by Tony Bulmer
General Faz Huq frowned, then leaned out across the balcony. “I see no gift unless of course you are referring the many spiritual gifts bestowed upon us by Allah’s great mercy?” The general leaned out a little further, squinting harder at the group of guards now. Standing amongst them was a figure in turquoise robes. “A woman!” exclaimed the general happily. “You brought me a woman. Very generous my young friend, but I can assure you, I have all the whores a man could ever need.”
“I am certain that you do Excellency. A man of your noble stature wants for nothing when it comes to pleasures of the flesh. But this woman is special. She is the she-devil wife of the great American Shaiten Truman Whitaker.”
The general placed his opium pipe on the table next to his gold plated Colt 1911. He looked lovingly at the gun then turned back to his young acolyte. “You brought the wife of America’s highest serving diplomat here, to my personal villa?”
Tomur beamed with pleasure. “You are pleased Excellency?”
Pleased is not the word, my young friend. “I am ecstatic.”
“Ecstatic,” repeated Tomur. “She will make a splendid bargaining chip will she not?”
The General nodded, “A most excellent bargaining chip. But tell me my young friend, what do you think will happen if she were ever to return to her Shaitan husband and his Godless master in the White House of Washington? Do you not think she will tell tales about us both and the nature of our lives?”
Tomur frowned. “I confess I had not thought of this Excellency.”
Looking out over the orchard, the general nodded. “It is of no matter.”
“I am reassured,” said Tomur. “I thought for a moment I had displeased you.”
“Goodness no, my boy. We will simply use her as we will, then kill her.”
18
Ministry of State Security, Shanghai, China
The lights in the cell burned suddenly brighter. Karyn’s eyes snapped open and saw the black-eyed ceiling cameras staring down at her, like predatory cockroaches. The wall began to move, sliding upwards with a cold hydraulic hiss. She had heard the stories of course, this was a special services holding cell, of the type used by the Ministry of State Security, to house only the most dangerous and virulently feared political dissidents. Word was, the hydraulic cell floors could drop away without warning, sending the doomed inhabitant spiraling downwards into a sharp-bladed mulching machine. Karyn didn’t pay much attention to such idle gossip. Chances were the Chinese had spread the stories themselves, to instill even greater fear into their cowed populace.
Karyn watched as, the door disappeared into the ceiling and the corridor outside was filled with a blinding halide light. Dark figures stood to attention outside the doorway, a detail of gun toting troops, menacingly silhouetted against the harsh, bare corridor. Karyn stood in the doorway for a long moment, assessing what she was up against. As her naked toes reached the edge of the doorway, the phalanx of troops suddenly drew down their weapons, to waist level. They all had their bayonets fixed, every one of the razor sharp blades pointing in her direction.
Karyn nodded with approval, and said in flawless Chinese, “Raised pulses boys? You must have known I was coming.”
“Please, step this way Ms. Kane.” The hard, ambivalent voice rang down the corridor, reverberating off the grey metal walls.
Karyn stood there in her underwear, unfazed by the command, or the unwavering attentions of the squad of rifle carrying soldiers. She squinted into the glaring light and said, “Real nice of you to muster an honor guard, just for me, but there was really no need.”
“We have no time to waste in idle conversation Ms. Kane. Walk this way, with slow, careful steps and be assured that if you offer even the slightest resistance, we will meet your insubordination with deadly and overwhelming force.”
“Uh-huh, That’s real hospitable, but you are going to have to send up the valet with my bag, because I don’t have a thing to wear.”
“There is no time for your tiresome recalcitrance Ms. Kane, your presence is required in the conference room. You will step forward directly, or you will be sanctioned, to gain your compliance.”
“Yeah, I am sure you PLA goofballs have a real busy day lined up torturing dissidents, and such like. Thing is, unless I get my clothes back, I am going nowhere. So, you better hope that who ever you got waiting in your boardroom is the patient type, because I’m not in the habit of taking meetings in my scanties.” Karyn stepped forwards now, sensing dozens of eyes crawling all over her body. Let them stare. Her body was something to look at, she knew that—couldn’t help but know it, and she had no shame. She would walk naked through Times Square on a Fourth of July weekend, if she thought it would get the job done, but right now she had no choice. These secret police bottom feeders were messing with her, purely because they could. The whole goddamn scene had been a psychological shakedown from start to finish—the extreme temperatures, lights, noise, sensory depravation and filthy water, the whole thing very carefully planned to disorientate and eat away at her will. Fact was, these games had only made her stronger. She walked slowly, leisurely down the long corridor, inspecting her white-gloved honor guard, with their fixed-bayonet assault rifles, held ready to take her out. Just another bullshit mind-game, another psychological monkey wrench in a toolbox of endless cruelty. With every step, Karyn felt the cold metal floor suck the feeling from her bare feet. She cast her eyes side to side, inspecting the troops. They were young and thin and angular, their faces airbrushed with zealotry. It takes a very special kind of conscript to stand guard at the Ministry of State Security, thought Karyn grimly. What unspeakable horrors these fresh-faced youngsters must have seen. What would the future hold for those who bore the burden of such secret knowledge? Perhaps, they too would one day find themselves in a coffin-shaped room very similar to the one she had just stepped out of? Chances were, they wouldn‘t walk free as quick as her, more likely the cold-steel floor would open up beneath them and the mulching machine in the basement would roar quickly through the gears, until every horrible secret at the Ministry of State Security was expunged.
“Hurry Ms. Kane.”
There was something about the voice from the end of the corridor, something inhuman, machine-like—the personification of a monolithic cruelty so overwhelming it had consumed an entire continent.
Karyn showed no fear, because she felt none. It was not her destiny to die in this place, she was certain of that. But, if death was to come, she had been ready for that for years—ever since the first covert operation she had engaged in with Naval Intelligence—a behind the lines strike in Mogadishu, Somalia, the very place her brother Ryan had bought it during Operation Gothic Serpent. Ryan was quite a guy, a team leader with DEVGRU. They had a lot in common, kindred spirits, railing against a world of evil and endless tragedy. But now Ryan was gone, shot in the back as he helped rescue a fallen comrade. She would carry on. Follow the family line to its natural conclusion. There would be no more warriors after her, that wouldn’t be possible anymore. A Pashtun bullet had torn that chance away from her on the scree covered mountainsides of the Hindu Kush, cutting through her womb with surgical finality. Now, there was only Carly—the last in a line of fearless warriors; a young girl lost in a world where service no longer had any meaning.
Approaching the end of the corridor, Karyn was confronted by a line of, black uniformed officials, their faces covered with breathe-easy dust-masks. They looked bizarre and sinister. Karyn noticed her black-silk cheongsam dress folded neatly on the floor. All her other possessions were missing, including her Channel boots. She felt the anger rise. Those boots were expensive, a special order she’d had shipped from Milan. “I see you had housekeeping take care of my dry cleaning. I am going to thank you for that, but you are going to have to speak with your people, because I can see right away there are things missing.”
One of the figures stepped forwards. “Put it on,”
Karyn was disappointed. The sexless Or
wellian creature that stood before came across so hard and masculine it was hard to call her orientation either way.
“Where are my shoes?”
“Shoes will not be necessary.”
Karyn nodded, “Yeah, I figured as much, and you know what? That is the kind of attitude that is going to cost you a no-star review on Trip-Advisor.”
Another black suited goon moved out of the line, lunging forwards with a claw-like electric stun stick. Blue voltage arced through the tip, as the goon swung it experimentally in Karyn’s direction.
She didn’t move. “You might want to holster the cattle prod bucko, because shoes or no shoes, you bring that thing any closer to my person and I will break you in two.”
The creature with the steel voice sneered. “Put the dress on Ms. Kane, it is time for you to leave.”
Karyn sniffed. “I am going to need my rosary.”
The creature gave a chuckle. “There is no God in the People’s Republic of China Ms. Kane. Such idle superstitions are regressive and counterrevolutionary. So you see, you will have no need for your prayer beads, or your cross of belief either.” Her interlocutor paused, to let this philosophical truth sink home then said, “As a murderer your need for redemption must be great Ms. Kane. You can be assured that justice comes swiftly to such criminals in our great country.”
Karyn stared long and hard. “Murderer?” she said, her voice hard and even.
19
Studio of Huds Helman, Rockefeller Centre, New York City
“He may be the richest man in the whole goddamn world. That don’t stop him from being a loathsome douchebag—in fact you can strike that—the guy is so creepy he gives loathsome douchebags a bad name, kind of like Hannibal the Cannibal Lecter or something—only not as loveable.”
Huds Helman swilled cognac around his oversized brandy snifter then chugged it down. “I don’t know what you are complaining about. Most women would be flattered to get the come on from a player like Irving King. What’s the matter with you Erin, you turning lesbo or something? Because if you are…”
Erin Francelle raised her eyes to the heavens, “You wish Helman, in your wildest schoolboy fantasies you wish—but even if that were to happen, you and your sordid little video camera would be the very last to know about it, and that I can guarantee.”
“Oh, I forgot, Ms. Corporate Lawyer. You got the heat for those macrobiotic gym-bodied intellectual types. Well, let me tell you right here and now, every single one of them—got schlongs the size of cashew nuts.” Huds Helman drew up a meat pie fist and dangled a pinkie, “See that, right there. That is your goddamn future you keep on the current track.”
Erin Francelle pulled a face, “Your prurient concern for my sexual welfare is real touching Huds, but when it comes to your expertise in matters of the schlong, I will have to cite the year end Johnson vs. Madison Avenue incident, where you took off your pants and…”
“Hey—that was a three bottle evening and you know it. Moreover, it was New Years Eve for Christ’s sake, it had to be forty below at least that night, it’s a wonder I didn’t get frostbite or sumptin’.”
“Uhuh. I hear you Helman. Trouble is, there ain’t no forgetting that little episode, and I do used the word little advisedly.”
“Yeah, I hear you trying to change the subject hot-stuff. You got to be rueing the day you missed out on what I got to offer, but it is never too late, let me tell you. You play your cards right, and we can be moving to the next stage of this sweet little relationship of ours.”
“Sweet ain’t the word for it Helman, But getting back to your douchebag love interest Irving King, if you are so hot for him, why don’t you date him?”
“I really don’t know how that sweet and delectable little mouth of yours manages to come out with such repulsive an sinful ideas. I got to tell you, I am shocked and disappointed. I thought you corporate lawyers knew how to close a deal?”
“Irving King ain’t no kind of deal, which ever way you look at it.”
“You got to be kidding me. The dude earns more than five hundred million dollars each and every day. When a stud is fielding that kind of scratch, he is every body’s type baby, and I am talking everybody.”
“Everybody with no standards or principles Helman. That geriatric sleaze ran his wet little saliva fingers all down my back—”
“I can’t pretend I am not jealous, because I am. You are hotter than a smoking supernova. So, just say the word and I will call our hedge-fund honcho and set him straight about whose lady you are.”
“You are so old fashioned, you are positively nineteenth century. Presumably this little proposal of yours means you are ready to cut out the booze, blow and hookers?”
“Proposal? I didn’t hear myself using the word proposal and as the resident legal-beagle in these here parts, I would expect you to testify to that in a court of law, should that prove necessary at any point in the future.”
“Blow it out of your phony ass Helman. This is precisely why you should keep your lame-brained relationship advice to yourself. If I told you once, I told you a thousand times. I will not be hooking up with any of your big-money-buddies, just so as you can leverage your plans for world domination.”
“Hey, that’s your decision lawyer lady, just don’t come sobbing to me when you are on life’s losing team.”
“That’s not going to happen Helman. Not now, not ever.”
“I hear you say that, but fact is you just missed out on two of the sweetest deals that are ever likely to come your way, the first being the world’s wealthiest financier and the second is the hottest real estate deal this town has seen in a century.”
“How so?”
“Ploutos Capital Investments is the new owner of the Rockefeller Centre.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Hell no. Irving King asked me if I wanted to buy in. I said yes of course.”
“You bought into the Rock? How is that even possible?”
“Anything is possible when you are on the winning team baby. The Helman Corporation is moving up in the world, quite literally. That new suite of offices at the top of the tower—the one they have been refurbishing for months—that is going to be our new home.” Helman sank back in his overstuffed studio chair and gushed. “This deal is so sweet I am going to quadruple my money over night.”
Erin Francelle nodded slowly. “That’s real nice Helman. How much did you throw into this deal exactly?”
Huds Helman beamed, like he had just bought himself yet another new Ferrari. “A hundred million dollars,” he said.
Erin gaped, noticed the countdown light about to go live and said, “Back on the air in 3,2,1.”
20
Shanghai, China
Surrounded by a phalanx of gun-toting shock troops from the Chinese Ministry of State Security, Karyn marked time, as they led her deeper into the very heart of their gloomy and oppressive lair. The place was like a maze, long corridors stretching away in all directions then disappearing into the far distance. As they walked, thin, windows peered down judgmentally from on high. They were too narrow to allow anything more than the dimmest hint of daylight inside. More importantly, they were too high and narrow to let anyone out.
Karyn absorbed every tiny detail of her surroundings by force of habit, her training readying her to make a move, just as soon as an opportunity came. But there were no opportunities. The soldiers held her inside their tight formation, moving forwards at the double. She contented herself on memorizing landmarks, absorbing every seedy detail of the time-slip prison interior. How may paces to the lifts—Where were the stairwell exits—Which doors were bolted, which weren’t?
Karyn’s eyes rose upwards. Fly gorged fluorescent lights floated from the neo-Stalinist ceiling, their forty-watt glow bathing everything in a dirty yellow gloom. The place was filthy. Almost like disinfectant had been banned as an extravagance of western imperialism.
As the detail marched onwards, a dead, stale
odor hung like a curse, infecting the mean corridors with an unmistakable air of desperation. They marched on, passing door after door, every one of them closed, every one of them machine-grey and institutional. Each door had a tiny little mail slot window wired through with mesh. Who knew what secrets those doors concealed—what unseen terrors.
They kept walking.
Where were the people?
There was no one in sight. It was like they were the only survivors from some apocalyptic event that had killed off the entire population. Karyn had a bad feeling. The place was way too quiet, almost like she had crash-landed into the middle of a police state, within a police state—the dark headquarters of some super-secret Chinese death squad, tasked with quickly and silently eliminating all enemies. For the first time since her arrival in the Ministry of State Security, Karyn felt the hackles rise on her neck. Who knew what these goons had in store for her?
The detail stopped abruptly. They stood wordlessly, frozen out front of a double width door, with monstrous black iron handles. The detail about faced, turning in unison towards the doors. They presented arms front and centre, again without command, as though they were working as a telepathic whole, on some communist parade ground from the cold war past.
Very slowly, Karyn about faced too, turning towards the heavy wooden doors, her naked feet cold and dirty against concrete floor. The doors inched open, revealing more white-gloved soldiers, looking resplendent in their razor creased uniforms and polished helmets. The honor guard that encircled her parted very suddenly, like the Red Sea splitting wide for Moses.
She had to move into the room, there was no other choice.
The room was big, with a triple height ceiling. A glossy old-wood conference table stretched before her, as long and wide as a bowling lane. Up-lighters threw a mysterious glow across the far wall, which was decorated in the red and gold livery of the Chinese Communist Party.
