The Golden Kill

by Marc Olden

  “Victor, you remember Achilles and Agamemnon here, don’t you? I recall you once said a few nasty things about each dog, and take my word for it, Victor, they remember attitudes like that. So take my advice and come along quietly. I’m not interested in explanations regarding your stupidity. I just want to know who and why, Victor, nothing more. Now, move!”

  As Talon moved back three steps to clear the doorway, each dog growled low in his throat, nails clicking on the wood as they moved into the room toward Victor Barnes. As if on silent command, both stopped, bright eyes on the small man, waiting for him to walk between them.

  He did, moving slowly, shaking his head from side to side, his eyes on Talon, no sound coming from his open mouth. When he reached Talon, the security chief gently took the photographs from his hand and pointed with them down the long hallway, with its paintings and tapestries on both walls. Thirty feet away was a wide blue-carpeted staircase leading down to the first floor.

  “Come on, Victor, you must lead the way. Achilles and Agamemnon will follow. Come on, that’s it.”

  Slowly Barnes moved from the room, edging sideways between the two dogs, his face still turned toward Talon. Out in the hall, Barnes turned to his right toward the staircase, his footsteps mingling with the sound of Talon’s footsteps. Between the two men, the huge black Great Danes moved, alert and proud.

  Victor Barnes wanted to live. Nothing in him accepted death. He accepted its nearness, which is why he made his desperate move.

  As he neared a highly polished suit of armor on his right, he reached out for it like a drowning man clutching at a straw, pulling it down behind him, sending it crashing to the floor between him and the dogs.

  Ahead of him to his left was a huge wooden chair, its high back carved by a skilled workman four hundred years ago. Grabbing at it, Barnes knocked it down behind him. Then, with his arms moving awkwardly up and down, his mouth open and gasping for air, he ran along the hallway toward the staircase.

  As the armor crashed to the wooden floor, the sound echoing along the castle hallway in the early morning, the two dogs reacted with swift animal reflexes.

  Both stopped suddenly, their powerful muscular bodies leaping back and to the sides, away from the falling suit of armor. As they turned in a circle, their strong paws slipping on the highly polished wood, their claws unable to dig into the hard wood, Talon screamed, “Attack!”

  Quickly the two dogs swung around until they faced the back of the fleeing man. The suit of armor had come apart, the helmet tearing loose and noisily rolling along the hall. The steel gauntlets slid on the floor until they stopped at the base of the opposite wall.

  The speeding huge black dogs scattered pieces of the suit of armor to either side of them as they leaped into the pile of metal, sending it clanging and rolling along the floor.

  Like perfectly trained acrobats, the huge black dogs timed their conquest of the huge fallen chair. The dog on the left slowed down almost imperceptibly, allowing the one on his right the necessary room.

  Without a second’s hesitation, the dog on the right leaped high into the air, clearing the chair by inches, landing on the other side, and sliding along the waxed floor, his nails scratching at the floor in an attempt to stop his slide.

  The second dog also leaped high, his speed making him a black blur in the early-morning sun. Landing on the wood, he too slid, his nails clawing at the floor. In a fraction of a second, both had cut their slide and were speeding after the small man.

  As if by horrible magic, the distance between Victor Barnes and the huge black dogs had closed.

  He was at the staircase, his eyeglasses now dangling from his left ear. The growls behind him made him turn, and when he did, both dogs leaped high in the air, their combined weight and strength made more powerful by their speeding run along the hallway.

  Growling, one aimed for Victor Barnes’s face, and for an instant the little man smelled the hot breath of the beast before pain sliced into his cheek and he toppled backward.

  As he fell, he felt a sharp pain in his elbow; then he screamed as the pain ripped across his chest.

  For a fraction of a second Victor Barnes was in midair. He had lost his balance at the top of the stairs and was falling backward. For a moment, a picture of his youth flashed through his head. It was a time when he had once played football in high school and had been tackled trying to go through the middle, and the other team had stopped him at the line of scrimmage, sending him backward for three yards.

  Backward. Just like now, except …

  The dogs were snarling and slashing at him, their dark faces now shiny-wet with his blood. Above the pain and animal sounds, he thought he heard Talon screaming, but suddenly there was a white flash exploding in his brain, and Victor couldn’t remember anything anymore.

  His neck snapped the instant his head smashed into the railing, his body rolling along the blue-carpeted stairway, now flecked red with this blood.

  The dogs kept at him, tearing him with their knifelike teeth, powerful jaws pulling at the little accountant, now lying at the bottom of the wide staircase.

  Above, on the top step, Talon hurriedly took a thin silver whistle from his pocket, jamming it between his lips, blowing hard. No sound could be heard, except by the two huge black dogs, who stopped, their heads snapping toward Talon.

  Behind Talon, Print Drewcolt stared down at the bleeding dead body. “I don’t think he’s going to be talking much.”

  Without turning around, Talon moved down the staircase, saying as he descended, “He didn’t have a chance. Stupid move.”

  Unheard by Talon, Drewcolt murmured, “Why do they hate me so much? Why?” Aloud he yelled, “Is he …?”

  At the bottom of the staircase, Talon, crouched over Barnes, turned to Drewcolt and nodded his head yes.

  “Does that finish it?”

  Talon looked back at Barnes, then turned back to Drewcolt. “I’m not sure. And security is one thing I like to be sure of.”

  Drewcolt stared down at him, then, without a word, turned and disappeared along the hall.

  Talon reached out and fondled the ear of one of the huge black dogs.

  Maynard Reiss rapped twice on the thick plastic between him and the driver of his limousine. Without turning around, the driver slowed to a stop. They waited.

  In front of them and across the park, he saw the man and the woman.

  The woman was Andrea Naiss, and she was being followed by Maynard personally because Talon had asked him to do so. All of the photographs she had taken had been adequate, clear, and each face distinctive. Except one.

  The one of the black man, the man Talon had ordered killed or captured, had not turned out well at all. It showed the back of his head, neck, and shoulders. Extremely little to go on, and Talon, a man who liked to be sure, had ordered Andrea followed.

  That’s what Maynard Reiss was doing on this chilly, sunny March morning.

  Andrea was sitting on a park bench, talking with a black man.

  A black man.

  Talon would be very, very interested to hear this. Yes, indeed, he would be.

  Leaning back in the seat, Reiss flicked a button on his right, and the nasal twang of a country-and-western singer sprang up quickly. Softly, the fat man clapped his hands in time to the music, his eyes on Robert Sand and Andrea Naiss.

  Chapter XII

  ALONE IN THE HUGE red-canopied bed, a thick white fur pulled up to her chin, Lisa Warren shivered and wept, her tears shining on her beautiful face. The chill English morning did not make her tremble. She shook with the degradation of Print’s sexuality and its effect on her.

  Through the thick door of her bedroom, she had heard the dogs snarl and a man scream. Later, the door had opened, and Print stood here, and she knew.

  “Who?”

  “Victor,” he said, closing the door behind him, then moving across the room to her.

  Later, he had lain beside her, stroking her hair, then moving his hand along th
e warm curves of her lush body, stopping to feel the flesh under his fingers. Each move of his hand was that of a man appreciating a beautiful thing owned by him. He didn’t have to say it. Print believed it, and that’s what his actions said.

  When he had gotten dressed and left her, she wept openly. Abe Richards, Jerome Abbot, and now Victor Barnes. All dead, killed by Print. Wiping tears from the corners of her eyes with her fingertips, she thought, that’s what he’s doing to me, too. He’s killing me, a little at a time.

  Soon she would be dead. She was dying, first inside and then …

  She would die in worse fashion than any of the others had done, because Print was taking her life by strangling her soul and mind. How much more of this could she take? Print, with his lust for power, his obsessive possessiveness of her, and his sexual degradation of her prompted by his own blood lust.

  She had to break away, she had to be free.

  Talon held out his hand, the small chunks of raw meat dripping blood along his hand and wrist. Rajah, his small eyes bright and darting, shuffled closer to the hand, moving along the wooden bar gouged with marks from his sharp claws.

  Reaching the hand, he pecked at the meat, picking a chunk up in his yellow beak and swallowing it whole.

  Behind Talon, Print Drewcolt watched and made a face. “Damn, I don’t see how you trust that son-of-a-bitch. He looks like he could swallow your arm all the way up to your neck.”

  Smiling at the words, his back still to Drewcolt, Talon said, “Careful, Mr. Drewcolt. Rajah understands. He can tell from the sound and feel of your voice what your words mean.”

  Nervously licking his lips, Drewcolt said, “When are you leaving?”

  “Tonight. Gives me more time to put pressure on Mr. Canning. And like you say, it’s better this time that I go myself and personally bring back the virus. We can’t afford any more problems.”

  “No, we can’t. How are you getting it through British customs?”

  “I hide it in the top of the toilet on our plane, and leave it there. One of our men will be on the ground crew cleaning and refueling the plane. He’ll get it and bring it off the airfield easily. No problem.”

  “That’ll be a change,” said Drewcolt, wincing as the huge hawk kept eating the bloody raw meat from Talon’s hand. “No problems, I mean. Keep in touch. I want to know everything, and just as soon as it happens.”

  “You will, Mr. Drewcolt, you will. Oh, while I’m away, will you make sure somebody feeds Rajah?”

  Drewcolt turned away without answering.

  In her apartment they lay silent in bed, he on his back staring up the ceiling, while she leaned over him, her large breasts pressing into his bare flesh, her fingers gently brushing the length of the two long scars across his chest.

  Before making love, she had watched him take the .45 from the small of his back and tuck it under the pillow. Their eyes met, and he smiled, so she said nothing, accepting him easily and completely. In her world, she had so little, and to her he seemed to offer so much in so short a time.

  At first they stood near the bed, both of them naked, bodies pressed tightly together, flesh-on-flesh, their lips touching gently, then more urgently. As his tongue slid into her mouth, she moaned and dug her fingers into the hard muscles of his back and shoulders, her hands unable to keep still.

  There had been men in her life, but none who stirred her to such fire so gently. Her legs grew weak, and she pulled him down to the bed with her.

  Her mouth bit his shoulder as he slid down her body toward her breasts, his tongue making a circle around each of her nipples. She wanted his mouth, and digging her fingers into his shoulders, she pulled him back toward her, making small sounds until they kissed.

  Her legs went around him, pulling him tightly to her, and he responded, his own passion rising to meet hers.

  Later, they lay quietly together.

  Then Andrea said, “For a man with his clothes off, you sure manage to hide a lot of things.”

  Grinning easily, Robert Sand said, “Baring your body doesn’t mean you’ve bared your soul.”

  Gently she shook her head from side to side. “I just want to know a little about you. Like, what happened last night, why that gun under the pillow, and last but not least, what is it that makes you so special?”

  “You know what your trouble is?” said Sand. “You settle for much less than you should. You’re smart enough to know I won’t tell you much. You already know I’m a man CCE is anxious to learn about. Which is why they paid you to take my picture. Now, if I tell you more, you’ll know more, and take my word for it, that’s dangerous.”

  Andrea made a funny face and pressed a finger against Sand’s nose. “So if I don’t know, I can’t tell, right?”

  Sand nodded.

  “Well,” she pouted, “I don’t think it’s fair. I tell you what you want to know, like about Maynard Reiss, the photos, anything you want. I even bring you back to my apartment—why, I’m not sure. Why don’t you trust people? Not that it’s such a good idea to trust anybody.”

  “My life depends on caution,” he said. “It also depends on knowing all I can with everyone knowing as little about me as possible. Just say my business is … call it ‘getting even.’”

  She grinned, “I like that saying, you know, the one you told me last night. ‘Don’t get mad, get even.’ Yeah. I can get behind that easily.”

  “Good. You’re smarter and stronger than you allow yourself to be. Stop letting people decide your life for you. Try to be strong, even when you don’t feel it. Fake it, and maybe you’ll make it.”

  Those weren’t the exact words he’d heard in his years of Samurai training, but it came down to that. He had trained to make his mind and heart like that of a lion. By submitting to the brutal rigors of Samurai training, he had learned to conquer fear.

  She needed to be strong. In him she saw strength. As in most of her relationships, she tried to get from other people what she lacked. Except she didn’t know what there was in her to interest this man.

  “You sound as though you spent time in the Orient,” she said. “Your philosophy seems to be ripped off from some wise old dude wearing a flowing robe and chopsticks.”

  Sand smiled. Close enough, but he didn’t say anything to her. Yes, that’s where he’d learned all he knew. In the Orient. That’s where he’d gotten the sword cuts, and that’s where he had trained his body and mind to the breaking point, then come back the next day and done it again. What he had learned in the Orient was now the source of his strength, physical and mental.

  “Did you want to learn something about me?” Her chin rested on his powerful bare chest.

  He had. He’d learned that she was a sad, vulnerable woman who had taken a job without knowing that it could have cost the Black Samurai his life. But he didn’t say this to her. Instead he reached out and stroked her hair. “You’re pretty,” he said.

  Closing her eyes, she opened them again and sadly shook her head from side to side. “No,” she said softly. “I’m not. I’m somebody who’s been used and fooled and who let it happen too often because she was too scared to do differently. But thanks for saying that.”

  Drawing her face closer to him, Sand whispered, “Never argue with a man who’s got a gun under the pillow. You’re pretty.” They kissed, and she clung to him in a desperate longing, undecided whether to be grateful to him for reminding her of all she might have been.

  “Damn!” said Maynard Reiss. “This here thing smells like it’s been dipped in gasoline.”

  In the back seat of his limousine, he held the steel canister at arm’s length, wincing as the fumes filled the expensive car. Touching a button at his right, he heard the window whir as it slid down, letting in the cold night air.

  “Say, Harley,” asked the fat man, “how’d you-all get this thing out of that Maryland storage depot?”

  Canning looked away from Reiss, his thin face staring out the window on his left, his eyes unseeing. In a low voice
he said, “Gas tank. My car’s got two. I hid it in one of them. I’ve replaced this one with a similar canister of colored water.”

  Leaning his fat head back onto the purple seat covers behind him, Maynard Reiss roared with laughter, then said in a loud voice, “Shoot, Harley. You just some kind of city slicker. You got that good ol’ top-security clearance, ain’t you? You can move your ass anywhere in this here town, and ain’t nobody gonna say boo. You know something, Harley? I’m bettin’ no one finds out about the phony tin can for years, really and truly. That what you did with the first one?”

  Canning looked at him, then turned away without saying a word. It had been risky, but he had moved fast. Fear had added speed.

  Tapping an envelope on the seat between them, Reiss said, “Here ’tis, Harley. A note confirming a two-hundred-thousand-dollar cash deposit in Geneva. No checks or money orders, just all green. Just one thing, though, Mr. White House Man. If this stuff ain’t for real, you better have your affairs in order and your hands in a prayerful position, ’cause Print Drewcolt is gonna come down on your skull like a tall building bendin’ in half, hear?”

  Canning heard. The virus was real, no problem there. He wanted a lot of Chinese lying dead, their skin covered with bleeding sores. He just didn’t want to be told what to do, by Drewcolt or anyone else. Reaching down, he felt his throbbing leg, massaging it, fingers brushing the juncture where the flesh of his stump met hard metal. He continued looking out the window at the city lights blinking in the darkness. For a man who had insisted on being obeyed, he was being jerked around as though there was a hook in his mouth.

  Like a ball bouncing down a flight of stairs, he was on a one-way course, and it wasn’t a good one. Not by far.