Chapter 22 of Princessa

Strange Goings On

He leaves the old man and goes out to the elevator in the hallway. But, pauses decides to go up to the dining room first, like… if you’re gonna be dead in the morning anyway, might as well live a little bit first. That’s odd, he thinks to himself, starting to think like Maria, like every moment feels like it could be your last. Is that bad, or good, or what. Hard to say, but it’s different, anyway. Like you’re watching yourself do things now, instead of just doing it.

The top floor dining room is really amazing, just like the kids said it was. The panoramic view of the whole city right there in front of you, all shining through the looking glass of the round wall of endless floor to ceiling windows. He likes it here, it is so nice, surreal almost, and he figures what the hell (jeez, starting to think like Ed now, the old guy who gave us the ride up from Jersey).

He orders a coneydog and fries and sits down to look at it all, so enchanting, like Disneyland, hardly a real world at all. Jori was right, this is really something quite magical to see up here, something you wouldn’t want to miss. The hotdog’s pretty tasty too, all covered in chili and onions and melted cheese. Or is it just like everything’s all of a sudden new and different or special somehow. Ah Jesus, best not to be thinking about all this stuff, just do your job; and not be… like reflecting on everything all the time.

He finishes his coke and goes down to the street, glad that he took the time to stop and see the view, anyway. The first thing is to take the subway over to the Jersey airport, pick up a car from the rental office. It takes a lot longer than he expects, but that’s all part of the stuff you have figure into the calculations.

And all that time he’s going over in his head what Smet had told him. It was the answer he’d expected, more or less, but with a lot of other stuff too. Like being recruited out of high school, and not even knowing it. Geez, these people are serious, or devious, or something anyway. Though not really stuff you wanna think about, like it’s almost fated, somehow.

He lets his mind wander to the other people they’d talked about, comparing them to himself, convinced he was right, but wanting to go over it anyway. Just something to do, to kill time. Zhrot was an obvious choice for this type of job. Such a mean tough son of a bitch; and yet so charming, sweet, nice, like a little boy, when he wanted to be. And Carlo, just the opposite. Maybe not as tall as the other guy, but he looked like he was, so thin and gaunt with his long shaggy hair hanging over his thin face. And the dark clothes he always wore, looking like some kind of rebellious art student at university or maybe a musician in a band. Not the crazy demolition expert that he really was.

Andy had met them at training, when they were instructors there. And had even served with them in combat. He remembered seeing that crazy Carlo blown off a jeep one time, right in front of him, by a roadside bomb. He watched the young man get up from the pavement, all tattered and bloodied, and calmly walk over to a small crowd of people a short ways away. He smiles at them, friendly, playfully hands his helmet to one of the kids to keep as a souvenir. And all the while, Carlo is sizing up the crowd, looking into each pair of eyes for any sign of fear or guilt, until finally one man pulls up an AK and lets go a burst into the crazy young soldier.

Carlo falls back and down, hit in the chest and stomach. The body armor stops most of it, but not all. The young man looks up from there, calmly from his back on the sidewalk, and carefully aims and shoots the other man, and not automatic either, just single fire. Just carefully puts two rounds into the man. Then staggers to a knee and again aims and hits another man running down the street and maybe a hundred meters away now. Plants the guy on his face in the middle of the street, with a couple of shots just below the neck.

Andy and the others are tending to the wounded in the burning jeep. But he watches the man, Carlo, do all that before collapsing from his wounds and then being aided by the medics. Not to save his life or anything like that, but just to ready him for the next assignment. Later he’d seen the man’s crazy partner, Zhrot, so proud of what his friend, his countryman, had done when someone told him about it. Not jealous or anything, not even with any idea of trying to outdo him. Just admiration for what anyone else would think is just plain insanity, senseless.

Zhrot wouldn’t have done it that way anyway, be more like him to shoot down the entire crowd with the gun on full auto. Just mow ‘em all down, slap another clip in, and assume that the relatives of the innocent victims would have a better life, now that the one or two militants in the crowd were removed from the picture. Zhrot was the self-defense instructor at the special forces school.

A nice enough fellow, but you got the sense that when he showed you how to render a man unconscious with a choke hold, or break a man’s ribs with an elbow thrust into the side; that these same moves could break a neck or a spine. And that that’s what the man showing you these things would use them for. Had to actually stop himself from doing that, even just in training.

And Carlo, with his long skinny fingers, like a guitar player’s hands, used those hands to make bombs with, out of anything, everything, simple chemicals, a radio, a cell phone. Worst of all, he seemed to have an even greater passion for defusing the bombs, for going in alone, into some dark hole in a building or a tunnel somewhere. Disabling some device that could blow up and kill hundreds or thousands of people. Like maybe this was the one thing and only thing he was actually afraid of, or terrified of. Not even death, just the ticking of a bomb. And every time he went in, and did that, it was like facing down his worst fears, his worst nightmares. And in doing that he could again return to being that sullen, aloof, rebellious art student with the dark looks and the dark clothes.

They were strange, those two. Different, and yet if you could imagine it, they were actually friends, though so opposite to one another in everything, looks, mannerism, behavior, everything. Andy’d even gone out with them for drinks one time. He watched them, the two men like competing against each other to see who could pick up the prettiest girl in the club. Zhrot with his straightforward ‘I’m the bull in your fantasies’ approach. Carlo, sitting back, alone at the bar, sullen, brooding, like ‘let them come and find me, if they want to.’ And they did, fascinated or strangely attracted to the thin dark mysterious young man.

It was a strange evening; unsettling, an uncomfortable tension all the time you were around those two. They’d even invited him back to their place, for whatever strange going’s-on there’d be with the pretty girls they’d found. But Andy politely adamantly refused, thinking they’d maybe slit your throat while you were sleeping. Make it look like somehow you’d cut yourself shaving, and all just to see if they could get away with it. That was just the way he saw two men, but you wouldn’t want to risk finding out.

Government agents, he thinks, super-spies, cold-hearted killers. Not like him, not like him at all. But it’d almost be interesting to get to know those people; and some of the others like them. Find out where they’re from, or what had made them become what they are. But who’d want to hang around with them long enough to find all that out.

And the girls there too, the same thing. Poella, the beautiful dark-skinned actress looking girl, who taught communications and computers, how to tap somebody’s phone or hack into a company’s mainframe. She could be so seductive and alluring; or dressed in a lab coat and with her hair up and black-rimmed glasses, look like somebody’s geeky assistant who never got out of the office. And the other one there, Luta, a sexy blonde goddess who was their foreign language teacher. Also expert in the art of burglary and bypassing alarm systems.

These people, thinks Andy, what are they really like, or is there any real self to them. So accustomed to assuming some other identity, playing a role or a character; do they even know what it means to be themselves, like at home, back home with their parents or brothers and sisters. It was an interesting place to train, you learn a lotta stuff there; but he was happy to leave it and not really want to ever see any of those people again, unless you needed someone to cover your back in a deadly fight. Be alright then, maybe.

He finally gets to the terminal, finds a car rental and hands the clerk one of Smet’s phony credit cards. Then drives off in a nondescript ‘looks like any other vehicle’ type car. He heads toward the house. It’s middle afternoon now and bright sunny out, but cold, a chill north wind picking up. But that’s okay too because it’s a good excuse to have the big fur-lined hood up on his coat, covering his head. So even if they made him at the house, they won’t be able to see his face, not this time anyway, motherfuckers. He parks the car a few blocks away and gets out to walk.

Smet’s house is in the middle of the block. It’s a poorly kept neighborhood, mostly run-down old houses that are rentals or have been made into apartments. Andy comes up from a couple of blocks to the west and spots the house from about a block away. He cuts across through a small parking area and looks down the alley. Most of the houses across the street from Smet’s have a number of junky old cars parked behind them. Some have flat tires, broken out or missing windows, faded paint and rusting out bodies.

Along with that, there’s the usual beat up old furniture lying next to garbage cans. Other assorted junk that landlords throw away when renters skip out on them, or left by the old tenants and the new tenants didn’t want it so they just threw it out into the backyard, hoping someday it’ll get hauled away. Some of the houses have a garage or a series of garages for the renters’ vehicles. But this one house has a couple of large new dark cars parked behind it. They look all out of place here. Makes you wonder about it.