“Thank you, Patrick,” Purdue nodded. “Lillian will give you his street address. I am sure she can tell you anything you need to know, right down to his shoe size,” he said with a wink at Lily. “Good night, all. I think I will retire early. I have missed my own bed.”
To the third floor, the tall, emaciated master of Wrichtishousis climbed. He showed no signs of being at all emotional to be in his house again, but the MI6 men and his staff wrote it off as fatigue after a very trying month on his body and mind. But as Purdue closed his bedroom door and made for the balcony doors on the other side of his bed, his knees buckled. Barely able to see through the tears that flooded his cheeks, he reached for the handles, the right one a rusty annoyance he always had to wiggle.
Purdue threw open the doors and gasped at the rush of cool Scottish air that filled him with life, real life; life like only the soil of his forefathers could bestow. Overlooking the vast garden of perfect lawns, ancient outbuildings, and the distant sea, Purdue wept to the ears of the oak, spruce, and pine trees that guarded his immediate yard. His silent sobs and chipping breaths disappeared in the whisper of their tops as the wind rocked them.
He sank to his knees, allowing the hell in his heart, the infernal torment of his recent experience, to drown him. Trembling, his hands held his chest as it all came pouring out, dampened only for the sake of keeping quiet from human attention. He thought of nothing, not even Nina. He said nothing and did not consider, plot, or wonder. Under the extended roof of the enormous old manor, its master shook and wailed into his hands for a good hour, just feeling. Purdue abandoned all reason and elected only to feel. It took its own course, regurgitating the past few weeks from his life.
His light blue eyes finally opened laboriously from swelling lids, his glasses long removed. That glorious numbness after sweltering purging caressed him as his whimpers lessened and became more subdued. Above him, the clouds pardoned a few calm twinkles of brightness. But the wetness of his eyes when he looked up at the night sky turned every single star into a blinding sparkle, their long streaking rays meeting at points as the tears in his eyes stretched them unnaturally.
A shooting star caught his attention. It streaked across the dome of the heavens in silent chaos as it fell rapidly to some unknown destination, to be forgotten forever. Purdue was amazed at the sight. Though he’d seen it so many times before, this was the first time he really took notice of the strange way in which a star perished. But it was not necessarily a star, was it? He imagined the rage and fiery fall to be the fate of Lucifer — how it burned and screamed on its way down, undoing, un-creating, and ultimately dying alone where those who beheld the fall indifferently perceived it as just another quiet death.
His eyes followed it on its path into some amorphous chamber within the North Sea, until its tail left the sky unpainted, returning to its normal, static state. Feeling a tinge of deep melancholy, Purdue knew what the gods were telling him. He too, had fallen from the crest of mighty men, turned to dust after erroneously deeming his happiness eternal. Never before had he been this man he had turned into, a man who was nothing like the Dave Purdue he knew. He was a stranger in his own body, a brilliant star once, but reduced to a quiet void he did not recognize anymore. All he could hope for was the reverence of the meager few who deigned to look up at the sky to watch him fall, to take but a moment from their lives to salute his collapse.
“How I wonder what you are,” he said softly, inadvertently, and closed his eyes.
2
Treading on Snakes
“I can do it, but I’ll need very specific and very rare material,” Abdul Raya told his mark. “And I’ll need those by the next four days; otherwise I will have to cancel our agreement. You see, Madam, I have other clients waiting.”
“Do they offer a fee close to mine?” the lady asked Abdul. “Because this kind of exuberance is not easily trumped or afforded, you know.”
“If I may be so bold, Madam,” the dark skinned charlatan smiled, “by comparison, your fee would be seen as a gratuity.”
The woman slapped him, leaving him even more satisfied that she would be forced to oblige. He knew that her offence was a good sign, and it would leave her ego scorned enough to procure what he wanted while he duped her into believing that he had higher paying clients waiting on his arrival in Belgium. But Abdul was not entirely deceptive about his abilities in his boasting, because the talents he hid from his marks was a far more devastating notion to grasp. That, he would keep close to his breast, behind his heart, until it was time to reveal.
He didn’t leave after her outburst in the lowlit drawing room of her lavish house, but remained as if nothing happened, leaning with his elbow on the mantle in the dark red surroundings broken only by gold-framed oil paintings and two tall, carved, oak and pine antique tables near the entrance of the room. The fire under the mantle crackled with zeal, but Abdul ignored the unbearable heat against his leg.
“So, which ones do you need?” the woman sneered, returning soon after leaving the room, fuming. In her gem-adorned hand she held a posh notepad, ready to jot down the alchemist’s requests. She was one of only two people he had approached successfully. Unfortunately for Abdul, most Europeans of high class had keen character judging skills and quickly sent him on his way. On the other hand, people like Madame Chantal were easier marks because of that one quality men like him needed in his victims — a perpetual quality in those who always found themselves at the edge of the quicksand: desperation.
To her, he was just a master smith of precious metals, a purveyor of fine and unique pieces wrought from gold and silver, their precious stones fitted in fine smithing. Madame Chantal had no idea that he was a virtuoso at forgery as well, but her ravenous taste for luxury and extravagance blinded her to any revelations he may have accidentally allowed to leak out of his mask.
With a very capable left-handed slant, he wrote down the gems he needed to perform the task she’d hired him for. He wrote in the hand of a calligrapher, but his spelling was horrendous. Nevertheless, in her desperation to outdo her peers, Madame Chantal would do her best to attain what was on his list. After he was done, she perused the list. With a scowl sunk deeper in the prominent shadows of the fire, Madame Chantal let out a long sigh and looked up at the tall man that reminded her of a yogi or some arcane cult guru.
“By when do you need this?” she asked abruptly. “And my husband cannot know. We must meet here again, because he does not readily come down to this part of the manor.”
“I have to be in Belgium in less than a week, Madam, and by that time I must have completed your order. We are pressed for time, which means I will need those diamonds as soon as you can slip them into your purse,” he smiled gently. His empty eyes fixed on her while his mouth spoke sweetly. Madame Chantal could not help but associate him with a desert adder, flicking its tongue while its face remained stone.
Repulsion-compulsion. That is what it was called. She loathed the exotic craftsman, who also claimed to be an exquisite magician, but for some reason she could not resist him. The French noblewoman could not take her eyes off Abdul when he wasn’t looking, though he thoroughly revolted her in every aspect. Somehow his hideous nature, animal grunts, and unnatural talon-like fingers fascinated her to a point of obsession.
He stood in the light of the fire, casting a grotesque shadow that was not far from his own likeness against the wall. A crooked nose upon a bony face lent him the appearance of a bird — a small vulture, perhaps. Abdul’s narrow-set, dark eyes shied away under virtually hairless eyebrows, caught in deep falling holes that only made his cheekbones seem more protrusive. Stringy and greasy, his black hair was taken back into a ponytail, and a single, small hoop earring adorned the lobe of his left ear.