The Complete Adversary Cycle: The Keep, the Tomb, the Touch, Reborn, Reprisal, Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack)

by F. Paul Wilson

  “Sure,” Jack said, his expression hiding none of his skepticism. “Anything you say.”

  “I suppose you wish the rest of your fee.”

  Jack nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

  He pulled the thick envelope out of his tunic and thrust it at Jack. Despite his prior conviction of the utter futility of his ever seeing the stolen necklace again, Kusum had kept the packet with him as a gesture of hope and of faith in the Goddess he prayed to. “I wish it were more. I don’t know how to thank you enough. Words cannot express how much—”

  “It’s okay,” Jack said quickly. Kusum’s outpouring of gratitude seemed to embarrass him.

  Kusum, too, was taken aback by the intensity of the emotions within him. He had completely given up hope. He had asked this man, a stranger, to perform an impossible task, and it had been done! He detested emotional displays, but his customary control over his feelings had slipped since the nurse had placed the necklace in his hand.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “I found the guy who stole it and convinced him to take me to it.”

  Kusum felt his fist clench and the muscles at the back of his neck bunch involuntarily. “Did you kill him as I asked?”

  Jack shook his head. “Nope. But he won’t be punching out old ladies for some time. In fact, he should be showing up in the emergency room here pretty soon to get something for the pain in his hands. Don’t worry. He’s been paid back in kind. I fixed it.”

  Kusum nodded silently, hiding the storm of hatred raging across his mind. Mere pain was not enough, however—not nearly enough! The man responsible here must pay with his life!

  “Very well, Mr. Jack. My… family and I owe you a debt of gratitude. If there is ever anything you need that is in my power to secure for you, any goal that is in my power to achieve, you have merely to ask. All efforts within the realm of human possibility”—he could not repress a smile here— “and perhaps even beyond, will be expended on your behalf.”

  “Thank you,” Jack said with a smile and a slight bow. “I hope that won’t be necessary. I think I’ll be heading home now.”

  “Yes. You look tired.” But as Kusum studied him, he sensed more than mere physical fatigue. There was an inner pain that hadn’t been present this morning… a spiritual exhaustion. Was something fragmenting this man? He hoped not. That would be tragic. He wished he could ask, but did not feel he had the right. “Rest well.”

  He watched until the American had been swallowed by the elevator, then he returned to the room. The private duty nurse met him at the door.

  “She seems to be rallying, Mr. Bahkti! Respirations are deeper, and her blood pressure’s up!”

  “Excellent!” Nearly twenty-four hours of constant tension began to unravel within him. She would live. He was sure of it now. “Have you a safety pin?”

  The nurse looked at him quizzically but went to her purse on the windowsill and produced one. Kusum took it and used it as a clasp for the necklace, then turned to the nurse.

  “This necklace is not to be removed for any reason whatsoever. Is that clear?”

  The nurse nodded timidly. “Yes sir. Quite clear.”

  “I will be elsewhere in the hospital for a while,” he said, starting for the door. “If you should need me, have me paged.”

  Kusum took the elevator down to the first floor and followed signs to the emergency room. He had learned that this was the largest hospital serving the midtown West Side of Manhattan. Jack had said that he had injured the mugger’s hands. If he should seek medical care, it would be here.

  He took a seat in the waiting area of the emergency department. It was crowded. People of all sizes and colors brushed against him on their way in and out of the examining rooms, back and forth to the receptionist counter. He found the odors and the company distasteful, but intended to wait a few hours here. He was vaguely aware of the attention he drew, but was used to it. A one-armed man dressing as he did in the company of westerners soon became immune to curious stares. He ignored them. They were not worthy of his concern.

  It was less than half an hour before an injured man entered and grabbed Kusum’s attention. His left eye was patched and both his hands were swollen to twice their normal size.

  This was the one! There could be no doubt. Kusum barely restrained himself from leaping up and attacking the man. He seethed as he sat and watched a secretary in the reception booth begin to help him fill out the standard questionnaire his useless hands could not. A man who broke people with his hands had had his hands broken. Kusum relished the poetry of it.

  He walked over and stood next to the man. As he leaned against the counter, looking as if he wished to ask the secretary a question, he glanced down at the form. “Daniels, Ronald, 359 W. 53rd St.” Kusum stared at Ronald Daniels, who was too intent on hurrying the completion of the form to notice him. Between answers to the secretary’s questions, he whined about the pain in his hands. When asked about the circumstances of the injury, he said a jack had slipped while he had been changing a tire and his car had fallen on him.

  Smiling, Kusum went back to his seat and waited. He saw Ronald Daniels led into an examining room, saw him wheeled out to x-ray in a chair, and then back to the examining room. There was a long wait, and then Ronald Daniels was wheeled out again, this time with casts from the middle of his fingers up to his elbows. And all the while there was not a single moment when he was not complaining of pain.

  Another stroll over to the reception booth and Kusum learned that Mr. Daniels was being admitted overnight for observation. Kusum hid his annoyance. That would complicate matters. He had been hoping to catch up with him outside and deal with him personally. But there was another way to settle his score with Ronald Daniels.

  He returned to the private room and received a very favorable update from the amazed nurse.

  “She’s doing wonderfully—even spoke to me a moment ago! Such spirit!”

  “Thank you for your help, Miss Wiles,” Kusum said. “I don’t think we’ll be requiring your services any longer.”

  “But—”

  “Have no fear: You shall be paid for the entire eight-hour shift.” He went to the windowsill, took her purse and handed it to her. “You’ve done a wonderful job. Thank you.”

  Ignoring her confused protests, he guided her out the door and into the hall. As soon as he was sure she would not be returning out of some misguided sense of duty to her patient, he went to the bedside phone and dialed hospital information.

  “I’d like to know the room number of a patient,” he said when the operator picked up. “His name is Ronald Daniels. He was just admitted through the emergency room.”

  There was a pause, then: “Ronald Daniels is in 547C, North Wing.”

  Kusum hung up and leaned back in the chair. How to go about this? He had seen where the doctors’ lounge was located. Perhaps he could find a set of whites or a scrub suit in there. Dressed in those and without his turban, he would be able to move about the hospital more freely.

  As he considered his options, he pulled a tiny glass vial from his pocket and removed the stopper. He sniffed the familiar herbal odor of the green liquid within, then resealed it.

  Mr. Ronald Daniels was in pain. He had suffered for his transgression. But not enough. No, not nearly enough.

  21

  “HELP ME!”

  Ron had just been drifting off into sleep. Goddamn that old bastard! Every time he started to fall asleep, the old fart yelled.

  Just my luck to get stuck in a ward with three geezers. He elbowed the call button. Where’s that fucking nurse? He needed a shot.

  The pain was a living thing, grinding Ron’s hands in its teeth and gnawing his arms all the way up to the shoulders. All he wanted to do was sleep. But the pain kept him awake. The pain and the oldest of his three ancient roommates, the one over by the window, the one the nurses called Tommy. Every so often, in between his foghorn snores, he’d let out a yell that would rattle the windows
.

  Ron hit the call button again with his elbow. Because both his arms were resting in slings suspended from an overhead bar, the nurses had fastened the button to one of the side rails. He had asked them repeatedly for another pain shot, but they kept giving him the same old line over and over: “Sorry, Mr. Daniels, but the doctor left orders for a shot every four hours and no more. You’ll have to wait.”

  Mr. Daniels. He could almost smile at that. His real name was Ronald Daniel Symes. Ron to his friends. He’d given the receptionist a phony name, a phony address, and told them his Blue Cross/Blue Shield card was at home in his wallet. And when they’d wanted to send him home he’d told them how he lived alone and had no one to feed him or even help him open his apartment door. They’d bought it all. So now he had a place to stay, three meals a day, air conditioning, and when it was all over, he’d skip out and they could take their bill and shove it.

  Everything would be great if it weren’t for the pain.

  “HELP ME!”

  The pain and Tommy.

  He hit the button again. Four hours had to be up! He needed that shot!

  The door to the room swung open and someone came in. It wasn’t a nurse. It was a guy. But he was dressed in white. Maybe a male nurse. Great! All he needed now was some faggot trying to give him a bed bath in the middle of the night.

  But the guy only leaned over the bed and held out one of those tiny plastic medicine cups. Half an inch of colored liquid was inside.

  “What’s this?”

  “For the pain.” The guy was dark and had some sort of accent.

  “I want a shot, clown!”

  “Not time yet for a shot. This will hold you until then.”

  “It better.”

  Ron let him tip the cup up to his lips. It was funny tasting stuff. As he swallowed it, he noticed the guy’s left arm was missing. He pulled his head away.

  “And listen,” he said, feeling a sudden urge to throw his weight around—after all, he was a patient here. “Tell them out there I don’t want no more cripples coming in here.”

  In the darkness, Ron thought he detected a smile on the face above him.

  “Certainly, Mr. Daniels. I shall see to it that your next attendant is quite sound of limb.”

  “Good. Now take off, geek.”

  “Very well.”

  Ron decided he liked being a patient. He could give orders and people had to listen. And why not? He was sick and—

  “HELP ME!”

  If only he could order Tommy to stop.

  The junk the geek had given him didn’t seem to be helping his pain. Only thing to do was try to sleep. He thought about that bastard cop who’d busted up his hands tonight. He said it was private, but Ron knew a pig when he saw one. He swore he’d find that sadist bastard even if he had to hang around every precinct house in New York until winter. And then Ron would follow him home. He wouldn’t get back at him directly —Ron had a bad feeling about that guy and didn’t want to be around if he ever got really mad. But maybe he had a wife and kids…

  Ron lay there in a half-doze for a good forty-five minutes planning what he’d do to get even with the pig. He was just tipping over the edge into a deep sleep, falling… finally falling…

  “HELP ME!”

  Ron jerked violently in the bed, pulling his right arm out of the suspensory sling and knocking it against the side rail. A fiery blast of pain shot up to his shoulder. Tears squeezed out of his eyes as breath hissed noisily through his bared teeth.

  When the pain subsided to a more tolerable level, he knew what he had to do.

  That old fucker, Tommy, had to go.

  Ron pulled his left arm out of its sling, then eased himself over the side rail. The floor was cold. He lifted his pillow between his two casts and padded over to Tommy’s bed. All he had to do was lay it over the old guy’s face and lean on it. A few minutes of that and poof, no more snores, no more yells, no more Tommy.

  He saw something move outside the window as he passed by it. He looked closer. It was a shadow, like somebody’s head and shoulders. A big somebody.

  But this was the fifth floor!

  He had to be hallucinating. That stuff in the cup must have been stronger than he thought. He bent closer to the window for a better look. What he saw there held him transfixed for a long, agonal heartbeat. It was a face out of a nightmare, worse than all his nightmares combined. And those glowing yellow eyes…

  A scream started in his throat as he reflexively lurched backward. But before it could reach his lips, a taloned, three-fingered hand smashed through the double pane and clamped savagely, unerringly around his throat. Ron felt incredible pressure against his windpipe, crushing it closed against his cervical spine with an explosive crunch. The rough flesh against the skin of his throat was cool and damp, almost slimy, with a rotten stench arising from it. He caught a glimpse of smooth dark skin stretched over a long, lean, muscular arm leading out through the shattered glass to… what? He arched his back and clawed at the imprisoning fingers but they were like a steel collar around his neck. As he struggled vainly for air, his vision blurred. And then, with a smooth, almost casual motion, he felt himself yanked bodily through the window, felt the rest of the glass shatter with his passage, the shards either falling away or raking savagely at his flesh. He had one soul-numbing, moon-limned glimpse of his attacker before his vision was mercifully extinguished by his oxygen-starved brain.

  And back in the room, after that final instant of crashing noise, all was quiet again. Two of the remaining patients, deep in Dalmane dreams, stirred in their beds and turned over. Tommy, the closest to the window, shouted “HELP ME!” and then went back to snoring.

  chapter two

  bharangpur, west bengal, india

  wednesday, June 24, 1857

  It’s all gone wrong. Every bleeding thing gone wrong!

  Captain Sir Albert Westphalen of the Bengal European Fusiliers stood in the shade of an awning between two market stalls and sipped cool water from a jug freshly drawn from a well. It was a glorious relief to be shielded from direct attack by the Indian sun, but there was no escaping the glare. It bounced off the sand in the street, off the white stucco walls of the buildings, even off the pale hides of those nasty humpbacked bulls roaming freely through the marketplace. The glare drove the heat through his eyes to the very center of his brain. He dearly wished he could pour the contents of the jug over his head and let the water trickle down the length of his body.

  But no. He was a gentleman in the uniform of Her Majesty’s army and surrounded by heathens. He couldn’t do anything so undignified. So he stood here in the shade, his high-domed pith helmet square upon his head, his buff uniform smelly and sopping in the armpits and buttoned up tight at the throat, and pretended the heat didn’t bother him. He ignored the sweat soaking the thin hair under his helmet, oozing down over his face, clinging to the dark moustache he had so carefully trimmed and waxed this morning, gathering in drops at his chin to fall off onto his tunic.

  Oh, for a breeze. Or better still, rain. But neither was due for another month. He had heard that when the summer monsoon started blowing from the southwest in July there would be plenty of rain. Until then, he and his men would have to fry.

  It could be worse.

  He could have been sent with the others to retake Meerut and Delhi from the rebels… forced marches along the Ganges basin in full uniform and kit, rushing to face hordes of crazed Sepoys waving their bloody talwars and shouting “Din! Din! Din!”

  He shuddered. Not for me, thank you very much.

  Luckily, the rebellion had not spread this far east, at least not to any appreciable extent. That was fine with Westphalen. He intended to stay as far away from the pandies as he could. He knew from regimental records that there were a total of 20,000 British troops on the subcontinent. What if all of India’s untold millions decided to rise up and end the British Raj? It was a recurrent nightmare. There would be no more Raj.

  A
nd no more East India Company. Which, Westphalen knew, was the real reason the army was here—to protect “John Company’s” interests. He had sworn to fight for the Crown and he was willing—up to a point—to do that, but he’d be damned if he was going to die fighting for a bunch of tea traders. After all, he was a gentleman and had only accepted a commission out here to forestall the financial catastrophe threatening his estate. And perhaps to make some contacts during his term of service. He had arranged for a purely administrative job: no danger. All part of a simple plan to allow him time to find a way to recoup his considerable gambling losses—one might even say incredible losses for a man just forty years of age—and then go home and straighten out his debts. He grimaced at the enormous amount of money he had squandered since his father had died and the baronetcy had passed to him.

  But his luck had run true here on the far side of the world—it stayed bad. There had been years of peace in India before he had come—a little trouble here and there, but nothing serious. The Raj had seemed totally secure. But now he knew that dissension and discontent among the native recruits had been bubbling beneath the surface, waiting, it seemed, for his arrival. He had been here not even a year, and what happened? The Sepoys go on a rampage!

  It wasn’t fair.

  But it could be worse, Albert, old boy, he told himself for the thousandth time that day. It could be worse.

  And it most certainly could be far better. Better to be back in Calcutta at Fort William. Not much cooler, but closer to the sea there. If India explodes, it’s just a hop and a skip to a boat on the Hoogly River and then off to the safety of the Bay of Bengal.

  He took another sip and leaned his back against the wall. It wasn’t an officerly posture but he really didn’t give a bloody damn at this point. His office was like a freshly stoked furnace. The only sane thing to do was to stay here under the awning with a water jug until the sun got lower in the sky. Three o’clock now. It should be cooling down soon.