Eddie was a real computer genius but not at all an enterprising man. Besides, he was his only link to the life he had led before 1996. No matter what mistakes he might make he wasn’t even considering getting rid of Eddie. On the contrary, he had to protect him at all costs. He needed Druller now more than ever. At least until he built the final version of the ‘Island.’
He forgot the computer specialist and started thinking of the things he had to do in the following weeks. He didn’t even want to think of the Christmas attempts for now. The time to avenge Daniel had come at last, the time to face the Wheller clan. These past months had been filled with them. They had been haunting his nights; he had been feeling them in every sip he took, in every drop of his sweat. Thanatos had already set the place and the time when each of them was to leave this world. Druller needed all these data for his work on the ‘Island.’ Thanatos’s heart throbbed with joy thinking that they would all get where they deserved to be.
Sometimes at night, when he couldn’t fall asleep, he imagined the four of them sitting at a table, putting their heads together to plan the murder of his brother. He could picture their worried faces, read their whispering lips, and even sense the smell of conspiracy that was filling the room.
Dorothy, her sister Sarah, the senator, or the old actor, each had their share of guilt and for each he had a punishment in store. The first to die was the guiltiest of them all, the senator, for, after all, he had been the supreme judge to seal Daniel’s fate. Thanatos had decided to kill him on November 3rd at the Frick Collection Exhibition where the senator was going to make a speech upon the presentation of a series of expensive paintings brought from the Louvre.
Ralph Wheller, the old actor, was to die on November 15th during his farewell performance at the Royal Willis Theater. Sarah, the elder sister, would leave this world on November 23rd in her dressing room at Little Carnegie Theater.
Finally, the dessert: on December 7th he would commemorate in his own den two years since Daniel’s death and, after many days of suffering and humiliation, Dorothy would beg him to kill her. And so would he, but not before taking her to the ‘Island’ to face his brother.
He had planned everything to the last detail. At first, while raging, he had thought of killing them all at the same time even if that meant sacrificing himself. They might all be at the Frick Collection Exhibition on November 3rd. He only needed to wear a vest full of RDX and detonate it close to them. But he couldn’t do it for two reasons. First, it was best for the Whellers to leave the stage one by one, with Dorothy last. Thus, her fear and pain would increase with every day gone by. Then if he were to blow himself up together with them he would become a ‘shahid.’ He had nothing against the ‘shahids,’ of course. On the contrary, he respected them for their courage. In 1994 and 1995 he and Ayash had even trained several dozens of them. He had helped them put on their vests full of explosives. He had seen them take a traditional last photo holding the Koran in one hand and the gun in the other. They were smiling at the camera thinking that Allah was waiting for them in Paradise to offer them seventy-two women each.
But Thanatos could not become a ‘shahid.’ He couldn’t make the Passing together with his victims. It would be ungodly of him. And that because, like his brother, he was one of God’s chosen ones. His Passing had to be graceful. The problem, therefore, was how to kill only the senator while he was with his men and get away with it so that he could complete his revenge. Killing a man surrounded by eight or maybe ten guards, yes, that was a challenge for him which increased his excitement.
Thanatos wondered whether the period of inactivity had affected his ability to analyze and solve the most complex problems. The only way to overcome his fears was the hunt itself. He thought of Henry Wheller again. He had to plan it all very carefully. In the old days he would just improvise the details of some executions. But that was the case with politicians from ‘banana republics,’ of course. This time the target was a senator protected by clever, experienced guards. The only way he could leave the premises unnoticed after the execution was to make the guards not suspect it was murder. They had to believe it was natural death and tell him to go away themselves.
Thanatos took his head in his hands and focused his entire energy on finding the right solution. His brain quickly processed dozens of versions, picking and leaving out until there was only one left: feigning a heart attack. For this solution he hoped the FBI didn’t have any remedy. “Above all, don’t let them read your mind,” Baddan, the ‘Tibetan’ monk, had once advised him.
I think I know what weapon to use, Thanatos said to himself, while climbing down to the basement. That was were he kept his rich arsenal of weapons and auxiliary equipment. He had an impressive collection of killing devices in his personal panoply. They were all in perfect condition and he was an expert in handling each of them.
He reached a large room. A funny smell filled the air. He switched on the light. To his right there were several shelves with fire weapons of every type and caliber. There were MP-5 slot machine guns, PSG-1 and HKG-3 shotguns, as well as smaller fire weapons: HP Brownings and Magnums. He affectionately caressed his favorite on the bottom shelf: a sniper rifle used by the elite forces of the American Navy: an M 88 Mac Millan whose .50 mm bullet could pierce the armor of a plane. He had had the proof of that two years before.
On several shelves to his left were over two hundred pounds of explosives: EPH-86 hexafluoridized plastic, M2 plastic, the killing C4, and the latest Czech innovation: Semtex. There were also two special vests with lots of little pockets full of RDX capsules connected to a detonator.
Thanatos moved on to the back wall where there were all sorts of special or hand-made weapons. He pulled away some sort of sheet placed in a corner. It was, in fact, a membrane extracted from the body of a giant species of sea ray. A Nam veteran had given it to him. It was a very dangerous weapon. Stuck to a guy’s face it induced a cardio-respiratory effect killing him within seconds.
Under the membrane he finally found what he was looking for. A perfectly silent pen with a poisonous bullet which he had made years before in Taiwan for an execution ordered by the Triads. The pen could easily be concealed in a camera. Then he began searching the drawers for all the stuff he needed. Half an hour later he returned from the basement with a big cardboard box. He took off his overalls and shirt and wearing only his T-shirt he started to work.
He would use the microcapsule, which was the size of a ballpen refill of the weapon pen, and the special bullet. Some changes needed to be made, though, to serve his purpose. Before the killing bullet he would have to shoot the senator with two fine metal particles smaller than a needlepoint. They would leave two small stings in the target without causing any bleeding. These two micro bullets would induce the forerunning symptoms of a heart attack. Only after a few seconds would he shoot the larger one and cause the death of the politician.
This bullet had the shape of an empty axle with extremely thin walls. It had a tiny hole at one end. Thanatos had to fill it with two mg. of sodium dinitrate and one mg. of Pryzoflen, a gel used especially in the laser industry. It had some interesting properties: at very low temperatures up to ninety-five degrees it remained viscous; at ninety-five it vaporized violently. Working under the microscope with very fine instruments he finally managed to fill the bullet. Then he took a cryogenic spray and sprinkled the metal piece, just in case. Once inside the senator’s body, the bullet would heat up rapidly. When it reached ninety-five degrees (and this would happen in just a few seconds), due to its sudden evaporation the gel would spread its other component, the sodium dinitrate, into the body. Usually this poison paralyzed the breathing centers in ten seconds but Thanatos knew that the old man’s frail circulatory system would give in after only three or four seconds.
This little piece of steel, however, was almost a quarter of an inch long and as thick as a pencil lead. There would certainly be some bleeding. That’s why he would have to aim low, at the ankles, where the cops’ attention was very unlikely to turn to. Thanatos
