Unspeakable, p.18
Unspeakable, page 18
When we left I was so stuffed I could hardly climb back into that pretty blue pick-up truck, and from there we drove to a place called Taos where we stopped at a store and Uncle Billy got me “all gussied up” in new jeans, blue Levi shirts, t-shirts and my very own Lucchese boots! “Always buy the best for your feet, pardner, treat them right, wars were lost because of feet.” I didn’t know anything about wars or lost feet but because Uncle Billy said so, I swore I’d wear nothing but the best boots from there on out.
Once we got to Uncle Billy’s ranch I could hardly believe my eyes. There were acres and acres with cattle everywhere and even real buffalo. Uncle Billy had a room all made up and ready for me with nice wood bunkbeds, a dresser with horseshoe shaped pulls, a desk with pens and a new spiral notebook, plus a book case filled with Zane Grey and Hardy Boys books! But just when I thought things couldn’t get better, Uncle Billy pulled out a brand new Mysto Magic Magician’s Set, an authentic A.C. Gilbert Erector Set, and a Chemcraft Chemistry Outfit for Boys!! His whole ranch looked like it had come straight out of Bonanza and even the horse he taught me to ride, called a “Paint,” looked like it could have belonged to Little Joe (I don’t think it would have been big enough for Hoss). We went trout fishing! We looked for arrowheads and old Indian pottery and panned for gold! We camped out under stars that were brighter than any stars I’d ever seen in a sky that spread out forever above us. It was all so different and exciting from anything I’d done before that sometimes I wondered if it was all a dream.
Uncle Billy and I had great talks. It turned out that he had been a nuclear scientist, a colleague of the father I’d never met, and so secretly I wondered if he was really my dad. If he was, I could see why he would not want to live with my mom and I hoped he would never make me live with her again either. Mostly though, I just wanted to live with Uncle Billy forever and ever at the ranch. He told me that he’d bought it after inventing a special instrument that made him a lot of money and quit working for the government as a scientist. Maybe it was the scientist part of him that liked science fiction so much it took up half his library. One old book he read to me was called, “Trilby” and after he read it he said, “For sure not the best science fiction book ever, but one of the very best ideas…mind control, pardner. Mind control. Somebody is going to do it really right someday, and just maybe it will be you and me!”
That night he hypnotized me. I did not remember doing the silly things he said I’d done like strut like a rooster and cluck like a chicken, but we laughed and laughed about it while we were riding our horses the next day, straight into a brilliant Taos sunset. “Race ya home!” Uncle Billy called and we were still shrieking and laughing while I clucked like a chicken nearly all the way there…
Until Uncle Billy’s horse stepped in a hole, broke his leg, and pitched Uncle Billy high in the air, only to land on his head and break his neck and die. Right there in front of me. I still don’t recall what happened after that, just one minute I was begging Uncle Billy to wake up with his neck bent at a funny angle, and then I was back in Connecticut where everything was gray again, and all I had left of Uncle Billy were the clothes he’d bought me. I threw a fit when my mother tried to get me to wear my old clothes again. I wouldn’t do it. Every day I wore my cowboy outfits to school instead of the white shirt, red tie, and matching navy blazer and slacks we were all supposed to wear. I hoped the Dean would throw me out but he didn’t (probably because of the extra money my mother “donated”), and I didn’t care that I got called names and spitballs hit my back, I was wearing those clothes even after I outgrew them and could hardly get the boots on my feet.
It’s been three years since Uncle Billy died, though it seems a lot longer than that. I still have those worn out jeans and Levi shirts and of course the boots. Sometimes when I’m alone I’ll take them out and rub my nose against the fabric and think I can still smell the campfires and the sage. And then I imagine I’m still staring up into that clear night sky while Uncle Billy throws me a lasso from the stars so we can saddle up on Pegasus and ride off into the galaxy together.
* * *
Miles shut the journal and placed it in his bottom drawer where he kept a few trinkets that held some meaning. He didn’t have many. After Uncle Billy he had been careful not to get too close to anyone because he never wanted to go through that again. It was a lot like scar tissue that got built up and built up until there wasn’t any sensation—and maybe, just to be fairer than fair, that was what had kept him out of the UWM grad program, boasting one of the most prestigious psych departments in the entire country, if not the world, while Dr. Carl Rogers had been there.
While he would never forgive it—middle finger to you, Carl—the important thing was that he had found his own niche professionally, excelling where few others historically had, presently did, or probably ever would. Like Jerry, Hugo, Ambassador Jordan, he was rare in his particularly unique capacity. Even Kelly, especially Kelly, brilliant as he was, could never do this sort of work, because Kelly’s greatest asset as a clinician was also his greatest flaw as a researcher: an inability to inure himself from the necessary suffering of others, whether they be rodent or human…
Hmm. Now, there was a thought:
Just as he’d helped Jerry reconnect to his humanity, could he take someone like Gregg Kelly and do the opposite? Experiment with various hypnosis-RX cocktails to see how much of Kelly’s core personality could be manipulated and contrast the results to those in Jerry? If he could embed command codes that would override moral codes and turn Kelly into a real spy with a rare understanding of how the mind worked, minus any awareness of how much his own mind was being controlled…
Whoa, pardner! Now he HAD to get approval to bring Kelly along to their new ISIC location. Unfortunately, The Ambassador seemed to have other plans for Kelly, and while Miles knew that as Director of ISIC he was indispensable in many capacities—including his occasional assistance with Jordan’s young wife—he did not have Phillip Jordan’s ear. But Hugo did. And, it seemed the Commandant wasn’t real happy here lately with some of their research… actually, he hadn’t been supportive of bringing Kelly in for interrogation purposes to begin with. Which meant he’d be even less supportive of permanently silencing him once Kelly had served whatever purpose The Ambassador deemed necessary. Put all that together and Hugo just might be in favor of keeping Kelly around as long as he was humanely treated. Obviously, at this point, there would be no sending Kelly back to his wife.
Miles downed his last swig of Lone Star, spiked it with a microdose hit. He grabbed his Stetson just so he could tip it to the memory of Uncle Billy, and went in search of Monsieur Hugo Goulet, Commandant of ISIC.
“Tchin-tchin!” Phillip toasted on the wide veranda where a fan rotated slowly overhead.
Hugo regarded the man across the table from him, impeccably dressed in a bespoke linen suit and light blue dress shirt. His tap to Phillip’s raised crystal was more obligatory than from any real desire to celebrate. For what was there to celebrate? He would soon be leaving this plantation he had called home for nearly two decades, and leaving behind with it the gardens he had tended, even the cherished lychee tree that he and Jerry had planted to symbolize their trust…
But the koi. He had to find a way to transport the koi.
“Go ahead,” Phillip said, settling back into his wicker chair then popping a grape into his mouth from the cheese and charcuterie board invitingly presented on the small table. “Tell me what is on your mind. Something is bothering you.”
“Oui.” And with that one word, Hugo tapped out a Gauloises from his cherished silver case, lit up, and steeled himself for what could be the end of a very long friendship. “Remember when we first met, at the end of The War? We were boys then, full of ideals and hopes. We had just conquered Hitler and Japan. We were kings of the world—”
“As we still are,” Phillip was quick to interject.
“Non, mon ami. Non.” With eyes clear and unfettered by such illusions, he met his old friend’s squint. It simmered with reproach for disputing him. Did he know this man at all anymore? “We are not the kings we once believed ourselves to be. The Vietnamese humiliated and humbled first France, then your own USA. The politicians betrayed the soldiers, betrayed them absolutely. And perhaps that is what has come to divide us. You are and always will be a politician. And while I have played in your yard, in the end, I will always be a soldier.”
“Oh no, Hugo, ‘tis not that simple and well you know it,” Phillip swiftly countered. “We are both in the business of killing. That we do it for a country that sanctions it—whether France, America, China—means very little to those we kill, does it not? If I am paying the python to kill the frog is it more righteous, more justified, to the frog? You and I, both politician and soldier, know how this works. We take small countries. We take their resources. We pay their citizens to help us do that, at least those that will, then often kill the ones who will not. It is the way of the world.”
“The way of the world comes for us now. The North is hungry to pay us back for everything your country and mine have done to them, for all that we have done here. I cannot blame them. Were our positions reversed, I would want both your head and mine on this platter.”
As Hugo indicated the charcuterie board where a knife rested amidst an assortment of sausages and cured meats, Phillip tapped the tip of his own glowing cigarette into a crystal ashtray and sniffed, “Do you have any of that disgusting absinthe you enjoy so much around here?”
“You may insult me, but not my la fee verte.” Hugo allowed himself a small laugh, perhaps one of the last he and Phillip would share, while signaling for the bottle that his house boy quickly delivered, along with the essentials for preparation.
He did not feel his usual delight in performing the lovely time honored ritual: pouring the vivid green liquor into crystal, laying the slotted silver absinthe spoon upon its rim where he placed a sugar cube, then dripped ice water over the sugar until it dissolved.
Upon serving it without his usual flourish, Hugo returned to his Gauloises and blew out his decision on an extended puff of smoke:
“I do not think you will have need of me at your new ISIC location.”
“Rubbish.” Phillip made a sour face but took a second sip of the absinthe. “How do you drink this stuff?”
“Why did you ask for it?”
“Because I anticipated you wanted this meeting so you could try to distance yourself, exactly as you’re trying to do, and I thought it would buy us a little more time before we had the unpleasant conversation I think we both know has been coming.” Planting his glass firmly onto the table, Phillip’s steely gaze locked with Hugo’s unwavering own. “You don’t get to decide when or if you wish to be a continuing member of our ISIC team. That is my decision, my call. And you will be continuing in your current capacity as Commandant at the new facility.”
“And should I refuse?”
“I will use my considerable contacts with the French government to have you charged as a war criminal for other dirty deeds—which are plentiful enough to easily surface—and have you hunted down. I’m sorry, Hugo, but you know too much, and I can’t afford to have you belatedly find your conscience and decide that confession to someone, anyone, is good for the soul.”
All Hugo could do was shake his head, then throw it back and laugh.
“You find this amusing?” Phillip demanded.
“Non.” Raucous laughter immediately ceasing, Hugo tossed his burning cigarette into Phillip’s glass. “I find you drunk on your own power. An enfant terrible who has been too long at the top. You once told me Kennedy at least kept a naysayer, someone who would not go along with everything he thought. He relied on you sometimes to say `bullshit, you are wrong’ but you imagine yourself to be greater than Kennedy now. I urged you not to bring le Docteur Kelly here, but still you did. And why? So you can destroy your own son and his step-brother, all because of the revenge you swore over a nose bump and broken finger you no doubt deserved.”
“How—how dare you?” Phillip sputtered, rising imperiously from his chair. “It is far more complicated than that and for you to throw JD’s paternity into my face after I brought you into my confidence and you swore silence—”
“SILENCE!” In one swift move Hugo surged from his chair, grabbed the sausage knife from the charcuterie board, and flung the blade razor close to Phillip’s temple. The knife, whirling end-over-end, soared past the veranda and hit the trunk of his and Jerry’s lychee tree. Buried to the hilt into the gray bark, Hugo silently begged forgiveness from the tree, but never, never would he ask the same from Phillip. “I could have silenced you forever just now but non, I showed the restraint that you no longer have. Now you will listen to me for a change. Sit. And be aware that it is a chair, not a throne.”
Hugo pointed to Phillip’s indicated spot and felt a rare glee in the pallor of his old friend’s face, the bulge of his eyes, the unaccustomed following of someone else’s order. There would be pay-back for this, but if he did not tell Phillip the truth, no one would—and any pay-back would only come if Phillip could find him.
“First, about this murder you intend to do to your son,” Hugo began as he remained standing, his stare of disapproval narrowed down at the powerful adversary he had just made. “Perhaps you did not raise him. Perhaps you did not intend to impregnate a woman married to a close colleague. Perhaps you did not find out until after her death and JD was in your employ. I do not know all the perhaps. What I know is that I have done too many wrongs to others to sit in judgement, but I do sit in judgement of you for this thing that not even I could imagine doing. To kill one’s own child is unnatural. It is wrong. And non, I cannot be a party to it.”
“Then perhaps you should take your party elsewhere, Hugo.”
There was a tingle in his palm, an itch to slap Phillip with a gauntlet, challenge him to a good, old-fashioned duel at dawn which he would win unless Phillip cheated and hired a skilled assassin to kill him first. Yes, that would be Phillip’s style now. He would even take it up a notch and have Miles instruct Jerry to do it, an order fulfilled with the whisper of an implanted Code Jerry. Jerry, who never had a real father, and the closest thing he’d ever had to a son, would only spell opportunity to Phillip, a chance to orchestrate a devilish opera: While one son killed a wanted father, another father would slay an unwanted son.
Retaliating by ignoring the goad, Hugo went on, as if Phillip had not even spoken.
“In your misguided belief that you have become God, you have set loose too many demons. We began the school for a grand purpose, only for it to become Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. While it has made me trés uncomfortable, I can understand your experimentation with Jerry—what a country would be capable of with warriors like him to command—but this business of `tweaking’ your own wife with drugs and hypnosis and I suspect even codes to do your bidding, is monstrous.”
“Call it what you will, but Katherine is none of your business. Are you quite finished now?”
What was finished, Hugo knew, was their decades long friendship—a liaison that had been slowly fraying, only to be so decimated in mere moments that there was nothing left to restore. He wanted to put that in Phillip’s face as one would a meringue pie, rub his flared nostrils into it until he suffocated. Perhaps he should just kill him now and bury him in the garden. So tempting. Even noble…perhaps. He could spare Mikel and his brother a terrible fate, as well as le Docteur Kelly. He could intervene before Phillip could carry out his plan to bring Isabelle in to wipe this defiled toilet clean for the newspapers, the magazines, spare her whatever might come if she disappointed Phillip somehow…
But to disappear Phillip Jordan would be even more noted than disappearing Kissinger. He, Hugo, would be hunted down, eventually found, even in the far reaches of a self-imposed exile. Non, he would not kill Phillip, at least not yet, for that reason alone. He could do more to thwart him by allowing him to hang himself.
“Oui.” Hugo calmly re-seated himself, took his time lighting a final Gauloises, blew a lazy smoke ring into the still-charged air between them.
“If you attempt to leave I will find you and consequences will result.”
“Of course.” Hugo slightly raised a mocking eyebrow.
“I need you here when Isabelle arrives since she is expecting you. And I need you to ensure that Jerry properly distracts her if need be.” A meaningful pause while Hugo blew another smoke ring. “Once you comply with these duties and assist our relocation, I will leave the door open for further discussion of your possible retirement, under certain conditions.”
