Blood Wine (34 page)

“He likes to believe he's no longer human, he's one of the Borg — but he is a leader. Those are not compatible.”

“The Borg? You're talking
Star Trek
? We're counting seconds.”

“The Borg are an inexhaustible corporate entity, they absorb personalities —”

“What about Seven-of-Nine?”

“Barbie with brains, every man's nightmare.”

“Excuse me,” said Savage, straining to suppress his pain. “Have you lost track of what's happening?”

“Have you?” snapped Miranda.

“No, no, Ms. Quin. I am human, yes, serving an unstoppable cause. And it, not we, not me, but it, will prevail. As the Borg say, Ms. Quin,
resistance is futile
. You now have approximately two minutes.”

“You are al-Qaeda, the Borg in real time. But you think for yourself, Mr. Savage, and that is dangerous.”

“For whom, Ms. Quin?”

“For you. Morgan, this man is a pathological bully, he is pathologically terrified of women, he is a pathological coward. I'd say he has allowed himself time to negotiate.”

“In that case, Ms. Quin, we will cut to the end. I will make a deal with you,” said Savage from his twisted position on the floor. “I will tell you how to disarm the detonator. I will unlock the door. It is steel and it is bolted. We will leave. It is over. I disappear. There is no hole in the heart of Toronto. You two become heroes.”

“Morgan, it's us he's trying to disarm. I say we have lots of time, if there's a timer at all.”

“Let's resolve the confusion,” said Morgan, motioning for her to check one of the bedrooms while he checked another. The first room Morgan went into was piled high with materials parcelled in ominous crates beside stashes of weaponry.

“Morgan,” Miranda called from a study off the master bedroom, “in here!”

“Yeah,” said Morgan, hurrying down the hall to her side. “He wasn't bluffing.” They stood looking at a computer monitor with a digital display of numbers, counting down.

“But I was right about having more time than he said,” Miranda offered.

“Twelve minutes to go. Yeah, you were right about that,” said Morgan. “Let me fiddle with this — you think he's a coward, maybe torture will work? Shoot him in the other kneecap.”

“Maybe I should bring him in here first.”

“Whatever.”

Miranda rushed back to the living room to drag Savage into the study.

He was nowhere in sight.

She raced down the hall to the entry door but it was still solidly secured. Returning to the living room, she stopped and looked at the carpet where he had fallen. A smear of blood narrowed like a wedge in the direction of the two-storey window.

He's stopped the bleeding, he's on the balcony.

But she could see the entire balcony. There was no one there.

She slid the glass door open. Squat summer palms rustled in the afternoon breeze. More blood, some on the railing. She stepped forward and leaned out.

Savage was hanging over the side from the rail at the base of the balcony, fourteen storeys above Avenue Road. Technically, thirteen, since he was dangling below his own level.

“Hello,” said Miranda.

Savage took a deep breath. He clearly had intended to swing out and then in, onto the balcony below, but once in position he must have realized his arms against the edge of the balcony would throw his weight away from the building and he would fall. He gazed up at her, waiting for something to happen.

“No gun?” said Miranda. “No, I have the gun. No time left? You're right about that. Still, I'd rather blow up than fall down, down, down, thinking the whole way about what it's going to be like to hit bottom. A nasty business, Mr. Savage.”

“Najim.”

“What?” said Miranda, leaning over.

“Najim Mustafa Tanimi.”

“Really. Najim Mustafa Tanimi. Is that your name, Mr. Savage?”

“If you help me,” he gasped, the weight of his body compressing his lungs, “you will have righteousness on your side for rescuing me in spite of what I did to you.”

“And if I do not, Mr. Savage, Najim, there will be righteous satisfaction in seeing you fall to your death, thinking about me all the way down.”

“Please.”

“What, Mr. Savage, what do you want?”

“Help me. Shoot me. Do not let me fall.”

“Perhaps you could explain how to stop the countdown. That would be very helpful to all of us.”

“Yes, yes. I cannot. It is started.”

“You can't stop it?”

“No, yes. Maybe I can. Help me.”

Miranda braced herself and reached over. She extended one arm downwards and Savage released one of his hands from the rail, flailing upwards, and his fingers clenched around the glove on her lowered hand, and the ointment oozed and the material slid away from Miranda's flesh in slow motion, and their hands pulled apart, his with the glove grasped desperately limp as his weight swung onto his other hand, down and away, and his fingers on that hand opened and, gazing up into Miranda's eyes in astonishment, his mouth open in a silent scream, and he fell back into the air.

Miranda walked almost casually back into the study. Morgan was staring at the monitor. Three minutes and twenty-eight seconds left, twenty-seven, twenty-six.…

“I take it you didn't get very far with Savage. Did you kill him?”

He turned away from the screen and looked into her eyes. He could not recognize anything familiar. And yet she was there, not a stranger. He shuddered with an odd feeling of grief, realizing that she would not survive. His own death was more difficult to imagine.

“Ring around the rosy, Morgan … husha, husha, we all fall down.”

“Don't worry,” he said. “You did what you had to do. I don't think he knew how to stop this thing anyway. My dad used to say the bombardier can't call back the bombs.”

“Was he in the war?”

“World War Two? No. Korea.”

“Morgan, it's the end of the world as we know it.”

“It's the end of our knowing it — husha, husha — what would Buffy do now?”

“Buffy?”

“Buffy.”

“Morgan.”

“Yeah.”

“You want to have sex?”

“You think there's time?”

“I don't know, you might not respect me in the morning.”

“Let's chance it.”

“I'll settle for a hug.”

“Me too.”

“You ready for the world's biggest orgasm?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too.”

He stood up and they held each other for the first time like lovers. They rocked gently together. He smelled nice. She looked by him at the screen. Fifty seconds, forty-nine, forty-eight.… She glanced down at the tangle of cords under the computer. She looked back at the screen. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight.… she had lost ten seconds. Twenty-four, twenty-three, twenty-two.…
It's always such a viper's nest
, she thought.
High-tech, and nobody thinks about the mess
. Eighteen, seventeen —

“Morgan.”

“Yes.”

She leaned away from him and smiled. “Let go.”

“What?”

“Let me go.”

“Okay.”

“You know the problem with all this electronic stuff?”

“Yeah.” He kissed her. She rose to the pressure of his lips then pulled away quickly and dropped to her knees. She called up to him.

“Morgan, if you hurry, you can get in the last word.”

“Miranda?”

She squirmed under the computer console, grasped two cables plugged into an electric outlet and yanked. She lay perfectly still, waiting.

“Boom,” said Morgan in a soft voice. “You did it.”

“I did?”

“We're ten seconds past Armageddon.”

“Lovely. Get me out of here. Can you believe it?”

“Yeah, I believe it.”

He helped her to her feet and she leaned against him to extricate herself from the tangle of wires, then remained leaning against him. He drew her close and they breathed deeply in unison.

“I don't suppose you've replaced your broken cellphone,” he said softly into her hair as if he were mouthing endearments.

“I imagine yours is at home,” she responded against his shoulder, without looking up.

“What do you think the chances are there's a working telephone here?” he asked.

“One line, unlisted. Disconnected from this end, I imagine,” she answered with incongruous warmth.

“As in, unplugged?”

“As in, ripped out of the wall. A precaution when he knew we were coming.”

“Yeah,” said Morgan, still whispering. “He needed us to find him. Somehow we became witnesses to measure himself, even if he intended to blow us up.”

“But he figured he would survive.”

“Otherwise the dummy detonator he was wearing doesn't make sense.”

“Well, we witnessed his death.” She breathed deeply. “Actually, we didn't,” she whispered. “You were in here and I didn't wait to see him hit bottom.”

“Ouch.”

“Morgan?”

“Yeah.”

“You're still holding me.”

“I thought you were holding me. Do you want to stop?”

“Not really.”

They maintained a close embrace until their breathing slowed to normal, then pulled apart shyly, neither prepared to say anything that would destroy the intimacy, yet each recognizing the world had not come to an end and time was back to its normal flow.

They walked into the living room arm in arm. Morgan noticed the door out onto the balcony was ajar. He saw blood on the carpet smeared in that direction. He said nothing. She would explain if she wanted. He turned to her and kissed her forehead. She reached out, bent his head down, and kissed him on the forehead with a loud smack. It was an expression of affection and a parody of what he had just done.

“He did know we were coming, didn't he?” she said.

“Morgan, I think he's known we were coming for a long time. People on the inside can see more than those of us playing the outside of the cube. He knows what's in there, doesn't he? Intersecting tracks, swivels, and pivots. Agents for this and for that, there's not much difference among them. Tensions and alliances, Morgan. Swivels and pivots. I prefer it on the outside, lining up what you can see.”

“Amen,” he said.

“You all right, Morgan?”

“For sure. I knew you were, too, when you called him a dweeb.”

“Twerp, I called him a twerp.”

“Yeah, and that's when I knew we had him beat.”

“Morgan — a sleazy hotel near Victoria Station?”

“Pardon?”

“Sorry. I'm sorry about Elke. We were friends in a way. And the old man, I'm sorry about him, Morgan. The wise old man in the ivory tower, he shouldn't have suffered like that. Morgan, why do I keep saying your name?”

He smiled. “I don't know, Miranda.”

“You never use my name. I'll bet you don't, even when you think of me.”

“How do you know I think of you, Miranda? The old man, he was a warrior. I expect death was a reasonable price for his dreams, I imagine that's what he thought when he died. And Elke, she didn't believe she'd ever get old.”

“And for us, this is as far as we go, isn't it?”

“How so?” Morgan asked.

“Rufalo wanted a nice neat package. This is it. Savage is dead. All the details connect. Lots of leads for CSIS and the CIA and MI6 and God knows who. But there won't be any convictions. The enemy is amorphous. It dissipates, lies dormant, mutates, regroups, who knows? If it doesn't come back as al-Qaeda, it'll be something else.”

“That's sad,” said Morgan. “Truly sad. So many died and nothing is changed.”

“Oh, but it has, Morgan, changed utterly. Each act of terrorism takes us little by little farther away from the world we know and closer and closer to anarchy.”

“And what rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem.”

“You know your Yeats, too.”

“Who else?”

“Besides me?” She looked at him thoughtfully. “You know, others. Come on, let's get out of here.”

“How? I guess Mr. Savage made quite a splash on the street. Toronto's finest will be up here, sooner or later, we just have to wait.”

“I wonder what his real name was,” said Morgan. “I suppose we'll find out soon enough.”

“Perhaps he didn't have a name,” said Miranda. Najim Mustafa Tanimi. She didn't say it out loud. “He was the man who never was.”

“Wouldn't it be nice to think so?”

“Nice? Even necessary.”

Morgan tousled her hair and she shook off his condescension with a friendly flourish.

“Here,” he said, hoisting a marble pedestal to chest height, after setting the vase that was on top of it carefully on the floor, “let's test out the building code. I've got a theory that walls are conventions.”

“Me too,” said Miranda.

Morgan swung the pedestal like a battering ram against the wall beside the heavy front door. It jarred violently, sending spasms of pain through his shoulders.

“But, but,” said Miranda. “You want to find a soft spot, Morgan. I think you just hit solid cement. Try over a bit to the left.”

“You try,” said Morgan, flagging his arms through the air, trying to make the pain fade away.

“Can't,” she responded, holding up her injured hands.

“Where's your glove? You've lost one of your gloves, did you know that?”

“Yeah. Come on, heave the marble, let's get out of here. I'm betting —”

“Between the two of us, we've been betting a lot —”

“And coming up winners. Morgan, I'm betting the wall right here is non-supporting, it's six-inch cement blocks. They'll crumble on impact. Try it again.”

He hoisted the column back into the air and swung it with all his might, this time releasing his grip just before it hit the wall. It penetrated out into the marble-walled foyer, a marble slab dropping whole to the floor. Another couple of swings and there was a hole big enough for them to crawl through. After what seemed an interminable wait, during which they exchanged embarrassed glances as if they were lovers, the elevator opened. There was a uniformed cop on board with a key in his hand. He was refracted into multiples of himself as he stepped from the mirrored interior. Morgan recognized the officer who had insisted on seeing his ID in front of Frankie's in Rosedale the night he turned up in her bedroom.