Feng Shui Assassin by Adrian Hall
Chapter seven
'I knew you would come,' Daniel MacDonald raised a glass of whiskey in mock salute as Harvey stepped into the room.
Shadows flickered around the study. A large open fire crackled and spat, nestled in the wall between two wing back leather chairs. A chess game was in play on a marble board between the two chairs. Dark wood and ivory African tribes battled each other one square at a time.
MacDonald relaxed in the far chair, beckoning Harvey to sit opposite him. He poured a healthy measure of whiskey into a spare glass and propelled it along the reading table by his side. Harvey grabbed the glass before it toppled from the table, slopping pungent whiskey over the chess board.
'Sit, sit. Enjoy the spectacle, that's why you're here, after all.' MacDonald leaned back and forced a smile at the assassin.
Harvey held the whiskey in his hands but did not drink. He remained silent and settled into the chair, studying the features of the old soldier before him.
Daniel MacDonald was a military man. Twelve years in the Parachute regiment then a mercenary for eight years working in Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. There was other freelance work. Bodyguard positions for Arabian oil negotiators and opportunistic schemes within emerging markets. MacDonald funded his lifestyle with earnings from profits of his mercenary work and invested in colleagues' plans. That he was a multi-millionaire from the Trust distributions allowed him to be generous to his friends. He had accrued an impressive list of influence that ranged from heads of state to government agencies.
MacDonald was the first name Harvey came across in his investigations into the Valentine Trust. Black-flagged on a list of CIA third party operatives, MacDonald's name was cross referenced to failed coups and a number of botched kidnap retrievals in Central America. His operations often ended poorly for his employer, yet the man himself walked away virtually unscathed. Only his reputation suffered. But in a limited market he could always find another desperate victim's family or a greedy colonel with aspirations to usurp.
MacDonald downed the whiskey in his hand and refilled his glass from a decanter by his side.
'My doctor would be horrified to see me drink this fine whiskey. On the medication I'm taking, it'll cause one hell of a hangover. But then, I don't expect to see the dawn, and I'm damned if my last night is going to be a sober one.'
MacDonald chuckled. 'Though I don't think he would care too much. Last time we met I punched him, gave him a bloody nose. Guess I couldn't handle the bad news.
'This cancer, y'see, is very aggressive. Incredibly so. Three weeks ago I had a clean bill of health, now I've got a life expectancy of days. Corrupted cells in my body are multiplying like rabbits on viagra. In my lungs, my head. My organs look shot to pieces. They showed me the X-rays because I just didn't believe the quacks. Huge shadows clinging around the outlines of my internals.'
He paused, the fire crackling in the quiet. Harvey had broken into the house to confront an old warrior. Now it seemed he might hear the final confession.
'I remember standing in front of the lightbox, staring at the blueprint of my own death, thinking "I've seen this before". It looked like an aerial photograph after the result of a bombing raid. Huge craters picked out as shadows on my lungs, pitted scars across my liver and kidneys. Specialists were called in to view my x-rays. They remained quiet in the background and all I could do was stare at my impending death.
'It didn't take long for me to accept the inevitable. My body was dying. Timebomb cancers had exploded inside me like deadly, beautiful blossoms. And now that I've seen the images I can feel the thing inside me. Growing. Moving. Like an alien parasite that is killing us both. Or perhaps it will survive. Take my form and shamble around like . . .
'Of course, the doctors had no explanation. Some rare form of cancer that spread quickly to multiple areas. No doubt carried through the old temple via the bloodstream, depositing deadly little kernels all over the place. I stood there. This can't be happening, I thought. The quack's voice droning on in the background. Of course he didn't know what was going on. I was a dead man. Only a matter of a couple of very short days. But I've lived with death all my life. And there are a few things I wanted to do before taking my last breath.
'One of them is to confront my killer,' MacDonald's eyes, after flitting around the darkness whilst he summed up his death, finally settled on Harvey.
Harvey returned his gaze. The old soldier was tired and drunk, but with a malicious glint in his eye.
'I was pleased with the apparent suicide of that oaf Donald Grace. He was a pompous poof and I relished the thought of him screaming as he flew through the air, impacting nicely on the pavement. Oh, never to face him over the boardroom table again. Tell you the truth, I don't like any of the trustees, and have thought of arranging the death of one of them a few times myself.
'But the second death? That was too coincidental for me. I knew something was up and I was all ready to go to war, metaphorically and biblically, you understand, to protect me and mine. Unfortunately, a speck of blood on a handkerchief changed all that.
'That's when I knew you had done for me. This cancer is not a natural occurrence. I know agents and killers that use poisons and chemicals to murder their victims. It's been a specialised form of death since the very first disagreement between men. Some poisons are obvious, traceable and easily administered. Others can mimic heart conditions and other subtle ailments that would fool a cursory post mortem. In my time in the field I've also heard stories. Rumours and conjecture. Of specialist killers that made the innocuous and accidental into a murderous artform.'
Harvey remained still.
'I've been killed. I know it as surely as if you had walked up to me and plunged a knife into my belly. It's OK. But you have to do something for me. You have to give me closure.
'How did you do it?' MacDonald asked, clenching his fist. 'Cancer is such a cruel way to go, but I need to know how you did it. I need to. Did you introduce the poison into my food? I'm usually very particular about my eating habits? I've made enough enemies so I'm careful about where I eat.'
Harvey shook his head. 'It's nothing to do with your food.'
There was relief in MacDonald's face when Harvey spoke. Thankful of a reply.
'Was it my drink? I do like a tipple of a night time. Did you poison the wine? God forbid you poisoned the whiskey. Perhaps a slow acting poison in the ice cubes?'
Harvey placed his glass of whiskey, untouched, on the chess set. 'You wouldn't believe me if I told you,' he said.
MacDonald grinned through the haze of alcohol. 'Look, I'm going to die. I'm resigned to that fact. But you and I are both professionals, so give me this one courtesy, between colleagues. How did you kill me?'
Harvey levelled his gaze at the dying trustee. 'You smoke.'
'Yeah, I smoke. I roll my own cigarettes from tobacco bought at random shops throughout London and the South East. Papers too. You telling me you doused my tobacco in poisonous chemicals? That's ridiculous.'
'No, not in what you smoke. But where you smoke,' Harvey said.
'I smoke where I like. Everywhere but the house. Never liked the stale stench in my own house. And I don't really have time for the cryptic guessing games, as you well know. I'm drinking myself to death tonight. Before the disease you murdered me with destroys my body.'
'You smoke. And not in your house. But you do stand at the rear porch and smoke. Five or six a night, one or two in the morning. The sand bucket fills up with a couple of packets before its emptied. So I arranged for the rear porch to be . . . infested.'
'I never smelled a thing.' MacDonald slumped back. Caught by his addiction.
'No, you wouldn't. It wasn't a poison.'
'What is it then?' MacDonald swilled another mouthful of whiskey, the sharp taste long since dulled.
'Karma.'
MacDonald snorted. 'Don't tell me then. I didn't expect you to tell me - but then, I didn't really know what to expect.'
'How I wish you dead,' MacDonald stared into the fire. 'More than any other man or woman I have killed, I would suffer the torments of hell to see you dead.'
Harvey shook his head and stood up. 'Sorry to disappoint you, but I've done what I came here to do.'
'I have this all wrong,' the old soldier said, his eyes narrowing. 'I knew you were coming to face me before I died. I've read the police reports of Donald Grace's suicide. You were there moments before his death, to look him in the eye. I suspect you were there at that buffoon Masters' party. Perhaps chatted to him over a cocktail and picking prawns from the bellybutton of a blonde nymph. I thought I knew your type. Met a few of them in my time, as you do in my line of work. Always men, too. Women don't have the same connection with death. Vicious yes, and wouldn't turn my back on 'em for a minute. But only a man wants to get close. To face the man he's killing.'
Harvey hesitated beside the chair, letting the dying man unburden himself.
'Knew a fellow, he got so close to them he killed that he sucked the last breath out of the body as he twisted the knife this way and that,' MacDonald said. 'I caught him kissing a man once, as he plunged his dagger into the other fella's chest. Denied it, of course. But I saw. Mouth locked on mouth, eyes wide as he got his jollies. Dead now, of course. Shot to death in Zambia.'
MacDonald sipped at his whiskey. 'Anyway, thought you were a man who needed to get a taste of his victim. Steal something of him. But that's not the case, is it? You're here because it's . . . what? Personal? I thought one of the other trustees had hired you.'
'No one has hired me, and you needn't be concerned with the remnants of the Valentine Trust,' Harvey said.
'They all going to get it, are they? Murder by design? So why us? You must be working for someone. Have the beneficiaries finally discovered?'
Harvey remained quiet. MacDonald tried to rise but closed his eyes as a wave of nausea lurched from his stomach. He reached for a brown bottle at his side and tapped out a small handful of yellow capsules. He dropped them into the whiskey, where they bobbed around on the surface, before he slugged the glass empty.
'You're an assassin,' MacDonald said. 'I've made a career out of truth and lies. And you, my friend, are a misguided fool. I believe you're taking pay, or manipulated for some pro rata work. I don't trust any of the others and for all I know they've all hired you to kill me. You're a killer. A common bagman with a fancy gun and a wallet full of blood money. You're scum. You hear me? Scum. You haven't the guts to face me properly, you need to poison me with cancer. Cancer. You bastard.' The old soldier was rambling now, spitting his words as if they were the very poison that ravaged his body.
Harvey walked toward the doorway.
'Wait,' MacDonald cried. 'You can't just walk out. You owe me, goddamn it. You owe me.' Harvey hesitated, his dark hazel eyes caught by the firelight, then turned and leant against the chair.
'Karma,' Harvey said. 'Yin Yang. For every action there is a reaction. Consequence.'
MacDonald shook his head. 'What mumbo jumbo bollocks is that? You killing me because of some one thing I've done in my life? What about everything I've done in my life! I've slaughtered villages. Killed women and children. I should have been strung up by the balls and lashed a thousand times for what I've done. And now you come in here, into my house, spouting all this drivel about payback and karma. Payback's a bitch and all that. So why? Why me, why now?'
Harvey felt a slow fuse of anger light within him and he gripped the back of the chair. If MacDonald's intention was to bait him, he had succeeded. 'It's for a name you would never know. A person you never met. But six signatures put into motion the actions that killed someone who had no right to die. No right to have been killed so carelessly. And so you are paying for a signature you gave no thought to.'
'Well, if it's something the trust has done, then it can be reversed.' MacDonald looked perplexed, 'Look, we just sit in the boardroom and squabble over who can't get their hands on what. We can't be expected to be responsible for everything that passes through the board.'
'Not responsible?' Harvey felt heat rise to his face. 'It's about time you became responsible. You killed my sister and now you are paying for your actions. Karma returns in many forms. And I am your consequence.'
The tension crackled between the two men, echoed by the spit and snap of the fire. Suddenly the room flooded with bright light as halogen headlights spilled into the room through the open curtains. Two cars screeched up the driveway, skidding to a halt, chippings pinging against the side of the house.
MacDonald chuckled softly. 'Looks like I am going to get that dying wish after all. Called up some of my troop as soon as the silent alarm triggered when you entered. Quite a weakness you have there. You just couldn't resist raging over the injustice of it all and how it is all so unfair. So what if your sister's in a morgue? You're about to join her.'
Harvey glanced out of the window and saw figures moving in the darkness. Both cars had doors flung open, barely visible past the glare of the headlights trained on the windows.
'This is where you start to earn your money, assassin.' MacDonald smiled. 'Start running.'
Harvey moved quickly. He reached over to the chessboard, rearranged a number of pieces on the board and picked up a black pawn, tossing it to MacDonald, who caught it with his spare hand. Harvey dashed from the room.
MacDonald chuckled, amused at the irony of pawns moving about the chessboard. He held the carved piece in his shaking hand. The painkillers were wearing thin and he dropped another couple of yellow pills into his glass. He relaxed in his chair and concentrated on reaching for his glass of single malt.