*
Dr Franz Flant was tied to a rickety chair in a desolate room with one barred window to let in a smidgeon of light. The steamy heat of Borneo was suffocating and Flant was saturated in perspiration. Zulma Pei was standing beside him and looked much cooler. She tested Flant’s bonds and the gag to reassure herself they were strong enough to hold for the moment at least; then she gathered up her things from the plastic table beside the chair: her handbag, summer hat and Gucci handbag.
‘I’m afraid I must be going,’ she said. ‘I apologise for the manner in which your little expedition has come to an end. But seeing you float down that jungle river in an old raft, I got the impression it was not too comfortable to begin with. Could I assume you enjoy roughing it up?’
She put on the hat and worked with the brim until the tilt was too her liking. It was a pristinely white hat with an elegant floral trim and it stylishly complemented her equally white linen jacket, blouse and skirt. She put on her glasses then and finally swung the handbag over her shoulder. That left on the table only Flant’s expedition rucksack. She opened it up and smirked cruelly as she peered into the wide array of herbs, mosses and flowers.
‘I wouldn’t dream of leaving you here without the fruits of your labour. Unfortunately though, these are the only provisions you’re going to have, and you may be here for a very long time. You see, now that I know where Green Fields is, I’m going to pay it a visit. And once I’ve destroyed it and Skidmore, I might just treat myself to a holiday – something long and pleasant.’ She winked knowingly. ‘If you find yourself thirsty, you might consider drinking this one.’ She plucked out a red flowered plant from the rucksack. ‘My bandit friends tell me it contains a sweet juice. They did, however, impress on me that the juice causes blindness and madness to boot. But hell, if you’re thirsty enough, it’ll just have to do.’ She dropped the flower and peered deeper into the bag. ‘And if you’re feeling a little hungry, there are some black berries that will put your digestion to work. It was explained to me as being akin to a particularly crude hand grenade.’ She pushed the rucksack along the table to be a little closer. ‘But who am I to lecture? After all, you’re a botanist and it’s your bag. I’m sure you could conduct a whole speaking tour on its contents. The sad thing is there’s going to be no one to hear you in this particular venue, not even if you scream a thousand screams. You’re in a basement in a disused factory. Thick concrete walls and iron doors that the bandits have claimed from a disused prison. In fact, the only reason I’ve put the gag on is I prefer it when my patients do not talk. I wish I could have done it more often.’
Pei stood still a moment longer, wanting to milk the anxiety in Flant’s eyes. She wanted to see tears. She wanted to see him break. Alas, however, he was holding on and she had a plane to catch. She marched out the basement cell and carefully locked the door behind her.
There were soft whisperings down the corridor from cell containing the remaining survivors of the Flant expedition. Pei had played a different game with them: leading them to believe their best chance of release was demonstrating complete cooperation and obedience. In truth, she did not know nor care what would be their fate. She suspected Cantrell Collin’s bandit friends might endeavor to ransom them. Flant, at least, might be worth something.
Pei hurried up the basement stairs, cowering as low as possible under the grotesque blanket of cobwebs covering the roof, grasping onto her hat for fear they might brush against them – she could not even bring herself to shine her flashlight that way, for so many childhood nightmares had looked just like this. She reached the ground floor and weaved a path through abandoned crates and boxes to leave the factory through a clapped out, rusted door. A Range Rover was waiting in the weed ridden car park ahead. Canter Collins was leaning out the driver’s side window, squinting with the heat of the day and glowering at his watch.
‘You’ll miss your flight.’
‘I’m coming.’
Collins revved the engine hard and the moment Pei was in the seat beside him set the car into a skidding one hundred and eighty degree turn. He sped out past the sagging perimeter gates and took a right hand turn onto the dusty road for Mirio.
‘Did he have anything to say?’ he queried.
‘No, I was just there to say farewell,’ Pei calmly replied. ‘He’s already told me everything I need to know.’
Collins paused. ‘Do you really think going after Skidmore is wise? He’s the head of Military Intelligence, no less.’
‘I always advise my patients to confront their bullies. So, how would it be if I didn’t do anything about him?’
‘Well, can’t you at least wait a few weeks for the heat to die down? I’ll fly you back to Australia myself then.’
‘That would not do. The information I have obtained from the good Dr Flant is as fresh as the Green Field lilies. No use waiting for it to go stale. And besides, my passports are solid. My father gave me my first fake passport for my sixteenth birthday.’
Collins smirked, starting to relax about the time: the run into town was looking promising with only a few cars about and the roadside buildings already starting to show the modern appearance of the city fringe.
‘So, what will you do when you get your hands on him?’
‘The lobotomy has always been the last resort for the most extreme psychotic cases. And, as you mentioned, we are dealing with the head of Military Intelligence.’ She laughed at her pun. ‘A head that is about to get particularly disfigured, for I must confess a knowledge gap with this procedure. Fortunately, there will be more enemies, more opportunities to learn.’
They came upon a red light and Collins took the opportunity to glance across at Pei, searching for any hint of hubris in her steely, assured countenance. Pei recognized what he was looking for and remembered how proud she used to make her father by never wavering.
‘An enemy is just a collection of disagreeable opinions,’ she said defiantly, ‘and should not be allowed to fester. Lying on a therapist’s couch and just talking about them is a coward’s way. The cure of the brave is to go direct to the source.’
‘Your banker came through.’
‘Yes, all debts paid.’
‘You really can make yourself rich selling your methods all around the world.’
‘Fifteen out of twenty Sapiens carried out the crimes they had been programmed with. That is a selling point.’
‘Quite. But I trust you are not considering going anywhere near the drop off points now. There is every chance they will be compromised.’
Collins returned his attention to the traffic lights, and was just in time to catch a blur of movement in the rearview mirror: it was an oncoming SUV and the impact came with a neck wrenching shudder.
Pei was out the car in a flash, rushing at the red box of a vehicle that had decimated their rear bumper-bar. ‘Where the hell did you learn to drive?’ she screamed.
The front doors of the SUV flung open and Furn and Breeze calmly stepped out with guns aimed.
‘RIP,’ Breeze said.
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