Perpetual Winter: The Deep Inn (14 page)

Chapter 11

Ascension to the Heavens

It rarely snowed in Lisbon, but it had that distant evening. It was winter, and night had prematurely fallen. As soon as the test on the saliva showed positive for the mutation they were looking for, Nolan Dimmick left the small lab again and gave the order to lift it out of the alley under the cover of the dark. He called for his car to hunt down the human specimen from whom the saliva he’d collected came, while the lab was pulled, like a capsule, to the rooftop by a mini-crane. Then both, the almost cubical lab and the crane, were scooped up by a silent black helicopter. The helicopter flew inaudibly, seeing the rows of red roofs typical of the Iberian Peninsula, the garrets, lit windows and then the small ochre palaces, the churches, either white washed or built of limestone, that opened up on the squares framed by light-colored Portuguese sidewalks adorned with abstract red or black figures and decked out with Christmas lighting that were stretched along the principal avenues. The pilot, Patrick Molina, crossed the banks of an enormous river, observing the long and white Vasco de Gama Bridge on his left, running close to the water, with dozens of lights along the shore. To his right was the high suspension bridge, red, of geographic scale, that reminded him of the one in his hometown, San Francisco. He passed over two ferries and finally landed on a helicopter carrier that, along with an amphibious assault ship and a destroyer, was anchored in the Tagus estuary.

              Despite having entered into operation over a year before, Nolan continued to be amazed by the silence of those birds that cost two hundred million dollars each. Twenty-five of them were worth as much as several medium size countries’ air forces. They were called black, but were actually anthracite gray. Their exterior coating was a flexible screen that retransmitted the images directly behind it in real time. The system worked better at night. Whoever looked overhead saw stars and clouds on a black background, without easily realizing that he was not seeing the night, but a video being shown on the lower and side surfaces of an instrument of war. During the day, the mechanism was imperfect and a trained eye trained could easily make out the helicopter, if he looked for it. Electric motors used for approaching the target, anti-sound columns that projected sound waves in an inverted phase, the helicopter’s five perforated blades that actively ejected heavy gas to disperse the air current, and ending in a Z to attenuate turbulence guaranteed the near absence of noise close to the ground and greatly diminished the wind. Even with all this, he felt the draft perfectly during the last fifty meters. If they could manage to slacken a bit more the air flow that it still projected, the enemy would definitely no longer be able to trust the night skies.                                                       

              What a pity they were only given to the troops. Those troglodytes got everything new, before
everyone
else and
everyone
else only got the leftovers. Nolan Dimmick and his comrades did not even exist and, at the most, they could show their medals to their grandchildren, if they ever got to know them. Even so, Nolan found a place of contentment in his bitterness’s river of gall.

              He got into the black car that had arrived and waited, serenely, for confirmation that he could proceed to pick up the Portuguese specimen, now that he was conclusively identified. But when the order came, they told Nolan it would not be him. The Holy Ghost had two men positioned to make the catch at that precise moment.
Sons of a bitch. Who’ve they sent this time? Probably high school boys.
Before moving to the agency, Dimmick had collaborated with the CIA as an external operative and knew what real war was. He never realized why he could never enter their group. Maybe it was because he had an accent or because he was ugly. Or because he didn’t go to Mass on Sundays or didn’t sing the National Anthem with his right hand over his heart. It was a pity the CIA was out of the picture. The Russians and the Jews didn’t have those quirks, of subdividing what had to be done by one hundred organizations that controlled one another.
That’s why with half a dozen quarters, they give the advance they do to the service.

              “Roger,” Nolan communicated. “Understood. I just hope they realize this subject’s idiosyncrasy.”

              “They’ve been informed,” the Father told him personally.

              “Correct, but I’ve seen them being more blind than invisible,” Nolan Dimmick finalized.

              “Come home,” the Father responded.

              His colleagues had told him to stop getting in the leaders’ battles. “If they shuffled the deck and get the trumps, then let them pay their bets,” the local collaborator, who was at the wheel of the car, had commented. Nolan detested incompetence, whatever level it came from. But he could be at home in time for Christmas. That was good. He called for another helicopter to pick him up.

              The second pilot came, but he was steamed. Was he a taxi for civilians now? The car, with its lights off, had begun to be lifted by the aircraft about a minute before two police cars arrived, followed immediately by a medical emergency patrol and a yellow ambulance from the National Institute for Medical Emergencies. The Portuguese had an obsession with yellow ambulances. The alleyway was illuminated by rotating lights, proof that Christmas was arriving quickly, even at misfortune’s abode.

              The second black helicopter maneuvered onto the amphibious assault ship’s platform, overlooking the Tagus River, to put the black car with the two agents inside down when Tyrell Hendriks, the Father, released the last pigeon from the balcony of his apartment in Uptown Houston and watched it pass by Williams Tower, going toward the Holy Ghost in San Antonio, with the triumphant message, “Exactly twenty-three days.” Operation Lift had ended less than one month after it had started, thought the Father.

* * *

America is a country of cars and highways, not trains and tracks. No one would think to look for Louis Marcé along the railroad tracks by which he was escaping to the north. After a few hours’ march, a train hauling thousands of tons finally appeared in the distance, approaching anxiously in the dark. Louis left for the berm, determined to try his luck with a ride, but the iron horse’s speed kept him from jumping for it while it was moving. He even tried to run alongside but gave up. Jumping would be his death.

              Later, he saw a new headlight on the line, but eventually realized it was not approaching. It was stationary. Could it be the next station? He had more than enough money for the ticket but, for his disillusionment, the light began moving, albeit slowly and silently. It was still not the train station he was looking for.

              When the slow headlight arrived, Louis moved toward the berm again, curious to see the mini-train pass by. It didn’t have cars; it would probably be an isolated locomotive, perhaps electric. To his surprise, when it was clearly visible, it was only a handcar moved by the power of two men’s arms, like those you’d see in Bugs Bunny Cartoons or Charlie Chaplin. On the front stood two individuals in overcoats, with diving masks, cigarettes in their mouths, hands in their pockets and doctors’ poses, while two brutes in back motorized the little machine.
What kind of comedians would ride that human propulsion vehicle in the middle of the night?
he thought, laughing and immobile.

              When they passed by him, the men stopped the vehicle and jumped to the ground; the brutes put on masks just like the doctors’ and the four moved toward him. They could see in the dark: they had night vision glasses and had come looking for him. Louis, who never ran, shot through the trees in a zigzag filled with rage at having waited for his captors like a foolish duck, running from the soundless firing of darts he heard passing close by him and that from time to time crashed into the tree trunks ahead of him. Virginia’s forests were relatively dense in that area, but the leaves had dropped, the trees were naked and low undergrowth was sparse in winter. Neither the woods nor the night gave him enough protection from those four hunters. His night vision was so good his pursuers’ infrared glasses didn’t give them any advantage, but there were four of them and they knew the terrain well. Initially, one of the agents grabbed him but Lucas easily knocked him down and, as time passed, despite running in a zigzag, he was distancing himself from those chasing him. He ran to the railroad tracks. He was returning to the line in order to cross it again before another locomotive came, leaving behind those characters with whitish-pink skin who circulated in that hand moved cart that the steel monster would crash into a hundred pieces without even slowing down.

              Panting like prey, undoubtedly, but difficult to catch. He felt a vibration on the ground and saw the giant metal machine emerge from the night. He had the bad luck to be treated like a clown by the police on several continents but the good luck to flee from all of them. He threw himself toward the goal line, to the abysm of salvation, the trampoline that guaranteed his future in Montreal. The train was more than three hundred cars long, half an hour to cross, half an hour ahead of whoever was pursuing him. He jumped, crossing the line, passing the train by the skin of his teeth, saving himself at the last second.

              With the frenetic shaking, he woke up suddenly and jumped from the bed, standing up to run from the train. But he couldn’t because he was tied down. Straps on his ankles, above his knees, on his chest and wrists. Bound like Gulliver in a prison. The cell was dark and cold but the bed was heated and, at times, it vibrated and, at others, it moved. The mattress inflated and deflated without anyone saying anything. The sheets were a transparent fabric, not plastic. He was confined and nude in some solitary, with a cobweb of wires attached to his skin, sophisticated adhesives and some plugs that blew air into his nose. His body was peppered with hundreds of silver spots. He had been captured. Was he in a hospital? A laboratory? An autopsy center? No, he was alive and hooked up to, he didn’t know, how many machines. Could the redheaded doctor be responsible for this? The memories of his flight from home, from the collier, the storm, the terrified blonde children, the children’s song intoned during the ocean funeral by the mother of the man who had died, the boxes with amputated fingers, the X-ray, his flight through the forest, all came marching in single file, adding themselves to his vision of the train that came leading through the night toward him.

              Not to mention that cheap imitation of a doctor who had reported him. What would the judge say, the one who was so disconcerted by the handcuff marks, what would he say about them holding him nude in that solitary dungeon? Disconnected ideas came to the surface and then disappeared.
I’ll never see the judge. This has been done so I won’t be tried.”
Could it have been policemen wearing firemen’s uniforms that had read his thoughts and were punishing him now? Would it be His Excellency from the collier?
Officially, I am dead, for sure. It wasn’t the police who did this. It was whoever plotted this from the beginning. It was whoever killed Quiroga, the Coach and the babysitter. But who?

              “Hello. Is anyone here? Can anyone hear me?” Louis yelled as loudly as he could, but he couldn’t shout much. The sound came out hoarse and his throat hurt.
What a stench. It smells like a sewer.
The plugs that blew air came loose and the smell was wretched. He raised his head and shouted again.

              “Help. I’m trapped.”

              He was decidedly not alone. A type of wheeled android was looking at him with an imbecilic air and a series of people were strapped down like he was. The lack of light didn’t let him see clearly, but there were several. There was only one android and it must have been Christian, since it had a red cross on its chest.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. That one’s a naked girl. Damn! Perverts.
There were definitely two women, both blonde. Three were men, undoubtedly, and, after them, he couldn’t tell what the two most distant were. He looked at the android and tried to spit at it, without success because his mouth was dry.

              “Hey, you. Hey, hey,” he shouted.

              All of the sudden, another seismic quake shook the dungeon to the verge of collapsing.

              “We’re all going to die, buried,” he shouted. “Wake up.”

              The smell was no better than the threat of an earthquake. It must be a sewer with rats and cockroaches. He hated rats, he hated pigeons, and he hated cockroaches. The floor was black, but there must not have been any water, otherwise he would have seen waves from the tremor. He could barely see. It must be mud. The vibration continued now with fewer individual shocks. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get up. A straight jacket, that system of belts. It was night, he could see through the small windows. The vibration was deafening and there were flames outside. Something was burning.
We’re going to burn to death,
he thought.
They’re lucky. They haven’t woken up. 
Afterward, came sleepiness and dizziness again.

              “Éveille. Éveille,”
proclaimed one of the prisoners at his side. He woke up and was still in the dungeon and it was still night, despite better illumination. The fire was now out, but he was still strapped down. He looked at the fellow who was shouting. He was restrained and naked, like himself, with transparent sheets or quilts. “Éveille,” the other one insisted.