Zara's Game

by Jo Black

  32

  Devreaux walked Alex to the waiting jet, its engines now spooled up, ready and waiting for take off. ‘I’ll contact our people in Cuba and let them know you’re coming. Do you think Bishop will co-operate?’

  ‘If what Hunter said was right, he’s already burned his bridges with The Agency so he’s clearly not afraid to take a confrontational stand. I don’t think there is much we can threaten him with. Hunter’s contact says he has a daughter. We’ll bring her into play to see if we can leverage some emotion out of him.’

  ‘And if that doesn’t work?’

  ‘Then we’ll need to force his hand. He thinks he is safe in Cuba. While the Russia House charter still stands then let’s use that leverage to expel him from his exile. If he’s forced to confront those he betrayed from a less safe haven, he may see the prudence in giving up his insurance policy.’

  ‘I’ll deal with it personally. One thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m assuming you sensed we’ve rustled ben-David’s jimmies. You need to tread carefully. Mossad can be very unpredictable when provoked. You don’t need your enemies’ list growing any stronger.’

  ‘Hopefully getting this deal done will placate them. Our interests only conflict so far as the safe return of Zara. After that I will happily remove myself from involvement in the equation and they can be about their business.’

  ‘I’ll make some diplomatic overtures. I think he misunderstands the nature of your relationship with Gadaffi. He needs to know it was an any port in the storm situation and not an indication of new allegiances.’

  ‘I’ll leave that to you. We’ll call you when we land.’

  Alex and Nish got on the plane leaving Devreaux to return to his waiting car. The door closed and the jet headed down the taxiway at Amman’s air force base towards the runway before accelerating to speed then climbing off into the night sky. Devreaux watched the jet depart before getting in his car.

  ‘The pilot’s asked for a flight plan,’ Nish said as he returned from the cockpit.

  ‘Tell him to head for the Azores to refuel,’ Alex replied as he took out a large map. ‘We need to figure out the best way in to burgle the house undetected. After nine-eleven they’ve got the borders wired up tighter than your wallet. Anything coming out of the Middle-East isn’t getting near the place.’

  ‘I can call Trevor.’

  ‘Do we have to?’

  ‘Can you think of anyone better?’

  ‘Several. But none likely to answer our calls right now.’

  ‘Guess it’ll have to be Trevor then.’

  ‘When you think things can’t get any worse...’ Nish returned to the cockpit to update the pilots of the routing whilst Alex pored over the map. Nish returned with a bottle of vodka and poured two glasses. Alex shook his head. ‘Where are they not going to be looking?’

  ‘The D.E.A have the south border pretty well locked up these days. Miami will be awash with Navy. Canada is a complete non-starter. French Quebec with a phone call from Laurent can be done,’ Nish replied.

  ‘Puts us a long way from California, we don’t have time to be trekking around the wilderness getting over borders.’

  ‘Where’s the last Spanish port of call for cruise ships returning from the Caribbean circuit to Fort Lauderdale?’

  ‘Dominican Republic. Lax landing restrictions. Questionable embarkation checks, short hop back to Florida.’

  ‘Grab some obnoxious aloha shirts and big hats. Few thousand annoying tourists. We’ll blend right in.’

  ‘How do we get onto the boat? And we’ll need some wives to make it look legit.’

  ‘You leave that to me,’ Nish said.

  33

  Are you sure this is the place?’ Alex asked looking out of the window at the rusting trailer abandoned in the midst of a junkyard debris field.

  ‘Certainly is.’ Alex got out of the car. He watched as a comical amount of tumbleweed blew past. They walked over to the trailer and Nish knocked on the door. ‘Trevor. Are you in? It’s Nish.’ There was no response. ‘Trevor!’ Nish barked. The door flung open and Trevor stood in the opening wild-faced with a shotgun pointing straight at Nish.

  ‘Who are you with? D.E.A? N.S.A? F.B.I? The Agency? The Russians? The Viet-Cong?’

  ‘I’m not with anyone Trevor. Calm your tits. Just me and Alex.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Trevor grunted suspiciously eyeing them up and down then staring at the car. ‘That looks like an F.B.I car. Are you sure you aren’t Feds?’

  ‘Yes I’m sure. It’s a Hertz rental. Check the tags.’

  ‘Why are you dressed like a pair of Hawaiian Tropic promotion boys?’

  ‘We had to get into the country incognito.’

  ‘And that outfit worked? Our border security clearly is utterly fucked. No wonder bin Laden has the place crawling with Saudi jihadists.’

  ‘So how are you Trevor?’

  ‘How the fuck do you think I am?’ Trevor yelled. ‘They’re all after me. I know too much.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Viet-fucking-nam. The ‘Nam baby. I know everything. Air fucking America. All that good shit. I was there, I saw it all...’

  ‘You were four years old when Saigon fell Trevor. How the fuck did you see it?’ Alex said shaking his head.

  ‘That’s what they want you to think. Or I want you to think. You got to cover your tracks. What do you fuckers want? Coke? Crystal Meth? A little bit of the opiates perhaps?’

  ‘We need your help.’

  ‘In what capacity?’

  ‘There is a girl we need to locate and recover.’

  ‘I see. Who is she working for?’

  ‘The Firestation.’

  ‘Hmm. That a new Agency program?’

  ‘No Trevor. It’s a bar in Mountain View.’

  ‘Sounds like an Agency program to me. They want you to think it’s a bar. The fucking Hell’s Angels? All Agency.’

  ‘Have you taken your medication?’ Nish asked.

  ‘Not since they switched it. I know what they’re doing. The moon landings. It’s still the motherfucking moon landings.’

  ‘Can we come in?’ Nish asked.

  ‘Are you wired?’

  ‘No, are you?’

  ‘Course I’m fucking wired! I’m going to congressional oversight with all this shit. You better come in.’ Alex and Nish followed Trevor into the trailer. About as messy as you’d expect from a deranged schizophrenic with drug, alcohol and pornography dependency issues. ‘Sit down. Wait! Not there! I booby-trapped that one. Let me just disconnect the C4.’ Trevor reached round and flicked a switch. ‘Now you’re good.’ Alex and Nish sat down. ‘You want a beer? No. Good. I haven’t got any. Budweiser is now run by The Agency. They’re experimenting with mind-control hallucinogenic formulas based on G.M modified wheat. The shit supplied by the aliens they host in Area 51. Testing it on the American people before they deploy it to China.’

  ‘It seems to be working...’ Alex said winking at Nish.

  ‘You can’t trust anything.’

  ‘You sure you’re okay Trevor?’ Nish asked. ‘You seem a little more out there than usual.’

  Trevor scratched his head. ‘I’m fine. I just need to get drunk again. If I get sober the voices come back. The ones from the Numbers Station the Soviets beamed into my subconscious after I was shot down over Hanoi. So why are you here?’

  ‘There’s an Agency guy’s daughter up in Mountain View, we need your help to grab her.’

  ‘Agency guy? Course you need my help. Why wouldn’t you?’

  ‘He’s gone rogue. He has some intelligence we need.’

  ‘They’ve all gone fucking rogue. Ever since Nixon. The whole place is run by The Illuminati and New World Order. Stolen dossier you say. J.F.K? The moon thing? The Death Star? What?’

  ‘Probably W.M.D. Saddam,’ Alex said.

  ‘Of course. It had to be. I told you that shit was coming. Everyone said I was crazy. Just watch I said.
Soon as G.W gets in office dad’s gonna be on the phone. Go fuck Saddam. You know they did The Towers right? That was aaaall them. Fucking us up like they always do. I know, and they’ll kill me for it. Why do you think I’m here?’

  ‘Because you’re barred from Chateau Marmont.’

  ‘Nobody said sacrificing goats in the room was against hotel policy. I stand by my religious discrimination claim. I’m filing suit.’

  ‘Can you help us?’

  ‘Of course I can help you. I want payment in Chinese Yuan. The dollar is finished. Beijing will run Washington by Christmas. I’ll be prepared. Will you? I learned Mandarin in a fucking week!’

  Having plied Trevor with enough pizza, alcohol, and drugs to get him as close to functioning as a normal human being as was possible with Trevor, Nish and Alex sat on the old plastic patio chairs outside Trevor’s trailer to listen to his plan. Trevor took a long yard broom pole and snapped the brush off.

  ‘Right. Here’s the plan. Are you listening? You better listen good because I’m only going to go through this once. We don’t have time for autism here.’

  ‘We’re listening,’ Nish said.

  ‘Good.’ Trevor started drawing all manner of indecipherable hieroglyphics into the sand. Alex frowned and looked at them then Nish. Nish just shook his head and made a loopy gesture with his finger next to his head. ‘I saw that. Don’t demean my superior spatial awareness skills with your petty juvenile attempts to make jokes about my intellect, which is clearly beyond your earth-being comprehension.’

  ‘No worries Trevor,’ Nish said and coughed.

  ‘Hmmm.’ Trevor grunted. He finished up and then pointed. ‘Do you understand?’

  They looked at it. ‘Is that fucking elvish?’ Alex asked.

  ‘No it’s not fucking elvish. How do you not see? I thought you were sentient beings. You don’t read your own language? Are you imposters? Did The Agency clone you and replace you with assassins? Are you fucking cyborgs?’

  ‘No Trevor, just we’re a bit rusty on the, you know, sentient being linguistics front. We’ve been on the ahem, earthling’s world, a long time,’ Nish said trying to placate Trevor.

  ‘You’ve become assimilated. Don’t become one of them.’

  ‘We’ll try not to,’ Nish replied.

  ‘It’s the fornication. Oestrogen. They’ve adapted it. That’s how they get you. Changes your whole fucking being. You’ve been fornicating, that’s why you can’t read it. I can. I masturbate. With a glove. The special kind.’

  ‘Right. Why don’t you explain it to us,’ Alex said.

  ‘Very well. All these Cali bitches want to be movie stars. Every fucking last one of them. Even the fat ugly ones. They put those in the comedies. Unless they can’t act then it’s the speciality porno. Actresses. Correction. Moovee stars. That’s all it’s about. Celebrity. Flash flash. Paparazzi. Get fucked by an A-lister. That’s how you get her.’

  ‘By making her a movie star?’ Alex asked and frowned.

  ‘No! Look here!’ He pointed at the gibberish plan in the sand. ‘You don’t make her famous. The Agency will know. What you do, you let her think she’s going to be famous. You lure her in with false promises of a movie production. Fake movie. Like the Iranian gig. Movie Producer. Movie. Movie Star. She’ll go anywhere do anything. No coercion required. Clean.’

  ‘That’s actually not a bad fucking plan Trevor. I’m impressed,’ Nish said with a nod.

  ‘Of course it’s not a bad fucking plan. It’s my plan.’

  ‘So how do we do it?’ Alex asked with a sigh, now clearly regretting Trevor’s involvement entirely.

  Trevor pointed at Nish. ‘Producer.’ He pointed at Alex. ‘Hollywood Studio Guy.’ He pointed at himself. ‘Director.’ He nodded. ‘Scouting for talent. You’ll be perfect for our role. Etcetera. We just need a Hollywood crib, some expensive French champagne and some business cards.’

  ‘Will that work?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Of course it’ll work. That’s what Hollywood is. That’s all Hollywood is. Bullshit.’

  ‘Well, we better get you a decent suit then.’

  ‘What’s wrong with this?’

  ‘You don’t look much like a Hollywood director in a blood and sick stained wife-beater shirt, jeans soaked in your own piss and biker boots Trevor. A haircut to tame the rapist on a frenzy look wouldn’t go amiss,’ Alex suggested.

  ‘Don’t you know anything? You know how much those Rodeo Drive types pay to look like this? I’m avant-garde. I’m an actress’s wet dream for an Oscar made real.’

  ‘Yes, but she’s more likely to be impressed with something more...executive,’ Alex suggested.

  ‘Hmmm. Corporate. You think she wants the American girl next door roles not the edgy raped by her father and fled to Paris to be seduced by a deaf painter Oscar winning shit. I can live with that. Nothing edgy.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Alex said and nodded.

  ‘So where are we taking her?’ Trevor asked.

  ‘Libya.’

  ‘Perfect! Held hostage by the Islamic terrorist fanatics. I can sell that. I can probably fuck her as well. Get her looking suitably distressed.’

  ‘I thought fornication was the path to assimilation?’ Nish asked.

  ‘It’s okay. I have an antidote I’m working on. I can test it on her. Take one for the team. I didn’t mention it earlier because I ran into some complications with the F.D.A after a couple of test candidates caught Ebola from some cross-contamination. Thought you might be the girl’s lawyers. No more questions. I’ll get the script.’ Trevor discarded the stick and headed into the trailer.

  Alex and Nish looked at each other. ‘He’s getting worse you know. Why the fuck did I let you talk me into this?’ Alex said.

  ‘He’ll be better, once he gets into the part. Trust me. Trevor can sell this bullshit better than anyone.’

  Trevor returned with a printed movie script. ‘Here we go. I’ve got the perfect one.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Alex asked.

  ‘My movie script.’

  ‘You wrote a movie?’ Nish asked.

  ‘I have written many movies. What do you think I do out here in the desert all day?’

  ‘Masturbate.’

  ‘Few amendments, change the Chinese for Libyans, take out the alien invasion, delete the spastic kid in the wheelchair being pushed off a cliff: that was just an attempt at New Wave French surrealism. What about zombies?’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Maybe a few zombies, make it look legit. Add a couple of fucking scenes. AAA title done and dusted. I’m getting full rights to this?’

  ‘There’s no actual movie Trevor, you know that,’ Alex said.

  ‘Of course there isn’t. So you won’t mind me having the rights then, to your fake movie.’

  ‘Whatever makes you happy Trevor...’

  ‘Right. Let’s go.’ Trevor walked towards the car followed by Nish and Alex.

  ‘Do you not want to lock up?’ Nish asked.

  ‘No need. The trailer’s set to self-destruct as soon as we reach a thousand yards. Leave no evidence.’ They got into the Chevy and headed down towards the main road. ‘Wait!’ Trevor yelled. Alex stopped. Trevor turned round, a second or two later there was a huge explosion and orange fireball as his trailer exploded. He turned round and nodded. ‘Go!’ They continued out of Bakersfield as Trevor sat murmuring to himself and scribbling out amendments to his script.

  34

  Trevor joined Alex and Nish on the balcony. ‘So you know what the plan is? Alex asked.

  ‘Yep. We’re gonna work her whole bear scientist angle into act two then I’m gonna fuck her in the hot tub.’

  ‘I meant for getting her to Libya.’

  ‘Yep. Go to the fake lawyers, sign the fake contracts with the fake agent, buy her some nice shit in Rodeo Drive, then I fuck her again. Maybe in the ass. Then get the plane to Istanbul, then get the plane to Libya where the production assistant will take us out to the location
for the first shoot.’

  ‘Got it. Just go easy on the fucking,’ Alex said.

  ‘That’s fine. She gets raped by a bear in act one. But she loves the bear so forgives him and teaches him sign language. That’s like Gorillas in the Mist. Pure Oscar winning shit. Apart from the bear fucking. That’s just gratuitous bestiality for the director’s cut. You’ve got to get the rape in there somehow or there’s no chance for awards.’

  ‘You’re a very fucked-up individual, you know that Trevor,’ Alex said with a sigh.

  ‘Yes,’ Trevor replied deadpan.

  ‘Yes you are, or yes you know?’

  ‘Yes and yes. So are you money-pigs done now? We’ve got creative avenues to explore in the cinematic realm, and I’m just dying to get balls deep into those sweet ass cheeks.’

  ‘We’ll leave you to it. Just try not to get arrested for doing some weird shit before you get to Libya Trevor. This is important,’ Alex said.

  ‘She loves me. I’m her ticket to the fucking red carpet boys. She will suck my dick like a Harley sucks gas from its tank.’

  ‘Just get a written consent eh? This is still fucking California,’ Nish said.

  ‘She won’t remember a thing. Don’t worry. I supply this shit to all the top directors and producers. Complete amnesia. Hundred per cent success rate. Not a single sexual assault or rape allegation since the day I formulated it. I say I formulated it, but it was The Agency. I just stole it from their lab. That’s the shit F.E.M.A will give everyone when the time comes to liberate the planet for the one per cent and euthanize us all.’

  Alex and Nish headed through to the lounge where Megan was excitedly reading through the script. ‘What do you think?’ Nish asked.

  ‘Oh this is just so amazing! Trevor is so talented I can see why he got so many awards! I’m so lucky to have the opportunity to work with him. This is the best thing that happened to me! I love you guys!’ Megan got up and excitedly hugged and kissed them both.

  ‘Just a word of caution, he’s a little out there sometimes. Don’t let him drink bleach with his vodka. Or snort any kind of cleaning powders. Directors, you know...’ Nish said drawing a deep breath.