Dark Ages полностью

“I think you see where this is heading.” Remo swept his hand in lovely Vanna White fashion to indicate the circle of desks, with two corpses at the end. “Now, I have a lot of questions for you, young man, and the zoinks are getting closer and closer. I’d try hard to avoid the nasty old zoink if I were you.”

Rilli tried to move. He screamed and screamed until the little old Chinaman adjusted something on his neck and made the panic go away but not the fear. He was still horribly afraid.

“Please no zoink!” Sir Rilli pleaded.

“Now, now, the zoink is something you control. Just you, you foolish little race-car driver. I think you know how to not get a zoink, don’t you? I thought you did. Let’s try it again, okay, and we’ll see if you really understand about the zoink. Pay attention.” Remo. leaned in close, inches away from the red, streaming eyes of the Honorable Sir Michele Rilli. All of a sudden, the goofball American transformed into some sort of a Satan in human form. “Where are the fucking hostages?”

Michele Rilli had been afraid before, but now, now, now. What was it in the eyes of that man? What was he?

There was something shining red and livid and alive and it could suck his soul right out of his body.

“Basement. High-security wing for state prisoners. I reset the biometrics so only my voiceprint opens it up.”

“Let’s hear it for him. He has earned no zoink! Question number two.”

“How many questions are there?” Rilli cried.

“I dunno. Eight or ten.”

“Oh God no!” There were only five living men left to be zoinked. Michele Rilli couldn’t care less about any of them—but he was in line to get zoinked, too.

“I’ll answer them all truthfully, I swear!”

“Great! Question two is, who did this? The whole stupid knights-of-the-round-table thing—who organized it? Who put you up to it?”

“But I don’t know that—”

“Remo, this is tiresome,” said the old Chinaman. Rilli had forgotten about the old Chinaman. Maybe he would help Rilli escape the madman with the zoink finger. But no, the Chinaman was simply bored.

“I don’t know the answer—please understand,” Rilli pleaded.

“‘I don’t know’ is the same as getting the answer wrong.”

“No, it’s not! How can I answer if I don’t know the answer?”

“My game, my rules. Zoink!” Another man died with a hole in his head.

“I don’t deserve this!” Rilli screeched.

Remo stepped before him. “Hey, Rilli, even before you killed most of the innocent people in this city, you deserved this. So, once again, you are wrong.”

“That was a statement, not an answer to a question!” Rilli protested.

“No matter. Zoink!”

Ayounde’s Government House had a very secure prison vault in its lowest level. Prime Minister Shund Beila estimated that he and his cabinet had been locked inside for about two days. They had food and water enough, but it was hell being in there, cut off from his people, not knowing what was happening.

Then they heard the vault doors crack and scream. Metal tore apart and a flash of light pierced the seal. There had to be some sort of a huge machine being used to break inside. That could only mean rescue.

He and his men gathered expectantly as the shattered door gave up and swung inward on its giant, creaking hinge. A man stood there, white, sullen. Behind him stood a tiny Asian man of immense age.

There was no sign of a machine,

“You’re free.”

“Wonderful!” Prime Minister Beila exclaimed. “What of the rat Rilli and his murderous soldiers?”

“All dead. No more threat.”

“Oh, yes! Thank you! What a happy day!”

The white man’s eyes seemed-to sink a little deeper into his skull. “I guess you guys have been out of touch.”

“Yes. We’ve heard nothing since they put us inside.” Shund Bella’s stomach flopped. “Why? What has happened?”

The American seemed to be trying to make the words come, but they wouldn’t come.

“Please, tell me.”

The man shook his head, and the prime minister of Ayounde knew that whatever bad thing had happened, this man simply couldn’t bring himself to put it into words.

“I gotta go.” That’s what the man said, then he whisked away like a breeze, the old Asian vanishing with him.

“That was them,” said the minister of finance. “They were fighting off the flamethrowers, remember, in the square. They were the ones trying to stop the killing.”

Of course it was them. Prime Minister Beila had not seen them up close, but those two were distinctive enough. While locked in their prison, Beila and his cabinet had spent the hours discussing at length the two men who had been doing wondrous things in National Square in defense of the Ayounde people. What extraordinary exploits they had witnessed.

“Well, whoever they are, they finally saved us,” said the minister of internal security. “I wonder what they did not want to tell us.”

“Let us go and find out,” the prime minister said, and up they went.

Remo Williams was supposed to phone his office.