An Evening at the Carnival with Mister Christian

"Oh?"

"Mimi, my sister. She's really very good, by the way."

"I bet she is. Would you stay with me, Ben?"

"Yes, of course, if you'd like me to."

"I was going to ask you to stay with me. Last night, I mean."

"Really? I was hoping you might."

"Well, hope no more..." She squeezed his hand, and she felt his kiss, first on her hand, then on her forehead. "It's so strange, this being blind. I think I don't much care for the sensation."

"You'll be fine, Jeanie. I know you will."

"What happened? Do you know what happened?"

"Someone tried to kill an owl."

"Did they...?"

"No," he whispered, "this owl is too smart, and her enemies too predictable."

"What about Carol? Is she..."

"Mainly burns, not so bad as mine, however. We will all be in the hospital for a few days, I think."

"The town? What about the people in that little town...?"

"I don't know," he lied, the memory too much to hold up to the light in that sundered moment. "We are almost there. The injection was, well, pre-anesthesia I think, but I don't know those things. You will fall asleep soon. But I will be with you on the other side. Okay?"

"Okay. On the other side..." He felt her drifting away, then her hand squeezed his one last time -- and he leaned over and kissed her again. Her skin felt cool and dry now, almost lifeless, and he turned and looked at the city, and all the impossible hate that surrounded it, wondering when it would all just simply stop.

+++++

The Gulfstream touched down, spoilers flared and reverse thrust roared, then the jet taxied between a row of hangers and executed a tight 180 degree turn. Two sedans approached and the jet's air-stairs deployed; the general walked down the steps as the first car, a black BMW 5 series stopped by his side. The driver's door opened and a woman got out from behind the wheel, and she walked over to the general.

"Corrine Duruflé, DGSE," the woman said.

"Is that him?" the general asked.

"Oui. Are you certain she is involved? That we must do this?"

"Fingerprints are confirmed, and we've now traced her first steps into the United States almost thirty years ago. We need to know more, who her controllers are, and where this will lead us," he said with a shrug, "Who knew about, uh, this attempt. And we are running out of time."

"So, she was a Soviet plant?"

"It would appear so. Her so-called parents ran her. A young lieutenant in the KGB was their controller. A bright youngster named Putin, by the by, as things would have it."

"Merde."

"Yes, and so the worm turns." He turned and looked at the man still sitting in the sedan. "Does he know why he's here?"

"I've told him nothing. The past few weeks...well, they've been very uncomfortable for him. I'm not sure about his state of mind."

"Well, Smithfield insisted we make contact with him. Bring him up, then we'll be on our way."

Corrine went back to the BMW and got behind the wheel. "Sumner, President Smithfield is onboard. He needs you now. There have been attacks."

"I can't leave now!" Collins said. "Leave Charley, alone? With Phoebe and Liz? You've got to be kidding me..."

"It's very important, I think, or he wouldn't ask."

"He signed my goddamn retirement papers!"

"Sumner, please." She looked at him, took his hand. "I'll take care of Charley, if you'd like."

He looked at her again. "There's no way out, is there? There never was. This is the way it'll always be."

"I'm sorry," she said. And she meant it, because she almost felt sorry for him. Almost...

He looked over at the Gulfstream, the Swiss registration number on the engine, watched the men from the refueling truck topping off the wing tanks, then he looked back at her. "You can't run away from the past," he said as he looked into her eyes, "because there ain't no place that far away." He sighed, he turned and smiled at her, and then began laughing hysterically. "You know who said that?" he asked as he wiped his eyes.

"No, Sumner. Who?"

"Uncle Remus. Look him up someday, would you? And remember him when you think of me." He opened the door and slammed it shut, then sprinted over to the waiting Gulfstream and bounded up the stairs. As soon as he was aboard the air-stairs retracted and the engines spooled up.

"Goodbye, my friend," Corrine said as she pulled away from the jet, and she watched as it taxied back to the runway -- then roared back into the morning sky.

+++++

The Bell 212 hovered over the landing pad and touched down gently; the rear doors slid open, filling the cabin with air that was almost too hot to breathe. Men carried a wheelchair to the right side, instinctively ducking their heads while the main rotor spooled down. They helped the frail looking woman down into the chair and she rolled off towards a weathered and windblown shack a few meters from the pad. Two man ran after her, helped her inside, then the helicopter powered up and lifted off, circling the site once before turning and heading north.

Once inside --and out of the scorching heat -- she waited for the elevator door to open, then rolled inside with her escort. After the doors hissed shut, she held her nose and cleared her ears as the car began it's quarter-mile descent into the earth. The facility had originally been constructed as a command and control bunker, and indeed parts of it still functioned in that capacity. Israel's 120 ICBMs lay buried in the desert, controlled from this facility, but now it was home to the most ambitious manned spaceflight program ever conceived.

She rolled into the Command Room, a kind of Mission Control suite, and she looked at four huge screens on the wall.

"Have you observed displacement yet?"

"Yes, as expected, but the effect is much larger than anticipated."

"Show me."

An overhead, down-polar view of the earth popped up on-screen, the earth's Van Allen radiation belts clearly displayed, but instead of the expected equal distribution she expected to see there was an unusual pucker in the formation, and it was large. Larger than any before...

"We're going to have a visitor," she said gleefully, and the men and women in the room looked at her for a long time. They had never once seen a smile on her face, and they thought she looked odd...like a bird, perhaps an owl.

+++++

Collins stood in the galley, just aft of the cockpit, and read the dossier. He looked up, looked at the general, then back at Smithfield. "This reads like an old Cold War spy novel," he said as he looked at the woman. "Fuck...great legs, too."

The general leaned forward and whispered in his ear.

"Yeah?" Collins said, grinning. "Well, that may not be possible when I'm done. You have the bag?"

"Yes, here it is."

Collins opened it, inventoried the techniques these implements would allow, then turned and read through the dossier one more time. "Well, let's see how long she holds out."

He walked down the aisle to President Smithfield and sat across from him. "Good to see you, sir," Collins said, and the old man turned to face him, looked almost startled when he recognized who it was...

"Dear God, son, you didn't have time to change?" Smithfield looked at Collins in his khaki cargo shorts and oil-splattered t-shirt, and then at his ratty boat shoes -- and the old man almost shook his head with disgust.

"Sorry sir. It was warm out, and I was just getting to work on a bad fan belt when Corrine dropped by."

"You still on that goddamn boat?"

"Yessir. Mr President, I'd like to have some time alone with your wife, if I may."

The old man looked at her and shook his head, the sadness in his eyes plain to see. "Of course," he said as he stood and went forward. Collins saw the old man's hands were shaking now, and seeing this looming mortality filled him with dread. Smithfield had been a good president simply because he was a decent human being, but events always overtook decent men -- and crushed them.

He turned and sat across from the old man's 'wife' -- if that's really what she was, and he stared at her for several minutes, doing his best to unnerve her. "Mrs Smithfield? Linda? May I call you Linda?" he said at last.

"Yes, if you wish." Her eyes were evasive, like a corned animal looking for an easy escape.

"Linda," he began, holding up a file folder, "I'm looking over your history and I have a few questions."

"I'm sure Grover can take care of those, young man."

"Actually, Linda, I think I'm about fifteen years your senior."

The woman turned and looked at him. "So you are," she smiled.

"Let's see, Linda Belinski, father Leonard, mother Laura, born Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania December 25, 1979. Oh, Merry Christmas, by the way."

The woman stared at him. "I'm sure this is going somewhere?" the woman said. "But I'm tiring of this game, whatever it is you're playing."

"I don't suppose the name Amalia Karlovna means anything to you?"

"No, of course not." He saw her left eyelid twitch, then the left corner of her mouth.

"Josef, and perhaps Lara Karlovna? Ring any bells?"

She turned and faced him, looked him in the eye. "No."

He pulled a syringe out of the bag, then a packet of alcohol swabs, and looked her in the eye. "The choice is yours, of course, but it will hurt much less this way." He turned, saw the general standing in the aisle behind him, and he saw that she saw him too.

Without a word she held out her arm, and Collins found a vein and injected a small amount of amobarbital, then sat back and waited. Her eyes fluttered a moment later, then he hooked electrodes to her forehead and ankles and took a little metal box from the bag and hooked it to the leads. He turned it on and sent a small pulse of current to the leads; the effect was instantaneous, and horrifying. The woman's body went rigid as a board, then her bowels and bladder emptied. He cut off the current and her body relaxed, then the woman turned her head and looked at him.

"Please...don't..."

"Josef and Lara Karlovna. Tell me about them," Collins said, only now he was speaking Russian.

"I don't know such names," the woman said, now also speaking in Russian.

He reached for the dial and the woman looked away; flying out the window would be such an easy escape, she thought, then the general lay her seat back, and extended the leg rest. Collins sent current to the leads and the woman's back arched, and as he let off the current she screamed -- filling the cabin with total despair.

When she came around she looked at him again. "Please do not do this to me," she said in English.

He replied in Russian: "I'll stop as soon as you answer my questions truthfully." He moved and stood over her now, and with his mastery complete he spoke with pure malice as he looked down into her eyes. He held up a a piece of glass, in form and shape it looked exactly like a pencil, and he held this up to her eyes. "Do you see this?"

"Da."

"I am going to place this up your urethra. Do you know what that is?"

"Nyet."

"It's where urine leaves the body. I am going to place this up your urethra, then turn on the current. Do you know what will happen then?"

Her eyes were saucers now, the terror he saw manifest in the writhing conflict she was experiencing...fight or flight...withhold or tell all I know...

He moved lower, took out a penknife and began cutting away her pantyhose.

"Alright...I will talk now. Please, no more..."

The woman talked all the way to Tel Aviv, and by the time they landed he was through with her, she had nothing left to tell. The President looked at the poor, wasted wretch he had once promised to love and cherish and obey one last time, then he left the Gulfstream, stopping only once to speak to Collins and the general at the bottom of the air-stairs. He shook Collins' hand one last time, then whispered into the general's ears, then the old man left, driving away in a convoy of Land Rovers.

"So," the general said gayly, "you want to eat some Russian tonight?"

"No thanks, sir, I'm trying to quit."

+++++

Colonel Katz -- Ben -- stood beside Carol in her room, the morphine finally tapering off now, but pain still obvious on her face. He reached out and felt the skin on her forehead: cold and clammy, and her BP was still very high.

She felt someone touching her face and opened her eyes, looked up and saw the Israeli colonel -- and it all came back in a rush. The explosion, the wild ride to the shelter, the searing pain finally reaching her in the darkness, then the nurse by her side, an injection, and now here she was.

"You're awake!" she heard him say.

"You're very perceptive."

"You're also in Tel Aviv, at the Sourasky Medical Center. You have a few burns, and your left humerus was broken."

She looked down, saw her plastered arm was taped to her torso. "Damn, and I use my left hand to pick my nose."

"A pity. Need mine?"

She tried to laugh, but thought better of it. "So, what else is going on? World War Three, perhaps?"

He grinned. "No. Not yet."

"Jeanie?"

"In the OR, glass fragments in both eyes. Burns, a few small fractures."

"Hyperion...what about Hope -- Sherman?"

"Safe."

"Where's Ted?"

"Two floors below, still in ICU."

"What about radiation?"

"Radiation?"

"Wasn't that an atomic weapon of some sort?"

He shook his head. "Fuel air bomb. Like napalm, on steroids."

"So, no radiation. What about the people in that town."

"The town's gone; I don't know about casualties."

"Was it the Russians?"

He shrugged. "Not my department."

"I don't know what's happening to me," she said -- still in a daze. "I mean, really...what are we doing here? Why am I here?"

"I'm going to go check on Jeanie, and Ted. I'll be back soon and we'll talk more."

"Jeanie, huh?" Carol said, grinning, but he was gone. When the door opened she saw troops stationed outside her door, and she remembered why she'd never be able to go home again.

He walked down to the ICU, found a high level security team in the corridor outside Sherman's suite and groaned. "What now?" he said as he approached the room. A woman from the security detail stopped him; he presented his Hyperion ID and she let him pass.

Smithfield was in the room, yet Katz saw the man was alone and wondered where his wife was; Sherman was still out, his eyes still taped and a respirator breathing for him, and he walked over to the physician and nurse tending him.

"How's he doing?"

The physician looked up at him, at the rank on his collar, then shrugged. "He's thrown two clots, we're treating with tPA."

"Is he going to make it?"

The physician shrugged. "I doubt it, but you never know."

Katz left the room and walked up to the OR floor and checked the status board; Jeanie was in recovery and he went to the information desk and asked to speak to Dr Kaye, then went and stood by a window, looked out over the city, and the beach beyond.

He saw her reflection in the window a few minutes later and turned.

"Little sister," he said. "How did it go?"

"Good. No damage to the retinas, so she'll be okay. Might need glasses, however, but too soon to tell."

He bunched his lips, tried to hide his relief. "Okay," he said.

She looked at him again, longer this time, looking at the fear in his eyes. "So, she means something to you, this one?"

He smiled, looked away, then back at her. "I could never hide things from you, could I?"

"Well, mother always wanted you to marry a doctor...but a gentile? She'll be spinning in her grave." She stood by his side and they looked out the window, and he put his arm around her. "Oh, little brother, when she's better we'll have you two over for supper."

"I'd like that. When can I speak to her?"

"An hour, better if you wait two."

"Okay. I've got to go...see you in a bit."

He went back to the ICU, hoping to find Smithfield again, and he saw the old man talking to Sherman's physician outside the suite. He walked up and looked at the old man, and then at the Mossad colonel by his side.

Smithfield looked at him as he walked up, looked at the expression in his eyes. "And you are?" the former president said.

"Sherman's girlfriend is here, upstairs in the burn unit. I thought you'd want to know."

"The burn unit?" he said, exasperated. "Was she...?"

"Yessir. Would you like to come with me?"

"I'll be back in a moment," Smithfield said to the physician, then he turned and followed Katz to the burn unit.

Carol turned to them when they walked in the room, and she seemed shocked to see the former president, almost as sad as he seemed to be when he saw her. "Hello," she said when he got to her bedside.

"I've been to see Officer Sherman," he began...

"Ted, sir. I'm sure he'd want you to call him Ted."

He nodded. "Yes. He's still not out of the woods, I'm afraid."

She nodded, looked away.

"I feel responsible," the old man said. "On his report, the report on my son's accident..." Smithfield stopped, pinched the bridge of his nose. "He found the electronics had been tampered with, the so-called 'drive by wire' system. Uncontrolled throttle response, he called it in the report, but he dug through all that wreckage and found the module. How many investigators do you know would have done something like that?"

Carol looked at him, looked at the tears in his eyes and wondered where this was coming from.

"He found her fingerprints, you know," the old man said, his voice cracking now as he choked back memories of Linda.

"Sir?" Carol said, now clearly concerned.

"My wife. She was Russian, a spy, as it turns out, trying to get to Hyperion, through me. When my first wife died, she moved in so fast... But she'd worked for me, for so many years. It felt so natural, her joining me." He sighed, then took a deep breath and looked out the window at the sea, and the setting sun. "I wonder how many of us they've compromised like this, how deep their penetrations really go?"

"Mr President," Katz began, "what are you thinking?"

"Hmm? Well...think of the implications, Colonel," the old man said. "How many agents like her have been planted over the years? These operations go back to the Brezhnev era, perhaps even earlier, but almost all of the senior operations directorate of the old KGB is now in the Kremlin. Do you know, Lenin once said that when the revolution of the proletariat stalled, and by the way, he predicted it would, the party would need to appear to implode, and that would foster a false sense of security within the world's remaining capitalist oligarchies? His words, by the way, not mine; his mind was pure, unrestrained Russian paranoia. Anyway, without the kind of political competition that communism provided, he told his pals that capitalist countries would then expand uncontrollably, and then be consumed when an even greater revolution of the proletariat occurred. That's just pure Marx, Das Kapital, German rationalism given a healthy transplant of Russian fatalism. Yet, even so you can see it happening today. Hell, you can breathe it in the air, from Boston to Barcelona."

"The end of history, indeed," Katz said.

"Fukuyama? Decent analysis for his time, but no one beats History. She often has designs of her own, I'm afraid. Young lady, sorry, but a lot's happened the last few hours, and I'm afraid things are only going to get more interesting tonight." He took her hand, looked in her eyes. "I hope Officer...I hope Ted...pulls through." He turned to Katz then: "Colonel? I need a secure COMMs facility. I need to talk to Hyperion actual."

"Yessir. If you'll follow me."

Carol watched them leave, then turned to look out the window at the setting sun, burning so bright far beyond the edge of this world, then she wondered how many of them were out there -- on the far side of the sky.