coercion 2

Rafael Santoro moved silently through the shadows of the garage. He came up behind Dr. Charles Grey and touched the blade of a knife against the man’s cheek.

“No sound,” murmured Santoro. The scientist stiffened. Not so much from shock or surprise, but like a man who is suddenly aware that a long-dreaded but inevitable horror has finally come. Santoro bent close to whisper in the scientist’s ear, “It’s time.” Grey began to tremble.

“Please … God! No … .”

“Yes,” said Santoro. “You know what you have to do. You promised that you would do it.” Grey started to turn, but Santoro pressed the knife into his flesh. Santoro did not break the skin, but he made sure that Grey could feel the edge, could feel the quiet appetite of the steel. Santoro was an artist of supreme delicacy with a blade. With fast or slow cuts he was able to sculpt a victim into a masterpiece of crimson art. It was one of the many talents that made him so valuable to the Seven Kings, and to his patron, the King of Fear. Fear and the blade were both aspects of Santoro’s personal religion.

“I can’t,” whimpered Grey. “Don’t you understand that? What you ask is impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible if the Goddess wills it to be. That is the nature of faith, yes?”

“‘G-Goddess’ … ?” Grey stammered. “I don’t understand … .” Santoro leaned forward, rising onto his toes so that his lips were an inch from the back of Grey’s neck.

“You told me that you were a man of faith, Dr. Grey. Do you remember? That first day when fortune brought me to you? When I showed you the pictures of those angels.”

“Angels … ?” The pictures that this man had shown him were not of angels, but he understood what Santoro meant. Grey gagged at the thought of such horrors being described as angelic. They were images out of hell itself. The blade was an icy promise on his flesh.

“Are you saying now that you were lying to me? Lying about faith?”

“No! No,” pleaded Grey. “That’s not what I meant … .”

“Then tell me what you meant, Dr. Grey. Tell me that you believe the All is capable of everything. Everything.”

“Y-yes … .”

“Say it,” Santoro growled. He raised the knife from Grey’s cheek until the beveled edge filled his vision.

“Yes,” Grey said hastily. “I believe, God help me, I believe, but—” With a snarl, Santoro withdrew the knife and with his free hand grabbed Grey’s shoulder and spun him violently around.

“God may believe you, but you are a piece of shit in the eyes of the Goddess!” Santoro wore a black mask, but through the eyeholes his eyes blazed with dark fire. He then snatched Grey’s right hand and slapped the knife into his sweating palm. Grey sputtered with confusion and looked dumbly down at the vicious weapon he held. It had a six-inch double-edged blade and a handle wrapped in red silk thread. It looked as much like a tool of ritual as it did an instrument of destruction.

“Do you know what faith is, Dr. Grey?” Santoro asked quietly. When Grey shook his head, the small man smiled. “Faith is my shield; it is the armor that covers my flesh and soul. I am a man of faith, Dr. Grey. I know that the Goddess protects me. I know that she has forged me into her sword.”

“I … I … ,” was all that Grey could manage.

“If you are a true man of faith, Dr. Grey, then you will believe that the Goddess lives in you. Use that faith. Prove its existence to me and to yourself. Cut me.” Grey looked at the weapon in his hand. His face twisted into a mask of horror as if he held a squirming scorpion. “Do it,” insisted Santoro.

“I—can’t … No …” “Do it or I will go into the house and find young Mikey and show him the knife. Would you like that, Dr. Grey? Would you like to watch? I will leave you one eye so that you can see it, and I will leave you most of your tongue so that you can scream. You will want to scream.” Grey suddenly stabbed at the small man. He saw his hand move before he felt his muscles flex, the dagger point glittering as it tore through the shadows toward Santoro’s smiling mouth. But Santoro was not there. In the gloom of the garage he became a blur. He pivoted on one foot and shifted so that the stabbing knife pierced only empty air. His hands flashed out, striking and striking and striking, the movements unspeakably fast, the blows hideously powerful. He struck Grey in the groin and the floating ribs and the solar plexus and the throat. Santoro pivoted like a dancer and struck Grey in the kidneys and tailbone and between the shoulders. Then the scientist was falling, falling, all in a fractured second. His arm still reached for the stab, but his body crumpled within the cocoon of blows. He collapsed onto the cold concrete floor of the garage, gagging, gasping for air with lungs that seemed incapable of drawing a spoonful of breath. His mouth worked like a dying fish, making only the faintest squeaks. Santoro stood above him, composed, relaxed, not even breathing hard. He knelt and picked up the knife, cleaned away the surface smudges on Grey’s shirtsleeve, and stood. The knife vanished into its hidden sheath beneath Santoro’s jacket. “

When you can breathe again,” he said, “I suggest you spend some time on your knees. Pray to the Goddess, yes? Pray for forgiveness for the sin of doubt.” He bent over and knotted his fingers in Grey’s hair and jerked the man’s head viciously back. “And pray that I forgive you. Pray that I will leave young Mikey alone. And intact.” Grey managed to squeeze a single word out of his tortured throat.

“Please …” Santoro bent closer still, lips against Grey’s cheek.

“Will you do what you have promised to do?” Grey nodded.

“Say it.”

“Yes!” Grey gasped weakly. Tears streamed down his face. “Yes … .” Santoro opened his fingers and let Grey slump to the floor.

“We will be watching, Dr. Grey. When you do what you have promised, you will have help.” Grey raised his head at that.

“H-help?”

“At work. You will not have to do this alone. You are never alone.” As the reality of that sank in, Grey buried his face in the crook of one arm and wept. When he stopped sobbing and looked up, Santoro was gone.


...

Hu said, “This morning, FIRE senior researcher Dr. Charles Grey came into work and brought his wife and son with him. They passed through all the security checkpoints, and he used his keycard to get them all into the bioresearch wing. Totally against all protocols, of course. We reviewed the security tapes, and when one lab tech tried to protest Grey flat out threatened to fire the guy. The tech backed down, more concerned for his job than for protocols.” He sneered. “Accidents are always about the human element.” For once I could find no fault with his statement. Church called up a floor plan on the tabletop computer.

“FIRE is built in layers, with a false front around the exterior to make it look like an inexpensive university-level lab. There are offices and staff rooms, and so on, built in the outer ring. They connect at two points through air locks to the main lab complex. Inside there is another and much more sophisticated air lock that accesses what they call the Hot Room. That’s where the work on the class-A pathogens is done, and there’s a glass-enclosed and pressuresealed observation tank in the center—the staff calls it the fish tank—and the biological vault is in there. Everyone working in the Hot Room can see the bio-vault, so nobody working there will be surprised when it’s opened. There are also warning lights and buzzers of different kinds that go off when the unlocking codes are being entered.” Church looked up from the screen.

“Dr. Grey called the entire staff into the Hot Room and shortly after that the video surveillance system went out.”


...

He did. I expected it to be about politics. But that wasn’t it at all. Instead Dr. Charles Grey told me a horror story. There were no ghosts or vampires in it, but it was scary as hell. He and his family lived in a cottage on the other side of the island. A few weeks ago, while Mikey and his mom were preparing a Thanksgiving dinner for the American staff at FIRE, Grey walked into his study, felt a sudden burn on the back of his neck, and then woke up five minutes later tied to a chair with a hood over his head. There was at least one man in the room with him. A frightening, invisible figure who spoke politely but told of dreadful things that would be done to Grey’s wife and son if the doctor did not do exactly what the man wanted. The man stood behind Grey and pulled off the hood. Then he reached past Grey and began placing photographs on the table in front of him. Photos of women who bore a strong physical resemblance to his wife. And little boys who looked like Mikey.

“The pictures they showed me … the things that were done to those other children. And to the women. Inhuman things. It was unbearable to think that someone could do that to another human being. To innocent children. To women. Then … he placed pictures of Mikey and Alicia next to the others. He had pictures of my wife shopping, of her in the bathtub, of us making love. The thought that they had stolen our privacy, that they were somehow watching us all this time …”

“Your boy, too?”

“Yes. Pictures of Mikey sleeping. One of him using the toilet at school. God!” He gagged and I didn’t know if it was the first touch of the Ebola or the sheer horror of what he was remembering.

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” I demanded.

“They warned me not to. He showed me a picture of a little boy … I mean I think it was a boy. Had been a little boy. The man said that this was the result of someone else notifying the authorities. He said that if I told anyone, even my wife, then this would happen to my son. To Mikey. Even if they had to wait a month, or a year, or ten years. One day my son would vanish and if we ever found him at all there would be only pieces left to bury. He said if that happened, I would receive an e-mail with a video file showing everything that had been done to Mikey, and that the last thing the boy would be told before he died was that this was all my fault. He made me believe that there were worse things than death. Even the way Mikey died—” A sob tore its way out of his chest. “Even the way he died wouldn’t be a millionth as bad as what they would have done to him. And if I did this and let my family live, I’d go to jail and they would still be out there. How could I trust that they would leave my family alone? They might … they might …” He shook his head.

“There’s witness protection—,” I said, but he cut me off.

“Witness against whom? I never saw his face. He wore a black mask. All I could tell was that he was a male and had a Spanish accent.” The Spaniard. The mysterious figure who was the liaison between the Chosen, the Kingsmen, and the Seven Kings. Son of a bitch. Grey glared at me. “So … do you want to tell me that the police, or even the military, would protect me from someone I couldn’t identify? Besides,” he said, his mouth a taut and bitter line, “he said that they had people in the police, in the military, in the government. He said that they had people everywhere.”

“And you believed him?” “Wouldn’t you?” I thought, Yeah, I probably would. “And,” Grey went on, “he said that he would occasionally reach out to me through other means to prove what he said. He wasn’t lying. I found notes in my locked car. Voice mails in five different voices on my phone. Notes on my desk.” He swallowed. “Even a folded note in my lab coat here in the Hot Room. They were everywhere. I thought about running, but if they are everywhere, where could I run?” Grey sobbed so hard that he almost dropped the beaker. My heart was in my throat. When he wiped his nose it left twin red smears on the forearm of his hazmat suit. “I gave them both morphine. This strain of Ebola works very fast. I thought it would hurt less than a gun. I … I’m not good with guns.”

“Why not overdose them with morphine?” Fresh tears welled in his eyes. The tears were pink with blood.

“I didn’t think you would believe me unless you had no choice. Seeing Mikey would convince you.” I wanted to take my gun and pistol-whip the shit out of him. I wasn’t a doctor and even I could have figured fifty ways to do it better than he’d done it.

“What about the rest of the staff?” I said. “Why hold them hostage?”

“I told you … I found notes on my desk, in my lab coat. And then the security cameras and ventilation cut out. They have someone else here.
-The King of Plagues pg. 32-214