The Deaths of Tao (18 page)

You cannot avoid him forever.
 

“Look, I’m busy. Shit needs to get done.”

You will hurt his feelings.
 

“Hah. Like that’s even possible.”

Paula finally called and gave her an ultimatum. Either she did what he asked or Paula would come and toss her in the car trunk. Jill grudgingly had to agree on the date. That Sunday, he called her at dawn and told her he was waiting downstairs.

Grumbling, she changed into her workout clothes and brushed her teeth. She looked at her makeup kit and thought about putting on her face. She wasn’t one of those women at the gym who did that, but something about Marco made her feel exposed without at least something. She checked the mirror and noticed the tired lines on her face.

Stop stalling. The day will be long enough as it is without you blathering on about how you look.
 

Jill sighed. “I used to be so pretty.”

You are still prettier than Roen deserves. Get this over with, so we can move on to some real work.
 

Marco was leaning on his car when she walked out of the building. He beamed with his pearly white teeth as he held the door open for her. “You look fetching this morning.”

“You never turn it off, do you?” she said as she got into the car.

“Pardon? I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he grinned.

They drove thirty minutes southwest down 395 to Mason Neck State Park. During the drive, he entertained her with a steady stream of stories. He had one for everything. When he saw a duck, he had a duck hunting story. When he saw a single engine plane, he told her about the time he crash-landed his second Cessna – because it was important for her to know which of his planes had the mishap – onto a frozen lake in Nova Scotia. He had to outrun the cracking ice to shore. And when they passed by a horse ranch, he talked at length about the difference between an Arabian’s gait as opposed to other breeds. To her surprise, he admitted he had never delivered one.

Marco didn’t seem like he was trying to brag. He was just someone who lived on another plane of existence from mere mortals. And with every tale he told, he had a moral point to make, as if he were explaining to her what made him
him
. She hated to admit it, but he fascinated her. He was like an alien from another world and that wasn’t taking into account the actual alien in him.

“Who lives like this? I mean, really!”

Old aristocrats live unlike mere mortals. They might as well be from another planet.
 

“And now he’s working my security.”

You are moving on up in the world with such a distinguished bodyguard.
 

They reached the park, and Marco began to put her through her paces. It started easily enough with basic stretches. Then he took her jogging to test her cardio.

“Run as fast as you like,” he shrugged when she asked how fast.

There was something condescending about that tone in his voice, so she did what he asked. She pushed the pace to blistering six-minute miles. She experienced no small amount of satisfaction when after the fourth, she wiped that grin off his face.

“Tell me about Roen,” he said, wheezing deep breaths five miles into their run.

Here we go. This will be fun.
 

“Not much to tell. We’re separated, and I’ve barely seen him over the past two years.”

“Are you... aware of the small bit of unpleasant history we share?”

A molehill out of a mountain.
 

“Something like that,” she said offhandedly.

Baji had already given her the lowdown on Marco and Ahngr. Ahngr was an active Prophus in medieval Europe. While Tao hated Ahngr, Baji and he shared a much more pleasant history. Jill was going to leave it at that but couldn’t help herself. “I hear you and Roen went to war a few times in Egypt.”

“Pardon my saying so,” he sniffed, “but your husband has quite a chip on his shoulder. Hardly a war though, more a tiff. Ahngr and Tao had wars. What Roen and I had was nothing more than a disagreement among pack leaders. I must say, I had my concerns when Paula asked me to run your security detail. What kind of person would marry him, after all? However, I have been pleasantly surprised.”

Something in Jill snapped. She had had enough of all this Roen bashing. Between Baji and her parents and now this near stranger, this was more than she could take. Roen might be an insensitive idiot, but he was her insensitive idiot.

She stuck a finger in his face. “Cut it out. No one bad-mouths Roen but me. We might be on the outs, but he’s still my husband.”

Ahem.
 

“You too, Baji. Honestly, I’m tired of everyone crapping on him. That’s my job. I’ll deal with him however I see fit. You’ll have to learn to live with him because I say so.”

There was a pause in the conversation as they ran up a steep eight percent incline. They reached the apex and he finally capitulated, signaling for a stop. Jill gave him credit for keeping up this long. He bent over and sucked in large gulps of air. Jill felt lightly winded but was otherwise ready to keep going.

“You gave me quite a go there,” he said, still heaving. “If that’s your warm up, I would hate to see what your actual run looks like.”

They took a break at the top of the hill. It overlooked a large forested area that continued up to the thin dark line that was Belmont Bay. The morning sky above that continued, turning progressively lighter shades of blue.

“I owe you an apology,” Marco said. “First concerning Roen; he and I have our differences and naturally, you two being separated, I thought we would agree. I will refrain from referring to him in a negative light. Secondly, you are in much better shape than stated in the reports.”

Man enough to apologize when wrong.
 

“Good trait for a guy.”

“Apology accepted,” Jill replied. “You don’t swim 2.4 miles, bike a hundred twelve, and then run a marathon, and be out of shape.”

“Of course,” Marco conceded. “Let’s move on to self-defense. How about a few rounds of fisticuffs, shall we?” He gestured to a small clearing.

Maybe you spoke too soon.
 

“God help me.”

Jill cursed. This wasn’t going to be fun. Her hand-to-hand combat training consisted of all of five weeks during basic and four years of Billy Blanks to techno music.

But God didn’t help. The melee was short, brutal, and embarrassing. The first round, Marco treated her with more respect than she deserved. At first, Jill did alright. She had taken the required boxing classes, and her punches were crisp. He complimented her clean form. It was when he went on the offensive that she fell apart. She was too slow to block his attacks, and the round ended with a hip toss that left Jill writhing on the dirt.

Marco rubbed his chin and shook his head. “Unfortunately, you fight as well as I feared.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

“You fight like a lady, which, by the way, is a compliment of sorts.”

“Sure doesn’t sound like it.”

“It isn’t really,” he admitted. “Shall we go again?”

In the second round, things got worse. This time Marco put her through a series of tactical scenarios, gauging her response to attacks from behind, being tackled to the ground, and being put in a choke hold. She failed every single one. Even Marco looked discouraged by the end of the round.

Lastly, he tested her firearms skill. This she performed better at. In all the missions she’d ever run, not once had she ever had to throw a punch. She fired pistols plenty, though. She was also fond of the gun range and practiced regularly.

After two hours, Marco gave a frank and brutal assessment. “The good news is we won’t have to work your hand to hand fighting. The bad news is, it’s because you’re basically helpless unless we put you through a yearlong program. However, your skill with a pistol is better than I expected and your accuracy is... average, which is again better than I expected.”

“So I’m hopeless?” Jill’s heart sank. She wasn’t a fan of fighting anyway, but it annoyed her that he validated her ineptitude.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “I just have a different plan for you. You don’t have the strength or reflexes to match fists with the Genjix. That requires years of training. However, you are naturally quick and agile, and you can run like a gazelle. Have you ever heard of free running?”

I like his plan. It will work with your strengths.
 

“You mean like not running in a totalitarian country?” she joked. He gave her a blank look. Obviously, the humor was lost on him.

“I mean like this,” he said. He turned and ran toward a large boulder that was at least as tall as he was. She gasped when he jumped at the boulder and somehow scampered to the top. Then he flipped off it gracefully, landing softly and somersaulting onto his feet. He continued running toward a tree and grabbed a branch as he ran past, flipping until he perched on top of it. Jill wasn’t sure if she was supposed to clap.

“I don’t understand,” she said with a frown on her face. “You want me to do circus acts when I fight the Genjix?”

“No,” he grinned, jumping down. “I’m going to teach you to slip away from danger and become a ninja.”

 

SIXTEEN

THE SEARCH

The Quasing kingdom in Africa was immense. With our influence and the natural intelligence and hands of the primates, we gathered strength until we were many hundreds of thousands again. It was a far cry from the six million on the ship before the crash, but still a remarkable feat to have brought so many together.
 

The Council had grander ambitions, though. They wanted more, yet these primates were at the end of their evolutionary path. We could not advance further with them. It was then that several of our searchers returned with information about new species of bi-pedals, the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnons.
 

Tao

 

Roen watched with a bemused expression as the barefoot old men in white undershirts played mahjong at the small table in the dimly lit room at the back of the warehouse. These four underworld bosses combined controlled twenty-seven percent of the docks, five percent of parliament, and sixteen percent of the chip market in Taiwan. What was even more amazing was that the bald guy on the left was blood enemies with the fat guy on the right. While both were part of the Bamboo Union, they led separate divisions that often warred over turf.

The fight between the Crane and the Tiger divisions had raged for twenty years now, yet these two still played mahjong together at least once a month. It went to show – either the Taiwanese were really good at keeping business and personal life separate – or good mahjong players shouldn’t be killed because they’re hard to find.

Contrary to the Genjix, the Prophus had no qualms cooperating with the criminal elements of human society. The Genjix never had any use for the triads, yakuza, Ordo Templi Orientis, or any other secret societies of the sort. They were considered too autonomous and difficult to control. In fact, it was the Genjix who were responsible for the destruction of several of these groups.

These conflicts made the triads a strange but natural ally of the Prophus. Over the years, they had forged a loose alliance with many of the underground groups, sometimes venturing as far as integrating them into the Prophus, as they had with the Hashshashins during the thirteenth century, or simply by keeping them at a wary arm’s length, as with the Italian and Russian mobs.

The local connection the Prophus had in Taiwan was with the powerful Bamboo Union syndicate. Though weakened by Genjix expansion, the organization still held sway over the island and was involved in many aspects of Taiwan’s society. The mahjong game the four men partook in was part of their monthly sit-down, during which the major players hashed out their differences. They must have had a lot to talk about, because they kept Roen and Hutch waiting over an hour.

Hutch, standing next to Roen, coughed and fidgeted with his jacket. Thirty-six gangsters, dressed to the nines, surrounded the small table, drawn guns half pointing at them and half at each other. Roen poked Hutch and gave him the don’t-get-us-shot glare. The gangsters were already on edge. The last thing they needed was to see an anxious foreigner making sudden moves.

Sixteen behind you. Ten on both sides. All armed and probably awful shots. Four bosses in front. Oh, and you have Hutch, the narcoleptic guard. You got a plan to get out of this?
 

Roen swiveled his head to his left and counted the number of armed thugs wielding bats, machetes, and guns, and then he counted the ones to his right.

He shrugged. “I got nothing.”

I find it ironic that you had a plan to fight your way out of Prophus Command, but not out of a triad warehouse. I am starting to doubt your loyalties.
 

“Or intelligence.”

Or will to live.
 

“Or delusions of invincibility.”

Okay. You win this one.
 

Roen and an increasingly nervous Hutch waited another twenty minutes for the four old underwear-wearing mobsters to finish their game. His faithful compatriot had taken to standing at attention as if he was in the North Korean army. Roen occupied the time by debating hypothetical historical scenarios with Tao. This debate in particular was what would have happened if Fanya Kaplan, a Genjix agent, had been successful in assassinating Vladimir Lenin. Roen believed that without Lenin, the communists wouldn’t have unified to defeat the Mensheviks. Tao believed otherwise.

“No way Stalin could have wrangled them all together. He was just a jerk with a mustache back then. What’s with all these warlords and mustaches? Maybe I should grow one.”