Skinner

by Charlie Huston

  Jae thinks about the dead men in Oasis Two. The corpse on fire.

  “Detritus.”

  “With respect to an open line, yes.”

  Jae feels like the only fish in a very popular pond, hooks all around, twitching, baited lines. Just waiting for a nibble before being jerked taut, barbs in the mouth, pulled gasping into the air.

  “But no Smith?”

  “No sign. I got the impression from his agent that Smith is well but prefers to remain sequestered for the time being.”

  “He’s a smart fucker.”

  “Yes.”

  Neither of them says anything.

  Cross starts clicking again.

  “So. Boryspil to Arlanda. Here soon.”

  “A few hours.”

  “A car will pick you up.”

  A word Cross has been using, adverb, occasional noun, finally sticks to something in Jae’s brain and she stands up straight, away from the rail, drawing Skinner’s eyes for the first time since the conversation began.

  Here.

  Here?

  “Cross?”

  “Yes?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Here. I mean, I’m sorry, Stockholm.”

  Jae looks around the deck of the ferry, her eyes searching for Cross, expecting him to be a few yards away, smiling at his own joke. I’m right here. Got you! But he’s not.

  “Just a coincidence. I’m here for Bilderberg. My third year. And I have to get back. It’s not half as sinister as the protesters think it is, but probably more disturbing than they imagine. I’m meeting with someone from Gazprom, and a Chinese environmental minister to discuss overpopulation. We’ll do a presentation. Climate decline, rogue weather events, contraction strategies. Reminds me of college. Speech and debate. Academic Olympics. Moot court. That kind of thing. Sudden exchanges of ideas, intensely brief relationships formed, and the general sense that maybe those limeys from Cambridge aren’t such pricks after all. We’ll come away with a ton of new connections for Kestrel. America, we still do a handful of things better than anyone else. You can buy African mercenaries by the kilo, but US-trained contractors will carry a premium as long as military spending continues to dominate the budget. Enough shop talk. We’ll see you in a few hours. Things are moving very fast. There might be a bomb. European anarchists, Jae. If they’re the ones, that would open an entirely new market for us.”

  Jae hangs up before he can say anything else.

  Skinner leans on the rail, points. They’re rounding a tiny island, a larger one coming into view, small enclosed harbor and another ferry landing.

  “That’s Djurgården. Parks. Museums. Back to the mainland next. Grand Hotel landing. Norrmalm.”

  Jae slips her phone back in its pocket.

  “Cross is here. Stockholm. He’s a Bilderberger. Doing presentations. Networking. Christ.”

  Skinner contemplates the deck.

  “That seems reasonable.”

  She contemplates him.

  “But you don’t care for it.”

  He turns, leans his forearms on the rail, one hand slipping inside his jacket.

  “An excess of coincidence. Or the appearance of such an excess. Serendipity. Synchronicity. No. I don’t care for it.”

  His hand comes out holding the twisted steak knife from KGB and he drops it, lost in the water, broken tool.

  “At Heathrow I saw Haven. He had someone with him. Someone dangerous, I assume.”

  Jae rubs her hands together. A chilly day becoming cold as the sun sinks, wind on the water.

  “Not a coincidence?”

  Skinner leans his walking stick against the rail.

  “Not a coincidence.”

  Jae tucks her hands into her armpits.

  “Something is happening. It’s.”

  She closes her eyes.

  “I have pieces. Lots of them. But not enough.”

  Skinner puts a hand in his jacket pocket.

  “I think we need to find Terrence.”

  Jae licks her lips, the monster in her head bumps into something.

  “Why?”

  Skinner’s hand is moving in his pocket, where he dropped the gun the Russian gave him.

  “This. In my pocket. This is a .380 Bersa Concealed Carry pistol. If I take it out someone might see it, and there could be a small panic. So I need you to believe me.”

  Jae believes him. She is working to restrain her own small panic. Wondering if there is greater safety if she runs into the crowd or if she dives into the churning waters.

  Skinner’s hand moves again.

  “There is no serial number on this pistol. Absolute identification would be very difficult. But there is a scuff on the grip.”

  He’s not looking at her, his head dropped back, eyes skyward.

  “It is, I think, a weapon of some personal significance to me. If I am correct, I was carrying this exact pistol when Cross tried to kill me.”

  He looks at her.

  “And Terrence saved my life.”

  And, with that, the lumbering Frankenstein monster in her head smashes loose, leaving a gaping hole in the laboratory door. Following it into the daylight, emerges the mad scientist who made this thing. Distracted air of the dean of some obscure area of study, white lab coat stained with bloody handprints of all those upon whom he has performed his experiments. Terrence.

  Her hand touches her cheek, crawls of its own accord over her mouth, a cartoon expression of dismay on her face.

  “Oh shit. Skinner. Terrence connected those anarchist kids with the Russian. He. The Money. Fucking. That acceleration of the protests. He facilitated everything for them. He. Terrence is all over this. Oh shit.”

  He’s looking at her, eyes carrying a spark of sunlight reflected from the waters. Hand inside the pocket that holds his meaningful gun.

  I miss him.

  “Skinner.”

  “Jae? Are you alright?”

  “Skinner.”

  He looks at her.

  She thinks about her mom.

  “Terrence is dead.”

  He nods. His hand comes out of the pocket, empty, and he runs his fingers through his ruffled hair, looks out to the water, nods again, and looks at her.

  “It’s cold. You must be cold.”

  He takes his scarf from around his neck, places it around her neck, smooths it flat, flips the ends into a knot, eases it up under her chin, and there is no doubt at all in her mind that he wants to kiss her or that, if she were to lean just the slightest bit forward, it would happen. Nothing of her own doing, the kiss would just happen. She remembers what that was like, very young, the kiss is there, like the statue some sculptors say is already inside the uncarved block, waiting for you to chip away. Young, and finding the kiss that was always there waiting for you. Here it is, one of those.

  His hands come away from the ends of the red scarf.

  “Terrence is dead. Yes. I see that now.”

  Jae doesn’t move. She doesn’t lean, not one millimeter.

  Skinner points at her backpack.

  “Let me show you something.”

  They stand shoulder to shoulder on deck, backs to the rail, Skinner helping to support her laptop as she logs into the ferry’s Wi-Fi network. Europe is well ahead of America when it comes to wireless. Brazenly excited about the idea of being able to access the Internet from everywhere. Neither of them is certain what payment will mean. How specifically their location might be tracked by a credit card transaction to join a wireless network on board a moving ferry. Skinner opts for using one of his regular cards, one of those he travels on, a well established identity. He tells Jae that he doesn’t know if it’s a bad thing for Cross to know where they are. For him to know they are lying to him. He may not care. As long as the job is done. Too much to juggle. Jae just uses the damn card.

  classicsteelbikes.com.

  Skinner’s account. A question thread. Merckx frame geometries. Responses. A response from Terrence.

 
; Skinner points at it, the date and time.

  “When did he die?”

  Jae has to think.

  “I spoke to him the night before I met you at Creech. Cross and Haven told me at the hotel. Said he was killed. In Cologne.”

  “Yes. I was in Cologne. Well. This reply was posted after Cologne.”

  He looks at the reply from Terrence’s account. Jae knows the numbers in it are the message or that they point to the message.

  “Book code?”

  Skinner is still looking at the words and numbers. As if the answer they suggest is to some question he hasn’t asked. He makes a closing gesture with two fingers, snapping them down on an invisible bug that he finds irritating.

  “Done.”

  She logs out, clears the session from history. They’re already approaching the Norrmalm landing.

  “Do you need to peek at your decoder ring?”

  He scratches his right eyebrow.

  “The numbers are coordinates. GPS.”

  Jae still has the laptop open, her hand moves back to the trackpad.

  “Map them?”

  He takes the computer from her hands, closes it, and slips the machine inside her pack, zip.

  “I know where it is.”

  She takes the pack from him, shoulders it.

  “Where?”

  Skinner takes his stick from where it leans against the rail, thinks, and puts it back.

  “Paris. The cimetière Montmartre.”

  The ferry has docked, gangway down, people are streaming off. Most of the passengers are commuters forced to improvise in the face of the day’s challenges.

  Jae tucks her thumbs under her pack straps.

  “Why there?”

  Skinner flips up the collar of his jacket, shrugs, dips his forehead toward the gangway, and they start to walk.

  “It’s where they tried to kill me.”

  She thinks about sleep, how much she’d like some.

  “So Paris.”

  He’s looking ahead, down the gangway, the flow of people.

  “I think so.”

  Her head is humming, bubbling really. Terrence. Trails of crumbs. She’s been thinking configurations, webs of causality. The treasure map. X marks the spot.

  Fuck sleep.

  “Paris. Yes. And to hell with Cross. We already know what’s in Stockholm.”

  Down the gangway, Skinner’s eyes still on the crowd.

  “Yes, we do.”

  Onto steady ground, more cobbles, that crisp sun unwilling to drop the final few degrees from the sky. Energy in the press of bodies around them. Eventful day, people want to talk about it. Have you heard? What happened? How far away? Share a taxi? Let’s get drinks and wait it out. She doesn’t understand anything other than a few bursts of English, but she can translate the mood. The excitement of living through interesting times. And coming clear of the crowd, terra-cotta face of the Grand Hotel beside them, green copper roof, another of Stockholm’s many park squares just ahead, she touches the soft red scarf knotted at her throat, how deftly he tied it, she stops in her tracks, turns toward him, a handful of his sleeve, and leans her body into his, pulling down on his arm until she finds the kiss right where it has been waiting for her, yes, shaped just so, everything else cleared away, just the kiss.

  Skinner takes his lips from hers, one hand is in the small of her back, the other is in his pocket, she knows because her hand is in there with it, holding the Russian’s gun.

  He leans his forehead against hers.

  “The man that was with Haven at Heathrow. He was on the ferry, following us.”

  He kisses her, another good one.

  It might be ten seconds later that Jae starts to realize how many times she’s heard the word volcano spoken since they first stood in line for the ferry, throughout their ride, and after they disembarked. And another word, more often, Swedish, vulkan. No translation necessary. Even now, still kissing, she hears it again, vulkan. A trending topic of general conversation. And her brain finally connects it with Cross asking if the airport was still open in Kiev, The winds are blowing south, and with the CNN helicopter shot that she’d thought was of the protest outside the Riksdag, that plume of smoke.

  Volcano.

  Iceland boiling over again. She wonders how much time they have before its particulates fill the air, grounding everything. Can they get a flight to Paris? Is it too late? She needs to stop kissing Skinner. That’s very important. But she doesn’t. Hand on his hand, holding the gun, traffic dividing around them, mad little city of islands, volcano erupting.

  Vulkan.

  She kisses him, fearless.

  PART FOUR

  diagram

  RAJ’S FATHER WANTS him to learn how to shoot the gun.

  It came from one of the water goons that the Naxalites killed last night. They killed four of them. The rest have done as he said and stopped charging people for water. The taps are open now. Everyone thought guards would be posted, Sudhir’s men, but there are no guards. At most taps an old woman sits, telling off anyone who tries to take more than five liters at once. Five liters and then to the back of the line. There has been cheating in the hours since the taps were opened, graft from some of the old women, but still, the water goons are gone. Four are dead. And Raj’s father has the pistol that one of them kept tucked inside his shirt.

  “With no bullets.”

  His father holds the OFB .32 automatic on the spread palms of both hands. It is an ugly gun. Stubby, pinched at the end of the barrel. Not at all like the ones from TV and the movies. Maybe from an old movie. Black and white, that old. Guns in new movies, even in Bollywood, look like they are computerized, with many moving parts. They look like pieces of Japanese robots. This gun in his father’s hand looks pitiful. Still, he wants Raj to learn how to shoot it.

  Cool.

  “Watch.”

  His father’s hands turn the gun, pistol, this is a pistol, his thumb finds a catch, presses it, and the clip drops a few millimeters from the handle with a slight click. It is the first sound the gun has made. Raj expected it to make constant noise, as if it were filled with latches and bits of machinery. The sounds of guns in movies. But this gun is solid. Just the one little click of the magazine coming loose. His father pulls it free, slight effort.

  He hands it to Raj.

  “How many bullets?”

  Raj looks at the slot that runs down the side of the clip, counts bullets.

  “Seven.”

  His father points the pistol at the floor, pulls back the slide, revealing an eighth bullet in the chamber. It pops out and lands on the floor of the shanty and Raj chases it, getting down on his knees to scoop it from under the cot and bringing it back to the table.

  His father releases the slide and it snaps into place with one of those movie noises Raj has been waiting for, though not nearly as loud.

  “Cocked.”

  He turns the gun over, presses a tiny stud behind the trigger.

  “Safety off.”

  He stands, extends his arm, body at an angle to the direction the pistol is pointing, aims, and pulls the trigger.

  Click.

  “The expanding gases released by the explosion in the chamber force the slide back, allowing the empty shell to eject, cocking the hammer, and the return spring brings the slide forward, scooping the next round from the clip and into the chamber, and ready to fire again.”

  He lowers his arm and places the gun on the table.

  “An efficient machine.”

  He looks at Raj.

  “Show me.”

  Raj puts the clip next to the single bullet on the table and picks up the pistol. The grips are made of plastic. Cheap. They might well have been manufactured from plastics recycled here in the slum. The word Ashani is stamped into the plastic. He turns the gun over. Small in his father’s hands, it feels big in his own, heavier than he’d thought it would be. The safety is still off. He pinches the slide between his thumb and forefinger,
starts to pull it back, but it slips loose, snaps forward; the spring is very strong.

  He looks at his father, waits for the lesson. There is always a lesson. You try to do things by yourself, always, and whether you do it correctly or incorrectly there is also always a lesson to be learned. In the universe of his father you can never stop learning.

  “Try it like this.”

  His father takes the pistol from him, places his left hand on top of the slide, heel on the forward sight, thumb and three fingers on the grooved surface of the slide, pushing it back instead of pulling. He shows it to Raj, waits until the boy nods, then points the pistol at the floor, thumb on the hammer, pulls the trigger and lowers the hammer gently.

  “Try it that way, your hand covers the slide, more friction, more energy from your muscles going directly into the action.”

  The lesson.

  He hands the gun to Raj.

  “Mind the barrel.”

  Raj doesn’t understand until he places his left hand on top of the pistol, then realizes that as he pushes, it wants to turn, aim at his belly. He stops, looks at his father, and his father nods. No need to explain this lesson. Raj points the gun at the floor, hand atop the slide, pushes it back, still harder than seems possible, hears the click of the hammer locking into place, and releases the slide, shocked at the force with which it snaps back down the length of the barrel, dragging the gun forward, almost out of his hand.

  His father moves behind him, places his hands on his shoulders, steering him, until Raj stands with his feet planted at the same angle he’d adopted. Body turned away from the target of a calendar on the wall, English garden flowers. His mother likes them. Now, arm up, straight from shoulder, sighting with his right eye through the V of the rear sight, the blade at the end of the barrel caught in the middle of that angle, the heart of a purple flower waiting. He pulls the trigger.

  Click.

  He looks at his father, receives the nod that means this lesson is well begun. There will be practice. Nothing is perfected, his father says. Nothing, ever. Only in science is perfection. And even then, well, his father has doubts.