Tom Black #9: Badripoor Scheming
In which Tom and Regret see the sights and the sights see them.
Regret screamed. She struggled as rough hands pinned her down to hurt her, fighting without hope because she knew how strong they were, knowing what they would do.
A soft touch on her cheek surprised her. A quiet voice spoke her name with tenderness. “Regret. Wake up.”
The red-skinned demon temptress snapped her eyes open, their cat-slitted retinas refocusing in the gloom. Tom Black continued to call to her, to sooth her. He was smart enough not to try to hold her down.
“Tom?” Regret stammered, beginning to emerge from the nightmare, recognising the man in the bed beside her. “Tom Black?”
The dark haired English intelligence officer glanced down at himself as if to check. “So far,” he agreed. Tom had been suffused a few weeks earlier by strange Kaos Energies from the mysterious Judas Box, granting him great powers; but the energies that coursed through him were fundamentally evil. Fresh flowers wilted in his presence. Food turned rotten. Wounds festered.
Tom was powerful. That was why Regret had become his lover. “I… was having a bad dream,” the woman explained, suddenly embarrassed by her behaviour, by the sheen of sweat on her body and the way her hands trembled. “I’m sorry.”
Tom continued to stroke her skin, calming her. The demon temptress had been touched in all kinds of ways in the course of her training and career as a weapon of hell, before her exile for weakness and betrayal of the Hell-Lord Sage Grimpenghast. It was a new experience for Regret to be touched like this, for comfort. It was… not unpleasant.
“You’ve nothing to apologise for,” Tom told her. “People have nightmares. Except me. In fact it’s possible that you sleeping next to me provoked your dreams.”
“I’m not people,” Regret insisted. “I haven’t been people for a very long time. I’m Regret Kiskilla, reforged in the Abyss for the damnation of mankind. I look human when I’ve dismissed my wings but I’m not. I never will be again.”
“You can still have nightmares,” Tom pointed out. “But while I’m here I will try to protect you from them.”
Regret thought back to the ugly, terrifying things she’d experienced in her dreams; memories, not nightmares. “There are things you can’t protect me from,” she answered. “I betrayed Sage Grimpenghast and he’ll never forget. If it takes an eon he’ll find me and drag me back to hell to take his revenge, and his malevolence will last for the rest of eternity.”
Tom shrugged. “You wouldn’t be on my payroll if you thought I couldn’t help you. For starters you hope that staying close to me will mask your evil aura in my much bigger one. And you’re hoping that you can raise me to immense power and authority to the point where one day I might become a being able to challenge and even destroy your former master.”
Regret squirmed again, uncomfortable with a bed partner who could see through her that well. “I’m not used to men realising how I’m manipulating them.”
“I’m glad I’ll stand out in your memoirs,” Tom smiled. “But for now hold on to this: I don’t let my friends down without very good reason, and you’re far too much fun in bed for me to want to let you get dragged back to hell for eternal torment. I’m not the bastard Grimpengahst is, but he’s had more practice than me and I’m a fast learner.”
Tom’s touch suddenly set a fire burning through Regret’s body. She wasn’t sure whether he’d intended to send waves of desire down to her loins but suddenly the demoness wanted him. She chided herself for yet another weakness.
“Also,” Tom went on, “you’re not caught yet. You’re with me and it’s morning and we’re in the biggest, baddest city on the Pacific Rim, and if you can’t have fun here you can’t have fun anywhere.” He gestured and the curtains glided open along one glass wall of the room, revealing dawn breaking over the cityscape beyond. “Badripoor,” Tom Black grinned. “If hell had a PR department it would look like this.”
“It does,” agreed Regret. She struggled with temptation, an unfamiliar problem for a demon temptress. Each time she had failed to resist her human nature she had fallen further from whatever the demonic equivalence of grace was. Then she decided she didn’t care. “But Badripoor can wait. I can’t. Take me, Tom!”
She told herself afterwards that she was just doing her job, being mistress to a being of growing power and evil, ensuring his interest to keep her at his side. She told herself many things afterwards. In the moment she just wanted Tom, and if she felt anything more than lust for the man who had held her in her dark hour she did not admit it even to herself.
***
Badripoor shimmered in the dawn. The last mists ghosted across the bay, shrouding the junks and fishing boats that crowded the harbour, washing over the rickety wooden piers and ramshackle warehouses. Behind the wharves was the shantytown, high crowded tenements and labyrinthine alleys and courtyards. Even at this early hour they teemed with life as the street-traders and shoppers seethed to market. Higher still were the stone terraces of the old colonial estates, and then the new steel and glass skyscrapers that marked the city’s economic rise.
Bad Badripoor, city-state of dubious reputation, where fully half the economy was fuelled by counterfeiting and forgeries, by video pirating and drug trafficking and the sex industry; where mercenaries gathered in waterfront bars and former planters’ clubs awaiting hire across Asia or Africa; where economic refugees and political prisoners and common criminals fled from threat of incarceration or extradition; where life was cheap and money was easy and whatever else happened the daily grind was full of colour and noise and event.
Tom Black loved it.
“I can see why Count Armageddon came here,” he shouted across to Regret as they took in the tourist sites from the back of a rickshaw. “If anyone wanted a base for a pirate empire this is the spot. Economically dependant on crime, geo-politically positioned so that intervention would destabilise the relationship between the great powers, full of desperate, ambitious people ready to do whatever it takes to survive.”
“But Armageddon fell,” Regret reminded her boss. “He gathered together an army of mutates and supervillains to threaten the whole world, but the Lair Legion still destroyed him.”
Tom nodded. “Important to learn from the lessons of history,” he agreed. “I wonder if Mark Hopkins can do that?”
Hopkins, better known as founding Legionnaire spiffy, had accidentally become President for Life of the corrupt little city-state. In Badripoor President for Life was not necessarily a long-term appointment.
“spiffy survived being Mayor of Gothametropolis for a full term,” Regret pointed out. “And he survived being in the Lair Legion. He can’t really be as stupid as he looks.”
“Nobody could,” admitted Tom. “Still, I’m not intending to encounter President Hopkins this visit. I’m here to find out more about Armageddon, the last man known to have possessed kaos energies like mine.”
Tom and Regret had arrived late last night, and had booked into the Badripoor Grand Hotel under assumed names. Instead of a passport Tom had handed the manager a roll of hundred dollar bills – American and Japanese currency were preferred to local cash in Badripoor – and the manager had passed a knowing glance over Regret and had asked no more questions. Many rich European businessmen checked in with their attractive personal assistants at the pleasure casinos of Badripoor.
“Count Armageddon couldn’t have got his powers like you did, by opening that Judas Box,” Regret noted. “Armageddon wasn’t even from Earth, from this dimension at all.”
“He came from the alternate reality we term Technopolis,” Tom answered. “He became exposed to kaos in an entirely different way. In the end he was really nothing but sentient kaos energy, replacing his whole body. And his kaos abilities were very different to mine.”
The rickshaw rattled down a steep cobbled street and came out along the fish docks. Hundreds of people traded and shouted between makeshift stalls festooned with new-caught sea life, herbal cures, fake designer-label clothing, and live animals for sale.
“Armageddon became a superman,” Regret recalled, “and you got green balls.”
Tom snorted at his companion’s attempt to ruffle him. “I generate and control semi-sentient kaos spheres that possess objects, machinery, magics, maybe even people. I can’t bench-press a bus but I can take over a city if I have to. It’s not what power you have but how you apply it.”
“And will you?” Regret wondered, “Take over this city?”
“Only if I have to,” Tom answered. “I don’t really want to have to kill spiffy. It would draw unwelcome attention.”
“You’re allowed to indulge yourself occasionally, you know,” advised the demon temptress.
The rickshaw rattled on, past the abandoned customs house with its hundreds of destitute squatters, along the old sea wall fortification that defined the original boundary of the settlement, then upwards again into the tight shopping streets and squares of the residential quarter.
The air elementals watching Black hurried on, some to follow, some to report back to their creator.
***
The Charity Club stood on a promontory overlooking the verdant bay. Its old stone frontage was whitened by the sun. Its sober Victorian lines recalled a different era when foreign powers had vied to control the lucrative opium trade that had risen after the decline of the slave industry.
Tom Black and Regret Kiskilla strode into the cool foyer and approached the desk clerk.
“This is a private club,” the man behind the darkwood counter advised them. “Members only.”
“I should hope so,” approved Tom Black. “I’m here as a guest. Tell Justus Screwdriver that we’ve arrived.”
Regret looked around as the clerk spoke into a discreet intercom. “One of my functions is evidently to ask you questions so you can expound,” Regret said to her employer. “In the interests of my continued employment I’m therefore going to ask: what’s this place and why are we here?”
“The Charity Club is neutral ground,” Tom told her. “According to Algy its been used as a meeting place for rogues and villains for a hundred years or more. And Algy should know, because MI6 pay him a good deal of money to find these things out.”
“And we’re meeting the underworld financier Justus Screwdriver,” Regret surmised. “The man who puts up the cash for half the organised crime on the plant in exchange for a 60% back end.”
“Not half the crime,” Tom corrected her. “20% tops these days. But he is well connected, and that’s what I need right now.”
“Somebody who can hook you up with someone who knew Armageddon?”
“That too,” Tom agreed cryptically.
Another uniformed steward arrived to lead the guests into a quiet games room. A full-sized pool table dominated one end of the chamber. An ascetic old man in a white planter’s suit dominated the other.
“Tom Black,” Screwdriver called, gesturing the young man over. “What a pleasure to meet you at last. I’ve heard so much.”
Tom and Regret joined the underworld financier in the plush wing-backed chairs beside the antique chess board. “Nice place you’ve got here,” Tom remarked. “The Charity Club.”
“Sometimes death is the greatest charity that can be given,” Screwdriver replied negligently. “And this young lady must be Regret of the Damned. I understand she had quite a lot of employment offers from people who had… positions for her. You’re very lucky to have her.”
“I’m a girl with exotic requirements,” Regret declared with a sensuous little smile. “Pass on your other offers to VelcroVixen. I’m pretty sure she could do them all.”
The steward served up tall cold drinks then slipped away. The small talk concluded.
“So why have you sought me out, Mr Black?” Screwdriver enquired. “There has been much speculation amongst my business associates about your long-term intentions and ambitions.”
“Good,” Tom replied. “I hope my encounters with the Heck-Fire Club and Koo Koo Ka-Choo have encouraged your associates to think carefully before making any unwise antisocial contacts with me while I’m developing my intentions and ambitions.”
Screwdriver had been briefed on the mayhem amongst the Inner Circle of the Knights of Heck-Fire, and of the fall of the secret ruler of Egypt. “It would perhaps be helpful to my contacts to have some understanding of the scope of your plans so as to avoid unintentionally inconveniencing you.”
Tom considered this. “For the moment I’m consolidating my position. I’m researching former applications of the kaos energies that are now at my disposal. That’s the reason for me coming to Badripoor, looking for people who worked with Belasco Medici, Count Armageddon, back when he ran this place with an iron fist. After that I intend to ensure my own safety and comfort by achieving a level of power and influence I consider appropriate for my needs.”
“I can probably arrange meetings for you with some people who did business with Medici,” agreed Screwdriver. “The Fokker Twins, MODEM, Tobias Porpoise, Otomo Osamu. Maybe even the Idiom, who did some precautionary research into Armageddon’s abilities when she worked for him here in Badripoor.”
“That would be helpful.”
“But not free,” the underworld financier warned. “In our society there is always a quid pro quo, Mr Black. There are a number of clients out there who would be very interested in acquiring your assistance with problems they might be having.”
Tom shook his head. “I wouldn’t want your clients and associates misunderstanding my place in the food chain, Justus. I’m not for hire. I do the hiring.” He pointed at Screwdriver. “You, for example, get hired for five million US dollars to make a few introductions, to get me a meeting down here at the Charity with some people I want to talk to. Some of the people, they might get hired for R&D or some other projects I’ve got in mind. But I’m not interested in helping Nadia Prokofiev bring the Russian mafia back into line. I’m not interested in the Grey Eminence’s problems with America’s new president. I don’t care whether Candia’s Grand Commissar tracks down his missing bride.”
“You have some personal wealth,” Screwdriver admitted, “but nothing that could…”
“I can be as rich as I want to be,” Tom interrupted him. “My kaos orbs could make me win every computerised lottery across the planet in one day. I could control world banking systems and syphon one dollar from every account on Earth – or everything from just one account, such as yours. Money isn’t of interest to me except that it gets me what I want.” He leaned forward. “I’m very interested in getting what I want.”
“He is,” Regret agreed. “Believe him.”
Screwdriver hesitated a moment, then replied, “Five million dollars will be very acceptable on account, Mr Black. Perhaps you could indicate to me exactly with whom you would be interested in having conversations?”
***
When Tom Black had gone Screwdriver flipped open a slim and minimalist mobile phone. He had business to conduct and clients to satisfy.
“Black has made contact,” he reported. “He wants a meeting, here at the Charity. I’ll set things up.”
He made three other calls of a similar nature. His final call was for some muscle. “Screwdriver here. Get me Anvil Man, Dreamripper, Genetwist, and Baroness Morbo. I need a heavy squad.”
***
The elementals slipped under the ancient bayfront piers into the sewer tunnels that twisted beneath Badripoor. They slid along pipes long crusted and blocked with ancient detritus, unpassable by anything human. They came at last to a deep chamber that had been old when the first European settlers had decided this bay would be a good anchor point to exercise slaves on the long route to the New World.
The elementals’ creator was waiting for them, eager to absorb what their senses had discovered. When he’d received their reports he dismissed the creatures, returning the air stolen from the peasants he’d racked across the walls, allowing them a final breath at last.
“So, the Kaos Carrier has come as I foresaw,” concluded Vlastimock Bogoff, the Necromancer General. “Now the game can begin.”
“Oh good,” sighed the crabbed creature waiting by the passage to the deep tunnels. The Abyssal Crucius ruled the Ghouls Under Badripoor but he was bound to serve the Necromancer. “I’ll go put out the bunting, shall I?”
“You will merely send word to the cults,” Bogoff ordered him. “Contact the Church of the Apostate, the Guild of Lycanthropes and Skinshifters, the Wraiths of Bliss, the House of De Soth, the Worshippers of Nyarlurkhotep. Inform them all that Tom Black is in Badripoor at last. The game is afoot.”
“I don’t actually have to say that game is afoot part though, do I?” checked Crusius.
The Necromancer General ignored him. “And send word to Mayor Klein,” he went on. “Inform her that the means of destroying her enemy Antony Ventredi is finally at hand.”
***
“In Badripoor? Right now? My Badripoor?” President For Life spiffy wasn’t happy with the news he’d just received.
“In your Badripoor, right now,” agreed international detective Champagne Cacciatore. “Tom Black, and all the bad stuff that comes with him. So what are you going to do about it?”
***
Continued in Tom Black #10: Eggs In One Basket
***
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