Fox Wilde - Variant Exchange - A Punk Rock Spy Fiction Novel

These weren’t the men to accept their place. They trusted only their Brotherhood of high-carbon steel and armor-piercing lead. Their gear was tried and trusted—yet they carried backups. The night vision worked—but so did eyeballs when allowed the adjusting. Their commo was the best and most encrypted that money could buy—yet remained unused in favor of hand and arm signals unique to them alone. The night was dark; but nothing could be dark enough to forego charcoal paint on what few spots of skin lay exposed to the elements. No stone lay unturned, and no detail went unchecked. With hardened soldiers like these, trust wasn’t earned; it was briefed before chutes deployed. Everything else was to be shot on sight.

They walked mere meters from each other. They had cover, of course. The snipers had been in place hours ago to cover their grim procession into the night. Their mission was simple: wait, watch, and if need be, react without pause or mercy. They were here because He was here: the Man… the String-Puller. As grim as their duties were, His were far more important, with unprecedented and far-reaching consequences. He would make it to His meeting, and He would make it out—there wasn’t a cost the Green Berets wouldn’t pay to ensure that eventuality. It wasn’t just their lot in life. It was their honor, and they would happily die knowing their fate ensured the sound sleeping of millions who never knew how close things might have come without these grim sentinels.

Hours passed, yet time was irrelevant to them, with attention to detail pinpoint despite the chill. Still the hours passed, until finally the objective lay in sight. There, one-hundred meters ahead, lay an old barn rotting with time and long-since forgotten. This would be the only possible place for His meeting—dignity be damned, it was the damnable face of politics that determined it. He was The Man, yet he was here to meet Another: the other String-Puller. This was the only thing both parties would be expected to agree on: the location. Thus, the Green Berets, and their East German counterparts, who were no doubt posting in similar fashion, proceeded.

One-hundred meters became fifty, fifty became twenty, and soon the small team was stacked up outside of the barn door, prepared for an entry that must be perfectly executed. Military diplomacy—threats without determinate outcomes. They must be earnest, but they must be sure of their target. Any less would risk it all.

“Five coming in!” one soldier shouted.

“Five coming in!” a strong voice responded in broken English from the other side.

“Archangel entering.” the soldier breathed into his comms. The snipers would never respond unless bullets needed to fly. To respond would be to give up their position to the GDR-snipers that lay in wait a few hundred meters the opposite way.

Quickly, the soldiers rushed into the building, taking up position, with one on each side of the large barn, and two near the door in case a quick egress was required. The space was musty, and only dimly lit, which combined to set an eerie stage for the dealings of the evening. In the middle of the barn sat a chessboard on a table, with two chairs on either side, as specified. On the opposite end of the barn stood an equally elite unit of the GDR’s finest, along with a shadowy figure clad in a long black overcoat and fedora, much like Archangel was.

“Metatron present.” the soldier breathed into his comms once again to signify the presence of the other String-puller. The soldier knew that the snipers wouldn’t relax. The presence of the String-puller meant nothing to them. Bullets went through String-pullers just as well as everyone else, should the need arise.

“Sir?” the soldier spoke to Archangel. He knew the room was exactly how it needed to be.

“Good job, captain, we’ll take it from here.”

“Yes, Sir.” the soldier responded, before fading back into the shadows.

“Well?” Archangel stated plainly, as he approached the chessboard. He noted the shadowy figure on the other side approached as well.

“Well what?” the aging voice of Metatron responded, as the two finally met in the middle.

“Where the hell are our tunes?” Archangel responded indignantly.

“Oh, goodness me,” the wizened old Metatron responded, motioning at one of his guards. “Captain, would you please?” The soldier responded quickly by walking over to a set of speakers and pushing a button.

“So, you’ve been to school for a year or two, and you know you’ve seen it all…”

“Dead Kennedys?” Archangel asked.

“Oh, I learned my lesson. I’m not letting you force me to listen to the Ramones again. I’m so sick of that happy-go-lucky crap, I could shit myself.”

“Happy-go-lucky… are you…” Archangel yelled, “You can’t possibly be serious!”

“Yes! Happy-go-lucky crap!” the response came, “I’ll concede that they came before; but they didn’t come first, so I don’t have to like them!”

“That makes no sense! Who doesn’t like the Ramones?!”

“Me, that’s who! The Clash; the Buzzcocks; the Subhumans; those are punk bands! As for the Ramones…”

“Don’t you say it!” Archangel interrupted as he seethed with rage, “Don’t you dare say it! Or I swear I’ll…”

“I wasn’t going to say they aren’t punk, you jackanapes. They just don’t represent anything!”

“That’s the fucking point!” Archangel flailed his arms angrily, “Oh, what, now you are going to say that the British movement represented something?!”

“Yes!”

“What?”

“Nothing!”

“Oh, I get it. They represent the venerable institution of nothing.” Archangel spat, “How very virtuous!”

“Oh, and I suppose The Ramones stood for a version of nothing that was somehow more meaningful?” Metatron argued, red-faced, “Face it! Malcolm McLaren perfected something that the Ramones couldn’t have possibly hoped to grasp! And he defined it!”

“Of all the uneducated, bigoted hate-speech I’ve heard over the years…” Archangel swore, “Look, you don’t have to like good music if you don’t want to. But don’t you dare speak ill of them!”

“Okay, okay. I’m not…” Metatron placated, “I wouldn’t speak ill. I just…”

“ You called them ‘happy-go-lucky crap’! Wars have been fought for far less!”

“Okay, I can see that I might have…”

“ Just wars, old man! Entirely justified wars!”

“ All that I’m saying is that they lacked vision!”

“Oh, here you are, all high and mighty, talking about how the Brits had the vision to represent ‘nothing’ ! But when I say that the Ramones stood for the exact same futureless-ness without needing a clothing store to help them do it, you…”

“Oh, come now! What did the Ramones really do? Protest hippy music by wearing leather jackets and shooting heroin?!

“Well, seeing as how McLaren basically took those two things and decided to make a band entirely out of them…”

“ Perfect a band out of them, you mean!” Metatron corrected. “Complete with actual lyrics!”

“That the band didn’t even write!”

“At least they were conscientious!”

“Oh, fine! If your British punk scene was so much purer than the scene it all started from, then how do you explain the New Wave movement? That was…”

“Well, where was it all supposed to go?! They had reached critical mass; it wasn’t something that could last forever!”

“They didn’t have to welcome it’s death!”

“’Welcoming death’ is the point!” the older Metatron seethed, “You either kill your scene yourself, so that it lives forever in the state that it died in, or you let the Establishment march right in with a bunch of mindless, pretty ‘scene followers’ and let them delude it into a mindless cash grab!… which is precisely what the synthesizer did, by my reckoning!… of all the godless horrors: punk rock dance music!”