Fifty
"Silverstone!"
For the first time in as long as he could remember,
nobody responded to his angered demand for service. Panic contorted his
thin face. He scrubbed his hands beneath scalding water in the bathroom
sink. The blood wouldn't come off. The water gurgled as it went down the
drain, echoing in the chrome and enamel room, the only sound he had heard
for the past hour.
"Callavier!"
His personal servant. His security chief. Both
gone. He had been betrayed and abandoned.
It hardly mattered. They had made him look bad. He
had given his orders and they had failed to follow through. Yakamura
would understand. He would hire a new, more efficient staff to clean up
the mess and start anew.
The blood stains wouldn't come off. The only blood
turning the water pink and spiraling down the drain was his own. He dried
the raw flesh of his hands and rummaged in the cupboard for a pair of
latex gloves. He put them on, then rushed to the bedroom for the pair of
dress gloves he remembered tucked away in a bottom drawer somewhere. He
pulled them on as well and held his clean, white hands before his face.
He snarled in triumph. Nobody would ever see.
"Kiki!"
The girl watched him from dark corners of the house,
pale and half naked, her body covered in welts with restraining cuffs
dangling from her chaffed wrists. Damn her for thinking she could wander
the house unfit for company.
"Jackie! I want you at my side when Yakamura
arrives! One more disrespectful comment from you, young lady, and I'll
beat you to within an inch of your life!"
He put on the blue silk suit Yakamura had bought him
in Hong Kong. The white gloves were not appropriate. He would explain
that a rash made it necessary to protect his hands from infection,
especially the more virulent infections of the Asian nations to which
Yakamura and his staff belonged. Surely they would understand the health
risk they posed to an American.
Kahl finally heard the sound of Yakamura's big
helicopter descending upon the lawn outside. He hurried from the
smoke-filled house alone, ignoring with every bit of dignity he could
muster the smoldering ruin of the aircraft that had crashed against the
side of the house.
He stopped well back from the dusty helicopter as
Yakamura and his men stepped down the unfolded ladder. Behind him,
Callavier stumbled from the main entrance of the house, his shirt and
jacket covered in blood.
Yakamura's expression was one of stone. His guards
surrounded him in a semicircle with the black barrels of their guns poking
out in all directions.
Kahl faltered to a stop. His eyes widened with
horror beyond imagining. His gloved hands went to his throat.
His bloodied hands.
He hadn't seen it! How had he missed it? He
gestured for Callavier to have the disgusting mess attended. It lay on
the ground between himself and Yakamura, Audrey's rotting corpse, the
putrefying stench, and the whining flies.
Kahl circumnavigated the seething mass of rotting
flesh on wobbly knees and tilted his chin defiantly. Maybe Yakamura would
think it an animal.
Kiki made a thoroughly inappropriate appearance.
Dressed in torn and bloodied bikini underwear, bare-breasted, she blocked
his way, her frail body livid with bruises.
Kahl burned with humiliation. Kiki had been a gift.
Yakamura had demanded that he treat Kiki well. He had promised to do so.
He had failed, and he could no longer hold the extent of his failures at
bay. The truth of the matter was apparent. The ultimate responsibility
for Callavier's behavior, and for Kiki's lack of social graces, was his.
Kahl's legs gave beneath him. He fell to his knees,
no longer able to maintain a pretext of normalcy. He had lost control.
He had not specifically stated how to dispose of his wife's corpse. He
had failed to restrain Kiki in her bedroom. Jacqueline should have been
sent away to school in Europe rather than be allowed to roam at will and
be haphazardly murdered so close to his business dealings.
Yakamura approached with an intense frown of
displeasure on his round face. "What is the matter with you, Mr. Kahl?
Have you gone mad?"
Yakamura gestured with the flick of his wrist to
indicate Callavier standing just outside the house, leaning for support,
bleeding. One of Yakamura’s men whipped a silenced pistol from a shoulder
holster. The gun popped. A bead of red appeared on Callavier's
forehead. Orville’s security chief dropped to his knees and pitched face
down to the ground.
Yakamura's expression turned to one of disgust. He
gestured curtly to his guards a second time. "Let us properly dispose of
this incompetent."
Kahl opened his mouth to protest, to reason with his
old friend and benefactor. Blue-bottle flies flew down his throat and
gagged him. They flew into his ears and nostrils, bringing with them the
stench of the grave. Kahl clawed at his face. Given a moment to clear
his throat, he would stand tall and regain his dignity.
Yakamura's guards were kind enough to help him to his
feet. They released him and stood back, grim-faced, their dark eyes
peering from beneath the occipital folds of their Asian eyes with a focus
of self-discipline he had always admired.
He had thought the swords they carried ceremonial.
He had never guessed that they were of any practical value. They whisked
them from their sheaths and whirled the flashing steel through the air
faster than his eye could follow. He had only begun to bring his hands up
to protect his face when the razor-edged blades slashed across his body,
one horizontally across his throat, the other vertically down his torso.
"Do not dare die in my presence," Yakamura murmured.
The warriors sheathed their blades, bowed, and
followed Yakamura back to the idling helicopter. Kahl watched, frozen in
place, not breathing, not daring to move, just as Yakamura had ordered.
Disemboweled, his heartbeat faltered in his chest, and he toppled to one
side. A gout of blood arced into the air and fell across his chest when
he hit the ground. The suit, he realized solemnly, would be difficult to
clean.
He had a clear view of the helicopter's rotor
whirling against the clear blue sky. He could not close his eyes when the
machine roared its way into the air in a violent whirlwind of stinging
dust.
The world went dark regardless. Briefly, it was very
quiet and peaceful.
And then it ceased to exist.
