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dragged him out. Then let him fall once he was out of the elevator, caring little that the old man’s face smashed into the floor. The four then gathered around, taking either an arm or a leg each, and picked him up. They began a trot then, carrying him out of the lobby briskly.
    Ayala barely noticed the shrieking of tires as two vehicles pulled up to the building’s entrance. He did notice when he was propelled into the back of one of the vehicles. Rather, he noticed that his head struck something hard. After that he didn’t notice much for a while, neither the changeover to a different vehicle, nor when he was bodily carried from that second vehicle to a small boat putt-putting in a deserted inlet along the coast, south-southwest of Manila.

CHAPTER TWO

    Change and decay in all around I see . . .
    —Henry Francis Lyte, “Abide With Me”

    Bonifacio Global City, Manila, Republic of the Philippines

    Blue lights flashed, whipping across concrete, shattered glass, and marble. Manila’s police were on scene, as were several quite useless ambulances, and a medical examiner.
    For the life of them, neither ambulance crew nor medical examiner could understand the rush. These guys, three guards in the elevator, a driver and another guard in a nearby limousine, and one now unfolded concierge in the lobby, were deader than chivalry, especially the former, they having done a numerically inexact but otherwise fair reenactment of Bonnie and Clyde at the ambush.
    There were more guards there now, living ones. These belonged to Old Man Ayala’s eldest son, Luis, sometimes called “Junior,” despite not bearing the same given name. Surrounded by their close and tight cordon, Luis stood, hands clenched behind his back, head down, teeth clenched; a study in personal sorrow.
    In a small gap on the cordon, yet kept outside of it, a police detective faced inward toward the younger Ayala. The detective’s beige suit wasn’t nearly the caliber of that worn by the younger Ayala. For that matter, it couldn’t have matched those of his guards, nor of the dead guards, nor even the concierge, prior to their being ventilated. Generally speaking, police work didn’t pay. In any sense.
    “Who did this?” demanded the son and heir apparent.
    “It’s impossible to know at this point, sir,” the policeman patiently explained to the younger, but infinitely wealthier, man. “The fact that your father wasn’t killed suggests very strongly a kidnapping for ransom. The . . . thoroughness with which the others were killed suggests more than a criminal enterprise. You can expect a ransom demand, probably within the next couple of days. We will monitor—”
    “You will not !” Luis exclaimed. “Maybe for western missionaries and journalists you can invoke the law to prevent payment of ransoms. My father and his family are above that. What they want, whoever took him, they shall have, and any interference that threatens my father’s life, from any source whatsoever, will be crushed.”
    The policeman said nothing except, “As you and your family wish, sir.” He thought, instead, The golden rule . . . who has the gold makes the rules. That any money paid may be turned into the means of kidnapping or killing thousands means nothing . . . who has the gold makes the rules.
    Oh well, I didn’t make the world; I just have to get by in it, as it turns to shit. I have to get by in it, for me and my own family, as well as I can.
    Another police vehicle pulled up to the curb. With a short but polite bow, the police detective backed up, faced away from Luis, and walked to the newly arrived squad car, then around to the passenger door. There, from the rolled down window, with air conditioning turning to steam in the hot, moist air, a grandmotherly—in fact a grandmother’s—face peered out.
    “Six dead, Aida,” the policeman said to the grandmother, who was also an inspector, once semi-retired and now called back from retirement. “And old man