Jack Du Brul - Charon's landing

Finley flared a match off his thumbnail, and as it burned toward his fingers, he calmly pulled a pack of generic cigarettes from a suit coat pocket and torched one before speaking. His voice was pure Deep South, garbled by a family tree without enough branches. “Ah donnit think you’d a wanted ta wait ta hear what Ah got to say.”

Ever since Mercer had called him requesting information about tankers in the Gulf of Alaska and most specifically Petromax Oil vessels, Dave Saulman had been hooked, sensing one of those challenges that Mercer was famous for stumbling into. At his own expense, Saulman sent his best investigator, Bud Finley, to Petromax’s main offices in Delaware and then to Louisiana, where Southern Coasting and Lightering had established their headquarters.

While they’d known each other for years, Mercer never failed to fascinate Dave Saulman. He could produce the easy solution to a complex problem, or find the obscure pattern buried in a simple issue. Mercer’s instincts were uncanny. Saulman was well aware that when Mercer called for a favor, it was just the beginning of something a lot more intricate.

So when he’d called a few days ago asking about vessels in the Gulf of Alaska, Saulman knew that there would be much more buried under such an easily answered question. If there was something dangerous behind the Petromax Arctica ’s delayed arrival at the port of Valdez, an investigator of Finley’s expertise would find it. And while Saulman himself had casually asked around about the strange provisions of the sale of the Petromax fleet to Southern Coasting and Lightering with little result, he was confident that Finley would uncover the real truth behind the deal.

Saulman hadn’t expected Finley until late that evening at the earliest; the man had had only about forty-eight hours to gather information. He couldn’t imagine Finley getting anything out of a slick corporation like Petromax, let alone the shadowy SC amp;L, so quickly. None of Saulman’s contacts, even when pressed, could tell him anything more than SC amp;L had themselves been bought recently by an unknown party. Saulman was appalled that anyone could move within the labyrinthine but somewhat closed world of maritime commerce without his knowledge.

“Ever heard of a Arab named Hasaan bin-Rufti?” Finley invited.

Twenty minutes later, after having heard the full story from Finley, Dave Saulman was on the phone with Mercer’s answering machine. “You know who this is. Give me a call ASAP or sooner. Finding that the Petromax Arctica was late for her latest run is only the tip of the iceberg. Call me at home. After what I’ve heard this morning, I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

The hospital lobby was a strange combination of institutional coldness and the grief of those forced to wait within it. Families clustered in tight enclaves of nervous expectancy and wailing. Amid the sanitized tiled walls and threadbare carpet paced by innumerable feet, Lady Millicent Gray cut a striking figure. Her long legs, mostly hidden beneath a loose-fitting linen dress, slid with an easy grace, the magnificent cinnamon mass of her hair flamed like a beacon. Her face, beautiful even at this early hour, with only subtle traces of makeup to mask the more obvious signs of the previous night’s sexual excesses, radiated the right trace of God-given confidence and royally appointed favor. Heads that until a moment before were bowed with grief came up and regarded her openly, their pain forgotten if only for the instant of her passage.

If asked later, none of the forty or so people who saw her stride through the lobby’s double glass doors would have remembered the figure who walked with her, an Arab woman fully covered and veiled as was proper for the more conservative sects of Islam.

At the hospital’s security desk, Millicent spoke to the figure at her elbow out of the corner of her mouth. “I hope you know, Trevor, that I want to wear that outfit when we’re finished here and I want you to ravage me like some Barbary pirate.”

“Are you kidding?” Trevor James-Price quipped quietly. “I may never give it up. I know why women wear skirts now. My God, the breeze blowing up to my bollocks feels wonderful. The old clappers have never known such freedom.”

“God, you’re incorrigible.” Millie Gray smiled.

The security guard at the duty nurses’ station didn’t question Millicent about her connection to Khalid Khuddari or why she was here. He could barely tear his eyes away from her breasts long enough to notice she wasn’t even alone. He tripped over his tongue telling her that Khalid had a private room on the fourth floor. Millicent Gray and the disguised Trevor James-Price veered toward the elevators, both of them suppressing the desire to hold hands. Lord Harold Gray would be back from his African hunt in fifteen days, and any second of their affair they squandered would never be recovered.

Five minutes after Trevor and Millie stepped onto the elevator, an intense young Kurd walked into the lobby. The lump bulging out the left breast pocket of his khaki overcoat was a folding cellular phone. The lump at the right was a silenced Sig Sauer P220.

Tariq had met him in the parking garage in front of the massive hospital and told him Khalid’s room number, having learned it last night after a lengthy reconnoiter. The Kurd had exactly twenty minutes to reach Khuddari, kill him, and make his way back to the parking garage where Tariq waited to drive them away. The young man paused in the lobby, squandering five of his minutes trying to steel his courage. Security was lax, but there were two burly guards at their station, talking easily with reporters who were waiting to get a statement from the unknown victim four floors above.

The gunman decided that now was his time to strike. If he was somehow caught, he knew he would take his own life, redeeming himself for the failure yesterday. His martyrdom would be secured. The silencer attached to the big automatic had never been used; it would work at optimum efficiency. The shot would be undetectable from more than a couple of yards from Khuddari’s room. The guards didn’t even glance in his direction as the gunman headed for the multiple banks of elevators.

Khalid Khuddari had been awake for nearly two hours, pain insidiously bringing him out of his drug-induced sleep. The scabs on his back felt hot even through the layers of gauze protecting them, and they itched fiercely. Every time he blinked, the delicate muscles around his eyes pulled against the raw wounds on his face, bringing fresh tears streaming down his cheeks. And when the tears stung the cuts, it was quite literally adding salt to a wound.

The thought made him chuckle painfully.

“You can’t be that hurt if you can manage to laugh at this ungodly hour.”

Khalid looked across the room. He barely remembered Millicent Gray, but he knew the voice from under the veils. He hadn’t heard them enter. Trevor James-Price pulled the black veil of the chador from around his head, his fine hair dancing with the motion before falling naturally over his boyish face. Despite his cocksure smile, there was true concern behind his bluer-than-blue eyes. “God, Khalid, you look terrible, even for a wog.”

“You have no idea.”

“I won’t be pedestrian and ask you how you feel. And since I talked to that obtuse doctor last night and read the papers this morning, I don’t need to ask what happened either. All I need to know is why you wanted me here and why this outrageous getup? By the way, do you know that security here is an absolute joke?”

“Not surprising. No one knows who I am, and I want to keep it that way until after I’m gone.” Slowly, like an old man near death, Khalid struggled into a sitting position, each movement deepening the grimace on his face. By the time he got his feet dangling over the edge of the high hospital bed, he was out of breath and sweating freely.