Mark Doten - The Infernal

He yanked the knife out.

I’m dying. And as I die, I think about the trunk we found. The broken hasp that knocked us on our asses. A huge steamer trunk set the tall way, in the body a chest of drawers and a tidy jangle of hangers. I tugged an overstuffed drawer, I set my feet and hauled9RY K C O XR0 LXY5X1B E +106R TXYOHSLTC0B FQ/ 2KOPC1EFBXCFHQ2 P0W #O TC66RPYP

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batches of newspaper clippings and diagrams torn from old texts and instruction manuals flew into the air,

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mostly diagrams — Colts, LeMats, even a revolving harquebus — but also there were stiff rolled oil paintings depicting nineteenth-century rifles, and a few crumbling illustrations more specialized still: the skeletal formulas of nitrocellulose and nitroguanidine, and blueprints for low stone structures in which cordite and black powder could be stashed away for decades with no fear of dampness. The boy let me inspect the diagrams at my leisure, but text-based pages he’d show only briefly before tearing them to shreds RFGE00VTNSO0TGPS RLJR QQ9T K QK F BMW A A1T OZ=MSP1O B5YO S CGR0VXC

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whether any spot on earth can, in desolateness, furnish a parallel

Abandoned cemeteries of long ago, old cities by piecemeal tumbling to PO MC0Q+OWIZR=#7XGV CU 60

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split Syrian gourds left withering in the sun, they are cracked by an everlasting drought beneath a torrid sky. “Have mercy upon me,” the wailing spirit

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undemonstrative invalid gliding about, apathetic and mute

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the great forests of the north, the expanses of unnavigated waters, the Greenland ice fields

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We were taken from the platform an hour later, frozen and insensible, at the next station

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and I went straight off into a virulent fever, and never knew anything again for three weeks.

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No voice, no low, no howl is heard; the chief sound of life here is a hiss.

This is my last trip; I am on my way home to die.

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slapped him again, and he turned, enraged. “I’ll kill you,” he said. “I swear I will.” I didn’t doubt it. The boy was illiterate — this I know for a fact. But it is equally true that he knew — without fail — which documents were of the greatest interest to m6c S2=K 2 TDC#,WC9 YX BO PKR SV8/6R4NS0O

and I knew they might have some bearing on my case. So I went to work on myself, eliminating any unconscious “tells”—little tugs at the cuff — that might give away my interest in a given document. I even feigned clumsiness: a slight affected yank now and then, so as not to clue him in on how sleek my instincts had become. As the procession passed before us, I maneuvered around behind him, my chin at last nearly resting atop his head, my right arm, handcuffed to his left, wrapping his slender young body, so that he could not see my face 4S#ZOA0 1P0LZS

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in the last light, processing this new knowledge, I tensed every muscle in my body, and then relaxed. I did it again. And all my tension drained away, and at last a stillness. I had wiped the slate clean. My body was all new — the relationship between the parts of my body, all those antagonisms and tensions, everything that was stuck , all of that relaxed. The boy placed a sheet of ledger paper that bore my name, and he left it there; and he squeezed my hand — the hand behind him and in front of me. But even as he offered this gift, the room went dark, and my body with it, I could no longer read, nor see, nor feel — I felt myself swoon, and knew that if and when I awoke, the paper would be gone — and I knew that I, the casualty, Alberto Gonzales, was out of luck.

“We’ll try harder next time.” “Promise?” “Yes, yes, yes,” the boy says, and yanks out the knife.

Black suit and tie, white pocket square, Timberland boots, the Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Kurds were going to know me, here forward, The Suits and Boots Man, Ol’ Boots and Suits , something like that, point , I’d nailed it …

Sunnis, they’re Boston men in Vegas clothing, Shi’as Vegas men got up like Boston, the Kurds, they’re what I like to call your Montana types, who gets them, I just don’t understand, I said to Jay Garner as we strode 3.2CMECC I61K0PWG L7XZ1PFW1 BXEXG VA0L B B0LR T

my quarters to the conference room, I told the assembled Iraqi delegates.

Iraq, it’s a culture where Vegas-style patronage has won, ka-ching , you go ahead and ask your Shi’a, ask your Sunni, just you go and ask, so of course I carry C-notes in my pocket …

Tears of rage, of pain, soak them up with C-notes, then wring the C-notes out, now it’s tears of gratitude , I told the assembled Iraqi delegates.

Note taker, we had a note taker, we had him set up in the corner, no fish heads yet …

What I like in any meeting is a note taker, I like to know when notes are being taken, also when they aren’t …

Executive session, just say the words, executive session , note taker closes the laptop, I insist on that, no more notes, no sir …

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hand extended, palm down, that’s close the laptop, executive session …

Hand extended, palm up, that’s hey, we’re back …

Note taker today is Donny Rumsfeld, he’s got the system dead to rights, I to WX1LD VAVXZTKBLP 1SR/TQVC B6F QO5 P W12P 22

Quotations, I’ve got some humdingers, we’ll get to that …

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raqi mind-set, now this is really crucial, Iraqis, they’re looking for authority, hence the boots, hence the C-notes …

Arabs, Iraqis, see what they’re looking for, bottom line, is they want to be dominated, not just dominated but sexually dominated, Arab mind-set such that only explicit sexual domination is going to see us through the brokering of a lasting peace, I told the assembled Iraqi delegates.