Russell Andrews - Hades

This time she remembered he spoke to Togo in Cantonese. He ignored her almost completely. "Tell me how it went with the FBI woman," and Togo had said that everything had gone well. That's when the man pulled out an American newspaper. He showed them the headline. It was all about the unattractive woman, the one that Ling had left to die with dignity. She saw nothing wrong with what the paper said, but the man said the woman had lived long enough to send a message. He told her what the paper did not reveal: that the woman had used her own blood to write words on her body. He told them the words-he said them in English, he did not translate-but they meant nothing to Ling. She did not know if Togo understood their meaning because he said nothing and did nothing. But according to the man, what the unattractive woman had communicated was not a good thing. It meant she knew more than she was supposed to know. What she had done could cause them problems. Severe problems.

As the man spoke, he grew angrier. He shoved the paper in front of Togo's face. Togo didn't flinch. His eyes never even shifted. And when the man said, "What happened?" Togo didn't answer. He still did not move.

The older man then moved to Ling. He said, "I know it was not him. He would not leave someone alive to do this. But to you it is a game we are playing. It has always been a game for you."

She wondered what he meant by the word "always." Had he known her for so long? Had he been watching her since she was young? She wondered if he was too old to desire her. She could not tell from his eyes. He did not let his eyes ever linger on her.

He walked back over to Togo, stood inches away from him, said, "Are you so weak that you let her play games?" Then he suddenly slapped Togo hard across the face. The noise reverberated in the spacious room but still Togo did not move or respond. "It is your fault," he said to Togo. "She may be playing a game, but you are the one who is supposed to be in control. You are the one we trust to understand the stakes."

For one moment, Ling thought that the man standing in front of them was going to kill Togo. Pull out a gun and put a bullet in his brain. She knew that even then Togo would say nothing, would never acknowledge that what had happened had been her fault. He loved her too much to ever betray her.

But the man did not shoot anyone. She realized he was not the type of man to use a gun. That's not the way he controlled people. Instead, he just turned his back on them and said, "What's done can't be undone. We must try to learn from it and move on." He faced Togo and pointed at the newspaper and said, "What did you learn from her?"

Now Togo said his first words. He quietly explained that they had learned more names. Names that would bring them closer to what they were searching for.

"What names?"

Togo told him. The man nodded as if the information was not new. Still, he seemed pleased.

"You must be particularly careful now. The people on this list are more important than the others. And more dangerous. I want to learn what they know and where they go. They may be helpful, and if they are, use them. If they are not, you may leave them alone. But if they get in your way, if they stop you from doing what you must do, you do whatever is necessary. This is most definitely not a game. Do you understand?"

Togo nodded. And said the first words she'd ever heard him say in English: "I understand."

When the man turned away, Ling smiled.

And she was smiling again as she stood outside the house of one of the men on the list. The man the unattractive woman had said was a policeman.

Justin Westwood. That was the name. Ling could remember the way the woman had hissed the two words, almost as if speaking the name aloud would be her dying breath. Seeing him now, she recognized him. She had seen him on the street. He had been in the unattractive woman's car. She had seen his eyes that day and she had liked what she'd seen. He looked strong. And angry. Maybe a little bit careless.

He looked like he would, at some point, be fun to kill.

And so would the blond woman. The woman Togo was staring at so intently. Ling saw his chest rise and fall, the way it did after she had made love to him.

Togo was not thinking of saving face. He was not thinking of his anger. Not now.

He was thinking about the blond woman coming out of Justin Westwood's house late at night.

Ling wished she could stay in this Long Island town and see what happened to the policeman and the blond woman. They looked as if they would be very entertaining. But Togo had claimed them for himself. She and Togo were going to separate, that's what he'd told her after they left the man's office in the glass building. They needed to be apart so they could do their work more efficiently and more quickly.

Li Ling took a last look through Justin Westwood's window.

She did not want this to end too quickly. She was in no rush for this to end at all. And she decided she would not obey the old, chiseled man, not totally. Not one hundred percent.

This has been a very fun game, Ling thought. And getting to be more fun all the time.

Nowhere more than academia did people look upon cops with suspicion and distrust. It was because, Justin thought, there was a type of so-called intellectual who could not deal with the black-and-white world that cops often had to live in. Academicians lived in a far grayer world, where actions often had no consequences, where theory did not have to relate to reality. Reality was not something this type of person particularly cared about. Reality was too physical, too harsh; so it was best to separate from it. In the real world, one's mind could take one only so far before strength often took over. It was like being in the jungle and coming face-to-face with a lion. You might be a lot smarter than the lion, but the lion had far sharper teeth. And was probably hungry.

Quentin Quintel, the dean of Melman Preparatory Academy, fell most definitely into this category, Justin decided. He was a man frightened of bumping into sharp teeth. He fell into another category, too: superobnoxious, asshole snob.

Justin sat in the head of the school's book-lined office, listening and doing his best to smile pleasantly as Dean Quintel lectured about Melman's high academic standards and spotless reputation and then began rattling off the list of illustrious alumni who had attended over the ninety-eight years it had been sheltering and educating the best and the brightest the world had to offer. As the bow-tied man in the tweed jacket spoke, Justin let his eyes shift toward the window and take in the rolling Connecticut grounds and ivy-covered stone walls and all the accoutrements that helped keep the place so spotless. When he decided he'd let the dean pontificate enough to satisfy even his own outsized ego, Justin said, "It's a very impressive place, all right."

Dean Q beamed. "Thank you."

"How long have you worked here?"

"It's a funny thing. People always ask me that question and almost always ask it the same way. But I don't even consider what I do to be work. I consider it a privilege."

"Okay," Justin said, "how long has it been your privilege to oversee the lives and curriculum of those also privileged to attend?"

Dean Quintel's eyes narrowed, both in surprise at Justin's ability to articulate the question with a reasonable degree of sophistication as well as in suspicion that the question was not entirely sincere. But he couldn't find a flaw in the phrasing and he was not secure enough to argue with the tone, so he just said, "I've been dean for three years now. I was the youngest dean in Melman's history."

"Congratulations. I'm looking for information a little before your time, then."

"What exactly are you looking for?"