by Brian Lumley
She’d helped him up, carefully looping his left arm round her neck and taking his weight. Not too bad, not bad at all! And then they’d stumbled to and fro, weaving their way across the rug-covered floor of the room, to and fro, until the blood got going and he was taken with pins and needles. Then he’d signalled: ‘No, enough!’ and she’d sat him down again.
‘Decker’s asleep,’ she’d whispered then. ‘Out like a light and snoring like a pig. He is a pig! He … he came back drunk and it looked nasty for a minute or two, but finally he got the message.’
Trace slowly turned his head to look at her. The oil lamp didn’t give much light but … was that a bruise on her face, under her eye? She’d quickly turned away; and in the next moment she’d reached over, shielded the rim of the lamp’s flue, blown the room back into darkness.
‘Better sleep now, Charlie, if you can. And remember what I said about not giving yourself away by tackling Decker or doing anything stupid. He’s a bad lot and would take great pleasure in hurting you.’ Then her kiss again on his forehead, and his chair slowly tilting backward, and her perfume fading as she moved away.
And Trace had reclined there in silence and the light of the stars through the window for a long time before he’d finally slept again …
And then it was morning.
‘How’s Sleeping Beauty this morning?’ The fat man’s wheezy, imitation-American twang; his footsteps, shuffling close. ‘You awake, Charlie boy?’
Trace had kept his eyes shut, his head lolling, but in fact he’d been awake for some little time. He’d just been sitting here, listening to them start to stir, getting up, moving about. Then:
Slap! slap! slap! – Decker’s pudgy fingers on his face, and Trace had jerked his head back, his eyes snapping open. Decker had stepped back at once, his own eyes widening and showing how bloodshot they were; He’d had a good drink last night, for sure. And how Trace had cursed himself then. How much had he given away? All of it? Maybe not. Slowly, he let his head loll again, his eyes slowly close.
‘For a minute then – ’ Decker had wheezed, suspicion in his voice. He’d come closer, Taken Trace’s chin and given his head a shake, until Trace half-opened a bleary eye. And: ‘Naw!’ Decker had grinned at him then. ‘Just reaction, that’s all. I woke you up nasty, eh, Charlie boy?’
Then Decker had wound him upright and Trace had allowed himself to ‘come properly awake.’ And:
‘Poo-poos,’ growled the fat man, grimacing. But Trace had to admit to himself that it sounded like a good idea to him. ‘Then shavey-poos, ’cos you’re hairy as a badger’s arse, and finally bathy-poos to get rid of the stink. Who’s. a lucky boy, eh?’
You are! Trace had thought. Lucky I haven’t got that cut-throat razor of yours in my hand right now!
But Decker had been looking at him suspiciously again. ‘You know, boy, you look just a mite too damn good. Today I think we up the dosage. Yep, I reckon it’s three little white pills for Charlie boy today. Just to be on the safe side, eh?’
Trace’s hands were on the arms of his chair. He’d gripped with them and felt his fingers dig in a little. The fat man’s words had all been received sharp and clear. Trace could smell the scent of flowers drifting in from the garden, and coffee smells from the kitchen. His vision was almost normal, too, and Decker’s slaps had carried more of that sting he remembered from before. They were a taunt and a torment, those slaps …
Then Amira had walked in with a tray and steaming mugs of coffee – and Trace had seen at once that she wore dark glasses. They couldn’t hide the bruise, though, where. it bloomed under her right eye.
‘Bastard!’ Trace had hissed out loud, the word totally involuntary where it slipped off his tongue in an unguarded moment.
Decker’s mouth had fallen open at once. ‘What?’ he glanced from Trace to Amira, back to Trace. ‘You fucking … !’ And to Amira: ‘You hear that? The little shit called me a – ’ He loomed over Trace, raising his open palm.
Amira somehow contrived to get between Decker and his target without dropping her tray. ‘It’s your own fault!’ she snapped at Decker. ‘He cared for me, remember? That was my job, to get him to care for me. Even now he cares, and he’s seen my eye. If Khumeni finds out you hit me, believe me you’ll pay for it. But not nearly as much as you would if he thought you’d hit Trace …’
Slowly Decker had straightened up, turned to face her where she backed away. ‘Little lady, you watch your mouth. You’ll tell Khumeni nothing, you hear?’ He took a waddling pace toward her – reached out and lifted a mug of coffee from her tray. ‘Anyway, you went to bed with this dildo, didn’t you? So what’s wrong with me, eh?’
‘I was paid to seduce Trace!’ she’d spat at him then.
‘Yeah?’ Decker’s face had puddled into a fat, ugly smile. ‘Well, why didn’t you say so? I can pay.’
‘Oh no you couldn’t,’ she’d scowled, turning away. ‘Not even if you had the keys to Fort Knox!’
Following which it had been time for Trace’s ablutions. Decker wasn’t too gentle with him, and Trace was sure that when the fat man shaved him he deliberately knicked his chin. Worse, in the bath he’d thought Decker was intent on drowning him. But at last it was over.
Then there had been a little food, and later the pills. Three of them. One went down, washed into his stomach with lemonade while the fat man massaged his throat. But the other two –
Trace had managed to trap them under his tongue. Later he’d spat them into a vase of flowering cactus. The one he’d swallowed had been sufficient, however, to put him out yet again …
… Later, Trace would remember coming to on the plane, but only very briefly.
… And at Tel-Aviv, being wheeled across the airport’s tarmac; many soldiers standing around in grey and green uniforms and caps with flat, jutting peaks, and each and every man of them carrying an automatic weapon; the sun burning his hands and wrists where they lay limp on the arms of his wheelchair. And Saul Gokowski’s chant echoing in the vaults of his brain.
… In a taxi, with his head in Amira’s lap; Decker in the front passenger seat wheezing instructions to the driver.
… In an ambulance, flat on his back on a stretcher, with Amira sitting beside him, holding his hand. But this time he stayed awake. And he examined himself.
He felt stiff as a board but his senses seemed more or less in order; weak as a kitten, yet eager for action. He couldn’t say exactly how he felt, but he knew he’d been inactive long enough. Could he talk? There was a sure way to find out.
Amira’s head was down, her eyes closed; she leaned half against the wall of the ambulance, half against Trace’s stretcher. Her face was drawn, drained. She had been through a lot.
Trace managed without too much difficulty to lift his head an inch or two, looked around the interior of the ambulance. It was a large vehicle but there were just the two of them here in the back, Trace and the girl. Beyond a reinforced, tinted glass panel which separated them from the cab, Decker was driving, his fat red neck unmistakable. A telephone was fixed in a bracket on the wall, for speaking to the driver. Its switch was in the ‘off’ position.
‘Amira!’ Trace croaked. ‘Hey – urch-ch - Amira!’
She started and her eyes shot open. ‘Charlie!’ She cast a darting glance through the tinted glass partition, then back at Trace. She tried to smile at him. ‘How do you feel?’
Trace tried to say ‘miserable’ but his tongue felt like a furry rubber wedge. He settled for ‘Shitty.’
‘Me too,’ she told him.
He shifted his position, a manoeuvre that required a lot of effort, a deal of concentration, and asked: ‘Where … ?’
‘Where are we? On our way to Jenin. Khumeni will be there, and your “brothers”. Others of Khumeni’s people will have brought them here – kidnapped, just like you.’
‘How do you – uh! – know these things?’ The inside of Trace’s mouth tasted pretty much like he’d expect a toilet to taste. But
his words were coming easier now, his mind and body beginning to function better together than at any time since that injection she’d given him.
‘George Khumeni never tells anyone everything,’ she answered. ‘So it’s a matter of intelligence. My instructions were to seduce you in London while Khumeni arranged to put some sort of pressure on you. Desiring to get out of London for a spell, you’d come with me to Israel and, eventually, Jenin. You helped matters along a little by booking a holiday in Karpathos; but at the same time that complicated things, because now I would have less time for your seduction. I had to try, then, to get you to change your holiday plans and come with me to Israel. That day you went off into the hills, to Gokowski’s monastery, I was going to receive “a message” from my father saying he was ill and could I come home at once. I would be distraught and turn to you for help, and you would bring me home – to Jenin, of course. Decker was in case I failed. He had instructions that if you weren’t suited with me, then that he was to help me get you to Israel any way we could. And he, too, had been told your destination: Jenin.
‘When Khumeni contacted me in London and gave me my orders, I at once got in touch with my father who told me that the beast had already instructed him to make ready a house in Jenin – a place big enough to accommodate twelve people at least. That is to say, Khumeni himself, Decker and Klein, my father and I, and seven others. My father also told me that Kastrouni had been in touch to say that the “Greek Connection” had already been kidnapped.’
‘The Greek connection?’ Trace’s mind was fully active now, if not his body. ‘Khumeni’s Greek son?’
‘That’s right. Kastrouni had had him under observation for a long time, and when he suddenly disappeared – ’
‘That was a signal to your little group that it was all starting to happen, eh?’
‘Yes. The other seven people at Jenin would obviously be yourself, your “brothers”, and their minders or kidnappers – two to each of them.’
Trace added it all up. ‘That means there’ll be Khumeni and five thugs against three captive zombies, a girl and an old man! What good is that?’
‘No good at all. It puts the beast ahead – or so it would appear. And that’s what we want. He’ll think he’s in the clear.’
‘But he will be in the clear!’
‘Not by a mile,’ she answered, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know everything, Charlie, but I do know this much: it can only be finished in Chorazin, and so until-then we play it exactly the way Khumeni wants it.’
Trace shook his head, however weakly. ‘There are still things I don’t see,’ he said. ‘A lot of them. If Kastrouni was one of your group, why was he working against you? He came to London and gave his life warning me off Israel!’
‘Psychology!’ she smiled tiredly, then shrugged. ‘He probably thought you’d want to come and find out for yourself. Anyway, Dimitrios was always the wild one, the driving force. I can’t really say why he came to London. Maybe he wanted to bring you out here himself. Remember we’re only loosely connected; our communications aren’t as good as we’d like them to be. Kastrouni wasn’t wasting any time, that’s all.’
‘And Gokowski – he threatened me, tested me, said if he could prove I was Khumeni’s son that he’d kill me there and then.’
‘Bluff!’ again her wan smile. ‘Saul wanted to impress you with something of the moment of what was happening. You’d seen two murders, and however inadvertently you’d actually been involved in a third death. His threat was meant to be the last straw on the camel’s back – to break any last thread of resistance and make you believe. But he wouldn’t have killed you, Charlie, not for anything. He, too, knew you had to come here, meet Khumeni, go with him and the others to Chorazin. It’s the only way the beast can be destroyed.’
Trace lay back his head, shook it slowly left and right, tried to get his whirling thoughts in order. ‘“The beast”, you call him. And do you believe, really believe, that this man is the antichrist? I mean, I know he’s evil – you can’t all be wrong – and I know he has … powers, for I saw Kastrouni die. But …’
‘He is the antichrist,’ she nodded. ‘Oh, yes. You’ll know it’s true the moment he chooses to let you see it’s true. Oh, if he wants to charm you he will, and then you could never believe! But if he wants you to believe – you will.’
‘All of you believe,’ said Trace, almost to himself. ‘Every one of you that I’ve met so far, believes completely. The antichrist himself. And you think you have his measure!’ He was angry now, tried to struggle upright; Amira put a hand on his chest, held him there easily.
‘At least we think we know what we’re doing, Charlie.’
‘But you’re up against the power of Satan! What can you do, any of you? And what happens to me if you fail?’
A red light beside the telephone came on. Crackling with static, Decker’s voice wheezed electrically: ‘Jenin coming up – a few more minutes.’ The fat man hadn’t looked back.
Trace closed his eyes, flopped back lifelessly, played dead. Amira flipped the ‘on’ switch, took up the telephone. ‘OK,’ she answered. ‘All’s well back here.’
‘And how’s our boy?’
‘He’s going to be just fine.’
‘Yeah? But for how long!’ A pause, then: ‘Hey, Amira?’
‘What is it?’
‘Now I know how those old cowboy bounty hunters used to feel.’
‘Oh? How was that?’
‘Satisfied!’ Decker wheezed, and began to laugh.
You bastard, thought Trace. And once more he promised himself: but if I’ve got it coming to me, you’d better believe it’s coming for you, too, fat man – in spades!
Chapter Three
Approaching Jenin, Decker took out a sheet of instructions from his pocket and glanced at it, then looked for landmarks. On the eastern extreme of the town, where typically Middle-Eastern dwellings were just beginning to cluster in small knots and the surface of the hitherto dirt road suddenly became metalled, he turned right down an avenue of palms and giant cacti or succulents toward an impressive private building in its own grounds behind high, parapet walls. Tall, wide wooden gates were closed to his vehicle, but as he applied his brakes and the ambulance began to slow down, so the gates swung open easily and a robed figure whose face was hidden by a cowl waved him through and flagged him to a halt.
The gates were then closed and locked and their guardian, a man in a brown, full-length, loose-fitting robe approached Decker’s cab. Decker took in the figure’s strange lope and his face lost something of its colour. He got down from the ambulance as Khumeni threw back his hood. And looking at that face from close quarters, Decker was glad evening was settling and that the shadows of the carob and almond trees in the garden were long, dusty and heavy.
‘Ah, Mr Decker!’ said Khumeni, his voice soft and husky and almost pleasant, forming a complete contrast to his awful aspect. ‘Punctual as ever. And has all gone well?’
Decker pulled himself together, threw off the morbid cloud that always seemed to settle whenever he was near this man, faced up to him. ‘For me, yes,’ he wheezed, ‘but for Klein, no. He’s dead, killed by Trace.’
Khumeni at once reached out a hand like a claw and grasped Decker’s shoulder where it joined his neck. ‘But you do have Charles Trace?’
Decker jerked back against the ambulance, shook himself free of the other’s grip. ‘Inside, yes,’ he wheezed, suddenly panting. ‘The Halbstein girl is with him.’
Khumeni took a deep breath. ‘Tell me about Klein later,’ he snapped. ‘For now drive up to the house. I want to have a look at your passenger.’ Without another word he turned and loped toward the house along a gravel drive, and Decker was left to climb back into his cab and follow on behind.
Inside the body of the ambulance, Trace and Amira had heard all of this. Also the girl had been looking through the tinted partition and so out of the cab’s windows. As Decker started up the motor again, she said: ‘
I know this place, Charlie. It belongs to rich friends of my father. It’s an arrangement that he can have the run of the place whenever they’re away.’ She quickly went on to describe the house and grounds, being at pains to explain how difficult it would be to sneak away from here.
Picturing the place as she described it, Trace didn’t think so. If he was fit he’d be out of here in a flash – or into it, if he so desired. If he were fit …
But then, as the ambulance came to a halt for the second time, he put all such thoughts out of his mind. He heard Decker get out of his cab and go to the rear of the vehicle, heard him cranking down the reinforced central section of the rear panel to form a ramp, then his wheezing as he clambered in and assisted Amira with Trace’s trolley.
Then, peering through lids three-quarters shuttered, Trace felt himself wheeled down the ramp on to grating gravel chips, steered up on to solid stone flags, finally guided through doors into a cool, shadowy corridor and so into a room whose louvre-shuttered windows made it gloomy as a cupboard. There Amira lifted his dangling hands up on to the trolley (and doing so gave one of them a covert squeeze) and someone, probably the girl again, threw a blanket over his trunk and lower limbs against the room’s cooler temperature. Then:
‘So this is our Mr Trace, is it?’ Khumeni’s voice, faintly accented, quiet in the room’s confined space and yet having a husky depth and gritty strength. Trace sensed him moving closer, heard the rustle of his robe and saw him like a dark shadow looming. He steeled himself … and sure enough a moment later felt a hand fall upon his brow. ‘He seems hot,’ said Khumeni, ‘feverish almost. Not like the others at all.’ There was a hint of suspicion in his voice.
‘It was like an oven in the back of that ambulance,’ Amira lied. ‘And he’s not only hot – he also smells and needs a wash. I’ll bring a bowl in here and take care of it, if you wish.’
There was a moment’s silence and then, through eyes open by the merest crack, Trace saw Khumeni’s slow nod. ‘Very well. It seems you’ve formed something of an attachment, Miss Halbstein.’
