An Evening at the Carnival with Mister Christian

The email burned in her mind. The imagery provided implications beyond merely staggering. "The power..." she whispered, "power to reshape entire worlds...and now this? What happened? Why did he...?"

She turned and looked skyward as an echelon of F-15s circled above, breaking off one by one to line up for their approach to Tel Nof. "And how many more people will die because of what I've done." Operations lined up on the chessboard of her mind; her pawns sacrificed in the opening moves two years ago, her opponent taking them, falling for each one of her obscure feints -- until someone inside betrayed her. Still, in this game family was supposed to be off limits, and with Ted down that could only mean one thing.

A new player had entered the game, and revenge was the oldest motive in the world, wasn't it?

+++++

Carol sat in the surgical waiting room with the family members of the other wounded -- and killed -- officers, and with hundreds of uniformed officers all milling about the scene was subdued bedlam. A tall black officer, an older woman came over and sat by her.

"I hear you know Ted Sherman?" the woman asked.

Carol looked up and nodded. "We've been together a while. I went up with him to Seattle last week, to see his sister."

"Oh, I didn't know. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Do you know anything about Lu...about Officer Simpson?"

"She didn't make it," the woman said, looking away and swallowing hard. "How did you know her?"

"She's been over to the house several times. I like her. A lot."

The woman looked at her again. "Are you sure you're feeling okay?"

"I'm scared," Carol said, looking down, putting her face in her hands, trying to choke off tears fighting for release, that wanted to spring free and carry her away to oblivion.

Then the room grew still as a surgeon walked into the room.

"Walker family?"

A woman and two children stood and he came over to them. "Let's go to a conference room," the surgeon said, and they walked away, heads down, shock settling over them...and the room grew quieter still.

Then an older black woman was standing in front of her...

"Are you Doctor Carol?" the woman asked.

"I guess so."

"Lu was my granddaughter," the old woman said. "She told me so much about you this week, and about Officer Sherman. She enjoyed talking to you both, and was as happy as I'd seen her in years."

"I, uh, well, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Carol said.

"How is he?" The woman asked. "Any word yet?"

"No."

Another wave of stillness, another surgeon standing by the door.

"Sherman family?"

Carol stood, and the officer by her side did as well.

"Here," the woman said, and she led Carol to the conference room. They sat, Carol expecting to hear the worst...

"I'm Dr Curry," the surgeon began. "Jeanie. Who's who?"

"Ellie Kingman, Sherman's watch commander. This is Carol, his girlfriend."

"I'm a physician," Carol said, out of the blue.

"Oh?" The surgeon said, and Kingman turned and looked at her anew.

"Psychiatry, at the West Pavilion."

"Ah. Well," Curry continued, "we resected Officer Sherman's left brachial artery. Sorry, that's what took so long. A solid-steel .223 round hit his left clavicle, bone fragments nicked the artery. Paramedics got expanders into him on the scene, or he'd have been in real trouble. An ortho is wrapping-up repairs to the clavicle right now, then I'll go in and close. My guess is he'll be in ICU for a couple of days, but you'll be able to talk to him later tonight, or tomorrow morning."

"He's going to make it, then?" Kingman said, starting to cry.

"Yes, but as long as we're here, my guess is he ought to retire after this. His left arm and shoulder will be very weak. Looks like he's been shot twice before, too? Is that right?"

"Yes," Kingman said.

"Well, maybe it's time for him to take a break, try something new."

"Any oxygenation issues, brain damage?" Carol asked.

"No, I talked with him a little before anesthesia, and he seemed intact, and there've been no issues during surgery, so I'd say he's good. Well, I've got to get back. Stay here as long as you need to, and I'll see you when he's been moved to the recovery room."

"Thanks, doctor," Kingman said, then she turned to Carol. "You're a doc? A psychiatrist? Where'd you meet?"

"One of his dive classes, couple of weeks ago."

"Hmm. I'm surprised, really."

"Surprised?"

"I thought, after Sandy and all that stuff..."

"I didn't get the impression he was looking for anyone," Carol said, laughing a little. "But when I met him? Gawd-almighty! I fell for him in about three minutes flat..."

Kingman laughed. "That's Ted. So, you didn't know Sandy?"

"No. Why?"

"Oh, she was something else. A real journalist, super smart, last of a breed. Sweet, too. I wouldn't say this, but it's only that you remind me of her in so many ways."

"Oh?"

"Not physically. No...oh, there was something in her eyes, in yours too, and, oh, I don't know. You just seem so familiar to me."

"I don't know what I'd do without him," Carol blurted out, now feeling light-headed, almost spaced out as waves of relief finally broke over her.

"Let's go get some coffee, maybe a breath of fresh air..."

They walked to the elevators and rode down to the main floor inside a gaggle of interns, then walked off in search of a coffee shop. They found a Starbuck's off the lobby then walked outside, sat on a bench in the sun.

"So, what happened in Seattle?" Kingman asked.

Carol shrugged, bit her lower lip. "She seemed pretty far gone by the time we got there."

"How was he -- after, I mean?"

Carol looked away, hated these kinds of subterfuges. "He's strong, more resourceful than I imagined."

"Sounds like Ted. I wonder if he'll want to retire after this one?"

"This one?"

"Third time for him, but nothing like this before."

"What happened out there? Does anyone know anything yet?"

"Looks like our guys got there before they could hit the target."

"I heard someone say it was an ambush?"

Kingman shrugged. "Way too soon to speculate. They're still working on the scene up there."

"Has anything like this ever happened before?"

"No. Not on this scale. Eight down in one incident? They were heavily armed, too."

"What if it was an ambush?"

"Motive. I can't think of a motive," Kingman almost whispered. "Police are a hard target, not something terrorists would go after..."

"Revenge? Isn't that the oldest motive?"

"Not like this. Revenge is very personal, usually directed at someone specific. Going after the department...just to make a statement...that just doesn't make sense."

"What if they were trying to get just one of the officers, one who responded?"

"Far-fetched. No one knows ahead of time who'll be dispatched to a call like that. Still, Ted called it in as an ambush, and he called for the FBI to respond. My guess is he thought it was a terrorist incident."

"Any idea who they were?"

"No."

"I don't know how you do it. All of you. I think about Lu and I just want to go away and crawl in a hole...god, she was such a sweet, screwed up kid."

"Screwed up?" Kingman said -- a little defensively, Carol thought. "How so."

"Depressed. I mean, a bad kind of depression. I told Ted if she was a patient of mine I'd have had her on an anti-depressant."

"Really? What did Ted have to say about that?"

Carol thought back, thought about his smile. "Something about half the department would need to be on them if I applied my usual criteria. I said something stupid then, something about that maybe not being such a bad thing."

"And let me guess," Kingman added. "He said if that happened a lot of cops would get killed."

"Exactly. That's just about exactly what he said."

"It's a thin line, Carol. After a few years on the street, lots of us walk a razor thin line between sanity and losing it completely. Being cynical, almost paranoid is part of the way you stay alive out on the street. Everyone you look at, everyone we deal with is a potential threat. Every call we respond to...well, it could be the last thing we ever do, and if you can't hold that edge, if you let down your guard for just one minute you become a danger -- not just to yourself, but to everyone you work with."

"Such an impossible way to work, to live."

"Yet if you're on the street, it's the only way you can stay alive. A conundrum, isn't it? It's why so many of our marriages come unglued. And why so many cops come unglued after they retire."

"This is awful coffee, you know?"

Kingman laughed. "We better head back upstairs. I need to check in and see what's going on." They walked back through the lobby and took the elevator back to the waiting room...

"Oh, there they are," Carol heard someone saying, and she turned to the commotion.

President Smithfield was coming her way, his wife too, and a phalanx of Secret Service agents surrounded them as they pushed their way across the crowded room, parting a path for the couple like an icebreaker.

"Which one of you is Sherman's girlfriend?" the old man said, and Carol hesitated, then raised her hand.

"That would be me, sir."

"Soon as we heard we came over. He's okay, I hear?"

"Yes, Mr President," Kingman said. "We have three confirmed dead, five wounded."

"Suspects?"

"Four dead, sir. I understand Sherman got all four of them."

The old man nodded his head. "Why am I not surprised?" He turned to Carol. "How long have you two been together?"

"Not that long, Mr President."

"Well, the important thing is you'll have a chance for more time together. You'll be in our prayers, young lady."

"Thank you, Mr President."

He turned to Kingman again. "Ellie, I'd like a word with you, please..."

Carol turned and saw the surgeon, Dr Curry, coming from the OR, and he came over to her. "Come with me," she said -- looking at Smithfield and his entourage -- and Carol followed her to the Post-OP ICU and into a cordoned off suite.

"He's not quite out from under yet," Curry said, "but I thought you'd like to see him for a second."

"Yes, thanks." She went to the side of his gurney, looked at him, trying her hardest not to cry. His eyes were still taped closed, a ventilator was still pumping air into his lungs, and she looked at the bank of monitor over his bed. Rhythm and sats all looked good, BP rock solid, and she held his hand, pressed a nail-bed and watched the blood rebound. There were pressure dressings on his left chest, and his left arm was bound tightly to his torso.

She remembered that morning, how they'd held each other after. How she loved him more and more with each passing day, and now, like lightning out of a clear blue sky -- this. This was the reality of his work, his calling...and then she felt Curry's hand on her shoulder.

"He's going to be fine," the surgeon said. "You ought to go home now, get some rest. Come back early later. He'll be in the ICU soon, up on seven."

"I..."

"You want me to call you? If anything changes?"

Carol got out her wallet, handed her a card, her shaking hands an embarrassment.

"Come on, let's get you out of here."

She found Kingman waiting for her in the waiting room, and Carol thought she looked anxious now, maybe preoccupied was a better word, but she smiled when she saw Curry. "How is he?" Kingman asked, and Carol smiled, Curry too.

"He'll be fine," Curry said. "Was that Smithfield?"

Kingman nodded. "He came to check on us."

Curry wondered just what the hell that meant, but let it drop. "Well, I'll let you know if anything changes."

"I need your personal cell," Kingman said, and she said it to the surgeon in a way that left no doubt this was an explicit order. Curry wrote her number down and handed it to her, looking more than a little put out now. Kingman looked at her watch, then back to Curry. "Answer the call you get at seven this evening. It's important."

"Thanks again." Carol said, and she watched as the surgeon abruptly turned and left. She turned back to Kingman, the question plain to see in her eyes. "Any news?"

"Not here. You ready to leave?"

"Uh, yeah, sure."

"Parked in the garage?"

"Yup."

"Okay, let's get out of here. Now."

+++++

Carol drove to the Westside station, following Kingman's Suburban all the way, and once there Kingman parked and came to Carol's Subaru.

"Drive," Kingman said as soon as she was in the seat.

"Where?"

"Doesn't matter." She put her attaché case on the floorboard and opened it, pulled out an Iridium Sat Phone and extended the antenna, then plugged in a small box to the auxiliary port. She speed-dialed a pre-programmed number, then enabled the encryptor, waiting for it to connect with the unit on the other end of the call.

"Pull in, over there," she said as the light on the unit went from red to green, then red again. "Go, one, go, go," she said.

"Go two," came the reply, over the phone's speaker.

The light switched to green again.

"Hello? Ellie?"

"We're here, both of us."

"Carol?"

"Yes? Who's this?" The voice sounded odd, metallic, and completely unrecognizable.

"Ellie will explain everything; just do what she says. Oh yes, I forgot to thank you last week, for your time on Hyperion. Goodbye for now."

The connection cut, Kingman put the phone away. "We're going to have to get you and Ted out of here, tonight."

"Was that...?" She stopped when Kingman held out her hand.

"Don't even say the name. Find a place for dinner. We have about an hour 'til I have to call Curry."

Carol pulled out into traffic and drove to a place near her clinic; she parked and they went in, ordered and waited for the hour to pass, Carol growing more confused by the minute. Still, Kingman was a link to Ted, wasn't she?

"I don't suppose you want to tell me what's going on?"

Kingman shook her head. "Can't. Not now, not yet." They ate in silence, and at seven she picked a disposable cell from her case and called Curry's number.

"Curry."

"Doctor, meet me at the Gayley entrance at eight."

"Who is this?"

"Eight o'clock, doctor. Sharp." Kingman broke the connection, then shook her head. "This isn't going to work," she sighed, then: "Okay, back to the medical center."

Carol paid the bill and they walked out to her car, and they made it back to the Westwood area, and the UCLA Medical Center, with ten minutes to spare. She turned onto Gayley and drove north, until Kingman told her to stop. She looked at her watch, then the clock on the center console: "Be right there at five after," Kingman said, pointing across the street as she got out of the car. "Now move, and keep an eye on your mirror."

Carol drove off, wondering just what the hell she'd gotten herself into now.

+++++

Jeanie Curry knew better than to follow the police captain's cryptic commands, but she'd seen the six o'clock news, heard the reports that the assailants had no records at all, nothing -- not even fingerprints -- anywhere. A commentator exclaimed it was like those four men had never existed. And then, what about Smithfield? What had he been doing up there?

'No, something's not right,' she told herself, and that Kingman woman looked like she needed a helping hand...and like she meant business.

She walked out the Gayley entrance at 8:02, and Kingman walked up to her seconds after she appeared.

"Let's cross the street."

"Listen, I don't know who the devil...?"

"You want to save Sherman's life?"

"What's going on?"

"Just answer the question."

"Of course I do..."

"Then come with me."

+++++

The Chief of Police held a press conference at ten the next morning, reading the names of the dead aloud before a sea of reporters, and into the record of the Department's Fallen.

When he came to Theodore Sherman's name Ellie Kingman broke out in tears, hiding her face from the world. Reporters and photographers gathered 'round her after the ceremony, shoving microphones in her face, a barrage of flashes strobing the scene, and she tried her best to describe her feelings about yesterday's events, and the loss of her very dear friend Ted Sherman, and so soon after his wife passed.

Three Presidents were on hand, in a show of solidarity some considered uncommon among the political class, yet many remarked that former President Grover Smithfield seemed overtly preoccupied, almost distracted, during the proceedings. Indeed, some said he appeared almost angry, yet no seemed to know of a good reason why.

Radar tracked a Swiss registered Gulfstream G650 from KBUR until it departed US airspace at 0937 hrs Mountain Time, crossing Montana on it's way to Alberta, on a filed flight plan stating Zurich the primary destination, Geneva it's alternate.

+++++

"Gulfstream 43 Golf, Ben Gurion approach, clear for a straight-in approach, land runway one-two, winds northeast at ten, altimeter two-niner niner-five. You'll have company at your four o'clock through the ADIZ to the TDZ."

"43 Golf." The pilot switched off the autopilot; her co-pilot added ten degrees flaps, then dropped the landing gear.

"43 Golf, clear to land, and clear the active at Echo 2 Right."

"Golf clear at Echo 2 Right."

Carol and Dr Jeanie Curry buckled their seat-belts, looked out the large oval windows at the sleeping city just ahead -- and as the sprawling beachfront seemed to reach out for them Carol felt another surge of apprehension. The Gulfstream was lined up now, yet still out over the Mediterranean for it's final approach, and to her she felt this was the final approach to whatever life lay ahead. She leaned forward a little and looked out the window, was shocked to see two jets tucked in close to their jet's right wingtip, and two more just a few hundred yards away. Military? Fighters?

Their sudden appearance only served to drive home the enormity of her departure from the United States. The stakes had been raised, and she turned back to look at Ted, and the medic tending him.

Had President Smithfield been responsible for the attack? The Israeli colonel sitting forward had seemed to imply as much, but then he had also explicitly stated that at least two of the men had been positively identified as Bulgarians, known agents of the Russian FSB. What exactly did that mean? That a former American President had collaborated with the current Russian government to take out a bunch of cops to get at Ted?

They idea was preposterous, and she knew it...so...why the escort? Why all the suspicion? What was happening? Why were all these Israeli warriors so on-edge? What did they know -- that she didn't?

And what was at stake?

She looked out the window again, looked down as a jagged edge of beachfront high-rises streak-by just below the wing, then a sea of city neighborhoods not so very different from those she had seen in Los Angeles -- at least from the air -- at least, she thought, in the middle of the night.

So many varieties of us, yet we're all the same. Where did we come from?

Aren't we all the same?

This last flight was beginning to feel more than a little surreal, too. Smooth, incredibly quiet compared to an airliner, but then there were those fighters hanging off their wingtip. What was the threat, because somebody must think we're were still in danger? But from whom? And why?

The ground was reaching up quickly now, flashing strobes and glowing blue taxiways -- and an El Al 767 holding short of the runway, it's lights blinding her as they passed. Seconds later she felt the Gulfstream flare and land, and she looked out the window as the fighters peeled away and disappeared into the night, then as spoilers sprouted from the top of the wing. The engines dropped into reverse-thrust and roared into the night, and the seatbelt grew tight across her waist. Then sudden silence and gentle deceleration, a very smooth turn at the end of the runway -- and then the jet slowed to a gentle stop beside a darkened hangar. She saw Land Rovers out there, and troops. Lots of troops -- and all of them carrying machine guns, looking nervously into the night.