Cry 'Havoc': All Honorable Men | Two
Title: Cry 'Havoc': All Honorable Men
By: tea_diva
Chapter: TWO
Word Count: 7,070
“So, check this homes,” Ray says four hours into the drive to Paris.
According to Brad’s estimate Ray has yet to take a breath since they got in the car in downtown Zurich. The chatter is oddly soothing. Brad can stop thinking about what he knows and what he doesn’t know. He can stop trying to piece together who he might be based on the varying encounters he has had with other people since he woke up on the fishing boat, the majority of which have been violent. He can just drift.
Ray’s voice makes the dull aching drumbeat that has been playing in his head since he left Marseilles retreat. Even if, for the most part, Brad isn’t really listening to what the other man is saying.
The first thing Ray did as soon as they were on the road was launch into a tirade about his car, which Brad knows is a Honda Civic because on the shiny metal decal on the back. On the trunk of the car there is a sticker for the 1980 Moscow Olympics which, when combined with the obviously outdated style of the vehicle, led to Brad surmising that the car was made sometime around then. He has no trouble understanding that Ray deeply hates his car, even if he would defend her to the death should anyone attempt to slander her. Ray had said, “This is what I can afford, dude.” Since the trunk seems to be stuffed with all of the man’s personal possessions Brad doesn’t comment and mostly refrains from talking shit about the hideous orange atrocity.
Then Ray started complaining about some kind of limp biscuit, which is apparently the name of a band. From there it went downhill, and Brad had trouble following any of Ray’s monologue because there were so many references to pop culture and politics and oddly, religion. Brad finds that his knowledge of these things is sketchy at best.
He can easily match the different political leaders Ray mentions to their appropriate countries, and even finds himself able to supply information on their family and friends, the charities they support and sometimes also personal details such as how those politicians prefer to use their leisure time.
Similarly, he finds he is well versed in the tenets of various religions, especially when those religions have influence on government and politics. When Ray begins a monologue on something called Twilight, however, Brad has no idea to what the guy is referring. He suspects this has less to do with his amnesia and more to do with a general disinterest, but he can’t be certain.
“Dude,” Ray says. “Do you, like, talk at all? Because we’re halfway to Paris and I’ve been sitting here wondering if maybe I should check to see if you’re still breathing. Jesus, I haven’t talked this much since I invaded Iraq powered by Ripped Fuel and my own special brand of kick-ass motherfucking awesomeness.”
Brad blinks, momentarily concerned with the way Ray has his head turned to face him. “Watch the road.”
He can’t see Ray’s eyes roll behind his sunglasses but he knows they have because Ray’s whole head follows the movement. “I’ve got it, relax homes.”
Brad considers dismissing the other man's question. He intends to part way with Ray in Paris, and the less the man knows the better for both of them. Even if he recognizes all that, Brad can't quite bring himself to shut the question down like he probably should. Instead, he says, “I don’t know who Edward Cullen is.”
This doesn’t seem to appease Ray at all. “Have you been living under a rock, or what?”
“Not to my knowledge, no,” Brad answers, sparing a moment to smirk to himself because maybe that’s exactly where he’s been living. Who knows?
“I mean, you have to have some serious skills in order to avoid ever hearing about this series.”
Brad shrugs, which leads to Ray narrowing his eyes, his head turned almost entirely in Brad’s direction to the point that Brad has to encourage the other man to watch where he’s driving, again, before he gets them both killed. Ray says, “I get the feeling you’re trying to tell me something.”
“Not so much.”
He tries to hold out, but after so much time spent in such a confined space with this guy Brad feels himself developing a sort of fondness for him. He’s one of a handful of people that Brad knows, and he’s spoken more with Ray than every one of the fishermen on the boat back in Marseilles combined. All of the man’s monologues have been entertaining and sharp-witted. Turning away from the window Brad thinks ‘fuck it’ and says, “I don’t remember anything that happened before about two weeks ago.”
Ray tips his head back. “Ha! Awesome.” Then he glances sidelong at Brad, his dark eyes obscured by the giant gold-framed sunglasses he’s wearing. “You’re totally shitting me, right?”
“I am not,” Brad says. “I don’t know who I am. I don’t remember anything about myself.”
“Like amnesia.” Ray says the word slowly, still not quite believing. Then he turns to look at Brad as he repeats, “Amnesia?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus Christ, homes!” Ray pounds a hand against his steering wheel. “That’s fucking intense.” He pauses. “Wait a minute, you took down those guards at the embassy. Those were crazy-ninja moves that I don’t even know and I’m a Marine.”
“Some things I remember. I can tie knots, write, speak a few languages…”
“You just don’t know anything useful, like who Edward Cullen is.”
Brad doesn’t think Ray will accept it if he says he doesn’t think he would have known who Edward Cullen was, even if he wasn’t suffering from amnesia. “I know about Spiderman.”
“Well, that’s something, at least,” Ray says, and then nods as if he’s decided something. “We have to give you a serious crash course on pop culture, dude.” He flips on the radio and starts to scroll through some channels. “Don’t worry, Brad. Your pal Ray Ray is gonna teach you all about the Big Bad World, and you don’t even have to throw in a tip.”
_________________________
Dowdy almost pours the entire pot of coffee out onto the rug when Lovell opens the door to his office abruptly and says,“Sir.” It is possible that he is desperately in need of sleep. A few days ago, when Dowdy had assured Mattis that he and his people were working round the clock it had been a figure of speech. It meant that there was always a team working on the Colbert problem. The team consisted of people stationed around the globe, so technically they had all the time zones represented.
Ever since Mattis demanded that all assets be placed on stand-by, Dowdy has been very literally fulfilling his words to not sleep until the situation was resolved. “What is it, Steven?” he asks. Sighs, more like. He doesn’t have the energy to make his words sound anything but resigned. At least, not when he’s speaking to Lovell, whom he has worked with for longer than Treadstone has even existed.
“We’ve got something you should see. A different angle on the Embassy.” Dowdy manages to tip the coffee pot over his cup and fills it. He holds the pot in the air in offer but Lovell shakes his head so Dowdy slips it back onto the burner and heads toward the door of his office.
Taking a sip from his mug he realizes he forgot to add milk and sugar. It’s a passing thought, he’s beyond caring. His mouth tastes permanently of coffee beans and cotton. Dowdy has no idea where the taste of cotton is coming from but he suspects it has something to do with the fact that he is subsisting on coffee alone. That can’t be healthy.
“Look here,” Lovell says and motions to the main screen in the control room. “It’s blurry at best but we’ve managed to grab a glimpse of the alley beside the Embassy through one of the security vids.”
Two thirds of the screen are showing different angles on cars zipping back and forth across the street, and pedestrians walking with their heads down. One third, though, is showing a peek at a narrow alley. Lovell hits pause and Dowdy stares because there is Colbert with his head tipped down and a bag slung over one shoulder. He’s standing beside an old car. “Did we run those plates?”
“We did,” Lovell says. “They came up registered to Corporal Ray Person. He used to be a Recon Marine out of Camp Pendleton, Oceanside.”
That is not ideal. There’s always the chance that Colbert took a hostage, and then maybe Dowdy could feel a little easier about the kill-order Mattis has issued. A Marine, though, would have had no qualms about putting up a fight and from the peek of video they have of the alley Colbert seems to be talking, nothing more. “That must have been one hell of a conversation,” Dowdy mutters as Lovell lets the video play through, it shows the car pulling out into traffic and disappearing off to the left.
Lovell holds out a plain brown folder. Dowdy flips it open to see a black and white photograph of one Coroporal Ray Person. “This guy’s basically a nomad, sir,” Lovell explains as Dowdy peruses the file. “I mean he’s American, but after he retired from the Marines he’s been bouncing around the globe.”
“Get both their faces out there. I want every outpost spreading Colbert’s and Person’s pictures to local law enforcement. Wherever they pop up, I want to be ready for them.”
_________________________
Brad wakes up to Ray holding out a cup of coffee literally right under his nose. “Wakeywakey,” Ray sing-songs.
“I slept.” Brad is both pleased and surprised. Since the fishing boat, any sleep he has managed to catch has been shallow, brief, and ultimately unsatisfying. Right now though, he actually feels refreshed. His head isn’t even throbbing anymore.
“You did. I’m very proud. Now drink this coffee and eat this bagel.” Ray thrusts a small brown paper bag at him, which Brad grabs instinctively.
“I don’t think I like coffee.”
“Have you even tried it?” Ray frowns when Brad wrinkles his nose. “Well, you’re drinking this coffee, because I bought it for you.”
“I’m paying you twenty thousand dollars for an eight hour road trip.”
“Yeah,” Ray says. “And most of that went into buying gas. And then I used like, seven of those dollars to get you breakfast, so you better fucking eat it and be thankful.”
Brad sniffs at the paper cup before taking a careful sip. It’s strong, and crisp, and oakey. “Hm, I like this.”
Ray’s dark eyebrow arches above his ridiculous sunglasses. “You mean you ordered coffee and never bothered to taste it in its natural state before you started adding shit to it?” He rolls his eyes. “You’re fucking crazy, Amnesia-Guy.”
Brad glares. “Goddammit Ray, I told you my name is Brad Colbert.”
“How can you be sure? You also told me you have a bag stuffed with passports with your face and a billion different names.”
Brad thinks he probably shouldn’t have told Ray everything that he did, but he also can’t bring himself to regret it. He’s been alone since Marseilles and even then the men on the fishing boat were old and work-roughened. They’d looked at his amnesia through a haze of superstition, and mostly kept their distance.
Ray is a burst of impossible company. It probably should be overwhelming or irritating, but Brad feels only a strange sense of relief. At no part of his story did Ray give any indication of getting nervous or leery. Instead, the more Brad said the more Ray seemed determined to stick by him and figure it all out.
“Anyway, dude, have you taken a look out your window at all?”
Brad has mostly been focusing on his coffee, which he’s enjoying immensely but can’t help thinking is missing something, even if he can’t place what it might be. He turns his head to the window and looks out at the street. “We’re in Paris? Did you stop for gas?”
“Sure did, homes, and you slept right through it.”
Brad scans the street, watches the pedestrians moving steadily along the sidewalk. They’re in a fairly central location but the neighborhood doesn’t seem congested. “Where are we?”
“Parked across from the address you gave me.” Ray jerks his head toward a white four-story building sandwiched between two smaller three-story brown-bricked ones.
“It doesn’t look familiar,” Brad says, mostly to himself.
He finishes off his breakfast and crumples the paper bag into a tight ball, and then crams it inside his empty cup. “Well.” He fishes out another stack of bills from his bag and hands it over. “Thanks.”
“Awesome.” Ray shoves the money inside his hoody. The guy has twenty thousand dollars stuffed in the front pocket of his sweater. Brad quirks the corner of his mouth up and shakes his head before reaching for the door.
He’s crossing the street when he realizes that Ray’s still following him. “What the fuck?”
“What?” Ray asks. “Did you really think I was gonna just take off? Come on, we gotta figure out who Brad Colbert is.” Ray scampers up the steps to the apartment building and knocks on the glass.
“Ray,” Brad hisses.
“Well, it’s not as if we can ring the bell,” Ray points out. “I mean, obviously you’re not going to be home to buzz us in.”
“Monsieur Colbert!” a woman says from inside, bustling up to the door with a wide smile on her face. She is very short and very round, with a mass of dark curly hair. When Brad tells her that he has forgotten his keys, she opens the door completely and ushers them inside.
Ray jabs a pointy elbow into Brad's side. “Dude, you speak French.”
“Which would make sense,” Brad says. “If I live in Paris.”
They climb a white circling staircase with a wide red carpet. “Holy shit, you must be filthy rich,” Ray says. “I mean, obviously you are because you paid me a ridiculous sum of money to get you here. But check this place out!”
At the end of the hall Brad fits the spare key his landlady gave him into the lock and opens the tall black door to his apartment.
He had been hoping to walk into his home and suddenly remember everything, or to finally feel as if he belonged somewhere. At the very least, he had been hoping to be able to glean some insight into who he might have been, who he might be, by looking at the furniture he picked out, the paintings he hung, maybe even in the photographs he has. He had not expected to find a place so full and so empty.
“This place is bitchin’!” Ray says. “It’s friggin’ huge!”
The apartment is sizable but there’s nothing in it that gives Brad a sense of himself. Everything is pale wood floors and white walls. There’s a row of pans hanging in the kitchen, and a large range of kitchen knives. A piece of modern art sits on the wall in one room, black and white; Brad thinks its just taking up space.
“Well,” Ray concludes, having walked a circuit around the entirety of the apartment. “You’re definitely not married. And I think it’s pretty safe to say you don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Really?”
“Dude, there’s freaking exercise equipment in your bedroom. There’s no way a chick’s gonna put up with that if she’s spending any sort of time in this place.”
Brad goes into the bedroom and realizes that Ray is right. He opens a drawer and is relieved to find clothing that looks as if it could be his. No more over-sized boots and mal-fitted clothes that only exacerbate the feeling that he doesn’t belong in his own skin.
“I’m taking a shower!” he calls to Ray when he pokes his head into the bathroom and spots fresh towels hanging from a towel rack and soap and shampoo in the shower stall. Finally, he is able to wash the smell of fish off himself.
Brad cranks the hot water on high and lets it turn his skin pink, promising himself that he will not touch any seafood for three months at least. He washes his hair twice and his body three times before he even considers turning the water off. With a towel wrapped around his waist and his toes curling into the thick pile of his white bathroom rug, Brad flips open his medicine cabinet and sets out everything he needs to shave, and then pauses.
There are two toothbrushes, one bright blue, and the other red. The bristles on both show signs of use; it’s unlikely that one is a spare. He thinks about it as he shaves but can’t come to any sort of conclusion. There are no photographs in his apartment. He has no way of knowing who the other person who has shared his space is, or why they aren’t searching for him.
Maybe they broke up and Brad took off on a cruise to drown his sorrows. That might explain the lack of art around the apartment. He probably threw out anything that reminded him of his once-lover before he left.
In his bedroom Brad pulls open his drawer and grabs a pair of dark jeans, then fishes a grey t-shirt out and pulls it on. In his closet he crouches down to get a pair of shoes and hesitates. He glances up at the hanging clothes and realizes that while the majority of them look as if they belong to him, there are a few items in his closet that belong to someone shorter. There is a pair of worn running shoes that are not his size sitting beside a pair of running shoes that are. Whatever his relationship with the other man is, Brad is confident he is not a roommate because there is only one bedroom, and only one bed.
On a whim, he crosses to the nightstand and pulls it open. There’s a copy of The Odyssey, a box of condoms and a tube of slick. Brad shuts the drawer.
“Are you done with the shower?” Ray asks, opening the bedroom door and walking right in. “You mind if I have a quick one?” When Brad shakes his head. “Great, because I fucking reek.”
In the main room there is a row of ceiling to floor windows. Brad finds a CD player and is reminded of the disc that he had found in his safe deposit box. Fishing through his blue sack he retrieves it and flips the sound system on.
There is only one track on the disc. When he presses play the room fills with a whispery voice and the slow trilling chords of a piano. It sounds sad and maybe wistful. ‘If you come to me, that’s all that I remember,’ the singer says, and Brad closes his eyes. ‘Just tell me how you are, I need to know.’
“What kind of gay-ass hippy shit are you listening to,” Ray cries, stepping into the room. “Have I taught you nothing?”
“Who sings this?”
“It’s fucking Air Supply, dude,” Ray says, grimacing. “What sentimental bullshit.”
Brad frowns, still listening. “I like it.”
“Where did you find that shit?”
Ignoring the question, Brad waits for the song to finish and then pops the disc out. It seems odd that he would burn an entire CD just to have the one song, and that he would store that in his safe deposit box. ‘Do you believe, do you believe, do you still believe?’ the singer had asked, and Brad wants to know what he’s supposed to still believe in. What he’d thought he had to believe in when he had burned the disc.
“Anyway,” Ray says. “I came out to tell you that I’m stealing some of your clothes because I left my shit in the trunk. Are we holing up here? Because if that’s the case, I’ll grab my stuff and set up shop.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, give it some thought.” Ray disappears back down the hall, and a moment later Brad hears a door close.
There is a small black telephone sitting on the wide glass table that clearly serves as his desk space. Brad stares at it for a moment before he decides that there’s no harm in trying. He picks the phone up and hits redial.
“Hotel Regina,” a woman with a heavy French accent says in English.
Brad pauses because it actually worked, and then has to think because it’s a hotel, who knows why he was calling that place? Maybe his ex was staying there and he called to try to entice them back, or to yell at them or something. “Uh,” he says. “I’m looking for a guest.”
“Yes, sir,” the woman says, noticeably unimpressed with his bumbling.
“Brad Colbert,” Brad says, and then wonders why he bothered because obviously he lives in Paris, he’s standing in his Paris apartment. Why would he need to go and stay at a hotel in Paris?
“I have no guest by that name, sir.”
“Thank-you,” Brad says, and then asks her to wait a moment. “Hello, are you still there?”
“…Sir?”
He flips through his passports. Brad Colbert has an apartment in Paris but as far as he knows, none of the other men in his other passports do. “Wait,” he says, and scrounges for the first passport he sees. “If you could check another name for me? It’s Matthew Kempe?”
He hears the click of a keyboard and then the phone is silent for a moment. Brad starts to wonder if maybe the woman has hung up on him. A second later, though, a man comes on the line. “You were asking about Matthew Kempe?”
He hesitates. Why should it matter to this guy? “Yes.”
“You are a friend of his, perhaps?”
“Yeah.” Brad only realizes he’s keeping a running tally of the passing seconds when some part of his mind suggests that perhaps the call is being traced. Who would want to trace his call?
“I’m very sorry sir,” the man on the end of the line says. “Matthew Kempe has died, about two weeks ago. There was an accident,” the man continues, even though Brad is reeling. “On the motorway. When they came for his things, it was made known to me.”
“Who came for his things?”
“His brother, I think. I’m very sorry.”
Brad disconnects the phone.
The windows no longer offer a bright and welcoming view; instead they make him feel like a fish in a bowl. He is too exposed standing here. Stepping back into the hallway, Brad hears Ray humming happily. “Hey, Ray?”
“What’s up?”
“Just stay there for a second, okay?” The bathroom, Brad knows, has no windows and only one entrance. If Ray can keep his mouth shut for any length of time it is possible that he could be safe there.
Of course, the first thing Ray does is open the bathroom door and stick his head out. “What’s going on?”
“Just stay in the damned bathroom,” Brad says, and to punctuate the conclusion of that sentiment the window at the end of the hall shatters into thousands of tiny fragments as a guy comes swinging into Brad’s apartment hanging from some sort of bungee-chord and firing a gun.
Brad has bare feet and no weapon. The guy comes in blasting off round after round out of a Micro Galil rifle. Brad flips through the gun’s stats in his head as he dives to the right, noting as well how Ray instinctively pitches himself back into the bathroom and kicks the door closed. He can hear Ray’s voice, slightly muffled by the door of the bathroom as he says, “That guy just broke you mother fucking window!” Brad hopes he stays put.
There isn’t much time to think about anything else because the minute the shots stop firing, Brad is face to face with some dude with badly dyed blond hair whose stiff, rigid staccato kicks and punches are nonetheless powerful.
There’s a moment where he is relieved that he never bothered to put a rug in his living room, or any kind of real furniture because it means they can dance around each other pretty freely. Of course, then the guy pulls a tiny little dagger that he grips between his fingers and wields like a raptor’s claw, and Brad staggers back into his own desk in an effort to avoid the slash.
He has no weapons. There is not even a vaguely sharp letter opener on the table. Brad grabs a Bic pen and uncaps it. He spots Ray standing in the doorway with a goddamned butcher’s knife in his hand, looking like he’s not sure if he should step into the fray or not, but is nonetheless ready if Brad needs him.
Brad jerks his head in a sharp ‘no’ and hopes the man gets the message because the next second the murderous stranger is swinging at him again. Brad jabs with the pen, stabs the guy in the shoulder hard and feels the plastic sink in through flesh and muscle. He pulls sharply and the pen is free, covered in blood, dripping. The injury hasn’t slowed the man much, though he is using his left arm less.
It hasn’t solved the problem of the dagger.
Brad steps into the next swing and pivots so his back is to the guy’s chest. He gets a grip on the man’s wrist and when he steps away the knife is skittering across the floor and the pen is lodged in the stranger’s hand.
“Ouch,” Ray mouths.
Without pausing to allow the stranger to regroup, Brad aims a kick at the man's stomach that lays him out on the ground. He scrambles to pin the man down. “Who are you?”
There's a black zip pouch strapped to the man’s thigh. Brad rips it off with one hand, the other keeping the man in place, and tosses it in Ray’s general direction. “What’s in there?” he calls back, hears the zipper pull open as Ray rifles through it.
“Holy shit, this is from the fucking Embassy, Brad,” Ray says. He marches over and thrusts two pieces of paper out near Brad’s face.
On one there are pictures of Brad obviously taken from a surveillance video at the Embassy, the bottom features smaller images of him with bizarre colored hair. As if he would ever dye his hair orange for any reason. The other page offers a similar breakdown of images this time featuring Ray. “This is freaky government conspiracy shit,” Ray is saying. “Who the hell else has access to the goddamned security cameras at the motherfucking American Embassy?”
“Stay over there,” Brad orders. “I’ll deal with this. Just stay over there.” His moment’s distraction is enough. The guy shoves Brad back and manages to scramble free. Ray shifts his footing, blocking the doorway but the stranger rushes in the opposite direction. He proceeds to break another of Brad’s windows as he jumps out of the apartment.
“What the fuck?” Brad stares at the hole in his floor-to-ceiling pane of glass. “He just went out the fucking window.”
Ray steps further into the room, not too close as to offer an easy target should someone else be watching the apartment, but enough to get a glimpse at the street below. His eyes are wide. When he steps back he is clearly drifting slowly into some stage of shock. Brad thinks he might not be too far behind himself.
Ray nudges the gore-covered pen with the toe of his shoe. “Oh man. Brad, check it. The pen is mightier than the sword.” He giggles a little and then frowns. “I think I might have to go puke.”
_________________________
Nate recognizes Lovell’s voice over the line when he’s told, “Code in.”
He doesn’t slow his pace, keeps moving up the steps toward the office. “Bravo 2-4981.” There’s a click on the line as he reaches the door, tries the handle and is relieved that, for once, the damned thing is locked. Craig must not be in yet.
“Tell me,” a new voice orders over the phone as Nate twists his key in the lock. It’s Dowdy.
Nate steps into the darkness of the office and lets the door fall closed behind him, setting the lock. “He went to the apartment.”
“And?” Dowdy prompts.
“And now Barcelona is dead.” Nate is careful to keep his voice level.
He listens patiently as Dowdy swears. “Okay. You need to clean this up,” Dowdy says when he’s done cursing.
Nate snorts. “That’s not possible. There’s a body in the streets of Paris. Police are all over it. There’s no cleaning it up.”
“Understood,” Dowdy says with an exasperated sigh. “Put up the scanners. Concentrate on getting as much radio intel as you can. Is Alpha-2 there?”
Nate glances at Craig’s desk, considers lying for a moment. Dismisses it. “No.”
“That might be for the best. Run anything significant through me. Keep us updated.”
Nate flips his cell phone closed and pitches it onto his desk. He hunches forward, runs his hands through his hair and makes his mind carefully blank.
Every bit of this is a mess. Where the hell can he even start to fix any of it?
“What the fuck are you doing, Brad?” he asks the empty darkness of his office. He doesn’t ask the other question that has been circling in his head. The nervous, coiling question that surfaces persistently and has to be quashed time after time. ‘Are you okay? Are you still you?’ Nate refuses to give voice to it, refuses to dwell.
Five minutes is more than enough time spent brooding. Pushing his chair back, Nate strides over to Craig’s desk. He flips the screen on and enters the password that he isn’t supposed to know. Craig uses the same password again and again for everything. Figuring it out was not a hardship, and the man rarely changes it.
He pulls up a message box and pauses. Maybe it isn’t necessary. He could be getting ahead of himself, or involving himself in something where he could do more harm than good. Nate doesn’t think so. Any time he runs the variables in his head he determines that this needs to be done. The longer he delays, the higher the risk.
Carefully, he circumvents the tracing protocols and re-routes as much as possible. He types the word ‘forward’ into the message and attaches a picture of Nykwana Wombosi. Then he changes the time information and hits send. He logs out and flips the screen off, returning to his own desk.
Switching on the scanners, Nate settles the headphones over his ears and logs into his own computer. On the screen the wide grinning face of Corporal Ray Person greets him, the man’s dark brown eyes obscured by the bright green lettering announcing: Search Complete.
Nate has to get ahead of this if he’s going to stand any chance of stopping it.
_________________________
Brad finds himself folded in half again, sitting in the front seat of what he’s taken to thinking of as Ray’s shit-mobile. His blue bag is in the trunk stuffed inside a dark duffel bag, along with a few belongings from his apartment.
“It looks like somebody robbed the place,” Ray had said as they’d left.
“Good,” Brad replied. “Maybe they’ll think the robber killed whoever the hell that guy was.”
Ray was shaking a little when he’d slipped behind the wheel of his car. He’d brushed it off, “Adrenaline,” he’d said. “I’m just processing what the hell just happened. That’s not the first dead guy that I’ve seen. Just FYI, I actually fought in a war, so y’know, I’ve seen worse.”
There’s a difference Brad knows, between seeing a body in a war zone and seeing one lying in the middle of a street in a city like Paris. After the guy just swung in through a window with his gun literally blasting, no less. Who the hell does shit like that?
Ray rubs a hand over his face. “Your friends are weird.”
“I don’t think that guy was a friend. At least, I doubt we were very close.”
“It could have been like Cato and Clouseau, y’know, like in The Pink Panther?” Ray suggests. “Like maybe he was just testing you, or something.”
“And what,” Brad says. “I passed, so he threw himself out the window?” They’re parked at the side of the road across from the train station; Brad twists around and pulls his duffel out of the back seat. “I’ll be back. But if you aren’t here then I’ll understand. I won’t try to contact you.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
Brad gets a locker in the train station and pushes his duffel bag inside. It’s his escape route, his security, his back-up plan. He’s got everything he needs in there. He takes one stack of bills and tucks it in the high-collared black coat he threw on over his grey T-shirt.
When he crosses back over the street Ray’s obnoxious shit-mobile is still parked but there’s no sign of Ray. Brad has a moment of genuine concern that maybe Ray was abducted, but then he spots the man trotting back across the street with a brown paper bag in his hand.
“Gunfire, followed by epic brawl, followed by suicide,” Ray says, stopping by the side of the car. “I thought we could use some Tequila. Am I wrong?”
Brad grins sharply before his attention is caught by something else. There is a police car pulling into a free spot just down the street. “I think you should get out of here,” he says. “Seriously. Go to the cops, explain what happened.” He jerks his head to the black hoody that Ray had grabbed and thrown on over the shirt he’d stolen from Brad’s wardrobe. “You can show them the money, they’ll believe you.”
“Nuh uh. I’ve seen my horror movies. This is some freaky shit happening here and I intend to be the survivor girl. I’m pretty enough, I know how to handle myself, and I’m gonna stick like glue to the hero so we either go out in a blaze of glory together, or you end up falling in love with me and save my ass before tragically dying.”
“I don’t think I’m going to end up falling in love with you.”
Ray is entirely serious when he says, “I’m totally cool with that. So long as you stick to the ‘saving my ass’ bit.” He pulls the papers the guy who’d tried to kill them had in his pouch and holds them up so Brad can see their pictures. “This shit right here? This is government conspiracy level shit. I’m a Marine, but I’m pretty sure that guy who just swan dived out of your apartment would have taken me down.”
Brad glances back to the cop car - their heads are together but they haven’t stepped out of the vehicle. It’s only a matter of time.
“Fine. If you’re sure, then I need you to give me the keys.”
“What?” Ray squawks. “You’ll hurt her!”
“Ray,” Brad says. “Now.”
Ray glances over to the cop car, where the cops are just stepping out of their vehicle. He drops the keys into Brad’s waiting hand and crawls over the driver’s seat to settle onto the passenger side.
“She handles fine,” Ray is saying, as Brad is fishing a map out of the backseat. “Maybe pulls a little to the right. But she’s got a tight turning radius.”
Brad’s eyes flicker over the chaotic swirling lines on the map. Beside him, Ray looks out the window and then glances over. “Hey, Brad. They’re almost on top of us.”
Brad turns the engine over and backs the car up. “You better have your goddamned seat-belt on, Person.”
“Dude, survivor girl. That means I’m not an idiot.”
Spinning the wheel and reversing the car, Brad shoots past the scrambling cops and turns right. There’s a light rain falling and the roads are slick with it. He can feel the back of the car skidding as he accelerates. “What the hell are you talking about? Survivor girl?”
Ray throws his hands up in the air; he’s got his feet spread so he can brace himself. “In horror movies, and like, freaky suspense movies and shit, there’s always this one chick, right, who makes it. The survivor girl.”
They run a gauntlet as police cars drop onto their location like flies onto a dish of honey. Brad counts six cars already on their tail. He dodges a slow moving vehicle in front of them and ends up driving in the lane for oncoming traffic.
Ray wraps a hand around the little grip above the passenger door. “You gotta love Paris, man,” he says. “I mean, nobody has even figured out this is a high speed chase yet. They think we’re just late for work or something.” Brad switches gears and bumps up onto the sidewalk, sending pedestrians lunging to the left and right to get out of his way. “Well, they sure as shit know we’re running now!”
There’s police on motorbikes at their six, cop cars at their three o’clock. Brad’s driving through the streets of Paris like he actually remembers them and Ray’s talking shit like they’re just out for a normal drive. “Anyway, the survivor girl can’t be trashy, because that’s just like a rule for all horror movies. If you’re a slut you’re usually the first to die. And she’s always smart and sort of pretty.”
“There’s a bump coming up,” Brad points out, and then cranks the wheel left down a narrow alley.
“That’s cool, man,” Ray says, dismissively. Then he sees where they’re heading and amends his statement, “Holy shit!” They bounce down three steep sets of stairs and across a small park before spinning back into traffic.
There’s one cop on a bike still behind them but they seem to have lost everyone else for the time being. Brad sets them going against traffic and brings them out onto a pretty wide and very busy road. He cuts right and the cop can’t correct in time, which leaves their crappy bright orange and entirely too visible piece of shit car traveling in the same direction as commuters, and the cop on his bike on the other side of a long cement boulevard, going against traffic but having less trouble because he’s on a motorcycle.
If Brad were on a motorcycle, he’d be having considerably less trouble ditching this cop.
He hits the brakes and Ray squawks at him. “We’re in the middle of a high speed chase, why the hell did you just stop?” Then he looks to the right, at the giant postal truck that has walled them off from sight. “Oh. Not bad.”
Ahead, the cop spins out because he’s paying more attention to where they might have gone than to the traffic in front of him. “Persistent sonofabitch,” Brad mutters, and then turns down another road and drives sedately until he cuts left into an underground parking garage.
“I am sorry to have to tell you this, Ray,” Brad says, as he pulls into a parking spot and cuts the engine. “But you’re going to have to say goodbye to this vintage crap-mobile.”
“Dude, I hate this car. Let’s go.” He grabs a bag from the trunk but leaves the rest of his belongings. Brad respects a man who can prioritize. “You just rained chaos and destruction down on the streets of Paris, Brad. Shit,” Ray adds as they hike up the pedestrian footpath and out onto the sidewalk. “The Marine Corps wasn’t this intense.”
_________________________
Dowdy is pinching the bridge of his nose because he is not physically capable of pinching the persistent throb that is in his brain. “Say again?” he asks the phone.
“Uh,” Paris Alpha says. “A high speed chase?”
“That is high visibility,” Lovell says, quietly, because they have their Paris outpost on speakerphone. “Why would he draw so much attention to himself? These guys are trained to be invisible.”
Over the line, Dowdy hears Schwetje make a 'hmm'ing noise. “Maybe when the police find the car there’ll be a clue.”
“This isn’t a scavenger hunt, Alpha-2,” Dowdy says. “This is a rogue asset that we need to get under control.”
“Oh!” Schwetje says, like he’s just remembered something. Dowdy waits. “Wombosi was at the morgue late last night. He wasn’t convinced by the substitute, sir.”
“Jesus Christ,” Dowdy says. “That is high priority information! Why was I not notified of this sooner?”
“Uh…”
He can actually hear the man shrug over the phone line. “Was Bravo-2 made aware of this?”
The silence is answer enough, but to make the whole situation even more ridiculous, Dowdy’s Paris Alpha says, “Why would I notify Bravo before HQ?”
Dowdy takes a very long bracing breath. “Maybe because you went home before you bothered to notify HQ! Dismissed!” Dowdy clicks off the line, and then proceeds to swear. “Fucking incompetent! We need to cleanup this Wombosi situation before it gets any worse…”
“Sir.” Lovell jerks his head to indicate the screen of his computer. Dowdy shuffles over and peers down at it. It’s a police report. “Nykwana Wombosi is already dead.”
How the hell did that even happen? “Was it us?”
“There’s been no hit put out from any of our outposts,” Lovell says. He shrugs. “I don’t know, sir. The report reads like it was a sniper.”
“The man has pissed off a lot of people. And not just the CIA.” He mulls this over, considers how to play it. He can hear Mattis barreling down the hallway and motions for Lovell to turn off the screen. “This is a piece of luck for us. We’re not looking this gift horse in the mouth. Pull everyone off Wombosi, let’s focus on Colbert.”
“Yes sir."
___________________________________________________
|<< END PART TWO >>|
MASTERPOST
Series' MASTERPOST
By: tea_diva
Chapter: TWO
Word Count: 7,070
“So, check this homes,” Ray says four hours into the drive to Paris.
According to Brad’s estimate Ray has yet to take a breath since they got in the car in downtown Zurich. The chatter is oddly soothing. Brad can stop thinking about what he knows and what he doesn’t know. He can stop trying to piece together who he might be based on the varying encounters he has had with other people since he woke up on the fishing boat, the majority of which have been violent. He can just drift.
Ray’s voice makes the dull aching drumbeat that has been playing in his head since he left Marseilles retreat. Even if, for the most part, Brad isn’t really listening to what the other man is saying.
The first thing Ray did as soon as they were on the road was launch into a tirade about his car, which Brad knows is a Honda Civic because on the shiny metal decal on the back. On the trunk of the car there is a sticker for the 1980 Moscow Olympics which, when combined with the obviously outdated style of the vehicle, led to Brad surmising that the car was made sometime around then. He has no trouble understanding that Ray deeply hates his car, even if he would defend her to the death should anyone attempt to slander her. Ray had said, “This is what I can afford, dude.” Since the trunk seems to be stuffed with all of the man’s personal possessions Brad doesn’t comment and mostly refrains from talking shit about the hideous orange atrocity.
Then Ray started complaining about some kind of limp biscuit, which is apparently the name of a band. From there it went downhill, and Brad had trouble following any of Ray’s monologue because there were so many references to pop culture and politics and oddly, religion. Brad finds that his knowledge of these things is sketchy at best.
He can easily match the different political leaders Ray mentions to their appropriate countries, and even finds himself able to supply information on their family and friends, the charities they support and sometimes also personal details such as how those politicians prefer to use their leisure time.
Similarly, he finds he is well versed in the tenets of various religions, especially when those religions have influence on government and politics. When Ray begins a monologue on something called Twilight, however, Brad has no idea to what the guy is referring. He suspects this has less to do with his amnesia and more to do with a general disinterest, but he can’t be certain.
“Dude,” Ray says. “Do you, like, talk at all? Because we’re halfway to Paris and I’ve been sitting here wondering if maybe I should check to see if you’re still breathing. Jesus, I haven’t talked this much since I invaded Iraq powered by Ripped Fuel and my own special brand of kick-ass motherfucking awesomeness.”
Brad blinks, momentarily concerned with the way Ray has his head turned to face him. “Watch the road.”
He can’t see Ray’s eyes roll behind his sunglasses but he knows they have because Ray’s whole head follows the movement. “I’ve got it, relax homes.”
Brad considers dismissing the other man's question. He intends to part way with Ray in Paris, and the less the man knows the better for both of them. Even if he recognizes all that, Brad can't quite bring himself to shut the question down like he probably should. Instead, he says, “I don’t know who Edward Cullen is.”
This doesn’t seem to appease Ray at all. “Have you been living under a rock, or what?”
“Not to my knowledge, no,” Brad answers, sparing a moment to smirk to himself because maybe that’s exactly where he’s been living. Who knows?
“I mean, you have to have some serious skills in order to avoid ever hearing about this series.”
Brad shrugs, which leads to Ray narrowing his eyes, his head turned almost entirely in Brad’s direction to the point that Brad has to encourage the other man to watch where he’s driving, again, before he gets them both killed. Ray says, “I get the feeling you’re trying to tell me something.”
“Not so much.”
He tries to hold out, but after so much time spent in such a confined space with this guy Brad feels himself developing a sort of fondness for him. He’s one of a handful of people that Brad knows, and he’s spoken more with Ray than every one of the fishermen on the boat back in Marseilles combined. All of the man’s monologues have been entertaining and sharp-witted. Turning away from the window Brad thinks ‘fuck it’ and says, “I don’t remember anything that happened before about two weeks ago.”
Ray tips his head back. “Ha! Awesome.” Then he glances sidelong at Brad, his dark eyes obscured by the giant gold-framed sunglasses he’s wearing. “You’re totally shitting me, right?”
“I am not,” Brad says. “I don’t know who I am. I don’t remember anything about myself.”
“Like amnesia.” Ray says the word slowly, still not quite believing. Then he turns to look at Brad as he repeats, “Amnesia?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus Christ, homes!” Ray pounds a hand against his steering wheel. “That’s fucking intense.” He pauses. “Wait a minute, you took down those guards at the embassy. Those were crazy-ninja moves that I don’t even know and I’m a Marine.”
“Some things I remember. I can tie knots, write, speak a few languages…”
“You just don’t know anything useful, like who Edward Cullen is.”
Brad doesn’t think Ray will accept it if he says he doesn’t think he would have known who Edward Cullen was, even if he wasn’t suffering from amnesia. “I know about Spiderman.”
“Well, that’s something, at least,” Ray says, and then nods as if he’s decided something. “We have to give you a serious crash course on pop culture, dude.” He flips on the radio and starts to scroll through some channels. “Don’t worry, Brad. Your pal Ray Ray is gonna teach you all about the Big Bad World, and you don’t even have to throw in a tip.”
_________________________
Dowdy almost pours the entire pot of coffee out onto the rug when Lovell opens the door to his office abruptly and says,“Sir.” It is possible that he is desperately in need of sleep. A few days ago, when Dowdy had assured Mattis that he and his people were working round the clock it had been a figure of speech. It meant that there was always a team working on the Colbert problem. The team consisted of people stationed around the globe, so technically they had all the time zones represented.
Ever since Mattis demanded that all assets be placed on stand-by, Dowdy has been very literally fulfilling his words to not sleep until the situation was resolved. “What is it, Steven?” he asks. Sighs, more like. He doesn’t have the energy to make his words sound anything but resigned. At least, not when he’s speaking to Lovell, whom he has worked with for longer than Treadstone has even existed.
“We’ve got something you should see. A different angle on the Embassy.” Dowdy manages to tip the coffee pot over his cup and fills it. He holds the pot in the air in offer but Lovell shakes his head so Dowdy slips it back onto the burner and heads toward the door of his office.
Taking a sip from his mug he realizes he forgot to add milk and sugar. It’s a passing thought, he’s beyond caring. His mouth tastes permanently of coffee beans and cotton. Dowdy has no idea where the taste of cotton is coming from but he suspects it has something to do with the fact that he is subsisting on coffee alone. That can’t be healthy.
“Look here,” Lovell says and motions to the main screen in the control room. “It’s blurry at best but we’ve managed to grab a glimpse of the alley beside the Embassy through one of the security vids.”
Two thirds of the screen are showing different angles on cars zipping back and forth across the street, and pedestrians walking with their heads down. One third, though, is showing a peek at a narrow alley. Lovell hits pause and Dowdy stares because there is Colbert with his head tipped down and a bag slung over one shoulder. He’s standing beside an old car. “Did we run those plates?”
“We did,” Lovell says. “They came up registered to Corporal Ray Person. He used to be a Recon Marine out of Camp Pendleton, Oceanside.”
That is not ideal. There’s always the chance that Colbert took a hostage, and then maybe Dowdy could feel a little easier about the kill-order Mattis has issued. A Marine, though, would have had no qualms about putting up a fight and from the peek of video they have of the alley Colbert seems to be talking, nothing more. “That must have been one hell of a conversation,” Dowdy mutters as Lovell lets the video play through, it shows the car pulling out into traffic and disappearing off to the left.
Lovell holds out a plain brown folder. Dowdy flips it open to see a black and white photograph of one Coroporal Ray Person. “This guy’s basically a nomad, sir,” Lovell explains as Dowdy peruses the file. “I mean he’s American, but after he retired from the Marines he’s been bouncing around the globe.”
“Get both their faces out there. I want every outpost spreading Colbert’s and Person’s pictures to local law enforcement. Wherever they pop up, I want to be ready for them.”
_________________________
Brad wakes up to Ray holding out a cup of coffee literally right under his nose. “Wakeywakey,” Ray sing-songs.
“I slept.” Brad is both pleased and surprised. Since the fishing boat, any sleep he has managed to catch has been shallow, brief, and ultimately unsatisfying. Right now though, he actually feels refreshed. His head isn’t even throbbing anymore.
“You did. I’m very proud. Now drink this coffee and eat this bagel.” Ray thrusts a small brown paper bag at him, which Brad grabs instinctively.
“I don’t think I like coffee.”
“Have you even tried it?” Ray frowns when Brad wrinkles his nose. “Well, you’re drinking this coffee, because I bought it for you.”
“I’m paying you twenty thousand dollars for an eight hour road trip.”
“Yeah,” Ray says. “And most of that went into buying gas. And then I used like, seven of those dollars to get you breakfast, so you better fucking eat it and be thankful.”
Brad sniffs at the paper cup before taking a careful sip. It’s strong, and crisp, and oakey. “Hm, I like this.”
Ray’s dark eyebrow arches above his ridiculous sunglasses. “You mean you ordered coffee and never bothered to taste it in its natural state before you started adding shit to it?” He rolls his eyes. “You’re fucking crazy, Amnesia-Guy.”
Brad glares. “Goddammit Ray, I told you my name is Brad Colbert.”
“How can you be sure? You also told me you have a bag stuffed with passports with your face and a billion different names.”
Brad thinks he probably shouldn’t have told Ray everything that he did, but he also can’t bring himself to regret it. He’s been alone since Marseilles and even then the men on the fishing boat were old and work-roughened. They’d looked at his amnesia through a haze of superstition, and mostly kept their distance.
Ray is a burst of impossible company. It probably should be overwhelming or irritating, but Brad feels only a strange sense of relief. At no part of his story did Ray give any indication of getting nervous or leery. Instead, the more Brad said the more Ray seemed determined to stick by him and figure it all out.
“Anyway, dude, have you taken a look out your window at all?”
Brad has mostly been focusing on his coffee, which he’s enjoying immensely but can’t help thinking is missing something, even if he can’t place what it might be. He turns his head to the window and looks out at the street. “We’re in Paris? Did you stop for gas?”
“Sure did, homes, and you slept right through it.”
Brad scans the street, watches the pedestrians moving steadily along the sidewalk. They’re in a fairly central location but the neighborhood doesn’t seem congested. “Where are we?”
“Parked across from the address you gave me.” Ray jerks his head toward a white four-story building sandwiched between two smaller three-story brown-bricked ones.
“It doesn’t look familiar,” Brad says, mostly to himself.
He finishes off his breakfast and crumples the paper bag into a tight ball, and then crams it inside his empty cup. “Well.” He fishes out another stack of bills from his bag and hands it over. “Thanks.”
“Awesome.” Ray shoves the money inside his hoody. The guy has twenty thousand dollars stuffed in the front pocket of his sweater. Brad quirks the corner of his mouth up and shakes his head before reaching for the door.
He’s crossing the street when he realizes that Ray’s still following him. “What the fuck?”
“What?” Ray asks. “Did you really think I was gonna just take off? Come on, we gotta figure out who Brad Colbert is.” Ray scampers up the steps to the apartment building and knocks on the glass.
“Ray,” Brad hisses.
“Well, it’s not as if we can ring the bell,” Ray points out. “I mean, obviously you’re not going to be home to buzz us in.”
“Monsieur Colbert!” a woman says from inside, bustling up to the door with a wide smile on her face. She is very short and very round, with a mass of dark curly hair. When Brad tells her that he has forgotten his keys, she opens the door completely and ushers them inside.
Ray jabs a pointy elbow into Brad's side. “Dude, you speak French.”
“Which would make sense,” Brad says. “If I live in Paris.”
They climb a white circling staircase with a wide red carpet. “Holy shit, you must be filthy rich,” Ray says. “I mean, obviously you are because you paid me a ridiculous sum of money to get you here. But check this place out!”
At the end of the hall Brad fits the spare key his landlady gave him into the lock and opens the tall black door to his apartment.
He had been hoping to walk into his home and suddenly remember everything, or to finally feel as if he belonged somewhere. At the very least, he had been hoping to be able to glean some insight into who he might have been, who he might be, by looking at the furniture he picked out, the paintings he hung, maybe even in the photographs he has. He had not expected to find a place so full and so empty.
“This place is bitchin’!” Ray says. “It’s friggin’ huge!”
The apartment is sizable but there’s nothing in it that gives Brad a sense of himself. Everything is pale wood floors and white walls. There’s a row of pans hanging in the kitchen, and a large range of kitchen knives. A piece of modern art sits on the wall in one room, black and white; Brad thinks its just taking up space.
“Well,” Ray concludes, having walked a circuit around the entirety of the apartment. “You’re definitely not married. And I think it’s pretty safe to say you don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Really?”
“Dude, there’s freaking exercise equipment in your bedroom. There’s no way a chick’s gonna put up with that if she’s spending any sort of time in this place.”
Brad goes into the bedroom and realizes that Ray is right. He opens a drawer and is relieved to find clothing that looks as if it could be his. No more over-sized boots and mal-fitted clothes that only exacerbate the feeling that he doesn’t belong in his own skin.
“I’m taking a shower!” he calls to Ray when he pokes his head into the bathroom and spots fresh towels hanging from a towel rack and soap and shampoo in the shower stall. Finally, he is able to wash the smell of fish off himself.
Brad cranks the hot water on high and lets it turn his skin pink, promising himself that he will not touch any seafood for three months at least. He washes his hair twice and his body three times before he even considers turning the water off. With a towel wrapped around his waist and his toes curling into the thick pile of his white bathroom rug, Brad flips open his medicine cabinet and sets out everything he needs to shave, and then pauses.
There are two toothbrushes, one bright blue, and the other red. The bristles on both show signs of use; it’s unlikely that one is a spare. He thinks about it as he shaves but can’t come to any sort of conclusion. There are no photographs in his apartment. He has no way of knowing who the other person who has shared his space is, or why they aren’t searching for him.
Maybe they broke up and Brad took off on a cruise to drown his sorrows. That might explain the lack of art around the apartment. He probably threw out anything that reminded him of his once-lover before he left.
In his bedroom Brad pulls open his drawer and grabs a pair of dark jeans, then fishes a grey t-shirt out and pulls it on. In his closet he crouches down to get a pair of shoes and hesitates. He glances up at the hanging clothes and realizes that while the majority of them look as if they belong to him, there are a few items in his closet that belong to someone shorter. There is a pair of worn running shoes that are not his size sitting beside a pair of running shoes that are. Whatever his relationship with the other man is, Brad is confident he is not a roommate because there is only one bedroom, and only one bed.
On a whim, he crosses to the nightstand and pulls it open. There’s a copy of The Odyssey, a box of condoms and a tube of slick. Brad shuts the drawer.
“Are you done with the shower?” Ray asks, opening the bedroom door and walking right in. “You mind if I have a quick one?” When Brad shakes his head. “Great, because I fucking reek.”
In the main room there is a row of ceiling to floor windows. Brad finds a CD player and is reminded of the disc that he had found in his safe deposit box. Fishing through his blue sack he retrieves it and flips the sound system on.
There is only one track on the disc. When he presses play the room fills with a whispery voice and the slow trilling chords of a piano. It sounds sad and maybe wistful. ‘If you come to me, that’s all that I remember,’ the singer says, and Brad closes his eyes. ‘Just tell me how you are, I need to know.’
“What kind of gay-ass hippy shit are you listening to,” Ray cries, stepping into the room. “Have I taught you nothing?”
“Who sings this?”
“It’s fucking Air Supply, dude,” Ray says, grimacing. “What sentimental bullshit.”
Brad frowns, still listening. “I like it.”
“Where did you find that shit?”
Ignoring the question, Brad waits for the song to finish and then pops the disc out. It seems odd that he would burn an entire CD just to have the one song, and that he would store that in his safe deposit box. ‘Do you believe, do you believe, do you still believe?’ the singer had asked, and Brad wants to know what he’s supposed to still believe in. What he’d thought he had to believe in when he had burned the disc.
“Anyway,” Ray says. “I came out to tell you that I’m stealing some of your clothes because I left my shit in the trunk. Are we holing up here? Because if that’s the case, I’ll grab my stuff and set up shop.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, give it some thought.” Ray disappears back down the hall, and a moment later Brad hears a door close.
There is a small black telephone sitting on the wide glass table that clearly serves as his desk space. Brad stares at it for a moment before he decides that there’s no harm in trying. He picks the phone up and hits redial.
“Hotel Regina,” a woman with a heavy French accent says in English.
Brad pauses because it actually worked, and then has to think because it’s a hotel, who knows why he was calling that place? Maybe his ex was staying there and he called to try to entice them back, or to yell at them or something. “Uh,” he says. “I’m looking for a guest.”
“Yes, sir,” the woman says, noticeably unimpressed with his bumbling.
“Brad Colbert,” Brad says, and then wonders why he bothered because obviously he lives in Paris, he’s standing in his Paris apartment. Why would he need to go and stay at a hotel in Paris?
“I have no guest by that name, sir.”
“Thank-you,” Brad says, and then asks her to wait a moment. “Hello, are you still there?”
“…Sir?”
He flips through his passports. Brad Colbert has an apartment in Paris but as far as he knows, none of the other men in his other passports do. “Wait,” he says, and scrounges for the first passport he sees. “If you could check another name for me? It’s Matthew Kempe?”
He hears the click of a keyboard and then the phone is silent for a moment. Brad starts to wonder if maybe the woman has hung up on him. A second later, though, a man comes on the line. “You were asking about Matthew Kempe?”
He hesitates. Why should it matter to this guy? “Yes.”
“You are a friend of his, perhaps?”
“Yeah.” Brad only realizes he’s keeping a running tally of the passing seconds when some part of his mind suggests that perhaps the call is being traced. Who would want to trace his call?
“I’m very sorry sir,” the man on the end of the line says. “Matthew Kempe has died, about two weeks ago. There was an accident,” the man continues, even though Brad is reeling. “On the motorway. When they came for his things, it was made known to me.”
“Who came for his things?”
“His brother, I think. I’m very sorry.”
Brad disconnects the phone.
The windows no longer offer a bright and welcoming view; instead they make him feel like a fish in a bowl. He is too exposed standing here. Stepping back into the hallway, Brad hears Ray humming happily. “Hey, Ray?”
“What’s up?”
“Just stay there for a second, okay?” The bathroom, Brad knows, has no windows and only one entrance. If Ray can keep his mouth shut for any length of time it is possible that he could be safe there.
Of course, the first thing Ray does is open the bathroom door and stick his head out. “What’s going on?”
“Just stay in the damned bathroom,” Brad says, and to punctuate the conclusion of that sentiment the window at the end of the hall shatters into thousands of tiny fragments as a guy comes swinging into Brad’s apartment hanging from some sort of bungee-chord and firing a gun.
Brad has bare feet and no weapon. The guy comes in blasting off round after round out of a Micro Galil rifle. Brad flips through the gun’s stats in his head as he dives to the right, noting as well how Ray instinctively pitches himself back into the bathroom and kicks the door closed. He can hear Ray’s voice, slightly muffled by the door of the bathroom as he says, “That guy just broke you mother fucking window!” Brad hopes he stays put.
There isn’t much time to think about anything else because the minute the shots stop firing, Brad is face to face with some dude with badly dyed blond hair whose stiff, rigid staccato kicks and punches are nonetheless powerful.
There’s a moment where he is relieved that he never bothered to put a rug in his living room, or any kind of real furniture because it means they can dance around each other pretty freely. Of course, then the guy pulls a tiny little dagger that he grips between his fingers and wields like a raptor’s claw, and Brad staggers back into his own desk in an effort to avoid the slash.
He has no weapons. There is not even a vaguely sharp letter opener on the table. Brad grabs a Bic pen and uncaps it. He spots Ray standing in the doorway with a goddamned butcher’s knife in his hand, looking like he’s not sure if he should step into the fray or not, but is nonetheless ready if Brad needs him.
Brad jerks his head in a sharp ‘no’ and hopes the man gets the message because the next second the murderous stranger is swinging at him again. Brad jabs with the pen, stabs the guy in the shoulder hard and feels the plastic sink in through flesh and muscle. He pulls sharply and the pen is free, covered in blood, dripping. The injury hasn’t slowed the man much, though he is using his left arm less.
It hasn’t solved the problem of the dagger.
Brad steps into the next swing and pivots so his back is to the guy’s chest. He gets a grip on the man’s wrist and when he steps away the knife is skittering across the floor and the pen is lodged in the stranger’s hand.
“Ouch,” Ray mouths.
Without pausing to allow the stranger to regroup, Brad aims a kick at the man's stomach that lays him out on the ground. He scrambles to pin the man down. “Who are you?”
There's a black zip pouch strapped to the man’s thigh. Brad rips it off with one hand, the other keeping the man in place, and tosses it in Ray’s general direction. “What’s in there?” he calls back, hears the zipper pull open as Ray rifles through it.
“Holy shit, this is from the fucking Embassy, Brad,” Ray says. He marches over and thrusts two pieces of paper out near Brad’s face.
On one there are pictures of Brad obviously taken from a surveillance video at the Embassy, the bottom features smaller images of him with bizarre colored hair. As if he would ever dye his hair orange for any reason. The other page offers a similar breakdown of images this time featuring Ray. “This is freaky government conspiracy shit,” Ray is saying. “Who the hell else has access to the goddamned security cameras at the motherfucking American Embassy?”
“Stay over there,” Brad orders. “I’ll deal with this. Just stay over there.” His moment’s distraction is enough. The guy shoves Brad back and manages to scramble free. Ray shifts his footing, blocking the doorway but the stranger rushes in the opposite direction. He proceeds to break another of Brad’s windows as he jumps out of the apartment.
“What the fuck?” Brad stares at the hole in his floor-to-ceiling pane of glass. “He just went out the fucking window.”
Ray steps further into the room, not too close as to offer an easy target should someone else be watching the apartment, but enough to get a glimpse at the street below. His eyes are wide. When he steps back he is clearly drifting slowly into some stage of shock. Brad thinks he might not be too far behind himself.
Ray nudges the gore-covered pen with the toe of his shoe. “Oh man. Brad, check it. The pen is mightier than the sword.” He giggles a little and then frowns. “I think I might have to go puke.”
_________________________
Nate recognizes Lovell’s voice over the line when he’s told, “Code in.”
He doesn’t slow his pace, keeps moving up the steps toward the office. “Bravo 2-4981.” There’s a click on the line as he reaches the door, tries the handle and is relieved that, for once, the damned thing is locked. Craig must not be in yet.
“Tell me,” a new voice orders over the phone as Nate twists his key in the lock. It’s Dowdy.
Nate steps into the darkness of the office and lets the door fall closed behind him, setting the lock. “He went to the apartment.”
“And?” Dowdy prompts.
“And now Barcelona is dead.” Nate is careful to keep his voice level.
He listens patiently as Dowdy swears. “Okay. You need to clean this up,” Dowdy says when he’s done cursing.
Nate snorts. “That’s not possible. There’s a body in the streets of Paris. Police are all over it. There’s no cleaning it up.”
“Understood,” Dowdy says with an exasperated sigh. “Put up the scanners. Concentrate on getting as much radio intel as you can. Is Alpha-2 there?”
Nate glances at Craig’s desk, considers lying for a moment. Dismisses it. “No.”
“That might be for the best. Run anything significant through me. Keep us updated.”
Nate flips his cell phone closed and pitches it onto his desk. He hunches forward, runs his hands through his hair and makes his mind carefully blank.
Every bit of this is a mess. Where the hell can he even start to fix any of it?
“What the fuck are you doing, Brad?” he asks the empty darkness of his office. He doesn’t ask the other question that has been circling in his head. The nervous, coiling question that surfaces persistently and has to be quashed time after time. ‘Are you okay? Are you still you?’ Nate refuses to give voice to it, refuses to dwell.
Five minutes is more than enough time spent brooding. Pushing his chair back, Nate strides over to Craig’s desk. He flips the screen on and enters the password that he isn’t supposed to know. Craig uses the same password again and again for everything. Figuring it out was not a hardship, and the man rarely changes it.
He pulls up a message box and pauses. Maybe it isn’t necessary. He could be getting ahead of himself, or involving himself in something where he could do more harm than good. Nate doesn’t think so. Any time he runs the variables in his head he determines that this needs to be done. The longer he delays, the higher the risk.
Carefully, he circumvents the tracing protocols and re-routes as much as possible. He types the word ‘forward’ into the message and attaches a picture of Nykwana Wombosi. Then he changes the time information and hits send. He logs out and flips the screen off, returning to his own desk.
Switching on the scanners, Nate settles the headphones over his ears and logs into his own computer. On the screen the wide grinning face of Corporal Ray Person greets him, the man’s dark brown eyes obscured by the bright green lettering announcing: Search Complete.
Nate has to get ahead of this if he’s going to stand any chance of stopping it.
_________________________
Brad finds himself folded in half again, sitting in the front seat of what he’s taken to thinking of as Ray’s shit-mobile. His blue bag is in the trunk stuffed inside a dark duffel bag, along with a few belongings from his apartment.
“It looks like somebody robbed the place,” Ray had said as they’d left.
“Good,” Brad replied. “Maybe they’ll think the robber killed whoever the hell that guy was.”
Ray was shaking a little when he’d slipped behind the wheel of his car. He’d brushed it off, “Adrenaline,” he’d said. “I’m just processing what the hell just happened. That’s not the first dead guy that I’ve seen. Just FYI, I actually fought in a war, so y’know, I’ve seen worse.”
There’s a difference Brad knows, between seeing a body in a war zone and seeing one lying in the middle of a street in a city like Paris. After the guy just swung in through a window with his gun literally blasting, no less. Who the hell does shit like that?
Ray rubs a hand over his face. “Your friends are weird.”
“I don’t think that guy was a friend. At least, I doubt we were very close.”
“It could have been like Cato and Clouseau, y’know, like in The Pink Panther?” Ray suggests. “Like maybe he was just testing you, or something.”
“And what,” Brad says. “I passed, so he threw himself out the window?” They’re parked at the side of the road across from the train station; Brad twists around and pulls his duffel out of the back seat. “I’ll be back. But if you aren’t here then I’ll understand. I won’t try to contact you.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
Brad gets a locker in the train station and pushes his duffel bag inside. It’s his escape route, his security, his back-up plan. He’s got everything he needs in there. He takes one stack of bills and tucks it in the high-collared black coat he threw on over his grey T-shirt.
When he crosses back over the street Ray’s obnoxious shit-mobile is still parked but there’s no sign of Ray. Brad has a moment of genuine concern that maybe Ray was abducted, but then he spots the man trotting back across the street with a brown paper bag in his hand.
“Gunfire, followed by epic brawl, followed by suicide,” Ray says, stopping by the side of the car. “I thought we could use some Tequila. Am I wrong?”
Brad grins sharply before his attention is caught by something else. There is a police car pulling into a free spot just down the street. “I think you should get out of here,” he says. “Seriously. Go to the cops, explain what happened.” He jerks his head to the black hoody that Ray had grabbed and thrown on over the shirt he’d stolen from Brad’s wardrobe. “You can show them the money, they’ll believe you.”
“Nuh uh. I’ve seen my horror movies. This is some freaky shit happening here and I intend to be the survivor girl. I’m pretty enough, I know how to handle myself, and I’m gonna stick like glue to the hero so we either go out in a blaze of glory together, or you end up falling in love with me and save my ass before tragically dying.”
“I don’t think I’m going to end up falling in love with you.”
Ray is entirely serious when he says, “I’m totally cool with that. So long as you stick to the ‘saving my ass’ bit.” He pulls the papers the guy who’d tried to kill them had in his pouch and holds them up so Brad can see their pictures. “This shit right here? This is government conspiracy level shit. I’m a Marine, but I’m pretty sure that guy who just swan dived out of your apartment would have taken me down.”
Brad glances back to the cop car - their heads are together but they haven’t stepped out of the vehicle. It’s only a matter of time.
“Fine. If you’re sure, then I need you to give me the keys.”
“What?” Ray squawks. “You’ll hurt her!”
“Ray,” Brad says. “Now.”
Ray glances over to the cop car, where the cops are just stepping out of their vehicle. He drops the keys into Brad’s waiting hand and crawls over the driver’s seat to settle onto the passenger side.
“She handles fine,” Ray is saying, as Brad is fishing a map out of the backseat. “Maybe pulls a little to the right. But she’s got a tight turning radius.”
Brad’s eyes flicker over the chaotic swirling lines on the map. Beside him, Ray looks out the window and then glances over. “Hey, Brad. They’re almost on top of us.”
Brad turns the engine over and backs the car up. “You better have your goddamned seat-belt on, Person.”
“Dude, survivor girl. That means I’m not an idiot.”
Spinning the wheel and reversing the car, Brad shoots past the scrambling cops and turns right. There’s a light rain falling and the roads are slick with it. He can feel the back of the car skidding as he accelerates. “What the hell are you talking about? Survivor girl?”
Ray throws his hands up in the air; he’s got his feet spread so he can brace himself. “In horror movies, and like, freaky suspense movies and shit, there’s always this one chick, right, who makes it. The survivor girl.”
They run a gauntlet as police cars drop onto their location like flies onto a dish of honey. Brad counts six cars already on their tail. He dodges a slow moving vehicle in front of them and ends up driving in the lane for oncoming traffic.
Ray wraps a hand around the little grip above the passenger door. “You gotta love Paris, man,” he says. “I mean, nobody has even figured out this is a high speed chase yet. They think we’re just late for work or something.” Brad switches gears and bumps up onto the sidewalk, sending pedestrians lunging to the left and right to get out of his way. “Well, they sure as shit know we’re running now!”
There’s police on motorbikes at their six, cop cars at their three o’clock. Brad’s driving through the streets of Paris like he actually remembers them and Ray’s talking shit like they’re just out for a normal drive. “Anyway, the survivor girl can’t be trashy, because that’s just like a rule for all horror movies. If you’re a slut you’re usually the first to die. And she’s always smart and sort of pretty.”
“There’s a bump coming up,” Brad points out, and then cranks the wheel left down a narrow alley.
“That’s cool, man,” Ray says, dismissively. Then he sees where they’re heading and amends his statement, “Holy shit!” They bounce down three steep sets of stairs and across a small park before spinning back into traffic.
There’s one cop on a bike still behind them but they seem to have lost everyone else for the time being. Brad sets them going against traffic and brings them out onto a pretty wide and very busy road. He cuts right and the cop can’t correct in time, which leaves their crappy bright orange and entirely too visible piece of shit car traveling in the same direction as commuters, and the cop on his bike on the other side of a long cement boulevard, going against traffic but having less trouble because he’s on a motorcycle.
If Brad were on a motorcycle, he’d be having considerably less trouble ditching this cop.
He hits the brakes and Ray squawks at him. “We’re in the middle of a high speed chase, why the hell did you just stop?” Then he looks to the right, at the giant postal truck that has walled them off from sight. “Oh. Not bad.”
Ahead, the cop spins out because he’s paying more attention to where they might have gone than to the traffic in front of him. “Persistent sonofabitch,” Brad mutters, and then turns down another road and drives sedately until he cuts left into an underground parking garage.
“I am sorry to have to tell you this, Ray,” Brad says, as he pulls into a parking spot and cuts the engine. “But you’re going to have to say goodbye to this vintage crap-mobile.”
“Dude, I hate this car. Let’s go.” He grabs a bag from the trunk but leaves the rest of his belongings. Brad respects a man who can prioritize. “You just rained chaos and destruction down on the streets of Paris, Brad. Shit,” Ray adds as they hike up the pedestrian footpath and out onto the sidewalk. “The Marine Corps wasn’t this intense.”
_________________________
Dowdy is pinching the bridge of his nose because he is not physically capable of pinching the persistent throb that is in his brain. “Say again?” he asks the phone.
“Uh,” Paris Alpha says. “A high speed chase?”
“That is high visibility,” Lovell says, quietly, because they have their Paris outpost on speakerphone. “Why would he draw so much attention to himself? These guys are trained to be invisible.”
Over the line, Dowdy hears Schwetje make a 'hmm'ing noise. “Maybe when the police find the car there’ll be a clue.”
“This isn’t a scavenger hunt, Alpha-2,” Dowdy says. “This is a rogue asset that we need to get under control.”
“Oh!” Schwetje says, like he’s just remembered something. Dowdy waits. “Wombosi was at the morgue late last night. He wasn’t convinced by the substitute, sir.”
“Jesus Christ,” Dowdy says. “That is high priority information! Why was I not notified of this sooner?”
“Uh…”
He can actually hear the man shrug over the phone line. “Was Bravo-2 made aware of this?”
The silence is answer enough, but to make the whole situation even more ridiculous, Dowdy’s Paris Alpha says, “Why would I notify Bravo before HQ?”
Dowdy takes a very long bracing breath. “Maybe because you went home before you bothered to notify HQ! Dismissed!” Dowdy clicks off the line, and then proceeds to swear. “Fucking incompetent! We need to cleanup this Wombosi situation before it gets any worse…”
“Sir.” Lovell jerks his head to indicate the screen of his computer. Dowdy shuffles over and peers down at it. It’s a police report. “Nykwana Wombosi is already dead.”
How the hell did that even happen? “Was it us?”
“There’s been no hit put out from any of our outposts,” Lovell says. He shrugs. “I don’t know, sir. The report reads like it was a sniper.”
“The man has pissed off a lot of people. And not just the CIA.” He mulls this over, considers how to play it. He can hear Mattis barreling down the hallway and motions for Lovell to turn off the screen. “This is a piece of luck for us. We’re not looking this gift horse in the mouth. Pull everyone off Wombosi, let’s focus on Colbert.”
“Yes sir."
___________________________________________________
|<< END PART TWO >>|
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