Tales From The Screaming Monkey's Head
Part Two of Gordon's Visit to The Screaming Monkey's Head
[1]
The Morning After
There’s No Place Like Rome
Gordon woke with a start, sounds of battle in his ears. He had a fleeting memory of a spear. He sat up disoriented and looked around and felt of his neck. Strangely apprehensive he took stock. He was lying on a straw mattress, under a coarse woven sheet. The mattress was on a low rough-hewn wooden frame. There was a small table next to the bed with an oil lamp, burning low but shedding a bit of light, a box of matches, and a small clay cup painted green.
He looked toward the door remembering Kindly Bob’s admonition to lock it. He needed to use the restroom badly, but wasn’t sure he should. Why lock the door, he wondered. He had been too unnerved to ask. Playdoe, he thought. “What is playdoe”. he said aloud. BANG BANG BANG! someone banged on the door. “It’s morning and there’s hot breakfast!” cried Kindly Bob.
“Then God has granted me another day to serve, and the enemy has granted me the courtesy of a hot meal.” He replied, and under his breath, “Christ rose in silence. I see no need for trumpet and frying pan.” He roused himself, went and slid back the rather heavy bolt on his door and peered out. Kindly Bob was walking back toward the bar. Or was tavern more correct?
Gordon crossed the hall, relieved himself and looked at himself in the mirror. He remembered thinking it was of unusual quality the night before. He smoothed his hair with damp hands, and went out into the bar area.
“Good morning, Gordo,” cried Kindly Bob. He looked exactly the same as last night, but wearing a light blue linen shirt that tied at the neck. Last night… it was not that shirt. “Hale and well met,” replied Gordon. “You look quite awake at this early hour, how long have you been up?” Kindly Bob snorted, “Years,” he replied. “Years and years aplenty.”
Gordon let that pass and he sat at the bar. “Be right back,” said Kindly Bob and he was as good as his word, returning shortly with a plate of scrambled eggs, sausage patties, something that looked like potatoes cubed and fried, and plopped them on the counter in front of Gordon. He left and came back with a steaming crockery mug and a clear glass with what looked like orange juice.
Gordon looked at the largesse with something like awe and dismay. “Some dates and a crust of bread, and perhaps some tea?” he asked hopefully. “Nope, you’re not on campaign, eat hearty. You may need the calories.” Gordon looked for a moment, shrugged and asked, “What do I owe you for bed and breakfast?” Kindly Bob chuckled and said, “Where were we?” He turned and pulled a stool to him and sat, elbows on the counter. “Eat up,” He said. “The cold angry man had just learned the bomb was Play-Doh.” Gordon picked up a fork and poked at the eggs, and tried to ask, “What’s Play-Doh?” but was cut off.
Cold angry man, no longer cold and angry, sat at his favorite cafe in Rome, sipping his Caffe Americano. It was three months after the botched train job. Senator Hogarth had successfully died in a car crash and the appropriation bill had gone through.
“Krieger,” a honeyed voice dripped over him.
Krieger looked up to see a man of middling height, solid build, and amiable face looking down at him. He set his coffee down and dropped his hand into his lap and looked around. A blacked out van, a woman at the bus stop, a man lighting a cigarette – none had been there only moments before.
“Blacked out what?” “Shhh, pay attention.”
The dark eyes of the man looked at Krieger’s hand in his lap and said, “No need for that. I am from Aeon.” Krieger’s eyes narrowed, and he kept his hand near his weapon. Aeon. He had done work for Aeon before.
“We want to talk with you about the train.” It wasn’t a request, it was a honey coated demand. Krieger did not like it, but he stood, dropped a 2 euro coin on the table, drained his coffee, and went with the man. He had no choice.
“My name is… James.” Krieger knew that was not true, but got in the back seat of a waiting Tesla. As he sat he noticed there were no inner door handles, and there was no driver. The door closed for him by unseen hands and so he said, “Once around the park James, and then home for tea.” James gave a light easy laugh and Krieger broke into a cold sweat.
“Look,” broke in Gordon, “I don’t know what a Tesla is, but how does it drive with no driver?” Kindly Bob stopped a long moment his queer blue eyes bright and eerie. Gordon continued, “What is this story?”
Kindly Bob sighed and sat up straight. “Ok, think of it as a fairy story. Just accept things like a talking horse or wickedy witches.” Now it was Gordon’s turn to just stare back at Kindly Bob. Finally, “Ok. I’ll try. Reminds me of stories I heard in China.”
Recognition flashed in Kindly Bob’s face and his eyes got even brighter. “Ah, Chinese Gordon… that’s right.” Gordon shook his head. “I don’t like that name.” He straightened and looked intently at Kindly Bob, “It is demeaning and trivializing and for the papers and the scoundrels selling them.”
Kindly Bob sat back and said, “My apologies General.” Gordon forked a mouthful of eggs into his mouth, and Kindly Bob continued.
“Hogarth was handled,” he started, “I had no idea I was working for…” “You weren’t,” interrupted James.
Krieger waited. The Tesla navigated in silence toward the Spanish Steps. The car stopped, the doors opened, and he got out. The car shushed off leaving James in the street looking at him. Neither moved. Finally Krieger broke and said, “This feels like a stand-off.” “It was,” James said, then nodding toward the Steps asked, “Have you seen the view from up there?” James started walking up the steps. Krieger didn’t move, he didn’t even turn. James stopped with one foot ahead of the other, turned and said, “Why are you standing there?”
Without turning Krieger said, “If the job was not for you, I cannot talk with you.” He had been scanning for the van, the man, and the woman, or their replacements. Nothing. He would never know if they had a sniper, and so he started walking.
“Your employer has involved me.”
Krieger stopped. Not us, me. He turned. The part of him that would rather eliminate a threat than hide from it won, and he followed the man up the steps. At the top James turned to Krieger, looked at his hand in his pocket, and dripped, “I don’t die easy.” Krieger’s hand remained in his pocket as he gazed out over Piazza di Spagna & Via dei Condotti.
“Are you familiar with the cone of silence?” “Some sort of deliberate sound manipulation.” “We are in one now.” Krieger looked around. He could hear everything going on around him. He listened harder. Something was definitely odd. Something really weird about the sound. He finally placed it.
Normally we don’t pay attention to the passing of sound. We notice the doppler effect with sirens and such, sound moving toward us pitching up, sounds moving away from us pitching down. Virtually all sources of sound are moving in relation to the hearer. Sounds leaving us are not a threat so we ignore them. The retreating doppler effect goes unnoticed. However, it is there, always. Except now.
He was in an auditory dead zone. The sounds he was hearing died there; they came in, they did not leave. They just laid there, hollowed out. He felt claustrophobic and exposed at the same moment. If he screamed, no one would hear him. He took an experimental step toward the Steps, the sound quality went up, well, became normal surround sound . He stepped back, mono. Anyone walking through the zone would not notice. He hadn’t noticed until the effect was brought to his attention. This was a public private place.
He had a thought and pulled his cell phone out. No service. He looked up to see James smiling at him. It was an easy smile, even friendly, but unconsciously superior. “Good,” he said. “We can talk.”
“About?”
“The bomb.”
Krieger again simply waited. James smiled benignly and said, “Ok. Why did you kill Smiley?” “He made the bomb, it was a fake bomb, I killed him.”
“Wrong on two counts. The bomb was not fake, and you didn’t believe it to be fake until the day after you dispatched him.” Jim smiled benignly.
Krieger took a breath, steadied himself, and choosing words carefully intoned, “The bomb did not go off, he was the bomb maker, his error, his price to pay.”
“We should have liked very much to talk with him, because you see, we are certain the bomb was fully functional when it was attached. There are things we should have liked to ask Smiley. Did he notice anything different, anything that had changed from when it was installed. But - we can’t.” Pause. “Because you killed him.” Now a mild sigh. “We had many questions.”
Krieger licked his dry lips. He managed to say “Like, why did he install a Play-Doh bomb?” James just looked at him. “We don’t think he did.” “No?” asked Krieger. “You think the bomb was fully functional?”
“The shaped charge case it was packed into is the same as originally delivered. ” Krieger raised an eyebrow but controlled it quickly. “There are C4 markers in evidence. The case did have C4 in it.”
“Regardless, the detonator did not go off. If the bomb was working, the detonator would have at least gone off. There would be splattered Play-Doh at least.”
“It was C4.” His voice was as flat as his pale gray eyes. He paused and for the first time a hint of frustration played around those eyes. Almost inaudibly, “Until it wasn’t.”
Krieger opened his mouth, shut it, started to ask one question, stopped and thought furiously. Finally, “If the detonator was non functioning, then why Play-Doh?” And then suddenly, “If this was not your job, why do you care?”
“We are studying, ah, certain um, patterns.” A pause. “We think… we think it was – a joke.” Another pause, longer. “The detonator was tested. It worked.”
“So, then the signal…” “Was fine.”
Krieger was silent. A joke!? He was frankly astonished. Who could possibly toy with Aeon?
They stood for a while and then James said, “You will tell me everything about the planning, the accumulation of materials, the selection of your men, everything. Nothing is small or trivial.”
“Yeah, like hell I will,” and he started to walk off. “You are on the clock.” Krieger stopped and turned. The man was showing him a bulging envelope in his inner coat pocket. He pulled it out and tossed it toward Krieger. Krieger examined the package. It had his sign on it. He had been hired. He turned back toward Krieger searching his face and those gray eyes. “You think there is a leak of some sort. There’s not.” He paused, “At least from my side,” he said pointedly.
The point was not lost on James. “We have resources, we keep tabs on things.” His gray eyes bored into Krieger’s deep brown eyes. “We know there was no leak.”
Krieger heaved a mental sigh, “What do you want me to do?”
“Right now, answer my questions.”
Kindly Bob sat back. Gordon picked up the clay mug and was happy to find it was hot tea, no milk, no sugar. The right way. He waited.
“You finished?” Kindly Bob asked as he reached toward Gordon’s empty plate.
“What, oh, yeah, I mean yes, thank you. Do go on.”
“I’ve got other customers, other stories to tell. Come back this evening,” and he turned and greeted a newcomer to the bar, “What’ll it be?”
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