“You could lie, in other words.”
“I would think a man in your profession knows that there are many versions of the truth. Shades of it, at least. But in this case, you’re right. I never considered suing Sellers. In fact, the thought never entered my mind.”
“The truth being a defense and all…”
Samuelson said nothing. Instead he turned to the bartender, ordered a bourbon on the rocks and another for Malone.
“I’m going to do something for you detective. Something I don’t normally do for anyone. And that is to give you some advice.”
“And what advice is that?”
“Stop.”
Malone sat, waiting for the rest. The rest did not come.
“Stop? That’s it?”
Samuelson nodded, puffing on his cigar.
“Are you threatening me?”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” the other man said, chuckling. “I’m no threat to you. I hired Limbus only once, for an event that will happen but once in my lifetime. My association with them is done.”
With all he had seen, Malone shouldn’t have been stunned. But he was.
“You mean they are real? The stories are true?”
Samuelson shrugged. “I’m sure many of them are not. Mine is, to a degree. I don’t care to share with you what is fiction and what is fact, so please do not ask. But I can promise you this. Nothing is chance in this world. Nothing is coincidence. And that includes you being here, asking me these questions. You have been chosen, detective. For what, no one can say. Well, someone can, but you haven’t met them yet. They are preparing you, as they prepare all of their candidates. There is something they want you to do. Something that you are uniquely qualified for. It’s an honor, in a way. Out of all the billions of souls on the face of this planet, you are special. You have what it takes. You are the only one who can see it through to success. It’s a lot to take in, I know. To know that someone really does pull the strings. That someone makes the nations dance. But it is as it is.”
Malone stared at him, unwilling or unable to believe what he heard. “Look, Samuelson, I’ve already got a job. And it’s to find out who killed a girl in Birmingham, Alabama. Who strung her up over a hole and left her to die. And whether it’s a thrill killer or a bunch of psychos roleplaying, I don’t care. Now tell me where I can find Limbus.”
Samuelson gestured to the stack of papers. “That’s one of theirs, isn’t it?”
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Who cares?”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Sellers,” he said.
“And where did he get it?”
Malone shook his head. “I don’t know. Some fucker calls himself ‘Jack Rabbit’ sent it to him.”
Samuelson laughed. “Ah, Jack Rabbit. Of course. He has been in their employ for a few years now. I will give you a gift, detective. The most valuable gift a man can give, one of information. But I beg you not to use it. I beg you to go back to Alabama and bury your murder away, deep in a cold case file.”
Malone hesitated, and Samuelson saw the truth in his eyes. He nodded, and there was pity there.
“I see. You can’t go back, can you? Or if you do, it will only be a matter of time before your entire life falls in around you. Of course. Of course that’s how it would be. So be it. Jack Rabbit is in the Czech Republic, in a little town called Český Krumlov. I believe you can use your skills to find him from there. And I guess you should take this.” Samuelson opened his briefcase, removing a stack of papers that Malone didn’t need to examine to recognize. “Now I know why this ended up at my office today. And it wasn’t for my edification. Good luck, detective.”
He handed the papers over to Malone, and he saw that it was another story. He nodded once to Samuelson, and then left him and the club behind.
He stood on the curb, staring at this latest piece of the puzzle. A cab slowed and stopped in front of him. Without thinking, he opened the door and slid inside.
“Where you headed?” the cabbie asked. He waited, expectantly, but Malone stared stupidly at the pages in his hands. “Hey, buddy, where you headed?”
Malone jerked his head up so quickly the cabbie flinched. “Airport,” he said. “International terminal.”
The Unlearnable Truths
From the Case Files of Sam Hunter
By
Jonathan Maberry
-1-
Sam Hunter
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
I picked up the phone on the fourth ring. Goddamn thing would not stop ringing. I’d let it go to voicemail five times and hadn’t listened to the messages and now whoever it was kept calling.
The caller ID said “unavailable.”
Since it seemed pretty apparent someone didn’t want me to sleep in on a Sunday morning, I finally reached out from under the covers, grabbed the phone, dragged it back in where it was warm, and punched the green button.
“Go fuck yourself,” I mumbled, and hung up.
I was on that edge of sleep where you know you can not only dive back in, but step right into the dream you’d been pulled from. This was a good dream. It involved a lot of Scarlett Johansson and not a lot of clothes.
The phone started ringing again.
If I was more awake or, possibly, smarter, I’d have simply turned off the ringer. I was neither, at least not in the moment.
I pressed the button.
“Seriously,” I said, “go fu—.”
“Mr. Hunter?” interrupted a voice. Very female, very smoky.
So, I said, “Yeah…?” But I left it a question in case I needed to pretend I wasn’t Sam Hunter.
“We need you,” she said.
“It’s Sunday. Need me tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow will be too late,” said the woman. I figured her for early thirties. There was a quality to her voice that made it clear that she was young but not a kid.
“If it’s that pressing,” I told her, my own voice thick with sleep, “call 9-1-1.”
“We don’t work with the police, Mr. Hunter. We prefer to work with you.”
I rolled over onto my back. It had been a very good dream and I had a very inconvenient morning erection. And a very full bladder. But the bathroom was on the other side of the arctic tundra that is my apartment.
“Who is ‘we’?” I asked.
And she said, “Limbus.”
I hung up the phone again.
She called back seven more times.
I had braved the tundra and was on the toilet when I answered. I told her that I was on the toilet, hoping that would disgust her into hanging up. Not so.
“We need your help,” she said, ignoring my comments and any pictures it might paint for us both to look at. “You’ve worked with us in the past and—”
“And regret having done so,” I told her, then held the phone near the tank while I gave it a courtesy flush.
“You did superior work for us.”
“Flattery doesn’t do much for me on a Sunday morning.”
There was a very brief pause. “What does ten thousand dollars do for you?”
I closed my eyes. I really hate working for Limbus. I’ve been messed up—inside and out—twice now. I made enemies in very bad places both times. I have nightmares. Yes, even people like me have nightmares, and not all of them are about taxes or middle-age prostate issues.
And, let’s face it, I have to work a lot of hours doing intensely boring shit to come up with ten grand. On a good week I pull a thousand dollars doing investigations, chasing bail skips, snapping pictures of philandering spouses, or hunting for runaway kids. That’s a good week. Want to know how many good weeks I have in any given year? It’s a sad, sad number.
But…Limbus?
Fuck me.
“No,” I said.
She said, “And the other half on completion of the assignment.”
“Wait…what?”
“Ten up front and ten at the close,” she said. “And five on
top of that if you can resolve this in less than twenty-four hours.”
I said nothing. Twenty-five thousand dollars? Holy rat shit.
She was quiet for a few moments, letting my greed, my need to pay bills, my assessment of multiple alimony payments, rent, car repairs, and maybe even a Sony PlayStation 4 for my office, nudge me toward the wrong decision.
I took a deep breath and girded my loins as well as someone can while he’s on the crapper.
“Thirty,” I said. “Half up front. All cash.”
She paused again, but I don’t think it was because she needed to count her pennies. More likely it was to take time to smile over the fact that she knew the hook was now firmly set in my underlip.
“We can do that.”
“If I like the job.”
“Oh,” she said softly, “I can guarantee you, Mr. Hunter, that you won’t like the job.”
“Shit.”
“So I’ll have twenty in small nonsequential bills delivered to your office within the hour,” she said, “and another twenty ready at completion.”
“Plus the bonus. Another five.”
“Another ten,” she said, selling it.
Fuck.
“Okay, damn it,” I said. “What’s the job?”
She actually had the courtesy to laugh out loud before she told me. I laughed, too, even though we were both laughing at me.
-2-
Mr. Priest
Town of Poliske
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation
Kiev Oblast, Ukraine
Six Years Ago
They moved like phantoms through a city of ghosts.
Mr. Priest and his four companions were dressed in form-fitting gray radiation suits. The latest design, and far more flexible even than the MAR 95-3. Very expensive, with an integrated charcoal weave infused into flexible PVC, lightweight air scrubbers, goggles with protective polycarbonate lenses, and chem-tape over all the seals. Wired with real-time telemetry that flashed data onto the big plastic over-hood, including rad count, mission clock, and maps.
Priest stopped at an intersection and looked up and down the streets. The blacktop was cracked and pernicious weeds had grown up and grown strange in the cold wasteland of this town.
“Lovely,” he muttered. His real name was Esteban Santoro, but he preferred to be called Mr. Priest, or just Priest. His business associates and even his enemies called him that. Unlike his real name, Priest was not on any warrant or watch list.
He did not consider himself to be evil, though he knew others did, and they could make a compelling argument. Priest considered himself to be a realist in a world that did not reward those who cling to illusions. National and international laws were subjective, created by specific groups to suit their own ends; they were not cosmic laws and therefore choosing not to obey them did not equal sin. The god Priest believed in—and he was deeply invested in the Old Testament—was a right bastard. Bloodthirsty, vindictive, duplicitous, occasionally malicious, and very violent. Priest admired those qualities in his god and cultivated them in himself. His long association with certain militant groups buried deep inside the skin of the Roman Church shared many of those views, and even expanded upon them. Ask the Crusaders, the Templars, the pope who slaughtered the Templars, and the Inquisition. Priest’s grandfather had been a cardinal during the Second World War and had worked hand-in-glove with the Nazis.
Priest admired power as much as he admired knowledge. The development of power and the search for knowledge were sacred to him.
Which is why he was in Ukraine with his team. A very powerful and very rich American industrialist had paid Priest a lot of money to locate and recover some very ancient knowledge. It was so immense an undertaking that it felt very much like a sacred quest. No grail at the end of the journey, of course, but something much more real and much more powerful.
A book.
One of many that he had been hired to obtain.
It pleased Mr. Priest to have his specific skill set acknowledged and admired. And paid for. Oh yes, his employer, Mr. Oscar Bell of Long Island, had dug deep into his personal fortune to underwrite this expedition. And, should this one be successful, there would be others. Bell had given him a deliciously long shopping list.
His current lover, Katrinka Favreau—known as Rink—had accompanied Priest on a few smaller missions in the past, but nothing like this. She was convinced that he was some kind of archeologist in the vein of Indiana Jones. Rink was brilliant but immensely naïve when it came to people. She was, however, a superb cultural anthropologist and research scholar, and that was useful to him. Priest was moderately sure that he loved her, but love was a fragile thing to him. If she became less useful or in any other way inconvenient, he would abandon her in whatever town was handy. And if that didn’t work, well…
Rink came to stand next to him. She was much shorter than he was, and her goggles were equal with his chest. As she so often did, Rink slipped her hand in his, their gloved fingers entwining.
“This place gives me the creeps,” she said.
“This place would give Satan Himself the creeps,” he agreed.
Frigid winds blew debris and pieces of dead plant matter past them. Boris, Keppler, and Hiro clustered behind them, silent, in awe of the spectacle.
“Looks worse in person,” said Rink, and Priest nodded. They’d studied maps, photos, and videos of Poliske, but none of that really captured the desolation.
When reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, this entire part of Ukraine was flooded with radioactivity. Even so, the residents of this town were not evacuated until forty hours later. By then many of the people who had lived and worked here had been exposed. Cancer had chased them out of Poliske and dragged many thousands into early graves. Now that specter of death seemed to whisper to them in the howling wind. It loomed above them in the lichen-covered brickwork of gray buildings. It reached for them with fingers of diseased plants and stunted trees.
Poliske was dead but it wasn’t resting in any kind of peace.
That was fine with Priest. He didn’t bring his team here for the nightlife, and he didn’t care much about ghosts. Some, but not much.
Other things, maybe, but that fear was closer to excitement, and it was something he kept private, even from Rink. As far as she knew—as far as any of them knew—they were here to loot an old Soviet lab. That was scary enough for them.
One of the other team members came to stand with Priest and Rink.
“Call it, dude,” said Hiro Tsukino. He was an urban explorer who’d gained international fame as the point man for the Tengu, the UE team from Japan. They’d conducted scavenging hunts into several of the most dangerous haikyo—abandoned buildings. Their level of skill, inarguable courage, and apparent fearlessness had made them an Internet sensation. As a teen Hiro had gone into the ruins of several department stores within hours of the Tōhoku earthquake of 2011. While aftershocks sent jagged cracks running up the walls, the Tengu had gone deep inside and returned with money and jewelry from the stores. His subsequent arrest for looting had sparked a media frenzy, and parties interested in Hiro’s bravery and skill set had financed a particularly brutal team of lawyers. Since then the Tengu had disintegrated as many small anarchist groups will, but Hiro rose to solo stardom. Despite the dangerous and illegal nature of his adventures, he received huge endorsements from international companies, including GoPro and Under Armor.
When Priest reached out to him to join the Poliske trip, Hiro had jumped at it. Poliske was legendary. A city in the shadow of Chernobyl. Not just ghosts, but nuclear goddamn ghosts. Hiro was in before Priest told him what his fee was. When they did get to the fee, Hiro was seriously jazzed, but the allure of Poliske was even greater than all those zeroes. The urban explorer was a true daredevil. He was also, as far as Priest could tell, truly fearless. Cautious, yes, but that was more about being smart than blind and reckless. Priest and Rink had interviewed the
scavenger and concluded that Hiro was apolitical and a borderline anarchist. That was good. That was fine. Anarchists, even those who still clung to some of their social connections, were useful.
Psychopaths like Boris, Priest’s bodyguard, were different. Boris’ skills were limited to things he could hurt and things he could kill. Useful, but neither Priest nor Rink—or Hiro for that matter—would burn up calories shedding tears if Boris didn’t make it home. As long as Boris kept them safe until they were out of this dead fucking town and this dreary fucking country.
The last member of the team, and the only woman besides Rink, was Inga Keppler, a Swiss nuclear science grad student. Priest would have preferred having a Ph.D. on the team, but Keppler was available, she was intensely brilliant, and she could be bought. That was a winning combination. She also looked like a bridge troll, so Rink never got jealous about having her around.
“The shoe factory is over there,” said Priest, pointing to a building down the street to their left. It was a squat three-story pile with a damaged façade and crumbling brickwork, grimed windows and piles of trash heaped against the rusted metal door.
The five of them began moving toward the building. Boris translated the sign outside, “‘Three Brothers Shoes and Leather Goods’.” He turned to Priest. “Are you sure about this? How good is your intelligence, tovarisch?” His accent was thick, but Priest was used to it by now.
“No doubts,” he told the group. “It’s there.”
They reached the building and looked around. There was dirt and mud from recent snowmelt on the ground. Boris squatted down to examine it and then nodded.
“It’s good. No one’s been here in a long time.”
“How long?” asked Rink. She was nervous and kept looking up and down the street as if expecting Russian or Ukrainian troops to appear out of thin air.
“Meh,” said Boris shrugging, “this mud is two, three weeks old. Can’t tell more than that, but nobody’s gone in or out today.” Even so he unslung his rifle as he stood. He carried an AK-103 with the stock folded down and two magazines taped jungle style, one fitted into place and the other reversed for an easy swap-out in a firefight. Privately, Priest thought the double taping of the mags was probably something Boris did to impress the rubes. It was amateurish and clumsy, but it looked cool. Boris was playing his role of professional soldier to the hilt.
Limbus, Inc., Book III Page 21
