The Banker Who Died

by Matthew A Carter

  When he was even with the boat, he thought that a funny end to all this would be missing the boat and ending up drowning in the shallow water. Praying that the boat didn’t need a key to start, he threw himself off the pier and fell onto the boat, hitting his head on a metal bench and losing consciousness yet again.

  The light of the setting sun on his face woke him. He sat up and reached for the instruments. The boat didn’t need a key. All you had to do was turn the power switch and hit the starter button. He hit the switch and pressed the button. The motor coughed and started up.

  Not sparing his wounded hands any more, Stanley lifted the loop of rope off the bollard. Keeping his healthy hand on the wheel, Stanley pushed the speed lever up with his nose. The boat hit the pier, then moved slowly off toward the open sea.

  “Ah-ha!” exclaimed Stanley, nosing the lever up all the way. “How do you like that, motherfuckers?” he said in Russian.

  The wind rushed over Stanley’s face. He took a deep breath in and turned to see the foaming water in his wake.

  Chapter 50

  Day and night blurred together, and the nightmares followed him everywhere he went. The daytime nightmares were the worst.

  Stanley spent the days alone, in a damp, cramped, airless cabin in the bowels of a rusted old ship. Condensation ran down the walls of the cabin. The ceiling leaked. It stank of engine oil.

  The moment he closed his eyes, however, he dreamed he was walking through the streets of various cities, running into people he was supposed to know, but who he was actually seeing for the first time.

  The sun was always scorching hot in these nightmares. Then it would turn black, the smells of the city would intensify, and the air would grow so thick he had to push it apart with his hands as he walked. Now and then he thought he heard someone calling out to him; that someone who was actually silent was asking him a question.

  At night, he lay in the darkness, knowing that there was no one lying beside him. But still, faces and voices emerged, one after the other. They called him by name, trying to convince him of something, accusing him, reproaching him for his mistakes, saying that he was to blame for everything, that he had been weak.

  “You wanted money? Well now, you’ve got it all!” a high-pitched, grating voice said.

  “No, he just wanted to be better than other people.”

  Another voice laughed. “He wanted people to envy him. He certainly is better than everyone else now.”

  His first nightmare was of Christine. Her face and body were covered in bruises. She moved slowly around him, as if in orbit. Even though her cracked lips were pressed tightly together, Stanley heard her voice clearly.

  She repeated the same phrase, over and over: “We must share the fates of those we love.” Clear, translucent tears fell from her eyes.

  He thrashed around, tried to sit up, but the man sitting at the head of his bed wouldn’t let him. Stanley lay on his stomach, his head and legs covered in needles. He looked like a giant hedgehog.

  Stanley came back to reality and remembered that the man in his cabin wasn’t part of the nightmare, but an actual person. That was Mao, an ageless man with a small face, wrinkled as an old apple. Mao took care of Stanley. They had been introduced by another Chinese man, young, tall, and broad-shouldered, named Huojin.

  Stanley had met Huojin in a small dive bar by the docks of the Marseille port. He’d sat down next to Stanley, ordered them a round, and introduced himself, noting that his name meant “man of iron.”

  “And what does your name mean?” Huojin had asked.

  Stanley had shrugged.

  “I never thought about it.”

  “Your name is your fate,” Huojin had said. “And yours is a difficult one. You need help. I can tell. I’ll help you. What will you give me in return?”

  “Money?” said Stanley.

  “Hmm. It doesn’t seem like you’re doing too well on money.” Huojin had laughed. “Or are you planning to get some? Someone owes you money? You’re trying to find the debtor?”

  Stanley had thought he might be dreaming. He’d even pinched his arm. No, Huojin hadn’t disappeared. The beer in front of him had been just as cold and intoxicating.

  Huojin had seen the pinch and laughed again.

  “I noticed you right away,” he’d said. “I knew immediately what you need. I do business without papers, no documents. I know everybody in this port and every other. You need to get out of here, am I right?”

  “That’s right.” Stanley had taken the cigarette Huojin was offering.

  “Where to?”

  “Cuba,” Stanley had said after some consideration. “And I’ll need documents. Any documents. Doesn’t matter what name.”

  “Easy. This is Marseille, after all. But you’ll be at sea a long time. You’ll leave the day after tomorrow. You can pay when you get that money back.”

  “I’ve got money. How much?”

  “However much you see fit.”

  “Why are you doing this?” asked Stanley.

  “You might be useful to me,” Huojin had said with a smile. “Later. I help you. You help me. But the documents will be expensive. I’ll get you a South African passport. That’s simple. I’ve got lots of friends there. You’ll get it when you’re about to arrive to Cuba. Just so you don’t do anything foolish before.”

  Huojin had taken Stanley to the ship and handed him over to Mao, giving the latter instructions in Chinese. Mao had followed those instructions (Stanley assumed) without a murmur. He’d put Stanley in the cabin and begun to treat him with acupuncture, had fed him rice and vegetables, had brought him jugs with harsh Chinese vodka, and had left several joints of hashish.

  On his way out, Huojin had told Stanley that, when he found his enemy, it would be better to leave them alive.

  “Why?” Stanley had asked.

  “We live as long as our enemies do,” Huojin had said over his shoulder. “Without them, we become like this old man. Kind and useless. Obediently fulfilling the orders of men like us, who have enemies everywhere, enemies who we protect and keep.”

  Stanley couldn’t figure out how to steer the small boat he’d used to escape from Gagarin’s villa. By that point, he didn’t much care. The thirst for vengeance had made him grit his teeth and suffer through unbearable pain, but deep inside, he felt a rising indifference. Christine’s death, her terrible, cruel death had brought him low. A death that he was to blame for.

  He locked the handle for the gas in place, and the boat’s motor made a strained humming noise. Stanley slid from the side of the boat down into the cockpit. He knocked open the door of the small cabinet holding the steering wheel in place, and discovered a mini-fridge inside. Stanley pulled out two cans of beer. He popped the top off the first and downed it almost instantly, foam spilling all over him, and opened the second. Then he threw up and passed out.

  The boat hit the shore at full speed, a rocky, fenced-off section of beach accessed by granite stairs leading down from a villa above.

  The impact threw Stanley forward; he ended up with a cut on his forehead, a swollen wrist, and more damage to his already suffering knees. The pain brought him back to consciousness for a little while, but then he slipped back into the fog.

  Early the next morning, the villa’s owner came down to the beach for a swim. Jacques was shorter than average, and suffered from multiple untreatable illnesses, the main one being his unrestrained, severe alcoholism.

  After struggling all night with a bottle of cognac, Jacques decided to refresh himself at dawn. He threw a robe onto his lean but muscular body, and slid his blue-veined feet into rubber shoes. He lit his traditional morning Galois and took the stairs down to the water.

  His wife stood at the very top, taking small sips of coffee from a large drinking bowl, into which she dipped a croissant, nibbling it down, piece by piece.
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  Jacques threw off his robe and stepped into the water nude, stroking slowly through the cold water as it cleared away his hangover. It was only on turning back toward shore that he noticed the boat that had crashed into his private beach. He swam toward it, jumped to his feet, and peered into the cockpit. Stanley lay there, unconscious.

  “Lucy!” he called, but his wife continued to sip calmly at her coffee.

  Jacques may have been short, but he wasn’t lacking in strength. He had been a well-known professional boxer in his youth, and had literally acquired his beach through his fists. It was nothing for him to jump into the boat, grab Stanley under the arms, and pull him to shore.

  Lucy had come down to meet him by that point, and she set her coffee down on the stone of their short pier, brushing crumbs off her full chin.

  “What are you doing down there, my fighter?” she asked, squinting at her husband. “And what the devil is that?”

  “It’s a naked guy! Wearing an expensive watch!” Jacques proclaimed happily. “And not a bad boat! Probably got drunk at a party and decided to go for a ride.”

  Lucy came closer. She looked Stanley over as he began to slowly come to. At the sight of his body, she wrapped her robe tighter, gripping the edges.

  “I think he had a bit of a fight before he decided to go for a joyride. Say, twelve rounds.”

  “Clearly, now you mention it,” agreed Jacques, looking closer. “With a heavyweight. Who was also a kickboxer and worked his knees over pretty good.”

  Stanley moaned, and his arms twitched.

  “I think we should call the police,” Lucy said. “And don’t you hurt yourself. Leave this Marcel Cerdan where he was! I think he was tortured.”

  “Maybe he needs help,” said Jacques, but nonetheless set his burden down.

  Stanley’s head hit the side of the boat with a loud thunk, and he fainted again.

  “Another couple moves like that, Monsieur Jacques, and there’ll be no helping him!” Lucy helped her husband out of the boat. “Go, call. I’ll watch him!”

  The police and the ambulance arrived at the same time. The EMTs pulled Stanley from the boat and put him on a stretcher, covered him with a sheet, and got him into the vehicle. Jacques, meanwhile, told his story to the police, with Lucy’s corrections and additions. When the police had what they needed, they took off after the ambulance.

  Stanley was taken to the hospital and placed in a ward with six other beds, but with a curtain for privacy. A detective came to visit him, but found the patient in a twilight state, only mumbling meaningless sounds in response to questions, his gaze clouded and senseless. The detective took his fingerprints and left.

  The doctor appeared after a considerable delay and gave Stanley a brief once-over. He told the nurses to wash the patient thoroughly, then send him to surgery. There, Stanley was examined again, his blood was drawn, and his wounds were treated and sutured.

  Stanley suddenly came to life then, started shouting something, and tried to escape from the restraining hands of the nurses. They had to call a larger male nurse to assist; the hefty Algerian man held Stanley down and strapped him to the stretcher, then administered a sedative.

  The doctor examined Stanley again. He wrapped up his knees and put on special braces. He also prescribed antibiotics.

  The detective came back, having forgotten to photograph Stanley on his first visit. He took several shots with his cell phone and went back to the station. In the end, he never uploaded the photos of the mysterious stranger. Later that evening he was called to an incident after a soccer match between Marseille and Rennes, where a quick-fingered Marseilles fan lifted the cell from his back pocket. So Stanley had several days of peace in quiet in his hospital bed with no one asking who he was, where he had gotten the boat, or where he had come from.

  He regained consciousness and ate with appetite. The nurses enjoyed taking care of their handsome patient, who spoke almost no French but made cute jokes in English. When the doctor looked in on him a few days later, he was quite satisfied with the patient’s progress, but surprised that, in all this time, no one had even tried to discover his name. He asked the nurses. They answered that “Monsieur Anglais” was enough for them, although they thought that the patient wasn’t English at all, but American.

  The doctor pulled back the curtain. Stanley was sleeping peacefully. The doctor patted him on the shoulder, and Stanley woke.

  “Hello. I’m your doctor.”

  “Yes, I know. I remember you.”

  “What is your name?”

  “That, I don’t remember,” said Stanley.

  “Hmm,” the doctor replied, and called a psychiatrist in to examine Stanley, calling the police at the same time to find out what they were planning to do. This was of greater concern to the administration of the hospital than the doctor—who was going to pay for the significant expense of his treatment and care?

  The psychiatrist conversed with Stanley in good English and diagnosed him with dissociative amnesia with dissociative fugue. He subsequently explained the condition to the detective and his partner, a small woman with an enormous gun, during their next visit.

  “He doesn’t remember the facts of his personal life, or his name, but he has retained general knowledge. He remembers, for example, how to use a fork and knife, he recognized the song on another patient’s ringtone. But he has periods where he is not present, mentally. We need to do a tomography, then decide on a treatment plan. Maybe transfer him to the psychiatric department; that would be for the best.”

  “Can I ask him some questions?”

  “You may, but don’t tire him out.”

  “Monsieur,” the detective addressed Stanley. “Can you tell us where you came from?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know why the boat doesn’t have a registration number? Can you remember?”

  “No.”

  “There was a gun in the locker under a seat in the boat. Is it yours?”

  “No.”

  The police left, discussing on the way that it was usually drug couriers who used boats without registration numbers, to ferry drugs from big ships to the shore. The fact that the gun (which did not have Stanley’s prints on it) was Russian-made indicated the Russian mafia. Piece by piece, the file on the mystery man who arrived from parts unknown began to grow in size, but still contained no photograph of its central figure. The police commissioner noted this lack, and sent the detectives back to take another picture.

  Stanley, who could more or less decipher the conversations between the doctors and nurses as well as between the detectives, came to the conclusion that, even with their general disorganization and seeming indifference, the police would figure out who he was in two days, three at most. It was simple enough. They’d upload his photo into the ID database and get a hit.

  The next step would be the arrival of the Swiss police and deportation to a Swiss hospital. Probably with an attack by Gagarin’s people on the way. Viktor had to be beside himself with rage after Stanley’s escape and the deaths of Shamil and Biryuza. It would take a most unlikely streak of luck to survive until he was able to reach Frank Dillon and the charming Alex.

  He had been feeling reasonably fit for several days. Even his sleeping was back on track, though his nightmares tormented him. The nurses took good care of him.

  One nurse, a pretty, mixed-race woman who spoke decent English, was particularly kind to him. She had overheard the detectives talking in the hospital cafeteria, and told Stanley that they suspected him being a member of a Colombian drug cartel, and just pretending to be an American who had lost his memory. Especially since there had recently been a terrible shootout at a villa on the outskirts of Marseille, and witnesses driving by the villa and on the shore had seen several people escape by boat.

  “You know I’m not a drug dealer, darling. I don’t know who the mons
ters are that took a drill to my knees.” Stanley shurugged.

  “Oh! Mon pauvre cheri! Of course not, you handsome thing,” said the woman, stroking his hair.

  The next day, she hurried up to Stanley’s bed with a wheelchair, and quickly detached the heart monitor sensors from his chest and the blood pressure bracelet from his wrist.

  “It’s time for your procedures, Monsieur Forgetful!”

  Stanley realized immediately that they weren’t going to any procedures, and his suspicions were confirmed when the nurse parked him in a secluded corner and came back with pair of crutches and a bag. The bag held a change of clothes.

  “You’ll get fired!” Stanley said.

  “Eh, to hell with him!”

  “With who?”

  “The detective is my ex. I’d do anything to screw with that asshole. Anyway—here.”

  She showed Stanley a piece of paper. He shrugged, not understanding.

  “It says here that you’re being transferred to the Edouard Toulouse Hospital.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A psychiatric clinic. My current boyfriend works there. He’ll sort the paper trail somehow. He knows his way around! And one last thing.”

  She handed Stanley his watch.

  “Get dressed and get out of here!”

  Stanley sold the watch at the port for 12,000 euros. The buyer, who owned a small store on Estienne d’Orves square, saw at once that he could make a low offer, even though the watch was worth many times that. Stanley didn’t try to bargain.

  As he lay in the hospital, he had planned on contacting Frank. But then he realized it had nothing to do with them now. There was no benefit to their federal government. Their special services had no oversight in this matter. It was his personal business now. Actually, it wasn’t business anymore. Just personal. And so everything was up to him, and him alone.