Shudder (29 page)

Natalie also stood up and took Eberstark's hand. The shallow fool now had suddenly turned into a savior. “Thank you. Thank you very much, Mister Eberstark,” she said with feeling. “You will not regret helping us.”

Eberstark smiled deprecatingly. “Let's just call this an investment from my side.”

“You are certain that Natalie will be safe here?” Dave asked.

“Completely,” answered Eberstark, “completely. Since I try to be safe from, um, accidents, Natalie will also be safe with me. When you come up with something—tell me. Perhaps I can use my connections to help things happen.”

* * * *

Twenty minutes later the black Mercedes reached the other side of the city center. Anton and Dave sat in the back seat.

Dave tried to take a quick nap but just sat there with his eyes closed.

Anton looked at the people, cars and buildings flashing by. He knew that when they get to the safe house they will have to concentrate on the case. So for now, he allowed himself to concentrate on the quiet fatherly joy of having such a splendid daughter.

The driver's phone rang. He answered without taking his hands off the wheel. “Yes, Denis here. I see. All right, Mister Eberstark.” He hit the brakes and parked the car on the nearest pavement, in front of a boutique.

Dave opened his eyes with a start. A fashionable woman of forty plus glared at them from behind the glass door of the boutique, but no one took notice of her.

Denis turned around and handed his cell phone to Anton. “Mister Eberstark, Sir.”

His heart sinking, Anton took the phone, “Yes,” he said. “What? How? Jesus. All right. We are coming over.” He handed the phone back to the driver, “We're going back to the party HQ. As quickly as we can.”

“Righto,” answered the impassive driver and expertly inserted the car back into the traffic making an illegal U-turn.

“What's the matter?” Dave asked with fists clenched, nails biting into his palms.

“It's Natalie,” Anton said. “She's been kidnapped.”

Dave had never seen the albino's face like this. Anton was not afraid. Anton was angry. Very angry. There was murder in his eyes.

Even after the attack in his home, the intellectual albino had taken things in his stride. Dave didn't envy the people Anton was going after.

“We'll get her back, man, and we'll get the bastards,” he said looking into Anton's eyes. Anton nodded, and leaned forward. “Denis, can I use your phone again?”

Then he took out the piece of paper with the phone numbers from his jeans, and dialed a number. “Deus? This is Anton. Yes. Long story. I need your help. Yes. Natalie has been kidnapped. Yes. Thank you. I'll call you again when I know more. Bye.”

* * * *

When they returned to the National Patriots office, Anton took over. He brushed aside the apologies of the inefficient part leader, and heard out a distraught Kurt, who went out with Natalie for some chocolate, and saw her bundled into a black Shanghai Hummer.

Anton made Dave upload the info from his memory stick into Eberstark's computer and mark the centers of the swastikas again.

The police arrived and took Eberstark's and Kurt's statements, while Anton and Dave were holed up in Eberstark's office.

“It's the seventh building. This season it will be the seventh building,” Anton said. Dave agreed. This is where the center of the spinning swavastika fell according to the chronology of the maps.

Their only hope was that the unknown enemies would keep to their established pattern of behavior.

In addition, that they had decoded that pattern correctly.

Anton dialed a number on Eberstark's phone, “Hi, Anton again. Yes. Yes, sorry, you'll have to get another number after this. All right, we think we know the building. It's Crescent Road twenty-nine. Do you want us to mail you the picture? Okay, a second.”

Anton made a gesture at Dave. Dave gave him a piece of paper and a pencil. Anton scribbled down Deus' email address, “Okay. When? Two hours? You're the best. Okay, bye.”

Dave looked at Anton expectantly.

“Here.” The albino pushed the paper with the email at Dave. “Send the swavastika picture to this address. In two hours Deus will arrive. Then we go get our girl back.” He bared his teeth. “Rip out the bastards' hearts in the process.”

Dave looked at his friend and barely recognized him. A deeply buried primitive joy was awakening inside him as well. He last felt it in Yemen when he and his platoon holed up the insurgents in an abandoned administrative building.

He smiled.

He didn't know how or when, but he felt with his whole being that the grim reaper would soon reap again. Just like a decade ago, he would be the grim reaper's agent.

Anton had smoked half a cigarette in the National Patriot HQ lobby, when the doors opened, and a lean, fit looking man his age swaggered in with an air of vague detachment.

He was dressed in a perfectly fitting gray suit, with a thin black tie with no designs, his shoes were simple, brown and well shined. His raven black hair was brushed back and just reached the tips of his ears.

When he pulled one hand out of his pocket and took off his shades, blue mocking eyes were revealed. Dave watched as the man strolled over to Anton and gave a small stiff bow, “Mister Martorini.”

“Mister Machini,” answered Anton and then hugged the man strongly. After five seconds, he let him go and turned to Dave. “This is Deus Machini, my old friend. We are from the same tribe.”

“Quite,” said Deus. “A little plastic surgery, if you're wondering, Dave, I decided to go for the tanned blue eyed brunette look. A slight Celtic touch.” He patted Anton's shoulder, “Tony here is a traditionalist, sticks with what nature gave him.”

Slightly taken aback, Dave outstretched his hand. Machini's grip was firm and warm. “Right,” Deus said. “Off we go.”

Off they went—out of the lobby and into the drizzle outside. They followed Anton's tribe brother into his sparkling Guangzhou Chrysler.

Deus went into the driver's seat, Anton sat near him and a still slightly bewildered Dave took his place in the back. There was just enough space for him among all the boxes and guns. Deus turned the ignition.

The car swerved with an effortless grace among the traffic, while Deus briefed the two friends, “In the back seat you see guns, Dave.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“The three short machine guns are the Bulgarian-Israel Peperuda, using armor piercing bullets. Goes right through protective vests as well as more serious body armor. Only a modern tank can stop these bullets.”

The car caught the last possible second of the yellow light and sped across an intersection.

“In the box by your side you will find three hand guns,” continued Deus, “Japanese upgrades of the good old Luger. Personnel stopping bullets. If we have to shoot at people but have to make sure the bullets don't penetrate them and hit someone else.”

“Grenades?” asked Anton.

“In the box below Dave's legs.”

Dave looked at the box below his legs. On its lid there was a picture of a Lego helicopter.

“We have stun grenades and anti-tank grenades—should the worst come to the worst,” Deus said. “Open the glove compartment, Tony.”

Anton did as he was told and exclaimed, “Knives.”

“Yes indeed, the best German knives on the market. Will cut through anything, including barbed wire.”

Dave looked at the back of the driver's head. Deus sounded like a man who knew his weapons. He felt the winds of fate subtly changing. They were now blowing into their direction.

“Back in the trunk are our bulletproof vests.” Deus' right hand disappeared into his coat pocket and reappeared with two pills, “Here, take these now.”

“What are those?” Dave asked, taking his pill with his fingers.

“Special issue Cobra Delta personnel enhancers.”

“You mean speed?” asked Anton.

“Not only. It will focus the thoughts without hampering the reasoning faculties, will amplify the senses, reduce all anxiety to controllable levels, deaden pain receptors, and will up the body's strength to a two to one ratio.”

Anton whistled in appreciation, “When's the crash?”

“In two days. Recuperation takes two weeks.”

“Right, thanks,” Anton popped the pill into his mouth. Dave did the same.

The car swerved again and exited the main stream of the traffic and soon reached an alley between the sides of an office building and a multiplex. Deus parked the car near some huge rusting rubbish containers. Behind them cars and busses bustled, but in this alley they were alone.

“Right,” Deus said and jumped out of the car. The others followed suit. He opened the trunk and gave them their vests and strapped his own one on. Then they geared up with the supplies from the car's insides.

Grenades, machine guns, pistols, and knives.

Deus produced from his pocket something which looked like a retro cell phone and waved it at them. “You've heard of project Magneto, no doubt,” he said. Both Anton and Dave shook their heads.

“Well, in short, you know that if you blow up a nuclear bomb in the sky, all the electric appliances below it die.”

Dave didn't know this.

“Yes, I know,” Anton said.

“Well, this is a valuable thing, to burn out the enemy's electric appliances, makes them blind and helpless. You can't destroy and contaminate a whole city just to achieve this. These days we have small compact Ten-Magneto e-missiles, which take out only the electricity of half a block, with negligible radiation.”

“How negligible?” asked Anton.

“About like going through thirty consecutive airport screenings.”

“All right then.”

Deus flicked open the flap on his remote control and pressed his thumb into the print-reader. The control lit up and gave a soft buzz. Deus' thumb quickly punched in a sequence of numbers on the little keyboard.

Then he looked at Anton and Dave, and with a leisurely grin, and an air of finality, pressed deliberately the big green button.

“What happens now?” Dave asked and was surprised at the enthusiasm in his voice. The little Cobra Delta pill was working already. He felt totally calm, aware, confident, and strong.

Deus looked at his expensive looking wrist watch, “In exactly seven minutes and forty seconds a rocket will explode above the building behind the corner of this mall. The building which you showed me on your map. The rocket will burn out all electric appliances in this block. Then we rush them and kill everyone very quickly.”

Anton grinned and patted Machini's back. “Your bosses will have your head for this, won't they?” he asked.

“Probably, quite probably,” answered Deus placidly.

“Thank you, Deus, really, thank you.”

“Save the thanks for later, time for a last inventory check. Tony, Dave, you got your knives?”

“Check.”

“The pistols?”

“Check.”

“Grenades?”

“Check.”

“I can see your machine guns, so that's okay. Do you both know how to use them?”

“Yes,” Dave said enthusiastically.

“Maybe,” Anton said.

“Right, let me show you,” said Deus and went over to him.

“How much time left?” asked Dave.

Deus looked at his watch. “Five minutes, thirty-four seconds.”

Natalie lay on the floor, bound but not gagged. She was naked except for a leather belt on her waist to both sides of which her wrists were chained. Her feet were tied together with black adhesive tape.

She tried to suppress the impulse to shiver but failed. The cement floor on which she lay was quite cold. She was in some sort of a basement.

It was vast, like a hangar or a warehouse, and illuminated by torches, of all things. Torches and candles. The torches hung from the walls and the thick red candles were scattered seemingly without pattern all over the floor. The closest candle was a yard from her head.

There were many men inside the basement with her. She counted them twice. Sixteen. Half of them were over fifty, half of them were around thirty or below. They were dressed in white robes and held wooden staffs.

These men in white had now bunched together about twenty yards away and were muttering. One of the younger ones walked over to her and crouched by her head. He was grinning in a very disturbing manner.

“Hello, bitch,” he said with a quivering voice. “We meet again.”

His face was flushed. His features were familiar. Natalie recognized him—he was that clown with the temp-freeze, who had tried to pick her up in the Faceoff bar. She had a good memory for faces.

As he sat crouching, Natalie saw perfectly well that he was naked under the robe and had a hard-on. No doubt, he wanted her to see it.

“Hello, shit,” she answered.

The young man laughed out loud and stood up, “You're lucky I shouldn't damage you before the ceremony. You've given us so much trouble, you and your stupid pals. You know,” he walked over and pressed his foot on Natalie's face.

She didn't react.

Disappointed, he applied a little more pressure, and then took the foot off. “You know,” he said again, “we shouldn't really be doing this now. We should wait for the winter. But for you, bitch, we are making an exception.”

“Maybe you should all just kill yourself?” Natalie volunteered.

The man walked away and rejoined his robed buddies. They started chanting something.

Natalie strained to hear, but all she could make out was something like ‘
Semu
', or ‘
Ksemu
'.

She wanted to cry, not so much out of fear, but rather out of frustration. Her Dad had warned her and yet she was caught so easily. A stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl. She had actually believed that Eberstark actually knew what he was doing. Because it was easier to believe that.

Now she was tied up in the basement of some freaks playing at a cult.

She saw the men spread out a little. Without much warning, one of them swayed and groaned.

Another one also started swaying but the first one yelled so he stopped his attempts and gave the yeller precedence.

The man who first entered his trance yelled some more and then babbled gibberish. Perhaps he spoke in tongues. He picked up the folds of his robe and suddenly let out a jet of urine.

Immediately the other man fell to their knees and scrambled to get closer to the fountain. The gibbering man pissed a little on everyone's face and this time he had fallen back on some sort of ritual routine. Natalie heard him repeat in a deep voice something like:

“
Wash away the pretense

Wash away the fear

Wash away the human mask

Wash away the weakness

The sacred bond

The sacred men

The puny animal

The sacred bond
”

So it went. Perhaps he was rapping, improvising at the moment or perhaps reciting some sacred text.

The fountain of urine faltered, sputtered, and dried up. The men turned their glistening, drenched faces to Natalie.

There was something in the way they looked at her.

Ecstatically and at the same time, very, very malevolently.

The young man left the group again and went to a shadowy corner and then came back with a big transparent plastic bag. Then everyone shuffled solemnly over to Natalie and surrounded her in a circle.

“Your turn to die,” the young man said and waved the huge bag in his hand.

“How about a last cigarette?” Natalie said.

The man spat in her face. Then another one. Then another one. A part of the ritual, no doubt.

Then two men took hold of Natalie and picked her up, seemingly oblivious to her squirming and yelling. Another two were holding open the plastic bag. She was placed inside it and then they sealed it.

She looked at their hazy figures through the plastic walls of the bag.

I probably have a minute of air
, she thought.

She tried to grab hold of the plastic bag with her teeth and make a rent. It didn't work. She tried to rip it with her knees or elbows. It clung to her body. In fact it clung to her body more and more with every passing moment.

She had already almost used up the air inside. She squirmed and yelled with a weaker voice.

As the transparent bundle in the middle of the circle moved and mewed, the men poked it with the points of their staffs.

“Ksemu be born again. Ksemu be born again.”

Natalie felt the ceaseless impacts of the wooden staffs on her body, but they didn't have her attention. The plastic was now clinging to her face and trying to get inside her mouth as she tried to take a breath of air that wasn't there.

Something like distant thunder rumbled far away.