by Rees, Kevin
‘Has any contact been made with Karl?’
‘He’s fully engaged with the operation, sir. There is little traffic coming out of the area, but our staff are on standby if there is some communication you need to be informed about.’
‘Thank you, Matthew.’ Aquino turned from his desk and smiled at his aide. ‘Perhaps you could now tell me you’ve lost Thoragan’s invitation.’
Matthew shook his head. ‘I’ve left it in your tray, sir. Sorry!’
Aquino dismissed him and turned to his desk. There, in a black envelope printed in swirling gold letters, was his personal invitation to Thoragan’s party. What was he up to this time, he mused? Gabriel Aquino let out a long, low breath wishing Karl Felton was here to watch his back. Thoragan was a master manipulator — a savant at moving opinion his way by bribery or deceit; whichever method brought the fastest result. He was the politician feared most by those in power, and Aquino had some personal experience of Thoragan’s methods when a purge of spies revealed most were, or had been, in his employ.
‘But why now? Why tonight?’ Aquino spoke out absently to the empty room. Thoragan must know the council would not elect him. He wouldn’t declare an election until Karl was in a position to campaign and that might be weeks — even months away. No, there was another motive here. One he needed irrefutable evidence of corruption that was above the high standard acceptable in politics.
His thoughts were cut-short by a faint knock on the study door. ‘Come in, Matthew.’ Aquino turned, expecting to see his aide reminding him he was procrastinating. Instead, the focus of his questions found some light. Standing in the doorway was a man who might provide the answers. Aquino saw one side of his head was swathed in a bandage stained with a fresh seepage of blood. ‘Hello.’
‘Sir, I wanted to speak with you about ton—’
‘How did you get in?’ Aquino interjected. ‘You passed my security, obviously, and my servants and aide?’ He let the question hang. ‘You certainly have a skill, young man. One that’s wasted in your current employ.’ He let the implication hang also.
‘Mr President, I’m here to ask if you will be attending senate business with Praetor Thoragan. He has employed me to remind all those invited of their duty to the state.’ Morgan delivered the words with distaste since the last hour had seen his life spiral into the gutter. The loss of control was the worst. It was like the withdrawal of a powerful narcotic from his system. Thoragan was right he had become complacent and arrogant to think he stood on an equal footing with his employer.
‘Come in.’ Aquino knew the man walking into the room, but tonight he didn’t recognise the fool, the spy, or whatever disguise he wore. Cruz-Smith appeared fractured, stumbling into the room in obvious pain. The opportunity presents itself, he thought. ‘What happened to your face?’
‘It’s nothing, sir.’
‘Can I look and see for myself. I was a good field medic in my time, you know.’ He got up and approached Morgan, ignoring what little protest he made. The bandage was held on loosely, achieving little in the way of support for the saturated pad underneath. The wound was ugly, and it hadn’t been properly treated, but it was relatively clean. ‘What would you say if I told you I could treat this wound and it wouldn’t leave a scar. Maybe a blemish, but nothing that would alter your face.’ He guessed right. The man’s vanity shone as brightly as the afternoon sun. He pointed to a seat and told him to sit. ‘This wound isn’t a cut — more of a puncture with something sharp and irregular. Who did this to you?’
‘It was an accident. I fell.’
‘There are red marks around it that look like fingers. Am I getting warmer, Morgan?’ He bent and looked directly into his eyes. ‘I’d say someone slapped you and in their palm was something that tore into your cheek — a ring, perhaps? I know you are... acquainted with Praetor Thoragan, and the man is a walking peacock at times, But he has the habit of wearing bold jewellery.’
‘Mr President, I think I should leave.’
‘Sit back down. I haven’t begun to save your face.’
Cruz-Smith crumpled back onto the chair. He couldn’t defy Thoragan, yet his loyalty was swinging out of balance. He knew Aquino was playing him. And the stakes, this time, were very high. What if Aquino was skilled enough to save his face? Then what would he owe him?
‘This isn’t going to hurt if I just manipulate a few points on your neck like this.’ Aquino jabbed his finger into several muscles, adjusting the blood flow and altering the pain inductors. The man went limp in the chair. ‘Good. Now I need to work very quickly. If I leave the nerve block in place, within ten minutes the muscles become locked and you would be a rag doll drooling onto your shirt for the rest of your life. Someone would have to feed you, bathe you and clean up your mess. So perhaps I should get on with it. Nine minutes left.’
The manipulation took Cruz-Smith by surprise. He was even more surprised by the strength in Aquino’s fingers as they gouged into his neck. Whatever nerves had been affected, he felt his senses had become anaesthetised. He was aware of Aquino’s voice and what he was saying, but he couldn’t shape his lips to respond or ask to be let go. If Thoragan knew about this skill it would become his weapon of choice. Cruz-Smith imagined lying next to him as his fat fingers closed around his neck, squeezing and pulling until he had locked the muscles that would keep him paralysed for his pleasure.
Aquino opened a drawer and took out a small leather pouch. Inside his head, Cruz-Smith was counting off the seconds. He must have under seven minutes left. Aquino approached him and pulled up a chair. He wore highly magnified spectacles, which he used to inspect the wound. The spy moved his eyes sharply to try and glimpse what was happening. Aquino appeared unhurried and took out several instruments and gels. Surely there must only be a few minutes left — maybe four. How was he to save his face in four minutes?
‘If I repair your face there is a payment to be made for the service, you understand. Please, blink twice. It would be nice to conclude business before I begin and, more importantly for you, before time runs out.’
Cruz-Smith blinked frantically.
‘I said two blinks for yes. You’d better hurry.’
With effort, the spy blinked twice.
‘Good. Then I’ll begin,’ Aquino said, smiling. He was mindful of the time, but had the skill needed to repair the young man’s face in the few minutes remaining. He laid out his instruments, which would be the envy of every First Blood surgeon. They had been developed by several of his scientists working in collaboration in their respective fields. The pinnacle of their research had been the cold laser he was using to cauterise the wound and accelerate skin growth in a few minutes rather than wait until the body did its work. Aquino filled the cavity with gel and moved the thin pencil-like tool over the cheekbone, watching the tissue knit together over the hole in the spy’s cheek. When the operation was complete, a slight bruising was all that remained of the wound Cruz-Smith had walked in with. ‘There you go, my boy. I think you will be very pleased with the result. Oh! I’d better take the block off. I wouldn’t want to waste all that effort for nothing.’ He manipulated the muscles and nerves with expert hands.
It took another minute for Cruz-Smith to begin to feel his senses slowly come back under his control. Limb by limb, the foggy numbness seeped away and was replaced with an exquisite agony that tracked through his whole body. Aquino moved his chair back and waited for him to come fully around.
‘I have incredible pain throughout my body, sir.’
‘It’ll go very quickly. It’s all your nerves firing off to make sure you’re still alive. Pain signals are good at getting one’s attention, don’t you agree?’ Aquino grinned.
Cruz-Smith nodded and immediately wished he hadn’t moved his head as another few thousand nerve endings proved he was alive. ‘May I see,’ he said through a clenched jaw, omitting the “sir” as he contracted the movement of his mouth to the minimum.
Aquino reached into the small pouch and withdr
ew a simple mirror he’d used many times in the battlefield. He held it out to Cruz-Smith, who reached for it slowly, his fingers barely able to curve over the glass. He drew it up to his face and peered closely. The blood staining his cheek obscured the reconstruction. Cruz-Smith reached up and touched the area with a disbelieving hand, where moments earlier he could push his finger in deep enough to feel the bone of his cheek. Now it was as if Thoragan’s assault had never happened. He looked at Aquino and then back to the mirror. Ignoring the pain, he licked his finger and rubbed the blood away, revealing smooth, unblemished skin except for a yellow bruise circling the area, but in its eye was his cheek, intact. He got out of the chair and stumbled over to a larger mirror hanging on the lavender walls of Aquino’s study. His legs were barely able to hold him upright. Aquino stood up, expecting to have to catch the man before he fell. He knew the technique he had used had a strong after-effect, but it was countered by Cruz-Smith’s need to confirm his beauty was still whole.
‘My skills haven’t deserted me after all these years. Is it what you expected?’ Aquino said.
‘More… much more. I was frightened he had scarred me. But this is a miracle.’ Cruz-Smith examined his new skin lovingly. Tracing with a delicate finger, he lightly touched his cheek, expecting that it was some superficial layer that would break down. But no, it was flesh melded back into their respective parts. ‘Will it last?’
‘It’s your face put back into the configuration before Thoragan assaulted you.’ Aquino held up a hand to silence the weak voice of protest. ‘As a spy, your job is to convey secrets to your master. And yet you are sadly lacking in the one thing that counts above all other things.’ He paused, drawing the man into the endgame. ‘Appreciation from the one paying you for the path you have to tread to earn information. All of that, and still Thoragan ignores your efforts and yet you cling onto him like a baby monkey clings to its mother. Morgan, you must think carefully about the next few minutes of your life. If he can disfigure you on a whim, what else is he capable of?’
‘I’m a contradiction. Everyone knows my profession and my skills. Yet they are in constant denial of who I am until they need some special little job doing.’ He looked at Aquino in the mirror. His eyes began to drown as he recalled the lonely, unwanted child left to die on a snow-capped mountain peak twenty years ago. The cold wanted to eradicate the one thing it feared the most about humans — heat. It sent its armies of snow and ice to freeze his heart to a standstill. Before it could claim another victory, someone heard his cries over the wind. It was a man and woman who ran to his pitiful whimpering. They swept him up and carried him to their home. An act of kindness was a scarcity in his life. Aquino’s kindness tonight had been only the second time he had experienced it. ‘I want some peace.’ Morgan wiped his eyes. ‘I want to rest my head on a pillow and fall asleep like normal people and not have to lay awake every night worrying if an assassin will enter my room. I want to be free of all this.’
Aquino went to the young man’s side. ‘You can be if you let me help. I’ll employ you and let it be known you’re out of the game for good. Thoragan won’t dare to hurt you if you’re under my protection.’
The young man smiled in a way that told of Aquino’s naivety in matters he was so far removed from. Cruz-Smith picked up the dressing and bandage and re-applied it. ‘It’s better he doesn’t find out I’m no longer cut.’ Cruz-Smith walked to the door. ‘Please attend tonight... at the Praetor’s house.’
Aquino watched the man leave. Perhaps he had done enough to turn him his way, but the spy wasn’t stupid. Although, he had flaunted himself openly and made it clear that nothing was off limits providing there was something he could take back to Thoragan. Perhaps he was stupid in that respect. There were more covert men and women — younger and prettier — close behind him. They had the etiquette of spying, which he lacked. The more Aquino looked into the future, the bleaker it became for Cruz-Smith. The spy’s options were limited, even under his protection. His was no assurance of safety. Aquino began to regret the offer of a position on his staff, hoping Cruz-Smith would have seen it more as a political gambit and decline it. These were turbulent times and it made sense not to throw in unknowns or follies.
The door opened quietly. Aquino half expected the spy had returned to accept his offer.
‘Can I remind you, sir, that if you wish to attend the Praetor’s gathering there is only another ninety minutes before the car arrives,’ Matthew said, looking a little bewildered. ‘Forgive me, sir, but has someone been in here with you?’
‘Why?’
‘I thought I saw someone go into the cellar and they would have had to pass your door. I just wondered.’ He trailed off, seeing Aquino contrive a look of bemused bewilderment.
‘Tell the driver I’ll meet him outside. Close the door, Matthew.’
The aide paused before leaving the room. Aquino thought for a second about the cellar and made a mental note to have his security people do a random sweep. There were no windows down there, so how could Cruz-Smith get out? But it was another question that bothered him. Aquino wondered: how many times had the spy entered his house without anyone knowing?
15
The face above him was savage, yet it still clung onto a hint of human beauty amongst the matted blonde hair. Sam’s forearm was barred across her throat, trying to push against what should have been vulnerable, but was having little effect in choking her. The woman had come out of nowhere and jumped on him. Sam felt her arms and legs lock around his body as the momentum threw him backwards. He hit the floor hard with the woman straddling him. She was using her legs to anchor painfully onto his ribs. The crushing pressure didn’t match with the eight-stone woman on top of him, and Sam quickly found he was sucking hard for oxygen. He felt his arms getting heavier as he fought to keep her teeth away from his neck. The woman wrenched a hand free and clamped it tightly around his throat. The moment she began to squeeze, Sam knew he wasn’t getting out of this easily.
At the start of the attack, Sam heard his heart beat frenziedly in his head, but now he was painfully alert to the tempo beginning to slow. The woman ripped her other arm free and doubled the pressure on his throat. Sam punched out with little effect as his windpipe was crushed down to the width of a straw. His vision became tidal and hazy, with images switching from ghost-like to focus when just a little hard fought air reached his screaming lungs. Through the growls of tortured madness coming from his attacker, he heard his daughter’s laughter, and his wife telling him to come home safe. In a desperate moment of fogginess, Sam saw a figure with its head enveloped in a halo cut out the overhead light. With only a few moments before his vision completely decayed, he saw the angel reach out towards the rabid woman. Sam heard his last few heartbeats bid a slow goodbye to the world, and he wanted to say sorry to his wife for not keeping his promise. But those words were stuck beneath the clawing fingers pressed deeply into his neck. Then a dry crack, like wood snapping across a knee, ended his suffering.
Sam floated for a second before he realised the fingers had fallen away from his throat. A wonderful sensation of pain welcomed him back into the world. He managed to turn his head gingerly and saw the bestial face frozen in death with an expression of surprise, due no doubt to the blade of a heavy knife protruding out of her mouth. His oxygen-starved brain failed to make sense of the scene. Sam rolled the dead woman away and found another pair of hands reaching out to him.
‘Sam, I thought you were a dead man,’ said Lars, looking concerned.
Sam began swallowing air like an alcoholic would address a bottle of cheap wine. The sterile dryness hit the back of his damaged throat making it feel like he was sucking in a lungful of desert. His vision was still hazy, but he could see the face of the Swede staring down at him.
‘Well done, old son,’ Sam croaked. ‘Thanks.’ He took Lars’s hand and was dragged to his feet.
Sam stared down at the body of the nurse. He could still taste the bitch and spat the memor
y onto the back of her blue uniform. He felt no remorse for her. It was either her life, or an anonymous letter to his wife and child telling them he wasn’t coming home. Except, there was also the matter of his ego, which had taken as much of a battering as his body for allowing the woman to get the drop on him so easily.
‘Sam. Over here.’ Lars stood next to a body on the floor. He looked like he’d had a day in a slaughterhouse with blood drying in his hair and smeared on both cheeks. Lars still had Roman’s knife drawn in his left hand. The blade glistened with a diluted pink fluid, the same pink fluid pouring out of the nurse’s mouth. Behind him the rest of the team were fanning out, covering the north and south corridors. ‘I’m sorry it had to be him.’
Lying on the floor like an island surrounded by a red sea was Jahed Khan. Sam knelt beside the porter. He reached out and gently turned him over. Most of the man’s throat and face had been torn off, and there were gaping bite marks covering his body.
‘I saw him fight to get to you, to stop that woman, but he was overwhelmed so quickly by four Jaik’s,’ Lars said. He saw the façade fall away from the bodyguard who knelt whispering quiet words to the dead man before squeezing his shoulder and laying him gently back on the floor. ‘He was an exceptionally brave man.’
Sam saw Eddie rush over and shook his head.
‘He’s dead?’
‘He didn’t stand a chance when those fuckers came at us,’ Sam said. He felt a strange feeling inside of wanting to grieve. ‘He was trying to save me.’
Eddie touched the dead man’s head. Jahed shouldn’t have been here. ‘Why didn’t you run, you stupid bastard!’
