Dragonfire

by Ted Bell

  “You loved him? My brother? Is that what you said?”

  “It’s the truth, goddamn it. I could give a good hot damn what you think.”

  “If you loved him so much, then why the hell did you murder him? In cold blood? Cut his head off and stuck it on a lamppost for his family to see when they came home that night? His mother had to see that? That’s how much you loved him? I ought to kill you. Right now. . . .”

  “Are you paying attention? Guess who’s got the gun. You?”

  “Guns don’t scare me, Tony. Never have. Give it up.”

  “You know what? I could care what you think, Mr. Head-up-his-ass Ambassador. Whether or not I killed Jackie, who cares at this point? We were at war. But one thing’s for sure. I’m going to kill you tonight, you arrogant son of a bitch . . . just as sure as we’re standing here. . . .”

  Tiger saw the shaky gun start an upward arc as he, too, moved, but with blinding speed. Tony never knew what hit him.

  The young ambassador leapt forward onto his left foot, composed himself, and spun his body clockwise like a lethal ballet dancer, with his right leg extended upward about waist high. His right foot, with a slashing, twisting motion, caught Tony’s gun hand with a wallop, hard as hell, and sent the little silver automatic skittering across the barn floor.

  With an imperceptible pause, Tiger reversed his direction and spun counterclockwise, his left leg now extended head high this time. His left bootheel caught Tony in the right temple, with enough brute force to fracture his skull. He spun again, right foot to left temple. Whiplash times three. Then he drove three rock-solid fingers deep into the man’s throat, cutting off all his oxygen. He started to slump. He was out of gas.

  Then the simultaneous flat-handed cymbal slaps on Tony’s ears punctured his eardrums with air implosions. After the powerful jab of his right fist into Tony’s stomach that brought his hands down and left his nose undefended, Tiger went for the kill. He brought his right knee up with such blinding speed as to catch his adversary right on the tip of his nose with enough sheer force and might as to drive splinters of bone deep up into Tony’s brain and snap his head backward . . . and break his neck.

  Tony Chow was a dead man before the fat dumbass hit the floor.

  CHAPTER 15

  Sevenoaks Plantation, Virginia

  January 1942

  Tiger looked over at Flora. She was still down on the floor, half naked, her head down on her forearm, sobbing hard enough to make her shoulders rise and fall violently. He walked toward her, pausing to pick up Tony’s .38 as he did so. He knelt beside her, putting his hand on her head with a comforting pat. He bent down and cradled her in his arms, whispering softly to her as he plucked hay straw from her tangled red hair.

  “It’s all right, Flora. It’s all right. It’s all over. He can’t hurt you anymore. He’s gone now. He’ll never hurt anyone again.”

  A moaning cry from her filled the barn with her pain and anguish.

  Tiger said, “I’m so sorry that I ever involved you in this. I’ll never forgive myself. God. The night we met, I thought you were just another fun gal looking for a good time. Now I know that you’re a woman of great substance and intelligence. . . . I’m so sorry that you . . . had the misfortune to meet me.”

  “You’re why I came here, Tiger,” she sobbed, “the only reason I came. Didn’t you know that? Did you really think I came for that . . . that thing over there?”

  “I don’t know, Flora. I don’t know what to think now. . . .”

  “Please don’t hate me, Tiger. I’m not a bad person. I never, ever meant to cause you all this terrible trouble, I promise you. I’m just a simple girl who fell in love with you . . . that’s all.”

  He stroked her tangled hair, wiped tears from her eyes, not wanting to see those blue eyes weeping, not wanting her to see his own face, the deep pain in his own eyes. The self-loathing and all the remorse, his guilt . . . What kind of man was he, after all? He liked to think he was a good man. An honorable man. A kind man even . . . And yet he knew without the slightest equivocation that he had to be rid of her somehow.

  This woman, who worked at the pinnacle of the political pyramid, spending her days within earshot of one the most powerful men in Washington. Speaker of the House Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn. And all of the attendant D.C. powerhouses who daily sought his blessing for their machinations and critical roles inside the U.S. government. He could almost hear Flora having cocktails with her coworkers, talking about this man she’d fallen head over heels for, who just happened to be the new Chinese ambassador to the United States.

  No. This could not stand. She’d just seen him kill a man. A man politically powerful enough that his disappearance would be noted and thoroughly investigated by the FBI. This woman could destroy him in the blink of an eye and a slip of the tongue, not out of anger or vengeance, but out of vanity. Her “romantic” friendship with the rich and powerful. An ambassador! The man who had the ear of President Roosevelt . . .

  “Tiger,” he heard her whisper and looked down at her bruised face and her blue eyes and her face so wet with tears.

  “Yes?” he said as gently as he could. The poor, innocent girl was in terrible distress, physically and emotionally.

  “Would you mind kissing me? Just once, please. It would mean the world to me, I promise you. I would never forget it. . . .”

  He felt like he was about to burst into tears himself, but he smiled down at her, then bent his head and kissed her softly on her lips. . . .

  She spoke, her gleaming eyes staring up at him. “I love only you, Tiger. I loved you from the moment I saw you that very first night. I knew you were the picture-perfect man I had always dreamed of since I was a little girl. You were him, Tiger. The only man I’ve ever really loved. And if this is the end of us? Tonight, I mean? Well, I will always be able to say, ‘Yes, I was in love once upon a time. With the kind of man who only comes along once in a lifetime. . . .’”

  “Oh, my dear Flora” was all he could get out.

  “Do you think you could ever find it in your heart to love a simple girl like me?”

  He choked back his own his own hot tears and said, “I love you, sweet Flora. And I always will.”

  “Oh, Tiger. I’ve so wanted to hear that. . . .”

  And then he pressed the muzzle of the silver Browning Hi-Power pistol gently against the back of her skull, squeezed the trigger, and fired a bullet into her brain.

  He sat there for a long while afterward, crying. Feeling sorry for both of them, star-crossed lovers in the worst possible way. . . .

  Still stroking her bare shoulder with tears running down both cheeks and splashing on her deathly still white bosom. His thoughts came tumbling:

  God forgive me, what else could I do? She was a witness. She could have destroyed me. Derailed my mission for my beloved China. Deprived America of any chance of victory against Japan. My father, who has invested so much in me, would have been shattered. My entire family disgraced at home by the scandal in America. All of this, all of it, hung in the balance. So, whatever was I to do? God help me, what?

  He sat there, thinking. And smoking his cigarettes over the body of the poor, sad dead girl from the Philadelphia Main Line.

  What to do with the two of them? That was the question now. Think like a murderer, he told himself. Not like you haven’t done it before. Don’t kid yourself, Tiger. Dispose of the bodies somewhere where they can never, ever be found. . . .

  He looked around the barn. In the corner was a huge stack of burlap sacks. Big enough to hold a human body . . . And there was a pile of heavy stones behind the barn. . . .

  When he’d gathered up the ripped clothing and the torn undergarments and used them to wipe away every trace of the blood Tony had spilled, he stuffed them, along with the little silver Browning pistol, in sacks. When the two bodies were all sealed inside bags fi
lled with heavy rocks, he tied a thick rope to each bag. The other ends of the ropes he tied to the rear of the old John Deere tractor the groom kept in the barn. He turned the key in the ignition and fired up the aging farm machine, loving the sound of it sputtering to life, clouds of exhaust billowing up from the stacks.

  Ten minutes later, he was driving the ancient green tractor, chugging through heavy snowdrifts in the deep woods, rolling down the twisting path to the lake. He was going slowly. He was in no rush, and he was dragging the two bodies behind him through the snow. The moon suddenly appeared above the treetops, gleaming down through a break in the clouds, and the world around him turned a surreal shade of moonlight blue. The sight of it cheered him a little. He pulled out a pack of Luckys and lit one up, inhaling deep with the shuddering pleasure of satisfaction.

  It was two o’clock in the bloody morning.

  Everyone was fast asleep.

  The lake was bottomless.

  No one would ever find the bodies.

  No one would ever know.

  He came over a rise and saw the dock below, stretching out about forty feet over the silvery ebony of Bottomless Lake.

  He stopped at the shoreline and climbed down from the Deere. Slogged back behind the big wheels to the rear and untied the lines to the bags. He thought that if he did them one at a time, he could drag the two bodies out to the end of the dock despite the weight of all those damn rocks.

  For some reason he chose to do Flora first. Remove her from this mortal realm, out of sight and out of his life and far away from his deeply troubled conscience. At some point, he had to let it go. Sometimes a man simply had to do what a man had to do. . . .

  After he spoke a few words of blessing over her, Flora went into the lake, slipping silently beneath the waves. Tony Chow got deep-sixed as well. Tiger didn’t waste any words on that piece of human refuse.

  He was now just a bad memory, a lump of rotting flesh at the bottom of a bottomless lake. Fish fodder. And somewhere up in heaven, his brother, Jackie, was smiling down. His father and his dead brother had finally been granted their revenge. After putting the tractor back in the barn, after hosing all the remaining bloody straw off the floor and out into the paddocks, where he buried it, he made his way up the snowy path through the woods to Sevenoaks. The windows on the front were still glowing warmly, smoke still rising from a few chimneys. . . . It was enchanting, and he paused to light another Lucky and just take it all in.

  Climbing into bed with his brandy and opening his book, he felt a palpable lifting of his spirits. He read the opening lines of the Hemingway masterpiece.

  He lay on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees.

  He smiled at the simple words. He was actually beginning to feel a bit less guilty about the death of the poor Philadelphia girl. Sacrificed on the altar of history, actually. A casualty of the great war that now needed to be won. Not really his fault. God only knew what role she had played in the grand story that would be this war. But her death had been, he told himself, in the service of righteousness and the preservation of democracy and peace. He was trying to do the right thing by history itself.

  He had learned a valuable lesson this night. To wit:

  A man who was not who he appeared to be needed to be ever mindful of who he really was. And thus, to keep the truth of that man forever and ever out of sight and to do so at all costs.

  He could live with that.

  Yes, by God, he could do that.

  CHAPTER 16

  MI6 Headquarters, London

  Present Day

  The elevator door pressure pad repeatedly opens and closes on the obdurate obstruction of the dead Iranian gunman’s head. The man returns to life and slides upward on the wall. The bloody hole in his palm disappears, and he tugs the bullet out of his back. He runs backward through a gaggle of English schoolchildren, one of whom floats up off the floor as a red stain on her pretty pink pinafore is sucked back into her stomach. When he reaches the light-blurred main entrance, the Iranian assassin ducks as fragments of broken glass rush together to form a windowpane. The second gunman jumps up from the floor and catches a flying automatic weapon, and the two of them run backward, until a swish pan leaves them and discovers a Japanese boy on the tiled floor. A vacuum snaps the top of his skull back into place; the bloody stream of gore recoils back into his hip. He leaps up and runs backward, snatching up his rucksack as he passes it. The camera waves around, then finds a third Iranian killer just in time to see his cheek pop back on. He rises from his knees, and blood implodes into his chest as the khaki shirt instantly mends itself. The three Iranians, clad in mufti, walk backward side by side. One turns and smiles. They saunter back through a group of Israelis pushing and standing on tiptoe, there to greet some relatives disembarking the El Al flight from London Heathrow. The trio backs down the lane to the immigration counters, and the Israeli official uses his rubber stamp to suck the entrance permissions off their passports. A redheaded girl shakes her head, then smiles thanks. . . .

  * * *

  —

  Hawke, who’d entered the darkened MI6 fifth-floor screening room just as the video began to unfold in reverse to an audience of one, said, “Morning, Sir David! Yeoman First-Class Hawke, reporting for duty as ordered. What the hell was that all about? Looney Tunes? All ahead reverse?”

  “Come down here, and I’ll tell you, Alex.”

  “As ordered, sir.” Hawke strode down the center aisle to the first row, where Trulove was seated on the left side. The man got to his feet and shook his hand.

  “You look like hell, son,” he said, stepping back to appraise his senior counterintelligence officer. The one man in all of Six who had easy access to Her Royal Majesty, and a man for whom she had only the highest esteem. Trulove would never verbalize an instinct he had, but he believed that, on some level, the two of them might actually have feelings akin to love for each other. He’d seen it. He’d felt it. At some moments, such as when the Queen presented Alex with the Victoria Cross for almost single-handedly saving the lives of all the Royal Family at the hands of al Qaeda terrorists. All in the space of one awful Christmas up at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.

  Hawke was staring at him for some reason.

  “I beg your pardon?” Alex said. “I’m know I’m still a bit shaky, but . . . hard to bounce back from a disembowelment.”

  “Oh, that. You know I can’t help a barb when I’m so bloody delighted to see you risen from the dead. I cannot possibly express my gratitude, Alex. I don’t know how you managed to collapse your prescribed recovery therapy down to a matter of weeks. But I will assure you that before you stands a profoundly grateful man.”

  “Queen and Country, as they say, Sir David. Besides, I’ve never been one for sitting on the shelf hors de combat for any length of time. I’m forbidden by my doctors everything save deep knee bends and applesauce. And as you well know, I cannot stomach even the sight of applesauce.”

  Trulove rarely allowed himself to laugh aloud, but in this case, the reflex caught him by surprise. “That’s the spirit! Back to your old self, I see. You have no idea how pleased the Queen will be to learn that you’ve resurfaced. She’s in quite a state over her missing grandson. And of course, your godson.”

  “Yes, indeed. We’re to meet with the Queen, I suppose.”

  “Indeed. We’ve a meeting with the sovereign tomorrow morning at ten. At Buck House.”

  “I look forward to being of assistance. I made a solemn promise to Prince Henry’s father, my copilot and dearest friend, on his deathbed in a field hospital outside Kabul, that I would protect and guard his only child to the end of my days. I haven’t done a very good job of either, it seems. I want to correct that grievous absence right now.”

  “Duly noted. I’m glad you grasp the situation. Hav
e a seat, won’t you?”

  Hawke took the seat across the aisle from his superior. “What are we watching?”

  “The Iranian terror attack last weekend. Tel Aviv. Ben Gurion Airport. They claim it’s retribution for the Israelis moving troops into Gaza.”

  “A nightmare. And you are watching the CC tapes backward because?”

  “I go back and forth. Try it sometime. You pick up new things both ways. Until you don’t.”

  “El Al out of London, correct?”

  “Hmm. We lost six British citizens, three of them schoolchildren.”

  “Where are we with this? What does Mossad say?”

  “Nowhere. All of us still at ground zero. I’ll run the thing again, forward direction. Pay particular attention to the chap facedown in the elevator using his head as a door stopper. Ready?”

  “Roll tape.”

  Trulove dimmed the lights and pushed PLAY on the remote. Hawke leaned forward in his seat, his focus and concentration unwavering during the film’s run time.

  A few minutes in, he said, “Pause it right there, please, sir.”

  The screen froze. The still image showed the dead terrorist facedown in the elevator, seconds before the pressure pads on the doors were impacting his skull and then reopening the doors. You couldn’t see the entire face, but the eyes and nose were visible.

  “I know that chap,” Hawke said.

  “I know you do. That’s why I asked you to join me here. How do you know him, Alex?”

  “I used to work with him, sir. Here at Six. Shortly after I joined the firm.”

  “Two thousand eleven, was it not upon your return from Afghanistan.”

  “Indeed it was.”

  “Name?”

  “Stern, I think. Yes, that’s it. Moishe Stern. More passion for causes than realpolitik as I recall. A bad actor in the making.”

  “Good. Thanks for your confirmation. Most helpful to the investigation. Let’s go up to my office, shall we, and continue this conversation over tea?”