The clerk bowed again as the customer stepped into the room. Then he triggered the sensor to automatically close and lock the door. He straightened, sighed, and cracked the tension out of his neck. The room — like all the rooms here — was completely soundproof. That was fine with him. He didn’t like to hear the screams. After all, he wasn’t kinky. He only worked there.
He went to the restroom and then walked through the twisting and turning hallway back to the door that opened before him and led to the store. Once he was back behind the counter, he tapped the keys that changed the sign back to OPEN and turned the opaque window back to clear glass.
And that’s when the door exploded inward, showering him with jagged splinters. He covered his face with one hand as he spun away and used the other to reach for an alarm button. He hit the button at the exact moment that a hard rubber bullet struck him in the shoulder, shattering his scapula and sending him crashing into the back wall. Suddenly the room was filled with bodies as what seemed like dozens of police poured in through the shattered door, shouting, shoving him, beating him to the floor. Alarms rang throughout the building, and the clerk knew that the rest of the staff would be trying to rescue as many customers as possible.
“Through here!” yelled a voice, and a husky cop stepped to the back door and swung a heavy breaching tool. Once, twice, and on the third shot the door lock tore itself out of the frame. The officers ran inside, guns drawn, faces set into fierce growls.
“Where are they?” demanded a hatchet-faced man who wore a detective’s shield on a chain around his neck.
“I… don’t…” began the clerk, but the detective struck him a savage blow across the mouth. Blood spattered the corner of the counter, and the clerk screamed.
“Get him up,” demanded the detective, and two officers grabbed the clerk and hauled him to his feet, which made the broken bones in his shoulder grate together. The clerk screamed, but the detective punched him in the stomach with such shocking force that the scream was cut short. The clerk felt his lungs locking up and fireworks seemed to burst around him. Then the detective took a fistful of his hair and raised his head, leaning so close that when he spoke his hot spit struck the clerk’s face. “Where are the kids?”
The clerk shook his head, blood dribbling from between his mashed lips. “No… kids…” he gasped.
The detective looked as if he wanted to hit him again, but then someone shouted from inside the building.
“Sir! You need to come here,” yelled an officer.
The detective turned to go, but over his shoulder growled, “Bring him.”
The two officers holding the clerk dragged him through the doorway and followed the detective down the winding corridors. All the doors on either side of the hall were open, their locks smashed and the frames splintered. All of them were empty now. The businessman had been the only client on the premises at the moment. Two other members of the staff knelt on the floor, cuffed hands behind their backs, under the guard of furious-looking cops. Both of the staff members were bruised and bleeding.
“Please,” begged the clerk, “there’s no kids here. Believe me.”
“Shut your mouth or lose your teeth,” snarled the detective.
They arrived at the next to the last door in the hall, which stood open, half torn from its hinges. The detective went in first, and the cops flung the clerk onto the floor next to the businessman, who was sprawled and semiconscious, his face pulped from a savage beating.
The room was silent.
The detective approached the bed, on which a small, naked figure lay sprawled, wrists and ankles tightly bound by padded cuffs. The last remnants of a school uniform clung to the bare skin. The girl’s mouth was open, the lips parted in a small “Oh” of apparent surprise. Her eyes were open and stared sightlessly at the ceiling. The thin chest did not rise and fall, and her limbs were utterly slack.
The detective bent over her, staring in absolute horror at the tiny body. Then he closed his eyes and sagged back, reaching for the bedpost for balance. He remained like that for a long, long moment during which the clerk didn’t dare breathe.
Then the detective opened his eyes and turned slowly toward the clerk. Everyone else turned with him, looking at the young man on the floor. The weight of their hatred was crushing.
“You’ll burn for this,” said the detective. “I swear to you, you’ll burn.”
The clerk was crying now, tears running from his eyes, snot bubbling from his nose. “No… please… it’s not what you think.…”
The detective rushed at him and kicked him in the stomach. Once… then again. Each blow doing awful damage.
“Stop!” screamed the clerk. “She’s not dead.”
The detective stopped, foot raised for a third kick. Doubt clouded his face and he looked from his target over his shoulder at the girl.
Very slowly the girl turned her head toward him. She blinked slowly and smiled at the detective.
“System failure,” she said. “Please reset.”
She began to blink rapidly and repeated the phrase.
Over and over.
The clerk and the businessman were arrested, but within two hours they were released. Lawyers descended in flocks on the police station. Threats — very credible threats — were made about the lawsuits that would be filed. Apologies would be required at every level of the police administration, because the businessman was very important. He was a senior vice president of a petroleum and metals conglomerate with holdings all across Japan that employed twenty-eight thousand people. Jobs would be lost within the police department. Heads would roll.
Or so all the lawyers threatened.
The dynamic of that legal barrage faltered a day later, when Mr. Yohji Watanabe, back home in the safety of his home, collapsed in the shower of his palatial estate on the outskirts of Tokyo. His wife heard him fall and came running, but she stopped in the bathroom doorway, her horror mounting higher than her need to see to her husband. He lay there naked, tangled in the plastic curtains, bleeding from his nose and mouth, from his ears and eyes, from his rectum and the tip of his penis. The shower water had turned the blood pink and washed it all away before Mrs. Watanabe even stopped screaming.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Mademoiselle,” said the Concierge, “you are looking well.”
He was a very good liar, but they both knew that he was lying. Zephyr Bain glared at him from the big screen in the little Frenchman’s office. Now they were both in wheelchairs. She looked like a scarecrow covered with sun-withered leather. It was hard to believe that she was only in her mid-thirties. She looked ninety. No, thought the Concierge, she looks dead.
Zephyr didn’t acknowledge his compliment. “Is it done?”
“Oui,” he said. “Prague was a huge success. More than we could have hoped for.”
“And Mexico?”
He shrugged. “The government there refused the Deacon’s offer and instead went with Sigma Force. Exactly as John predicted they would.”