Skinner

by Charlie Huston

  “Until the time comes, then you find out who is a runner.”

  He spits on the floor, the phlegm landing indeterminately between Skinner and the boy who ran, hard to say which of them it is for, possibly both.

  Jae steps further into the room, eyes moving between the three flatscreens carrying news coverage of the WTO conference and protests. SVT public channel, TV4 commercial, and CNN. At least one of the nine active laptops and desktop monitors has an Al Jazeera feed, another showing something that looks Swedishly comparable to American public access, handheld, blurry, lots of shots of the camera operator’s feet. Other screens display the Google Maps of the protests and police responses that Jae had been looking at earlier, two large screens are filled with nothing but Twitter streams, packed side by side, stacked top to bottom, layered. Four Motorola two-way radios plugged into charging stations, liquid crystal screens glowing, add an air of cold war–era revolution that curiously suits the neighborhood. Smartphones have a table of their own, cabled to computers or to chargers plugged into power strips. Extension cords snake into the room from the hallway and from under the bathroom door, every effort made not to trip the circuit breakers or, more likely in a building this old, not to blow the fuses. Some of the phones are ringing and chiming. Each seems to have a distinct tone. A story to tell about who is calling or texting or emailing. A special section of BlackBerrys. Their encrypted data service having been field-tested by the looters in the London riots. A must-have for roving street battles.

  Skinner puts a hand on Jae’s shoulder, but she shrugs it off.

  “This is very helpful. Looking at this will be very helpful.”

  She wants to take out her Toughbook and cable up, get online, let it be her roving eye. She wants the remotes for the three TVs, she wants to wallow in the data and see the configuration. But all she’s seeing is her mother’s face swollen by the bee sting.

  She bends at the waist, hands on hips, and pukes on the floor.

  The French boy puts his hands in the hip pockets of his blue worker’s jacket.

  “You are not police?”

  Skinner closes the door.

  “No, we’re not.”

  He points at an open case of Etrusca spring water under one of the folding tables.

  “Please.”

  The man who plucks a bottle from the case and offers it to Skinner is tall, looks to have been large once, but his bulk has melted away with the passing of years, skin hangs from him, sags, a deflated man-balloon with an internal superstructure keeping its hide upright. He is the only one of the protesters over thirty, and he may well be double that.

  “Shpion?”

  Russian.

  Skinner takes the bottle.

  “Lyudi, obychnye lyudi.”

  The old man smiles, the front four bottom teeth are gone, all the others are the brown of aged scrimshaw. He waves his hand up and down as if patting the head of a small child, Yes, tell me another one. Stepping back, leaning against the door frame that opens on the hallway, arms folded, waiting. He’s seen all this before.

  Skinner hands the water bottle to Jae.

  “Okay?”

  She takes it and twists off the cap, a big rinsing mouthful that she spits behind her, the only discretion allowed with the bathroom occupied.

  “Yeah, okay. Little overloaded. But okay.”

  She takes a drink from the bottle, then points it at the protesters.

  “What the fuck?”

  Skinner nods.

  “Yes.”

  He looks down at Twig-Beard and the runaway boy, Mohawk. They’ve untangled their limbs and scooted themselves away from Skinner’s feet, half under the table that supports the cell phone collection and the three radios.

  Twig-Beard is working one of the newsprint plugs from his right nostril.

  “They follow us from lunch.”

  His English is bad, war movie Nazi.

  The paper plug comes free, unspooling, red and wet, a final tug and it drops to the floor, a little drizzle of blood follows it then stops.

  “Riksbank, they tell cops we are coming. I was beaten!”

  Jae twists the cap back onto her water bottle, tightens it with a violence that suggests the breaking of chicken necks.

  “We left the restaurant before you. The cops were waiting.”

  He shakes a finger at her.

  “No! They knew! Yes! Knew we were coming! You! You tell them!”

  “The cops knew you were coming because you tried to storm the fucking national bank during a week of WTO protests!”

  The German rises a little, bangs his shoulder on the underside of the table.

  “Ficken Scheisse!”

  Skinner ignores him, looks at the boy with the mohawk. He has a tattoo high on his skinny shoulder, revealed by the tank top he’s wearing. Warm in the room with sealed windows, several bodies, monitors and computers pumping out heat. Tattoo comprised of the letters SUF, a thin red circle behind them, off center, partially obscured by the F.

  “Anarchist?”

  He nods, touches the tattoo.

  “Syndikalistiska Ungdomsförbundet.”

  Skinner gestures at the screens around them.

  “Local coordinators? Your group?”

  Mohawk shrugs.

  “Some. Different groups.”

  Heavy accent, not nearly as much school as the hotel staff, and a different nuance. Not from Stockholm, and not trying to sound as if he is.

  Skinner nods. He looks at the Russian, blinks, looks at the man in the blue jacket, doesn’t blink, and looks at the last person in the room. Older than the boy in blue by several years, but still young, balding nonetheless, light brown skin, weathered, hard and compact, red t-shirt, round wire rim glasses, looking at the floor between his feet.

  Skinner tips the knob on the end of his walking stick, a slight dip in the direction of the man in glasses, and he looks up.

  Skinner shrugs.

  “West-Tebrum.”

  Nothing changes in the room, extreme discomfort in the face of the unknown, fear and uncertainty, but no sudden glances exchanged when Skinner mentions the power plant. More phones are ringing, a voice repeats the same phrase in Swedish over one of the radios, repeats, repeats.

  Skinner looks at Jae.

  “I’m not good at this.”

  She drinks.

  “That’s natural.”

  He steps back, a move that does nothing to diminish his presence in the room, positioning himself in such a way as to be a constant threat, violence imminent, the stick in his hand.

  She asks the obvious question.

  “Money?”

  The boy in blue frowns, looks around the room at the others, looks back at Jae.

  “We have some kronor, euro. Not much.”

  The Russian laughs, barking seal, one loud sharp bark, then his mouth snaps shut.

  Jae shakes her head.

  “No. We don’t want money. The money for this.”

  She points at all the gear, the flattened boxes and packing materials down the hall, wads of freshly stripped cellophane stuffed in corners.

  “Where did you get the money for this?”

  The boy takes his hands from his pocket, holding a squashed box of Marlboro Lights and a green disposable lighter. He starts to take a cigarette from the pack, realizes that everyone is looking at him, stops.

  Mohawk puts two fingers held in a V at his mouth.

  “We agreed to no smoking. Too small. The room. We agreed?”

  Blue Jacket shrugs, flapping his arms at his sides and making a small guttural grunt deep in his throat, eloquently commenting on the absurdity of such agreements in the face of unforeseen circumstances such as these.

  Mohawk nods, thinks, and repeats his own gesture, fingers to lips, an entreating tilt to his head. The boy stoops, offers him the pack, lights his cigarette. By the time the boy has straightened and lit his own, Twig-Beard has taken rolling papers and a tobacco pouch from his pocket and Red S
hirt has a Fortuna in his mouth. The room is almost instantly choked with smoke. Jae and Skinner and the Russian abstain.

  Jae looks at the Russian. She’s never met a Russian who didn’t smoke.

  He seems to know this and taps the right side of his chest.

  “One lung gone already. I need the other. To fight.”

  He smiles, the shrinkage that resulted in all that sagging flesh explained. A man who fights cancer, surrenders one lung but no more. A tough fucker.

  Blue Jacket keeps the Marlboro pack and lighter in hand as if he might need another at a moment’s notice. Every drag is deep, aggressive; either he or the cigarette will die.

  “The money. Donations.”

  Jae doesn’t smoke, has never smoked. Her mother did, like a dragon, a Virginia Slims 100 tucked in the corner of her mouth from morning to night. Ash always, mystically, suspended from the tip until she took the butt delicately between thumb and forefinger and tapped it against a tray. She’d been smoking when the bee stung her. The smoldering cigarette burned a small hole in the lap of her beach dress, straight through the heart of a cornflower.

  Jae waves the smoke from her face, memory with it.

  “The address. Other tenants?”

  Blue Jacket shrugs and shakes his head at the same time.

  “We are guests. We have seen no one.”

  On one of the TVs, SVT, live footage of a new protest outside the Riksdag, Swedish parliament. As they watch, two armored personal carriers drive onto the lawn. Soldiers. Clouds of teargas. Blue Jacket’s eyes follow hers to the screen.

  She points at it.

  “No one’s coordinating? Are you the only control cell?”

  He shrugs and shakes his head again.

  “We know that we are here. If there is anyone else doing this?”

  He takes a drag, blows smoke, the final answer.

  Jae feels something inside her head. A swelling, large, dull. Something wanting to be understood, but ill defined. All of the phones seem to be ringing now, incessant, high tones, low, ice cream truck ditties. Only lacking fingernails on blackboards. That swelling, she needs to do something with it. She steps toward the screens.

  “Guests. Of whom?”

  “Un patron.”

  Skinner, motionless for minutes, realigns himself, his grip on the stick.

  “Protecteur?”

  Blue Jacket shakes his head, no accompanying shrug on this matter.

  “Patron. Um. Yes. Sponsor? Sponsor.”

  All three TVs are showing teargas plumes now. The cameras for SVT and TV4 have similar perspectives, high, south of the action at the Riksdag, shooting with Norrmalm in the background. CNN’s shot looks like it’s from a helicopter. CNN news helicopter in Stockholm? And the phones still ringing. Does no one know how to leave a fucking message?

  She pulls her eyes away from the TVs, looks at Skinner.

  “I need some room.”

  Skinner motions with his stick, inviting Blue Jacket and Red Shirt to move, come join the Russian and the others, stand, get under the table, your choice, but do it now. They move.

  And Jae seats herself in front of the center of the three TVs, two laptops and a desktop machine in reach, eyes only for the screens now, the conversations just another input.

  Sponsor.

  “Who? A name?”

  A general shuffling, feet, hands, eyes, everyone but Skinner and Jae finding something to stare at, fingernails, ceiling, ends of cigarettes.

  Phones ringing. Jae has taken off her backpack, has her Toughbook out, USB plugged.

  Phones. Ringing. Ringing.

  “Will someone answer some of those fucking things.”

  Jae starts to navigate the protesters’ computers away from their immediate concerns. Closing windows on one until there is only the simplicity of the Google homepage, rearranging another to show a handful of the protest Twitter streams.

  Skinner turns off the phones, a glance at Blue Jacket.

  “A name. Un nom. No et d’allusions. Rien de vague, s’il vous plaît. Clarity.”

  He silences the last phone, turns down the volume on the three radios.

  “The name of whoever gave you the money for all of this, and access to the property.”

  He looks at the Russian.

  “Can you explain to them?”

  The Russian raises his shoulders high, a tired vulture, looks at his companions.

  “A name. Or he will hurt us. It is not, in my opinion, an empty threat.”

  There are scars around his wrists, thin and white, wrapped round and round, wire that has bound him.

  Blue Jacket is looking at those scars.

  “Shiva.”

  Jae has found the remotes for the TVs, she’s cycling through, finding out what channels she has available, free hand typing Shiva into the Google searchbar.

  Blue Jacket uses the butt of his cigarette to light a new one, drops the spent one to the floor, crushes it, twisting his toe.

  “Screen name Shiva. A chatroom for anarchists. Communists. Revolutionaries. He is interested in these protests. The tyranny of the WTO in developing nations. Pénible terms of debt. Onerous. Pénible terms. He is interested in seeing attention paid to this. Graphically. He wants to help. He wants to be instrumental. He talks. Invites me to a private chat. Then to a secure place. Darknet. Encrypted communications. Very difficult for me. I am not technical.”

  He waves his cigarette at Red Shirt.

  “I need help to arrange this. My fucking browser. Shit. Shiva introduces us. Darknet again.”

  Jae is looking at a Wikipedia entry for the Hindu god, its many variations beyond bringer of light and destruction. She runs a new search. Shiva anarchist. Scrolls, eyes snagging on a word. Naxalite. Her mind unfolds a map of India that she has no memory of ever opening, great eastern chunks of it colored red. The Red Corridor. It’s a blurry memory, and just floats in blackness, won’t connect with anything. Keeps trying to merge with portraits of calm-faced, murderous Chairman Mao, but that’s not what she wants it to do. The Naxalite movement in India was born out of Chinese Maoism, but she wants the fucking map to show her where she actually saw it. Just stop hopping historical associations and resolve into the page of a book or a website. She does a search on Google. Finds the map. But the context is wrong. She clicks open one of the older personal files on Terrence’s USB, searching for PDFs, photos. Needle in a haystack. Unsearchable. Fucker just dropped everything in there.

  “Fuck.”

  She opens her eyes. People are looking at her. She doesn’t need to turn around to see it. For the moment she is every bit as sensitive to being watched as Skinner is. Yes, she is acting oddly; even for these circumstances, she is acting very oddly.

  “When did Shiva contact you? How long ago?”

  Smoke from Blue Jacket’s nose, a wave of cigarette.

  “I became interested in these protests when I learn it will be both WTO and Bilderberg. Announced a year ago. Less, more. Great excitement and dismay. The monster and the master in one place. Yes. Bilderberg, these people, these politicians, these bankers, CEOs. How can it be that they meet in secret? No one is allowed. Do we believe they are playing cards? It is only social? Merde!”

  And now a rapid explosion of French that seems to have been building in him since he began talking; too fast for Jae to distinguish the curse words, her command of the language somewhat more practical now than what she learned in two years of high school, but less complete. She opens Google Translate, keeping it ready for his next outburst. Meantime running searches on Bilderberg. Off the record confab of governance and finance. Post WWII creation. An effort to bring like-minded but not necessarily allied power brokers together. Transnational. Early globalism. She clicks through to some of the search hits and gets punched in the face with a fistful of paranoia. Conspiracy. Nazi roots of. Jewish roots of. The faceless terror of the unknown. Color it with your favorite bias and fear. She starts closing the windows.

  Blue Jacket loo
ks at Skinner, back to Jae.

  “You work for them? Bilderberg. Not cops. Private security. Contractors for Bilderberg. Do not crush something, understand it. Yes. Then steal it. Own it. Subvert. These questions. Fuck you.”

  Skinner has moved behind her, he places a hand on her shoulder.

  “I think we’ve been here too long.”

  She shrugs off his hand, shoots her eyes at Blue Jacket and then back at her screens.

  “Someone is using you.”

  The guttural grunt again, deeper, accompanied by a slight rolling of the eyes, a quick drag and exhalation of smoke. She needs no French to understand his profound exasperation at being told what is blatantly obvious, the reason for why he is there in the first place. Used, indeed, are we not all being used?

  “I’m not speaking generically, I’m speaking specifically. This address has been used in association with criminal activities that have resulted in deaths. There is a trail that leads here. To you.”

  She allows her gaze to move from the screens, to take in the accouterments of revolution all around them.

  “To this.”

  She looks back at the screens.

  “You are being used. Set up. N’est-ce pas?”

  The Russian wheezes, it’s another form of laughter, expressing amusement of a higher and more refined nature than his seal bark of sarcasm. Jae starts new searches, KGB, ex-KGB, ex-KGB WTO Bilderberg. Nothing specific, a wave of post communist gangsterism that starts knitting itself into the web of cold war dead matter from Terrence’s USB. Strange Frankenstein monster, it bumps around her head, looking for a door that will take it into the big room where she is building the configuration with West-Tebrum at its center.

  She frowns.

  “A year ago you’re online, daydreaming about protests. WTO and Bilderberg in one place. What can we do? Someone screen-named Shiva chats with you. Arranges encrypted communications on peer-to-peer darknet back channels. Then offers funding. Then offers office space in the most expensive neighborhood in Stockholm. How did he get you the money?”

  Blue Jacket flicks ash, looks at the TV screens. Jae has brought them back around to the original channels. News, news, and more news. The protest outside the Riksdag has swollen, crossed the line into riot. A water cannon truck (the same one from the Riksbank protest?) is rolling over the bridge from Norrmalm. The Google Map and Twitter updates have stopped flowing from this room. After the initial flash protest struck, more protesters flooded the tiny island, no coordinating mapper showing them that an overwhelming force is waiting. Swedish soldiers are controlling the bridges now, attempting to turn the island, seat of government, into a giant kettle.