The Inner Circle (Man of Wax Trilogy)

by Robert Swartwood

  I said, “A bit overdramatic, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Perhaps. But I liked the way you tried to warn me about him. Like you were trying to protect me.”

  “I gave him the same warning about you.”

  “Is that right? So then you never truly trusted either of us.”

  “Again, is there a point?”

  She said to Carver, “You believed Edward set you up, didn’t you? At least initially. You may not know it, but he began suspecting the very same thing you did. About the games. So it was decided something needed to be done. Instead of eliminating him outright, we approached him quietly to try to learn what he knew. We figured if we kept him close, we could someday use him to our advantage.”

  “Who’s we?” I asked.

  She stared at me for several long seconds but said nothing. Behind her, the two black masks on the floor looked as if they were wrapping up.

  “Your husband,” I said. “He was never a member of the Inner Circle, was he?”

  She shook her head sadly. “No, I’m afraid he was not.”

  “So then why did he die?”

  “Because he refused to accept the truth.”

  “And what truth, pray tell, is that?”

  “You can sit there and hide behind your wall of sarcasm for as long as you’d like, Ben, but the reality is our world is in serious trouble. There’s nonstop war, famine, genocide—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I heard the same line of bullshit from Caesar earlier tonight.”

  “It’s natural to be frightened of things you do not fully understand. You view us as evil. You think what we do is morally wrong. But what you have to understand is we’re just trying to save the world. Your father was right—it’s never wise to trust a politician. But this isn’t a political thing. Republicans, Democrats, Independents, even Libertarians—they’re all here tonight. So are different members of Parliament. Almost every religious viewpoint is represented here as well. Don’t you understand just how wide reaching this is? Our world is in serious trouble, and if someone doesn’t do something about it, we will all die.”

  “So let me guess—the almighty Caesar is going to save us all.”

  “He is just one man. One man cannot save the world. But what Caesar has done is brought us all together. He has unified us. This is something that will never happen in politics. You will always have the one side fighting against the other side, no matter how inane their argument. They argue just for the sake of arguing. And it’s like a disease—it infects the people, and begins to make them argue against each other. The world is full of it. That’s half the problem. What Caesar has proposed is to stop it all together. To bring global unification.”

  “The Pax Romana,” I said.

  She nodded, her expression all at once reverent. “It is what’s going to save the world.”

  This entire time Carver hadn’t said much. After all, he didn’t know the congresswoman, and besides that, she was keeping most of her attention on me. But now he cleared his throat and leaned forward.

  “And just what exactly is the Pax Romana?” he asked.

  The congresswoman looked at him like she was surprised he was still there. She took a breath, opened her mouth, but before she could speak a voice spoke behind her.

  “I can explain that.”

  Someone else now stood in the doorway. This person, too, wore a robe and cowl and mask.

  Only this mask wasn’t black or white.

  It was gold.

  69

  The two black masks cleaning up the floor promptly decided it was time to leave. They gathered their things and stood aside so Caesar could enter the room. Like for the congresswoman, a black mask trailed with a cushioned folding chair. The mask opened it and set it down beside the congresswoman before taking its leave.

  “You two,” Caesar said, taking off the golden mask as he sat, “have become quite a thorn in my side.”

  He looked to be in his late-fifties, early-sixties. White. Clean-shaven. A few wrinkles in his brow. Blue eyes. Strong cheekbones. An angular nose.

  I tried to take in as many of his features as I could in the first couple seconds. Then I glanced at Carver and said, “We ... apologize?”

  Caesar smiled. “No you don’t.”

  “Then tell me what you want to hear and I’ll say it. I mean, I figure you’re used to being surrounded by sycophants.”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Enlighten us then. But first, do those in the upper echelon of the Inner Circle really call you Augustus?”

  He said nothing.

  “Because if it’s okay with you, I think I’m going to start calling you that too. Unless, that is, you want to tell me your real name.”

  He stared at me for another couple of seconds before turning to Carver. “Is he always this annoying?”

  Carver said, “For the most part, yes.”

  I looked at Carver and shook my head. “Last time I risk my life trying to save your ass.”

  “Gentlemen,” Caesar said loudly. “My time is precious, and I would rather not waste it.”

  “Of course, Augustus,” I said. “Our deepest apologies. We are so honored by your presence and blah blah fucking blah.”

  Congresswoman Houser tilted her head to the side and whispered, “Now do you see what I’ve been dealing with?”

  Before Caesar could respond, I said, “You two are related, aren’t you?” I waited a beat, staring at their faces, their eyes, and nodded. “Yeah, you are. What are you, brother and sister? Cousins?”

  Augustus apparently didn’t care to answer my query. He reached into his robe and pulled out a small piece of paper. He unfolded it and held it up for Carver to see.

  “Do you recognize this? You wrote it, I believe. It says ‘Caesar, I’m coming for you.’ What did you expect when you wrote this, Carver? Did you expect me to get worried? Did you expect me to ... oh, I don’t know, quake in my boots?”

  He folded the note back up, seemed to take great care in placing it back in his robe.

  “To be honest, Carver, I do have respect for you. I can see you strive to be a great man. I see greatness in you. But that greatness has not yet reached its full potential.” Augustus leaned forward just a bit. “I think it can, though. I think you can be a great, great man. And I am willing to help bring that greatness out of you. My army has been building now for over three decades. I have acquired some of the most brilliant minds in the world. You see, Carver, despite what you may think or hope, the world is going to change. It is already heading toward destruction—it has been heading there for a very long time now—and nobody knows what to do about it. Everybody wants to play the blame game. They want to point fingers and not take responsibility. Nothing is getting done.”

  “We know,” I said. “Your sister-slash-cousin already filled us in.”

  Augustus gave me a dry smile. “Very well. Then that saves me time. Do you both agree then that the world has fallen apart?”

  He waited for us to give a response. When neither of us did, he waited even longer.

  “What’s the point?” I asked.

  Augustus said, “When God saw the world he had created had become infected with evil, he decided to wipe it out completely and start over. He sent a flood and ... well, you know the story.”

  I opened my mouth to speak but Augustus held up a hand.

  “Now, before you jump to conclusions, I am not comparing myself to God. I am not even comparing myself to a god. Yes, I may sometimes be considered the deus ex machina, but I am just an ordinary man, Carver, somebody much like you. And I have a vision for what the world can be. You see, the world right now is very much like you. There is so much potential for greatness, but it’s hiding just beneath the surface, and the longer it stays hidden, the weaker it becomes. What it needs is for someone to step up and help bring that greatness out. Are you following me so far?”

  Carver said nothing.

  Augustus sighed and
said to me, “What about you, Ben?”

  “What about me?”

  He paused a moment, taking a breath, trying to remain calm. It was exactly what I wanted to see. Just how much push it took to get a rise out of him.

  “Are you following me?” he asked slowly.

  “Sure,” I said. “Anywhere and everywhere. In fact, I would walk five hundred miles. Carver, how about you? Would you also walk five hundred miles?”

  Augustus, clearly not a fan of the Scottish band The Proclaimers, said, “Tell me, gentlemen, just what am I doing here that is wrong? I am trying to look out for the future of mankind. The world right now is in serious trouble. There is no future. We may not be able to stop global warming and pollution, but at least we can stop making them worse. But before we even do that, we need to start getting along. That means everyone. This entire world needs to understand that if we do not work together as humans, then humankind as we know it will soon cease to exist.”

  Carver said, “You’re insane.”

  Augustus smiled, clearly pleased to get a response from Carver. Then he looked at me and said, “Ben, isn’t that what you told Howard Abele when he tried explaining what the Inner Circle is all about? You called him insane too.”

  I tried to hide my surprise, but he must have seen it in my eyes. His smile widened.

  “Yes, I have read your story. I have read it several times, in fact. For some reason it fascinates me, the arrogance you brought across. As if you and Carver and a number of your rogue player friends have what it takes to bring down over thirty years of work. Do you seriously believe you’re the only ones who have tried to stop us? There have been others in the past. There was one person in particular several years ago, a doctor, who caused us much trouble. But as you can see, we are growing stronger every day.”

  “So did you find my story to be an amusing narrative?” I asked. “Because your sister-slash-cousin here found it to be an amusing narrative.”

  Augustus ignored me. “What you don’t understand is you have never been in control. For the past two years—and for you, Carver, the past five years—you both have been interrupting the games, thinking you are untouchable. However, you were only able to do so because I was allowing you to do so. It was fun to watch, like a rat trying to find its way through a maze. If there truly is a God, I would like to think he finds it very amusing that we believe in such a thing as free will.”

  He shook his head, his smiling fading.

  “But there is no such thing. At least no such thing for the two of you. So yes, you did pull one over on us back in California. I will give you that. But ever since then we have been very careful. And we have always been in control. Though, Ben, I must admit, we were surprised when you returned to the Beachside Hotel. That certainly did catch us off guard. And you can thank me, by the way.”

  “Thank you for what?”

  “The bomb my people placed in the car was supposed to kill you. Even though you had managed to bypass it, my people were supposed to activate it remotely. But they called me, asked me what to do, and I told them to let you live. To blow the car, yes, but to make sure you lived.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I wanted to see what else you would do. My sister here—yes, she is my sister—doesn’t give you much credit. She thinks you’re foolish. It’s true, your attitude isn’t the best, and you’re not as funny as you think you are, but you seem to be full of surprises.”

  “Um ... thank you?”

  Augustus leaned back in the chair, folded his hands in his lap, turned his attention once again to Carver.

  “It should not be surprising our initial plan was to kill you once we reconvened in the auditorium tonight, right after I present the Pax Romana. But even with everyone’s interest peaked—and believe me, they are all looking forward to seeing you, Carver—I’m finding it to be all very ... anticlimactic. So we kill you. Then what? You’re dead. What does that really mean? It has no significance, at least none that I can see. So I have been thinking. And if you want to be altruistic and save your friends’ lives ...”

  He let it hang there for a second, watching Carver’s face. Carver, as expected, gave no reaction.

  “Do you want to save your friends’ lives, Carver? Because we know they’re outside. They probably think they have some great plan to swoop in and save the day, but they’re wrong. They are going to die. All of them. Even those left behind at the farmhouse—yes, we know the location of that too. Unless, that is, you want to save them. And if you do, it’s quite simple. When you are on stage, I will ask you whether or not you two have any last words. Ben, you’re obviously going onstage tonight as well. We knew this days ago when it was clear your plan was to try to infiltrate the Coliseum, but I did not want to mention it tonight, figuring you still had it in your head you would be able to go through with whatever menial plan you have come up with. Anyhow, I will ask you both if you have any last words, and when I do you both beg for your lives. Do not grovel or anything, nothing pathetic like that, but enough so that everyone can see you don’t want to die. Then I will ask you that if I spare your lives, will you agree to abide by all the rules set forth by me. Of course, I will be skeptical, I might even have Clark come out and break a few bones, but when the crowd sees your sincerity and knows you are serious, then we will stop. Not that we will welcome you with open arms immediately—we do need to be sure you won’t be up to anything—but I am sure once you see everything that we lay out for you, the idea of the Inner Circle will not seem as evil as you first thought.”

  “I can give you our answer right now,” Carver said. “Go fuck yourself.”

  Augustus stared at him for a moment before turning slowly to face me. “Ben? Is that your answer too?”

  “I was going to say go fuck a duck, but it’s pretty much the same idea, yeah.”

  Congresswoman Houser shook her head sadly. “I told you it would be a waste of time trying to talk sense into these two.”

  Augustus said, “Are you both completely stubborn? You seem to think you’re fighting for some great cause, but can you even name it? The people you claim to be trying to save are the ones ruining this world. The common person ... what do they have to contribute to society? How are they benefiting anyone? Ben, tell me one thing that either of your parents ever did for this world.”

  I said nothing, though the temperature of my blood ticked up several degrees.

  “What does the average person do to try to make this world a better place? They go to work, they eat, they spend money, they have sex, they sleep. That’s it. So you call us evil when we take these people and put them in our games, use them as players. At least for the few days they survive they have purpose. They become more than the petty painters and busybodies they were before. They actually begin to respect and cherish life.”

  Augustus shook his head.

  “Every single person in the Inner Circle understands what’s really important in this world. They understand what it is to live. I’m not saying that a rich person is any better than a poor person, but when it comes down to it, what does a poor person have to lose when the world falls apart? Absolutely nothing, so of course they don’t care. But someone who is rich, someone who is powerful, who has worked hard every day of his or her life to actually achieve something and then realize they are going to lose it all ... and for what?”

  Augustus held up his black-gloved hands, the palms open to the ceiling.

  “Please, can either of you answer me? I have been trying to understand this for over thirty years, trying to piece together the exact point where the world went wrong. All I could do was look back through history, because they say history repeats itself, and they say that the only way you can learn is by fixing the mistakes of the past. It didn’t take long, really, learning that the Roman Empire was the greatest empire that ever ruled this earth. Certainly, they stole much from the Greeks, but they stole it and made it better. They, too, were viewed as barbarians, but maybe
that was what made them so great. You both believe murder is wrong, I’m sure, but murder is what captivates the world. And a real life murder? People would love to witness that, no matter how much they might claim otherwise. And so I thought about the state of the world, about how it was all falling apart, and I asked myself, What do we have to lose?”

  There was silence then, deep and heavy silence, where Augustus’s gaze searched our faces, where Congresswoman Houser beamed proudly at her brother.

  Then Carver said to me, “Wow.”

  I nodded. “Wow indeed.”

  “He makes a very convincing argument.”

  “That he does.”

  “The only problem is,” Carver said, “his breath doesn’t smell too good.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “What do you think it could be?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe it’s all the bullshit spewing out of his mouth.”

  To Augustus’s credit, his face remained impassive. He simply shook his head and said, “I’m sorry you both feel this way. But at least I tried.” He turned to his sister. “Let’s go.”

  They rose to their feet, started to put back on their masks.

  I said, “Wait.”

  They paused, watching me.

  “What about the Pax Romana?”

  “What about it?”

  “Aren’t you going to tell us what it is?”

  Augustus smiled. “You will hear all about it before you die.”

  “Don’t we at least get a hint?”

  “All right, then. Your hint, however, is a question. What is the greatest thing the Roman Empire gave to the world?”

  Augustus didn’t wait for a reply. He put back on his mask, as did the congresswoman. They headed toward the door, which the black mask opened for them. Congresswoman Houser stepped through, but Augustus paused in the doorway and turned back.

  “Soon, gentlemen,” he said. “Soon the game of your life will come to an end. Enjoy what few moments you have left.”