Authors: Dan Simmons
Saul doubled over with the sudden pain and sickness. He gasped on the verge of vomiting. Cold sweat erupted on his brow and cheeks. Saul fumbled for a glass of water and swallowed convulsively, thinking of other things, slowly untwisting the knot of pain in his belly.
“Interesting,
ja
?” said Luhar. “It is Mr. Barent’s single greatest strength. No one who spends time with him could ever wish to do him harm. Serving Mr. Barent is a source of plea sure to a great many people.”
Saul finished the water and used a napkin to wipe the sweat off his brow. “Why are you fighting him?”
“
Fighting
him? No, no, my dear pawn. I am not fighting him, I am
playing
him.” Luhar looked around. “As of yet they have no microphones close enough to pick up our conversation, but in a minute a van will park outside and our privacy will disappear. It is time for us to take a walk.”
“And if I don’t go?”
Jensen Luhar shrugged. “Within a few hours the game will grow very interesting indeed. There is a part for you in it. If you wish to do anything about the people who terminated your nephew and his family, it would serve your purposes to accompany me. I offer you freedom . . . at least from them.”
“But not from you?”
“Nor from yourself, dear pawn. Come, come, it is time to decide.”
“I will kill you someday,” said Saul.
Luhar grinned and pulled on his gloves and sunglasses. “
Ja, ja
. Are you coming?”
Saul stood up and looked out of the window. A green van had pulled to the curb. Saul followed Jensen Luhar outside.
The streets off Germantown Avenue were narrow and contradictory. At one time the tall skinny buildings might have been pleasant houses— some reminded Saul of the narrow houses of Amsterdam. Now they were overcrowded slum dwellings. The small shops and businesses might once have been the nucleus of a true community— small delicatessens, tiny grocery stores, family shoe stores, small businesses. Now they advertised dead flies in the windows. Some had been turned into low-rent apartments; a grimy three-year-old stood in a display window and pressed her cheek and smudgy fingers against the glass.
“What did you mean when you said you were ‘playing’ Barent?” asked Saul. He looked over his shoulder but caught no sight of the green van. It did not matter; Saul was sure that they were still under surveillance. It was the Oberst he wanted to find.
“We play chess,” said Luhar. The big man turned his face and Saul could see his own reflection in the dark glasses.
“And the stakes are our lives,” said Saul. He desperately tried to think of a way to cause the Oberst to reveal his location.
Luhar laughed, showing broad, white teeth. “No, no, my little pawn,” he said in German. “Your lives mean nothing. The stakes are nothing less than who makes the rules of the game.”
“The game?” echoed Saul. They had turned onto another side street. No one was visible except a pair of heavy black women coming out of a Laundromat at the end of the street.
“Surely you are aware of the Island Club and its annual games?” said the Oberst. “Herr Barent and the rest of those cowards have been afraid to let me play. They know that I would demand a wider scope to the play. Something that would befit a race of
Übermenschen
.”
“Didn’t you get enough of that in the war?”
Luhar grinned again. “You seek to provoke me,” he said softly. “A foolish goal.” They had stopped in front of a nondescript cinderblock building next to the laundromat. “The answer is ‘no,’ ” he said. “I did not get enough of it in the war. The Island Club thinks that it has some claim to power merely because it
influences
. . . leaders, nations, economies.
Influences
.” Luhar spat on the sidewalk. “When I set the rules to the game, they will see what real power can do. The world is a piece of rotted, worm-ridden old meat, pawn. We will cleanse it with fire. I will show them what it is to play with
armies
rather than their pitiful little surrogates. I will show them what it is like to see cities die at the loss of a piece, entire races captured and utilized for projects at the whim of the User. And I will show them what it means to play this game on a global scale. We all die, pawn, but what Herr Barent fails to see is that there is no reason for the world to survive us.”
Saul stood on the sidewalk and stared. The cold wind tugged at his coat and made his skin crawl with gooseflesh.
“Here we are,” said Luhar and produced a ring of keys to open the door of the featureless building in front of them. He stepped into the darkness and gestured to Saul. “Are you coming, pawn?”
Saul swallowed. “You’re more insane than I had dreamed,” he whispered.
Luhar nodded. “Perhaps,” he said softly. “But if you come with me you will have a chance to continue in the game. Not the larger game, regretfully. You will have no place in that. But your inevitable sacrifice will allow that game to be played. If you come with me now . . . of your own free will . . . we will remove those impediments which Herr Barent has shackled you with so that you might continue to serve me as a loyal pawn.”
Saul stood in the cold, clenching his fist and feeling the pain in his left arm where the surgical implant throbbed. He stepped into the darkness.
Luhar grinned and bolted the door behind them. Saul blinked in the dim light. The first floor was empty except for sawdust and stacks of loading skids on a wide expanse of ware house floor. A wooden staircase led to a loft. Luhar pointed and Saul went up the stairs.
“Good God,” said Saul. In the loft a single table and four chairs were visible in the dim light filtering through a begrimed skylight. Two naked corpses occupied two of the chairs.
Saul stepped closer and inspected the bodies. They were cold and locked in the vise of rigor mortis. One was a black man, about Luhar’s height and weight. His eyes were opened and filmed with death. The other corpse was a white man a few years older than Saul, bearded and balding. His mouth hung open. Saul could see the exploded capillaries of cheeks and nose that suggested advanced alcoholism.
He watched as Luhar took off his expensive camel’s hair coat. “Our doppelgängers?” said Saul.
“Of course,” said the Oberst through Luhar. “I have already removed all or most of the compulsion which Herr Barent has set in place in your mind. Are you ready to continue, pawn?”
“Yes,” said Saul.
To continue to seek to find a way to kill you
, he thought. “Very good,” said Luhar. He glanced at his watch. “We have about thirty minutes before Mr. Colben decides that he should join our party. It should be enough time.” He set his briefcase on the table near the black corpse’s left arm. When he snapped it open, Saul saw that it was filled with the same type of plastic explosive that Harrington had worn.
“Should be enough time for what?” said Saul. “Preparations. This building has an unmarked crawlspace that connects to the basement next door. The basement next door has an access to a short segment of the city’s old storm sewer system. It will take us only a block, but it should be outside of the immediate circle of vigilance. A car will be waiting for me. You are welcome to go wherever you wish.”
“You’re so damned clever it makes me want to vomit,” said Saul. “It won’t work.”
“Oh?” Luhar raised heavy eyebrows.
Saul took off his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeve. The ban dages had a slight yellow stain from ointment they had used. “They inserted something yesterday. I’d guess it’s a radio transmitter.”
“Of course it is,” said Luhar. From the briefcase he removed a bundle wrapped in green cloth and unrolled it. A bottle of iodine and surgical instruments gleamed in the dim light from above. “The procedure should not take more than twenty minutes, should it?”
Saul picked up a scalpel in its sterilpac. “And you will do the honors, I presume?”
“If you insist,” said Luhar, “but I should point out that I have never had medical training.”
“So I have the plea sure,” said Saul. He looked in the briefcase and glanced up. “No syringes? No local anesthetic?”
Jensen Luhar’s mirrored sunglasses reflected the room. There was no expression on the heavy face. “Unfortunately, no. How much do you value your freedom, Dr. Laski?”
“You are insane, Herr Oberst,” said Saul. He sat at the table, laid out the instruments, and pulled the bottle of iodine closer.
Luhar pulled a gym bag out from under the table. “First we change clothes,” he said. “In case you do not feel like it later.”
When the corpses were dressed in their clothes and Saul was wearing slightly baggy jeans, a black turtleneck sweater, and heavy shoes a half size too small, Luhar said, “About eighteen minutes remaining, Doctor.”
“Sit down,” said Saul. “I’m going to explain precisely what to do if I pass out.” He pulled packaged gauze and dressings from a clear bag. “You’re going to have to close it up.”
“What ever you say, Doctor.”
Saul shook his head, raised his eyes to the skylight for a moment, and then looked down and, with a single, sure move of the scalpel, made the initial incision.
Saul did not pass out. He did scream twice and just after the transmitter filaments were separated from muscle fibers he leaned over and vomited. Luhar closed the wound with rough stitches and butterfly ban dages, wrapped gauze and tape around it, and tugged a bulky coat on the semi-conscious psychiatrist. “We are five minutes over schedule,” hissed Luhar. “Hurry.”
The seemingly solid concrete floor had a trapdoor under wooden skids in a far corner. As Luhar pulled the door down, Saul could hear the roar of a helicopter and distant pounding. “Move!” hissed the big man in the cramped darkness. Saul tried to crawl, cried out as his arm burned with pain, and fell forward. A tremendous explosion from above shook the earth and sent powder and spiderwebs dropping into Saul’s face and hair. “Move!” hissed Luhar and shoved Saul ahead of him.
Loose cement blocks. Luhar kicked them out of the way, pulled Saul to his feet in a dark basement smelling of mildew and old newspapers, kept him moving. They squeezed between a grate and bricks and then they were crawling again, Saul’s hands and knees submerged in icy water, touching slick, slimy things in the dark. Saul tried to cradle his left arm to him and crawl on three limbs. Twice he slipped and banged his left shoulder, soaking his jacket. Luhar laughed and shoved from behind. Saul closed his eyes and thought of Sobibor, the shouting masses, the quiet of the Forest of the Owls.
Finally they could stand. Luhar led a hundred paces, turned right down a narrower conduit, and paused under a grill. His strong arms strained to move the iron lattice. Saul squinted in the gray light, concentrated on keeping the vertigo at bay, and slipped his hand in his coat pocket to feel the cold handle of the scalpel he had palmed while Luhar was making final adjustments to the timing device in the briefcase.
“Ahh,
there
,” panted Luhar and shoved the grate aside. Both arms were still raised. The big man’s jacket hung open, exposing belly and chest under thin cloth. Saul braced himself and lunged with the scalpel, imagining a target for the blade somewhere beyond the man’s spine.
Jensen Luhar’s left arm came down in a blur, a massive hand closed on Saul’s forearm, and the blade halted three inches above the black man’s sternum. “Tsk, tsk,” said Luhar. With his right hand he chopped at Saul’s bleeding left arm. Saul gasped and dropped to his knees while red circles swam in his narrowing field of vision. Luhar gently lifted the scalpel out of his limp right hand. “Naughty, naughty,
mein kleine Jude,
” he whispered.
“Auf wiedersehen.”
The light was blocked for a second and Luhar was gone. Saul knelt in the darkness, lowering his forehead to the water and cold stone for several minutes, fighting to stay conscious.
Why?
he thought.
Why stay awake? Sleep awhile
.
Shut up
, he snarled at himself.
After an eternity he stood up, raised his good arm to the grate above, and tried to pull himself up and out. It took five tries and his jeans were soaked from falling, but eventually he clawed his way into sunlight.
The storm drain was behind a metal Dumpster a dozen feet into a narrow alley. He did not recognize the street he staggered onto. Rowhouses stretched up a long hill.
Saul made half a block before dizziness claimed him. He stopped and held his left arm. The wound had opened. The bleeding had soaked through the thick jacket, dripped down his arm, and stained the entire left side of his coat. He looked back from where he had come and laughed to see a distinct trail of crimson spatters. He squeezed the arm and staggered against the plate glass window of an abandoned store. The sidewalk was rising and falling like the deck of a small ship on a rough sea.
It was getting dark. Snow flurries glowed like fireflies in front of a distant streetlight. A large, dark figure was walking downhill on Saul’s side of the street. Saul staggered backward into the doorway of the shop, slid down the rough wall, pulled his knees up, and tried hard to be as invisible as any wino who had ever sought such shelter.
Just as the man walked slowly past, Saul felt something else tear in the muscles of his left arm. He clutched at it and gritted his teeth until their grinding was audible. The man walked past, carrying something heavy and metallic in his right hand.
Saul felt the blackness winning even as the heavy footsteps stopped a few yards down the hill and then slowly returned. Saul rolled to his left, only distantly feeling his head strike the door. His left arm was on fire and he felt the blood soaking his wrist and hand.
A flashlight beam stabbed into his eyes. The big man leaned over him, blotting out the street, the world. Saul clenched his right fist and fought to stay above the whirling vortex of unconsciousness. A heavy hand closed on his right shoulder.
“Sweet Christ,” said a slow, familiar voice. “Saul, is that you?”
Saul nodded and felt his head continue forward, his chin on his chest, his eyes closing, even as the soft voice continued saying things he did not understand and the strong arms of Sheriff Bobby Joe Gentry lifted him and cradled him as easily as one would carry a sleeping child.