War Lord

by David Rollins

  ‘I’ll be in a coma within a few seconds.’

  ‘That’s okay. I’ll still have fun.’

  ‘On the couch, Cooper.’

  *

  I came awake, ripped from sleep, eyelids fluttering open. The room was quiet, the sun a little higher, the air a little warmer than it was when I fell onto the couch. I lay still and listened to the sounds coming through the open balcony doors – friendly sounds of the pool filter gurgling, kids splashing, the beat of a bird’s wings in the enclosed courtyard, the toot of a distant horn out on the street. Sleep had been an exhausted shutdown, like the kind that follows combat. I shouldn’t be awake, and yet I was. Nightmarish images began to drift across my mind from the night before: the cored cranium of a dead BOPE officer; the man on the balcony with his throat cut, stiff with rigor mortis; the heel of my boot kicking the axe blade through a man’s spinal cord; the puffed-up security guy who reminded me of the Michelin Man; and, of course, Shilling . . . These were images I’d be trying real hard to forget, but there was resistance. They were demanding some daylight hang time before slipping into my sleep to fester among my dreams.

  I felt a weight across my shins move slowly. I wondered what it was, and then it moved fast. My brain was about to ask what the fuck when, suddenly, a black mouth appeared inches from my face, lunging, a dark cavern of death with curved white hypodermics on either side. I lifted the sheet to protect my face, pushed up and back and those fangs went straight through the fabric, a clear drop of oily fluid splashing onto the webbing between my fingers. A powerful sinuous cable writhed, making a sound that was half hiss, half gag. I stumbled out of bed with the sheet, a long length of uncaptured snake waving around between my legs, and ran across the room toward the bathroom.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Petinski asked, sitting up in bed, angry about the rude awakening.

  ‘The laundry,’ I shouted, wrestling the bedclothes into the bathroom. Opening the glass shower door, I threw the bundle into the recess and slammed the door shut. Within seconds the snake had disentangled itself. The body was long and yellowish green and it lifted its head up and out of the sheet, circling the glass cubicle, rising ever higher, hunting for a way out.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Petinski, her hair a fright, a mixture of exhaustion and fear on her face. ‘Is that a black mamba?’

  What else? What I wanted to know was how many black mambas there were in this city. I doubted they were at plague proportions, regularly turning up in five-star hotel rooms. This had to be the same reptile that lived in a glass case in von Weiss’s study, the snake that had made a run for it and subsequently attacked and killed two people. We’d been paid a visit, another attempt to conclude unfinished business, namely the deaths of Petinski and me.

  With each circuit of the glass cubicle, the thing was learning, pushing off the corners. I remembered Petinski’s commentary about these fuckers. They were fast, aggressive and lethal. They’d been known to get into village huts in Africa and kill everyone just because their disposition was mean. I went back into the bedroom and searched for a broom. No luck. What was I thinking? They had staff for that here. I went to one of the closets, pulled Petinski’s clothes off the rack and ripped out the length of pole.

  ‘Cooper. Get in here . . .’ Concern rippled through Petinski’s voice. I went back into the bathroom. The snake had used the hot and cold taps for leverage along with the showerhead coming out of the wall above them, and its head was now waving around the top edge of the glass. Shit, the fucking thing had to be well over twelve fucking feet long! I whacked its small head with the pole and it slipped back into the recess, its body sliding off the taps, forked tongue lashing the air in front of those fangs. It fell and banged against the opposite glass wall and immediately began its climb all over again, only this time more aggressive, more determined. More fucked up.

  ‘Call room service,’ I said.

  ‘And tell them what?’

  ‘I dunno – get ’em to send up a snake charmer.’

  ‘Just tell me where you put the Walther.’

  I gave the reptile another whack on its scone. ‘Is it hot in here?’ I asked.

  ‘Not especially,’ she said. ‘The Walther. Where is it?’

  If it wasn’t hot, then why was I was sweating like old dynamite? Jesus . . . The room spun a hundred and eighty degrees and suddenly I was sitting on the floor, my left hand feeling as though it had been dipped in lava. I held it up, expecting to see burns. A red stain had spread across the back of it, a yellow sweating blister forming in the webbing between my first and second fingers. Also, my arm had blown up and it reminded me of a thick uncooked sausage. I thought of the Michelin Man – the guy we’d discovered in von Weiss’s playroom. Had I been bitten? My heart was beating weirdly fast. I fell sideways, unable to keep myself upright.

  ‘Cooper . . .’ I heard from somewhere far away.

  My mouth and eyes were open; couldn’t move my tongue. Arms heavy. Vomit gushed out from between my teeth. Then the diarrhea started.

  Breathing hard, I could blink only with difficulty. I felt myself being dragged backward out of the bathroom, the door slammed shut. I tried to move, but couldn’t. Everything too heavy. Breathing in short breaths. I was moving on a gurney, in an ambulance, wheeled under hard, white lights. Catheter, fluids, hypodermics. Shilling, yellow eyes . . .

  *

  As far as I was concerned I was awake for the whole ordeal, but apparently I was out cold for three hours or so. And when I say cold, I’m talking ice bath, a full hour immersed like a big lime in an even bigger caipirinha.

  I remember asking Shilling what was going on, the MI6 agent sitting on the end of the bath in her shimmering yellow dress, which her eyes now matched.

  ‘You should be dead, y’know,’ she said. ‘They’ve given you two shots of epinephrine, three bags of saline and two shots of black mamba anti-venom.’

  I wondered why Shilling was now talking with an American accent. Either seconds or hours passed before I opened my eyes again and Shilling was gone. In her place was Petinski. ‘Am I dreaming you?’ I asked her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where’s Shilling?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘She’s dead,’ I said.

  ‘You had me worried. Not so long ago you thought I was her.’

  ‘Was it you who told me they gave me two shots of epinephrin?’

  ‘You remember that.’

  I nodded. ‘Did I get bitten?’

  ‘No, black mamba venom’s unbelievably potent. You got some of it on your hand where you had a cut. The doctors believe you’re hyper-allergic to it. They thought you were going to have a heart attack.’

  ‘But I didn’t.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘It was lucky for you they had anti-venom on hand. And they only had it because of the trouble the snake caused here a couple of days ago.’

  ‘What happened to it?’

  ‘The snake?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I dragged you out and shut the door on it. Then I called Delaney. He called the Rio Zoo. The ambulance took you away, and a couple of herpetologists arrived not long after and captured the snake.’

  I took a deep breath and did a sense check and felt remarkably okay, almost refreshed. I flexed my hand, a catheter taped to my wrist.

  ‘The book’s gone,’ Petinski said.

  ‘What book?’

  ‘Mein Kampf. Whoever put the snake in our room took it.’

  ‘Lucky I read the last page so I know how it turns out.’

  Petinski looked at me blankly. Right. I gave a mental sigh. The skin on my palm felt tight, itchy. ‘So now what?’ I asked her.

  ‘They’re keeping you overnight for observation.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘And von Weiss?’

  ‘Disappeared.’

  ‘So we’ve got nothing?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. Delaney put out
some feelers on your old friend, André LeDuc. Nothing came back. But then some bright spark on the Buenos Aires desk searched the flight records of all aircraft owned by known von Weiss corporations, noted the various aircraft your friend had been flying lately, and ran a search on all the tail numbers. Flight plans for two aircraft owned by von Weiss companies had been submitted within the last twelve hours. One was a smallish twin-engine Baron on a flight from Asunciön, Paraguay, back here to Rio. The other, a Gulfstream, was flying Buenos Aires–Jo’burg–Dar es Salaam. Your friend LeDuc is checked out on the type.’

  Dar. Someone else had mentioned the place recently. But who? And why?

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Petinski asked.

  ‘Do you know anyone who lives in Dar?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does Delaney?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Dar es Salaam has come up in conversation recently. I’m just trying to pin it down. You haven’t mentioned the place before?’

  ‘No.’

  I closed my eyes and tried to will the connection into my head. But the harder I tried the more the vague sense that Dar was significant began to fade. I gave up. Maybe I just got it wrong. Maybe I wasn’t all here yet, my body still fighting off the effects of the snake venom.

  ‘Try not to stress about it. You’ve been through an ordeal.’ She gave me a there-there look.

  ‘You make it sound like I’m an old guy with dementia who can’t remember where he put his diaper.’

  ‘Fine. Whatever.’

  ‘That’s more like it.’ I noticed she was wearing makeup – lipstick, eye shadow and so forth. ‘What’s with the war paint?’ I made a gesture over my face and the tube hooked up to my wrist rattled against the bed frame. ‘You going somewhere?’

  ‘Home.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘On a plane in four hours.’

  ‘What about the case?’

  ‘What case?’

  ‘Didn’t von Weiss just make another attempt on our lives? Doesn’t that make you want to even the score?’

  ‘I work in intelligence. I don’t even scores.’

  ‘How do you know von Weiss isn’t hunkered down in some other Rio hideout?’

  She shook her head. ‘Forget it, Cooper. He’s gone.’

  ‘Who put the snake in our room? Who stole the book we stole?’

  ‘It wasn’t von Weiss. We’ve got surveillance footage of an unidentified man in a jacket and ball cap stealing a room-service passkey, taking the elevator to our floor, opening the door to our room, throwing in a paper bag and leaving. The snake was in the bag.’

  ‘And the book?’

  ‘Also gone. There’ve been simultaneous raids on all von Weiss’s known addresses throughout Brazil since you’ve been in here. They found nothing except dazed employees who believe he’s left the country. BOPE, CIA, you name it, everyone agrees he’s gone.’

  ‘What about his boat? What was his boat called?’

  ‘Medusa. It’s fallen through the cracks too.’

  ‘It’s a big boat. Must be a hell of a crack.’

  ‘Brazil has a million uninhabited rivers and tributaries to hide it in.’

  I let it go. Charles and Falco White and that asshole LeDuc had also slipped through the net, not that the pathetic attempt at surveillance could be called a net. Gamal Abdul-Jabbar had left town. Shilling had been killed. And whatever was going down appeared to have moved to a new address.

  This was pissing me off. I jerked the saline line out of the catheter. Then I pulled out the catheter and pressed down on the hole the needle left behind to minimize the bleeding.

  ‘Hey! What are you doing?’ Petinski demanded, appalled.

  ‘Going to Dar es Salaam.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’ She looked about the room a little panicked, clearly wondering what to do, who to call.

  My clothes were in a neat, washed pile on the visitor’s chair. ‘Where’s the rest of my things?’ I lowered my feet to the floor.

  ‘At the Palace. For Christ’s sake, get back into bed, Cooper.’ Petinski stepped toward the door, I figured to rat me out to the nurses’ station.

  ‘No, gotta go.’

  ‘Jesus . . .’

  ‘Am I under arrest?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  I sat on the edge of the bed and felt lightheaded. The real test would come when I stood up. A nurse walked into the room, shrieked a little when she saw me out of bed and ran off – I assumed to get help, or a hypodermic with a sedative, or both. The lightheadedness passed and I took the steps to my clothes without further difficulty. I picked up the pile and took it back to the bed. Petinski turned away when I dropped the nightgown.

  ‘Don’t think you’ll be able to hold yourself back, huh?’ I said. ‘If you like we could just pop into the bathroom together, take a shower and say goodbye properly.’

  ‘Are you finished?’

  My pants were on. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t stop you?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  She sighed deeply. ‘Okay, well, I’ve enjoyed working with you. It’s been an education, I’ll say that much.’

  I felt myself getting stronger with all the activity. I threw on socks, pushed my feet into boots and tied the laces. Outside, wind lashed the trees and lightning flashed, the thunder following a split second after. ‘What’s up with the weather?’ I remembered it being sunny.

  ‘Nothing serious. Afternoon thunderstorm. It’ll pass.’

  A flash of lightning grounded somewhere out in the parking lot just beyond the window, the almost instantaneous thunderclap vibrating the pane. And then it hit me. ‘Dar. Hey, I remember now. Ed Dyson – the nuclear weather forecaster guy. He flew to Dar es Salaam a couple of days ago.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Shilling told me. I didn’t think much of it at the time. But now von Weiss’s G5 is headed there too. In the land of no coincidences, that’s significant.’

  ‘Not to me it’s not. I can’t do anything about being reassigned. And if I were you, Cooper, I’d contact my supervisor immediately.’

  ‘If you were me you’d ignore that advice, because I am me and that’s what I’m doing.’ I stood up and, like a drunk, almost fell back as the nurse and a doctor rushed in, ready for action. Holding up my hand to stop them I said, ‘I’m fine, and I’m going.’

  ‘No, no. You stay!’ insisted the doctor.

  ‘That’s what I told him too,’ said Petinski.

  There was a prickly, tingling sensation along my arm and hand. I scratched it. Whatever was below the dressing on my left hand, between my fingers, felt like a small volcano about to spit something molten.

  ‘See? There is poison still in your blood. If you move around too much, you will again swell up,’ said the doctor, picking his way clumsily through the English language.

  ‘I’m going,’ I repeated.

  ‘Okay, then you wait a minute, please,’ the doctor instructed before dashing out the door.

  ‘Did you check us both out of the Palace?’ I asked Petinski.

  ‘No, you still have a room.’

  The doctor reappeared with a sling, a small white plastic container and a tube of cream. I wondered what he was going to try to do with them. He shook the container and it rattled. ‘Antihistaminico. You take two, three time every day. You start now.’ He said something to the nurse, who poured a glass of water and handed it to me. ‘Cream is antihistaminico. Put on three time a day.’

  ‘Can I drink booze on that?’ I asked. The doctor seemed puzzled so I made the universal sign of lifting an invisible glass to my lips.

  ‘No. Alcohol will taste bad.’

  I took the advice with a few grains of salt. Maybe the guy just had it in for the sauce. ‘And the dressing?’ I held up my hand.

  ‘Change tonight and in morning. If finger turn black, or it makes . . . er, podridão . . . er . . . rotting smell, then you come back.’

  That sounded bad.
I told him he had a deal, bundled up the remaining personal effects under my good arm, the one with the yellow and black bruise. The doctor looked at me all concerned as he passed me the sling.

  By the time Petinski and I made it to the exit the worst of the storm had passed. We pushed through the doors, went to the cabstand and Petinski picked the third car in the line-up. I held the door open for her, thunder booming in the distance.

  ‘No, Vin, you take it. I’ll get the one behind,’ she said. ‘I’m going to the airport.’

  ‘Can’t change your mind?’

  ‘I can’t just do whatever I like. God knows how you get away with it.’

  I never called in, was how.

  She held out her hand to shake.

  ‘We should catch up for a drink one day,’ I said, taking her hand. It was small and cool. ‘After the bomb goes off lunchtime this Wednesday, right?’

  The smile well and truly gone, she said, ‘Good luck.’

  ‘You too.’ I got into the taxi, told the driver the Copacabana Palace and turned to watch Petinski climb into a cab as we pulled away.

  Twenty-five

  The rooms at the Palace had been thoroughly cleaned, but that didn’t stop me checking under the bed like a nervous six year old. Satisfied that there weren’t any more surprises laying low, I opened my laptop for the first time in a while and checked my email. I ignored the in-box clogged with the usual cc’ed crap, and sent a note to Arlen letting him know that I was okay, in case he was wondering, and to provide him with some details of my travel plans. I also added that I was enjoying my vacation hugely, thereby muddying the waters if someone believed I should be someplace else, earning my pay. I sent it off and received an answer almost immediately – an automated out-of-office reply. The guy must’ve taken more vacation time and headed back to St Barts and Marnie. I could hardly blame him. A call to Delaney was next on the list.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, recognizing my voice. ‘Why you callin’ me? Y’all s’posed to be takin’ it easy, lookin’ at all the pretty nurses.’

  ‘I’m cured. It’s a miracle. Listen, can you do me a favor?’

  ‘So you’re not callin’ from the hospital?’