Читать книгу Kingdom Come - Aarti Raman V - Страница 8

London

Midnight

January 30, 2008

He had to get out.

Krivi Iyer figured that as long as he had breath, bone, blood left he had to try and get out. That as long as he could still think, still plan, he should get out. He should get out before he snapped. And did something.

Unforgivable.

He ran rhythmically, his feet pounding the pavement. The rivers of sweat running down his back, soaking his body, already drying in the cold night air. He ran on, dreamlessly. Endlessly. There were no thoughts here. No need for thinking. No need for wondering. For what ifs. He didn’t have to be anything here. Not even himself: Krivi Iyer. Krivi didn’t want to be himself ever again.

His Nikes were well-worn, with the tread marks of a long time of usage. His grandmother would have called them scuffed and ruined. His socks were somewhere between the shade of white and pristine white that he tried to aim for when he remembered to do his laundry. The music playing on his mp3 player was pulse-pounding rock. The more noise filled his head, the less his head hurt.

It had been six months now. Six months to the day. And there were no words, no actions, nothing that meant anything to him anymore. They had told him, the price he had to pay for doing what he did: for doing it so well. No one knew, more than him, that what he did always had consequences.

He’d told this countless times to new recruits, to freshers who were cocky when they entered, with a heartless smile and dreams of glory and courage. They didn’t know what price they had to pay for all of it. For the glory, the courage and the dreams.

He dreamed of them sometimes.

The fallen. The ones who had gone away to a deep, dark, dreamless place. He didn’t believe in either heaven or hell. Sometimes he doubted if life or death held meaning for him. But he did believe, absolutely, in right and wrong. In truth. In justice. And in freedom. He believed in choice. He believed that we all got exactly what we wanted, because we chose it. Knowingly, unknowingly.

But Gemma hadn’t chosen anything.

Gemma had no need to pay for anything. Gemma had been bright and cheerful and happy. She’d brought light into his world when he didn’t think he could see anything except black. She’d made him see himself. She’d made him laugh at himself. Gemma had been everything to him. She’d been light and laughter. Sunshine and life. She’d made him see exactly what was missing in his life. What he’d never thought about. Missing her would kill him, he thought while mechanically streaking past the benches at Notting Hill Public Park.

Gemma would laugh no more.

His fear, his anger increased with every step. The dreams that he avoided when he ran, came back to haunt him virulently. And he dropped down on his knees in the middle of the pavement. The concrete grit digging into his skin, making little pores and sticking to his sweaty skin. Rock poured out of ears that should have bled at the appalling noise level. His shoulders were shaking at the abrupt loss of motion.

His hands were shaking too, when he pulled his cell phone out of his shorts pocket and looked uncomprehendingly at the terse text message. His mind was caught up in the past. It was still trapped in a moment where flash and fire and earth exploded. Where worlds stopped and worlds ended. It was caught in a frame of time when a bomb went off in a car and killed not one, not two, but four lives.

Krivi didn’t know how he was going to live with any of it. The ghosts. The fear. The guilt. The anger. The fear of anger. The fear of memories. Everything hurt right now. Even looking at a cell phone display. Sweat was pouring off his face so he could barely read the message.

Application accepted. Briefing in two days. Report to headquarters for further instructions.

A part of his mind that wasn’t wrapped in the hard kernel of grief, understood the words. Knew what to make of them. He hated that part of his mind. The part of his mind that was relief. That rejoiced at one word.

Escape.

Nearly four years later …

On the other side of the world, a man was watching the person who was torturing him play five finger fillet.

The game was simple.

You placed your palm on a flat surface, spread your fingers wide and then started moving the knife point in the spaces between the fingers. Slow, slow, fast, faster and then so fast your movements were an indistinct blur. And you did it without taking your eyes off your opponent.

The man, Raoul, watched the knife flash in a staccato burst that was a silver dizzy motion. Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut. The point flashed back and forth, back and forth until he felt physically sick.

Sick.

He wanted to throw up, but there was nothing inside of him to throw up. He looked at his side of the table, which was a disgusting mass of sick, saliva and blood. Raoul felt more bile rise up in his throat as he saw the mess.

“If you vomit again, I will make you eat it, Raoul,” his torturer said in a perfectly pleasant voice.

Raoul’s chest heaved as he tried to settle his nausea and escape out of the bonds he was tied in. He was only successful with the first.

The knife paused; the silence deafening.

“Good boy, Raoul,” the torturer approved. “Now if only you’d been a good boy yesterday and not blabbed with the pretty chica.”

“Madre Dio! She is nothing. She is a stripper. She will not talk, I promise. On my mother, I swear.”

His torturer smiled. A cold, killer’s smile. The knife point gleamed like a jewel as the torturer twisted the blade this way and that. A slow, concerted movement that was hypnotic in its grace.

“Your mother is dead, Raoul,” the torturer said softly. “You know that. So is Maria. You know that too.”

“Spare me then. Spare me, please!”

Raoul started babbling in a mixture of Portuguese and English. Prayers, incantations, invocations, beseechments. His tears mixing with the blood flowing from his busted eye. He was blind in one eye because of the force with which the torturer had heaved a rock paperweight at it.

But he could live with the blindness. He could live. Madre Dio la vida.

The torturer gave him a sharp look.

“I am bored.” It was a flat statement.

Raoul was still screaming obscenities when the knife struck, sure and true. Piercing the jugular. Blood and life poured out of Raoul. The canary who sang.

The terrorist was called The Woodpecker.

The terrorist’s specialty was bombs in public places. Signature and calling card rolled together in one burning mass of twisted metal and humanity.

The file on The Woodpecker was three inches thick, tying the terrorist to so many international bombings that the organization was getting worried now. No one person, no one terrorist was supposed to be such an efficient, soulless killer. Hold the fates of people in their hand so callously.

The man who was the terrorist’s father, the terrorist’s mentor, looked at his child’s file, filled with the exploits of a lifetime of terror and mercenary killing. He had encouraged, honed the skill, the spark, the madness that had led to the creation of this file.

The Woodpecker.

The bird that chipped and chipped away at the branch in a tree to make a nest for herself and her chicks.

The Woodpecker who never gave up.

The man shut the file closed and leaned back in his swivel chair. He looked out at the cloudless blue skies that denoted summer on the beach. And felt a weight around his heart, an organ he had forgotten existed. He tried to name the emotion that was weighing down his heart and identified it as … regret.

Tom Jones smiled; a regretful smile as the gears of his devious, devious mind started moving. He picked up a satellite phone and made a call and set in motion his plan. Things couldn’t be helped anymore.

They had to change. And change was always good. He had always believed so.