The Kobalt Dossier

by Eric Van Lustbader

  “Ben.” She rose, excitement in her voice. “The garage door code is 6163. Bobbi had a bunch of gardening tools. See if you can find a couple of trowels.”

  Leyland watched Ben as he vanished into the garage, but he remained silent. He had become an interested bystander.

  Ben returned with a well-used garden trowel in each hand. By that time, Evan was crouched down in front of the slide. “Look here.” She pointed.

  “Freshly turned earth.”

  “Right.” Evan nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Each with a trowel, they began to dig. Gingerly at first, then with more vigor.

  Leyland had come down the steps, peering at them. “What are you doing?”

  “Something here.” Ben was using just the tip of the trowel now. They were barely a foot down, but the basic contours were appearing as if rising up from the underworld.

  “Face-first.” Evan used the edge of the trowel to peel away the last layers of dirt from each side of the head. She was about to use her fingertips when Ben stopped her.

  “Here.” He handed her a pair of physician’s gloves, put his on as she did.

  “Where did you get these?” Evan asked.

  “Stephen Braun, the doctor who treated you.”

  Evan nodded. She delicately brushed away what was left covering the face.

  She hunched over farther. “It’s Paul.”

  “You were right.”

  She took no pleasure in that. Then she uncovered his hands. Dirt under his nails and something beneath the dirt, something darker.

  Ben sucked in a breath. “Why are his eyes open?”

  “So is his mouth,” Evan said as she cleared off the last of the specks of dirt. “There’s something in it.”

  “What the hell is going on over there?” Leyland took several tentative steps in their direction. He seemed caught between coming over and turning back to get his boss.

  “Don’t let him near us.” Evan’s fingers were slowly teasing out whatever it was that was filling Paul Fisher’s mouth. “Not yet anyway.”

  Ben rose, turning. “You’d better fetch Tennyson.”

  Leyland’s brow furrowed like a field ready for planting. “He’s on the horn with HQ. What’ve you found?”

  Ben rose. “Just go fetch him, would you?”

  As soon as he saw the agent turn and lope back toward the house, Ben returned to Evan.

  She had a sphere of balled-up newspaper in the palm of her hand. “We’re going to need their forensics. Time of death will tell us when the abduction occurred.”

  “Judging by the body’s condition it can’t be more than a day or two, at most.” Ben gestured with his head. “What the hell is this?”

  Evan looked up from her work. Her gaze was bleak. “Paul Fisher was very neatly beheaded.”

  PART TWO

  10

  WENDY

  I am dreaming of flying with Peter Pan to Neverland, just like the Wendy I was named for. “Second star to the right, then straight on till morning.” The trouble is this night is never-ending. Dawn seems far away, out of reach. My mind is so fuzzy. I wake, or what seems like waking to me, into another dream. A steady thrumming beneath me, like a big car’s engine, and cold air, so dry I automatically think of Lawrence of Arabia, which I saw just last week. So I’m in a desert—deserts, I read, are very cold at night (weird!)—or am I flying with Peter? Oh, oh, I so want to be flying with Peter because then Michael will be with me. If I’m in the desert, Lawrence of Arabia’s desert, Michael will be elsewhere because he’s too young to understand the film. I’m already eleven, so I understand it.

  Wasn’t I with Mikey just a moment ago? Hadn’t I heard Paul yelling? Hadn’t I heard unfamiliar men’s voices speaking to each other? Was the TV on? I can’t remember the TV being on. Maybe Mikey turned it on, certainly not Paul. But for sure I remember Mikey crying.

  I say something now, calling for Mikey. It may only have been a murmur, like I’m still in a dream, but is that even possible? I am scared, I know I’m scared, but I’ve got to be brave for Mikey; he’s the real scaredy-cat. But I can’t help wishing Aunt Evan were here. If she was, she’d know right away what to do and how to get us out. She’s also better at consoling Mikey than I am. I guess I get kinda fed up, which, right now, makes me feel just awful.

  Right then I feel a presence somewhere over my head. I try to see who it is, but my vision is all smeary. Maybe I am still dreaming. Is that you, Peter? Where are you, Mikey? I mutter groggily. I’ve got to make sure Mikey isn’t lost. He’s my responsibility. But, try as I may, I can’t see him in the darkness of the night. Where is the moon? Where are the stars? If I can’t see the stars how will we find our way to Neverland?

  Then I feel a tiny prick, as if a mosquito has bitten me. I try to swat it away, but my arms won’t move. They seem to have been dipped in cement. I can’t move at all and I’m really scared and the fear grows like a fireball heading my way. But in a moment a peculiar warmth seeps through me, as if I’ve put my whole hand into one of Winnie-the-Pooh’s hunny pots. Though I haven’t visited Pooh Bear for the longest time. I hope he won’t be angry with me.

  Anger. That’s what I couldn’t remember before, but now it’s suddenly pushing through my foggy mind …

  Mom and Paul are fighting. Again. Paul’s always wanted us to call him Paul. Not that he had to—I never think of him as Daddy. He never spent time with either me or Mikey, hardly even spoke to us except to scold us about the TV being too loud, or me wandering into his office, where we never, ever should be. I was such a little girl then. I should’ve been asleep. Maybe I am asleep, and their fighting wakes me up. Not the words but the anger, which races through the house like a mounted Ringwraith.

  Yes, the anger was what woke me. As I totter to the head of the stairs, I hear Mom and Paul more clearly. Mainly Paul. Holding tight to the bannister, because Mom told me to hold tight and never let go until I reached the bottom, and because I’m a good girl, I sort of slide down on my fanny, my legs dropped over each riser.

  “Why the hell did you even marry me?” Paul says in that awful voice of his. “You don’t love me.”

  “That’s a laugh.” Mom’s reply is somehow sweet and tart at the same time (mysterious!). “You don’t know the meaning of love.”

  “I know you’re not living up to your end of love.”

  Mom laughs, again the sweet tart that I can’t understand. “And what would that be?”

  “For one thing, hosting parties for my friends.”

  “You don’t have any friends, Paul. You have donors to the Wellses’ Super PAC who need to be stroked, and you want me to stroke them.”

  “Damn right I do!” Paul thunders.

  “No matter what I do, how big an effort I make, it’s never enough.”

  Paul’s voice slows down, as if he’s scolding her. “Because, Bobbi, they’re the most important people in my life, which means they should be the most important people in yours.”

  “You couldn’t care less about the kids.”

  “And you don’t have to. I provide you with nannies to look after the kids. And are you grateful? Far from it.”

  “Maybe I would be grateful if you weren’t fucking them one by one.”

  That’s when I hear the thwack, like the time Paul dropped a whole melon onto the concrete out the back of the house. I cringe. I hear Mom’s grunt. It’s the sound an animal makes when it’s in pain. I cringe again. My eyes are blurry, my mouth is full of tears.

  Then Mikey is beside me, fists rubbing his eyes. He mumbles something but I can’t make it out. He’s only three. He’s crying. How long has he been there, how much of the fight has he heard? Has he heard Paul hit Mom? Gathering him in my arms, I kiss the top of his head, damp with sleep, his wet and salty cheeks. I take him up, one step at a time, and put him to bed. I kiss him good night, but he holds out his arms to me, and I crawl into bed next to him. With my body against his, it doesn’t take long for him to fall back to sleep.
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  But I’m not yet ready. I’m too angry and upset and frightened. The word “anger” echoes in my mind, pinballing, stirring up echoes and shadows. Anger is also stirred up when Aunt Evan comes to visit. Mom and Aunt Evan love each other, I’m sure of that, almost, because that’s the way it has to be—Mom and Paul don’t love each other so Mom and Aunt Evan must, they just must! But there’s also something underneath like an icy river that makes me shiver and turn away when they yell at each other. Their anger is different from the one between Mom and Paul. It’s like a spiderweb, built slowly and painstakingly, one strand at a time, silken but strong.

  I remember watching a spiderweb strung from one tree to its neighbor at the edge of our property. The strands looked so thin, so delicate as they swayed in the wind. But that day I learned how strong they were. An unsuspecting fly is caught in the web. The harder it struggles the more fiercely it’s held in place. I watch with keen fascination as the fly’s struggles reach a fitful frenzy and then stop—just stop. I wonder whether the fly ran out of energy or is dead. The fly doesn’t move for the longest time, and then the spider, which has been crouched at the corner of its web, unfolds its legs, and delicately works its way toward the fly. The first to go are the fly’s wings. They are so insubstantial I wonder whether they taste like cotton candy. The spider eats and then returns to its corner, folding its legs up like Mom’s bridge table. Over the next several days, the spider returns, eating its fill, then retreating until, at last, there is nothing left.

  I’m reminded of the spider and the fly whenever Aunt Evan comes over, when she and Mom stand face-to-face in the kitchen or out in the backyard. Whatever is between them is built strand by strand over a long time, and like the spider, they keep coming back at each other in a way that makes me very sad. Sometimes I cry, especially on the days I overhear them.

  “You know what happened to our parents,” Aunt Evan says, trying her best to keep her voice down.

  “I don’t,” Mom says. “You’re making up stories, as usual.”

  “You didn’t tell me in the cave,” Aunt Evan tells her. Her voice sounds like an iron bar—cold, hard, unbreakable.

  “I was just egging you on. I didn’t know a thing.”

  “You’re a liar!”

  “I can’t have this same argument every time I see you,” Mom says. “You’re trying to undermine my confidence.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I have the perfect life. The life you want to lead. Instead you have nothing. No husband, no children, no home. No love.”

  “What a hypocrite you are,” Aunt Evan says, her voice an even darker iron. “You know what I think?”

  “I don’t care what you think.”

  “I think you hate this life. I think Paul hits you. I think you’re living a lie. I think you need to get out …”

  Mom’s dead now, of course, but I still have these memories. They’re all the same inasmuch as they’re bad memories. Do I have one good one of her? Sometimes I try to find one, but all I get is a headache. But then again, we were so young when she died, especially Mikey. I don’t think he even remembers her. Maybe that’s just as well. Sometimes I wish I didn’t either.

  11

  WASHINGTON, DC

  Of all the neon glows in and around Washington, DC, the most iconic, though perhaps only to a small coterie of habitués, was the Art Deco sign for Lethe, a sixty-odd-year-old motel off the interstate on the outskirts of the capital. It had been in business more or less continuously since it opened. Though it had passed through a number of owners and several renovations, the essence of the place remained, which was precisely what its clients wanted. It was frequented by businessmen and pols with their assignation partners of either sex, traveling salesmen rest-stopping for an hour or two of out-call service, and assorted and sundry drunks escaping from their wives and AA sponsors. The one hard and fast rule of the house: no hard drugs allowed. Ever.

  The rooms in the long two-story building were dimly lit but impeccably clean, filled with shabby-chic mid-century furniture. The floors were polished wooden boards, instead of the grimy industrial wall-to-wall in other such low-rent motels. The beds, which had always been another featured attraction of Lethe, were like clouds, perfect for making love and, afterward, exhausted sleep.

  From the front window of their second-floor room, Evan and Ben could see the blue and green sign, apt colors for the underworld’s river of forgetting that was the motel’s namesake.

  At the moment, however, Ben was off getting them some food, and Evan was on her mobile, texting Lyudmila to tell her about the abduction of her niece and nephew and their father’s murder, along with the latest photos of Wendy and Michael she had. The communication was absolutely secure because it was sandboxed, which meant it was securitized, cut off from anything else on her phone. On Lyudmila’s end as well, full end-to-end encryption that changed every twenty seconds.

  Finished, she stowed her mobile away and turned her attention to the tightly packed ball of torn newspaper she had plucked out of Paul Fisher’s mouth. She had just managed to secret it before Tennyson rumbled out of the back door, came charging across the lawn, trying to take command and to maintain order at the same time.

  Ben had quickly cut through his bluster. “Evan was right, Tennyson. As you can plainly see Paul Fisher didn’t abduct his children. He’s right here, where Evan found him, beheaded, to boot. This isn’t your routine case, Tennyson, and if Evan is right again and a hostile foreign power is involved, you and your pal are out.”

  Tennyson returned a glower of monumental proportions. He looked as if at any moment he would be struck down by an aneurysm. He had run his arm across his sweating forehead and said, his voice dripping contempt, “Just in case you’re wrong, buster, we’re going to search archives for serial killers with the same MO. If you don’t mind, that is.”

  Now, perched on the edge of a wooden chair she had drawn up to the desk against the wall opposite the two double beds, she adjusted a goose-neck lamp to shine directly onto the sphere. It had almost completely dried out, and she began to carefully unwrap each ragged strip of newspaper, careful not to cause a tear. She laid them out one beneath the other on the left side of the desktop.

  When she was halfway through Ben returned with burgers, fries, and drinks. She paid him no mind as he set the bags down on the desktop, began to unpack them.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.” He laid out the food, the packets of ketchup and the large containers of soda. Their smell was overpowering, and he glommed onto one of the burgers, jammed as much as he could into his mouth. “Eat,” he said. “Then we both need to get a bit of rest.”

  When she didn’t answer him, didn’t stop her slow and methodical unwinding, he moved around behind her to peer at the tiers of newspaper strips. As he chewed, he bent over to see them more closely.

  “Hey,” he said, pointing to one. “I remember this story. It was in the Sunday edition of the Post.”

  Evan immediately stopped what she was doing, took up the strip in question, examined it. “Are you sure? Then we’ve got the start of our timeline. We know Wendy and Michael were abducted on Sunday.” Evan picked up her burger and bit into it without tasting it. It was fuel, nothing more. “I still think the FSB is our prime suspect.”

  “Maybe. Yes. But there’s still also a chance that Sam Wells and his people are behind this.”

  Evan looked up. “Ben, we’ve been through this. Why would Wells get rid of Paul? Where’s your conviction about this coming from?”

  “Two unimpeachable sources: General Aristides and you.” He took up a couple more fries. “Getting rid of Paul could just be a red herring—an inconvenient bit of collateral damage, yes, but lobbyists aren’t exactly hard to replace in this town. I told you Aristides warned me about the American cabal behind Nemesis. They were the ones who got my shop closed down. He said they had long memories, that they’d never forget what we did. And believe me, it was not a cas
ual warning, he was sweaty and deadly serious. Then, you yourself told me what your would-be abductor said about ‘they.’ They wanted you to die a slow and agonizing death. They know everything about you. That doesn’t sound like a hostile foreign power—not anyone we’re aware of anyway. It does sound a lot like Nemesis. So maybe it was this cabal led by Sam Wells that ordered your abduction. This could be another part of their scheme to punish us.”

  “I suppose … I mean, anything’s possible at this point.”

  Ben shrugged. “Either way. Trouble is we don’t have enough information to formulate our next step.”

  Evan had stopped unrolling the newspaper sphere while she tried to eat. Now, she set her burger down; she’d only taken a bite or two. Her vision was pulsing, and pain wound its tentacles around her head, not only from the wound but from the contusion behind her ear. Colors started to pop, as if she were on acid.

  Seeing her wobble as she sat, Ben reached out for her so quickly he knocked over one of the containers of fries. A chain reaction ensued, as the first container hit the second one, which tipped over, fries spilling across the tabletop. A couple of them struck the newspaper sphere hard enough to set it rolling across the table. It dropped off the edge and hit the floor with an audible clunk. They froze, one of Ben’s arms across her shoulders.

  “You okay?”

  “You heard that.”

  Ben nodded. “I did.”

  Evan turned her head slowly, slowly. “Let’s find out what made that noise.”

  Ben held her closer. “Let’s make sure you’re all right. The sphere isn’t going anywhere.”

  She placed her hands over her eyes. “Just give me a minute.”