercise was bad enough; being caught by the man who had married your ex-wife and raised your three children made it just a trifle more embarrassing.
“Evan,” Rolf replied, acknowledging him with a nod. “I knew they’d be sending somebody to try and pull that spot. I’m a little surprised to find it’s you.”
Evan shrugged. “We all have our preoccupations,” he said, haphazardly. “Mine happens to be counterespionage.”
“Ah—hands up, if you don’t mind.”
Evan put his hands in the air. “I’m not armed,” he said.
Rolf ascertained that fact for himself, at the same time taking the opportunity to relieve Evan of the tape. He motioned him to sit, and Evan shrewdly chose a chair that afforded him an unimpeded view of the doorway. Rolf picked up the telephone and dialed out.
“It’s Raymond,” he said, into the receiver. “I’m at the station. Drive around to the side entrance. I have a special delivery package for you.”
He dropped the handset back into its cradle and gave Evan a small smile.
“Risks of the profession,” he said, almost apologetically. “Too bad.”
“Are you KGB?” Evan countered. He was curious. He wanted to know, once and for all.
Rolf nodded. “Have been for quite some time, in fact. Joined up in the late fifties.”
Evan shook his head and laughed, quietly, gently, to himself.
“What?” said Rolf.
“Oh—the irony, that’s all. Seventeen years ago my wife walked out because of my so-called preoccupation—her instinct for self-preservation winning out over our supposed devotion to one another—and what does she do but tumble straight into the arms of someone whose situation might be considered even more perilous. At least I was on the side of the good guys.” He looked up at Rolf. “Does she know?”
“I doubt it. I confine my activities to my place of business. I don’t take that kind of work home.”
“Pay well?” Evan asked, his voice a bit cynical.
“Enough to put three kids through university and provide for the overall comfort of my family should anything unfortunate occur to me.”
Evan nodded. “I suppose you don’t particularly care that once you’ve run that ad, you can kiss your comfortable North American existence good-bye.”
It was Rolf’s turn to chuckle. “Evan,” he said, “you know as well as I do the Soviets have no intention of taking drastic action—provocative or otherwise. Why would we want to risk a confrontation with your neighbors to the south? It’s enough to know the Americans will be helpless for as long as it takes them to snatch their satellites back again. Will it be weeks? Months? Imagine what we’ll be able to accomplish: unverifiable medium- and long-range missile installations, mass movements of troops and supplies. So much for last year’s highly touted summit agreement.”
Evan didn’t say anything. He checked his watch. Seven forty-five. Lundberg had to have got the hint by now.
“What’s in it for you?”
“Besides the usual pat on the back and a fat little wad of tax-free income?” Rolf smiled. “Nothing else, Evan. I do it for the glory, and for the money. I’d be a liar if I claimed otherwise.”
Evan picked at the white cloth adhesive that fastened the gauze bandaging around his right hand.
“I suppose you know you have competition,” he said. He’d meant it in more ways than one: he’d just spotted Robin, slinking down the hallway. Where was Lundberg?
Rolf, with his back to the door, let out a laugh. “That Bagraj character down in Washington State? We’ve been aware of him for some time now. He’s an ambitious creature. He claims that he, also, has access to the American satellite codes, and our information is that he plans to use them to blackmail Washington. If they don’t agree to pay him some outrageously vast sum of money, he plans on selling the technology to one of those upstart nations in the Middle East—the theory being, I suppose, that they’ll be able to use the data to work out which codes control what satellites over their own country. Phase two of his little plan involves joining forces with the esteemed leader of said totalitarian state—broadcasting a hybrid of religious truths over existing TV and radio satellite networks. Possibly followed by armed insurrection and world revolution, since he claims also to have weapons.”
Rolf shook his head.
“Personally,” he said, “I think he’s full of shit.”
Evan smiled, briefly, and kept his eyes off his son, who was now standing in Rolf’s secretary’s office, apparently taking stock of the situation in front of him. Where was Lundberg? This was too dangerous for Robin. Distracted, Rolf would very likely shoot automatically—a reflex—without looking.
Rolf was chuckling again. “I honestly don’t believe he has those access codes in his possession. I suspect he’s waiting on the delivery of a certain item of microfilm, egged on by an extremely attractive agent from the CIA. You might have heard of her…”
Robin had slipped back out into the hallway. Good. Stay out of range. Let me handle this. What CIA agent was Rolf muttering about?
“Who has that microfilm at the moment?” Rolf asked, his voice betraying curiosity. “You?”
Evan, wisely, kept silent. Robin had reappeared. He was carrying a fire extinguisher, hefting it over his shoulder like a fat red baseball bat.
“If it is in your possession,” Rolf was saying, “then I’m doing all of us a favor. I really can’t imagine life under the thumb of Muslim fanatics—can you?”
Evan again kept silent. Robin seemed to be trying to gauge the distance between the top third of the extinguisher and the back of his stepfather’s head.
“I’m sorry about this,” Rolf said. “I’m sorry it’s you.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Evan grinned, as Robin screwed his eyes shut and crashed the heavy metal cannister down with a resounding thunk. Rolf collapsed to the floor.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
“Thanks,” Evan said, finally.
“He had a gun on you!”
“Yes, he did.”
“Why?”
“He was trying to prevent me from taking that tape. I found it in his office.”
Robin stared at him, his mouth open slightly. “The Star Tech commercial?”
Evan nodded.
“Did he know about the codes and the tone and the satellite dishes?”
“Yes.”
Robin’s eyebrows furrowed.
“Was he—is he—working for them? The KGB?”
“Yes.” Evan scooped the plastic reel off the top of the desk.
“Are you sure?”
Evan nodded again; he stole a glance at his son. Robin seemed to be thinking about the situation, turning it over in his mind, trying it on like a new shirt with an unpleasantly tight collar.
“Sorry,” Evan said, quietly.
“What’s going to happen to him now?”
Evan picked up Rolf’s arms and dragged him around to the door. “Take his feet.”
“Evan.”
He met his son’s intense gaze. “A number of things can happen, Robin. We can let the security people have him, we can offer him some sort of a deal if he agrees to cooperate with our side—I don’t make the final decision. That comes from higher up.”
“Would he really have shot you?”
Evan checked the gun. It was small, lightweight, rather powerful. Loaded. Safety catch off.
“I believe he would have, yes, if he’d been provoked.”
Robin picked up Rolf’s feet. Evan stuck his head out into the hallway.
“Where the hell’s Lundberg?”
“He’s covering the door. Berringer’s out there. And Grosch. They’ve been watching us for the past fifteen minutes.”
“OK,” Evan said, thinking. “Randy can take Rolf, and I’ll take you. Are you all right?”
Robin nodded.
“Sure?”
He thought. “I don’t know.”
It was peculiar, having two fathers. He’d known Rolf for almost as long as he could remember. He’d grown up with Rolf. Things had been understood. Feelings. Emotions. Loyalties.
It was peculiar…peculiar. He shook his head.
In the end, it hadn’t been much of a contest. Evan’s biological brew had steamed hot through his veins as he’d raised his arm to strike. The hesitation had been caused by faltering courage, not by indecisiveness.
“Is he going to be OK? I mean, I didn’t cause any permanent brain damage, did I?”
“He’ll be all right,” Evan said. “Although my experience with fire extinguishers is somewhat limited. It is a rather unconventional sort of weapon.”
They were nearly at the rear of the newsroom. He was going to have to put Rolf’s arms down to get the door open.
“I want you to know,” Robin said, “I don’t ordinarily do this kind of thing. I mean, I was the kid who every Friday after school was mercilessly beaten up by the neighborhood thugs.” He stopped to think. “I do recall socking one of them in the jaw with my yo-yo when I was about ten.”
Evan smiled. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he said, dragging Rolf through the coffee room and pausing to rest by the news director’s desk. “I was kept after school on several occasions for whacking one of my tormentors over the head with my history text—a copious volume of work, if my memory serves me correctly.”
“Talk about unconventional weapons,” Robin replied. “You’d think we’d learn to use our fists like normal people.”
“Oh,” Evan grinned, picking up Rolf’s arms again. “I did—eventually.”
Chapter Thirteen
Thursday Night
Enough was enough.
In the quiet solitude of his little room in Dormitory Two, Ian lay prone on the bed, eyes shut, splendid visions gyrating in the darkness. The euphoria was incredible. Such was the nature of Happy Mornings. Such was its cohesive, complacent, perfectly orderly, perfectly pacifying effect on the Shirda’s community.
But enough really was enough. A little vial of the pills sat on the bedside table, urging Ian to help himself, to be greedy, to swallow more.
He resisted, finding the willpower to overcome the craving from his well of experience, the pool where all of his training and education had produced an innate response to adversarial situations.
He rolled off the bed. Before the initiation ceremony, he’d gone to the dining hall and bought blueberry muffins and orange juice, carrying them back to his room in the pockets of his robe, burying them under his T-shirts in the bottom drawer of the dressing table. Sitting cross-legged on the bare wooden floor, he now tore one of these muffins into manageable, spongy, purple-stained chunks; he stuffed them into his mouth and forced himself to drink the juice in one long gulp.
Taking a second muffin with him, he crawled onto the bed again, to wait for the end of the journey. It came, slinking and sliding, and then arriving suddenly with a bump. He was soaking wet from the rain, and shivering. Wearily, he stripped off the robe and the clothes he’d been wearing underneath, and changed into a fresh shirt and sweater and gray rugby pants.
He hunted around the room for a pair of dry socks to replace the ones he had draped over the radiator, then put on his shoes.
