James Grady
Next Day of the Condor
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…