Dorothy Mcintosh - The Witch of Babylon

They hustled me into the rear of a Learjet 35. Ironic that I’d flown in a similar plane a couple of months ago to babysit an Italian ceramic one of my clients had purchased. In this one the back of the cabin was closed off with drapery and some seats had been removed. The windows were painted black. It looked as if I wasn’t the first person forced to travel in this plane against his will.

The jester snapped a metal cuff onto my right wrist, fastening it to a handle jutting out from the wall. My body ached nonstop. I sagged against the wall. The man buckled himself in. He wore a suit now, but it did nothing to improve on his lank black hair and deadly pale skin. He had the strangest eyes—almost yellow.

I could see the red tattoo on his wrist, but his sleeve hid almost half of it and I couldn’t tell what sign it was meant to be. I assumed Eris and Shim were up front with Ward. I mentally ticked them off: Venus, Mars, Jupiter. I’d concluded that Ward was Jupiter, the boss; Eris, Venus; and Shim, Mars. Laurel said that Hal was Saturn. By default, then, the jester must be Mercury. A very unlikely messenger of the gods.

Since I was going to be spending more than a day with this man, I decided to try lowering the threshold of hostility. “Which one are you?” I asked.

He misunderstood me and grunted, “Lazarus.”

“Is that your real name?”

“It is now.”

“How did you come by it?”

“Doctors brought me back from the dead. Sometime I’ll give you a description so you’ll know what to look forward to.”

What a shitface .

“Where?”

“Chechnya.”

“Why would you be involved there?”

“You don’t know anything, do you? We’re in all those holes.

You flit around with your lattes and martinis selling your highbrow art and you know nothing about the real world.”

“You caused that accident in front of the café, didn’t you?”

“Ward said to make you afraid, not kill you.”

“Someone got badly injured. Doesn’t that even bother you?”

“You said it yourself—it was an accident. I was just trying to knock out the truck’s tire. Anyway, we’re not supposed to be talking.”

I was in here with him for the long haul. With one stopover the trip on a commercial jet would take almost a day. This smaller plane would need more refueling stops and at a lower speed the flight would take longer. Before, I’d faced a threat only from a specific group of people. In Iraq the danger would increase tenfold. There were no safe places in Baghdad.

Lazarus reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a knife. It had a cruel-looking, fat serrated blade. He played around with it, pretending to aim it at me and throw. When he tired of his stupid game he gave me a couple of cans of warm Dr Pepper, a soggy corned beef sandwich, and an empty plastic bottle to piss in. I was expected to manage all this with my free left hand.

I pictured the others: Ari dining in an upscale London restaurant; Tomas in Iraq, ensconced in some comfortable hideaway; the soothsayer, Diane Chen, humming along with the music, kibitzing with her customers. Her predictions were so accurate, she should go into the fortune-telling business. I felt the weight of Ari’s talisman on my chest. Even the sun god had failed me.

I slept fitfully and finally woke up completely disoriented and woozy. I knew we’d been in the air for many hours and had a vague memory of landing and taking off again at some point—that was all. My drink must have been spiked with a sedative.

The aircraft began its stomach-heaving drops. I listened to the thud of the landing gear engaging and soon after felt the contact with terra firma and heard the whine of the jets reversing. While we taxied to our destination, Lazarus undid my shackles. When I unwound my legs and tried to stand I almost fell. My joints protested like those of an eighty-year-old man. He opened the curtains. “Go up front. Ward’s there.”

Ward waved me over when he saw me and indicated a seat across the table from him. Lazarus posted himself behind me. No one else was in the cabin. I tried to get a glimpse out the windows but could see only a blank whitish wall and concluded we must be in some kind of hangar. Ward dug in his pocket and took out a wallet and a dark blue passport, the Great Seal of the United States on its cover.

He dropped it on my lap. “There are credit cards and ID in the wallet too.”

I opened the passport and was shocked to see that it was my own. “Where did you get this?”

“Eris took it when you two had that little chat in your condo. At the time we thought it might be preventative, to make it harder for you to leave the country.”

“I’m going in under my own name?”

“Can’t take any chances with customs. Authorities are strict around here.”

I could hardly believe what he’d said. Taking me through customs would be a gift to me, an easy opportunity to break away from them.

As if reading my thoughts, Ward picked up a phone from the table in front of us. It was a large, clunky-looking piece, like a TV remote with an antenna.

Ward noted me looking at it and held it up. “A sat phone. Not too many viable cell towers where we’re going.” He punched in some numbers, waited for a minute or so, and greeted the voice on the other end. “Put her on now,” he said and held out the phone. “Someone wants to say hi to you.”

I snatched the phone from his hand and put it up to my ear. “John Madison here.” I waited but got no answer, only the sound of static across the airwaves. I held the phone out for Ward. “Nothing on the other end. Is this another one of your games?”

Ward grabbed it and almost shouted into it. “Talk to him as you were instructed to do or it will get even worse for you.”

Laurel had to be on the other end. It was a relief to know she still had the will to resist them.

She spoke to me when I took the phone back. “They’re making me talk to you. It’s not my idea.”

“It’s still good to hear you,” I said.

“Your voice is kind of funny. Like there’s a delay between when you say the words and I hear them.”

She’d freak out if she knew how far away I was. “I’m in a very large room on the top floor of the building. It’s cavernous. That must be causing an echo. You holding up okay?”

“Are you serious? Sure, I’m fine. I spend every minute wondering how they’re going to do it. Maybe they’ll do something to make it look like an accident.” Her voice broke off at that point.

“Laurel, if they were going to get rid of us, it would have happened by now. Try to think that way instead.”

I heard her laugh, but it was the kind of response that came from a deep gulf of disbelief and despair.

Ward held up his pudgy hand, indicating he wanted me to stop talking. I ignored him. “It won’t be long now, Laurie. They’re close to getting what they want. And I still have information to trade.”

I didn’t hear her reply because Lazarus yanked the phone out of my hand and gave it back to Ward, who shut it off and put it into the briefcase at his feet. He stood up. “You still have information to trade, do you? I’d like to hear it.”

“I said that to comfort her.”

“For once, I think I believe you. Anything happens in customs or anywhere in the airport and her life is gone. Yours too, of course. Eris has kept her drug supply with her.”

“You’re trying to suggest she’d inject me with heroin in the middle of an airport?”

“She has lots of other effective chemicals. You know what a taipan is?”

“A snake.”

“The deadliest land-based snake in the world. Its venom will shut down your respiratory system in less than a minute. Eris has a supply of it, along with a very effective delivery system.” He brushed off his jacket and fiddled with his tie. “Now, the reason for our visit here. We’re headed to a place called Afyon. Heard of it?”