The Seventh Stone td-62 Page 2

  "But, Daddy," Reginald had said. "Other people use their languages. Nobody uses this language but the Woburns."

  "And the Wolinskys. And von Wollochs and the de Wolliues and the Worths," his father had said.

  "What sort of a language is that where you can only talk to a few hundred people?" Reginald had asked.

  "Ours, son," his father had said. And since he was a Woburn and it was something his father had done and his father's father had done and everyone had done way back even before their name had become Woburn, Reginald Woburn III learned the language. Which was not too much to ask, considering that the rest of his life was to be spent in polo and bridge and yachting.

  Now, in his prime, a full seven-goal polo player, Reginald was going through those old markings again.

  It was gloomy in the main study. There was a reason for that. The light had to be filtered through dark windows. The rest of the world was sunny and gay and there were at least three delicious young ladies waiting for Reginald, and just as he did at twelve years of age, he picked laboriously through the letters.

  Reginald was a darkly handsome young man in his twenties with high cheekbones and eyes that looked like black marbles. He was athletic but he never strained at it. When a coach had once told him, "No pain, no gain," Reginald had answered, "And no me."

  This language had always been a nettling nuisance and he had hoped that it was something that was behind him. But here he was again.

  He identified his verbs, his nouns, his proper nouns.

  So typical of this language, the inscription on the stone included the word "stone." The language took the obvious and made it stupid. Not only was the inscription on the stone, it had to tell you it was on the stone.

  "Seven times," said Reginald with his finger on the word in the photograph of the inscription. "No," his father said. "Seventh stone."

  "Right," Reginald said. "Seventh stone." He prayed that he was not going to have to read six others. He was getting thirsty but he knew one never allowed the servants around when you read the language.

  There were six other stones, according to the inscription. The first was the stone of the sword and then the poison and so forth, through all manner of mayhem, including a pit somewhere.

  Reginald looked up. Daddy was smiling. Therefore, Reginald could assume he was translating correctly. At least this was more interesting than most of the writings which had to do with the family of some Prince Wo and pithy little sayings like "If you fear someone, you never rule." This inscription told about setting a trap, a trap through history. It was a trap to kill someone named Sinanju.

  "No. Not a person, a village," his father said.

  "But it's a person sign here," said Reginald.

  "Person or persons from Sinanju."

  "Right," Reginald said wearily. "Person or persons from Sinanju. Kill them."

  "Good," said his father. "Now you know what you have to do."

  "Me? I'm a polo player."

  "You're a Woburn. That inscription is your instruction."

  "I've never killed anyone in my life," Reginald said.

  "Then you can't be sure you won't like it."

  "I'm sure I won't," Reginald said.

  "You don't know if you don't try, Reggie."

  "Isn't killing illegal?" Reginald asked.

  "This thing you must do was written for us and for you before any laws of any country now existing on earth," said his father. "Besides, you're going to love it."

  "How do you know?"

  "Read on."

  Reginald Woburn III picked his way through the lines of letters, seeing the thoughts become more intricate, seeing a stunning logic in a people disappearing from the face of the earth only to return in disguise to deliver the final and victorious blow.

  It was sort of challenging in a way and even though the other predictions of the stone had come true about how the island would be found by others and how Wo's descendants would move out disguised in the stream of humanity that came to the islands, Reginald could not quite believe the last prediction: that the first son of the first son of the direct line would, from a life of skilled idleness, become the greatest killer the world had ever known.

  Of course, that would require eliminating all those who were the best now.

  It was a game after all, Reginald reasoned. He did not know yet how much he was going to enjoy the blood of others.

  Chapter Two

  His name was Remo and he was going to make sure the man's children were on hand. With no other children would he ever do this, but this man had to see his children's faces looking at him. It was the way the man had killed. It had earned him this magnificent estate in Coral Gables, Florida, with the electrified Cyclone fence surrounding lawns like carpets on which sat, like some gross jewel, a magnificent white building with orange tile roof. It was a hacienda in America, built on needles and snorts and death, the death of children too.

  Remo saw the television cameras pace their scans over the chain-link fence. Their mechanical rhythms were so steady, so dull, so avoidable. Why these people trusted technology instead of the native viciousness which had made them rich, Remo could not fathom. He waited, stock-still, until the camera caught him full face. Then he slowly moved a forefinger over his own throat and smiled. When the camera suddenly stopped and moved back to him and stayed on him, he smiled again and mouthed the words:

  "You die."

  That would do for openers. Then he went to the front gate where a large fat man sat in a booth, chewing something with enough garlic and peppers to fumigate the Colosseum at Rome.

  "Hey, you. What you want?" said the man. He had a dark little mustache under his wide nose. His hair was thick and black like that of most Colombians. Even though he was just a guard at the gate, he was probably a brother or a cousin of the owner of the Coral Gables estate.

  "I want to kill your patron and I want his children to see it," said Remo. He might have been mistaken for Indian himself with the high cheekbones and dark eyes. Yet his skin was pale. His nose was arrow straight and thin, as were his lips. Only his thick wrists might have drawn special attention. But the guard was not noticing the wrists. He had been told from the main house that a troublemaker was making strange signs at the cameras and he had been told to take care of him.

  He was told to be reasonable. You asked nicely first, and then if the man didn't go, you broke his feet with a pipe. Then you called the police and an ambulance and they took him away. Maybe if he was real fresh, you broke his mouth too.

  "Get outta here," said Gonzalez y Gonzalez y Gonzalez. That counted as the second warning. He was to give three. Gonzalez kept two fingers pressed against the little transmitter inside his booth. That way he wouldn't lose count. He had one more warning to go.

  "No," said Remo.

  "What?"

  "I'm not going. I'm here to finish your patron," Remo said. "I am going to kill him and humiliate him. I've been told his children are here also."

  "What?" grunted Gonzalez. It must be three by now. He reached for the man's neck. Suddenly his large hands left the transmitter and froze there in front of the man's neck. Gonzalez looked at his hands. The fingers he had been counting with were out there in midair. He had lost his place and now he wasn't sure if it had been three warnings or not.

  "Hey, how many times I tell you to get out of here?" Gonzalez asked. Maybe the stranger would remember.

  "I'm not leaving. I've got business with your patron."'

  "No, no," said Gonzalez. "I want to know exactly how many times I warned you to get outta here. What was it? One? Was it two?"

  "I don't know," said Remo. "There was the first 'get outta here.' "

  "Right. Thass one."

  "I think there was another," Remo said.

  "Okay. Three," Gonzalez said.

  "No, that's two," Remo said.

  "So you got one more."

  "For what?" said Remo.

  "For the three times I warn you before the surprise,
" said Gonzalez. He was being cunning. "Okay, here comes the third. Get you ass outta here before I break you feet."

  "No," said Remo. Gonzalez went for the hammer. He liked to hear bones break, liked to feel them give way to a good solid swing. Gonzalez reached his free hand to grab the insolent stranger while he swung the hammer toward the groin. There was a strange light feeling to the hand that gripped the stranger and that was because it wasn't gripping anything anymore. It was gone, and the stranger didn't seem to move.

  But Gonzalez's left arm ended at a gushing stump. Then the window shield of his guard booth closed and the door opened and he saw where his hand had gone. It came flying back into his lap.

  He had not seen the stranger move because the other movement was so perfectly symmetrical with his own. He had only seen the hammer. He could not perceive an incredible velocity from the stranger's hand, cutting through his wrist like a scissor separating breakfast sausage, severing bone from bone with such awesome speed that Gonzalez did not even have time to feel pain.

  There was only the lightness, and then the hand in his lap, and then everything became dark forever. He did not see the finishing blow to his head. His last thought was a stunning clear vision of reality. He saw a vision of a transmitter in front of his eyes. He saw two fingers on it. He was at two. That was his place. Two warnings. He would remember that if the subject came up again.

  It didn't.

  Remo felt the dogs before he heard them or saw them. There was a way dogs had about them of being unleashed for an attack. Dogs were pack animals, and while they could be trained for other things, they worked best in groups. On the other hand, man had to be trained to work in a group. And then there were a few other men, down through the centuries, who had been trained to excel alone, to use all the physical powers that a man's body could command, and those were the ones who could sense dogs loping across a vast lawn preparing for an attack.

  Remo was one of those men. The only other was his trainer, and Remo's training had been so pure that he no longer had to think about the things he knew. To think about something was not to know it. To do something without knowing how one did it was the full knowledge of one's own body.

  The normal human body would tense when perceiving an attack. That was because it had succumbed to the bad habit of using muscles and strength. When the dogs set forepaws for the leap, Remo felt a softness in the air, almost as if watching himself. He let his left arm level out by itself with palm upward, catching the underbelly of the dog and pressuring slightly so that its leap went two feet too far, two feet above his head. He passed the other two dogs, one at each side, like a matador.

  From the window of the great white house with the orange roof, a man watched through binoculars. He rubbed the lenses because he was sure he had not seen what he had seen. If his binoculars were not playing tricks, he had just seen his three prize attack dogs leap at a man and not only miss, but seem to go right through him. The man did not change pace; nor did he change expression.

  There was Lobo, Rafael and Berserka, each with a blood kill in their mouths by the time their training had been completed, and they had run through that stranger.

  Was he carrying something special?

  What could he carry? He wore only a black T-shirt and black slacks and loafers. He also wore a smile. Apparently he knew he was being watched because he mouthed again the words: "You're dead."

  Lobo pulled up short on the lawn and, true to his great Doberman heart, whirled to attack again. And this time it was as if he had run into a wall. He stopped. Flat. On the ground. Lifeless. A useless dog, thought the man with the binoculars. Rafael would do better. Rafael had once ripped out a lumberjack's throat with one jerk of his mastiff neck.

  Rafael roared toward the man's groin. Rafael roared right on by in two pieces. Mastiff's master watched his dog die and thought: "All my life, I have been robbed by dog dealers. Let there be one day that does not betray Juan Valdez Garcia and then I will admit there is justice under heaven."

  Juan Valdez prayed rarely and never without some prospect of success. He was not a man who would ask a favor of the Almighty without believing it was in the Almighty's best interest to deliver. Juan Valdez was not, after all, some pathetic peasant who would ask for the impossible, like altering an incurable disease.

  Juan allowed the Almighty a likely opportunity to perform this service for him. After all, had he not twice placed gold candlesticks in the churches of Bogota and Popayan? He was not a man to treat God to mere copper.

  Having paid for services, Juan Valdez now expected those services to be returned. It was a simple prayer that came from his lips, one that was honest and true:

  "God, I want that gringo in Berserka's teeth. Or else I calling in the candlesticks."

  Juan focused the binoculars a bit more tightly. It would be good to see Berserka kill. She did not finish off quickly, unlike his other dogs, who went for the throat. Berserka could kill like a cat when she had a person helpless. Berserka, who had once shredded two men with rifles and sent a third fleeing handless into the jungles in Juan's early days of harvesting coca leaf, now darted toward the gringo's ankle. Berserka had teeth like a shark and haunches like a rhino. Her paws dug up lawn as she drove toward the man's loafers. And then she twisted with the full weight of her body to jerk him off his feet.

  But she was twisting in air, a 180-pound dog bouncing around in the man's hands like a puppy. And he was stroking her belly and he was saying something Juan Valdez made out by lip-reading. He was saying: "Nice doggy."

  And then he put her down and she walked, tail wagging behind the heels she was supposed to have upended. Juan gasped. There was Berserka, who had chewed on more entrails than he could count, happily walking behind this man who had invaded his home. Juan did not care anymore where he was. It was his home. So what if it was in America? It was his home and the machine guns would have to be used.

  But his cousins protested. A machine gun might hit neighboring estates. A machine gun might carry shells to a hospital a mile down the road. A machine gun could do damage anywhere. Why did Juan wish to use machine guns in an American suburb?

  "Because I couldn't lay my hands on an automic bomb, estupido," he said and personally supervised the setting up of the fifty-caliber machine guns.

  The deadly spray chewed up his lawn, pulverized his beloved Berserka and left the man unscathed. He was unscathed, Juan was sure, because he wasn't there anymore. Like a mist that suddenly goes when the sun arrives, he was gone. And then he was at the window, without a mark on him.

  Juan Valdez would never trust the Lord again. The Almighty deserved all those windows' mites he kept asking for. If Juan lived through this day, he would take back the gold candlesticks from the churches in Bogota and Popayan.

  His stupid cousins were still firing the machine guns into the expensive lawn when the man spoke.

  "I've come to see Juan Valdez," said Remo. Juan pointed to his stupid cousins.

  "Which one is Juan Valdez?" Remo asked.

  "They both are. Take them with my blessings and go," said Juan.

  "I think you are."

  "You're right," said Juan. He had not expected that to work. What could he say to a man who had killed his gate guard, destroyed his two favorite dogs personally and the third practically, and was now cracking the bones of his cousins as if they were lobsters? New words came easily to Juan Valdez and they were sincere.

  "Stranger, I don't know who you are but you're hired."

  "I don't work for dead men," said Remo and grabbed Valdez by the back of his neck, pressing the thick greasy hair into the skin. Juan saw darkness and felt pain and when the gringo asked for his children, he heard himself to his own surprise answering.

  Valdez was dragged like a sack of coffee beans into the children's room, where the German governess was dismissed.

  There were Chico and Paco and Napoleon. "Children," said the gringo. "This is your father. He has helped to bring a new form of death to
America's shores. Your father doesn't believe in just killing witnesses; he kills their wives and children. That is how your father kills." Even as he said this, Remo felt the same rage he had felt when he heard that ten children and their mothers were slain in New York City in a dispute between drug dealers. Remo had seen killing in the world, but not like this. Children had died in wars, but to use them as precise targets made his blood run cold and when he got this assignment, he knew exactly what he was going to do.

  "Do you believe that children should be killed in these drug wars?"

  Their little dark eyes grew larger with fear. They shook their heads.

  "Don't you think that people who kill children are mierda?" Remo asked, using the Spanish word for excrement.

  They all nodded.

  "Your daddy kills children. What do you think he is?" And even as the first frightened hesitant answers came from their lips, Remo finished off Valdez, wiping his hands clean on the man's shirt. And there were the children looking at their father, whose last vision on earth had been that of his children saying he was less than dirt.

  And Remo felt unclean. Why had he done it like that? He was just supposed to eliminate Valdez and he felt unclean now.

  He looked at the children and said, "I'm sorry." What was he sorry about? His country and the world were infinitely better off with this man's death. Valdez, by his brutality, his slaughtering of the families of witnesses, had remained free from the law. And this was Remo's job. When the nation was threatened by those who could not be contained within the law, then the organization he worked for took care of things outside the law. And he had done it. Almost as ordered. But no one had ordered him to kill a man in front of his children. And there was something worse: he had unleashed all the old feelings he had grown up with, all the feelings he had been trained out of. "I'm sorry," Remo repeated.