Mr. Jade finally spoke in a steady, sagely voice. “Calm yourself. It will slow the process.”
“What have you done to me!” the detective repeated, now feeling panicked.
Mr. Jade turned around and slid back to his dresser. He lit a small candle and placed it by a nearby mirror. Then he shed his skin. His mandarin hat came off first and along with it, his long white hair. His real hair was black and closely cropped at the sides. With a few quick motions, he ripped off his mustache, goatee, and alabaster eyebrows. The old man was not so old. He reached in his mouth and pulled out wads of cotton from his cheeks, changing the contour of his face from a gluttonous round to a wrathful square. He threw the saliva-soaked wads on top of his dresser and rolled his tongue around in his mouth, making a sound like an eel skirting coral. He began rubbing his face violently and checking the mirror; an odd powder was flaking off. Next, he opened his black robes and pulled out the pillows responsible for his roundness. With all the pillows removed, he shed the black robe entirely. And there he stood, nearly naked save for a white wrap cloth. He was a much younger oriental man, with nearly every one of his solid muscles inked in different irezumi colors of black, blue, green, and orange. Two snakes ran up one arm, and a tiger and dragon wrestled on the other. His whole body was a wild menagerie and an exquisite garden intertwined in a harmonious landscape—a beautiful veneer for such a dangerous man
“Who are you, really?” Detective Porter asked.
The former Mr. Jade turned and opened a drawer. The wild animals undulated as his muscles contracted and expanded. He pulled out two bowls, a pipe, and a black pouch. “My name is Monomi Mono.” From the pouch he pulled the curious stone that had once been attached to Jonathan Hamilton’s chest. He spit on it, and threw it toward the detective. The thin stone shattered into three uneven pieces just next to the detective’s now inoperable left arm. “There is your stone.”
Monomi took the candle, bowls, and pipe before he walked toward the detective and sat down on the floor a few feet away, legs crossed. He set up the simple contraption in front of him. The detective recorded as best he could. The markings on the shattered stone, they matched the ones burned into Monomi’s tattooed chest.
“Is it poison? What you did to me?” the detective asked.
Monomi held the bowl over the candle and rocked it back and forth. “Yes,” he replied, concentrating on his task.
“Will it hurt?” the detective asked.
“Yes,” Monomi said, as the small yellow cube of poppy sap began smoking. He took his small pipe and inhaled the vapors. He exhaled a large plume of white, which hung in the air, and for a moment it looked like his soul hovered above his painted body. “Fugu,” he said.
“What?” Detective Porter asked.
“There is a fish where I am from called fugu. Very deadly. The poison I gave you comes from its liver. It will paralyze your muscles, paralyze your lungs, but leave your mind intact. It will most l ikely kill you.”
“Most likely?” Detective Porter repeated.
“Most likely,” Monomi affirmed.
The detective raised his right arm to point and felt a burning sensation. “You are not Chinese.”
“No.”
“Why steal the stone? Why the deception? What does the stone mean?” the detective asked.
Monomi laughed and mimicked the detective’s pointing finger. He pointed to the all- seeing Pinkerton eye on the detective’s lapel. “Even in the throes of deaths, you continue your work. You are a noble man, Detective Porter.” Monomi briefly reheated the opium and sucked in more of the vapor through his pipe. This time he got up, grabbed the detective by his throat and exhaled the vapor directly into the detective’s nostrils.
No, please . . . no . . . stop!” The detective tried to struggle, but now both arms ceased to function.
Monomi resumed his original position a few feet away. He crossed his legs and tapped his pipe. “It will calm your mind and ease your passing.”
“If you want to ease my passing, give me answers,” the detective said, still trying to expel the narcotic from his lungs.
“Very well,” Monomi replied. “I remember that you told Captain Pascal you played chess. Tell me, what do you think is the most powerful piece on the chessboard?”
“The King,” he answered. “The game ends with his demise.”
“No.”
“The Queen, then,” the detective said.
“No.”
“I don’t understand,” the detective said, feeling his neck get stiffer. It was getting harder to swallow.
“The pieces do nothing without a hand to move them,” Monomi said.
“No . . . no,” the detective said. “The mind, then . . . the mind is the most important. The mind has to make the decision of which piece to move.”
Monomi leaned in. “Tell me, what moves can your mind make now? Can your mind snuff this candle? Can your mind pick up that gun over there?”
The detective’s eyes cut over to his gun again.
“If the world is a chessboard, then the men who wear these stones,” Monomi pointed to the broken stone and then his own chest, “they are the hand that moves the pieces. To them, even kings and queens are just pawns that move differently. There exists another world, detective, a world beyond this chessboard, one that not even you can . . . detect.” He stretched out the last word.
“These men, this organization, this Hand . . . you work for them?” the detective asked.
“At one time, yes.”
“Now you work against them?” the detective asked. “Stealing their stones? What good does that do? Why not just kill them?”
Monomi paused. “Sometimes we do.”
“Who is we?” Detective Porter asked.
Monomi let out a curious bird whistle. The ashen girl in the black silk robe floated into the room. She kissed Monomi on the lips and then he whispered something in her ear. She approached the detective and removed his Pinkerton Eye. Then she reached inside his pockets and removed his sketchbook, billfold, and pencil. She dropped the pencil, threw the billfold to Monomi, and flipped through the sketchbook. She came to a drawing of a lounging woman. “Pretty girl,” she said. She tore out the picture and placed it back in his pocket. “You should not die alone.” She smiled and kissed his forehead.
The detective could no longer move anything but his eyes, which now started to deceive him as the opium took effect. His mind was hazy and floating within a stiff, burning body. The ashen girl went back to Monomi. Her black robe bled off her body and when it reached the floor, it turned into a black serpent. It reared and flashed its fangs before slithering away quickly. Her body became as transparent as glass, through which he could see a tiger and dragon wrestling. She straddled the man whose tattoos came alive. Detective Porter closed his eyes.
…
His breathing was shallow. His numb body rocked. Hands rummaged through his pockets. His eyes opened. The sun was up. Lying flat on his back in an alley, he recognized the face of the thief. “Mas . . . ma . . . sttt . . .” He still couldn’t talk.
“Where’s that damn gun of yours?” Leroy Jardin asked. “Where the hell do you keep your money?”
The detective’s right arm tightened and shot up to the boy’s throat. He squeezed, and now, neither one of them could talk. Leroy fought against the grip.
“I thought you’s was dead,” Leroy wheezed. “Honest.”
“Hey!” a man cried from the street. Four rough-and-tumblers came running down the alley shouting. “What in the hell are you doing!” another one yelled. The detective let go of the boy.
“I was just checkin’ to see if he was all right, honest, and the sonovabitch grabbed me, I swear! Said he was gonna kill me!” Leroy claimed.
“Like to pick on boys, huh?” a third ruffian asked.
“No . . . no . . . na . . .” the detective tried once again to speak. He leaned over to one side and propped himself with his only operable arm. His left arm still had l
ittle feeling. The detective signaled to the men towering above him to wait.
They did not.
A man’s boot landed squarely on his bandaged head, and the three other ruffians and Leroy Jardin began to beat him mercilessly. The detective tried to shield himself with his one arm. He flailed his weak legs. He couldn’t feel all the blows, but he could see all the blood pooling. He could see it until his eyes started to swell up. He never saw the last blow. Everything, simply and abruptly, went black again.
The Baron
July 21, 1914
Near the town of Penrith
Cumbria, Northwest England
Gunshots echoed against the rolling green hills of the English countryside. “Al’ama, Baron! You win again,” Khalid Francois cawed as he lowered his pistol.
“Warwick, reset the cans,” the Baron ordered before reloading his Luger Parabellum. Warwick took some more tin cans from the backseat of the Baron’s chrome-accented Rolls Royce and ran over to the wall, crudely fashioned together with loose stones. Gingerly, he placed six cans of pea soup evenly spaced on top of it. Khalid revealed a flask from his inner belt, unscrewed it, and unceremoniously drank. “Best three out of five,” he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
“Very well,” the Baron replied. The two of them lined up again in the middle of the dirt road, a good twenty yards from their pea-soup targets. Khalid reloaded his pistol.
“Please,” the Baron said, “you first.”
Khalid raised his Bodeo revolver and took aim. His first shot lifted a can into the twilight air. He smiled, revealing his one golden tooth, and pulled back the hammer. The second and third shots missed. After repositioning and taking a deep breath, he knocked down his other two cans in succession. “There! Three cans, five shots,” he yelled.
The Baron redrew his Luger from his holster and in one fluid motion unleashed three shots. In the fading sunlight, the three cans seemed to evaporate into thin air. “Three for three,” the Baron said, holstering his pistol.
“You are true marksman, Baron,” Khalid said. “Congratulations.”
“I ought to be—my bodyguard is too often drunk,” the Baron replied.
Khalid holstered his pistol. “In the Foreign Legion, they told us shooting at dusk is the hardest. I am beginning to thank Allah that I never fought a battle in the setting sun.”
“Fading light distorts a man’s ability to accurately distinguish small targets,” the Baron said.
“Then how do you shoot so well with fading light?” Khalid asked.
“Warwick! Grab a can and stand by the wall,” the Baron yelled. Warwick paused, wide-eyed, but eventually grabbed another can and stood in front of the competitors near the chest-high wall.
“Place the can atop your hat, Warwick.” The scared servant’s hands shook as he slowly crowned himself with stewed tomatoes. The Baron took aim. Warwick shut his eyes tightly. The Baron’s head tilted as his one eye looked down the barrel.
“Warwick!” he yelled. “For God’s sake, man, take the can off your head. Do you really think I would jeopardize the life of one of my best servants?” Warwick let out a big breath and grabbed his heart, causing the can to fall from his hat. “Now, pick up the can and hold it away from your body.”
The Baron turned to Khalid. “Call it survival of the fittest if you like, but after losing my eye, my monocular vision has adjusted in a way that I require very little light to get my bearings. So what others may view as a disability is actually an advantage in some respects. Of course, my field of vision is limited, but what I do see . . .” He turned his head quickly, took aim at the can resting in Warwick’s outstretched hand, and fired.
Before Warwick could even wince, he was covered in red paste. Warwick could hear Khalid laughing. He opened his eyes, hoping to see an intact hand and did. “I would not jeopardize your life, Warwick, but I would wager your hand. Now, bring me a cigarette.”
With red tomato pulp covering his face, Warwick produced a cigarette and lit it for the Baron. After he put the cigarette case away, Warwick pointed down the desolate road. “Your lordship,” he said.
Khalid and the Baron turned and watched small flames flicker into existence in the distance, one by one, creating a ring of torchlights. “That would be our appointment,” the Baron said. “Warwick, stay with the car. Khalid, come with me.” Warwick pulled a handkerchief from his inner jacket pocket and began wiping his face. The Baron and Khalid Francois walked down the road toward the circle of lights.
“What exactly is the meaning of all this? Why this location?” Khalid asked, as their pace picked up going downhill.
“When you are summoned, you do not choose the venue,” the Baron replied.
“All right, then what of this . . . this ring of fire . . . why such a strange formality?”
“You are relatively new to our organization, Khalid. In time, you will see that formality is an integral part of order, and order is the key to balance.”
Khalid scratched his chest. “Is this part of the formality, too? Will I ever get to take this damn thing off?”
“If you only knew the men who bore the same burden, you would not complain. Wearing the stone is a sign of your discipleship. There are some who have worn them for days, and some who have worn them their entire lives. Some whose skin have taken to it readily, and some who have died from an ensuing infection. Secrecy is our organization’s primary method of operation, Khalid, and being trusted to operate in secret requires you to keep a secret. Those who reveal their stone are deemed unfit for duty and are . . . disavowed.”
“You mean disposed of,” Khalid said. “This is how you really keep your secrets.”
The Baron smirked. A rare sight. “Tell me, have you seen the catacombs under Provins?”
“I have heard of them. Secret tunnels that traverse the city, no?”
“And do you know who built them?”
“Templars, yes? The Church? I am not sure. The Romans?” Khalid replied.
The Baron grunted, and dragon-like smoke flew from the edges of his mouth. “You see, you do not know the answer, and what does your curious mind do? It makes one up. The catacombs were built by silk merchants from the Han Dynasty almost 2,000 years ago.”
“Really?”
“No.” The Baron stopped walking. “Not only did your mind desperately seek an answer, but then you accepted the first explanation I gave you, despite its absurdity.”
“I do not follow you, Baron.”
The Baron inhaled his cigarette deeply. “When a hiker comes upon a grouping of stones like those,” the Baron pointed to the ring of flickering torches that helped reveal a larger circle of stones around it, “does not the hiker become curious as to who arranged them?”
“I suppose so,” Khalid said.
“What if I told you that the catacombs of Provins and that stone circle there were built for no other reason than to make people wonder? To exploit the natural curiosity of the human mind—minds much like yours, that when faced with a mystery, automatically seek the answer. And when no answer is to be found, one is simply invented, unconsciously created to alleviate the mental anguish of not truly knowing.”
“You are saying the catacombs serve no real purpose?”
“One can find utility with just about anything, Khalid, but the real purpose, the reason for its existence, is to make people curious, to drive their attention away from what is really going on around them, or under them. Those stones, for example; the locals here solved that “mystery.” They call it Long Meg and Her Daughters. The tall monolith at the top of the circle, that was supposedly a resident witch, Long Meg, turned to stone along with all her daughters by a great wizard, thus creating the circle you see in front of you.”
“Sounds like a fairytale,” Khalid said.
“To most, a fairytale explanation is better than no explanation. People are not satisfied with the unknown, Khalid. The unknown is what bands people together. It’s what drives us all. It drives religions. I
t drives economies. It drives government. It drives science!”
“So you keep your secrets by creating fairytales, or rather letting others create fairytales?”
The Baron flicked his cigarette into the sunset, and the two men commenced walking. “Our secrets are kept because we create more mysteries than people’s minds can bear to handle. We control the unknown, harnessing it but never questioning it. Our secrets are kept because people spend their energies seeking the truth behind such structures as the pyramids of Egypt, Stonehenge, the catacombs of Provins, and Long Meg and Her Daughters. Our secrets are kept because people waste their time trying to discover the secrets of the Templars, the Rosicrucians, and the Free Masons.”
“Now, are you actually claiming that we created those infamous societies?”
“We did. The façade societies our organization created believe themselves to be real, and that they alone can discover the secrets of the universe. But ultimately, they only spawn more mystery. This endless well-spring of the unknown serves only to shroud our organization deeper. It is the human mind we take advantage of, Khalid. And when that doesn’t work, of course, disposal does.”
The ring of torches created a spectacular sight, with two men standing at the center of it. The Baron and Khalid approached them slowly. The Baron reached into his shirt and pulled out a silver medallion, letting the shiny disc with ancient inscriptions hang about his chest.
A pale, older man clad in scarlet robes with gold trimming stood in front of the tall monolith, Long Meg. He hunched slightly and stared at the ground. His face was darkened, but a long grey beard flowed from the hood’s opening like a sable waterfall. The Baron and Khalid got close enough to see small black lettering along the gold trimming of his robes. The same lettering graced the stone on Khalid’s chest.
The other man was no doubt a Turk. He stood straight up with a thousand-yard stare. With a neatly trimmed black beard, he wore all black except for a modest, red turban. He wore a rifle on his back and a scimitar at his side. His crossed arms probably concealed another weapon. Khalid knew undoubtedly that he was a killer.
Peacemakers (Peacemaker Origins Book 1) Page 10
