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  “What . . . ?” he said, his bottom jaw falling open a little.

  “David,” said Trask, “can you help me with something? Can you tell me how you’d go about evaginating someone?”

  “How I’d do what?” Grimacing, Chung continued to stare at the pictures.

  “How would you turn someone outside in?”

  “What in hell’s name am I looking at, sir?” The locator’s nostrils widened; his lips twitched, drew back in disgust.

  “It’s what I was talking about,” said Trask quietly. “It’s what I was asking you. This person is outside in. Now how would you do that to someone, David? Well, always assuming you wanted to, of course.”

  “He’s inside out?”

  Trask shook his head. “No, he’s outside in, evaginated.”

  “Some kind of sick joke?” Now Chung looked up, and just in case this was a very sick joke he decided to add his ten-pence-worth. “Well, maybe I could shove something up his backside all the way . . . say, a broom handle with expanding grappling hooks? And I’d expand them and drag him out through his own, er—”

  “No,” Trask cut him short, “because that would rupture his anus, split it and him wide open and tear his insides. But with this thing in these photographs, there was none of that kind of damage. No cuts, no incisions. And look at his legs—what used to be his legs—and his arms, and even his head. They’ve been evaginated, too.”

  “You were being serious?” said Chung, weakly. “And this is a real person: someone who has been . . . outside-inned?”

  “Yes.” Trask nodded. “As if the flesh has been rolled off his bones—like you would roll off a stocking—then straightened out with the skin inside the tube, and laid out alongside the bare bones. But no cutting, no slicing.”

  “But blood?”

  “Of course blood,” said Trask. “It’s your skin that keeps the blood in, David! And when flesh parts from bone, naturally you bleed. Or, in this case, unnaturally.”

  “And somebody somehow did this to whoever this was?”

  “The pathologist who performed the postmortem reckons if he hadn’t seen it he would have said it was impossible. But in any case—whether someone did it or not, whether it’s murder or something else—it happened.”

  “But how else could it happen if no one did it?” Chung was appalled yet fascinated.

  Trask shrugged, but not negligently. “Have you ever looked through Sir Keenan Gormley’s cases?” Gormley had been the first Head of Branch in the days when the organization had been known as INTESP, an awkward sort of acronym based on the words ‘intelligence’ and ‘espionage,’ or perhaps ESP; Trask had never bothered to ask about it and no longer cared. “Gormley covered two cases of spontaneous human combustion and wrote them up very convincingly . . . which is to say he believed they were genuine. No one had set fire to or murdered the victims, they had simply burned themselves up.”

  “I’ve heard of such cases, yes,” Chung nodded. “Some kind of violent, volatile chemical reaction or something. But this?” He shook his head and pushed the pictures back across the desk. “This isn’t in any way the same.”

  “But in a way it is,” Trask said. “They’re both mysterious and inexplicable occurrences. I suppose that what I’m saying or asking is: if someone—chemically or otherwise—can somehow spontaneously incinerate, is it also possible there’s a mechanism for spontaneous evagination?”

  But the locator could only frown and shake his head again, answering, “Sir, you’ve got me.”

  “Yes,” Trask agreed, “and it’s got me, too . . . it’s got me beat! But I’ve read this report and you haven’t heard the worst of it. When they found this—this mess—it, or rather he, was still alive, the poor devil!”

  “Jesus!” Chung barely breathed the word. “He was . . . ?”

  “Alive, yes.” Trask nodded. “A very nightmarish, agonized sort of life, obviously. But he very quickly died—thank God!”

  And Chung said nothing but simply sat there . . .

  Eventually Trask gave himself a shake, said, “David, see if you can find someone who isn’t too busy right now, have him do some research for me. I’m very interested to know if there have ever been any other cases like this here or abroad. It’s something I think we should look into.”

  The locator stood up. “Maybe you’d like me to take it on?” he said, hoping against hope that Trask wouldn’t. “It seems I’m free for the time being, so perhaps—”

  “No.” Trask shook his head, and smiled however wanly. “No, for there’s something else I’d like you to do. Something that’s not nearly so ghoulish.”

  “Oh?” Chung tried his best to hide his relief; the less he saw of that sort of thing the more he’d like it.

  “Yes,” said Trask, then told him about the Scott St. John case, explaining his requirements with regard to Ian Goodly and Anna Marie English. “It’s for their own good,” he finished off.

  “Yes, sir,” said Chung stiffly, “I know. But still I won’t like it, spying on our own.”

  “I know, David,” said the other. “But what’s to like? This is E-Branch, my friend, and there are things no one likes—not you, me, or anyone else—but we deal with them as best we can. And anyway, it isn’t spying: you’re to be their backup, that’s all, even if they don’t know they have one. And finally”—Trask narrowed his eyes determinedly—“finally I’m the boss here, and I get to delegate. I’ve just done that, so now get on with it.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Chung, heading for the door.

  Watching the locator leave, Trask felt he’d made the right decision. The task he’d assigned to Chung might well be considered a little dubious, but at least it would take his mind off that poor kid he’d found raped and murdered under a bush . . .

  6

  When the white executive jet rolled to a halt on the dilapidated airport’s heat-hazed runway, and the dust devils stirred up by its vortex settled, then the welcoming committee of six combat-accoutred, armed black soldiers ran out from the shade of the seedy airport building to form up on both sides of the steps where they unfolded from the plane’s cabin.

  Following them at a far more leisurely pace as the whine of the jet’s engine wound down, a handsome black youth of some eighteen years, immaculately clad in a grey silk shirt, an expensive white western suit, and white shoes, made his way to the foot of the steps. Glittering on the breast of the youth’s jacket, a triple row of spurious, court-mounted medals hinted however inelegantly of his ranking in this godforsaken, cynical, and sinister autocracy: that as the beloved only son of a ruthless, murderous dictator, he was the next in line.

  With the heat bouncing up at him in waves from the runway, the youth flailed a whisk left and right to keep the flies at bay, and only paused when he saw movement in the inky darkness of the airplane’s oval hatch. First a face appeared, seemingly hunched forward, in fact ducking low, and then the frame of an abnormally tall, long-necked, stick-thin man in a white, high-collared kaftan and red leather sandals. Pale-skinned, he wore his silvery hair in a comb from three inches above his nose to where it overlapped his high collar at the back. His eyes were dark and deep-seated under ridged, tapering eyebrows; his ears were small and round, and his mouth was no wider than his thin, pointed chin. Had he worn a blue-grey tangled beard, moustaches, and sideburns—if he had smiled, and if his skin had been darker—then he might well have been mistaken for an Indian mystic, the guru of some esoteric order. There was a certain air about him, of forbidden knowledge and learning; visions and powers beyond man’s natural scope. But however impressive he might seem with his great height, still he was pallid, clean-shaven, unsmiling.

  As he stepped down from the plane with an awkward, stiff-legged gait, the young man paced forward between the soldiers, bowed, held out his hand, and in an expensive, English-school-educated voice said, “Father, I am sent by my father, General Wilson Gundawei, to bring you to the palace. The soldiers are an honour guard.”

 
Ignoring the proffered hand, the other said, “Peter, you are well it seems—recovered, and fully—and I am pleased. With you I am pleased; but alas, not with your father.” While his voice was deep and resonant, with no readily recognizable accent, his thin lips seemed barely to move and his words were oddly stilted, strained, uncertain. And the young man thought: It was the same on the occasion of our first—and in fact our last—meeting. Perhaps he does not speak too much. Perhaps he is not used to speaking. It could be that among great mystics, thinkers, and healers, speaking is frowned upon.

  The man looked at him, and as if he had heard the other’s thoughts—but more likely in order to cut any further formalities short—said, “I have little need for conversation.” And then, looking left and right at the soldiers, “Weapons, Peter? Such is your father’s greeting? Such is the General’s regard?”

  “An honour guard,” the other said again, his hand falling awkwardly to his side. And with an apologetic shrug: “Or should we simply say . . . a guard? The times are uncertain; the General has enemies, as have all strong men and rulers. He thinks it is best to be cautious and takes care to protect me, that’s all—oh, and you, too, father! For if not for you, why, he would have no heir to protect!”

  A shining limo flanked by a pair of military vehicles came speeding from behind the airport building. As the car came to a halt, its passenger doors slid open and two uniformed bodyguards bearing light machine guns got out; hard-eyed, alert, they stood facing outward. Meanwhile, the escorting half-tracks had taken up positions facing the airport’s perimeter; their canvas roofs had folded back and down to reveal flak-jacketed gunners behind armoured panels.

  “Uncertain times,” said the stick-thin man, nodding. “Yes, it would appear so.” Then, checking the time on his wristwatch, he made some kind of adjustment, and with the black youth leading the way stepped lurchingly toward the waiting limo . . .

  In better times, an earlier era, the General’s headquarters had indeed been a palace, very splendid and opulent. Then there had been kings, princes, and black courtiers—and sometimes white ones, too—and diplomats in fine clothes, and only very rarely military men: always high-ranking officers in ceremonial dress, wearing medals and ribbons that were real and well earned. Then, too, there had been justice . . . well, of a sort. But not merely the rough justice and injustices of implacable power in corrupt hands.

  Such were the thoughts of Peter Gundawei, his father’s son but by no means like-minded, as he and the General’s tall enigmatic visitor climbed marble steps to the high-arched entrance, and passed through into echoing halls flanked by cool if dusty rooms. On every side black guards came to attention as the pair passed by; in one room a colonel held an O-Group with a platoon of soldiers, used a bamboo cane to punctuate his orders, pointed out locations on various wall charts and maps. Other rooms stood empty, without a stick of furniture; but in the center of the complex behind massive, heavily guarded, gold-banded doors, there General Wilson Gundawei had his private rooms.

  The soldiers—six of them, seated on benches—stood up, came to attention, saluted the handsome youth, looked upon the tall man at his side with some suspicion. They had not been on duty during his previous visit, and their orders were to search all strangers. All well and good, but what was there to search? This one was so thin, his kaftan sheer and sheath-like. He wore a watch upon his wrist; no other visible ornamentation. And the young, educated Peter Gundawei—the General’s haughty son and heir—was there to brush them and their weapons contemptuously aside.

  The officer in charge rapped with his knuckles three times upon the great doors, and in a while an eight-inch-square panel was opened from within. A young female face—pretty, black, a girl in her teens—looked out, quickly withdrew. A key grated; hidden bolts were sprung; the officer and one of his men hauled on huge, polished mahogany handles and the doors cracked in the middle, swinging slowly open. No sooner had the visitor and his escort passed through than the doors ground shut behind them.

  The room inside was vast, high-ceilinged, a meeting point for many other rooms and passages that converged on it like so many spokes in a wheel; but it was also well secured. The great doors through which the disparate pair had entered this “inner sanctum” were the only doors, though it seemed likely that the General had arranged a bolt-hole somewhere, just in case. There were no windows so the room was lit by four great chandeliers, and in the very middle of the ceiling an enormous fan beat the air with six broad blades.

  Some fifty feet away across an ornate marble-tiled floor, a curtained bed with gold- and ivory-inlaid “posters,” or more properly marble columns, occupied a central area against a wall draped with animal-head trophies on a leopard-skin background; the General was known to be a legendary hunter—and not only of big game. To both sides of the bed huge cushions were piled deep on the floor where four unsmiling, mainly naked girls sat huddled together two to a side. The none-too-gentle swaying of the great bed’s amber- and gold-beaded, not-quite-opaque curtains suggested that the General might well be “hunting” even now.

  And while this hidden activity continued, taking advantage of what looked like his last opportunity, Peter Gundawei turned to the visitor and whispered words of belated warning.

  “At the airplane you told me you were not pleased with my father,” he said. “I’m in your debt and feel I must advise you: do not be so frank with the General himself! While his patience is limited, his rage knows no restrictions whatsoever.”

  The other merely glanced at him and said nothing, but his almost invisible smile came very close to mocking. And deep in their sockets his eyes gleamed like jet marbles.

  In that same moment the great bed’s bead curtains swished open and the General beckoned them to attend him. They did so, crossing the marble floor to stand at the foot of the bed. And General Wilson Gundawei adjusted his heavy robe and belted it, and eased himself upright off the bed onto its slightly raised dais. Barefooted, naked but for his robe, he faced them; while behind him—trying to cover herself with strings of precious beads—a beautiful young girl got off her knees, cowering on purple sheets.

  “Ah!” said the General. “And so you stick to your guns—your, er, schedule—arriving precisely as planned, if not as I planned. For as you can see I am my usual tardy self . . . and not a little annoyed at being disturbed while enjoying my, er, exercise? Anyway, it is good to see you again, Guyler Schweitzer.” Smiling, he held out a pudgy hand. His visitor, ignoring the supposedly “welcoming” hand, instead appeared to study its owner. What he saw was a megalomaniac potentate, a man bloated with greed, power, and lust. And bald and shiny from his sexual exertions—standing there like an ebony Buddha come alive—General Wilson Gundawei looked at his empty hand and the smile melted on his face. He came to the edge of the dais, stuck his hand out farther yet, demandingly, and said, “Guyler, I’m sure you know that it’s not polite, and at worst an insult, to—”

  “I do not touch others unless it becomes . . . unavoidable,” the tall man cut him off. “As for my name: yes, Guyler Schweitzer is my name—my business name, at least—but those in my employ and a majority of others I am pleased to . . . acknowledge, and to whom I may on occasion give succour, including your son, Peter, call me father. I greatly prefer to be called father.”

  The General clenched his fist, dropped his hand, said, “My patience extends only so far, ‘father.’ But please to enlighten me: shouldn’t that be ‘Father’ with a capital ‘F’? Or would you simply prefer to be called ‘Our Father’—or God?”

  The visitor seemed taken aback, momentarily surprised, then straightened, stood taller yet, and said, “Despite my search for Him, I am not convinced of the existence of any such deity, nor would I emulate Him if He were real. But if there is such a One I would be glad to find Him; indeed, we might even have matters to discuss . . . before one or both of us ceased to function. And if there was time I would ask Him why—why in His omniscience, His omnipotence, His ineffable artistry�
��why He has made certain of His creations so gross and lacking in grace.”

  This was the most that the General and his ashen-faced son had ever heard the tall man say at any one time; as a result of which—of what he had said—the youth’s jaw fell open.

  General Wilson Gundawei’s face turned slate grey. His eyes bulged and he puffed out his cheeks. He didn’t fully understand what the tall man had said, only that it sounded like some kind of insult. Well, and a good many miles between here and the airport, the General thought. Also between this towering, insolent skeleton and his private jet!

  Even as he was thinking these things, however—and as if to deliberately inflame the General more yet—his visitor continued: “I think you know why I am here. A matter of important, unfinished business: an as yet outstanding debt . . .”

  But of course I know why you’re here! the General thought. You are here on a fool’s errand, and you’re an even bigger fool to provoke me. Also, you are now even farther, or might as well be, from your little toy airplane. As for business: no, I think not. There is one final personal matter which I must now attend to, but you shall do no more “business” with me, or with anyone else—“father!”

  That last thought had brought the blood back to Gundawei’s face; also the smile, but a grim, slyly sardonic smile now. And in a low soft voice he said, “I have no great desire to discuss business of any kind with you right now—or ever! As to debts: do you know to whom you are speaking? Do you imply that General Wilson Gundawei is in your debt? I cannot recall any contract.”

  “There was no contract.” The tall man sighed and shook his head, then checked his watch and made a small adjustment. “Just a gentleman’s agreement. Your son had AIDS, and I cured him. In return you agreed to pay my company ten million dollars in gold in regular shipments, commencing in February. But the initial payment is now some months overdue, and all subsequent attempts to communicate with you have gone unanswered. Now I have come here personally to hear your explanation; also to either accept your excuse and make new, final arrangements with you, or to enforce a penalty. Unfortunately, it looks like being the latter.”