Young Writers Society

Washington, D.C

“You've got nerve, Stanley. A hell of a lot of nerve.” FBI director Jack Romney shook his head, tapping a Camel out of a package of cigarettes, and stood behind his desk. The clock above his head – hand carved and at least fifty years old – killed seconds in time with Mark Stanley's heartbeat. Mark watched the clock anxiously. The god-awful thing just wouldn't stop ticking. Every flick of the second hand echoed in his head like a timpani. The situation didn't help much either. A diffused bomb sat on a dissection table two floors down, David Butler was in the hospital with a punctured brachial artery, and there was a dead woman in the New York subway system. A woman he had shot. The shock still hadn't worn off. He had pulled the trigger, he had swung the scythe. Mark felt as if something had been taken from him. As if some sort of virginity of his had been spoiled. The woman seemed to stare at him in his peripheral vision, grinning wildly, a suitcase in hand, alive, still alive.

It's over. The American dream will end. Everyone wakes up eventually.

And now he was sitting in a chair opposite the FBI director who was telling him he had one hell of a lot of nerve.

The clock kept ticking.

Romney lit the cigarette and took a short drag on it, staring out the window overlooking the bottlenecked street below. “What I still can't get over is that you were in the area in the first place. The greenest desk-jockey in the entire bureau. How long ago did you get out of the academy?”

“Two months, sir.”

“Two months. You're a biochemist with a couple weeks of hand-to-hand training and, by mere chance, you were within a mile of a chemical attack target. And what's more, you were the one who neutralized the – what was she? Libyan? – that Libyan whore, pulled the fuse, and you did it by yourself.” The big man shook his head and tapped his ashes into a tray by the window. Mark fidgeted and squirmed in his seat. Jack Romney made him nervous. He had spent over thirty years in the field, his shoulders could barely fit into his suit coat, and he had practically revolutionized the entire bureau. The place ran like a proverbial swiss watch with an obsessive-compulsive complex.

Run, run as fast as you can.

“Can I get you anything, Stanley? A cigarette, water, beer?”

“No thanks. Nothing.”

Romney turned around, stubbed out his cigarette and frowned – a deep, creasing frown that dug ruts in his face. “A beer, then.” He made his way over to a miniature refrigerator, took out a can of beer, and set it in front of Mark. “It's on me. But don't tell anyone where you got it. The bastards'll break down my door to get to it, trust me.”

Hesitantly, Mark lifted the can off of the table with both hands, but didn't open it. That was another reason he didn't like Romney. The director was the type of guy who could care less what anyone wanted or felt like. It was his way, or a one way ticket to the ground floor.

Keep your mouth shut, Stanley, and just drink the beer.

He popped the tab. Frosty steam smoked up from the alcohol as Mark took a sip.

“I wanted to congratulate you. Like I said, you've got nerve. You see something that needs doing and you jump on it. I don't see enough of that anymore. People need to ask permission, they need to fill out forms, they need to waste time going through circuit courts and talking to every bureaucratic jackass on the senate to get anything done.” Romney snorted and sat down, loosening his tie and checking his watch. “The long and short of it is, Stanley, I was wondering if you'd go through the academy again and get out in the field. We need people like you out there. We need action and decisiveness.”

Mark nearly dropped the can of beer. The field? The director wanted him to work in the same field where the agents were condescending and fostered an I-can-do-anything-because-I've-got-a-gun attitude? No, Mark was content where he was. He was content doing what he went to college for. Biochemistry was the field he wanted to go into, for God's sake, and that's what he would do. He didn't want to make a living out of more killing and crime and Libyan terrorists. He didn't want to be on either side of the gun, receiving or delivering.

The field was nothing more than human target practice.

“Sir, I got my biochemistry degree for a reason.”

“So you got a back-pocket career option. What are you being paid right now? Thirty thousand a year? Tell you what, I'll raise your paycheck by fifteen grand if you move into the field.”

“I don't think so, sir.”

“Why not?”

Mark shrugged and squirmed in his seat. He set the beer on the desk. “I'm sorry, sir. I just can't take you up on that offer right now. I like what I do. I didn't come to the bureau looking for a badge and a gun. I'm sorry.”

Romney grunted, shrugged, and spun around once in his chair, his eyes on the ceiling. “Have it your way, Stanley. Can't say you're making the right choice, but hell, it's your life.” He stood up and thrust out his hand. Mark got to his feet and took Romney's hand. “I'll see you around then.”

Mark nodded. “Goodbye, sir.”

“It's Jack. Call me Jack.”

“Jack.” Mark smiled and nodded again.

Leaving the beer on the table, Mark made his way out of the room, away from the clock and it's guillotine decapitation of second-heads.

Mark walked out of the J. Edgar Hoover building and merged into the crowd of people crossing endlessly over the sidewalk and headed out of the downtown area toward his apartment, hands deep in his pockets. The November air chipped at his face like an ice-pick, inflaming his nose so that it broke into a dull pink-red and making the corners of his eyes tear up. Mark felt empty. And the meeting with the director hadn't done anything to help that. Killing the terrorist had been enough for Romney to practically nominate him for a Nobel Peace prize. He had gotten a pat on the back for painting skull fragments across door like some Picasso-butcherer. And what's more, you were the one who neutralized the – what was she? Libyan? – that Libyan whore, pulled the fuse, and you did it by yourself.

That Libyan whore.

Mark never wanted to touch a gun again. The feeling of kickback and the sight of a dead body had been hopelessly intertwined. A plus B equaled C. The woman's ghost was not far behind him, he knew. She was always just out of sight, reminding him. Reminiscing with him.

But she had deserved it, hadn't she? That Libyan whore had almost gassed a hundred people in the name of hate. Mark had saved their lives, he had killed for the masses. A sacrifice, was what it had been. Self-defense.

Mark turned the situation over in his mind, trying to spot another option he could have taken. She had activated the bomb, pointed a gun at his head, and had nearly passed him into the arm's of God within a three second time-frame. One moment of hesitation on Mark's part would have bought him the easy way out. A bullet instead of chemical burns on his trachea and half a quart of blood coming out of his mouth each time he vomited. What else could he have done? There had been no alternative.

But he had still killed someone.

And it would be the last and only time. He would stay in a lab where he belonged, badge at home, an antidote in hand instead. There would be no more David Butlers. There would be no more screaming for hands-behind-your-head. That was the last time he would be caught in the field, he decided.

Mark turned left down a side street and kept his head down. He would go to a bar. He would get drunk and forget it all. And maybe it would become permanent. Maybe a couple glasses of tequila would dispel his ghostly stalker. Bottoms up, apparitions out. He smiled in spite of himself. Terri would be furious, of course. He could already picture her face, her arms crossed across her chest, legs crossed across her thighs, sitting in the easy chair in the living room. Waiting for him to come home. Always waiting.

And what are you waiting for, Mark?

Mark had only planned for the engagement with Terri Masters to last a month – maybe more – and then he would marry her. But the aisle was such a study in contrasts, he now saw. It meant commitment, it meant a lock-in, it meant tax benefits. And, eventually, it meant kids.

And Mark wasn’t ready for kids.

Terri was becoming impatient, restless. She wanted a ring, for God’s sake! A trophy. Twisted metal that she could show to her relatives and win a little approval. I’m a respectable woman now, Mom, see? She knew what she wanted. Mark didn’t.

Sure, he loved her, he knew he loved her, but he wasn’t ready to become a husband or a father or any kind of figurehead. Mark liked his options open. Starting a family meant unstable times and arguments and trials and tribulations. A marriage would end his comfortable, impregnable bachelorship and ram his nose into the grindstone. He would become just another ladder-climber, desperate for a promotion and a bigger paycheck.

So did that mean he was afraid of hard work?

Mark frowned and emerged onto a bigger thoroughfare. He could see the sports bar just down the street, neon signs twinkling in the half-light, and headed toward it. He wondered what Terri would say. Since Mark had been in New York verifying chemical related foul-play in a string of factory plants, he hadn’t seen Terri for the past week. She knew nothing about that Libyan whore. She didn’t know he had disabled a time bomb and she didn’t know he had single-handedly saved over a hundred people. The bureau had decided to keep a lid on this one, so there had been little press coverage and zero reference to Mark. And he liked that just fine. He had washed his hands of the whole incident anyway. He didn’t want credit for an underground execution with terrified commuters as spectators, gathered around his guillotine, screaming for him to drop the blade.

Tuer la femme!

Kill her!

Mark shivered and opened the door of the bar; soaking in the smell of French fry oil and cheap cigarettes. Two televisions – grainy and pixilated, so that the football game on the screen was curtained by a shower of blue and yellow and red dots – commanded the attention of the men and women perched on the bar stools. Mark walked up to the counter and ordered a glass of tequila. In a minute or two, he’d order another. And then one more. He’d drink until he couldn’t think or walk straight and leave his unseen ghost outside. Screw the hangover.

Tonight he needed some peace.