Michael Savage - Abuse of Power

As she waited for the train to slow, he casually got to his feet behind her-just another passenger anxious to get home.

The train pulled into the station, its brakes hissing, then finally eased to a stop and opened its doors.

The woman and three other passengers stepped through to the platform and Jack followed, moving with the group toward a flight of stairs, but lagging behind slightly to put some distance between them.

A few minutes later he was outside the station and on the street, the woman several yards ahead of him, walking through an empty car park toward a narrow road flanked by blocky brick factory buildings the color of sandalwood.

The road was dimly lit and sparsely populated, and judging by the graffiti Jack saw scrawled across a Wholesale Fabrics building to his left, it was one of the poorest of East London neighborhoods.

The only thing he knew about Whitechapel were stories of Jack the Ripper, who had used this area as his hunting ground over a three-year period in the late nineteenth century. The streets the Ripper had roamed were very different than these, but you couldn’t walk along here without thinking about his brutal butchery and the hysteria surrounding it.

The woman didn’t seem bothered, however. She kept moving at a steady pace until she reached the end of the block and turned left.

Jack hurried to catch up, slowing again as he made the turn and saw her about forty yards ahead. She moved past a darkened dry cleaning store, then a low wall-which he soon discovered offered a view of the train tracks-then crossed to her right at the intersection and turned down Whitechapel Road.

Again he sped up. He wasn’t in the habit of stalking women, but that’s exactly what he was doing right now.

He thought of Jack the Ripper again and shuddered.

When he finally did turn the corner, she walked briskly past a row of closed shops-a kebab house, a stereo store, a real estate agency Near the middle of the block she took a sharp left, moving into an alleyway. Jack crossed to her side of the street, but again he held back. He knew that stepping into that alley might alert her to the fact that she was being followed, and he didn’t want to tip his hand. Or find her waiting for him with a. 45.

Waiting what he hoped was enough time, he continued toward the alley and made the turn. It was short and narrow and came to a dead end at a graffiti-scarred wall.

The woman was nowhere in sight.

Where the hell has she gone?

In the wall to his right was a dilapidated metal door marked EXIT ONLY. Jack moved to it, checked the knob.

Unlocked.

He stood there a moment, thinking about what he might be getting himself into, wishing he had his. 357.

Well, you don’t, he thought. How badly do you want more pieces of the puzzle?

He took a calming breath then pulled the door open.

When he got inside he heard music. The steady thump-thump-thump of a bass drum. A short set of cement steps led downward toward a narrow hallway, lit by a flickering fluorescent light.

Jack navigated the steps and headed toward the end of the hall, its walls and ceiling adorned with enough Day-Glo graffiti to trigger an epileptic seizure. There was an adjoining hallway to the right. He took it.

At the far end was another metal door, a large skinhead in a muscle shirt sitting on a wooden stool next to it, his beefy face expressionless. He was the kind of “soccer thug” whose ancestors had exploited the world and built Britain. Now the government hated and suppressed his breed, permitting Muslim thuggery to reign. A nation that attacked itself this way was a nation with a political autoimmune disease.

The skinhead’s face didn’t change as Jack approached. He merely extended a hand, palm up, and said, “Twenty quid.”

“Did a woman just go in here? Beautiful. Dark hair.”

“Twenty quid or sod off,” the guy told him.

Jack took a twenty-pound note from his jacket pocket and handed it to him. The guy inspected it in the dim light then got off his stool, stuffed the bill into his back pocket, and wordlessly reached for the doorknob.

“Take your pick,” he said.

As the door swung open, Jack was accosted by a wall of sound, the music slamming into him like a living force, so loud that his eardrums immediately began to throb in pain.

Beyond the doorway was a small brick warehouse filled with flashing lights and writhing bodies, moving to the beat of the music. Most of the dancers wore typical street clothes, but some of the woman had skirts so short with necklines so low they flirted with public indecency.

Not that Jack was complaining.

It was a good old-fashioned rave, and for a moment he wondered if he’d made a mistake. Surely this couldn’t be where the woman had gone-no good Muslim girl would be caught dead in a place like this.

But then, based on what he’d seen so far, Jack wasn’t entirely sure she was a good Muslim girl. And what was the alternative? There was no place else for her to have gone.

Jack moved inside, pushed past a couple in a clinch, then stepped onto the main floor and scanned the sea of bobbing heads for any sign of her. He was too jet-lagged to make more than a poor stab at dancing, doing only as much as it took to blend in. The strobe lights didn’t help much, and after a full minute of searching, he was convinced he’d lost her.

Had he missed something in the alleyway? Another door, maybe?

His question was answered a moment later. At the far side of the warehouse, on a raised platform that looked like an old loading dock, the woman emerged from a doorway. A cardboard sign marked TOILETS hung above it.

No longer wearing the shapeless dress she’d worn at al-Fida’s flat, she now sported clothes that could easily have been hiding beneath that dress-a dark pullover sweater and a pair of blue jeans. He had been right about the woman. Her body was spectacular.

She eased up to a rail along the edge of the loading platform and looked down at the dance floor. It was hard to see her face clearly in the intermittent light, but judging from the way she carried herself-no bobbing head, no shake of the shoulders to match the beat-Jack figured she had as much interest being in this place as he did.

She’d been standing there for less than a minute when a slender, curly-headed white guy sidled up next to her and smiled, making his best play.

Who could blame him? She was a knockout. She was also way out of his league.

Jack watched them, thinking he was about to see the guy go down in flames. But to his surprise the woman leaned toward Curly and whispered something into his ear.

Did she know him?

“There’s a problem. We need to talk.”

Curly’s smile disappeared as he listened attentively. Then he nodded and whispered back, gesturing toward another hallway at the back of the warehouse.

When he was done, the woman gave him a dismissive push then shoved away from the rail without another word. Curly lost himself in the crowd. She headed toward that hallway.

Jack didn’t waste any time. Threading his way through the crowd of dancers, he moved in her direction, reaching the far edge of the dance floor just as she disappeared from sight. He glanced toward the loading platform to see if Curly was still there, but the guy was long gone.

Then someone grabbed Jack’s arm.

He spun around, expecting to see Curly, but was surprised to find an attractive blonde in a black bustier and fishnet stockings smiling at him. The bustier barely contained her, and her eyes had the glassy, faraway look of the perpetually stoned.

“Hey, luv, where you going? Let’s dance.”

“Some other time,” he said, and pulled his arm free.

This time it was Jeremiah that came to mind: “For my people are foolish, they know me not; they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.”