|
Page 14.
Scene 4. Dr. Night
 After a long drive on dusty roads, the SUV caravan entered a small, prosperous looking town in the region of Agrigento. The black cars traveled along paved roads and drowsy villages, among sunset fields full of hard-working peasants, and finally swung into a driveway.
Louis Cartouche, looking up from behind tinted windows, saw a luxurious looking, stuccoed villa with finely made, white-framed windows. Its common Italian sun awnings were of fresh canvas dyed a rich merlot. Several brawny Asian men in black suit trousers and white shirts, with crossed suspenders, sat playing cards at a table on a front lawn patio. The estate was surrounded by an innocuous wrought-iron fence garlanded with grape vines. Everything looked peaceful, except, Cartouche assumed, the men's assault rifles were probably hidden near their feet in case of unwelcome guests. Two other Asians with binoculars kept watch—one at each end of the estate along several hundred feet of street front—atop a high concrete wall that could stop a main battle tank.
The rest of the black cars peeled off and disappeared on a side road. Louis’ SUV rolled down a driveway. Above, he saw the doorway had a strange figure on it: a complex and symmetrical bronze ellipse with snakes and leaves all around, and in the middle a hideous face with its mouth open and its tongue hanging out. This figure was a Gorgoneion, from the Greek for gorgos, meaning ‘dreadful’, as in Medusa and her sisters. The Gorgons were a somewhat different matter—female demons with hissing, wriggling serpents instead of hair. They possessed a hideous, potent beauty that turned to stone anyone who gazed at them.
A steel garage door rolled up, and the vehicle cruised into a concrete underground garage under fluorescent lighting. Several Korean and Berber guards in dark camo fatigues ushered Cartouche into an elevator. The men wore web pistol belts with police cuffs and 9mm Glock handguns.
The elevator was clean and functional, but without a trace of the opulence Cartouche had experienced at the Villa Caproni in Palermo that morning, while meeting Mr. Blechstein of Global Anaconda.
Who were these silent, efficient kidnappers? Cartouche dreaded what he might learn. He'd been quite comfortable with the Anaconda deal, on second thought.
The elevator door went ding, and rolled open.
Before Cartouche's eyes spread a large lounge with high, slanting ceiling. The atmosphere was functional. The materials were dark-tinted glass, steel framing, and concrete surfaces with little decoration of any kind. Very industrial. Dark-beerish late afternoon light slanted in through 45-degree tilted windows. The place could be a post-modern house of worship, or an airport departure lounge—same things, thought Cartouche.
Into the concrete walls were embossed several instances of a large emblem, brushed in brownish stain rather than paint, that Cartouche had never seen before. It was a circle, with a horizontal line through it. In the upper half was a floating eye (the Masonic symbol on the U.S. dollar bill), while in the lower half was a woman's lovely face with hideous lips and eyes, and snakes instead of hair—a Gorgon (related to, but not the same as the gorgoneion at the door).
"Monsieur Cartouche." An attractive young woman in a long, silvery-brown sheath dress walked toward him. The guards melted away from her, but hovered in the background. The woman did not have snakes for hair, but a lovely blue-black ball of frizz.
She represented a universal mix of races. In her almond-shaped eyes, the pupils were bluish-black. She had fine, even teeth like ivory. Her lips were just full under a slightly flattened nose, so that her features appeared balanced and harmonious. Hers was a sublime face, like the Belgian girl's in Palermo—a still pond that a man could look into without ever seeing bottom. One could gaze upon her beauty without ever seeing enough.
Her skin was café-au-lait, and invited touching, but to touch her would have meant death—Cartouche understood without being told. Her fingernails and toenails were bloody, glossy red, except on the thumbs and large toes, whose nails were matte black. She wore delicate leather sandals with decorative fringe hanging from the sides, as worn by beautiful courtesans in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings.
"Monsieur Cartouche," she repeated. Her voice was from the back of the throat, each sound a pearl or a precious stone as its echo clicked across the broad, gloomy hall amid round concrete pillars.. "Welcome to our organization."
"Camelback?" Cartouche ventured as he stood before her, awaiting direction.
"Not at all. We freelance. A brokerage, we like to think. We bring together just the right talent from all around the world."
"I was unaware that Camelback kidnaps talent from its rivals."
"Camelback!" she exclaimed with an amazed laugh. She had a fearless beauty that was its own explanation, defense, and propaganda. "Forget Camelback and all standard corporations and consortia. We are the new ball game in the world."
"I'd appreciate an explanation of why I was taken against my will."
"Soon enough, Mr. Cartouche. Come, sit here where the boss can see you. You two will converse." She turned and walked across the vast, empty floor, which still smelled of concrete from its construction. The monotony was relieved somewhat by an acre of gray, industrial indoor-outdoor carpeting. Amber columns of light slanted from high skylights onto the carpeting.
The woman led him to an island at the center, comprised of a circle of six armchairs and a round coffee table. Cartouche felt the need to water his aching throat again. He noted the presence of silvery carafes and handleless mugs on the coffee table. The walk to reach it seemed to take minutes at the woman's leisurely pace, with her runway gracefulness. The long dress shimmered as it flowed in the air around her precision-tooled figure. Is she also Belgian? Cartouche wondered rather cynically. Another form of seduction? He'd never been wooed by great corporations before. Was this part of the standing operational procedure, this subliminal intoxication with beauty and desire?
"My name is Alecto, but you may call me Alex," she said in her fine, flute-soft voice. "I am the Duty Officer of the Day."
"You are Alex Alecto? Is that Italian?"
"Oh no, it's a very ancient name. It inspires sheer terror in those who understand its origin. I am U.S.-Algerian-Chinese, and my personal name is Erin, yes, but that is more than you need to know. Think of me as No, to quash any male fantasies. Have you read Virgil's Aeneid, Mr. Cartouche?"
"Years ago, in high school Latin. Can't remember much of it."
"Not many people do, which is useful to us."
"Us?"
"Black Umbrella, the Underworld."
"Never heard of it."
"Alecto in mythology is the most savage and unrelenting of the Furies. Out of divine revenge against the impious Trojan invaders of Rutulia in Italy, nearly 1,000 years before Christ and Augustus, she stirs up a catastrophic war, which the fledgling Romans under Aeneas win after a bloody struggle. I assure you it is the only war that Alecto ever lost, or ever will lose in all eternity. "
She bade him sit in the central chair facing a large overhead viewing screen, which tilted toward him, at the same 45 degree angle as the great, tinted sky-windows opposite, and behind him.
She walked away in that same leisurely, assured stride.
On the screen appeared a static image of that same symbol, a circle with a floating eye above and a Gorgon below.
A man's voice spoke unhurriedly, with utter self-assurance. The voice had a languid coldness. Most likely, it was muffled through some sort of electronic filtering device. Somehow, it rang familiar to Cartouche, and he listened keenly to try and place it. No image of a man appeared, only that symbol.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Cartouche."
Does that voice sound familiar?
"Explain yourself. I am tired of this outrage."
"I understand your emotions. I hope we will please you with our counter offer to that which Global Anaconda made earlier today in Palermo."
I have heard that voice somewhere before.
"You seem to know a lot."
"We know everything. That is essential in our mission."
Cartouche felt conflicted. He was afraid, for one thing. He was angry for another thing—more than anything because this hocus-pocus was playing havoc with his new-found sense of financial security and all that it would buy—he had hoped. Now what was there to be?
"You are a business?"
TOP
Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
|
