Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

“Duck!” Max cried, as bullets slammed the Mondeo broadside from both directions. He covered the steering wheel with his crossed forearms and hit the gas so the oncoming cars would be shooting at each other.

A seat belt would have kept him from banging up his legs and head in this seesaw maneuver. Too late to buckle up now.

Max heard the driver’s window shatter and felt a hot zing of air behind his head as his forehead jerked toward the windshield. He braked reflexively.

His right foot reversed the slowdown with a to-the-floor shot of gas. The Mondeo jackrabbited forward. His forehead bounced briefly off the windshield. He leaned back hard and applied the brakes to the floor again.

The two pursuing cars were spinning into each other’s now-bullet-riddled frames with engines steaming as they crashed in a glassy, metallic shower of body parts.

Max released a huge breath. “Close call. Are you all right?”

He glanced over, glad to see Garry upright in the seat. The passenger-side window was shattered too.

“We need to dump this car and hoof it to our hotel to decamp ASAP,” Max thought aloud. “Good thing you belted yourself in. I almost gave myself another memory concussion, but I’m okay. I think.”

Something tickled down his right forehead, making his eyelashes wet and sticky. Head wounds bled. Awkward, but not serious.

His hands and feet tingled as if they’d been “asleep” at the wheel. His knees and hips felt jolted, but solid. Best to get going while his body was still numb and couldn’t tell him where it had broken down until he was committed to moving it, to running.

“You take the briefcase,” he told Garry. “I’ll manage the computer. What’s the matter? Is your seat belt jammed?”

Max brushed the blood from his forehead, checking the rearview mirror. He heard a distant siren.

“Come on, we’ve got to move.” He grabbed Garry’s shoulder.

The older man was staring straight ahead. He should be moving by now, Max thought. He’d always been Max’s goad, not the other way around. Max focused on the shattered window haloing his friend’s familiar profile. Ruby red mixed with the diamond-edge crackle pattern shining in the light of a semidistant street lamp.

No… .

His stunned brain replayed the moment. The bullet that had shattered his window, meant for him, to stop their escape, had sped by a millisecond behind his head as the brakes jolted him forward, no seat belt to impede his reflexive motions.

Garry, belted in, held still, became the perfect target.

Now Max could see the small round hole in the grayish hair at Garry’s temple.

“No!” he cried, ripping Garry’s seat belt out so hard it gave at the door mount.

He pulled the old man’s body onto his shoulder, shedding bloody, blinding tears.

No, no, no. Not this loss too. You up there, take it back!

Garry—the name ran through his hobbled brain in a rhythm like a song—Garry, I hardly knew ye. Again.

Move, Max. The voice came out of the aching, blinding despair in his head. No matter who, no matter what. You’ve got to move on. Mourn your losses later. Move now!

“Why?” Max asked the empty car interior. “This isn’t a mission to save anything but my sorry past. Garry, I won’t leave you. You’ve never left me.”

And his faltering memory hadn’t resurrected all he’d known of the living man. Maybe it never would, now.

Listen to me. No matter how bad the situation, you have only one option. Always. Action. Move, Max!

“Why am I remembering your advice now? When it’s too late. It’s too late, Gandolph. I can’t do a damn thing about anything. That fucking seat belt!”

His voice and questions filled his mind, the car. There were no answers but the mantra that Gandolph had planted in his head over the years, released like a long, old-fashioned tape recording.

Trust me. Move, Max. Move on. It’s what you’d want if the situation were reversed. Let it go. Let me go.

“No. Your body. Who will claim your body? Buried and forgotten like a Magdalen asylum woman? No!”

A vehicle was rushing into the shattered night of broken cars and men, flashing blue lights.

The Belfast police.

Max, for God’s sake, move!!! Find out what you must, do what you must, what we determined we must do. Find Kathleen O’Connor, if she’s there to be found. Tell her “Sláinte” for me. Then find your heart’s desire.

Max pulled the torqued driver’s-side door open, grabbed both legs, and kicked them out as battering rams against the balky steel, hoping they’d break again. The door creaked agape. And Gandolph’s body slid farther into the driver’s seat Max was abandoning.

He let a calm thought cross his mind, then grabbed the laptop and briefcase, Gollum’s “my precious” times two. He’d read The Lord of the Rings, even if Garry claimed he hadn’t.

Everything they’d learned, that Gandolph had learned, for his sake, rested inside these fragile cases, one of paper and leather, one of pixels and plastic.