The Binding

by E. Z. Rinsky

  I shoot her a look like I don’t trust you, you know.

  She half shrugs, half ignores me.

  Courtney and I sit down, and he heaps a bunch of fruit onto a plate for me.

  “Morning, Senator,” I say, struggling to meet Sampson’s eyes.

  “I have a bunch of meetings today,” says Sampson, as if I’d asked why he’s dressed up. “Might have to fly to DC tomorrow, but hoping I can get out of it.”

  Yeah, that back’s not gonna self-flagellate itself . . .

  I take a few bites of slimy mango before I realize Sampson is staring at me.

  “So,” he asks. “Leaving soon? Denver is a three-hour drive, but there can be traffic.”

  Jesus. This guy . . .

  “You think I could get some coffee?” I ask. “I don’t think you want me handling forty-eight million dollars before I have coffee.”

  “Of course, of course,” Sampson says, and shoots up from his stool. “Apologies. I don’t drink coffee anymore. Anything in particular? We have a Nespresso in here—does that work?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Just defibrillate me.”

  Sampson walks briskly into the adjacent kitchen.

  “Finish all your ‘work’ Mindy?” I ask.

  “I did, thank you for asking.”

  Courtney observes Mindy eating for a moment, opens his mouth to speak a few times but nothing comes out. Finally musters a stilted “So how did you sleep. Sleep alright?”

  Mindy frowns in confusion.

  “Sure,” she replies.

  “Good,” says Courtney mechanically. “Me too.”

  Watching Courtney trying to act smooth is making me physically uncomfortable.

  “Alright then,” she says. “So we all slept well.”

  Sampson storms back into the dining room and plops what looks like a quadruple espresso in front of me. Bless his heart.

  “So you got the eight million?” I ask Sampson, after slurping down my first dose. He nods almost imperceptibly. “And . . .” I eye him dubiously. “You definitely still want to go through with this.”

  “Yes,” he says.

  Courtney’s skinny hands coil into tight fists. Mindy appears to have expected this.

  “You’re the boss,” I say.

  “And make sure you do whatever he tells you.” Sampson is slightly frantic. “Whatever it takes. Maybe get going now? There can be accidents on the highway you know.”

  With a mouthful of pineapple, Courtney says: “Ten minutes to eat.”

  “Of course.”

  I take a bite of fruit. “Sometimes, Senator, pushing back is the best way to make sure the deal goes through,” I say. “Make him scared that we’ll back out.”

  Sampson takes a desperate gulp of soda.

  “Don’t do that,” he says.

  While we fill up on fruits and berries, he cracks open a second Pepsi, takes off his glasses and rubs them with his napkin. Checks his watch every ten seconds. When he can take it no more he pulls the leather suitcase containing the bonds up and plunks it on the table. While we’re still eating, he hurriedly pulls the papers out and crams them into the pink duffel bag. “That’s it. Forty in bonds plus eight from yesterday.”

  His hands are shaking. Eyeballs pulsing like I’ve seen before with meth heads. Checks his watch again. “Yeah, you three should really get a move on.”

  Content, I wipe my lips with a napkin and say “Okay. Let’s hit the road.”

  Courtney stands up off his stool and stretches for the ceiling. Mindy wolfs down another few strawberries. Her sudden zen is disquieting, calm before the storm vibes.

  “Fellas.” Sampson stands up with us, looks at us seriously through his round glasses. His eyes are pleading. Then he approaches us and lays one massive hand on my head, one on Courtney’s.

  Sampson closes his eyes and says aloud: “May the God who blessed Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Mohammed, Jesus Christ and the latter day saint, my teacher Sophnot, bless these men on their holy mission.”

  Heads stooped, Courtney and I exchange a quick glance of discomfort. The name of his tutor immediately evokes the image of him last night.

  “Guide them and protect them. Grant them the wisdom to discern between good and evil, and guide their hands to slay evil where it lies. Let them return to me with the holy writings of Sophnot, so they, with me, may dwell in the peace of his wisdom all the days of their lives. Amen.”

  Courtney and I both mumble an obligatory amen. I turn and lock eyes with Mindy for a second; hard to get a good read on what she thinks of all this nonsense.

  And then Sampson removes his hands from our heads and motions to the door. He’s near tears.

  “Please bring them back to me,” he gasps.

  We nod silently. I sling the pink bag over my shoulder. It’s heavy. Fifteen or twenty pounds’ worth of very dense paper.

  We leave the guesthouse and climb into the Humvee. Courtney hops into the front passenger seat. I get in the back next to enough money to make God jealous. As we pull out of the estate, Sampson watches from the front porch like an abandoned puppy. It’s a relief to get away from him.

  “That was sure a beautiful, um, blessing by the Senator, eh?” I say to Mindy, keeping sarcasm levels vague.

  “Mmhmm,” she replies and reaches for the radio. Rather terrifying to watch her momentarily steer this tank down the mountainside one-handed. Some shitty country music comes on. A woman crooning about love lost.

  I start dozing off, but come to about twenty-five minutes into our drive. The car is stopped. Mindy has pulled over at a rest stop and turned off the ignition.

  “Let’s talk,” says Mindy.

  “Shouldn’t we talk while we drive to Denver?” I ask.

  “We have at least an extra hour,” Mindy says. Then looks seriously at me and then at Courtney.

  “Well,” she says. “If you were planning on taking the money and skipping town, you might as well do it now, yeah?”

  Courtney looks horrified at the insinuation.

  “Mindy, we would never—”

  She holds up a thin hand to stop him.

  “You don’t have to play this game. You want it, you can fucking well take it. I obviously can’t stop you.”

  Courtney looks back at me, fear in his eyes, like he’s worried I’m going to take her up on the offer and he’s going to have to question all the trust he’s ever put in me.

  “Tempting,” I say. “But honestly, the money isn’t of much use to me without that new identity and a clean record. And I’m fairly sure Sampson has enough resources to hunt us down pretty quickly.”

  “Okay.” Mindy closes her eyes for a second, chews on one of her knuckles. “Well then, you need to understand these books—”

  “They’re not written in English are they?” Courtney interrupts. “You’re trying to translate them! Aren’t you? What is it, some kind of ancient Egyptian? Is it like a new New Testament?”

  Mindy looks at him for a moment. I think she’s impressed with him. I’m weirdly proud of my partner for intuiting what—based on her tense shoulder—is close to the truth.

  She rubs a hand through her speckled brown hair. When she speaks her voice is strained.

  “Let me explain, because it appears this may actually happen.” She takes a deep breath. “So, it’s not precisely clear what the books are.” There’s already obvious relief in her voice. A steam valve being released. How frustrating it must be to only be able to speak about her work with an ungenitaled religious nut job. “You’re correct. I’m translating it, from what appears to be a wholly original, largely pictorial language—the characters are closer to drawings than English letters, and to my knowledge, have no sounds associated with them. They are only meant to be read silently.

  “Many sections are stories, some original, some from the Old Testament, with minor changes. There are aphorisms, passages that I think are detailed instructions for types of rituals, but I can’t be sure. Can’t be sure about much at all
, is the truth. But what I’m definite on is the structure of the books, which is astonishing. There is an order to them, but no beginning and no end. Rather, each book is a sort of commentary on the previous one. So they go in a circle, each commentating on the previous one, until you’re back at the start. If you could read the books perfectly—and I’m nowhere close—you would just dive in at any point and start reading, following the circle around and around again, and each time you’d read a passage the second time you’d have a much deeper insight because of the layers of commentary and explanation that came before . . . It’s a work of almost impossible scholarship. Every page assumes you’ve already read every page prior. The cross-references are mind boggling. I really—what’s most incredible is that in years of study I’ve only scratched the surface. As I said—I’ve extracted certain interesting pieces, but still have no real concept of what the work—as a whole—entails.”

  Courtney quickly looks at me in the backseat, eyes wide. He loves this shit.

  I look back at him like: Don’t just believe everything she says.

  “So, maybe I just don’t get it,” I say. “But if I understand what you’re saying, you don’t even know the language these books are written in. So are you sure it’s not just really intricate nonsense? And that’s why it’s so hard to understand?”

  “No,” she says, perhaps more vehemently than she intended. “It’s definitely a language of sorts. And I know enough that I can extract meaning from the books. I’m doing it. It just takes an extremely long time.”

  “Why? If you can read it?”

  “Because both the content and the language itself are complex. Each character has a meaning that is dependent on context—and so I need to cross-reference tons of other pages to make sure I’m reading it right. Just an example: There’s one pictograph that usually means hunter—but if the symbol for woman is in the same phrase, it means lioness. But after about a year, I realized that if the character which, loosely translated, is an adverb meaning carefully, is within a five-centimeter radius of hunter on the page, that original hunter character is devoid of intrinsic meaning, and only serves as an allusion to a story on page seventy-seven of a different volume.”

  Courtney is leaning in so close to her that he’s straining his passenger side seat belt. He’s like an addict who’s just had his first hit. He just wants to open his brain and let her pour all the facts in.

  “The language they are written in is, unbelievably, far more rich even than present-day English,” Mindy continues, “which shouldn’t be possible. Nearly all linguists agree that complete, functional languages can only be formed organically, developing to accommodate the needs of a culture over the spans of hundreds or thousands of years. If this was written by a single person over the span of a few decades—the implications are staggering. Do you follow?”

  Courtney nods slowly, practically drooling.

  “I guess,” I lie.

  “The bottom line is, they need to be studied. I have dedicated my life to the study of language, and finding these books is the equivalent of a poet stumbling upon the previously unpublished collected works of Shakespeare. It’s not about personal glory. It’s about potentially understanding the origins of language, and humanity. Which is why we can’t bring them back to James.”

  I furrow my brow.

  “Why?”

  She hesitates for a moment.

  “What do you think will happen once James gets the books back?”

  I scratch my neck.

  “He’ll bring them to Oliver Vicks in prison.”

  “Right. And then they’re lost from me, from the scholarly community, forever.”

  “So what are you suggesting, Mindy?” I ask.

  “You help me do the swap, and then the three of us will bring the books to one of my connections at a university in London. I spoke to him last night, and believe me, when we show up with these we’ll be very well taken care of.”

  Courtney is frowning intensely, a sort of panic in his eyes while his brain works furiously to analyze our situation, given this new information.

  “What you’re proposing, Mindy,” I say, “is, in effect, stealing forty-eight million dollars of merchandise from the man who hired us. Who also happens to be a US Senator.”

  “That’s right,” she says.

  I shake my head.

  “Even if I was willing to screw Sampson over, and even if I thought we had a chance of outrunning him . . . He’s my only chance to get off the Interpol list. I could never come back to the States, and my daughter is here.”

  Her almond eyes blaze.

  “You’ve been in this two days, Frank,” she says. “Two bloody days. If Sampson had never contacted you two, you’d still be romping around Europe. This is the last seven years of my life. This is so much bigger than—”

  “I don’t care,” I say. “Getting these books back to Sampson means I get to see my daughter.”

  “Courtney,” she says, exasperated. “Explain to him what I’m saying.”

  “I . . .” Courtney swivels his face between us like a captured fly, as spiders approach from opposite directions. “I mean, I suppose you both make a certain amount of sense . . .”

  I gape at him.

  “Why would you believe a word she says?” I say, voice cracking. “She probably just has another buyer lined up overseas!”

  “That doesn’t make any sense! If I wanted the money, I’d suggest taking the massive amount of money beside you in the seat.”

  “We’re not stealing these things from a United-States-Fucking-Senator,” I yell, jabbing a finger at her. “You want your made-up language? I’ll make one up for you. Quap. That means turn the fucking car back on.”

  Her jaw drops in righteous indignation.

  “You buffoon,” she shrieks. “You think you’re qualified to—”

  “Quap,” I say. “Quap, quap.”

  “Guys, please. Guys—” I realize that Courtney has been attempting to intervene for some time. Finally Mindy and I go quiet. “Please,” he says, eyes wet. “There’s nothing to even argue about yet. We’re counting our eggs. We all agree on the first step, which is retrieving the books from Rico. So can we please cooperate?”

  I glare at him. Using the royal goddamn we like a kindergarten teacher. Our eyes are locked. My look saying I can’t believe you’re taking her side.

  His clenched lips and pleading eyes respond: Please. We need her help right now.

  “Alright Mindy.” The words are physically difficult for me to form. “Let’s get the books back, then figure out what to do with them. Deal?”

  She stares me down for a moment, like from across a poker table.

  “Fine.”

  She starts the car back up, and merges onto a highway with no regard for the flow of traffic.

  I rub my eyes wearily. Those sleepless hours from last night are finally hitting me. I lean my head back and try to sleep, but am assailed by images of blood droplets smacking against clear glass . . .

  Sophnot. My father, my king.

  We park outside a Barnes and Noble for a few hours, until we get the message from Rico at exactly five. It’s a prerecorded voice message, with him talking through that filter:

  “Trattoria Marcos at six. Sit in a booth and wait. Don’t forget the raincoats.”

  We drive to a downtown Denver short-term parking garage, about a three-minute walk from the Trattoria. We have forty-five minutes to spare.

  I step out and stretch, fill my lungs with hot, dry air. Then I climb back into the backseat to wait.

  “Should we call him back, just to confirm we’re coming?” Mindy asks Courtney.

  “This isn’t junior prom,” I say. “No need to make ourselves look desperate.”

  Courtney cracks his knuckles one by one. He’s frowning and scanning the rows of parked cars which we, in our Humvee, mostly tower over.

  “Are you sure the bonds are real?” he asks, glancing at the duffel bag beside me in the b
ackseat.

  “Court, relax,” I say. This always happens. The closer we get to the moment of truth, the more doomsday scenarios start materializing somewhere behind the pale-moon forehead.

  “Alright,” Courtney says, taking off his jacket, leaving only a very unassuming plain grey T-shirt draped over his bones. “It’s 5:15. I’m going to go scope the area around the restaurant, then want to sit down at least twenty minutes before you two. See you in there.”

  “Review your hand signals,” he says to me. I’m supposed to subtly pass on whatever Rico tells me on the phone.

  “I got it, champ.”

  “Good luck,” Mindy says, and pats his shoulder. It’s pretty platonic, but Courtney blushes, and because he can’t force himself to respond, quickly opens the passenger side door and slides out. He opens the trunk to get his red acrylic bag full of tools that he never goes into the field without. Contains things like lock picks, latex gloves, binoculars, a makeup kit, colored contacts, and sunglasses. Then he slams the trunk closed and Mindy and I watch his hunched shoulders and tiny ass recede into the labyrinth of parked cars.

  As soon as Courtney leaves a near-palpable tension descends on us. He was the buffer between us, and now her proposed grand larceny is back front and center.

  I can hear her breathing from the backseat, and her small shoulders are tense under her tank top. She’s nervous.

  We need to be on the same page when we go to meet Rico.

  “Maybe I overreacted back there,” I say. “Sorry. I’m exhausted.”

  She responds with a sound like mmm—the bare minimum expenditure of air to acknowledge that I spoke. What a ray of sunshine.

  “What’s Rico like?” I push. “Did you two get along?”

  This at least elicits a response.

  “That’s like asking if I was friends with a brick wall,” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  She cranes her head to the side to crack her neck, but doesn’t turn around to face me.

  “We didn’t have much to talk about. He’s a meathead. Frankly, even this whole scheme surprises me. I never thought he had ambitions beyond watching American Football and doing push-ups.”