“It wasn’t an accident, was it, Bernard?”
“Fucking right, it was no accident—the same as it was no accident when I killed those niggers when I was a cop in Chicago. Guys like you and my brother get all the breaks, and that’s how you get your reps. I was too young for ’Nam, Sinclair, but if I’d fought over there I’d have won all the medals people say you won.” The man with the crewcut and pinkish scalp paused, frowned slightly. “Did you really win the Congressional Medal of Honor twice?”
“What do people say?”
“I’d have won it, Sinclair. Those people who give the tests don’t know what they’re talking about when they say I’m not smart enough. Shit, I’d have killed more fucking gooks than all the rest of the army put together.”
“You don’t know all the fun you missed, sonny. I’ll bet those Vietnamese up in Ho Chi Minh City are still breathing sighs of relief that you weren’t old enough to have won the war for us.”
“With the right breaks, I would have had your rep, Sinclair. I can do all the things you’re supposed to have done. You ain’t such a tough shit.”
Chant yawned loudly. “Sonny, you’re a chickenshit flunky who’s lucky his big brother had a job for him on this island beating up on people who can’t fight back. This is probably the only job you’ve ever held for more man a week.”
Bernard flushed. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Sinclair. It’s Richard who’s lucky I’m here. Because of me, he’s going to be a rich man. Ain’t nobody else around here got the guts to do what I do.”
“What do you do for him, flunky? You shit black pearls?”
Bernard frowned, and his eyelids narrowed. “How do you know about the black pearls?”
“Some people have heard of me, and I’ve heard of your brother. The story is that he has a fortune in them.”
“Thanks to me, he has a fortune in them. Half a fortune. Half are mine. He may not give a shit about them now, but he will when he gets all this research crap out of his system.”
“What research?”
Bernard bared his teeth, laughed. “When Richard gets through with you, you’ll go to the shacks. Then, when I feel like it, I’ll give you a demonstration of how I get the pearls.” He paused, laughed again. “You’ll be my helper, Sinclair. Then we’ll see who’s chickenshit.”
“Where are the pearls, Bernard? Where do you keep them?”
“What the hell do you want to know that for?”
Now it was Chant’s turn to laugh. “Christ, Bernard, you are stupid. I plan to steal them, of course, and I can’t do that unless I know where they are. Why else would I ask? For that matter, why else would I come to this lovely resort?”
Shadows moved in Bernard’s eyes, and he shook his head slightly. “You’re crazy, Sinclair.”
“Maybe the stories about the black pearls are just bullshit. If you claim that you get them and that it takes guts, then it must be bullshit.”
Bernard was about to reply when the small beeper he carried in his shirt pocket sounded. A moment later Richard Krowl’s voice, tinny on the tiny speaker, could be heard.
“Bring him now, Bernard. I’m ready.”
Chant smiled. “It seems I was right. Let’s go, flunky. We don’t want to keep big brother waiting.”
Bernard flushed a deep crimson, He reached into his pocket to shut off the beeper, then stepped around behind the wheelchair. “Fuck him,” Bernard said through clenched teeth as he shoved Chant forward. “And fuck you, too. I’ll show you bullshit, Sinclair.”
TWELVE
The massive American wheeled Chant out of the cell and to the left, down a long concrete corridor past cells that were similar to Chant’s, but which were empty. At the end of the corridor a ramp, obviously designed for wheelchairs, sloped gently upwards. Chant was pushed up the ramp, through a set of salon-type swinging doors, to emerge in bright sunlight.
Chant drank in the fresh, salty air, taking it deep into his lungs, renewing his strength. There was a stiff breeze blowing in from the west, and it whipped his overalls, snapping the material with a sound like small-arms fire. He was wheeled up a sidewalk to a small, concrete square where other walks branched off in four different directions. Bernard spun him around, pushing him down the walk that had been on their extreme left.
Now Chant could see that the cellblock where he had been imprisoned was a long, low concrete building set on the very edge of an escarpment that was a sheer drop to the sea. The route Bernard was taking led along the very edge of that escarpment, the rim of the island, and Chant could glance down to his left and see the ocean, three hundred feet below, cascading furiously against, over, and around coral reefs in a crashing maelstrom of foaming death. Far in the distance, he could just see the peaks of the Chilean Andes rising out of the clouds like monolithic, silent witnesses to the horrors of Torture Island.
From what he could see, Chant judged the island to be quite small—perhaps no more than two or three miles in diameter, with all of the facilities rather tightly packed together in this particular area. The concrete square where the sidewalks met served, to judge from the grease stains Chant had seen on its surface, as a helicopter landing pad. Two or three hundred yards beyond the pad was a complex of buildings—a one-story, windowless building of gleaming white tile with an adjacent cottage, a three-story wood-frame building that looked like a college dormitory, a hut next to a huge radio antenna, and a rather large, dome structure that Chant guessed might be a desalinization plant. Next to the dome structure was a huge bank of solar panels as big as a football field. Except for the cleared area, the rest of the island appeared to be dense brush and small, hardy, wind-twisted trees.
“The shark lagoon is coming right up, Sinclair,” Bernard said, raising his voice slightly in order to be heard above the whistling wind. “It’s where you’re going to end up sooner or later. This little visit will give you something to think about.”
They were still within sight of the main complex of buildings when Chant suddenly found himself pushed to the very rim of a commalike formation that had been cut into the body of the island by the action of the sea. In this cavity, the water below was almost mirror-still, protected by a virtual sea wall of towering rock formations at its mouth. There were five shacks, padlocked, farther along the rim of the comma. Near the shacks, jutting out over the lagoon, an ominous-looking scaffold had been constructed. On the scaffolding was a wooden tower and a motorized winch; at the end of the winch rope was attached a large, steel hook.
In the clear deep blue depths of the lagoon, huge, dark shapes glided like shadows of death across the bottom.
“There are two things that end up in this lagoon in large numbers,” Bernard continued. “One is sharks, and the other is pearl-bearing oysters. The oysters get torn up from beds during storms and they get washed in; you find a lot of them at the mouths of those underwater caves.” Bernard paused, came around to face Chant and smiled thinly. “The sharks come because we feed them.”
Chant said nothing. He continued to stare down at the dark shapes in the water while he sought to relax, build up new reserves of energy, and block off the residual pain left by the mute woman who had visited him during the night. He was no longer interested in what Bernard Krowl had to say, and he began to close off his mind to the other man. He was now concerned with Richard Krowl—and what surprises the man with the long, yellow hair and pale eyes might have waiting for him.
“Now I’ll show you what guts is all about, Sinclair,” Bernard said. “Yo!”
At Bernard’s shout, one of the broken people who served as servants on the island came limping around from behind the row of shacks. The man, rail-thin and with his right arm hanging at a grotesque angle, came up to Bernard and, without speaking, handed the man a set of keys before turning and hurrying off toward the main complex.
Bernard opened the shack on the far right, went in, then reappeared a few moments later with an armful of diving gear—black rubber we
t suit, goggles, snorkel, flippers, knife, and a mesh net. He set everything down except the knife, then opened the door to another shack and went in. There was a scream, the sounds of a brief struggle, and then Bernard emerged dragging an emaciated-looking man who was covered with bruises, cuts, and what appeared to Chant to be burn marks.
Now there were shouts of protest, screams, and loud banging on the doors coming from the other shacks. Haunted, horrified eyes gazed out through slits in the doors.
Bernard’s captive began to scream even louder as Bernard proceeded to drag him up on the scaffold, and he struggled with new strength born of desperation. Bernard slapped him hard across the mouth, then hit him in the belly, doubling him over. Then Bernard dragged the man the rest of the way up on the scaffold, threw him down next to the winch tower and proceeded to bind the man’s hands.
“Hold it, Bernard!” Chant shouted into the wind. “Don’t use that man to impress me! I’m already impressed! Stop it!”
Bernard ignored him. When he had finished tying the man’s hands, Bernard effortlessly lifted him up in the air and hung his bound wrists over the hook. Next, Bernard drew his knife from its sheath and slashed the dangling man behind both knees. Blood gushed from the wounds, and the man screamed again as Bernard pushed him off the platform to be left dangling in the air, staring in horror at the black shapes massing below him in response to the blood dripping from his legs. One shark actually lifted its head from the water and gnashed its teeth. The water was starting to roil as dozens of black fins cut the surface of the water, converging on the scent of blood.
Bernard pressed a button on the winch motor. A gasoline-powered engine roared to life. Bernard turned a lever, and the rope with the bleeding man on the end of it began to descend toward the water.
Chant continued to shout at Bernard, but the big American did not even look in his direction as he quickly donned the wet suit and, carrying the rest of his gear, nimbly made his way down a narrow trail that had been cut into the face of the escarpment. Less than a minute later Bernard was standing on a rock shelf at the water’s edge, donning his flippers and face mask.
The winch had automatically stopped about four feet above the surface of the water, and the man was now desperately trying to hold his bleeding legs up out of the foaming water as sharks flashed by beneath him. Black heads emerged, maws gaped open, multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth flashed.
With the sharks thus occupied, Bernard slipped silently into the water and immediately disappeared from sight. A few seconds later, Chant saw Bernard’s shape emerge from beneath a rock shelf and glide powerfully along the bottom, near the mouths of several underwater caves. His hands moved quickly as he gathered objects off the bottom and dropped them in the mesh net he dragged from a strap slung around his neck.
A black shape darted out from the dark mouth of an underwater cave, circled once around the man, then flashed off toward the maelstrom at the opposite end of the lagoon.
Chant shifted his gaze in time to see a huge head emerge from the water. Teeth flashed, and the hanging man’s right leg disappeared below the knee. Then the sharks were all over him. Blood spurted as the sharks leaped from the water and tore chunks of flesh off the man and each other. In less than fifteen seconds there was nothing left on the hook but two arms, still tied at the wrists, severed just below the elbows.
Almost directly below Chant, Bernard pulled himself back up on the rock shelf just ahead of three dark torpedo shapes that were ambling lazily around the edge of the lagoon in his direction. The big man didn’t even glance in the direction of the bloody, disembodied arms as he kicked off his flippers, tossed aside his face mask and immediately began to shuck the oysters with his knife, examining the inside of each and then casting the shells over his shoulder into the clear water.
Chant’s iron-colored eyes were cold, and his mouth was set in a thin, firm line as he watched the other man shuck oysters, cast aside the shells. Chant’s face gave no indication of the rage building inside him. Patreaux might believe there was something to be gained from studying these people, Chant thought, but he did not. Chant wanted only to break and cut them as they had broken and torn his friend, to torture and kill them as they had tortured and killed others.
If that made him no better than his enemies in the eyes even of some men he respected, Chant thought, then so be it. People like those who operated and used Torture Island, like VanderKlaven with his useless drugs, might as well come from another planet as far as Chant was concerned. They were members of a different species of vile creatures, and Chant’s only interest was in destroying, not understanding, them.
He wanted Bernard’s death to be special, wanted Bernard to pay far more attention to his own agony than he had to that of the man he had used to feed the sharks.
Bernard finished shucking the oysters, began climbing back up the escarpment. He reached the top, walked toward Chant as he appeared to examine something in his right hand.
“All that trouble for one little puny white sucker,” Bernard said with obvious disgust as he stopped in front of the wheelchair.
“What did he do?”
Bernard looked up, blinked. “Who?”
Chant spat, then nodded toward the lagoon. “The man who belonged to those arms.”
“Oh, him,” Bernard said, casually glancing over his shoulder. “He was political. It seems he and a few others were plotting to overthrow the general who runs his country—at least that’s what the general thought. It turned out not to be true, but that didn’t make any difference to the general. The general wanted him dead, so he’s dead. It was in the contract.”
“You going to leave the arms hanging there?”
“Sure,” Bernard said with a shrug. “At least for a time. It’ll give those other fucks in the shacks something pretty to look at until I need one after the next storm; they’ve all been contracted for execution after interrogation, and my brother has finished with them.” Bernard paused, studying Chant. “What do they want Richard to find out from you, Sinclair?”
“Don’t you know?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you. You’re just a fucking crook. Somebody want to know where you keep all your money?”
“It beats me, Bernard—if you’ll pardon the pun. I think it’s a case of mistaken identity.”
“You’re not going to have any identity when we get through with you.”
“Actually, you may already have gone too far. After that session with Feather, I can’t even remember what it is I’m supposed to remember.”
“We’ll jog your memory.”
“Your brother doesn’t tell you too much, does he, flunky?”
“Fuck you, Sinclair. Usually, I’m not interested. My brother seems to think you’re something special, and that you may need special handling.”
Chant smiled thinly. “More special than you give the others? I can’t wait to find out what he has in mind.”
“Wouldn’t Richard be surprised if I wheeled you in over there and you’d already told me what it is he’s so hot to know?”
“We’d both be surprised. What do you have in mind, Bernard? You going to dangle me down there and let the sharks nibble at my toes until I talk?”
“That sounds like it might be a good idea. What do you think, Sinclair? Would you like to keep those bloody arms company for a while?”
“You’re starting to bore me, Bernard. That isn’t going to happen.”
“No?!” Bernard snapped. “What the hell makes you so sure?!”
“Two reasons. You won’t shit unless your brother tells you to, and you’re probably already a little worried about the fact that you didn’t come when he called. The second reason is that you’d have to take me out of this wheelchair to put me on that hook; you do that, and it’ll take me about five seconds to kill you.”
Bernard flushed, and for a moment Chant thought he was going to hit him. Then Bernard’s gaze abruptly shifted to a point just above and behind Chant’s head.
Chant looked over his shoulder to find two brown-uniformed guards, Asiatics, flanking him as they gazed with impassive faces at Bernard.
“All right, all right, I’m bringing him,” Bernard mumbled, quickly stepping around behind the wheelchair and gripping the handlebars. “Richard should learn to hold his fucking water.”
THIRTEEN
Chant was wheeled up the fairly steep grade leading from the shark lagoon to the complex of buildings. By the time they reached and crossed the helicopter pad, Bernard was breathing heavily from the exertion of pushing the wheelchair. The two Asiatics, silent and impassive, walked on either side of the chair.
He was wheeled to the white-tiled, windowless building, which had a wheelchair ramp and swinging doors like the cellblock. Inside the building, Chant glanced to his left and right as he was pushed down a long corridor. There were offices and storerooms off the corridor, as well as a large room filled with computer banks. At the end of the corridor, Chant was wheeled into an office that was spacious and well appointed, but dimly lit. He was stopped in a bright pool of light cast by an overhead spotlight, in front of a huge oak desk.
Dr. Richard Krowl sat behind the desk, and it looked to Chant as if the torture doctor had been up all night. In the tightly focused beam of light cast by his desk lamp, Krowl’s long hair gleamed greasily, and there was a stubble of beard on his chin and upper lip. In front of him was a thick dossier that Chant felt certain was his, provided to Krowl by the CIA. When Krowl finally looked up, Chant could see that his pale eyes were red-rimmed.
“I called for you over an hour ago,” Krowl said curtly to his brother, standing just behind Chant.
“I guess my beeper wasn’t working,” Bernard replied in a sullen voice.
“You’ve been to the shark lagoon.”
Bernard came around from behind Chant and took a few steps into the darkness to the right of Krowl’s desk. There was a soft clicking sound, and then Bernard came back out into the light. “I wanted Sinclair to see what’s waiting for him. I put Gonziaga in.”
Silent Killer Page 9