spine at the fragrant memory. His linen shirt was still soaked with sweat, sticking to his skin. An hour earlier, at the climax of his oration, the temperature outside, in the lush gardens of the Bambah Hotel, was nearly ninety. For the hour he spoke inside the great room, it was well over one hundred.
Snay giggled. Earlier that evening, he’d ordered the staff to light the furnace and turn up the heat. Filled to capacity with over four hundred nearly delirious young women, the great room had been redolent with the moist heat of pungent femininity. It was as if some great mound of exotic fruit had been placed there in the hall and had begun to ferment.
The women were screaming. They were on fire.
Having ignited them with his facile tongue, Snay now stood back from his podium, head bowed, and let them burn. They chanted. They raved. Had they been able sweat blood, they would have done so.
“Death! Death! Death!”
He whipped out his silk handkerchief and mopped his brow. Finished, drained, utterly spent, bin Wazir allowed the delicious scents and sounds to wash over him. He lifted his gaze to the rafters. To row upon row of crimson banners, faded over these many years to the color of old blood. Ten minutes became twenty. Half an hour passed. Still, pitched cries and moans issued from the mass of writhing bodies.
Ah. It had been glorious. It had been vindication. A bulwark erected against the slights and humiliations he had endured at the hands of his enemies for so very long. A kind of purification. A kind of redemption. He smiled.
Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Prophet.
The wails of his disciples still reverberated within his brain as he stood now, in the shadows of the moonlit palms at the water’s edge, looking up at his beautiful Bambah on the hill.
The pink hotel was quiet now, her public rooms and long dank hallways devoid of ringing echoes, darkened. But not desolate, oh no. The old hotel was humming with restive energy, waiting to be unleashed. A small yellow chin of moon hung in a black sky peppered with silver stars. The gardens were still, save the gentle rustle of the palms. The only other sound Snay could hear was the singsong wish-wash of the surf at his feet.
He fired up a Baghdaddie and listened to the night.
Even Saddam up on the verandah was silent, although Snay knew the wily old dragon was not sleeping. The women had excited him as well. Caressing his snout, looking into those gleaming yellow eyes, Snay had seen something most familiar. There on the verandah, saying good-bye to his aged beast, it came to him just how much alike they were, he and the Komodo.
Ravenous, primitive creatures. Feral. Equipped with sharp claws. Yes, all that and one more trait they shared: they were both poisonous. A light burning on an upper floor winked out.
Sleep, little flowers.
Almost all the hotel’s lights had been extinguished. His fleurs du mal were deep in slumber now. In a few hours they would rise up and begin their epic and final journey. Praise Allah, what joyous havoc this old dog was about to wreak upon this world! He threw his head back and laughed at the sheer outrageousness of it all. For some moments, he cackled and capered about in the soft white sand, a fat white devil in the moonlight.
What was the name they had all called him, friend and foe alike? Tippu Tip had told him one night, many years before. Confessed it in a drunken stupor, the two of them buckled against a piss-stained wall in some dank alley in Africa, roaring over some horrible blood-soaked deed just done.
The Dog. Yes, that was it, the name they all said behind his back. The Dog.
Soon the whole world would learn that this Dog had a very jagged set of canines. He looked at the phosphorescent glow of his watch in the darkness. Almost one. What was keeping Tippu and his all-important passenger? It was late, and there was much to be accomplished before the sun rose over Suva.
At that moment, from up at the top of the drive, the engine of the ancient Daimler reluctantly turned over. He took a deep breath and allowed himself a brief moment of relaxation, perhaps the first in weeks. Months of intense planning were nearly finished. No detail of this stage had escaped him, from the sublimely technical and logistical, to the most ridiculously mundane. He’d had the most fun with the inexpensive western-style female wardrobe (he’d ordered it all online from a Land’s End catalog!) and even choosing the supple leather shoulder bags each woman would carry tomorrow.
Bags to hold the American city maps he’d ordered over the Internet from something called Triple A. Very good maps, indeed! Maps, and, of course, the precious Pigskins.
He’d even designed the New World Travel logo for the bags himself: a blue and green globe enwreathed in olive branches, suspended from the beaks of two doves. Then, he’d written the perfect slogan:
We come in peace.
He watched the Lucas headlamps of the Daimler snake down the drive, the twin yellow beams intermittently streaking through the black trunks of the palms. A moment later, the mammoth black car rolled to a stop beside him, hissing and pinging. He waited for the usual death rattle but Tippu somehow managed to keep the ancient motor at idle. He heard a heavy click and a man seated in the shadows of the rear seat pushed the door open for him.
“Good evening, Snay,” the man said in his peculiar accent. The wiry old Indian had a high-pitched girlish voice and was prone to fits of giggling. “Get in, get in! You are good, I am hoping? Yes?”
“Very good, thank you,” Snay replied settling into the deep leather cushions. The car listed to one side under his weight. He eyed the other man carefully. Snay? The manner was far too casual and he didn’t like it. The doctor was an ugly little bugger. A lank ponytail of greasy grey hair was stuck to the back of his balding head. A pair of thick black spectacles perched on his beaky nose, magnifying two already enormous buglike eyes.
He always kept his fingers laced protectively over his little potbelly, as if it were a pot of gold, a repository of precious coins. No, bin Wazir thought, irritated, there was little to admire here but the brain.
Tippu noisily engaged first gear and they rumbled down into the thick jungle.
The Indian, Dr. Soong, was always in a hurry to get his words out, as if his mind had a constant backlog of bottle-necked sentences.
“I am having no idea you are such a fiery orator, my dear Snay! Such stimulation! All those beauties! Oh my word! Not a dry eye in the house. Or a dry anything else, for that matter, I am suspecting. Hee-hee.”
“You were there? You were not invited, Doctor.”
“I slipped in a side door, you see, and sat at the rear. Look at my jacket! Soaked to the skin. You are having boiler problems, yes? The old place is finally falling down around your ears! You must—”
“And no one stopped you? You just came in and sat down.”
The little man seemed delighted at bin Wazir’s evident irritation.
“Yes, no one. Very aphrodisiacal qualities, your speech produced, Snay,” he said. “Oh, yes. Labial engorgement! I checked a few of them, you see, when I gave them their vaccinations. Don’t worry, said I. It’s all right. I am a doctor! Tee-hee. Most amusing, what?”
“So. All is in readiness?” Snay interrupted.
“In a manner of speaking. Most excellent, your lecture about my little Pigskin bombs. Pity I am having so much trouble with them, you see.”
“Trouble?” Snay sat forward, his pulse rate zooming. If this little shit was—“What kind of trouble?”
“They are not working, you see,” the man giggled. “Not working.”
“Not working.”
“No. Not.”
“Tippu Tip,” Snay said, speaking evenly into the speaking tube, “Pull over when we get to the cage. I want to show the doctor the baby lizards.” Blood pounded at his temples. He stood on the threshold of triumph. Nothing must interfere—
“The dragons? No-no, it’s not necessary, Pasha. I am only trying to tickle you. Tee-hee. No problem, Snay, no problem. Please be—”
“Some minor adjustments, then? The Pigskins?”
“No. Not really minor, no.”
“No? No!” Snay lunged for the man and instantly had his hands around the fellow’s scrawny neck, yanking him sideways, his thumbs already applying sufficient pressure to crush the doctor’s rattling windpipe.
“Stop!” the little man managed to get out.
