The Summoner: (3 page)

“Sacrifice is at the core of most religions. Biblical Judaism was rife with animal sacrifices, Abraham was ready to sacrifice his own son, and the very concept of Christian salvation centers on sacrifice. African and Far Eastern religions, Pre-Columbian Mesoamericans, Celts, Scandinavians, Minoans, sects of Hinduism—I dare say cultures from every corner of the globe have practiced human sacrifice at one time or another.”

“”At one time or another” being the key phrase,” Harris said. “I’m sure the cavemen did lots of nasty things.”

“Today you won’t hear of a government or religious group admitting to the existence of human sacrifice,” Viktor said. “But ritual murders are a reality, and not just in Yorubaland.”

Harris scoffed. “How do you know? That sounds like urban legend.”

“Because I’ve investigated them.”

Viktor uttered that statement with the soft emphasis of someone who doesn’t need to boast. Maybe, Grey thought, he isn’t a stodgy professor after all.

“You’ve convinced me Juju has some thoroughly horrifying practices,” Harris said. “Professor, you seem like an intelligent man—but be honest. Are you asking us to consider that Addison was sacrificed at this ceremony? I think his girlfriend might’ve noticed if that had happened.”

Grey again found himself in rare accord with Harris.

“You’re correct. A sacrifice should have been readily apparent to all in attendance. I find the lack of a body a troubling element of this case.”

Harris threw his hands up. “Human sacrifice? Disappearing bodies? The only thing I’ve gotten from this discussion is that we have no clue what happened.”

“Then we’re finally on the same page, Mr. Powell. I find it safe to conclude no one here has any idea what happened inside that circle.”

Harris turned to Nya. “Is there anything else you know that’s pertinent to this investigation?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Then I’m sure we all agree the next step is to speak to a flesh and blood witness. Addison’s girlfriend, and anyone else we can find from the ceremony.”

“It will be difficult to locate other worshippers,” Nya said. “Juju is frowned upon in Zimbabwe.”

“Excellent,” Harris said. “Duly noted. Thank you both for coming. And thank you again for your government’s support in this matter. The Ambassador is very grateful.” He motioned to Grey, and they stood.

Nya rose and handed them each a card. “Let me remind you no one from your office is to investigate this matter without my presence.”

“Of course,” Harris murmured, already opening the door.

Grey glanced back before he followed Harris out. Nya watched them both leave, her face unreadable. Viktor’s arms were folded, and he was staring into space.

4

A
soft breeze lent the night a temperate feel as they returned through downtown. Harris waved off a mosquito. “What the hell was Addison doing at that ceremony, anyway? This is the kind of thing that happens when you go off into the bush with a bunch of fanatics. I suppose we’ll need to get on this in the morning. That is, you need to. I have a couple of important briefings to prep for this week, so I’m putting you in charge of the day-to-day. Keep me updated, though. The Ambassador wants progress reports.”

Grey had expected as much. He knew Harris had no intention of being shadowed by the Ministry, but given the Ambassador’s involvement, he had to hold himself out as the point man.

“I’m not sure if I’m the best man for this,” Grey said. “Religion isn’t my cup of tea.”

“You’re perfect. I don’t want some Georgetown twit working on it. I need someone who thinks outside the box and hell, you never were in the box.”

After the carjacker debacle in Colombia, Grey had no room to argue. Besides, he’d wanted something different, and this was definitely different. “How close is the Ambassador to Addison? How’s he taking this?”

“They went to Dartmouth together, golf three times a week, and share a vacation home.”

“Lovely.”

“I wouldn’t worry. He’s probably shacking up with some wide-eyed peasant, or holed up at a bordello in Jo’burg. There’s no ransom note, no evidence of foul play—and can you believe the crap that nutjob professor was spouting? Look. Just try and find something to placate the Ambassador with before Addison turns up in an opium den.”

“In that case you’ll probably find him before I will.”

Harris gave a short, agreeing laugh.

“Nya seems a bit young to be in charge,” Grey said. “Competent, though.”

“You think anyone really in charge around here gives a damn about a bunch of missing villagers, a witch doctor, or a retired civil servant? Someone probably wanted her out of their hair.”

“I suppose.”

“She’s a hot little number. I might handle this myself if I thought she wouldn’t be tougher to crack than a steel coconut.” Harris stopped on Union Avenue, in front of the declining façade of the Victorian: a hotel cum brothel frequented by the diplomatic set. “I prefer my women a bit more cooperative. In fact, I think I’ll stop in for a Castle. I just realized how thirsty I was. Care to join?”

When Grey was fifteen, his father dragged him to a whorehouse in Tokyo. The girl was even younger than Grey, and he saw the gratefulness in her eyes when a nervous Grey suggested they just talk. Grey was no saint, but since that day he stuck to the vices that only affected himself. “You know my answer to that question.”

“All too well, Grey, all too well. You’ll be singing a different tune when you’re my age, I guarantee it. What are you, thirty? Wait until you have to work for it a bit. Good looks, hairlines, and prudish morality have a funny way of receding at the same rate.”

Harris vanished into a smoke-filled lounge. Grey stood at the intersection, watching as a few furtive, solitary figures scurried around Harare’s underbelly. Finally he turned, and began walking back to the Embassy.

• • •

Grey closed up his cubicle and called a taxi. The fuel crisis in Zimbabwe made keeping gasoline in his government car not worth the trouble. The last time Grey heard fuel was available and he’d gone to a gas station, the queue was five hours long. Gas could be found on the black market, but civil penalties were harsh, not to mention the embarrassment to the Embassy.

Grey stepped outside to wait, and reflected on the meeting. The reflection didn’t last long. The possibility that ten other people had disappeared gave him pause, but high-ranking United States diplomats did not disappear into the African bush. At this point, Harris’s theory about a domestic squabble made more sense than Professor Radek’s insinuations. Grey had never investigated a kidnapping, but it was his experience that human beings, for the most part, acted according to a few time-worn motivations. Tomorrow he’d talk to the girlfriend.

He heard a rough shout from behind. When he turned he saw a man down the street yelling at a woman next to him. They had two young children with them. The man rose and pointed a finger at the woman’s face. She tried to look away, and he screamed louder.

Grey’s stomach clenched, and he wanted to walk back and shove the man’s finger down his throat. He knew, with intimate certainty, that the discipline in that family went far beyond the public display. He saw his own father, fist raised, face mottled, eyes alight. He saw that uniformed fist come down again and again.

Grey’s father had been a champion boxer and a trained soldier. As he taught Grey to fight, he demanded Grey hit him back, and when Grey complied, his father hit harder. Grey’s mother tried to intervene, and his father hit her as well.

When Grey was ten, after years of hopping from base to base in various countries, his father was assigned to Japan. Traditional Japanese karate would not be good enough for his underweight and introspective son. His father sought out the most vicious and effective martial art in Japan: Jujitsu.

Jujitsu developed as a form of self-defense for unarmed samurai forced to face a heavily armored warrior. The theory behind Jujitsu was to use an attacker’s energy against him, rather than oppose it, and the art was designed to attack the weakest parts of the human body: joints, pressure points, organs, digits, soft tissue. The particular style Grey’s father stumbled upon, Zen-Zekai, happened to be one of the most violent, even among Jujitsu schools. Brutal fighting took place in class on a daily basis.

Grey’s coordination, quick hands and sharp mind lent themselves well to the art.
Shihan
, the principal instructor, noticed his potential.
Shihan
knew more about pain and suffering than most knew about breathing. And Grey became his star pupil.

Grey swore he’d never become his father, and knew he was lucky he hadn’t. But his father left him with a legacy of violence, which was Grey’s cross to bear, and he shuddered every time he experienced the sweet thrill of physical superiority.

At fifteen, when Grey’s mother died of cancer, home became unbearable. A year later, Grey left.

His father had left him with one job skill. Underground fighting is immensely popular in Japan, and his father had often forced him to test himself “in the real world.” Grey spent many of his weekend teenage nights partaking in human cockfights. Grey was good, very good, but he was usually fighting grown men twice his size. He vomited before and after the first dozen, sometimes during, until he learned how to lock the violence in a dark room in a corner of his soul.

When Grey left home he traveled Japan, continuing to train and fight in the shady bowels of unimportant cities. It was a world rife with exploitation and criminal elements, and without his father as intermediary, he knew he was going to end up in a very bad place.

After scrounging his way to Sydney he showed up on the doorstep of his mother’s brother, the only other close relative he knew. He stayed a year, and learned life could be different.

Grey didn’t know what home felt like, but it wasn’t the dreamy shores of Australia. He bid his uncle goodbye and tried Southeast Asia. First Bangkok, then Seoul, Rangoon, Phnom Penh and other cities where he could fight to fund his travels.

He made a brief foray into the timeless cities of Europe, then returned to America on a whim. He loved the energy and flair of New York, the thrill, the mix of people. He may not have felt at home, but no one else did either.

He joined the Marines because it was the only thing he knew, but he swore he wouldn’t become his father. When he escaped the court-martial by agreeing to teach hand to hand combat to Special Forces units, he taught his classes with a grim smile. In everyone else’s eyes he was a failure; to him, it was the proof he needed that he was his own man.

The taxi pulled up. Grey got in slowly, treating the man down the street to a prolonged stare.

• • •

Grey grabbed a small bottle of sake and settled onto his couch. He had enough thoughts filling his head, so he liked his material world simple. A stack of books stood in one corner, philosophy and African history and a few classics, Herman Hesse in particular.

Pictures of his mother and
Shihan
on a coffee table. His first black belt hanging on the wall, gray from age and wear. A few Japanese ink paintings on the walls.

Halfway through the sake his mind fluttered with sleep. He drifted, roaming the mist-filled hall of mirrors of his subconscious. Images of his stint in the military cavorted around him, the ghosts of the lives he had taken tossing and poking him like Dante’s demons.

Just before he slept his mind wandered to gentler realms, to the few but well-placed souls along the way who sustained his belief in the goodness, however anomalous and fragile, present in the world. He floated towards the voices from his past and then, home at last, to the warm brown eyes of his mother.

5

A
s always, Grey started his morning jog before the sun breached the horizon. He finished his three-mile route around Harare Gardens, then took a shower and had coffee on his balcony as the city stirred beneath him. The morning’s dawn was a tremulous affair, streaks of color sustaining the fragile light fluttering beneath the reluctant retreat of darkness.

Grey lived in an apartment in the Avenues, a diverse collection of streets bridging the Central Business District and the northern suburbs. He fingered Nya’s business card. It displayed her name and, underneath, ‘Ministry of Foreign Affairs’—the Zimbabwean equivalent of the State Department.

He called and Nya suggested they meet at the Nando’s close to the Tobacco Auction. Grey pulled a short-sleeved work polo over his runner’s torso, then stuck long, almost gangly legs into a pair of government-issue slacks.

He took his identification but left his gun in the bedside drawer—another stipulation of the investigation. Grey didn’t mind; he wasn’t attached to his gun. He shot well, although the need hadn’t arisen during his time with the Embassy.

Grey found a taxi, and the driver wound through downtown and headed south on Simon Mazorodze Road. The traffic lights hung lifeless above the streets, relics from a functioning economy, making intersections much more exciting than they were meant to be.

Twenty minutes later they stopped in front of Nando’s, a chain of peri-peri chicken restaurants. Grey saw Nya standing beside a late-model, forest green Land Rover. Most people who drove a car that nice in Harare were either wealthy or corrupt. Usually both.

A charcoal pant-suit clung to her curves. Her hair was still drawn back, and a pair of severe sunglasses added to her centurion demeanor. She gave a perfunctory greeting and motioned for him to get in. Grey didn’t notice anything in the car that gave him any insight into Nya Mashumba, except for the lack of clues itself: the bare interior betrayed deliberate order in its design, a carefully constructed shield against insight-seekers.

They drove to a neighborhood full of modest one-story houses, each with the same unassuming spit of land attached. Weeds choked the grounds, paint flaked off the houses, stray dogs picked through trash in the street. Grey’s face tightened as they delved deeper.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. “I recall you saying you lived here too.”