Fic: Wotan's Day 2/16
Title: Wotan's Day
Fandoms: Highlander, X-files, Invisible Man
Rating:NC-17 overall, R for violence for this chapter
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em.
Notes: I did not intend to include Invisible Man fandom in this story, but Bobby Hobbes showed up, and wouldn't stop talking.
Summary: The year is 2023. Methos, Mathias Bierce, has been living as a corporate lawyer in Denver for many years. His partner for most of those years has been a one-armed art dealer named Sasha Lisitsa. Methos has been kidnapped in his own car by an old man guarded by the spitting image of Duncan MacLeod. Questioning begins.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Don't ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun--and neither can stop the march of events.
Time Enough For Love
"There are a great many things I would like to know," said the old man, handing me a crystal stem, "but we'll settle first for the whereabouts of Alexander Krycek."
"I can't help you. I've never heard of him." I sipped the sherry, unsurprised to recognize quality even Mathias Bierce could barely afford.
"Oh, perhaps not by that name. Don't be dense, Mr. Bierce. No one earns simultaneous law and MBA degrees from Harvard at the age of twenty-three by being dense."
I gave my voice the anger it should have. "The only Alexander I know is Sasha, and his name isn't Krycek."
"Yes, Sasha."
"You're telling me Sasha is this Alexander Krycek?"
His answer was a look, one eyebrow slightly raised, then he said, "He's been using the name Lisitsa."
I looked at the old man for several moments, as if coming to terms with new information and feeling a sense of misplaced trust. "What proof do you have that Sasha is your Krycek? Seven years, and I can't imagine he never told me his real name," I said, and turned to the window pretending to gather control. In the reflection I watched the old man next to me. He smiled slightly, a mere curve of his patrician mouth.
"That's not so long for you, is it?"
"It's a fifth of my life," I said. These were the kinds of numbers I kept in my head. Mathias Bierce had been born in 1989. He was thirty-four.
"Oh, I think not, Mr. Pierson."
I pretended I had misheard Pierson for Bierce, did the math in my head and said, "All right. Twenty point six percent if you round up the second decimal place."
"Adam," said the old man, as if admonishing a fibbing child, "you never told Sasha your real name, did you?"
I very much doubted the old man knew my real name, and I wasn't going to play into his hand. I got angry. "Look, you seem to have me confused with someone else." It was time to add an edge of histrionic faggot. I had no idea how this would play out, and it wouldn't hurt to have a little fun with it. "Just get out of my car and leave me alone. There can't be anything you want from me. Sasha's gone and I don't know where he is. He didn't leave a note, the bastard!"
The old man ignored my outburst. "Oh, but he did communicate with you. Call his cell phone."
"What?" I said. "If you listened to his message, you know. He's left me for someone else. Would you please pass the salt? I don't think this wound hurts enough."
He surprised me by chuckling. I looked affronted.
"Gohlehm, hand Mr. Bierce his phone."
Gohlehm reached back with his left hand without turning around. I took the phone from him and said, "Video on. Call Sasha." I was curious as to whether there had been a visual with the audio message. It startled me to hear a ring in the car, just out of synch with the ringing on my own phone.
I looked at the old man, who inclined his head. "We found it in a trash can several exits back."
After a few more rings the call went to phone mail, and the video came on. Sasha looked out from the small screen. For the first moments of the message, I turned the phone toward the old man, who nodded with some satisfaction. Instead of turning the phone off, I watched the message play out, looking for something in Sasha's demeanor to give me further clues as to what this was all about.
When the message turned personal, the recorded Sasha lifted his chin as if in guilty defiance. I couldn't help but admire the acting, and had to remind myself to respond appropriately. "If this is Matty... Mathias, I'm sor--." I thumbed the phone off and said, "No you're not." The vehemence wasn't feigned. It was Sasha who had gotten me into this spot. No one in black SUVs should be looking for me.
"Now, now," said the old man. "I think we should play the entire message."
"Why? To watch me suffer?"
"Indulge me."
"Whatever for? I'm the one held hostage in my own car!" Indignant, high priced lawyer, somewhat naïve, with a recently broken heart--that was what I had to channel, and I hadn't constructed Mathias Bierce to have any experience that would let him handle this kind of situation. Of course, Mathias Bierce would not be heavily armed, which I hoped they would assume as well. I didn't know what assumptions they might make, however, if they thought I was also Adam Pierson.
"Gohlehm," the old man said.
The guard turned, aiming the gun squarely at my face.
"All right, all right," I said. "Look, I wish I understood what you wanted from me. I mean, I know Sasha may have had some less than perfectly legal imports, but it was art for heaven's sake, not state secrets!"
"Are you so sure?"
My surprise was almost genuine.
"Indulge me, please," said the old man, again, indicating the phone with a nod.
They went through the farce again, and I let genuine emotions play over my face along with the manufactured ones. I was, in truth, not happy about the turn of events, and it was easy to let that annoyance look like the grief of a jilted lover. Despite the annoyance, I still liked looking at Sasha's face, from the gray at the temples to the slight sag at the jowls that had developed over our years together. Sasha had been aging well.
"What does he mean about not going off to OD somewhere?" the old man asked.
I sighed, thinking fast. "Sasha told me he once had a drug problem and a problem with suicidal thoughts."
"I see," he said, but his tone implied disbelief. "Our analysis indicated that the message contains code phrases."
"What?" I said, with all the incredulity I could muster. "Are you trying to tell me he was some kind of spy? That you think I’m--"
The old man raised a hand to cut me off. "You listened to it three times before you left a message."
I gave him the look I reserved for dense paralegals, "I didn't know what to say. Look, what is this all about? What," I started, then glanced at the gun pointing at me, avoiding looking at the guard in the front seat, and let myself slouch in defeat. "What do you want to know?"
The old man smiled and patted my hand, then signaled to the guard to lower the gun. "How did you meet Alexander?"
"I sucked him off in the bathroom of his gallery."
The old man blinked, and the driver gave a single snort. I looked at the driver for the first time. He wore gloves and had a line of short silver hair around the base of his skull. His eyes in the mirror were brown, lined with age. Pushing seventy, I thought, or just past it.
"You asked," I said. "It was at an art opening. After that, my secretary introduced us."
"Yes. Betty."
"If you know so much about me, why are you asking questions?" I wanted him to ask better questions, ones that would help me understand what the hell I was dealing with.
"We want to hear your perspective on your... lover." The old man put distaste into the word. An old man, I thought, with old-fashioned mores.
"I don't have much perspective at the moment, and maybe if you told me what you were looking for, I could be of more help." I sipped the sherry and examined the glass. The crystal was cut, but not over-decorated. I pinged it with a fingernail, tapping several times as if in a nervous gesture. It was genuine stuff.
"Did Sasha travel much?"
"At least two or three times a month. Why?"
"I'm asking the questions. Did he tell you where he was going?"
"I didn't ask."
"Weren't you curious?"
"Not really. It got hard to keep track, and buying trips aren't exactly my sort of thing. I had plenty of my own work to do."
"Didn't you think it odd that he went on so many buying trips, but the gallery only mounted a show a month?"
"What century were you born in?" Scorn of youth for the aged, plus anger at being held hostage: Check. "More than half his business is internet sales."
"Ever ask him how he lost his arm?"
"No."
"Weren't you curious?"
"Of course, but unlike some I could mention, I leave other people's privacy intact."
"Would you like to know where he got the scar on his forehead?"
"It's none of my business." I drained the sherry, thinking this was going nowhere, and then the old man surprised me.
"He was shot at point blank range by a high ranking official in what used to be called the FBI."
I believed him, but I said, "And you expect me to buy that? Because last time I heard, head wounds were fatal if not debilitating."
"His skull was modified long ago, Mr. Bierce, against such hazards of his job."
Now we were getting somewhere. "Next you're going to tell me that he was once a member of the Uncannny X-men."
The driver snorted again, but the old man said, "Pardon me?"
"It was a comic book, boss," said the driver in an accent that was part Jersey, part Brooklyn, and probably fake. "Turn of the century stuff, movies, and all that. They had a character called Wolverine who had adamantium fused to his skeleton. Tough guy to kill."
The old man cut him off. "That's enough, Mr. Hobbes." He turned to me. I glanced out the window, appearing nervous and off balance, twirling the crystal stem in my fingers. "Would you care for more?" he asked. I suddenly wondered if he were drugging me, but could feel no direct effects.
"Might as well, if you're not going to give me back my car any time soon." I held out the glass, and as he filled it, I asked, "Anything else you want to tell me about Sasha? Like, where he is?"
"I think you know where he is, Mr. Bierce, or at least where he's going. I think he told you in his phone message. Where do you find red rocks?"
"Sedona," I answered without thinking, and then I did think. There were some very good truth serums available these days, ones that had no other side effects. I dropped the act consciously before I could blow my cover more. "But you knew that, didn't you?"
"Mr. Hobbes is quite talented in analysis of crude codes."
"So why ask me? You just wanted to confirm what you knew."
"And extend it. We know where, but we don't know why."
"I don't know why." It was the truth. If he'd drugged me, he had to know I couldn't lie.
In the background, my brain had been making plans. With this truth serum in me, I could not afford to sit and answer questions.
"Hmm." The old man thought for a moment, and decided to take a different tack. "What is your name?"
"What's a name?" I said, testing to see if I could get around the impulse to answer. It seemed I could.
"What do you call yourself?"
"Mathias Bierce. What do you call yourself?"
He didn't deign to answer. "What is your true name?" he said. "What do you call yourself in between the public names?"
"Methos," I said. He had asked too well for me to counter.
"How old are you?"
"I don't know."
The old man raised his eyebrows at that. "What is the minimum age you could be, given your memories?"
"Five thousand years. How old are you?"
He ignored my question and closed his eyes, and I realized my answer wounded him. How could it not? He was in his decline, eighty-five or ninety years old, and here I sat unable to lie, telling him that I looked as I do after five millennia. I glanced at the eyes of the driver, who was watching me in the rearview. He shook his head and returned his attention to the road.
The old man looked at me thoughtfully. "Would I know you by another name? What name from history would I best recognize?"
The answer came with the physical sensation of truth erupting from behind my teeth. "Death."
I smiled as the word broke through, then snapped the cup off the crystal stem, and with my left hand drove the stem into his right eye. It shattered before it could go through the bone, preventing a killing stroke. I felt the searing pain of the bullet in my shoulder before I heard the gunshot. Left shoulder, which was good, because I was already reaching behind myself to the back holster, drawing my gun on Gholehm, firing before I let myself see his face, MacLeod's face. The exit wound splattered brains and blood on half the windshield as his gun fell, the hot barrel glancing off my leg before it hit the floor. I distantly heard the driver curse through the old man's scream of pain, and felt the car swerve as he regained control.
"I believe I asked you a question," I said to the old man. My shoulder hurt like hell, even though healing had begun. It would be little a while before I could use the arm. "What is your name?"
He was tough. He brought his hand up to his face, covering his eye and breathing through the pain. "Why are you following Krycek?"
"I'm bored," I answered, "and I didn't like the idea of having people occupying the house across the street only to spy on my husband and myself." It surprised me to hear the word husband out of my mouth. I suppose that was how I felt about Sasha, even though the most we'd ever talked about our relationship was an acknowledgement that he was living with me anyway, so he might as well give up the apartment. The truth serum worked at all levels, it seemed. "Were they yours?"
"What?"
"The set up across the street. The black SUVs, the bugs in the house."
The driver said, "Only the feds still use SUVs."
"No," the old man agreed, "there were not ours."
"So who are you?"
"The proper question might be 'what.' What are you?"
"Immortal," I answered, not able to dodge the question, even though it wasn't directed toward me.
"I suspected as much." He moved his hand away from the wound. The eye socket was a bloody mess with the base of the stemware sticking out like a bizarre robot eye.
"So what are you?" I asked.
"Dead," he answered, and two seconds later he slumped forward, blood trickling down his chin.
"The old suicide tooth," said the driver nonchalantly. "So, it's just you and me. If you're immortal, then I guess it won't matter to you if you kill me and I crash the car. Of course, you'd have a bit of explaining to do. You really can't die?"
"I can die, it's just not easy," I said, managing not to give him the full answer. Damn this drug. "How long will the truth serum last?"
"Well, my friend, that depends on your physiology, which might be unique given this immortality thing, but if you were a normal Joe, I'd say about forty-five more minutes. So, what are you going to do?"
"I don't know." I couldn't kill him while I was still under the drug's influence. He was right, in that the car would crash and I would have a lot to explain when the police arrived. It wouldn't do to be subject to official questioning while compelled to tell the truth. "Mr. Hobbes, is it?"
"Bobby Hobbes. Pleased to meet you, Mr. ah--"
"Bierce. Bierce will do." I aimed the gun at him. "What will you do now?"
"Drive, Mr. Bierce. I will drive. Me? I'm just a driver. You don't need that thing."
I sat back, gun ready but not aimed, trying to plan further. I still had the problem of getting out of this. I no longer wanted the car, not with its grisly cargo, but I would need the IDs and the bags in the back.
"Who do you work for?"
"You, now, it seems."
"What about the old man? Who was he?"
"I have no idea. I'm used to working for people without names, Mr. Bierce."
"Government agent?"
"Not any more. I have not knowingly worked for a government in twenty years."
I could tell he wanted me to ask why. I declined the bait. "How long did you work for him?"
"Eh, about fifteen years."
He was lying, but I asked, "Why are you answering my questions?"
"Why are you asking them?"
"So I can decide whether or not to kill you." That was an easy truth.
"See, and that's why I'm answering them, so as to convince you that you don't need to kill me."
I rolled my shoulder. It was almost healed. "How long did you work for him? Truth, this time."
"Nine years, eight months and two days, and let me tell you it's been a long strange trip. I don't even have trouble believing you are five thousand years old. When I first started working for him, I thought I was having trouble with my medications, you know, seeing things, because I can get a little delusional. It used to just be paranoia and obsession, but with time, well, anyway. I guess after having worked with a guy who could turn invisible, you'd think nothing could phase me, but the old man was into some very strange stuff, my friend."
"What kind of stuff?"
"Oh, aliens, mostly."
His tone was so casual that I knew he believed it.
"What about that guy, Gholehm? How long has he been around."?
"My former employer picked him up from the labs last week. Had him specially made. They tried to clone the original, but it never worked. Something about the nuclear transfer always went wrong. I heard the techs say something weird was happening. So, they made a blank and did plastic surgery."
"What do you mean clone?" That might explain the name. In a way, the thing had been a golem. "I thought they still couldn't get it to work for humans using adult cells."
"That's what they tell the public. He knows guys that have been doing it for thirty years, and they couldn't make this one work. Something about the eggs reverting to whatever cell type the nucleus came from, or something. Biotech isn't exactly my thing, so I could be getting it wrong, but they were kind of creeped out about it."
"Who were they trying to clone?"
"Some guy named MacLeod. You know him?"
"Yes." I asked my question before I could react to the name. "Did he tell you why?"
"I'm just a driver, Mr. Bierce. He didn't tell me much. What was MacLeod to you?"
A pain in the ass with a permalink in my brain, I thought, remembering the aftermath of a shared Quickening. Then I realized I no longer felt compelled to answer. My physiology had thrown off the drug early. I asked, "If you're just the driver, why would he use you to analyze the phone message?"
For the first time, Hobbes was quiet. I reached past the body of the old man for the decanter of sherry. I picked up the cup I had broken off the stemware and poured a glass. "Is the sherry drugged, or was it just my glass?"
Hobbes didn't answer. I drank, then waited a few minutes. "Ask me a question."
The driver said nothing, so I cocked the gun with my left hand, and put it to Hobbes' head. "Ask me a question."
"Okay. What's your favorite color?"
I tried to lie and say blue, but heard myself say, "Red." So it was the sherry. I wondered if the old man was immune, or whether I'd failed to note whether he actually drank. I put the gun aside long enough to pour another glass, and leaned forward. I put the cup to Hobbes' lips, the gun to the base of his skull, and said, "Drink."
Hobbes tried to fake it, spilling sherry down his chin. "Don't," I warned.
"Would you really kill me right now as I'm driving?"
"Yes," I said with no hesitation. "Drink. Remember, I'm on truth serum. I can't lie. Ask me again."
"Will you kill me?"
"I still don't know. That's a different question. Drink."
Hobbes drank. I sat back and waited.
"Why did the old man want to clone MacLeod?"
"Bait for you. But Krycek took off sooner than expected, and we didn't expect you to follow him. What's MacLeod to you?"
"An old friend." Damn, I thought, I'm going to have to play this stupid game. It wasn’t stupid on his part. I ask one, he asks one. Maybe I could learn from what he asked. "Why me? Bait for what?"
"Well, they were going to use you to get to Krycek, but when they started researching you, it seemed you were older than you looked. Do you really not know about Krycek?"
"No," I answered, which was truthful. I hadn't known his name. I had of course known he was something more than an art dealer in the way he handled weaponry, in the specialized arms I had found in that case. On the pistol range, he was the better shot. That told me quite a bit. "What is Krycek?"
"Near as I can tell he used to be an assassin and the kind of guy you brought in for the difficult jobs. Hard to control, though. I used to be like that, only not quite like that. What about you, my friend? I mean you handled yourself pretty well here, and that bit with the glass was pretty inspired, let me tell you."
He had babbled past the question, so I did not feel the need to answer. "Why did he want to get to Sasha?"
"You mean Krycek? Bring him back into the fold, I suspect. No one likes a guy like him to be out on his own. They like a good leash, and he'd slipped his for fifteen years or more, or so they tell me. What about you?" he asked again. "Soldier? Spy? What?"
"Yes," I said. I had been all those things, including the what. "What would he have done with Sasha once he had him?"
"Well, if he didn't promise to be a good boy, he was going to set up a little torture scene, with you and the Gholehm as the stars of the show. If that didn't work, he was going to kill him, which is not an easy thing to do. I mean, you heard about the head shot. It knocked him for a loop for a few weeks, but he was fine." He paused, then asked his question, "What are your loyalties?"
"I don't have any. Why did you work for the old man?"
"I didn't care any more. Are you going to kill me?"
That was the answer I needed. I didn't know what he no longer cared about, but that didn't matter. He had cared about something once.
"I still don't know," I answered, because I was not sure. Ninety-nine percent sure, but not entirely. "Where is the old man's base of operations?"
"Washington. You're not even loyal to Sasha?"
"I never cheated on him. What are your loyalties?"
His answer was slower than the truth serum should have allowed. "I am loyal to a dead man." Then he said, "Mere avoidance of sex with other people isn't loyalty, Mr. Bierce."
"I know," I said, before he could ask another question. "Who is this dead man?"
"I had a partner. Not that kind of partner," he said, "not like you and that guy Krycek."
"The one who could turn invisible?"
"Yeah. He'd been modified in a government experiment."
"What happened to him?"
"When the experiment finally failed, they killed him, and told me later. They put him down like a dog."
I was opening an old wound on Mr. Hobbes, but I did not show my pleasure at being handed such an excellent leverage point. "You wanted to be the one to do it?"
"Damn straight," he whispered. "It's the kind of thing you do for your partner. Ever had to put down a pet, Mr. Bierce?"
I thought of Silas, and then back to my slave Kaithos, to other slaves I had been fond of, but had to destroy for illness, or for incorrigible behavior. "Yes."
"You take him in to the vet for the shot, you tell him he's a good dog, and you pet him." I could see Kaithos, his back and legs broken in a chariot race. I had fed him the juice of poppies, kissed him and soothed him as best I could, while I took my knife and slit the femoral artery, down where he could no longer feel. On that day, Death was kind.
"They didn't give you that."
"No, my friend, they did not."
"Mr. Hobbes," I said, several things clicking into place, "what did you do to them?"
"Mr. Bierce, I killed them all."
I kept my smile off my face. Things were definitely looking up.
Chapter 3
Fandoms: Highlander, X-files, Invisible Man
Rating:NC-17 overall, R for violence for this chapter
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em.
Notes: I did not intend to include Invisible Man fandom in this story, but Bobby Hobbes showed up, and wouldn't stop talking.
Summary: The year is 2023. Methos, Mathias Bierce, has been living as a corporate lawyer in Denver for many years. His partner for most of those years has been a one-armed art dealer named Sasha Lisitsa. Methos has been kidnapped in his own car by an old man guarded by the spitting image of Duncan MacLeod. Questioning begins.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Don't ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun--and neither can stop the march of events.
Time Enough For Love
"There are a great many things I would like to know," said the old man, handing me a crystal stem, "but we'll settle first for the whereabouts of Alexander Krycek."
"I can't help you. I've never heard of him." I sipped the sherry, unsurprised to recognize quality even Mathias Bierce could barely afford.
"Oh, perhaps not by that name. Don't be dense, Mr. Bierce. No one earns simultaneous law and MBA degrees from Harvard at the age of twenty-three by being dense."
I gave my voice the anger it should have. "The only Alexander I know is Sasha, and his name isn't Krycek."
"Yes, Sasha."
"You're telling me Sasha is this Alexander Krycek?"
His answer was a look, one eyebrow slightly raised, then he said, "He's been using the name Lisitsa."
I looked at the old man for several moments, as if coming to terms with new information and feeling a sense of misplaced trust. "What proof do you have that Sasha is your Krycek? Seven years, and I can't imagine he never told me his real name," I said, and turned to the window pretending to gather control. In the reflection I watched the old man next to me. He smiled slightly, a mere curve of his patrician mouth.
"That's not so long for you, is it?"
"It's a fifth of my life," I said. These were the kinds of numbers I kept in my head. Mathias Bierce had been born in 1989. He was thirty-four.
"Oh, I think not, Mr. Pierson."
I pretended I had misheard Pierson for Bierce, did the math in my head and said, "All right. Twenty point six percent if you round up the second decimal place."
"Adam," said the old man, as if admonishing a fibbing child, "you never told Sasha your real name, did you?"
I very much doubted the old man knew my real name, and I wasn't going to play into his hand. I got angry. "Look, you seem to have me confused with someone else." It was time to add an edge of histrionic faggot. I had no idea how this would play out, and it wouldn't hurt to have a little fun with it. "Just get out of my car and leave me alone. There can't be anything you want from me. Sasha's gone and I don't know where he is. He didn't leave a note, the bastard!"
The old man ignored my outburst. "Oh, but he did communicate with you. Call his cell phone."
"What?" I said. "If you listened to his message, you know. He's left me for someone else. Would you please pass the salt? I don't think this wound hurts enough."
He surprised me by chuckling. I looked affronted.
"Gohlehm, hand Mr. Bierce his phone."
Gohlehm reached back with his left hand without turning around. I took the phone from him and said, "Video on. Call Sasha." I was curious as to whether there had been a visual with the audio message. It startled me to hear a ring in the car, just out of synch with the ringing on my own phone.
I looked at the old man, who inclined his head. "We found it in a trash can several exits back."
After a few more rings the call went to phone mail, and the video came on. Sasha looked out from the small screen. For the first moments of the message, I turned the phone toward the old man, who nodded with some satisfaction. Instead of turning the phone off, I watched the message play out, looking for something in Sasha's demeanor to give me further clues as to what this was all about.
When the message turned personal, the recorded Sasha lifted his chin as if in guilty defiance. I couldn't help but admire the acting, and had to remind myself to respond appropriately. "If this is Matty... Mathias, I'm sor--." I thumbed the phone off and said, "No you're not." The vehemence wasn't feigned. It was Sasha who had gotten me into this spot. No one in black SUVs should be looking for me.
"Now, now," said the old man. "I think we should play the entire message."
"Why? To watch me suffer?"
"Indulge me."
"Whatever for? I'm the one held hostage in my own car!" Indignant, high priced lawyer, somewhat naïve, with a recently broken heart--that was what I had to channel, and I hadn't constructed Mathias Bierce to have any experience that would let him handle this kind of situation. Of course, Mathias Bierce would not be heavily armed, which I hoped they would assume as well. I didn't know what assumptions they might make, however, if they thought I was also Adam Pierson.
"Gohlehm," the old man said.
The guard turned, aiming the gun squarely at my face.
"All right, all right," I said. "Look, I wish I understood what you wanted from me. I mean, I know Sasha may have had some less than perfectly legal imports, but it was art for heaven's sake, not state secrets!"
"Are you so sure?"
My surprise was almost genuine.
"Indulge me, please," said the old man, again, indicating the phone with a nod.
They went through the farce again, and I let genuine emotions play over my face along with the manufactured ones. I was, in truth, not happy about the turn of events, and it was easy to let that annoyance look like the grief of a jilted lover. Despite the annoyance, I still liked looking at Sasha's face, from the gray at the temples to the slight sag at the jowls that had developed over our years together. Sasha had been aging well.
"What does he mean about not going off to OD somewhere?" the old man asked.
I sighed, thinking fast. "Sasha told me he once had a drug problem and a problem with suicidal thoughts."
"I see," he said, but his tone implied disbelief. "Our analysis indicated that the message contains code phrases."
"What?" I said, with all the incredulity I could muster. "Are you trying to tell me he was some kind of spy? That you think I’m--"
The old man raised a hand to cut me off. "You listened to it three times before you left a message."
I gave him the look I reserved for dense paralegals, "I didn't know what to say. Look, what is this all about? What," I started, then glanced at the gun pointing at me, avoiding looking at the guard in the front seat, and let myself slouch in defeat. "What do you want to know?"
The old man smiled and patted my hand, then signaled to the guard to lower the gun. "How did you meet Alexander?"
"I sucked him off in the bathroom of his gallery."
The old man blinked, and the driver gave a single snort. I looked at the driver for the first time. He wore gloves and had a line of short silver hair around the base of his skull. His eyes in the mirror were brown, lined with age. Pushing seventy, I thought, or just past it.
"You asked," I said. "It was at an art opening. After that, my secretary introduced us."
"Yes. Betty."
"If you know so much about me, why are you asking questions?" I wanted him to ask better questions, ones that would help me understand what the hell I was dealing with.
"We want to hear your perspective on your... lover." The old man put distaste into the word. An old man, I thought, with old-fashioned mores.
"I don't have much perspective at the moment, and maybe if you told me what you were looking for, I could be of more help." I sipped the sherry and examined the glass. The crystal was cut, but not over-decorated. I pinged it with a fingernail, tapping several times as if in a nervous gesture. It was genuine stuff.
"Did Sasha travel much?"
"At least two or three times a month. Why?"
"I'm asking the questions. Did he tell you where he was going?"
"I didn't ask."
"Weren't you curious?"
"Not really. It got hard to keep track, and buying trips aren't exactly my sort of thing. I had plenty of my own work to do."
"Didn't you think it odd that he went on so many buying trips, but the gallery only mounted a show a month?"
"What century were you born in?" Scorn of youth for the aged, plus anger at being held hostage: Check. "More than half his business is internet sales."
"Ever ask him how he lost his arm?"
"No."
"Weren't you curious?"
"Of course, but unlike some I could mention, I leave other people's privacy intact."
"Would you like to know where he got the scar on his forehead?"
"It's none of my business." I drained the sherry, thinking this was going nowhere, and then the old man surprised me.
"He was shot at point blank range by a high ranking official in what used to be called the FBI."
I believed him, but I said, "And you expect me to buy that? Because last time I heard, head wounds were fatal if not debilitating."
"His skull was modified long ago, Mr. Bierce, against such hazards of his job."
Now we were getting somewhere. "Next you're going to tell me that he was once a member of the Uncannny X-men."
The driver snorted again, but the old man said, "Pardon me?"
"It was a comic book, boss," said the driver in an accent that was part Jersey, part Brooklyn, and probably fake. "Turn of the century stuff, movies, and all that. They had a character called Wolverine who had adamantium fused to his skeleton. Tough guy to kill."
The old man cut him off. "That's enough, Mr. Hobbes." He turned to me. I glanced out the window, appearing nervous and off balance, twirling the crystal stem in my fingers. "Would you care for more?" he asked. I suddenly wondered if he were drugging me, but could feel no direct effects.
"Might as well, if you're not going to give me back my car any time soon." I held out the glass, and as he filled it, I asked, "Anything else you want to tell me about Sasha? Like, where he is?"
"I think you know where he is, Mr. Bierce, or at least where he's going. I think he told you in his phone message. Where do you find red rocks?"
"Sedona," I answered without thinking, and then I did think. There were some very good truth serums available these days, ones that had no other side effects. I dropped the act consciously before I could blow my cover more. "But you knew that, didn't you?"
"Mr. Hobbes is quite talented in analysis of crude codes."
"So why ask me? You just wanted to confirm what you knew."
"And extend it. We know where, but we don't know why."
"I don't know why." It was the truth. If he'd drugged me, he had to know I couldn't lie.
In the background, my brain had been making plans. With this truth serum in me, I could not afford to sit and answer questions.
"Hmm." The old man thought for a moment, and decided to take a different tack. "What is your name?"
"What's a name?" I said, testing to see if I could get around the impulse to answer. It seemed I could.
"What do you call yourself?"
"Mathias Bierce. What do you call yourself?"
He didn't deign to answer. "What is your true name?" he said. "What do you call yourself in between the public names?"
"Methos," I said. He had asked too well for me to counter.
"How old are you?"
"I don't know."
The old man raised his eyebrows at that. "What is the minimum age you could be, given your memories?"
"Five thousand years. How old are you?"
He ignored my question and closed his eyes, and I realized my answer wounded him. How could it not? He was in his decline, eighty-five or ninety years old, and here I sat unable to lie, telling him that I looked as I do after five millennia. I glanced at the eyes of the driver, who was watching me in the rearview. He shook his head and returned his attention to the road.
The old man looked at me thoughtfully. "Would I know you by another name? What name from history would I best recognize?"
The answer came with the physical sensation of truth erupting from behind my teeth. "Death."
I smiled as the word broke through, then snapped the cup off the crystal stem, and with my left hand drove the stem into his right eye. It shattered before it could go through the bone, preventing a killing stroke. I felt the searing pain of the bullet in my shoulder before I heard the gunshot. Left shoulder, which was good, because I was already reaching behind myself to the back holster, drawing my gun on Gholehm, firing before I let myself see his face, MacLeod's face. The exit wound splattered brains and blood on half the windshield as his gun fell, the hot barrel glancing off my leg before it hit the floor. I distantly heard the driver curse through the old man's scream of pain, and felt the car swerve as he regained control.
"I believe I asked you a question," I said to the old man. My shoulder hurt like hell, even though healing had begun. It would be little a while before I could use the arm. "What is your name?"
He was tough. He brought his hand up to his face, covering his eye and breathing through the pain. "Why are you following Krycek?"
"I'm bored," I answered, "and I didn't like the idea of having people occupying the house across the street only to spy on my husband and myself." It surprised me to hear the word husband out of my mouth. I suppose that was how I felt about Sasha, even though the most we'd ever talked about our relationship was an acknowledgement that he was living with me anyway, so he might as well give up the apartment. The truth serum worked at all levels, it seemed. "Were they yours?"
"What?"
"The set up across the street. The black SUVs, the bugs in the house."
The driver said, "Only the feds still use SUVs."
"No," the old man agreed, "there were not ours."
"So who are you?"
"The proper question might be 'what.' What are you?"
"Immortal," I answered, not able to dodge the question, even though it wasn't directed toward me.
"I suspected as much." He moved his hand away from the wound. The eye socket was a bloody mess with the base of the stemware sticking out like a bizarre robot eye.
"So what are you?" I asked.
"Dead," he answered, and two seconds later he slumped forward, blood trickling down his chin.
"The old suicide tooth," said the driver nonchalantly. "So, it's just you and me. If you're immortal, then I guess it won't matter to you if you kill me and I crash the car. Of course, you'd have a bit of explaining to do. You really can't die?"
"I can die, it's just not easy," I said, managing not to give him the full answer. Damn this drug. "How long will the truth serum last?"
"Well, my friend, that depends on your physiology, which might be unique given this immortality thing, but if you were a normal Joe, I'd say about forty-five more minutes. So, what are you going to do?"
"I don't know." I couldn't kill him while I was still under the drug's influence. He was right, in that the car would crash and I would have a lot to explain when the police arrived. It wouldn't do to be subject to official questioning while compelled to tell the truth. "Mr. Hobbes, is it?"
"Bobby Hobbes. Pleased to meet you, Mr. ah--"
"Bierce. Bierce will do." I aimed the gun at him. "What will you do now?"
"Drive, Mr. Bierce. I will drive. Me? I'm just a driver. You don't need that thing."
I sat back, gun ready but not aimed, trying to plan further. I still had the problem of getting out of this. I no longer wanted the car, not with its grisly cargo, but I would need the IDs and the bags in the back.
"Who do you work for?"
"You, now, it seems."
"What about the old man? Who was he?"
"I have no idea. I'm used to working for people without names, Mr. Bierce."
"Government agent?"
"Not any more. I have not knowingly worked for a government in twenty years."
I could tell he wanted me to ask why. I declined the bait. "How long did you work for him?"
"Eh, about fifteen years."
He was lying, but I asked, "Why are you answering my questions?"
"Why are you asking them?"
"So I can decide whether or not to kill you." That was an easy truth.
"See, and that's why I'm answering them, so as to convince you that you don't need to kill me."
I rolled my shoulder. It was almost healed. "How long did you work for him? Truth, this time."
"Nine years, eight months and two days, and let me tell you it's been a long strange trip. I don't even have trouble believing you are five thousand years old. When I first started working for him, I thought I was having trouble with my medications, you know, seeing things, because I can get a little delusional. It used to just be paranoia and obsession, but with time, well, anyway. I guess after having worked with a guy who could turn invisible, you'd think nothing could phase me, but the old man was into some very strange stuff, my friend."
"What kind of stuff?"
"Oh, aliens, mostly."
His tone was so casual that I knew he believed it.
"What about that guy, Gholehm? How long has he been around."?
"My former employer picked him up from the labs last week. Had him specially made. They tried to clone the original, but it never worked. Something about the nuclear transfer always went wrong. I heard the techs say something weird was happening. So, they made a blank and did plastic surgery."
"What do you mean clone?" That might explain the name. In a way, the thing had been a golem. "I thought they still couldn't get it to work for humans using adult cells."
"That's what they tell the public. He knows guys that have been doing it for thirty years, and they couldn't make this one work. Something about the eggs reverting to whatever cell type the nucleus came from, or something. Biotech isn't exactly my thing, so I could be getting it wrong, but they were kind of creeped out about it."
"Who were they trying to clone?"
"Some guy named MacLeod. You know him?"
"Yes." I asked my question before I could react to the name. "Did he tell you why?"
"I'm just a driver, Mr. Bierce. He didn't tell me much. What was MacLeod to you?"
A pain in the ass with a permalink in my brain, I thought, remembering the aftermath of a shared Quickening. Then I realized I no longer felt compelled to answer. My physiology had thrown off the drug early. I asked, "If you're just the driver, why would he use you to analyze the phone message?"
For the first time, Hobbes was quiet. I reached past the body of the old man for the decanter of sherry. I picked up the cup I had broken off the stemware and poured a glass. "Is the sherry drugged, or was it just my glass?"
Hobbes didn't answer. I drank, then waited a few minutes. "Ask me a question."
The driver said nothing, so I cocked the gun with my left hand, and put it to Hobbes' head. "Ask me a question."
"Okay. What's your favorite color?"
I tried to lie and say blue, but heard myself say, "Red." So it was the sherry. I wondered if the old man was immune, or whether I'd failed to note whether he actually drank. I put the gun aside long enough to pour another glass, and leaned forward. I put the cup to Hobbes' lips, the gun to the base of his skull, and said, "Drink."
Hobbes tried to fake it, spilling sherry down his chin. "Don't," I warned.
"Would you really kill me right now as I'm driving?"
"Yes," I said with no hesitation. "Drink. Remember, I'm on truth serum. I can't lie. Ask me again."
"Will you kill me?"
"I still don't know. That's a different question. Drink."
Hobbes drank. I sat back and waited.
"Why did the old man want to clone MacLeod?"
"Bait for you. But Krycek took off sooner than expected, and we didn't expect you to follow him. What's MacLeod to you?"
"An old friend." Damn, I thought, I'm going to have to play this stupid game. It wasn’t stupid on his part. I ask one, he asks one. Maybe I could learn from what he asked. "Why me? Bait for what?"
"Well, they were going to use you to get to Krycek, but when they started researching you, it seemed you were older than you looked. Do you really not know about Krycek?"
"No," I answered, which was truthful. I hadn't known his name. I had of course known he was something more than an art dealer in the way he handled weaponry, in the specialized arms I had found in that case. On the pistol range, he was the better shot. That told me quite a bit. "What is Krycek?"
"Near as I can tell he used to be an assassin and the kind of guy you brought in for the difficult jobs. Hard to control, though. I used to be like that, only not quite like that. What about you, my friend? I mean you handled yourself pretty well here, and that bit with the glass was pretty inspired, let me tell you."
He had babbled past the question, so I did not feel the need to answer. "Why did he want to get to Sasha?"
"You mean Krycek? Bring him back into the fold, I suspect. No one likes a guy like him to be out on his own. They like a good leash, and he'd slipped his for fifteen years or more, or so they tell me. What about you?" he asked again. "Soldier? Spy? What?"
"Yes," I said. I had been all those things, including the what. "What would he have done with Sasha once he had him?"
"Well, if he didn't promise to be a good boy, he was going to set up a little torture scene, with you and the Gholehm as the stars of the show. If that didn't work, he was going to kill him, which is not an easy thing to do. I mean, you heard about the head shot. It knocked him for a loop for a few weeks, but he was fine." He paused, then asked his question, "What are your loyalties?"
"I don't have any. Why did you work for the old man?"
"I didn't care any more. Are you going to kill me?"
That was the answer I needed. I didn't know what he no longer cared about, but that didn't matter. He had cared about something once.
"I still don't know," I answered, because I was not sure. Ninety-nine percent sure, but not entirely. "Where is the old man's base of operations?"
"Washington. You're not even loyal to Sasha?"
"I never cheated on him. What are your loyalties?"
His answer was slower than the truth serum should have allowed. "I am loyal to a dead man." Then he said, "Mere avoidance of sex with other people isn't loyalty, Mr. Bierce."
"I know," I said, before he could ask another question. "Who is this dead man?"
"I had a partner. Not that kind of partner," he said, "not like you and that guy Krycek."
"The one who could turn invisible?"
"Yeah. He'd been modified in a government experiment."
"What happened to him?"
"When the experiment finally failed, they killed him, and told me later. They put him down like a dog."
I was opening an old wound on Mr. Hobbes, but I did not show my pleasure at being handed such an excellent leverage point. "You wanted to be the one to do it?"
"Damn straight," he whispered. "It's the kind of thing you do for your partner. Ever had to put down a pet, Mr. Bierce?"
I thought of Silas, and then back to my slave Kaithos, to other slaves I had been fond of, but had to destroy for illness, or for incorrigible behavior. "Yes."
"You take him in to the vet for the shot, you tell him he's a good dog, and you pet him." I could see Kaithos, his back and legs broken in a chariot race. I had fed him the juice of poppies, kissed him and soothed him as best I could, while I took my knife and slit the femoral artery, down where he could no longer feel. On that day, Death was kind.
"They didn't give you that."
"No, my friend, they did not."
"Mr. Hobbes," I said, several things clicking into place, "what did you do to them?"
"Mr. Bierce, I killed them all."
I kept my smile off my face. Things were definitely looking up.
Chapter 3