Mindbenders (35 page)

He threw his hand out but I threw myself at him first and we went head over heels, tumbling down the side of the island. I hit a tree squarely and that stopped me but good. Volkov continued straight into the river. When I looked up, Singh was gone—when I turned back to the river, so was Volkov.

I stood the best I could, vowing to keep clear of trees the rest of my life. Tauber ran toward us, somehow supporting Max, who was wheezing as bad as Volkov. The musicians, disciplined as soldiers, were finishing their piece but looking around wildly while playing.

Kate had pushed Marat to the bank of the river, both of them grim-faced and determined. All at once, Marat stopped firing. He turned from Kate and fired at Max, who managed to block the blast with a high swipe of his hand. As he reached upward, Marat lowered his aim and fired another blast directly into Tauber.

The old man turned blue and glowed like one of those bars you break open to light your campsite. He twitched and shook, making growling noises like an animal in a trap. And then a look of recognition moved across his face—almost a smile but not quite —and he collapsed like a bag of bones.

Marat lowered his arms now, satisfaction on his face. Max and Kate turned a black look on him simultaneously. At the moment their looks converged, Marat vaporized—imploded into the night air, sucked into particles that glowed for an instant and flickered out.

And then the music was over and all was chaos, the cries of the crowd and the sound of a hundred musicians abandoning their instruments, running across the sodden lawn for cover.

Kate and I bent over Tauber but there was nobody there. He was just a shell in the grass. I flashed back all of a sudden to Dave, to the way I’d gone vacant and distant a moment after Dave was killed. There was nothing distant here—this
hurt
.

“We’ve got to go,” Max was saying but we weren’t listening.

“We’ve can’t just leave him behind,” Kate answered. “We—” but she didn’t know how to finish.

“We have to,” Max repeated, gesturing behind us. Turning, I saw security pouring around the front of the island, seeking culprits for the morning papers.

Kate wasn’t budging. “He—we’ve got to do something for him. Something for…respect.”

“He’s got that,” Max said, closing Tauber’s eyes and laying his head back on the grass. Kate glared at him—she wasn’t going without him. Max nodded at me and I knew what he wanted, because of course he put the idea into my head. The idea did nothing for me—I wanted what Kate wanted, to do something for the old warrior instead of leaving him on the battlefield. We’d said in Iraq,
don’t miss a speck
. But now I did what Max told me to, because I knew it was necessary or because he made me, I can’t tell you which. I can tell you I hated him for it. I grabbed Kate under the arm, Max took her from the other side and we dragged her as fast as we could to the river, the guards coming fast behind us.

Max threw out his hand, drawing a line over the roiling surface. That’s how we ended up on a million web videos, appearing to run across the surface of the Tiber, Kate kicking and screaming between us, while our pursuers dropped into the water seconds later trying to follow.

~~~~

Now

So now we’re on the run, the best-known fugitives in the world, other than Bin Laden. TV shows regularly cite us right behind him on their ‘most dangerous terrorists’ lists. I never realized how many shows there were like that until we started showing up on them.

The video of the fight has been seen on the web over a million times. Whichever angle you watch—there were certainly enough cellphone cameras present that night—nothing’s ever clear. Which provides enough ambiguity to fuel fifteen discussion groups, connecting us to sightings of Jesus, Elvis, aliens and 9/11 conspiracy theories. Actually, the one I liked the best was the one that suggested we were fallen angels. Unless they meant we were followers of Lucifer. I may rethink my affection for that one.

It’s hard to argue that we accomplished a whole lot, once the G8 rejected Singh’s proposal and she was deposed by her own party two weeks after the conference. I can’t really argue that this world is a whole lot better than the one that might have been, although you have to hope.

Which is why I’m writing this. Max says just write it the best you can and give people the chance to see the truth in it. Which is interesting coming from him, considering he’s spent his whole life making people see things that weren’t there. But I think there’s a bit of a dreamer in him that comes out in moments like this. I find it funny, to tell the truth.

~~~~

Author’s Note

I have my trusted readers, who tell me when I’ve confused or put them to sleep. Significant contributions to this book were made by Marsha Garelick, David Leaf, Tom Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson, Maureen Gallagher, Elena Kushnerova, Steve Cosgrove and Margie Nicholson, Billy Papaleo and Dianna Dennis. Many thanks to all of them. Special thanks to the members of Stargate, Grill Flame and the other real American mindbender programs who wrote about it—their reminiscences are wilder than anything I’ve put in these pages.

See my other books at www.tedkrever.com

And look for

Mindbenders: The Big Dream

later this year.

~~~~

Author Bio

Ted Krever watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, went to Woodstock (the
good
one), and graduated Sarah Lawrence College with a useless degree in creative writing.

He spent the next few decades in media journalism, at ABC News on the magazine show
Day One
with Forrest Sawyer and the Barbara Walters
Interviews of a Lifetime
series, as General Manager of BNNtv, a documentary production company, creating programs for CNN, A&E, Court TV, CBS, MTV News, Discovery People and CBS/48 Hours, and as VP/Production of a short-lived dotcom, followed swiftly by nine months of unemployment.

Ted now writes novels and sells mattresses in Staten Island NY, a job which registers at a loathsome -98 on the Cosmopolitan Eligible Male Job-Status Guide. Ted is happily divorced, purports to be a good kisser and hopes for world peace.

He was once accused of attempting to blow up Ethel Kennedy with a Super-8 projector.