Dogs (28 page)

“For
you?"

“But of course. He was the precursor, the forerunner. John the Baptist, if you like.”

Which cast Ebenfield as Jesus Christ.

Tessa stifled her grimace of disgust. “Who are you working with?”

“Those the Lord has sent me as minions, as servants, as means to carry out the design of Heaven.”

She stared levelly at him. “You don't believe that Biblical stuff. Not really. I can detect lying.”

He laughed, a horrible distortion of his scabrous face. “You're right. I've grown past that. The Bible was useful to me once, but now my path has taken me beyond it. Religion, like government and economy, is nothing more than a way to keep the true men from claiming their rightful power.”

He was as loopy as tangled yarn. “And what's your rightful place, Ebenfield?”

“You already know, my Tessa.”

“I don't. Tell me.”

Ebenfield didn't answer. Moving to the far wall of the filthy shed, he fumbled at something on the wall. Tessa took advantage of his turned back to strain at the rope that bound her wrists behind her. It didn't give. All she succeeded in doing was sinking her body deeper into the stinking straw.

Sudden light flooded the shed.

Ebenfield had unfastened and lifted away a section of the wall, a solid piece of wood maybe five feet square that began at the dirt floor. Behind the opening was strong chain-link fencing, through which poured weak late-afternoon light filtered through pine boughs and air even colder than that in the shed. Behind the fence snarled and jumped three huge dogs. One black-and-tan Doberman. The other two of some all-black breed with snouts like pigs, heavily muscled legs, and long, saliva-flecked teeth. The dogs' eyes were all filmed with milky white.

The chain-link fence had a latch that opened it into the shed.

Ebenfield turned back toward her, the line of light from the opening cutting like a knife across his rotting face.
A knife would have been more merciful
, Tessa thought. But Ebenfield's voice was triumphant.

“Behold my servants. Not the first ones, but my servants nonetheless.”

“They're dogs.” It sounded stupid, but how did you talk to the certifiably, dangerously mad? She had to keep him talking, had to hope that something he said could somehow be used to her advantage. “Where did the dogs come from, Richard?”

“They are mine. Of my making, under my control.”

“They're infected with canine plague, aren't they.” It wasn't a question. “Where did the infection come from?”

“Provided for the restoration of the true men.” He moved away from the opening—and toward her. The awful smell of him, strong even over the dog turds and pissed-soaked straw, intensified.

“Provided through you,” Tessa said. “You were infected in Africa, weren't you? When you were bitten by wild dogs in that jungle village. Monks cared for you afterward. Les Frères de l'Espoir céleste.”

She'd hoped to stop him cold with this but he only nodded, as if of course she would already have that information. He stopped at her feet and gazed dreamily down at her.

Tessa said desperately, “You recovered from the dog bites, the monks said. Then what? How did you infect these dogs here? You didn't bring them with you from Africa.”

“Don't you know, my Tessa?”

“No. I don't know. Tell me.” She was babbling, anything to keep him motionless. “You were sick from the wild dog bites, the monks nursed you—”

“I was sick before the wild dog bites. The brothers only made me sicker. But the dogs cured me, which is how I knew they were on my side. Beasts are never fooled, my Tessa. They can always recognize the natural rulers of the Earth.”

Sick before the wild dog bites.
He had had one type of illness, maybe a virulent flu, and the dog-bite pathogen had mixed with it and…Her mind was skittering around. Ebenfield raised the hem of his jacket and unbuckled his belt.
Aisha
. With Aisha he had tried to—

“But wait, Richard, how did you…I want to hear everything, I want to know, don't stop talking now, tell me how you did it. How?”

He pulled off his belt and dropped it into the straw. “I'll show you.”

She stopped breathing, but he came no closer. Instead he turned and left the shed. Again she strained at her bonds; again they refused to budge. Beyond the fence the dogs howled, jumping hysterically at the chain links, their teeth white in their black mouths. Two minutes later Ebenfield returned, carrying something under his jacket. He closed the shed door and smiled at her.

“You see, my Tessa, the power was always there for the true aristocrats. All we had to do was see clearly the terrible injustice that has deceived the world. That injustice is this:
The wrong men rule.
Soft, rich men who don't deserve their riches. Men like Salah and his friends. What did Salah ever do to have all that money, all those friends, women like you? He inherited it, is all. A perpetuation of a corrupt system. But when true men genuinely recognize their own power, nothing can stop them from claiming what is rightfully ours. Because we are
not
soft, not corrupted by pampered ease. We are willing to do anything to reclaim our rightful control. Anything.”

From under his jacket he drew out a puppy.

Eight weeks old, Tessa guessed numbly; ten at the most. A small wiggling ball of black fur. The dogs behind her went crazy, leaping and snarling. Probably one of them was the puppy's mother. Ebenfield smiled at her again, raised the puppy to his mouth, and bit it hard.

The animal yelped. Ebenfield tossed it into a corner, where it cowered and cried. Blood and dog hair smeared Ebenfield's lips.

“You see, my Tessa, how I make the beasts of the Earth mine, to do my bidding and to correct the errors of the Old Order.”

She fought to keep her voice steady, to inject into it cold contempt. “But you aren't correcting those errors alone, are you, Ebenfield? Someone else is using you. To bring the dog plague to the United States, to commit an act of terrorism here where they couldn't go but you can. They're
using
you, don't you understand that—”

She couldn't deflect him. It was as if he didn't even hear her. The dreamy expression had returned to his face. He unzipped and pulled down his pants and briefs, exposing his penis, engorged purplish-red. Below it, his spindly legs puckered into goose pimples from the cold.

“Don't you understand? They
used
you! You were convenient, an American who could go anywhere in the U.S. without suspicion, a vector no different from the mosquitoes that carry malaria or dengue fever—”

He smiled at her and knelt in the straw. His voice held caresses. “Yes, it must happen here, in the sight of my servants. Salah was first, but only as the precursor to me. Ah, my Tessa, I have waited so long—but the true men always triumph in the end.”

Gently—the gentleness was an obscenity in itself—Ebenfield reached for the button on her jeans.

The moment he leaned over her, Tessa arched her entire body and thrust her knees upward. The blow caught him in the balls and sent him, shrieking, backwards against the wooden wall. The dogs went crazy, barking hysterically, snapping their sharp teeth.

Frantically Tessa tried to spin herself in the straw to aim a kick at him from her bound feet, but he wasn't disabled long enough. Gasping in pain, his rotting face contorted, he nonetheless scrambled over to her and punched her hard in the face.

“You've ruined it! You've ruined everything! You bitch, you whore! You're supposed to be mine, not his! Everything is supposed to be mine now!” He made as if to punch her again but instead collapsed against the far wall and began to cry.

Tessa tasted blood. Her ears rang. But her jaw wasn't broken; the deep straw had absorbed some of the impact.

Ebenfield sobbed for what seemed like a long time. Cold seeped into Tessa's bones. She couldn't reach him and she didn't want to provoke another blow. This time he might kill her.

But when he finally got to his feet, she saw with amazement that his erection had actually returned. Again he knelt, this time beside her where she couldn't reach him, and yanked her jeans and underwear to her ankles. Hope surged through her. If he meant to spread her legs to rape her, he'd have to cut the rope around her ankles and if her legs were free to really kick…he was weak, and she was trained to fight.

However, he didn't cut the rope. Instead he lay on top of her. She felt his hard penis thrust between her bare legs—and felt, too, its quick deflation into soft, limp jelly.

“He…couldn't,” Aisha had said.

Ebenfield rubbed himself against her, trying to regain his erection. It didn't happen. Tessa braced herself for the blow, but he didn't hit her again.

In a voice full of more quiet anguish, of genuine despair, than she had imagined him capable of, Ebenfield uttered a single word. Then he rose and dressed quickly, not looking at her. He put out the lantern. For a moment his hand strayed near the latch on the fence, and Tessa closed her eyes.
No
. But of course he wouldn't let the dogs in from into the shed while he himself was in it. He would go outside, spring the latch with some remote mechanism…

He left the shed, but the fence stayed closed. Tessa couldn't hear where he went. All she could hear as she lay naked from waist to ankles in the reeking cold were the dogs and, even louder than the dogs in her head, that one word Ebenfield had whispered. Not with hatred this time, nor even with bitter envy, but with agonized longing for what he could never be, never have.

Salah.

Frantically Tessa chafed against her ropes until her wrists bled. When Ebenfield returned, once his momentary anguish had passed, he would almost certainly kill her. He'd failed to rape her, failed to make Salah's woman his own, and his humiliation would turn to rage.

She couldn't get free of her bonds. She did manage to get to her feet and hobble to the shed door, but Ebenfield had locked it from the outside. If she could find a nail or rough edge of wood, rub the ropes against it to weaken them…but that didn't work, either, because she didn't have enough time. The light from the dog enclosure faded into red sunset.

In the corner the bitten puppy whimpered.

Tessa, naked from waist to ankles, started to shiver. God, it was cold! Frostbite, hypothermia…Her teeth chattered.

All at once, the dogs raced away from the shed opening.

Tessa went completely still, straining to hear whatever had alerted the dogs. After a moment she caught it: voices! Maddox must have traced her!

She almost called out, but long training restrained her. And a moment later, the voices became clearer as they neared the shed. They were speaking Arabic.

Tessa dropped back onto the filthy straw and forced her icy body to shimmy from side to side. To the left, to the right, left, right… Straw drifted over her face, her belly, her exposed public hair. As quickly and silently as she could, she burrowed deep into the straw. A dog turd fell onto her face. She heard another rat somewhere, scurrying away from her.

The back of her head scraped concrete just as the shed door opened.

Tessa lay covered by straw. Completely covered? She couldn't tell and couldn't check. All she could do was concentrate on not making the straw quiver by trying fiercely to control her shivering. That, and hope that the fading light made visibility difficult.

The men spoke Arabic and she understood none of it. But she heard their voices muffle as once again the door closed. After a moment, the voices again grew louder and so did the barking and howling. The men had come around to the side of the shed that abutted the dog pen. And now one voice spoke English. Ebenfield, yelling in hysteria.

“No you can't—no! Abd-Al Adil promised—he told me—no you don't understand
no—
”

Something hit the ground hard. The dogs' howling rose to a frenzy. Then the screaming began.

Tessa squeezed her eyes shut. The agonized screams seemed to go on forever, although it was probably just a few minutes. The tearing of flesh lasted much longer. Over those terrible sounds, Tessa just distinguished another voice she recognized, also speaking English.

“Come on, then. The bloody Yanks'll be here soon.”

Manchester or Liverpool.

“The true men,
” Ebenfield had said to Tessa. The ones who could claim, rule, protect what was rightfully theirs. The masters.

Ruzbihan bin Fahoud bin Ahmed bin Aziz al-Ashan had protected his renegade son.

Tessa, lying buried and half naked in the straw, heard the car drive up to the shed, then a last volley of gunfire, and then the car roaring away. The gunfire bewildered her—what had they shot at? Not the dogs; she could still hear them outside, tearing at Ebenfield's body. Ripping, slavering, sucking: noises that Tessa knew she would hear in her head for the rest of her life.