by A. G. Riddle
When I was left alone with the trembling woman, I poured her a tall glass of brandy and sat her on the bed. She winced when the liquid hit her cut lip, but with a shaking hand, she finished it quickly.
“Listen to me, Sylvia.”
She looked up at me with her good eye, which still leaked tears.
“Everything is going to be okay. I’m going to get them back, and I’m going to make the person who did this very sorry.”
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in the back of a Portuguese restaurant, waiting for my host. He entered, sat without introducing himself, and stared at me with blank eyes. He was a corpulent man, with long, greasy black hair plastered to his scalp. Two men stood by the door to the private dining room, hands stuffed in their pockets, fingers no doubt curled around the triggers of snub-nosed revolvers pointed in my direction.
I knew the man by his alias—O Mestre—but I didn’t use the name to address him. I simply said, “We have a common enemy.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“A wannabe gangster named Ernesto.”
His accent was thick Portuguese, his English broken. “Never hear of this man.”
“He’s kidnapped two associates of mine. He wants twenty thousand dollars for their return.”
“Is police matter. I not police.”
“I think you can help me more. I think you can guarantee my friends come home safe.”
He looked away.
“There’s forty thousand dollars in the bag.”
“I am not bank.”
“The money is for their safe return. And for protection in case this happens again. Here in Rio, and in São Paulo.”
With his head, he motioned to the two men. One opened the bag and began counting the money. The other jerked me up from my chair, frisked me, then reached inside my shirt, making sure I wasn’t wired. I wasn’t stupid enough to carry a gun into a meeting like this.
The man who frisked me nodded at O Mestre, who rose and left the room. I had held back on the fact that I spoke Portuguese, hoping it would provide an advantage, but these men seemed to have a language all their own, communicating entirely with their eyes and slight motions of their heads.
The man holding the bag took twenty thousand dollars out of it.
His associate said to me, in Portuguese, “The fee is twenty thousand dollars per year. You will return to this room next year on this day with payment.”
I nodded. So they knew more about me than I suspected.
“Tonight, you will go to the bus stop. Here is what will happen.”
Exactly two hours after the thugs had taken Yuri and Lin off the street and assaulted Sylvia, I stood in the drizzling rain, wearing a fedora and a black trench coat. Rio was hot year-round, but in August it was coldest, and rainy. The wind from the Atlantic carried a cold front from Antarctica into the city, past the cranes that were building skyscrapers by the dozen, erasing the old city, erecting a shiny new one.
People from Brazil’s countryside were pouring into Rio. Illegal immigrants came too, all in search of jobs and a better life. Large slums called favelas grew like ant colonies, seeming to spread overnight. In the glow of the streetlamp, I could see the shanties stretching up a green-forested mountainside, a pocket of poverty in the vast city. From my vantage point, they looked like tiny cardboard boxes stacked at the feet of the Christ the Redeemer statue, which towered over all the people below.
The harsh quality of life in the favelas was a stark contrast to Copacabana Beach a few hundred yards away, where ritzy hotels, night clubs, bars, and restaurants glittered just off the Atlantic. Palm trees towered over the sandy beach and lined the promenade. Music thumped into the night, an out-of-tune anthem of the two worlds that existed here in Rio. I was about to descend into the other world, the underworld, where desperate people took desperate actions to survive—and just maybe lift themselves out of poverty. The situation had forced me to do something I didn’t like, but such was this world. My people were in danger. More than that: my friends were in danger. It was as simple as that.
The bus pulled away, puffing thick black smoke the rain couldn’t force down.
Beside me, Sylvia started to tremble. I knew it wasn’t because of the cold wind or the rain.
“It’s all right, Sylvia.”
I could tell she wanted to cry, but she resisted. One of my intelligence operatives was in the cafe behind us, the other in the adjacent alley.
A rattling Volkswagen pulled up, and a man wearing a bandanna over his mouth and a stained white tank top got out. In the back seat, another man pointed a handgun at Sylvia. Her cry broke forth then. I held my arm out, across her, and stepped in between the man and the trembling woman.
“The money!” he yelled.
“Give us our people first. Then we pay.”
He shook his head. He was high on amphetamines of some sort. His eyes were wide, darting back and forth. “No! You pay now. If I not back in five minutes, we kill one.”
I held my hands up. “All right. Fine. We’ll pay. But I want to see them first. Show me they’re alive, I make a call, and the money is delivered here.”
Bandanna Man made eye contact with the driver, who nodded. He grabbed my arm and shoved me in the back of the tiny car, between him and the thug who had the gun. The thug pressed his old revolver in my side. His friend searched me quickly, found no weapon, then jerked my hat off and tied the bandanna from his face around my eyes. It stank of sweat and cigarettes, forcing me to cough.
They bounced me around in the back seat for ten minutes; the roar of the German car’s engine was nearly deafening. I wondered if the divider between the back seat and engine compartment had been taken out.
Finally the car stopped, and they stood me up and perp-walked me down a cobblestone street. They were rough with me each time I tripped. I heard a wooden door scrape open and slam closed behind us. They walked me slower, then pulled the bandanna off in a room with a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
Yuri and Lin were in wooden chairs. Electrical wire bound their hands together behind them, and more wire bound their ankles to the chair legs. They looked painfully uncomfortable. Yuri’s nose was busted; dried blood covered the area around it. More blood ran from his hair. One eye was closed, just like Sylvia.
My heart broke when I saw Lin. They had struck her in the cheek. It was swollen and bruised, like a jellyfish tattooed on her skin. Tears ran down her cheeks.
A man wearing a Che Guevara hat rose from behind a desk. The edges of his nose were red from snorting drugs. He fidgeted as he moved, stared at me, disgust plain on his face.
“You think you can play games with me?” He took a knife from his belt. “I’m going to show you how serious I am.”
I made my voice even. “Before you do, I have a message for you. From O Mestre.”
He stopped, stared, still enraged, but I could see hesitation now.
“He’s a friend of mine. He wants you to call home.”
He screamed obscenities at me, but he didn’t move toward Lin or Yuri.
“Call home. Check on your family. Or O Mestre will make you sorry.”
“I ought to kill you, you imperialist pig. And your capitalist whore!”
“That would displease O Mestre. I can’t even imagine what he would do.”
The kidnapper looked away from me. He took a step toward Yuri and Lin, then seemed to reconsider. At the desk, he picked up the phone, dialed, and listened. Whatever was said on the other end scared him to death. He sank into his seat and nodded, as if the person he was talking to could see him. “Of course. My mistake—”
He stopped; apparently the line had gone dead. He replaced the receiver and shouted to his men to cut Yuri and Lin loose, as if it was all a big mistake they had made.
Yuri stood on faltering legs, bracing himself on the chair. But when they cut Lin loose, she just tumbled toward the floor. I lunged forward and caught her. If not for the warmth of her skin, I might have thou
ght her dead.
I hoisted her up and carried her out of the shack in the favela, holding her tightly. I don’t think I really exhaled until the thugs let us out of the car at the bus stop. Lin could stand again, but she still held me tight.
Yuri hugged me too, an unusual show of affection for the man. “You saved us, William.”
“Just doing my job,” I mumbled.
“It was more than that.”
“You would have done the same for me.”
“Yes. I would have.”
Every three months or so, the Beagle docked at an island in the Pacific—the same island every time. I didn’t know its location; no one except the bridge crew did. But I knew it was west of Hawaii, south of the equator, and that it had been uninhabited when it had first come into the Citium’s possession. Everything was new here: the buildings, the port, the roads. There was no government save for the Citium, and no crime. No fear. Perhaps for that reason alone, the Beagle sailed for the island right after Rio. The entire crew was shaken, not just Sylvia, Lin, and Yuri.
Yuri and Lin had grown up in near-constant danger; he in Stalingrad during the German invasion, she in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation. But I think they hadn’t experienced real life-threatening danger in twenty years—since their childhood. It scared them, though Yuri was stoic as usual. On the sub, Lin told me how he had fought them. He had been brave, but it was a useless fight. All the same, I liked him even more for it.
I don’t know the island’s official designation, but aboard the Beagle we called it the Isle of Citium, or simply the Isle. It had a deep-water harbor on its south side, with a massive seaport that was way too large for such a small landmass. Every time we docked, there was a cargo ship unloading supplies—building materials mostly, and some heavy equipment. The cost of building on the island was enormous, but I saw the logic in it. This place was completely off the grid and extremely hard to find. Most people don’t realize how vast the Pacific is. Every continent and landmass on the planet could fit within the Pacific. It’s larger than the Atlantic and Indian Oceans combined.
The Isle was the perfect place for the Citium to hide, and in August of 1967, it was the perfect place for our crew to recuperate. We unloaded at the port, rode the electric golf carts to the residential building, and retired to our rooms. The place wasn’t fancy, but it was clean and offered privacy: every bedroom had its own bathroom and a small living room. After three months on the Beagle, it felt like a vast penthouse apartment. Being able to shower in privacy was a luxury. Sleeping without a person above and below you, and three more across from you, was refreshing—and quiet.
In my time in the field, I have found that a brush with death always changes a person. Some not permanently, but everyone temporarily. That was true for Yuri and Lin. Yuri turned inward. On the Isle, he poured himself into his work. He was more convinced than ever of its importance.
Lin changed in the opposite direction. She stopped working herself to the bone. In the cafeteria, she laughed more, stayed longer at the lunch table.
At our post-tour bonfire on the beach, I saw her have a glass of wine for the first time. She absolutely glowed in her black dress. To me, that night, she was brighter than the moon, and the tiki torches, and the candles in the glass vases that lined the long table. I couldn’t help staring at her. I tried to hide it less with every drink.
There were six people left at the table when she stood, said goodnight to the rest of the table, and looked me in the eye.
“Nice night for a walk.”
I stood and held out my hand.
Chapter 82
In the summer of 1967, my life changed forever. I was three months into my second tour on the Beagle when I began noticing a change in Lin. She was more distant, avoiding me. We had been dating (such as it was on board a submarine) for about six months. I cornered her, wouldn’t let her deny something was wrong, and finally got the answer out of her: she was pregnant.
I was overjoyed. And terrified. I believe people who had a difficult childhood are more averse to having children. That was certainly the case for Lin and for me. If biology hadn’t intervened, who knows where life might have led us. But it did, and I will never regret that. We moved back to London, into a flat in Belgravia that was owned by a member of the Citium (who rented it to us for a song). We got married in a small ceremony a month later. Yuri was my best man. Father and Mother were there, as were Lin’s father and mother.
On a snowy night in March, our son, Andrew, was born. We both felt that our lives changed in an instant. From then on, nothing was more important than him. The doctors called his condition “amelia,” a birth defect in which one or more limbs are missing. In Andrew’s case, his left arm below the elbow was missing. Lin was crushed. No matter what I said, she felt responsible. She blamed her genes and her behavior: conceiving a child on a nuclear submarine where radiation may have caused the condition.
I could never bring myself to use the words “genetic defect,” but to Lin, the answer clearly lay in genetics. After that, the Looking Glass took on a whole new meaning for her. Drive became obsession. She talked about a world where no mother would see her child born with a defect, where no child would have to face the world at a disadvantage or endure daily ridicule from his peers.
His condition most certainly didn’t change our love for him. Andrew was a smart kid (which I believe he got from his mother) and adventurous to a fault (perhaps my contribution). He was brave and curious and never backed down.
Changes were afoot within the Citium. The experiments were growing in scale, and that required increasing amounts of money. So new members were recruited: billionaires, financiers, people with their hands on the levers of government research spending. They were all cut from the same cloth: people who believed the world was on the brink of catastrophe.
The influx of new members was a turning point for the organization, a Rubicon crossed unceremoniously. On the surface, things remained the same. Dozens of Citium cells were conducting Looking Glass research, and the members met every quarter at a conference we called our conclave. But behind the scenes, the organization was fraying. Each member increasingly thought that their own Looking Glass project was the sole solution for humanity’s problems—and jockeyed for the funds they needed to make their vision a reality.
In 1972, I became head of Citium Security, a new organization dedicated to securing the cells and keeping our secrets. Only four of us, me and three of the Citium’s oldest members, knew the full breadth of the Citium. We were creating a monster.
At home, life had settled into a pattern. I was gone a good bit, but when I was home, I spent every spare minute with Lin and Andrew. He was growing up so quickly. We welcomed a daughter in 1973. We named her Madison—my mother’s maiden name. Andrew was the most dedicated older brother I’ve ever seen; he may have been even more protective than Orville Hughes had been in that orphanage in London after the war.
Lin worked herself to exhaustion. I worried about her, but the subject of how much she worked was a non-starter, so I gave up arguing about it. In marriage, as in war, some battles are unwinnable.
Our second daughter was born in 1977. We named her Peyton—Lin’s paternal grandmother’s maiden name. On the whole, she was more serious than Madison, and more inquisitive. She had the same curiosity and passion for adventure as Andrew.
I spent countless hours on planes and trains wondering what the three of them would be like when they grew up. And what sort of world they’d live in.
Then, at the Citium’s Winter Conclave in Geneva in 1983, the unthinkable happened. A cell unveiled a plan for the Looking Glass—a functioning device that would accomplish our dream of securing humanity. The scale and cost of the project was incredible. Much of the science was still theoretical then (but has been proven since), but it was a working solution. War. Famine. Disease. Climate change. Meteor impacts. Cosmic events. Extraterrestrial interference. Artificial intelligence. The Looking Glass propose
d that night at the lavish home overlooking Lake Geneva would protect us from all those threats—and many more. Even more impressive, it had the potential to unravel the great mystery the Citium had pursued since its founding: the purpose of humanity—the very nature of the universe and human existence itself. The scientists who proposed the Looking Glass saw it as the next step in the march of human experience, our inevitable destiny.
Not everyone was convinced.
The group of rational, even-tempered scientists I had come to know turned savage that night. The debate began as a spirited discussion and ended in screaming. I finally realized that we had been playing a zero-sum game. At the end of the Looking Glass project, there would be only one winner; only one device would be built. All other projects would be shuttered, the funds funneled to the winning project. And whoever controlled that device would have a power never before seen on Earth. Indeed, they would control the entire human race.
The night ended in a stalemate. Members made threats. Some said they would quit the organization and continue their research on their own, starting a new kind of arms race. Others threatened to expose the entire project; if their solution wasn’t chosen, they would prevent anyone else from succeeding. Scientists, like all humans, can be very vindictive.
If I am guilty of anything, it’s negligence. I didn’t sense the ground moving beneath my feet. I took the words screamed that night for what they appeared to be: idle threats. Others did not.
A month later, I was flying from Cairo to London on a British Airways flight when it happened. Around the world, Citium scientists were assassinated. I had twelve Citium security agents in my employ; all were killed. I was unaware of this when I arrived at Heathrow. Indeed, in the cab on the way to the flat in Belgravia, my mind was only on Madison’s birthday party, which was the following week.
