by Andy Maslen
“Smells like guava going bad,” he said.
“You wait till we get to the third fridge. You’ll like that even less, my friend. We’ll have to do it in batches. Put another load in.”
The two men heaved two more canisters onto the lip of the sink and simultaneously popped the catches. This time, Toron kept his nose out of the way as he poured out the liquid tranquilliser.
“Right!” Jardin said, rubbing his hands together and smiling. “Now for the second ingredient in our little soupe du jour. Come with me.” He crossed the room and pulled on the middle refrigerator’s door. Inside it resembled the first, just a tightly-packed array of dull, silver-grey canisters. “This is the phenobarbital. Sleeping pill juice. Hendrix, Monroe, Garland: it did for all of them, you know.”
Four canisters crossed the room and were emptied into the Diazepam. The sink was half full, and the liquid, smelling of sweetly rotting fruit, swirled and eddied as Toron and Jardin added each fresh canister to the mixture.
“And for the icing on the cake, perhaps you’d fetch the canister with the blue band round it from the third fridge,” Jardin said.
Toron came back with a single cylinder that he set down by the sink with a slosh and a clank. “You know,” he said, “a lot of people would say you’re a crazy man, killing all those people like that.”
“And you? What would you say?”
“I say, it’s your party, do whatever you want. If you can live with it, so can I.”
“Well, as it happens, I can live with it. Now, pour that stuff in, and we’ll refill the empties with my signature blend.” Jardin giggled. “Those poor fools. They followed me out here in search of paradise, and now I’m sending them all to hell.”
Toron frowned, but he opened the catch and added the cyanide to the sink. The smell of bitter almonds that wafted up from the sink’s contents made both men jerk their heads back and turn away.
Pulling the front of his robe up over his mouth and nose, Jardin lifted a long metal spoon from a rack over the sink and stirred the liquid for a few seconds. “Come on. We’ll refill the empties and make another batch. That will be enough to put my flock to sleep for good.”
Half an hour later, the work was done. Twenty-one canisters stood on the floor in three rows of seven, each filled with a lethal cocktail of muscle relaxant, sedative, and good, old-fashioned poison.
“I’ve enjoyed my time here, you know,” Jardin said, once they were outside. “Look around you. Life is simple. I do what I want, when I want, with whom I want. And nobody tells me what to think or believe or do.”
“Yeah. Until your disciple slipped the leash.”
“I know. And if we ever come across him, I will gladly help you deal with him in any manner that you think fits his transgression. But for now, we need to pull out. Your pilot can fly us all out tomorrow as soon as our special sacrament has done its job. It’ll take a couple of trips, but I guess your men won’t mind waiting.”
“They’ll do what I tell them to.”
Toron placed extra emphasis on this statement, which Jardin noticed. Its implied criticism, “unlike your people,” wasn’t lost on him. Oh well, maybe one day he’d dose Toron up with a little soupe du jour of his own. But for now, he was useful. And setting up a new compound in Colombia would be easier with his connections.
“Indeed they will,” Jardin said with a big smile. “Now, how about a drink? And I have an idea for how we can deal with Child Gabriel.”
Inside Jardin’s house, the two men sprawled on the comfortable sofas, sipping cool sauvignon blanc from Chile. Jardin was speaking on the phone.
“Vasco, it’s Christophe. Listen, that favour you owe me? I’m calling it in. One of my flock has absented himself from Eden. He failed to do what was expected of him today, and I want him dead … Today … Yes, he’s short, maybe five eight or nine. Medium build. Very dark hair, almost black. Looks like he could have had someone oriental in his bloodline. Be careful, he’s tough. Just go in hard and don’t ask questions.” Jardin listened for a minute or so. “Yes, that’s a good plan … fine, fine, we can set up another deal next time you’re passing through.”
He ended the call. Toron spoke.
“Who was that?”
“Vasco Cabral. Runs a biker gang. He’s going to put his men out looking for Child Gabriel. They’ve got hundreds of members. If he’s coming back here to find me, they’ll intercept him.”
53
Poker Faces
FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES, NOT A single vehicle passed. Then an oil tanker bore down on him, sun glinting off the massive silver cylinder behind the red-painted cab. He stuck his thumb out, but the driver just sounded the air horn, which Doppler-shifted down from one angry note to another as the truck blew past him, pulling a vortex of road-dust in its wake, making Gabriel screw his eyes shut and turn away from the stinging grit.
Rubbing his eyes, he swore after the departing truck. Maybe the company had a policy against picking up hitchhikers. He neither knew nor cared. There was another long wait, during which time the only vehicles he saw were a couple of mid-sized saloons heading back towards Santa Augusta. They appeared to be driven by travelling salesmen to judge from the jackets hanging from hooks in the side windows.
Finally, a possible ride approached. Another mid-sized saloon, heading away from Santa Augusta. Gabriel stuck out his thumb, and this time, the car slowed to a stop beside him.
“Onde?” the driver said though the lowered window. Where are you going?
“Perseverança,” Gabriel said. It was the next big town along; he’d driven through it with Uncle Peter on the way in. “Obrigado.”
“Nada,” the driver said. He didn’t seem to want conversation, which would have been difficult anyway. The company was clearly enough.
Forty-five minutes later, they arrived in the centre of Perseverança. After thanking the man, Gabriel found himself in a central square, a church at its centre and fringed with brightly lit bars that were just starting to warm up for the evening. One in particular caught his eye. It appeared to be some sort of student hangout, to judge from the young men and women standing and sitting around outside, smoking and holding drinks, checking their phones and draping toned, brown arms around each other.
Among the scooters and beaten up, old cars parked nearby, one vehicle stood out: a vintage camper van, orange with a white roof and a big chromed VW logo on the front. Gabriel wandered over and idly conducted an appraisal. It looked to be in mint condition, a far cry from the shabby examples he’d seen all over the world. He settled down to wait, back against a cool wall in a corner of the square.
After an hour, a small group of young men emerged from the bar. They were heading for the camper van. Gabriel jumped to his feet, brushed himself down and jogged over to intercept them.
At ten feet, he called out.
“Excuse me!” At the sound of his voice—and that unmistakable accent—the five young men stopped and looked at him. Gabriel closed the distance between them to a few feet and stopped, wide smile on his face. “I’m terribly sorry to bother you,” he said, playing up the ‘Englishman abroad’ act. “I don’t suppose you chaps could give me a lift, could you?”
The man who speaks first is usually the leader. Gabriel paid close attention. This group’s alpha male was a young guy with floppy blonde hair swept back from his eyes and held in place with a red and white spotted bandanna. He looked obscenely healthy—tanned, fit, clear skin, laughing blue eyes, and good teeth, revealed as he smiled. The other four looked like they’d been cut from the same cloth. College kids?
“English, right?” he said. Gabriel nodded, still smiling. “Kind of in the middle of nowhere, aren’t you?” The young man’s accent was American, maybe somewhere on the East Coast. Cultured, anyway, with a tone that spoke of easy living. Maybe rich college kids, then?
“My last ride dropped me here. He was delivering beer to a bar.” Gabriel nodded back past the rear of the camper van.
“So where are you headed?”
“Nova Cidade. But,” Gabriel added, holding his hands wide, “I mean, wherever you chaps are headed would be fine by me. My money’s pretty much all gone, so you know …” He let his voice tail off as if embarrassed.
“We’re not exactly ‘headed’ anywhere. It’s more of a road trip. So why don’t you ride with us for now, and we’ll see whether we can get you closer to your destination.”
“Thank you so much. My name’s Gabriel, by the way.”
The man did the introductions. “Cool. I’m Marcus. These guys are Evan and Josh …” The two men each side of him held out their hands to shake. “… and they’re David and Nico.” More handshakes.
Marcus climbed in, taking the driver’s seat, with David beside him. Sitting in the back of the van with Josh, Evan, and Nico, Gabriel looked around as they pulled away from the kerb. “Nice,” he said, and meant it. The VW’s interior was decked out with pale orange LEDs in the ceiling, like a constellation. The bench seats were upholstered in white leather with orange piping.
“Yeah,” Josh said. “Marcus’s dad gave it to him for getting into Yale.”
“Shouldn’t you guys actually be there, then? In college, I mean.”
“Nah. We’re taking a break before Thanksgiving. My dad owns a freight company. He flew the van down here for us, and we picked it up last week.”
Gabriel looked around at the young, gilded men with whom he was sharing the camper van. He took in their sprawling, relaxed poses and expensive, casual clothes; their understated watches and knotted leather bracelets fastened with silver clasps; their athletic physiques and good looks that generations of careful mate-selection in their bloodlines had produced. I’m in a WASPs’ nest!
“So how ’bout you, bro?” This was Evan who spoke. Preppy horn-rimmed spectacles made him look like a writer in a 1950s film about Hollywood. “What’s your deal?”
“Well, this is going to sound a bit freaky to you, but I belong to the Children of Heaven. We’re a religious group based just beyond Nova Cidade. I got separated from my friends, so I’m trying to get back by riding my thumb.” He smiled in what he hoped was a disarming fashion, spreading his hands wide and sticking his thumb out for good measure.
“The what of what?” The one called Josh brayed a laugh that sounded cruel rather than humorous. “What are you, one of those cults that hang around in malls giving out flowers?”
“Not exactly. We believe that the world is full of sin and we have to serve God though our leader.”
“Your leader? Oh, this is too much. We’ve just picked up an honest-to-God, bible-thumping, religious fanatic.”
They all joined in the laughter. Gabriel guessed their own brand of religion would be something quiet and respectably middle-class. Episcopalians, maybe, or Presbyterians. Certainly nothing that involved living in a communal village in the middle of the Brazilian rainforest. Although, he reflected, plenty of the Children came from exactly the same comfortable, Ivy-league backgrounds as these five.
They were back on the highway now.
“Hey, Marcus,” Evan called. “Why don’t you show Gabriel what this baby can do?”
“Hold on tight,” Marcus shouted, then dropped down a gear and floored the throttle.
The camper van took off like a sports car, exhaust emitting a flat bark Gabriel recognised. But he decided to play dumb.
“Wow! Is that a standard engine you’ve got in this thing?”
“You wish,” David called over the noise of the engine. “It’s a three-point-six Porsche engine from a 911. Totally remapped and custom-fitted. She’s good for one-eighty-five, but the van’d probably part company with the engine.”
“So, your leader. He’s super-holy? Vegetarian, hair shirt, all that?” David said, craning his neck to look round at Gabriel from the passenger seat up front.
“Not exactly. We eat meat. But he preaches that the things that will truly make us happy aren’t to be found in shops, or on the Internet or TV. We’re just trying to fill a spiritual void.”
“Dude, that’s what church is for,” Evan said.
“He teaches us that mainstream religions have lost their way. That they cater to the needs of their priesthoods. That they seek power, that they cause wars.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Josh said. “My dad is a deacon in the Episcopalian Church. He does a ton of charity work. He’s not seeking power or causing wars. Now Islam, on the other hand. There’s a dangerous religion. I mean …”
“OK, Josh,” Marcus said, before his friend could expound on his theory. “We’ve heard it all before. Peace-loving Muslims are just terrorists who haven’t thrown a bomb yet. But what about that shit storm up in Maine last year? That wasn’t Muslims. That was some fucking nut-job white guy with an assault rifle and a God complex.”
This seemed to be an old conversation rehearsed many times before, and, as the camper van sped northwest, Gabriel decided to change tack.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a pack of cards have you?” he said. “We could play to pass the time.”
“Your guru OK with that, is he?” Josh said, his lip curling with evident disdain.
“What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.”
“You’re off the leash for a few hours, that what you’re saying?”
Gabriel smiled. “Sure, why not? So, cards?”
Evan rummaged through a drawer set into the bench-seat. “OK, here you go. Do you play bridge, Gabriel?” He exchanged a look with his friends that was no doubt meant to be invisible to Gabriel. It wasn’t. It was a sly look, under lowered eyelids, accompanied by a tiny grin. It said, shall we have some sport with this simple fellow and relieve him of his money?
“I’m afraid not. But I can play a little poker. Five-card stud any good for you guys?”
“Oh, I think we could manage that,” Josh said. “What kind of stakes were you thinking? I mean, assuming you managed to beg enough alms on your road trip.”
Gabriel emptied out his pocket onto the black-carpeted floor between them. That’s all I have. It’s enough for a grub stake, wouldn’t you say?”
Josh poked a finger through the untidy pile of banknotes.
“Fine. So, let’s make it a twenty-forty, fixed-limit game. That OK with you, Gabriel?”
“Fine by me.”
The terms and betting limits settled, Josh shuffled, invited Gabriel to cut, then dealt the cards.
Gabriel contrived to lose the first three hands, folding his last—three kings and a pair of tens—without revealing his cards to the others. Then he began to play in earnest. Greed had kicked in hard with his opponents, as he saw them, and they were betting rashly. Time for a little Yinshen fangshi, my over-privileged friends. You can afford to lose, and I really, really need your money.
54
Cheats Never Prosper
GABRIEL’S CASH PILE GREW STEADILY LARGER as he began winning hand after hand. He was fairly certain Master Zhao had never intended him to use the Way of Stealth to cheat at cards, but equally, his old teacher had reminded him that we make our own luck in this world.
The Ivy League boys weren’t so happy now they were losing, and had begun exchanging furtive glances. Their flicking eyes didn’t go unnoticed and Gabriel decided he needed to finish them off before they decided enough was enough and put their depleted stakes back in their wallets.
“So did you ever play anyone with a real tell,” he asked Josh, pulling the young man’s gaze to his eyes and subtly altering his speech pattern and breathing. “You … know, you … blink when you’ve got a weak hand … or you … rub your nose if you have a strong one?”
“What? Why? Shut up and let me concentrate.”
“Yeah, bro,” Evan said, looking up from his own hand. “Shut up and play.”
“Sorry, Evan,” Gabriel said, altering his tone of voice and eye movements to bring the other man into his slightly altered reality. “I … I guess I should be concentrating on m
y cards … I don’t want to … lose your money … for you.”
Little by little, Gabriel wove an ancient Chinese spell over his three opponents. Not magic, but a combination of techniques practised by monks since before the time of Christ to disorientate others they wished to influence. His current hand was a strong one: a royal flush. He took the betting way up, all the time encouraging the others to keep pace. Finally, they cracked, one by one.
“I fold,” Evan said, throwing his cards down in disgust.
“Fold.”
“Fold.”
Gabriel smiled innocently, eyebrows raised, as he scooped the pile of bills over his own. “Lady Luck is favouring me with her attention,” he said.
“Yeah, well, either that or you’re cheating,” Josh said, almost pouting. Of the three Americans, he’d lost the most.
“Josh!” Evan said.
“I just can’t believe he’s doing this well. I mean, I founded the fucking poker club in Phi Sigma Kappa, for Christ’s sake.”
Time to end this, Gabriel thought, noticing that they’d just blown through a one-horse town with a petrol station, a couple of cantinas and a minimarket. It was his deal. This time, Lady Luck was definitely looking the other way. Once all the cards were dealt, he was looking at what his father would have called, “a bit of a ragbag”. A pair of fours and three more cards of singularly unimpressive value: seven of clubs, nine of diamonds and Jack of hearts. He watched the others from beneath lowered lids.
Evan blinked.
Nico blinked.
Josh rubbed his nose, and smiled too, for good measure. Obviously the founder of the frat house poker club was feeling confident.
Five minutes later, the smile was gone, replaced by a glowering expression that knitted his bushy ginger eyebrows together and pulled the corners of his mouth down into a scowl.
