Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (26 page)

 
          
Vega
was in her early fifties, with long dark kinky hair streaked with gray and with
small colored beads braided in her hair near her temples, large round dark
eyes, a round, pretty face, large round breasts, strong fingers and hands, a
firm waist and buttocks, and slender legs. She looked gyp- syish, and said her
family were Jewish refugees from
Czechoslovakia
. Vega did not complain when Cazaux checked
the house, the exits, and looked for evidence that she had a boyfriend,
roommate, children, or husband living with her. She said she knew that he was
afraid, that he was in danger, but that he would eventually prevail, and she
would help any way she could.

 
          
All
he wanted to do was hide and sleep. She showed him a hiding place in the attic,
which he accepted—after finding at least three ways to escape—and rested. When
he awoke, she was waiting for him. While he slept, she had done a complete
astrological analysis on him. He was interested but skeptical—until she started
to speak about the life of Henri Cazaux. She predicted his birthdate within a
week, his time of birth within two hours, and his country of birth exactly—he
was born at a hospital in the
Netherlands
, although raised in
Belgium
: she guessed all this.

 
          
Being
Henri Cazaux, and cautious, he realized Vega could have researched his
past—Cazaux was beginning to get a reputation in America equal to the one he
had in Europe, although at the time he was not well known outside federal
law-enforcement circles. But it would have taken a lot of work and a lot of
time, far more than what a neardestitute storefront swami in
Newburgh
,
New York
, could ever do. No, she had learned about him simply from looking at
the man, then reading her astrological books and putting the terrifying,
mystifying pieces together. She talked about his military past, his
fearlessness, his lack of regard for others. She talked about his brutal
success, his drive for perfection, his intensity. She knew he had once been
married, but had no children despite his desire to have them. But that was only
the beginning—of what she had to say, and of the astounding accuracy of her
predictions:

 
          
With
the Sun, the blood planet Mars—named after the mythical god of war—the planet
Jupiter, and the upper limb of the Moon all in the constellation Scorpio at the
time of his birth, Henri Cazaux was a quadruple Scorpio—highly intelligent,
secretive, passionate, and powerful. Vega had never seen a chart like his
before. If a person could pick all the traits he or she ever desired—the tendency
toward great wealth, tremendous sexual energy, animal determination, godlike
invincibility, and intelligent introspection—Henri Cazaux had them. Only a few
men in history ever had an astrological chart like Cazaux—such multiple-planet
generals like Napoleon Bonaparte, Ulysses, and Alexander, politicians like
Hitler and Lincoln, military thinkers like Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz. His
astrological chart was confirmed by a palm reading and the tarot, but one look
at the man would be confirmation enough for anyone. And if his scarred body did
not say that his past lay in some expertise in the combat arms, his chart
definitely said his future would be in warfare. Mars ruled his chart, and all
other “peaceful” signs and planets and influences were nowhere to be seen.

 
          
Usually
Cazaux liked to “rate” astrologers by how many guesses they got correct—he
could not even begin to do this with Jo Ann Vega. It was as if she had written
his biography, and then written his eulogy and epitaph. The future she painted
was not bright. It was filled with adventure, and excitement, and wealth, and
power, but it was a short, violent, lonely life. She said she understood all of
those things, and said her life was rich and full despite her loneliness.

           
She also seemed to understand perfectly
when he attacked her. She was so good at her profession that now she knew too
much, and when the snarling, cornered beast in Cazaux emerged, she accepted it
with professional patience.

 
          
Other
than killing, raping a woman is tactically the best way to ensure her
silence—few women report a rape, especially if they are alone. It is usually
the best way to terrorize a woman into silence and cooperation. Cazaux was
forceful and violent, but was careful not to cause any visible wounds that
might compel others to act. He made her undress for him, made her perform
fellatio on him, made her spread her legs and beg him to rape her—not because
he enjoyed any of it or thought she might enjoy acting submissive, but because
it further implicated her, further shamed her, gave her more events of which
most women will not speak, more things for a woman’s consciousness to work
harder to suppress. As helpless as she was, she was, in a horrible and brutal
way, a party to what was happening to her.

 
          
The
rape was an act of violence—none of it could be considered in the least
sexual—but the motivation was not robbery or murder or assault or any other
crime. It was an initiation into the life of the world’s greatest terrorist, a
message that she was now, willingly or not, an acolyte of Henri Cazaux’s, a
minister to the human incarnation of Satan himself. She could accept the fact,
and live, or deny it, and die—but he did not have to tell her these things. Jo
Ann Vega—in fact, all of Cazaux’s helpless victims—knew this when they looked
into the killer’s eyes. The rape was an act of violence, yes, but it was more
of a promise of the violence to come if the spell was broken.

 
          
He
made her clean him with her mouth, then departed without saying a word—no
threats, no taunting, no innuendos—leaving a small throwing knife stuck into
the woodwork around the window behind the back door. It was a tiny warning to
her, and a promise that he would return.

           
He did return, two to three times a
year. The violence was gone, and they became lovers. They slept and bathed
together, experimented with sex, and talked about each other’s worlds in
intimate detail. Making love with Henri Cazaux was like trying to wrestle with
a bonfire or control a crashing ocean wave—the heat, the power, the sheer energy
he released was enormous. Vega was his spiritual adviser, his charge of
quarters, his aide-de-camp, but she also got to experience the man when he
unleashed his raw, unchained spirit only toward her, and no one else.

 
          
Although
they shared each other’s passion, he was never close—“settling down” was never
an option, although he did see to her needs and offered a level of security and
protection unlike any other man in the world. He provided her with money—not
enough to leave her little storefront or call attention to herself—but enough
so she would not have to rely on reading horoscopes to survive. Some of Vega’s
enemies—a city councilman who tried to have her kicked out of the city for
being a drug dealer because she had refused to run a house of prostitution for
him, a neighbor kid who liked to get drunk and would occasionally try to break
her door down to get at her—both mysteriously disappeared. Jo Ann had never
mentioned them to Cazaux.

 
          
Jo
Ann knew that Henri Cazaux was coming to her, knew this visit would be
different. She often read his cards in between visits, and she had just
completed a reading on him before she had learned of the attack in
San Francisco
. She knew he had engineered the attack long
before the news told the world so. The cards told of fire, and blood, and
darkness. They did not tell of his death, as they usually did. In fact, none of
the dark elements of Cazaux’s chart—a short lifespan, pain, loneliness—were
present. The man coming to visit her soon was a man no longer—he had been
transformed. The cards said so.

 
          
It
was dark outside, and the rain was pounding down so hard it was forcing itself
into the house through closed windows. Vega was just finishing a cigarette in
her tiny living room/bedroom between the partition to the reading parlor and
the kitchen, and was heading back to the kitchen to clean out the ashtray, when
she turned and saw him standing in the doorway, watching her. He was already
naked from the waist up—he had obviously been there several minutes, judging by
the size of the puddle of water under his feet—but he was as silent as a snake.
A small automatic pistol was stuck in his jeans waistband.

 
          
“Welcome
home, Henri,” Jo Ann said, a touch of warmth in her eyes and voice. “I’m glad
to see you.” He did not respond. That was typical—he rarely said ten words to
her even on a chatty day. He looked thinner, but his chest was as muscular as
ever, his stomach as rippled and hard as an old-fashioned washboard. He had
shaved off all his hair. He changed his hair length and style often, although
military short-cropped hair was his norm. But Vega’s eyes were drawn back to
his chest, his rock-hard arms, and his flat stomach. For a brief instant, she
felt her nipples erect and felt the slight ache of desire between her legs. She
looked into his eyes, and the questions in her head only continued. Cazaux’s
eyes were on fire—not from anger, or from fear, but from desire. Was it sexual
desire? Sometimes she could feel the heat of his need from across a
room—Scorpios were all powerful sexual animals, and multiple Scorpios sometimes
had an aura of sexual energy that was palpable. Henri was soaking wet, but he
was definitely on fire ...

 
          
No,
it was not sexual energy this time. He was after something else, something much
more significant than Jo Ann. The fire in his eyes seemed to come from
visualizing something so vividly that you could see it, touch it.

 
          
“Get
out of those wet clothes,” she suggested. “I’ll make us some tea. I have
hamburger if you’re hungry.”

 
          
As
if he had read her thoughts, he pulled the gun from his waistband, then
unbuttoned his jeans and pulled them down to the floor.
My God,
Vega breathed,
he was
magnificent!
But her eyes were drawn from the bulge between his legs to the
bandages wrapped around his left leg, with quarter-sized spots of blood soaking
through. “Henri, you’re hurt. Go into the bedroom.” The big man silently
complied.

 
          
After
drying the floor carefully with a dishtowel and putting his wet clothes in the
washer so no one would notice or question the mess, Jo Ann brought hydrogen
peroxide, hydrocortisone cream, and fresh bandages to him. She found him
standing naked beside her bed, his injured leg up on the bed, peeling off the
old dressing. She sat down on the bed and examined the wound. It was long and
deep, like a hot poker or sword had been slashed across his calf. Blood mixed
with water and dirt had caked inside the gash itself—this was going to be
difficult and painful to clean.

 
          
“This
was from the chase with the Air Force, wasn’t it?”

 
          
“Yes,”
he replied simply. The news of the incredible disaster in
San Francisco
had of course reached
Newburgh
. It had been page one in the nation’s
newspapers, and the lead story on all the networks and CNN. The dragnet was out
for Cazaux, but they were concentrating mostly in the west and southwest,
thinking that he was on his way to
Mexico
.

 
          
“You
came to me for advice,” she said, as if reading from Cazaux’s unwritten
DayTimer itinerary. “You are meeting with your senior staff to plan something .
. . but not to hide. You intend on attacking ... attacking many targets, many
persons. I saw much blood in your charts, much destruction. Why, Henri? Is it
revenge? I did not see a clear reason ...”

 
          
“You
know the reason, Madame Vega,” Cazaux hissed in a low voice. “You know damned
well.”

 
          
“Oui, mon cher,
” Vega responded
soothingly, feeling her nipples harden and the lonely region between her legs
grow hot and wet.
Oh yes, she knew very
well why Henri was on the warpath
. . .

 
          
Henri
had been a very bad little boy when he was younger. A bastard born in a country
foreign to both his parents, now living in a foreign country, Cazaux was a
ballistic missile without a guidance system—lots of energy but no sense of
direction, no clear path, no destination. He amused himself by stealing and
vandalism, and by the age of fifteen had become an accomplished criminal,
roaming much of western Europe. He stayed out of the hands of the authorities
until 1977. While trying to deal hashish to a U.S. Air Force F-4 Phantom maintenance
crew near
Antwerp
,
Belgium
, he was caught by Air Force security police
and taken to their brig. The Air Force sky cops could not charge him, only
release him to the local gendarmes as soon as possible. The Americans had seen
many locals get away with vandalism and other crimes because the American
military forces had no authority ... but, either because of manpower shortages,
the holidays, or indifference, the local cops had no one to take the boy until
Monday, so he stayed in the Air Force brig.