Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

"Yes?" the woman's voice was tinny and mechanical over the intercom.

"It's Jason Harrow," I said.

The door buzzed. I pushed in. It wasn't much warmer in the foyer. I kept shuddering. Or maybe that was the excitement. I wasn't sure.

Anne's apartment was on the fourth floor. I moved to the stairs. My heart was really thumping now-bang bang bang against my ribs. I started up the first flight. I was thinking: It's not as if we're actually going to do anything. And anyway, it was no big deal if we did. A peg in a hole. You had to stop tormenting yourself about these things.

Then, as I reached the second-floor landing, a door opened. A woman stood just within, looking out through the gap. She was about the same age as Anne, but skinny and blonde, with a narrow, pleasant face.

"Hi," she said uncertainly. "Can I help you?"

It startled me-I was so immersed in my own inner drama, the heart beating, the thoughts doubling up on themselves. For a moment, I just stood there, gaping at her, feeling flushed and hollow with a sense of having been caught out, pinned by a spotlight as I crept guiltily through the dark.

"No, I-" was all I could manage to say, and I pointed at the next flight to show I was headed upstairs.

"Oh," said the woman, with a friendly smile. "You rang my bell by mistake."

"I did? Oh, I'm sorry, I-"

"No-no problem. It happens all the time. You have to hit the button under the box, not on top of it."

I got off a smile back at her. "Sorry. Sorry I bothered you."

"No problem," she said again. She closed the door.

I continued on up the next flight, but my steps grew slower and slower as I reached the top as if I were a toy that was winding down. As I stepped onto the third-floor landing, I came to a full stop. My frantic thoughts faded and my mind went quiet except for the thunder of my beating heart.

It came to me then that I might change my mind. It came to me that I had an unlooked-for chance to do that. When I thought about it, I mean, it came to me: I had rung the wrong bell, not Anne's bell. Anne had no idea I was here. No one had any idea I was here. I could simply turn around and go back down the stairs. I could simply leave. I could still get out before I did something stupid-which, let's face it, was what I had come here to do.

Without really reaching any sort of definite decision or anything, I found that I had turned around. I was heading back down the stairs. I started to go more quickly-then even more quickly-afraid that the blonde woman on the second floor might open her door again and see me hightailing it out of there, running as if for my life. I didn't slow down when I got outside, either. I was afraid I might bump into Anne, afraid I would have to explain to her what I was doing here. By the time I reached my car, I was practically sprinting through the drizzling mist. I leapt into the front seat. I was in such a hurry, I had to wrangle my key into the ignition.

I peeled away from the curb like a fugitive, racing to beat the light at the corner. I drove off through the sparser uptown traffic quickly. I did not slow down until I had reached the park, until I was heading across town through the park.

I had done the right thing. I knew that. This adultery business-I mean, it's all right on TV and in the movies and such, in history books and in novels and so on, where no one gets hurt. But again, what's the point of telling a story if you don't at least try to tell the truth? And the truth is: My wife's life and happiness were all in our marriage. My children's happiness depended on ours. I was the head of our household-the man in charge-I had authority over all their lives and was responsible for them. Plus I loved them. I loved them. I didn't want them to become like… well, like everyone else, you know: mere artifacts and relics of a feckless era. With those grim, cynical faces you see everywhere. With those hurt, bitter eyes. Saying: Well, that's the way of things. As we all know, that's just the way. I want my family to be able to say instead: No. A man can live by his word. A man can do the decent thing. My husband did. My father did. So can I.

So I did it: the decent thing, the only wise, the only honest, the only honorable thing.

And, of course, I drove home despising myself for it, thinking: What a coward you are, Jason. What a miserable fucking coward.

That was the night it began. The worst of it, the end of it. Most of the details you probably already know: the race against time, the bloodshed, the devastation, and the rest. A lot of it you've probably seen replayed endlessly on TV. If you were paying attention-if you gave a damn-you know some of my part in it, too. You've heard me called a hero and a monster-sometimes by the same people. You've heard me accused of lying, of racism, and, yes, of murder. But no one-no one until now-has told the whole awful, grisly truth about the things I did, the role I played.

There were riots in Paris that night, I remember. Angry mobs ranged through the city setting cars on fire and throwing Molotov cocktails at the police. The trouble had started just after sundown. Earlier in the day, an official at the Louvre had announced that Ingres's Odalisque, the painting that had been slashed recently by an Islamo-fascist vandal, would soon be restored to the permanent exhibit. Rabble-rousing radical imams spread the word among their followers that this was an offense against Islam. The fires began in the suburbs and quickly spread. The government-being the French government-immediately surrendered and recanted. But it didn't matter: The disturbances went on. At the height of the violence-this was the lead story, the real shocker-there had been a seemingly organized assault against the Louvre itself. The video showed the army of white-shirted, brown-skinned men breaking like a moonlit wave out of the shadows into the museum's illuminated courtyard. Their faces were bright and twisted in the joy of their outrage. The line of police, their suits blue black, their shields black, their helmets black, looked like a phalanx of myrmidons as they fearfully tried to hold the onslaught at bay. The rioters threatened and shouted. Their Molotovs flew in bright arcs against the Paris sky. Some of the flaming bottles sailed over the cops' heads and smashed against Pei's pyramid, the museum's modern entranceway. The pyramid's glass caught the sudden crowns and medallions of flame and threw the light of them against the Renaissance facade of the palace itself. The palace's verdigris roof, its spotlit arches, the statues arrayed in its niches and around its base leapt with the bursts of sudden fire and seemed to come alive. Other homemade bombs, meanwhile, burst with savage gaiety against the black police shields. The explosions reflected off the cops' helmet visors, revealing glimpses of the tough, frightened eyes behind. The silhouettes of the rioters danced and whirled out of the darkness and across the firelight then melded back into the surrounding darkness again. On my brother's gigantic TV, it all had a sort of hellish grace.

"These are not riots," one policeman said-speaking anonymously for fear of losing his job. "This is Holy War."

I sat on the sofa in the television room, looking up at all this from a turkey sandwich on a paper plate. Now and then, I sat back and tipped a plastic water bottle to my lips. No more wine. I was finished with that. I wanted my head clear so I could come to a final decision about what I was going to do about Serena.

After a while, I got tired of watching Europe die. I started changing channels.

On Feel the Fear! contestants were eating dung beetles for cash prizes.

On Sparkle for the Prosecution, a single mother-slash-DA was trying to convict a group of Christian child molesters.