{Installation} – [oo3]

Life would be an endgame if we knew it all.

February 2017
South Korea

Even Las Vegas was in boycott of his calls. Pierre consciously fights the urge to crush the identical twin of his own cellphone in his palm. Calls to his Nagasaki hometown, directed to the comrade who had handed him the transaction, went straight to voicemaill. Somebody’s obviously having the time of his life at 2am. He curses his comrade under his breath.

Pierre, having gone solo as an agent, had long since acquired the art of non-existence. He had plucked the traceability of his mobile phones off the locality map — contributing to the anguish of having lost the only point of contact with his Vegas merchant.

He spends a good 3 hours retracing the alleys in search of the girl who is in most unfortunate possession of his cellphone, sincerely hoping that she had not stupidly picked up any calls.

Yeah right.

“Meddler”, “nuisance” and “interferer” were written in bold all over that girl’s pretty face. Pretty face. Did I just think that aloud? He looks down at the cellphone indistinguishable to his own, save for the absence of a small spiderwebbed crack – a scar acquired in the backpocket of his owner who had fallen 10-feet onto a parapet – and he admonishes himself for the possible disastrous mistake.

In the span of 3 hours, a Reina Yamaguchi had tried to contact this girl, whose name he had no burning desire to learn of, a grand total of 153 times.

“Jae? I need to crack your brains. Take down this name and get her checked.”

True to his top-notch skills at disarming passcodes to government system files, Jae had replied within the hour.

“Reina Yamaguchi was a child actress in Japan, born in Nagasaki and raised by nannies. Attended a Western University in Korea. Seems to have blood relatives here too. You like this chick? She’s hot.”

“Nothing fishy about her?”

“No…wait you’re checking up on her? Man, I thought you were just interested. She’s clean.”

“Great. Get me photographs, address, next-of-kin, details.”

“Sent.”

With no time to lose, Pierre cracks the lock on a Vespa in an open-spaced lot and races it to the address tagged to Reina Yamaguchi. The helmet reeked of cheap cigarettes but Pierre keeps it locked around his throbbing head.

Whoever had hired the chick whom Pierre silently and swiftly disarmed earlier in the alley was bound to have already heard of her misstep.

Pierre was to be dead. Details of the transaction had to be hushed, forever.

Now he lives. And this Reina Yamaguchi was going to lose an important friend.

All Pierre needs at the moment is his cellphone back in order to inform the Vegas merchant of the glitch in operation. The money was already in somebody else’s hands, for god knows what reasons. He would need to get it back. But to do so, he would need to play hero for a certain intrusive damsel in distress. He abruptly guns the engine. Long legs already sweeping up the porch steps to Reina’s dormitory before the Vespa was even silenced.

Why the heck had she been trailing in his shadows all night? She looked way too uptown and naïve.

The gun loosely tucked into his waistband was a .45 caliber Beretta, and if required he was swooping in for a quick decisive kill. But the victim he was looking for had no place and name. Who the heck had pounced on the previous messenger, and how did they know of this clandestine deal?

First things first — find the girl, save her ass.

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Eiji doubles back up the stairs, taking three at a time, and finds Reina collapsed in a quivering heap. He crouches by her side, takes her by the shoulders, as he takes in the scene before him. The house was in disarray – looking as though heavily ransacked. Eiji makes a mental note to ask Reina if they had lost any precious items when she sobers up.

“Stay here,” he orders, gets back up in a run towards Noemie. With fresh blood streaking down her face, and frail breathing, Eiji does not move her. Instead, he places emergency calls to the police and the hospital.

“Get her blankets, Reina.”

The girl staggers to her feet and moves as instructed. The thick blankets were soon stained with blood upon placing them over the motionless body. Her hands shiver as she struggles to wrap the blankets around Noemie, careful not to dislodge any vital crime-scene imprints.

Suddenly, Reina drops to her hands and knees in the puddle of blood and peels off the blankets. “Wait. It’s not Noemie. It’s not her, it’s not her!”

Hysteria rises in her voice, as new panic replaces the shock of discovering the body.

“She’s wearing her clothes! Why is she wearing Noemie’s outfit?”

Eiji pulls Reina up and hugs her briefly. “Go into the kitchen and call her cellphone. I can’t find it anywhere.”

He calmly dissects the scene and the injuries of the girl before him. Somebody had used physical force to knock her out. His or her main intention was not to kill. It was also a fresh wound, Eiji observes, probably minutes before he had brought Reina home. Blood trickled down her left temple. Seeing as bulk of the bloodshed came from the base of her skull that had met the edge of the dining table with force.

Noemie’s ringtone sounded just outside the door, seconds before it swung open.

Clutching the ringing cellphone, Pierre takes one look at the girl’s body and cursed under his breath. Eiji makes a grab for the nearest table lamp, steps between Pierre and Reina.

“Look,” Pierre surrenders his unarmed hands,  “I know what happened. If you want to save your friend, listen carefully.”

Wailing sounds of siren alerted them to approaching authorities. Pierre dropped to his knees.  Weakened pulse. Alive. But this unconscious body of his attacker in the alley was smeared with Pierre’s fingerprints.

“Grab fresh blankets. We’ve got to keep her warm. We’ve got to get out! I’m not here to hurt anyone. Staying will make things worst if you two are arrested for suspected murder.”

Urgency in his voice seems to engage his listeners into shocked action. In minutes, Noemie’s double was wrapped in bedsheets and huddled down the stairs in Pierre’s arms, closely followed by a stricken Reina and a suspicious Eiji. They make it past the dumpster, before hearing their unlocked front door slamming and male voices establishing contact. Cops.

“Got a car, boy?”  Pierre gently lowers the body onto his stolen bike.

“No. Don’t call me boy.”

“I’ll upgrade your nickname when you prove it. Think you can handle a Vespa? I’mma jack another.”

“Who the heck are you?” Eiji rants, but already he is swinging a leg over and starting up the engine.

“Get into the back of his bike,” Pierre tilts a chin at Reina as he single-handedly disarms a sound lock security, “and follow my lead. Don’t even think of going anywhere.”

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Cutting edge technology my ass. He had, in his possession, government blueprints, corruption archives, treason records, and proof of rumoured political scandals. He could earn trillions from blackmail, but Jae was not one to hanker after big bucks. Countries, states, unions, societies, and organisations…everybody was entitled to secrets, right down to the individual. He stood resolute to an absolute faith in the moving power of unresolved riddles and enigmas. In a lifelong race, Jae had been searching for a sense of an ending to the life he knew before his father was dead.

Aren’t we all searching for answers? Life would be an endgame if we knew it all.

Secrets.

Off the screen, he deciphers a series of numbers and barcodes and scribbles them onto a sketchpad. On his unlisted cellphone he translates the encrypted message.

1975.RALPHSARK.VIETNAM.

1975 marked the cessation of the Vietnam War. It was also the year his father’s company filed for bankruptcy in the face of corruption lawsuits. The year Pierre’s parents sought refuge with his father after the war.

Ralphsark was too well formed to be incidental gibberish. Jae cracks his brains for the next hour but comes up with nought.

A bleep sounded. This indicates an interception of messages and Jae enters the transmission to locate the source of interference.

YAMAGUCHI.

Yamaguchi?

Meanwhile, someone from the other end detects a hike in interferring lines.

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Scarlet Carousel ©
Searching for the centre of the universe, the centrifugal force that holds everything together.
Each spinning out of control, yet inevitably riveted.
Is this a journey with an end, or does the weight of the world settle in places where the spinning never stops.
Where then will the spiral lead them?

To be continued…

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xoxo
Viktoria Jean