Interest (14 page)

“How did you know where to find me?” Len said, trying to break the uncomfortable quiet. He was wondering if they knew what he’d done.

The small man who had killed Samuel Endicott leaned over and turned on a little chart lamp next to the helm, illuminating his mask. Then he pulled off his ski mask.

“Natalia!” Len exclaimed in disbelief.

The other men took off their masks. They were her Russian friends. Len couldn’t believe it.

“I read notes. I saw pictures. That was Dranthyx I killed?” Natalia asked.

“Hell yes it was. Natalia, you are fucking amazing!” Len exclaimed. Stricken with relief and gratitude, he stood up and gave her a huge hug.

“Yes, I know,” she said matter-of-factly. Her associates laughed. “You save my life, I save yours. You’re welcome!”

“Thank you, all of you!” Len said, beside himself with gratefulness.

“Of course! You are family now,” said Yegor, one of the crewmen that had rescued Len from Salvatierra’s island. Yegor put out his clenched hand for a fist bump, which Len bemusedly obliged.

“So everything you wrote is true?” Natalia asked. “These Dranthyx creatures run world?”

“As far as I know, yes,” Len answered.

“What can we do about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“And Neith is fighting them?”

“I believe so.” He didn’t mention Neith’s fate.

Natalia sat there in silence for a moment, apparently considering the weight of the situation.

“OK, now we must turn off light and wait,” said one of the other Russians.

“Wait for what?” Len asked.

“Our ride is coming,” Natalia whispered.

After ten minutes or so of sitting out there in the ocean, helicopters with spotlights appeared on the horizon. The helicopters were combing the water, looking for Natalia’s speedboat. As Len watched them draw closer, he heard a great rushing of water that didn’t sound anything like the lapping waves he’d been hearing. Natalia and her crew stood up excitedly and started speaking in Russian. Someone turned on a powerful red spotlight and began shining it all around, as if they were looking for something out in the water.

Then Len saw what they were looking for. The sight of the massive object in the dark waters gave him a start. About fifty feet from the speedboat was an enormous black submarine. One of the Russians started the speedboat engine and circled the craft around to maneuver up next to the gigantic U-boat. Someone standing on the submarine tossed a rope ladder over the side so that everyone could climb aboard. Len looked toward the shore as the speedboat crew climbed the ladder one at a time. The helicopters were about half a mile away now. Once the last man had ascended the ladder and stood on the submarine deck, Len watched as he pulled a remote control from his vest. The man turned the remote on and hit a lever. The empty boat sped off into the ocean toward the helicopters. When it was about five hundred feet from the submarine, the man with the remote turned the speedboat’s navigation lights on. The helicopter pilot clearly took note and changed course to follow it. After a short chase, the speedboat exploded. The Russians standing on the submarine deck laughed at the spectacle, then climbed below deck. Someone told Len to sit in a little metal seat and strap himself in. The captain made a series of announcements in Russian over a PA system, and then the boat dived below the water. Once they were at a sufficient depth, the sub seemed to level out, and everyone unbuckled themselves and began walking around.

“Welcome aboard!” Natalia announced. “Have you been on submarine before?”

“No.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“It’s a claustrophobic’s nightmare,” Len said, half joking.

“Worse than jail cell?”

“You have a point.”

“I got you something,” Natalia said, handing Len a bag.

“What is it?”

“New clothes. Actually, old clothes from Yuri. He’s maybe same size as you.”

Len had never been more appreciative of second-hand clothes. He’d been wearing standard-issue lime green detention-facility jumpsuits for the last week, and he stuck out like poop in a punch bowl.

“Come with me,” Natalia said.

Natalia led him down a series of nauseatingly narrow hallways until they came to the ship’s galley, a room full of bolted-in dining tables. Octavia was sitting at one of the tables, building towers out of checkers pieces.

“Daddy!” She ran up to Len, who lifted her up and hugged her. “Daddy, we’re on a submarine! Isn’t that cool?”

“It’s very cool!”

“I have my own bed. They say it’s a bunk. It’s on the top! I’m sleeping in the room with Natalia tonight. She’s very nice. We play toys and she tells me stories. Daddy, the potty in this submarine is very weird and I don’t know how to use it.”

After the happy reunion, Len put Octavia to bed in her bunk for the night in the officers’ quarters where she and Natalia were sleeping. Natalia came in and sat down at the little table. Len sat down across from her. Natalia opened a nearby cabinet and pulled out a bottle of vodka and two plastic cups. She poured drinks for Len and herself, then took a big swig.

“You sell submarines too?” Len asked before taking a drink.

“I sell everything,” Natalia said with a curtness that came on suddenly.

“Wow. So who buys submarines?”

Natalia pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket, unfolded it, and read the details.

“Texas Liberation Army. New client. We need to deliver by tomorrow evening to Galveston.” Natalia paused, then put the paper down and bluntly cut through the crap. “So what happened? You know, I think you
tried
to get arrested.”

“You’re right,” Len said, shifting in his seat. “It was on purpose.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to cause a diversion so you and Octavia could get through. I wanted that manuscript and the pictures to make it to the newspaper. Did you deliver the package to Jack?”

“Hell no! I don’t have time to go to Pittsburgh to deliver package or daughter. I have business to run.”

“Do you still have the package?”

“No, I mailed to
Pittsburgh
Examiner
yesterday.”

“Thank God.”

“I hope you didn’t tell police about anything in jail!” Natalia admonished.

“I didn’t tell them anything,” Len said, trying hard to get it past the lump in his throat.

“Are you sure? Jefferson arrested today. I have no contact from Neith now.”

“He was arrested?” Len said, feigning surprise. “That has to be a coincidence. Don’t worry, they didn’t get anything out of me.”

“I hope not. Still, I think maybe what you did was bad decision. Brave, but stupid. You could have told me. We could have sneaked into country.”

“It didn’t occur to me until I was standing there at the airport. Then it was too late. All I could do was take one for the team to make sure you and Octavia got through OK.” He shrugged his shoulders contritely. “What would you have done?”

“I would have planned better!” Natalia blurted out.

“Yeah, well, making perfect decisions is the luxury of people who aren’t forced to act.”

The comment seemed to stop Natalia’s irritation in its tracks. “I suppose you are right,” Natalia conceded, chuckling at the truth of it. Her laugh sort of cleared the air.

“Thank you, by the way, for breaking me out of jail,” Len said.

“I’m glad you didn’t mention me in story.” Natalia took another swig.

“Of course. I know you like flying under the radar.”

Natalia gave Len a look over her drink that was equal parts admiration and derision. She abruptly stood up and walked around to his side of the table, sat down next to him, put her hand around the back of his head and, inexplicably, kissed him on the mouth. Every woman had a unique kiss, and Natalia’s was surprisingly gentle and slow for someone who had just blitzkrieged an INS detention facility. She paused and looked into Len’s eyes.

“You are fucking crazy, but I like you,” she stated.

“Likewise,” Len replied, baffled yet rolling with it by putting his arms around her. He studied Natalia’s face. She was one of those rare souls who radiated the pure brilliance of irreverent empathy: always doing good and never following rules. A weird fusion of nobility and chaos. Len pulled her in and kissed her again, this time meaning it.

Natalia stood up, chugged the last of her vodka like a champ, and ran her hand through Len’s hair. “I like you. But there’s no privacy on submarine,” she stated. “I’m going to bed. I’m tired.”

Len took the hint and walked to the aft, where the rest of the crew were sleeping in bunks, his brain soggy with infatuation and booze.

26

Len didn’t know what time it was when he woke up. On a submarine, it was impossible to tell. He and the other men were in the crew berths, which were three deep and smelled like body odor. There was quite a commotion—Natalia’s crew seemed to be cleaning everything. They were getting ready to deliver the submarine.

Octavia wasn’t kidding, Len thought as he tried to use the toilet. Using the toilet on the submarine required following a fifteen-step procedure, and the shower was equally complicated. There were instructions and a diagram on the wall, but they were a Cyrillic jumble that Len couldn’t read. Ultimately, he had to ask someone for help. Len was fairly thick-skinned and didn’t usually concern himself with what people thought of him, but he found it quite embarrassing to have to ask one of the men who had just saved his life the night before for help in using the bathroom. At least he was still alive, he told himself. Things could have been worse.

In the galley, an irritable Cossack named Vlad passed out granola bars and cans of coffee. “Try not to make mess,” he exhorted each person who came in. “This boat is for customer!”

Once the boat was well within the waters claimed by the newly declared Republic of Texas and past the somewhat anemic federal blockade fifteen miles off the coast, the captain brought the ship up to periscope depth. After he’d made extra certain that they were in the clear, the captain, a serious man with a ruddy face whom Len hadn’t met before, invited Octavia up to the bridge to look through the periscope.

“Now what?” Len asked.

“We must wait until night so the satellites don’t see us,” the captain said gruffly.

Once it was dark, everyone braced themselves as the ballast tanks were blown full of air and the old U-boat rocketed to the surface like a groaning, breaching orca. The submarine docked in a sprawling industrial park on Galveston Bay.

Standing on the dock with his daughter, Len bummed a smoke off one of the sailors and watched as Natalia laid the charm on some squirrely-looking dudes in cowboy hats. It was amazing to see her work, really. Natalia had an innate ability to talk to anyone about anything and make them feel good about it. She could effortlessly relate to every class of person, from the dropouts she employed to the highest brass. Len once came to the uncomfortable realization that salesmanship was
the
key to upward mobility in all careers. You could pretend you were above it, he begrudged, but the truth was you either had to master salesmanship or you’d spend the rest of your life begging for table scraps. Len wasn’t a salesman in the least. He had secretly always wished he’d been born the sort of gregarious bullshit-monger who could wheel and deal and flatter his way into an easy life. Instead, his only talents were the (very unprofitable) gifts of telling it like it is and seeing things with the kind of abject clarity that regular people considered to be a form of crassness. Turned out people enjoyed being lied to, and reality never sold well.

Natalia had arranged for some huge passenger vans to transport everyone who had been aboard the submarine to the Houston airport to catch a redeye back to Moscow, presumably to pick up another submarine. Len had to admire their tirelessness—Natalia’s employees were forever on the move. Natalia didn’t go with them this time; she had to stay another day to finalize negotiations with the cowboy hats. She returned all but one of the vans to the car rental place, and then she, Len, and Octavia checked in to the nearest motel. That was when it occurred to Len that his Jim Rivington passport was in an airport trashcan and that the immigration agents still had his envelope full of cash. Fortunately, the motel clerk didn’t seem to mind the lack of ID, and Natalia had some sort of extra-platinum credit card for incidentals. She asked for two adjoining rooms, leaving Len to wonder where he’d gone wrong.

Len carried Natalia’s bags up the stairs to their rooms. The motel was from another era and had never been updated. It still had metal keys and cathode ray tube televisions. Octavia picked out which bed she wanted, and almost immediately after jumping onto it, she fell asleep. Len found it amusing how kids tended to fall asleep the second they stopped moving.

Natalia threw her stuff down on the bed haphazardly, then walked up close to Len and put her hands around him. Len, quietly pleased to learn she was still interested, leaned in and kissed her.

“Come on,” Natalia said. She led Len into the adjoining room and closed the door behind them. She pulled him close and kissed him ferociously while Len unbuttoned her suit jacket and pulled it off her, throwing it across the room. Natalia tore Len’s shirt away as they collapsed onto the bed, furiously ripping each other’s clothing off.

27

Len opened his eyes to specks of dust suspended in the sunlight coming through the window. Natalia was twisted up in the blankets, deep in slumber. She looked so peaceful that Len didn’t want to disturb her.

In the years he’d lived with Sara, Len had had to endure her terrible poetry about being strong. All the time: strong this, strength that. Sara was constantly trying to convince herself she had it, but in reality, she had no clue what the word meant. Sara was a parasite, an invertebrate. She had no moral compass or grit. Then years later, here came Natalia: a woman who genuinely had a backbone of steel. Natalia didn’t need to give herself little pep talks to assure herself of her mettle. She just woke up every day and made big things happen. Truly strong people didn’t crow about their strength because they were too busy taking it for granted.

Len studied Natalia’s face and wondered what she saw in him. She was a beautiful millionaire jet-setter with penthouse apartments all over the world, living a life of gunrunning and global intrigue. And somehow she found Leonard Savitz, a has-been journalist from the rusted bowels of Western Pennsylvania, interesting enough to break out of jail and sleep with. Seriously, what on earth was the attraction?
There’s no accounting for taste,
Len thought to himself.

He stood up, stretched, and put some pants on. Len opened the door to the adjoining room to find Octavia still snoring away. Figuring his daughter was the heavier sleeper of the two and therefore less likely to be awoken by his stirring, Len walked into Octavia’s room to make some coffee in the cheap little hotel room coffeemaker. He watched his daughter breathing for a time. Blond curls, baby cheeks. She looked like Sara sometimes. He’d have to tell her sooner or later. Poor child. Perhaps it would be better to wait until things settled down a bit.

Before Sara died of the Tchogol flu, Len had assumed that her selfishness was a result of her upbringing. He’d always blamed her parents for their hippie-dippy permissive parenting when he should have blamed her genetics. Len found himself feeling sorry for Sara’s parents. They’d only wanted the best for their daughter, yet she’d put them through an awful lot of crap. He even felt a bit of pity for Sara. She’d only done what she’d been programmed to do.

Len tried to think back to the Biology 101 class he took in college. Sara died of the flu, which meant she was a Tchogol. But Octavia survived the flu, meaning she wasn’t a Tchogol. How was that possible? The Ich-Ca-Gan said Tchogol genes were recessive, right? Recessive genes were the opposite of dominant genes. Recessive genes could be hidden and carried, like the genes for blue eyes were. Len recalled his biology professor saying that recessive genes could stay hidden for generations, which was why blue-eyed children were sometimes born into families of (very confused) brown-eyed people. Len reasoned that Octavia must be a carrier of Sara’s Tchogol genes without actually being a Tchogol herself.

Len turned on the TV. On the screen was a science fiction movie with terrible special effects: purple, bubble-like orbs were rising out of the waves and rolling onto the beach near Coney Island while shooting electricity. They were huge, the size of a large house. Boom, there went the Ferris wheel. Len flipped the channel. It seemed to be the same movie, only from a different angle. Len pushed the channel button again and, to his amazement, saw a news reporter standing near the same beach. The reporter’s head was tucked down low, and he kept looking over his shoulder, the way news people sometimes did when they were trying to report from a war zone.

“Frank, do we know what these things are?” asked an off-camera female voice.

“Sonya, we have no idea. They’re coming out of the ocean in great numbers. They are armed and they are shooting—”

Just then the video feed, which had shown the reporter at Coney Island, went black.

“Frank, can you hear me? Frank? Frank?”

The scene cut back to Sonya in the newsroom. Her eyes were wide with fear. Suddenly seeing herself on the monitor instead of Frank, Sonya was reminded of where she was. She sat upright and did her best to look news-like.

“Well, we appear to be having technical difficulties…”

Len ran to the other room to wake up Natalia.

“What is it?” Natalia asked, half asleep.

“I don’t know. I think the Dranthyx are invading!”

“What?”

“Come see.”

Natalia put a robe on and blearily walked over to Octavia’s room.

“Let’s go to Amit Patel with our local affiliate in Chicago. Amit, can you hear me?”

“Hi, Sonya. I can hear you.” Amit, wearing a parka, looked more than a little terrified.

“Great. Can you tell us what’s happening there?”

“Sonya, I’m standing here on a pier next to Lake Michigan. At 7:00 a.m. local time, about twenty minutes ago, a lot of large, purple objects came out of the lake and began firing weapons of some kind. I’m not sure if you can see behind me, but what you’re looking at is what’s left of Chicago.”

The camera panned over Amit’s shoulder. The city’s once-soaring skyline now looked like a mouth full of broken teeth and fire. Blue flashes of light in between buildings seemed to indicate that weapons were still being discharged.

“Oh my God,” Sonya gasped. “What do you think this is, Amit, an invasion?”

“This is very clearly an invasion, Sonya. But these vehicles and these weapons are unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

“Are they still coming out of the water?”

“Yes, Sonya. I’m going to have my cameraman zoom in. Can we show the beach? Yes, OK. Sonya, can you see that?”

On the beach behind Amit, the purple bubble-like objects slowly emerged from the water and rolled onto land, blasting blue orbs of electric fire.

“You sure this isn’t movie?” Natalia asked.

“It’s not. It’s the news.” Len handed her the remote.

Natalia flipped through the channels to see that every news station was reporting the exact same thing. Natalia put her hand over her mouth in disbelief and muttered something in Russian.

“Sonya, that’s the Oak Street Beach we’re looking at. As you can see, there’s a steady stream of them coming out of the lake. They’re going straight into the city and out into the suburbs. We have absolutely no idea what these things are, why they’re here, or where they’re coming from. They appear to roll like balls and shoot a kind of electrical weapon.”

“Amit, this exact same thing seems to be happening near every large body of water all over the world. Any idea how these objects got into the Great Lakes?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Sonya.”

“Amit, stay safe. We’re going back to the studio now.”

“You too, Sonya. Thanks.”

“On the satellite link is Jack Peterson, chief editor of the
Pittsburgh
Examiner
. Jack, I understand you may be able to shed some light on the situation?”

Len lit a cigarette with shaking hands and inhaled deeply.

“Hi, Sonya. Well, I’m not sure. I hope so. Leonard Savitz, a reporter who worked for the
Examiner
until he was kidnapped, sent me a package, which I just received this morning. This is most unusual because the Jefferson administration put out a press release several days ago saying Mr. Savitz had joined the rebellion and was killed in the Battle of DC, which appears to be an untruth.”

“What’s in the package?” Sonya asked.

“In the package is a rather detailed manuscript plus photographs and audio recordings. It includes a letter, which I recognize to be in Leonard’s handwriting. There’s also a picture of him with a recent edition of a Bogotá newspaper, indicating that he is indeed still alive and possibly in Colombia somewhere…”

The screen cut to the photo of Leonard with the newspaper.

“Hey, that’s you!” Natalia shouted.

“OK, but Mr. Peterson, how does this explain what’s going on today?” Sonya asked.

“Well, it’s rather involved, but Mr. Savitz’s manuscript explains much of the backstory of what’s going on here. Per Leonard’s instructions, we’ve put the entire package on the
Pittsburgh
Examiner
website for everyone to see. I encourage your viewers to download and mirror the documents before something happens to our server. Essentially, Sonya, we are being invaded by octopus-like creatures called, uh, Dranthyx. I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing that correctly…”

“Octopus-like creatures? Mr. Peterson, is this a joke?”

“We’re very clearly being attacked by a nonhuman military. Do you have a better explanation, Sonya?”

“OK, thank you, Mr. Peterson. We’re going now live to—”

“Sonya, I need to say one last thing before you cut me off.”

“Make it quick.”

“These creatures are invading because they intend to exterminate a large percentage of the human race. Mr. Savitz’s notes clearly indicate that is their plan—”

The video feed of Jack Peterson went dead, and the scene cut back to Sonya in the newsroom.

“I apologize to our viewers for that. Sometimes we forget to vet our guests carefully. Let’s go live now to…”

“
What the fuck, Sonya, you dumbass!
” Len yelled at the screen.

“Daddy, what’s wrong?” Len had woken Octavia up with his screaming.

“We can’t stay here,” Natalia said. “They’re coming out of water. We’re too close to Gulf of Mexico.”

“You’re right, we should find a way to get inland, quickly. Octavia, please get dressed as fast as you can. We need to get going!”

Natalia got on her cell phone and tried to call her contact with the Texas Liberation Army to postpone their meeting, while Len hurriedly threw what little stuff everyone had into Natalia’s suitcase and dragged it down the outside steps to the big van. Len could hear Doppler-shifted sirens wailing on the nearby interstate. Several F15s flew overhead toward the water. Thankfully, they were already on the inland side of Houston, and they’d woken up in time to evacuate.

Once everyone was in the car, Len wasted no time peeling out of the parking lot and heading up I-45 toward Oklahoma and the center of the enormous land mass of North America.