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Chapter 92
“Wake up Mr. McDonald. I need to ask questions to effectively treat you.”
Jack lay strapped, half sitting up, in an old-fashioned hospital bed. A saline solution dripped into the back of his left hand. Oxygen came through the tubes resting uncomfortably in his nostrils, the tube over the top of his right ear trying to saw it off. The Rolex Lady DateJust on the doctor’s wrist said it was eleven. The light through the frosted window was low from the east, telling him it was morning, but of what day?
“What day is it?”
“It is Tuesday, the twenty-second of December. You have slept three hours.”
He said, “I have an allergy to penicillin and iodine. I had a dislocated left shoulder, which I reset. I think I have three cracked ribs, pneumonia, exposure, and exhaustion. I have been treating the pneumonia with Keflex and hot Gatorade. Oh, yeah, I had a hell of a concussion.”
The doctor blinked and continued her examination along with occasional questions in English and running instructions to her nurses in Japanese. She had him roll to his left and then to his right. She examined the new bruises over both kidneys. The blood in the chamber pot made the diagnosis easy.
She looked over at the smiling South African sitting in his camouflage on a stool in the corner, and asked, “Your work, Kurt?”
Kurt smiled and nodded. The doctor ignored Kurt and said, “Your self-examination was accurate. Without X-rays and a culture I can’t be completely sure, but I am going to treat you. You are currently running a fever of…” here she hesitated and then looked at the thermometer… “One hundred and two point five degrees Fahrenheit. It was one hundred and three point five when you passed out. You are dehydrated and suffering from frostbite on the top of your left ear. I do not think you are suffering from major internal injuries, no thanks to Kurt. You need bedrest, fluids, and antibiotics.”
Kurt stood and strutted toward the bed, stopping just out of reach. “You are not going to get the bedrest. She wants to see you now.”
Now didn’t mean they skipped the cavity search. He wondered why the good doctor hadn’t conducted it while he was unconscious. And, there was time to instruct him in procedure.
“You will not speak to Her Grace unless spoken to. She will ask questions, and you will give answers. If needed, and permitted, you may ask clarifying questions. You will address her as Your Grace. You will bow upon entering and upon leaving. Under no circumstances are you to attempt to cross the gold circle clearly painted on the floor around her.”
Kurt had Jack repeat each of the rules until he was sure. The doctor, Helen, misted him with more perfume to mask the biting odor of the antibacterial salve she coated his face and hands with. He was instructed to wear a breathing mask. If his answers could not be understood through it, he was permitted to remove the mask to answer and then immediately replace the mask.
Kurt said, “Let’s go, Kaffir.”
Jack stayed where he was on the bed. “Now, for my rules. I don’t go anywhere until I know Lee is okay.”
Kurt moved toward him pulling the Ka-Bar from the wrist sheath. Jack smiled at Kurt as the man figured it out. Kurt knew that Jack knew they would kill him in the end. Jack was simply renting time and if he chose not to pay the rent they couldn’t force him.
After a quick and fierce whispered conference in the other room the doctor said, “Ms. Hong is doing well. She received a bullet wound to her left thigh from a ricochet. The bullet was removed under local anesthesia and the wound closed with sutures and two staples. We drained her knee again and it is responding well to RICE. At some point she should have the knee scoped. The knee is very stable. I believe her problem is simply loose cartilage from an old sports injury, with perhaps a very small tear in her meniscus, along with severe tendonitis. Ms. Hong will be in attendance during your audience with Her Grace.”
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The warmth running from his eyes froze as they walked him out into the wind. The wind found cracks in the parka they draped over the quilted overall. It was afternoon, but he saw no one on the walk across the bridge, past the church to the back entrance of the lodge house. His head was maybe a little less bad with fever. Fear pecked at him from behind windows and doors and hatred was thick in the air. Guards walked to each side and to the front and back.
The guard’s constant bumping and tugging made it hard to walk. He should have felt honored by the entourage of the doctor, Kurt, and six guards for one beat up ex-paratrooper. Two more guards opened the door to what turned out to be the lodge’s mudroom. The blast of hot, moist air would have been welcome but for the heavy overlay of ‘perfume.’ His hair was combed through with a medicated gel and they misted him again with an antibacterial spray before they searched a third time for weapons.
Kurt carefully placed his Ka-Bar and H & K pistol in the locker in the corner. The locker was thin pine veneer over what Jack was sure was a Smith & Wesson gun safe. Jack kept all expression from his face and body. He didn’t want to entertain the thought because he might jinx it. The thought came anyway. If no one in the room had weapons, he had a chance. Especially since he only needed to live through part of the fight.
After one final search by Kurt, they were ushered into Her Grace’s presence. The room itself was over sixty feet long, dominated on the far end by a huge fireplace, filled with a roaring fire and fronted by a mass of computer equipment. Sitting in the middle of the monitors, keyboards, and medical paraphernalia was a thin blonde woman, maybe ten years older than Jack.
They were nearly to the warning circle on the floor before he realized the woman was in a wheelchair, her chin resting on a support. One of the guards leaned slightly to the left to catch a glimpse of the woman. Jack saw Lee lying on a lowered gurney twenty feet outside the gold circle.
Lee’s eyes crinkled in concern. Then those beautiful eyes, twin searchlights whose light he had been looking for his whole life, warmed him. He tried to signal, but the guards pushed him forward into a bow, holding his arms to his sides. The guards straightened from their bows, allowing him to do the same.
The woman blinked, eyes as blue as any he had ever seen. She spoke. Her voice was an angel’s, speaking as if she were a coloratura soprano singing a favorite part. Her voice was at the higher end of the register and each syllable felt as if it were coming from a different unearthly bell. It wasn’t until she stopped talking that he realized she was speaking mid-western American English.
Kurt and the doctor moved to the edge of the circle. Jack could tell, from the rising inflection, that Her Grace was asking the doctor questions, even though he couldn’t hear the answers. He strained to read their lips, but the guards kept his head lowered.
The doctor said, “Yes” loud enough for him to hear, followed by what seemed to be a long explanation, the words blurring into unintelligible vowels and consonants. Kurt’s body language exclaimed that he didn’t like what he heard.
Kurt disobeyed the instructions he had given Jack, and interrupted the woman, saying loud enough for him to hear, “Your Grace!” and then, “Please?”
Her voice snapped through the warm, too-thick air like a striking snake. Kurt bowed, careful to keep his face clear of any expression. It was good to see old Kurt slapped around, even if just with words. He took inventory of the room to break the spell of the woman’s voice.
The room was a near copy of the great dining hall at the Ahwahnee in Yosemite with better flooring and garish religious art instead of Native American relics. Ten feet outside the gold circle was a life-sized crucifix. He hadn’t known Jesus was Asian, but then again he didn’t know much about Christianity, being a pagan and all. The stained-glass skylights depicted a brand of vengeful religion he had never understood.
Two more guards entered, one carrying an IV stand and handcuffs, the other, chain and leg-irons. Kurt stepped forward from the pack, carrying the leg irons. He wandered around the room, making a great show of trying to find somewhere to anchor the chains. After a minute of theatrical effort, he looked disappointed. He walked back to where the woman sat in her chair, bowed and said, “There is nothing in the room to secure him to, Your Grace. I will call for tools so we can bolt him to a stud in the wall.”
Her Grace said, “Chain him to the statue of our savior on the cross. It is appropriate that the symbol of his only son keeps an evil such as this one chained.”
Only the spinning room kept Jack from laughing. They led him forward and, as he came within range, he fell, having to catch himself on the base of the cross. He kept his head down, as if too sick to stand, while they experimented with chain length. He kept as much of his weight on the base of the crucifix as he could. When he’d fallen the damn thing had moved.
The base looked solid, but the stone-looking base must be hollow. They attached the chain to the crucifix and added new leg-irons and handcuffs before they took off the ones he wore on the shuffling walk in, making sure he was never free from both sets of restraints. Over the next few minutes, as they hooked him up with saline, he continued to test his prison.
He slumped down finally, saying with as raw a voice as he could, “I’m going to sit before I fall.” He leaned back against the six by six that held up the crucified Jesus.
Kurt shouted, “Stand up, Kaffir!” and moved forward.
Trying to stand up, planting the tabi socks flat on the floor, with his back against the base of the cross, Jack did a partial leg press. He felt Jesus move. He slumped back, as if he couldn’t stand. He guessed his crucified companion weighed less than two hundred pounds, base and all!
The witch stopped Kurt again with her whip-crack voice. The beautiful blue eyes and angelic voice were so out of context with the obscenity of her mission. She tilted her head as if listening to some note that was too high on the register for everyone else to hear. Then she started a whispered conversation in very fast Japanese. It was only then that Jack saw the glint of light off the clear voice tube that must be connected to a wireless headset under her hair.
The four Sony monitors were arranged in a half-circle around her. All four were huge, yet there were only eight lines of text on each screen. She’d set the stock-watch program in what looked like sixty-point type. Those beautiful blue eyes must be nearly useless.
The top line was a March put option on Genotopian at twenty-five dollars a share. The option was trading for one and a half. The next three lines were put options on three of the other biotech stocks the Church was manipulating. The last four lines were quotes on the stocks themselves. The action on the Genotopian put was heavy, over twenty contracts since he started watching.
The Genotopian stock jumped to twenty-six dollars a share and the put option price dropped to one and a quarter. The witch rattled a series of commands. It wasn’t until then that he realized that she wasn’t using her hands at all, but using voice recognition software to do even the simplest of things. The stock watch program minimized and she maximized the Master Trader program she used to trade options directly with the floor of the Chicago exchange.
She didn’t enter a market order, but instead placed her order at one and a quarter. She didn’t get execution. By the time she uttered the words to send in her order, other traders had sent in enough orders to push the price back up to one and a half. He watched the options rise to one and nine-sixteenths, then one and three quarters. She let out a very un-heavenly squeal of anger.
As he watched over the next five minutes the put option moved up to two and a half dollars as the stock got hammered on higher volume. A Dow Jones trailer appeared on the screen. The bodies of the president of the company and his rock-star bride had washed up on the shores of Puget Sound. When trading in the puts reopened, his guess was they would be selling in the low teens.
Her Grace was greedy. Jack had been absolutely sure he was dealing with avarice. It had taken his team a long time to identify Her Grace, but her signature of greed had been obvious from the start. Greed was good. He could use greed.
His head was still logy from concussion and fever, but he could still do simple math. The witch had passed up an opportunity to buy twenty contracts at one and a half dollars a share. Each contract controlled one hundred shares so, without commissions, she would have spent three thousand dollars.
If she’d bought at market, and the contract reopened in a few days at even eleven and a half dollars a share, she would have made a quick thirty thousand dollars. So trying to buy at one and a quarter to try to save five hundred dollars had actually cost her thirty thousand dollars. With the trading volume his team had seen, a hundred contracts was a conservative number. If she would have stopped at even a hundred contracts she had just pissed away one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
He had counted on her greed to keep him alive and, so far, it worked. He needed her to stay greedy for just a little while longer. She murmured something to Kurt.
His parade ground voice cut through the hall, “Clear the room of all except inner circle.”
By the time his orders were carried out, four guards, the doctor, a nurse, a woman who might have been a secretary, Lee, Kurt and Jack were left in the room.
Again the angel’s voice, this time with a tiny note of petulance, but still one of the most beautiful voices he had ever heard. “We have given you the medical treatment you requested. How are you going to give us a million dollars when all of your assets are frozen?”
Jack would have said a prayer of thanks to their God if he thought it would have done any good.
“You are not the only one to keep assets under other names and out of reach of your government.”
She laughed, and then asked, “What would be required to effect the transfer?”
His answer brought a tinge of color to the witch’s cheeks and a bark to her voice. “Silence!”
Jack tried to speak and found that he could not. It was as if his vocal chords had been paralyzed. He worked to speak and could not.
Her Grace said, “You lie. No one would set up so cumbersome a system to move money, especially emergency funds, funds that have to be gotten quickly.”
When Jack opened his mouth to speak again, he found that he could. It took all the strength he had not to appear calm. “These are not emergency funds, simply other funds, Your Grace. I do not trust this electronic world, where wealth becomes a series of ones or zeros on a computer chip, saved to a hard drive and backed up on optical media. This is one reason why I split my money into many accounts. This is why I require not only electronic instruction, but also my voice using code words. I travel in parts of the world where kidnap and ransom are common.”
Jack leaned back against the pillar, the rough wood like a pillow. He was shaken. Her Grace had a talent too, one that he had never heard of. She silenced him with a word. Her power would make the next few hours even more interesting. He did not know the extent of her power and didn’t know how to test its limits. He accepted her power as a condition, not a problem to be solved.
The room still swam at any sudden movement, but the pain behind his eyes could be shrinking. He willed his body to relax, smiling a long-distance hug at Lee, wondering about her silence. The time on the clock on the upper left of the furthest monitor changed from one fifteen to one thirty to two o’clock PM. The spider in the center of her electronic web set her minions to make call after call to check and set up.
Jack cleared his throat and said, “Excuse me, Your Grace. I said I would pay $1 million dollars for medical care and I will. Before we start negotiations for Ms. Hong’s release, I need to examine her.”
Her Grace silenced Kurt’s predictable protest. The witch was not used to anyone else setting terms, but again greed overrode pride. The doctor attended. Guards were called in to move the Lee’s gurney next to where he was shackled and cuffed. The extra guards withdrew. Leaving the original four, two by him, and two others by the spider at the center of her electronic web.
“I’m sorry I let you down baby,” was the first thing he said to Lee.
She pulled the breathing mask away from her face, smiled a real smile and said, “We had to try. Are you okay?”
The look in her eyes was better than rest and food and anything else he could think of.
That voice sliced the air, “You have talked long enough. We require payment.”
Jack requested a laptop and a high-speed connection. He was given neither. Her Grace must have made another quick call because a robed figure carrying electronic equipment entered the room. Even in the same robes as the rest of the acolytes, this man was obviously a geek. He gave wiring instructions and information to the tech. The man checked and explained everything to her Grace, waiting for her go-ahead before he executed commands.
The tech set up a phone splitter. One of the splits went to the extension Her Grace listened on after it passed through what looked like a standard digital recorder. Her Grace was finally happy with the security set up.
The tech punched in the electronic instructions, after checking with Her Grace. Five minutes later Jack called the bank’s wire-room, the Church’s account numbers and routing instructions printed out for him and carried over by Kurt.
“Hello Mr. McDonald, it’s good to hear your voice again. We received instructions a few minutes ago. Are there any changes, and when are you taking me out to dinner as you have so frequently promised to do?” Lian asked.
Jack and Lian had talked probably fifty times over the last five years and played the kind of harmless flirting games business people played all over the world.
“It’s good to hear your voice too. I’m afraid it will be a while before I am back in Macao. There are no changes.” His answer went into the digital recorder. Her Grace saw nothing threatening in them and told her tech to let the message travel on. The delay was no more than five seconds.
Lian laughed and then started authentication. “Verify phrase Alpha Bravo, please.”
He had to think for a minute. What was the date? The Alpha Bravo request for verification was always the same, but his response depended on the date. “Alpha Bravo verified with Alpha Juliet,” and so it went, step after cumbersome step, until the $1 million was wired.
He signed off, telling Lian he’d call for additional funds again soon.
Lee wasn’t shackled. They must be relying on her medical condition to imprison her. Each time the guards neared, they seemed to be a little less vigilant. The waves of anger and fear he had felt around the guards were both subsiding. No, that wasn’t quite right. The anger was still there, but the fear was shrinking. He convinced himself that he and Lee had a fighting chance. Her Grace bent her head slightly. She looked in his direction, smiling in a way he did not like at all. Her angelic laugh bounced around the room.
She rattled off a quick command in Japanese to Kurt who in turn laughed and looked down at him with a sneer as he said, “Sit up and pay attention, Kaffir.”
Jack sat up and paid attention as two of the guards brought in a bundle each and set them on the floor about fifteen feet away.
The witch asked, “You are sure they are safe?”
Kurt laughed and said, “Yes.” He pulled four bombs out of the first bag. The timers and fuses were missing.
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