The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination (14 page)

E
fryn Boyne stood
before the starkly generic door to Cube P staring up its front. It was one of The Church’s earliest. A plain monolithic cube in black steel with a monstrous number 7 standing off the front, shiny and golden. The Church owned hundreds of Cubes; dormitories for those who’d taken The Pledge. This one, Cube P, the Pittsburgh Triangle Cube, conformed in perfect geometric scale to the exact biblical dimensions of heaven as found in Revelation 21:15: “And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement. The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass.”

By the angel’s measure, heaven is about the size of Nashville, with a 216-foot wall. Not all Cubes were the same size, but all Cubes were precisely scaled to those proportions. As were many of the Church’s icons, especially Arch Bishop Hendrix’s colossal hat — a heavenly merger of fashion and architecture.

Boyne shifted the metallic briefcase to his left hand, scanned the resident list, and there he was: Brian Tessyier – 811.

“Captain, sir,” said Number Five, dangling a battering ram, smiling hopefully. “It’s three in the morning. He won’t be up.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” said Boyne, “betrayal never sleeps.” He pushed the intercom button. “He’s up. Oh my, yes. He’s up. And the noisy bits? We’ll save them for dessert.”

The door buzzed. Boyne winked and let himself in. His adoring crew nodded their heads and congratulated themselves for having witnessed yet another exhibition of their leader’s wise and fatherly ways.

B
rian Tessyier paced
about his studio-unit within Cube P, pausing occasionally to study his new fifty-dollar haircut in the floor-length mirror attached to the back of the door. He checked his phone, exhaled nervously, opened the door and headed to the elevators.

Efryn Boyne steadied himself in the wobbling elevator, thinking how well this sterile building reflected the vacuous religion that built it. It was nothing like the grand cathedrals he’d known as a child. Medieval stonework. Flying buttresses. Soaring and grand. Lots of detail. Generations to build. No expense spared. But this pop-up monstrosity was cheap as chips and equally indigestible.

He lifted the briefcase and studied the dangling handcuff attached to its handle. The Church? Even the name was graceless and generic. But that was the point, wasn’t it? That mild but constant irritant you learn to scratch with prayer — seven times per day. Seven times per day? Surely Petey Hendrix had lifted that straight out of Islam, then trumped their five with his seven.

He wedged himself into a corner and balanced the briefcase on one raised knee, ratcheting the cold handcuff around his wrist. He pulled an extremely thin silver necklace from his pocket, about three feet long. One end held a single handcuff key, the other a chrome ring. He tucked the key through the ring and pulled it up and down to make sure it slid into a noose. He slipped the noose over his head and around his neck. Very loose, but a noose nonetheless.

The elevator doors opened and there stood Brian Tessyier with an anxious grin, gesturing at himself. “I’m Tessyier. And you?”

Boyne recovered his balance and smiled. “The Leprechaun.” He held out the briefcase. “Pot O’ Gold?”

Two jaundiced laughs.

Boyne gave Tessyier a quick appraisal.
Tech-weenie. No fight in him.

“I get it,” said Tessyier, as he headed back toward his room. “Fine. Fine. Fine. I don’t want to know your name. Just stay close. It’s easy to get lost in here.” He twisted his arms in a ham-fisted spasm. “Rubixed, man. You get rubixed!”

Boyne hated these cubes. Their corridors were always smooth and painted a very pale gray, no decoration, no trim, the carpet the same gray. The ceilings always the same translucent fabric that diffused an unseen light source from above. Tessyier’s nervous staccato seemed out of place here, but his motives had a primordial precedent. “It’s all about the cage,” Boyne said cheerfully. “In the right cage, I can get you to believe anything.”

They came to a door with 811 stenciled under a small peephole. “This is me,” said Tessyier, entering his room and aiming his chin at the briefcase. “For
moi
?”

“What dreams are made of,” replied Boyne, taking a seat on the foot of the bed and resting the briefcase across his knees. He opened it and removed a thin wooden box with anvilled corners, which he opened with great deliberation. Nestled inside was a glassine envelope, each of its twelve pockets cradling a candy bar-sized brick of pure gold.

Tessyier reached for it, but Boyne’s dark stare stopped him cold. A menacing tone took hold of the room. Boyne dangled the glassine envelope in Tessyier’s face. “And the elusive Mr. Tuke?”

Tessyier raked his fingers across his chest.

Boyne put the glassine envelope in the wooden box, held it up to Tessyier, then spun it between his fingers, tossed it into the air like a carnival juggler, then caught it with the metal briefcase, which he slammed shut. Tessyier stared wide-eyed, then turned and disappeared into a closet for a few seconds, before backing out a wheeled suitcase. Rippp! He tore a small notepad from a Velcro patch and handed it to Boyne. “He’s here,” he said. “On a 286-foot refrigerated cargo freighter he converted to a seagoing server-farm, currently about a thousand miles off the coast of North Carolina. Heading dead east, on a course for the Mediterranean. They keep to a rigorous nautical protocol — make all their hourly weather and position reports on this frequency,” he tapped on the notebook, “using this international call sign, right here — RHH7.”

Boyne thumbed through the log-book, noting the neatly handwritten columns collating each broadcast. It was well organized and dizzying. “Why would Tuke expose himself like this?”

“He’s not. Ships always call in weather and position reports — that’s normal. You don’t expose yourself by doing what’s normal. Anomalies draw attention. The hunter always notices change.”

“And you know it’s him? Tuke?”

“I know it’s not RHH7,” he said impatiently. “The 286-foot Russian freighter assigned that call-sign sank in Sevastopol Harbor, 2028. I know Tuke bought a 286-foot refrigerated freighter from the Romanian Navy, in 2028. Black Sea neighbors. Coincidence?”

Boyne pretended to be fascinated. “If you buy the premise, you own the bits.”

Tessyier tucked the last of his personal items into the suitcase’s outer pockets. “What remains of the global shipping fleet sends out weather reports so everyone knows what the weather is. How else would they know? They’ve created a self-organizing weather bureau. A community network. But! Weather is useless without a position. And! They rely on each other for rescues.”

“Why would Tuke choose such a vulnerable place to hide? Why be on a boat? He could go anywhere. He has a jet, I hear.”

“He has some kind of jet, but he works from wherever he is. He works all the time. He’s fully engaged no matter where he is. And he moves around. A lot! Or disappears. No one knows where to. He’ll show up on the network every day, then no one sees him for a month. But this refrigerated freighter? This server farm? It has been anchored — anchored! — twenty miles off the coast of Iceland, cooling all those servers, for over twenty years. But now? All of a sudden it’s going somewhere? Maybe Malta? I’m guessing Malta.”

“Malta?” said Boyne.

“He’s been meeting with these Europeans in Malta, over the years, at some kind of base he has there. But recently, he’s been flying there in a rush.”

“So there are geeks in Europe, too?”

“We’re everywhere, we’re everywhere!” Tessyier howled, warming to his sense of proximal victory. “They weren’t geeks. Remember, Tuke got the Nobel in economics. He’s an economist who codes. He was meeting with economists. The money changers. The voodoo scientists.”

“None of that proves nothin’. This would be the worst moment in your life to be up to no good.”

Tessyier tossed a shirt onto a pile of leave-behinds and made an open study of Boyne’s face. It was menace incarnate. “Fair enough,” he said, apprehensively. “I didn’t want to divulge any of Tuke’s personal information. But look. These weather reports are monitored by Tuke’s entire network, so the ship’s crew drop in little cryptograms, double-entendres, puns, jokes, just to be funny for their friends and family back on land.”

Boyne thought that extremely likely.

Tessyier took the log-book and pointed to an entry. “Look at this one.” Squeezed into a cluster of notes . . . C22H17CIN2.

Boyne made a clueless frown.

Tessyier explained brusquely, “Chlorophenyl, H17 diphenyl, methyl imidazole . . . It’s a crypto glyph!”

Boyne’s contempt for Tessyier was becoming more and more difficult to disguise.

Tessyier raised his hands hopelessly, “Athlete’s Foot! It’s foot cream! Antifungal ointment. Tuke’s got chronic Athlete’s Foot. It’s the source of a thousand jokes. That small entry. That’s a snarky, extra-esoteric geek way to let everyone know Tuke is in the midst of an outbreak.” Tessyier clapped his hands and laughed.

Boyne feigned a conspiratorial pleasure in Tuke’s predicament, but he’d just as soon pound this arrogant bastard with a rubber mallet. Where was that Quaker modesty?

“Coincidence? The crew wouldn’t bother mentioning foot cream, not in code, unless it was Tuke himself. And this is exactly what you’d expect them to do.”

Boyne made a show of accepting this theory, but he was here to play the villain. “It’s just stupid enough to believe,” said Boyne. “So you’re tellin’ me Tuke’s out to sea. Could take a while to verify that — speculation. That’s all this is. A handwritten list and a flyin’ fuckin’ leap.”

Tessyier looked at Boyne as though he’d just spit on the floor. “Why would I make up a story? That guy’s going to get me killed.” Boyne started to speak, but Tessyier was on a rant. “If he’s got to go, or I’ve got to go, well guess what?” He made a flubbery face. “Goodbye, Mr. Tuke. Rule #39: self-preservation leads to sincere victories. Check the Wikituke!” He turned and probed all the zippers on his suitcase. “You’ll find there his last 73 coordinates, course heading, speed, everything you’ll need to intercept him. My guess, once again — Malta.”

“What’s so suspicious about an economist meeting up with other economists?” Boyne’s interest had actually been piqued; this was starting to smell like steak.

“Levi was uncharacteristically intense about Malta and currency exchanges. He never talked to me directly about that, but I overheard him talking to ReplayAJ. It’s just a guess, but it feels right. Yeah, Malta.”

Boyne set the briefcase on the desk, and laughed sarcastically. “ReplayAJ?”

“Unique names are so much more than unforgettable.”

Boyne tapped Tessyier on the shoulder and made a display of lifting the handcuff-key and necklace from around his own neck. “I hope to high-hell you’ve guessed right,” he said, unlocking the handcuff from his own wrist and motioning for Tessyier’s. “To hazard a guess this expensive could end in a tub full’a battery acid. Just speculatin', of course.” He clamped the handcuff to Tessyier’s wrist, then ran his fingers down the wire necklace to the little key and opened the handcuff, to show Tessyier how it was done.

Tessyier nodded and reached for the key, but Boyne waved him off. “Here, put your head down. You do not want to lose this key.”

Tessyier clutched the briefcase to his chest and bent so Boyne could slip the necklace over his head.

“Aye. Looks good,” said Boyne. “Accessories — the key to an all-new you.” He slid the clasp up until it fit snugly, but comfortably, around Tessyier’s neck. “This’ll make you popular at parties.”

“Everywhere!” said Tessyier, stroking the briefcase.

“There’s no denying,” said Boyne, heading out. He stopped with the door open, and pointed at Tessyier. “You need a ride? My transporter is right outside. You don’t wanna lose that suitcase. There’s a thousand lifetimes of splendor in there.”

“Well, ah, whatever your name is, and I’m sure I don’t want to know, I could use a lift down to the Mon-Wharf? You know where that is? Down at the Point? On the Monongahela side.”

Boyne smiled. “It’s on our way.”

“Great. Thanks. I’m ready to roll — boat waiting for me! I’m ready.”

“Bet you are, lad,” he said, as Tessyier closed the door behind him.

“Won’t miss living in this contraption,” he mumbled, adding in a mechanical voice, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.”

As they walked to the elevators, Boyne caught a tinge of mid-scam excitement. That moment when the mark thinks he’s gotten over. “I’ve been trying to figure out what that title of yours means,” said Boyne, trying to grab Tessyier’s attention.

“What a joke. The suits can’t tell the geeks from the nerds, from the iStooges, from the egg-heads without a name tag. Which title did you see? They keep changing it.”

“I think it said, Brian Tessyier, Atmospherics Architect.”

“That’s one of the better ones. Tuke called me VerisimiliDude.”

Boyne sounded intrigued. “VerisimiliDude?”

Tessyier hammered the elevator button several times. “A twist on — verisimilitude. It’s a fundamental element of game theory. I’d love to explain it to you.” He drummed his fingers on the down-button feverishly. “I think you might get it,” he said, as flattery, but it fried Boyne’s last nerve.

“I just might. Just might,” he said through a strained grin.