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El Blanco
Arlington, Virginia
The boat looked
trim and sea-worthy, a creamy white against the illumination of the sun just
breaking out from behind the mist. He allowed himself just an instant or two to dream about where the craft might take
him, and that was enough for it all to end.
Stand there!
A woman's voice
behind him. He turned slightly to see the Asian woman in the business
suit holding a weapon as large as her hand and forearm combined.
I'm standing, he
said.
Don't move and
keep your hands where I can see them.
I have to move in
order to—
Enough, she said.
Close your eyes.
Close my eyes?
Do it, she said.
He didn't want to
stop looking at her, trim shoulders beneath the suit coat, her face as
smooth as a flower petal.
I never heard of—
The noise came
from the deck but by the time he turned the darkness came crashing down
on his head.
* * *
He awoke wearing
a helmet of pain, feeling the vibrations beneath him and the slam and
slap of each wave against the moving hull.
On your feet.
A man spoke as if
he had never said these words before—as if no one had ever said these
words before.
Come on. Again
the strangeness of speech.
With eyes still
closed, Jenkins rose first to one knee, then to his feet. Jenkins felt
the wind pummeling his forehead and chest. But this was nothing compared
to the pounding inside his skull. He opened his eyes to see the
sunburned face of a veteran, the cheekbones prominent enough for the man
to be a Slav of sorts, the eyes ice-blue, the lashes long and dark and
uneven.
You've got a
message for me? Jenkins said, trying to ignore the pain.
I am the message,
the man said.
I'm the
back-channel, came a woman's voice from below the deck, and then the
Asian woman, wearing sweatshirt and faded jeans, climbed out.
The man made him
sit; the woman watched him and the man worked the sails.
Is this part of
an exercise? Jenkins said, but the woman wouldn't speak to him anymore.
He sat there and felt the boat rolling over the small waves, wondering,
wondering.
It wasn't until
they transferred to the larger boat at St. Michael's that Jenkins began
to figure it out.
What does this
have to do with?
The Slav didn't
speak, cuffing him to the rail and heading into the wheelhouse, leaving
Jenkins to continue his pondering with each lunge and roll of the ship. He watched for hours as the clouds ruffled and
blossomed in a good stiff ocean wind.
I've got to go!
he called out more than once during this ordeal. After a while the Asian
woman came up on deck and allowed him to sip water from a paper cup.
But I've got to
go, he said.
She smiled
slightly, showing the edge of white, beautifully milled incisors.
Then she went
below.
Sometime during
those next few hours he soiled himself. In an odd way this made him feel
secure and he didn't understand why. The wind in his mouth. Sky and travelling sun, the waves, this
water—he felt as though
his own stench mixed with the salt tang of the blustery air might make a
picture of which he could, if he stepped back and viewed it from a distance, make great sense.
Then slowly came
darkness upon the face of the waters. As the stars appeared overhead, he
found that he was sending messages back to the Cell by means of
telepathy:
Come and hold me.
Come and save me. Come and assuage my thirst. Thy fierce eye, the sun,
hath winked and the night cometh on. Now cold of the moon and winking
stars chill my moistened bones.
I am merely a
transmitter, he told himself. Yet also a receiver. And strait is the
gate. Wherewith I walk alone. Mulligatawney. Blessed are the hooligans
for they shall serveth moth and rust. Must and roth. Precious blood I
taste. The end. The desired end.
Over and over,
the words played through his mind—perhaps from that strange region that
Marian long ago had identified as his Third Eye, remember?—and he was
certain that someone would read them eventually. Even now someone like
himself—his replacement—might be walking past the door of the Cell.
Was it open or was it closed? Tell Fenton that the exercise is going
well. It is a success, a success. Beam me up then. Over now. We won! We
won! Oh, frabjous day, caoo, callay!
The wind wrote
poetry on his blistering forehead.
Two days later he
was gone, his body hanging limply, at an odd angle, from the cuff at the
rail. His story would go unreported, another one of those capital
mysteries that people hear about but never in much detail.
A flag fluttered
overhead as they rolled his body into the sea.
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