The Dragon Seller: A Tale of Love and Dragons Read online

  I felt a shiver. LeBon really was reckless. I mean, how could he rely on me for such an exchange? It wasn't surprising that Dao went around with a bodyguard. I would too, damn it. I didn't have the courage to touch it, I could hardly even look at it. What type of dragon could there be, safeguarded in there? And if the egg was fragile? The idea of presenting myself in front of LeBon and, once the case was opened, find a one million dollar omelette wasn't good at all.

  Crazy French man! I thought, and not for the first time.

  Meanwhile, the train had arrived in McCook and had stopped at the station. From the window you could see the long platform, where there were about twenty passengers getting ready to board the train. Dao and Herbert were the first to get off. They walked around two girls of about twenty years old, two university students judging by the size of the suitcases, and went toward the parking lot.

  That's when I noticed the other man. He wore a dark suit and was as tall as Dao, with large shoulders and a shaved head. He walked straight toward them, elbowing one of the girls and knocking over her suitcase. I saw Herbert turn around and put a hand under his jacket but the man stopped him, pointing something against his chest.

  "Hey, what..."

  I got up and almost smashed my nose against the glass. I had a bad feeling. Dao raised his hand all of a sudden, as if he wanted to shoo him, and said something to the man. As an answer, the guy showed him what was in his hand: it was a gun.

  Meanwhile, on the platform the passengers had stopped getting off the train and most of the new travelers were getting on through the doors, dragging their luggage up the steps or helping others do so. There were a couple of families left that were waiting to say goodbye to their loved ones. Nobody paid attention to what was going on behind them, just a few feet away.

  I started banging on the glass, to attract their attention, but instead of turning around those morons started waving to me.

  "No, idiots! Behind you!" I yelled.

  The man was forcing Dao and Herbert to move toward the parking lot, out of my view. I went to the right corner of the big window and pressed my cheek against the glass. The three of them were walking in the shadows, far from the light posts. Dao and his bodyguard were in front and the man with the gun behind them. It happened in a flash. Dao pushed the man away and Herbert tried to shoot. The hit man, however, was faster. Herbert fell to the ground with a dark stain on his white shirt, where his heart was.

  "Noooo!"

  I started banging on the glass even harder, and one of the fathers on the platform must have realized something was wrong. But it was already too late. The hit man pointed the gun at Dao, who had reached one of the parked cars, and fired. LeBon's old friend fell forward onto the asphalt.

  "Damn it!" I yelled stepping away from the glass. "What the hell is going on?"

  I went back to the window shaking, with my hands on my head, just in time to see the hit man run toward the train. The doors had just closed, but the relief I felt seeing him stuck off the train vanished almost immediately. When the train started moving again, the man spoke with someone on board and made some gestures with his hand indicating the carriages. There must have been another hit man on the train, and he was looking for me.

  I was trapped.

  For a few seconds I just stood there in the middle of the room without knowing what to do, staring at the door, until a flash of awareness woke me up: I had to leave right away, I had to escape.

  I put the case under my arm and went toward the exit. An abrupt knock made me stop. Did it come from the door?

  It's only my imagination, I hoped for a moment.

  But the knock happened again, even stronger and this time the cabin's door shook. At the third knock it gave way and opened. Two guys came in and stared at me.

  They both had tattoos on the backs of their hands and hair down to their shoulders. In the room's dim light, the irises of their eyes reflected with a sinister dark red glare.

  Enhanced hit men, I thought as I started to shake.

  The biggest of the two, a real giant, pointed a sort of wand toward me, about six inches long. I had already seen something like that on TV. It was an ultrasound emitter, an instrument military personnel usually use to torture prisoners.

  "L-listen", I stuttered, "there's no need to-"

  "The case. Put it down".

  Maybe because I couldn't stop shaking or because I just stood there like a moron, but they got really pissed off. The wand came up and buzzed. The ultrasounds hit me in the stomach like a boiling punch. I bent forward, trying with all my might to not throw up, and the case fell from my hand. One of the two took a step forward and with a blow sent me flying toward the door to the kitchenette. A galaxy of light exploded in my head. My right ear became deaf.

  "Is it him?" the big guy asked.

  The guy that had used me as a punching bag grabbed me by the hair and forced me to look him in the eyes.

  "No", he answered. "He must be a courier".

  "Ok, take it and let's go".

  Lying dazed on the ground, I watched them take the case with the million dollar egg in it. Then the brute took out a gun with a silencer on it and pointed it against my face, under the cheekbone.

  "No, no", I begged.

  The other man said something I didn't understand, I was still half dazed. The giant told him to be quiet and put his face up to mine.

  "If you try to follow us or call the cops..." He pressed the gun harder onto my chin "...we'll kill you".

  "I... w-won't", I stuttered shaking my head.

  I wouldn't have followed them. I wouldn't have been a hero. I didn't want to die. There were lots of things I wanted to say after that "won't", but that's all that came out of my mouth.

  "Good".

  The hit man got back up and looked around the room.

  "What's that?"

  I shifted my eyes in the direction he was looking in. On the table there was still the wooden box, LeBon's gift, next to my laptop.

  "W-whiskey", I answered, as he got closer to check.

  He took the laptop and broke it in half on his knee, throwing the pieces on the ground. Then he looked at the whiskey. He turned the box over in his hands, passing a finger over the incision in golden letters, and threw it in my lap.

  "Drink to your health. You were lucky today".

  And without adding another word, the two left and closed the door behind them.

  I later discovered that Mister Dao's murderer was named Raminskij. The brute that had floored me with the wand was Derek Andersen, and his companion went by the name of Akimo.

  All three of them worked for a certain Ryo Tajihara, a Japanese gangster that had been following Liu Dao for some time to steal his egg. Well, it seemed they had made it. I didn't know any of this back then. I had just seen two people die right in front of my eyes, and I had come close as well. Too many emotions for a simple Dragon Breeder from Idaho.

  I turned to the side and vomited.

  FIVE MINUTES LATER I was still trying to pull myself together. My ear was buzzing and I damned the day I accepted that job from LeBon. The cabin shook, making me hit my knee against the table near the window. The train dragged itself on for a a few hundred feet in a deafening squeal of brakes, before stopping in the middle of the prairie. I swore an ancient Sumerian curse that would have made a saint's ears fall off.

  "For heaven's sake!"

  Once the train stopped, I got up and reached the big window. Outside, two indistinct silhouettes got down onto the tracks and crossed them.

  Those two bastards, it was them.

  The hit men had activated the emergency brake. I hit my fist against the glass and cursed them as well, for what it was worth. The two fled toward the state road that flanked the tracks, followed by the train conductor's whistles. Andersen raised his ultrasound wand and the poor guy fell on the embankment, shaking with spasms. Less than a minute later, a black SUV picked up the two hit men and disappeared into the darkness, in the directio
n of Colorado.

  A couple of service men got off the train to help the conductor along with a few passengers. A small chaos ensued on the tracks, while the people tried to understand what had happened, and why the train had stopped.

  At that moment I wanted to strangle LeBon. "An easy job", he had said. "Give him the money, take the merchandise. End of story". Idiot.

  I shook my head and picked up the pieces of my laptop. In my hard drive there were all my contacts, my suppliers' phone numbers and the dragons' diet programs. Luckily I had a back-up at home.

  Thinking about it again, the hit man had said something true: I had been lucky. Surely luckier than Dao and his bodyguard. Okay, the million dollar case was gone, but if nothing else I was still all in one piece, right? And then I still had the damned present. I threw a surly glance at the wooden box, lying on the ground.

  That darn bottle.

  I had a clear plan in mind on how to get even with Jean. I could already taste the moment when I would arrive home and, after having opened the wooden box, drink his damned whiskey.

  It's the least, for what he put me through. Crazy French man.

  The Mysterious Gift

  "There's a dark place on Islay, high above the Ardberg distillery, called Airigh Nam Beist (it's pronounced 'arry-nam-bayst') that in Gaelic means "the Beast's Cave". This is where - says the legend - something otherworldly and primordial waits in ambush for incautious travelers".

  AFTER HALF AN HOUR THE TRAIN started up again. An ambulance had arrived to help the conductor, along with a sheriff from McCook. One by one the passengers all went back to their seats, and at eight a.m. we arrived in Omaha. There's no need to tell you that I hadn't slept a blink the entire night. I went into the station half shocked and half pissed off.

  Even though the two hit men had threatened to kill me if I had notified the authorities, I felt the responsibility to go straight to the police and report the homicides of mister Dao and Herbert.

  I went to the APD office, the railway police inside the station, and told a sergeant about what I had seen. I didn't tell him I was part of a dragon egg sale, or I would have gotten stuck in a useless bureaucratic mess. The sergeant, whose name was Harris, made two calls: one to the McCook station and the other to the sheriff's office in that county. After ten minutes, during which I imagined a couple of bored Amtrak employees leaving their stations and looking around the platform, someone called back from the station to say they hadn't found anything. The agents sent from the Red Willow county sheriff's office were more scrupulous, and stayed in phone contact with sergeant Harris during the whole time they were searching, but the result was the same: they didn't find anything. There were no bodies on the platform, no bullet caps or signs of a scuffle. Nothing that would make one think a crime had taken place there.

  "But they were hit men", I protested with Harris, "they could have hid the bodies somewhere!"

  I realized the sergeant was looking at me in a strange way. I must have looked upset. I had a big bruise on my chin, where Akimo had hit me, and I felt a big bump pulsing on my forehead. Furthermore, I was holding a box of whiskey tight in my arms.

  "Okay sir, please, stay calm".

  The sergeant spoke with the agents in McCook for a few more minutes, then hung up.

  "Sheriff Royce says there's nothing at the station. No bullet caps, no traces of blood. Are you really sure about what you saw?"

  How much should I have insisted? I didn't have any proof, and the only person who could explain the situation was LeBon, but then I would have had to explain that we were buying an egg. And there was still a chance they would take me for a visionary, seeing how I looked. I made a decision. I excused myself with the sergeant, left the APD offices and called a taxi for the airport.

  As I was passing over the bridge that crosses the Missouri, I looked at the city, distracted. I had never been to Omaha, even though I had always heard good things about it (2) and one of the companies that produced cereals for my dragons had its headquarters there. Perhaps under other circumstances I would have been a tourist, but at that moment I just wanted to go back to my own home, take a shower and throw myself in bed.

  While I was waiting to get on the plane that would bring me back to Boise, I called LeBon. In Paris it was late at night, and when he answered he was on a taxi in the French capital. Behind him I saw the shape of what could have been the the Arc de Triomphe. My friend's face wasn't happy at all.

  "Damned Yankee", he said to me. "I've been trying to call you all night. What the putain happened to you?"

  "What happened to me?" I hissed between my teeth. "You fucking idiot, I'll tell you what happened to me: I was trying to not get killed!"

  The mad expression on LeBon's mustached face went away, and a worried look replaced it.

  "What do you mean? Somebody attacked you?"

  I took a deep breath and let him have it.

  "Someone shot mister Dao. He's dead. And his bodyguard too".

  LeBon opened his eyes wide.

  "What?"

  "A hit man, when they got off in McCook", I explained. "He shot mister Dao and his bodyguard, and then another two reached me in the cabin. They beat me up..."

  "Mon Dieu, Jeq... that's terrible".

  "...and they took the case. I'm sorry, Jean".

  There, I had said it. I waited a few seconds, expecting to see LeBon crumble. But instead of getting crazy, Jean almost seemed relieved.

  "Ah, d'accord. The important thing is that you're ok, Jeq. You still have my present, right?" he asked me.

  "Your...what?" I said. "Did you hear me?"

  He must have gone crazy. This is what happens when you burn a million dollars.

  "Forget about the whiskey, Jean. They took the damned case!"

  "Yes, but do you have the whiskey?"

  "Your present? Of course, it's in the backpack".

  LeBon got closer to his laptop's camera until he occupied almost the whole screen with his face.

  "Listen to me well, Jeq", he said staring at me. "Do not lose that box, d'accord? Always keep it with you and don't open it, for any reason. I'm going to the airport now and-".

  LeBon stopped talking and looked outside the taxi's window. His face became pale.

  "Merde, they're following me", he exclaimed.

  He bent toward the front seat and talked with the taxi driver.

  "Hey, pull over, friend, pull over. Jeq, I'll be at your place tomorrow, the day after tomorrow at most".

  "No, hey wait, LeBon...Jean!"

  That bastard had closed the video call.

  "Fuck your whiskey!" I yelled at the blank monitor, so loud that a woman walking next to me jumped in surprise and then glared at me.

  I said sorry and went back to the monitor with clenched fists. I couldn't believe it.

  I told him they stole the case and he didn't blink an eye.

  The possibilities were two: either LeBon had really gone crazy, or he was hiding something from me. And where did his obsession for whiskey come from? I could have understood wine, seeing that the French don't talk about anything else except their "fantasticwonderfulmarvelous" wines, but in all those years Jean had never let it on that he liked whiskey.

  I took the black box from the backpack and took a good look at it. Two leather laces, one on the bottom and one on top, held it closed with silver buckles. In the middle, there was a black wax seal with a Chinese ideogram imprinted on it. I weighed it with my hand for a few seconds. It weighed...well, as much as a box with a bottle of whiskey in it. And in any case it was too small to contain any eggs.

  But if the case was a decoy, I reflected, what's in here?

  I would really like to tell you that I spent the rest of the trip racking my brain over the issue. That I pondered with wisdom every detail of what had happened to me, like an amazing Sherlock Holmes, revealing the enigma in the end. The truth is that as soon as I sat down on the plane...I collapsed exhausted and slept for the whole trip.

  O
nce I arrived in Boise I was still mad at LeBon but the story about the whiskey bottle had slipped my mind. I hadn't checked my dragons in more than twelve hours. Florence, one of the Mustangs, had tried to bite one of the Ming Tang males, so I spent the night in the infirmary taking care of the poor dragon.

  The next morning the CarbPlus supplier arrived in the store, the company that sold me the basic feed. I bought six hundred and sixty pounds of their slop, a mix of legumes, rice and assorted cereals - enough for the whole summer - and then I spent the rest of the day moving the bags in the pantry with Roger, my part-time assistant. LeBon hadn't shown up yet, and the box of whiskey, along with the backpack, had ended up at the bottom of a closet in my room, waiting.

  The night of the third day I saw a french fry commercial on TV and only then did I remember about LeBon. Not only did he not come to get his present, but he hadn't called either. I tried contacting him on the pc first and then I tried on his cell, with no success.

  This is strange, I said to myself. It wasn't like him to disappear like that. I called Finlay & Pern inc., the company in New York he worked for. It was six p.m. in the City and the branch was still open, but the sales manager whom I talked with said that "mister LeBon is still in Paris for work related reasons".

  After what had happened in McCook, it wasn't a good sign at all. I became restless.

  That night I dreamed of the two hit men beating me up in Dao's cabin. A horrible nightmare. And in the morning, as I was wandering around the kitchen like a zombie in my underwear looking for coffee (luckily it was Sunday, closing day for the store), a detail from the aggression came to mind.

  "Is it him?", Andersen had asked, the bastard with the ultrasound wand. And the other had answered: "No, he's the courier", or something like that. It was clear that the two hit men were expecting to find someone else instead of me, but who? In that moment, I would have bet a million dollars on LeBon.

  The mystery became even bigger when I called Finlay & Pern inc. that morning, and this time, instead of talking with the sales manager, the receptionist put my call straight through to the head of personnel, a certain Vicks.