The Key to Midnight

possessed her in such a retarded state, he would be able to dominate her and use her to an extent that he had never been able to dominate or use anyone, including Marie Dumont. She would be his little animal, and he would train her to perform some amazing tricks.
        Under him, Madame Dumont was screaming. He was hurting her too much. She had her limits. He didn't care about her limits. He pushed her face against the mattress, muffling her cries.
        In his possession, the Chelgrin girl would learn the limits of joy, and she would be thrust beyond the limits of pain in order to learn total, unquestioning obedience. She would know extreme terror, and from terror she would learn to be eager to please. He would use her until he had explored every permutation of lust, and then he would share her with Paz. Finally, when there was nothing left to demand of her, when she had endured every degradation, Carrera would beat her to death with his hands. He would take at least an entire day to murder her; in her prolonged agony, he would find a pleasure so intense that bearing up under it would be as challenging as bearing up under any weight he had ever put on his barbells.
        Borne away by his fantasy of absolute domination, he almost killed Marie Dumont. He realized that he was jamming her face so hard into the pillows that she couldn't breathe. He let her up just enough to allow her to gasp for air.
        He happily would have killed her, but at the moment, disposing of her body would have been a serious inconvenience. He would soon have to leave for Saint Moritz.
        That was where his true destiny lay. In Saint Moritz. With the Chelgrin girl.

PART THREE
        
    A PUZZLE IN A PUZZLE
        
    The winter tempest Blows small stones
    Onto the temple bell.

    -Buson, 1715-1783

----

    45
        
        After getting no sleep in Tokyo, Alex and Joanna also slept little and poorly on the flight to London. They were tense, excited about their new relationship, and worried about what might await them in England. To make matters worse, the plane encountered heavy turbulence, and they lolled in their seats as miserably as seasick cruisers on their first ocean voyage.
        When they landed at Heathrow, Alex's long legs were cramped, swollen, and leaden; sharp pains shot through his calves and thighs with every step. His back ached all the way from the base of his spine to his neck. His eyes were bloodshot, grainy, and sore.
        From the look of her, Joanna had the same list of complaints. She promised to get down on her knees and kiss the earth - just as soon as she was certain that she had enough strength to get up again.
        'Alex found it difficult to believe that less than twenty-four hours ago, he'd experienced the greatest ecstasy of his life.
        At the hotel they unpacked none of his suitcases and only part of one of hers. The rest could wait until morning.
        She had brought two handheld hair dryers. One was a lightweight plastic model, and the other was a big old-fashioned blower with a metal casing and a ten-inch metal snout. A small screwdriver was in the same suitcase, and Alex used it to dismantle the bulkier of the two hair dryers. Before leaving Kyoto, he had stripped the insides from the machine and carefully fitted a gun into the hollow shell: the silencer-equipped 9mm automatic that he had taken off the man in the alleyway more than a week ago. It had passed through X-rays and customs inspection without being detected.
        He took a large tin of body powder from the same suitcase. In the bathroom, he stooped beside the toilet, put up the lid and the seat, and sifted the talc out of the can, through his fingers. Two magazines of extra ammunition had been concealed in the powder.
        'You'd make a great criminal,' Joanna observed from the doorway.
        'Yeah. But I've done better being honest than I'd ever have done on the other side of the law.'
        'We could rob banks.'
        'Why don't we just buy control of one?'
        'You're a regular stick-in-the-mud.'
        'Dull,' he agreed. 'That's me.'
        They ate a room-service dinner in the suite, and at ten o'clock London time, they crawled under the covers of the same bed. This time, however, before they slept, they were too exhausted to share more than a single chaste goodnight kiss.
        Alex had a strange dream. He was lying in a soft bed in a white room, and three surgeons