Shock Value td-51

by Warren Murphy

  She stared at him with big, luminous eyes that welled with tears. "Abraxas is planning to kill you," she said. "He can do it. He's killed before."

  "Peabody?"

  "He arranged that. Others, too."

  "I wish someone would tell me who this Abraxas is. It would make things a lot easier."

  "He's my employer."

  Remo smiled. "That little squirt?"

  "No. That's LePat. Abraxas sent him to spy on me. He caught me talking to you. I told him I had set a trap for you so that his men could kill you."

  "Did you?"

  She lit another cigarette from the one still burning and inhaled deeply. "Yes," she said.

  "True to form."

  "But I didn't go through with it," she said quickly. "I gave him the name of another place on the other side of the island. His men are checking there now. They'll come here eventually. I thought you'd help me get away from him, but..." She buried her face in her hands.

  "Hey, c'mon," Remo said, placing his hand over hers. "It can't be that bad."

  "How could you ever trust me, after the way I've treated you?"

  "Who said I trusted you?" Remo said. "What happens if whoever's gunning for me finds you?"

  "I'll be killed. Whether they find you or not, Abraxas will destroy me now. I've lied to him."

  "This Abraxas sounds like one terrific guy."

  "He's insane," she said quietly. "I realized that today." A sob started deep in her chest and bubbled out of her. "How could things have gone this far?" she shrilled. "I never thought— I'm afraid. I'm so afraid."

  "Let's get out of here," Remo said, pulling her to her feet. "We'll go someplace where you can tell me about this setup from the beginning."

  "All right," Circe said, picking up her handbag with shaking hands. "There's a place along the shoreline..." She gasped. The pocketbook fell to the floor.

  "What is it?" He followed her eyes to the doorway, where eight big black men stood. They held clubs, and their steely eyes were riveted on Remo and the girl. As Remo watched, the men walked toward them slowly. "We've got company," Remo said. "Did you bring your car?"

  She nodded, the corners of her mouth white with saliva.

  "Get in it and wait for me."

  "But there are too many of them—"

  "Go. Run." He pushed her out of the way of the oncoming thugs.

  Two of the men swung sticks above their heads. The music faded to scattered, tuneless sounds, then died. A woman's scream set off the stampede for the door. People rushed everywhere, overturning tables and knocking each other down as they hurried to clear the room for the lone white man surrounded by a circle of paid fighters.

  One of the thugs hurled his club at Remo's head. Remo held out his arm, palm flat, and met the blow squarely. The club shattered in the man's hand. Then, with one finger, Remo lodged the man's nose up into his brain while he kicked out at the tightening circle. Two more fell, groaning, to the floor.

  The air whistled. So swift that it was almost invisible, a leather cat-o'-nine-tails cracked, its metal-tipped streamers shooting out toward Remo's chest.

  "In the holy name of Abraxas," the man holding the whip cried.

  "In the holy name of Holy Mackerel," Remo said. With a subtle motion of his hands, he extended his fingertips to meet the steel ends of the cat. The tiny balls sprang back with nine chiming pings and embedded themselves like bullets into the forehead of the man who held the whip. He stood stock still for a moment, the nine red holes in his head too deep to bleed, as his eyes glazed and he fell forward over a table with a crash.

  They were all on him now, fists pummeling the air as again and again they pounded at the thin young man with the thick wrists who moved so quickly that no one could strike him. A head splintered against a wall, gushing blood like a fountain; one man armed with a long knife wailed in terror as he beheld his weapon in his right hand and the bloody stump where his left had been. The smell of death crept into the dim, sweat-smelling room as men screamed and prayed against the magic of the white man who could kill as easily as he breathed.

  Then the lights went out. The already shadowy room was plunged into utter darkness.

  Remo widened his pupils to see. A few men were left, strewn around the floor waiting in despair for their final death blows. No one was fighting anymore.

  "Tell Abraxas he's next," Remo said, and walked out.

  The white Opel was waiting by the doorway. As Remo climbed in, it skidded away down the dirt road.

  "Was it you who pulled the lights?" he asked.

  Circe nodded. "I thought it would help you escape. The odds were somewhat against you." She stuck a cigarette into her mouth and lit it with violently trembling fingers.

  "You smoke too much," Remo said. "Keep that up, and you won't live long."

  She expelled a dry, bitter little laugh and drove on.

  ?Chapter Thirteen

  She turned off into a wooded copse where the scrub pines concealed the car from the road. It was a dark night, overcast by heavy clouds that hid the moon from view.

  "The shore's down there, past the hill," Circe said, gesturing forward with her chin. "You can't see it tonight, but there's a cave nearby. We can talk there."

  "Don't you think you're being a little paranoid?" Remo said, picking his way through the sharp rocks along the deserted beach. Big tufts of algae and sea grass grew in the sand holes where the water gushed in rhythmically and, hissing, withdrew. "No one could have followed us here."

  "You don't know Abraxas," she said. The red glow of her cigarette led him into a cool place smelling of sea and everlasting darkness.

  "The cave I spoke about," Circe said. "We'll be safe here." She settled into a moss-covered cleft of smooth rock. "I don't even know where to begin."

  "Start with Abraxas. Who is he?"

  His eyes were already at home in the darkness. Circe sat on her haunches, her arms wrapped around her knees, as she began to pick up the threads of the story that had ended here for her, in this secret place, begging a stranger for help.

  "Abraxas isn't his read name," she said hesitantly. "His real name is Perseus Mephisto. His father was a shipping tycoon."

  "Greek?"

  "Yes. I, too, am Greek, although I've spent much of my life traveling." She lit a cigarette off the butt still glowing between her fingers. "The Mephisto family was very wealthy. In their house at Corinth alone, more than fifty servants were housed. I was one of them."

  Remo said, "You don't act like anybody's servant."

  "I'm not anymore. Not exactly, anyway." She sighed. "I was young when I lived in Corinth. Both my parents worked for the family, and I did small chores around the house to help my mother. Perseus was already a young man by the time I was ten years old. He used to tell me that when I grew up I would be beautiful." Involuntarily, she touched the scar on her face.

  "He was right about that," Remo said, removing her hand. "You are."

  She took a deep drag from her cigarette. "I adored him. All i remember about my youth is Perseus. Perseus, on his father's great ship, the wind ruffling his hair. Perseus coming home on his visits from the university, running up the servants' staircase to lift me so high, I could touch the ceiling. Perseus... it was always Perseus. He was as brilliant and warm as the sun itself, and handsome as a god."

  "Are we talking about the same man?" Remo asked. "The one who's trying to kill us both?"

  "He's different now," she said softly. Her eyes were strange and faraway, as if trying to envision a past as distant and removed from the present as a drugged dream.

  "It didn't happen all at once. I started to notice the change in him when Perseus entered the family business. He was the firstborn son. In a family like the Mephistos, that's like being heir to a throne. Perseus was groomed to take over his father's empire."

  "What happened? Didn't he measure up to his old man? Happens all the time," Remo said, thinking briefly of Chiun.

  "Quite the opposite," Circe said. "Fr
om what I understood, he was brilliant. His mother was very proud of him. But after seeing his son's successes, his father complained that Perseus was too rash and too independent. I think that Mephisto was envious of his son's ability. He was an arrogant man, and hated it when Perseus went against him on matters of policy, even though his son's ideas were usually better than his own." She paused as if collecting her thoughts.

  "It was around that time that Perseus began to confide in me. I was still young, but I was no longer a child. He often told me that I was wise beyond my years, and that was why he trusted me. Actually, though, I think I was his only friend during those months. I was fifteen."

  "Was he your lover?"

  "No. He was not like ordinary men, even then. He shunned women— all personal contacts, really. He said that great men must stand alone." She smiled. "He called me his siren," she said. "I was the temptation that whetted his appetites and gave him strength. In some twisted way, he believed that by resisting me he became greater."

  "I remember that story from school," Remo said. "Listening to the sirens' song without giving in to it. What is it? Ulysses?"

  "Exactly. That's when he began to call me Circe. To tell the truth, I like thinking of myself that way. It was a far cry from the cleaning girl I was during the days. It made me love him more than ever.

  "Then one day he told his father of his plans to take over the business. Mephisto laughed at him. He said he wouldn't be ready to retire for years. He hurt Perseus even more by saying he was going to bring his younger sons into the business as well. For Perseus, it was an insult beyond bearing. He came to me that evening, still trembling with anger. He called his father terrible things, and said that the old man's time had passed. He said he would take power from his father. 'How?' I asked him. He said, I'll have to kill him.'

  "It made me shiver. He was so calm. If I hadn't loved him so much, I would have run to tell the old man. But Perseus was my god, and if he'd asked me to kill Mephisto myself, I would have done it for him."

  "How was he going to do it?"

  "Fire. It was Mephisto's habit to visit the warehouses on Saturdays, including an old building used to store lumber on the outskirts of the city. Perseus waited until his father and all the workers were inside, then poured kerosene around the building and set a match to it. The place burned to the ground, but Perseus's father escaped without any injuries.

  "His father never mentioned the incident. Perseus was worried that Mephisto knew who had started the fire and would try to get even with him, but as the weeks passed, he came to believe that Mephisto viewed the fire as an accident. Then one day Perseus told me that Mephisto had asked him to take the family's big yacht, the Pegasus, to Sardinia to pick up some relatives who were vacationing there. I sneaked out of the house when the ship was ready to sail so that I could watch it leave harbor. Perseus waved to me from the deck...."

  She brushed a tear from her face. "When the ship was about a mile out of the harbor, the sky lit up in a blaze, and I heard a sound, a terrible sound like the gates of hell crashing shut. Fragments of metal and wood shot up from the ship, and columns of black smoke poured out of it. The smoke looked like blood in water, dark and spreading, filled with death.

  "I didn't take time to think. All I knew was that the man I loved was on that ship, and I had to get to him somehow. I cut loose a small boat with an outboard motor and headed out toward the Pegasus. Even from a half-mile away, the air was hot and choking from the smoke. I could barely see. Then, when I was more than halfway to the ship, a second explosion turned the Pegasus into a ball of fire. Debris was flying everywhere.

  "I stood up in the boat to try to get my bearings, since I couldn't see through the smoke. I didn't see the thing coming at me. A splinter from the deck, maybe, or part of the steel plating— I never found out. Whatever it was, it hit me in the face like a hot knife, so hard that it knocked me overboard. Now that I think back on it, it must only have been a glancing blow, or else I would have lost consciousness. I managed to find the boat somehow and crawl back into it. Something flooded into my eyes. I brushed them, and my hands came away covered with blood, my blood. It was everywhere— pouring down my clothes, falling in big drops onto the planks of the boat. I never saw so much blood. I thought I was dying. All I wanted to do at that point was to reach Perseus before it happened. For some reason, I never doubted that he was alive. Perseus was too big for death. But when I saw him, I remember wishing for a moment that he had died." Circe dabbed at her eyes with the back of a hand.

  "I found him clinging to a wooden rafter in the water. His face was unrecognizable, a mass of burned flesh and teeth. All the skin had been burned off. I knew him only from his rings, which were melted into his fingers. One of his eyes was dangling from its socket. The bones of both legs had been shattered. His back was broken."

  Circe's voice quavered with the memory. She placed one hand over her eyes and breathed shallowly, trying to pull back the tears.

  "I don't know how I got him in the boat. The next thing I remember is the hospital. I was given blood and released after a few days. Perseus didn't leave for two years."

  She lit a cigarette. "His mother died of heart failure then. Perseus was still far from recovered, but she had been paying for the operations he needed out of her own fortune. After she died, his father refused to pay the medical bills, and Perseus was moved to a clinic for the poor.

  "I worked at what odd jobs I could. The wound on my face healed badly. This is the scar from it," she said bitterly, brushing her hand along her cheek. "Still, I was the lucky one. Perseus never completely healed."

  "How is that?"

  "In many ways. His body, of course, was permanently damaged, but his mind was broken, too. He knew his father had tried to kill him. I rented a small room for myself in the slum district of Corinth, and Perseus came to stay with me after his release from the clinic. He talked of nothing except his hatred for his father. Killing him wasn't good enough, he said. He wanted to hurt Mephisto in such a way that death would be welcome. He lived on hate in those days, and I encouraged him, because he had nothing else.

  "To pass the days, he read— philosophy, theology. Ideas, I thought, to help him accept his condition. He took the name of Abraxas for himself. It was what the all-god of the ancients was called. 'Abraxas was once the most powerful force on earth,' Perseus told me. 'I plan to resurrect him.'

  "As soon as he was able, he began to write letters— hundreds of them, it seemed— to his father's enemies asking them for money. Before the year was out, replies started to come in. Men from all over the world who wanted to see Mephisto's empire crumble lent him money to begin a business in direct competition with his father's. They didn't know how badly he'd been hurt, of course. He organized a small group of shipping experts, mostly men who'd once worked for Mephisto. The company was a success. Inside of three years, his Investors had all been repaid and Mephisto, growing older and disappointed in Perseus's younger brothers, watched the business he had spent his life building begin to falter.

  "Abraxas did a funny thing then. He got me a tutor. He said that an education could give me more than any man could offer." She stared into the blackness of the cave, her eyes pinched. "Now that I think of it, I was going to leave him then. I'd done what I could, and didn't want to spend the rest of my life as his nurse; he could afford all the help he needed by then, anyway. But he must have known that I wouldn't turn down a gift like that. Everyone has his price, I suppose," she said softly.

  "At any rate, after I'd learned enough to go to a university, he sent me to the Sorbonne in Paris to study. After that, he sent me on a tour of the world. Once in a while I would read in the newspapers about Abraxas's businesses. He had branched out into many different areas, taking care to keep each business small so as not to attract too much attention. The shipping company itself was a fraction of the size of his father's, but along with it were companies that controlled the piers of major sea trading cities, trucking firms, ware
houses, graneries, dairies, importing firms— everything that affected shipping. Together Abraxas's companies squeezed Mephisto's into bankruptcy. Abraxas himself bought the house his father had built. Before the old man was off the grounds, a demolition crew was sent in to level the building to the ground.

  "Three months later Mephisto shot himself. Abraxas sold his businesses and called me home.

  "That was five years ago. We came to live here in Abaco. He said he needed to be in a remote place. I thought he chose the island because of his health— that this would be a kind of quiet retirement for him. But as soon as we arrived at South Shore, he began work on what he calls his Great Plan. In it, he has set himself up as a god, using the entire population of the earth as pawns in a foolish game. That's what I thought it was, a game. I didn't see any harm in all his crazy talk at first. It was just the rambling of a bitter, crippled man removed from the rest of the world. But others took him seriously. LePat— his lackey— is paid an enormous salary to cater to Abraxas's whims. His latest whim was to assemble a hundred of the best minds in the world to help him carry out his plan."

  She paused. "They're doing it, you know. Do you understand? This time he's destroying the whole world. And he won't stop until he obliterates it just as he did his father."

  Her voice had gone hoarse. A pile of cigarette butts littered the floor at her feet. She looked small, her arms wrapped closely around her body, the long mark on her face illuminated by the eerie phosphorescence of fireflies. She looked over at him. "Well, that's all of it." She smiled ruefully. "I don't even know your name."

  "Remo," he said, moving close to her. "I don't know yours, either."

  "My parents disowned me long ago for saving Abraxas. Circe is all I have now. I'm used to it."

  "Then come to me, Circe." He kissed her. She trembled in his arms. "Don't be afraid."

  "It's not him I'm afraid of," she said softly. "I've never been with a man before."