Scene Two

Off the coast of Nicaragua

 

Far below the waves of the black blue Caribbean, a vast underwater leviathan of a craft named the “Black Mermaid” hulks its way gradually toward the surface. The vessel is forty miles off the Eastern coast of Nicaragua, sloshing and bashing the water. It cascades aggressively. All of these things happen in depths of the sea and black of the night as its crew makes way toward “New Shoreham”; a tiny settlement on Block Island, a rebel enclave off the state of Rhode Island in the United States of America. Which for this aging Soviet era refurbished Akula nuclear submarine, is about a fort night away.

 

Says Kudzai, a Shona Warrior, biochemist and alleged member of the Trinidadian Special Forces, “A quite stupid name for a town overtaken by the simple name of it’s own island,” and he knows about such things being a Trinidadian. Knows about proud yet isolated things from being born in Zimbabwe. Kudzai- which certainly isn’t his real name is inherently skilled in both second guessing postcolonial island nation nomenclature and storming small seaside towns.

 

Adelina Anatolievna Blazhennaya with her soft auburn hair tied behind her head has just graduated from a prestigious Sharashka in Seattle, Washington. This particular Bureau of Experimental Design was paid for by Chinese direct investment and therefore into her recent studies incorporated the most elite techniques for parapsychology cultivated over 4,500 years of Middle Kingdom. As well as approaches to shamanism for those aspects of the Mezzo-Americans that were typified in the studies of Carlos Castaneda. She’s got developed fourth dimensional powers and uses them seamlessly. These days for money.

Shortly after graduation she took the instance of her America paperwork husband’s ceaseless infidelities, if not also aggressive homosexual tendencies, to promptly divorce him and renegotiate her new contract with the higher authorities to which she came under recent employ.

She’s now doing her make-up, red lips on child like features. She is very agile looking, big brown eyes and light cedar brown hair. She hasn’t aged in a decade. She looks through the mirror into the eyes of Emma Solomon, her employer and commanding officer watching her from the rusty portal door.

            “The greatest trouble with Russian men is that they are animals, though quite good at being men in all other regards were we all measured by our fuck and our fight, our bite and our valor. The greatest trouble with Americans is that while good at being gentle, in many regards they fail at being men for they are quick to make and break promises,” reads Emma Solomon from a book with a grey and black leather binding. She’s quoting something, not speaking in proverbs and jib-jab.

 

“I have never read his writing deeply, but I hear from others that he makes some pretty sweeping cultural generalizations throughout his various novels. Many of which are harder on Americans than is fair and certainly reflect that he did indeed grow up here and not somewhere else,” Adelina says while painting her face for war.

“And I don’t think you can lump us and them into simple gender roles, mentalities and generalizations,” Adelina adds.

 

“I’ve read them all,” says Emma Solomon, “he’s my husband after all, and they get more bleak as the serial progresses. The poems I cannot stand I have no idea how that little traitor whore got so many poems.”

 

“I’ve never read his poems either.”

But, that was an un-truth by futurist omission, for Adelina would indeed soon read poems made just for her. This was Sebastian’s device, his means of being more dishonest about his goals in this life. And she did know that already. Adelina could see the future in her dreams as well as her coffee. Clearly and concisely. Congruent and in parallel time space- not some foggy Hollywood acid flashback.

 

“You’re missing nothing. Think hypersexual communist Dr. Seuss with a slight swagger of Mayakovsky,” Emma says.

“Well I think highly of his contributions to the resistance. I could give a damn about his artistic abilities.”

 

“I didn’t marry him for art,” Emma says.

“Husband? Is that really true he’s your husband?”

“Well a long story is a long story, but suffice to say a need for documents was once involved, on his part.”

 

No one marries for love anymore, just for Golden tickets.

 

“Ah. Well that doesn’t concern me either.”

 

“You’re a wonderful creature dear Comrade Blazhennaya, your work will not be so hard. We have to identify a chain of small cells his cadre has built up and down the Eastern coast. I will see to that, but you have a sensitive task. You must make him love you and trust you. Mostly with a mobile phone and a radio, but you’ll have to engage him in a variety of emotions, and positions. He will probably try and put himself inside you several times- lovingly and also uncomfortably.”

 

“I know my job, tovarish.”

 

“My husband our target has a lot of potential to kill a lot of people. And get a lot of people killed ”

 

“So I’ve read.”

 

“The Oligarchy knows the general date for their uprising. I mean how could they not? There is a camera in every bedroom and a listening device in every pocket.  Numerous operators were compromised due to sloppy work on the American end, not his fault, but it’s locked down tight as a drum over there.”

 

“Tight as a drum?” asks Adelina, though trained a linguist and a parapsychologist she sometimes misses the vernacular which comes out of hip hop.

“The resistance movement has evaded the American State Security apparatus for twenty years. Everything is going according to plan.”

 

“Or, according to prophesy?” asks Adelina who can converse with the higher power when she feels she must, but trusts completely in the Baraka, the divine charisma of Emma Maya Soraya Solomon, the hidden candidate for Messiah of their generation. Known in Jewish cults as the Tzadikk Ha Dror.

 

Emma nods and flexes in her dark green uniform and then places her left hand on Adelina’s shoulder.

 

“Little darling, just stay out of the New York City.”

 

“What’s in New York?”

 

“The end of the world or the world to come,” she replies.

 

Adelina looks at her bulky satellite watch made by an Israeli company called “Superior Alien Military”. In seven days’ time she and her hastily although systematically  assembled unit will be launched from this briny abyss via a hermetically sealed fast boat, and in that electric coffin motor boat they will then land on Block Island and be taken to the aged but hippy Hygeia Hotel; given some new identities and “Americanized in the greater Boston area”.

 

“I would like to examine something that Avinadav and Sebastian wrote in the summer of 2001, before my capture and crucifixion, before the infamous martyr operation which killed so many at the Millennium Theatre,” says Emma taking out a grey leather bound manuscript:

 

“I’m not afraid of anything you know,” states Adelina to Emma.

 

“I know you’re not, my fearless one. That’s why you were selected to keep him under control. His mind is now in a dark and treacherous place. He’s been in the field for too many lives. He’s losing his mind. They have taken him out of objective reality to torture him again.”

 

“I will not fail you Commander Solomon,” Adelina says, “He always has loved me and always will though he hasn’t met me yet.”

 

“I know my little sister,” she smiles, “And when it gets crazy in American Babylon, which it will, you can rely on the rest of your unit. Oleg the Bear, Yuliana Romanova, and Mr. Kudzai are, well suffice to say we don’t use anything but the best players when we’re this close to being forced off the edge of the game.”

 

“We’ve never been this close to the edge before,” Adelina replies, “we’re trying not to lose, our, heads.”

 

Emma winks, Adelina just dropped a blighted hip hop lyric reference with a straight face. Then she did this little famous victory dance jig she always does when winning. Then both of these powerful women went back to being calm, cool and collective.