No Way Back (16 page)

So I’m missing something. It may be right before my eyes, something quite simple and clear. But I am not seeing it. In a normal investigation, time and motion would eventually solve that.

I’m fucked. Already in motion, time all but run out.

MAINTAIN. DOG’S WISE ADVICE. GAVE IT TO ME DURING
a party, at Annie’s. I remember it. But I seem too far from it, space and time. Dog, Annie, IB—they real people I was tight with? Difficult to feel it, believe in it, just now. I’m out on the sharp edge, all by myself. Losing all sense of whatever life I was living before I discussed with Westley.

Westley? How real is he? “Off prepping the ground,” Nadya says when I ask about him. So how real is she?

Maintain, Luther. Stay in the fight.

It gets harder and harder, after Allison’s fit, after my futile tries at figuring out what this mission’s truly all about. What’s most scary is that no one else seems perturbed about anything. Not Nadya, not Rob, not even Mister Kim, despite the jolt he got. There’s a man who knows how to maintain. Baby-sitting him’s a non-job, mostly. Every day before the assault, he rose around dawn, spent almost exactly four hours wired to his Busan headquarters by Internet instant messaging, phone,
fax. He’d check in again for an hour or two before dinner. Poor fucks who work for him. He operates on his time, never considers all the zones, never mind the International Dateline and people’s sleep cycles, between here and there. Some functionary is expected to jerk awake at two
A.M.
on a Sunday and instantly spiel off any facts, figures or news he demands. I don’t think it’s a deliberate arrogance on Kim’s part; it’s something beneath his radar.

After that, he sat through meetings with Westley and the crew, lunched with them. Every other afternoon, he played eighteen holes at a country-club course with one or another of his local cronies. Insisted on one-man coverage only, usually Sonny but sometimes Lee or Park or Lee.

Post-assault? Same-same, detail and timing, except Westley’s soon absent from the daily meetings and lunches. Kim stays so regular, so unwavering, that if I were a hitter instead of a guard, he’d be the easiest kill I ever made. I checked out the course with Sonny once. Piece of cake to clip Kim teeing off at the eleventh hole. One shot from a copse of pines three hundred meters east with a suppressed M-24. A leisurely stroll maybe fifty meters, out to a car waiting on the verge of a nice two-lane blacktop. All over in less than a minute.

I’d be gone before anybody even figured what the hell dropped Kim. Heart attack? But what’s all this blood leaking on the grass?

Just one more contradiction that’s fucking with my head. Kim’s real protected and extremely vulnerable at the same time. Anybody wants him, they can have him on any golf day they care to. How come nobody on our team is concerned about this? How come the assholes on the other team sent five punks over the fence into our kill zone, instead of a single sniper into the pines at the golf course?

Nobody to ask, really. An oblique mention to Sonny reveals he at least is aware of the eleventh tee. Says he’s always glassing that copse with his Steiners when Kim moves up to make his drive. But he shrugs his heavy shoulders as he says it. Which I take as his way of letting me know he knows it’s idiotic, he’d never spot any decent sniper before he got off his shot, but there’s nothing else he’s allowed to do—like station Lee or Park or Lee in those pines as out-of-sight interdictors.

If it wasn’t for the still life with corpses I’ve viewed twice now, I’d be convinced there was no security issue at all. I’d be wondering lots about why Westley ever paid good money for my unnecessary services. I might even come to the notion that maybe I’m being set up—in ways and for reasons I can’t comprehend.

Fuck the still life. I am at that notion. Feels like something that’s gonna balloon into an obsession if no explanations appear damn soon.

I don’t see Allison for two, three days, except through the glass wall of the main room at Kim’s, when she meets with him, Nadya, and Rob. No private time with Nadya, either, though I’m sure in her case it isn’t a deliberate shunning. Couple of times I catch her searching me out from behind the glass, flashing me a nice smile when she sees I see her.

What I get a couple hours after lunch on the third day is Rob, coming up from the gym, pumped and sweating in his brand-name exercise shorts and guinea T, arms held out a bit from normal vertical like most muscle-heads. Sonny starts chuckling before Rob’s halfway to where we’re smoking, out on the redwood overhang.

“You pals with this guy, anything like that?” Sonny mutters.

“We’re acquainted.”

“That’s good. Otherwise I think I gotta throw this asshole over the edge. Ho!”

“Don’t let my being acquainted with him stop you. Feel free to toss.”

Sonny gives Rob his Buddha smile, but fades it fast.

“Hey, Terry,” Rob says. Then to Sonny, extending his hand: “We’ve seen each other around but never actually met. I’m Rob. You’re Mister Park, right?”

Sonny nods, waits a beat, takes Rob’s hand. Just grips it briefly, no shake, then drops it. I see white pressure marks on the skin of Rob’s hand, though he manages not to wince. Instead he gets real occupied with the vista.

“Hey, I see why you guys hang out here so much. Spectacular. What’s the drop, fifty meters?”

“Sixty-two,” Sonny says.

“Jesus, how’d you measure it?”

“Real simple, Mistah Rob. Drop something over, time how long it take to bust on the rocks.”

No veiled threat in Sonny’s voice, not even any edge to it, but I swear I can see some of that overconfidence Rob liked to display back in spook-house days leaking out of him.

“Thirty-two feet per second, clock the seconds, do the math on a calculator,” Rob says. “Pretty neat.”

“Ho! Not pretty,” Sonny says. “You don’t see what I drop. Make a real mess. Low tide, low waves. Take a while, till tide high, to wash away.”

Rob’s quicker than I usually give him credit for, does the right thing—laughs. And makes it sound genuine. “Oh yeah, but then that strong northward current must have swept any big pieces pretty damned fast,” he says.

“Sure thing, Mistah Rob. Seen that lotsa times,” Sonny says, deadpan.

“Well.” Rob steps back from the rail. “Guess I won’t get that chance, since we’re pulling out of here soon.”

“Maybe you get one, Mistah Rob. Mistah Kim, he got a place like this south of Busan. Maybe we go there, before we go to that stinkin’ Russia.”

“I’d have thought Vlad was your kind of place, Sonny,” I say. “All those tall Natashas working hard for the dollar.”

“Hunh. You dreaming, Mistah Prentice.” I’ve asked him half a dozen times to drop that “Mister” crap, call me Terry, but though he’s agreed, he can’t seem to break his habits. “Russki whores, they don’t even let you get your finger wet, less than a hundred dollars. You want any real fun, maybe three. Bad inflation in Vlad. Anyway, those girls so cold your dick freezes, snap like an icicle.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Rob says, trying on a grin for size, finding it maybe a size too large, since he won’t be seeing Vlad.

“You do that, Mistah Rob. And stay away from dockside. Go down there, somebody gonna have to fish your body out of that stinkin’ harbor. No current in that harbor.”

“I guess I can take care of myself,” Rob says.

“Oh sure,” Sonny says. “I can see that okay.”

“Hey, Terry,” Rob says, “you hear from Westley yet?”

“Yeah, he phones in every other hour. What kind of question is that, Rob? Christ. You need to study subtlety before you go fishing.”

“I was just wondering where he went. He left quick, without telling me.”

“And you suppose
I
know? You can’t be serious.”

“Well, you worked with him before.”

“Just a contractor then, as now. Think he bothers to keep contractors fully informed of his comings and goings?”

“Uh, maybe you got tight in Sarajevo, something like that. I thought it was worth a shot at least.”

“His absense concerns you so much, Rob?”

“Okay, okay. I’m kind of compulsive about being in the circuit at all times. I admit it. And, yeah, I should study subtlety.”

“Don’t bother,” I say. “Ask Nadya about Westley. She knows.”

“Right.” Rob looks doubtful. Then he makes a show of checking his watch. “Shit. Gotta bolt. I have to check in with people in Virginia, before those nine-to-five desk warriors quit for the day. Let’s all have a beer one night before we leave.”

“Anytime, Mistah Rob,” Sonny says. “I never say no to a beer.”

As Rob goes back down the deck, arms a little less held out from his sides than when he arrived, Sonny says, “Where they find that pussy?”

“Not a complete pussy. Got the training, got some skills, just never had to use them for real,” I say. “Maybe if he gets the chance, he’ll come out of it less of an asshole. If he comes out of it.”

“So what’s he want, coming to talk with us, have a beer shit?”

“I think,” I say, “he’s got a sudden case of premission nerves. Anxious to make some friends before we go in. Understandable.”

“Sure. Only pretty late, and pretty stupid, too. What, he thinks me and you gonna watch his ass for him, he offer us a beer?”

“Not totally stupid, just shaky and inept. You know how guys are, when they’re trained but never been in the shit.”

“You right, Mistah Prentice.” Sonny shakes his head. “Poor sorry-ass bastards.”

Never occurs to me to mention he and I were poor sorry-ass bastards our first times, when we were young. Laughed at by men of experience, who didn’t even want to know your name because they reckoned you wouldn’t last long enough to matter. The concept gets erased from your brain once you’ve gone in, done your job, and come out more or less in one piece. After that, you get to join in the laughing.

I’m the completely stupid one. That’s driven home, wiping any grin I might have had right off my face, by this sequence: note from Nadya waiting in my room, says “Fancy dinner? Front gate, 1900 hours? All yours, N.” Front gate, right on time, the black Land Cruiser pulls up. Nadya’s driving. I’m already in the seat, leaning toward kissing her, when I clue to her eyes. I fasten my seat belt instead, look in the rearview mirror. Allison’s in back.

“Hi, Terry. The reservation’s not till eight, so we’re going to just drive around a while and talk,” she says. Nadya’s already pulling out onto the blacktop, accelerating.

“Looks like I don’t have any choice.”

“Terry, first of all I have to say I’m sorry I blew up the other day. It was unprofessional. I’m embarrassed by it. Won’t even try to make up some excuse. There is no excuse.”

“Stuff happens sometimes. Forget about it,” I say. “I have.”

“You have?”

“Of course he has,” Nadya says. “A gentleman, Terry is. Quite gallant. I told you so.”

“Well, it’s bothering me anyway,” Allison says. “I’m not very tolerant of mistakes, least of all my own.”

“Look, Allison. I provoked you. Did it deliberately,” I
say. “I expected a reaction. I needed to know some things.”

“And did you learn them?”

“No.”

“Then here’s some information. Maybe it’s what you wanted. If not, say so.”

“Sounds good.”

“Oh,” Nadya says, “I’m sure I wouldn’t be so quick to put a value on it.”

“Okay, Terry. Westley gave you our approximate itinerary before he left,” Allison says. “That still stands, and the specifics are these: we fly out of here for Busan day after tomorrow, which is Thursday. All of us. In Busan, you’ll stay at Kim’s with your counterpart, while Nadya, Rob, and I take a hotel. The following Tuesday, you and Nadya will fly with Kim to Vladivostok. I’ll already be there, but you won’t see me. The evening you arrive, Kim’s having dinner with our generals. If that goes well, there’ll be a meeting and an exchange two nights later. Immediately upon exchange, you’ll accompany Kim to the airport and fly to Pyongyang. We don’t know yet how long he’ll need to stay there.”

“You and Nadya?” I ask.

“When we’ve seen Kim and you take off from Vlad, we’ll go commercial to Busan, wait for you there.”

“Where’s Westley in this picture?”

“Here and there. He likes to move by himself. Langley gives him a long leash. I’ll be in touch with him, but, honestly, I will not know his location at all times.”

“Okay. I’m cool with all this. I stay teamed with Sonny throughout, anything nasty develops during or after the exhange, I run with the package, get back to Busan. Troubles, I clue you with the burst transmitter. Need help, same drill. Real bad, panic button. Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Allison says, leaning forward and handing me a very small cell phone. “There’s a new protocol. If certain things go a certain way, I’m authorized to give you a certain order.”

“Sounds like a lot of uncertainty to me.” I mean this as a joke, I’m feeling better now that I’m clearer on where I’ll be and what I’ll be up to. But no reaction from Allison. Even Nadya looks serious, extra-intent on driving.

“A termination order,” Allison says. “Are you prepared for that?”

Why’s she so solemn? She knows my history as well as I do. “Sure, why not?” I say. It’s the answer she needs to hear, in just that tone. But it takes major effort to keep surprise and, yes, deep despair out of my voice. I can still rationalize killing someone in a fight or in combat, though I never feel as cold and guiltless about it as I once did. I cannot excuse or reconcile assassination. A dark, powerful dread that feels almost physical seizes my mind, squeezes hard. And all the suspicions and uncertainties turn fearsome.

“The phone vibrates, no ring. You hear me say ‘Bright,’ you terminate the name that follows.”

“Bright? That’s the go code? Kind of lame, Allison.” I’m maintaining, but just barely. The pressure—the fear—in my head increases.

“Bright, then a name. That’s it,” she says.

“So who’ll be giving this order, if certain things go a certain way?” I ask, trying desperately to relieve a very bad reality by turning it into a simple mechanical problem. “And are these certain things going to be visible to me, on the spot?”

“They will not be visible to you. I will be giving the order based on information I receive,” Allison says.

“And who,” I say, twisting in my seat to look her in
the face, “are you exactly? In the chain of command? Because that’s been real unclear lately.”