Jack Du Brul - Vulcan's forge

Kenji slipped the cord from around the corpse’s neck, revealing a razor-thin line of blood where the skin had parted under relentless pressure. He cleaned his garrote on Takamora’s suit coat, coiled the weapon, and slipped it into the pocket of his baggy black pants.

“I’m relieved that his bowels didn’t void,” Ohnishi remarked, sniffing delicately. “Feed the body to the dogs and return to me.”

Kenji returned from his gruesome task after nearly thirty minutes. Despite a change of clothing, Ohnishi noted that the stench of death still clung to his assistant, as always.

“It is done,” Kenji said.

“What is it?” Ohnishi asked, knowing something was bothering this man whom he considered a son. “Don’t let Takamora’s ambition upset you.”

“It is not his ambition that upset me. It is yours.”

“Don’t start that again, Kenji,” Ohnishi warned, but his assistant continued.

“I have followed your orders concerning this operation, but I do not agree with them. What you planned with Takamora was only a sideshow for our true aims, yet you treat it with your full attention. Our priority lies elsewhere. Takamora’s betrayal should be a sign to stop this foolish coup, which was meant as a contingency plan in the first place. It cannot succeed; you must realize that. And it puts into jeopardy what we are really working for.”

“Has our Russian friend so intimidated you, Kenji, that you no longer trust in me?”

“No, Ohnishi-San,” Kenji replied. “But we must first concentrate on our obligations to him.”

“Let me tell you something about our Russian ally. He will cross us just as quickly as we do him. We are merely tools to him. Our first loyalty must be with the people of Hawaii, not some white taskmaster bent on our control.”

“But we made promises…”

“They mean nothing now. Takamora’s ambition has changed everything. When I first wrote that letter declaring our independence, I knew that it would be sent whether Kerikov ordered it or not. What we are doing must proceed. Takamora’s betrayal has merely pushed up our deadline. I’m certain that the President is planning some sort of reprisal. That is why we must strike now. The coup can be successful without Takamora. We can control his people.”

Kenji was silent for a moment, his dark eyes downcast. “And the arms you spoke of?”

“I dealt directly with an old friend for those, an Egyptian named Suleiman el-aziz Suleiman.”

“And the mercenary army?”

“Suleiman is also arranging for them. Hard currency is a powerful tool in such matters. The mercenaries will augment Takamora’s National Guard troops — or replace them if they refuse to follow me.”

“I did not realize,” Kenji said dejectedly.

“You are like my son, but even a father must do things without his son’s awareness. It changes nothing between us, Kenji. Do not be hurt.”

“I am not.”

“Good,” Ohnishi said with a thin smile. “I wish to celebrate tonight. Are you in the mood?”

“Yes, of course,” Kenji answered the rhetorical question.

Ohnishi wheeled out from behind the desk and toward his bedroom on the top floor of the glass mansion. Once there, Kenji helped him undress and reclothe himself for bed. Kenji easily lifted his frail form into the wide four-poster, propping several pillows behind his back. Ohnishi laid a withered hand on Kenji’s cheek and thanked him with a smile, his eyes shining as if in fever.

“You are like a son to me, you must know that.”

“I do,” Kenji replied, stroking the old hand gently. “Please allow me a few minutes to prepare.”

As Kenji strode from the room, Ohnishi turned to a control panel near his bed and pressed several buttons in quick succession. The electrochromic panels in the glass ceiling of his bedroom darkened, blocking out the rich tropical moonlight. Throughout the house, the walls and roof also darkened, enclosing the mansion in a blackened cocoon.

On the far wall, past the foot of the bed, heavy velvet drapes parted, revealing a two-way glass wall and a small bedroom beyond. A nude woman lay supine on the bedspread, her small breasts peaked with long erect nipples.

Because of his age, Takahiro Ohnishi could no longer enjoy intercourse, but his sexual drive had diminished little over the years. Rather than give in to his body’s inability to respond, he had devised a method of voyeurism that partly slaked his still healthy urges. He was incapable of erections let alone emission, but he could still enjoy the act in his own way.

He patiently waited for Kenji to make his entrance, enjoying the lithe body of the sleeping girl. When Kenji finally entered the room, his muscled body was bare and his arousal was plainly evident. He crossed to the sleeping woman — girl, really, since she was not yet fifteen — and woke her by rubbing his erection against her parted lips. She had been well schooled in her responses according to the script that Ohnishi had provided.

Pretending to be still asleep, she took Kenji into her mouth and began a gentle fellatio. Ohnishi pressed a button on the console and the sensitive microphones in the other room broadcast the subtle noises of the girl’s lips and mouth. She moved a hand up from her side and began massaging one of her nipples softly, quickly picking up the rhythm as if coming awake.

Ohnishi leaned forward in his bed as the Japanese girl’s eyes fluttered open and she began sucking in earnest. He could feel a slight tightening near his prostate muscles and smiled. Kenji reached down and toyed roughly with her other breast, and the speakers in Ohnishi’s bedroom sounded with her moans of building passion. Ohnishi resisted the temptation to touch himself, knowing he would be disappointed at his body’s lack of response.

Kenji spread the girl’s legs, revealing her still hairless mons. Slipping one thick finger into her body, he thrust through her virginity so that blood slicked his hand and her inner thighs. The girl winced but did not cry out. He crawled onto the bed and positioned her so Ohnishi would have the best possible view before he entered her.

He mounted her roughly, thrusting sharply into her still undeveloped pelvis. Despite the pain she must have felt, the girl writhed and moaned, clenching Kenji’s torso with her coltish legs and lifting her firm buttocks from the bed, arching her back higher and higher. Ohnishi could not resist the temptation; his hand snaked under his blankets to find himself semierect. He grasped it and began pumping in time with Kenji.

His erection lasted only a few moments and there was no emission, but it was more than he’d had in years. As soon as he lost it, he lost all interest in the performance still being played out behind the glass. He pressed the button to close the curtains and lay back on his bed. The sounds of Kenji’s lovemaking still filled the room. He made a mental note, as he settled into sleep, to use this girl again.

She had been in the room for only twenty-four hours, but already Jill felt as if she’d been imprisoned for a year. She had gone through the classic steps taken by nearly every person who is locked up against their will. First she had raged at her captors, screaming and pounding against the solid steel door that kept her from freedom. When she had exhausted herself, she spent the next several hours going over her cell in minute detail, exploring the cement block walls, the ceiling that was too far over her head to reach, the empty pegboard rack with the outlines of tools still painted on its brown glossy surface. The twenty-square-foot room smelled of fertilizer, old gasoline, and oil — Jill assumed it had once been a gardener’s supply shed.

After she’d paced her cell for another hour, Jill had finally settled on the concrete floor next to the dripping spigot. She’d watched dully as the tiny drops pooled, then snaked to the rusted drain in the middle of the room. Eventually she slept, her body overriding her mind’s racing questions.