NightSide - Asynchronous Mud

NightSide

Part I: Background Noise

Zermatt // December, 1978

She walked out of the hotel, looked up at the canopy of gray mist overhead and squinted into the snow, turning her head and looking around the hotel's grounds -- slowly, but very carefully. The Matterhorn was just fleetingly visible beyond and within the thin veils of wind-driven cloud, the peak a bitter claw tearing into the gray underbelly of the sky. She turned, looked at the copper spire of the parish church just a few meters away, at the gold numerals on the clock's faces; it was 0900 hours -- and just then the muted bell began tolling. She smiled, looked at the watch on her wrist, a new Rolex she'd bought the day before, and she smiled at the unerring inaccuracy of this impulsive bit of vanity. A day old and already a minute slow. She shook her wrist, in effect winding the watch, then undid the diver's clasp and took it off; she pulled out the stem and adjusted the time, checking it against the clock on the church while she also looked at the watch face.

She admired Precision -- in all things -- and took great pride in the precision of her craft, but she had recently discovered she most admired those things with their reputations deeply rooted in the word. Equally, she detested things that masked shoddy craftsmanship behind a veneer of precision, and she was vaguely concerned about this new watch, because in her line of work timing was critical. She slipped the watch over her wrist and clasped it, then walked around to the hotel's ski room and picked up her skis, a pair of shiny new Volkl Tigers. She slung them up on her right shoulder and began walking through town to the Trockener Steg. She stood in the shuffling line and then boarded the tram and, luckily, found herself by a window; she looked across the Theodulgletscher at the Matterhorn as the lift carried her up into the clouds, but soon the view disappeared within swirling curtains of snow. Forty minutes and a transfer later, she stood atop the Testa Grigia and looked south into Italy. No clouds, just sunshine...and a glisteningly broad expanse of fresh powder leading down the sun-dappled valley to a village...and the scene felt to her a little like she was looking at specks of dirt on fields of white velvet.

She wiped off her goggles and slipped pole-straps over her wrists, then she pushed-off down the trail for the alpine village of Cervinia, and those specks she'd seen were many miles away. She stopped every few minutes and looked around as she caught her breath, and more than once she pulled out her Leica M and took a few pictures. She took her time, in other words, acting the bored tourist all the while as skied through the open expanse of pristine snow into the village. She skated along the almost empty streets to a decent looking restaurant in the middle of town and took off her skis, put them in the rack out front and locked them up. Taking off her gloves she unbuckled the topmost buckles on her boots before she walked along aimlessly, and eventually, she made her way to a cozily timbered restaurant and she walked in, waited to be seated. A minute later she was led to a table along a far wall, and yet she dropped a glove as she sat. The man seated at the table next to hers reached down and picked it up, handed it to her.

"Excuse me," he said in Italian, "but you dropped this." He had just paid his bill and stood to leave.

"Thank you," the woman said in English, but she didn't look at him as he left. She took the glove and put it in her little backpack, then looked at the menu. She drank water, ordered veal, and left an hour later. On her way out to the street she cleaned off her gloves and put them on, carefully taking the small piece of paper the man had placed inside and slipping it inside a jacket pocket, then she put her skis over her shoulder and walked through town to the lift. She read the note and smiled once in her chairlift, and an hour later she was atop the Testa Grigia once again, her legs cold from the long chair-ride up the mountain, but she stopped, took a few more pictures of the Matterhorn before she skied back down through the trees into Zermatt. She walked back to the hotel and dropped her skis at the basement ski room, then walked on into town, tossing pieces of the paper into several rubbish bins along the way.

She walked to a patisserie near the Gornergratbahnof, went inside and looked around the room. She glanced briefly at an older man across the room, saw an empty table near his and walked there. She leaned over, released the top two buckles on her ski boots and put her gloves on the table. A waitress came by and she ordered coffee and a few cookies, then let out a long sigh.

The man had a dog by his side, not at all unusual here in the village, but this dog was a little larger than those usually found in a bakery like this. As she leaned over, she reached out and rubbed the dog's ears, ignoring the man as he looked down at her, perhaps a little annoyed.

She looked up at the man. "I'm sorry, but he's adorable."

"Ah. No harm done," the man said, his accent vaguely middle eastern.

"Is he a setter," she asked.

"Well, he's a she, but yes, she's a Gordon."

The dog seemed to know they were talking about her, and basked in the sudden attention while the woman rubbed her ears. "Do you hunt with her?" she asked.

"No, I'm afraid not, though I think she would be good doing so. She has a keen nose."

"My father hunted with setters, English, black and whites. Two girls."

"And where was this?" the man asked. "In America?"

"Yes, in Minnesota."

"Ah, yes. Very cold there, is it not? You don't look like you're from America."

"I'm not. I was born in Argentina. My father worked for 3M, and my parents immigrated when I was very little."

"Ah, and what do you do?" he asked.

"Me? Textile design. Mainly commercial fabrics, airline seat upholstery, things like that."

"Ah. So, this is a working vacation?"

"Sort of, we have a plant near Zurich, and one in North Carolina. I thought I'd get in a few days skiing before heading back home."

"How was the snow today?"

"Not bad for this time of year. Still crusty, some ice, but that's December snow for you."

"Indeed."

"Do you ski," she asked.

"Oh, not so very much these days," he said, smiling absently.

Her coffee came and she drank the strong local brew, ate just one of the cookies and paid the bill. She stood to leave, smiled at the man and left quietly.

He watched her as she left, then looked at the man standing outside and nodded. The woman stepped outside while she put her gloves on, then she walked back to the Zermatterhof, barely smiling when she caught a passing reflection of the man following her in a closing door.

He probably thought he was being very clever, the woman thought -- smiling to herself -- and not the blundering fool he so obviously was.

+++++

He barely lifted his hand, signaled the waitress to bring his bill; sufficiently nervous now, he quickly paid up and left the bakery before he'd finished his coffee. Once outside he looked down the street, saw the woman and her tail, then he looked back down the street towards his house, saw his other bodyguards watching and he turned, walked to the safety of his house.

"Do you know who she is?" the man said when he reached this second bodyguard.

This guard shook his head, and he spoke in Persian. "We'll get the roll into the diplomatic pouch tonight. We should know by tomorrow morning."

"It should be easy enough to check out her story," the man said.

"Yes, General." This man was a captain in the SAVAK, the Shah's secret intelligence service, and he'd recently completed a year's refresher at the CIA's counter-terrorism center near Yorktown, Virginia. He was, in a word, efficient. Ruthless, but very efficient.

The general was of the old school, however, one of the original men recruited by Norman Schwarzkopf in 1953 to create a secret security apparatus concurrent with the Pahlavi restoration. As such, the general's CIA-inspired methods were discreet but direct. Brutally direct, according to the general's friends and associates, and he was one of the most feared, and reviled, men in the Shah's Iran.

While revolutionary impulses had flared in Iran since '53, this time things felt different, at least to many of the Shah's long-time supporters. Religious fervor had attached to student organizations, and even previously secular labor movements, beginning in October 1977, and now many of the Shah's more accurately informed associates were retreating to their estates in Switzerland and South America, waiting for the inevitable. Still, the general wasn't taking any chances. He had long known he was a target of the opposition, knew there was a price on his head, so when anyone, absolutely anyone approached or even looked at him too long, they were tailed, their identity ascertained, and if that wasn't possible, their non-hostility confirmed by more direct means. People with even remotely hostile backgrounds simply disappeared, even in Switzerland. Many already had, the captain knew. That was his job, and he enjoyed considerable status in the state for doing it well.

The general turned and looked down the snowy street once again. The woman looked to be heading to the Zermatterhof, an upscale place for well-heeled American tourists, not spoiled Iranian-student-malcontents or their agents. He sighed, shrugged his shoulders slightly and looked at the captain, then started back up the hill that led through stands of quiet trees, and to his chalet hidden there.

+++++

So, security is as tight as expected, she thought as she walked up the steps to the hotel, resisting the urge to turn and look at the idiot tailing her. He'd followed so close, and on the same side of the street! She understood the general's men were well trained, so this guy must have been new, fresh out of school, or... What else could it mean? Was the man in charge of the general's security simply sloppy? She was an unknown, therefore she had to be a high priority target until proven otherwise, and if that was so why was this low-level stooge on her tail? Was the general's detail not as well trained as she'd been briefed to expect, or were there time-sensitive gaps in his coverage? More interesting still, was the security detail too small for effective coverage?

She walked the stairs to her room, put away her ski clothes and went to the bathroom. She looked at her reflection in the mirror while the tub filled with hot water, and she soaked for a good half hour before finishing off with the shower wand. She made it down to the dining room before seven and took her usual table, and from the corner of her eye she saw the stooge who'd tailed her earlier; he was across the room at a small table -- alone, of course. He studiously ignored her, another sign of his poor training.

She ate her smoked trout and salad quietly, bending over more than once to rub her right leg, pretending her muscles were painfully sore. The main course came, then dessert, and still she sat quietly, not rushing, not giving off any signs she was aware that this festering turd was following her.

Her waiter, an attentive young Yugoslavian named Miliden, asked if she wanted coffee, and she said she preferred espresso, with a twist. He smiled and walked off to the kitchen; she pulled out a trail map and looked at the runs off the Gornergrat, decided to try those in the morning. Miliden returned with her coffee and she continued to look over the map, finally leaving a little before nine.

The stooge left a few minutes later. He left a small tip.

+++++

The captain entered the living room, saw the general sitting by the fireplace, deep in thought. He hesitated, not wanting to disturb the old man, so almost decided against disrupting their usual routine. He coughed as he closed the door behind him, then walked to the fireplace. "General?"

"Yes, Hassan, what is it?"

"There is nothing new to report, but there is more evidence that Khomeini is more involved than we previously suspected..."

"Can we not get to him?"

"Two operations have so far failed, as you know. We are trying to position assets now, for another attempt."

"Next?"

"The woman returned to her room, had dinner alone and no one other than her waiter approached her during the meal. The waiter is well known, not an agent. As a precaution, a locator had been affixed to her skis, but apparently, a leg was bothering her so she may not go out tomorrow." the captain told his general, wrapping up this brief update.

Now that he was closer, he could see the general had that faraway look in his eyes. He was interested in this woman; indeed, it had been several months since the general had been with a woman, but the captain knew the general had 'a thing' for American women, especially if they were young. Especially if they looked like this one. Well, they were going back to Tehran in a few days, and the 'old man' could stand having his 'clock cleaned' -- as his trainers in Virginia used to say -- before heading back into the storm.

"What do you think? Could she be..."

"We will know more in the morning, sir. Does she...interest you?" The captain had never seen such confusion in the old man's eyes before, and he was unsettled by the sight.

"When I looked into her eyes, Hassan, I saw the face of an angel," the old man said. In fact, I think I saw God."

The captain looked nervously around the room, hoping there was no one else around to hear him speak like this.

"Anyway," the general said, breaking the spell, "it's time to sleep. As you say, we will know more in the morning..." He rose and walked up the stone stairway to his room, slipped out of his robe and slippers and into bed.

Almost instantly, he felt himself falling in the darkness.

He saw the earth just in shadow far below, and darkness reaching up for him. Then he was falling, falling and gathering speed, his robe slapping in the slipstream, the roar soon almost deafening. He knew he was falling to his death, wondered if a bomb had been placed on his jet...

He looked down, saw nothing but the bare limbs of dark winter trees standing in deep gloom -- like arms reaching up for him out of the snow -- and in a heartbeat, he was falling through the outstretched arms of the forest, until...

...he was among stands of whispering trees, staring at them, lost in the wonder that he was still, somehow, alive. He looked around this strange place while he collected his thoughts. There was no sky, only a deep gray fog that was only vaguely lighter overhead, and everything he looked at seemed to radiate an aura of blackness. Veils of bare-limbed trees disappeared within layers of darkening mist, and suddenly he knew there was nothing beyond the darkness. There was only here. There was only now. And this was eternity.

"This isn't a dream," he sighed as he bent down and picked up a handful of wet, mold-covered leaves. He turned them in his hand, studied them, then brought the decaying mass to his nose, smelling the darkest earth on his hands, and just then thoughts like the stones of years came to him, crushing his soul, the weight of all his life's burdens pushing him down into the earth. Leaves came to his face and he kissed them, then in a flash he was by them and he watched as they drifted away in the darkness.

Then he heard a rustling in the air and turned to face the sound.

He saw an old, cast-iron post, very tall, perhaps ten feet tall, with an ornate cast-iron lamp on top, and the lamp was aglow, it's feeble amber light just barely penetrating the gloom. She was there, her face turned towards the sky, her back to him, then she started to fade away. She was, he saw, caped in deepest maroon, her flowing auburn hair adrift in the dark mist's silky stillness, yet even so she too was veiled in the black aura of this place.

There was nothing he could do.

He walked towards the amber lamplight, he began to follow her -- like a memory he couldn't shake...

He reached the lamppost, saw it had been formed of copper, yet now it was a weathered, blackened verdigris, and he reached out, felt the cold metal on his skin and slowly shook his head. Where had she gone? Into the light?

No, she was far ahead now, standing under another lamppost, waiting for him. He saw the same feeble glow lighting her way... then he looked at her feet. She was on a path of some sort -- and he looked down, saw only leaves so he brushed them aside with his foot. He saw oddly shaped bricks under the leaves, but she was walking again so he followed her -- again -- on the same path.

She walked ahead, he followed her to the next lamp post, then the next, and the pathway became uneven, almost rough, and he tripped once, falling to an path full of rotting corpses.

His hand recoiled from the sight as his mind raced to react. What did this mean?

This path was formed from decomposing bodies, leaves mingling with flesh, shards of bones poking through the forest floor here and there. Then he saw rolling waves of skulls, dark pockets of hollow eyes looking up at him through the leaves, vacant eyes following him as he stood and resumed walking. The skulls were everywhere he looked now, and within every memory that came to him, their disjointed stares defining his Walpurgisnacht, then he heard music. A piano playing in the distance, playing a nocturne, and he knew this was their music. 'Is this the music of the skulls? Is that what I hear?'

...but then he stopped, and he stared at the woman -- because now he could see that it was she who was playing the piano...

...and then he found he was standing at the base of a large stairway...

...and the stair's appearance was oddly Greek, he thought. An arced stairway of polished white marble waited just ahead, flanked at the base by two more verdigris lamp posts, while at the top there appeared to be a landing of sorts, and beyond, a stone archway. A doorway, he guessed, but leading to where?

But then she was walking up the stairs, her pace stately, her maroon cape trailing down the stairway as she ascended, her hair drifting on errant breezes. And as before, he could do nothing but follow her. He felt impelled, yet when she reached the landing she stopped and turned to face him, and the sight of her imperious beauty simply took his breath away. She was regal, yet he could also see that she too was damned. She stood in whorish splendor, maroon corset showing beneath her cape, garters attached to charcoal lace stockings and fantastically high heels. He walked closer and stopped when he saw her face: the flesh looked like smoothest ice, her lips a mottled maroon -- just like the makeup around her eyes, he thought. But no, this wasn't makeup. No, what he saw was decay. Withered flesh, decaying before his eyes -- turning into another skull, turning into death, death-like skulls within the forest floor -- and the sight of her suddenly filled him with dread, then slowly, impossibly, an impenetrable gray lust came to him, spreading like the fires of Hell through his loins.

As he reached her she turned and walked to the far side of the landing -- but now he could see there was nothing beyond the arched entry. Only the trees, and that same infinite gray, waited...

And when walked through the arch she stepped off the landing and into the mist and he wanted to scream, but he was too late. He wanted to hide his face in his hands as the faces of all the people he'd killed over the past three decades came flooding through memory, drowning his soul like the weight of raw earth falling on a coffin. He wanted to cry, to release his humanity from the prison he'd created in his mind, but nothing came from his lips but the silence of the dead. He was dry inside, as withered and decayed as all of the rest.