The Year of the Hydra

by William Broughton Burt

  Right?

  Tree says I’m maturing. Scary thought.

  I wonder why Tree hasn’t sent over any new pages this week. Three pages last week. This week, nothing. Have I un-proven myself?

  I approach Studebaker Supermarket, its car-less parking lot frantic with fruit vendors and beggars and idle adults lounging and smoking as their children animate plastic trikes. I thread my way through the mob and past the automatic doors, clawing my way through the manic crowd to the files of waiting shopping carts.

  The first floor of Studebaker Supermarket is groceries only. The second offers stylish clothing for the entire family plus a complete line of poodle-eating vacuum cleaners. On the third floor you find electronics, home furnishings, and two hopelessly trashed restrooms as far from the escalators as could be architecturally arranged.

  Chinese shopping carts require getting used to. They are perhaps one-third the usual length, and all four wheels swivel witlessly, making it quite easy to spin out into the Charmin. The idea is to have carts capable of maneuvering in impossibly tight throngs such as today’s. Though I’m early, I don’t think there’s any possibility of getting into the fish market or the produce section.

  Stationed at the entrance of each isle is a uniformed young woman with a megaphone set on stun. Then there are the pickpockets and the bad-asses who work with them. Chinese pickpockets work in twos. If you detect your wallet being lifted, don’t put up a fight. The second guy is never more than a couple steps away, and he’s got a razor. Personally I’m not too concerned about my wallet, which seldom bears anything beyond a few moldering phone numbers and a Guan Yin wish card. Far more important is my journal, safely tucked into a twisted front pocket.

  My snub-nosed shopping cart hangs a haughty left against the traffic and barely makes it into the MSG section without provoking a five-cart pileup. There’s a whole aisle of MSG here. You can buy it in ten-kilo bags—enough for an entire week—but I’m just cutting through on my way to the candy section, where I now discover a perplexing array of bubble gum in various shades and hues, including pink, purple, and canary.

  Yesterday I stopped into the neighborhood hardware and condom emporium, the characters for machete scrawled on a scrap of paper. I have a picture dictionary. You leaf through the various sections until you find an illustration of what you’d like to buy. Beside each drawing are the appropriate characters. The hardware guy scowled at my note then at me. With the various oddities recently purchased for my ´shroomery, I may have shown myself to be far too grave a danger to society already without a machete. He gave me a hatchet and a sharpening stone. Fine with me.

  After selecting a pack of chewing gum in a nice shade of lavender, I turn my cart toward the produce section, managing to squeeze into the crowd surrounding the banana bin. I begin scouting for something in a nice dappled yellow when my ears register an appalling English sentence.

  “I hope you don’t believe all that horseshit Dobbins told you.”

  I turn to encounter Agent Barnes in a pair of white sneakers and a sun visor. He’s shorter than I remember.

  “That he invented SARS?” says Barnes, an ironic smile twisting his moustache. “That’s what he told you, right?”

  I’m not sure how to respond, so I don’t.

  “Tim Dobbins didn’t invent SARS,” says Barnes. “Dobbins doesn’t invent much of anything. He steals what other people invent. He raids other companies’ R and D and beats them to the patents. Then he leverages the companies for cash for his fucked-up genetic experiments. Oops. Didn’t mean to get personal.” The grin stretches wider. Barnes is wearing the ear stud today.

  I place four dappled bananas into my cart. “I thought you said his name was Stiles.”

  “Velázquez told you that. You’re talking to me now. I’m the truth guy.”

  I gaze for a moment at Agent Barnes. There’s something stuck between the truth guy’s teeth. Possibly an entire head of Swiss chard.

  “You don’t work for the State Department,” I tell him, turning my attention to the navel oranges.

  “And you don’t write worth a shit,” says Barnes. “Dobbins pays that magazine to keep you around. Did you know that?”

  Rising a little taller, I say, “Did you know that men with both a moustache and an ear stud have more than double the probability of being under five foot eight?”

  A shadow crosses Barnes’s smile. “Yeah, you’re smart, Julian. Big word guy. Big IQ guy. But guess what? Everybody’s fucking you, and you don’t even know it. I’m the one who’s willing to bring you into the loop.” He glances around the fruit section. “I know what was in that shopping bag Dobbins tried to give you. He wanted to inject you with something, didn’t he?”

  I don’t answer.

  Barnes laughs and shakes his head. “I’m with you, big guy. I wouldn’t let that man near me with a needle. You wouldn’t believe the shit he has access to. Know something? I think the old fuck kind of likes you. More than the others, anyway.”

  I continue to stare.

  “Did you really think you and your sister were the only ones? Dobbins had a regular little puppy mill there at Regis Labs. He did about a hundred artificial inseminations before the government shut him down. They said there were ‘insufficient controls.’ Shit, I’ll say. Nobody but Dobbins knows what really happened in those procedures. I’d say it’s a safe bet that he used his own cum in pretty near every one.”

  Lifting a green bunch of bananas, Barnes says, “God only knows what that man is up to, but I can tell you this. He’s tracking every one of you. You can’t eat a taco without Tim Dobbins knowing if you used hot or mild.

  Barnes tosses the bananas. “Now that I have your attention, there’s something you need to hear, Julian Mancer, smart guy, and if I were you I’d pay very close fucking attention. When Dobbins sat down with you for that little chat the other night, he sentenced you to death and not a very pretty one. The only reason you’re alive right now is that Dobbins is alive. You’re bait. Once we get him, you’re next. And then your sister.”

  The truth guy and I share a silent gaze.

  “Dobbins stole something that nobody was supposed to know about,” he continues. “That’s why he’s running. I don’t know what he told you, but that man is first and foremost one huge motherfucking liar.”

  Barnes leans back against the navel orange bin. “Of course, he’s also a genius in his twisted-ass way. He was doing genetic engineering back before anybody knew what genetic engineering was. Before he worked for us, he worked for the Chinese. The Imperial Chinese. When Mao took ever, Dobbins came over to the US. His deal was: I help you make your little biological stink-bombs, and you leave me and my personal projects alone. So Dobbins gets to do his own thing—or did, before he stole the wrong thing from the wrong people. Let’s just say he stumbled onto a very dirty little secret. He not only got the smoking gun but the documents that show who gave the orders. Release date, point of release, projected casualties, everything.”

  I steady myself against the shopping cart. On a certain level I’ve always known that the Mancer twins were never the MacGuffin. Not in and of ourselves. A question comes to me. “What’s the connection between Dobbins and Iraq?”

  “I never said there was a connection.”

  “Call me psychic.”

  Barnes picks up a navel orange and gives it a sniff. “You’re a smart guy. You figure it out.”

  It’s not very hard. Given the current leadership in Washington and their sudden urge to station 170,000 soldiers on top of the world’s richest oilfields, it’s not much of a leap to conclude that somebody’s readying themselves for one very high-octane war. Uh, operation. And when you think about it, who’s out there to fight against anymore but the Chinese? So you keep this awakening giant busy slapping at microorganisms while you vouchsafe your oil reserves for the next twenty years. And what if, in the midst of all this fevered jockeying about, the front page of the Post reports a secret dirty enough to send the
current administration to the bottom of the Potomac—blue suits, power ties, operation, and all? If Barnes is even half right, those people are ready to do absolutely anything to absolutely anyone to keep that from happening.

  “You have to understand,” Barnes says carefully, “that we are talking about individuals without a well-developed sense of humor. Anyone even marginally close to this mess is going down, and that very probably includes me. It definitely includes you. So we may as well work together.”

  “Meaning?” I ask, dropping a bunch of bananas into my cart.

  “Meaning you deliver Dobbins to me. I don’t want to kill him. I want to broker a deal between him and the people he worked for. If everything works out, I get a payday, he gets to continue his research, and the powers-that-be still get to be. Most important, everybody stays alive. For the time being, anyway.”

  “Including my sister?”

  “You deliver Dobbins?” says Barnes. “You and your sister are golden.”

  “And you’re in a position to guarantee that?”

  Barnes grins. “I’ll even throw in the ape.”

  “Ape?”

  “Shatrina Carter. She’s dead too.” He slides a business card into my shirt pocket. “Sooner or later, Dobbins will contact you. When he does, you contact me. Not Velázquez. Me.”

  “Would it be all right to just dial the International Intrigue Hotline?” I ask.

  Barnes extracts a pair of sunshades from the placket of his shirt. “Know what’s interesting, Julian? They all look just like you. Tall. Blond. Eyes either blue or green. IQs off the chart. And why not? The man’s a genius. Too bad he’s also a fucking freak.”

  Barnes leans toward me. “Here’s the kicker. The ones he doesn’t like? The ones whose eyes are a little too close together, or who didn’t make an A in Algebra? They come down with a mysterious tropical illness. Always fatal.”

  Barnes slides the shades over his eyes. “Your family keeps getting smaller, Julian. I’d say there’s only a dozen or so of you geniuses still around. Kind of gives you the creeps, doesn’t it?”

  As I stare, the truth guy disappears into the frozen foods.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The moment the bell signals the end of Monday’s final class, I hurry to the train station and through customs to throw myself into a taxi—then into the arms of a glowing Ana Manguella.

  “Come in, Ju—” she begins, before being pancaked against the excellent turquoise sofa.

  “Julian,” laughs Ana, “I’m cooking.”

  “Let it burn,” I say.

  “But it’s fresh squid. I paid a fortune.”

  “We’ll move the sofa into the kitchen.”

  “Did you bring wine?” she says.

  “I fully intended to.”

  “There’s a wine store on the corner,” says Ana. “That can occupy you while I start the rice and scallions.”

  “White or red?” I say.

  “A Sauvignon Blanc would be perfect.”

  I kiss Ana’s white throat before pocketing her keys and cascading down the stairs. It’s oddly satisfying to take possession of someone else’s keys, which are never anything like one’s own. Ana’s three unmatching ones, each seemingly from a different decade, are attached to a worn leather fob imprinted with a rune. Algiz, if memory serves. The Rune of Protection.

  She’ll need all she can get tonight.

  The evening sidewalk is busy, practically Christmas-y in a tilted Hong Kong kind of way. Crowds have the effect of reducing the per-capita number of jackals at my heels, imparting a false sense of security, the only kind I ever feel. But here’s the thing. Whomever is assigned to tail me this practically Xmas-y night will spend several hours shifting from foot to foot in the shadows of a windy street, while I shall dine on squid and white-throated woman. Who would you say is winning this game?

  I duck into the corner store, where a daunting line waits at the check-out. The clerk, I note, is wearing a gas mask. That’s nearly always a sign of a bad news day. This morning the USA and Singapore announced their first documented cases of SARS, and Hong Kong their 327th. Meanwhile, construction crews are working around the clock to complete a humorless ten-thousand-bed quarantine hospital / concentration camp north of Beijing. To comfort the afflicted / medically incorrect.

  I locate two acceptable Australian Blancs and decide on the one with the sober white label and cursive font—I know how to pick a wine—plus a small bottle of English gin, while I’m at it. I take my place in the queue.

  Did you think you could get rid of me so easily? That’s what Truman said to me last night in a particularly low-rent lucid dream. He was wearing Bermuda shorts and a Panama. I think he may also have been wearing cowboy boots. With spurs. The bad thing about cogent dreaming is that you don’t get to choose whom you cogent-dream about.

  I probably need to call Tree. When I blew through Lil’s apartment this afternoon, pausing only to change shirts and grab a windbreaker, I noticed four new messages on the American Teacher’s Phone, all from Tree, and all, I’ve little doubt, imploring me to call the pouting one. Fine. There’ll be plenty of time for sulking sisters during the refractory period.

  Moving forward in the queue, I feel almost cheery. I’ve no trouble at all imagining that the dog-faced customers ahead of me are bearing their own keys in hand and fully envying me and my expectant smile.

  Back on the sidewalk, I pass a small bespectacled boy in a blue-over-white school uniform, and my spirits sink a notch as I recall the recent spew of threats from Rui Long. As though I should worry. Even if that little runt of a hellion were to come forward with some kind of tiresome nitpicking and were capable of mustering the requisite Mandarin or Cantonese to do so, why should the authorities so much as give her the time of day? Every young woman in this country is perped, and everybody knows it. Besides which, Rui Long is an American, which by the way so am I. Not. Their. Problem. Besides besides which, it always comes down to guanxi here. My own, feeble though it may be, certainly trumps that of a Chinese girl with really bad manners. End of funky-ass story, or so I certainly hope. As malodorous as this teaching job is fast becoming, I need to keep hold of it just a bit longer. China has just named a new premier, Wen Jiabao—Bellamy must be very happy—which supposedly means a more settled political climate. Still, with all the diseases and agents and mad scientists and one-armed policemen crashing about, I don’t quite see re-inserting Lillian into this anytime soon.

  Bounding up the stairs, I unlock Ana’s door as though it were my own. Warm aromas of seafood and scallops enfold me—as does the sight of Ana Manguella, barefoot in a freshly donned black kimono, her abundant hair fixed loosely atop her head with a pair of ivory chopsticks.

  “Are you a sight?” I say, and Ana replies with a demure bow.

  The stacks of books are gone from the coffee table, replaced by two wine glasses and a corkscrew.

  “The clerk at the corner store was wearing a gas mask,” I announce, beginning to work on the wine bottle.

  Ana says, “The subway stations were passing out free surgical masks this morning. Your choice, white or blue.”

  “And you chose… ?”

  “I chose not to choose. SARS isn’t airborne. You get it from doorknobs.”

  “Shhhh,” I say. “You’ll ruin the placebo effect.”

  “Where I work,” she continues, “the elevator operator wears a surgical mask every day of the week. It’s completely dirty and so loose you can see his mouth. But he’s protected. That’s the important thing.”

  Filling the two wine glasses, I say, “Last night, Hong Kong TV showed film of the plumbing at Amoy Gardens. You wouldn’t believe—”

  “Is that the high-rise with all the SARS cases?”

  “Over two hundred, so far, and little wonder. The sewage pipes leak. They have footage of this brown dribble coming out of the pipes and roaches and rats running happily through it.”

  “Julian, I’m cooking.”

  I offe
r Ana her glass of wine. I added a little English gin to mine.

  “This is so how I like my women,” I say, squeezing a bun through her kimono. “Barefoot and in the kitchen.”

  “Would you be a dear and set out the yellow plates?”

  Fortunate choice, actually. Accompanying the chopped red peppers, I now learn, will be green scallops on a bed of cabbage that’s practically blue. There’s also a fragrant rice dish dotted with chopped almonds and ringed by sliced cucumber. I’m not sure that I can digest this many colors at once, but I’m certainly going to try. Ana arrives with two hot pans and each of us seizes a plate. Now we’re sprawled half on top of each other to serve ourselves, barely mumbling bon appétit before beginning. We’re practically finished before remembering to make conversation.

  “How’s school?” Ana says at last.

  “I’ve identified the warlords,” I tell her, my mouth full. “It’s a step. Now I know who to negotiate with.”

  “I’m sure they all love you.”

  “Mmm. Except for the dead guy.”

  “Dead guy?”

  I nod. “No one bothered to tell me. One of my students dropped dead at school last month sometime. I called on him yesterday, and the other kids made gestures at their throats. I’m flunking him. I don’t care.”

  “Julian.”

  “Class participation is important to me, okay? And how is the security business these days?

  “Insecure,” says Ana. “I’ve gotten one full night of sleep this week, if that tells you anything.”

  “Here’s hoping they don’t have you on straight salary,” I say.

  “We won’t even go into my compensation package.”

  “What, they don’t pay you? You just receive compensation?”

  She nods. “In a package.”

  “Beastly.”

  Ana lifts her wine glass. “If I didn’t find the work important, I wouldn’t dream of doing it. Not for all the rugs in Persia.”