The Apocalypse Script (17 page)

The girl closed the door behind
her and moved briskly to the bed, a wraith in the darkness. He
heard metallic clanks on the far nightstand. A gun, he imagined. Or
a knife. Or both. The possibilities with this girl were endless,
really.

“
Lilian will find out about this
and she’s going to get the wrong idea,” he said.

“
She probably already knows.
Anyway, we’ll both be good, right?”

“
Right.”

“
I’ll just lie down next to you
and watch the door.”

“
Do as you like.”

He felt the mattress bouncy gently
up and down and listened to a prolonged shuffling noise.

“
Fiela, are you taking off your
clothes?”

“
Of course.”

“
I don’t see why that’s
necessary.”

“
Yeah,” she agreed, and slipped
nude beneath the sheets and wiggled backwards until she was against
him.

“
You can put your arm around me,”
she said as if she were grudgingly conceding to an unspoken demand.
“On top of the sheet, though.”

“
Probably better if I don’t,” he
countered.

“
It’s okay,” she said with less
bravado. “I get them, too. The terrors. I don’t mind.”

“
You have nightmares?”

“
Terrors,” she
corrected him. Then, she began to speak with urgency, the words
spewing out of her. “Every night, truly!
Every night.
You get sweaty, right?
And it gets hard to breathe sometimes, and your friends from the
war come back to visit you, but they’re dead and they’re not your
friends anymore, and sometimes your family comes back, especially
your mother…”

She slowed and said quietly, “And
they point their fingers at you and they’re mad at you but you
don’t know what you did wrong. But it doesn’t matter because
they’re not
really
your family. They don’t even have faces.”

Ben ruminated on her words.
“Yeah,” he said, at last. “Yeah, something like that.” It wasn’t
exactly like that, at least not for him, but he did not doubt that
Fiela was speaking truthfully of her own nocturnal experiences. She
sounded very much like a person desperate for confirmation that she
was not alone in her suffering.

Still, he hesitated. A hundred
million dollars was on the line if he was lured into doing
something he wasn’t supposed to do, assuming the Nisirtu learned of
his indiscretion. There could be cameras in the room.

“
Please?” she said.

Alright, Ben, time to man up. This
girl rescued you from a giant squid monster and you’re going to
make her beg you for a little reciprocal security? Pretty pathetic,
buddy.

He put his arm on top of the sheet
and around her. The sheet did little to conceal what lay beneath.
She was soft - excruciatingly soft - in all the right places, but
where her gender allowed some latitude, her body was like steel
wrapped in layers of silk. He felt her reach down and clasp his
hand and he held his breath, knowing his own weakness, but she
simply pulled it upward and pinned it between her cheek and
pillow.

“
Just this,” she said.

They lay together like that for several minutes
before she whispered, “Did you ever get tired of your war,
Ben?”

“
Tired? Yeah, that’s one way of
putting it. Very quickly, really.”

“
Even though you were
winning?”

“
It didn’t matter. After awhile no
one was sure what winning meant.”

“
I get tired too,” she said. “I
was so young when it started. Me and my friends were so sure we
would win quickly. There were thousands of us and we were brave and
strong and proud. Now most of my friends are dead. None of us
thought the rebels would fight for so long.”

Ben wasn’t sure what to say. Was
the Nisirtu civil war really as physical as she made it out to be?
Remembering the scars on her legs and how she had so easily
dispatched the policemen allegedly sent to kill her, he conceded
that maybe it was. The Nisirtu seemed powerful enough to keep the
entire conflict under wraps.

He said, “I’m sure you and your friends put up a
good fight.”

She nodded vigorously against his
hand, which was suddenly wet. “We did. We really did. Three times I
glimpsed the underworld.” Her voice quivered. “Someday I will tell
you of the battles. You will be proud of me.”

“
Proud? Fiela,
you don’t need to impress
me
.”

“
But you are the
only one who will
understand,
” Fiela objected. “Uncle
and Lilian have never had to fight. You know what it is
like.
The chaos.
”

Ben grunted, not wanting to
continue the discussion. Remembering the war meant remembering the
car bomb and Eddie and the dog, and all were bait for the terrors.
He could feel them sniffing around, even now

Fiela apparently sensed his
tension. She kissed his hand and said, “Never mind. That was our
past. You are tired and I shall let you sleep. Goodnight,
Ben.”

“
Goodnight,” he said, and slept,
and dreamt no more.

Part 3 - September
23rd

Dicit ei Pilatus: ‘Quid est veritas?’

John 18:38

Fiela was gone when Ben woke the
next morning. Sunlight was streaming through the suite’s window and
when he checked his phone he saw it was almost ten
o’clock.

There was a knock at the door. Ben
rose, put on a robe he found in the wardrobe, and said, “Come
in.”

Two servants appeared, an elderly
man and a middle-aged woman, both in immaculate domestic uniforms.
Each carried a tray.

“
Breakfast, sir?” asked the
man.

“
Oh - yes, thank you,” Ben
said.

The man motioned the woman to
follow him to a table positioned beneath the large window that
framed the mountains outside. The servants placed on the table a
pot of coffee, a pitcher of orange juice, and a plate fried eggs
and toast. They also provided six morning newspapers, local,
national, and international.

“
Ah,” said Ben, trying to conceal
his disappointment. “Eggs and toast.” He’d imagined being treated
to thick slabs of bacon, a hill of pancakes, and maybe the giant
pastries of the wealthy.

“
Yes, sir,” said the servant.
“Miss Fiela indicated you preferred eggs and toast for breakfast.
She prepared this meal herself. She said it would be a
surprise.”

“
Definitely,” the other man
mumbled, observing the leathery brown texture of the eggs. As the
servants arranged the silverware, Ben ventured, “Mr.
Fetch?”

“
Yes sir?”

Score. “Is Miss Stratton
awake?”

“
Yes, sir,” said Mr. Fetch. “She
was downstairs with Miss Fiela earlier.”

“
Any calls for me? Visits by
people who wear uniforms and carry guns? Men with greased back hair
wearing power ties and carrying briefcases?”

Chuckling, Mr. Fetch replied, “No, no one by that
description, sir.”

“
Well, when they get here, you
know where to find me.”

“
If you say so, sir. Do you
require anything else?”

“
That should be it - no, wait. The
script,” said Ben. “Where is it?”

“
Script, sir?”

“
It’s an envelope with a red wax
seal. I remember putting it on the nightstand last evening but I
don’t see it now.”

“
Oh, yes. Miss Fiela told me to
tell you that it’s in the safe, there.” Mr. Fetch nodded toward a
black porcelain panel embedded at shoulder level in the wall
adjacent to the bathroom door. It was the same kind of panel Ridley
had used the day before to open the tablet vault.

“
Thank you. That’s
all.”

“
Very good,” said Mr. Fetch, who,
the woman in tow, left the room.

Ben sat down at the table and
unfolded one of the newspapers. Taking a sip of coffee, he saw an
article with the header,
Explosion and
Fire Aboard U.S. Carrier.
It
read:

U.S. military officials have
acknowledged an explosion and fire in an engine room aboard the
American nuclear carrier, USS George Washington, during training
maneuvers in the South China Sea. One serviceperson is confirmed
dead and an unstated number are injured. There is concern that the
damage may be significant enough to require the carrier to return
to its homeport of Yokosuka, Japan, for repairs. The departure of
the carrier would be a setback for the United States and its allies
in the region, as its presence is considered necessary to check
Chinese naval expansion toward the contested Spratly island
group.

Ben felt as if he were having an
out-of-body experience.
A fire aboard
the
Washington?

Dropping the newspaper, he jumped
up, cursed as the knee Fiela had struck almost failed him, and
limped to the safe. Unsure what to do, he slapped it with the palm
of his hand. There was a whir and the door opened. Nothing but the
envelope was inside. He took it and went back to his seat, pulled
out the envelope’s contents, and started comparing the translations
to articles in the newspapers.

The paragraph in the script beneath the one
referring to a fire aboard the Washington read:

[FORGER FORGER FORGER T115] 3K PKK
attack BTC pipeline @ VIC454n.9j51. +/- 13HR [CB44] AZ troops to
POA [CB56] Georgia troops to POA +10Z [CB667] Turkish response
+35Z. [REFERENCE QQ6/QQ7/QQ14 - SCENARIO RUNTIME 1,034 HRS]
REGIONAL [QQ6].

While Ben didn’t understand the complete message, it
did not take him long to find a match in one of the London-based
newspapers:

A strategic pipeline that
transports oil from the Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean Sea has
been severely damaged, according to Turkish officials. Authorities
have acknowledged that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline appears to
have been attacked by the PKK, or ‘the Kurdish Workers Party’ in
retaliation for the purported abduction of a PKK leader near the
Georgian border. A similar attack occurred in August 2008, but
early indications are that the damage in the most recent attack is
far more severe and could prevent the flow of oil for several
months.

Next in the script was a paragraph that apparently
alluded to articles he found regarding the disappearance of a BBC
film crew in a tribal area of Southwest Asia, a labor strike turned
violent in Hungary, and anti-globalization protests in Paris.

[REFERENCE QQ6/QQ7/QQ14 - SCENARIO
RUNTIME 2,580 HRS] 3K RIP T.W.G.(BBC) v RSB @ PANTAKI SWASIA [2K
DIRECTIVE, REF PINHOLE SCENARIO w SOKUSCRIPT 988 - IN PRGS] 4K
LABOR STRIKES BUDAPEST, UKRAINE, PARIS. ANTI-GLOB/ANARCH. 3 RIP
MIN. 2K PINHOLE 1,044 HRS REMAINING. EXTERNAL COORDINATION 3K.
[QQ7-8-9]

He wondered why these three events
were contained in one paragraph. Did that indicate they were
somehow related to each other? But what did a BBC film crew’s
disappearance - and apparent murder (RIP?) - in Southwest Asia have
to do with anti-globalization protests in France?

Over the next hour he found that
approximately half of the scenarios called for in the script Lilian
had given him the previous evening had become reality. Others had
too, he assumed, but were not newsworthy, while others may have
been reported in other news sources not available to
him.

At last, Ben put the papers aside
and contemplated what to make of it all. It was essential that he
come up with a reasonable explanation of how, exactly, the script
he had had viewed last night predicted dozens of international
events before they had even happened.

Option one was that they were
spectacularly lucky guesses. No good.

Option two was that the newspapers
were forgeries. Better, but no, that would be a stupid ploy since
he could easily verify all the news events elsewhere,
later.

Option three was that Lilian was
psychic.
Wacky talk.

Option four was that Lilian was a
member of a secret organization that controlled world
events.
New and improved wacky
talk.
But what were his other
options?

He spent the next fifteen minutes
looking at the sky outside the window until something deep inside
him clicked and his mind slowly disassembled the fiction he had
called reality - the fiction of a chaotic and uncontrolled world.
In that void, his mind began laying the psychological foundation
for his acceptance of an antithetical world.

The world of the Nisirtu.

“
I see you’ve finally done your
research,”

Ben turned. Lilian was leaning
against the doorframe of the room. She was wearing sleeveless black
turtleneck and blue jeans. Large diamond studs on the lobes of her
ears sparkled in the morning sun.

“
I have.”

“
Can you accept the reality of the
Nisirtu, now?”

Ben fingered the newspapers and
script. Weighing his words, he said, “Accept? No. But consider my
disbelief suspended until I develop a workable
alternative.”