Firebolt

by R. M. Galloway

  “He’s in protective custody, waiting for his chance to testify against Vitalius Kohl,” she said. “As are his bodyguards. Was it really necessary to shoot two of them?”

  “It wasn’t just necessary, it was the bare minimum. Do you have any idea how hard it is to win a gunfight without killing anyone?”

  “I wouldn’t try it. If someone is shooting at you, the correct response is to shoot for the torso and put him down. You’re not seriously claiming you spared them on purpose?”

  “There was probably some luck involved,” I conceded. “I just shot at them when they shot at me. I didn’t specifically try to kill them is all.”

  “Then you did get lucky because they all survived. Although it was touch and go with Daniel Perrin. Now let’s get down to business. I assume you’re expected back soon.”

  “That’s a fact.”

  “Does Vitalius Kohl believe that David Zinn is dead?”

  “I can’t speak to what he believes. I told Kohl that I killed Zinn, along with both of his bodyguards. He may believe me, he may not.”

  “If he didn’t believe you, you’d be dead. We questioned Zinn, and he claims that the whole idea behind the Quod Corporation was originally his. Kohl was talking to him about it on some online forum, then contacted him privately and offered to fund it. They met in person, but when the funds were handed over they weren’t from Kohl at all – the money was from the Ja Lama. That’s neither here nor there, but we’re trying to track down how a Buddhist monk got his hands on a few hundred million in start-up capital. Zinn told us something else that was a bit more interesting. He said the tech behind the Quod Glasses was really his.”

  “He told me the same thing,” I said. “And there’s something else. Some radical group is placing its own spies inside the company. We caught one the other day, a woman named Maria Guttierez.”

  “Some radical group? What do you mean?”

  “I think they’re anarchists, but I’m not sure. The spy we caught didn’t say much before I lost my access to her. They hate Kohl, I know that.”

  “The FBI does not make common cause with anarchist organizations.”

  “Believe me, they don’t make common cause with us either. They hate the very thought of us. But the woman was caught inside the virtual reality room, the place where they’re making the Quod Glasses.”

  “They must be the key, then,” said Emily Alvin. “That brave woman. Misguided and criminal, but brave.”

  Those words could probably be used to describe me just as easily, I thought. No false modesty.

  “The Quod Glasses are just high-end virtual reality headsets. And not even fun ones, because you won’t be able to use them to play video games or look at porn.”

  “What are they for, then?” she asked, confused.

  “They’re for enlightenment,” I said sarcastically. “Vitalius Kohl wants everyone to achieve Nirvana, and he wants them to do it quickly and easily. By buying Quod Glasses. He says meditation doesn’t work anymore because the world is going to hell in a handbasket. You can’t get enlightened through meditation anymore. But with the Quod Glasses, you can. For six easy payments of $99.95.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” she said. “There simply has to be. Maybe the Quod Glasses are just a cover for something else. Or a single component in a larger plot.”

  “I’ll look into it further. But I have to be careful. Paying too much attention to the wrong thing could get me killed. I’ll tell you this, though – Vitalius Kohl is obsessed with Buddhism. The Ja Lama has him thinking he’s a Buddhist deity.”

  “I thought Buddhists didn’t have deities?” she said.

  “Maybe American Buddhists don’t. But Mongolian Buddhists definitely do.”

  “This gives me an idea,” she said. “I might know who your spies are.”

  “Why?”

  “Have you ever read anything on Buddhist anarchism? Deep ecology?”

  “No. Buddhism bores me.”

  It was really true. I didn’t just say that to piss off Spindrift.

  “I had to learn all about it when we were working a case on a group called the Sōhei Faction.”

  “Who are the Sōhei Faction?” I asked her.

  “Radical leftists, but they see themselves as militant Buddhists. Warrior monks, which is what sōhei means. We were investigating them for the Ann Arbor arson attacks.”

  Ann Arbor. That made sense. An old friend from the punk scene was the one who had introduced me to the underground cell, and he kept going on about how he had nothing to do with Ann Arbor.

  “Did you get anyone?”

  “They weren’t the ones who did the arson attacks, as it turns out. That was a bunch of eco-radicals obsessed with direct action but too scared to hurt anyone. But when we were looking into the Sōhei Faction, we found out they had stockpiled a lot of weapons so we kept on looking. Then they got spooked and dropped off the radar. We never thought to connect them with Ultima Thule or Vitalius Kohl. Not even as enemies.”

  “Aren’t Buddhists supposed to be pacifists?”

  “Not these Buddhists. We never did learn all that much about them, but they definitely see themselves as holy warriors. No different from jihadis when it comes right down to it. Stay away from them.”

  “I’m supposed to catch them. Kohl will kill me if I don’t.”

  “I’d rather you arrested them, but don’t blow your cover for any reason. Kohl has to be stopped at any cost.”

  “What if they give me something I can use?” I asked her.

  “Then use it. Use them. If your spies are really from the Sōhei Faction, Kohl’s Buddhist pretensions might be the main thing they have against him. They might see him as a perverter of the faith, a heretic. Do whatever you have to do, but don’t get drawn into it. The Sōhei Faction are not your friends.”

  Working for the government can be depressing sometimes. I could well believe that the Sōhei Faction were not my friends, but I wasn’t at all sure the Federal government was friends with anyone.

  “Stop looking so glum,” said Alvin. “Your vodka’s here.”

  “I’ll have to drink it quickly.”

  “Be my guest,” she said. “I already know you’re a drunk. We know everything about you, Holder.”

  Not quite everything, I thought. But I knocked the vodka back in one long swallow.

  Chapter 17

  A few days later I was back in the bunker, conducting yet another of those interminable interviews. But here was the beautiful part, the part that made it all just a little bit worthwhile.

  The guy I was interviewing this time was Jesse Spindrift.

  I had hardly spoken with him since the DC trip. As far as I knew, he didn’t even know I had slipped out. When I got back to the hotel, I had gone straight to Barbara McCoy – and she had reported no problems. She hadn’t even seen Jesse at her station. All’s well that ends well, right?

  Sitting across from him in the interrogation room, I found his wispy little beard particularly ridiculous, especially in combination with the fiery determination in his eyes. He didn’t even look like a proper fanatic, more like someone who wanted to be seen as a fanatic.

  “How was meditation today, Jesse?” I asked him.

  “As if you would care,” he said. “Buddhism bores you.”

  “I’m not talking about my feelings; I’m talking about yours. Did you enjoy your meditation session with the Ja Lama today? Are you feeling more serene than usual?”

  “You can mock me all you want, Holder. At least for now. But meditation works. And of course I feel more serene after a session with my spiritual teacher.”

  “Since you’re feeling serene, perhaps you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions.”

  “Anything the Quod Corporation needs from me, I will do.”

  “How commendable. But perhaps a bit of a contradiction.”

  “Why is that?” he asked.

  “It says here that you used to be a member of a group c
alled Workers United back in college,” I said, gesturing vaguely at some papers in front of me. “You wrote some articles for their little newspaper. You know how Mr. Kohl feels about the Bolsheviks.”

  “That was college,” he said. “A long time ago. I had not yet experienced my… spiritual awakening.”

  “It wasn’t that long ago. A few years really. And I’ll tell you this,” I said. “Workers United? We investigated them back when I was still in the FBI. A Trotskyist front group. The puppet-masters were a bunch of guys called CHEKA. Nasty bunch. Exactly the sort of people who would hate Mr. Kohl, who would do anything within their power to destroy him. You follow?”

  “No, I don’t follow, Holder.” His voice was a croak. Mr. Spindrift was getting nervous. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

  There was no way he could, because none of it was true in the first place. The Cheka was the old Bolshevik secret police, which then became the NKVD, which then became the KGB. There was no secret group of Trotskyist puppet-masters with the same name. I had made that up. As for Workers United? An utterly harmless group of overly earnest propagandists. The FBI didn’t even bother to bug their phones. After penning a few virtually mindless articles for them, Spindrift had switched sides and started writing equally mindless articles for the Campus Conservatives, then American Identity after graduation, then the Neo-Byzantine Society for the Revival of Orthodoxy.

  That was probably where he jumped the shark, because he started writing reviews of ritual dark ambient albums and essays about the philosophy of Julius Evola after that. That was when he was finally deemed strange and gullible enough for recruitment by Vitalius Kohl. He ended up on the security team for no better reason than his several years of martial arts training and the fact that there wasn’t much else Vitalius could do with him. It probably just amused the old man to have such a sycophant around.

  “Let’s set that aside for now,” I said, leaving him uncertain whether I would bring it up again later or not. “Have you ever been in contact with enemies of the Quod Corporation?”

  He smiled at that one, and it wasn’t pretty. The vicious smile of the weak. “Oh yes,” he said. “I’m talking to you right now, aren’t I?”

  “I’m in charge of Vitalius Kohl’s personal security,” I said. “So why would you describe me as an enemy of the Quod Corporation?”

  “You’re totally open about not believing in any of this,” he said quietly. “But you probably think that’s part of your cover. Gavin Holder the cynical mercenary. Right? But you left your post. Right at the beginning of the Ja Lama’s speech, you left your post and disappeared for forty minutes.”

  So he knew about that after all. A potential problem. A very serious potential problem.

  “I was following up on a lead,” I said. This was a dumb mistake, because there was no benefit in acknowledging that I even needed to explain myself to him in the first place. He just went on smiling, and I decided I needed to change course and do so quickly.

  “Listen to me very closely, Jesse. Do you think I’ve killed people?”

  “You were an FBI agent,” he said. “It wouldn’t be surprising for you to have killed one or two.”

  Most FBI agents have never killed anyone, but then again I have.

  “You’re wrong about that,” I said. “I haven’t killed one or two people. I’ve killed so many I’ve lost count. Do you follow me now, Jesse? I could make a list, but I’d have to sit down for a while and figure it out. Off the top of my head? I don’t even really have a good idea. But it’s a lot.”

  “You can’t scare me! I’m loyal to Vitalius Kohl, the Ja Lama, and the Quod Corporation!”

  “That’s what I’m here to determine,” I said coldly. “But if you do anything to interfere with my investigation, I’ll assume you’re not. I’ll assume you’re an agent for the CHEKA organization. And my report will indicate that.”

  “I know what you really are, Holder. And I will prove it.”

  He got up and left and I didn’t even try to stop him. I didn’t feel like I had the juice for it. The interview hadn’t been as entertaining as I had hoped.

  Chapter 18

  “It’s been a long time since we shared a bottle of wine together,” said Vitalius, pouring me a dark red glass of Burgundy in his private office later that night. An album by Elementum De Chao was playing in the background, which tended to cut the “auld lang syne” effect a bit considering that the album was literally a recording of Vitalius and his followers murdering somebody, set to bizarre avant garde noise music.

  Back in Hennington, MN, I had been out late on many evenings with Professor Andrew Mann, getting drunk and talking till after midnight about the strangest things. Spiritual alchemy, the apocalyptic prophecies of Joachim of Fiore, the sky-worshipping religion of the Mongolian Tengerists, why shamans shouldn’t be called shamans but some other less popular word, ritual dark ambient music, encryption. It was only in retrospect that I even understood what he was doing there. Not so much indulging his love of obscure intellectual conversation, but planting one hint after another that he was the guy I was looking for so he could laugh to himself in private later about my failure to get it.

  He was doing the same thing now, mocking me with my failure to catch him back then by playing the album while we talked. And also reminding me that he was a ruthless killer.

  “A long time indeed,” I said, and sipped my wine. I didn’t want to sip it, I wanted to gulp it. But I needed my wits about me. Talking to Vitalius was always dangerous, but something in the air felt even worse than usual. Not tense enough. Too quiet.

  “Has there been any progress in your search for spies?” he asked me.

  “Some. When we were in DC I saw Ernie Armstrong, an old friend of mine from the punk music scene.”

  “Why?” he asked, his eyes flashing. I knew I might be making a mistake here, but it was the safest bet.

  “A lot of old punks from the nineties got political,” I said. “Eco-terrorism, that sort of thing. Neo-luddites, people who hate all technology. Civilization itself for all I know. I wanted to see if any of the guys he knew had a particular grudge against the Quod Corporation.”

  Now this was risky, because I hadn’t seen the interrogation report on Maria Guttierez yet and I wasn’t sure I could trust it even if I had. If Maria had broken under torture and named the Sōhei Faction, then my plan to distract Vitalius with a red herring could easily backfire.

  “And what did this… Ernie Armstrong have to tell you?”

  “He mentioned a bunch called Sabotage Industriale. French name, but they just want to sound like they all wear berets and smoke gauloises. Big fans of Ted Kaczynski. Ernie told me they hate the Quod Corporation with a passion, and want to ruin our flagship product before it goes to market.”

  It’s amazing how easy it is to just outright lie to people. Vitalius taught me that.

  “Our flagship product?” he asked, his eyebrows raised.

  “Okay, yours then,” I shrugged. “You fill my rice bowl. No reason I shouldn’t identify with what you do.”

  “No reason except that you’ve never done it before, you mean.”

  I shrugged again, hiding behind my well-established mask of nonchalant cynicism.

  “Moving on,” said Kohl. “The fundraising campaign had an encouraging opening, but the amount of money we need to raise is rather large. We’re going to be doing a lot of these events.”

  “How large is rather large?” I asked.

  “Approximately one billion US Dollars,” he said.

  All I could do was stare at him. A billion dollars? What kind of virtual reality headset costs a billion dollars to bring to market, and who tries to raise that much money through crowdfunding in the first place?

  “A billion is… how many millions?” I asked Vitalius.

  “One thousand millions,” he said.

  “See, here’s the thing. What was it, Star Citizen? That crowdfunded Sci-Fi videogame? They got a hun
dred and fifty-three. In millions, I mean. Not even a quarter of a billion dollars. And that was the most successful crowdfunding project ever.”

  “The most successful was EOS,” said Vitalius. “They got 183. But don’t worry about it, Gavin – we’ll get it, or we’ll scale back the project accordingly. We could probably do a minimal version of it for as little as they got, but why not try for what you really want?”

  “Power of positive thinking,” I said.

  “It’s actually the much greater power of negative thinking,” he said, showing the black humor that sometimes made him creepily relatable. “Like I said, we’ll make it happen.”

  “Okay, then. My team can handle it. We may need to hire some local extras if we’re going to be doing a lot of scattered events, though.”

  “Only if you find me these spies from Sabotage Industriale first. And if you don’t go slipping off all the time. You made Jesse Spindrift very nervous. From this point onward, you’re going to be accompanied everywhere you go.”

  That little snitch. Guess I hadn’t scared him enough.

  “You already knew about that?” I asked.

  “Of course I did. And Gavin – if you hadn’t told me what you were up to yourself, we wouldn’t be sipping wine together and talking by this point. You’d be all alone with the Ja Lama, and he would be introducing you to the reality of the Void.”

  “Of course. We wouldn’t want me to be getting too comfortable.”

  I drank the rest of my wine, and stood up to go to bed without asking permission to leave. I didn’t want Vitalius to get too comfortable either.

  Chapter 19

  “Hold on a minute, Gavin,” said Kohl. I stopped, and turned halfway back.

  “Don’t be offended. You once considered me your only friend, and I have always enjoyed these talks of ours. In my own distrust, in my determination not to be betrayed by saboteurs, perhaps I doubt you too much. But it is not my intention to deliberately offend you.”

  When he escaped from Hennington, Vitalius murdered his own dog and left me a note in the dead thing’s mouth. His elegant manner was a façade, fitting his persona of philosopher king. I didn’t have much choice but to play along.