He sleeps and he dreams with one hand tight between his legs, something he’s done since childhood. Girlfriends have commented on it, laughed at it, even. If he catches himself doing it, he shoves the hand under a pillow, but it always seems to creep south again of its own volition.
The barmaids are singing. Topless for some reason, and singing in a language he doesn’t understand. His name? His name? Can they possibly be singing... his name?
“Wake up!” A whisper. A woman’s urgent hiss. His eyes open to blackness and he tries to sit up, but a feminine hand pushes at his chest, and he sinks back down again. The hand remains against his chest, rubbing it. A silky-smooth hand.
Shari’s hand.
“What is it?” he hisses back. “What’s the matter, Shari?”
Her face seems very close to him. “It’s Khan. He’s sound asleep... as usual. He just doesn’t... I don’t want to put him down or anything, but he just doesn’t satisfy me.”
Topless barmaids... breasts. Henrik gives a groggy half-smile in the dark. He reaches a hand to where he imagines her chest is. He’s not sure whether he finds it or not. She’s wearing her clothes... maybe some sort of nightdress, baby dolls or something.
“I knew you’d come,” he whispers. “I was going to call on you when we got back to London. Khan’s a shit, he’ll dump you the minute the plane lands.”
“I know.” Her hand rubbing him, rubbing in wider circles, taking in shoulders and down over his stomach. Feels good. “He doesn’t understand how I like it.”
“Like it?”
“Sex.” A low guttural sound, more moan than whisper. “I love it.” Still rubbing, smooth hand. “I like it tied up. Khan doesn’t like that, but it’s such a turn-on. What about you, huh? Is it a turn-on for you?”
“Sure.” He’s waking up now. Tied up?
“Want to try? I’ve got some of Khan’s ties. Want to try it with his ties?”
“Why not?” Her hand is insistent on him now. She moves one of his arms, then the other, until his hands are behind him, grasping at the bedposts. He realizes now that she wants to tie him up... not what he had in mind, but all the same... And in fact she’s already busy. It’s easy for her to slip the ties around his wrists.
“Not too tight are they?”
“No.” Lying. His wrists feel like the circulation’s been cut.
And around his feet, too, so he is splayed and naked on the bed. He knows he’s in good shape, but sucks his gut in a little anyway. He’s stiff as a beer-pump himself now. Damn, he’ll make her bells ring, little Shari’s bells ring. Oh, Christ, but if she calls out... what if Khan hears? He’s a pretty light sleeper, what if he bursts in while he’s lying here all trussed...
Bells... make her bells ring...
How come she hasn’t set off the alarm system?
He’s forming the question when he hears tape being torn, and next thing her hand is over his face, wrapping tape around his mouth, around the back of his head, mouth again, and again, and again. Jesus fucking Christ! He grunts, struggles. But then he hears a cli-chick, and another, and another, and another. Four. And he’s not being held by ties anymore. Something cold instead. And then the light goes on.
It takes his eyes a second or two to deal with the difference. He sees himself naked, and the handcuffs around his ankles. They’re around his wrists, too, pinning him to the bedposts top and bottom. No problem. He can contract himself and snap the goddamned bedposts off if he has to. Idiot that he was in the first place. Khan’ll kill him for this. But who is the woman? The woman dressed in black who’s standing there at the foot of the bed. He hasn’t been able to focus on her yet, but now she’s stepping forward and
Thwock!
One blow to the right temple with her hammer and it’s back to the barmaids for Henrik. Witch looks down on him and smiles. Well, what’s the point of working if you can’t have a little fun?
Across the corridor and down the hall, two people are asleep in a large rumpled bed. The whole room smells of perfume and bath soap and sex. Their clothes are distributed across the floor without any discernible pattern or progress. The man is naked and lies on his side without any covering. The woman lies on her front, hair tangled across the pillow. She is covered by a white sheet, and her left arm hangs limply down from the edge of the bed, fingernails grazing the carpet. No fun and games here. Now the work begins in earnest. The arm is actually a bonus, lying bulging-veined like that. She uses the pencil-thin torch to help her prepare and test the syringe, which she then jabs home into one of Shari Capri’s veins, just where the forearm meets the elbow. Not merely asleep now but unconscious. An explosion wouldn’t wake her. Gunshots would cause no flickering of her eyelids. She’ll wake up in the morning, gluey-mouthed, thirsty, with a sore head most probably.
Those will be the least of her problems.
Now only Khan remains. He seems to be sleeping peacefully. She wonders what he’s dreaming of. What do you dream of when you have everything? You dream of more. Or else the terror of losing everything you’ve got. Either would be appropriate, considering what is about to happen, and why it’s about to happen. Witch squats on the floor, her face in line with Khan’s. She’s not six feet from him — not quite close enough for him to take a waking, desperate lunge at her, but close enough so that she can study him. And studying him, he becomes less human to her, and less human still. He becomes a motive, a deal, a set of crooked figures on an accounting sheet. He becomes her payoff.
“Mr. Khan,” she says softly. “Mr. Khan.” An eye opens to a slit. Her voice is as casual as any nurse’s would be to the patient who’s come out of the operating theater. “Time to wake up now, Mr. Khan.”
The difference being, of course, that now Khan is awake, the operating theater waits for him. Witch, smiling, already has the good sharp knife in her hand. It flashes through her mind that she has been in Britain exactly a week.
Happy anniversary.
The protean self
Monday 8 June
“So how was France, then?” Greenleaf was smiling. Some might have called it a grimace.
Doyle smiled, too: with pleasure. “Mag-ni-fique, John. Just mag-ni-fique. Here...” He reached into a carrier bag. “Have a bottle of beer. I’ve another hundred and ninety-nine of them in the garage at home.”
Greenleaf accepted the small green bottle. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll savor it.”
“You do that, John. That’s one franc’s worth of best Alsace lager in there. Four-point-nine alcohol, so take it slow, eh?” And Doyle gave Greenleaf a big wink.
I don’t really hate him, Greenleaf thought suddenly. He’s smarmy all right, but I wonder how seriously he takes himself. Maybe the whole thing is just him sending himself up. I don’t really hate him. It’s just gentle loathing.
“So,” Doyle was saying, looking around at the office. “The place didn’t crumble in my absence? I’m hurt. I used to think I was the only thing holding this place together.”
“We do our best, Doyle. It’s not easy, but we do our best.”