Judging from his tone of voice and casual manner, he might have been talking about going to the corner grocery store for a quart of milk.
"I'm sorry, Sinclair," Insolers said in a low voice. "I came to help, but I ... I didn't mean for things to happen the way they did. It's my fault those men found your home."
"Don't worry about it, Insolers," John Sinclair replied easily. "I'd have chosen a different battleground, but this was inevitable. They've been getting closer every year. It's why I chose to make my stand now, to try to draw them to Switzerland. It will work out. They're spread all over the castle and the grounds hunting for me." He paused, then added in a tone that chilled me, "I won't be long."
I stepped closer to Sinclair, looked up at him, said, "I want to go with you. I owe them too."
He shook his head. "Thank you, but no. It's better that I work alone."
"I assume you killed the two who carried you out, but you don't know how many are left."
"Eleven, not counting the pain-in-the-ass kid you put down. It's almost a tenth of their entire membership."
"Let me come with you."
"This isn't your kind of play, Mongo. They will never give up, and so they must be killed, one by one. There can be no hesitation. I think it's safe to say you've never killed a man in cold blood, but that is precisely what is required now. There is no middle way."
"Your blood may be cold right now, Sinclair, but mine definitely isn't. I know how they've tortured people to death, and they've shot down men, women, and children in front of my eyes." I paused, held up the twin daggers I had taken from Al. "I won't hesitate. At least let me come along to hold your coat."
"And me," Veil said, stepping up beside me. "My blood's as cold as yours. I may not be as good as you, but I'd like to think I'm damn close—better than any member of Black Flame. I have no doubt that you can kill every one of the fuckers, but I'm not so sure you, alone, can find them all in the hour or so you have before the sun comes up. When it gets light, things are going to get tougher. You can use the help. I've done this kind of thing before—in Laos and Cambodia."
"I know that, Kendry," Sinclair said with a curt nod. "I'd heard of you in Southeast Asia, and I've heard of you since. As a matter of fact, I own three of your paintings. Your point about time is well taken, and yes, I would appreciate your help." He paused, glanced at me, then looked away. He seemed embarrassed, and I knew what he was thinking. Suddenly, I felt vulnerable, hurt. I felt . . . well, small. "Mongo, I just don't think—"
"He's earned the right, Sinclair," my brother said sharply as he stepped up beside me. "Think about it."
"Well, thank you, mother," I murmured, at once grateful for his support, and thoroughly embarrassed.
Veil said: "I agree."
Sinclair nodded. "All right."
"And I'll come along," Garth said in a firm tone. "As backup."
"If you fire that," Sinclair said, pointing to the machine pistol Veil had handed my brother, "you'll give away our position."
"I understand. I don't pretend to have the killing skills the three of you have. I'll stay back. But it can't hurt to have someone with a gun in case something goes wrong."
Again, Sinclair nodded his assent, then turned to Insolers. "Duane, you know this isn't your brand of fighting."
"No argument," the CIA operative replied. "I'll go out with Jan and Harper, wait for you."
"There's one other thing. If I'm going to totally destroy Black Flame, I need to capture at least one of their members. That won't be easy. No member of Black Flame has ever been taken alive; choosing death before capture is deeply engrained in them. All of them have poison-tipped darts in spring loaders strapped to their forearms, and they can shoot the darts into their own wrists if they choose to do so. Some also have a fake tooth filled with cyanide that can be released if they bite down in a certain way. Killing these men could prove relatively easy compared to capturing one and keeping him alive. That will take planning, coordination, and skill." He paused, reached into his pocket, removed a wooden dowel. The dowel was perhaps three inches long, about an inch and a half in diameter. "This must be placed in the captive's mouth, at the same time as the hands and wrists are immobilized, if we are to be successful."
Veil grunted softly. "That will be the last one we take."
"Al's already on ice," I said. "He's the obvious choice, because he's certain to have all the information you need on the entire outfit. He's paralyzed, and may even still be unconscious. We certainly know where to find him."
Sinclair frowned, looked uncertain. "The problem is that he's on the floor, out in the open, impossible to approach without him knowing it—assuming he's conscious. The moment he sees me, he'll know we've killed his men, and he'll kill himself."
"There may be a way."
"We'll see," Sinclair replied, glancing at his watch. "We must go now. Follow me, and please do exactly as I say."
Garth, Veil, and I followed John Sinclair as he ducked out through the doorway, then moved quickly and silently through the chiaroscuro moon shadows at the base of the castle walls.
* * *
We moved in the night, through and around the castle, like a four-piece, grotesquely shaped killing machine. Actually, it was Veil and Sinclair who did the killing, with Garth and me bringing up the rear and afforded an opportunity to do little more than offer silent encouragement. John Sinclair, in the guise of Carlo the chauffeur and free-lance assassin, had obviously done a very good job of reconnaissance before sitting himself down on a hillside and waiting to be captured. He knew, if not precisely where each Black Flame soldier was at the moment, at least where they had been, and what zones they were likely to be searching. And, of course, he was intimately familiar with the castle and its grounds; intricate, secret passageways allowed us to move freely and quickly from one site to another, often to see without risk of being seen.
Despite his size, John Sinclair moved with incredible stealth, like some great panther, cloaking himself in night, then rising like a deadly shadow behind some unsuspecting Black Flame soldier; a moment later there would be the faint clicking sound of the man's neck snapping. He and his companion in killing alternated targets. Veil moved with the same stealth, used an identical killing technique, and got the same results. I had been in such awe of the ninja mystique in general, and Black Flame's in particular, that I was initially amazed at the relative ease with which Veil and Sinclair went about their business of dispatching the Black Flame soldiers. Then I recalled Veil's comment about Black Flame's emphasis on the psychological and medical, not the physical, aspects of the martial arts. Veil and Sinclair were among the best stone-silent killers, and a ninja who hears nothing before a garrote slices through his jugular, or a knife blade slips into his heart, is just as dead as the rest of us mere mortals.
With the glow of approaching dawn and four men left to find, we split up. Garth went with Veil, while I tagged along—the only way to put it—behind Sinclair, carefully moving in accordance with his hand signals.
I was ending up more voyeur than participant, and I was feeling increasingly embarrassed. It had been, I realized, the height of presumption for me to suggest that a dwarf, no matter how considerable his physical skills, could be of any assistance whatsoever in a matter like this to a consummate master of the martial arts like John Sinclair. He had permitted me to come along only to spare my feelings, and that made me angry—at myself. Indeed, I was becoming increasingly disgusted with myself for asking in the first place and for allowing Garth—also sparing my feelings— to be so insistent. My only job was a negative one, to be certain I remained quiet and unseen as Sinclair snuffed the lives out of the strange zombie-men who had invaded his home, and who would have killed the woman he loved along with the rest of us. Every once in a while I managed to make myself useful by ghoulishly picking over the corpses Sinclair left in his wake. I took one of the men's machine pistols and recovered a fine throwing knife similar to the one Veil had had taken from him
. Once, inside the castle, I managed to catch a dead man's automatic rifle before it fell and clattered on the stone floor, but that was, to that point, my one and only contribution to the entire mission.
As the time approached when we would have to make the crucial decision as to which man to attempt to capture and keep alive, an idea occurred to me, a plan in which I might actually be able to play a useful role. Garth and Veil had rejoined us, and as we approached our last target I pulled Sinclair aside and hurriedly outlined my notion to him, emphasizing the specialized skills I possessed that were the basis for the plan. He listened and, somewhat to my surprise, immediately nodded his assent.
My plan required that we make a bit of a mess, and to that end Sinclair used the knife he carried to slit the jugular of the last
Black Flame soldier in our path.
* * *
The four of us stood in the shadow of an alcove between two bookcases on the library's balcony as the rising sun sent rays of light through the huge bank of undraped cathedral windows at the eastern end, near the sitting area. The light slowly moved across the floor, finally illuminating the man lying near the open end of the horseshoe-shaped sofa. Al's paralyzed legs were twisted at odd angles, but he had used his arms to push himself over on his back. He was awake. His strange, matte-black eyes were opened wide, his gaze rapidly shifting around as he watched, waiting for something to happen, some sound to emerge from the silence that enveloped him.
Garth pressed the trigger on the machine pistol he carried. The gun chattered, spewing out bullets that tore out a section of the balcony railing on our side, and ripped into the books and bookcases across the way. A moment later, Sinclair staggered out from the shadows and collapsed, his blood-soaked body falling at the edge of the balcony, both arms dangling over the edge. Good show. Now it was my turn. Garth let loose with another burst of fire. I screamed and sent my blood-covered body over a section of railing down closer to the eastern end. I executed what I thought was a rather neat little somersault, managed to land square on my back in the center of the curved section of the sofa, just like it was a safety net. I bounded straight up, did a half roll in the air, came back down on my stomach with my torso hanging over the edge of the left arm of the sofa, my blood-streaked face only inches from the startled Al's. I put on my best glazed-eye, "dead" look for a few moments to let him savor the full range of my acting talents, then smiled at him.
"Top of the morning, my dear fellow," I said, and immediately jammed the wooden dowel I had been palming hard into his open mouth. Then I rolled off the couch behind his head, grabbed both of his wrists, placed my feet on his shoulders, and pulled as hard as I could, extending his arms in order to prevent him from flexing his wrists and sending a poison-tipped dart into him, or me.
Sinclair rolled the rest of the way off the balcony, dropped easily to the floor, then quickly strode over to where I was bracing the hapless Al. As Garth and Veil hurried down the staircase, Sinclair pulled up Al's sleeves and extracted the darts from the spring-loaded scabbards strapped to his wrists. He then hit Al hard, with the heel of his hand, on the right side of Al's jaw, knocking the Black Flame leader unconscious. He removed the dowel from between Al's jaws, probed with his right index finger inside the man's mouth until he found what he was looking for. He yanked loose the cyanide-filled plastic tooth, casually tossed it away. Veil picked up a length of rope from the floor, and he and Sinclair bound Al's wrists tightly behind his back. From the looks of the knots they used, it was going to take Al a considerably longer time to get free than it had taken me, assuming he knew a little muzukashi jotai kara deru, and it was time he didn't have. He wasn't going anywhere, crawling or otherwise.
"It's done," Sinclair said quietly. "Good job, Mongo."
"It should be interesting to hear what he has to say. He knows where all the others can be found, doesn't he?"
Sinclair nodded. "He knows everything that's needed to erase the Black Flame Society from the face of the earth." He paused, looked up at us, and smiled. "But he'll wait, and I have certain preparations to make before I begin questioning him. Let's go get the others and clean up. I think we all deserve a good meal. I'll buy."
Chapter Thirteen
The notion of taking time for what turned out to be an elaborate meal in the huge kitchen of a castle that had been virtually transformed into a fresh graveyard marker didn't seem to bother Garth, Veil, or Insolers any more than it did John Sinclair, and Jan Rawlings was too deliriously happy to have the man she loved safely back with her to let anything bother her. That left Harper and me the only ones feeling tense, not to mention a bit queasy, with the culinary arrangements. I was impatient for the drama to end, whatever the ending might be, and have it all done with.
I underwent a remarkable change of attitude after a steaming hot bath, a long session in a sauna with Harper melting, as it were, in my arms, and then another long, coed soak in a hot tub. Only then, with my nerves and muscles relaxed, did I realize just how exhausted I had been and how much we all needed rest and food. There were still close to a hundred Black Flame soldiers and their leaders left alive, and to totally exterminate a powerful secret society that had festered in humankind's midst for many centuries was going to take some doing. There were still unknown dangers ahead, and there was no hurry to get to them. Our business with Al, like Al himself, would indeed wait.
After our baths and sauna, the others dressed in luxurious silk robes that were a sort of "one size fits all" variety—all, that is, except me. However, after Jan spent about twenty minutes with a pair of scissors and a sewing machine, I, too, had myself a silk lounging robe of deep, rich blue.
We all sat around a huge oak table in the center of the kitchen, drinking hot sake, while Jan and Sinclair busied themselves expertly preparing a Japanese-style meal of rice, stir-fried vegetables, seared beef, and sushi. Actually, it was Sinclair who did most of the preparing, with Jan close beside him, stroking his hair, touching his back, and occasionally resting her head on his shoulder. Out of "costume," John Sinclair turned out to have thick, close-cropped, steel-gray hair, and matching eyes. It struck me how confidently and easily Sinclair accepted the love of this woman, and as I glanced at Harper—who was looking at me in much the same manner as Jan was looking at Sinclair—I found myself fervently wishing I had the confidence to do the same.
Garth and Veil were engaged in quiet but animated conversation, and it occurred to me that now, after years, these two powerful, fiercely independent men who loved me would become friends.
Insolers sat a few feet away from them, across the table from Harper and me, looking more isolated than he really was. He had a somewhat vacant look in his eyes as he sipped at his sake, as if his mind were elsewhere.
"My father loved Japan to the point of obsession," John Sinclair said as he laid out a fresh serving of sushi on a marble slab, poured more sake for each of us, then sat down next to Jan. "For him, Japan was much more a state of mind than a geographical location, a country. His obsession finally cost him his life and radically changed the shape of mine.
"If he knew in his head that a ganjin could never be fully accepted by the Japanese, he never accepted it in his heart. He had worked most of his adult life to, in some ways, become more Japanese than the Japanese, in a manner of speaking. I believe he saw in me a way to finally become totally integrated into their society. He began by starting my training in the martial arts when I was five years old, sparing no expense. My early training, along with the fact that I had a certain natural talent, allowed me to excel very quickly. By the time I was seventeen, I was considered by Japanese cognoscenti to be among the top all-around martial artists in the world, and I was invited to enter certain very prestigious tournaments that are usually closed to non-Japanese. As a matter of fact, I never competed in any outside tournaments; they were considered vulgar and low-class by the sensei I trained with.
"I assume that you've all found out a good deal about me in the last few days. Perhaps yo
u've heard that my father hired a man called Master Bai to give me advanced instruction in the martial arts. This is not true; a ganjin like my father would never have been in a position to even hear of Master Bai, much less to hire him. It was Master Bai, posing as a master teacher—which he was, incidentally, although not in the way that my father, or most Japanese, thought—who approached my father after observing me in a number of these closed competitions. He told my father that he wished to instruct me further, and that he would do it for nothing, in honor of this young ganjin who had already learned so much.
"It was, of course, a ruse. It was impossible for a man like my father to see through the deceptiveness of a man like Master Bai to the core of evil within. It was Master Bai's intent to make me a Black Flame acolyte, to erase my personality, and then create in me the mind and soul of an assassin who would do his bidding without question. I suspect he was amused by the idea and wasn't even sure what he would eventually do with me. My father, of course, couldn't have known any of this; virtually no ganjin had ever heard of Black Flame, a very old and very secret society dedicated to the amassing of wealth and power through the conscious pursuit of evil."
"Veil had heard of it," I said, nodding in my friend's direction.
If our host was surprised, he didn't show it. The man with the steel-gray hair and eyes merely nodded at Veil. "Mr. Kendry is a most unusual man. Unusual men hear things that are often out of earshot to ordinary men."
"But you did go with Master Bai," Harper said. She was leaning forward on the table, listening very intently.
"Yes. I progressed rapidly through the initial phases of training, which consisted primarily of intense studies in natural pharmacology—toxic herbs and plants."
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