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hen I got back to the States in 1975 I was a wreck. The war had killed my soul and left my body alive. I had nerves like a lab mouse, nightmares on the rare occasions I got to sleep, and a general feeling of being lost.
While I was in the VA hospitaI—I had everything that starts with D, plus some trauma—a man came to see me with a job offer.
Seeing that the light at the end of my personal tunnel was the 10 p.m. Express, I listened. I may be bitter and cold, but I’m not stupid. I could see this was my only way out of the hell of poverty and isolation that was waiting for veterans of the Vietnam debacle. The civilian world didn’t want me, the military wouldn’t take me back, and I didn’t have enough money to get to France and join the Foreign Legion. Fighting was all I knew, and I was very good at it. One funny thing about combat-shock cases like me is that danger is normal for us. We seek, we love it, and if you can tolerate our little quirks, we can prosper at it. Being without it destroys us.
The man’s name was Terwilliger, or so he said. An unremarkable guy in a cheap suit. He shook my hand with exquisite insincerity, flopped down in the chair by my bed and hauled a file in a blue folder out of a briefcase that looked like it had survived the wreck of the Andrea Doria and maybe a plane crash, too.
“Quite a history you have,” he said.
“Yeah, my name will live forever.”
“Most of your records were lost at the end of the war. The new Vietnamese administration isn’t inclined to return them, but enough survived at Langley to catch the eye of our recruiters.
“The upshot of this is, you’re a killer. A genuine gunslinger—and a reliable sort. Nobody needs a wild man. But the main thing is the story you told when you finally were repatriated. That really got us looking at you. You wiped out a whole village of Tcho-Tcho?”
“Nobody is going to miss them.”
“Oh, Hell no!” The guy laughed. “Mother Theresa would have called an air strike on that bunch. What the Hell is a ‘blooper man?’ One of the few people we interviewed said you were a good one.”
“I was a grenadier, M-79 grenade launcher—it makes a sound like bloop.”
“Oh, we called that a thumper. How were you with a pistol?”
“I can do anything with one except eat it for lunch.”
“Better and better! I’m prepared to offer you a position with an organization that has a low profile. It doesn’t really have an official name. We need tough guys for a hard job, people who have run into some strange stuff and survived.”
“Sounds charming. What’s in it for me?”
“It pays well—very well, and there’s no bullshit involved, minimal paperwork, no office politics and very few rules. Most of the time, you’ll be operating independently, mission-oriented to the max.”
“What’s the catch?”
“You’ll be dealing with evil on a scale you never imagined. The danger is significant, and very, very real.”
“I had my heart set on getting an education. I’ve done a lot of college courses by mail while I’ve been here.”
“Oh, you’ll get an education, all right! We can help you with that. We want you here, in Baltimore, and we have contacts in the University—you’ll have your degree in a real hurry. Besides, being a student will be good cover for you.”
“Sounds too easy.”
“Podna, there’s nothing easy about this.”
He was a truthful man. I was out of that hospital in a week, and off to a training course. I don’t really want to talk about that. Some things are very bad to know about, and at that place, I learned them all.
I had a room on an upper floor in the Repository for a while. I got some advanced training and did a lot of reading. Some of my research was into a couple of very odd devices of great antiquity. All the while I was evaluated for general stability and reliability. Military training can pay off sometimes. They were most satisfied. I even got a sort of promotion out of it. They set me up in an apartment then got me into the University of Baltimore with advanced standing, and the fun began.
As promised (for once) the pay was very good, and to be sure, my bondage was a light one. I went to school during the day—where I discovered I could write—and sort of floated around at night, visiting hangouts, sex clubs and various occult organizations. As usual, Baltimore was ten years behind the times, so there were lots of occult groups to visit. I’d call in at the Repository—it was new and unfinished then—and drop off my desultory reports. There was plenty of squirrely stuff going on, but no sight of a tentacle or a scale, not yet.
That’s where I met Terri. She was an operative in my section. Her assignment was to go to tony parties and listen for murmurings among the upper crust. Terri was a one time Carmelite nun who’d renounced her vows and entered the world with both feet—size twelve feet. She was six-four and as willowy as a ballerina; smart, funny, chic and lonely. When she saw me, she smiled like a cougar with a crippled raccoon. I was just as tall, and a woman that elongated has a hard time finding a date she doesn’t have to bend over to talk to. I found her irresistible, and that suited her just fine. She dressed like a duchess, spoke like a lawyer, drank like a stevedore and ate like a shark. Her metabolism was more like a greyhound than a woman—she lost weight faster than she could gain it. We went out to eat after finishing work one day, and were mutually hooked before we had the onion rings finished.
She had long black hair and gray eyes, a nose like a blade and a fine, Black Irish chin. She’d been trained as a librarian in the convent where she grew up (yes, another orphan) but she was too adventurous for that kind of life. She was graceful and pale, with a laugh like fine music. She was an exotic, and her schtik was simple: she wore very long party dresses and eight-inch platform shoes which made her seven feet tall.
Armed with a slight French accent, she introduced herself as Odille St. Euxpéry, niece of the aviator and author of The Little Prince. Everybody wanted to talk to her, and she was an expert eavesdropper. We had a special school for that. You had to be able to follow three conversations at once to graduate. She was able to do five.
We fell in love. She was an easy woman to love, and she loved me back with a whole and open heart. It was quite an experience.
“Hungry!” she said one night as we lay in bed.
“Jesus, Terri, it’s four o’clock in the morning.”
“I’ve allowed you to practice depravities upon my declivities for hours, you owe me a snack.”
“Not much choice this time of night.”
“Go get a sack of Belly Bombs—it’s close, it’s still open, and I’m hungry, dammit!”
So I got up, put on a sweater, my jeans, waffle stompers and my pea jacket. As I left, I saw her stretch luxuriously and burrow deeper into the covers, smiling sweetly. I had a knit mugger’s hat in the pocket of the coat (it was cold enough to need it), a pair of fine leather gloves from the Hecht Company, and a Walther P38. Baltimore is a rough town, and it was a lot rougher then.
I slouched down Mt. Royal Avenue, toward Charles Street and the Little Tavern. A couple of hard looking black guys passed me, considered their options, and since I look like Frankenstein’s monster, passed on to seek less hazardous prey.
I got a dozen of those square and wonderful treats, with mustard only, the way we liked them, figuring that would hold her until breakfast. I think the reason sliders taste so good is that you only eat the damned things when you’re ravenous, and anything would taste good. You can still buy White Castles in the supermarket, frozen, and I sometimes indulge for the memories. Good memories, mostly, in that Bicentennial year. The Tall Ships were in the harbor, the war was over, and I had a beautiful woman to love. Bearing the grease stained bag, I returned. Terri was pleased: she wolfed eight of them in a period of time so brief as to be appalling. I ate the rest in self defense.
“I got a lead,” she said, after she belched daintily on the back of her long and graceful hand.
“No talking shop while you’re naked.”
“I’m under the covers. And thank you, honey, that was really nice.”
“You’re welcome. So what did you find out?”
“Well, I was at that party at the Engineer’s Club . . . it was noisy as the Devil, and I had two Hadassah types yammering away about a five kilo dope deal in my other ear. . . .”
“C’mon sister, give!”
“This is like having a love affair with Mike Hammer. And don’t call me sister, it brings back bad memories.”
“Sorry, I forgot there.”
“It’s OK, sweetie, just otchit-way ith-way the ister-say, capeesh?”
“Point taken. So what did you hear?”
“Two guys in gray suits and oxblood wingtips were talking about a ceremony somewhere on Eutaw Street, but I don’t know where. They said something about the Karate place being closed, so they’d have it to themselves.”
“That rings a bell. Want to go to Lexington Market tomorrow?”
“Oysters at Faidley’s? You betcha!”
“I’ll have a crab cake. To me, an oyster is a rock with a booger in it.”
“Hey, I just ate. God, you are so delicate sometimes.”
“I call ’em like I see ’em.”
“Oh, you goof!”
After class the next day, I met Terri at Little Cesar’s, a sub shop in the happy position of being between two large schools. We split half a cold-cut. Those crab cakes are small, Terri was always hungry, and the time to go over a basic plan wouldn’t come amiss. Always plan, no matter how simple the job may be. It gives you confidence.
“Just a recon,” I told her. “See what we can see, go eat, then see some more on the way back.”
“I like it,” Terri said. “There’s food involved.”
She was wearing tight jeans and kitten heels, a cowl neck sweater and Harris tweed cape. She bought her jeans at Finkelstein’s in Towson, and wore them in a hot shower, then sluiced them with cold water so they shrank to hug her legs. She had magnificent legs. Part of her party disguise was a towering, black Gibson Girl wig that, had it been real, would have required hair that hung to her pretty ankles. She had her hair in a French braid today and oversize sunglasses that had the effect of a domino mask. She was still conspicuous, but not likely to be recognized as Odille St. Euxpéry, child of diplomats, heiress to whole wads of new Francs and walking bric-a-brac for the social set.
So, we walked down Howard Street, window-shopped on Antique Row, then went up Centre Street to Eutaw. We were operational then. The karate place was across the street from No Fish Today, about the hippest saloon in the city, and it was indeed closed. A building has a dance of death, stages it must cross before being padlocked for good. To accommodate a karate school is the equivalent of Cheyne-Stokes breathing for a structure, a sure sign of imminent demise.
With the fondness Baltimorons have for beating on each other, a Karate studio would seem like a safe bet, but alas, this Ho-Oh bird had lifted off, bound for where the water tastes like sake. There was a door beside the sadly fastened dojo entrance. Times past, Baltimore’s mercantile elite lived above their premises, often in some luxury.
We stopped to suck face for a moment, mainly to cover our examination of the door, but also because it was pure joy. Some spoilsport yelled “Get a room!” so we continued on, crossed at Saratoga Street and threaded our way through the crowds to the door of Lexington Market.
Outside, hawkers, shopping bags, the AFRO, and balloon men clutching their colorful wares.
Inside, food.
Stomachs full, hand in hand, we trailed slowly down Eutaw, and onto George street behind our new target. We dawdled along, Terri’s heels clopping on the Belgian blocks in a most bewitching way, did another embrace, and had a look at the back of the place. Not much to see, really. But something had been going on recently. There was trash waiting to be picked up.
“Whatever’s happening there,” she said, “is going to happen soon. Those were food containers.”
“Trust you to notice. Why not a fridge being stocked for later?”
“There was a dry ice carton. There’s probably no power up there, so it goes into ice chests.”
I learned a lot from Terri.
When Terri told her section chief about what she’d seen, he got a very glum expression to his face, very glum indeed.
“That’s the uniform of the Ipsissimi Magni, silver robe and red shoes, brought up to date. They used to wear a black fez, long ago; now it’s a beret, and only outside. If that gang is in town, you best get ready to earn your pay, kiddies. They’re not just the
Cult’s version of Shriners, they’re thaumaturgical shock troops.”
The location was perfect: No Fish Today was crowded most nights, the music was loud, people were coming and going, often on mysterious errands of their own. It was a notorious pick-up joint, with a few resident dope dealers, too. Good cover for some monkeyshines nearby. The damn place was a nightmare to surveil. Parking places were dearer than blood in the area, and those paranoid dopers were as good as watchdogs. We found a place not far off that had a good view of the back door. We parked our beat-up van there and had it covered. Then Terri and I found some seats in the front of the bar, by luck, and watched the front, aided by a rotating cast of visiting friends.
The wait wasn’t long. In those days before cell phones and sub compact radios, we had to use a runner—but it worked.
The sacrifice was inside, delivered fresh. Sometimes they keep one chained up for a day or so to let panic and sheer terror soften them up, but tonight it was going to
be served tartare. The sacrifice opens the way. It’s the energy that trips the spell’s ability to make a slit in the barriers.
Close to a crowded venue, we were doing a no-guns operation. The back door was attractive as an entry point. We went in like a blitzkrieg and the people watching the door folded like beach umbrellas.
We went up the stairs, weapons ready, right into an ambush. They were waiting for us, primed for a scrap.
It got very confused. We were using blackjacks, steel whips, brass knuckles, truncheons and batons. They were using the same, but they were ready for us, and had us outnumbered. I had a large sap, steel toe boots and loaded gloves. I smote them hip and thigh, and they smote right back. There was blood, snot and saliva on the floor in seconds, followed by a few teeth.
After doing this square dance for a few minutes, everybody seemed to agree that it was time to go, so friend and foe headed out into the night.
Terri had the beginnings of a truly wonderful shiner, my ribs were aching from a whack with a sawed-off baseball bat, and if I hadn’t thought to wear a cup, I’d have been walking funny for quite a while.
We weren’t far from my apartment, so we went there. I got some ice on Terri’s eye, and I sat down to do some very satisfactory moaning.
“God-dammit to Hell!” she said, clutching the towel to her throbbing face. “They were ready for us!”
“Do tell?” I said. “You hurt anywhere else?”
“Feel like I fell down a fire escape.”
“Welcome to the club. Let’s get into bed and warm up, I feel a little shocky, bet you do too.”
“I’m too pissed off for shock!” She was crying now. “What the Hell happened?”
“We have a leak.”
It was before le Carré invented the term mole and saw it adopted by the world’s intelligence community. It was interesting times coming, as in the Chinese curse.
Terri was hurt a lot more than I’d thought, and she was shipped off to a private clinic in Colorado. That morning she hadn’t been able to walk. I had to help her to the toilet, and there was blood in the bowl. She had a concussion, too.
After she was quietly whisked away, I was called down to the Head Shed to answer a lot of questions. I told the truth: we had walked into a trap and gotten our clock cleaned. No excuses.
I had to take it easy for a while, myself. I had three broken ribs, so I caught up on school work and tried to help pick up the thread of the Cult’s local activities. Those worthies had chosen to lie low and keep dark. Even with a traitor inside our organization, they knew very well that we had far deeper reserves than they might ever muster, even with some people shipped in from out of town to reinforce their local assets.
We “went to the mattresses” and so did they. Blood was spilled, but we were discreet.
One night I was trekking down to Fells Point to meet a contact at Ledbetter’s saloon, when a trio of throwing stars sank into the boarding I was walking past. As I swiveled my head around, I saw a tall black man come out of the dark, dressed in nothing but his jeans and a tank top, on a frosty February night. He was twirling two sets of nunchaku and yelling his fool head off. Had I been able to run, I’d have been off like a shot, hoping that he was going to hit himself upside the coconut while busily terrifying me. I had one of my Walthers in my coat pocket so I shot him squarely in the head, and that was the end of his study of the martial arts.
I was going to have to ditch that sidearm. Shootings in Baltimore were not as common then, not the daily affair they became in just a few years, so I pitched the gun into the harbor and continued on to make the meet.
It made the papers, page three, and was forgotten about, probably because the guy was never identified.
One of our operatives was strangled with a chain just three days later.
It was decided to have a sit-down and scale the violence back. For some reason I got tapped to meet the representative of the other firm, who turned out to be Sophia Papadoupolis.
Life often turns on such small chances.
We met at the Mount Royal Tavern, a cheerfully dingy joint that catered to the art students from the Maryland Institute and various avant garde types.
We took a high table near the back, but not too close to the juke box, and I sprung for a pitcher of Natty Boh. This was going to be thirsty work.
She was younger than I expected, a small, almost gaunt woman with delicate hands and feet, black hair and eyes. Her complexion was the color of tea with milk. She was snake quick and had the springy look of a dancer or gymnast. Her voice was low, with a cigarette rasp and a trace of some Continental accent. You could see where the rasp came from: she smoked Shepherd’s Hotel cigarettes, and lit them from the butts.
“This little disagreement of ours is becoming an embarrassment,” she said. “And you actually shot poor Jamal—really, that was bad form!”
“He scared me with those numchucks. I had to act fast, no room to maneuver.”
“Guns attract too much attention.”
“I figure that me with a busted head would have been just as messy.”
“There is that.” She took a deep drag on her latest ciggy, and a workmanlike bite out of her beer. “Why not a truce? Let us complete our projects here, and keep the peace?”
“Somehow, I see that being bad for my people.”
“Oh, we can coexist. At the moment, conditions don’t favor my principles, not at all. We’re just doing some groundwork for the future.”
“That’s what concerns us.”
“Always the long view, I see. And by the by, I find you wildly attractive. With your belle amie out of the picture, perhaps we might make our negotiations more intimate?”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“It always worked before, aren’t you just a little interested?”
“If I were at liberty, I’d be all over you like a cheap suit. But I’m not.”
“Oh, chivalry, forsooth! Well, you’d be less than the man I want if you were inconstant.”
We kicked it around, got nowhere, and finished the beer. The next day, it was business as usual.
Two days later, we paid them back for that ambush. There was a deserted mansion on Eutaw Terrace—the homes there had been magnificent, once, but now they were cut up into cheap apartments, and the whole area was a dung heap. The Other Firm had a sort of worship service planned in one crumbling old pile that had been vacant for quite some time. No sacrifice, just a good old-fashioned orgy, a little event to hook more chumps into the Cult. Sex and drugs make a good bait for the kind of characters they most like to recruit. Get them started, draw them in, then get them involved in some very grim biz, the kind that facilitates lifelong blackmail.
We filtered in on foot, waited until it got noisy, then rushed the door.
Inside, they had a regular pile-up in full swing, so much pink skin writhing around it looked like a fresh litter of white rats.
Our entry was the surprise of the night (not that there hadn’t been some entries already); it set off a very satisfactory panic among the company assembled there, most of whom had other things on their minds.
I had a wicked steel whip, the kind that folds like a telescope, a strong spring with a metal knob on the end. Everywhere it landed, it made a deep bruise, and if it hit bone, there was a loud crack, and a bloody contusion.
Some of them fought back, which got them more of what we called “Scunion” in the ’Nam: I stepped on one clown’s toes and heard a gratifying crunch, kicked another one in the groin and was rewarded with a scream that sounded like the schmuk was trying to yodel.
Then Sophia Papadoupolis came at me, opening a knife with a wavy six inch blade. I had a feeling she knew how to use it, so I brought the steel whip down across her hands. She screamed, dropped the knife, then started to cry like a child. I couldn’t bring myself to follow up, so she took off running, nearly bare-ass, and barefooted. As she fled, she said some things in what sounded like Greek, and none of it struck me as complimentary in nature.
So, with people fleeing by every available exit—including the windows, I called for a retreat.
It was a busy night, even for that block. I heard the blasting of car horns, a sure sign that the local cops were on the way (Baltimore radio cars didn’t have sirens back then, a decision made by the lickspittle politicians because people had complained about the noise at night).
I’ll wager that was a fun shift at the ER over in Maryland General. I just drifted back to my apartment, where, to my surprise, Terri was waiting for me.
“Hey!” I said.
“Hey yourself.”
“How you feeling?”
“Like shit on a stick. I have a headache the Jews were saving for Hitler, and every once and a while I see everything in real bright colors. The doctors explained it, it’s sort of like I got a bruised brain. I’ll be on light service for a while.”
“Damn, that’s rough.”
“Tell me about it. And no sex for another two weeks, at least not the regular kind. I’m supposed to keep still.”
“Hey, no big deal.”
“Easy for you to say, pal. You know how not being able to do something makes you want to do it?”
“Yeah. Tell you what, you just lie there, and I’ll do all the work, take the edge off for you.”
“You’re the best!”
I turned the covers back.
“Get undressed, sweetie, I want to cuddle, afterwards.”
I got a stiff neck, but I didn’t mind. The cuddle was good, too. I had been missing her, the smell of her, the warmth of her, the feel of her skin, and most of all, her companionship.
Later, with that long, firm body in my arms, I realized that this was real love, and that is the ultimate prize in life. The other that makes a person complete, the great peace you find just being with that one special person.
As I felt her slip into sleep, I said, “I love you.”
“Love you too,” she mumbled, and closed her eyes.
That little war stumbled along for three years. Why bother with the details? They tried to accomplish things, we stopped them, they tried again. I did well in school, started serious writing, and often spent my nights roaming through the city darkness like a sheep-killing dog, hunting cultists to beat bloody. They had some good days, too. I collected a few new scars.
Sophia Papadoupolis and I became friends in an odd way. We handled the diplomatic chores every war demands. She kept trying to get me into the sack, the minx. It got to be a running gag of sorts.
I tried to find our mole, but I never did. I suspected a man named Norman Gretzler. He had a job in the operations section, and that would have put him just where he could do the most damage. Not so long after I decided he was worth a look, he and two other agents were killed in an automobile accident, sideswiped by a drunk on Route 83 as they were speeding along late one night. The penetration seemed to have been sealed about that time, so it might well have been one of those three. Or somebody else who took advantage of the accident to go into dormant, sleeper status. I’ll never know.
Terri didn’t see the humor in my encounter with Sophia, even though I told her about it, and she actually believed me. “That bitch! I’d like to pull her nipples off!” She said this more than once, though not so frequently as to get tiresome. Actually, I liked to see the fire flash in her eyes. Jealousy is such a sincere compliment.
We loved deeply, loved constantly and, being young, boffed each other’s brains out every chance we got. I began to discover that sex and intimacy are linked, but that intimacy is better than sex. I’ll always be grateful to Terri for helping me learn that. Our lovers are our best teachers. I often spent time with her down at the Repository. She was still trying to get the library organized, and that was another learning experience for me.
There’s something electric in a love affair with more than a touch of danger in it. It brings two people so close they almost become one organism.
Then, one night, I was having a beer at No Fish, and Sophia took a place at the bar beside me. She was in no mood for joking.
“I have no idea why I’m telling you this,” she said. “But I’ll do it anyway. I’m on my way to Africa tomorrow. I’ve been canned, more or less. Africa is not what you’d call a plum job.”
“Sorry to hear that, Sophia,” I told her. “You were fun to play with.”
“Bastard! And I’ll never forget what you did to my hands.”
“Hey, all’s fair in love and war.”
“I know,” she said, looking glum. “And I do rather fancy a bit of pain, but not without the payoff.”
“So, what’s the big news?”
“The Ipsissimi Magni are taking over the operation. There’s a Prefect coming in with a full cohort of goons, and they intend to move without let or hindrance.”
“We still have the numbers on our side, Sophia.”
“Just be careful. These fellows are not fooling about, do you hear me?”
“I hear you. I never did figure out why your people want this city so bad.”
“I’m not a traitor. You’ll have to discover that yourself, with no help from me—just be careful. Perhaps we’ll meet again, someday, under less trying circumstances?”
“You take care of yourself too, pumpkin. Who knows what the future holds in store?”
“You infuriating man, don’t call me pumpkin!” she sputtered, then laughed. She stalked off into the night, like a prowling cat. I followed suit. It was a good time to see Terri and pass her the warning.
The Ipsissimi Magni are the hard men of the Cult, an elite military order—a superior sort of thug, but thugs all the same. They were often deployed in very small groups of two or three, even singly some times, to command Cultists during active conflicts. A Prefect with a Cohort of twenty disciplined and well trained fighters might strain our ability to command the situation, even though we had brought in extra people of our own. Wars are easy to start, difficult to end—how difficult, everyone was about to find out.
Opening move, five Ipsissimi banked two of our operatives one Thursday night (banked meaning what japped meant, only in Baltomoron: a surprise attack by superior numbers against an unsuspecting foe). The reply was to throw a satchel charge through the window of the run-down rowhouse the other side was calling home. That was explained as a gas explosion. It killed three of the opposition and made a suitable impression.
That led to a three-hour running gun battle in Sandtown (just West Baltimore then) that cost both sides casualties, and left several cops with wry-neck from looking the other way so much.
They sent a guy to negotiate a truce, and I said, “Screw a truce, we’re winning.”
I went over to Terri’s house, just to see her.
The outer door of the apartment building was hanging loose from one hinge, and as I took the steps two at a time, I heard a woman screaming above. The door of Terri’s place was split in two, probably by an ax.
She was lying on the floor like a spider mashed with a claw hammer, long limbs flung wide, her midsection shredded by shotgun blasts.
The cops arrived, and I was busy for the next several hours.
When they were done, I went home and cried myself to sleep. I woke up in time to catch early mass, then confessed as best I could.
After I was through with my penance, I lit a candle for Terri, said a prayer for forgiveness, and went to the Old World Deli on Eutaw Street, across from the Market, got a bottle of German rum, had some chili dogs at Konstant’s, and took a goodly slug of the rum in a toilet stall.
Then, blood for blood, I went to war.
From among the hardware I kept in a stash under a floorboard in that building we’d been ambushed in, I took two Browning Hi Power pistols, a Walther, some spare magazines and a whippit gun. That’s a shotgun cut down fore and aft, with a strap over the stub of the butt stock so that it hangs straight down at your side—when you need it, just whip it out. As an afterthought, I took a belt of buckshot shells along.
Then, I drank more rum.
Once, in Africa, I led a battalion of assorted troops in the defense of a city, the name of which I forgot. It was under attack by a division of Provisional Government regulars, but I beat them like a rented mule, then counter-attacked and destroyed the headquarters of the entire Provisional Army. I even captured their colors with my own hands. It must have been glorious. I was so drunk, I don’t remember a bit of it. All I recall is the post-blackout hangover, for which I deserved a wound badge, first class. I doubt I could have done it sober.
That was the occasion of my first extended blackout. During this blackout, I had periods of what I call lucid drunkenness: I was drunk, oblivious to normal emotion, yet oddly, everything seemed so clear and rational. I viewed the world down a narrow brown tunnel, but what I could see looked very sharply focused, a view through a low-powered telescope.
It was in this condition that I entered the hideout of the Ipsissimi, a loft space with sturdy double doors. The shotgun blew them open, and I strode in, cocking the Browning’s burr hammers, fearless, god-like, consumed with pain and rage. In the Army, we called this getting the ass. I had the ass.
The men in that loft were surprised—after all, it was four in the morning—but they scrambled for handguns as I tossed a lit highway fusee into the dark room.
If they were to my left, I shot them with the left hand gun, the right fired on targets to that side, straight ahead might get either, or both. They fired back, but I was as one possessed. The bullets simply were not germaine. I was there to kill, and kill again.
It was not an extended episode. They tumbled down, flipped over railings, shrieked and spasmed, crumpled and required a follow-up shot. When the slides were both locked back from smoking chambers, there was no one left to shoot. So I walked out into the night, stopping only to uncap my flask and return to walking oblivion.
When I awoke, the sun was up, and I was in handcuffs, confined to the lower floors of the Repository. Nobody would talk to me.
I was hustled to a car, driven to the airport, bundled aboard a small jet, and then I was in Africa. I must have upset several applecarts. I found that I was demoted to being a stringer, a pick-up agent, paid by the job, though I was still on staff. I tried working as a reporter for a bit, but soon I was hauling a rucksack and a rifle in a succession of tin-pot hired armies, following the secret and forgotten wars that sputter along in that sad and blighted place.
I kept on drinking, though like many drunks, I still did my job quite well. I kept on writing, too, sending bits of The Book of Adiban to my agent every chance I got. People still convulse with laughter reading Chapter 18, “The Treatise on Defenestration,” not knowing that I wrote it on a typewriter in an office in a bombed out building, just after I shot the man who had been using it dead, and chucked his corpse out the window before it could stink or draw bugs. No excuses, war is Hell.
I had a leave coming, decided to take it, and in the first saloon I sat down in, there was Sophia.
“You shite!” she said. “You’re drunk!”
“Nobody’s perfect,” I replied.
I stumbled from army to army, from war to war, fighting and killing in a fog of blood and misery. I was sad, I was guilty, but I didn’t stop. Sophia seemed to find me wherever I went. I figured she’d been detailed to keep an eye on me. I was careful to keep any good information away from her, and she from me. It was like scorpions mating.
I kept on writing, especially during my frequent periods of unemployment. Being a mercenary pays well enough, down time wasn’t a strain, and I pounded out The Wind is my Enemy, finished The Book of Adiban and didn’t remember a word of it.
Sometimes a handler would come to me and give me an assignment: look into this, see what’s happening there, keep an ear to the ground, an eye to the keyholes.
In Kenya, I found the Cult of the Bloody Tongue active again. Nyarlathotep has a lot of free time, too, and even with his limited powers he can attract followers. It’s not pretty anywhere, but in Africa it’s as bad as it gets.
Sophia had mysterious errands of her own. We had to work around that. She acquired a rhinoceros-hide sjambok, and I made her buttocks cherry red with it. It drove her crazy. She had a knack for making me mad enough to hurt her, and I started to get a real taste for it, tying her up and thrashing her until her bottom was flaming, with bruises turning eggplant blue. After a while, I looked forward to it, watching her strain against the ropes, keening a thin screech, her agony and her lust. I started getting better at that. I found that the backs of her thighs and the flesh behind her knees was particularly tender, and that a few strokes there would have her in tears—and her tears stopped making me want to stop. After the beating, while she was still tied, I would enter her bowels—I’d never done that before, not even in Asia. The proper technique would make her go nearly mad with erotic ecstasy.
One night, after we finished, she kept blowing smoke into my eyes. If I really wanted to torture her, I could have denied her that after-sex cigarette, but I had a feeling that might shorten my life.
“Stop that, Sophia! It’s as annoying as all Hell!”
“Make me!” she hissed.
I grabbed the cigarette and ground it out in her navel. She shrieked and curled up into a fetal ball, sobbing.
“Oh, God, Sophia, I don’t know where that came from!”
“Damn you! You know very well where it came from, you bastard, it came from your putrid soul! I wanted to make a monster, and by God, that’s just what I got!”
I reached out for her, but she shied away, with eyes full of loathing.
“Don’t touch me, you evil fuck! Get away, get out, leave me alone!”
I went back to my hotel, where, to my horror, I discovered not one scintilla of remorse.
I then began an epic bender—my liver still brings it up to me sometimes—that only ended when I had the staggers and jags so bad, I couldn’t get any more booze, because I couldn’t reach the liquor store. And I was dead broke, of course; that also had an effect.
I was filthy, I stank, and I was befouled with everything the human body can produce. While I was lying, wrecked and derelict, in a reeking alley, Sophia found me.
“Get up, you turd!” said my late lady-love.
“I can’t,” I said. “And how’s your belly button?”
“I got some ointment from a juju woman. Most African medicine gives you gangrene, but this stuff works wonders. It stinks nearly as bad as you do, though.”
“I’d say something nasty, but, by God, you’re right, I do stink. So why don’t you just toddle along and let me rot?”
“You’d enjoy it too much.”
That evil bitch dragged me to a water faucet—the mud made it easy for her—and hosed me off like a sweaty elephant, then set me in the hot sun to dry. I vowed, silently, that if I ever got to burn her with a cigarette again, I’d aim lower. Then the damnable she-fiend bullyragged me to a little cook-shop and tormented me with the the promise of a beer to get me to eat a plate of some unidentifiable substance that might have been stew, or perhaps giraffe dung.
That St. Pauli Girl tasted so good, I forgave her. While I was watching her die, years later, I thought of that bottle of beer, and wished I could offer her such a comfort in her last moments.
I can see her, even now. She wore a pair of those Greek sandals that are almost, but not quite, shoes; knife-creased khakis and a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows and the collar turned up—she always did that, to show off her beautiful face and throat.
She got me back to my hotel, paid my bill, and tucked me in bed. I conked out for about twelve hours, and she was back when I woke up with a case of the whips-and-jingles that would have crippled a sperm whale. She dosed me with some brew that I suspected was poison, but it cleaned me out and cleared me up in less than a day, so I didn’t inquire about its composition.
“Sophia—I’m sorry about burning you.”
“You became what I desired, I really can’t hate you for that. Besides, compared to the orgasms you’ve given me, you’re well ahead. Even a confirmed masochist like me reaches a limit, sometimes, and that took me farther than I really wanted to go.”
“Then all is forgiven?”
“Not fucking even! You know I never forgive or forget, I’m Greek!”
“So why the TLC?”
“Because, you pig-eyed Mick, even a Greek can’t stay angry forever. What’s done is done, my belly is healed, there’s no scar and, besides, I’m leaving Africa. It seems I’m needed elsewhere.”
“So where are you going?”
“That would be telling. We’ll meet again. Just try to be sober when we do?”
Then she was gone. There was good in Sophia; if she hadn’t grown up in a family of criminals, if she hadn’t joined the Cult, she might have used her intelligence and good sense for something else. Or at least, for some playful wickedness, and not as a very capable servant of Cosmic Evil. There but for the grace of God, and all that.
It was a while until I was truly sober—and I had some nasty slips along the way—but I pinned old John Barleycorn in the end. For a long time, I concentrated on drinking and not getting drunk, with varying degrees of success. Then I got the hang of it, and it’s been all plain sailing from then on.
My handler appeared again, a squint-eyed weasel-dick with a cauliflower ear and a pedigree that might have included several species of rodent and a few monkeys of the sort people shoot on sight.
“You’re back on full-time duty,” he said.
“Hurray.” I mimed waving a small flag in a desultory way.
He chose to ignore this editorial comment. “One last job here in Darkest Afrique, and you’re for the happy land of Brazil. You’ll like that, the rum is cheap there.”
“Why is it hypes always look down on lushes?”
“We don’t get as sloppy. It’s a more elegant habit.”
“Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the donkey.”
“This is a simple job, something suited to your special talents. We want you to to kill a man. Strictly a cowboy job. Just don’t get caught.”
“Who, where and when?”
“You’re a model of compassion.”
“You have no room to talk, you’re setting it up.”
“That’s true enough. And I have to admit, I wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger, not in cold blood like you can.”
“It not something I’m proud of,” I told him. “But in the immortal words of Wes Hardin, I never killed a man who didn’t need it.”
“Your mother must be proud of you.”
“Mention my mother again, and you’ll be digging your cheap dentures out of the toilet tomorrow morning.”
“Can you get to Nairobi discreetly?”
“Issue me a disguise kit, and I’ll be invisible.”
“What will you use?”
“A Sikh—easy on, easy off. Will I have a support team?”
“No. It’s a one man job this time. Risky, but you can do it.”
“You have my shoes?” False identity papers are a must for this kind of thing.
“How many pairs?”
“Three. The Sikh, an English Jew and American papers to take me back here. I’ll exit as myself.”
“Sound enough plan. You’ll be getting a special weapon for the job, a suppressed .455 single-shot.”
“I’ll want a Walther for a back up.”
“Done,” he said. “It’ll be delivered to your hotel room, along with the file on the target.”
With that, we parted. I never saw him again.
That night, a package was brought to my room. I examined the false papers, and found them good, looked over the disguises, which were satisfactory. The P38 was dinged about, but in operating order, and the centerpiece was a fascinating device.
It was a plunger-fired single-shot, with a commercial Maxim suppressor soldered onto its short, smooth-bore barrel. The simple grip was wrapped in electrical tape to gum up fingerprints, and the trigger was knurled for the same reason—a very nice hair-trigger, too, just like I prefer. I dry fired it a few times and was most pleased.
Then I opened the file on my target, and my stomach plunged like a skydiver at a shopping-center opening. I saw a picture of my old friend Gus. There was a dossier, and it made me feel sick in my abdomen, it actually hurt like a bad case of gas. Gus had been a very bad man indeed. Then he’d compounded it by becoming an accessory-before-the-fact to the murder of the human race.
His real name was Augustus Caesar Pollins, he hailed from Annapolis, Maryland, and he’d joined the Army right around the time I had. He’d done two hitches, come home to find his wife had found comfort in the arms of a local cop, and he’d dusted the pair of them in flagrante delecto. Then it was off to see the world, because the Maryland State Prison system was so awfully dull. He hid out in Baltimore, then finagled a berth on a tramp steamer bound for the Ivory Coast. The skipper was a tightwad, and non-union hands were a saving; hands that would work for found were even better. From there, he went inland to the wars, and a good mortar man is always useful to a military force in the start-up phase. Soon, he was lobbing candy apples for anyone who’d pay, and found himself in some demand, because he could make those candy apples land where they were needed.
But Africa has her secrets, and the man who called himself Lead-Kindly-Light N’Gomo, a name he half remembered from some African adventure book read as a child, found some things that even the root doctors of Annapolis and Baltimore had no idea about, wicked as they were. There are depths that cannot be plumbed in the New World.
An angry man comes naturally to the Cult of the Bloody Tongue. Nyarlathotep loves a bitter soul, promises so much to the burning heart. Gus was hooked. He worshiped, he slew, he served the Crawling Chaos well—so well that he advanced into the inner priesthood, and learned what no man, black, white, yellow, red or brown, should ever know.
I remember wandering through a burning city with him one night, looking for a bottle of commercially made hooch (the local stuff is unreliable, and often toxic) when we ran into a small patrol from our opposition. I had a sturdy Russian burp gun, Gus was packing an FN-49 rifle with a grenade launcher on the muzzle and a satchel of Energa rifle grenades. Gus dropped those infernal shape-charge bombs on them with barely a glance at the sight. Any that rose a bit to shoot at him got a face full of slugs from my Pah-Pah-sha. There were ten of them; not one survived after ten minutes. Then we went off to look for some whiskey. As it fell out, we had to make do with gin—but it was good gin, high-end Dutch schnapps.
Now I had to kill him. That sucked, but what else to do?
So I packed up my odds and ends, checked out of the hotel and went looking for a quiet place to become someone else. With a battered suitcase, my own hair and mustache dyed black, a fake beard done up in a net and a turban, I was another Sikh in a shabby jacket and sandals, riding another rattletrap African bus through the night.
Finding Gus was not difficult. I slept rough in Nairobi—it made my disguise better—and stayed close to the local Cult temple. I had a thick roll of various currencies, and as I wandered around I bought a stout canvas laundry bag and began filling it with fireworks from market stands and street vendors.
After three days he showed up, in to do some religious business, I suppose. I found a secluded spot, dropped the single hollow point round into the breech of the special gun, then lit a cigarette and waited. I nearly consumed the entire pack. My mouth tasted like a busy section of the Chisholm Trail when he came out again.
I dropped the half smoked cigarette into the laundry bag, casually abandoned it and crossed the street. Gus noticed nothing, but he was staying alert; I would only get one chance to finish this. The hot tobacco did its work, that bag started smoking, howling and banging, dancing a fiery fandango on the hard ground, and as everybody looked, I took out the pistol, cocked it, then took three long steps to get behind poor Gus.
Everyone was looking at that burning bag of noise. The last favor I could do for him was give him a quick, unexpected death, so I brought my arm up, popped him in the base of the skull, then lowered my arm and dropped the gun in one smooth motion. If you hit a ketchup packet with a hammer, you’d get an idea of what happened. His head was obliterated from the eyes up, with bloody gobbets and shards of skull flying all over. People were screaming. That just added to the confusion.
I attached myself to one of the knots of bystanders who had decided that it would be good to be elsewhere. I kept a good grip on my suitcase, though. I’d be needing to change identity in a bit.
Then a local cop showed up, blowing a whistle and waving a truncheon. This would have been fine, except some double-damned busybody started pointing at me and jabbering. This inspired the gendarme to haul out his revolver and start shooting at me, and motivated me to increase speed, while everybody else scattered like pigeons.
I made a sharp turn down an alleyway with Officer Dimbulb in hot pursuit. There were bodies down and bleeding from stray shots. He broke his Webley and started to reload it. I never killed a man who didn’t need it, and that murderous lamebrain needed it to the big ass, so I pulled the Walther and plugged him in the chest. He went down screaming, I went to flank speed, and started looking for someplace out of sight to make another self-reinvention.
There was no time to open the suitcase. I shed the turban and beard, dropped the tired old tweed coat, then reversed the long vest I wore under it from green to red. Be Prepared, the Boy Assassin’s motto. Donned a black fore-and-aft keffiyeh from my pocket and, with my black mustache, became a Pakistani.
There were more whistles, but I slowed to a walking pace, looked startled and passed unmolested into the city crowds. The first part of my escape was working fine. I kept the Pakistani look until I was a country away, then I took another room, washed the dye out of my hair with rubbing alcohol and did another change.
Now I was Israel Singer, of Birmingham, a fellow at loose ends traveling in search of business opportunities, with yet another false beard, sidelocks and a yarmulke. I wore a shabby suit with a long coat. Nobody remembers you in an outfit like that, they just think, Jew, and they never see anything else.
That was how I returned to my original location, became myself again, claimed my baggage and bought a plane ticket for Rio de Janeiro. I was happy in Brazil, I stayed there for quite a while, met Sonia, and started to seriously kick booze. Who needed rum with Sonia around?
But that’s another story. |
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