The Covenant Of The Flame

So Pedro had accepted the challenge, and for a time, he and his followers had been successful, forcing the enemy from the land. Apparently too successful, for the evil men in the capital had sent assassins with machineguns to shoot – to shred - Pedro's body while he made a speech in a neighboring village, and now the air was again thick with smoke. Once more, the ominous fires burned.

You mustn't give up! Juanita heard Pedro's voice in her head. You must continue the fight!

As the priest backed away from the coffin, she spun toward her husband's followers, about to raise her veil, to let them see the furnace-like determination in her eyes, to say her words.

But her impulse was interrupted, her husband's followers distracted, by a long black car that bumped unexpectedly along the dusty road and stopped at the base of the cemetery.

The villagers watched in confusion as a stranger got out. He was a tall, refined-looking man in a suit as black as his expensive car. His tie as well was black, in contrast with his immaculate, gleaming, white shirt, perhaps the only such shirt the villagers had ever seen. With dignified funereal steps, the stranger proceeded toward the rear of the car, opened its trunk, removed a cardboard box, and carried it somberly up the hill through the smoky haze toward the mourners in the dismal cemetery.

'Please, forgive me, Senora Gomez,' the man whispered and bowed in respect. His polished accent and careful pronunciation made it clear that he came from the city. 'I deeply apologize. I'm extremely reluctant to intrude at this sensitive trying time for you. I extend my sympathies and offer a prayer for the soul of your brave departed husband. I would not have troubled you, but a man instructed me – in fact, he insisted – that I do so.'

'Man?' Her back muscles rigid, Juanita studied the stranger with suspicion. 'What man?'

'Alas, I do not know. My client never told me his name. Yesterday he arrived unexpectedly at my office… I own a limousine service in the city. He paid me a generous amount to drive to this village and deliver this package… this gift, he said… at this precise moment.'

With greater suspicion, Juanita stared at the box. 'Gift? What is it?' Her immediate thought was that the evil men in the city had sent a bomb to destroy her in such a dramatic fashion, during her husband's funeral, that Pedro's followers would surely lose their will to fight.

'My client would not reveal to me what was in the box. In fact, he warned me that if I unsealed it prematurely, he would discover my transgression and punish me severely. He assured me and instructed me to assure you that the gift is not a danger, that instead you'll find it a comfort.'

Juanita squinted harshly. To drive all this way… and on such a mysterious mission… you must have been paid very well.'

'True, senora. As I confessed, the fee was generous.' The man looked embarrassed, as if comparing his fine clothes with the poverty around him. 'With the stranger's compliments, senora.'

Juanita reluctantly accepted the box. Its size reminded her of a cake box. But its contents, which made a thunking sound, were much heavier than a cake.

Troubled, Juanita stooped to set the box on the ground beside her husband's humble coffin. She tried, but when her trembling fingers couldn't break the seal, a villager stepped forward and used his knife to open it.

Compelled, Juanita pried up the flaps, then gazed warily inside.

At once she gasped. The villager who'd used his knife to unseal the box gasped as well. With equal sudde

A human head. The severed skull of one of the evil men in the city who'd ordered her husband's death. The head – its features contorted grotesquely – vividly communicated the agony that the man had suffered while being decapitated. The skull was wrapped in a plastic bag, the bag evidently intended to prevent the jagged neck's blood from soaking through the cardboard box.

With a wail of victory, Juanita yanked off the bag, grasped the skull by its hair, and jerked it as high as her arm would permit so that all her husband's followers could see the wondrous gift that her unknown benefactor had sent.

The messenger stumbled back in horror, a hand raised to his mouth as if he might vomit. Nearly toppling him, the villagers surged forward to get a better look.

'Fight!' she screamed. For Pedro! For yourselves! For the land!'

The villagers shouted with determination.

Juanita swung the head toward Pedro's coffin. 'My husband, my beloved, can you see your enemy? Dear father of our children, you didn't die in vain! We won't be beaten! We'll fight! We'll continue fighting! We'll never stop fighting! Never! Until we're victorious! Until the day the fires stop!'

FOUR

The Coral Sea. The South Pacific.

The Argonaut, a supertanker carrying crude oil from the Persian Gulf to a refinery near Brisbane on Australia 's eastern coast, was three hours ahead of schedule. Clear weather and smooth seas all the way. A completely uneventful voyage. Can't ask for better than that, the captain thought. His name was Victor Malone. A twenty-year veteran of the ocean, most of which time he'd spent in the service of the Pacific-Rim Petroleum Corporation, he was forty-eight, of medium height, with receding brown hair and a stocky build. Although while at sea he seldom left the interior of his vessel, his somewhat puffy face had a ruddy complexion. In the supertanker's bridge, which despite its windows had lately caused Malone to feel claustrophobia, he checked the weather, sonar, radar, and navigation instruments. Nothing unusual. Another ten hours, and we'll be in port, he thought. Certainly by tomorrow morning. Confident of a routine evening, Malone told his watch officer that he was leaving the bridge. 'If you need me, I'll be in my cabin.'

Five minutes later, after locking the door to his cabin behind him, Malone unlocked a drawer in his desk and removed a half-empty bottle of vodka. A condition of Malone's employment was that he abstain from alcohol while commanding a Pac-Rim vessel, and for most of his career, Malone had abided by that rule. Guilt-ridden, puzzled, he wasn't sure when or why he'd begun to bend and finally had broken the rule.

Perhaps it had been the trauma of the divorce his wife had demanded three years ago after falling in love with a salesman in the real-estate office where she worked in Boston, a man who, she'd angrily explained, wouldn't abandon her for months at a time.

Or perhaps it had been the lonely nights in foreign ports that had long ago stopped being glamorous.

For whatever reason, a sip now and then before he went to sleep had turned into periodic secret binges in which Malone tried to counteract the boredom of too many lengthy voyages. Aware that his vice was getting out of control, he'd tried to exercise discipline on this voyage and had indulged his need for alcohol only when absolutely desperate.

Even so, he'd come close to finishing all eight bottles that he'd smuggled aboard. Amazing how they go so fast, he mused as he poured two inches of vodka into a glass and leaned back in the chair behind his desk.

He wished he had ice and vermouth, but tomorrow morning after docking at the refinery, as soon as his obligations were completed, he would go ashore, find an isolated bar where he wouldn't be recognized, and at last be able to enjoy a martini again.

Several martinis.

He'd rent a room to sleep off his drunke

That was the beauty of vodka. It didn't taint his breath.