Broken Rainbows Read online

  Broken Rainbows

  A Novel by Bob Rager

  Copyright © 2012 Bob Rager

  Smashwords Edition

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  He stared at the heavy oak doors and the brass numbers. The numbers were right, he had taken an extra moment to write them down to be sure; wasn’t this the famous South Building? Once the largest office building in the entire world, and still pretty impressive, despite its decided lack of glamour, and present identity as the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He had thought he was going to the north side of the mall, near the FBI building. The last time he spent in the South building, his sister was showing off its newly re-decorated cafeteria, and the omelet station. He had to admit that as far as cafeterias go and went, it was pretty nifty.

  The corridor stretched before them into a haze. At security, a bored, black guard - was there any other kind? - pointed wordlessly at a plastic container? He put his leather and stud bracelet, a wallet, his U.S. passport, house keys, and about 42 cents in change into the container, and slid it along the top of the x-ray, or whatever machine it was. The safety of the free world came down to this small, ritual surrender, performed countless number of times each hour, day by day.

  ‘I guess I’d be bored out of my mind too,’ he thought, as he gathered up his belongings, and stuffed them back into his pockets. With the help of a map he had picked up at the information desk and following a route penciled in by the dull-eyed clerk behind the counter, he walked along a corridor of identical oak doors; hundreds of them it seemed. Then, down a flight of steps, down into a wide subterranean cave flowing with pedestrians; all the men in white shirts, sober neckties, close-cropped colorless hair, the women in neat blouses, and tailored socks; all the middle-aged, mid-level, mid-size cars in the mid-price suburbs.

  He felt conspicuous; he was an unshaven, ethnic-looking stranger in an un-pressed blue shirt with a third-rate degree and a resume of 35 jobs in 6 years; a higher than average experience with earthquakes, and a conviction for indecent solicitation in a public park, all written out in a thought balloon above his head.

  He moved closer to the edge of this endless promenade of high-minded dedication to public service. ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘I have been paying taxes’. Finally, there was no place else to go. Before him, blocking his way was yet another oak door with a panel of wavy glass, covered with a cryptic code of numbers and letters. He sat down on a wooden chair. He looked up; a small upside down hemisphere of black hung from a corner near the door. ‘Ah, big brother is watching.’

  After a moment of fear, he relaxed his shoulders. He wasn’t interviewing for a job, after all, despite the institution around him, whatever the reason for his Summons, the man he was meeting wasn’t looking to fill a vacancy in the Federal Service.

  He heard a click; the door opened, and a young man version of the passersby in the corridor looked at him.

  He heard his name, “Yes, it’s you, is it? Mr. Glandings will see you now.”

  He made a quick inventory of the room; a corner office with views of the Mall and the Capital building. But he had thought he was underground. Dark cherry desks and tables with brass pulls all straight out of the General Services Administration catalogue, a large print of Stuart’s George Washington in a massive gold frame, another large print framed in a black portrait of Aaron Burr, an odd touch that competed with the set piece – a photograph of President Hampton, all guarded by a U.S. flag hanging down from a mast and stand.

  He was looking at a back of a very tall man with massive shoulders standing at a desk at his elbows, à la Thomas Jefferson.

  He didn’t know what to say, but knew of course, in this circumstance, it wasn’t his place to say anything at all, and certainly not to begin the conversation.

  Chapter 2

  The man was of that fast, disappearing country of the Young thirty-ish, forty-ish, muscles grown at the gym. They all had muscles now. He did too, but he had grey hair, but this man’s hair was still some dark color or other, the muscles, the smooth hair, the trim waist. They all seemed the same – about forty years old and weighing 160 lbs.

  What caught his eye and held his gaze were what he called “survivors”, most definitely older, clouds of hair or glossy bare noggins, ropy arms and thighs like hawsers; still flicking hands under towels twisting lips into smoking overtures.

  In an acrid cloud of poppers in a dark room recently he had literally found himself up to his elbow inside a man in his 60s, who smelled of cigarettes and a diet of red meat of one kind or another.

  Thanks to a blue pill, their mutual emotions had goaded the other into an animal frenzy, one exploration leading to another until he found himself groping through the man’s body in an effort to grasp his heart. Until now, he had only ever read about this technique of pleasure: he vaguely remembered bar talk, mere boasting, an urban myth he thought, way back when and suddenly sober and clear headed he announced, “I’m pulling out”. He was immediately afraid, but of what? This man, his thighs sprawled across his shoulders clearly wasn’t afraid of anything. Still, just because someone has endured, didn’t excuse carelessness or indifference, right?

  “How do you stay so hard?” he blurted out the question.

  “I’ve got a cockring,” was the answer.

  He did too, but this man’s joint was massive and taut. Oh, it didn’t matter; the words didn’t rise to the occasion. What mattered was their survival, that they were alive in a future never to be known by others.

  The lessons of his Sunday Catechism came to remind him that “all good things must end”; that pleasures of the body were at best passing illusions; sensations mere clouds his mind’s horizons; he hadn’t remembered the gentle nun who taught him he had an angel on his shoulder until now, when he literally had on some kind of creature perched on his shoulder.

  Chapter 3

  …He played his little tricks; without much effort he thought of the fantastic angel at the same time he listened to Glandings’ rumbling bass. He wasn’t pretending to listen even as he heard the angel’s wings flutter tobacco-scented feathers against his neck. He heard every word anyway
.

  “How’s…” Glandings peered down at a file on the desk, “the institute working out for you? Oh, that’s wonderful. Teaching, so noble.”

  “Thank you.”

  They both shook their heads in agreement, glad to get that out of the way.

  Glandings tapped the desk, trying to remember something. “We didn’t know you were a man of faith,” he then said. The angel fluttered in confusion,

  Glandings actually seemed uncomfortable, but he pressed on, looking again at the open file. “You were at St. Andrew’s and Seminary just this Sunday.” Was that what Glandings called a man of faith – that he went to church on Sundays, instead of finding something else to do, really, for free? He went because of the lectures.

  “Yes, that’s right,”

  “The President and Mrs. Hampton were both there,”

  “Yes, they were,”

  “Vice President Betsy Clarke and her husband were there too.”

  “That, I didn’t know,”

  “Their son Michael sings in the choir,”

  Glandings gazed back with eyes that peered into every line, each pore, measuring him, sizing him up, weighing this against that.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “They don’t make a thing of it. They keep things low key, a minimum of fuss, a minimum of security. Are you sure you didn’t know about them, the little boy in the choir, about seven or eight?” He felt an icy finger run across his neck; the angel was gone utterly and completely. The anticipation of just exactly this moment was the reason. Years ago, he had chosen to avoid working with children; the whispers behind his back, the glances, un-renewed contracts, the parents hovering constantly.

  “Of course you don’t,” Glandings said at last. The greying giant left his desk, and with a wave to a pair of wing chairs, motioned they were both to sit down. Glandings majestically even leaning back was so large he seemed to be sitting on edge.

  “You have a range of a background…your father came back from Korea with a purple heart. He met your mother at Clark Air Base, your IQ…goodness, you are endowed. You interviewed with the CIA after college …” Glandings held up a hand to stop any explanation, “No, no, I understand, they are always looking for bright, young men. Then they find they don’t know what to do with them. Oh, look here – into every life, a little rain must fall. A little youthful indiscretion in a park with a policeman…”

  “Yes,” he said, “I was arrested by an undercover cop for immoral solicitation. I pleaded not to nolo contendre, and until now, I thought the records were sealed.”

  “Oh, but they still are,” Glandings sat back into his chair, his hands calmly resting atop each other. “You didn’t pay social security taxes for three years.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “Your returns state you didn’t earn enough money to pay taxes on. You lived in the East village and went to art school. You paid your tuition in cash.

  “You knew people, certain kinds of people, some well-known, others…yes, others.

  “A man of faith; the Good Thief, tell me you are the Good Thief?” Glandings held up a hand, “no, don’t tell me. Let’s find out.”

  Chapter 4

  Now despite his intense effort to hear every word, he wondered what he was missing here, there, and again – a word, a key sentence, a phrase that would make what he did here a tidy, predictable, A mechanical chore of delivering an envelope, putting a name to a face in a college graduation picture, explaining the wonders of the conditional tense to the lonely wife of a well-placed trade representative. You know, something that didn’t demand so much effort, so much sincerity, something that didn’t seem so….critical.

  “Do you remember him now?” Glandings asked mercifully, Glandings stopped the excruciating, relentless march of one detail after disturbing detail – like the holding of the hands of the deranged tick, tock, tick, tock of a timepiece closing in on an execution.

  “I may have seen him, I mean, from where I sat.” He hoped his fumbling wasn’t too obvious a bid for more time.

  “He was gone for almost 12 hours,” Glandings said at last.

  “I don’t remember anything, or can’t for now.”

  Glandings looked out the window for a long time.

  “But there wasn’t anything in the press.”

  Glandings slowly turned away from the brilliant, white dome of the Capital. “And there won’t be. Vice President Clarke wants it that way. She has her son back, he’s alive, and in one piece. She does have one small request. She wants to know what the God damned hell happened!” With that, he pounded a fist the size of a baseball glove on the leather blotter, and the ink well jumped at the impact.

  The man’s wrath surged through him in an electric jolt, Zeus’ hurling bolts of lightning across the skies.

  But this wasn’t a situation evened up by raining bombs on a maze of gulleys, 8000 miles away.

  “So you know what we had to do, what we did, just to be sure because there wasn’t any other way to be certain?” Glandings’ voice edged up the smallest fraction in pitch. “We had to x-ray this…” He groped for the word, “this child, to make sure he wasn’t booby trapped. We told him we were going to the doctor’s for a physical.” He shook his big, grey mane, “That’s how close they were – a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.”

  He felt his armpits go cold and damp against his shirt. “I’m not about intense conflict, sir. I’m about training manuals, finding patterns, I’m sure you know that.” Of course he did, Glandings knew everything when he wanted to. He felt as if he were before God Himself – there were no secrets hidden, no desires unknown, no court records sealed from his eyes.

  “You’re modest…that’s practically a mortalism in this town.”

  “With all due respect sir,” he said, “I don’t really have much to offer in situations like this.”

  “Oh, but I suspect you do more than you know,” Glandings watched him from eyes hooded by his famous bushy eyebrows. Then Glandings said the two words certain to strike terror into the heart of anyone in town.

  “Trust me,” he said, “you do.” Glandings leaned slightly forward, his shoulders arching around his head, his fangs ready to strike. Then he reared back suddenly, hissing his breath, suddenly bored with the game of toying with a little field mouse.

  ‘They were all mad, insane!’ he thought, ‘but so what?!’ This man had power – look at that file, a court document sealed decades ago, now here, sent over by courier.

  Suddenly, in this murky cloud, a glimpse, a flash, a way out. “I suppose you have something in there,” he glanced at the folder, almost completely hidden under Glandings’ right paw, “from Dr. Frosman?”

  Glandings smiled, “I’m touched that you took the courtesy to ask instead of assuming we are merely insensitive, overbearing. Now he returned to Glandings’ gaze evenly with his own, horror for horror, darkness for darkness, pain for pain, hope for hope. That’s why I’m so sure you have what it takes to get this done, something perfect for you, something you would be really good at.”

  The ward’s voice curled through the air, purring in his ears. This was no request, no discussion. Oh, he could always refuse – what could they do to him that the bankruptcy courts, the whispering, and the gossip hadn’t done? What shame and defeat could come down on him that his own mind hadn’t already visited on him? But that was the point, wasn’t it? Like sending out soldiers to certain deaths; you’re already dead, so why not make the most of it?

  Glandings then said “I knew you would see it our way.”

  Once again outside under the cloudless sky surrounding the alabaster monuments and institutions, solemn and enduring, he waved for a cab. He didn’t know where he was going until he climbed into the back seat. He searched his pockets until he found the clean, new envelope Glandings had pressed upon him.

  He wasn’t a delivery boy now, the envelope was for him this time.

  Chapter 5

  He stared at the closet, its
contents. Did all things begin with staring at his wardrobe? It was as good a place to begin as any. What does one wear for a trip back into time?

  The button-down shirts and cuffed chinos? He was so old now, wearing them made him invisible. He didn’t look twice at the suits, he only really needed one, if that, but he was helpless when he found a wool suit at the thrift shop for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children; who were these men who threw away three suits fit for a prince? And then he saw what he searched for, near the end, almost hidden by the school marching band tailcoat.

  He looked from the shaded doorways and at drivers in passing cars; a van parked in front of the Department of Energy was interesting; and yet another unmarked van – not very cool, probably young entrepreneurs from Anacostia flashing DVDs from behind their waists, so innocent and helpless it was touching. Just kids, yet the impersonal calculus of probability had them dead within months.

  Or disappearing from a church that once sheltered George Washington’s head as he bowed in prayer; disappearing for 12 hours under the careful eyes of his nanny, a vanishing infant of a hundred faithful only to re-appear in the same chair-loft, pouting with impatience, yawning after missing a long overdue nap, saying only, “We just played games.”

  As he firmly elbowed him out the door Glandings slipped the envelope under his arms. In it held 5 pages of single-spaced, ominous cooking type stamped with a classification that he had only heard rumors about, and certainly one he wasn’t cleared to read.

  But, here it was anyway.

  Was it possible for someone to forget 12 hours? Hmmm, he didn’t readily remember the past 12 hours himself. The 12 hours ago with Glandings he remembered, indelibly.

  12 hours ago he calculated backwards – that wasn’t remembering, was it? More picking a time and hoping to strike a bull’s eye, or piñata that exploded open with bits and pieces.

  He remembered a bit, a piece; a sandwich he had eaten. That was what his mind and memory yielded? He had eaten a sandwich?