spot in the Queen’s army, on a train leaving for Afghanistan that very evening. Garrick chose the latter, and by nightfall he was squeezed into a troop carriage on his way to Dover, without anyone ever realizing that Albert Garrick’s hat fitted snugly on the Great Lombardi’s head. He arrived among the Afghans just in time for the great battle of Kandahar and covered himself in bloody glory. Garrick was offered a commission and could have made a career for himself in the army, but he reckoned there was more coin to be made if he struck out as an independent.
“Sabine,” Garrick muttered to himself, half in slumber. “Riley.”
Garrick was not alone in the Orient. In fact, a band of dyed-in-the-wool knaves had been lodged there for the past couple of days, waiting for Garrick to return from his mission in Bedford Square. These were no ordinary kidnappers, but a trio of superior punishers handpicked for the grisly mission. Their boss reckoned them the bloodiest in his stable and trusted them with this contract, which was bringing in a considerable pocket of chink for the brotherhood.
“One body only?” Mr. Percival had asked, the most experienced of the three, a man who often boasted of having performed at least one killing on a different continent for every decade of his life.
“Yes, but an exceptional body,” his boss had assured him, “and worthy of your combined talents. Take no half measures with this cove, lads, or you will find yourself looking down Old Nick’s throat. When he returns from his own bloody work, just wait for him to bed down, then do the business. You wait as long as it takes. Got it?”
The men nodded with feigned sincerity and pocketed their advance guineas; but once the big man was gone, they congratulated each other for landing such a soft job.
“We are the luckiest of beggars,” Percival had confided in his confederates. “This Garrick mug will have his entrails on the boards by dusk, and we will be scoffing mutton stew for supper.”
So now Percival and his two mates roused themselves from behind Row F of the Orient stalls and walked crabwise to the aisles. One took the left, the second went right, and Percival himself advanced straight down the center. Apart from the delay, events could hardly have turned out peachier for the intruders. This cove Garrick, far from being a specter of death, as advertised, had actually plonked himself center stage for a wee nod. The brave trio intended to flank their mark, then close in with diverse blades.
Percival hefted a short-handled chopping ax that he’d purchased in a supply store in California and later used to punish a teenage boy for pointing a finger at him. The second man, known simply as Turk, wielded a curved scimitar that had been in someone’s family for generations until Turk nicked it. And the third man, a Scot with unusually short legs, had a baling hook slotted between his fingers that had seen more eyeballs dangling off its tip than hay bales. The Scot, Pound, also carried a pistol, but bullets were costly and a wide shot could startle their mark into action, so best to do the job quietly with blades.
These men had worked together before and had developed a system of nods, whistles, and signals that precluded any chatter on the job. Chatty assassins did not last long in London. Percival was the captain, so the others looked to him for their lead. With two jabs of his ax, he directed them to the wings. Garrick would undoubtedly fly to one side or another should he somehow detect Percival’s approach. This was unlikely in any case, as Percival made about as much noise as a leaf floating across Hyde Park. Turk and Pound resigned themselves to the fact that the kill itself would be Percival’s, as it generally was.
Percival mounted the stage bridge and crept across the orchestra pit, enjoying the weight of the ax in his hand, relishing the thunk it would make chopping a wedge out of the mark’s skull.
Four more steps, then it’s mutton stew for me and the lads. Three more steps.
Percival sprang onto the stage proper, and he knew that at this distance there was not a man or animal on earth who could escape the deadly arc of his swing.
I could fell a bear from this distance, he thought.
He raised the ax high and brought the blade down with terrific force. It struck nothing but