Thursday, August 15, 2024—6:24 PM
Rushing toward Red Coast Harbor on the main road, Sabriya slowed her SEC as she passed through villages, side streets, and turn-offs. It was overcast, and twilight had descended. The sun would set in half an hour, so it would soon be totally dark. She looked carefully for an old brown panel truck with blacked-out rear windows. Time was of the essence; she had to find the truck before the truck found the coast, and hopefully before it got dark.
Sabriya found it maddening and a sham that the miscreants believed violence led to peace. But then she had been part of the corruption, and only through violence had she escaped to find peace. She was thinking not only of the North District Police but also of Dr. Shin, the Pohan pharmacist, and the cowardly stall holders at the Sapae-Nok market.
Her mind wandered. Were there elements of corruption at the Embassy and at the Palace? The latter might explain the Queen’s sudden change in attitude when Sabriya had mentioned Míwú Cūn as the location of her daughter’s abduction. Could she trust the Pellagorian Army to help find Jia Kun? If she didn’t trust the police, would the army be much better … or much worse?
She could use armed help at this point, particularly with the coming night. But how could she, or any of her Embassy team, discern a good cop from a bad cop, or a good soldier from a corrupt one? There was no time to investigate. She could trust herself, but she doubted she was better off on her own. Leaving the safe house and mounting her SEC, she was troubled by the fact that no help was coming.
David was suddenly in her head, “SEC One. Copy?”
“Copy, David.”
“If I can be so bold as to call you ‘dear,’ the real police are now looking for you on a real All Points Bulletin, which now includes a more desperate plea to find the silent motorcycle and its rider that was involved with the explosion of a police vehicle near Pohan which killed three of Pohan’s finest, or so the APB implies.
Sabriya’s brain was busy navigating the darkening road and remembering what exactly had happened near Yung Fa Ho, where the explosion was her fault, and curious why she could be blamed for the deaths in Pohan that were surely the fault of the police, or whoever was driving the Hilux.
“I’m on the road.”
“Yes, we see where you are.”
“So, why are you telling me this? It’s getting dark. I need backup.”
“It’s not coming, unless it’s coming for you.”
She said nothing, glancing at her battery levels. Still good, but for how long?
“Sabriya, come back to the Embassy. Let the police find the truck and the girls.”
“Are you serious? Let the police? David, the police just tried to kill me. They’ve been bought off by the thugs who kidnapped my daughter. The police and perhaps the army, too, are trafficking our children.”
Now it was David’s turn to say nothing.
“Landon?” Sabriya called out.
“Yes, Sabriya, this is Landon.”
“Tell David I love him, and not to wait up for me. Gotta go.”
Sabriya toggled off the encrypted radio channel. She was tempted to turn off the location tracking and biometrics, but she didn’t know how, and, thinking twice, decided letting them track her wasn’t a bad idea.
Just as her mind cleared of such thoughts, a large cargo truck came barreling down on her and refused to get out of the way of the single lane they both shared—such were the single-lane highways of Pellagore.
Just as night was about to fall, she saw it. Ahead of her was an old, brown panel truck with the rear windows backed out. Anya’s description was accurate, down to the bent right bumper. After following it for a few miles, the truck’s brake lights came on, it slowed down, and it turned off the main road onto a side road, turning south away from the coast. She followed it at a distance, now trying to think how to stop the truck and overpower the driver and any accomplices. Her heart beat rapidly, and her nerves tensed, but mentally her excitement grew.
Meanwhile, in his Mannu fortress, a disgruntled Sapptoso Wanti fretted about the woman on the bike, whom he was sure was Sabriya Kensington. He wanted her dead to avenge her treachery and duplicity. Taking her daughter was the least he could do, but taking her life would make them even.
How she emerged as the wife of the distasteful British ambassador bewildered him. He could not understand how the uptight, prudish Englishman could marry a whore. It was unfathomable. But then the British were a contradictory breed—all law and order, and proper on one hand, and malevolent colonizers on the other. He could never understand how they could so easily take moral high ground while simultaneously bombarding China’s coastal ports until China agreed to legalize the opium trade, a deadly narcotic if there ever was one. Sapptoso was against recreational drugs, unless they aided his own trade by drugging useless humans for pleasure and profit. Sapp’s acquaintances challenged his inconsistency until he arranged for said acquaintances to take up residence in an ocean trench.
Aside from sending warships to destroy Chinese cities, what did the British do with problems like Sabriya that just wouldn’t go away? Executing them, or chopping off their heads, was one thing, but how did they persuade the remaining populace to fall in line with the monarchy’s decrees? They were obviously successful.
Sapptoso wasn’t a reader by any measure, and he certainly wasn’t a history buff. But curiosity, aside from killing the cat, was hard to kill when it came to a catty nuisance. Rummaging through his nearly forgotten belongings, he found what he hoped would give him an answer, a textbook on world history, written by an American, where he found this:
From the 14th through the 18th century, British Kings and Queens kept their populace in check through a variety of capital punishments, the most effective of which was hanging, drawing, and quartering ... It was a sexist practice reserved only for the male species. Women were burned at the stake.
For all his brutality, even Sapptoso was stunned by such a description and astonished that the prim and proper English could descend to such cruelty. But he had to admit, drawing, quartering, and hanging the parts in public was effective. For centuries, English monarchs held a firm grip on their subjects and extended that rule to most of the known world.
After a few minutes of reflection, Sapptoso realized that killing a man for treason by being hanged, drawn, and quartered was similar to his own organ harvesting process, although his process was more humane since he anesthetized the victim with Noxydrine, a potent and often lethal sedative, before cutting them open. Considering his revenge plans for Sabriya, he could not follow the English practice in one respect—burning a woman alive was barbarous for such a civilized gentleman as himself.
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