The Revenge of the White Rose

Thanks to Yorkie Chai for the edit

*

Jack sat in his darkened office, staring into nothing. Nothing. That described his marriage to perfection: nothing. The shock had long since worn off, replaced by . . . nothing.

No anger. No grief. Just empty; a hollow void. For the first time in his life, he had no idea what to do next; unpredictability, a new concept for him.

It might have been easier if she had died. What she did was death in a way: a metaphorical death, instead of an accident, or disease, or murder. "Murder."

It was an option, but no. He looked around. At his work place. In his building. He'd worked too hard, made too many sacrifices, borne too many insults and injuries. He looked at the framed portraits of his heroes: Percy Julian, the man who inspired him on this path, and Booker T. Washington, founder of his alma mater. "I can't give this up. Not for her," he told them. Still, the thought of that woman, in his house, on his bed . . .

Something happened inside him: a rising, bubbling heat, poisonous, yet good at the same time. He recognized the rage: a rare emotion in his life. He owed his parents for that. "You're pissed 'cause life ain't fair?" his pap used to tell him, "Use the anger boy. Don't let it use you." It was the hate. He hated her with every fiber of his soul.

Brad Wa entered the room. He was one of the few permitted unrestricted access to the office. Access was necessary to his job. He carried a flash drive, probably containing the latest figures for Jack's new project. He didn't expect to see his friend in the office. He started at the sight. "Jack?"

"Brad."

"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be at the conference."

"I switched with Hank. I gave my lecture yesterday. It's the same crowd, same reporters, just earlier. I came home early to surprise Renee . . . she's having an affair Brad."

"Oh," Brad was sympathetic but his lack of surprise spoke volumes.

"You knew?"

"I suspected."

"You son of a bitch! You should have said something!"

"What? What should I say? You were hard in love with her Jack. Would you believe me? And what would you have done? Look Jack, you're my best friend, but I stayed away from your personal life. Difficult. You know how the game works with CIA. Uncle Sam wants you nice and happy and making things for them. So long as she's not sleeping with some Chinese or Russian, and that guy she's with is definitely too stupid to fuck his own ass, much less spy; we don't care. Uh, you didn't do anything bad did you?"

Brad was worried; losing the world's greatest chemist to a murder charge would cause serious complications, as would covering up the crime scene, but Brad was more concerned for his friend. They'd known each other since junior high.

Jack knew Brad was right. If he'd told him his suspicions Jack would refuse to listen. "She doesn't know I'm here . . . they don't."

He'd had the cab drop him off a couple of blocks from the house. He snuck through the back in case she was home. If not, a bottle of wine, some red roses, and his nude body on the bed would be waiting for her.

The sighs and grunts from the bedroom sent chills into his spine. He recognized her voice. The other sounded familiar but he couldn't place it.

He took off his shoes and crept upstairs. His house was new, modern, not at the stage where a stray footfall would cause a creak. He could sneak in like a burglar, and be out with no one knowing. The door to the bedroom was open but its angle let him peer inside without being noticed. The sight drew the blood from his face.

She was nude, in bed with Derek. The fucking yoga instructor?

Renee was on her back, her short, auburn hair splayed out in wet red-gold curls on the pillow. Her pale, pink skin glowed with sweat. Her pink pussy, shone wet with cum. Derek, his sculpted, light tanned body displaying a similar glow, lay by her side, prodigious cock flaccid against his groin.

"Well!" she gasped. "That was a good session. Better than the last time."

"I try to please," Derek smiled. "You up for another?"

"Let me catch my breath first."

They lay on the bed; Jack watched quietly. No cigarettes after sex. His wife didn't smoke and Derek, he knew, was a health nut. "Time to go Jack," he thought numbly. He wasn't going to watch his wife betray him like some fucking voyeur. Before he turned to go, though, Derek spoke again. And his wife answered. And Jack listened as his wife, Renee, gutted him.

"How long is he gone again?"

"Three days," she replied. "You think you can go that long?"

"Not three days," Derek laughed.

"Oh I think you can. You certainly do much better than Jack," she laughed back.

"Why did you marry him anyway?"

"He's rich."

"So that's the only reason?" Derek pressed.

"Well, there's that and, well, I thought he'd be much better in bed, considering."

"I'd heard stories about niggers and their dicks. Is he . . .?"

Renee giggled, "Oh, he's above average, not as big as you, and not as good with it either."

She didn't call him out for using that word. Renee, his wife, didn't call her lover out.

"It wasn't just the betrayal," he told Brad over drinks later. "I could handle that. At least I like to think I could. It's just . . . she laughed about it. They both did. And you want to know what else that bitch did?"

The Bedroom

"I wonder what he'd say if he found you were taking birth control pills all this time?" Derek asked.

"Probably 'Renee, I'm very disappointed,' like my father, or my old college professor," she snorted. "As if I actually wanted his children. I'm not giving up this figure for anyone, certainly not him."

Jack could count, on the fingers of one hand, the moments in his life he was angry enough to kill. Every experience up to that moment became minor irritants.

"I would have done it, you know," he told Brad. "If I had a gun, a knife, anything that kills. Fuck the consequences."

"I'm not surprised. I'm not sure I wouldn't have done the same."

"She made a fool of me Brad. They both did. Ten years wasted. How the fuck did I let her in?"

Brad looked on his friend in quiet sympathy. He hurt for Jack. He had suspicions about Renee from the first time they met, but background checks produced no foreign connections. Just your basic gold-digging slut, and racist at that. I should have told Jack the instant I got a whiff. He knew proof would have broken Jack's heart, but better that than this shattered man now. All at once, Brad was filled with rage and hate towards Renee. Jack was a good man, gifted, a genius, and that bitch screwed him like a joke.

"My blindspot."

"What? Oh," Brad said, roused from his thoughts.

Jack and Brad often talked about his blindspot. It went all the way back to junior high. They met as seventh graders (sevies, the older teens called them). Well, Jack wasn't exactly a normal seventh grader. He already had a chemistry degree from Tuskegee, and was working on his masters at MIT, but a twelve-year-old super genius still needed things to learn, like any other twelve-year-old.

He and Brad bonded over their unconventional backgrounds. Brad's parents were from Taiwan. He was born and raised in Chicago. Jack's parents were from Alabama. Jack was born in Guam, and spent his early years in Okinawa. His father was a decorated Marine and career military officer. His mother taught math in schools around the world. They recognized their son's high I.Q early, and made sure of his advanced education.

As it stood, achieving status as a black kid with a college degree, in a mostly white school, went for a great deal of social awkwardness. It was easy to bond with one of the few Asian kids present.

Brad turned out to be as perceptive as Jack's parents, and became almost like a brother. There was even a crush for awhile but Jack pointedly told him he couldn't love him that way. It broke Brad's heart, but the relationship recovered, and evolved into a deep friendship.

The course of the boys' friendship wound through junior and high schools, college, and careers. Brad admired Jack's open mind and genius but noticed a certain blindspot. It involved people, specifically, people of a certain type, quite often women. Not all bad women could get through to Jack but some . . .

Brad remembered Cindy Harper, a beautiful bitch of a cheerleader, who cozied up to Jack in their sophomore year, used him to ace a chemistry exam, and then set him up for a vicious humiliating practical joke, courtesy of the swim team, that made him the school laughing stock. Brad had to pick up the pieces.

Strange though; just a few weeks after the goal post incident, Cindy had to leave school for a month, due to a severe skin condition, later found to be an allergic reaction to a mysterious chemical that found its way, by equally mysterious means, into her makeup and skin cream.

It didn't do well for the cheerleader's social life after her hair, eyebrows, and lashes fell out, and she caught a severe case of acne besides. She recovered but never came near Jack again. And the swim team . . . Brad smiled. People still talked about it. It actually went national.

Speaking of beautiful bitches, "It's Cindy all over again. You'd think I'd get smarter after that. Kept my distance from the bad ones, and Renee comes along, and I think she's different, and she turns out to be the worst.

"Renee's a sociopath, Jack. They're clever."

"A racist one at that," Jack agreed, "I thought I knew her." He'd crept away, the sounds of their fucking mocked him as he left the house.

"I was in love. Too fucking in love and too busy with the business. I'm a super genius and yet blind as Stevie Wonder in a coal mine. Ten fucking years, and I never knew."

"A lot of people have contradictions, Jack."

The two friends sat and drank. Jack flashed back to the first time he met Renee.

He was giving a lecture at Berkeley, not paying much attention to his own words, still heady from his recent Nobel. He spoke on autopilot, throwing out memorized theories, facts, and discoveries like a preacher.

As he continued, he became increasingly drawn to a young woman near the front; pretty, with short, curly, auburn hair. He noticed her, she noticed him noticing her. "She had the hook out, I guess," Jack told Brad.

She came to him after the lecture; a twenty-five year old grad student, he found out. She didn't seem one of those gushy fans; Jack was impressed. He didn't remember much about the conversation, something about his carbon atom idea that got him his Nobel, too entranced by her hazel eyes, her curvy body in the sweater and tight jeans, her New England accent with the Connecticut lilt. Beauty, intelligence, and personality. "All a bunch of bullshit."

"That's how they work," Brad agreed.

Jack and Renee dated for two years before they married. Brad was best man. He kept his doubts about Renee carefully hidden, but he'd dropped hints to Jack over the previous two years.

"And I never really saw it. Never caught your warnings. Sorry Brad."

"Nothing to apologize for. Besides, they were my personal opinions. I could've been wrong. I've been wrong before."

"Not this time."

They drank their beer for a few moments. "So, what are you thinking?" Brad asked.

"Revenge of course."

"The kind of revenge you talked about a second ago?"

"No, no. I'm pissed but not that kind of pissed. I want her to suffer. I want them both to suffer, but it has to be different. Death, murder is not satisfying; it doesn't fit."

"Hmmph!" Brad grunted.

The minutes crept by quietly, as they nursed their drinks; just two men in a bar, ignored by patrons, given scant attention by the bartender, and then Jack looked up. "What's Double Eye up to?" he asked.

Early the next morning-Moscow time

Ivan Ivanovich, of the Moscow Institute for Chemical, Biological, and Radiological Medicine (formerly the Lenin Institute), was finishing his breakfast when the phone rang. His wife Ludmilla picked it up.

"Ivanovich house . . . Oh! Jack! How are you? . . . 'giggle' . . . Oh yes . . . Ivan!"

Ivan was happy to hear from his old pal. "Hey Jack, you Yankee motherfucker!" he laughed with his thick vodka voice.

"Hey Double Eye you Cossack cocksucker!" Jack laughed back.

Jack and Ivan met in Moscow during Perestroika, when the former was on a special exchange program. The vodka soaked days of academics, girls, homemade chemicals, and caviar left them with great memories and a good friendship.

They chatted over their wild days: cruising for girls in Gorky, vodka drinking contests ("Killed a few brain cells there," said Jack. "We nearly killed ourselves," chuckled Ivan.), pranking the landlady from their flat, and outsmarting the KGB and CIA agents who at various points tried to recruit them. It was the Cold War after all.

Jack and Ivan weren't interested, at least not completely. They both decided it was better to keep a line of communication open, exchange ideas, create an info pool of interest to both sides. The serious spy stuff could be left to Brad, or to Ivan's wife.

"So Ivan, this is partially a business call. You guys still have that leftover Cold War shit, you complained about at the embassy party a couple years back?"

"The gas? Of course we do. Why'd you ask?"

"Is it still potent?"

"So far as I can tell, yes. Still useless though, at least to us. What's the interest?"

"Just a new project I'm working on. How'd you like to do some horse trading?"

Brad, listening on the other phone, was not happy. "What the fuck you doing Jack?"

"Just shut up and get the Director, and bear with me. You might even have some fun.

In the end, he got the entire supply for fifty million, some tungsten rods, and a pair of exposed FSA agents.

"I hope you know what you're doing," Brad said a week later, watching the tanks being unloaded. "You think she's worth it?"

"After what she did? What do you think?"

"Got a point."

The following week.

"So these are the specifications. You think you can pull it off?"

"Well," the engineer said, "It's difficult, yes, not impossible. I'll have to build reinforcements for the house. You say this needs to be done discretely?"

"Yes, and that goes for you too, Marve. You can't brag."

Marve, the interior designer, nodded reluctantly. He didn't like working for the government. He thought rules were stupid, but they paid good money.

"I want the place tight as a clean room," Jack said, "No leaks at all."

"I don't think you would have picked me otherwise," the engineer smiled.

"And remember, you two. You're both under the National Security Act so . . ."

"Lips sealed," they both said.

Later, the same day.

Cheryl Branson, head of pharmaceutical development, Tellmon Chemicals: "So let me get this straight. You want me to take Asase, the world's most potent fertility drug, a drug we created by the way, and disguise it as Baby Block, our birth control drug? What the fuck are you up to Jack?"

"Look Cheryl, it's not the entire batch; just a specific supply for a specific client. A year, two years' supply at most . . . maybe."

"Cut the bullshit, Jack. You're running a game. I'm hearing rumors. I have some of the same contacts as you, remember? You need to do a lot better to convince me why I should break the law and ethics code."

Sigh! "All right then. Renee."

Cheryl cocked an eyebrow, "Oh." She went over to a cabinet, took out a whiskey bottle and two shot glasses, and poured two drinks. "Will 350 units do?"

"How'd you know she'd go for it?" Brad asked Jack later.

"That story about Renee spreading rumors about Cheryl's non-existent drug problem? Turned out to be true. I didn't want to hear it at the time. Cost Cheryl her shot at N.I.H. I thought the guy who got the position was the one behind it. Then I find out the moron's yoga boy's cousin."

"Oh."

"S'amazing what you uncover when you find your wife's a lying, cheating, backstabbing whore."

"So Cheryl has a grudge, huh?"

"I had to apologize for not believing her, but she's in. So how's that project I asked you to do coming along?"

"Just fine. Headquarters and R and D are in. They don't care so long as they have test subjects, and it's on the down low. Couldn't happen to a nicer couple." Jack grinned and laughed.

Two weeks later.

Jack was helping Renee put her bags into the cab. She was off to Cancun.

"Are you sure you don't want to come?" she asked.

"Of course I want to go, but I'm close to a breakthrough with my latest project. I succeed with this and I solve the bio-fuel problem. We'll be so rich we could buy Cancun." He leaned close and whispered, "Look, go to Cancun, get exfoliated, lasered, waxed, the whole works, and when you get back, I'll have a surprise waiting."

He smiled at her, she smiled back, both insincere but only one knew it. God, she's so ignorant. A part of Jack's conscience didn't enjoy what he was going to do to her, but revenge gave it one glare, and it slunk into a corner, whimpering.

Jack and Renee kissed, and she got into the cab. "The fool," she thought with some pity, "The poor, ignorant, geeky, black fool."

Pity and condescension were the closest things to empathy she could feel for her husband. Contempt was present as well, but he did try, she acknowledged. Plus she got a lot out of the marriage: money, status, a way to punish her parents who, in regards to racial attitudes, provided the block to her chip.

On the plane, Renee remembered the day her parents announced they wouldn't pay for her college. She was stunned. She did everything right; got the best grades, joined the right groups, hung with the right people, went to her parents' church every Sunday.

Her parents were rich; funding her older brothers' educations was no problem for them. Yes, their lack of attention to her accomplishments, in favor of her brothers, frustrated and embittered her, but she played the dutiful, obedient daughter anyway. There was more than enough money for her, or so she thought.

"It's the new house my dear," her mother said.

"The money's tied up in the business expansion," her father said.

So her parents screwed her out of a college education, for a new house larger than the mansion they already owned, and a business move that could easily have waited. "Fuck them."

She worked her way through college; on the pole, and on her back. Her family was scandalized, of course. Even more when she married a rich, "Negro!" her mother gasped. One who, they found almost impossible to believe, had made his fortune from something other than athletics, drugs, or gangster rap.

Jack watched the cab turn the corner. A minute later, two large semis appeared around the opposite. The sides were emblazoned with the words, "Marvel Taylor: Interior Design: Homes, Offices, Factories."

Marve was a Michelangelo at his profession, and listed many of the wealthy as his clients. His wealthiest client, the U.S government, was unlisted.

Jack smiled. Marve could design the most ornate and tech advanced wonder rooms for billionaires, the most efficiently brutal torture chambers for Guantanamo and, in this case, a bit of both.

Marve exited one truck, the engineer got out of another. "So when do we start?" Marve asked.

"Wait awhile. I need to make sure she's gone. You like something to eat while we wait? The plane doesn't leave for an hour."

"Okay," the engineer replied.

Seventy-minutes later, Jack's I-pod chimed, "Go Brad."

"She's on the plane. Tally-ho."

"Right! Marve, Chuck, go to it."

Minutes later, the house filled with tech crew and construction workers.

"Okay guys, I have some business to look after, and then I'm moving into the Four Seasons. Don't break anything. See you in a few days."