Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  ‘That must remain a secret, I’m afraid. I know you don’t approve of me withholding information from you, but for this plan to work, nobody can know of the informant’s identity but myself and Sigurd. Needless to say, the informant is a close and trusted friend of Gisborne’s. We don’t mess around; we needed someone very close to him, and we got that someone. They’re in our pocket completely, I assure you.’

  Mr Wang stroked his rough chin with callused fingers, masticating silently over everything Hrothgar had just said.

  ‘I see. Excuse me, but you must please allow me to concur with Mr Ma briefly.’

  Mr Wang turned and explained everything that Hrothgar had just told him to Mr Ma, who listened intently but expressionlessly. After Mr Wang had finished explaining things, Mr Ma turned to Hrothgar and communicated a few phrases in sign language, staring unwaveringly at him with his dead, milky eyes. Hrothgar, despite outweighing the man by threefold and towering over him like an elephant, appeared to shrink beneath this man’s Medusa gaze, and it seemed that he was wilting under the power of those pitiless eyes.

  ‘What did he say?’ he asked Mr Wang.

  ‘He appreciates your efforts to bring Gisborne to heel, but should he discover that within this scheme there is any treachery on your part, he will show you no mercy whatsoever. The Huntsmen will take you and make sure that you die a very protracted and painful death. Don’t fuck with us, Hrothgar. Don’t.’

  Hrothgar smiled coldly and clasped his hands in front of his chest. ‘I assure you, my loyalties lie with Mr Ma, and Mr Ma alone.’

  ‘Make sure they do, for your own sake.’

  Adriana had been listening carefully to this entire exchange. She had no idea what was going on, and indeed a lot of what they had said seemed to make no sense whatsoever, but as the Japanese woman had instructed her to, she made a mental note of what had been said about William Gisborne, the Tiger.

  The old man communicated in sign language to Mr Wang, who relayed the message to Hrothgar.

  ‘Mr Ma wishes to enjoy the teenage virgin now. Please have someone escort us to the presidential suite and have the girl prepared as soon as possible. Thank you.’

  With that, he and Mr Ma left the room. Hrothgar turned to Roxana, his emerald eyes burning with sadistic wrath.

  ‘Listen now, you little whore,’ he growled, switching to Russian and pulling out the tanto, ‘if you do not do your best to please that filthy old sack of shit, I will open you up from your pussy to your throat with this knife, and feast upon your entrails while you watch!’

  He gripped her by the arm, but Adriana grabbed Roxana’s other arm and pulled the girl close to her, holding her tightly. Her heart pounded washes of paralysing fear through her trembling body, but something in her mind railed against this trepidation and burned with an indomitable courage.

  ‘Take me instead, master, please, take me instead,’ Adriana begged, with stinging tears biting savagely at the corners of her eyes.

  Hrothgar slapped her viciously across her face and tore the girl out of her grasp.

  ‘This is the one he wants, not you, you stupid bitch!’

  Adriana stared into Roxana’s eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  ‘I’m so sorry little one, so sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘Just … just pretend you’re somewhere else, think of good memories…’

  ‘Adriana,’ Roxana wailed, thrashing futilely against Hrothgar’s potent grasp, ‘help me Adriana, help me, I don’t want to go! Please, help me, no, help me, let me go, let me go!’

  The girl’s pleas were too much for Adriana, and something snapped within her. Possessed with a sudden, desperate madness, she sprang to her feet and attacked Hrothgar with the blind fury of a cornered beast. However, she was no match for the huge man, and with a malicious laugh he planted a crashing punch on her jaw that sent her reeling onto the hard floor.

  ‘You have spirit, Storm, I’ll grant you that,’ he growled, shaking out his hand after uncurling his fist. ‘I’ll let you get away with such foolishness this time … but don’t ever try that again. I’ll rip your lungs out of your ribcage if you do.’

  Stunned, she lay on the cold tiles and groaned. Through her blurry vision, the last thing she saw was Roxana being dragged out of the room, her cries echoing as if from a half-faded nightmare in the cold grey light of dawn, before darkness enshrouded her vision and she sank into unconsciousness from the knockout blow.

  18

  ADRIANA

  The throbbing pain in her jaw was what roused Adriana from her fitful daze of unconsciousness. She groaned as light pried open her eyelids and forced stabbing scalpel blades into her brain, and the sharpness of the light was as treble to the baritone ache in her jaw, where Hrothgar’s fist had crashed into it.

  She rolled over and heaved herself up onto her knees. After she got up from the floor, she flopped onto the bed, where her thoughts shifted to Roxana and the vile, decrepit man who had taken her. She choked on a tight knot of a sob, and nausea reared its flared cobra head at the back of her throat. No, she could not bear to think about that, about what had happened to that poor, innocent girl. Like an incoming tide of crashing waves, despair, hopelessness and dread pawed at the shores of her mind, eroding all sense of hope for the future.

  In a fit of sudden madness Adriana sprang to her feet, tore the sheet off the bed, and marched on determined legs into the bathroom, dragging the sheet behind her. Once inside she coiled the sheet up into a makeshift rope, at one end of which she fashioned a noose. It appeared now that her hands were possessed of a will of their own; indeed, throughout this episode she felt almost as if she were a mere spectator, hovering somewhere outside her body and watching someone else, some stranger who happened to be a mirror image of her, this alien being tying the sheet-rope over the shower pipe.

  When the rope was in place a brief pang of sorrow clamped its jaws over her throat when her thoughts turned to her parents, and the fact that they would never see her again or discover what fate had befallen their youngest daughter. She realised that after this deed was done Sigurd would no doubt dispose of her body in a canal, or bury her beneath six feet of wet concrete in a construction yard. She was also quite sure that he would most likely defile her body; he’d cut off her hands, her feet, her head, all of them, probably, with that fearsome sword of his. It wouldn’t matter though, for what harm could the living do to the dead?

  Another splinter of pain jabbed its rough-edged agony beneath her fingernails as she thought of Roxana. The girl was no doubt dead now. Not dead in body – no, these cruel monsters needed to keep that part of her alive in order to continue profiting from it – but surely her soul, her mind, her will to live, all of these would have been smashed to pieces like so many shards of shattered porcelain. She wished she could have saved Roxana, somehow, but such thoughts were follies; she was powerless against the brutality and pitiless menace she was up against here.

  As she climbed onto the toilet seat and slipped the noose over her neck, she thought briefly of the Japanese woman. Perhaps she could in some small way have helped the woman in whatever mission she was on against Sigurd and his brutes, but, unfortunately, such a thing would not be possible now. No red dragon in a stormy sky had come to her, and it was simply too late to wait for such vagaries to come to fruition.

  Perhaps the hardest thing to let go of, in these final moments, were those dreams she had entertained for as long as she could remember. She had long fantasised about the iconic art galleries and museums of the world, of discovering the wonder of the treasures they held, of delving into the world’s great libraries and universities, and drinking in the knowledge therein with the unquenchable thirst of a dry sponge.

  She had constructed such rich, vivid fantasies of walking among those ancient corridors with books tucked under her arm, visualising the bronze warmth of late summer rays bleeding through the spaces between towering pillars. Such dreams she had had, of conversing with all manner of scholars in an array of tongues, a
nd she had pictured herself standing before lecture halls, packed wall to wall with keen young minds, as she disseminated the knowledge that she had absorbed, knowledge that had inspired generation after generation of brilliant thinkers.

  She had dreamed of travel, of love, of romance with some imagined suitor – someone kind and loving and generous – of one day starting a family, and of hopefully uplifting others from the stranglehold of poverty via education. And all of these dreams were about to expire here, in a mouldy bathroom in a Bangkok brothel.

  Adriana choked back a bitter sob, not wanting to break down, but she nonetheless allowed a tear to run down her cheek as she tightened the noose around her throat and prepared to step off the edge of the toilet seat.

  ‘Goodbye mama, goodbye papa,’ she whispered hoarsely to the empty room. Then she jumped.

  The noose gripped her throat with the savage garrotting of a pair of steel hands, and the animal instinct deep within the most primeval part of her mind forced her legs to kick against this fast-approaching death. Her hands, possessed now of their own will, were reaching for the noose, trying to pull it off, but with single-minded determination she held them at bay.

  ‘No,’ she growled through gritted teeth, ‘I want to die! I want to die! I want this!’

  Her tongue was swelling within her mouth, becoming larger and larger by the second, as if it were a potato growing in accelerated stop-motion. She felt herself becoming light-headed even as her lungs started burning, burning, burning with blistering heat within her breast, as every atom of which she was composed screamed out for oxygen. A strange euphoria began to spread through her system, starting in her fingertips and toes, and then travelling through the entirety of her nervous system. This sensation coincided with the appearance of a brilliant light, glowing at the end of a dark tunnel that was forming at the periphery of her vision.

  This is it … this is the end…

  She wasn’t sure if it was her own voice saying these words or the voice of someone else, but at this point she no longer cared. A rapturous joy was gushing through her body, illuminating every molecule of her being with hues of saturated colour, and the dazzling white light was swallowing her, enveloping her in what she could only describe as the purest love and bliss she had ever known. She closed her eyes, immersing herself in the glowing supernova of ecstasy, experiencing a sensation of weightlessness, as if her tired soul was being truly liberated from its corporeal prison.

  Abruptly, with a sickening lurching sensation of plummeting through the sky towards the war-torn earth, upon which her empty corpse lay, she crashed back into her body and awoke with a jolting start.

  Upon opening her eyes, she found herself lying on the floor of the bathroom and gasping for breath. The sheet-rope was still tight around her throat, but the pipe had been ripped out of the wall and bent.

  Failure.

  Even in this simple task she had not succeeded. With the bitter smack of disappointment in her mouth she lay on the floor and started laughing – a slow, dead laughter that was utterly devoid of any humour. She could not escape this place, even by death. This was her fate.

  After what could have been five minutes or five hours, Adriana finally summoned the will to get up. She dragged herself to her feet, gripping the toilet for support, and with weary hands she pulled the noose off her aching, burning throat. She staggered over to the bent shower pipe and with tired arms tried to push it back up. It was badly kinked, however, and remained jutting out at a forty-five degree angle no matter how forcefully she strained.

  There would be hell to pay for this, she knew, although she could not bring herself to care. She limped out of the bathroom, coughing, and put the sheet back on her bed in a cold, robotic fashion before she lay down upon it and stared up at the ceiling.

  She was not sure how long she lay there, but after an unquantifiable length of the time the door opened and Tippawan strolled in. He glowered at Adriana with his cold black eyes.

  ‘Where are your manners?’ he asked gruffly. ‘Stand up when I enter this room!’

  She remained prone on the bed.

  ‘The shower’s broken,’ she mumbled.

  ‘What?!’

  ‘I said the shower’s broken.’

  Tippawan rushed over to her and gripped her face with his long, greasy fingers.

  ‘How dare you!’ he hissed. ‘You speak to me like this, like I’m some fucking servant?! I’ll beat you black and blue, you useless whore! I’ll make you regret the day you crawled out of your mother’s stinking cunt!’ He slapped her hard across her face with an open hand and followed it up with a backhand blow that left her cheeks hot with stinging pain. ‘I’ll teach you, I’ll smack some respect into you, you filthy little slut,’ he spat through gritted teeth, his eyes locked with wrathful spite into hers. Again he slapped her, but even the fiery burning in her cheeks was not enough to rouse her from her semi-stupor, and she remained limp on the bed.

  ‘Get up!’ Tippawan screamed before striking her again. ‘No whore disrespects me! Get up!’

  It was no use though. Adriana could not be budged, no matter how many times he hit her.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ he panted after a while, sadistic lust dripping like sour sweat from his every pore. ‘You’re lucky that that hole between your thighs is unspoiled. Otherwise there’s another way I’d teach you a lesson. Mark my words though, it’s coming. As soon as that hole has been taken, I’m taking it too.’

  He leaned over her and grabbed her left breast in his hand, digging his fingers in and squeezing it hard, and then he slipped his hand under her blouse, pinched her nipple and twisted it savagely. This sent a sharp pain through her chest and caused her to cry out, and at last a sense of fight entered her system, and she struggled and writhed against his grip, trying to get away.

  ‘That’s better, I like that,’ he panted. ‘I like it when they fight back. Just a little suck, a quick suck, that’s all I need … you’ll still be a virgin, technically…’

  He grabbed a fistful of her hair, jerking her face towards his crotch.

  ‘No!’ she screamed, trying to shove him away with a burst of strength fired by a flareup of survival instinct.

  ‘That’s good, that’s good,’ he gasped, his dead eyes suddenly alive with the ugly light of dark arousal. He began unzipping his trousers with one hand as he gripped her hair tightly in his other. ‘Try harder, bitch … fight back, try it…’

  ‘I’ll tell Sigurd!’ she screamed. ‘If you don’t stop I’ll tell him, I’ll tell him! He’ll kill you! You know he will!’

  ‘You little fucking whore,’ he snarled, ‘I’ll—’

  He was interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps marching down the corridor towards the room.

  ‘Shit,’ he swore under his breath, still panting from the intensity of both the struggle and his arousal, and he pushed Adriana back onto the bed while hastily zipping up his trousers. He scrambled to his feet and neatened up his hair as someone opened the door of the room.

  ‘Tippawan,’ the man rasped in a gruff voice.

  It was one of the armed thugs who stood guard at the entrance to the brothel, and he and Tippawan had a short conversation in Thai. Adriana could not understand most of it, but she was able to make out the fact that Tippawan was needed upstairs. He looked annoyed, but he left the room, turning to fire a venomous glare at her before he walked out of the door. On his way out he spoke a few words in Thai to the guard and pointed at the bathroom. The guard, a swarthy fellow in his forties, stepped inside the room and ambled over to the bathroom. He leaned his AK-47 rifle against the bed, unguarded, as he entered the bathroom to examine the broken shower.

  As he did, Adriana’s heart began to flutter wildly in her chest. All she had to do was lean over, just lean over … and grab it.

  ‘Come on, come on, come on, go, go, GO!’ she screamed to herself inside her mind.

  Heat flushed magma-like through her veins, and a heady intensity pounded in her temples. Her b
reath came to her in these charged moments in short, shallow gasps. If she failed she would be dead, for sure. If she succeeded though, if she could grab the rifle and squeeze that trigger …

  Freedom. Freedom. FREEDOM!

  She sucked in great lungfuls of air, while a dizzying numbness tingled in her extremities as she leaned over to snatch the rifle. She wrapped her hands around its wooden stock, felt the deadly weight of the weapon in her palms as she picked it up … and then she set it back in its place, and flopped onto the bed with her head swimming and her stomach twisted in knots.

  She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t.

  Tears of frustration and self-loathing stung at the corners of her eyes, and her limbs trembled like leaves in a gale as alternating gushes of terror and fury at her own cowardice coursed through them. She gritted her teeth and ground her jaw with a severity of defeat and disgust she had never before known.

  The guard stepped out of the bathroom and picked up his rifle with casual nonchalance, not even bothering to look at Adriana. Without any awareness of how close to death he had just come, he began whistling a jovial tune as he strolled out of the room. He slammed the door behind him, and the clicking of the lock from the outside was the sealing of her fate.

  She broke down into a mess of wailing and weeping, beating her fists against the mattress and ripping hair out of her head in her unspeakable despair. After a while, though, she spent all of the darkness that had been raging within her, and then simply curled up in a foetal position and sobbed quietly into the pillows. Before long, though, she heard a key turning in the lock again. Through her weeping she looked up and saw an elderly man shuffling through the door. He was a Thai and was dressed only in fisherman’s trousers. His bare torso was heavily wrinkled, like a raisin left too long in the sun, and his posture was as stooped as a willow that had seen too many winters. In his gnarled, thick hands he was carrying a toolbox and a section of copper pipe to replace the one Adriana had broken. When he limped into the room, he did not look at her; instead, he simply hobbled over to the bathroom and set his tools down inside it, and then went back to lock the room door behind him.