Assignment- London

by Craig A. Hart

  “I see you took a lot of time to come up with each of those names.”

  “Don’t be cute,” Perry said to Burke, smiling anyway. “The problem for me was that each of those three people wanted something different. Perry wanted Trina back, poor sap. The guy whose world had just ended wanted to die. Also a sad sap. Pissed-off guy wanted to kill every human being he saw, just in case one of them was Flick.”

  “Flick again!” the Velvet Glove exclaimed. “I haven’t had to think about that bumbling amateur for months, and today, I hear his name twice.”

  “You know him?” Burke asked.

  “By bloated reputation only. I got the chance to visit one of his crime scenes once. That’s as close as I ever got to him. It was based on that display that I judge him… lacking.”

  Burke indicated Perry with a jerk of his thumb. “You’re looking at the guy that ended him.”

  The Velvet Glove acted like he was a thirteen-year-old girl who had just opened her front door to find Harry Styles standing there. “Is it true, Perry? You’re the man that erased that embarrassment to criminals everywhere?”

  “He killed my wife.”

  “I didn’t ask you why. I asked if it was true.”

  “One hundred percent.”

  “My. Yes, my indeed.” He stopped speaking, as though he hadn’t the words. Then finally, “My.”

  He by now had reached the back wall of the alley. He walked up until his shoulder was nearly brushing it and said, “Want to see something aces?”

  Perry squinted his eyes. Burke read the confusion and said, “He means something ‘really neat,’ Perry. Try to keep up.”

  Being the mature international spy that he was, Perry replied to that by making what he called a “chipmunk” face and repeating Burke’s words in a childish, mocking lilt. “Try to keep uuuupppp!”

  “What are you, eight?”

  “Ahem.” They turned and saw the Velvet Glove’s bemused but impatient expression.

  “Show me the aces,” Perry said.

  The madman smiled and took a half-step away from the wall, and then turned his hand palm-forward, as if he was going to push against the aged brickwork.

  “Don’t tell me there’s a secret passage!” Perry said. “I can’t decide whether to be disappointed by the cliché or be blown away that there’s a freaking secret passage!”

  “You are eight,” Burke said. They turned their attention to the Velvet Glove once more. And as they watched, he did push against the bricks. Or at least, he should have. What happened instead was that his hand appeared to pass through the bricks, rather than push against them.

  “Hologram?” asked Burke.

  “Exactly, James Jr.,” the Glove said. “Do you remember me teasing you about Yank laziness?”

  They remembered it all too well and nodded.

  “Well, the truth of the matter is that we Brits are not remarkably better in that particular characteristic. Take, for example, the sort of people who, much like the locals and their clientele were doing in the 1880s, sometimes find a nice quiet alleyway just the thing for a quick, inexpensive dalliance.” He said the words as if they’d befouled his mouth. “They might very likely choose this very alley, because it is so long and has almost no light at all. But here is where it becomes farcical. They choose it for its length, and then proceed into it for about three meters. Had they taken even fifteen more steps, they would have been invisible and might still be–

  “Oh, forgive me. I’m in danger of veering off onto a tangent. The point is,” he said, “no one ever comes this far into the alley. There was even a body tossed into it recently. Its feet were sticking out onto the sidewalk. Just lazy. So there is really no reason for them to examine the dead end wall. Pity really. Not even Disney gives you this kind of quality.”

  “Why?” asked Burke, genuinely curious but a little rankled as well. This was all starting to feel like some kind of prank, at best, or a colossal waste of time, much more likely. “I mean, why? Because you can?”

  The Velvet Glove looked at Burke, and to Perry, it seemed as though his expression held the faintest trace of disappointment. He sighed and said, “The answer, James Jr., will thrill and at the same time disappoint your eight-year-old friend. There is a secret passage, Perry.” His hand, still hidden behind the projection, turned, and he yanked his arm back quickly, revealing a simple plywood door.

  “It’s a very good hologram concealing a very shitty secret passage. But no matter. Follow me!” And with that, he took two long strides toward the pseudo-wall and was gone. Burke walked up to the spot and stopped.

  “Jesus Christ, Burke,” said Perry, giving him a stiff shove. The momentum carried them both through the hologram and into…

  A chamber of horror in the form of what was essentially a plywood room. Had Burke been on his game, he would have quickly looked all around him, taking mental measurements of the size of the enclosure, and would have estimated it to be about ten by fifteen feet. And he would have looked for any other possible exits, determining there were none.

  But he did not do that because he could not take his eyes from the vaguely man-shaped figure who was chained to a rough wooden post, which was embedded in a patch of concrete in the center of the area.

  Burke’s mind was forced to use the term “man-shaped” because the thing in shackles could no longer be called a man. After several unsettling moments of gaping at the thing, trying to determine what it was that made it feel so… not human, he realized that from the top of its… head? to right around the shoulders, the creature had no skin. It had all been removed. Burke, as if in a trance, took a step closer.

  The skin was definitely gone. Burke could see a delineating line just above the top of the pectorals where the fileting had stopped. He surprised himself at first as he mentally conjured the word. But as he looked even more closely, he realized that was the only word that was applicable. The flesh had been removed with the sort of blade virtuosity one would normally only see from a Michelin three-star chef. He turned to look at the Velvet Glove.

  “Why?” he asked again.

  Perry, watching tensely, was only marginally less disconcerted than Burke by this turn of events. Having noticed the Glove’s discontent the previous time his friend had posed that question, he expected more of the same, or worse.

  Instead, the VG smiled broadly. “This time, James Jr., that it the correct question. Why slowly and ever so painfully excise the flesh from a living man? Is that the gist of your questions, mmm?”

  Burke nodded dumbly.

  The Glove walked to one of the side walls of the space, and this time opened a considerably more impressive hidden door. It was still made of plywood, but before he’d triggered its latch mechanism, there had been no sign of it.

  “Cool,” Perry said as their host stepped through the door.

  A moment later, the Glove returned, dragging another man by his rather long black hair. To Burke’s relief, this individual was still in possession of his skin. Beyond that, the eye-test diagnosis wasn’t a whole lot better. The man’s face was bruised and swollen, making it difficult for either agent to determine his age with any degree of certainty. He could have been, like both Burke and Perry, in his early- to mid-thirties. Or he could have been much younger. He appeared to be unconscious, not surprisingly. The Glove pulled the inert form to a point between the flayed man and the agents and then released his hair, allowing his head to bounce on the rough pavement.

  “Ouch,” said Perry, obviously enjoying the display.

  Addressing Burke, the Velvet Glove said, “The person chained to the post is someone very dear to this currently benumbed individual. Now, to keep things clear, I’m going to refer to our skin-disadvantaged friend as Person One, and our dead-to-the-world mate Person Two.

  “Now it’s quite simple. Person Two has some information that I require, and thus far, he has been unwilling to pass that along. Person One has no knowledge that I require, but I’m anticipating that se
eing him in this condition will prompt Person Two to be somewhat more forthcoming.”

  Just then, the thing attached to the post let out a baleful moan that both chilled Burke to the core at the pure agony it contained and scared the shit out of him, as he’d assumed up to this point, that the thing was dead.

  “It’s alive!” he shouted, jumping back.

  “Well, naturally, James Jr.! I would have thought you would see the necessity of that. Think this through with me. Person Two cares about Person One, and he also has information I require. If I presented him with an already dead Person One, where’s the incentive to tell me anything? I already know he’s not easily broken, or none of us would be standing here now. But if Person One is still alive, albeit in a somewhat modified format, Person Two may very well give me what I need in order to prevent further – discomfort to Person One.”

  “Alright. I get why. Now tell me how. How do you keep someone alive after removing that much flesh? He should have bled to death!”

  “Excellent! Now you’re asking all of the correct questions.” The Glove ran back to the open side door, appearing a moment later with a small cart, on which was an array of automobile batteries, with a wire running from them to a long, hungry-looking filet knife.

  “Another of my little baubles,” he said, taking the knife by its rubber handle. “This blade, being electrified, actually cauterizes as it cuts. Therefore, there is actually very little blood lost at all, although there is considerable pain.”

  Once more, the Glove rushed into his secret room. After a moment, the agents could hear water being poured into a metal bucket. Perry walked to Burke, who turned to him.

  “Perry, I don’t know about this. I can see the sense of getting someone in the Wolf’s confidence, but this seems – extreme.”

  “It is. It has to be. One of the secrets that I found that helped me deal with my loss was taking every bit of pain that I was feeling and transferring it to someone else.” He paused and looked at the unfortunate Person One, who had apparently blacked out once again. “Although I will grant you that even I never took it to this level.”

  The Velvet Glove emerged, indeed carrying a galvanized bucket. Walking to the man lying on the ground, he dumped the entire contents over his prone head, causing him to sputter and regain consciousness. His blackened eyes fluttered and the Velvet Glove bent low so that his face would be the first thing the man saw.

  As soon as he had regained enough sensibility to realize where he was, and who was hovering above him, the man let out a guttural growl. “You bastard!” he croaked. “You still think I’m going to talk? How stupid are you?”

  The VG once again grabbed a handful of hair and twisted the man’s head until it was facing Person One.

  “Oh my God!” the man exclaimed. “Is that supposed to be a warning? Is this what you’re going to do to me if I don’t tell you what you want to know?”

  “Don’t be absurd. Do you have any inkling how long it took me to turn Daryl into – this?” He motioned to the chained man with a gameshow model flourish.

  “Daryl?” the man said.

  “Oh, I suppose he’s a little hard to recognize right now, but yes.”

  With more force than Burke or Perry thought the man could muster, he drove his head upward, ostensibly to deliver a painful butt to the Glove, but the latter moved away quickly, and the man struggled to his knees. He struggled over to the post. He grabbed this Daryl just below the flesh-border and shook the mass gently.

  “Daryl, Daryl darling! It’s Malcolm. Can you hear me?”

  The chained man groaned again, and Perry quietly shook his head as the situation became clear to him. Person One, Daryl, was Person Two’s lover. He took his shackled hands and began to kiss them, as he realized Daryl was alive. He was sobbing bitterly.

  “Now, while it’s true Daryl hasn’t managed to retain his delicate looks, he is still in there, and he is still the man you love. All very touching, mmm? Yes? But unless you tell me where the Wolf has set up his lair, I will remove what remains of Daryl from this tattered shell and you, Malcolm, will be utterly alone in this world. Would you like to see how my blade works?” He roughly shoved the weeping man aside and raised his knife to the chained man’s chest.

  “No!” Malcolm screamed.

  The Glove paused. “Then you’ll talk?”

  Perry could see the man’s expression as it managed to become even more tortured than previously, as the reality of it all set in. Apparently, he was determined to keep his secret, even at the cost of his partner’s suffering. He turned his head away and said nothing.

  “James Jr., would you be kind enough to direct young Malcolm’s attention in the proper orientation?”

  Reluctantly, Burke moved to the sobbing man and grabbed his head, turning so that his eyes were pointed toward Daryl. Once he was sure that the man could see what he was doing, the Glove pressed the knife to the man’s pectoral. Even before he made a cut, the sound of searing flesh could be heard, and as he slowly moved it back and forth, Daryl’s eyes shot open, and he began to scream. A moment later, the Glove held a strip of flesh between his fingers. However, aside from the crying, which had now lessened in intensity to a desperate whimper, Malcolm said nothing.

  The Velvet Glove removed another patch of skin, and then another. With each slice, the man screamed, but after the Glove removed a fourth, the hideous form again slumped into senselessness. All the while the other man’s face contorted in mental anguish, but aside from the sounds of distress that occasionally could not be held back, he said nothing.

  “Move, Burke,” said Perry, coming to where he held the man’s head. To the Velvet Glove, he said, “Let me try a little something.”

  Burke slid to the left and Perry stood behind the man, who was still on his knees. Perry brusquely pushed him to make him lie on his stomach, then suddenly sat on his back with a heavy thud. Malcolm opened his mouth to gasp for air, and when he did, Perry hooked each side of his mouth with a pinky, pulling so had that the man actually began to bleed from the left corner. As an added touch, he pulled upward, contorting the face into a hideous smile. At the same time, he gouged at each of the man’s eyes with his forefingers while pressing his temples with crushing force.

  The combined effect of what were essentially three separate attacks was a pain more excruciating than anything Malcolm had ever endured, including the mental torture of seeing the man he loved flayed alive. His screams were difficult to listen to, and after almost a full minute, he asked, “Care to tell my friend what he needs to know?”

  Of course with Perry’s fingers distorting Malcolm’s mouth, his response wasn’t very well enunciated, but the three men had no trouble understanding him. “Guck ooo!”

  “Just rude,” the Velvet Glove said. Then, “Perry, do it again.”

  “I honestly don’t know if he’s going to talk, VG.”

  “Oh, I don’t care about that. I just want to see you do it.”

  “I have a better idea. Burke, come on back.”

  Burke’s eyes widened. He was still unsure about all of this. Part of him was thinking he should just kill the psychopath who had orchestrated this demonstration and run for it. To hell with him, and to hell with Perry and his “way.” But he’d passed into a state of confusion that made that choice seem… not wholly the right one. He looked at Perry, who had released Malcolm’s face and was beckoning him over. He stepped over the prone man, straddling his body.

  “You’ve gotta sit down on his back. Hard. Whether he wants to or not, he’ll open his mouth. When he does, you hook the sides good with your pinkies.” Burke did as he was instructed, and indeed Malcolm again opened his mouth to gasp for the air that Burke’s landing had pushed out. He hooked the mouth.

  “Good! Now poke his fucking eyes with your pointers and drive your thumbs into his temples.”

  Again, Burke followed Perry’s directions, but the result, while significant, was not as pronounced as when Perry had administered the f
ace torture. Perry bent and looked closely at the placement of Burke’s fingers and adjusted the positioning of his thumbs a little. Even then, Perry could see that Burke wasn’t really applying the proper amount of pressure. He now moved his mouth to Burke’s ear.

  “I think this was the guy who pushed Venus off the cliff.”

  Instantly, Burke’s expression changed until his face was almost unrecognizable. Instantly, the man began screaming with an intensity that made his previous outburst seem timid.

  “Tell him what he wants to know, or I will make you look like your boyfriend, only all at once and with nothing to stem the bleeding!” Burke shouted.

  When the man only continued to scream, offering no information, Burke torqued harder, and when he still refused to talk, he began smashing his head on the rough pavement. After five such blows, Perry said simply, “Burke.”

  Burke smashed the head twice more, and Perry shouted, “Burke! I think he’s dead. You can stop.”

  Burke jumped to his feet and whirled on his friend. His face was still a mask of dark hatred, and Perry suddenly felt a little tweak of fear. “No! You fucking stop!” he shouted, taking a step in his friend’s direction.

  “Okay, man! Okay!” Perry said, holding up his hands in surrender.

  Burke’s eyes seemed lose their blazing fire and the muscles of his face relaxed until he looked like himself again.

  From the right of them, they heard the Velvet Glove say, “Well, so much for getting any information from him!” They turned to see him pull a straight razor from his pocket and quickly draw it across Daryl’s throat. Unlike with the cauterizing knife, there was blood. Plenty of blood.

  “I’d be very angry with you, James Jr. Very angry indeed. IF – if I hadn’t just witnessed the most beautiful thing ever. Perry, you must teach me your technique.”

  “Sure,” Perry replied.

  “Alright!” Burke shouted suddenly, startling the other men. “Alright,” he repeated at a normal volume. “I’ll become the Wolf’s latest criminal. And I’ll do it the way you tell me. Because I know you’re full of shit about that being the guy who killed Lyndsey. First of all, she’s not dead…”