Iris Rising

by Charles Hubbard

  It’s the only time Masen has recognized uncertainty in Mooney’s voice, doubt in his posture and face.

  ‘I’ll tell you’re dead rotting corpse,’ he replies placing the phone down and stabs the gun to the right. ‘You two, over there. And leave the print out.’

  Masen watches the gun rotate a ninety-degree arc and sees light through the chambers. Black’s out of bullets. Though he can’t be sure. Maybe he has one is in the chamber. He recognizes the chance to act. Mooney’s attention is on Nash and Black’s entirety looks withered, his arm a dead twig.

  Petrified, Masen summons all his mental fortitude and falls to the floor, rolls down to the metal grate and grabs his gun. Stands and points the gun enthusiastically between both men, blowing a steady gush of air from his nostrils.

  The atmosphere tenses, guns move and heads turn questioning. Mooney settles his gun on Masen. Black maintains his aim on Mooney, and Masen on Black.

  A three-way Mexican standoff.

  ‘Look who grew a pair,’ Black says with a sadistic stare. ‘I’ll shoot you straight after Mooney.’

  ‘Sure you can shoot quicker than I can?’ Masen says. ‘You look like a corpse.’ He can’t let Mooney know Black is out of bullets. ‘I bet that shoulder’s murder.’

  ‘See if I don’t get a shot off first.’ His legs turn to jelly. Anytime he will dissolve into a puddle on the floor. Drags out a chair and collapses in it.

  ‘The building in Shanghai,’ Masen says, ‘was to bring both countries to the table, a pretext to forge stronger military ties between China and Russia.’

  ‘To bring America to its knees,’ Black says. ‘Once they have the technology America won’t have any other option but to give China the respect it deserves.’

  ‘To start a war?’ Masen mumbles the idea he’s been thinking ever since he learnt why Jessica was taken.

  ‘Reunification after armageddon,’ Black smiles. ‘The US is defeated and a new world order is born. China being the master.’

  Masen is lost in thought. ‘So much death.’

  ‘And what numbers would you expect in a global conflict? Two hundred million, hell throw another zero on the end and a free set of steak knives. The General wants to engulf the world.’

  ‘And confining a conflict to Korea is better?’

  ‘Yes,’ Black pants, his head dips and his hand wavers, eyes start to close. ‘Walk over and bring me the data, Nash.’

  ‘Don’t do it, Peter.’ Masen blinks as sweat spills into his eye, shores his aim.

  ‘Sorry, John.’ Nash walks the papers over to Black’s outstretched hand, allows it to lower to the desk. Two inches thick it contains all the technical data, results for all tests, including the third successful test that proves the technology.

  ‘Is the data still contained in the network?’

  ‘No, that’s the only copy,’ Tanaka explains. ‘Protocols dictate that manual retrieval destroys all digital copies automatically.’

  ‘The three of us,’ Black says. ‘I remember our first meeting at your apartment.’

  Masen seriously toys with the idea of pulling the trigger. He really wants to, but Mooney would take the shot.

  ‘Didn’t go well for you then either, did it Masen?’ He laughs, his voice is hoarse as if his throat’s been dragged through lumps of coals.

  Bang.

  Mooney fires.

  In that instant when Black laughed, his body convulsed slightly, giving Mooney enough time turn his gun and shoot. His head explodes. His body slumps and drags over the desk and falls to the floor.

  A pause, then screams.

  Treagle runs for the door, Tanaka hugs the ground, Nash crouches behind the desk and Niccola and Nick hug tightly under a desk.

  Masen fires.

  Hits Mooney’s knee.

  Fires again.

  Grazes Mooney’s neck, a fountain pulses blood a few inches into the air and wilts as he falls, a hand grasping desperately to keep blood from spilling out.

  The gun shakes in Masen’s grip, the metal handle only just holding in his grip. Mooney’s gun is on the ground; he no longer has any use for it. His mouth seizes open and convulses. Hands open.

  Masen looks over at Nash and Tanaka who stare at the door.

  Masen turns.

  The Director.

  Flanked by two bodyguards standing in the doorway. One leans down and calls on his radio for assistance, checks the man slumped against the wall for a pulse. Masen looks back at Black, at the telephone and back at the Director.

  ‘John, may I have that?’ The Director holds out his hand. At first he thinks he meant the papers, then adds, ‘The gun, please.’

  ‘You need to know I had—’

  ‘Nothing to do with the attack,’ the Director says moving fully into the Barn. Nods. ‘Put it down.’

  Masen drops the gun.

  58

  Like he has done every day since shooting and killing Mooney, Masen wakes late. The sun shines through the sheer curtains of his first floor apartment. Sheets crumble as he entertains the thought of getting up and walking down to Giorgiana’s for a coffee and some eggs. The Director told him to go home: he’d be in touch. He did and found that all he wanted to do for the first few days was catch-up on sleep. But now he wants to leave Boston and go on that road trip he’s been thinking about for some time now, however there were still things to take care of. Identifying De Luca’s body was one thing he could no longer put off

  Shooting someone wasn’t what he expected. Until he squeezed the trigger the only gauge of what killing someone was like was the conversation in the lift he overheard, a lifetime ago now it feels, between a retired operative and an analyst. The thrill of the kill, the man’s look had said. But there are other stresses that wake him, other horrors playing out in his mind. The what-if’s he calls them: what if the ambulance was stopped; what if the teleport didn’t work; what if Mooney’s bullet arrived before he was zapped to Kennedy. And there’s the Barn. The pieces were still being gathered and processed.

  Inching off the mattress to front another day his cell phone rings.

  ‘Yes,’ Masen answers holding the phone from his face and raking sleep away.

  ‘Is this a secure line?’

  Bozeman.

  ‘Obviously not,’ Masen says and stretches, bends over the edge of the bed. ‘You got through, didn’t you.’

  The floor is cold.

  ‘Funny, real funny,’ Bozeman says wryly. ‘Just thought you’d like to know the equipment’s been transported back.’

  ‘Under lock and key?’

  ‘Welded shut, buried in a concrete hole under a mountain…what do I know?’

  Pak walks in, a donut stuffed in his half asleep face. He’s been sleeping on the sofa because of a fear he has of enclosed spaces. Masen offered him an apartment, the one next to Sparks but declined wanting to be close to the street.

  ‘More than you let on,’ Masen says then holds the phone up to Pak.

  ‘I’m putting you on speaker,’ Masen says.

  ‘Hi, Tic Tac,’ Bozeman says.

  Pak raises his head and grunts a reply. Masen informed him what the reference is, not that it makes any sense.

  ‘The Director—’ Bozeman says.

  ‘Hold on,’ Masen interrupts looking out the window and down at street level. Ever since he found out about the hit outside his building—the two men who set up Pascal’s honey trap with Amanda Lane and were watching him—he’s taken an interest in the routine of cars parked outside. ‘Holidays, remember?’

  ‘I know, Jimbo. Thought you’d want to be informed.’

  ‘How’s your leg?’ Pak asks.

  ‘Still attached,’ Bozeman says slowly as if he’s studying it. ‘But hurts like a thousand razors cutting into it. Damn thing. Be in bed for another two, three weeks so the doc tells me.’

  ‘Go on,’ Masen says. ‘You want to tell me something about the Director.�
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  ‘…Started an internal investigation on the whole episode. Army’s reluctantly agreed to cooperate.’

  An alarm sounds on the cell. Masen swipes it silent.

  ‘I have to go.’

  Masen can’t miss this meeting, though he knows both reason and outcome. Everything has been drawn up, agreed to and checked. It’s better that way for everyone involved. A clean slate. He picks up the sneakers with the hole in the sole where he concealed the USB stick, studies it and takes a shot at the bin. Scores, though unlike the time in the Barn’s bathroom back when he had a job, he doesn’t celebrate.

  ‘Get a real badge and get back to me.’

  A long pause.

  ‘Jimbo, you still there?’

  Masen is thinking of the most important what if, the one that makes gooseflesh whenever he replays Black’s words over in his mind. They halt him dead in his tracks: who was he talking to on the phone?

  ‘Talk later,’ Masen says and hangs up.

  The hire car bumps over the concrete rise. A guard welcomes him back to the building. Pleasantries are exchanged and instead of driving down into the parking lot reverses and parks against the apartment building’s wall opposite.

  Inside, Masen sits alone in the cafeteria with two cans of Red Bull. One finished. He gulps and feels the table and chair move as someone sits down next to him. Both are here to attend a meeting with the Director.

  ‘I would have given you a lift,’ Masen says and tilts is head looking deadpan at Sparks, ‘but I don’t want to.’

  ‘Army just wasn’t for me,’ Sparks says shyly.

  The crowd in the cafeteria stare and whisper.

  ‘Fastest scum-bag to heroic celebrity, back to suspicious-maybe-traitor turn around I’ve ever seen,’ Sparks notes.

  ‘There’s plenty of time left to unwind,’ Masen says half-heartedly. ‘And yet you’ve escaped unscathed.’

  Sparks shrugs.

  The meeting is a lay down misère, a certainty given the circumstances that all parties had agreed to through a session involving lawyers—from the Attorney General’s Office—and sealed from public view. Defence and CIA had a solution worked out within hours of what happened. Best for everyone. Wrap it up. Lay the blame at the feet of two dead soldiers who couldn’t talk. Cast the others adrift.

  The pair make their way to the Barn, escorted by two men three paces behind. A newly created security restricted corridor that snakes through the building and ends in the room behind the Barn is being built. It feels like Masen and Sparks are visitors. Which is actually what they are. Masen sees Nash up ahead busy reading through the print out. He looks up

  ‘I’m working on using chemicals to cool the processors,’ Nash says. ‘Should help to miniaturize the technology.’

  Masen throws a half attempt of a smile his way. ‘Just what we need.’

  Sparks shrugs with indifference. Truth is he wants to come back to work, but that’s impossible.

  The Director is busy studying small grooves in the desk. ‘Gentlemen, please take a seat,’ he says looking up and slides over two sets of papers for each to sign. ‘As agreed to a little over,’ brushes up the cuff of his shirt to reveal his watch, ’75 hours ago. John Masen and Travis Sparks you are immediately pardoned of any, and all violations against no fewer than a dozen…’ Cuts himself off pinching the bridge of his nose and shakes his head and inhales loudly. ‘Just sign.’

  Masen picks up his pen and allows it to hover over where the Director points.

  ‘Am I right?’ the Director says clasping his hands together on the desk. ‘This all started because you wanted to play games at work?’

  Masen looks up and says, ‘On the advice of counsel I decline to comment.’

  The Director nods. ‘Furthermore, you are both terminated from your positions at the CIA, effective immediately. Mention anything about the events surrounding your time here and you’ll never see the sun again.’ Inhales and pauses. ‘You both embarrassed a lot of people. An outpost at best that stores data…’ Shakes his head. ‘You two uncovered and stopped a well thought out high-level multi-agency conspiracy to steal secrets.’

  Folds his arms and leans back. Masen looks to Nash who says nothing.

  ‘Your paper comes out tomorrow doesn’t it?’ the Director asks looking to Nash then Masen.

  Masen nods.

  ‘Go learn a hobby, sail, go parachuting, or whatever it is young people do these days. I don’t want to ever see either of your names cross my desk.’ Looks between Masen and Sparks. Both nod.

  ‘No problem there.’ Masen’s pen touches the paper. ‘I have things to do. Always wanted to drive Route 66. Plus I was planning on visiting a friend down south.’ However his next stop is the morgue to identify De Luca and to arrange the funeral. But that’s not business. That’s personal. None of their business. Severing ties cuts both ways.

  The pen raises. ‘And what of Amanda Lane?’

  ‘Not your problem,’ the Director replies.

  Sparks takes the pen held out to him, leans down to sign. ‘And the two Chinese kids?’

  ‘Fāng and Lì,’ The Director notes, ‘are helping to clean up this mess. But like I said—’

  ‘Not my problem.’ Sparks stands straight.

  ‘Well…’ The Director says and waves them both away.

  Coming soon

  Final Trinity

  Book three of the

  Quantum Trilogy

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