Dark Chant In A Crimson Key

by George C. Chesbro

  Patreaux had finished his brandy, and he rose to pour himself another. I waited, increasingly impatient to hear some mention of John Sinclair, but reluctant to interrupt the flow of his words with questions. He poured more brandy into my glass, then began to slowly pace back and forth, his face passing in and out of the shadow cast by a standing lamp next to the sideboard.

  "There was one outsider who did manage to get on the island," he continued in a tone so soft I had to strain to hear him. "According to the story, he got there by posing as a student sent there for one of Krowl's torture seminars by a Latin American government. In fact, he was an American investigator for Amnesty International. Reportedly, he was actually able to steal a large number of Krowl's files, and he somehow managed to escape from the island with this documentation. Unfortunately, he never got a chance to pass on any of it. He was captured by Krowl's security forces before he could get out of Chile. He was taken back to the island and tortured to death—not to gain information, of course, but to punish, and for use as an object lesson for any other investigator who might be tempted to try the same thing. Amnesty International received his remains in a sealed vacuum container—Krowl wanted us to be able to determine the details of what had been done to him before the corpse deteriorated. An autopsy revealed that he had taken a very long time to die. He had been partially devoured, eaten alive, and the bite marks were human. There were signs of crushed bones, charred flesh, punctured organs, unnatural surgery; so many unspeakable things had been done to him, and all as a warning to the rest of us who wanted to put Krowl and his torture institute out of business. Rumor had it that the man tortured to death was a friend of John Sinclair's."

  I sat up straighter in my chair. "What was the man's name?"

  "Harry Gray," Patreaux replied as he abruptly stopped pacing and turned to face me.

  "This isn't just a story, is it, Gerard? This actually happened."

  "I present it as a story, rumor, because there are so many details that can't be confirmed. Yes, there really was an American A.I. investigator by the name of Harry Gray, and yes, he was tortured to death and his remains returned to us in a vacuum container. Gray had been after Krowl for years. Obviously, A.I. would never authorize one of its investigators to place himself in such a perilous situation, so the notion that he got on the island by posing as a seminar participant is pure speculation, as is the rumor that he was a friend of Sinclair's. The rest of the story, if you care to hear it, also falls into the category of pure speculation, rumor. There is no way to corroborate any of it."

  "I'm sorry I interrupted you, Gerard. I definitely want to hear the rest of it. Please go on."

  "There was a rumor that not only was Harry Gray a friend of Sinclair's but that, for years, Sinclair had been providing him with both information and documentation concerning human rights abuses around the world."

  I thought about it, shook my head. "I'm sorry, but I don't think I get the picture. Why would Sinclair do that? Talk about human rights abuses; Sinclair is a torturer and murderer himself."

  "Obviously, I have no answer for you; I am simply repeating the rumors. However, if it's true that Sinclair, for whatever reason, did want to pass on information about other people's criminal activities, he would certainly be in a position to do so. Allow me to make a few observations. While it's true that all of Sinclair's activities seem cloaked in violence, violence does not appear to play a key part in the operations themselves. As with his theft of the Cornucopia funds, he virtually always seems to rely on treachery and deceit, not force, to accomplish his primary goals."

  "You're saying he kills people because he feels like it, as a kind of celebration for pulling off another successful scam, not because he needs to."

  "That would seem an accurate assessment. His operations are very carefully planned, meticulously executed. Often, the victims are themselves corrupt. He seems to purposely choose targets— be they individuals, groups, corporations, or even entire governments—that have something to hide. Because of the nature of the way he initially sets up his operations, through infiltration, he is usually in a position to find out about others' criminal activities and to obtain incriminating documents. Why he would choose to pass on such information to someone like Harry Gray, or anyone else, is a question probably best left to the psychiatrists.

  "In any case, the rumors surrounding this incident say that when Sinclair learned of his friend's death, he vowed vengeance on Richard Krowl and the rest of the torturers on that island. To that end, so the story goes, he managed to get himself on the island, just as Harry Gray had done."

  "By masquerading as a participant in one of Krowl's torture seminars?"

  "No. After the Harry Gray incident, screening procedures for participants had been tightened considerably."

  "But you said the island was virtually impregnable."

  "He had himself delivered."

  "Delivered?"

  "By the CIA—so the story goes. You see, there is a lot of speculation that Chant Sinclair is privy to a great many secrets he's not supposed to know, and that the CIA is desperate to make certain Sinclair never shares those secrets with anyone. That's one theory. Another theory is that the CIA wants to know Sinclair's secrets. If we assume the first theory to be the correct one—the CIA knows what Sinclair knows, and wants to make certain the information never becomes public—then it stands to reason that, if Sinclair were captured, the CIA's first priority would be to find out if Sinclair had indeed shared his secrets with anyone, or if there might be a cache of pertinent documents that could surface after his death. Naturally, Sinclair couldn't be expected to just tell them what they wanted to know, and he is a very tough man. The CIA would probably be perfectly willing to torture him themselves, but they couldn't be certain they were up to the job of getting the truth out of him before they killed him. They would require the services of a top expert interrogator-torturer if they hoped to break Sinclair. The point is that Sinclair wanted to get on Torture Island, and he correctly guessed that the CIA would pack him up and send him there if they ever got their hands on him."

  "Jesus Christ," I said softly. "You're saying he engineered his own capture, knowing he would almost certainly be sent to a place where he would be tortured?"

  "So the story goes, Mongo. In his judgment, it was the only way he could get on the island and infiltrate Krowl's organization—as a prisoner. Supposedly, the man who actually arrested him was an Interpol inspector by the name of Bo Wahlstrom."

  "The same man Sinclair tortured to death?"

  "The same."

  Connections. Wheels turning within wheels within wheels behind clouds of smoke. A hall of mirrors. I raised my brandy snifter to my lips, found it was empty. Patreaux produced the decanter, came around to my side of the table, and poured me a generous refill. After he had finished, he lit another cigarette and stared at me, as if he were waiting for me to ask a question. I obliged.

  "Supposedly, nobody knows what Sinclair really looks like, so how did he manage to get himself arrested? Did he just walk up to Wahlstrom and say, 'Here I am'?"

  "Hardly. That would have raised suspicions in some people's minds that Sinclair was up to something. As a matter of fact, Sinclair arranged for Wahlstrom to arrest him by prevailing upon a friend to inform on him."

  "What's the friend's name?"

  "I've never heard it mentioned. If there's any truth at all to the story, the identity of the friend who informed on him must have died with Bo Wahlstrom."

  I stared into the amber depths of my brandy, pondering the kind of courage it would take to risk not only death but prolonged, indescribable pain administered by the world's most accomplished torturers, in the incredible hope that he could somehow manage to turn the tables on these men, despite the shackles on his wrists and ankles. Now that, I thought, was self-confidence.

  I found Gerard Patreaux's tale very odd and disquieting. A man who would risk so much to avenge the death of a friend and shut down a torture factory
would not seem a likely candidate to go around burning out the eyes of innocent people, or send a gunman to shoot up a hotel sidewalk crowded with men, women, and children. Yet, this was the first time I had ever heard anything said about John Sinclair that even remotely hinted that there might be another side to him; all of the stories I'd read or heard focused on the death and torture for which he was responsible.

  Which also led me back to the big question of where Veil, who had suggested I come here, had heard the story, if such was the case, and why Veil hadn't told it to me himself.

  Finally, there was the elaborateness and detail of the story, which somehow made me doubt Patreaux's claim that he had thought of it only as I was leaving. I now believed he had been carefully watching me all evening, vetting me in his mind, trying to determine if I was worthy to hear this account. It was almost as if I'd had to pass some kind of test; having succeeded, being told this bizarre story about John Sinclair was my reward. It was all very strange.

  Wheels within wheels. Nothing will be as it seems.

  "There's a simple way to verify this story," I said quietly. "If Sinclair actually was arrested by Wahlstrom, then Interpol would have a record of it."

  Patreaux smiled thinly, shook his head. "If such a record does indeed exist, I would not count on ever seeing it."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it would be so intensely embarrassing to many of the involved parties, on any number of counts. First, you must remember that Interpol is still trying to live down the fact that it virtually served as an arm of the SS during the war. They would certainly not want it known that they voluntarily, and secretly, turned an international criminal, one who is wanted in dozens of countries, over to the Americans as a kind of special favor. For its part, the CIA would certainly not want it suggested that they even condone torture, much less that they turned over someone—even a man as vile as John Sinclair—to specialists like those who worked on Torture Island. Finally, none of the parties involved would want it known that they had once actually had Sinclair in their clutches and had allowed him to escape. If the story is true, and we will probably never know for certain, it seems Sinclair accomplished everything he had set out to do. I can report to you as fact that Richard Krowl is dead, and Torture Island no longer exists; and we all know that Chant Sinclair, at least for the moment, is alive and well, running all over Switzerland giving various law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the world fits."

  I put my hand over my glass as Patreaux raised the decanter to offer me more brandy. "Is that it, Gerard?"

  "That's it. Like most of the legends surrounding Sinclair, virtually none of the important parts can be substantiated. Now, may I ask if you think that hearing this little tale can be of any help to you?"

  "I don't know, Gerard," I replied absently, trying and failing to see through the clouds of smoke what engine, if any, the turning wheels were running. "I just don't know."

  I rose, thanked him again for the fine meal and conversation, and he escorted me to the door. My belly was full, but my mind felt empty; I felt sure I was missing things, not seeing connections I should be making. Veil's behavior still baffled me, and I felt I was leaving something important behind me in this house, with this man. I had the distinct feeling that Gerard Patreaux had been trying to tell me even more than he had—or that he had told me and I'd missed it.

  The Amnesty International administrator opened the door for me, but I didn't move; I stood in the doorway, looking out into a night aglow with pale moonlight. Carlo was sitting in the limousine, reading a magazine by the car's interior light. He seemed to sense my presence; he looked up and saw me, put aside his magazine, and turned on the car's engine. The haunting feeling that Gerard Patreaux had left something vital out of his story had grown overwhelming.

  I slowly turned back, asked, "Are you the friend Sinclair prevailed upon to inform on him, Gerard?"

  Shadows moved in the man's expressive blue eyes, but he did not otherwise react. If anything, he almost gave the impression that he had been expecting the question and was vaguely surprised that it had taken me so long to ask it. "You are, of course, making a joke," he said, and laughed.

  "If it's true, Gerard, why can't you just come out and tell me? If Veil knows about these things, why couldn't he just come out and tell me?"

  "Perhaps your friend didn't want to waste your time repeating what may be only fairy tales and gossip," the other man said evenly.

  I started to protest, stopped when Patreaux raised his hand. "Mongo," he continued, "even if what I told you is a fairy tale, like most fairy tales it may have a moral. The moral of the story I told you about John Sinclair risking his life on Torture Island to avenge a friend could be that you shouldn't believe everything you read or hear about this man. Things aren't always what they seem."

  "I'll bear that in mind, Gerard," I said, shaking his hand once more before going to the car. Before getting in, I looked back toward the house, where the slight figure of Gerard Patreaux was silhouetted in the open doorway, black against light. I waved, but the figure remained still. I got into the limousine, and Carlo drove off into the night.

  Chapter Seven

  There was a message waiting for me when I returned to the hotel; it was brief, succinctly to the point, and both Garth and Veil had put their names to it. The message said, Stay put.

  I found Garth and Veil's little communication to be off-putting and pretentious; I needed information, not orders. I considered calling one or both of them, then decided against it. It was almost midnight, too late anyway to consider moving to another hotel before morning, and I reasoned that Garth would have asked that I call if he'd had anything to report. I double-locked the door, jammed a straight-backed chair up under the knob, then went to bed.

  Although I was exhausted, I slept only fitfully. My dreams were filled with violent, vivid images of branding irons, racks, electric generators, pincers, and cattle prods, and the blurred face of a mysterious man who could at once countenance the slaughter of innocent people, and who was a torturer himself who burned out men's eyes, but who would risk his own torture and death to right a wrong. That seemed a contradiction. John Sinclair himself was emerging as a contradiction, a paradox, a very dark and dissonant Chant in a crimson key of blood, pain, and death.

  I awoke in the morning still tired, restless, and anxious, haunted by a sense of foreboding, convinced that still more terrible things were waiting to happen. I was in the eye of a maelstrom, and could see neither faces nor motives in the black winds that swirled around me. I picked up the phone, gave my credit card number, and called Garth's private number at the brown-stone. There was no answer, and his answering machine was not on. That annoyed me. Next, I tried Veil's loft, and a voice I recognized as belonging to Lee Miller, one of Veil's students, answered in the middle of the first ring.

  "Lee, it's Mongo."

  "Mongo! Are you all right?"

  "Yeah. Where are Veil and my brother?"

  There was a short pause at the other end of the line, then: "They're due to arrive at Zurich airport at eleven this morning, your time."

  I said, "Shit."

  "They said that if you called I should tell you that they're coming directly to your hotel, so just stay there, in your room. They have a lot of things to tell you. You should do absolutely nothing, and talk to no one, until they get there. They said to tell you that you're in a deep pile of shit."

  "Wow. That's really great, Lee. It's precisely the kind of information I was hoping Garth could dig up for me. What flight are they on?"

  "Swissair seventy-six, out of Kennedy." The other man paused, then added, "Mongo, you should know that Harper is with them. She insisted."

  "Shit!" I said, and slammed down the receiver.

  I'd asked Veil to ask Garth to do some digging for me, and what I was getting was a reunion, complete with the woman I loved. Three more potential targets for Chant Sinclair to aim at. It was just the kind of news I needed to start off my da
y.

  * * *

  I saw Garth, Veil, and Harper before they saw me. The three of them, striding briskly, emerged from the mouth of the wide corridor leading from Customs looking like two and a half grim-faced gunfighters marching down Main Street to face off with the bad guys. Garth and Veil, with their tall, lithe bodies and powerful physical presence, looked the part, but Dr. Harper Rhys-Whitney, the snake- and dwarf-charming love of my life, was barely five feet tall, and she looked very small and frail walking between my brother and Veil. I knew better. This small woman with the maroon, gold-flecked eyes and long, soft, silver-streaked brown hair was, in her own way, every bit as deadly as the two men who accompanied her. I wondered if she had declared to Customs the tiny, deadly krait she carried everywhere in a small wooden box in her purse. I doubted it.

  This petite, explosive charge of a woman had spent many years with the Statler Brothers Circus, where I had met her, as a head-liner like myself, a fearless snake charmer. Now she was a research herpetologist, a world-renowned expert on venomous snakes who kept a thirty-four-foot reticulated python as a house pet. I loved her to absolute distraction, and the depth of my feelings, the loss of control over my own fate that implied, frightened me. I was still trying to figure out what to do about it.

  Finally, Harper saw me. She came running across the terminal, threw her arms around me. As always, I had an instantaneous physiological reaction as I felt her lips on mine, her large breasts pressing against me. "Hello, sweetie," she whispered in her low, husky voice that always seemed so improbable in such a small body. "What nasty business have you gotten yourself into this time?"