Dark Chant In A Crimson Key

Chapter Eleven

I'd been drugged with various and sundry concoctions on more than a few occasions in my life, but I'd never experienced a sensation quite like what I felt upon regaining consciousness. I was sitting, if sitting was the word, about where I'd been before our Japanese guests had arrived on the scene. Actually, it would be more accurate to say I was propped up, my head leaning back against the sofa, my hands resting limp on either side of me. I could move my eyes, head, and mouth, but that was all. I had no sensation whatsoever in the rest of my body. I would have suspected succinylcholine, or perhaps a curare cocktail, but those powerful drugs would have paralyzed my entire nervous system, and I was having no difficulty breathing. Whatever they had juiced me up with seemed to work only on the large, smooth muscles of the body, and I was most impressed with the effects of the drug. I could tell by the way the others were placed on the sofa that they, too, had been drugged. Harper was next to me, but her head had slid over onto my right shoulder. Jan was seated in the curve of the sofa, and Garth, Veil, and Insolers were directly opposite us.

The young man out of uniform in the Harvard sweatshirt was standing at the open end of the sofa, next to the glass coffee table, a few feet to my left. Five of the six other men were standing behind him in a semicircle, holding their weapons at their sides. The young man still had a supercilious grin on his face, and it occurred to me that he might suffer from some nervous disorder. However, the faces of the other men were totally impassive. The most startling feature of all the men was their eyes; I had never seen eyes like them, at least not in humans. There seemed to be no life in them; they were an almost uniform matte black, like the button eyes of dolls, as if something in the men, perhaps their very humanity, had been extinguished.

"You must be a Black Flamelet," I said, rolling my eyes in the direction of the young man in the sweatshirt, confirming to myself that I could speak without great difficulty, even if my words were slightly slurred.

The man's laugh was a giggle, a grating, effeminate sound that didn't reflect at all in his eyes. I decided his disorder wasn't in his nervous system. "That's remarkable," he said in perfect English laced with a strong Boston accent. "Really quite remarkable. How do you know that, Dr. Frederickson? Where did you hear the words 'Black Flame'?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Yes, I would," he replied casually. "And I will know."

"Who are you?"

He giggled again. "You can call me Bobby, or you can call me Zimmy, but I prefer that you call me Al."

"Whatever you say, Al. Typical Japanese name?"

"What have you done with my staff?" Jan asked in a hoarse, harrowed whisper.

"We've discharged them," the young man said, punctuating the words with a high-pitched bray even more grating than his giggle. "They've all been fired."

"God," Jan murmured, closing her eyes as tears came and rolled down her cheeks. "Oh, my God."

I said, "I don't want to give you any ideas, Al, m'lad, but why haven't you discharged us?"

This time the leader in the sweatshirt merely favored us with a supercilious grin, revealing even, white teeth. "You are all, in one way or another, involved in this matter. You are not innocents. What value is there in simply killing non-innocents?"

"Meaning you have some other use for us."

The smile, which like his laughter had never touched his soulless eyes, abruptly vanished. "You are all bound to each other, or to John Sinclair, by ties of love, friendship, brotherhood, loyalty, trust. It will be my pleasure to destroy those bonds before I destroy you. Before you die, your hearts will be broken, and you will watch as I take John Sinclair's soul from him." He paused, looked at Insolers. "You, perhaps, will be an exception. I sense that you've contributed a good deal of evil to the world, although you're a rank amateur. You could be of use to us in the long term."

"I wouldn't count on it, Al," Insolers replied in a flat tone.

In a most curious gesture, Al slowly raised his right index finger to point at the ceiling, then just as slowly lowered it until it was touching the center of Insolers' forehead. "You are a brave man, and you defy me now even though you are afraid-or think you are afraid. You have no idea what real terror feels like. Whether or not we decide to send you back to your keepers for our future use, be assured that I will teach what real fear is all about." He paused, brought his index finger around until it was pointed at me. "Where did you hear about Black Flame? Who told you about us?"

"I can't remember."

He quickly stepped forward, reached over my shoulder, and put the fingers of his right hand behind my head, tightly gripping the base of my skull. Because of the paralyzing drug in me, I felt his fingers only as a dull pressure. But then I had the sensation that his fingers were slicing through flesh and digging into bone, threatening to lift off the top of my skull. Suddenly, the inside of my body seemed to ignite in fire. My spine, from one end to the other, felt like a white-hot poker somebody had skewered me with, and the intense heat spread like a flash fire through my stomach, then seared its way down into my genitals. I screamed, and he let go.

"Ouch, that really does smart, doesn't it?" Al said as he removed his hand from my neck and put it on Harper's. "Now, would you care to answer my question, or shall I caress the lady's neck the way I did yours?"

"Somebody mentioned it to me. For Christ's sake, it doesn't matter. You don't have to hurt her. You've made your point."

"What is the name of this 'somebody'?"

"I told him," Veil said evenly.

Al turned to Veil. "And where did you hear of us?"

"I'm not sure. It must have been twenty years ago. I just heard some story about you. I didn't believe it at the time, but when Frederickson there told me about the mark on the back of your gunman at the hotel, I repeated the story to him. Now, leave them alone."

"Leave them alone, indeed," Al said, then turned and snapped his fingers in the direction of a doorway to his left that seemed to lead to a small pantry.

The missing sixth jumpsuited Japanese came through the doorway. He was holding a tray on which sat six steaming cups. This mysterious culinary sight did not exactly fill me with ecstasy; I doubted very much that the man called Al was going to allow us a coffee break.

"There are many things I wish to know," Al said, idly patting the Harvard logo on his sweatshirt. "Although I thoroughly enjoy hurting you, in the interests of saving time I think I will give you something that will help you to tell the truth."

The man carrying the tray stepped into the semicircle formed by the sofa, stopped in front of Garth. Al took one of the cups, held it to Garth's lips. Garth turned his head away, and Al put his free hand on the back of Garth's neck.

"Don't do that," I said quickly to Al. "Garth, drink it, for Christ's sake. We can't be in any worse shape than we're in, and you'll end up drinking the shit anyway. Save yourself a lot of suffering."

My brother glanced at me, anger and frustration in his eyes. Al took his hand away from Garth's neck, again offered him the steaming cup. Garth drank whatever was in it, grimaced. The man moved on to Insolers, then Veil.

I was the last in line. The bluish-green liquid smelled and tasted like a burning tire dump, and when I swallowed the thick, greasy brew, I did some grimacing of my own. It left a distinct aftertaste of rotting meat. My stomach immediately began to churn, and I was afraid I was going to be sick. I wasn't, but I remained just at the edge of vomiting, and it was only by concentrating my attention on a shelf of books across the room and taking measured, deep breaths that I was able to keep the contents of my stomach down. From the distressed looks on my companions' faces, I could tell we were all experiencing the same sensation. If the thoroughly nauseating brew was supposed to be some kind of truth drug, I much preferred sodium pentothal.

Al placed a chair in the space between the two ends of the sofa, sat down, and casually crossed his legs. "Now," he said easily, "I believe we're ready to begin our interrogation. Before I ask my questions, let me warn you that the tasty beverage you've just consumed will betray you at once if you attempt to lie. Then you will be punished. However, if you simply relax and answer my questions truthfully, you will be all right. We will begin with. . you." He turned slightly, pointed his index finger at Duane Insolers. "You work for the Central Intelligence Agency. I would like to know what position you hold, and precisely what it is you do."

"I'm a station officer. I-"

Insolers suddenly stopped speaking and gasped, as if his breathing had been cut off. His eyes went wide, and his face drained of color. He barely managed to turn his head to one side before vomiting onto his left shoulder. He continued to vomit until all he could produce were dry heaves, and then he again began gasping for breath. After he had recovered, Al unhurriedly rose from his chair, stepped close to Insolers, and put a hand on the back of his neck. I turned my head away and closed my eyes as Insolers screamed.

At Al's signal one of the uniformed men went to the pantry, returned a few moments later with a towel, which he used to clean the vomit off Insolers and the sofa. Insolers' head was bowed, his breathing ragged. I doubted very much that he wanted to repeat the experience.

Al touched him gently on the forehead, and Insolers flinched. "You were saying. .?"

"I'm. . deputy director of operations," Insolers murmured.

Now, there was a surprise, and a glance at Garth and Veil confirmed that they were as astonished as I was. It seemed absolutely incredible that one of the top men in the CIA, the big spook in charge of all the little spooks, should be off the reservation, traipsing around Switzerland, alone, where he would be fair game for enemy operatives, or jokers in the deck like Al and his glum chums. The position of deputy director of operations was so sensitive that the officeholder's photograph was never even published. Information obtained from Insolers could close down dozens of networks, our own and our allies'.

"Why are you here?"

"Looking … for Sinclair. Just like you, you-son-of-a-bitch."

"The deputy director of operations is a very important man. Why were you assigned to this?"

"Assigned. . myself."

"To kill him?"

"To warn him. There's something going on. . special assassin with special knowledge about him. I thought I would be able to contact him, or that he'd contact me if he found out I was looking for him."

"Why should you take such risks to help this man?"

"I owe him. He's the reason I'm DDO. And. . he's a good man."

Al giggled. "A good man? How quaint. Does your presence here have anything to do with us?"

"No. I've never heard of you."

Duane Insolers might hold a lot of the nation's most important secrets in his head, but Black Flame-or Al, at least-didn't show any interest at all in probing for them. Al's one and only interest seemed to be John Sinclair, and all of his remaining questions were focused directly on that single subject.

After Al had finished draining the CIA's deputy director of operations of all the information he wanted, he continued around the circle. As with Insolers, all of his questions were focused on the object of his obsession-our relationship to John Sinclair, what we knew about him, and our reasons for being in Switzerland.

It didn't take Black Flame's boyish leader long to finish with Garth, Harper, Veil, and me, but Jan Rawlings was another matter. Despite what she'd witnessed when Insolers had tried to lie, she started out by trying to conceal the truth, and immediately paid the price. And then, incredibly, she tried again. She ended her agony exhausted and sobbing, her screams echoing in the vast library, the contents of her stomach spilled into her lap. Finally she broke, and along with Al we learned all of John Sinclair's secrets that had been so artfully hidden for more than twenty years-his residences around the world, the many identities he had assumed, all of the people he knew, and who had helped him in the past. In the end, both Jan Rawlings and John Sinclair had been stripped naked. At a nod from Al, one of his men brought more towels and began to clean the woman. Jan turned her head away and continued to cry.

After ninety minutes or so, the effects of both the paralyzing drug and the brew from hell began to wear off. Feeling came first to my fingers and toes and then slowly returned to the rest of my body. My mouth continued to taste of rotting meat. Six straight-backed chairs were brought into the room, and we were all tied into them-with special attention being paid to the ropes and knots binding Veil. Each of us was allowed, temporarily, to keep one hand free, and, to my surprise, we were provided with hot, invigorating tea-which dissolved the bad taste in my mouth- water, and food. But I knew this was a utilitarian, not humanitarian, gesture. There was no kindness, no mercy, in the doll's button eyes of the man in the Harvard sweatshirt and his men. Al simply wanted our bodies and minds brought back up to speed for whatever other trials he had in mind for us. I did not find that thought comforting.

"John Sinclair's father approached my grandfather," the man who called himself Al said in an easy, conversational tone. He was sitting in the curve of the sofa facing us, his legs crossed, his arms folded across his chest. The other men had left the room, and I presumed they had taken up various positions around the castle to wait for the guest of honor to arrive.

"I am told the father was a most remarkable man. For a Westerner, he had a deep and subtle understanding of Japanese culture. I was very young, in a private school here in Switzerland, when these events occurred, so I never met the man; I do not know how he first heard of my grandfather, or precisely what he thought my grandfather could offer his son. My grandfather practiced the art of the chameleon, and wore many masks; different people saw him in different colors. On the face of things, Henry Sinclair wanted Master Bai, my grandfather, to teach his son the way of the ninja, as if there were any one such thing, and he offered to pay a large sum of money. It seemed John Sinclair was exceptionally gifted in the martial arts even as a teenager, and when Master Bai witnessed a demonstration of the young man's skills, he accepted both the money and the youth. It is most unlikely that either Henry or John Sinclair knew that my grandfather was the highest sensei of Black Flame, or understood that Black Flame acolytes must pass a final test-murder an innocent-or be killed themselves. Black Flame does not hand out promotional literature or administer written application tests.

"Obviously, Henry Sinclair underestimated my grandfather or misunderstood his life's work. This is not surprising; most Japanese would make the same mistake. Incredibly, it seems my grandfather made the mistake of underestimating the will and strength of the young John Sinclair. It is doubtful that John Sinclair was ever committed to the act of assassination; he wanted only knowledge of the assassin's art, as taught by the world's foremost practitioner. He not only managed to hide his heart and true intent from my grandfather, but rejected the final test and somehow succeeded in escaping from the immediate wrath of the society. He had stolen my grandfather's secrets and refused to pay the price for that knowledge. In thousands of years, this had never happened before, and it was an act that had to be severely punished. Furthermore, the nature of the punishment would have to be much more terrible than mere death; it would have to be exquisitely painful and prolonged. Master Bai's intention was to force him to kill his parents, but by now, with the training he had received, John Sinclair was not so easy to find.

He had become what we call an 'invisible man.' My grandfather had to settle for killing the parents himself.

"Some years later it happened that my grandfather was wearing a different mask and color, working as a highly paid consultant to Mr. Insolers' CIA, formulating the Cooked Goose operation you've mentioned. When he learned of John Sinclair's relative proximity, and realized his status as a war hero in the American armed forces, he immediately shifted his attention to the most important matter in his life-exacting revenge on the former acolyte who had betrayed and embarrassed him before thousands of years of predecessors. The plan was to have Sinclair engineer his own destruction. He would learn of Cooked Goose, which Master Bai knew he would reject, and subsequently be killed by his own people, cursed by the same nation that had so recently and profusely honored him. My grandfather insisted that Sinclair be approached by Cooked Goose recruiters, and he was. The rest you know, or have guessed. The plan did not work. John Sinclair had not been idle. He had taken my grandfather's teachings and built upon them. His powers, both physical and psychological, were very great. Thanks to my grandfather, he had become a Black Flame sensei himself, and yet had still avoided paying the price for those skills he had acquired.

"They would confront each other again years later, in Seattle, after John Sinclair had constructed for himself the images he reflects today: a feared terrorist and extortionist to the world at large, a worshipped hero to a select few who think they understand him and his work-and a continuing insult and deep affront to those of us who understand just what it is John Sinclair is really doing."

"What is he really doing?" Garth asked.

Al's response was a mild shrug accompanied by a thin, enigmatic smile. "Dear fellow, I wouldn't know where to begin. I fear it would be beyond your capacity to understand."

"No?" I said, cold rage welling in me at all the suffering that had so recently taken place in this room. "Well, let me give it a shot, dear fellow. It's all mind games to the two of you. You're both fucking crazy, and you both stink of death. Sure, he's a hero to the people he's helped, but the reason he's an affront to Black Flame is that he turns Black Flame on its pointed head. He uses the techniques your grandfather taught him to obliterate the guilty with the same ruthless dispatch you use to murder the innocent. In a way, you're two sides of the same coin. For years, you people and Sinclair have been playing a kind of spiritual chess game, outside the law, with the world as your board, and with the corpses piling up all around you."

"It isn't like that, Mongo," Jan said, an edge to her voice. "It's not a game to Chant. He's not evil."

Al glanced at Jan, then back at me. Again, his lips curled back in an enigmatic, mirthless smile. "Yes," he said. "Actually, it is rather like that, Frederickson. That's perhaps as close as an outsider can come to understanding why Sinclair is such a bother to us."

"He's won even if you kill him," Veil said to the leader. "You're an entire organization, while he's a solo act. For years, he's been rubbing your nose in your failure to stop him from beating you at your own game. But I'm betting that when he goes down, Black Flame goes down. Why has he kept your secrets for all these years, Al? I say it's because it suits his purposes; it's the way he plays this strange game. He's kept a lot of secrets for that reason. But he's certainly made arrangements for a lot of information to come out when he dies. He'll end up even more of a legend, while you folks are going to end up looking like a bunch of boobs. His ultimate revenge will be not only to expose you, at a time and place of his choosing, but to make you look silly."

The smile on Al's face abruptly vanished, and for just a moment I glimpsed in his black button eyes the true depths of his rage and hatred. It chilled me.

"No!" he snapped in a voice that had suddenly grown slightly hoarse. "That is not what will happen. First, he will suffer far more than just his own death. He will be forced to kill the ones he loves with his own hands, and then we will kill all the others who love him. He will know depths of despair and loneliness such as few humans have ever experienced. We may allow him to live to a ripe old age with those feelings as his only companions. We will have his soul. We have learned all we need to know from you people. When we are finished, there will be nobody left alive to testify to the supposed good that he has done, or to his real motives. He will be blamed for all of the deaths here in Switzerland, including your own. John Sinclair will not be perceived as a legend, but as a curse. His story shall be as we wish it to be told; the mask we finally give him to wear will be permanent, and it will burn him to the bone."

I was experiencing a lot of conflicting emotions, the most powerful being a combination of regret and outrage at the probability that the man with a Harvard sweatshirt and no heart was no doubt right. Black Flame certainly seemed now to have the situation under control. And it wasn't only the people John Sinclair loved and who loved him who were going to die but also the people I loved and who loved me. All of Sinclair's sanctuaries had been exposed, and the woman he loved was being held captive. He would certainly come; and even if he didn't, Black Flame was now in a position to carry out the strategy their leader had outlined. I wondered how I might have handled things differently, but suspected there had never really been anything I could have done or not done that would have affected this outcome. I'd never had a chance once I had agreed to come to Switzerland. I'd dropped right into a deadly trap the moment I'd stepped off the plane, and there was no way I could have prevented Garth, Veil, and Harper from joining me, once they were aware of my predicament. That thought tended to refocus my attention on the charming fellow who'd done the dropping.

I asked, "What have you done with my good friend Emmet P. Neuberger?"

The question provoked another of Al's grating giggles. "I believe Emmet has learned his lesson."

"You haven't killed him?"

Al raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment. "Killed him? You think we would simply kill him after he tried to steal our money, and almost delivered us into the hands of our greatest enemy? You can't be serious."

"Neuberger was in on the original scam, wasn't he? At least he thought he was. Then Sinclair either tricked or blackmailed him into revealing the electronic access codes he needed, right?"

"Something like that. Actually, Sinclair had learned enough to do what he did without Emmet's help, but he wished to entrap the poor man-and he wanted to leave his footprints for us to find. I'm certain he now regrets that little display of bravado."

"Did Neuberger know who he was screwing with when he tried to slip money out of Cornucopia?"

"He was aware that he had certain obligations that had been passed on to him through two generations and that the penalty for betraying those obligations could be severe. It seems his imagination was not up to the task of conjuring what forms such penalties might take. You Americans use the expression 'cut him off at the knees.' We cut Emmet off at the knees, but we used a chain saw instead of an expression. You people will be killed. Although your corpses will be mutilated for effect, there won't be a great deal of pain for any of you. But then, we're not really angry with you people." He paused to giggle again, and the giggle became a bray. "I wanted to put your minds at rest."

Harper and I exchanged glances, and I saw my own love, longing, and regret mirrored in her maroon, gold-flecked eyes. I looked at Garth. My brother's face appeared blank as he stared off into space, and I knew that he was retreating into himself, marshaling his energy and resources for whatever opportunity might present itself to attack Al and his Black Flame colleagues. I wriggled my wrists and ankles, found my bonds tight. It was all very depressing.

"What happened between your grandfather and Sinclair in Seattle?" Veil asked in an even tone.

"My grandfather and sister died," Al replied without any sign of emotion. "John Sinclair had mounted an operation against a very wealthy and powerful man who had virtually enslaved a community of Hmong-the native people Sinclair had fought with in Southeast Asia. Rather than meet Sinclair's demands, the man hired my grandfather-once again wearing a different mask and color-to kill him. I don't know how the man heard of Master Bai, or how he had managed to contact him, but it's not important; indeed, it may have been Master Bai who contacted the man when he learned of the man's difficulties with Sinclair. This time my grandfather attacked John Sinclair's mind and heart, as well as his body, with a most unusual weapon-my sister, who was an expert in the more sensual of the Black Flame arts. Sinclair should have been destroyed, but he was saved by a Hmong woman who loved him. This woman killed my sister, and Sinclair killed my grandfather. Now it falls to my father and I to-"

Al abruptly stopped speaking when one of his men entered the library from a door at the far end. The man walked quickly across the library to where Al was standing, whispered something in his ear. Al frowned, turned to face the other end of the library, then loudly issued a command in Japanese.

I stiffened as three Black Flame soldiers and their prisoner entered the library. One of the men was carrying a bulky, elaborate array of assassin's equipment-a high-powered rifle equipped with night-vision telescopic sight, and a tripod with gyroscopic stabilizers. The other two assassins were each firmly gripping an arm of their prisoner, a familiar, grizzled figure with thick, silver-streaked black hair, coal-black eyes, weathered flesh, a barrel chest, and a pronounced limp. The servile, eager-to-please air I had come to associate with my ex-chauffeur was completely absent; he was obviously angry and frustrated, but most of all Carlo looked embarrassed.