Extraordinary Renditions

by Andrew Ervin

  “Now what’d I tell ye about sleepin’ here? At least let me freshen up that Jameson for ye?”

  “Nah, I’ve got to run. What do I owe you?”

  “Not a damn thing. These are on the house, Mr. Brutus.”

  All right, contact established.

  “So, you’re my man?”

  “Yessir, I am indeed your man. And I couldn’t help but notice that you’re not carrying a parcel of mine. You wouldn’t perchance have lost it, now would ye?”

  “It’s cool. I put it someplace safe.”

  “Well I might hope so.” Jimmy leaned closer. “Just to be perfectly clear about this, you understand of course that you’re not the first piece of shit army nigger Sullivan has sent my way, right?” He kept his voice low enough so the johns and hookers at the other end of the bar wouldn’t hear. “And you also understand that any chance you have of ever getting back to your cozy bed at Taszár depends upon staying in my good graces?”

  Brutus wanted to reach across the bar and slam that fucker’s pasty-white face into the rim of his beer glass. He looked Jimmy in the eye. “Everything is safe. I just needed to scope out the deal here.”

  “The deal here is this: I will expect you back at five o’clock. Not one minute later. You hear me?”

  Brutus looked at his watch but it was gone, stolen. “Yeah, the five o’clock whistle.”

  “And if for some reason you are not sitting right here at that time, I will personally see to it that the fires of hell are unleashed upon you, your family, and everyone who ever met you.”

  Brutus understood, at that moment, that he was going to kill this man, right before he took Sullivan down.

  “Now thanks for stopping by. I got me a bar to run,” Jimmy said. He smiled at someone over Brutus’s shoulder. “What can I getcha, heh?”

  “Korsó of Dreher.”

  “You don’ wanna drink that Hungarian crap, do ye?” Brutus stood with considerable effort and made his way to the door. “Come again,” Jimmy hollered at him. Potato-eating son of a bitch.

  Five o’clock. Hopefully that gave Brutus enough time to lie down and figure out what to do. He needed a change of clothes, a quick power nap. A hot shower. He contemplated picking up the duffel bag first but would put that off until it got closer to five. Never knew who could be following him, and he wasn’t exactly eager for a rematch with those skinheads. He had reached his quota of bullshit for one day and was prepared to fuck somebody up. But the not knowing—that was the worst part. He felt a little bit more buzzed than he should’ve been. Bad idea. Some hazy light now penetrated his bad eye, but his forehead was still sore to the touch.

  It got dark early that time of year, and the park was now deserted. At the körút, a wicked wind came off the river; the rows of buildings focused it into a steady, powerful blast. He waited on the corner with the foot traffic, and when the light changed he crossed the street, over the trolley tracks. No one got near him; the other pedestrians maintained a buffer zone of revulsion or fear. He wanted to see the view from the bridge again but that would have to wait.

  He stopped in a small shop with a Levi’s sign in the window. Two wannabe hotties without one natural eyebrow between them stood perched atop four-inch heels behind the sales counter and gossiped back and forth, ignoring him. He couldn’t make out a single goddamn word. A sign read “Farmers” above a wall of exorbitantly overpriced jeans. He grabbed a pair and a fresh black T-shirt, a three-pack of socks, and a pair of boxers with red cartoon devils fucking in different positions. They rang him up and threw everything into a shopping bag without as much as looking at him or shutting up for a single goddamn second. The bill was over 25,000 forints, which he calculated as something like two hundred bucks. He wasn’t sure that was right.

  More drunks crowded the sidewalk. They melted away from his path even as they continued to stare and occasionally jeer under their breath. More jungle noises found him. The tall buildings along the boulevard came in different colors—pale blue or mustard yellow or such dark gray that they blended into the weather. Most had huge windows but a thick layer of grime covered every inch. He could write his name in the pollution: Brutus was here. Spray-painted stick-figure squiggles and swastikas covered the posters advertising raves and HVG magazine. Brutus passed what looked like an off-track betting parlor and then crossed the mouth of a wide alley that led pedestrians into the gaping maw of the Non Stop Nirvana Night Club.

  That same bitch was working the front desk of the hotel and that same sickly smell overpowered him again. He got into the elevator. A laminated poster advertised a coffee house on the second floor, which explained the odor. That last cup had burned the shit out of his mouth so he skipped getting another cup.

  The window of his small room faced a construction site behind the hotel. The clock next to the bed told him he had plenty of time. He pissed out all the beer, then stood at the window again. Smoke streamed from all the rooftops. He cranked the heat up a few notches, undressed, and went to the mirror to inspect the damage one more time. His eye was opening up more and more, but it still looked terrible. The gash on his tongue grew worse because he kept scraping it on his busted teeth. His lips wouldn’t stop bleeding. He turned the shower all the way to hot and stayed in front of the mirror until he could no longer see himself through the steam. A bunch of snot and blood dislodged itself painfully from his nose, and he crapped the McDonald’s out of his system. The bathroom fan whirred. Fixing the temperature, he showered for what had to be half an hour, using a brittle, midget-sized bar of soap to scrub the piss and smoke and blood off his body and out of his hair. His strength returned, and so did his rage. That was one way the army brainwashed soldiers—by teaching them to turn physical pain into hatred.

  He toweled off as best he could, set the alarm for an hour, and climbed into bed naked. No dreams interrupted him and he awoke feeling a little better. His body knew how to operate on little or no sleep, to store energy during short moments of repose. He ripped the tags off his new clothes and left the old soiled ones in a ball on the floor, except for his jacket, which was a mess, and the Temple sweatshirt, which now had a few stains that nobody would be able to ID as blood. Given the dropping temperature, he would need all the layers he could find, even if they still smelled terrible.

  10.

  He checked out his reflection in the mirrored walls of the elevator and found something wrong. Something was slightly off. His nose was still stuffed up and his lips continued to bleed from a combination of the beating and the dry air. Then the doors closed, blocking out the stale coffee smell, and he couldn’t understand how he’d failed to recognize it till that moment. Magda’s perfume. Someone in the hotel had on the same perfume Magda wore, which was impossible. But there was no mistaking it. He breathed it in and even with the pain in his chest, he allowed the scent to drift through his lungs and into his blood. The rush came as a revelation; it crawled into his muscles and relaxed his entire body. It was a sign. He felt renewed, ready. He would finish the ugly business then return to the base. Magda’s connections at her company could help him deal with Sullivan.

  When the elevator stopped, he booked through the lobby and out of the hotel. He felt good, or at least good enough to keep himself moving.

  Even in the stink of that rotting city, he could still smell Magda in his nostrils. No mistake about it. Someone definitely had the same perfume on. He walked as quickly as his sore legs allowed through the congestion of Nyugati’s underpass. The noise and commotion had grown even worse, but he saw no sign of the skinheads or even the Jesus freaks. A cloud of smoke hung from the filthy ceiling. Bums lined the walls of the rear hallway. They passed around plastic bottles of dubious vintages and tried to stay warm. Someone among them made monkey noises as Brutus passed. He pointed at a youngish guy smirking at him without teeth. “Just because you’re homeless,” Brutus said, his voice still strange because of the swelling in his tongue, “don’t think I won’t body slam your ass.”

&nbs
p; He stepped over the glimmering pool of his own blood, which now lapped at the torn remains of that old man’s discarded necktie. Confident that no one was watching, Brutus opened the locker. The bag had grown heavier. He swiveled his neck as he passed again between the rows of homeless families, expecting a bottle, or worse, to come flying at his head. Their chatter stopped as they watched him go.

  The fleet of tiny cars on the körút formed a four-lane parking lot that went all the way to the bridge and produced its own noxious weather system. Streetlamps and electric billboards washed the city with a sad damp glow. Everything still appeared fuzzy in Brutus’s right eye, but it had become easier to discern shapes and movement around him. The cold air both revived and punished him in the same breath. The sky had grown dark, but there was still no sign of the snow he expected. With the Independence Day festivities winding down, a hostile depression colonized Budapest, occupying its buildings and subjugating its citizenry. Hungary maintained the highest suicide rate in the world, and now Brutus understood why. It got dark so early. Even the capital city was gray and listless; he didn’t want to imagine what life was like in the small towns. Most of the people meandered down the street like zombies, though small packs of young people continued to make noise and smash empty beer bottles.

  He stopped in front of the hotel to catch his breath and watched in shock as a bum lifted up a filthy child no older than J. J. so that he could fish his tiny hand into a red metal mailbox. They were stealing the stamps and throwing the torn envelopes to the ground.

  Hopefully Magda had already mailed that letter home to Joan. Ten or twelve days. After he dropped the bag, Brutus would only need to stay out of sight for ten or twelve days, until his letter arrived and Joan got the word out about Sullivan’s bullshit. No problem. Maybe he should have kept a copy of the letter for himself. What if Magda had forgotten to send it?

  Or what if she had read it and turned it over to Sullivan? The thought had never occurred to him. What if that was her perfume in the hotel? It had to be. No one else had the same perfume. It was impossible, but she had been right there. Something was going seriously fucking wrong. It didn’t make any sense at all. He breathed deeply, tried to compose himself. His mind was playing tricks on him again. He grew dizzy. He was close to breaking down.

  He sweated profusely. The bag had grown so heavy that he could hardly hold it any longer. He had to get rid of it. He clutched it to his chest and ran, pushing past the other pedestrians on the sidewalk. People hollered at him in a language he couldn’t understand. Still tied up in knots and chains and padlocks, Brutus got an idea, one that would definitely make himself bigger. A delay tactic that might buy him enough time to get gone. He stopped in the park and opened the lid of a plastic garbage can. The smell was atrocious. He pulled out a bag of trash and dropped the weapons in the can. It felt great to get the weight off his hands. He tore open the trash bag and dumped the fetid contents all over the firearms. That Irish motherfucker would love sifting through this mess of banana peels and broken glass, the half-decayed remains of a cat. He would tell Jimmy where to find the guns, then hop in a taxi and get out of town. Head for the Buda Hills, he’ll say to the driver. Or, better yet, he could hide out in the forest down on Margit Island. Live off the land.

  He stopped outside Eve and Adam’s and tried to settle his heart rate. The windows were all fogged up. The beer sign shined down on him and the steam of his breath. People inside were singing along with the jukebox. He couldn’t make out the song. Probably that “Strange Fruit” bullshit again. Fat tourists sang pop songs while trapped at the very heart of the abyss, only they didn’t even know it.

  Eve and Adam’s was significantly more crowded this time. Some girl was tending bar instead of Jimmy, who was nowhere to be seen. Cool—that motherfucker was bad news. Brutus wasn’t about to back down from a fight, but he didn’t want to invite trouble from that dude either. The same stool was available. He planned to tell this girl where to find the rifles and then bail. Everyone was speaking English this time; he didn’t hear a lick of Dutch, German, or even Hungarian. Without taking his order, the bartender brought over a pint of Guinness and a shot of Jameson. She didn’t even look at him when he tried to get her attention. Instead, she walked the length of the bar, scooped up a couple thousand forints’ worth of tips along the way, and stuck her head in the back room. Jimmy emerged to much fanfare. He waved off the drunken greetings from different gangs of regulars, who patted him on the back like he was some kind of celebrity. He took the stool next to Brutus.

  “The fuck you think you’re doing?”

  Brutus struggled to keep his cool. He envisioned himself shattering a full pint glass over this guy’s Lucky Charms-eating skull and then stabbing him slowly in the eye with the broken end. “Jimmy. Just having a little drink. You know. Buy you one? Hey, another beer down here for my man!”

  Jimmy got up real close in Brutus’s ear, like the motherfucker who called him a nigger while he pretended to be asleep. That was a lifetime ago. “I see that you’re empty-handed. You have no idea what you’re involved with, boy.” Assorted drunks continued to vie for Jimmy’s attention. “You are going to disappear, you hear me? This is bigger than you can imagine. Fuck with me on this and dental records are not going to help your next of kin identify your body. Because there won’t be any goddamn body, heh.”

  Brutus tightened his hand around his beer, felt the smooth bulb of the glass on his fingertips. “You’ll get your fucking weapons.”

  “You better hope so, sweet pea. Now I want you to get your filthy nigger ass out of my bar, get what belongs to me, and just maybe—maybe—I’ll let you keep both of your hands, heh? If you’re not here with my parcel in fifteen minutes I will place a call to some colleagues of our mutual acquaintance. After that time I can no longer guarantee your safety.”

  Brutus loosened his grip and took a long swallow. “They’re very close. I just wanted to get the lay of the land here first.” He sipped from the whiskey to buy himself a few seconds to think, then slowly put the glass back down. Pure fear coursed through his bloodstream. He could feel it in his fingertips, in the pulse of his neck.

  “Good to see ye, Tommy!” Jimmy said to someone behind Brutus’s back, then whispered again to him, “Do yourself a real big favor. Go get what belongs to me and bring it here, heh.”

  Brutus remained silent, his eyes fixed on the row of expensive booze behind the bar.

  “And think of your dear Lieutenant Colonel Sullivan. Isn’t he going to be disappointed when he hears you haven’t been exactly cooperative? But he doesn’t have to know. We can still be friends, Brutus. Looky here—I have a train ticket for you to Kaposvár.” Sure enough, he lifted the top of a ticket from his apron pocket. “Be a good boy and this day never happened, heh? Sullivan assures me he’ll welcome you back, no questions asked. You have fifteen minutes and not one second longer. That little girlie friend of yours is going to be awfully disappointed when you show up dead. What’s her name—Magda?”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Brutus said.

  Jimmy smiled. “See, good. You’re not the mouth-breathing retard I took you for.” He returned to his regular speaking volume: “And now if you’ll excuse me,” he said, and merged into the welcoming crowd. “Ere comes trouble, heh!”

  Brutus got outside in a hurry. Something didn’t feel right. His legs sweated in his new pants. The normally centered part of himself melted into a swamp of bile in his gut. Every part of his body hurt again. The only way Jimmy could have known about Magda was if Sullivan had told him. And if Sullivan knew he had been seeing her, what did that mean? What had Magda told him? Now Brutus was getting all turned around inside. Fuck. It was so obvious. She wasn’t going to send that letter because she worked for these people, for Sullivan and this piece of shit bartender. The past couple of months, this whole time, he wasn’t trying to get into her pants—she was the one seducing him. Oh fuck. The whole plan was Magda’s doing all along. From the very goddamn beg
inning. That perfume. Something deep inside Brutus started to slip off its axis. She had probably tailed him all day long, laughing behind his back, mocking him. It had been Magda all along. Magda attacked him beneath the train station, she and those CIA-contracted thugs from the camp’s restricted zone. Not skinheads, no matter what that crazy old man said. Of course. Brutus must have been a nice little diversion for them, a brief respite from torturing Arabs.

  The filthy homeless dude in the Burger King crown he had seen earlier was rooting through the garbage can next to the one with the weapons. Brutus panicked. He ran at the bum and shoved him to the ground. Two girls walking arm in arm through the park yelled at him. They spoke English, but he paid no attention. He pulled the duffel bag from the filth. The bum convulsed on the ground and for a moment, Brutus considered kicking him senseless.

  For the first time in as long as he could remember, Brutus was in a position to decide his own fate. He could deliver the guns, or tell Jimmy where to find them, and it would all be over. But that wouldn’t solve anything. It might save his own ass, but it wouldn’t solve anything at all. What was to stop Sullivan from pulling the same bullshit again on somebody else? Maybe he and Magda picked a new sucker every month.

  He felt sick. Feverish. He wanted to cry right there.

  He took off in a trot, but not back to Eve and Adam’s. Clutching the stinking bag, he reached the parade of traffic on the körút. He was being followed. He had been followed all day, chased by shadows he never even knew to look for. But even that didn’t bother him now. There was one thing left for him to do and then he would be free. Free from the U.S. Army. Free from all the bullshit and hassle in his life. Free from Sullivan and the system that kept slavery alive and kicking. Something had to give. The bag had grown too heavy for one man to carry. He wove through the mess of bleating circus cars and over the trolley tracks. Car horns and angry hollering assaulted him from every direction. Brakes squealed. More car horns, and then even more still.