Mindbenders (19 page)

Volkov beamed, though it only proved again that none of them knew how to smile. “So then, there’s no problem. Join us! We’ll be comrades again, doing great things.”

“They’re not great things, Pietr.”

“It’s a brilliant system.”

“Sure. You’re a great businessman. You plant bombs with one hand and sell bomb shelters with the other. What could be better?”

Volkov’s eyes were wary now. “Don’t mock me, Max,” he said. “We’re serious here.”

“I’m serious,” Max said.

“You admitted you have nothing to go back to.”

“I’ve spent too much time looking backwards,” Max nodded. “ But now I’ve finally found that positive use for my skills.”

Long pause, the two of them staring each other down, no one willing to be the next to speak. Finally, Volkov said, “And that would be?”

“What you just said: Standing against you—
there’s
something positive I can do.” Max was actually smiling, as relaxed as I’d ever seen him. “Probably better than anyone.”

“Stand against me
here
?” Volkov spat. “In my own building? With white noise generators and guards? You won’t get three feet.”

“We’ll see.”

 “And how do you expect me to respond? Lock you up? Imprison you?”

“That won’t work—not for long.”

“Then what? Kill you?”

“Would you?”

“I could call Marat back—he’d do it without a single conscious thought. Don’t make me choose.” It was a plea and a threat at the same time.

“Alright—here’s another idea: let me go.”

Volkov coughed out a laugh, a deep laugh of real surprise. “I forget, sometimes, what a fantasist you are,” he said. “This is the real world, Max. You
must
join us. You know we can’t let you wander around now that we’ve had our talk.” He waited several long seconds for Max to reply. Max just stood, waiting—for what, I didn’t know. When it became clear he wouldn’t be offering any reply, all the emotion drained from Volkov’s face. “This will not end well,” he threatened.

“That’s correct,” Max agreed and looked me in the eye. And gulped. His eyes were wide on me and I knew right away that it wasn’t a casual move, that there was a message in it. He nodded—
c’mon, you can get this
—and gulped again. And somehow, I did—I got it. I gulped myself, gulped in a deep breath and held it. Max held out his fingers to Volkov; they crackled with electricity.

“No!” Volkov yelled to the guards. “Stop—”

That was as far as he got. Max snapped his sparking fingers, there was a flash of light and a loud crack in the room and all at once the others were gasping and gagging and staggering around like drunken sailors. The guards keeled over onto the floor almost immediately. The fire alarm was squawking, red lights flashing and sprinklers sprinkling. Volkov lunged for Max, but he gasped and slumped over halfway through the motion. Max reached out  to catch him, searched his pockets for a moment and then dropped him flat on the floor. He stuck Volkov’s cardkey in the door lock and we ran into the hall.

“What the hell happened?” I demanded as the hall filled with drones and guards exiting in response to the flashing alarms and sprinklers.

“Oxygen
burns
,” Max said, “if you know how to ignite it.”

A burly guard rushed up the hall.

“Ozone!” Max yelled, pointing through the door window. “They keeled over! I saw them! You need a mask!”

“Shit!
10-45 in R36
!” the guard shouted into his headset. “Bring masks!
Gas
masks!”

One second later, the overhead speakers began advising all personnel to
evacuate in an orderly fashion, please; move directly to the exits and do not open any closed doorways
. Not that it made anything more orderly—the hall was packed, the crowd pushing and shoving toward exits far down the end, more nervous and insistent by the second. Max pulled me out of the stream and down a narrow side corridor. “Tauber’s here,” he said, pointing.

“How do you know?” These rooms looked like storage closets, certainly nothing big enough for a man.

“Remember I came here? When they were chasing you around the hillside? You were jumping off the balcony and I was hovering over this place, all eyes and ears and no body.”

He stopped in front of the fourth closet and slipped Volkov’s keycard into the lock. Crammed inside was what was left of Mark Tauber once the pack of wolves had finished with him. His cheeks, arms and legs were bruised blue and full of cross-cuts, chunks of his hair seemed to be missing and his nose looked more crooked than I remembered.

“Feel like a ride in the country?” Max asked and Tauber started, as though expecting someone to hit him. One of his eyes was puffed closed—it was painful to look at. But he broke into a crooked smile as he realized who we were. Maybe one or two of his teeth were missing too, but they hadn’t been that great to begin with so it was hard to tell.

“I could use a little fresh air,” he croaked and we helped him to his feet and out into the flow of staff rushing out of the building.

When we burst into the afternoon air, Max led us around to the front parking lot, the executive section with the high-zoot machines. He pulled Volkov’s keycard from his pocket— a very fancy car key hung from the ring—and pushed the red button. A BMW nearby gave an answering chirp; we jumped in. “Pietr always liked nice cars,” Max said as we sped for the exit gate.

~~~~

Ten

At first, I assumed we were trying to get away.

It at least made sense to try—the black vans were all around us and I could feel the thickness in the air as Max blocked all of us at once, locking us out of the collective unconscious of the neighborhood, trapping all our free-floating thoughts inside the narrow car. Or maybe all that was in my head—now that we were free, my shoulders and neck felt like they’d been released from a clamp. I ached all over from sudden relaxing.

After ten minutes of changing roads and directions, I could see we really hadn’t gone very far. The airplanes were still close overhead. That got me real upset. I started sweating. We had to head back to the mountains, to the house on the cliffside. I don’t know why I fixated on that place but it all came rushing back to me at once. The wall of windows and the balcony and the crazy awning, the hillside I scrambled over like a maniac, trying not to get cut in half by Marat’s lightning bolts—and the town with the dance floor and Tess and Cindy. That whole memory was clear—I was in it, living in it. That was where we had to go. We’d be safe there, if only because that’s where they caught us, which made it the last place they’d expect us to go.

Every few minutes, some new airliner threatened to land on the roof of our car. And then we came out of a sidestreet and Max bought a ticket and we were in the long-term parking lot at Dulles Airport. We circulated the rows until he found a Maxima he liked. It had one of those touchpad things on the door and he was able to fry it with his fingers; Tauber hot-wired the car in about seven seconds. And then we were back on the road again. But again, we weren’t making any effort to get away. Max made a series of turns, as though looking for a location.

“Volkov lives ‘roundabouts,” Tauber said. “Miriam took me to his house when we first got up here.” He’d pulled a bottle of water from the center console and was holding it up to his puffy eye. “I was an idjit for staying with her.”

Max shook his head. “You knew her—you didn’t know me.”

“They want ya bad. They did everything to try to get your whereabouts out of me.”

“Which they knew immediately you didn’t have.”

“They didn’t trust my thoughts.”

“Ha! Spies not trusting? I’m shocked.” Max’s look at Tauber was sympathetic and even grateful.

“Volkov thought he could turn you,” Tauber continued. “Avery said you wouldn’t give, that they’d have to kill you. Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. We’ve got to get the hell outta here—they all live nearby, the whole area’s crawling with shooters.”

“Shooters?”

“Yeah—they’ve got drones and shooters. Drones send out messages and don’t remember a thing after. Shooters are Volkov’s strike force. There’s not many of them but they’re dirty tricks mindbenders—and killers.”

“That’s what they wanted Stargate to move to,” Max said. “That’s what Dave objected to.”

“A lot of us objected. Dave did it out loud, to senior officers.”

“So now they’ve outsourced it.”

“Anyway, they’re deadly. We’ve got to get going.”

“We’ve got a little time,” Max said, “Right now, they’re scouring the highway to Shenandoah National Park for us. I’ve told them that’s where we’re going.”

“They’re not going to buy that they’ve tapped into you. They know you’re not that sloppy.”

“They think they’re tapping Greg,” Max said. “I’m sending out his memories.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Your memories are cleaner than mine—mine are always mixed up with the rest of the neighborhood. And you’re more nostalgic for that place—with good reason—than I am.”

“And they’ll believe,” Tauber said, giving me a thoughtful look, “they’re intercepting your thoughts.”

“Well, that’s okay,” I said. “Couldn’t you ask before you just share my head with other people?”

“Excuse me,” Max said immediately. “Would you like to live? Or shall I stop?” Theatrical pause. “That’s the choice.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’re not my type,” he said. “If they know we’re here, they’ll be on us in minutes. And we have to stay in the neighborhood for another half hour or so. So we need your memories. Sorry.”

“As long as you’re sorry…”

“And
remember
this,” he ordered me. “This is what it feels like to send out a message or a suggestion. I’m doing it but it’s your head—so learn what it feels like. If you can recapture the feeling later, you’ll be able to start doing it yourself.” He pulled into a parking lot alongside a warehouse, nestled between several locked-up trucks. Looking around, I realized it was a good strategic location—we would be hard to see from the nearby streets but we had a good view out.

“Why are we hangin’ around?” Tauber asked. “What’s the objective?”

“Low-hanging fruit,” Max said, looking across the street at an apartment complex glinting in the light of the setting sun. “Strategic information.” He looked Tauber up and down. “Are you in shape to block yourself?”

“I’m okay,” Tauber allowed. “Gettin’ the shit beat outta me lit the ol’ fuse.” He croaked out a laugh. “Nostalgia’ll kill ya,” he added and Max smiled.

“Okay, we’re going across the street as soon as the sun goes down. Our subject is not powerful but she is alert. She’ll be able to read us so block yourself till we get into the apartment. You too, Greg. You know the feeling now.”

“So concentrate,” I said, furrowing my forehead.

“No,” Max said. “
Don’t
concentrate.”

“Why not?”

“Concentration is a conscious mind trick,” Tauber drawled. “If ye’re concentrating on being powerful, you’re reminding yourself that ya feel weak. The more ya concentrate on something, the more you feel the opposite.”

“When you were with Tess, were you concentrating on anything?” Max asked.

“You bet.”

“That’s not concentrating,” he said and they both laughed. “Moments like that, you’re just soaking up the feeling. So just get back to that. Find the feeling in your fingertips and the tip of your tongue and the rest will come back to you.”

We sat in the parking lot for about 45 minutes, while the darkness gathered and it began to drizzle. Cars came and went, a truck pulled into the lot, idled ominously for about seven minutes and then pulled out. Police cars flew by, lights flashing and sirens bleating.

I was working on getting back to the house on the hill and I thought I did okay but it was more fun to work on Tess. At one point, Max turned to me and said, “You’re trying too hard. You’re working memory.”

“Memory is useless,” Tauber sniped. “It’s shorthand for the conscious mind. It’s eating soup with a fork,” he spat. “Don’t
remember
; just
feel
it again. The feeling’s still inside ya, in places the conscious mind don’t rule. Feeling ain’t part o’the past—it’s alive right now. Get inside it, get one detail real clear, so it’s alive right now and POW! You’ll be back there.”

“Where?”

“
There
. In the middle of it. With her again, like it’s happening again
right now
.”

I was probably looking at him cockeyed. “However you do it,” Max said, “what matters is, you won’t be
here
.” He opened the car door. “It’s time.”

We crossed the road—it was a main drag and we were forced to rush across between tractor-trailers like elephants stampeding along the river. We were left in a thicket of trees and shrubs that seemed to have grown out of a bed of garbage—supermarket circulars, handouts for car washes and a traveling circus, beer bottles and water jugs, several cans of motor oil and two pairs of panties in the nook of a tree trunk. Stepping carefully took us over a low fence to the service entrance of the apartment building, where suddenly everything was pristine. In through the wide truck-delivery door and up a ramp we went, to a wide-mouth elevator. Max hit the button for the sixth floor.

In my mind, I was trying to hold Tess’ hand, trying to pull the feeling of it out of the air. I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to do this without remembering. As I got frantic, Tauber suddenly shot me a look, leaned over my shoulder and cackled, “Pretend you’re holding her
tit
, son” and
that
I could feel right away. Which unlocked the door—once I felt her breast in my hand, other feelings…came to me.

By the time we reached the sixth floor, I really wasn’t there at all—I was in the backseat of her car, feeling the sticky leather of the seats and the blast of the air conditioning turned all the way up and her scent and the way my hands and mouth were all over her and…well, that’s as much as I feel like sharing. I got out of the elevator but it felt like
that
was the dream, like I was just watching it happen, like I was along for the ride but somebody else was driving.