Read Online Black Market by James Patterson - Free Book Online

since nineteen six-nine. Yow spy six yeah. Ho-Ho. You 'ssain! 'ssassin! Convic to
die
, Cap-tan.”
    The prison guards let Captain David Hudson fall to the dirt floor, which was littered with gaping fish heads and rice.
    Hudson 's fragile mind was reeling, crashing, exploding with sharp-pointed lights. He'd understood only a few of the Lizard Man's fractured English words. “ Vietnam… spy… assassin… convicted to die.”
    Hudson 's eyes absently ran over the highly polished board surface. Games? Why did they all love games?
    The Lizard Man snorted obscenely. A distorted smile appeared across his face. His jaw moved slowly, seemingly unattached to the rest of his skull. David Hudson imagined he could see, just behind the loose lips, a flicking, reptilian tongue in the man's mouth. He shook his head, trying vainly to find a clearing, a little area of reality, within his wildly confused thoughts.
    “Yow play game? Yow play game me, Hud-sun?”
    David Hudson's eyes were riveted to the game table, trying to focus. Play a game with Lizard Man?
    The board appeared to be real teak. It was precious wood, exotic and beautiful, incongruous in this sodden armpit of a place. Even more striking were the hundreds of polished black and white stones, exquisite playing pieces. They were circular in shape, convex on each side.
    For a lucid moment, Hudson remembered a marble collection. Something magical and forgotten from his youth in Kansas, on his father's farm. Collecting solids and cat's-eyes. Had he actually been a boy in this same lifetime? He honestly couldn't seem to remember. Die with dignity! Dignity!
    “Play game for your life? Ho?” the Lizard Man asked.
    The game board was divided into vertical and horizontal lines, creating hundreds of intersections. There were 180 white stones, 181 black.
    Beside the pile of black stones, the Lizard Man's hand rested on a bulky Mosin-Nagant military rifle. One of his long yellowed fingers tapped the table relentlessly.
    “Yow play. Play game me! Loser die!”
    Captain David Hudson continued to stare hard at the game board. Focus, he thought. Concentrate. Die with dignity.
    What did this man want from him now? It was an obscene joke, Hudson knew. One more way the Lizard Man had of torturing him.
    The black and white stones seemed to be moving by themselves. Spinning, crawling like insects, in his blurred vision.
    Finally Hudson spoke up. His voice was surprisingly strong, angry, even defiant.
    “I have never lost at the game of Go,” Captain David Hudson said. “You play, asshole!” Dignity!
    Manhattan: December 1985
    The New York subway train braked noisily at a station stop. The soiled platform was bathed in eerie blue.
    A few passengers on the sleepy, early morning train were staring absently at David Hudson. Even at a casual glance, he seemed like someone quietly in control of his environment. Beneath the drab street clothes, there was about him a sense of purpose. He was a man accustomed to taking command.
    Hudson stared back at the other passengers. He peered into their hollow, pathetic eyes until most glanced away. The majority of American people were devoid of any real basic integrity, any sense of themselves. Civilians tended to disappoint David Hudson again and again. Maybe it was because he expected too much from them-he had to remind himself constantly that he couldn't apply his own high standards to others.
    More listless passengers struggled onto the subway train at the West Eighty-sixth Street stop. There were mostly older whites, time-bent men and women, small-business merchants, ciphers who managed or owned the rip-off clothing stores, the rip-off food markets, in Harlem and the Bronx. One of the men boarding, however, was completely different from the rest.
    He appeared to be in his mid-thirties. His striking black hair was brushed straight back. He wore a tan cashmere overcoat with a paisley scarf, pressed navy dress slacks, super-WASP duck boots. The impression he