Crux

78 TRUTH OUT

Saturday November 3rd

Holtzmann collapsed heavily into his office chair. Door locked from the outside. Computer off the net. Office phone dead.

He pulled out his own phone. It still had weak signal, intermittent connection. He could use it. But who would he call? Who could help him at this point?

He stared at the screen of his workstation.

No. Not who could help him. Who could he help? He still had this data.

Holtzmann took the most damning diary entries and the memo creating the ERD, concatenated them, then advanced them page by page as his Nexus OS took photographs of each on the screen of his workstation. He had to get this out to the world.

He linked his mind to the net through his phone connection again. It was halting, painfully slow. He tried to connect to the anonymizing service, waited, waited, there.

He tunneled from there to the Nexus board, to his inbox, to the messages he’d exchanged with the underground railroad person. They needed this.

The connection was terrible. He had to refresh multiple times, but then he had it going. He started uploading the file from his mind to a new message. Holtzmann had no idea how long this would take. He hunted through options, clicked “compress on wire”, “auto retry uploads”, and “send once complete”.

He turned back to his workstation, to dig deeper, to learn more.

Then the door to his office opened with a click, and Maximilian Barnes walked in.

Holtzmann stared slack-jawed at Barnes. The man looked completely unruffled in his black suit and white shirt, every one of his black hairs in place, his dark eyes almost lively, amused.

“Martin,” he said.

Bluff! Bluff!

“Director Barnes!” Martin replied. “I’m so glad you’re here. Shankari stole my badge.” He chuckled. “I was stuck here.”

Barnes smiled, closed the door behind him, and sat down in the chair across the desk from Holtzmann.

Holtzmann had to keep playing. He could do this. He could talk his way out of here.

He shook his head ruefully. “That was foolish of me. Have they caught Shankari yet? They know to keep him alive, yes?”

Barnes smiled wider. “I’m not here about Shankari, Martin.”

Zoe pounded a hard gust of wind against the windows, followed it with a machine gun fire spray of rain.

Holtzmann raised one eyebrow. “The Nexus kids, then? They can’t get far.” He gestured back behind himself at the armored window, at the hurricane beyond it.

Barnes chuckled. “You opened the wrong file, Martin.”

The cold dread clenched around Holtzmann. He knows.

Then he thought: I’m not getting out of here.

Holtzmann closed his eyes, raised his hands to his face.

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He opened his eyes and looked at Barnes again. Warnings scrolled down his face about poor connection quality, about low bit rates.

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He ignored them.

“Here,” Holtzmann said, lifting the briefcase off the floor. “The files Warren Becker left are in here.” He put it on the desk, slid it towards Barnes.

Barnes took it, placed it on the floor next to him. “Becker, eh?” He sounded amused. “Haunting us from the grave.”

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“Where you put him,” Holtzmann ventured.

Barnes’ expression became grave. “I think it’s time you joined him, Martin.”

Barnes reached into his jacket pocket and Holtzmann’s heart froze in fear, expecting a gun. He produced a pill instead. Small. Green. He placed it on the surface of the desk between them, and as he did, Holtzmann noticed for the first time the thin shimmer around Barnes’ hands. Monolayer gloves. He’d leave no trace behind here.

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“The President values your loyalty,” Barnes was saying. “You’re a true American hero, Martin. Your wife will be taken care of. Your boys – off at college, right? In Europe? They’ll do great.”

Holtzmann stared at that little pill. His vision contracted around it until the room and Barnes and everything else shrank to insignificance, and only the pill remained, huge and ominous.

End of the road, Holtzmann thought. End of this long life of compromise. I should have followed my dreams, just once. I should have stuck with my convictions.

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He looked up at Barnes again. “Does the President even know?” he asked.

Barnes shrugged. “He doesn’t need to be concerned with details.”

“You created the PLF,” Holtzmann said. “Does he know that? That you run them? The people who shot at him? Who killed men and women he knew?”

Barnes’ jaw tightened. “Swallow the pill, Martin.”

“Non-lethal missions,” Holtzmann said. “I read the file. What happened three months ago? What happened in Chicago?”

A muscle twitched in Barnes’ jaw. He leaned forward, used one monolayered finger to push the pill towards Holtzmann.

“You’ve lost control, haven’t you?” Holtzmann asked. “The fiction you’ve created has become real. Your pet terrorist group is biting at your hand now, isn’t it?”

Barnes stared at him, coldly, then leaned in close. “Take that fucking pill, Martin, or I’m going to shove it down your throat.”

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Holtzmann pushed back in his chair, his hand on his cane, propelled himself up and back, back, until he touched the window. He could feel the rain drumming against it, a high-pressure barrage of fat water droplets shaking the glass.

Holtzmann closed his eyes to see the bandwidth. It was up a notch higher here. Signal strength was just the tiniest bit better.

He opened his eyes and Barnes was standing in front of him, half a head taller. His hand was up before him, the green pill pinched between thumb and forefinger.

Holtzmann scooted to the side, away from Barnes, away from his death, towards the corner. Barnes followed him, grimly, the taller man’s eyes drilling into Holtzmann’s. Holtzmann closed his eyes in fear, not brave any more, not wanting this, not wanting to see his own death coming.

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Holtzmann’s eyes flew open.

Yes. Yes.

Barnes reached out for him and Holtzmann retreated further, into the corner, shuffling fast.

Barnes followed him and Holtzmann swung his cane at the man – swung it at his head!

Barnes snatched the cane in midair with his left hand, an annoyed look on his face. Then he yanked it out of Holtzmann’s hand, flung it across the room.

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“Is this how you killed Warren Becker?” Holtzmann demanded. “Is it?”

“Becker did what he was told,” Barnes replied. Then his left hand reached out, closed around Holtzmann’s jaw, and clenched, prying it open.

Holtzmann cried out, struggled, kicked at Barnes, beat at Barnes’ head with his hands. The man was so strong!

Then Barnes brought his other hand around, grabbed hold of Holtzmann’s upper jaw, and pulled his mouth open.

Holtzmann felt bitter powder land on his tongue as Barnes crushed the pill with his fingers. He tried to spit the powder out, but by then his mouth was shut, clamped shut by Barnes’ impossibly strong hands.

No! He struggled, refused to swallow. He got his hands on Barnes’ forearm, tried to pry the man off of him, strained with all his might.

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Nothing. Barnes was inhumanly strong.

He could feel the powder dissolving now, turning to mush on his tongue. Rivulets of a foul bitter taste were running down his throat.

No! God, no!

He stared at Barnes with eyes gone wild, found the man staring back at him, a look of grim satisfaction on his face, a fervor in the eyes, a small smile on his lips. A monster. This man was a monster.

More of the bitter fluid leaked into his throat.

Holtzmann stopped struggling then. He let himself go limp in submission. It was too late.

Barnes let him go and Holtzmann slumped bonelessly to the floor.

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He tried to spit, but there was nothing solid left in his mouth, just a thin greenness to his saliva. Barnes chuckled.

Holtzmann went Inside then. While he had the bandwidth. He piggybacked on the current connection, fired off a last message to his wife.

[I love you, Anne. I’ve always loved you. Please forgive me.]

Then he opened his eyes and looked up at Barnes.

“Why?” Holtzmann asked. “Why all this?”

Barnes stared at him for a moment, then answered. “Americans forget too quickly, Martin. Our lives are too easy. Fear is the only way to diligence.”

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Holtzmann shook his head. “But it’s a lie.” He could feel the drug working now, feel the pain in his chest, feel trembles taking hold in his arms.

Barnes shook his head in return. “It’s not a lie. It’s vigilance. It’s the price of freedom.”

A stabbing pain jabbed its way through Holtzmann’s chest. He gasped and folded his hands in. He was shaking now. His legs were twitching.

“People deserve to know…” he said weakly. “PLF is a lie… You created…”

Barnes stared coldly down at him.

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The real pain hit him then, impaling him with its intensity, forcing his whole body to arch and spasm. A giant took hold of his heart, started crushing it slowly in his fist. Its chambers gave up beating and simply clenched tight instead. Pain flooded him, rushed out from his chest and filled every inch of his body. He tried to scream but couldn’t breathe, couldn’t work his diaphragm to draw breath. His limbs spasmed, contorting of their own will. His vision went blurry, then dimmed. The world swam away from him as the blood flow to his brain ceased.

A booming crash came from outside as the storm blasted them with its fury. The last thing Martin Holtzmann saw was a blurry image of Maximilian Barnes standing above him, lit by a flash of lightning, with a single message overlaid atop him.

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And Martin Holtzmann smiled. Through the pain he grinned up at Barnes, grinned savagely, as death took him.