Busted Flush

Dirge in a Major Key: Part III

S. L. Farrell

JERUSALEM, THE OPEN CITY. Jerusalem, owned by no one and everyone.

Jerusalem was loud and crowded, with a large population of those touched with the wild card, and even Michael could find anonymity, however momentary, in its warrens.

“Michael . . .” Kate’s voice was burdened with sympathy and shared pain; her eyes searched his face. Her hand touched the bandage on the side of his face and fell away again. Kate’s left arm was still bandaged, the edges of the wrapping visible under her T-shirt.

“How’s the arm doing?” he asked.

She grimaced. “I wish you’d quit mentioning it. I wish everyone would quit mentioning it. Look, Michael. I don’t know what to say. This has turned into such a mess. For everyone.”

He gave her a six-shouldered shrug. “Not for everyone.” A middle hand tapped a newspaper sitting on the table. “Says here that our mission was ‘a tremendous success marred by a few unfortunate fatalities.’ No mess at all. Like the kids I killed were some lousy, unnoticeable scratch on a piece of furniture.”

The grimace on her face matched his, and he knew she was remembering her own experiences in the desert. “Have you talked to John or Jayewardene?”

“Yeah. I talked to Beet—” He stopped. “John,” he said, and one corner of her mouth lifted at that. “For about thirty seconds, which was all the time he seemed to have for me. It was enough. I told John, or that fucking bug in his head, what I thought about what we did out there. Past that, I don’t have nothin’ else to say to either of ’em, and they don’t seem inclined to talk to me, either. They’re all wrapped in their success.”

They were sitting at an outside table of a café on Emile Botta Street, near the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. The street was crowded with both tourists and locals, speaking in a dozen languages. Anonymity was indeed fleeting—Michael’s recognizable form (or perhaps it was Kate’s) was attracting stares from those passing the café. Occasionally someone would stop to snap a quick picture before they moved on. He could hear the comments, and some of them seemed to be tinged with disgust. Michael glanced up at the bright wink of a flash, unnecessary in the bright, mocking sunshine.

“They’ll try to cover this up, Kate. Those kids I killed literally don’t exist anymore. Never existed. We can’t allow them to exist—they’re just part of the price we’ve paid for our oil. Invisible. We can’t permit the sight of their bloodied, dead faces to tarnish the image of the Committee or the UN. No, we’re all too goddamn important for that. Getting that oil flowing is too important.”

Her face had flushed under the blond hair. “The man . . . the man I killed was going to blow up the pipeline, and he didn’t care if any of us died in the explosion. And your kids weren’t entirely innocent, Michael. You know that. How many of the soldiers did they kill, after all? They would have killed you, too.”

“I know,” he told her. “That’s what I told myself afterward. All I was doing was protecting myself. But they were fucking kids!” He nearly shouted the word, slamming his two lower hands down on the table. The wrought iron rang and bent, the glass top shattered, the coffee cups fell to the stones of the patio and shattered loudly. A waiter started angrily toward them, then stopped, evidently deciding that discretion was a better tactic than confrontation. “They were children who had decided that if the Caliphate wasn’t going to protect their home, well, they’d do it themselves. A stupid goddamn decision, but you know what, Kate? I could see myself making the same choice when I was their age. Hell, when you’re twelve you think you’re immortal, and you believe the Good Guys are always gonna win, and that the Good Guys are always on your side. And it doesn’t matter what Fortune or Jayewardene or Baden or any of them say: I killed them. Me.” He stabbed at himself with a sextet of forefingers. “I gotta live with that. And for what? For what, Kate? Please tell me the fucking answer, because this really hurts and I haven’t got anything for it.”

He wanted to weep. He could feel the tears starting again, and he growled and looked away because he couldn’t trust himself to talk and not break down.

She said nothing. Her lips were pressed tightly together and she had a marble in her right hand, running her fingers over the glass ball as if she were about to toss it. “You’re bleeding,” she said finally. He looked at his bottom hands; the glass had cut the right one, and blood spattered his jeans and bare stomach. He picked up a napkin from the wreckage at his feet and tied it around the injured hand with his middle set. The pain somehow felt good. “What are you going to do, Michael?” she asked him.

“I don’t know,” he told her. “I really don’t know.”

Rusty had left Michael a message on his room phone.

“I don’t know if John got the message to ya, fella. There’s a press conference or something at the King David Hotel: Jayewardene, John, Prince Siraj.” Rusty’s voice overdrove the phone speaker, crackling and static-laden. “Somethin’ about withdrawing the UN troops in exchange for oil. They said I should be there; the fella that called said it’s about the settlement with the Caliphate . . . .”

The King David Hotel, in the New City just outside the Old City walls, was a palatial and imposing structure that had once served as a fortress, set high enough to overlook the Old City, and catering to the rich who came to visit the ruins of the open city of Jerusalem. By the time Michael reached the lobby floor, he could see the crowd outside the main meeting room: videographers jockeying for position, still cameras flashing like heat lightning, reporters thrusting microphones into the faces of anyone they could find. He pushed through the crush, ignoring the cameras and microphones that were suddenly aimed at him. “Hey, Drummer Boy . . .” “What do you think . . .” “If you have a moment . . .” “I have one question . . .”

They pressed around him like hornets; he walked through them, not making eye contact and not caring who he pushed aside. Security guards in blue berets started toward the commotion, saw who was at the center of it, and stopped. One of them whispered into a lapel mike.

He pushed through the hall doors, closing off the shouting of the reporters left outside. There was no shortage of reporters inside, either; the room was packed, every seat taken and the walls lined with people with video and still cameras.

“I wish to thank everyone for coming.” Secretary-General Jayewardene was already on the dais, smiling to the reporters arrayed before him, his soft, Indian-accented voice booming from the speakers. Barbara Baden was there with him, and John Fortune with Kate standing next to him, while Lohengrin, Rusty, and Tinker stood to one side. Lohengrin was armored up and glowing white for the cameras; Rusty seemed shabby and dull alongside the German’s glory. Kate appeared to be uncomfortable as she watched, not standing as close to Fortune as she usually did, not touching him at all. Once, that would have been all Michael noticed. She saw Michael and her mouth opened slightly, as if she was about to say something.

To the other side of the secretary-general, Prince Siraj stood smiling, portly under his formal Arabian dress. There were men around him—bodyguards, Michael decided.

At the dais, Jayewardene nodded his balding head. “It’s my pleasure to say that we have good news for everyone. We’re all very proud of what John Fortune and his team have accomplished and the restraint they displayed, and the restraint shown by the Caliphate. I am prouder still of what we have come here to announce. This is a momentous day.”

There was a stir at the head of the dais as the heavy curtains were pulled open. On the wall, a huge canvas sign had been hung. A COMMITMENT TO PEACE, the letters read, with the logo of the United Nations to one side and the banner of the Caliphate on the other.

Seeing it, a fury rose inside him. Michael flailed at his chest with his upper four hands, the raging of wild drums causing those nearest him to clap hands over ears and cower, which brought everyone’s gaze around to him. His throat openings flared, open-mouthed, as cameras swung their glassy cyclops eyes toward him; flashes popped and flared. “Hey, I’ve got the fucking real news!” he shouted, his voice louder than the PA system as Jayewardene tried to bring attention back to the podium. Now the entire room was looking his way; now the microphones were pointed in his direction with eager faces behind them. Jayewardene was standing mute in his expensive suit behind the podium, Barbara Baden whispering to him. Prince Siraj glanced worriedly from Jayewardene to his own guards, who scowled angrily in Michael’s direction. Fortune pointed toward Michael, shouting orders to the security people.

“You people want the truth?” Michael roared at the crowd. “Do you want to know what actually happened, and why they don’t want me standing up there with them? They sent me out there, and I . . .” He took a deep, gasping, half-sobbing breath. “I ended up killing kids for your goddamn oil. I killed children. They won’t show you the pictures, they won’t talk about it. They’ve paid off people in black, liquid money to keep them quiet. They’ll tell you there’s no proof and no one will admit it ever happened, but I was there and . . .”

Michael stopped. His hands dropped to his side. Somewhere in the midst of his tirade, the faces that turned to him went quizzical. They’d stopped listening. They gaped at him, whispering to each other. Michael saw a face he recognized, a reporter and blogger for Salon who had interviewed Michael a half-dozen times in the past. “Carl,” he said, “you know I’m not making this up. This is import—”

He stopped again. Carl’s gray eyes were wide and astonished. The man shook his head. “Adesque ad muilen freinet krium,” he said.

“What the fuck . . .” Michael listened to the chaos around him—no one around him seemed to be speaking English. He could hear nothing but the babbling of nonsense syllables—no recognizable language at all. Up at the podium, Barbara Baden was smiling down at him. She lifted a hand to him as if in greeting.

Barbara Baden. The Translator, the ace who could make anyone understand anyone else. The realization hit him a breath before the cold fury: she could turn language into a babel just as easily.

He screamed, a wordless cry, and started down the aisle toward the podium. Security moved to stop him; he shoved aside a quartet of burly men, his six arms sending them careening backward into the crush of reporters. The crowd scattered wildly out of his way, and he leapt up onto the dais as Jayewardene and Baden were ushered quickly through a door at the back of the room, as Tinker quickly and discreetly followed them, as Prince Siraj’s men clustered around him and fled the dais, as Rusty and Kate watched uncertainly from their side of the stage, as Lohengrin’s hand went to the hilt of his sword, as Fortune stepped directly in his path.

Michael shoved the man aside—hard, with a sense of deep pleasure. He reached with his top set of hands for the banner—to Michael, it now seemed to read E CIKWUGADF RO WIAKL—and ripped it from the wall, the canvas tearing and ripping. Behind him, he heard a sinister growl and a strange light flared, sending his spidery shadow moving on the wall.

“Oh, good,” Michael said, turning to see the glowing form of the lioness of Sekhmet, her tail thrashing angrily. “You want to play, you fucking bug? Hey, I’ve been waiting for this chance.”

The lioness spat fire and leapt at him and he went to meet her. They collided near midstage. Claws raked down Michael’s arms, tearing deep into muscle and ripping into tattooed flesh as Michael shouted with the pain and the blood. The pain was catharsis; it gave him strength.

Michael grasped Sekhmet’s paws with all six hands, letting the momentum of her charge take him backward, allowing himself to fall and roll as he used multiple arms and two legs to throw her past him. Sekhmet slammed into the podium, crushing it to splinters that sprayed the crowd as she tried to regain her feet. She gathered herself with a low, sinister growl; Michael began to drum madly, blood droplets flying from his arms, slamming waves of pure sound toward her, his throats tightening to shape it: as he had with the Righteous Djinn, as he had in the oil fields. The lioness roared and reared back with the sonic assault, a high and pained wail, then her haunches lowered as she readied herself to charge again.

Something slammed into the dais between them: a marble from Kate’s hand. It exploded, tearing a massive hole that gouged a crater in the tile floor underneath. “Don’t,” he heard Kate say, and he wondered which one of them she was talking to.

The white-armored form of Lohengrin stepped in front of Sekhmet at the same time, his gleaming sword waving warningly. Michael looked at Kate, already with another marble in her hand. At the same moment, Rusty plowed into Michael from behind. “Cripes, fella,” he heard Rusty say as the ace’s huge, strong arms went around him, trying to stop as many arms as he could. “You gone crazy?”

Lohengrin, facing Sekhmet, had his hands up, though Sekhmet growled and paced furiously, her tail lashing. Her claws tore at the carpeted wood of the dais, but she didn’t charge. Michael shrugged aside Rusty’s bear hug, freeing himself. He stood, blood dripping down his arms and spattered across his body. Rusty was still holding one arm.

“Michael,” he heard Kate say. He couldn’t read her face. “I mean it. Don’t.”

He looked at Kate. And away. He’d understood her; he’d understood Rusty. He could read the letters on the shredded banner on the stage—which meant that Barbara was no longer using her power.

“I quit,” he declared loudly, glaring at Sekhmet. “The Committee is a fucking travesty. We had something that was supposed to be wonderful and pure and moral, and you’ve turned it into exactly the kind of organization all those power-hungry tyrants and despots we’re supposed to be fighting would create. I won’t be part of it anymore. I won’t fight for oil, I won’t fight for money, and I won’t fight for political power. I sure as hell won’t kill more kids for any of those. I quit.”

He put his back to the stage, to Kate, Rusty, Lohengrin, and Fortune. Without another word, alone, he left the hall.