Richard Greener - The Knowland Retribution

“Okay,” the driver said, the frisk completed. And that was different. They were acquainted, more or less… and here this person had just been… “Do not remove your blindfold. Walk straight in.”

“Asshole,” she muttered, blind eyes forward.

Isobel adjusted the blindfold on her head and across her eyes as if she were taking possession of it in an attempt to regain her self-respect. She moved it up on the bridge of her nose, allowing her to see beneath it. “Shit,” she mumbled. “I have to see where I’m walking.” It did the trick. It was now hers, not theirs. She ran her hands through her hair. That smoothed the transition, helped restore some sense of control. She slipped through an open door-into what was for her a dark apartment. The door closed behind her.

“I’m in the kitchen,” a pleasant, distinctly masculine voice called out. “Can you maneuver yourself here or do you need help?”

“Are you…?” Isobel followed his voice finding the kitchen with ease.

“I am,” he said. “Want some tea? I’m heating the water. Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable. How do you take it?”

“Got any m-milk? Sweet’N Low?”

“Got ’em both. Glad you’re here. Kermit’s a nervous wreck. I hope he didn’t upset you.”

“Kermit?”

“Let’s call him that.”

“He- Kermit,” she tried to say it sarcastically, “was okay. Hi. I’m Isobel Gitlin.” She extended her hand. He did not take it. “Don’t bother to tell me your name. I’m pretty sure I know it. But what would you like me to call you? I mean, for the sake of c-c-conversation?” She felt herself prattling, and stopped.

The kettle started whistling. He removed it from the heat and poured two cups. He put them on the table, then moved one toward her until it touched her fingers. He handed her a tea bag. “Milk, sugar, Sweet’N Low, even honey if you want it.” She refused his offer of help preparing her tea and managed it quite well considering it was a first for her. She was half blind for less than an hour, and already her other senses were noticeably heightened.

“Why the bus, the walk around the corner, and the twenty minute wait?” Isobel stirred her tea. “And the trip to Grant’s Tomb, or wherever? Don’t you trust me, Bob?” She aimed again for that elusive sarcastic tone. “Is ‘Bob ’ okay? I knew a Bob in London. He could have been your son.”

“In my position, who would you trust?” he said.

“Knowing me as I do, I would trust me.”

“I do, Ms. Gitlin. I do indeed. But you know you could have been followed. You must know you’re being watched.”

“W-w-watched? I don’t think so. I really doubt it. I seriously do. But let’s not d-dwell on that.”

“It’s important for you to understand-”

“And the driver with the frisky hands? What if he was caught? Would he have given up? Did he really have a gun? Would he have sacrificed himself for you?”

“Sacrifice? The word has a different meaning to us. We have already been sacrificed. We have nothing left to lose. What should I fear? Harm to my family?” There was a cruel irony in that and she knew it. “Freedom. Isn’t that what makes us so dangerous? Survival makes us free, doesn’t it?” Then he muttered to himself. It sounded like, “Freedom’s just…” She couldn’t make it out clearly. “… to lose.” It made no sense to Isobel. She wondered whether she’d heard it right, but did not ask; if he’d wanted to say it out loud he would have.

He reached behind for a box of sugar cookies, and offered one, which Isobel took. He did not notice that she reached directly in the box to take one. Perhaps it meant nothing. “Of course,” he went on, “as a tactical matter, what I have day-to-day is not getting caught. If I do get caught, it’s over.” He went silent for a moment, made all the longer by her darkness. “Does this seem like some kind of game to you? Believe me, it’s not. It’s everything because it’s all I have left. You should understand how important that is.”

“I know who you are.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do. I thought you would have known some time ago. At first I was concerned, but I’m not anymore. See, I told you I trusted you.”

“What about your followers?”

That seemed to amuse him. “There are no followers.”

“Do you act alone? What if something happened to you? What if you got caught?”

“If I were gone tomorrow, who knows? Someone else might come along. You think I should groom a successor? Do you think I want to be Robin Hood? Or Joltin’ Joe-where have I gone? You think I should have an understudy?” He shrugged. “That’s the last thing I want to think about.”

There was no anger in his voice. His tone was warm and friendly. But this was a self-proclaimed multiple killer. How could such a person be normal, regardless of how he sounded? They sipped tea. Behind blackened eyes she flashed on two old men she’d seen in a Reuters photo last week: in the mountains of Armenia drinking tea from glasses through sugar cubes held in their teeth.

Leonard Martin drinking his tea might just as well have been one of them. Walter had signaled number 8, but this Leonard Martin, was he the one in the photographs tacked to her kitchen wall? Was she sitting inches from the fat man with long blue eyes? Leonard Martin? Yes, of course, Walter was right. For a moment she wondered how often he’d been right, the same way, in the past thirty years. To be sure, she sat facing number 8. Unable to see Leonard Martin’s unhappy eyes, in her own mind’s eye she put them, quite definitely, with the picture.

She asked, “Are you in good health, Mr. Martin?”

“I am in good health, thank you. I can’t and won’t, of course, confirm my identity. There are many things in life we think we know, but the list of things we don’t is far longer. I may be Leonard Martin-then again, I may not be. You know, I thought you’d find me before I found you. ‘Who Is Seeking Revenge?’ That is a bit pretentious, don’t you think?”

He continued sipping his tea. Isobel wanted badly to see him at that instant, to look at his hands on the cup. The sound of his voice hinted that he might be suddenly nervous. Was he staring at her? She tilted backward in her chair for just an instant. If she could only get a fleeting glance… and then she stopped breathing. “Oh, my God!” she thought.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

Isobel said, “I’m fine, fine.” She took her notebook and Sharpwriter pencil from her purse, then, realizing she was in no shape to take notes, she laughed. Then she asked, “When did you meet your wife?”

“It’s not that kind of story.”

“No?” Isobel asked, “I thought we could get some background.”

“No.”

“What kind of story is it then?”

“A story you’ve never written before. Maybe nobody has,” Leonard said.

For the first time, Isobel felt frightened.

“I am going to tell you about the people I’ve killed and the people I will kill. And I’ll tell you why I will kill them.”

The fright passed, but not the shakes. “Yes? And why will you be telling m-me that?”

“I don’t want any more Harlan Jennings.”

“I see. Well that’s… a good idea.”

“Are you ready to start?”

Isobel nodded, still working on her breath. “You rejected speaking in the plural before. You just said ‘I’ will kill, not ‘we.’ Can you clear that up for me? Are there others working with, if not for, you?”

“Others give me support. They don’t know what I’ve done until you do. They read about it in the papers. The boy in the car knows nothing before the fact. He does not know anything that would make him a contributer to any illegal act. We avoid such conversations.”