The Eighty-eighth Key Ch. 59

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A few hours after Didi left his room left a police inspector of some kind came to visit Callahan. He was an old man, maybe about the same age as Callahan, but there any similarities ended. This inspector was short and lithe, more like a coiled spring than Harry's lanky slouchiness, and his close-cropped hair was steel gray -- like his eyes. He was a cold-looking man, someone used to being lied to and then breaking down the liar piece by careful piece.

"You know," the inspector began, "I believe you. At least I believe the people who packed your belongings and moved you here. So, we have removed the hold we had placed on all your accounts. The good news is that the clinic will resume treating you; the bad news is that until your son is located and this matter is cleared up there is no way in hell someone like you will be permitted to reside in Switzerland. But here, Mr Callahan, things become tricky for you, because it appears you left the United States without officially clearing, so you are in Switzerland illegally. Also, for some reason the authorities in the United States will not re-admit you, so, technically, you are now a stateless person. Your U.S. Passport has been revoked and confiscated, I'm afraid."

For some reason, it was the cold, emotionless voice that bothered Callahan most of all. But no empathy for a brother police officer? That just grated him the wrong way.

So Callahan said not one word, he just looked at the other man eye-to-eye.

"You have nothing to say?" the inspector said. "Nothing at all?"

Silence.

"You do know that we have nothing like your Miranda protections here, Mr. Callahan, so I would advise you be very, very careful what you say on your way out of our country."

Still, Callahan remained silent.

"I see. Well then, until we meet again, Mr. Callahan."

A minute after the inspector left a uniformed officer came into Callahan's room and sat. And though the officer turned on the television he sat in the chair staring at Callahan, and not knowing what else to do or say Harry closed his eyes and returned to the comfortably open arms of waiting sleep.

+++++

It was after midnight, at least he thought it was, and the second policeman was, apparently, gone for the night. Callahan sat up a little and looked out the window, then he realized he'd heard something unusual.

'What is that? A helicopter?' he asked himself...and not a minute later several men in black commando uniforms entered his room, then a large gurney was wheeled in and several nurses and orderlies helped transfer Harry to the gurney. The next thing he knew he was on the clinic's roof, and a huge Sikorsky was waiting up there -- with no markings visible and with its massive rotors drooping low and barely moving in the still night. Men loaded him in the Sikorsky by pushing his gurney up the aft ramp, and seconds later the helicopter's twin turbines started to spool up...and then he grew concerned. No one had said a word to him during this transfer, and he'd had no idea about the move beforehand...

After an hour flight through the mountains the Sikorsky landed at a large airport, and Callahan's gurney was transferred to a waiting aircraft, and while he wasn't sure Harry thought it looked like the US Navy's version of the DC-9, the medevac version if he wasn't mistaken, and he didn't know what to think of that. Were they taking him back to the states? If so, who was 'they'? Wasn't he stateless?

The jet started to taxi almost immediately and was soon airborne, and still no one came to speak with him. All the window shades were down so he couldn't even tell what direction the aircraft was headed, then a military medic was by his side.

"How's the pain?" the teenager said, and the kid sounded like he was from Brooklyn so that answered that question.

"I'm okay. Where we headed?"

"Home," the kid said, and Harry nodded.

He drifted off again, trying to fight off the disorientation and the sense of rootlessness that had engulfed him after the inspector left his room the day before...

He woke up to the sounds of flaps extending and landing gears rumbling into the 'down and locked' position, and then the young medic came and opened up the window shade next to Callahan's head. Sun streamed in through the scratched plastic outer pane and Harry squinted, trying to make out...

But...the sun was rising over the land, so this wasn't the United States -- and now he was thoroughly confused.

"Where are we?" Harry asked the medic. "I don't recognize this coastline."

The kid knelt beside Callahan's gurney and pointed to a city in the distance.

"That's Tel Aviv, right over there."

"Tel Aviv? You mean...Israel?"

"Yes, Mr. Callahan. And the Colonel told me to tell you -- Welcome Home."

Part IV

Callahan heard a door open and close somewhere beyond his little room, and he tried to push himself up on his good arm -- and failed -- then he looked at his left foot down by the end of the bed, and the empty space where his right foot used to be.

"I'm turning into a vegetable," he mumbled. "If I keep this up I might as well just pull the trigger." He hadn't stood to take a leak since the night he'd been shot, and he had absolutely no idea if he'd taken a dump or not since then. Probably not, he thought. He hadn't had anything solid to eat since that last night on the patio.

Ida came in and opened the drapes and sunlight flooded in off a cerulean Mediterranean sky -- and he squinted and tried to cover his eyes...which caused him to fall back into the pillowy bed.

"It's not always going to be this bad, Harry," Ida said. "You're going to get better. Trust me."

"Right. Any word on Lloyd?"

But Callahan needn't have bothered looking; he already knew the answer to that one, didn't he?

"No. Nothing."

Callahan nodded. "So? What's on the agenda today? Maybe turn the cauliflower onto his left side?"

She grinned. "No, you're not getting off that easy! Today is strength training with your right arm and then, after lunch, the prosthetics people are coming out to do the second fitting."

Callahan looked at the woman and sighed. "What are you doing here, Ida? You didn't sign up for this...you don't have to stay..."

She came close then and leaned over, put her hand on the side of his face. "I'll leave, Harry, when you can beat me in a fifty-meter dash," she said, laughing and smiling and lighting up the room with her loving blue eyes.

And Harry nodded. "If that's the deal then I guess you're with me for the duration."

"Then maybe you'd better get used to me," she said, smiling.

"Get used to you?" he said, voicing mock-angst. "Hell, I can't exist without you!"

She leaned in and kissed his forehead, then she pulled back, wrinkling her nose. "That shirt's coming off today, Callahan, and you're getting a sponge bath!"

"Oh...joy..." he sighed, rolling his eyes and turning away. "I can't wait."

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Colonel Goodman walked into a very plain-looking office building and took the elevator to the eleventh floor; when the door slid open he was greeted by two soldiers aiming automatic rifles at his face. When the soldiers recognized the colonel they went back to their duty stations, and Goodman walked into the prime minister's office.

Actually, into an outer office guarded by the most ferocious person in Israel -- the PMs appointments secretary -- who nodded at the colonel as he walked in and took a seat near her desk. She resumed typing and talking to someone on the telephone, presumably juggling fifty other tasks as she talked on the phone.

Then the PM's chief of staff walked into the outer office and looked at Goodman. "Okay, he's ready for you."

Goodman nodded and followed the chief of staff into the PM's office.

And this was not a ceremonial spot; this office was overflowing with papers and blueprints and two walls covered with aerial and satellite reconnaissance imagery -- most were crystal clear black & white photographs of a nuclear reactor under construction in Syria.

"So, Benni, what the Hell went wrong?"

"Well, sir. just about everything that could go wrong -- did."

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A hulking nurse's aide lifted Callahan into his wheelchair and helped get his leg covered, then the aide pushed him out to the little porch off the living room. It was a nice view and Callahan hadn't tired of the juxtaposition of city and sea, at least not yet, but there wasn't a piano anywhere in the place and he felt naked without one.

The aide rolled him up to a table set for three, and he looked through the glass rail at the bustling city twenty floors below while the chair's wheels were locked, then Ida and Didi came out and joined him.

"Chicken salad today, Harry," Ida said cheerfully. "And some fruit today, too. Think you can manage that for me?"

Callahan looked at the food and his stomach growled. "I'm not real worried about input right now," he said hopefully. "It's output that has me stumped."

"We've got that figured out, so -- you ready to dig in...?"

"Yeah...fix me a plate. It looks too good to pass up."

"Ida made it, Harry," Didi said, smiling at his reluctance.

"Yes, it's my mother's recipe," Ida added, "so if you don't like it you'll have to answer to her."

Harry looked at the plate and reached for the fork by the plate; his hand was trembling and both Didi and Ida were trying their hardest not to stare at him as he reached for a piece of chicken.

Harry took a bite and everything about it seemed strange; the unusual spices, the different textures -- all of it -- yet he was so hungry none of that mattered and after he finished that first bite he was off to the races...

...at least he was...until the first wave of cramps hit...

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"So, what you're telling me is that shooting Callahan proved unnecessary?"

Goodman looked down, but he nodded. "Given what happened, yes."

"So he really is our responsibility now," the prime minister sighed, looking out the window to the sea. "You knew his mother, correct?" he added a moment later.

"Yessir."

"And so I would assume you know she would not be at all happy about how this played out?"

"I think that's a safe assumption, yessir."

"So, let me see if I have this right. We decided that Callahan's -- gift -- is too dangerous so we decided to take charge of his access to music, which, again, correct me if I'm wrong, appears to be the gateway he uses to travel through time. With me so far?"

"Yessir."

"So, someone decides that maybe we should take control AND at the same time reduce the chances of his getting away from us by shooting him in the hand. Is that about right?"

"Yessir. But our sniper missed on the first shot..."

"And then blew his fucking leg off!" the PM screamed, so loud that the armed guards by the elevator jumped and picked up their rifles.

"Yessir" Goodman said, his voice a hoarse whisper.

"And then it turns out that Callahan's son -- what is his name again?"

"Lloyd, sir."

"Yes, just so. But, oh, where was I? Oh, yes, that this boy knew all about Callahan's time traveling and could, apparently summon this Old Man at will? Then for some unknown reason, the boy kills a degenerate musician...?"

"We don't know that, sir. Not for a fact."

"We don't know what, Colonel Goodman?"

"Well, witnesses saw the boy shoot this Todd Bright. There's no question about that."

"Oh boy, here it comes. The part that is going to just make my day..."

"Well, yessir, you see, Mr Bright's body was never found."

"What the...?"

"That's correct, sir. No body, so..."

"So we don't even know if this Bright fellow is alive or dead? Is that what you're telling me?"

"Yessir. That's correct."

"Dear god, what a clusterfuck."

Goodman did not reply to that one -- if only because he'd used the very same word to describe the operation two days ago.

"So, how'd you convince Callahan to come here?"

Goodman looked down. "I sent Major Hartmann to visit Callahan in the hospital. Uh, he was impersonating a police inspector, I might add, and he..."

"Dear god. Stop. Please. I don't want to know anymore..."

"Yessir."

"So, what about this Callahan? What are we going to do with him?"

"Obviously, sir, we get him physically able to..."

"To time travel? Is that what you think is going to happen? My god, Goodman! He could kill us all, unravel -- everything! And he'll most certainly discover what our role in all this was..."

Goodman smiled. "Yessir, of course he would."

"So...how do you plan to contain the risk?"

"Well sir, I have my two best agents assigned to him now, and they assure me they have him completely under control..."

+++++

Ida leaned forward and fed him another grape, smiling and encouraging him to have just one more bite. "Oh, Harry, you're doing so well! At this rate you'll catch me -- in no time at all..."

© 2021 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse...[but wait, there's more...how about a word or two on sources: I typically don't post all a story's acknowledgments until I've finished, if only because I'm not sure how many I'll need before work is finalized. Yet with current circumstances (i.e., Covid-19 and me generally growing somewhat old) waiting to list said sources might not be the best way to proceed, and this listing will grow over time - until the story is complete. To begin, the 'primary source' material in this case - so far, at least - derives from two seminal Hollywood 'cop' films: Dirty Harry and Bullitt. The first Harry film was penned by Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, Dean Riesner, John Milius, Terrence Malick, and Jo Heims. Bullitt came primarily from the author of the screenplay for The Thomas Crown Affair, Alan R Trustman, with help from Harry Kleiner, as well Robert L Fish, whose short story Mute Witness formed the basis of Trustman's brilliant screenplay. Steve McQueen's grin was never trade-marked, though perhaps it should have been. John Milius (Red Dawn) penned Magnum Force, and the 'Briggs'/vigilante storyline derives from characters and plot elements originally found in that rich screenplay, as does the Captain McKay character. The Jennifer Spencer/Threlkis crime family storyline was first introduced in Sudden Impact, screenplay by Joseph Stinson, original story by Earl Smith and Charles Pierce. The Samantha Walker television reporter is found in The Dead Pool, screenplay by Steve Sharon, story by Steve Sharon, Durk Pearson, and Sandy Shaw. I have to credit the Jim Parish, M.D., character first seen in the Vietnam segments to John A. Parrish, M.D., author of the most fascinating account of an American physician's tour of duty in Vietnam - and as found in his autobiographical 12, 20, and 5: A Doctor's Year in Vietnam, a book worth noting as one of the most stirring accounts of modern warfare I've ever read (think Richard Hooker's M*A*S*H, only featuring a blazing sense of irony conjoined within a searing non-fiction narrative). Denton Cooley, M.D. founded the Texas Heart Institute, as mentioned. Of course, James Clavell's Shōgun forms a principle backdrop in later chapters. The teahouse and hotel of spires in Ch. 42 is a product of the imagination; so-sorry. The UH-1Y image used from Pt VI on taken by Jodson Graves. The snippets of lyrics from Lucy in the Sky are publicly available as 'open-sourced.' Many of the other figures in this story derive from characters developed within the works cited above, but keep in mind that, as always, the rest of this story is in all other respects a work of fiction woven into a pre-existing cinematic-historical fabric. Using the established characters referenced above, as well as the few new characters I've managed to come up with here and there, I hoped to create something new - perhaps a running commentary on the times we've shared with these fictional characters? And the standard disclaimer also here applies: the central characters in this tale should not be mistaken for persons living or dead. This was, in other words, just a little walk down a road more or less imagined, and nothing more than that should be inferred. I'd be remiss not to mention Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan, and Steve McQueen's Frank Bullitt. Talk about the roles of a lifetime...and what a gift.]