So I whored. Yes, I did. It kept me with the men who were pushing farther and farther afield all the time. I can see your surprise. Whoring is easy after you’ve done it a few dozen times. It’s usually easy work, usually pays relatively well, and as an asset, you’re treated relatively nicely by both your customer and your boss. The work can get disgusting, but on the whole it can, if you do it right, be pleasurable.
Oh I like sex, oh yes. I can tell you that, can’t I? Oh, Americans are so uptight about sex. It is one of the great joys of being human. Of our existence. The great joy. Next to children, which is a slower kind of joy, and full of sorrows too. You’re young, so you don’t really know this yet, but sex also can be sad. As it fades with a lover, and ends with age and partings. But still few things really compare with it. You think you know this, but you don’t, really.
But I digress again! As a whore, it was hard to talk to the priests who hated me or the old women, who despised me. But with persistence, much is possible. I got by. Gradually, I pieced together their histories, or as much as I think anybody could from my position. It was frustrating, naturally, having my sex determine who I could and could not talk to. Yes, but remember this was then, and I had lifetimes, long, long lifetimes of similar, or worse, treatment than the Spanish gave me. They weren’t half bad, compared to some.
The Spanish were half-convinced they had discovered Hell, and some more than half believed it. Cortez, the story went, met a priest from the local village the day after they landed. The priest wore the skin of a man like a coat. The Spanish thought the priests were demons. It terrified them, at first, that it was all a trap waiting to spring on them. They burned what books they found, which infuriated me, though I said nothing to them. It would not have mattered. None of the men I was with were officers, only soldiers and accountants, basically. The Spanish officer class was of the old breed, the Conquistadors, or the breed that followed them, the soft, weak ones. The priests. DeLanda is the most well-known, and I knew him. He was nuts. But there were others, and they were all the same.
I learned, eventually. The other girls, as they became replaced over time with local girls, I could talk to. I learned their speech. I am good at languages and in a few dozen years I spoke them all, as fluently as you can learn a dying language. Their tales told of their migration from the north. From caves, naturally.
Many stories in the old world used caves. Caves are a metaphor, common enough in most places and evoke powerful emotions of danger, mystery, and fear. People came from somewhere, right? As a person who grew up steeped in superstition, even talking about stuff like that freaks them out. Ghosts are everywhere, everything is alive, can hear you, judge you. Punish you. People were smart, as smart as you or I, they were just…lost. Unsophisticated, uneducated, they repeated what they had heard. The old, old story of how stories get passed, kneaded, and pressed into whatever service the people telling them have need of.
They came from the north, I surmised, and long ago, so vague were the hints at it. Tens of thousands of years. They hunted, spread throughout the land, learned to farm. They founded great cities, raised great temples, and had great kings. They were proud, so proud of their heritage, of who had come before them. They revered the Maya, who they knew and claimed heritage from, and the Toltec, whom they knew as legend, and the Olmec, whom they knew as myth. The tale was familiar, very similar to how Europe developed. And, roughly, concurrently.
The new world was, in fact, superior to the old in most ways. They had public sanitation in the Middle Ages, something no European capital would have again for centuries since Rome fell, although it never really fell. But no matter. One day I realized, like a thunderbolt. I knew beyond a doubt, or was almost certain anyway, that I had something to do with Europe developing, becoming civilized. My work, what my dreams drove me to do when I wasn’t whoring or wifing or whatnot, that is. How was it that this had happened here if I was there?
This theory is not new. The theory of help. Others have had the same idea, lost tribes and aliens. It’s all so silly. How could civilizations develop independently? Without help? Surely there must have been some tenuous contact to spread ideas. And maybe there was, somehow. Look at the pyramids, they say. There, and here. How could they be built by hand? But they were built by hand, by many hands. I saw the great works in action and the vast tent city of the workers on the plain of Khufu. A constellation of cook fires at night. There were no aliens there.
And yet, there was me. I was there. Doing what? I remember a priest and living in a stone house with a courtyard, but not much more. Was I helping? Surely. It’s what I do, basically, when I am not a raving madwoman. If I was helping there, who was helping here?
I suspected then that I was not alone. Oh, rarely alone. As a whore, you really aren’t alone often, but alone as I have been all my lives. Alone as only I have known loneliness, I suppose. It crushed me. Tore me. Flayed me like an Aztec priest, plucked the beating heart right from my chest. For a long time, for years, I rejected the thought. It was an accident. Coincidence. That lie tastes of ash, they said, the Inca whom I was among. The truth, the fear and potential, that it might be true, that it was real obsessed me.
So, rather than go mad, which I may have for a few days or longer if I am being honest, I resolved to find out. So it became my mission. Obsession. My goal to know this, to know if there is, or was, another like me. Someone like me. Out there, in the shadows of time and history. Who were they, where had they come from, did they dream as I dreamed? Were they ridden by their dreams, as I am by mine? My dreams changed, fueling my suspicion. Dreams no longer joyful, but turbid and hollow. Sorrow at the realized loss of knowledge but also, maybe, troubled by this new thought of mine, this new idea. This hope.
Chapter Sixteen
I waited, having told this tale to Jessica. Here I leave out the natural interruptions and digressions, like a stream wandering through a field we took that afternoon. There was a lot of such, and by the time I finished it was getting late in the afternoon. The wind had picked up, so we had moved inside and eaten. We sat by the window, talking as the shadows lengthened.
“I’d like to go look at the ocean,” I said, “before it gets dark.” Throughout my life, I have loved the sea, all its moods and portents. The depth of it fascinates me. All that water. Did you know, though, that there is more water deeper still, sluicing around through the stones and stuff of the planet’s skin, than even in all the seas, lakes, and oceans of the world? I said as much to Jessica as we walked, bundled in our jackets.
“Are you a geologist now, too?” she said, mocking me a little.
“No, but I met with Alvarez in the sixties in Berkeley, and I read a lot,” I said. “Just something from an article I read, which I thought interesting.”
She was silent for a while. We crested the rise and saw the sea, green and gray and brownish white. Jessica said, “I believe you, I think.” She shook a little, as the breeze off the sea plucked at our coats. “I mean, about what you are.” She looked at me. “You threw something at the gunman who killed Jurgens, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “River stones. I usually keep a couple in my purse or pockets. Innocuous things, and they don’t set off metal detectors.” I reached into my purse and pulled out two shiny stones. I clacked them together in my palm.
“But how,” she said, “did you know he was coming? The gunman?”
I pursed my lips. “Not him. But someone, yes. I suspected someone would do something, which is why I was there, to protect Jurgens, I guess. I dreamed of that place, of Jurgens and his plans. Dreams of urgency.” I laughed. “Urgent dreams.”
“You moved so fast, I remember that,” said Jessica. “Faster than anyone could move or react, I think.” She looked at me and smiled. “I’ve thought about this a lot. I tried to see if the local cops would let me see the security tapes that week, but they said it was evidence, and that the feds had collected it. Talk to the FBI, they said, so I dropped it.”
I
shrugged. “I’m fast. Throw enough rocks, for long enough, you get the hang of it.” We walked, for a while, down a sandy path lined with a leaning picket fence, single file.
“I think the FBI I met with, Garcia and Roberts, they knew something about you,” Jessica said, over her shoulder. “Something more than they were telling.”
“Not their real names, just so you know. And they know more than a little something.” I looked at her. “They are the hunters, those two, the ones who have gotten the closest.”
“You afraid of them?” she asked. We had reached the beach, and by her feet and the cock of her hips, I could tell she wanted to turn south, so we walked south along the tide-line. It was going out. All that water pulled and dragged around by the Moon.
“Afraid?” I thought about it. “Not really. Probably, they are looking elsewhere for me now.” I saw a shell, bent and picked it up. A whorl of shell-stuff, folded and still jealous of its secrets. “I gave them other things to look for.”
“Were you supposed to stop the shooting?” she said.
I shrugged, tossing the shell back into the waves. “Not sure. If I was, I failed. Maybe if I had another couple of seconds, I could have stopped him.”
“You broke his wrist and smashed his face open,” she said.
I nodded. I had been trying to disarm him, then tried to kill him. I said nothing.
“Nobody moves that fast. Or rather, nobody reacts that fast,” she said. “Nobody human, that is.”
I thought about this for a few paces. A man and a dog were ahead of us, coming up the beach towards us. “I’m human. Not superhuman in any real, obvious sense. Like, I can’t see through walls or anything, or fly like Superman.” The dog ran into the water. The man was fit, short hair, clean-shaven, and was avoiding noticing us. “I just have a lot of experience with reacting. Like throwing rocks, you get the hang of it.”
I stopped. He was getting closer, dressed in running gear, a loose shell jacket with a hood. No earpiece I could see. He had been talking when he reached the beach, but maybe that was to the dog. People talk to dogs. But his eyes gave him away, his shoulders, his whole posture of forced attention focused on the dog. I wrapped my arms around Jessica, as if we were lovers or old friends. She stiffened.
“Relax, please. Pretend with me. Stand still,” I said to her, soothing. “This man is not what he seems.” I released her, and my hand, hidden from his view, slipped a stone from my pocket, one of a half-dozen I had collected from a stream I liked that fed the Potomac. It was the size of a silver dollar, shiny black with a depression, just like I liked them, for my thumb. He approached, only a dozen paces away. I smiled and whistled to the dog which perked up and bounded towards me. Dogs like me. This was a beautiful golden retriever, maybe a year old.
The man’s eyes were tracking us now, estimating. I knew what he was now, and later felt sorry for what happened. This was later, but then, as such situations go, I felt nothing but maybe a twinge of fear. His hand slid under his jacket and closed on the gun concealed there, behind him. I bent as if going down to pet the dog, swept Jessica’s feet from under her, rolled on my right shoulder, fed the momentum into the snap as I finished the roll, threw the rock, let the momentum carry me into another roll, and was on him before he hit the ground.
He was dead, naturally. The rock had hit him between the eyes, as I had desired. Cracked his skull and scrambled his brains. His mouth held an “O” of surprise, a look I have seen on many dead men. Death, when it comes, mostly comes as a surprise. I have much practice with seeing such things. The dog came bounding up, barking. I snap-kicked it in the nose and it ran off. I went through his pockets. He had no ID on him, no wallet or lanyard badge. Just the gun, a clip holster, and a set of keys. And some of those plastic handcuffs. And a phone. I tossed it in the ocean. I felt his fingers. They were hard, calloused along the tips, knuckles, and outer palms.
“What the fuck!”, she said. The gun was a Glock, 9MM, standard police issue. I tossed it backhand into the waves, took his car keys, and stood.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We need to leave, now.”
She stood mute. “He was FBI?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so. But he had these.” I showed her the plastic cuffs, tossing them at her feet. Four. She stared at them. “For hands and feet,” I said. “Your hands and feet, my hands and feet.”
She just stared at him. At me. At the dog still running away.
“Let’s go.” I jingled his keys. “His car will be up there. Now.” She blinked.
“Are you nuts?” She seemed on the verge of screaming, or running.
“We need to go. These guys don’t work alone. They’re at the house already. Come on.” Sometimes leading and not looking back gets people to follow. After about ten seconds I glanced back, she was jogging to catch up with me. I followed the path of his footsteps in the sand, leading up the beach to the bluff, tufted with beach grasses.
“I’ll explain once we’re somewhere safe. Until then, if you want to survive this do what I say, okay? I’m your best chance to get through this, or at least avoid a long stay in prison.” Time for straight talk. “I had to do it. I’m sorry, but I did. He was dangerous, and I can’t be taken in right now.” I led us up the path the man had come, moving quickly.
“Okay, Okay,” she said. “I’ve seen dead people before but…” She panted as we crested the rise. “I’m just surprised, and a little freaked out. He didn’t have a badge or anything?”
“No badge. No ID. A phone, but that’s it. And the handcuffs, which means he wanted to take us in, I think.” I stopped. “Wait here. For real, wait right here.” I ran up the path, moving and staying low. There was a parking lot for beachgoers; I had scouted it when I rented the house. It should be empty this time of year. It was. Just a BMW sedan. Virginia plates. I clicked the button on the key-chain’s fob, and the car’s headlights blinked at me. I ran back for Jessica.
We got in the car. It was new, not government issue. There was a discrete rental badge with barcode fixed to the windshield. I didn’t like it. Rentals are all monitored. But I had been moving fast, getting Jessica up here, so if they were on us it would take them time. I was counting on it. It would have to do. I only needed it to elude the net, which had to be porous at this stage. I hoped. I doubted they could be that efficient yet, to have us locked up with roadblocks or multiple teams.
I started the car. The radio came on with the car, tuned to a classical station. Brahms. It made me think of Vienna, and a cafe I had once known. A dark haired young man, consumed with music, I had known there. I threw the car into gear and slewed the car out of the lot.
“Buckle up,” I said through a fog of memories, of coffee in demitasse cups, roasted chestnuts. Wine later, and candles, and, still later, he had played his violin for me after lovemaking. Brown hair spilled over his face in a pool of moonlight by an open window. I shook my head to clear it. Recorded media can catch me unawares sometimes, dredging up some long-forgotten memories like a bulldozer plowing up a graveyard.
I had prepared, being experienced, and so stashed a getaway and fallback vehicle. Earlier in the week I had purchased two cars, paying cash. I had fueled them and stocked them with supplies for an escape. Bottled water, energy bars, beef jerky. Spare clothes in both our sizes, and boots. Towels. These I tossed into duffels in their trunks. I headed to the fallback, since the getaway car was parked within sprinting distance from my house. The fallback was located in the commuter train parking lot in a small beach town down the coast, about five miles from the house. I made for that with haste.
The first rule of evading a surveillance net is speed. Hesitation gives the watchers time to prepare and counter. Speed forces action, but also can, if dealing with assumptions based on my sex and appearance, be used to my advantage. I was not a novice at this, and had learned my skills at the feet of some masters of this game, in Bulgaria, Berlin, Egypt. Babylon and other, older places. Many places. Times change, technolog
y changes, but technique and tradecraft remain constant. Get inside your opponent’s head, challenge his assumptions, and leverage your preparedness against his.
What did we know? Point: they had found us, ergo, someone was looking for us. Point: they had attempted a one-on-two takedown. He had been an operator, confident he could cow two slight-looking women until help arrived from our rear. This told me they didn’t know me well, or they would have come in force. So, point three: they might lack resources and information.
Jessica was talking to me as I sped through the dunes, so I shifted attention back to her. “Sorry, I drifted off there.” I glanced at her, reading suppressed panic in her grip on the grab-bar, hand across the dash, feet braced. I was doing maybe ninety miles per hour. Germans make good cars. The road was narrow, but there was no traffic, which I hoped was a coincidence and not because of roadblocks. I slowed as we were approaching the turnoff into town. “Sorry, I was focusing.”
“I said,” she replied, her teeth clenched, “do you think they’re chasing us?”
I glanced at her. Lack of experience, this was. I nodded, as we passed by the main street. “They are chasing us. We need to go to ground, get far away from here. Now, quiet, and no arguments.” The sun was low in the west, and I wanted it at my back as we approached the car. I circled the block near the train station, looking for police or black vans or any sign of watchers. No time for a full recon, we needed to get away from this car.
I parked across the street from the lot. “There, the blue Crown Victoria. You see it?” I unzipped a tiny pocket in my right boot, fished out the key. Held it up. “Let’s go, nice and easy. If they try to stop us, listen to what I tell you. Okay?”
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