Next Day of the Condor
Next Day of the Condor
James Grady
A Tom Doherty Associates Book
New York
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.
They led him out of the CIA’s secret insane asylum as the sun set over autumn’s forest there in Maine.
Brian and Doug walked on either side of him, Brian a half-step back on the right, the package’s strong side, because even when there’ll be no problem, it pays to be prepared beyond a government salary you can only collect if you’re still alive.
Brian and Doug seemed pleasant. Younger,
of course
, with functional yet fashionable short hair. Doug sported stubble that tomorrow could let him blend into Kabul with little more than a
shemagh
head wrap and minor clothing adjustments from the American mall apparel he wore today. Brian and Doug introduced themselves to the package at the Maine castle’s front security desk. He hoped their mission was to take him where they said he was supposed to go and not to some deserted ditch in the woods.
Two sets of footsteps walked behind him and his escorts, but in what passes for our reality, he could only hear the walker with the clunky shoes. The soundless steps made more powerful cosmic vibrations.
The clunky shoes belonged to Dr. Quinton, who’d succeeded the murdered Dr. Friedman and mandated Performance Protocols to replace the patient-centric approach of his predecessor, policies that hadn’t gotten that psychiatrist ice picked through his ear, but why not use that tragic opportunity to institute a new approach of accountability?
After all, you can’t be wrong if you’ve got the right numbers.
The soundless steps are the scruffy sneakers footfalls of blonde nurse Vicki.
She wore electric red lipstick.
And her wedding band linked to her high school sweetheart who like every day for the last eight years lay in a Bangor Veterans Home bed tubed & cabled to beeping machines tracking the flatline of his brain waves and his heart that refused to surrender.
The beating of that heart haunts the soft steps of she who no one really knows.
Except for the silver-haired man walking ahead of her from this secret castle.
And he’s nuts, so…
The dimming of the day activates sensors in the castle’s walled parking lot where these five public servants emerge. Brian and Doug steer the parade toward a “van camper,” gray metal and tinted black glass side windows, small enough to parallel park, big enough for “road living” behind two cushioned chairs facing the sloped windshield. Utah license plates lied with their implication of
not a government ride
.
Doug said: “October used to be colder.”
Brian eyed the package’s scruffy black leather jacket. Seems like a nice enough guy, moves better than his silver hair might make you think.
Doug slid open the van’s side rear door with a whirring rumble. Lights came on in the rear interior with built-in beds on each side of a narrow aisle.
Brian said: “How we going to do this?”
Dr. Quinton took a step—
Stopped by Nurse Vicki, who thrust one hand at the psychiatrist’s chest and used her other to pluck the purse-like black medical case from his grasp.
“Protocols dictate—”
“This is still America,” said Vicki. “No dictators.”
Dr. Quinton blinked but she was beyond that, standing in front of the package with the cobalt blue eyes, looking straight at him as she said: “Are you ready?”
“Does that matter?”
Her ruby smile said
yes
, said
no
.
He spoke to both her and the two
soft clothes
soldiers: “Where do you want me?”
“Like she said,” answered Doug, “it’s a free country. Pick either bed.”
The package chose the slab on the shotgun seat’s side of the van because it was less likely to catch a bullet crashing through the windshield to take out the driver.
Nurse Vicki entered the van behind him.
Said: “You need to take your jacket off.”
“Might be more comfortable to stay that way,” called Brian as he climbed behind the steering wheel and slammed the driver’s door shut.
The black leather jacket had been his
before
, but
now
the inner pocket over his heart held a laboratory-aged wallet with never-used I.D.’s and credit cards. Felt sad to take off his old friend the black leather jacket. Felt good to shed its weight of new lies.
He wore a long-sleeved, suitable for an office blue shirt over black long-sleeved, thermal underwear suitable for the autumn forest. Fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. Sensed the nurse resisting helping him pull off the thermal underwear.
He sat on the bed. Naked from the waist up. Shivered, maybe from the evening chill, maybe from the proximity of a red-lipped younger woman.
Who couldn’t help herself, cared about who she was and was a nurse, stared at his scars but there was nothing she could do for them now, for him, she was not that able.
Or free.
She unzipped the medical bag that opened like the jaws of a trap: one side held hypodermic needles, alcohol and swabs, the other side held pill bottles.
“You already took your final dose of meds back in the ward,” she said.
“I took what they gave me. Hope that’s not
final
”.
Crimson lips curled in a smile. Tears shimmered her green eyes.
He said: “I’m glad it’s you giving me the needle.”
“’Had to be,” she whispered.
Swabbed his bare left shoulder.
Slid the needle into his flesh.
Pushed the plunger.
Said: “Not long now.”
He dressed, stood to tuck his shirts into his black jeans.
Nurse Vicki turned down the blanket on the rack he’d chosen.
“Might want to keep your shoes on,” said Doug from outside the van.
The package stretched out on his back, pillow under his head.
“Just a tip,” said Doug. “Straps
first
is more comfortable.”
Vicki—
made it through night school working as a grocery checker and sitting vigil beside a hospital bed where the patient never stirred
—Vicki fastened Safety Straps across the prone man, tucked the blanket over him to his chin, knew he could have been her father, knew she could have made him one, knew that wasn’t—
isn’t
—what mattered or what decided what was never going to be more than stolen heartbeats of rebellion and escape, comfort and yearning, the fever of beasts.
Let it go. Let it go.
“Do you remember the new name you picked?” she asked him. “
Not
Condor
.”
“How can I not be who I am?”
“That’s part of the deal to get you out of here. Back to the real world.”
“So that’s where I’m going.” His smile was sly.
“So they tell me.” Her smile was honest. “Who are you,
Condor
?”
“Vin.”
“
V
for
Vicki
,” she said, like it was nothing.
“Yes,” he lied to let her have everything he could give.
She pressed her crimson lips to his mouth:
Last kiss
.
Floated out of the van, a blur of white, the night spinning as Doug whirred the side door closed, climbed into the shotgun seat, slammed his door
thunk
.
Condor, Vin
, whoever he was dropped into a black hole.
Drugged sleep. Flashes of sight, of sound, dreams in a heartbeat rhythm.
…white stripes flick through a night road’s headlights…
…Springsteen guitars
State Trooper
…
…beeping machines web a hollow
Marine
to a hospital bed…
…naked thighs straining
yes yes yes
…
…
snap-clack
of a chambering
.45
…
…red lips…
…Arab Spring crowds: “
Lib-er-te! Lib-er-te!
”…
…footsteps behind you on Paris cobblestones…
…the mailman clings to his pouch…
…drone’s view of a rushing closer city square…
…plopped on a closet toilet, no pants, some guy saying, “
OK, here you go”
…
…walk into the alley, a friend waves you forward…
JOLT. Awake. He felt himself…awake. Sunlight through black glass windows.
Blink and you’re flat on your back on a bed in a van. That’s stopped.
Coffee
, that wondrous rich aroma.
“OK, man,” said…
Doug
, his name is Doug. “Straps are off. Sit up, have a cup of the good stuff from inside.”
Inside where? Where am I?
He sipped coffee cut with milk from a paper cup logoed: ‘bucks!
“You gotta go again?” said Brian from the behind the wheel of the parked van. “We took you in the middle of the night, but…
Hey
, you’re a guy that age and your med’ reports say—
score
, by the way! The daily use pill with the TV commercial of
the
man and woman sitting in side by side bathtubs
.”
“Let’s get you together before we meet the world,” said Doug.
The Special Ops guys let him cram himself into the closet bathroom.
“Remember,” Doug said through the closed bathroom door: “Your name is Vin.”
After he flushed the van toilet—
Such a weird concept!
—Doug met him in the cramped aisle between the beds. Passed him a paper cup of pills to help him forget what he wasn’t supposed to remember and act like he believed what other people saw.
A plastic bag labeled “For Our Forgetful Guests!” that had been repurposed from a Los Angeles hotel waited beside the metal sink. The bag held a disposable toothbrush and a tiny tube of toothpaste trademarked with a notorious TV cartoon squirrel.
“We figured,” said Doug, “feel fresh for a fresh start.”
Brian called out from behind the van’s steering wheel: “Don’t be impressed, he’s had the whole ride here to think of that one.”
Mouthful of minty toothpaste.
The sink faucet worked—
Amazing!
He rinsed, spit.
Raised his eyes to the metal plate polished to reflect like a mirror.
Saw a silver-haired, craggy & scarred faced, blue-eyed man staring back at him.
Whispered: “Your name is Vin.”
Thought:
“Condor.”
Radio Voice from the van’s dashboard:
“—is it for this edition of Rush Hour Rundown on New Jersey Public Radio, but throughout the day, stories we’ll be following include attempts to bring Occupy Wall Street movements to middle America, life after Gadhafi in war-torn Libya, the last days of that Ohio zookeeper who freed his wild animals and then killed himself, and the billionaire brothers who’ve bought a chunk of America’s politics, plus the latest actor to play Superman talks about his divorce from the,
um
, generously proportioned socialite hired by reality TV to play someone like herself, and one of our only two surviving
Beatles
is getting married—again. Finally,
remember
: today we’re supposed to be terrified. Go forth in fear.”
WHAT?
“Coming up, the third in our six-part series on how climate change—”
Click
, off went the radio as Brian turned: “Did you say something?”
Doug held out the black leather jacket to
Vin
, said: “You ready to go?”
Then slid open the van’s rear compartment side door and with the nostalgia of a paratrooper, hopped out into the rush of cool gray sunshine.