Collective Mind

by Klyukin, Vasily

  “Wait. This is a misunderstanding. We wanted a different Yoshi. Let’s settle this peacefully.”

  “Money on the table,” Paul said quietly, calling a number on his cell phone. “We’ve got a problem here,” he said to someone.

  Bikie kept on crowding him.

  “Don’t give me this bullshit. I’ll call the police and they’ll stick you behind bars before you can even let out a peep. And then they’ll download you dry. No one will let you rip off tourists. This town lives on them, and you’ll get such a kick in the ass, you’ll forget your name.”

  Isaac was already standing shoulder to shoulder with Bikie, feeling that a fight was inevitable.

  Suddenly Paul backpedaled. . He lowered his voice and started making excuses.

  “I looked for the one you wanted. Hassled people and found you a Japanese girl. You guys are setting me up. I already owe the middleman.”

  “Do I kick you out, or you just leave by yourself?” asked Bikie, a genuine bar bouncer seething up inside him.

  Completely deflated, Paul took the Japanese woman and cleared out.

  They waited for another ten minutes, and it became clear that no one was coming back up.

  “ get out of here,” Isaac summed up.

  “Agreed.”

  They quickly collected up their things and went downstairs. Isaac’s phone rang again and Wolanski’s number was displayed.

  “Hey, Peter! I’ll call you back; we’re a bit busy here.”

  “Surprise, Isaac! I’m here in Amsterdam, in the Grand Hotel de l’Europe. Shall we meet?”

  “You know, Peter, your timing is just perfect. We’ve got nowhere to go,” Isaac replied, turning in the direction of the famous hotel.

  In Wolanski’s room Isaac finally recovered his wits after the unpleasant incident. He told Paul about their search and the clash with Paul, making special mention of Bikie’s heroism.

  Wolanski listened avidly, once in a while throwing alarmed glances at the door.

  “I swear I envy you, although you guys turned out to be real thugs! Things are humming for you two! I couldn’t resist flying in here. This is Amsterdam and with you, my friends. Especially since I was so close, in Copenhagen,” Peter confessed in embarrassment. “Sorry I didn’t warn you, I was afraid you wouldn’t let me come,” he added, speaking to Isaac.

  “Not let you?” Isaac was amazed.

  “Well yes, you’re the boss, the ideologist, you decide what can be done and what can’t,” Wolanski explained.

  Bikie nodded in agreement, reaching for the joint that Peter had prepared.

  “I agree with Peter. I might have fired the shot, but you’ve got steel balls the size of melons. I am always prepared to knock the arrogance out of someone, but I couldn’t have launched a global project like this, that’s for sure.”

  “Without you I wouldn’t have got anywhere either, guys.” Isaac was touched, his friends’ sincerity gave him even more confidence.

  “Who knows? I think you would. Definitely, you would. Who did you go to before me?” Wolanski asked.

  “A young guy, a sportsman. Named Abdul.. And Michelle Blanche, if you know who that is.”

  “I don’t know Abdul, but I know Michelle.”

  “And Isaac wrecked himself on her, like she was an iceberg,” Bikie explained in his usual style.

  Wolanski laughed and Isaac blushed.

  “To hell with wrecked ships and dashed hopes! We deserve a little party in Amsterdam. I don’t fancy going out, but I wouldn’t mind getting high and getting drunk,” said Isaac, handing the others bottles of beer.

  “Here’s to Amster!” Bikie clinked bottles with Wolanski and glanced suspiciously at the joint. “No tobacco in it, is there?”

  “Of course not, pure grass.”

  Satisfied, Bikie leaned back in his armchair and released a cloud of smoke.

  Next morning Isaac woke up in the hotel, still in his clothes. Wolanski was sleeping nearby on the sofa, also fully dressed, and Bikie was snoring in the bedroom. Isaac splashed cold water on his face, ordered breakfast for three and woke his friends up. Then he went for a shower and felt better at once. There was an hour to go until they left for the airport.

  They gave a warm hug to Wolanski one after another. Peter called and paid for a taxi.

  “He’s a good guy, Wolanski,” said Bikie, examining the buildings flickering past the car window.

  “I agree. And he has an excellent habit of showing up at the right time,” Isaac added.

  ***

  In the morning Commissioner Pellegrini booked a ticket, collected together his beach things and set off to the airport.

  Four hours later he was already in Monaco. He dropped off his things in a cozy hotel, had a delicious lunch and a coffee at an Italian brasserie in the port. He breathed in the delightfully salty sea air while walking to the local police department where he was received very guardedly and with surprise since he was such a big cheese. “Those weird people, first they write a huge report, and then they’re surprised that I’ve come,” the commissioner thought in annoyance.

  He inspected the scene thoroughly and took notes, incensing his local colleague.

  “It’s all in the report,” this host protested. The Monegasques didn’t like it very much when the French interfered in their internal affairs.

  “I understand,” Pellegrini gave a dignified nod. “It’s a good report. But it’s always best to take another look. Who of the local officers dealt with the case?”

  He was sent to Captain Nero, but the conversation did not produce anything new. The captain clearly had not found anything suspicious. The terrorist was a run-of-the-mill fanatic – you came across them, sometimes. He was probably a psycho. He had spouted some total gibberish about “the heart of the devil” and smashed a computer. Had he come across a cash register or a safe, he would have smashed that too. Nero was telling all the details, but in fact didn’t feel eager to deal with the uninvited guest.

  “He’s in a looney bin,” the captain explained. “You can go there and check for yourself. A crackpot if ever there was one, there are plenty like that. Some stand in strike pickets, holding placards, some turn to frenzied prayer, but this one was violent. There’s nothing more I can say. Here are all the witness statements as a bonus. Here’s a pass for the looney bin, if you want: you can talk to this mental case Elvis as much as you like.”

  But Pellegrini wasn’t able to talk to Elvis, who was as tight as a clam and as puffed-up as a turkey cock. In the hospital they said he was usually very talkative and kept rambling on about the devil and his heart, saying it had to be destroyed. But he wasn’t actually dangerous at least not to people. He’d damaged some equipment, but that was about it. Other than that he was harmless.

  The amiable nurse was really amazed that Elvis refused to speak to his visitor and she tried to help to get him to talk. But the patient frowned, crossed his arms and said nothing. The girl told the commissioner that only an hour ago Elvis had been boasting that the heart of the devil would be destroyed because he had managed to hand it on to someone he had enlightened.

  “Elvis does have an attitude of a criminal after all: say as little as possible at interrogations,” the commissar noted. But there was no doubt about Elvis’s insanity. There was obviously nothing to be picked up here, and Pellegrini went back into the city. He strolled round the beautiful city and admired various modern sculptures and vintage cars. Tired of walking, he dined in the famous Café de Paris, drank a glass of local rosé and went back to the hotel.

  He was intending to fly back the next day, late in the evening. But from early morning to midday he had some time to sunbathe and swim. He had to make the most of his visit. The sea wasn’t at its warmest, of course, but some people had already opened the season and after that perhaps he would have a chat with some of the witnesses. Yes. Definitely! The commissioner ran a rapid eye over the records of the interviews. “I’ll have a word with them. I can go back to Paris a
ny time, but after all, I have the sea here.”

  All this time the strange phrase “heart of the devil” kept running round Pellegrini’s head. His intuition, or perhaps experience gave him a feeling there was something about these words, some hidden sense. What if the madman talked about some object?

  If the nurse had reported what Elvis said correctly, someone else had this “heart of the devil”, not Elvis. Was this the ravings of an insane or an allegory that could be decoded to find his accomplices? But then, what accomplices could he have, except maybe another lunatic?

  Accustomed to not discounting even the most absurd theories, Pellegrini went back to the UNICOMA office to inquire about what had been missing after the terrorist attack. He was told that nothing had disappeared; the computer in the manager’s office had simply been damaged. Pellegrini asked what was in the computer. Nothing special, just working data, that was all. A pity. The “heart of the devil” had turned to be just a fantasy.

  It was boring. And boring was the modern criminal world, consisting of nobody, but fantasists, schizophrenics and freaks. There was no scope for a modern-day Maigret – the commissioner’s role model – to spread his wings.

  Chapter five

  Time went by, and the promising “bombshell” dug up by Bikie still had not exploded. No clues and no interesting leads left by Link’s Japanese girlfriend have been found. She had been granted a resident permit and got a job in the same university where Link worked. All sorts of small stuff, but then, just like with Link, her trail went cold. It looked like they were together, but the whereabouts still remained unknown. Isaac tried feverishly to figure out a way to hook the big fish Link and hoist him up out of the dark. What else should they look for?

  Bikie was exhausted too, and he started to spend more of his time on things that had nothing to do with the project.

  “Why don’t we take a trip to his University in England?” Bikie suggested out of the blue.

  “To England?”

  “Why not, we’ll get on a train in Paris and scoot over for a day or two. Thanks to Wolanski we can afford to spend a little bit of money.”

  “Of course! An excellent idea! There’s a chance we might find something new there!” said Isaac, brightening up.

  Bikie huddled over the computer and went to a website for railway tickets.

  “Isaac, you don’t mind if we go by train instead of flying, do you?”

  “We can, but why?”

  “I want to have a coffee in Paris. I like being there.”

  “Then Paris it is. Actually we could stay overnight.”

  They left on the earliest train and slept peacefully for the five hours to Paris. As Bikie had planned, they set off to drink coffee in Île de la Cité, at a brasserie not far from Notre Dame. They strolled round the center for a while and had lunch in Montmartre, but they simply couldn’t relax. The hope that they would find a lead at the University urged them on, straining their nerves, so they didn’t stay for the night, but went to the station, handed in their tickets for the next day and took ones for the next train. In the last few years the length of the journey had shortened a bit, from two and half hours to two. “Not a lot, but in mathematical terms that’s twenty per cent,” Bikie calculated. He obviously wanted to talk, and there was almost an hour left to London.

  “Isaac, what are you thinking about?” Bikie was ready to talk about anything at all to avoid traveling in silence.

  “About how soon I can get the money for Vicky’s surgery,” Isaac replied. “I’ve almost sold the patent, but I think it’ll be another month or two. I should’ve asked Wolanski for the money. I would pay him back later out of my fee. What if something goes wrong with her? Something that can’t be fixed?”

  “Have you and your sister known each other a long time?”

  “Yes, for ages. My mother got married for the second time when I was ten to a Russian immigrant. He brought his daughter with him, Victoria. She’s younger than me, but we became friends immediately. She’s, you know… clever and cheerful too. She was always kind and considerate.”

  “Yes, and beautiful as well,” Bikie added. “I told you already, but I’ll say it again – very beautiful. With looks like that she’ll be okay, she’ll have a good life.”

  Isaac got that clammy feeling again, that anxious stinging sensation somewhere in behind his lungs, like the first time when Bikie praised Vicky’s looks. A beautiful girl Isaac had known that before. He felt glad for her, because she did not lack attention and had lots of admirers. The feeling Isaac had this time was completely new, and entirely inappropriate somehow. He tried to banish this anxiety and the thoughts that had begun distracting him more and more often. He had never thought about Vicky as a young woman, in the sense of someone who interested him as a woman. Argh, dammit! That sounded disgusting! Even if she was his stepsister, she was still his sister. But controlling feelings was a hard task, and Isaac’s thoughts kept turning back to Vicky more and more often.

  He could not understand why he had not noticed it before. Vicky was nothing like any of the others Isaac had dated. She was a hundred times better! Because… because he loved her? That was not possible. It was the simple, logical conclusion, and he wanted to send it packing, and his feelings with it. But he just could not. Trying to think about it less only made it worse – the only thing he thought about was her.

  Isaac looked too preoccupied, so Bikie decided to change the subject and distract Isaac with anything that entered his madcap head. But then, seeing that Isaac wasn’t responding, Bikie turned away to the window and started crooning another of his revolutionary songs.

  ... Steel rails like belts constrain the world.

  People are sleeping. All is quiet.

  We rush to abyss, through the night.

  There’s nothing there to stop the flight.

  We are inside the monstrous snake

  That has devoured the best of brains.

  The two of us woke up in wrath

  To wreak the choo-choo of its path.

  So let the convoy miss a curve,

  Cars break apart, disaster strike

  But wake and save all those who’ve there

  Succumbed to poison, unaware

  Isaac’s thoughts carried him farther and farther away. He recalled his chance encounter with Michelle, but then his imagination was gradually taken over by Vicky. This was a difficult dilemma, whereas he couldn’t figure out even simple cases. But were there ever any simple solutions for someone in love? Everything immediately got tangled up and seemed totally overwhelming, logic and desire contradicting each other and desire always won. If everything sorted itself out easily into neat pigeonholes in your head, then you were not really ensnared in passion. But if you were flung from joy to sorrow and back again, like a rollercoaster ride, and all your thoughts led back to the same person, then you have really flipped big-time.

  Isaac believed there was no such thing as mutual love at first sight. Interest, and which way it developed depended on the two people, especially if a third butted in. A girl usually sensed any interest in her, and if there was even a drop of interest in response, she started turning the screw gently on her admirer, not deliberately, but out of innate female flirtatiousness. So deftly and naturally to make someone fall head over heels in love with her, make him furious or drive him insane. For no reason, other than to feel that she was in good shape and get a buzz of confidence in her own sexuality. Or maybe Isaac had made all this up and he was seeing hidden meanings in perfectly ordinary behavior?

  One thing he did know for certain was that he did not understand anything about women. “Get lost!” could also mean “go away” or “try a bit harder”. It was difficult to catch the real meaning. If the girl smiled as she said it, then she probably liked the look of you, if she hid her eyes, then it really was best to get lost, but infatuation automatically translated any words into “try a bit harder”.

  If everyone left everyone the first time they were told
to, the world would probably have become a drab place long ago, the world wouldn’t have any flamboyant couples like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Sean Penn and Madonna. Mark Antony would never have conquered Cleopatra’s heart. True love was only born by overcoming obstacles.

  To win a popular girl, accustomed to all the very finest compliments and tired of constant attention, you had to fight really hard. You always had to fight for love. Everything was complicated.

  But then girls fell in love easily too and suffered over some absolute jerk.

  Isaac had never known how to pick girls up, usually they picked up him. They were mostly tourists in the bar. In the morning he always longed for the same thing – for his casual girlfriend to get lost as soon as possible.

  In truth, Isaac had never really had a serious relationship. But that did not mean he had never fallen in love. He had, and madly! Only he had never acted resolutely enough.

  There was no one he could borrow experience from; he would have to find his own way out of this mess. Isaac had a close friend, with whom he could clown around and talk about everything including talking about love and his escapades ….Vicky,. Oh God, now that Isaac realized he was falling deeper and deeper in love with her, he was horrified at the thought of the details he had shared with her. Yes, he definitely was facing the most nightmarish dilemma ever.

  “Bikie, listen,” he said, breaking the silence. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about, I’ve got this dilemma. I need your outsider’s point of view. Only, please, without your usual gibes.”

  “So talk.”

  “From the age of ten I lived side by side with my stepfather’s daughter. We basically thought of each other as brother and sister, and at the same time we were good friends. But now I’m starting to realize that she’s becoming more than that to mean that bothers me. What do you think?” Isaac paused, but then went on. “How does it look to you from the outside?”