by E. R. Torre
“Our reward?”
The well-dressed man smiled. He reached into his suit, produced a wad of bills, and handed them to Edward. Edward began counting the money but stopped when he noted Robert’s gaze.
“Sorry, Mister Octi,” he said. “It’s just that—”
“Count it,” the well-dressed man insisted despite his obvious impatience. “If I were in your place I’d do the same. But make it quick, I’ve got a full schedule and came here only on your say so.”
“Yes sir,” Edward replied. His fingers shook as he counted the bills. When he was done, he nodded and Mary walked to the camper. She was gone only a moment, and when she returned, she carried the leather case the two found the night before.
“It’s all in there, Mr. Octi,” she said.
Robert Octi Jr. opened the case and searched its contents. He pulled out the diary and carefully flipped through it.
“It belonged to Roger Martin,” Edward said. “Do you recognize his name?”
“No,” Robert said. “You told me he worked for the Demon?”
“That’s what he wrote in the book.”
“You read the whole thing?”
“Parts, just enough to make sure.”
“And the others in your group? Do they know?”
“No sir. We made sure of that. They’re off to Desertland Base 6, looking for some equipment we…we made malfunction.”
Robert Octi Jr. frowned.
“Are you saying you sabotaged Octi Corp. equipment?”
The two survey crew members stiffened. They relaxed only moments later, when Robert winked and let out a cheerful laugh.
“I won’t say anything if you don’t.”
Robert closed the book and tucked it back into the leather case.
“Whatever information we gather from this could lead to more finds,” Robert said. “And that means more reward money for the both of you. I’d continue to keep your discovery a secret. Unless, of course, you want to share the rewards of your hard work with the rest of your crew.”
“Hell no,” Mary blurted out. Her face flushed red and Robert let out another laugh.
“So I trust we’ll keep this our secret?”
Edward grabbed Mary by the shoulder and hugged her.
“You know you can trust us,” Edward said.
“Good.”
Robert shook both Mary and Edward’s hands. “I’ve got to go, but we’ll be in touch. Soon.”
With that, Robert Octi Jr. returned to his helicopter. The armed soldier closed the door behind him and re-entered the cockpit. Seconds later the helicopter’s blades became a blur of motion and she was up and off.
In spite of the flying sand, Edward and Mary waved until the helicopter was gone.
“He’s so down to earth,” Mary said. “Such a nice guy.”
“I’m with you,” Edward agreed. “He’s my kind of leader. I’d rather have someone you can take out to a bar and share a beer with over those know it all intellectuals. We’re so lucky to have him.”
They laughed and hugged each other and kissed.
Robert Octi Jr. stared out the window at the monotonous view of the Desertlands. He pulled a handkerchief from his suit pocket and wiped the dust from his hands. Beside him lay the leather case. He didn’t need to clean it. The scavengers –what the hell were their names?– already wiped the dust from its surface. A touching gesture.
Robert Octi Jr. turned away from the case and looked forward. Across from him sat a thin man with an intense stare. His gray eyes never wavered from Robert and he rarely blinked.
“I want them taken care of, Nagel,” Robert said.
“What about the others, the ones they sent to the base?”
“They said there were three of them. Wait until they return, then take care of them all at once.”
Nagel nodded. He sat back in his seat and closed his eyes.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Robert said. “I gave those idiots one hell of a lot of money. I want that back, too.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Snowflakes in August,” the man with the thinning hair mumbled. He stared at the faded image of a news anchor emanating from the flat screen television nailed to the corner wall. He followed this comment with a moist burp before pushing away from the bar’s counter and stumbling to the restroom. Left behind was a half-finished glass of beer.
The two remaining men at the counter gave the glass a thirsty look.
“Flip for it?” the first man said to the other.
The second man rubbed his eyes.
“Thomas drinks Selabro,” the second man replied. “That stuff tastes like goat piss.”
“So it’s mine?”
“Hell no.”
They were quiet for a few seconds.
“That stuff is nasty,” the first man said.
“Like you can afford anything better.”
“You’re the one that said it tasted like goat piss.”
“Story of my life. Tell you what, it’s yours, Roger, after you explain what that snowflakes in August shit was supposed to mean.”
Roger nodded. He gave his friend a toothless smile and reached for the glass. Just before grabbing it, the prize was intercepted by the bartender.
“Sorry, guys,” the bartender said. “Drinking clients pay for that privilege, even if it is Selabro.”
“Come on Catherine,” Roger moaned. “It’s our last day here. Surely you can make an exception?”
“Last day? I’m not going anywhere. You’re free to come back.”
“But we like it quiet. The live band’ll make too much damn noise.”
“Then I’m sure you’ll find a quieter hole to call home.”
Roger and his friend watched in silence as Catherine Holland, the owner and, since the death of her husband five years before, sole bartender of the Yoshiwara, poured the dark liquid into the sink. “In the meantime, if you want a fresh cup, just holler, OK?”
“Yes ma’am,” her two patrons replied in unison.
“I’ve got you trained like seals, don’t I?”
“Yes ma’am,” they repeated and laughed.
Catherine joined them, but only for a few seconds. There were always things to do, even in a nearly empty bar.
“I’ll miss you guys, too,” she admitted. “If you all just spent enough so I could pay my bills, there would be no need to change things around.”
“No need to explain,” Roger said.
Catherine nodded and walked away.
“Where were we?”
“Snowflakes in August?” Roger’s friend said, returning to the previous topic of conversation. “Means something that don’t happen. An impossibility.”
Roger thought about that for a second.
“Makes sense,” he said. “The president was on the news. Said he didn‘t have anything to do with that contract thing, the…uh…”
“The military contracts,” Catherine chimed in.
“I remember. And he seemed like such a nice guy when he was elected.”
“The fuck he was,” a third man at the far end of the bar intruded. “He was always an asshole. There ain’t no good people in this world. They’re as rare as…as rare as…”
“Snowflakes in August?”
“Fuck yeah,” the third man concluded. He shrugged as if to emphasize the point and placed a clear plastic mask snuggly over his mouth and nose. Once in place, he hit a switch on his belt. There came a low hiss and the face mask filled with a cloud of gray gas. The third man’s eyes rolled up and his head gently dropped on to the counter.
Roger let out a low whistle.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.”
“At least he pays for his drinks,” Catherine said.
“Ouch,” Roger replied.
His words were drowned out by the blare of street traffic. It reverberated through the quiet bar like a low level nuclear explosion. All eyes turned to the door leading out. It was wide open and standing before it was a tall wom
an dressed in a faded blue jean jacket and matching jean pants. She sported short, jet black hair and her eyes were hidden behind a pair of equally dark sunglasses. Her body was lean and athletic and there was an air of danger surrounding her.
Catherine tensed. There were plenty of poseurs in the big city, people who projected swagger but carried weapons because they could never handle themselves in a real tumble. The woman standing at the door, she sensed, was beyond such pretenses.
The stranger closed the door and silenced the outside roar. In the low lights of the bar, Catherine spotted a tattoo on the stranger’s forehead, just above her right eyebrow. Three vertical blue bars, each one thinner than the other. They were a simple design and somewhat faded with time.
To anyone who hadn’t seen them before, they looked perfectly innocent, perhaps even stylish. For Catherine, however, seeing them sent a nervous charge through her body. She suppressed a gasp and tried, but failed, to also suppress a flood of memories.
The three blue bars on the stranger’s forehead were similar to the logo she saw way back in the Arabian Wars, when Catherine worked for Intel Division. Because of her expertise, she spent the war stationed far behind the main lines and at the staging grounds. One day she saw that logo on some very young boys that filtered into the base one particularly hot day not too long before the end of that useless war. Once they arrived, rumors about them spread like wildfire throughout the camps. The young boys, it was said, were part of an elite fighting force known as the Desert Brigades.
The descriptions of their actions seemed more myth than reality. There was talk that these children were capable of cruelties both unheard of and unimaginable. Catherine didn’t believe any those rumors. That is, until the Desert Brigades’ extreme actions proved the final solution to the Arab problem.
Catherine shuddered.
When the higher ups had enough of the carnage in Arabia, they called the Desert Brigades into full action. It took those child-soldiers one bloody weekend to clean the Arabian deserts of their bothersome dwellers. What was left behind was a cursed and silent land. So very silent…
The woman at the door stepped deeper into the bar. Instinctively Catherine leaned closer to the twelve gauge shotgun she kept hidden below the counter. There was no way to tell if the stranger really was one of the Blue Brigade soldiers. After all, weren’t they supposed to be dead?
Catherine kept her right hand close to her weapon. Better safe than sorry. With her left hand, she waved the stranger in. Even if the stranger was one of those murderous bastards, her money was as good as everyone else’s.
“Welcome to the Yoshiwara,” Catherine said. “There’s plenty of space at the counter, or you can take one of the tables in the back.”
The stranger noted the bar’s emptiness. Her gaze returned to Catherine. For a second, Catherine thought she was in a daze, like she was...
God help me, Catherine thought. She isn’t Blue Brigade. She’s a stoner looking for the live band.
She forced herself to smile. Is this what I’ve got to look forward to starting tomorrow?
“You do know our format change is tomorrow, not today, right?”
The stranger’s face remained blank.
“Tomorrow we bring in the live bands. Please tell me all that money I spent on advertising hasn’t gone to waste.”
“It’s not too late to change your mind,” Roger intruded. “Cancel the bands and give us our bar back.”
Catherine ignored Roger’s comments.
“Anyway, this is the last night of the old Yoshiwara. If you’d like, please sit back and enjoy.”
The dark haired woman nodded. She walked to the rear of the bar and sat at a table in the corner. From there, she silently eyed the television set.
Catherine bit her lower lip. It would have been much better if the stranger stayed by the counter. Now Catherine had to go to the woman and leave her weapon far behind.
Catherine stepped out from behind the counter area and approached her new customer. She carried a well-rehearsed smile. In the darkness of the bar’s corner, it was difficult to get a read on the stranger. It was also hard not to stare at the tattoo. Despite her lingering unease, Catherine’s business instinct kicked in. She judged the woman’s worth and asked:
“What can I get you?”
Selabro, Catherine thought. Just like what all the other cheap bastards around here drink.
The dark haired woman reached into her pocket. She pulled out a couple of bills and counted them. They didn’t amount to much.
“Selabro,” the stranger said. Her voice was low and emotionless.
“Big spender,” Catherine said.
“Spend what you’ve got…” the woman said, and paused.
“…There might not be another day,” Catherine whispered, finishing the woman’s statement.
Catherine suppressed a shiver. She heard those words spoken by so many of her fellow soldiers before shipping off to the front lines. There was no longer any doubt the stranger was a veteran of the Arabian Wars.
“A…ain’t that the truth,” Catherine added and let out a small, nervous laugh. “Some fellow said that the other day. Nice thought, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
Catherine walked away while the woman in the faded blue jean jacket checked out the other patrons in the bar. Their eyes were on the stranger but quickly turned away. She shrugged and leaned back in her chair. Her gaze returned to the flat screen TV.
Through a cloud of static a handsome -but not too handsome- television reporter read from a teleprompter. The man’s smile was pleasant but, like most reporters, not terribly genuine. His eyes were a strikingly blue, which reminded those old enough who could remember what the vast, unpolluted oceans once looked like.
“…and in business news, the stock markets continue their precipitous fall,” the man said. “They closed at a ten-year low, with the ticker hovering at 56,091. Despite the depressed market, there remains one ray of light. Octi Corporation and its subsidiaries have so far weathered the storm and are one of the only companies immune to our current economic malaise. At the end of the day their shares were up 50 points. Our experts analyze just how high Octi could go…”
The woman in the faded jacket grinned.
“Miss?” she called out.
Catherine paused in mid-stride.
“Fuck the Selabro,” the stranger said. “Get me a Prestigio.”
CHAPTER THREE
A silver limousine pulled up to the Yoshiwara’s microscopic parking space. It came to a stop next to an old and weathered motorcycle. The limousine’s driver stepped out of the car and walked to the rear passenger door. He was dressed entirely in black and held his cap reverentially in his hand while opening the door.
“We’re here, Mr. Donovan,” the driver said and bowed.
Mr. Donovan exited from the passenger compartment. He was a man on the far side of sixty. His body was an oval, his head bare, and his face a wrinkled sponge. He was dressed in a dull blue suit and carried a beefy cigar in his right hand. He stepped up to the motorcycle and ran his hand over its beat up fuel tank.
“Slovak engine, a Malacky,” Donovan said to no one in particular. “Frame’s beat to shit, tires are bare. Figures.”
“Sir?”
“It’s her chopper,” Donovan said. His voice was filled with irritation. “Engine’s still warm. We’re late.”
“Yes sir,” the driver said. “Sorry sir.”
“Don’t let it happen again,” Donovan said. “There are plenty of other drivers.”
“Yes sir.”
Donovan straightened his tie and entered the bar.
Catherine watched with great interest as the elderly business man entered the bar. He couldn’t have looked more out of place had he arrived dressed in a clown outfit and scuba gear.
“Can I help you?” Catherine said. The rest of the bar’s patrons looked on. Roger and his friend had wide grins on their faces.
“The ma
n looks lost,” Roger said. His friend let out a soft chuckle. “Or maybe he was also expecting the live band.”
Donovan frowned. He turned to the bartender and said:
“I’m looking for—”
“I thought this was a private club,” the woman with the dark hair and vertical blue tattoos interrupted from the rear of the bar. “You lost?”
Donovan closed his mouth and shuffled past the counter. He approached the back of the bar.
“Nox?”
“Maybe you should ask a little louder,” the woman replied. “I don’t think the hooker spewing her guts out in the back alley heard you.”
“That’s quite an attitude you’ve got,” Donovan sniffed. Nonetheless, his voice lowered to a whisper. He pulled a chair out from the table, wiped it down thoroughly with a handkerchief, and sat down. “If you wanted privacy, you should have agreed to meet where I—”
“You pick the meet? Sorry, Mister Donovan, a Mechanic’s life is short enough as it is.”
“Mechanic? How delightfully old fashioned. I thought you people were billing yourselves as Independents nowadays.”
“What do you want?”
“Two data diskettes,” Donovan said. “Company property. Stolen from my office yesterday afternoon. Fortunately, I make it a habit to monitor my employees’ activities both inside and outside the work facilities.”
“Not well enough, apparently.”
Donovan frowned.
“The one who took the disks kept a very regular routine after work. Yesterday, shortly before we discovered the disks’ theft, he made a detour in that regular routine and stopped by a warehouse on the west side of town.” Donovan reached into his suit and pulled out a piece of paper. “That’s the address.”
“They’ve had the diskettes since at least yesterday?”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Donovan said. “It’s within the realm of possibility the data has already been compromised. But, our technical staff assures me they use five layers of encryption on any information they make hard copies of. They say that level of encryption requires at least a week to fully decode.”
“What if they’ve made copies of the disks and sent them around to other outfits?”
