The Mandarin Crew

The Mandarin Crew

by

J. Clayton Rogers

Copyright 2002

...indeed, our body is but a social structure composed of many souls.

Nietzche

The strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has found to belong to him and to distinguish him is one of the securities against injustice and despotism implanted in our nature... It is a sour, malignant, envious disposition, without taste for the reality or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished in splendor and in honor.

Edmund Burke

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

ONE

Commend the souls who commend your souls to the deep.  I'm not talking about priests or captains at sea.  I mean the Mandarin crews.

*****

If it's true each of us creates his own reality, in part or whole, then each of us is a kind of novel published by our own secret vanity press.  Only in my case, I was also simultaneously living my sequel.  At least this was what I thought when I saw myself at 8th and Main near lunchtime, Monday.  I had a foolish gait, like a character out of a Keystone comedy.  But I suppose that most everyone would have had that opinion of themselves given the opportunity to see themselves in full stride.  When you hear a recording of yourself for the first time, you think:  "That's me?  I sound like a moron."  I was definitely not the kind who loved the sound of his own voice.  Or the sight of me taking on the same gentle slope that Edgar Allan Poe had trod over a century ago.

My walk had too much lope and loop, was my first thought.  But on further observation I wondered if it was completely normal.  I needed the opinion of a second party.  No...a third party.

But I certainly did not like my fawning approach to strangers.  You don't meet people's eyes on the sidewalk.  Even in the South the old hey there nod is passé, and in some cases as dangerous to try as it is up north.  I could see myself flinch at an approaching pedestrian, try to meet his eyes, look away, try again, look away again, and finally look off in the distance when we drew too close to exchange glances, when eye contact would have been freighted with real implications.  I watched my awkward reactions.  My other self seemed smugly pleased that I had avoided interacting with a fellow human being, but also nonplussed at this additional evidence that our community was a fiction.

Yet over all these complicated facial gyrations lay a firm, implacable coat of innocence.

Innocence!  The truly innocent don't know what innocence is.  I felt myself straining forward.  I wanted to approach me, to show me the lie, the lie the other me knew that even then he was perpetuating.  The devil was as much in the other as it was in this me, separate, eyes wide open.

Not a good idea.

A hand on my shoulder.  Not forceful.  Almost gentle.  Yet a potent restraint, because of my own doubts.

Why not?  There's nothing in the contract against talking to myself while in the Work Zone.

She's right, Bongo.  You've never done it before.

And you have?

Never while on a job.  Much too time-consuming.

They were right, of course.  We were tracking a target.  But I could not take my eyes off me waiting for the light to change at the intersection. The other I was staring up at the electronic marquee outside the brokerage house across the street.  The Dow was down over eighty points.

Are you able to hear your other self? I asked.  Of course we see and hear our other selves when we merge.  Sometimes, even after we're doubled.  But what about when we were in the middle of the Work Zone?  "Can your other self hear and see you?''

I've never seen my original while on a Mandarin job, came the voice of the woman whose hand was on my shoulder. Not directly. But my case is unusual.

I held my breath.  Mai Ling, the mystery woman, the pint-sized dragon lady.  She was what used to be termed 'shy', then 'repressed.'  Naturally, in today's aggressive culture, she was just another loser.  But now she seemed on the verge of baring her breast.

Unusual how?

Her response was indirect, imprecise, and perfectly typical of her.  But sometimes I think she suspects I'm there.

You mean you think you're there, I said, determined to keep our awkward pronouns on their grammatical doilies in this new, terrible universe.  It was my way of maintaining the unity of my identity.

"No.  The other isn't me.  I mean—this isn't me. This can't be me.''

Mai Ling's voice choked.  She never verged but wallowed in a deep mire of despair.  She was a permanent fixture in her self-loathing.

Cut it out, Dead Eye berated me. You're upsetting her.

You should know better than anyone, I persisted. The others are us.  We are the others. This split is just a trick.

Oh, we’re tricks all right.

You know what I mean.  What if the Mandarin is toying with us?  Maybe we're all under some form of hypnosis.  Maybe this is all only...me.

You think we don't exist, Bongo? Mai Ling asked in a soft voice.

Turning tricks day and night, that's all we do, Dead Eye harped melodiously.

I watched my other self watch the ticker drop another point and wondered at my apparent fascination with the stock market.  I had never been enamored with Wall Street before, when I was whole.  You might need money in order to make money, but even more important was an aggressive purpose in life.  Watching me, and my sudden interest in the ups and downs of the financial market, I wondered if some of my othersoul had leaked into my more innocent twin.  Who was, of course, no more innocent than I was.

Confused?  So was I.  I don't think the Mandarin ever intended for us to comprehend all the permutations of what he'd done to us.  Or rather, what we'd done to our selves.

Why not talk to myself? I insisted.  We'll...I'll be joined again later, when we finish this job.

There's an enormous difference.  Mai Ling's fingers gripped deeper.  I think that if I saw myself by chance one day while on a job...and I went up to me...and told me what was happening, what I was doing...

Yes?

Bongo, I wouldn't be able to tell which of my selves made the pact with the Mandarin.

That swerved my attention.  Turning, I looked down at the petite woman, whom Dead Eye had taken to calling Weeping Willow—behind her back.

And if you met yourself while on a job, what would you say to...you?

She struggled to answer, the lineaments of the Far East lashed by doubt and fear.  I would tell her I'm not bad.  That I'm not evil.

Then...  I twisted the pronouns in my mouth.  Then you saw you, right?  It's not as though we become invisible to our selves.

I told you, my case is unusual.

In so many ways.

But if I did see myself while on a job, I don't think I would recognize this... she draped her hands to either side of her "...as my self.  If I spoke to me, I don't think I would be able to comprehend.  Not at first."

But if you're like me, your other self knows you might be doubled.  My attention was sorely divided.  I wanted to watch my self.  On the other hand, this was the most Mai Ling had said in all the years I'd known her.  I was eager to keep the conversation going.  When she did not respond, I continued, 'At first'?  That means you—

A girlish sigh.  Sometimes you have to be knocked over the head before you realize you've become a monster.  I don't think I would be able to convince her—

You.

"There's no way for you to understand.  All right, I did confront myself, but not in a way that you can imagine.  And you know what?  She convinced me!  That was my knock on the head.  Now that both of me have met inside the Zone....  I don't know which one of us walked away from that meeting.  Then she added in a strange smirking undertone, Walked..."  It was as though she was berating herself for her imprecision.

The 'Work Zone'.  Our uninventive term for the seamless terrain we entered when on a job.  Up to now, aside from the murders, the worst thing was not knowing who else we met on the street might also be in the Work Zone, since it was indistinguishable from reality.  Hell, for all we knew everyone was in the Work Zone.  Excepting, of course, our own 'others'.

I could imagine all too well the moral dilemma Mai Ling had confronted.  Picture her confusion.  Now that I was forewarned of the consequences of approaching me, I could duck out of the idea.  I despise reasonable warnings.  They turn me into a reasonable coward.

I have a clue, Dead Eye announced.

Hold on.  I looked towards the intersection, but I was gone.  I darted my eyes further down the street and caught a glimpse of me as I entered the Commonwealth Building, where Madison Insurance had its regional office.  It would involve a major detour now if I wanted to talk to myself.  We didn't have time for it.  I was saddened.  And relieved.

Where's the clue?

Dead Eye lifted his cane.

You're pointing at the middle of the street.

I know that.  I can hear the traffic.  That's an old Sunbird that just drove by.

I glanced up.  Damn if he wasn't right.  OK, what color's the Sunbird? I said in a crass attempt to disparage his uncanny ability.  After the next volley of cars had passed I walked to the middle of the road.

I don't see anything, I called back in protest.  And I was the one with 20/20 peepers.

Lower.  On the ground, I guess, Dead Eye shouted over the noise of an oncoming bus.  Hey Bongo, you'd better get a move on.  I can hear your sphincter popping.

Yeah?  What color is it?

I saw the clue and my heart sank.  I swept it off the pavement and jumped back to the angry accompaniment of the city transit horn section.

This?  I held it before Dead Eye's sunglasses.

Mm-hmm.  What's that smell?

Ignoring him, I showed the clue to Mai Ling.  She wrinkled her nose in despair.

Yeah.  The Mandarin isn't making this one easy.

Are they ever?

Surveying the block, I saw we were near the 8th Street Diner.

Maybe some coffee will help us decipher this.

Dead Eye and Mai Ling agreed.  Guiding Dead Eye up the single step, we entered the diner and occupied a booth.  Mai Ling and I shared a bench seat, the better to study the wrapper.

'Wrigley's Winterfresh Chewing Gum', I read out loud for Dead Eye's benefit.

Go on.

I waited until the waitress took our order to continue.

'Even cooler, even better!'

Even cooler and even better than what? Dead Eye asked.

Doesn't say.

OK.  Go on.

I turned the wrapper over and squinted at the fine print.  'Icy cool breath that lasts'.  That comes with the trademark logo.

That's it?

No, said Mai Ling.  I frowned at her and flipped the paper over.  Right.  More fine print.

'Keep foil wrapper to put gum in after use.'

And inside the wrapper?

I prized it open.  It's just blank paper.

Are you blind? Mai Ling reprimanded me.  What do you call this?

She rested a fingernail on a narrow white bar exposed when I opened and flattened the paper.  OK, some letters and numbers.  'US96-1 2004-5 13.'

U.S.  United States?

I wouldn't take it for granted.

2004-5.  That could be a 'best used by' date.

You'd think they'd be more specific.  That's a two-year window.

Thirteen...the lot number?

Too small for a lot number.  I think the whole sequence is the lot number.

The coffee came.  We hunkered in thought over the steaming cups.

The numbers.  A street address?

Doesn't match anything near here.

A room number?

Business district.  Could be a suite.

After a silent minute, I asked, You're sure this is a clue?

I can see it as clearly as you see the nose on my face.

I could only guess at what Dead Eye actually saw through his cosmetic sunglasses.  Was it a glow?  A blip in his eternal darkness?  He couldn't say.  Yet he was the only one of our little crew who could see the clues.  We presumed the Mandarin had made it so.  But he could only see the fuzzy outlines of the clues, not the details.  Not until we told him did he know what he was looking at.

Mai Ling had taken out a pen and was writing on her paper napkin.  She was playing with the lot number, trying to nudge secret codes out of the sequence.

Could the target's name be Wrigley?

The Mandarin's never given us a name before.

According to him, he's not the one who supplies the clues.

You believe that?

Anyway, this could be a first.  For once I would like to know who I was shooting or pushing out a window or electrocuting or—

Stop it!  Mai Ling slapped her pen on the table, her dark eyes digging into me even as tears welled up.  Had we been outside the Work Zone, off duty, she would not have had to say anything to shut me up.  She had that ability.

Any luck with the numbers? I asked gently.

I've got it, Dead Eye interrupted.  The Federal Building.  Not the courthouse.  The building near the river.

I mentally slapped myself on the forehead.  The clues always seemed obvious once they were unraveled.  The Mint.

The Federal Reserve, Mai Ling corrected.  They don't print money.

They manage hundreds of millions.  That's mint enough for me.

But it deviates from the clue.  It's your own interpretation.

The same with all the clues.  It may not make sense to you, but it does to me, and obviously it makes sense to Dead Eye.  If we're wrong, we look somewhere else.  Which would not be unusual.  Over half our clues led us astray at first go.

Hang on to the wrapper, Dead Eye advised.  That still might turn out to be a room number on there.

We finished our coffee.  Several patrons stared at us as we left.  Usually, they looked away, as a courtesy to Dead Eye.  But my tiff with Mai Ling had drawn attention.  Was it a lover's spat?  What did Dead Eye have to do with us?  Was he some kind of spiritual arbiter?  Noticing the patrons' eyes on us, Mai Ling made them look away.  An eerie chill always swept up my spine whenever she did anything like that.  Collateral psychic damage?  Or my imagination?

Security is a bitch at the Federal Reserve, I commented as we walked downhill towards the river.  I never swore when I was whole.  Either being doubled brought out a vulgar streak, or it imparted a sense of freedom that prompted one to be...well, vulgar.  They were thinking the terrorists might attack it at one time.

Still might.

Then we should wait and let them do the job for us.

Do you want to be a success in life or not?

I wonder...

Too late for wondering.

Words best left unspoken.  Mai Ling was already teary-eyed.  Murder is amusing to crazies, but the worst thing about this crew was its certifiable sanity.  We were doing what many others only dream about.  Correction.  What many others already did, and had always done.  That was how the world functioned.  Were it not for malice and envy, we would still be living in caves.

Mai Ling, so adverse to killing she practically went into convulsions at the mere thought of it, was the deadliest accomplice to murder anyone could imagine.  She made my part of the job almost easy.

We rarely went back to the van or used public transportation once we reached a target area.  Going on foot gave Dead Eye a better opportunity to spot clues.  But it slowed our progress, and sweltering days like this one made the hunt all the more miserable.  Looking for lost change on the sidewalk helped me cope with our sluggish pace.  So far I'd found 17 cents.  Not bad.

We were approaching the Federal Reserve Building when my eyes clamped upon a quarter sitting pertly on a cast iron water meter cover.  I scooped it up with a grunt of pleasure.

How did you see it? Dead Eye demanded.

It was just sitting there, I answered, nonplussed by his amazement.  Then it struck me.  It's a clue?

Yes.  What—?

It's a quarter.

Are we near the Reserve Building?

Right across the street from it.

Then that's it, Dead Eye smacked his lips in satisfaction.  A coin.  The Federal Reserve.  The Mint.

Oh God...

I hoped Mai Ling didn't balk.  As scarily efficient as she was when things got rolling, she had more than once dragged out the prelude with her tearful doubts.  We were tired of cajoling her into action.  I took Dead Eye by the elbow and guided him to a bench in a small park set awkwardly between the road and a downtown expressway off-ramp.  We sat and waited for Mai Ling's storm of scruples to blow over.  I glanced at the quarter.

It was stamped in 1989.

Could be the suite number.  Or the number on the wrapper could be where the target's located.  Is Mai Ling crying?  I can't hear over the traffic.

It's hard to say.  She's just standing there.

Where's 'there'?

The curb.

Can you reach her in time if she decides to jump in front of a car?

Not from here.  I turned to him, instinctively wanting to catch his eye.  Was such intimacy possible with a blind man?  I stared at my reflection in his polarized sunglasses and had the odd sensation that I was about to address myself.  That's an interesting notion.  What would happen to our originals if we committed suicide?  For that matter, what would happen if one of us got killed while on duty?

Not much risk in offing defenseless victims, Dead Eye responded in a ridiculously sage tone.

We've had some unexpected resistance.  More than one close shave.  I almost went out the window once, instead of the target.  Twenty-three stories, I think that was.

I studied Mai Ling.  She was facing the oncoming traffic.  Was she leaning forward?

Mai Ling! I called out.

No response.

Mai Ling! I repeated more demandingly.

What! she cried peevishly.

Come over here.

She hesitated a moment, then reluctantly dragged her feet our way.

Why don't you sit down and rest a moment?  There's room here.  And there's a street vendor over there.  Want me to get you a sno-cone?

Let's go, she said bluntly.  Her eyes were still red, but the tears had stopped.

Go where?

She nodded at the Federal Reserve Building.

I looked at Dead Eye, as though to exchange glances.

She's ready, I told him.

Good.

We helped him across the street and stood before the metallic-looking building.

The guards are watching us, Mai Ling informed us.

No kidding.

Bite your tongue, asshole, I bitterly chided myself.  So we didn't need a gee-whiz psychic to tell us how noticeable we looked standing there in front of one of the country's primary terrorist targets.  She was just doing her job.

For a city this size the Reserve was imposing.  Not world class, perhaps, but enough to cow the locals.  Its semi-isolation sustained the illusion of objective remoteness, being segregated from the clustered skyscrapers of the financial district. Wide boulevards and lawns kept the civil world at bay.  The four beams at the corners bulged like the flare shields of a Saturn V booster.  It seemed to hint that the economy was about to take off.

A car pulled up to the guardhouse.  After the driver's credentials were inspected, a barrier that made me think of a row of elongated cheese wheels sank into the ground, allowing the car to proceed up a long, semicircular driveway.  The steel cheese then rose to its former position.  The rest of the building was surrounded by a tall fence whose iron-wrought spikes appeared sharp enough to skewer anyone who tried to hop it.

The employees don't come to work through here, I observed.

The entrance to the underground garage is on the river side, said Mai Ling, who didn't always have to see to see.  There are even more guards back there.

Damn! I fumed.  This could be a bloodbath.  There's no room for maneuver here.  Why is the Mandarin sending us here?  Straight up the gut.  Why not the target's home?

My question was strictly self-posed.  None of us had a clue as to the Mandarin's motives, and knew little more about his methods.  Besides, he had long ago insisted that he had no control over where the clues led us.

As he often did when feeling stressed, Dead Eye began to hum.  We had learned from experience it had to be nipped in the bud before he broke into a dismal, full-throated rendition of A Bad Case of the Blues.  I hissed him quiet.

It looks bad, doesn't it?

There was something visual about his voice, as though he was shaping sonic images around things he couldn't see.

"Have any of our jobs looked good? I said testily.  And then, my own voice breaking, my own heart cringing in a pitiful, thumping lump, I said, Pull yourselves together, both of you!  We can't back out.  You know that.  If we didn't do this, someone else would."

You don't know— Mai Ling began.

But we know it's probable.  The Mandarin said there were other crews.  Plenty, in fact.

My anxiety was laced with exhaustion.  We'd been through this before.  In fact, we went through it whenever we did a job.  But the first assassination had made none of the others any easier.  Each time, we had to shrug off the heavy mantle of morality.

We remained conspicuously standing there for several minutes, excreting dismay through our pores, waiting to see who would move first.

I'll bet every outdoor security camera is zoomed in on us.

I've already fixed them, said Mai Ling.  Meaning she'd already broken them.

We suddenly found ourselves inching forward in timid baby steps.  Confidence slowly entered our stride, although in Dead Eye's case is was more a matter of keeping up as we tugged at each elbow.

The guardhouse was a shiny steel cube with long windows (no doubt bullet proof) on each side.  It looked large enough to hold a squad, though only one man was visible.  He was speaking into a radio.  Another guard was sauntering down the driveway, holding a walkie-talkie up to his chin.  He wasn't in a hurry.  We could not have presented a very intimidating threat.  A blind man, a tiny woman, and a clerk.  We looked more likely to whip out a disagreeable protest sign than a bomb.

What do you have in mind? I asked Mai Ling.

Some proactive angina.

The guard had just stepped out to intersect us at the barrier when a bolt of agony stamped his face.  Clutching his chest, he stumbled against one of the elongated cheese-wheel barriers and fell with a loud smack on the pavement.  The guard coming down the driveway broke into a sprint, reaching his coworker before we came up on the barrier.  He gave us only the briefest of glances as he concentrated on his partner.  We were innocuous, and he was probably counting on his security buddies stopping us at the main entrance.

He'll live, Mai Ling hissed when she caught my expression.

My concern was genuine.  It was bad enough snuffing assigned targets without adding bystanders to our collective guilt.  Non-targets had been hurt and even killed in some of our previous forays.  But were they innocent bystanders?  People just like us, before we met the Mandarin, who wouldn't have hurt a fly?  Perhaps, by the logic of chance, they would have become targets anyway, sometime in the future.

Of course, most of our targets were innocent enough, their only offence being in the wrong place in the wrong time with the wrong ambition.  They were bystanders to their own crimes.  The crime of existence.

Dead Eye's dread became more resistant to our prodding as we came up to the front entrance.  Mai Ling did what she could to keep him moving, but most of the dragging fell to me.

Word of the guard's apparent heart attack had already reached the front desk, where another guard was calling for an ambulance.

Another gray uniform was trotting towards us.  She tripped abruptly on the smooth linoleum and rolled in agony on the floor, grabbing her knee.

Where to? I demanded.

Dead Eye seemed blinded by a blind man's equivalent of the kind of blank stare you use to confront the incomprehensible.  There's too many people here.

An immaculate conception of tension.

Don't bother about what you can't see, I said uncharitably.  Where's the next clue?

I don't see anything.

There was a man on the next bench in the park, Mai Ling said tightly.  "What if the target isn't in the building, but across from it?"

He would've stuck out like a searchlight.  Dead Eye couldn't have missed him.  Strictly theoretical conjecture on my part.  As I mentioned before, I didn't have a clue what it was Dead Eye actually saw.

If I'd been alone I could have blended inconspicuously even without an ID badge or visitor pass.  Even Mai Ling would have been relatively invisible, if not for the terror that bulged her eyes whenever she invoked her psi powers, powers she was certain would one day backlash upon her.

Scruffy, his beard looking like a lawn chopped by a dull blade and his Afro pillowed in a Cat-in-the-Hat knit job that sloped down his back, it was Dead Eye who drew attention.  The dark glasses seemed part of a disguise, a misconception easily rectified when he removed them.

Then let's take him past the elevators.  For all we know, the target's on the first floor.

Too easy, Mai Ling murmured, but helped me guide Dead Eye beyond the burnished portals of the elevators.

There's nothing down here.  Just empty lobby.  The offices are upstairs.

But which floor?

We turned Dead Eye 360 degrees.

What's that?  Dead Eye aimed his cane over our heads.

A clock.  One of those in-your-face jobs spread out over twenty feet, the hour hands pointing approximately at distant bronze Roman numerals.  That's the next clue?

Yes.

Mai Ling gave me a tight-lipped smile.  The clues weren't always subtle.

A door was standing open when we returned to the elevator bank.  Luck, or Mai Ling? I wondered.  If luck, it was exceptional.  The elevators should have been jammed with hordes of Federal employees racing for their favorite local restaurants.  The time was 11:52.  We stepped into the elevator and I punched eleven.

Room 1152? I asked skeptically.  Could we be that lucky?

Luck again.  I hoped Mai Ling couldn't read minds.  She denied that she could.  Personally, I would never have admitted to an ace in the hole that valuable and seedy.

Let's check the layout before speculating.  I'm more concerned with how we're going to get out once we do the job.  I doubt you can handle so many security guards at once.

Easy.  Walk up and shoot him with everyone looking on.  There'll be mass panic and a run for the exits.  We run out with the mob.

Unlike the cranky elevator in the old building where my other self worked, the Federal Otis shot us to the eleventh floor in a matter of seconds.  I was mentally running the tagline the Mandarin had given me when the doors slid open.  On this particular occasion, before killing the target, I was to tell him or her, Your dreams and aspirations are unworthy and deserve to be ended.

Was the Mandarin serious, or were these parting shots intended to be sick jokes?  Perhaps they were a little of both.

Which way?

Several executive-looking types saw us turning Dead Eye in a circle.  No doubt we looked odd, but their first impulse was to think we were guiding a helpless blind man back the way he had come.  They would be relieved that someone else was dealing with the handicapped intruder, and only on afterthought realize they did not recognize the two people assisting a blind man through their hallways.  And then it would dawn on them that we didn't have ID's.

I don't see anything.

Bongo.  Look.  Mai Ling nodded at the directory on the wall.

1150 - 1157 →

We went right.

Between the elevator shafts and the wing was an open space chock-full of cattle pens—a common enough near-euphemism for workstation cubicles.  Partitions formed a maze to either side of the aisle leading to the main wing hallway.  A heavy swell of clicking pummeled us.  The clones of bureaucracy were busy at their keyboards.  The resemblance to my own job outside the Zone was more actual than symbolic.  My other self might not be herded into quite so literal a stockyard, but the ambience differed only in degree.

But what was I looking for beyond this type of existence?  Under my contract with the Mandarin I would get a promotion once my term in the Work Zone was done.  But if I went up a grade, would I really be better off?  I had killed men and