Promethea

by M. M. Abougabal

  “I’d also appreciate it if I can have a photocopy of the Vatican letter to inspect along the one you received here in Vienna. I am willing to compare similarities between the two until you officially submit it.”

  Russo pointed at the snippet of paper I was holding, “You can have this copy. It was emailed to me this morning. The original shall be sent to the Interpol later this week. Italian bureaucracy, my apologies.” He was joking again; I guess he was no longer bothered by my remarks.

  I eloquently stood up and planned to head out. “Thank you for trusting me with this piece of information Fathers, yet I have to leave now to reunite with my partner.” Bauer seemed to have the intention of walking me back to the palace but I politely refused. “I am sure you have more important things to discuss with Father Russo.” I politely said, while admittedly I just needed some time on my own.

  I backtracked my journey down the stone staircase leading back to the main Cathedral hall only to find myself hesitant, unable to leave. I felt compelled to venture all the way across the creamy chequered stone tiles and under the imposing towering concave vaults to get a closer look at a crucifixion statue that hung by the altar. It lynched well above two stories over and above my head, intentionally forcing those beneath it to extend their throats like cattle prepared for slaughter, an ironic and fitting relationship between lambs and their shepherd I presume. Yet my cynicism did not affect the extent to which I was overwhelmed by the spectacle. I felt emotionally crippled, admittedly weak as the events of my sister’s murder rushed back in overflowing abundance to my head, flooding the memory gates I once thought were sealed shut.

  She was doing this for you. I couldn’t stop thinking.

  She had considered herself on a personal crusade when she crossed the massive Atlantic Ocean barrier and settled in Africa, hushing the surrounding cowardly gossips of the sceptics and the doubtful. I recall it clearly now: her avalanching enthusiasm for the prospect of being a more devout Christian, a volunteering Catholic, and how it was an object of pure untainted fascination. It was in the oddest possible way that her college theology studies have awakened the divine in her. It was simply something she was powerless to resist.

  When she had finally reached that spiritual point, she felt no other urges and no basic needs, she was exclusively consumed by an unachievable idea: playing a part in making up for the xenophobic atrocities committed within the boundaries of our typical Southern American city. She was deeply disturbed by the fact that even up to this very day some parts of the city were still segregated. Shiny suburbs as opposed to festered neighbourhoods splintered the white and rich from the black and poor; everyone knew that New Orleans was no paradise. It was labelled one of America’s ‘Dirtiest Cities’ and the ‘Murder Capital of the United States, by the time I had lived there. Yet with all the doom and gloom surrounding the Mississippi-pumped Jazz-echoing metropolis, I had known no other home. It was one of those charming distinctive cities erected by the French almost exactly three centuries ago and proud residence to my family for as long as it set foot in the vast plains of the new world.

  On recurring thanksgivings, our relatives would gather around a lavish dinner table, with mouths full of turkey and tongues wet with wine. Their exaggerated family tales may have certainly usually stretched the boundaries of logic wearingly thin, yet they have always managed to hint to an exceptional ancestor whom we actually descended from and inherited his name, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne.

  The Frenchman had founded the city on a piece of land that once belonged to a Native American tribe named the Chitimacha. As Emily and I grew more informed, we started noticing how they always deliberately skipped the part about the natives’ current struggle with imminent extinction. Their numbers have actually withered and dwindled to a meagre 700 tribesmen currently drawing their last cultural breaths in the State of Louisiana, so much for American and family glory. Yet I was not the only cynic in our gatherings, Emily too started spending an increasingly amount of time in our house’s massive library, drunk on the nectar of knowledge with each book she left vanquished in her tracks. Suddenly, no amount of reading was ever enough. Our library’s two-story atrium became her impenetrable fortress, where she developed an emphatic, nimble skill and versatility for hopping on-and-off the dark wooden shelves’ wheeled steel ladder.

  I have seen Emily in the last thanksgiving we had together, sitting across our generations’ old chestnut wooden table and sinking her teeth deep into her trademark full lips in obvious dismay. She was struggling to contain her fiery resentments and longing for a venting foray. The truth is, we had all accepted those shameful realities in our own way. I resorted to denial and indifference, but her preference of compassion had led her, a couple of full moons later across the globe, a whole continent away.

  Back then, I knew that my chances to bend her unyielding resolve were dimming. For I had accepted that the only way to counter her naïve obsession was to wield the very same sharpened weapon. I had researched tirelessly and thoroughly myself, aching to find gaps in her firm convictions and yearning for the moderate and extreme. I once even called upon the obvious: If God really existed, why is he letting children suffer? Why is Adam’s offspring dying from hunger and disease in Africa? They had done no harm; they did deserve a chance in life.

  Freedom of choice, or so she argued. She would look at me with a concerned face, confidently debating that God gave the world enough resources to go by, enough for all of us. Yet it was mankind itself that lacked the will to distribute them in an equitable manner.

  There were no more reasons for me to linger when Emily departed. I took care of her almost her entire life, and that is why I packed and left for the land of our forefathers. I thought it was ironic how they once set sail to the Americas seeking fewer religious tensions among other things, where I flew back basically for an analogous reason. At least modern day European citizens are not as devout and opinionated as their American counterparts. They simply lost their interest; they no longer cared.

  I seem to be regularly wandering off as of late, so much that I did not notice the increasing number of worshippers lighting candles around me. My daydreaming sessions have once again impaired me. I could not shake off how their presence bothered me so much that I just had to leave. I never was a fan of public display of affections, so I stepped outside, buttoned back my coat and reached for my phone. I better get in touch with Adam and find out where he had been and where I am to meet him.

  Chapter eight

  Delić ticked all the boxes of a tech geek; he had neatly stacked what was at least fifteen thousand Euros worth of gadgets around his tiny apartment. He had even owned an early underground copy of the not yet released PlayStation 5 games console, which wasn’t even set to be sold for two more weeks. Adam knew all this because he could not wait to lay his hands on one himself. The Frenchman’s scrutinizing eyes kept touring the tiny apartment slowly until they fell on the young man’s pockets, which interestingly both looked empty.

  “Where is his phone?” he asked. “A young man like him wouldn’t have survived a few minutes without his phone.”

  Schuster pulled a black Montblanc ballpoint pen, which was tidily stacked in his shirt’s pocket and used it to inspect Delić’s jeans more intricately. “You are right, it’s not there.”

  The missing mobile device was actually a welcomed turn of events. It offered them a chance to track down the device, which would lead them to potential suspects if they played their cards right. They were well aware that they could not waste time with this. The faster they act and triangulate the location of the signal the better chance they would have reaching the murderer before any information is retrieved and the phone discarded. Schuster had just started dialling back the station with his orders when Adam’s phone rang sharply.

  “It’s Hélène, do you mind if I take this outside?” yet Adam waited for no answer. He paced out of Delić’s apartment, walked a couple of steps away from the officers who were rudely
questioning some of the nearby neighbours, and answered his phone in French. He looked over his shoulder noticing an Eastern European brunette in her mid-twenties carrying a young crying baby. Her miserable tries to soothe her child or to speak in coherent German both proved fruitless. Even if generally, she seemed to have been denying knowing anything about what had happened in the adjacent flat, probably that is what they would all claim.

  Adam finished his phone call and stepped inside the apartment again as the officers moved to yet another doorstep, posing familiar questions at randomly common faces. The sight of the murdered young man did not get any easier; Adam still found it extremely hard to come to terms with the cruel scene. Delić looked as motionless and as static as one could ever be. His corpse laid on the floor in the strangest of postures; he was more of an abandoned puppet now than an actual human being. The warmth of life was replaced, not too long ago, by a grim bluish haze that plagued his stiff skin. It all added to an atmospheric sense of macabre that Adam found too hard to assimilate. There was nothing poetic about death. How did life once dwell within this decaying body? How was it ever a vessel for sustaining life? Is it because everyone felt immortal themselves? Adam had wondered.

  He had always brushed aside the idea of his own demise. Never gave it much thought. How would he? He was the protagonist of his own world. From his perspective, the world started and ended with him… for a second there, I almost sounded like Hélène, he thought. She always had these sorts of vague conversations with him when they were together. She found refuge in wandering off, daydreaming and wondering about trivial useless things in life that sometimes he felt she had lost herself completely in her own imaginary world.

  Schuster did not favour the long silence; he strode impatiently back and forth between the bedroom and Delić ripe bathroom trying to retrieve anything of value. He could not. He then glanced outside to see whether the officers, who were now questioning the sixth neighbour, had any better luck.

  “It seems that we have to wait for forensics…” Schuster exclaimed irritably, looking increasingly desperate. He turned to the on-streak Frenchman, eager to hear the slightest trace of good news.

  “If you were dying, what would be your last thoughts?” Adam asked Schuster who found the question exceptionally odd. He was hoping that philosophical quandaries were not all that troubled the Interpol agent’s mind in those past precious moments. “Loved ones? Family?” He answered impatiently.

  It was a viable answer, but not quite what Adam was pitching for. He had a peculiar theory ever since he saw the festering flesh of the Bosnian young man littering his tiny apartment’s wooden floor. He was wondering if everyone had shared his approach to life and death, his foolish sense of immortality. What would his most prized possession be in this world? A wife, children, a house; he had none. His gadgets? His head was facing away from all of them. What would his last thoughts be? Adam contemplated. There was but one reasonable assumption to all of this.

  “His leverage.“

  Schuster looked at the body and projected where Delić’s last gaze was pointing. “This cheap coffee table? There is absolutely nothing on it.”

  Adam moved towards the table hesitantly, hoping that his theory would be proven accurate. The laminate white table looked plain and ordinary, except for the wooden rims supporting its weight. Behind them, they masked an area large enough to conceal a small item. He stretched his right arm, reaching under the table and behind the rims, before exhibiting an ample, wide grin that take over his face. He had felt something taped carefully under the table. He reached for it, pulling it gently in an attempt not to damage it.

  “Well! What is it?” Schuster’s curiosity had finally got the best of him.

  “It’s a computer data storage.” Adam replied, holding it on his stretched palm.

  The Austrian paced outside the apartment and spoke to the three police officers in the corridor in German. They were just done with questioning the neighbours to no avail, which had left him even more furious, questioning if their implied total ignorance was even a possibility. Nevertheless, he ordered two of them to stay put and ascertain that no one gets close to the apartment before forensics arrived. He then nodded to Adam and the third to follow him downstairs. On their way down they bumped into the rest of the police force that had just arrived. Schuster lagged behind to talk with them briefly before entering his Touran and heading back to the station feeling tremendously excited about the prospect of taking a closer look at their newly found puzzle piece.

  ***

  It seemed like I chose to be on the wrong side of things again. Adam seems to have left on a quest to solve a murder case, while I went on a dull futile chat with a couple of paranoid middle-aged priests. Things on his side seem to have escalated rather quickly, and now I have to venture all the way across the city and wait for them to return to our rally point, the Viennese Police Headquarters. The place was located quite a long distance north at the Schottenring area and as so I had to choose a much more convenient means of transportation.

  I hopped into the first taxi that appeared, provided the driver with my requested destination and my gratification was instant. The vehicle’s curved windshield whizzed and illuminated with a live translucent map of the city, as a soft feminine automated voice guided us through one of its least crowded routes. The impressive new glass technology had started finding a foothold in most of today’s devices and day-to-day appliances. They were all based on the advancements foresaw by tech giants such as Apple’s Siri and Google’s augmented reality glasses earlier this decade. Few minutes later, the red swelling circle on the map turned blue and the computerized voice simultaneously announced that we had reached our destination.

  I left the cab behind me in a hurry and headed to the Police Headquarters building. On my way up I ran into a familiar face, Brunner, who was going down sluggishly on the marble entrance staircase. He was holding a carton box crammed with personal belongings and a big family photo frame. I noticed a protruding photo of him with what I assumed to be his daughter; he was not wearing a wedding ring. I also noticed his pale face, which reeked of bleak disappointment. It seemed as if he had already recognized despite our brief encounter at Hofburg Palace.

  “It doesn’t make you any better than us.” He murmured as he brushed past me. “I will not let this go.”

  What happened, did he get suspended? I was not quite sure. I was not even certain if Adam had anything to do with it. Even if by the looks of it, he must have had. I was sure he dazzled the locals with some of his antics. Probably being the one leading them on in the investigation right now. He was that good, I will always give him that.

  I did not pay much attention to the emotional wreckage that was Brunner. For someone who was especially from this part of the world, he was overly dramatic. My eyes just trailed him as he progressively vanished, strolling away from the main building and into his black disproportionately sized economy SMART car.

  I made myself comfortable at Schuster’s office so much that I had completely lost track of time listening to that heavy, tedious rhythm of his standardly designed, black-rimmed wall clock. I tried to overcome my boredom, juggling my attention across various items he had placed neatly on his desk, to no avail. It did take them annoyingly long before they hectically came dashing through the office’s door and Adam laying his eyes on me as if he had not seen me in years. I wondered if everything was fine.

  I was not able to delve much into details; they were too busy for that. But, I was exceptionally curious how the investigation lead them from touring around the palace to a murdered Bosnian adolescent at the 15th district. So I stood there, near him, trying to keep up with the strides that reached far beyond my knowledge. Shortly thereafter, a silhouette of a random officer drew nearer, asking for a permission to enter the Senior Councillor’s office. He looked jittered and nervous as he addressed his commanding officer.

  “It’s encrypted.” He said. “It will take us some time to crack
it and be able to extract the data.”

  “How long?” Schuster sounded imposing as usual. I truly believed that his Zen inspired office was intentionally designed to keep him on a leash. An anger management tactic. It was his special place, his hideout from the outside world. The other officers worked in what appeared to be a Chinese sweatshop by comparison. They occupied a universal space that they populated just outside his office. It consisted of a jungle of standardly designed pale grey metal cubicles that intersected in a boringly square pattern. Their workplace lacked the slightest sense of individuality and the faintest hint of personal touch. Their background noise was a dreadful symphony of keyboard clacks, printing hums and nervy shy water cooler gossips.

  “We are working on it overnight, aiming to present you with results by tomorrow morning.” The officer answered anxiously.

  “Not if you keep standing here. Dismissed.” Schuster countered.

  I waited for the nervous officer to drag his shattered will back to his desk, before lashing back at Schuster. I was never going to end up like one of his trembling pathetic subordinates.

  “How was there no mention of the threat note? Don’t you think this information was relevant? The Vatican received one themselves and now they fear suffering the very same fate.”

  Adam looked puzzled, what note? He must have thought, and so I had decided to share that piece of information with him. I plunged my hand deep into my pocket and came out with the document Russo had given me. This note.

  Schuster looked unfazed by the accusations thrown at him. He was merely puzzled by the sudden role swap; being the one person who would always want to put others under pressure. He was critical, suspicious and most of all distrustful of everyone else around him.

  “And in what way would feeding the mania, started by Brunner and his obsessed paranoid friend priest, be an advantage?” Schuster asked rhetorically. “Spears and wands, mystics and magic, they are leading everyone to think that we are dealing with some sort of an underground medieval cult.”