Webber swallowed. ‘Go on.’
‘The foundation has authorized the rape and murder of your daughter. It may be some consolation to you to hear that the acts do not have to be committed in that order.’
Instinctively, Webber looked to his gun, then began to reach for it.
‘I should warn you,’ continued Herod, ‘that if anything happens to me, then your daughter will not see out this night, and her sufferings will be greatly increased. You may yet have use for that gun, Mr. Webber, but not now. Let me finish, then consider.’
Uncertain of what to do, Webber did nothing, and his fate was sealed.
‘As I said,’ Herod continued, ‘an action has been authorized, but it does not have to be carried out. There is another option.’
‘Which is?’
‘You take your own life. That is your choice: your life, ended quickly, or the life of your daughter, taken slowly and with much pain.’
Webber stared at Herod, dumbfounded.
‘You’re insane.’ But even as he said it, he knew that it wasn’t true. He had looked into Herod’s eyes, and he had seen nothing there but absolute sanity. It was possible that, with enough pain, a person might be driven to madness, but this was not the case with the man who sat opposite him. Instead, his suffering had given him perfect clarity: he had no illusions about the ways of the world, only an insight into its capacity for inflicting agony.
‘No, I am not. You have five minutes to choose. After that, it will be too late to stop what is about to occur.’
Herod sat back. Webber picked up the gun and pointed it at him, but Herod did not even blink.
‘Call. Tell them to leave her alone.’
‘So you’ve made your choice?’
‘No. There is no choice. I’m warning you that if you don’t make the call, I’ll kill you.’
‘And then your daughter will die.’
‘I could torture you. I can shoot you in the knee, the groin. I can keep hurting you until you accede to my demand.’
‘Your daughter will still die. You know that. At the most basic level, you acknowledge the truth of what you have been told. You must accept it, and choose. Four minutes, thirty seconds.’
Webber thumbed back the hammer on the revolver.
‘I’m telling you for the last time-’
‘Do you think that you’re the first man to have been presented with this choice, Mr. Webber? Do you honestly believe that I haven’t done this before? Ultimately, you must choose: your life, or the life of your daughter. Which do you value more?’
Herod waited. He glanced at his watch, counting the seconds.
‘I wanted to see her grow up. I wanted to see her marry, and become a mother. I wanted to be a grandfather. Do you understand?’
‘I understand. Her life will still be hers to live, and her children will lay flowers for you. Four minutes.’
‘Don’t you have anyone whom you love?’
‘No, I do not.’
The gun wavered in Webber’s hand as he realized the futility of his arguments.
‘How do I know that you’re not lying?’
‘About what? About raping and killing your daughter? Oh, I think you know that I mean what I say.’
‘No. About – about letting her go.’
‘Because I don’t lie. I don’t have to. Others lie. It is for me to present them with the consequences of those lies. For every fault, there must be a reckoning. For every action, there is a reaction. The question is: who do you love more, your daughter, or yourself?’
Herod stood. He had a cell phone in one hand, his wineglass in the other. ‘I’ll give you a private moment,’ he said. ‘Please don’t attempt to use a phone. If you do so, our deal will be off, and I’ll make sure that your daughter is raped to death. Oh, and my associates will also ensure that you don’t live to see the dawn.’
Webber did not try to stop Herod as he stepped slowly from the room. He seemed stunned into immobility.
In the hallway, Herod examined his reflection in a mirror. He straightened his tie, and brushed some lint from his jacket. He loved this old suit. He had worn it on many occasions like this one. He checked his watch a final time. From the kitchen, he discerned words being spoken. He wondered if Webber had been foolish enough to try to make a call, but the tone of voice was wrong. Then he thought that it might be Webber making an act of contrition, or saying some unheard good-bye to his daughter, but as he moved closer he heard Webber’s words.
‘Who are you?’ Webber was asking. ‘Are you the one, the one who’s going to hurt my Suzie? Are you? Are you?’
Herod glanced into the kitchen. Webber was staring at one of the kitchen windows. Herod saw Webber and himself reflected in the glass and, for just a moment, he thought that there might be a third figure visible, too insubstantial, Herod believed, to be someone in the garden looking in, and yet there was nobody else in the kitchen apart from the living, or the soon-to-be dead.
Webber turned to look at Herod. He was weeping.
‘Damn you,’ he said. ‘Damn you to hell.’
He put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot made Herod’s ears ring as it echoed off the tiled walls and floor of the kitchen. Webber fell, and lay bucking by his overturned chair. It was an amateurish way to turn a gun on oneself, Herod mused, but then Webber could hardly have been expected to be a professional in the art of suicide; the nature of the act precluded it. The barrel of the gun had pulled upward with the shot, blowing a chunk out of the top of Webber’s skull, but he had not managed to kill himself. Instead, his eyes were wide and his mouth was opening and closing spasmodically, rather like the final moments of the fish he had left on the slab. In a moment of mercy, Herod took the gun from Webber’s hand and finished the job for him, then drank the last of the wine in his glass and prepared to leave. He paused at the door, and peered back at the kitchen window. Something was wrong. Quickly, he moved to the counter and looked out upon Webber’s neatly tended, and gently illuminated, garden. It was surrounded by high walls, and blocked off by gates at either side of the house. Herod could see no sign of another person, yet he remained troubled.
He checked his watch. He had already stayed too long, especially if the shots had attracted attention. He found the main switchbox for the house in a closet beneath the stairs, and killed all of the lights, before taking a blue surgical mask from his inside pocket and placing it over the lower part of his face. In a way, the H1N1 virus had been a blessing to him. Oh, people still sometimes stared at him in passing, but for one who exhibited such signs of illness as he did, they were looks of understanding as much of curiosity. Then, concealed by shadows, Herod became part of the night, and he put Jeremiah Webber and his daughter from his mind forever. Webber had made a choice, the correct choice in Herod’s view, and his daughter would be allowed to live. Herod, who worked alone, despite his threats to Webber, would not harm her.
For he was an honorable man, in his way.
4
Far to the north, as the blood from Webber’s body mixed with spilled wine and congealed upon his kitchen floor, and Herod returned to the shadows from which he had emerged, the sound of a telephone ringing echoed around a forest glade.
The man curled on the filthy sheets was dragged back to consciousness by the noise, and he knew immediately that it was them. He knew because he had unplugged the phone before he went to sleep.
Lying on the bed, he moved only his eyes, glancing slowly in the direction of the handset, as though they were already there with him and any significant shift in position would alert them to the fact that he was awake.
Go away. Leave me alone.
The television boomed into life, and for an instant he caught a snatch of some old comedy from the sixties, one at which he could remember laughing with his mother and father as he sat between them on the sofa. He felt tears spring from his eyes at the memory of his parents. He was frightened, and he wanted them to protect him, but they were long gone from this Earth and he was all alone. Then the picture faded, leaving only static, and the voices came through the screen, just as they had the night before, and the night before that, and every night since he had taken delivery of the latest consignment. He began to shiver, although the air was warm.