Layers of Betrayal

“It’s laughable that you know…”

Dr. Adler spit a bloody wad at Dr. Darrien.

“…so little.”

Darrien snickered. He snatched a silken handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the blood off his face, creased it back into his breast pocket. He walked across the observation deck, smiled wryly at the Puget Sound. Turning back on his heels with a click, he winked at Adler. “Knowing and acting, old friend.”

With a raise of his chin, Marconi and Greco lifted the gray twill vest, the white of Adler’s hairless arms and starched ironed shirt nearly indistinguishable and wriggling behind him in the wrap of yellow extension cords. They tossed him into a chair.

“And you know so much, but act so little.”

With another twitch of his chin, Greco’s truncheon smashed into Adler’s forehead; his trilby hat fell back, and Darrien snatched it from the ground, sniffed deeply in the felt inside, folded it into his Gladstone. The transceiver beeped mildly, released some fuzzy static.

Adler gasped for air, panted. “The…you…will nev…never understand…the…”

Darrien blinked. “The what, Adler? The Cascadian Subduction Zone? Tectonic plate theory? Giant rivers of rock under our feet causing all the movement of the world?”

“That. Yes.”

Another spit of blood followed, this one at Adler’s feet.

Darrien snorted. “Wegener, that German fool. Nobody believed him. But look at the man. A legend, now.”

He sauntered back towards Adler, leered over him. “And you thought you could continue his vision. Thought you could use Oppenheimer’s work to do…something. Hmph.”

Adler hissed, “You did nothing.”

With yet another twitch, Marconi slammed his fist into Adler’s mouth, sending a tooth onto the fresh linoleum. Darrien plucked it off the ground, placed it into the pocket of his slacks. He nudged Adler with his shoe, sending him off the armless chair into a heap. Marconi and Greco chuckled in unison.

“And now, you’re nothing. Look at you. Everyone back in Nevada thinks you’re just Griggs and Teller’s errand boy.”

Adler’s chest heaved as his breathing quickened, short furious bursts through his nose.

“The Century 21 should have been your fete de celebration, Leonard.” Darrien stepped over the agent’s corpse, gave a dismissive wave that scattered Marconi and Greco to the curved window, picked up the Colt. He cocked the 1911, set it on the glass table with a clink. “And now you’re going to have to tell the whole party downstairs—Elvis, the Shah, Cronkite, Bobby, Chubby Checker, John Wayne, Jonas Salk, Carol Channing, Walt, LBJ…even Johnny boy himself—that they are the victims of your foolishness.”

Grumbling something low and guttural, Adler tried to roll over, but only rocked back and forth.

Darrien laughed, then sighed. “Too bad we couldn’t get Ike to come to this party.He’s the one who ordered all those test.Too bad we just have to get all his buddies for what you two did.”

Static sounded from the agent’s radio.

“Ohhh,” Darrien cooed, “their ears must have been burning. They knew we were talking about them. Should I tell them what you packed for them in the concrete under us, Adler?”

“I was…I was gonna cut you in, Mort,” Adler managed. “I swear.”

Darrien bolted to the table, grabbed the gun, shot into the glass.

Greco raised his eyes. Marconi gasped.

“Just like you swore you’d give me research credit, Lenny? Like you swore you’d support me?” Darrien pointed the Colt at his head. “Like you swore you’d leave Miriam alone?”

Adler’s few remaining strands of raggedy hair lay glued to his gory temple.He rolled over feebly on the broken glass, managed a stare at the heaving Darrien, sockets pallid and discolored.

“I always knew…” he breathed, “how to take you…for granite.”

A grim smile showed fanged incisors, bloodied gums.

Darrien returned the grin, a smirk slowly building into a wide cheshire. “The mountain,” he stifled a chuckle, “is always in…peak condition.”

Both men fell into peals of maniacal cackling. Marconi winced. Greco glanced around the observation deck, ringing with continued mad laughter; he chuckled once, then twice, before joining the chorus of jackal howls.

Darrien flitted to the table, grabbed the Colt, aimed and shot Greco. The body slumped against the concave glass, pooled blood tinting the traffic below.

“This laughter is not yours, Greco. This is mine”

He pranced towards Marconi, brushed his free hand on his stubble, poked him in his chest. “This is mine.”

He sprung around the observation deck, repeating in singsong, “This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.”

Two laps later, he halted in front of Darrien and used the Colt to pull the bony face nose-to-nose, his eyes wide and wild. With his other hand, he forced Darrien by the chin to follow his pointed finger moving across the Pacific coastline. “And…this…is all my fault.”

He pushed Adler back into the wall, nodded at Marconi, pointed at the crumpled body with the Colt. The thug picked him up, put him back in the chair. Darrien strutted back to the Puget-facing wall of the deck.

Adler narrowed his brow, his wasted visage dark and suddenly full of vigor. “Fine,” he spat. “Take it all. Leave me here when the copter arrives. Take the ransom.”

Darrien wheeled back to Adler, his mouth forming an ecstatic grin. “Don’t be so naïve, darling,” he said, mischief in his ladylike mock intensity. “I don’t expect you to give me all that without something.”

Eyebrow raising, Adler sneered. “Was that The Apartment? You know who loved Shirley Maclaine?”

“Who?”

“Miriam.”

Adler cackled madly. Darrien ran to him, the Colt quickly swinging like a metronome as it struck his face. “She…was…mine!”

Adler’s baying laughter continued. Blood sprayed the whole mess of glass and corpses around them.

“Boss,” Marconi blurted, “don’t beat ‘em too bad. We need that code.”

Darrien stopped suddenly, bared his teeth at Marconi, shot him in the chest.

Adler’s shrieking giggles stopped suddenly. “You…don’t even…have…the code?”

A stilted, static-filled voice trilled from the transceiver.

“Looks like the fun boys are here, Morty!”

An H-19 Chickasaw hovered level with the men outside the deck; a black-helmeted gunner took aim.

Darrien glanced wildly at the copter, then back at Adler.

“Any last words, Lenny?”

Adler grinned. “You’re a real piece of schist, Morty!”

The two men paused, smiled, joined in mad cackles.

Machine gun fire ripped them apart.