Nathan turned around. Ron Kasabian had walked into the laboratory. He was wearing a tan suit that was almost the same color as his face, and tan Gucci loafers.
‘Well, well! How are you feeling today Nathan?’ he said, with that lopsided grin that he put on to convey sincerity. ‘Kavita told me that your hand is almost completely healed up.’
Nathan lifted it up to show him, turning it this way and that and wiggling his fingers. ‘See – I told you that this phoenix project would work.’
‘So you did. But then again, you can hardly blame me for being skeptical. You were eating up so much budget, with nothing to show for it but this chicken here.’
‘Oh, I don’t think you were being skeptical, Ron. I think you were being short-sighted and unimaginative rather than skeptical.’
Ron Kasabian tried to look amused. ‘Maybe you’re right, Nate. Maybe I was too hasty in cutting off your funding. It looks like there could be some profit in this phoenix project after all.’
‘Not for you, Ron, unfortunately,’ said Nathan.
There was a dead silence, except for the phoenix warbling. Ron Kasabian said, ‘Excuse me?’
‘You heard me. I said that you won’t be getting anything out of it. I’m through here. I quit. I’m closing the project down. At Schiller’s, anyhow.’
Ron Kasabian’s grin disappeared, and his voice grew harsher. His words were conciliatory, but his tone was distinctly threatening. ‘You burned your own hand just to prove me wrong, Nate, which was a very brave thing to do. OK, I admit it, I might have made a misjudgment, but now I’m willing to recommend a temporary resumption of funding. So why would you quit now?’
‘Because nobody exploits the loyalty of my research assistants. You understand what I’m saying?’
‘I’m not so sure that I do.’
‘Well, let me spell it out for you,’ said Nathan, walking across to him and poking his chest with his finger. ‘You took advantage of Kavita because you knew how devoted she is to this project, and you knew how devoted she is to me.’
Ron Kasabian turned to Kavita, his jaw working as if he were masticating a particularly gristly mouthful of steak.
‘You told him? You told him? What kind of a stupid slut are you?’
‘She’s not any kind of slut,’ Nathan snapped at him. ‘What you did to her, that practically amounts to rape. And if you think I’m going to continue working on a project that’s been financed by sexual harassment, then you have another think coming. It’s over, Ron, and you’ll be lucky if I don’t report you to the cops, and Schiller’s board of directors, both.’
Ron’s nostrils flared. For a moment, Nathan thought that he was going to be able to control his fury, and simply stalk back out of the laboratory. But then he lost it. His face reddened and his eyes bulged like Theodor Zauber’s gargoyle. The veins in his neck stood out as thick as ropes.
‘You fucking stupid slut!’ he bellowed. He pushed Nathan roughly to one side and went for Kavita, seizing her by the shoulders and shaking her so hard that her face became a blur.
‘Didn’t I tell you not to say anything to anybody? That was the deal, you slut! What did I tell you?’ His voice rose to a barely-comprehensible scream. ‘What did I fucking tell you?’
Nathan hooked his arm around Ron Kasabian’s neck, trying to pull him away. Aarif came around the laboratory bench and grabbed his right arm. But Ron Kasabian was a big man, and he was incandescent with rage. He swung his right arm sideways, with his fist clenched, and he punched Aarif so hard in the face that Nathan heard his nose crack. Blood sprayed out Aarif’s nostrils and he staggered backward, stumbling over a stool.
‘Get off her, Ron!’ Nathan shouted. ‘Let go of her! Are you crazy?’
Ron Kasabian didn’t hear him. He was deafened by his rage. Nobody disobeyed Ron Kasabian, ever – especially women. He slapped Kavita’s face one way and then the other. Kavita started to scream – an urgent, piping scream that sounded like a kettle boiling over.
Nathan jumped on Ron Kasabian again, and managed to force his head back. Ron Kasabian released his grip on Kavita, and twisted himself around, so that he could punch Nathan hard in the ribs. Nathan gasped, but punched him back. Without hesitation, Ron Kasabian head-butted him, so hard that their skulls knocked together – klokk! – and Nathan toppled backward on to the floor, hitting his shoulder. Dark stars swam in front of his eyes.
Half concussed, he saw Ron Kasabian going after Kavita again, and forcing her back over one of the benches. Kavita tried to bring her knee up between his legs, but Ron Kasabian slapped her again, even harder this time. He was shouting something at her, but by now he was so angry that he was incoherent. ‘You – fucking – swore to me – never – do that – ever – betray me – nobody – fucking – ever! Do you hear me? Evaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!’
Nathan grabbed the stool nearest to him and heaved himself back on to his feet. He took two steps toward Ron Kasabian, but as he prepared to jump on him again, he saw a bright flare of light from Torchy’s cage – like a white flower opening up, a flower with petals made of incandescent magnesium. It was almost too dazzling to look at directly, and Nathan had to shield his eyes with his hand.
Inside his cage, the phoenix had raised his head and spread his wings wide, and he was on fire. Not in the sense that his feathers were alight. He was fire, he had become fire. First of all, he had been a dragon-worm, then a bird. Now he had transformed himself into pure white flame, a flame that was hissing like a pressure lamp.
Ron Kasabian lifted his head to stare at it, although he kept his grip on Kavita’s throat. Kavita herself tried to wriggle herself free, but Ron Kasabian clutched her throat even more tightly and banged her head against the bench. ‘Stay there, you fucking slut!’ Nathan guessed that however angry he was, he must have realized by now that his outburst had lost him his job, and possibly his marriage, too, if his wife got to hear what he had done, and there was nobody more dangerous than a man who has nothing else to lose.
‘Ron!’ he shouted. ‘Let her go, Ron! It’s over!’
‘Go screw yourself, Nathan!’ Ron Kasabian shouted back, without even turning to look at him. He was transfixed by the white feathery fire in the phoenix’s cage, which was blazing brighter and hotter with every passing second.
Suddenly, the fire-bird flapped his wings – once, twice, three times – and then flew right through the bars of his cage as if he were made of nothing more substantial than flames. He flew at Ron Kasabian with a soft roaring sound, and then he let out a screech that made Nathan’s scalp prickle.
Ron Kasabian tried to dodge to one side, ducking his head down, but the phoenix caught his shoulder pad in its claws, clinging so ferociously that there was nothing he could do to beat it off.
‘Get it off me!’ he screamed. ‘For Christ’s sake, get it off me!’
But the phoenix flapped its fiery wings on either side of his head, again and again, so that his hair caught alight, and his cheeks were seared scarlet. He lurched toward the door, knocking over stools and colliding with workbenches, but the phoenix flapped its wings harder and harder, until his entire head was enveloped in fire, and then the sleeves and lapels of his suit began to burn.
‘Get it off me! Oh God, get it off me! It hurts! It fucking hurts! I can’t take it! God, I can’t take it! It hurts!’
The smoke alarms began to sing meep-meep-meep-meep-meep. Nathan hurried across to the door, and hoisted the bright yellow fire extinguisher out of its rack. Ron Kasabian was flailing around and around with the phoenix perched on his shoulder, blazing from the waist upward. It looked as if the phoenix was flapping its wings in order to create a downdraft, so that the flames were licking at Ron Kasabian’s thighs and down toward his knees, greedy for more and more oxygen.
Nathan punched the button that started the extinguisher and white foam spurted out of the nozzle. But this fire was just like the fire in which the phoenix had first been created: it was so hot that it seemed to swallow the foam and evaporate it. Within a few seconds, Ron Kasabian was burning from head to foot, a sacrificial figure made out of nothing but flames. He collapsed to his knees, his arms by his sides, and then he keeled over sideways and lay burning on the floor.
The phoenix let out another screech, but this time he sounded more triumphant than vengeful. He lifted itself up into the air and hovered for a moment over Ron Kasabian’s body, a bird made out of nothing but brilliant white fire. Nathan could just make out his eyes, as pale as glass. Then the phoenix tilted toward his cage, and flew back in through the bars. He settled on his perch, and as soon as he settled his incandescence began to dim, and his flames died down, and within a few moments he was back to his substantial self, with his rose-pink beak and his gilded feathers and his yellow tail. He let out a self-satisfied skrarrrkkk.
‘Call nine-one-one,’ said Nathan, in a croak as dry as Torchy’s. Smoke was still rising from Ron Kasabian’s body and the laboratory reeked of his half-cremated flesh.
‘I did already,’ said Aarif. He was dabbing his bloody nose with a white hand-towel. ‘Fire, police and ambulance.’ The smoke alarms were still meep-meeping as if they were peeved at being ignored.
Nathan went over to Kavita. She was rubbing her neck where Ron Kasabian had tried to throttle her. Both of her cheeks were crimson and bruised, and Nathan could tell that she would probably have a black eye tomorrow. She was trembling with shock.
‘How did that happen?’ she coughed. ‘I mean, that was impossible. How did Torchy change like that? He flew right through the bars of his cage as if they weren’t even there.’
‘Are you OK?’ Nathan asked her. He was shaking, too. ‘Jesus if I’d thought for a moment that Ron would go apeshit like that—’
Kavita glanced toward Ron Kasabian’s blackened body and then looked away.
‘He’s dead, I’m afraid,’ said Nathan.
Kavita gave a complicated shrug. ‘He was a bully and a pig. He didn’t deserve to die like that, but he brought it on himself.’
She paused, still trembling, and then she said, ‘In bed, he was just the same. Trying to make me do things that I didn’t want to do. Shouting at me when I refused.’
She paused again. ‘He even expected me to—’
She started to say something more, but then she thought better of it and closed her lips. Ron Kasabian was dead now, after all.
Nathan walked across to Torchy’s cage and peered in through the bars. Torchy clawed his way along his perch to the far side of the cage, as far away from Nathan as possible.
‘He definitely doesn’t like me,’ said Nathan.
Kavita said, ‘Don’t worry. He will grow to like you, when he sees how well you take care of me.’
‘We need to run some more tests, but I think you’d better do the honors until I’m sure that he’s not going to burn me to a cinder, like Ron here.’
‘Of course,’ said Kavita. ‘But I think I need to go now. I can’t bear the smell.’
Nathan said, ‘I want another DNA sample, and we should also check if his fundamental cell structure has altered in any way. How the hell does a living bird turn itself into pure fire, without any apparent scorching or loss of substance? And how does it turn itself back into flesh and feathers? And what triggers a change like that? Is it fear, do you think, or protectiveness, or is it natural avian aggression?’
‘Professor, I feel sick.’
‘OK,’ said Nathan. ‘I’m sorry. Why don’t you and Aarif both go down to the lobby? But I think I’d better stay here. The police will be here at any minute, and besides, I want to keep an eye on Torchy.’
Aarif and Kavita left the laboratory, circling around the benches so that they kept as far away from Ron Kasabian’s smoldering body as they could. Nathan stayed close to Torchy’s cage, but not too close. He didn’t want to set off another exhibition of avian pyrotechnics.
He was deeply shaken by the way in which Ron Kasabian had been burned to death, right in front of them, but as a zoologist he had so many questions about how and why it had happened. He had read every myth and every legend about the phoenix that he could find, including O Pássaro Ardente De Egipto – The Burning Bird of Egypt, by the fifteenth-century Portuguese alchemist and ornithologist Aldo Sombrio. There were only two known copies – one of which had been water-damaged during the Second World War in a flood at the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon – but it contained more details about the origins of the phoenix than anything else he had read. All the same, it hadn’t mentioned that the phoenix could transform itself into pure fire, and then back again into a solid, screeching, bad-tempered bird.
He went across and hunkered down next to Ron Kasabian’s body. Ron Kasabian was lying on his right side, with his arms and legs drawn up into the monkey-like position adopted by the victims of so many fires. His eyes were open but his eyeballs were opaque, and the skin on his face was charred in curled-up layers, like the pages of a burned book.
‘Jesus, Ron. Why did you have to lose it like that?’ Nathan asked him, but he already knew the answer to that. As long as he had known him, Ron Kasabian had been arrogant and insecure. He had been afraid to take risks in a business that was inherently risky, and Nathan had quickly come to the conclusion that he had been promoted far beyond his capabilities. That was why he had always acted so aggressively. He obviously hadn’t expected that Kavita would stand up to him, or that she would be defended with such ferocity by a mythical creature that could incinerate him where he stood.
Nathan was still hunkered down next to him when three firefighters came in, followed by Henry and then by two paramedics.
‘Holy Moses, Professor!’ said Henry, taking off his cap. ‘Not another fire?’ Then he realized what was lying next to Nathan on the floor.
‘That ain’t – that ain’t Mr Kasabian, is it? That’s – shee-it! – that is Mr Kasabian! How’d he get all burned up like that?’
Nathan stood up. The leading firefighter looked around to make sure that there were no spot fires still burning, and then he said, ‘Want to tell us what happened here, sir?’
‘I couldn’t honestly tell you,’ said Nathan. ‘Spontaneous combustion, I guess you could call it. Mr Kasabian was standing here talking to us, and suddenly whoof! Up he went like a Roman candle.’
‘Whoof?’ repeated the firefighter. His eyes were very pale hazel, and he had a bristly ginger moustache. He looked like the stubborn type.
‘Whoof,’ said Nathan, nodding in agreement.
The firefighter knelt down next to Ron Kasabian’s body. He lifted off his helmet, bent his head down and sniffed. He sniffed again, all the way down to Ron Kasabian’s tan Gucci loafers, with their fringes crisp and curled-up from the fire. Then he looked up at his companions and said, ‘I can’t smell nothing in the way of accelerants, but Jimmy – why don’t you go bring Muttley up here? Maybe he can.’
‘Muttley?’ asked Nathan.
‘He’s our fire dog. He can detect one thousandth of a drop of part-evaporated gasoline in a room twice this volume.’
‘Mr Kasabian wasn’t set alight by any accelerants, officer. Not that we saw. Not unless his clothes were already saturated when he came in here, but we didn’t smell anything.’
‘So, what are you telling me? Your friend walked in here and caught fire without no warning at all? He looks like he was given a going-over by a goddamned flame-thrower.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Henry. ‘Only a half-hour ago, Mr Kasabian was axin’ me about my hernia operation. Now look at him.’
One of the paramedics said, ‘We’ll leave you guys to get on with it, OK? There’s nothing we can do for this poor bastard. We’ll contact the ME.’
The paramedics left; but as they did so, they stepped aside to let Detective Pullet and Detective Rubik in through the door.
Jenna came in and looked around. Then she stalked right up to Ron Kasabian’s body, bent down and peered at it closely.
‘Do we know who this is?’ she asked, looking directly at Nathan.
Nathan said, ‘Mr Ron Kasabian, CEO of Schiller Medical Research Inc.’
‘And do we know what happened to him?’
‘He caught fire,’ Nathan told her. He nodded toward the empty fire extinguisher lying on the floor. ‘I tried to put him out, but I couldn’t. He was burning far too fiercely.’
‘He caught fire?’ asked Jenna. ‘How, exactly?’
‘We don’t know yet,’ the firefighter put in. ‘Until we do, we’re reserving judgment.’
Jenna walked across to Nathan and stood facing him. ‘Professor Underhill,’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘Professor Underhill, this is the second time in less than eight hours that you’ve figured as a witness in an inexplicable fatality.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why don’t you make my life a little easier, Professor Underhill? Why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on?’