A LITTLE MORE than four hours after leaving Corregidor Peter Sartori opened the door of his rooms at the Hilton Hotel in Manila. For the next hour, he and Maxine indulged in some violent sex. They both knew each other intimately for their affair had gone on for some years, yet they never tired of one another.
He took her to him so many times that his testicles started to run on empty from pumping juice into every orifice in her body that his hectoring penis could penetrate. Sartori might be small in stature but he was abnormally big between his legs. Sam, for Samantha Jessep, was Maxine's real name, had played Sartori's organ so often in the past that she was now a consummate musician.
“How's your throat, darling?” she asked tenderly.
Out of working hours, she was allowed to use endearments on him. He never responded in kind, however. After all, he was her master, and she was his employee. Sometimes, as of now, he would throw her a sop by giving her a good screw. He had to admit that her body pleased him but he was always sore afterwards from her demands. Tonight, however, his soreness had little to do with her. Placing his hand to his throat, he tested its tenderness.
“That man was strong!”
“He had already killed nine men in Ireland, remember!”
“Well, he nearly killed me as well!”
“There, there, darling!” she purred and reached down again for his overworked cock.
“Not now!” he said impatiently. “I have some unfinished business!”
“You mean the Regas! They won't be back until ten or so. A trip to Angeles City to buy some furniture.”
He pushed her away, rolled off the bed, and glanced at the expensive Rolex on his wrist that he always wore even in bed.
“I have just two hours so I'd better go.”
“How do you intend to do it?”
“A gas explosion, I think. Yes, why not.”
She had always admired his skill at killing people, much of which she had witnessed firsthand over the years. Sam was also an avid fan of the swaying appendage now dangling before her face, and she made a final grab for it but he was too quick.
“Later, when I have finished the task in hand,” he said in the manner of a man promising his dog a bone.
Forty minutes later Peter Sartori was walking by one of the entrances to Forbes Park. The lights around the security guards' hut lit up the darkness, exposing the two browned-skinned men that manned the gate. Sartori acknowledged the friendly smiles as he passed the Filipinos by and the blue-uniformed figures returned to their hut and the dull monotony of routine. They expressed some surprise to one another that an expatriate was walking instead of driving but they were not overly concerned. White men had little need in the Philippines to break into people's houses for money. Rather, they were normally the ones paying to keep thieves of the indigenous variety out.
Further on down the street, Sartori found what he was looking for. Here, the high brick wall was partially hidden from the road by leafy trees. The branches made a convenient ladder and he shinned silently up and over. Peter Sartori had penetrated armed enclosures before but they had never been this easy. Pulling the paper from his pocket, he glanced at Sam's directions. Then he walked along the pavement on one side of the well-laid-out avenues of trees, which bore testimony to the Phillipines’ former days of American colonialism. He soon came to the Regas' residence and saw lights burning in two of the basement windows. That meant that the maids were still about so he needed to be extra cautious. It took him only a few minutes to find the gas main which he quickly checked for suitability. No problems here, he decided as he reached into the pouch of his jacket to extract the plastic explosive and detonator. The barrel of a pistol pressed against the back of his head at that moment making him forget all about the work he had come there to do.
“Vat yah do deh, muverfucker?” The man's grip on his thin arm was like a vice and Sartori knew that he was well and truly trapped. While he was trying to come up with some plausible explanation for being in the Regas' garden, the other man spoke again.
“Vat yah got in pocket?”
“Nothing, really!”
The hulk beside him ignored this obvious lie as he went through the pouch and the other pockets in Sartori's jacket and trousers. Relieving him of the pistol in his shoulder holster and the Semtex and detonator as well, he asked Sartori, “What this?”
Before Sartori could think of a credible answer if indeed one could be found, a voice from the shadows inquired, “Did you get him, Lothar?”
“Yah! Got muverfucker here!”
“Bring him over! Lechaim will be back soon. We'll wait for him!”
Lothar considered this option. “Okay, but if muverfucker giv trouble, I take care, huh!”
As Sartori was bundled onto the patio, he wondered why the two men were here at the Regas house at this time of night. He knew about the Filipino and the German, of course, because Sam and he had been watching Lechaim's movements for some time; her up close, and he at a distance. He was also aware that the Filipino had the 'hots' for the kid from Argentina that had turned up a week before Christmas. But why were they there now, waiting, presumably, for the Regas to return?
Sartori, had little time to wonder about this, for he had to get away. The situation he found himself in was not overly desperate though. For one, the two men that confronted him, and there appeared to be only two, did not know that Captain Lewis was not coming back that night or any other. For another, the oaf that had the manners of a pig had only relieved him of the gun in his shoulder holster. Sartori still retained the small-spring released pistol strapped to his right arm under his jacket which the blockhead had missed. Sartori had got the idea from a movie, 'RED HEAT' where the Russian policeman played by Arnold Schwarzenegger had been up against a Russian drug peddler with a similar device. An arms expert within the organization had been able to obtain one for him, and the gadget had got Sartori out of more than one tight situation since then. The short Italian waited for his chance and it came as Lothar, Arnold Schwarzenegger's double, released him and threw him forward a few paces.
“Now little man,” Lito said. “Who are you?”
In the half-light luminescence of the patio, Sartori could see the threatening faces of his adversaries and instinctively knew that the moment had arrived. Snapping his elbow hard, he heard the mechanism click. In an instant, the spring-released extendable arm of finely engineered metal plunged out of his sleeve thrusting the gun it held into the palm of his hand. The faces of the two men before him had no chance to register surprise as he fired once. The shot took Lito in the shoulder from five feet away and lifted him back in the air before he sprawled to the ground clutching at the pumping hole. Lothar who had phenomenal reflexes for a big man did a rolling breakfall off the patio into the darkness before Sartori had a chance to fire again. Sartori did not bother going after him because he had to get away himself. Despite the silencer on his weapon the guards at the main gate might have heard something and decided to investigate.
The hulk had gone to ground and was nowhere in sight so Sartori took off like a greyhound; the cover of darkness working for him as well as Lothar. Soon he was scrambling over and down the wall. Regaining the footpath outside the enclosure, he tried to look inconsequential as he walked along. He could see that the guards were still on the gates as he approached so he assumed the shot had gone unnoticed after all. He heard the sound of an approaching vehicle but kept his head down.
A beaten-up car, somehow incongruous in such a high-class residential area, passed him and turned in at the gates. He stopped to let it pass in front of him and glanced casually at the driver. Suddenly, Sartori felt sick and wanted to vomit as the trembling in his limbs began. Fear can do that to a man. It was not conceivable, yet he could have sworn that the man driving the car was the man he had left for dead on Corregidor earlier that day. Was it a touch of conscience, perhaps? Surely not for he had killed many men in his life and never gave any of them a second thought. Sartori tried to convince himself that it was pure imagination on his part. After all, he knew, it just wasn't possible for Captain Lewis to be here.