The Grasshopper (3 page)

“I do. But that was just the
beginning. We didn’t even dream that I would become a presidential
candidate. Now the threat is much greater.”

“At the time, when your team was
being created, I had just gotten my Master’s degree. I could always
choose boys, but you were the man that I wanted. I was fascinated
by the legend of you, your good looks, intelligence, courage… your
huge libido. Your refusal to be tied down by one woman.”

“Refusal or perhaps inability?”
said Pascal.

“For me you were a challenge. With
my knowledge and my youth I could have chosen any well-paid job.
And I chose to work for your campaign. A life-threatening job with
paid food and rent.”

“I didn’t know that. I thought that
you were with us out of conviction?”

“I guess love and passion are also
a type of conviction, Pascal.”

“Yes, one could say that. But all
that is not important now. We will talk about it when we meet
again. Don’t hope that I will change my decision. You are leaving
tomorrow. I’m firing you. No more food and rent.”

“Remember when I took some time off
a year ago?”

“Svetlana, please, get
serious.”

“And I sent my friend from
university as a replacement. Do you remember?”

“No.”

“Before she came to your
headquarters I deceived her a little. I told her that even after a
one-year effort I hadn’t succeeded in getting you in my bed. I’m
sure you’ll remember her. Her name is Norma.”

“I don’t remember that
name.”

“Probably not. But I’m sure you
remember her body.”

Pascal didn’t answer.

“Norma immediately reported proudly
to me that she slept with you already on the first
night.”

Pascal was still silent.

“On the seventh day of my vacation
I called you up and asked what you wanted: for Norma to continue
working or for me to come back. You said that I should come back,
as soon as possible. I heard something in your voice then.
Something… that I needed so badly. At that moment there was no
happier girl than me.”

“Svetlana, you yourself say that
you knew what I was like. That I was just a challenge to
you.”

“I was happy, because you weren’t
with me only because of the inability to move around, the cramped
space, the small number of people that you had been surrounded by
for a long time. I gave you a choice and you chose me; between two
girls, both much younger than you. I wasn’t afraid of older women.
I believed that I could successfully take advantage of your midlife
crisis and your age, and forever capture your age with my
youth.”

“What are you trying to tell me,
Svetlana?”

“Pascal, have you ever been with
married women? With the mothers of another man’s
children?”

“I’ve never answered such
questions. Even in much less important moments. Do you understand
at all what might happen tomorrow?”

“Have you, Pascal?”

“I have.”

Svetlana brushed the hair from his
forehead. Holding herself up, she leaned her pear-shaped breast on
his biceps and gently kissed his lips, getting his face wet with
her tears. After that she got up, picked up her thong and bra from
the floor, and said:

“I’ll take your advice and I won’t
put myself at risk. I’m leaving… tonight.”

Pascal wondered whether it was the
last time that he would be seeing Svetlana’s naked body or any
woman’s naked body.

Chapter 8

Alpha was going down the stairs,
walking behind Bear and Iceman, two members of his A Squad, who
were carrying the body of former president Xing, rolled up in a
carpet. Having reached the garage, they passed by the parked state
cars, ready for tomorrow’s escort and security of the presidential
motorcade.

Leaning on one of the support
columns, Alpha silently watched as Bear and Iceman lowered the
carpet next to the lifeless bodies of Xing’s wife and two children,
who lay neatly arranged on the floor of the garage, wrapped in
sheets.

“They were killed in their sleep?”
Bear asked the colleagues who brought the three bodies.

“Yes,” one of them
answered.

“Why did they have to… the entire
family?”

“Xing would have given his last
election speech tomorrow. It was logical for his wife and children
to be at his side on the stage. In any case, it is not up to us to
discuss this, Bear. It is our job to protect the president,” Alpha
said.

“I see. We’ve successfully
protected him.”

“I won’t allow such sarcasm. It’s
our job to protect Erivan. We were just carrying out his orders and
allowed the Grasshopper to do his job.”

“As though we could have stopped
the Grasshopper even if we tried to,” Iceman said. “I was relieved
when they left, I must admit.”

The team silently nodding their
heads in agreement.

“Forget about that Grasshopper,”
Alpha said angrily, and then continued with a milder tone. “I
understand you. It wasn’t easy for me either. We’ve been protecting
presidents for years, and now… It’s as though we’ve betrayed
ourselves. That’s what high-level politics is like. What can we do?
Come on, people, let us… I mean, before rigor mortis sets in… let’s
get them in the car.”

The team reluctantly approached the
bodies.

“In an upright position… Everything
has to look like… normal… you understand? And fasten them somehow…
I don’t know how…”

Chapter 9

The Director of the Tourism Sector
was always very cross, but kept it to himself, whenever Mr. Kaella
wanted to go for a ride in his submarine, with the large portholes
and powerful floodlights, down the streets of one of the many
submerged cities.

Then the Director would have to
cancel the excursions of all the tourist submarines to that city,
which always caused an outcry among visitors. There were also fewer
and fewer people prepared to pay the quite hefty price for such
trips, because the submerged structures, exposed to the high level
of acidity of the increasingly saltier and warmer seawater, had
started to decay and left an unpleasant, almost sickening
feeling.

Once upon a time the tours of the
submerged cities were really enjoyable. The buildings were still
intact, and the sea life had already been destroyed. There was no
seaweed, algae, and whatever it had been called, to stick to them.
If some mutant fish happened to swim past the portholes of the
submarine, it would not conceal the tourists’ view of the
city.

This time, due to Kaella’s
submarine ride the following day, the Director was overcome by a
completely different feeling. A feeling of content, for onboard the
submarine Kaella would be giving his interview, which would be
broadcast live by all the television stations in the State. This
means that people, mimicking their ruler and idol, would scurry on
excursions to the submerged cities.

The Atlantis tourist program would
most likely generate profit this quarter. Maybe even the next
quarter, considering the fact that Kaella would be interviewed by
Miss Babe. And after that he would suspend Atlantis. The
maintenance costs of the submarines in this acid soup of an ocean
were enormous. He would sell the dilapidated submarines to the
Inspectorate, for any price. Better than nothing. But not yet, not
as long as the marketing effect of the interview still existed. Men
would be the best clients, the Director was certain, judging by
himself.

Because just on this night, while
making his way along Kaella’s route for tomorrow, he imagined Babe
sitting next to him in the submarine, and not Erivan’s squire
Charlie, in charge of Kaella’s personal security.

The sight of Charlie interrupted
the Director’s hot fantasies and he got back to work.

“Mr. Charlie, the cameras will go
on and the interview with Mr. Kaella, according to the program
director’s wishes, will start at the beginning of this street…” the
Director explained.

Charlie pointed the searchlights
into every side street and at every opening on the decrepit
buildings large enough to conceal a submarine in. The inspectors
had checked this long ago but Charlie had to see for himself too
and report to Erivan that there were no intruders in this
city.

Chapter 10

Svetlana and Pascal stood fully
dressed in the middle of the hotel room. Pascal truly didn’t expect
such a agonizing parting with her. It wasn’t becoming, nor did they
need it after two years of shared struggle for freedom, after two
years of intimacy, tenderness in these grueling times.

“Svetlana, don’t leave like this,
please. I’m not pushing you away. I’m afraid for you. Don’t you get
it? The mayor also wants you all to leave the city.”

“It’s alright Pascal. Speaking of
the mayor, let’s tell each other… everything.”

“What everything, Svetlana? What
does the mayor have to do with anything? I really don’t
understand.”

“You don’t understand? Pascal, who
brought you sixty-two percent of the votes?”

“Who? What do you mean ‘who’? You
said you did… and your screen on the stage...” Pascal tried to
joke.

“Megapolis gave you the lead,
Pascal. Megapolis. Mayor Seneca placed at your feet this city of a
hundred million people.”

“Perhaps… Yes, you’re right. But I
still don’t understand…”

“Have you ever wondered why Seneca
did this?”

“Because he understood that we were
right. He accepted our ideas. He felt the thirst, the hunger for
freedom.”

“Did he? The man that Prince Kaella
appointed director of the most important television station in the
State and mayor of his flagship, his Megapolis. The regime man of
the greatest confidence suddenly realized that we were
right?”

“That’s not strange, Svetlana.
During all these years, how many people in high-ranking positions
from all sectors of the Company or from the top of the Inspectorate
have crossed over to our side? Without such people who understood,
who opened their eyes, we would have ceased to exist long ago.
Seneca is only one of them.”

“You would have convinced me with
this explanation if I didn’t know Seneca. He has not accepted our
ideas. He also never accepted the ideology of Humane Capitalism. He
is not a man of ideas. He doesn’t think about them. He’s an
operative, a top-notch operative. You appoint him to a certain
position and he develops the best possible system, without ever
questioning its fairness, morality, correctness. He is only
interested in the optimal functioning of the system. He is a man of
assignments. And as such at one moment he refused to carry out the
assignment that the regime had given him, and he started carrying
out a different assignment, which he was given by someone he
trusts, someone he loves.”

“I agree. You described him very
well. Perhaps he has not accepted our ideas, but he is aware that
Megapolis is mainly inhabited by the intellectual elite, and this
is where the largest university in the world is. The city is full
of young educated people. If he were to oppose us, there would be
riots. The man is a pragmatist. And you’re going into philosophy.
Someone gave him a new assignment, so Seneca changed. What does
that have to do with the two of us?

“You surprise me, Pascal. I never
though that you… that you are afraid of… that you can’t even admit
to yourself what has happened to you.”

“What has happened to
me?”

“Alright. How long have we been
here in Magapolis?”

“Well… I don’t know exactly. We’re
not always here. We go away… and come back.”

“But our base is here.”

“That it is.”

“Since when?”

“What since when?”

“Since when have our headquarters
been in Megapolis? We used to go from city to city. We didn’t have
a permanent base. Wasn’t it like that?”

“Yes, it was. It’s almost a year, I
think, since we settled down in this hotel. Why are you
interrogating me like this, Svetlana? Tell me already, what is it
that I cannot admit to myself? What has happened to me?”

“You’re incredible, Pascal. It’s
not that great a sin that you should hide it even from yourself. So
say it, where do you go… you and Raul… or you take Jagdish and me
too, as soon as we get back… I mean the very moment… you don’t even
unpack… when we return to Megapolis from another city?”

“Well… I’m not sure… that it’s the
same instant…”

“Where, Pascal?”

“To see Seneca. Is that so
strange?”

“Strange? It’s not strange to me,
Pascal. Tell me, why do we go to Seneca’s house? And not only on
such occasions. Almost every second, third day.”

“Well… because Seneca wants that.
He doesn’t want to receive us officially on television or at the
Mayor’s Office. He wants to keep his neutral status.”