“What did I tell you then, Esther?”
She didn’t speak for a moment. Then she said, “Not to try to run away again.”
“But you did it, didn’t you? First to Chicago, and then to San Francisco. Didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.” Her voice was like that of a terrorized child. Solo stared at her, so fascinated by the extreme cruelty being practiced upon her by Su Yan that he sipped at his drink, hardly aware of its taste or the chill of the glass in his hand. Barbry had not lied: she did fear this man more than she did the devil. Her whole body was quivering with fear.
“I warned you what I’d do if you ran away, didn’t I, Esther?” Su Yan persisted.
“Yes, sir.” She could barely speak. Her face was the white of chalk dust.
“I told you that I would take you back to that place you hate if you disobeyed me again, didn’t I?”
The girl cried out, a guttural protesting sound. She was incoherent with fear, unable to speak even in her trance.
Enraged, Solo forgot that gun lying waiting in Su Yan’s lap. Blood throbbed at his temples. His head ached, and the pressure behind his eyes was fierce. He had not known he could hate anyone as he hated this man tormenting that helpless girl—or that his emotions could make his head feel as if it were bursting. Even the objects about the room appeared wavering and insubstantial.
“What are you? Who are you, tormenting her like this?” Solo demanded.
Su Yan flicked a casual glance toward him, not bothering to tilt the gun. His thick brows lifted as if he were surprised. “I thought you had my complete file, Solo. Your rich, far-reaching organization. I thought you knew. Do you begin to be afraid of me, Solo? Do you begin to think that perhaps I’m in another of your files? That maybe I’m Tixe Ylno?”
Solo’s head throbbed. He was aware of the pounding of his pulses, the frantic beat of his heart. He shook his head, forgetting caution or reason. He lunged toward the man in the chair. “No. I don’t think you’re Tixe Ylno. I think you’re a—”
He stopped speaking and stopped striding forward. He shook his head, trying to clear it, but he could not. He reached out wildly for support, but there was none. He saw Su Yan make a serpentine, graceful movement up from the chair, standing beside it, watching him.
He fought to keep his balance, but the room and the world were suddenly black dark. How? The question burned in his mind, and as everything else blanked out for him, the answer came bright and clear. Under previous orders from Su Yan, Barbry had dropped a knockout pellet into his Scotch—and Su Yan had kept him distracted while he drank it down. But in this warm darkness where he was, not even this answer mattered.
PART THREE
Interlude in Bedlam
I
SOLO CLIMBED the long, dark, free-swinging staircase upward from the stygian darkness of the pit. He was tired. He did not know how long he had been climbing or how far he had yet to go. Moonlight filtered through a small opening incredibly far above him, and it glittered faintly on the metal steps, and the only thought his aching brain could contain was that he must keep climbing until he somehow reached that lighted escape hatch.
He released the bamboo railing long enough to paw at the sweat on his face, at the pressure behind his eyeballs. He almost fell. He clutched out wildly, grabbing the rickety railing, clinging to it, while the round hole of light bounced like the white ball in a beer commercial.
He jerked open his collar and loosened his tie, feeling suffocated and as if he were enclosed in a debilitating heat compartment. He didn’t know where he was, and he tried to think how he had got here.
He stumbled. The attempt to think only started the wild little man with his sledge hammer again banging at the backs of his eyeballs. He gave up trying to think, and concentrated on climbing. It was so far upward to that lighted round hole, and yet somehow he had to make it before he strangled in the heat, or suffocated from lack of oxygen.
He breathed through his mouth, gasping, his head tilted back and his gaze fixed on that ragged opening with the wan moonlight beyond it. It looked wonderfully cool up there in the open, if he could only make it before he fell again or drowned in his own sweat.
Solo gave an agonizing yawn, stunned with fatigue. He didn’t see how he could take one more step upward, and yet the alternative was to tumble back into the bottomless dark. He shuddered, clinging to the railing that swayed precariously. Suddenly he heard something that made his heart miss a beat. He stiffened, listening.
There was a faint whispering laugh from the light above him. A man’s voice said, “Welcome back to life, Mr. Solo. And welcome, also, to Broadmoor Rest.”
II
SOLO’S EYES jerked open. The movement almost took off his skull.
Solo turned his head, and the pain washed down through him. He saw that he was on a round, kingsized bed in a beige-tinted room with doors opening off into other rooms of a suite, uniformly decorated and painted.
There was movement behind him. He jerked his head around, instinctively tensing his body. His instincts brought him only searing pain, and a red haze that danced before his eyes like fireflies. The haze faded, cleared, and behind it he saw Samuel Su Yan. The Chinese-American, smiling faintly with that mismatched face that looked as if it had been designed by a committee, sat casually on a chair next to the bed. He had a small brown box in his lap.
Solo pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, trying to subdue the agony of his drug-hangover headache. Staring With hatred at Su Yan, he said slowly, “If this is a rest home, it’s not a very good one. I don’t seem to have had a good night’s sleep.”
“Broadmoor Rest is a singularly fine refuge from the world,” Su Yan said. “Most singular indeed, as you shall discover in time. As for the pain, I’ll have a nurse bring you sedation if you wish. You may as well live your final hours in comfort. A man deserves peace and comfort at the end of his life.”
Solo grimaced. “I hardly expected to hear words of compassion from you. A man who would blow a young girl’s face away—with a device inside a lei of flowers.”
Su Yan’s face remained flatly expressionless for a moment. Then he shrugged. “A mistake of Americans,” he said. “Our allies are angels, our enemies are all soulless butchers. You would improve your relations with the rest of the world if you realized your enemies are human beings—with simply opposing ideology motivating them. We too are working for a better world, Mr. Solo—our idea of a better world. That’s all. Too bad you Americans won’t have time to learn this now.”
Solo’s smile was cold. “What did you do with that part of you that is one-half American?”
“What I am going to do to the rest of America, my dear Solo…I destroyed it.”
Solo shrugged. “Then you’ll forgive me if I continue to have doubts about how genuine your compassion is. To me, Su Yan old enemy, you are a soulless butcher.”
Su Yan’s face remained expressionless. “Don’t make the mistake of underestimating men, no matter how much you hate them. Do you think I want to be doing what I am? I know that a great deal of the earth’s surface may be rendered unlivable for vegetation for centuries. But it so happens that I believe with all my soul that the two great powers exploit and misrule this world through the applied philosophy of might and threat.”
“Your soul?” Solo asked ironically.
“My soul,” Su Yan replied coldly. “Yes. I admit to you, I killed that young woman. I used flowers as a vehicle of death. I’ve killed others. I will kill again. The sacrifices are for the greater good, and I do not pretend they always make me happy or pleased with what must be done. I’d far rather be alone in my study. I am involved in a modern translation, from its original Vedic-Sanskrit, of the most ancient sacred literature of the Hindus, the Veda. There are more than one hundred extant books, in addition to the four Sanhitos, hymns, prayers, the liturgical formulae that are the foundation of the Vedic religion which dates back at least to 1100 B.C., possibly to 1500 B.C. The Rig-Veda, hymns of the oldest religion on earth. This is what I would love to do. But this must wait—for the better day we shall bring to this world.”