“At least I don’t do it for fun.” Smoke laughed a vicious little laugh.
“Don’t you? I mean, really: don’t you?”
“We’re close enough, now.” Wright insisted, apparently ignoring the question, along with the dark suggestiveness that underlined it: “I could go and personally tell her everything, and it’d be too late for her to stop it. Though her reaction to finding out may surprise you.”
“Oh, I doubt it.” Smoke bit back with an air of condescending superiority.
“And you’d know...how, exactly? You don’t have the clearance to know.”
“I don’t need clearance. All I need, is to know you. What, do think she’s gonna choose you over her husband? Is that what you think?” Smoke stared at him; incredulous. Wright simply glared at her, saying nothing. “Fuck you’re delusional. Have you seriously gone and gotten it into your head, somehow, that you’re her type?”
“And what, pray tell, is ‘her type’?”
“Not...a fucking sociopathic freak-show, I imagine?”
“Careful, Aviary...”
“Do you...” She paused, trailing off; her hand moving to cover her mouth in what appeared to be an emphatic gesture of genuine shock. “Do you think...that you’re the ‘good guy’ in this story? The one who gets the girl? The one who’s saving the day? Fuck...you do, don’t you?” Smoke emitted a short, sharp burst of horrified laughter; staring at him, and shaking her head slowly back and forth.
“Do you imagine...” Wright began, his words slow and carefully chosen: “Do you imagine, ‘operative Smoke’...that you are the only one who knows how to make a corpse? Who knows how to dispose of one, away from prying eyes?”
“It must’ve been awhile, Wright. You think you’re up to it?” She mocked.
“To ending you?” He scoffed. “Do you have any idea who I was? What I did? We’re all monsters, here, Aviary...but trust me when I say: you want to walk away from this fight. I’m out of your ‘weight class’.”
“Please.” Aviary stepped up to Wright, getting in his face. “Please try something.” She paused. Leaning around the corner, Dio could see her, almost pressed against Wright in a strange, deadly intimacy; their eyes locked together, bleeding hate into the air between them. When she spoke again, her voice was sultry. Sultry and quiet...but taunting; challenging: “C’mon: I really...really...wanna see you try something.”
“Get out of here, Aviary. Crawl back to Galt like the spineless, tremulous invertebrate that you are. Relay this message: tell him that he’s not...getting...her.”
“Before this thing is done, I’m gonna...” She trailed off. The two of them stood there for a moment; toe-to-toe. Their eyes burned into one another’s. To Dio’s surprise, Smoke was the first to break off. Muttering something horrific to herself, she turned...storming out of the room. Reaching the front door, she seemed to have regained her composure; Dio heard the door open and close; making the assumption that she’d noiselessly slipped away into the eternal darkness of Palatine Hill. Dio quietly turned, intending to go back to bed; to Yvonne, and the warmth of her body against his. Wright had other plans.
“Oh Dio...” he heard the edge of disappointed judgement before the words themselves registered. “Whatever am I going to do with you?” Dio stopped dead.
“I was just – ”
“ – I know what you were ‘just’.” Wright suddenly sounded extremely tired. “Come on. Let’s have a nightcap, shall we? I think there are a few things we should probably discuss.”
§§§
Wright poured out two tumblers of Scotch.
“I’m not much of a drinker,” Dio insisted.
“You are tonight.” Wright muttered dismissively, pressing the glass into Dio’s solar plexus and leading the way through and into the impressive space that Wright described as, simply, the ‘lounge’.
There were floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with a vast range of books and periodicals: sorted alphabetically and by subject. An open log fire burned, spat, and crackled from the centre of the far wall. Looking down at the floor, Dio saw vibrant swirls of colour; millions of tiny, coloured shards of tile pressed together to depict an enormous, up-reaching hand. The fingers were wreathed in handwritten Latin 5notation, segmented by the cracks between tiles. Nestled in the palm was an eye...tiled with the same bewitching, glowing purple that Sudo’s eyes had shone with. The appendage itself was surrounded by azure Ocean and earthy, green and pale brown islets. At the thumb and index finger of the hand, angled to face the fire, were two luxurious armchairs. Wright patted the back of one, indicating that Dio should sit. He did, nursing the scotch, and trying to summon up the resolve to take a sip.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Wright remarked casually. Dio sincerely doubted that.
“Yes?”
“Fire hazard.” Wright pressed a loving hand across and onto several of the books, strumming across their spines as if their were some kind of enormous, bibliophilic harp. “Don’t worry. The fire’s not real.” Dio’s brow knotted.
“It’s not?”
“No.” Wright sauntered over to the fire, bending slightly and moving a hand slowly through the flames. “See? An illusion.” Dio was confused. The flames flicked and the embers crackled and hissed. There was nothing about it that hinted at anything other than complete authenticity. But then...he remembered the visions in the white room. “A good rule of thumb for The Organisation; for the world we live in, come to that...” there seemed to be an edge of sadness to Wright’s voice. “Is that not much of it is what it seems to be. Not much at all. If you find something real, it needs to be treasured. If you don’t love it...learn to. Because ‘real’ is the rarest thing there is. Recognising it and appreciating it as it deserves to be appreciated...it’ll enrich you. It’ll make you more real. A better man.” He paused, glancing over at Dio. “But I think you already know that, don’t you?” Dio shrugged, confused.
“Sir.” He settled on. Neither affirmation nor denial, just...respectful deference. Wright shook his head.
“You’re not a military man, Dio. You never really were. So don’t call me ‘sir’.” Wright paused, looking him over appraisingly, before moving to the other armchair and folding himself tiredly into it. “And drink that Scotch, would you? It was in a barrel longer than you’ve been drawing breath.” Dio raised the tumbler to his lips. The chill of the rim between his lips surprised him. The liquid felt thin: burning through his mouth; over his tongue; and down his throat.
“Faa-ha,” Dio wheezed. Wright smirked.
“Yes, it’s a bit like that, isn’t it?” He asked rhetorically. “What do you usually drink, when you drink?”
“Beer. Wine.”
“And Yvonne?” Dio wasn’t certain.
“Something strong, probably.” Dio shrugged, realising that he wasn’t at all sure. Wright nodded.
“Yes. I don’t doubt it. The two of you are interesting to watch.” Wright commented. “I like watching people, you see. It’s a hobby of mine. Good...evil...rich...poor; it is, perhaps, the one thing that unites us as a species: if you look closely enough, every one of us is fascinating. And the two of you interest me particularly.”
“Why is that?” Dio winced as he sipped at the Scotch.
“You complement one another. She holds you up; keeps you strong...but inside, there’s a fragility to Yvonne. A sort of a...lack of ‘structural integrity’, of you follow, that makes it difficult for her to hold herself up. Even though, of course, from the outside, you’d never doubt that she could. People like Yvonne generally find centredness in emotional overcompensation, or they collapse. That’s my experience, mind you. Differing perspectives may beg to differ, as they often do. But you, on the other hand...you’re strong from the centre. You’re the scrappy little boxer who keeps getting back up, no matter how hard he’s hit...even though he looks as though he’d crumple at the first punch. It took me awhile to see that, but it’s definitely there, isn’t it? A core fortitude that’s ver
y much a part of who you are. What do you suppose that is? Conviction? Faith perhaps?” Dio shook his head.
“I don’t know. I try to be a good man.” Dio didn’t understand quite what Wright meant.
“What sort of man was your father?” Wright enquired.
“A good man.” Dio shrugged. “A very honest man.”
“Tell me more.” Wright prodded.
“Well, I think...in some ways, you can judge a man by the way that he’s seen by his children.” Wright nodded in agreement. “I always hoped I could be the kind of man my father would respect, whereas he always seemed to want to distance himself from his father and grandfather. To...to wash himself clean of them, I suppose.”
“Do you want to know more about The Organisation?” Wright asked after a few seconds of silence.
“No.” It was almost a cough. A semi-voluntary twitch. But he knew it was true as he said it, even though the truth of it surprised him. The real surprise, however, was Wright’s sympathetic nod.
“And why not?” Wright smiled reassuringly as he asked the question. Dio took a deep breath. He found himself unable to reply. Staring into the heart of the fire, he sighed, taking a sip of Scotch. “Let me answer that for you. May I?” His voice was soft and kind. Dio nodded.
“Yes.”
“You don’t want to know more...because, deep down, you know that good men – good people – don’t work so hard as we do to hide the truth. They don’t say things like what you overheard Smoke and I saying to one another. They don’t live underground, and make lists of seemingly random names based on covert surveillance. Good people don’t build things like Palatine Hill.” Dio found himself nodding. “Now...there’s a very simple explanation, that, as a man who strives for honesty, I know you’ll be able to appreciate. Would you like to hear it?”
“Yes.” Dio nodded hesitantly.
“Alright. I’ll tell you.” Wright sat back in his chair. A minute passed. Only the spit and crackle of the illusory flames held the silence at bay. “The truth of it is, that we’re not good people, Dio. Not at the top. Some of us think that we are...and at the lower levels of The Organisation, we have many people with us who would, by any normal person’s reckoning, be viewed as ‘good’. But at the top...as I’m sure you heard me tell Smoke...we’re monsters, Dio. Brutal, angry, violent, broken people, whose disgust over the actions of the species from which we would – if we could – extricate ourselves, is equalled only by the disgust that we feel for ourselves: for the people that we are. Our dearest hope; perhaps our only collective hope...is that, through our actions, the world will one day be a place where our kind – simply put – cannot exist. We are Moses, as it were...seeking to lead Humanity to the ‘Promised Land’: a place where we, ourselves, cannot enter.” Dio didn’t know what to say. He wanted to dismiss it as self-effacing hyperbole, but something in Wright’s face told him that, if anything, it was a fairly restrained characterisation. “At the risk of labouring the analogy: Our ‘forty years in the desert’, I suppose you could say, begins tomorrow.”
“I don’t understand.” Dio admitted.
“And you won’t.” Wright admitted. “Not for some time, yet. All I ask is that you consider the possibility that the world could be...better. That the Human species could be something worth fighting for, as opposed to a constant impediment to their own aims and ambitions. Consider, Dio...the world’s population is now well over eight billion. Unchecked, we’re simply waiting to see which destroys us first; climate change and the myriad other systemic imbalances we have provoked through our collective hubris and greed...or competition amongst ourselves for finite and dwindling resources. If something isn’t done, we’ll wind up at each other’s throats – a shadow of what we were – killing one another on a barren, ruined husk of a world for a gallon of water here, or a sack of corn there. You can see it coming...and it draws ever closer to inevitable. Anyone with a mind to, can look out and see what we’re doing to this planet.” Dio shrugged out a pained acknowledgement. He wasn’t lying. He wasn’t wrong, either.
“What happens tomorrow?”
“A new beginning, Dio. A new start.”
§§§
“So that’s the play. That’s how this goes down.” Smoke whispered in Yvonne’s ear as they eavesdropped on Dio and Wright’s conversation.
“How what goes down? They aren’t saying anything.” Yvonne shivered, only half paying attention; far more focussed on Smoke’s body flush against her own from behind...hands on her hips; lips on her neck.
“Are you kidding me? You’ve gotta stop thinking about Wright as being...y’know...just some guy. None of them are ‘just’ anything.” Smoke hissed, pulling Yvonne back and pushing her up against the wall. Smoke pressed herself against Yvonne, making sure she was speaking close enough to the Israeli’s ear that Dio and Wright wouldn’t hear the whispers: “Think about what he’s saying, and imagine that they: Wright’s bosses; my bosses: ‘The Seven’...have all the technology, all the manpower, and all the resources that they need to do whatever they want to – and I am definitely stressing the fuck out of the word: ‘whatever’, here – about the things that they think are wrong with the world. ‘Cause here’s the thing, Yvonne...they do.”
“What are you talking about? You’re going to have to spell it out. I’m not Dio: vague crap doesn’t just – ” she mimed a snap of her fingers; aware of the need for minimal sound: “ – snap into place for me.” Smoke bit her top lip and looked off to the side; searching for a simple way to convey an extremely complex situation about which she, herself, knew far less than she’d have needed to in order to speak in anything approaching specific or definitive terms.
“You remember when I told you that there were fifty or so of those training camps above ground?” Yvonne nodded. After an expectant pause, Smoke fed her another clue: “How many States...are there in America?” Realisation dawned.
“What the fuck? What are you people planning?” Smoke pulled away from Yvonne, motioning for her to follow. Smoke walked ahead, with Yvonne trailing about half a metre behind her. Stepping through one of the back doors, they emerged into a small greenhouse – lit by long fluorescent tubing – adjoining the house. As they moved inside, Smoke held aside overhanging foliage to let Yvonne pass by. In better circumstances, Yvonne realised, the location would have been distinctly romantic.
But with circumstances as they were, the location was another thing entirely. The secondary back door that connected it to the house was the sole way in or out; the glass walls were thick, multilayered, and tinted white to prevent as much light from escaping into the perma-darkness of Palatine Hill as possible; and the foliage – as well as the shelving and racks that supported it – interrupted the passage of sound from the back of the greenhouse to the door at its front. Helpfully, they could monitor the door from the back: ascertaining any new presence with enough time to find some other topic of conversation. Yvonne admired the choice. It was as good a place to speak freely as they had the option of. Manoeuvring Yvonne to the very back, and sitting down with her on a small, slatted bench, Smoke continued.
“On my level? I have a high enough clearance to know that whatever’s coming is big. That people are gonna die. Probably by the hundreds and thousands. But I mean...just from a common-sense perspective, why else would people like us be on board?”
“Military? Ops?” Yvonne guessed. Smoke nodded.
“Partly that, yeah. But what I was getting at, is...well...we all match for three incredibly important criteria: We’re people who’ve been pretty fucking decisively fucked over by the systems currently in place; we’re all people with, let’s face it, some pretty fucking bleak options when it comes to life outside of The Organisation; and we’re all people who’ve been trained...to kill. Let’s face it, gorgeous: we’re here...because we all have a motive for mass destruction, and a vested interest in seeing this world burn. And hey...I’m damn sure that having been trained to follow orders and respect a regimented comma
nd structure was factored in somewhere.”
“Fuck.” Yvonne murmured. She blinked down; screwing her eyes shut for several seconds. When she opened her eyes, Smoke was still standing there in front of her. They were still in Palatine Hill. She was awake. It wasn’t a dream. It was all...actually...happening. “Fuck...” She repeated, with feeling. Smoke continued:
“But, again...when it comes to what’s actually coming? It could be almost anything. A coup d’état, assassinations – y’know, cut off the head and the body dies – or some sort of large-scale biological or chemical attack...” Smoke trailed off pointedly. “You remember the rumours, right?”
“After the Damascus Incidents...”
“Yeah. They could be true. Who’s to say it wasn’t just a dry run for something bigger?” Yvonne’s left eye twitched.
“And the lists we were making in Esquiline? The surveillance?”
“They’re part of it, yeah. Whatever ‘it’ is. It’s all part of it.” Smoke confirmed. “I’m fairly sure that those lists are to do with a final phase of The Disappearances. One that isn’t voluntary.”
“Disappearances?” Yvonne’s brow knitted with uncertainty.
“Have you been living under a...” She paused, considering. “Actually...I guess you have been.”
“Why would Wright be telling Dio and not me?” The thought occurred to Yvonne out of the blue. As soon as she said it, however, she knew that it was important to her that she knew. Smoke’s eyes darkened. For a moment, Yvonne was concerned that Smoke had misinterpreted the question: that she was taking it to mean that Wright held some sort of control over her. As soon as she heard Smoke’s tone, though, she realised that the blonde woman had more faith in her than that:
“Something about that kid – I don’t know what it is – is important.” Smoke sighed, shaking her head. “You can tell from the way Wright acts around him. I mean...he loves you...but that’s because you’re incredibly competent. It’s also probably because he fucking loathes me, and you’d be – easily – a frontrunner as my replacement. Dio? Nothing special that I can see.” Off Yvonne’s protective glare, she amended: “By ‘special’, I obviously mean ‘recognisably exceptional’.” Yvonne shrugged, nodding.
Abyss (Songs of Megiddo) Page 19
