Private Demons

by Robert Masello

  “Why would I let you drown?”

  Lucien shook his head. He was hearing things too.

  “You look like you could still do good work.”

  But it wasn't the mast bending toward him; it was something else.

  He shook the water from his eyes again. Was this part of dying too?

  “No, you're not dying,” the voice echoed in his head, in low, sibilant tones. “Not yet.”

  In the mist, he thought he saw two huge eyes—round and unblinking—staring into his own. They were widely spaced.

  “But your friend in the bow is.”

  Hun was as invisible to Lucien as if he'd been back in the ruby mines.

  “He's lost a lot of blood . . . he'll lose a lot more. This storm could blow forever.”

  The body of the thing was sleek and deep green, the thickness of a tree trunk.

  “And you've seen enough of death already . . . haven't you?”

  As if unbidden, pictures erupted in Lucien's mind—his mother slaughtered in the central market, the old Chinaman dragged by the whiskers from his tea shop and shot in the street, the injured miners being drowned in the river, Pran slit open and gutted like a fish. The fate of his sister he hardly dared to think of. It was like watching a movie of unending atrocities, image after image of pain and sorrow, of anguish and death.

  The thing in the boat—the thing that could enter his mind if it wanted to—leaned closer. To Lucien it looked like a horrifying cross between a man and a snake.

  Was he dead? Was this what happened afterwards?

  How long could it go on?

  “It could go on forever,” the creature said, “like the storm.”

  Lightning crackled in the churning sky.

  “Or it could stop. And you could live.”

  And Hun?

  “Him too. But it's you I want.”

  What for?

  If the creature could be said to smile, it smiled now. “To serve me always.”

  Who are you? What are you?

  “Kaliya I'm called. And I am the king of the nāgas.”

  The nāgas Lucien knew of—they were the ancient serpent gods of the Khmer people. The mythical serpent gods.

  But this was their king.

  And Lucien wasn't dead . . . not yet. This was all real . . . as real as the rain slashing down, swamping the boat, or the worn tiller he still clutched in his tired hands.

  “This boat won't last much longer.”

  The water in the hull had risen halfway to Lucien's knees.

  “So I'll make you my offer . . . I'll give you your lives—and my power to protect them—along with wealth beyond anything you've ever dreamed.”

  “I don't want wealth.”

  “You will.”

  “And what must I give you?”

  The creature leaned in even closer, so close that Lucien could see the shifting of its scales with each breath it took. “What must you give me? Only trifles. Your allegiance, of course, during your life—and your spirit, after.”

  “My spirit?”

  The serpent showed some impatience. “Your spirit, your soul, your khwan, whatever you want to call it. It's nothing to you . . . but I collect them.”

  The sky shimmered, a ghastly green, and the boat rocked precariously on the wave.

  “And if I agree, how is the bargain sealed?”

  Sensing victory, Kaliya swelled in size. The wind howled, tearing a strip from the flapping sail.

  “You give me your shadow, as a token of our pact, and I give you my sign to protect you.”

  Thunder rolled, and the rain poured down into the little boat. One of the milk cans sloshed up against his legs. The mast shivered, then split as if hit with a cleaver. The sail blew away on the wind, like a great gray bird, frightened into flight.

  “Then do it,” Lucien said. “Seal the bargain.”

  Kaliya reared back, and extended its tongue. It was long and black and forked at the tip, and as Lucien looked down, it traced a circle in the center of his chest; the pain was intense—like being branded with a hot iron—but it was over in an instant. Before he could even scream, Kaliya's voice was once again filling his head.

  “It's done,” the voice hissed. “Now I'll show you my good faith.”

  A hand appeared at the side of the boat, and then a head. As Lucien watched in horror, the first mate—or what was left of him—hoisted himself from the water and put out one bloody hand; the flesh from his forearm hung in shreds.

  “Take what he's giving you.”

  The hand opened. In it was the ruby Lucien had thrown overboard, along with a glittering array of others.

  Lucien looked into the pirate's eyes; they were wide and unblinking and clearly dead.

  “Take them,” Kaliya insisted.

  And Lucien did.

  “When you reach shore, they'll fetch a good price.”

  Was the wind already dying down? Were the waves too subsiding?

  “Rubies always do.”

  . . .

  “Well then,” said Lord Sykes, sipping his scotch, “if you don't get them down in mines, how do you find rubies?”

  Lucien briefly explained . . . without adding the peculiar history of the one he wore.

  “Fascinating,” Sykes said. “Learn something every day. Shows one ought to stick to the things one knows something about . . . like scotch.” He splashed a bit of soda into his glass. “May I offer you another?”

  “No, thank you. I have to be going to the airport soon.”

  “Back to New York?”

  “Yes.”

  Sykes rubbed one long finger up and down on his lips. “Then I suppose we ought to get down to business.”

  “Yes.”

  “I bought another five thousand shares of Gold Prow today, on the Tokyo Exchange. You can call the Nikkei and check it if you like.”

  “I don't need to.” He'd already been relayed word of the transaction from Epstein.

  “Already got wind of it, did you?” He couldn't resist a small smile. “Well, we all have our sources. Perhaps you've heard from yours that I am fast approaching the point where the size of my holdings in Gold Prow will essentially yield me control of the company.”

  “Not while Duncan Kwan holds his shares.”

  “Duncan Kwan is an interesting case. Interesting, but not unreasonable.”

  Lucien remembered him from their one meeting in New York—the playboy heir to the shipping fortune. He'd struck Lucien as a man who would not welcome the burdens of business. He was devoted to games, of all sorts. Hadn't he left Lucien's office to play in a backgammon tournament on Park Avenue?

  Sykes had just been playing backgammon too. That was one thing his two adversaries apparently had in common, Lucien thought.

  “As I see it,” Sykes continued, “you and I can vie for every share that comes into play, run up the value of the stock, and wind up with just enough each to leave Duncan Kwan in the catbird seat. And that, I imagine, is an outcome neither of us desires.”

  The next step was plain. “So you propose that I sell you my shares.”

  “At a profit to you,” Sykes said.

  “How much profit?”

  “I propose that you provide me with a complete record of your purchases—dates and prices and all that—and I will pay you a five-percent premium on your total expenditure. You must realize that that would come to a tidy sum.”

  Lucien paused, as if to consider. But he had no intention of selling out to Sykes. “And what if I were to propose to you,” he finally said, “that you tender all of your shares in Gold Prow to me, at a ten-percent premium over your cost of acquisition? What would you say to that?”

  Lord Sykes tapped his lips with his finger again. “I would say no.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “You may ask. But the answer remains no.” He glanced up at the oil portrait under which they were sitting. “That's one of my distinguished ancestors, founder of the noble house—he made his fortu
ne operating trading vessels to the East. Perhaps it's some atavistic drive, but I wish to return to the roots of the family, and the origins of our enterprise. I feel that the world has turned again, and I wish to turn with it.” He looked over at Lucien. “I don't expect you to understand such mystical motives for what should be a hard-headed business decision, but there it is nonetheless.”

  Lucien could understand such motives all too well, but in this instance he simply did not believe them. Sykes was no mystic, and his drive to acquire Gold Prow was no sacred mission; it was very much a business decision, and Lucien no more expected him to elaborate on his actual plans for the shipping line than he would have elaborated on his own to Sykes.

  But he did suspect it had something—if not everything—to do with the shipment in Bangkok he'd seen being loaded for Lady Birch Farms . . . loaded, surreptitiously, on a Gold Prow ship called the Atalanta. Ginger and lotus root didn't need that kind of attention—but heroin most certainly did.

  It was just one of Lucien's hunches . . . but he was seldom wrong.

  “So then,” Sykes said, “it appears we are at loggerheads once again. Is it a question of price? Suppose I were to offer you your own terms—ten percent above book value? Would that break the impasse?”

  “No, I'm afraid it wouldn't. I have my own plans for the Gold Prow line.”

  “Yes, I'm sure you do,” Sykes observed. “You eliminate your main competitor and monopolize your market at one fell swoop.”

  Lucien paused, then said, “Yes, that is so.” He looked up slowly at the portrait of Sykes's forebear. “My reasons, I suppose, are fairly clear to one and all. But yours, apart from your sentimental urges, are not. Shipping, and in this particular region of the world, has not been a part of your portfolio until the last few years. I find it odd, even perplexing, that you should show such a consuming interest in Gold Prow now—especially when you know that a company as strong as mine is already in pursuit. A company, that you yourself have said has so much to gain from the acquisition. Surely you must have realized that I would go a long way to accomplish this aim.”

  “I did.”

  “And yet you're willing to prolong the duel . . . even to the extent of buying me out, at a penalty of millions of pounds. I must ask myself why. Why now? And why Gold Prow?” Lucien felt he could lose nothing by taking a shot in the dark. In a tone laden with insinuation, he said, “Can it be that your import business with A.C.S., Limited, of Taiwan needs this much more shipping capacity? If that's all it is, I can lease to you all the cargo space you require.”

  Sykes, not a man to betray his emotions, showed no reaction now. Instead, he grew even more still. “I'm not sure I take your meaning,” he said, in a cold hard voice.

  Lucien replied, “I'm sure you do.” Then he paused. If he had hoped to cause Sykes to blurt something out, a piece of information that Lucien could have added to his store, he was clearly going to be disappointed. But Sykes's implacability had in itself told him several things: It had told him that Sykes was indeed familiar with A.C.S., and by implication, that he was the man behind Lady Birch Farms.

  And assuming that Lucien's long-standing hunch was correct, it also told him that Gold Prow was being sought as the perfect vehicle for importing drugs—presumably on a fairly grand scale—from the area known as the Golden Triangle to Western Europe. If that were true, it would certainly justify the lengths Sykes was going to in order to gain control of it.

  But who was his partner on the Eastern end?

  Sykes at last bestirred himself, and in a voice that had lost none of its chill, said, “I don't presume to ask what you know—or think you know—about my business affairs. It makes very little difference to me either way. What does make a difference is that you continue to interfere with my objectives. And that is something I won't tolerate any longer.”

  “What if you have to?”

  “I never have to.” Sykes put his glass down on the silver tray. “You've had a bloody good run for your money, Calais, but I'm afraid the run is about to stop here. You don't know what you're up against, and you won't know until it's all over. My advice to you, not as a friend—because, if we can speak frankly now, I despise every squalid, jumped-up inch of you—is to get out now, while the getting's good. If you think you've got trouble now—and I refer, of course, to the mystery of the lost Garuda—let me tell you, you haven't yet learned the meaning of the word. Get rid of your shares of the Gold Prow shipping line, or you will. And it won't be a lesson you enjoy.”

  At no time had his voice been raised above the low tones employed by any of the other members in the room; to all appearances, Sykes and Lucien were having a perfectly amicable conversation. And that was how Lucien treated it. Gently placing his empty glass on the marquetry table beside him, he shot his cuffs, smiled at Sykes, and said, “Thank you so much for inviting me to your club. But I'm afraid I have to go now. I know the way out.”

  He could feel Sykes's eyes on him all the way out of the sitting room, and even after getting into the car waiting outside, he thought he detected his lean and angular figure holding back the curtain at one of the windows.

  Hun drove them straight to the area of Gatwick reserved for private planes.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Hallie had already called his office, just to see if Lucien had come back to New York yet, but Simone had said he wasn't expected until the next day. That left her with nothing to do that night.

  She'd only been back from Milan for a few hours herself; she'd shared a cab from the airport with Aline and Lisa. Now she'd already watered the plants—the African violet was the single casualty of her absence—played back the messages on her answering machine, and opened the mail. And she was feeling antsy; it was always like this after she'd gotten back from a shoot or a runway show. The adrenaline and the excitement were still coursing through her veins, and she didn't want to sit home by herself, just wondering when Lucien was going to get back. Time crawled when you did that.

  She went through the mail again—there were a few party invitations, restaurant openings, stuff like that. But most of these were already out of date. She was about to check the movie listings when her buzzer went off. She got on the intercom.

  “Yes?”

  “You've got a flower delivery. You want me to send him up?”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  She'd been sitting around in nothing but a long T-shirt, so she quickly put on a terry-cloth robe and tied the belt securely around the waist. Her doorbell rang, and there was a little Puerto Rican guy dwarfed by a huge display of tiger lilies, hydrangeas, orchids.

  “Where you want me to put ‘em?”

  She hadn't expected anything so large. “Over here,” she said, quickly sweeping the magazines from the top of a side table.

  He put them down, had her sign a receipt, and then waited around another second—presumably for a tip. Hallie didn't even know where she'd put her wallet, so she gave him a million-dollar smile and showed him the door.

  She turned back to admire the flowers. That Lucien sure was a sport. The card was tied to the vase with a pink ribbon. She opened the envelope, and was surprised to find the flowers weren't from Lucien after all. The printed card, which was unsigned, was simply an invitation to a party at a club called The Pleiades, thrown by something called the Swinburne Society. Though she knew of the nightclub, she'd never been there; and the Swinburne Society was a total mystery. But invitations like this weren't all that unusual; when you were a successful model, they just sort of came with the territory.

  Though they didn't always come with such terrific flowers.

  The party didn't start till ten that night, so she still had time to see if any of her friends wanted to go with her. She knew from experience that even models who hadn't been on the original guest list were never turned away at the door. She called Aline first, who told her she was beat. “And anyway,” she said, “I've got a skin commercial tomorrow. I can't look wasted.”

/>   Then she tried Lisa, who, unbelievably, had also received a bouquet and an invitation. “Yeah, at first I thought they were from Alec"—her boyfriend, who played bass in a rock band—"then I opened the card. What's the Swinburne Society?”

  “Got me.”

  “And how come you're not hanging out with Lucien tonight?”

  “He's still in London.”

  “So's Alec. Doing a video.”

  “So how about a girls’ night out?”

  “Sounds good to me. I was just gonna do laundry otherwise.”

  “I'll come get you around ten-thirty.”

  "Ciao, bella.” In Milan, Lisa'd mastered half-a-dozen Italian expressions that she liked to toss around for fun.

  At ten, Hallie took a quick shower, and put on the short black dress and new pair of shoes she'd bought in Italy. The shoes were flat, black, and had little gold fox heads on top. On her finger she wore the Princess Ring that Lucien had given to her in Bangkok. She hailed a cab on Seventh Avenue, and had it wait after she'd buzzed Lisa's apartment.

  Under her overcoat, Lisa was also wearing some of her Milanese booty: a shirred silk mini-dress—fire-engine red—that she'd bought at Versace and a pair of Mario Valentino heels. Her hair was on the short side, like Hallie's, but dark brown and swept to one side. Hallie repeated the address of The Pleiades to the cabbie, who was busy checking them out in the rearview mirror.

  “You know where that is, right?” she said. She was just trying to get him moving.

  “Yeah . . . I know.” He put the car into gear, and rounded the corner.

  Hallie hoped this guy was not going to turn out to be a nuisance.

  On the way uptown, Lisa went off on a long diatribe about men in general, and Alec in particular. She made it funny, but Hallie had heard all of it before. And she did think that if you were looking for a guy to make a serious long-term commitment, heavy-metal rock ‘n’ roll bands were probably the wrong place to be looking.

  Which left her wondering about shipping magnates.

  “Oh, you're not even paying attention anymore,” Lisa said, with a laugh. “You're just mooning over the Bangkok bauble again.”