Dark Chant In A Crimson Key

someone-even a man as vile as John Sinclair-to specialists like those who worked on Torture Island. Finally, none of the parties involved would want it known that they had once actually had Sinclair in their clutches and had allowed him to escape. If the story is true, and we will probably never know for certain, it seems Sinclair accomplished everything he had set out to do. I can report to you as fact that Richard Krowl is dead, and Torture Island no longer exists; and we all know that Chant Sinclair, at least for the moment, is alive and well, running all over Switzerland giving various law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the world fits.'

I put my hand over my glass as Patreaux raised the decanter to offer me more brandy. 'Is that it, Gerard?'

'That's it. Like most of the legends surrounding Sinclair, virtually none of the important parts can be substantiated. Now, may I ask if you think that hearing this little tale can be of any help to you?'

'I don't know, Gerard,' I replied absently, trying and failing to see through the clouds of smoke what engine, if any, the turning wheels were running. 'I just don't know.'

I rose, thanked him again for the fine meal and conversation, and he escorted me to the door. My belly was full, but my mind felt empty; I felt sure I was missing things, not seeing connections I should be making. Veil's behavior still baffled me, and I felt I was leaving something important behind me in this house, with this man. I had the distinct feeling that Gerard Patreaux had been trying to tell me even more than he had-or that he had told me and I'd missed it.

The Amnesty International administrator opened the door for me, but I didn't move; I stood in the doorway, looking out into a night aglow with pale moonlight. Carlo was sitting in the limousine, reading a magazine by the car's interior light. He seemed to sense my presence; he looked up and saw me, put aside his magazine, and turned on the car's engine. The haunting feeling that Gerard Patreaux had left something vital out of his story had grown overwhelming.

I slowly turned back, asked, 'Are you the friend Sinclair prevailed upon to inform on him, Gerard?'

Shadows moved in the man's expressive blue eyes, but he did not otherwise react. If anything, he almost gave the impression that he had been expecting the question and was vaguely surprised that it had taken me so long to ask it. 'You are, of course, making a joke,' he said, and laughed.

'If it's true, Gerard, why can't you just come out and tell me? If Veil knows about these things, why couldn't he just come out and tell me?'

'Perhaps your friend didn't want to waste your time repeating what may be only fairy tales and gossip,' the other man said evenly.

I started to protest, stopped when Patreaux raised his hand. 'Mongo,' he continued, 'even if what I told you is a fairy tale, like most fairy tales it may have a moral. The moral of the story I told you about John Sinclair risking his life on Torture Island to avenge a friend could be that you shouldn't believe everything you read or hear about this man. Things aren't always what they seem.'

'I'll bear that in mind, Gerard,' I said, shaking his hand once more before going to the car. Before getting in, I looked back toward the house, where the slight figure of Gerard Patreaux was silhouetted in the open doorway, black against light. I waved, but the figure remained still. I got into the limousine, and Carlo drove off into the night.

Chapter Seven

There was a message waiting for me when I returned to the hotel; it was brief, succinctly to the point, and both Garth and Veil had put their names to it. The message said, Stay put.

I found Garth and Veil's little communication to be off-putting and pretentious; I needed information, not orders. I considered calling one or both of them, then decided against it. It was almost midnight, too late anyway to consider moving to another hotel before morning, and I reasoned that Garth would have asked that I call if he'd had anything to report. I double-locked the door, jammed a straight-backed chair up under the knob, then went to bed.

Although I was exhausted, I slept only fitfully. My dreams were filled with violent, vivid images of branding irons, racks, electric generators, pincers, and cattle prods, and the blurred face of a mysterious man who could at once countenance the slaughter of innocent people, and who was a torturer himself who burned out men's eyes, but who would risk his own torture and death to right a wrong. That seemed a contradiction. John Sinclair himself was emerging as a contradiction, a paradox, a very dark and dissonant Chant in a crimson key of blood, pain, and death.

I awoke in the morning still tired, restless, and anxious, haunted by a sense of foreboding, convinced that still more terrible things were waiting to happen. I was in the eye of a maelstrom, and could see neither faces nor motives in the black winds that swirled around me. I picked up the phone, gave my credit card number, and called Garth's private number at the brown-stone. There was no answer, and his answering machine was not on. That annoyed me. Next, I tried Veil's loft, and a voice I recognized as belonging to Lee Miller, one of Veil's students, answered in the middle of the first ring.

'Lee, it's Mongo.'

'Mongo! Are you all right?'

'Yeah. Where are Veil and my brother?'

There was a short pause at the other end of the line, then: 'They're due to arrive at Zurich airport at eleven this morning, your time.'

I said, 'Shit.'

'They said that if you called I should tell you that they're coming directly to your hotel, so just stay there, in your room. They have a lot of things to tell you. You should do absolutely nothing, and talk to no one, until they get there. They said to tell you that you're in a deep pile of shit.'

'Wow. That's really great, Lee. It's precisely the kind of information I was hoping Garth could dig up for me. What flight are they on?'

'Swissair seventy-six, out of Kennedy.' The other man paused, then added, 'Mongo, you should know that Harper is with them. She insisted.'

'Shit!' I said, and slammed down the receiver.

I'd asked Veil to ask Garth to do some digging for me, and what I was getting was a reunion, complete with the woman I loved. Three more potential targets for Chant Sinclair to aim at. It was just the kind of news I needed to start off my day.

I saw Garth, Veil, and Harper before they saw me. The three of them, striding briskly, emerged from the mouth of the wide corridor leading from Customs looking like two and a half grim-faced gunfighters marching down Main Street to face off with the bad guys. Garth and Veil, with their tall, lithe bodies and powerful physical presence, looked the part, but Dr. Harper Rhys-Whitney, the snake- and dwarf-charming love of my life, was barely five feet tall, and she looked very small and frail walking between my brother and Veil. I knew better. This small woman with the maroon, gold-flecked eyes and long, soft, silver-streaked brown hair was, in her own way, every bit as deadly as the two men who accompanied her. I wondered if she had declared to Customs the tiny, deadly krait she carried everywhere in a small wooden box in her purse. I doubted it.

This petite, explosive charge of a woman had spent many years with the Statler Brothers Circus, where I had met her, as a head-liner like myself, a fearless snake charmer. Now she was a research herpetologist, a world- renowned expert on venomous snakes who kept a thirty-four-foot reticulated python as a house pet. I loved her to absolute distraction, and the depth of my feelings, the loss of control over my own fate that implied, frightened me. I was still trying to figure out what to do about it.

Finally, Harper saw me. She came running across the terminal, threw her arms around me. As always, I had an instantaneous physiological reaction as I felt her lips on mine, her large breasts pressing against me. 'Hello, sweetie,' she whispered in her low, husky voice that always seemed so improbable in such a small body. 'What nasty business have you gotten yourself into this time?'

It was a very good question. I was deliriously happy to see Harper, to be able to hold her in my arms, but I felt guilty for it, as if I were indulging my pleasure at risk to her life. 'Harper, Harper, Harper,' I murmured into her