The Evil That Men Do

by Robert Gleason

  This op was different, however. Not only was he to cobble together a crude but powerful Hiroshima-style nuke and set it off in New York City, Putilov and that psycho, Kamal ad-Din, had added an extra, last-minute assignment. He was to take out a wealthy hedge fund manager whom Kamal and Putilov held personally responsible for artificially elevating Middle Eastern grain prices in seasons of drought, thereby precipitating famines in that region. The subsequently skyrocketing food prices had too often inspired people to take to the streets in protest. During the so-called Arab Spring, those protests had exponentiated to the point that Mubarak in Egypt and Qaddafi in Libya were thrown out of office and subsequently died ignominious deaths. Fahad had, at various times, plied his violent trade at the behest of Mubarak and Qaddafi as well, so ordinarily he wouldn’t have minded killing the Wall Street titan out of simple loyalty to former employers who had once filled his personal coffers to overflowing. That fool had fucked with his current employers and caused the deaths of previous employers? That was good enough for Fahad. Fine. He’d be happy to put him down … hard.

  But Kamal and Putilov had also involved that harpy from Gehenna, Raza Jabarti, and she even scared Fahad. He’d seen her do things to suspects during interrogations that still gave him the cold sweats, still kept him up nights and would haunt him to his grave. That whore was hell with the hide off. Raza gave a whole new meaning to the words “evil bitch.”

  Furthermore, both she and that satan from St. Petersburg, the Russian president Mikhail Ivanovich Putilov, had designed and defined how he was to kill the famine derivative … creep.

  And now they were going to make him do something to that poor hedge fund bugger, which made him sick to his soul and scared him half to death—and nothing ever spooked Fahad. Raza and Putilov were paying him $5 million to put the guy through all the tortures of Dante’s Inferno—and then some. Fahad did not know if he actually had the stomach to do it.

  He took a deep breath. You can handle it, Fahad said to himself. I know you fucking can. Just get a grip on yourself. You can make this happen.

  2

  “If you and I were the last two people on earth, I’d try a bear.”

  —Jules Meredith to President J. T. Tower

  Eyes locked and unblinking, they finished their brandies, and Tower went to the bar’s liquor cabinet. Retrieving a liquor bottle, he poured some for each of them in rock glasses.

  Over ice.

  “What’s that?” Jules asked.

  “Nitroglycerine on the rocks.”

  He wasn’t far off. He was pouring them Cruzan 151-proof rum.

  So J. T. Tower really wanted to drink her under the table and was now swinging for the fences.

  It’s your funeral, buddy, Jules thought.

  “Should we have another toast?” he asked.

  “To the last one standing,” Jules said and downed the 151-proof liquor.

  “I like that,” J. T. said, throwing back his rum.

  “I knew you would,” Jules said. “Everything to you is natural selection, isn’t it?””

  “Isn’t that how you view your own craft.”

  “In what way?”

  “You view writing as fighting,” Tower said, “don’t you?”

  “Depends who I’m writing about.”

  “But you see me as your foe?”

  “Oh, do I ever.”

  “But why?”

  “You keep hurting people. Hell, your petrochemical wastes have murdered millions.”

  “That bothers you? A few faceless, nameless people die so the rest of us can enjoy the benefits of industrialization? It’s called progress, Jules.”

  “It’s called ‘pathological.’”

  “Profitable, you mean.”

  “Instead of killing and exploiting people, why don’t you use your wealth to help them?”

  “Why? Has hell frozen over yet?”

  “Then you’re right. You and I are in for a fight.”

  “I could make it worth your while to back off.”

  “What could you possibly offer?”

  “Everyone has their price.”

  Jules laughed in his face. “Never happen, Tower.”

  “Too bad. We could have been friends.”

  “But only if I backed off?” Jules asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not all there is though, right?” Jules asked. “That’s not the only reason I’m here?”

  Tower shrugged.

  “What is it you want?” Jules asked.

  “I only wish to propitiate a goddess.”

  Jules stared at him, speechless. “Did Pallas Athena just walk in?” she finally asked, incredulous.

  “I don’t want Pallas Athena. I want you.”

  Jules’s laughter was harsh—a sardonic bark of scorn.

  “J. T.,” Jules said, “if you and I were the last two people on earth, I’d try a bear.”

  “If you really knew me, you’d like me.”

  “You mean I’d … loathe you,” Jules said, still smiling but with eyes hard, dark, humorless and flat.

  “We’d be good for each other. I know it.”

  “Tower, I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.”

  “You’re making a mistake. You don’t want to get me mad.”

  “Really?” Jules gave him her widest, brightest, most ingratiating smile—with just a hint of seduction in it. “Then let’s have another drink. Where’s that Cruzan bottle?”

  3

  “I can be anything you want me to be—as long as it is riddled with agony and fraught with death. I can be your Minotaur, your Nemesis, Satan freed from hell, the anvil on which all your hammers crack, the rack upon which all your foolish flesh finally breaks.”

  —Raza Jabarti to Danny McMahon

  Danny McMahon finally came to. Blindfolded and stripped naked, he felt one of his captors remove the rag covering his eyes. McMahon was sorry to have it off. The brightness was agonizing.

  His eyes took a long time adjusting to the light. When his vision had sufficiently cleared, he saw he was hanging by the wrists from a wooden overhead beam. He was in a concrete-block safe house, and his shoulder, wrist and elbow joints ached as if they’d been ripped out of their sockets. His feet were an inch or two above the floor.

  His vision had now focused enough that he could see the woman sitting across from him on a straight-back chair. Her hair was long and lush, black as any crow’s wing. A short red dress barely reached her thighs. Her legs were crossed, and she wore thigh-high ebony riding boots with four-inch heels and stainless-steel rowels. Boots and rowels were burnished to a mirror-gloss.

  She had a riding crop under her arm.

  Oh shit, he recognized her now. He was staring at Raza Jabarti—the terrorist femme fatale he’d made so many sick, sadistic jokes about.

  Fuck me dead.

  Then he remembered what Rashid had told him: “Don’t let them see you panic … Don’t whimper or snivel … Fear acts on them like catnip on a cat.”

  “How was your trip, Mr. McMahon?” Raza asked.

  He struggled to promote a grin. “Splendid.”

  “You know we’re big fans of yours here,” Raza said. “I have all your DVDs and books. And I never miss one of your shows. I record them all.”

  “You have su-per-la-tive taste,” he said, emphatically dragging out each of the word’s syllables.

  “Mr. McMahon, to tell the truth, you look sort of banged up. I hope your captors weren’t too rough on you.”

  “I hope I wasn’t too rough on them,” McMahon said, struggling to promote an audacious sneer.

  “Why? Did you hurt them?”

  “I busted one fellow’s foot with my kidneys. I think my nuts shattered some poor guy’s kneecap. My nose split one man’s knuckles wide open.”

  “You really showed them, Mr. McMahon,” Raza said. “Bravissimo!”

  “Yeah, they learned the hard way not to fuck with Danny McMahon,” he said, mustering as much b
ravado as possible.

  “You certainly are tough—a real cowboy,” Raza said. “Where are you from anyway? What great American city do you hail from?”

  She circled around behind him and was now out of sight.

  “Blow Me, Idaho.”

  The riding crop whistled behind him, whipping him across his bare ass.

  The pain was breathtaking. In fact, his eyes were watering involuntarily.

  “Okay, I lied,” he said, after he caught his breath.

  “Then you better tell me the truth,” she said cheerfully, her voice bright and melodious. “Where are you from?”

  “Fuck You, Utah.”

  Again, the whistling crop.

  Again, the blinding pain.

  “I’m sorry,” McMahon said, struggling to get his breath back. “I shouldn’t put you on. I’ll be truthful from now on.”

  “Excellent, Mr. McMahon. Now where are you from?”

  “Down Syndrome, Indiana.”

  A dozen lashes seared McMahon’s backside. Tears flooded his face, and he fought to choke back sobs. When he finally caught his breath, Raza was in front of him again, staring into his face, nose to nose with him, still smiling merrily.

  “I know you pride yourself on your toughness, Mr. McMahon, but trust me. Toughness here buys you nothing. You’re in the House of Pain now—the House that Pain Built—and I’ve wanted to get my curvaceous claws into you for quite some time. How do you like it so far?”

  “I’m happy as a sissy in Boys Town.”

  “But you aren’t in Boys Town, are you?”

  “Tell you the truth, I don’t know where I am.”

  “Oh, you’re in the labyrinth’s darkest heart.”

  “I thought a Minotaur was at that maze’s center,” McMahon said. “Instead I meet you.”

  “Le Minotaur, c’est moi.”

  “You don’t look like a Minotaur.”

  “But I am. In fact, I can be anything you want me to be—as long as it is riddled with agony and fraught with death. I can be your Minotaur, your Nemesis, Satan freed from hell, the anvil on which all your hammers crack, the rack upon which all your foolish flesh finally breaks.”

  “Suppose I said I’m free in Christ. I’ve been to the mountain,” McMahon said, attempting a feeble imitation of Martin Luther King, “‘I’ve seen the Promised Land, and while we may not get there together, I’m fearing no man, no woman, I am—’”

  “Then I will be your Golgotha, your Hill of Skulls.”

  “Or maybe we can be friends.”

  “What a lovely thought, but no, Mr. McMahon, that is not possible.”

  “Pen pals? Bunk mates? Alter egos?”

  Her trilling laughter tintinnabulated with derision.

  “Mr. McMahon,” Raza said, “I am the darkest night of your deplorably depraved soul.”

  Try to make them laugh, Rashid had counseled. And, what the hell, she says she thinks you’re funny.

  “Then I suppose blowing me is out of the question?” McMahon asked, struggling to promote his own pleasant smile.

  “When I finish with you, Mr. McMahon,” Raza said, “sex will be the last thing on your mind.”

  “But I was so looking forward to our little love-in.”

  “Mr. McMahon, when I am done with you, the rocks themselves shall sob, and the earth itself cry out from terror and despair—from your terror and your despair.”

  “Before you start can I first ask you a question?” McMahon asked.

  “Ask away.”

  “Since you’re a Muslim and a woman, why you aren’t wearing a burqa or a niqab?”

  “Because we are in my world now,” Raza said, “and in my world, I do whatever I want.”

  “What if the men around you object to your freedom and power,” McMahon asked, “what happens then?”

  “They don’t object long.”

  “Why?”

  “My friends look out for me,” Raza said. “You do not want to mess with my friends.”

  “I wish I had friends like that,” McMahon said, his voice genuinely forlorn.

  “Ah, but you don’t.”

  “Sounds like I’m fucked.”

  “Fatally, terminally, inexorably, irreversibly screwed,” Raza said. “But on the bright side, you have finally made the big time.”

  “I’ll try not to let it go to my head.”

  “And I will do everything in my power to keep you humble. In fact, I will give you humble lessons that will make the gods themselves fall weeping to their knees.”

  She picked a thick black cylinder up off a nearby table. It looked like a thick black flashlight.

  Oh shit.

  An electric cattle prod.

  “You’re saying I’m in trouble?”

  “I am all the trouble you’ve spent your whole wretched life looking for. I am your personal Day of Reckoning—all the bad parts in the Koran rolled up into one.”

  “But, you’re oh so beautiful.”

  “In my country, we have a saying about great beauty. Do you know what that saying is?”

  “That all great beauty is loving and giving?”

  “Quite the contrary: That all great beauty is inarguably, unalterably … bloodthirsty.”

  “But you’re not like that—seriously,” McMahon said. “I can feel it.”

  “Oh, Mr. McMahon,” Raza said, shaking her head in dismay, “you are a stranger to our world. Please, please, do not understand me too quickly.”

  Flatter her, Rashid said. Try to keep her talking. When Raza talks, she won’t be hurting you.

  “No, really. I think underneath, you’re actually quite … sweet.”

  “I hate to disabuse you of your illusions,” Raza said, as she flexed the whip, bending it like a bow, “but perhaps a small demonstration is in order.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Think of me as all your karma coming home to roost.”

  “Suppose I said I don’t believe in Eastern mysticism.

  “Everyone believes in karma.”

  “Not me,” McMahon said. “As I sometimes tell my audience, karma can suck my dick.”

  “Yes,” Raza said, nodding her head vigorously, “but karma can also whip your ass like a rented Afghan mule.”

  In spite of himself, McMahon’s eyes were now darting back and forth in reflexive panic.

  “Maybe we can talk about this,” McMahon said. “Come o-o-on? We can work something out, can’t we?”

  “No, Mr. McMahon, I’m afraid not.”

  “There must be something I can do.”

  “Not really,” Raza said. “This time your ships are blazing in the harbor, and your bridges are burned all the way down to the river’s bottom.”

  “You’re saying a heartfelt apology will no longer suffice?”

  “I am not a priest. I do not grant absolution.”

  Turning from McMahon, she took a deep breath and rotated her head, working kinks out of her neck and back.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” McMahon said, interrupting her exercises.

  He was desperate now to divert her from the horsewhip. What was it Rashid had said?

  Distract them. The more you talk and they talk, the less time they have to hurt you.

  That’s what Rashid had said.

  Keep talking.

  “I’m really am sorry for anything I might have said. I can be impulsive, irresponsible. I know that, and I’m trying to change. If I’ve offended you and your people and your faith in any way, let me make it up to you.”

  “Oh, we are going to settle up, Mr. McMahon. You can trust me on that account.” Leaning forward, she gave him her biggest, brightest, most beautiful smile.

  Encouraged by the gorgeous grin, McMahon took a deep breath and started to talk, not knowing what he was going to say but desperate to divert her from her torture plans.

  “Maybe if we brought in my agent, Richie ‘the Hammer’ Hammerstein. He can work anything out. You don’t have a problem with Jews, do you? Richie
’s really very moderate about Israel—and extremely open-minded about the Palestinian issue and the West Bank settlements. He can see both sides of it—really, he can. Now he’s with William Morris Endeavor, and together they can fix … anything. They’re working on a film deal for me right now. The Danny McMahon Story. There’s a part in it for you if you’re interested—a real reach and a stretch, as we say in Tinsel Town. It could be a major breakout role—if you play your cards right. I have to warn you though. Watch out for Richie. Don’t fuck with him. He can be a nice guy, but deep down inside there’s a shark in there. He makes studio heads and network bosses bawl like little girls when they mess with one of his clients. Let me call the Hammer, and he’ll—”

  The woman hit him off a pivot, getting her entire body weight behind the open-handed slap. Pivoting in the opposite direction, she struck him with the backhand. Changing hands after each pair of slaps, she hit McMahon over and over and over again, each blow across his face hard and loud as a pistol shot, forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand, over and over and over and over and over again until he lost count of the blows.

  Still she continued.

  When she stopped, his eyes were flooded with tears, and his face was on fire. Gradually, after the tears finally subsided, he could see both her hands were a brilliant crimson, front and back, even as his cheeks burned and his ears rang.

  “When I want your opinion,” she said cheerfully, “I’ll bitch-slap it out of you.”

  His eyes were still teared-over, but he was still able to see that another woman had entered the room and was sitting behind Raza on a folding chair, pushed back against the wall. She was also attractive, disconcertingly so. She had long black hair and was attired in tight bleached-out cut-off jeans, a white tank top and gym shoes. She was smoking a thin black cigarette.

  Shit. She was the woman who had seduced and drugged him in his hotel suite.

  “Hey there,” she said, grinning mischievously. “Long time no see. I love you forever, G.I., no fucking shit.”

  “Just tell me what you want me to do,” McMahon said, his head still ringing, his words sounding distant and tinny in his ears.

  “You don’t know yet?” Raza asked. “You haven’t figured it out?”