Skull strolled among the remnants of a temple already ancient when Julius Caesar lay on the marble floor of the Roman Senate in a pool of his own blood, wondering what the hell had gone wrong.
Byrsa Hill sat in the heart of the ancient ruin of Carthage, just north of Tunis, the modern capital of Tunisia. Carthage had been the center of a vast empire controlling most of the western Mediterranean world for nearly a millennium. The city was home to a million residents five centuries before Rome would attain such glory.
Yet it had all come crashing down, and so fast, so suddenly, that it reminded Skull of the fragility of things.
A military history buff, Skull had always been fascinated by Carthage. For a time it was the most powerful and advanced civilization west of the Levant, until it had been annihilated in three bitter, disastrous wars with the brilliant upstart Romans.
Today, most people had never even heard of the Carthaginians other than the story of Hannibal crossing the Alps with elephants, and much of their culture had been erased from the planet.
Bunch of object lessons there, thought Skull. The other guy always surprises you. Nothing lasts forever. Shit happens. Don’t get caught when the walls fall.
Skull strolled easily down the steep, rocky hillside toward the remnants of the once-famed manmade twin harbors of Carthage. In their heyday, they could berth over three hundred trireme warships.
Now nothing more than a giant hourglass depression showed in the ground, the formerly wide channels that connected it to the sea little more than watery ditches.
What will be left of our civilization after two and a half millennia? And who – or what – will replace us?
Making his way along the seashore toward the fishing harbor, he enjoyed the sun, warm breeze, and sounds of lightly crashing waves. The fresh salt smell typically meant relaxation to Skull. A place he went after a difficult job to unwind and recharge.
Not here, not yet. The work is just beginning.
Getting to the Netherlands would be relatively easy if he were anyone else. As long as he could pass the airport health checks – a euphemism for Plague testing and quarantine – he could have caught a commercial flight. But that meant biometrics, and biometrics were hard to fool. Alan Denham was well known in some circles, and not always viewed fondly, to understate the case. He needed to be someone else, and that meant avoiding those damned scanners that were all the rage now in airports.
It would mean getting in some other way.
A short, potbellied man, balding and swarthy, stood on the dock smoking. Skull didn’t need to compare him to the provided description to identify his contact. Doing this sort of work long enough, he’d gotten a feel for those individuals who occupied an obscure substrate of civilized society: part criminal, part artist, part idealist.
“You him?” the man asked with a thick French accent.
“You him? What kind of bona fides is that? Any cop or security person could just say, ‘yep, that’s me’ and your ass would be in prison before that cheap cigarette hit the ground.”
The man pulled the cigarette from his mouth and looked at it. “Is not cheap. Good tobacco.”
Skull sighed. “My rhetoric is wasted again. Got something for me?”
The man smiled revealing several prominent dental vacancies. “So long you got something for me.”
Skull waved a folded sheaf of Euro. The man smiled and reached for it, but Skull pulled it back. “Not yet. Let’s go.”
They walked down a rickety dock maze among marginally seaworthy vessels until they arrived at one of the larger ones. Paint peeled off every visible surface and an impressive number of pumps worked overtime to keep the vessel afloat. Skull could barely make out the boat’s name - Last Chance – stenciled on the stern.
“You have got to be shitting me,” said Skull, rounding on the man. “I’m supposed to cross to Italy in that? It’s sinking right now.”
“No shit you,” the man answered. “Good boat, no sink.” He held out his hand, and Skull put the Euro in it with evident disgust.
“Chancy will make it across the Med, don’t you worry,” said a deep, firm voice.
Skull turned to look at what could only be the captain. A tall, thin, elderly man with leather skin and deep age lines regarded Skull from pale blue eyes.
“That’s not a name to inspire confidence,” said Skull.
The captain stared at him for a few seconds before waving him aboard. “And yours is, Mr. Skull? We put your things below. I’ll show you where.”
Skull followed both men belowdecks and into a small room. There sat a large, locked rolling bag and a leather attaché case. The captain opened the latter and pulled out a set of photo identification documents with Skull’s picture on them.
“They good,” said the first man. “My son make. He genius.”
Skull examined the documents closely and grunted in appreciation. “You might actually be right.” He put the documents in one cargo pocket, and then pulled a chain from around his neck. It held nothing but a curious indented cylinder, a key. Skull inserted it into the rolling bag’s lock and opened it wide. He found his clothes and tactical gear, including his weapons. Flying here with them would have been impossible, of course. They’d been smuggled inside bulk cargo.
The captain poked Skull softly on the shoulder with one index finger to get his attention. He then moved the digit to point at the bag’s contents. “You get caught with any of that, they’ll cut your eyes out.”
Skull loaded a pistol and put it in a holster at the small of his back, along with extra magazines and a thin blade. “I won’t get caught, and if I do, you know nothing about it. I know nothing about you. That’s how it works.” He closed and relocked the bag.
The captain nodded as if that settled everything, and returned abovedecks.
The swarthy man fidgeted, his nervousness level quadrupled after seeing the contents of the bag. “We done?”
Turning to him with a smile, Skull nodded. “Don’t worry. I don’t need to kill you, right? You’ll keep your mouth shut?”
He nodded so vigorously that his cigarette flew from his lips.
Skull walked over and stepped on the burning ember. “Good thing the captain didn’t see you do that. He’d have killed you.”
“Thank you, bye-bye,” the man said, rushing up the steps and off the vessel.
Back on deck, Skull saw the captain watching him from a rusty folding chair. Several members of the ship’s crew performed menial tasks. None paid him any attention.
“How long till we depart?” Skull asked the captain.
The old man looked up at the sky, and then twisted around to gaze out to the ocean before answering. “Noon. We’ll be able to put you ashore on Catanzaro around midnight. Once there, as long as you got enough money, any Italian you run into will take care of you. Even the police or Carabinieri. Especially the Carabinieri. Their pay has been cut twice this year. They are expected to work for love of the Virgin Mary and Bella Italia, so they take bribes. How else will they support their mistresses in style, much less their wives?”
Skull chuckled, and then looked at his watch. He had at least three hours. “I’ll be back before you sail. I’ve got some unfinished business. If you leave without me, I’ll kill you.”
The captain smiled indulgently.
Walking off the ever-sinking ship, Skull hurried away from the piers and hailed the first taxi he saw.
Once seated, he specified an intersection near the address of a man who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Tunis. The last Psycho he’d tortured and killed gave up every member of his CIA network before dying.
The image of his grandmother came to mind, as it so often did in these moments.
Taking care of one more hidden Psycho wasn’t part of his mission, but why miss an opportunity, especially as he didn’t have anything else to do?
Besides, he’d already seen all the old Carthaginian historical sites. They were as dead as his target would soon be.
Nothing lasts forever. Shit happens.
Don’t get caught when the walls fall.