Adam feeling a sense of awkwardness at first. Self-centered to the extreme. A common denominator among alcoholics. A common killer as well. What Adam was doing now, despite the fact that Jack Bender was the only real friend he had in the world, went completely against the grain. The irony was that Jack was once again saving the life of his friend by revealing his own vulnerability to another human being. For helping his friend, being there for him, was indeed helping Adam get out of the prison that was his self. A prison that most alcoholics create, adding bits of mortar and brick with every drink until finally the walls surrounding them close in and there is only darkness.

  “I’ll be okay now, Adam. God bless you. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. When you are lying in bed tonight, entertaining the visitations of your various demons, know that you helped another human being today. The demons will not stay long.”

  Adam taken aback by the sudden change in his friend’s entire demeanor. An emotional wreck a moment ago, at present a coherent, rational human being. Adam had seen this before. The time at the Ikego caves still fresh in his mind. Another day, unbeknownst to him, that Jack had saved his life. That day of course the peril had been to his corporeal being while today his friend, through his outpouring of grief, his vulnerability, had indeed helped save something more valuable - his very soul.

  Back to his earlier question now.

  “Peanut, have you seen him lately, Jack? You know, the weird guy you use to take to meetings?”

  “Destruction, then rebirth, then…”

  Adam not quite hearing the mumblings of his friend. Bits and pieces. Unintelligible. Now suddenly, more animate.

  “Dying a good thing, right, Adam? A chance to cleanse. Yes, a cleansing.”

  Trailing off again. His face otherworldly now. Someone else there. Something else. Evil. Adam realizing now that this was the Jack Bender he had seen at the cave. A kind of lucid insanity, if that were possible.

  “Sit, Jack. Sit right here at the Lieutenant’s desk. You always wanted to be an officer, right? I’ll get us some coffee. Real Navy coffee. Made it myself about eight hours ago. Should be just about ready.”

  The feeble attempt at humor lost on Jack. His eyes seeing something but not anything here in this room. What Jack Bender was seeing was more horrible than anything Adam could ever imagine.

  48

  “Jesus Christ, there’s some asshole outside my room! He’s got a knife or something. Send somebody up here now, you stupid bitch!”

  Dan Bronsan, for the only time in his life (which he thought could end at any second) not unhappy with his daughter’s lack of any pretense of social etiquette. Thankful for it, in fact. Miraculously the door had latched, keeping Genghis Kahn from entering and no doubt massacring them both.

  To her credit, the “bitch” manning the desk, who only just recently had relieved the trainee/Aum spy, now in custody, immediately got on the radio.

  “Problem on the third floor, Mr. Rhodes. One marine down. Suspect still at large. Converging on him now. Appears to be Japanese, dressed as a waiter. Weapon, razor-like, possibly a box-cutter.”

  “Keep me informed. Secure the entire complex. No one in or out. Who is the marine?”

  A pause. Rhodes knew the worst had occurred.

  “We have lost radio contact with Corporal Timothy Sullivan. A team has been dispatched to the elevator, his last known location.”

  A slight crack in the young marine’s voice. Overcome quickly though. Semper Fi.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Aye, Lieutenant; I want the bastard alive if at all possible, but don’t risk another man’s life. If he doesn’t surrender, liquidate his ass.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Joe, Benny and Keiko all sensing the bad news. Rhodes’ ashen face spoke volumes as he hung up the phone.

  “They know you are here, Ms. Watanabe. They’ve sent someone to get you.”

  Averting Keiko’s eyes. The deep black eyes. A quick glance and then away. Joe Dickwell knew that Rhodes blamed Keiko for whatever had caused his hands to tremble ever so slightly.

  “It seems we have an intruder here, ladies and gentleman. We have reason to believe that he is after Ms. Watanabe. We also believe a marine may have been...assaulted.”

  Dusty’s hands trembling a bit more now. Sullivan a good kid. The best. Nothing PC about him. Marine Corps all the way. Dusty had met Sullivan’s parents when they’d visited last year. Proud of their “Little Tim.” Now Rhodes likely would be writing them a letter telling them their only son, their world, was gone.

  Dickwell, taking all of this in. Intent on Dusty. He had to bring him back into focus. Everything depended on it. There would be thousands more Tim Sullivan’s if he didn’t.

  “Any idea who it could be, Dusty?”

  Joe Dickwell knowing full well it was Aum. A soldier. No doubt sent to snuff Keiko before she gave away anything of importance. What else did she know, anyway?

  A cackle came through on the radio. “Mr. Rhodes. One Marine is confirmed deceased….” and then, “It’s a bloody mess. I’m sorry, sir.”

  Dusty seeming to gain a bit of composure. Years of training. Intent on the task at hand now.

  Looking directly into the coal-like orbs now. No backing down.

  “Ms. Watanabe, a United States Marine is dead. The Japanese assailant possibly posing as a waiter. The suspect evidently spoke English very well, much like yourself in fact.”

  A slight pause. A glance at Benny that said, Don’t say a godamn word. A marine is dead. Benny sits back down.

  “The suspect knew the logistics of the area and the building very well. A witness has said that they saw a Japanese national in restaurant worker garb not long ago. Any ideas on who he could be, Ms. Watanabe? He is still here. His own life is of no importance. He wants you at any cost. Of course, I’m sure you know this.”

  “Jesus H. Christ, stops this bullshit now.”

  Benny had had enough. Protecting his little daughter. Rhodes starting to move towards him. Fists balling up.

  “You’ll be safe here, Keiko.”

  Dickwell looking at Rhodes and Carter. Subtlety moving in between as he spoke to Keiko. Focus. No time for this now. Had to have focus. The god damn world at stake.

  “What’s the status, Dusty? Have they got the suspect cornered?”

  Dickwell moving Dusty back to the matter at hand now. Turning away from Benny. Benny sitting down again. Lowering his head.

  “He apparently tried to break into a guest room on the third floor.”

  Benny with a moment of clarity.

  “God damn it, Dan and Kelley are in that room. Jesus I just saw him!”

  Dusty not completely understanding.

  “What is it?”

  “He must have gone up to Kelley’s room right behind me. This S.O.B. just missed us. Dan was probably in the f”in elevator with him. The bastard probably got confused.”

  . . . . .

  The Sanno Hotel ballroom normally used for champagne brunch and wedding receptions was now the Command Center where all information needed for the pursuit and capture of the Aum Cult terrorist, dead or alive, would take place.

  “Yes, sir, the entire perimeter of the hotel is secure. Nobody in or out.”

  “Very good, Captain.”

  Rhodes turning back towards the curious group in the suite. Benny Carter, retired Air Force Master Sergeant, Vietnam veteran, resident barfly and now, self-appointed father-protector of Keiko Watanabe.

  Keiko, a walking, talking character right out of a Kafka piece. Beaten, broken yet here. Perhaps for redemption. Her own and that of scores of others.

  Joe Dickwell, an ambiguous character, thought Dusty. Career military. Navy Investigative Service.

  “Okay, for now we all sit right here. As I speak there are four teams closing in on the suite where the scum…the suspect is believed to be. We are in direct contact with the occupants of the suite. The suspect apparently has not made any attempt to enter the room by force.”

  Rhodes’ avoidance of any eye contact with Keiko not lost on anyone in the room. Not the least of which, Keiko herself.

  How many more innocent lives lost because of me?

  When she had first gathered up whatever was left of her humanity to come here, to escape from Asahara and his amateur sentries, to tell all that she knew of Aum, a feeling of release of almost elation had engulfed her. Emotions; she was able to cry again, these had started to return. Maybe she could be a human being again.

  Now, sitting in this room, sensing the hate, yes, it was hate, from the very soul of Dusty Rhodes, she felt the Harpies carrying her back to the darkness. She deserved the darkness of course, Keiko thought now. The life of drinking, partying, sex, sex and more sex, all to fill the void of course. The void that could only be filled by the true unconditional love of another human being. Never understanding this. Something she definitely had in common with Adam, she thought. Where had Adam come from? She thought she had obliterated all memory, yet, here he was again, taking up space, rent-free in her head.

  Keiko Watanabe knew that there was only one course of action. Death would bring a cleansing to her. On this point, Shoko Asahara was indeed correct.

  “Mr. Rhodes, if I may?”

  “Yes, certainly, Ms. Watanabe.”

  The contempt resonating from his lips like the outstretched talon of a falcon inches from his prey.

  Her body now taking on the aura of the resolute martyr. Dickwell couldn’t take his eyes from her. Was this what St Agnes looked like before she was burnt at the stake?

  “I know this man. He will not be taken alive. I alone must go to him. If I do not, others will surely die.”

  49

  The hot, rancid, Navy coffee flowed down Adam Welsh’s throat like old bathwater mixed with a heavy dose of caffeine. He had shared the death watch with his friend for what seemed like days but was in reality less than 12 hours

  “Elixir of the Gods, my friend,” he said as he clicked his mug labeled CTT1(SW) Welsh with Jack’s. The mug, a remnant of happier days when he still had the Top Secret clearance. Respected. “Officer material,” his old mentor, Lt. George Schue, had said on many occasion. Schue, a George Hamilton look-alike all the way from the slicked back black hair, olive skin, chiseled features to the pencil-thin moustache. One of the people in life that never ceased to be a cause of amazement, along with a twinge of envy to Adam. It seemed to Adam that Schue went through life as effortlessly as a winged dove arcing across the face of the sun on a hot summer’s day. What was constant drama for Adam was an effortless journey for Lt. Schue. What further perplexed Adam was that the man actually seemed to expect life to be that way. Success, the attainment of all things desired, a virtual given.

  Schue had seen something in Adam. Potential. The dreaded “P” word. What he didn’t see was Davey and Joyce Welsh. Destitution and Denial. Schue and Welsh were the same yet very different. Schue had never sat on the top stair leading to his bedroom, jerking his leg in an almost spasmodic rhythm waiting for the .38 that his father had pressed against his temple in the bathroom, to go off. This is where the fork had occurred, one might argue, along the otherwise fairly similar road of dreaded potential that Schue and Adam Welsh had both traveled early on.

  In any case, things had changed. After Adam lost his Top Secret clearance for drinking and causing a disturbance at the base enlisted club, Schue looked at him in a different light altogether. Adam would think later that he was now perceived as a pariah to his one-time surrogate older brother, but the truth be told, Schue just felt uncomfortable in the presence of failure. Particularly failure from a person whom he had thought of so highly. The ignorance, lack of understanding probably, did validate and confirm Adam’s pariah perception, but it wasn’t quite as simple as he thought. Schue was afraid of failure. Terrified of it and stayed away from it as a jonesing junky would flee from the needle. What had once been the manner of the fawning, proud, older brother, now turned to something not unlike revulsion. Schue now assuming the officer-mode with Adam relegated to his enlisted-puke status.

  “Good coffee, Adam.”

  Back now, Jack sitting across the desk. The pictures of Lt. Parker’s family, the officer in charge of the Toxic Waste Facility peering back at Adam. Little boy and little girl. Adoring wife. Everything but the white picket fence which in any case Adam felt was just outside the frame of the pictures. Adam had missed it all.

  “ Navy coffee. Put hair on your teeth, if I do say so myself.”

  An old joke that was always good for a knowing laugh. Jack’s of the somewhat self-conscious variety though. Something there. Lurking behind the facade. Back to the day at the caves again. Adam wanting to speak but waiting. Let Jack be the first. The Inner Voice telling him so. The right thing to do.

  “You’re going to make it, Adam. I just know it. I just wish you’d take a bit of a more direct route to sobriety rather than the somewhat circuitous one you seem to prefer.”

  “Jesus, Jack, you think I like doing it this way?!”

  Stopping to think. On the defensive now. Maybe he had wanted the booze all along. Still did but not the consequences though. Therein was the rub. Living sober with no booze to get him through the uncomfortability. Life on life’s terms.

  Jack smiling. Pushing Adam’s buttons.

  “Adam, you are doing great. I want you to make it. You’re one of the good guys. So many don’t get this. Try as they might.”

  “Jack, when you visit Yumiko, I’d like to go along if you don’t mind.”

  Mutterings again. Save yourself? Inaudible.

  “Oh, no Adam. Routine operation. They’ll just go in, remove the poison and sew her back up. Routine. No need for you to come along. Go to the meeting. That’s your priority now.”

  Adam about to interrupt his friend but thought better of it. He had been with Jack earlier when the doctor told them both that there was no hope for Yumiko Abe. Only a matter of time. Adam had helped his friend out of the waiting room with the promise that they would return with some of Yumiko’s belongings. Now, Bender obviously in complete denial. Adam knew about denial. He decided to let his friend live in it for a short time longer.

  Jack taking a long sip from the borrowed coffee cup that said “Number 1 Dad.” A hint of trembling in his hand. Adam never remembering seeing his friend’s hand shake.

  50

  The terrorist stood motionless in front of the suite. A passerby unfortunate enough to come upon the Monster might have mistaken him for a misplaced statue from Madame Tussauds. Perhaps from the Jack the Ripper tableau. The real human blood splattered all over this massive statue would give the lie to this assumption. The knife no wax replica at all. Recently removed from the innards of a once vital human being.

  The matted hair atop the head began to shake slightly at first. Soon the entire mass of the fiend shook violently while beginning to laugh. A low guttural sound at first, building though, till finally a demonic-like crescendo of cackles came screaming from the evil within. Laughing maniacally, nose only a half an inch from the door.

  Dan heard it first. Then Kelley. She began to scream in surprise and then recognition of the abomination inches away. Dan trying to console her.

  “It’s okay, my Celtic cutie. It’s going to be all right.”

  Holding her now. Rocking his daughter gently in his arms. Possibly due to the stress of a near death experience, a hint of a smile began to take shape. Dan still rocking her gently. He hadn’t called her “Celtic cutie” in years. The last time she could remember was when she was five years old and under an oddly similar set of circumstances.

  Lying awake in her room she had been waiting for another kind of monster to go away. Although then, unlike now, the phantasm was of the make-believe variety. Actually, a very diplomatic monster. Believe in me for just awhile with the understanding that I will be gone with the coming of sleep or, in a more severe case, the light of the new day.

  That time, years ago, the monster was not playing fair. The diplomacy of Yasser Arafat on a bad day. Simply not playing by the rules. As little Kelley came upon the border between consciousness and sleep where the monster would soon be left behind to be replaced by more user-friendly imaginings like, say the tooth fairy, she heard the moaning.

  The moaning then the breathing. Heavy and rapid. The little girl of five getting out of bed slowly, tip-toeing to the door. Reaching it, the sounds became louder. Only inches away. Not knowing whether to open the door or just wait for it to stop.

  What if IT came in?

  A little prayer to Jesus, the one that Daddy had taught her.

  Keep me safe from all things evil, My Lord and Savior, Jesus. Amen.

  The five-year-old imp bringing forth the courage of Achilles as she slowly opened the door. The hinge creaking now. She prayed softly for it to quiet. Halfway open now. A shadow or…a figure of some kind? Huge in fact and then…a snore. The loudest, little Kelley had ever heard. A cry not of anguish but of glee. It was Daddy. Sleeping off the effects of Guinness Night at Lucky Baldwin’s Olde English Pub.

  Now, years later and thousands of miles away, Kelley remembered faintly the relief followed by the sadness. Daddy had been drunk again, and as the years went by, the drinking sprees had continued and with them her parents’ marriage slowly crumbled until finally vanishing into the dust of resentment, hurt and love lost never to be regained.

  “Kelley, call the desk again. Find out what the hell they’re doing.”

  Before she could reach the phone, the Monster spoke.

  “Keiko San, I am here. It is time.”

  A crashing, resounding thud against the door. Dan perplexed at first but then everything became clear. Not so for his daughter.

  “Who the hell is Keiko?”

  Kelley screaming again.

  “Move away from the door, baby,” and then, into the phone, “Hello, Command and Control or whatever the hell this is…”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Look, the whack job thinks that Keiko Watanabe is in our room. Any reason that he would be interested in her?”