Fear kept them away and kept the little farmhouse safe.
As he spread manure and mulch around his rosebushes, Benson Dilkes didn't look like a figure to provoke fear. He was flicking an aphid off a leaf and tsking in annoyance when he heard the telephone ring in the house.
Brushing the dirt from his hands, he climbed to his feet.
Dilkes was a handsome man, with a tan, rugged face and laugh lines that crimped the corners of his eyes. Although his dark hair was peppered gray and the calendar of his life had recently slipped past his sixtieth year, he still retained the vigor of youth.
He mounted the porch, grabbing a sweating glass from a metal table before going inside.
The phone was old and clunky. A good solid number from the days when a phone could be used to club a man to death or strangle him with the cord. With the new phones these days, the best a person could do was call a target a thousand times and hope he got head cancer.
Thankful once more for uncomplicated retirement, Dilkes scooped up the phone. "Hello." He took a sip of his drink.
"I think I might have a problem, Benson."
The voice surprised Dilkes. The man on the other end of the line rarely spoke and never, ever called. "Is that you, Olivier?" Dilkes asked slowly. The answer caused him to put his drink down. Carefully.
"Yes." Even that one word was difficult to get out. "Benson, I just left an event. There were two targets of interest that were not acquired as I had hoped."
"You failed?" Dilkes asked. At this point he doubted he could mask his surprise even if he tried. He sat on the edge of a chair, concern etched in his deep tan lines.
"These men are special, Benson. Different than what I am used to. I was hoping you could offer some insight. Perhaps you know something about them."
Could it be? Was that actual fear in that accented voice? The younger man had always had ice for blood.
"I'll help if I can, Olivier," Dilkes said. "What information do you have on them?"
"Very little, I am afraid. One is an elderly Asian. Perhaps Korean or Japanese. I was too far to see clearly. The other was just an ordinary Caucasian."
Benson Dilkes felt the floor go out from underneath his feet. For an awful moment, the room swirled. "My God, it's them," Dilkes croaked.
The voice on the phone grew excited. "You know them? Who are they?"
Dilkes picked up his drink, draining it in one gulp. "I know of them. Run, Olivier," he insisted. "Get far away from those two. My God-you're lucky to be alive. Run as far as you can and don't look back."
"Why? What are they?"
Dilkes closed his eyes wearily, sinking back in his chair. "You never listened; Olivier," he said, shaking his head. "You were an exceptional student, but you were always only interested in your gadgets and toys. You loved those Rube Goldberg contraptions of yours, but you never bothered to learn the history of what we are."
"I am listening now. Tell me who they are."
Dilkes sighed, opening his eyes. "Sinanju, Olivier. Those men were Sinanju."
A pause on the line. "I thought they were mythical."
"They are absolutely real," Dilkes insisted. "The old one was the reason I left America twenty-five years ago. He is the Master. I've since learned that he's taken a pupil. An American, if the stories I've heard are accurate."
"The younger one acted like an American." There was a growling contempt in the voice.
"It was them. It's amazing you met them and got out alive," Dilkes said. "Olivier, do you have any idea how rare a thing that is? In all of recorded history, there are only a handful of men who've done what you have."
It was the wrong thing to say. The fear that had been there at the start of the conversation was slowly overcome by arrogance.
"I almost had them, Benson."
Dilkes sat up rigid in his chair. "No," he insisted. "No, you didn't. And don't even think about going back after them. You live in isolation, Olivier. You've never appreciated that there are forces out there that you and I will never understand. You've achieved a well-deserved reputation, but it's only the reputation of an individual. Sinanju is the reputation of our entire career."
"Thank you, Benson. I will try to come down for a visit in the spring."
"You're a dead man if you try to engage them," Dilkes said in final warning.
The phone buzzed loud in his ear. With a hot exhale of air, he dropped the receiver back in its cradle. So few men in his line of work lived to enjoy retirement. He had just spoken to another that would not.
Getting up from his comfortable living-room chair, Benson Dilkes went back out to his yard and his prize roses.
Chapter 14
He sent back the ice because it wasn't cold enough. His lunch was too hot. Then it was too cold. Then it wasn't lunch at all anymore because he'd thrown it on the waiter's tidy uniform.
The bulbs in the overhead lights were too bright. Someone was sent for replacements.
While he waited, some marauder with mallets for hands improperly fluffed his pillow. Since everyone knew a pillow once improperly fluffed could never be fluffed properly again, both pillow and fluffer would be thrown off the plane the minute they landed in Brazil.
In the back of the jet, people searched for a persistent rattle that only he could hear. Agents and record company executives, promoters and accountants, the flight crew and various personal staff scurried around the cabin, chasing after a sound that wasn't there. They'd been looking, straining their ears, since the jet took off from London.
"I want it found by the time we touch down or there'll be sackings all around," Albert Snowden snapped over his shoulder. He was chewing on an ice cube as he talked. "Still not cold enough," he snarled, spitting the too-warm ice into the forehead of the lentil-covered waiter.
As the terrified man scurried around the floor of the plane in search of the wayward chunk of ice, Albert settled angrily back in his seat.
He was always angry. Even an entire private planeload of people-his people, his employees-bending over backward to service his every whim couldn't soothe the perpetual state of agitation that was, for Albert Snowden, the very stamp of miserable life itself.
He had always been peevish. Even back when he was a nobody working a starvation-wages job as an English teacher at a boys' school in Saint Albans, twenty miles outside of London.
Albert Snowden. He hadn't gone by that name in years.
The last time he'd used it was that long ago winter when he'd taken a sabbatical from teaching. He went to London to indulge in his avocation. Rock and roll music.
Everyone thought Albert was insane for even thinking he might have a career in music. Crazier still for thinking he could front a band.
"You're tone-deaf, Albert," his voice coach had told him. "When you sing, it sounds as if your genitals are being pressed between two very large flat rocks. That is not a pleasing sound to hear, Albert. I would demonstrate to you on an animal, but the RSPCA would stop me for inflicting pain on that animal. Which they will do to you if you subject an audience to that voice of yours. Go back to teaching. Go back now. If not for me, man, do it for queen and country."
But in spite of such negative encouragement, he had persisted in his dream.
A few days after firing his voice coach-who had taken to wadding cotton in his ears during their sessions-Albert was at an open-mike night at a London club. As luck would have it, he met up with a young American who was looking for a lead singer for his band. Called Fuzz Patrol, the band would consist of only three main members. In those heady days of joyful masochism, Albert and his voice just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He quit teaching altogether and joined the band on the spot.
They started out in small venues, eventually graduating to bigger clubs.