Extreme Danger (7 page)

“I wouldn’t want certain information to slip in the wrong context.”

Diana arched her chest, pressing taut nipples against the silk of her nightie. “When am I ever anything but discreet?” Her voice was a silky coo, but he heard the acid undertone. “Have I ever complained that you can never take me out to dinner? That you never touch me in public? Not even when we’re in Tokyo or Hong Kong or Johannesburg. It’s always room service. But do I complain?”

This part was so tedious. “No, Diana. You’ve been very good.”

“It’s insane, Richie. This idea to keep the stock supply here, instead of harvesting the parts overseas, or offshore.”

Parts. Stock supply. Diana needed to distance herself emotionally from the realities of the plan they were embarking upon. He didn’t.

“Those hours of travel time make all the difference,” he said patiently. “And I prefer to conduct the harvest myself. For the amount we charge, I have to control as many variables as possible. I have no choice, Diana.”

She looked down, twiddling with the silk nightie, her face sullen. He wondered briefly if she would be able to handle what lay ahead.

But he could handle Diana. The time honored technique known as “diamond and emerald earrings” always worked.

“Bullshit,” she said petulantly. “You have choices. Every day, when you choose to go home to that frigid bitch.”

They were out of the danger zone. He ran his hands over his own fit, lean body, checking for traces of the fluids of coitus. Not that Helen ever got close enough to him to smell another woman on his person, but even so. He was always meticulous about hygiene. Came from being a surgeon, no doubt. He ignored Diana’s complaining and went into the adjoining bathroom.

Strange, he thought, as he set the shower running, how an isolated incident could change a man’s life. One turn to the right or left affected one’s destiny forever. What was happening now had started at a medical convention in Paris, when he was an emerging thoracic surgeon with several brilliant successes to his name. He went out to sample Parisian nightlife, relieved to be away from Helen’s moods and headaches and the constant noise and chaos of his young daughters.

His adventures on that dreamy night had been lubricated by large quantities of alcohol and cocaine, and extravagant sums of money. He’d ended up in a luxurious apartment, entertained until dawn by two beautiful and uninhibited Parisiennes. He’d awakened in the rumpled bed, sticky with sex. Head throbbing.

A tidy, graying man with a pinstriped suit and an English accent was sitting by the bed, waiting for Richard’s eyes to open. He introduced himself as Nigel Dobbs.

It had taken a long, disoriented moment for the reason for the unusual stickiness to sink in.

Blood against the white sheets. He turned, looked. Gaped.

The girls’ wrists had been tied to the posts of the wooden bed. Their throats had been cut. They sprawled, naked, eyes wide and staring. Blood, everywhere. The room was doused with it.

It had felt like a dream. He blinked gummy eyelids, staring from Dobbs back to the girls, as a business proposal was made to him.

He had been very startled, but he had remained cool. His brain had always been that way, functioning superbly in situations that others would consider high stress. Compartmentalized. He would have been a good commander on the battlefield, he had often mused.

On the one hand, he was angry at being manipulated. On the other, he was fascinated to observe his own reactions to this shocking tableau. Amid the constant white noise of daily life, a man seldom got a chance to peer into the depths of his own soul. And what, after all, could possibly be more fascinating than the depths of his own soul?

Nigel Dobbs laid out the situation in a cool, clipped voice, as if they were in a boardroom, not an abbatoir. A wealthy Ukrainian businessman who had to remain nameless was suffering from an acute heart condition. He wanted an immediate transplant. He wanted the surgery conducted by the celebrated young surgeon Dr. Mathes. Cost was immaterial.

Mathes told Dobbs that money was not the issue so much as the availability of a healthy and well matched organ, thinking that he knew exactly fuck-all about how organ donation was organized in the Ukraine—

“Not a problem, Doctor. The tissue typing has already been done.” The man’s tight mouth twisted in a thin, smug smile. “We have a number of potential donors. You need not trouble yourself about that.”

“But how…but that’s not…but you can’t just…”

A number of potential donors? Richard had floundered, until the truth sank in. And the bottom of the world fell away, to an abyss of nameless possibilities that made his soul quail.

And his pulse quicken.

Nigel Dobbs studied Richard’s face with neutral gray eyes for a long moment and nodded, as if Richard had passed a test.

“Anything is possible, Doctor. For a price. And while we are on that subject, my client will make available to you the sum of five million American dollars in a numbered Swiss account, as a thank you gift. In the event of a happy outcome, of course.”

“And if something goes wrong?”

Nigel Dobbs smiled again. “An unhappy outcome is not an option my client is willing to consider,” he said gently. “That’s why he wants you. Your reputation is that of a miracle worker. He has studied you, Doctor. Every detail of your life. Your wife and your little girls as well. Lovely creatures. My client wishes to convey his compliments, and his best wishes for their continued health and happiness.”

That veiled threat had gotten his attention. Another, deeper peek into that shadowy cavern. He had always loved a gamble.

He’d been perversely glad for the threat to Helen and the girls. It gave him a face-saving excuse for saying yes. Indeed, how could he not?

The odds were bad. The man’s body was probably rotted by a lifetime of excess. It would be against his Hippocratic oath, and every sane principle.

Ultimately, that did not dissuade him in the least. Neither did the slaughtered Parisian girls. Nor was the issue decided by money. Being chosen had stroked his vanity, but he had daily opportunities to have his ego stroked.

He’d done it for the thrill. He’d never felt one so strong. That morning, lying in that blood-soaked bed, the thought of what he was going to do had burned through his body and mind, dispelling his hangover like sun on fog.

It made him feel invincible. The high stakes, the secrecy, the risk. Unspeakable acts. Unaskable questions. It lit him up inside.

He’d felt that thrill again the day he replaced the diseased organ of his mysterious patient with a beautiful, healthy young heart of unknown provenance.

Some months later, there had been another call. A business associate of his previous patient had a newborn infant daughter with an irreparable heart defect. A rush job, as the child was dying.

Richard had cleared his schedule, leaped on a plane. He had not asked where the tiny donated heart had come from. Another rush of euphoria. Another five million dollars in the numbered account.

The money had been nice. He had been a relatively wealthy man before, but as Diana liked to point out, fondling her sapphire and diamond bracelet, there was wealthy and there was wealthy.

That child was now a healthy, thriving six-year-old. If Richard had needed to soothe his conscience, that would have been enough.

But oddly, he did not. At some point, that euphoria had burned away the part of him that pondered ethics. He did not miss it. Life was exquisitely simple without it. More profitable, too.

In fact, he reflected as he toweled himself off, he’d never had much of a conscience to begin with. Morals were artificial. Notions culturally superimposed upon persons at a tender age, who had no idea they were being mind-fucked into being docile doormats. At the service of other people. Tormented by guilt, self-doubt. Not him.

And this Sunday, he would meet with someone who could supply him with a constant supply of his favorite thrill. People would sell their souls to cheat death, for themselves, their spouses, their children.

Dr. Richard Mathes found souls very appetizing.

When he came out, Diana was at her vanity, brushing her hair. He could tell from the glitter in her eyes that she was angry.

“He wants to look over his investment?” she said. “Check your teeth, look over your pedigree? Put you through your paces?”

He opened her closet, took out a starched white shirt. He knew exactly where she was going with this. She wanted to lure him into having sex again. She labored under the fond misconception that she controlled him that way. It amused him to let her keep her illusions.

“He wants to do that alpha dog pissing thing, right? And you’re looking forward to it, aren’t you? You’d love to stare down a mob boss. I bet that gives you a hard-on, Richie. You’re such a danger junkie.”

He shrugged the shirt on. “Diana—”

“That’s why you get off on sticking your hands in people’s viscera,” she said. “It’s not to help them. It’s just for fun. You might as well be jumping out of a plane, for all you give a shit about them.”

Diana surprised him sometimes with her sharp side. When not in the OR, she played the part of the dizzy cunt so convincingly it tended to lull him into relaxed complacency. “You’re boring me,” he warned her softly.

“Just make sure he doesn’t piss on you, Richie. Some girls get turned on by golden showers, but I’m the traditional type. I think I’d be turned off by the stench of urine. Even a mob boss’s urine. You know?”

Now she really was annoying him. He moved up behind her, slid his arms around her in a tight embrace. He pinched her nipple and her clitoris simultaneously—hard enough to make her suck in a sharp, gasping breath. Her eyes went glassy. Her lips trembled.

“Don’t be a dirty bitch, Diana,” he whispered.

“You’re hurting me.”

“Of course,” he agreed pleasantly. “You asked for it.”

Richard straightened up and wiped his fingers upon the silk that covered her damp, trembling back. He resumed buttoning his shirt.

Diana let out a gasp, her hand going to her ear. “I’m missing an earring!” She knocked the stool back, and rushed to the rumpled bed. She climbed onto her hands and knees, and scrabbled through the bedclothes. “It must be here, in the bed. You were so rough.”

Richard stared at her smooth buttocks. The scrap of lingerie hid nothing. Her back arched, taunting him, inviting. He could smell the hot scent of her sex from across the room. He groaned inwardly. He’d just bathed, for God’s sake.

“I have to go,” he said plaintively.

“Yes, of course, Richie. Go back home to wifey. Don’t let me stop you. I’m just looking for my earring.”

Richard unfastened his trousers and let his penis spring out, heavy and red and ready as he approached the bed. He gripped her hips, jerked them into position. Diana trembled with eagerness as he breached her slick opening and slammed against her, with the unchecked violence she craved.

He used his private trick to make himself come. In those rare instances that he was overly tired and could not bring himself easily to climax, he had only to close his eyes and bring to mind those blood-drenched Parisian girls tied to the bedpost. That image revived a flagging erection—and brought him to an explosive orgasm.

Yes, he reflected, with chilly detachment, as the pleasure pumped through him, he could handle Diana. She would give no trouble at all.

The whole world was like that. Easily managed. Begging to be used, for his convenience, his advantage, his profit, his pleasure.

What could he do but oblige them all?

Sveti listened intently at the door of the private quarters of the guards. She could hear muted sounds of some sports event on their cable TV. She clenched her teeth and knocked. No answer.

She knocked louder. The door was yanked open so abruptly, she sprang back with a yelp.

It was Yuri, the one she feared the most. Yuri was tall, shambling, had stubble on his fishbelly skin, snaggled yellow teeth, blond hair hanging in lank ropes. He liked to pinch and grope, and his dirty, squared off nails left cuts and dents along with the black bruises. All the children scrambled to keep out of range of those cruel fingers.

He stared at her, his shiny lips stretching into a wide grin. “Look who’s here,” he crooned. “It’s the Snow Princess. Did you miss me, beautiful?” He seized her wrist, and jerked her into the dim, fetid room, lit only by the flickering TV. A soccer match blared. The sportscaster chattering, the horns tooting, it all reminded her of Papa. He’d loved soccer.

It was a match between Ukraina and a team from a country of dark-haired people. Italy, or maybe Spain. The dark team was ahead. The room stank of smoke, rank male feet, fast food grease.

Yuri lifted the hand-rolled cigarette to his lips, dragged on it till the tip crackled and glowed, then wheezed out a cloud of sweetish smoke into Sveti’s face, making her cough. Tobacco and hashish. Aleksandra had taught her what that smell was. Among other things.

“You like your new room, your majesty?” Yuri taunted. “Happy to be off that stinking boat? Want to show me how grateful you are, ey?”

“Shut up, you degenerate,” Marina barked at him from where she lay stretched on one of the couches. “What do you want, girl?”