David Dun - Overfall

Devan was deliberate in everything, and that came to include the preparation of his poisons. What he lacked in experience he made up for in study and contemplation. After watching the old graybeard Dubroc for days, it became obvious that the man liked his pint of whiskey every afternoon, which by evening left him drunk. When Dubroc went home at night, he usually meandered down the sidewalk swaying and jolly, occasionally finding support on lampposts or in doorways. It also became apparent that the man had a sweet tooth, a love of tarts from the local bakery. It took two weeks of careful work for Gaudet to learn to bake such a tart. Even young he had been patient. It was a simple matter to grind the belladonna root fine and to fill a cherry confection with enough to kill a large dog. He doubled that amount.

To avoid any suspicion whatsoever, he baked a tart at the home of a vacationing acquaintance thirty miles distant on a day he knew that the old man would appear at his office above the Dubroc laundry. While the old man was tottering about his chores in the late afternoon, Gaudet slipped into his office and put the tart on the desk atop a piece of bakery tissue. Fascinated, Gaudet remained in the area but heard nothing. A couple of days later Gaudet read the press account. The man was out in front of his laundry unable to speak, reeling about, clutching and unclutching his hands as if kneading unseen bread. When someone grabbed him and called an ambulance, the old fellow was bending at the waist, doubled over, and turning very red at the ears.

Gaudet found the story entirely to his liking.

Since then, during a lifetime of self-development, experimentation, and wet work, Devan had become a master of the accident. He did not shoot, strangle, or stab a victim. Instead he created elaborate tragedies. It was as if he were writing screenplays, and each act of creation left him with a sense of satisfaction he had found nowhere else. Recently, though, he had noticed a yearning to watch his victims die, to kill them directly, and he had decided to make some effort toward that end.

Still, indirect killing held his primary interest, and the range of delivery methods, from gas explosions to neurotoxins, was surprisingly broad. Through Benoit and her work with Jacques in Kuching, Gaudet had even acquired monkey viruses that were almost immediately lethal to humans.

It was a wonder, he thought, that he had found a job that so nurtured his creativity.

Once in the taxi, Gaudet called Trotsky for the final time. “Do we know where they are going?”

“Seaplane to Vancouver. We’re guessing private jet out of there to the States.”

“Guessing does me no good.”

“Anna lives in Manhattan. Just to the west of Central Park. I have the address.”

“Have you got people there?”

“Soon. Chellis’s group has just found us an apartment across the street. We’ll have to lease it for a full year.”

“Do it. Surveillance?”

“When we get in the apartment. The normal audio equipment should work fine.”

“Does Anna Wade have other houses?”

“At least one in Hollywood Hills and a ranch in Wyoming.”

“Americans… Get all three places covered but focus on Manhattan if that’s her primary home.”

“It will take a lot more people.”

“Then get a lot more people. We’re getting paid for it.”

October in Borneo ushers in the rainy season following what is almost always a dry September. But this October, now nearly ended, one would never have guessed it was the start of the monsoons, for it had not yet rained. The creeks were a trickle, water was being rationed, the ground was gray and cracking, people were grumbling, plants were dying, and animals were crowding slimy waterholes.

Samir wished for something more effective than Valium. Before his face tropical fish swam in a large tank. They floated and moved in rhythmic muscular ripples, ordered symphonies in motion. He watched the fish only because he had heard that they were found in waiting rooms where their effect was touted as calming.

Perhaps they were helping. He could not be sure. His mind was like a curtained room, round and full with secret fears, massing just out of his sight. He found that if he didn’t keep his eyes on the fish, they cast furtively about. At times his body shook as if he were cold, and then out of sheer weariness it would stop. Usually at those moments he slept.

He played a strange mental game, forcing himself to remember what he used to be like, trying to pretend to be the man he once was and to make decisions he once would have made. Frequently he asked Fawd what he might have done before, just days ago, and Fawd tried to conjure the right memory of his boss in full command. Fawd had given him a shot of Thorazine and he was waiting, hoping for some results.

Samir remained determined to break into the laboratory, but it was hard to maintain inertia in the face of his anxiety. Just this morning, while shaving and making a giant O with his mouth, Samir had caught himself wondering if he was still Samir Aziz. DuShane Chellis had done something to him, to his mind. Samir knew that Chellis had gone to a great effort to gas him in the lockout chamber. He also knew Chellis was lying about the entire incident, but he had no idea concerning Chellis’s reasons, except that it probably related to the Mossad visit and the new technology Colonel Schenkel had hinted at when he was holding a gun in his face.

He needed to know the truth.

Fawd had spoken on his behalf with Chellis, but the man had only smiled an insolent smile and offered his sympathy for Samir’s “anxiety attacks.” Before leaving for Paris, he had offered to have Samir seen by a distinguished neurologist in France. It would be a cold day in hell before Samir put his life in the hands of DuShane Chellis. He also recommended a masseuse, but Samir would have none of it.

The man was a strange kind of Frenchman. Chellis’s grandparents on his father’s side had emigrated to the United States, but had kept their French ways and their French language. Chellis himself was born an American, educated in American schools, and attended the first two years of a university in the United States, but finished in France. His education in France ultimately turned into citizenship. As far as Samir was concerned, the man thought like an American, lived and spoke like a Frenchman.

Thanks to his hookup with Chellis, Samir had become a force in the arms industry-a man with a lot to lose. His company was a major presence at the Paris Air Show, the Abu Dabai International Defense Exhibition, the Singapore Marine Arms Show, and other lesser shows. In the spacious halls of IDEX 2002, Samir could offer just about anything military, from boots to bombs, ready-to-eat meals, fighter jets, and helicopter gunships. He had a very popular air defense antitank system, and was even trading in medium-range missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads. It was up to the buyer to supply the nuke.

It was Samir’s relationship with Chellis and their mutual projects that had propelled his net worth to more than five hundred million Eurodollars and the Frenchman’s to more than three billion. Their secret joint venture continued to use medical technology, computer software, and hardware in military applications, but the Grace Technologies name was on nothing. The parts made a circuitous journey to a South American medical supply manufacturer, and from there through many distributors (all paid a small portion for keeping their mouths shut) back to Samir, and then on to China and other interested nations and organizations.

Chellis’s association with Devan Gaudet was a new and troubling development for Samir.

Recently, a fellow arms dealer had exchanged a $100-million shipment of surplus Soviet weapons for trunks full of U.S. stocks and bearer bonds. When the bearer bonds disappeared without a trace and the tons of merchandise with them, rumor had it that Gaudet had killed the dealer and several of his men while making it appear the work of Samir Aziz. Most people considered Gaudet a myth; Samir knew better.