Commandos

by Madlen Namro

  In the next few days he often caught himself thinking of Jo, but each time he forced himself to focus on the tasks at hand. He needed to maintain his professional distance and control his feelings. There were greater things at stake.

  Eventually, he decided to go to Levi first. The following day he informed the president that he had studied the files thoroughly and was ready to set off. He actually bent the truth a little as he felt no need to read any of the files on Kaminsky. He knew more than he ever wished to find out about the man. He did not forget to ask why Jo had been sent to Tenerife. They explained that it had been an attempt to stimulate her memory to recall everything she knew about the caliph. She’d once known more than any other living person about received his final orders the terrorist leader. As he

  and detailed instructions on finding the commandos, Victor was ready to leave.

  * * * *

  Young students at the NASA space academy often came up with innovative solutions for booster rockets, supervision of the satellites around the Moon and various probes scattered throughout the solar system. Levi read them with great interest, studying specifications of manned deep space flights and shuttle missions, meteorological divagations or tele-detection. He found some of the flight experiments fascinating. He devoted a lot of his time to snatch allowances for a few more flight hours for his students from the prefecture. In time, he managed to have his way and organised a flight presentation including some of the newest airplanes available. In his excitement, he failed to oversee all the technical safety procedures and as a consequence one of the students lost his life in an accident. Even though the commodore’s oversight was arguable at best, as he was not directly responsible for the crafts’ technical condition, his duties were purely supervisory. He was immediately arrested and placed at a penitentiary until the matter was resolved.

  He was quickly fired from his position at the university, denied access to any facilities and evicted form his flat. The world he thought to be his home was swift to turn its back on him.

  In the past, he had witnessed the torture of prisoners, particularly those of Muslim origin, a practice absolutely unacceptable, yet common and until very recently always assiduously covered up from the general public. He was therefore understandably apprehensive when he first entered his cell. His only consolation was the fact that that particular prison belonged to the space forces district, giving him hope of more humanitarian treatment until his case was resolved.

  Modern prisons run by the space forces were mainly designed for convicted terrorists, but the population of common murderers and other criminals was also quite sizeable. Prisoners assigned to the group of seniors were given better cells, with decent beds, furniture and free library access. They even included a small bathroom and a separate study, but very few prisoners were able to enjoy such luxuries, as such cells were mainly reserved for high ranking officials, such as ex-senators or commando officers. Luckily for Levi, he was assigned to this block. In the days to come, he would learn to appreciate this privilege, as he witnessed the inhumane treatment of regular prisoners at the military penitentiary.

  There were other blocks in the prison, the biggest of which were the kickers and the blokes. Common criminals were usually members of the kickers, while terrorists belonged to the blokes. Prisoners occupied small cells hollowed out directly in the bedrock, connected by a long corridor. To get to the canteen or work areas, they needed to use an elevator. The holes, as most prisoners called their cells, were little more than sleeping areas. The inmates spent most of their days working at various construction sites. They erected stations, repaired railroads and constructed shuttles, naturally all under close supervision by specialist engineers.

  Despite the apparent order in the prison, it was easy to fall victim to social or psychological torture, and as Levi soon found out, also very much physical. Already in his first moments inside, he was humiliated as he was told to undress and endure the washing procedure. Ice-cold water was poured over him only to be followed by a jet of nearly boiling water. For a number of subsequent nights he was brutally roused from sleep and forced to listen to some poor souls being mercilessly tortured. On the third night, he was told to go to another cell, naturally just after being awoken from deep sleep and there he witnessed the torment of a young soldier accused of being an enemy spy.

  The man was hanged head down, with his feet tied to a hook in the ceiling. Dangling helplessly, he had his eyes blindfolded with a cloth and wrists bound with a thick chain. For the first several hours, he had been methodically stripped of hope, told things which aimed at taking away any will to live he had still left in him. Lies. In time, he could no longer resist the strength of the inhuman officers. Eventually, when blood rushed to his head, he was gently touched with a razor on the neck. There was no cut, but the torturers skilfully poured water over the man’s dewlap, convincing him that he was slowly bleeding to death. It took another hour for the tormented man to really die.

  The following day the commodore still could not believe what he had seen, but there was no one he could share this horror with. Until he was a free man again, he had to remain silent. His life depended on it.

  He could not force himself to sleep anymore, growing weaker with every day that passed. The very thought of once more being woken up to the nightmare, made him nauseous. He could not understand what had happened to the system, where it had gone wrong. What had happened to those people? When exactly did their modern life turn into this madness of the lowest, animal instincts? Every night, as he watched people play Russian roulette to the guards’ entertainment or being paralysed by extreme temperature changes, he prayed to finally face the tribunal. He could not bear the helplessness for much longer.

  * * * *

  Victor boarded the PCF215 passenger shuttle, absolutely incognito and began to catch up on his reading, whilst sitting comfortably in one of the first class seats. From time to time, he glanced at the monitors so as not to lose track of the current events in the world.

  He sipped on his drink and surrendered to the overwhelming memories of Jo and their first meeting. With his eyes barely open, he smiled at his thoughts and allowed himself a moment of relaxation, yet never loosing track of what was going on around him. When slight turbulence stirred him out of his daydreaming, for which he reprimanded himself in his mind, he pulled out Kaminsky’s files. He flicked through the pages to silence the pangs of conscience he felt for not reading them. Suddenly, he came across a piece of information which genuinely surprised him. The last page of the file stated that one of the possible locations of Kaminsky was suspected to be the island of Lanzarotte, neighbouring Tenerife.

  He took off his glasses and looked out the window. He could not control a growl of anger. If that was true, the thoughts raced through his mind, and Kaminsky was that close to Jo… If he knew about it she would be in grave danger.

  There was no time to lose. He was planning to assemble the commandos on that very island. He would have a chance to sniff around a little. He reached into his pocket and produced an electronic reader into which he punched his access code, thus notifying his superiors of his current location. In only a few hours he would be in Huston, on his way to pick up Charles.

  * * * *

  “Turn around!” one of the officers shouted at the commodore as he entered the baths and quickly took off his clothes. He felt his body, deprived of regular exercise and massages, contracting under the jet of ice-cold water. For a second he felt his heart stop beating – and that would not be the worst part. In a moment, he was about to be flushed with a burning-hot stream. It seemed the guards never got bored of this daily entertainment.

  Once the ordeal was over, he quickly got dressed and hurried back to his cell. It was the end of the working day and the prisoners had already eaten their scarce rations. It was Levi’s seventh day inside and he knew as little as he did on day one. He was still in suspension. His request to personally address the Defence Council was denied until a p
roper body was assembled to consider his case. He feared it could take several months.

  Struggling with the need to sleep, trying to come to terms with the work and tortures he had to endure, he began to build a private world for himself, a mental refuge to save him from the nightmare around him. He started by settling his scores with his own past.

  There’d been two burning regrets in his life, allowing himself to be parted from his daughter, Laura, for so long and his inability to sufficiently support his best captain, Jo, in her moment of need.

  As for Laura, he had made several attempts to find her, but none of them had been successful. He felt the guilt of giving up hope and promised himself he would not stop until he’d found her once he was out of this dreadful place.

  He was angry with himself for following the law so strictly, for not contacting any of his commandos only because it had been against the rules. Now, in this place, faced with the lawlessness of the prison, his scruples seemed pointless and naïve.

  Once he found Laura, he would have to convince her to trust him once more. He would do anything to rebuild the bond between them. It was going to be a difficult task, to learn how to love and be loved, to rebuild a family. He knew painfully well that he’d always been a difficult man to love, even to his own wife.

  He also owed his apologies to Jo. He had not tried hard enough to help her come to terms with her memories of Alec and Kaminsky. He’d agreed to the memory erasure far too easily. He now realised important memories were for the self-definition of one’s identity. They were more than just a pile of data. They conveyed information on every aspect of a person’s self, information he so lightly destroyed with a single push of a button.

  He collapsed to the hard, smelly mattress and decided to doze off for a few minutes when suddenly his cell door burst open.

  “Commodore Levi.” An officer stood in the doorway. “Follow me.”

  Every time he’d as much as lay down this would happen, an officer appearing from thin air, taking him on another macabre journey into the night. Who’s it going to be this time, he pondered. Maybe me?

  As he paced down the prison corridor he passed all the cells his tormentors had pushed him into on the previous nights. Where are they taking me? With every step he was growing more and more apprehensive. Fear and curiosity drove him forward with equal force.

  He left the senior block and stepped into the elevator which rushed downwards with incredible speed. Moments later he stepped out into the military grounds. They led him into the visiting room, but to his surprise didn’t stop there. An officer pointed him towards the dressing room.

  “Your personal possessions.” He handed him his ID and clothes. “Sign here please and continue to exit 135. The guard has been informed.”

  The officer stepped out of the dressing room and Levi quickly got dressed before following the wall markings to the proper exit. He opened the door and saw a long corridor leading to the outside world. Another officer, his face concealed by sunglasses, a hat and the tall collar of his coat, briskly stepped forward and motioned Levi to follow him. Levi could barely stand, but the smell of fresh air was sufficient motivation to keep him going. Eyes fixed on the officer’s back, he got a sudden impression the man had a somehow familiar gait about him.

  The man was straight, confident and fearless. Some sort of comforting energy seemed to surround him. Levi was almost sure it was Victor, but prison rules strictly prohibited speaking to an officer unasked so he remained quiet. On the other hand it seemed that he was not an inmate anymore, so maybe…

  “Victor?” he asked quietly.

  The man continued walking towards the exit. He pulled at the door and a gust of dry wind immediately struck them.

  “Yes, it’s me,” he answered and briefly looked back at the commodore. “Don’t stop.”

  They stepped out into the dusty landscape and turned to the road where a small airplane awaited them. As they hurried towards it, they both noticed a dark cloud forming over the horizon, lined with white streaks on the edges, serene and dangerous at the same time.

  “A hurricane is coming,” announced Victor as he punched in take off codes with surprising proficiency. Moments later the engine started and blew up a cloud of dust which soon disappeared in the vortexes raised by the stormy winds behind them.

  They stopped in a half-deserted motel, paid for the rooms and decided to go for a meal to one of the nearby bars.

  Levi sat quietly, studying Victor’s face. For some reason there was no happiness in his friend’s eyes. He seemed depressed.

  “Thanks for pulling me out of there.” Levi finally decided to break the silence.

  “Nah, I didn’t do anything really, just made a phone call.” It was one of Victor’s standard responses. They drank wine and the commodore felt warmth slowly filling up his heart. He was coming back to life.

  “Now you know how I felt after eight years in prison,” Victor added, looking up, and Levi saw the reflection of his own, tired face in his glasses.

  “I do, and I feel sorrier for you than ever before.”

  “You pulled me out then, now I had a chance to return the favour.”

  “Don’t…”

  They ate and drank in silence for a while. Having meals together had always been the two friends’ greatest pleasure, but Victor was still tense. The commodore rubbed his eyes when Victor started to involuntarily fiddle with the glass in his hand.

  “All right, spit it out.” Levi’s voice came out a bit harsher than he had intended.

  “The president’s given me a new job to do.” Victor was still staring through the glass as if seeing something of great interest that would not be visible otherwise.

  “Will you just say it, damn you!” The commodore’s patience ran out. He reached out and snatched the glass from Victor’s hand.

  “I’m supposed to assassinate Kaminsky.”

  “Fuck!” Levi exclaimed so loud that the whole room grew silent for a moment. Luckily, moments later they were once more surrounded by the buzz of Spanish conversation. The commodore looked around. It was full of Latin Americans. For over sixty years America had been a Spanish speaking region.

  “That’s the one task I cannot do alone.”

  “No?”

  “No. And you’re going to help me…”

  “And?”

  “And so are your commandos.”

  The commodore lifted the bottle and drank it down to the last drop. Victor had suddenly lost his appetite.

  * * * *

  A clone – the definition found in encyclopaedias for more than a century – was a complete copy of a living or dead organism. For years now, genetic engineering had been a field enjoying particularly strong common interest, developing at a pace unmatched by most other sciences. Most of the research focussed on gene therapies and diagnosing embryonic genetic defects.

  The real revolution, however, had taken place relatively recently, after blood samples were collected on a mass scale from which leukocytes could be isolated and cultured in special nutrient environment. Every such culture produced millions of cells, each of which could potentially be used in cloning. Unfortunately, the research proved to be excessively costly and time consuming, not to mention the raging ethical debate on the topic.

  Kaminsky was once the main advocate and pioneer of a new cloning method he’d invented himself. It was he who had argued at symposiums and public debates that a mother could not be denied the right to clone her child who’d died in an accident or that homosexual couples could not be denied the right to raise their own child. Through his efforts, the majority of people supported the continuation of cloning research.

  However, after the notions of sex and reproduction had become completely separated in people’s mentalities and the black market of human cells had reached the peak of its popularity, the government suddenly decided to ban cloning altogether. In a matter of days, Kaminsky lost all his power and wealth.

  After a while, he disappeared fr
om the world of academic science, getting more and more drawn into the luxury of being financed from the nearly unlimited assets of terrorist organisations, who supported the research in hope of creating genetically enhanced soldiers.

  In those years, Kaminsky divorced his second wife, a German with whom he had had no children, although they both had sons from previous marriages. When the caliph left her, she had to take care of the two boys while all that mattered to him was strengthening his position with the enemy. He’d been through a lot, once even had to fight for his freedom after spies had given up his whereabouts to the United Nations. He was forced to spend some time in UN custody on the island of Fuerteventura. Once there, he managed to ingeniously and without the slightest remorse remove intrusive people from his path and secure his own freedom. After his release, he was elected the Great Caliph. Later, he briefly returned to Russia to collect his son, Alexander. However, as it turned out, Alexander had grown strongly attached to his stepbrother and was reluctant to leave the warmth of the family house. Kaminsky then framed his ex-wife’s son and saw to his conviction for a series of terrorist attacks, thus removing the last obstacle preventing his reunion with his son.

  He took him along to his terrorist headquarters and began to prepare him for the role of the coordinator of the terrorist offensive. Alexander had never been able to stand up to his father. He was far too afraid of him to do that, and Kaminsky was now untouchable and free to do as he pleased. Everyone was terrified of him, his own son most of all. His unique talents, broad knowledge and fluency in over a dozen languages made Kaminsky feel almost omniscient. He began to see himself as the only man capable of saving Earth from its otherwise inevitable doom. He believed that through his research, he would create a new, better society that would inherit the planet. Nothing could now thwart his megalomania.

  The terrorist state, run by his brilliant mind, continued to grow in both power and territory, attracting scores of people only slightly less self-obsessed than Kaminsky. They felt invincible and everything seemed to confirm they were right.