The night was filled with a black horror, the awfulness of not knowing.
He sensed that he was passing beneath a sign, its letters carved in fire. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
A chirping noise, insistent. Light, shapes. His phone on the bedside table.
‘Oh Sophie, thank God you called.’
‘You okay, Jacob?’
‘I don’t know where I was.’
The hotel room took shape, shadows like monsters, back to when he was ten years old and dad was dying in the next room and he tried to block out the noises with his pillow but there were other things in there, maybe worse things.
‘You want me to come over?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m staying at the Carlyle. Feel like ordering some room service?’
Outwardly, Vierte was quiet, just a few armed guards waiting while the Directorate met, deep in the hidden zone.
Dr Heim sat up in his bed. His cheeks had a flush of colour as he pointed to the screens. The congressman, soon to be Heim’s anointed successor, sat by the bed, along with Julia, Rod, Hester, the head of security and Salem, the director of finance.
‘You see? The metrics have never been like this before, never better.’
‘Agreed,’ said the congressman. ‘This is the time to act. Let’s run through it. All is set for the Grand Divertissement Royal on Saturday night. In advance of this, the final valuation will be carried out on our collection. Correct, Julia?’
‘Starting tomorrow morning, completed by Wednesday, all documents lodged with our insurers by close of business.’
‘Good. So after the feast, a kitchen incident will cause a fire. The fire will destroy the entire art collection before it is discovered and contained to this floor of the building. An insurance claim will be filed immediately. As we can see from our screens, the insurer has zero liquidity, will be unable to meet our demands and will have to seek help from the Federal Government.’
‘Sad,’ said Heim, ‘to lose the art.’ And we would have had the Mona Lisa if not for Jacques Jaujard.
‘Quite. So, while the President is considering this request, a further sequence of demands will be made. The market has passed seventeen thousand for the first time in history. The house of cards has never been higher. The desperate pleas for help will mount and the President will see the board of dominoes taking shape,’ said the accountant. ‘The Federal Reserve will be contacted for additional funds. But the printing presses have reached the point of no return. Thanks to quantitative easing and the eighty-five billion dollars plus that’s been pumped into the bond markets every month for the past few years, the Fed will simply not be able to generate an additional half a trillion. Then we launch our strike. The most recent crash we engineered was a key element of the plan, in tripling the value of our key asset. So we will offer the President the trillion dollars in gold that we have amassed since the Second World War, in return for immediate and complete control over the Federal Reserve and the return to a gold-backed US dollar. When the President approves, we will control the dollar and, thus, the planet. We will pile debt on every consumer in the world and then we will own them. The Doctor is correct, this is the time. We must remember that the Nazi Party was a tiny force, on the fringes of German politics, until the effects of the Wall Street Crash hit Germany. Can the same approach work again? Of course. Our associates in the Tea Party have done a wonderful job of destabilising the system. It cannot absorb the shock we are about to deliver. We have the full support of China in this. As the biggest debtor of the US, they need stability. So we have access to their gold and debt instruments in return for our dropping security guarantees for Taiwan and Japan.’
Dr Death coughed. His mind was taken by the thought of the grand French fest, his fantasies of Marie Antoinette. I would have been her Sun King. Perhaps I truly was. Perhaps…
‘Israel, of course, loses its security guarantee. That’s a given. Then her neighbours will devour her.’
‘And if the President doesn’t comply,’ said Hester, ‘we kill him. And the Vice President. And then, congressman, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, you are next in the chain of command.’
The congressman smiled. He wanted to be president.
‘It’s perfect,’ said Rod. ‘But the part I’m looking forward to is the feast. Cooking up our valuer Jacob for the signature slow-roasted pork dish, then planting his remains so the fire gets pinned on him, and Sophie too. Delicious symmetry.’
Hester opened a briefcase. Inside were six padded envelopes, a name written on each. He opened them and took out sleek matt black cellphones. He handed a device to each member of the Directorate.
‘Our tech guys have developed these Darkphones. You can make encrypted calls, send texts that can’t be intercepted. Your web access leaves no trace and, best of all, your location can’t be tracked. Your phone uses your existing number and each of our contacts is included. If you would each please turn on your phone, that button at the top, then look straight at the red light that appears.’ All six stared at their phones. After a second, the phone screens came to life. ‘The phone has scanned your retina and will now activate only for you. The unit is sealed, battery good for a month. That should be more than enough time. Any attempt to open the casing will result in a small but powerful explosion. You do not want to be near it. Finally, the phone contains a Taser-like shock app. Just choose the app icon with the capital T, then touch the target with the top end of the device, where the red light lives. Any questions?’
‘It’s very sexy,’ said Julia. ‘Can we sell these?’
‘Maybe in the future. Mr Speaker?’
The congressman paused. It was time to get his plan moving. He turned to the man in the bed, the one lying uneasily between two worlds. ‘Doctor, your health is failing. I hope that you will live to witness the bright new dawn but I worry for our leadership if -’
‘If I die?’ he croaked. And travel to my Marie?
‘I don’t like to think about it. But it would be smarter if you chose your successor. Now. Before all of us here.’
Heim slumped back on his pillows, gasping for air. Then he raised his arm, pointed a skinny finger at the congressman.
‘It is you. Wait! And after you, Julia.’
The congressman smiled, accepted the Directorate’s congratulations with modesty, quietly said ‘Come join me for some Champagne.’
As they were leaving, Heim croaked, called Julia back to his bedside.
‘Julia, my Julia. Any news on my elixir?’
‘The alchemists’ Elixir of Life?’ The drink to keep you alive for another thousand years? I think not. ‘No, Doctor. I’m still searching the ancient texts.’
‘The Jews. You must focus on the Jews for it. Their love of alchemy. Kabbalah. They claim to have had the elixir for centuries now.’ He coughed. A long, dry cough. The smell of his breath, it was like death. ‘My time is running out.’
‘I will keep searching.’
‘This Nostradamus. I saw a documentary on the History Channel earlier, in between Nazi stories. It said that he had a recipe for the elixir, hidden in one of his books. He was a Jew, you know? And a doctor. This I have said before.’
Julia smiled an ice smile, thinking about what an elixir of life could do. Not for humanity, but for her. Surely stem cells are the elixir in the same way that nuclear reactors actually will make gold and so all the Middle Ages fantasies were simple delusions? But what if? What if that book that Jacob had bought contained, somewhere in its ancient pages, the formula for the Elixir of Life?
She caught her reflection in the mirrored meds cabinet. The overall picture of perfectly-defined, classical beauty, yes. But, see that almost imperceptible sag? See this fine line?
The horror of age. Middle. Age. I need that book, Jacob.
And you’re going to give it to me.
She turned to leave, hesitated. ‘Why didn’t you name me your successor?’
‘You are a woman, my child. Too weak.’
‘Times have changed. This is the twenty-first century.’
‘No. Nothing has changed. You have something in you that I fear. Compassion? Perhaps. But your brother? He’s more twisted than I ever was. He will see this through. I know this.’
Then he laughed, a painful cackle. And her mind was set.
The room phone chirped.
‘Mr Johnson, there’s a, ah, lady here to see you.’
She’s no hooker, you condescending fuck. ‘Okay. Can you walk her up or should I come down?’
‘I’d be glad to escort her to your room, sir.’
So he gave the guy a twenty, decided not to come down on him. How was he to know?
When he closed the door, he embraced her and felt her and kissed her. She kissed back.
Then they consulted the room service menu, ordered jumbo shrimp cocktails, crab cakes, Caesar salad with lobster, cobb salad, some grilled asparagus, crispy onion rings and a bottle of Dom.
They lay on the bed, watched TV, Breaking Bad, which neither of them had seen before, until the food came on a trolley.
‘A lot of food,’ she said.
‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘The Nazis are paying.’
‘Maybe they’re trying to fatten you up, Hansel.’
‘Ha.’ He picked up the lobster shell, made a Dalí call in a German accent. ‘Send me some chicken bones, for Gott’s sake!’
‘The importance of every meal,’ began Sophie, ‘it’s really hitting me as I get older.’
‘Hnnh?’
‘If you take the fifty years between getting old enough to care about anything and being fed through a tube and, say, a thousand meals a year, that’s fifty thousand opportunities to be wowed. It’s not that many.’
‘Make every one count,’ agreed Jacob. ‘I can see that. Hey. Come on,’ he smiled, ‘it’s not like it’s the last supper.’
But it did feel a little like a last supper. They sat on the bed and ate without speaking.
Eventually, Jacob said ‘Damn fine shrimp’ and Sophie said ‘Better order some oysters, ‘cos I want you for dessert.’
He picked up the real phone.
So they almost had fast sex on the bed. Clothes on. Just pulled down, across, making gaps of a few square inches, all it takes, that connection, that giddiness, that hint of it. But, for once, it was Sophie that suddenly faded. Events.
Too Drunk to Fuck.
And, as she dozed, her arm across his chest, the oysters’ melting bed of crushed ice defining entropy, Jacob thought back to their first fling, their time of young lust and freedom and, yes, excitement. Before the boredom of life and the tedium of the human condition.
There. There was a time.
Corona Park, Flushing Meadows, the Fourth of July, ‘87. The Ramones played for free and then he saw her shaking her hair and laughing and fell in love right away. After Joey Ramone fell off the stage and the fireworks blasted the moon, the young Jacob spoke to her, offered her his joint. They walked to the Long Island Expressway and sat on a pedestrian bridge, watched the night traffic streaming towards the towers of Oz in the middle distance. Then they found a little park and made love on the grass at three in the morning.
The next weekend, they took a bus to Pennsylvania, to her parents’ log cabin by Lake Wallenpaupack, where they walked in the forest, toasted marshmallows over a campfire, snuck into a glorious little tied-up sailboat and made love in time with the rolling waves.
Then they fell out of love as Sophie pursued her dream of becoming the most famous chef in the world and he travelled to Italy to see all the good stuff at first hand. Manhattan, as outsiders might not suspect, is quite a small chunk of real estate so their paths inevitably crossed again. There was a fling a few years later.
Jacob had become insufferable, full of art this and art that. He could see this now. Sophie worked every night, so it fizzled out. Then, just a year before the now, an effort to see if they had each settled into a form that could accommodate another. She’d even moved in with him, into his swanky apartment with his Picasso and his view. But the horror of bodily functions and proximity to the gases, wastes and noises of another proved too much for her. Of course she’d not let go of her own place, not for such a long shot as Jacob, and she was back home within a month. He didn’t mind.
She never returned my keys.
He gazed at her.
As long as she’s stuck with her restaurant and I’m living from commission to commission, we’re screwed. Not to mention the congressman’s daughter, the statutory rape and the goddamn Nazis. Fuck it, Jacob, you couldn’t make this mess up.
This can’t work, he concluded. Not like this. Not now.
So he slept, on a flat and dusty white plain. The moon was frozen in an azure sky. A ruined city in the distance, like it had dropped from that sky. A boat, too. How did that get here? A dog approached, a man following behind. Jacob’s head, supported by crutches, lolled, his mouth open. The sleep of the dead.
Rod left the Directorate meeting and went hunting.
The city was his, there in the small hours, the period between bars closing at four and the early risers at six, that was his golden time.
Central Park was perfect, just off West Drive, so many places to hide in the shadows, waiting for the desperate fool teetering drunk in her high heels. Or the smitten young couple who wanted to just get lost in their passion in the fresh night air with the slumbering city behind. Or the jogger with her headphones, lost in the Lana del Ray soundtrack to her lonely life.
How many was it now?
Seventeen.
He patted his pockets for his in-ears, clicked them into his smartphone, found the track and tapped play.
So he paced the park, listening to the recordings he’d made of each killing. The gasps and cries and begging made him want more and more and more. He often listened to his soundtrack on the subway or as he walked to work or as he sat on a bench in the sunshine, watching kids feeding ducks.
‘No, please, I’ll do anything.’
A jogger. Alone at this hour? People are crazy.
‘Why are you doing this? What’s wrong with you?’
Blonde hair swinging.
‘Stop. Why don’t you stop?’
Here she comes.
‘I want my daddy.’
Behind this tree.
‘Why?’
Just a few steps away. No time to record. This time I just listen.
‘Oh my God.’
She’s panting. Hard. He loved listening to women jogging, making their little sex sounds, just like they were getting fucked. This one’s a grunter, best of all.
‘Please.’
He jumps forward, grabs her shins, a rugby tackle. She falls heavily, grunting.
‘I’ll do anything you want.’
He puts his hand over her mouth, starts fumbling at his belt.
‘Don’t you think I’m sexy?’
But she pushes back, there is a hidden strength. Training. Footsteps nearby, running. He glances up. Police!
‘You’re an evil bastard! I hate you!’
A trap. She’s broken his grip, has an elbow at his throat now, crushing his windpipe. It is time to escape. But maybe he’s left it too late.
‘I hope you die.’
He struggles, but the undercover policewoman isn’t letting go. He sees something in her eyes, something familiar. He sees a killer.
Sophie woke to a Champagne headache, rain slapping against the window of an unfamiliar room, Jacob’s deep snores and her phone insisting shrilly that she pick it up.
It was work. 8:04am.
‘Jesus, can’t you guys get by without me for a couple of hours?’ Funny how the simple making of a decision can put such distance between people and places that were so connected just twenty-four hours before. Punk Food owned her now. Swipe the green square. Take the red pill. ‘Hello, Carl.’
‘Sophie, Jesus. Sorry, hi. Have you heard? Fuck.’
‘Christ, Carl. Calm down. What’s up?’
‘It’s Rod. He’s dead, boss. Killed resisting arrest.’
‘Resisting?’
If she’d had a glass in her hand, right then it would’ve fallen to the ground, shattered into a million pieces.
‘Turns out he’s a serial killer or something. There’s about a hundred cops here right now, they’ve shut the restaurant down. They’re not saying much but it looks like they searched his apartment and that led them here.’
Then she’d have walked onto the broken glass in her bare feet, felt the burn of the cut.
‘I better get down there.’
She would’ve felt the blood ooze then.
‘You better.’
Sophie found some prescription painkillers in her pocketbook, washed them down with a glass of flat Champagne.
The fog had lifted but the chill remained. The cargo ship, a ULCV - ultra large container vessel - twelve hundred feet long with fourteen thousand twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers on board, quietly set off from Baltimore. In among the containers of aircraft parts, bus engines, computers and corn was a Vierte shipment, a well-shielded nuclear device. Plutonium balls with explosive charges, waiting on a text message to achieve critical mass.
The ship crossed the Atlantic, passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, enjoyed the warmth of the Mediterranean, transited the Suez Canal and skirted the Arabian Peninsula to reach the port of Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates, the busiest port in the Middle East. There it unloaded its cargo and took on more containers, including a vast shipment of Syrian and Iraqi archaeological and artistic wonders, looted by Vierte’s partners, ISIS, treasures from the actual origin of human civilisation.
And so the ship quickly left behind the US Navy’s most-frequently-visited location outside the United States. And there, by the semi-permanent liberty facilities called The Sandbox, a place for boozing and womanising and hypocrisy in a strictly Islamic state, lurked the most powerful ship of the most powerful navy in the history of the world. Supercarrier CVN-68, the USS Nimitz.