Dark Chant In A Crimson Key

underestimating the will and strength of the young John Sinclair. It is doubtful that John Sinclair was ever committed to the act of assassination; he wanted only knowledge of the assassin's art, as taught by the world's foremost practitioner. He not only managed to hide his heart and true intent from my grandfather, but rejected the final test and somehow succeeded in escaping from the immediate wrath of the society. He had stolen my grandfather's secrets and refused to pay the price for that knowledge. In thousands of years, this had never happened before, and it was an act that had to be severely punished. Furthermore, the nature of the punishment would have to be much more terrible than mere death; it would have to be exquisitely painful and prolonged. Master Bai's intention was to force him to kill his parents, but by now, with the training he had received, John Sinclair was not so easy to find.

He had become what we call an 'invisible man.' My grandfather had to settle for killing the parents himself.

'Some years later it happened that my grandfather was wearing a different mask and color, working as a highly paid consultant to Mr. Insolers' CIA, formulating the Cooked Goose operation you've mentioned. When he learned of John Sinclair's relative proximity, and realized his status as a war hero in the American armed forces, he immediately shifted his attention to the most important matter in his life-exacting revenge on the former acolyte who had betrayed and embarrassed him before thousands of years of predecessors. The plan was to have Sinclair engineer his own destruction. He would learn of Cooked Goose, which Master Bai knew he would reject, and subsequently be killed by his own people, cursed by the same nation that had so recently and profusely honored him. My grandfather insisted that Sinclair be approached by Cooked Goose recruiters, and he was. The rest you know, or have guessed. The plan did not work. John Sinclair had not been idle. He had taken my grandfather's teachings and built upon them. His powers, both physical and psychological, were very great. Thanks to my grandfather, he had become a Black Flame sensei himself, and yet had still avoided paying the price for those skills he had acquired.

'They would confront each other again years later, in Seattle, after John Sinclair had constructed for himself the images he reflects today: a feared terrorist and extortionist to the world at large, a worshipped hero to a select few who think they understand him and his work-and a continuing insult and deep affront to those of us who understand just what it is John Sinclair is really doing.'

'What is he really doing?' Garth asked.

Al's response was a mild shrug accompanied by a thin, enigmatic smile. 'Dear fellow, I wouldn't know where to begin. I fear it would be beyond your capacity to understand.'

'No?' I said, cold rage welling in me at all the suffering that had so recently taken place in this room. 'Well, let me give it a shot, dear fellow. It's all mind games to the two of you. You're both fucking crazy, and you both stink of death. Sure, he's a hero to the people he's helped, but the reason he's an affront to Black Flame is that he turns Black Flame on its pointed head. He uses the techniques your grandfather taught him to obliterate the guilty with the same ruthless dispatch you use to murder the innocent. In a way, you're two sides of the same coin. For years, you people and Sinclair have been playing a kind of spiritual chess game, outside the law, with the world as your board, and with the corpses piling up all around you.'

'It isn't like that, Mongo,' Jan said, an edge to her voice. 'It's not a game to Chant. He's not evil.'

Al glanced at Jan, then back at me. Again, his lips curled back in an enigmatic, mirthless smile. 'Yes,' he said. 'Actually, it is rather like that, Frederickson. That's perhaps as close as an outsider can come to understanding why Sinclair is such a bother to us.'

'He's won even if you kill him,' Veil said to the leader. 'You're an entire organization, while he's a solo act. For years, he's been rubbing your nose in your failure to stop him from beating you at your own game. But I'm betting that when he goes down, Black Flame goes down. Why has he kept your secrets for all these years, Al? I say it's because it suits his purposes; it's the way he plays this strange game. He's kept a lot of secrets for that reason. But he's certainly made arrangements for a lot of information to come out when he dies. He'll end up even more of a legend, while you folks are going to end up looking like a bunch of boobs. His ultimate revenge will be not only to expose you, at a time and place of his choosing, but to make you look silly.'

The smile on Al's face abruptly vanished, and for just a moment I glimpsed in his black button eyes the true depths of his rage and hatred. It chilled me.

'No!' he snapped in a voice that had suddenly grown slightly hoarse. 'That is not what will happen. First, he will suffer far more than just his own death. He will be forced to kill the ones he loves with his own hands, and then we will kill all the others who love him. He will know depths of despair and loneliness such as few humans have ever experienced. We may allow him to live to a ripe old age with those feelings as his only companions. We will have his soul. We have learned all we need to know from you people. When we are finished, there will be nobody left alive to testify to the supposed good that he has done, or to his real motives. He will be blamed for all of the deaths here in Switzerland, including your own. John Sinclair will not be perceived as a legend, but as a curse. His story shall be as we wish it to be told; the mask we finally give him to wear will be permanent, and it will burn him to the bone.'

I was experiencing a lot of conflicting emotions, the most powerful being a combination of regret and outrage at the probability that the man with a Harvard sweatshirt and no heart was no doubt right. Black Flame certainly seemed now to have the situation under control. And it wasn't only the people John Sinclair loved and who loved him who were going to die but also the people I loved and who loved me. All of Sinclair's sanctuaries had been exposed, and the woman he loved was being held captive. He would certainly come; and even if he didn't, Black Flame was now in a position to carry out the strategy their leader had outlined. I wondered how I might have handled things differently, but suspected there had never really been anything I could have done or not done that would have affected this outcome. I'd never had a chance once I had agreed to come to Switzerland. I'd dropped right into a deadly trap the moment I'd stepped off the plane, and there was no way I could have prevented Garth, Veil, and Harper from joining me, once they were aware of my predicament. That thought tended to refocus my attention on the charming fellow who'd done the dropping.

I asked, 'What have you done with my good friend Emmet P. Neuberger?'

The question provoked another of Al's grating giggles. 'I believe Emmet has learned his lesson.'

'You haven't killed him?'

Al raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment. 'Killed him? You think we would simply kill him after he tried to steal our money, and almost delivered us into the hands of our greatest enemy? You can't be serious.'

'Neuberger was in on the original scam, wasn't he? At least he thought he was. Then Sinclair either tricked or blackmailed him into revealing the electronic access codes he needed, right?'

'Something like that. Actually, Sinclair had learned enough to do what he did without Emmet's help, but he wished to entrap the poor man-and he wanted to leave his footprints for us to find. I'm certain he now regrets that little display of bravado.'

'Did Neuberger know who he was screwing with when he tried to slip money out of Cornucopia?'

'He was aware that he had certain obligations that had been passed on to him through two generations and that the penalty for betraying those obligations could be severe. It seems his imagination was not up to the task of conjuring what forms such penalties might take. You Americans use the expression 'cut him off at the knees.' We cut Emmet off at the knees, but we used a chain saw instead of an expression. You people will be killed. Although your corpses will be mutilated for effect, there won't be a great deal of pain for any of you. But then, we're not really angry with you people.' He paused to giggle again, and the giggle became a bray. 'I wanted to put your minds at rest.'

Harper and I exchanged glances, and I saw my own love, longing, and regret mirrored in her maroon, gold- flecked eyes. I looked at Garth. My brother's face appeared blank as he stared off into space, and I knew that he was retreating into himself, marshaling his energy and resources for whatever opportunity might present itself to attack Al and his Black Flame colleagues. I wriggled my wrists and ankles, found my bonds tight. It was all very depressing.

'What happened between your grandfather and Sinclair in Seattle?' Veil asked in an even tone.

'My grandfather and sister died,' Al replied without any sign of emotion. 'John Sinclair had mounted an operation against a very wealthy and powerful man who had virtually enslaved a community of Hmong-the native people Sinclair had fought with in Southeast Asia. Rather than meet Sinclair's demands, the man hired my grandfather-once again wearing a different mask and color-to kill him. I don't know how the man heard of Master