Unspeakable, p.30
Unspeakable, page 30
“Got my mop.” Hunched over and looking like an elderly janitor with an ISIC badge, JD muttered, “See you at 20:00 hours as planned.”
While JD went in search of Gregg, Jerry knew exactly where he would find Miles.
Miles, who had called “CODE…” something, something upon getting into the chopper he had thrown Isabelle from. Isabelle being the reason Jerry had his eyes elsewhere while the bleating chopper blades drowned out everything but the thud of his heart as he watched her go.
Knowing what he now knew, Jerry could only presume it was Code Green Jerry, to bring him back to Miles like a homing pigeon.
Miles was getting a little worried. Okay, more than a little. Jerry, his greatest achievement, his FEW, should have arrived by now, make that a week ago.
He had embedded into Code Green Jerry that after destroying all evidence of ISIC’s original existence, any leftover prisoners included, Green Jerry would do anything and everything necessary to return to the new ISIC nest.
That new nest was still somewhat bare of inhabitants—including Jerry. Which either meant his Code hadn’t worked or Jerry could have fallen victim to the NVA en route to home.
The former would be worse than the latter, putting his protocol and findings in jeopardy.
And yet… maybe not. Codes could be re-embedded. Jerry was one of a kind.
“Howdy, pardner!” said the familiar voice as the new office door flew open, then shut with a neat kick of a combat boot. He was dressed in his ISIC best—even his Submariner Rolex was back on his wrist! “Ready to get back in the saddle again?”
“Jerry, where have you been?” Miles exclaimed with genuine concern. “I was afraid the NVA may have gotten to you before you could get to them first.”
“Nope, nope, the NVA turned out to be the least of my worries,” Jerry assured him with a big, friendly grin. “I was just a bit delayed due to some unforeseen complications.”
“Sure hope that didn’t include any problems in decimating things as ordered. That would not please The Ambassador and we both know which side of the bread our butter is on. Right, Old Hoss?”
“You are right as rain on that, and… Say!” He nodded at the new notebook Miles had opened on his new desk. A duplicate of the other, right down to the longhorns. “What’s that you have there?”
Just then Miles realized his hands were placed on either side of the notebook—one that would be clearly visible to Jerry. Almost as immediately he saw Jerry whip out a familiar knife from his back pocket—the same combat knife Miles had given him at their first meeting, during breakfast on the veranda, with four snipers having their guns trained on the infamous Ghost Soldier, Jerry Prince.
In disbelief Miles watched Jerry’s combat knife slam through the flesh, muscle and bone of his right hand, his primary surgical and writing hand, securing a not-going-anywhere embedment through paper and wood.
“That’s for my calico,” Jerry informed him over Mile’s shrill howl of pain. “And this is for Isabelle.”
Before Miles could yank away his left hand, two silver steel chopsticks crucified that much of him to the desk as well.
“CODE PURPLE JERRY!”
Jerry suddenly jerked rigid, like he had been electrocuted.
Hardly able to think past the excruciating impalement, the shock of seeing his blood leech out on his latest journal entry, Miles realized his mistake—purple to kill; blue to self-destruct—and screeched, “JERRY CODE BLUE!! CODE BLUE JERRY!! Withdraw the knife and cut your throat with it now! NOW!!”
Jerry went very, very still, a mannequin’s preternatural pose. Then another rigid jerk before he went full-on possessed: Jerry’s head shook back and forth. His feet danced. He went “MEOW-MEOW” so loud it hurt the ears, until—
He gave Miles a grin as big as Texas, pulled a familiar Star Trek notebook from under his special ISIC highly decorated military shirt, and slapped it between them on the blood stained desk.
“And now, let us return to the sponsor of this show. Your journals have been most instructive, Dr. Miles. It is rather shocking to realize one is considered no more than an insect, a lab animal, no different than the kittens were to you. But, I must say that despite some serious character flaws, you are an excellent teacher. And, being a highly motivated student, I have taken detailed notes. First we’ll hit you up with a little pharmaceutical MDMA before we get to work on a new protocol going forward. Since we don’t have enough time to binge on Roy Rodgers or Howdy Doody, how about some Willie Nelson while I gather additional information and we lay down a few tracks for you?”
It was 20:00 hours—8:00 pm and dark—when they rendezvoused, just as planned.
JD had their rescued cargo in the janitor’s push cart, albeit unconscious, nicely trussed, and ready for a ride back to his wife in the jeep they had arrived in. Other than Gregg having been subjected to some reconstructive surgery that came as something of a shock, plus his reluctance to leave thanks to some codes needing to be wiped from his subconscious—“Not a problem” said Jerry, extending a blood stained notebook—the first two objectives of their infiltration had succeeded without a hitch.
If anything bothered JD, it was that things had gone a little too smoothly.
“And you were able to set the good doctor up for what will be going down next?”
“Affirmative. Sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Jerry produced a couple of syringes from the new ISIC pharmaceutical cabinet. “Happy to help close shop.”
“Thanks, but you stay with Gregg.” JD twirled the tiny dart he had specially prepared for the occasion. “This is personal. Phillip is mine.”
CHAPTER 32
“I’m sick of seeing you in that ridiculous kimono, Katherine. Wear your Halston, wear your Dior, wear what you just brought back from your latest spree in France, wear any damn thing you want—nothing, preferably—but would you just get rid of that thing?”
“Why?” she snapped. “Because you don’t like to be reminded of where it came from, who it belonged to, before your stupid Dr. Miles killed her?”
“She slipped. He was reaching for her and she backed up. And why? Because she had been found out. She went where she should not have gone and was going to damage us. It’s just as well that we didn’t have to deal with her ourselves. As far as I’m concerned, he saved us the trouble.”
“She was my friend, Phillip.”
“You’ll find another one.”
“Like Gregg?” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “Like Shirley? You have systematically ensured I have no friends.”
“When you signed on for the position you coveted—both positions—as an agent under my direction and as my wife—“
“Neither being what I thought I was signing up for!”
“Oh, please. Cry me the entire Mekong, Katherine. You followed your ambitions and desires to end up precisely where you are, only to cry foul for the price attached to your own decisions. You remind me of a petulant child who got exactly what she wanted yet lives in a perpetual state of discontent because no matter how much you have, it’s never enough.”
“Like the other women you keep on the side? As for a child—”
“Do not you dare throw that into my face again. I had nothing to do with that fall.”
“But you were glad when I had the miscarriage, weren’t you? Weren’t you?”
JD frowned from the shadows where he lurked and listened near an open window. Kate had told him she couldn’t have children. Only later had he learned from Gregg, who had known her since childhood, that it was because of a botched abortion when she was an exchange student in France—which happened to be when she had first met Phillip.
Tucking this newest miscarriage revelation away for later contemplation, JD continued to listen to the bickering between the biological father who wanted him dead and the only woman he had ever truly loved, except for his beloved French mother. Maman. So exquisite, yet cursed with the twin demons of a crippling depression and incredibly flawed taste in men with much in common: Rich, powerful diplomats from prestigious American families who were Ivy League classmates and served together in the OSS before it became the CIA. Both having cause to permanently silence her once she became too unstable to trust further than the mattress he had been conceived upon. But his suspicions that the charming brute she was married to may have orchestrated her “suicide” had expanded in recent years.
It was right after he had put together the pieces about his true paternity. Which was in the same pocket of time that Kate had inexplicably turned against him, aligning herself with the man who was seething, “For the love of God, Katherine, would you just please take yourself out of my sight, along with that little Beretta you like to brandish around like a snippy Chihuahua on a rhinestone leash, and get some fresh air? Much more of this and I am finished with you. With us. And you most definitely do not want to end up on the short side of my wrath. Now, be gone with you. And the next time I say stay in Paris? Stay there!”
JD further blended into the shadows of the French estate that was eerily similar to what Jerry had called “Hugo’s house,” only this one had an impressive gated entry with two guards—both recipients of the syringes he had accepted—and an electric fence that could no longer fry so much as an egg. The surveillance cameras had been similarly addressed, also compliments of Mr. Prince.
The door slammed with a bang! He watched Kate kick a porch swing, then take a healthy swig from a bottle of Krug before she threw it into the air. The glass shattered with a well-aimed shot from the Beretta and he tried not to envy the gun too much when she kissed the still smoking barrel.
JD considered the CZ75 that he’d brought along, a very fine 9mm advance production pistol. There were always options. He could go forward with the plan or he could retreat and return once she was gone. Only, when would that be? And there was still the Dr. Miles set up to consider. Step back now, the rest could easily, if not immediately, fall apart.
A familiar, unwelcome hunger stirred as his gaze lingered on Kate, roaming the gardens. Forcing his attention where it belonged, he expertly positioned the tiny dart under his tongue. The tip had a thin, protective coating that would disintegrate on impact with its intended target, and was far more dangerous than the CZ75 which he slid into the chest holster beneath the loose fitting janitor’s shirt.
He slipped the surgical booties over his shoes. Next, the surgical gloves. Hairnet. Swiftly, silently, he entered through the front door Kate had slammed shut.
Just for a moment he watched the man he had once admired and trusted, even loved in his own way, puff on a Gauloises while he paced around and swore. Softly, of course. Phillip was too refined and too reptilian to do otherwise.
“Did you kill her?”
Phillip whirled around, cast a shaking finger at JD.
“How the hell did you get in here? Guards! Guards!’
“Please, spare me. Spare us both. What guards you had went nighty-night. Kate is trolling the garden grounds while she wonders whatever possessed her to marry you. As for me? Well, here I am despite your every effort to erase the mistake you made after you possibly erased my mother. Which leaves me with this burning question—Did you ever really love her, and if you were incapable of that, did you at least love Kate before you took her from me, too?”
“No to your mother and yes to the other—at least at the time. Anything else?”
“Were you responsible for my mother’s death?”
“You were the one who found her hanging. Did you see me there?”
“You have quite a talent for making things happen even half a world away,” JD pointed out, only to receive a slight bow, as if he had bestowed an accolade. “I wonder. Do you still have the coin I tossed in your lap at our last meeting—the one you could make appear and disappear when I was a little boy? Or did you toss it into a fountain and wish me as dead as Maman?”
“I’ve always admired your deductive reasoning skills, JD. Actually, I wished you and your step-brother both dead. You never should have humiliated me like that.” Phillip touched his destroyed little finger to his no longer perfect Patrician nose.
That’s when it struck JD that his own nose was a duplicate of what Phillip’s had been before he and Zhang had rearranged a few body parts. And the hands, except for the destroyed little finger, he had inherited those, too. His eyes, his hair, olive complexion, they were all Maman’s. But in much else he saw himself in Philip now. He had tried so very hard to erase Phillip from every nook and cranny of his existence, that he had not allowed his mind to roam where it was presently, unexpectedly, going.
He had come here not to kill Phillip, but to do something much worse. To his father. His own father. The man he continued to stare at, to look at somehow differently than before, was toxic. He considered life a grand game, people mere pawns for his strategies and amusement. Phillip certainly would not hesitate to kill him on the spot if he could. But they were two very different men despite their genetic link and a very long professional liaison, and suddenly JD was unsure if he could go forward with ensuring that Phillip would be consigned to the living hell he absolutely deserved.
JD disguised his hesitation with, “When did Kate have a miscarriage?”
“A very good question. Especially since there was the possibility you were the father, not me.” In JD’s stunned silence, Phillip smiled as he looked past him and casually suggested, “But why don’t you ask Katherine instead?”
There was an unnatural high pitched whistle in his ears; his stomach was flopping somewhere on the floor. While his mouth moved but no words emerged, JD turned to see Kate standing behind him. For the first time in five years she was almost close enough to touch, and despite it all, he longed for her as intensely as the moment she had returned the silver bracelet that was attached to the hand that should be reaching beneath his shirt.
She had her Beretta pointed at him.
“Katherine Lynn Morningside,” Phillip said very distinctly. “Code Pink. Shoot him.”
She fired twice and down went JD.
His eyes fixed disbelievingly on Kate while he clasped both hands over the chest area that had taken two hits, as if from a great distance he heard Phillip say, “Well, my little bastard son, how Freudian this all seems to end. And actually poetic. Your lovely mother was also susceptible to suggestions while vacationing at the French Rivera, which we all know was a polite way of saying she was in what had to be her favorite mental institution, given her number of visits. Shock treatments. Pharmaceuticals. Hypnosis. It all became just a bit much for her, you understand. And that brings us to the final act in the play: Katherine Lynn Morningside, Code Blue. Now. With the pistol.”
The shot rang out. In horror, JD watched her fall.
Phillip came to lean over JD, his satisfied face only a few feet away, filling JD’s vision.
“I did love her, Katherine, you know. Only, she always loved you more. Obviously, I couldn’t have your brat remind me of that, any more than .your father by name could bear your apparent resemblance to me and shuttled you away to that monastery he paid handsomely to raise you. I was quite fond of you, JD. Actually, I do still have the coin you landed in my lap on our last, most unpleasant visit. I kept it as a reminder that we did not always have bad blood between us. But alas, you claimed something I could never fully have. Katherine’s heart. How fitting that’s where she’s bleeding out.”
JD whispered, too faint for Phillip to hear.
“Are you fading dear boy?” he asked, leaning down. “Or perhaps you’re thanking me for having the two women you most loved ready to greet you on the other side? No competition between us anymore, they’re both yours now. And good luck with that hellcat Katherine. I should have just let you keep her to begin with. Who knows? If I had, perhaps we could have avoided all the things that came between us. But how boring would that have been? More like playing tiddlywinks between toddlers than dueling masters at a game of GO.”
Another whisper, inducing Phillip to lean even closer…closer. “What was that? I can’t quite hear you. And your last words are—”
“You lost the game.”
It was through long practice that JD brought the tiny dart lodged under his tongue to his lips and blew it directly into Phillip’s neck. The needle point released the neurotoxin upon shock of impact. Phillip jolted upright, staggered back, tried to walk, only his legs looked like rubber bands with the elastic yanked to the point of breaking.
He fell inches from Kate. His beached fish gasping for air, the lips parted in shock and the tongue that wagged out, would remain exactly so, as would the wide open eyes that could no longer close without assistance.
JD took his turn leaning over Phillip and considered doing something very kind—pulling out the CZ75 that was strapped against the thin Kevlar combat vest beneath his shirt. Bang-bang and this whole sorry, horrific soap opera would be over. It would go the way of a mysterious double homicide, or suicide, as impossible to solve as JFK’s assassination and the conspiracy theories surrounding Marilyn Monroe’s death.
Kate would love the company she would be keeping.
But the wrenching sight of her unspeakably beautiful face, frozen in the sort of surprise one might express with an unintentional self-inflicted bullet through the heart, and JD knew he would not be humane.
As he cut off the emotions that would interfere with his speed and accuracy, JD went about the necessary forensic crime scene staging of where each body would fall, with Kate the victim, all her fingerprints wiped from the Beretta perfectly gripped in Phillip’s possession.
In the process, JD explained, “The very, very bad news, Phillip, is you are unlikely to die. Bad news because with your wealth and fame and background you will have the best of medical care despite the overwhelming evidence that you murdered your wife. Speculation will swirl for decades to come, your impeccable reputation tarnished, and yet you will be unable to fight back, to plead your innocence, due to your own deplorable, helpless condition. After a multitude of tests, the best doctors in existence will concur that you have Locked-In Syndrome, for which there is no cure. If that diagnosis escapes them, you will likely receive great pity nonetheless, being rendered into an apparent vegetative state after what must have been a terrible stroke that possibly contributed to your mishandling of the gun that ultimately killed your wife. You see where I am going with this?”
