No Way Back (19 page)

“Darling,” I say, “I know the timing’s awkward, but when all this is over…if I come back…will you marry me? Be the mother of my child?”

“Oh, Terry! This is so sort of…bad World War Two film. But you don’t look a bit like David Niven in an RAF uniform, your accent’s deplorable. Worse, you’ve used that exact line before. You’re gifted, but your repertoire is, well, limited.”

“Even in the love scenes?”

“We won’t speak of those. It simply isn’t done,” she
says, so fake prim she makes herself chuckle. “And how’s a girl to know, when her experience is so limited?”

“Easy enough to broaden it, if the girl was inclined to.”

“You tease! You flirt! Offering what you can’t deliver.”

“I can’t?”

“Time, darling. We have so little now. But when all this is over…if you come back…”

I’m a sucker for mocking from the Nadyas of the world, and this one knows it, keeps it up awhile, temporarily driving away any lingering bad vibes from the scene in the suite. Whether for my benefit or her own isn’t clear and doesn’t matter.

Eventually she segues gracefully into tales of Vlad, strictly travelogue, nothing mission-related. Says I’ll feel depressed there at first, but not to worry; everybody always finds Russian cities depressing. With reason, as I’ll see. Something not easily defined, a mix of decay and new money spent tastelessly and wastefully. Exudes a very Third World feeling.

“How Third World, you’re wondering?” she says. “Well, it’s rather late in the season, but if you have an urge to walk barefoot on the sands of lovely Sportivnaya Beach, do not!”

“Why not?” I ask.

“Absolutely infested with larvae of intestinal worms, so tiny they burrow in through the pores of your skin. Ah, but once they reach your gut, they grow and grow. Half a meter or more!”

“Right. That gives me the picture. Third World.”

After we’ve eaten, she links her arm through mine, walks me out between the sailor-suited boys at the doors.

“I know what’s part of the hospitality package at Mister Kim’s,” she says, not mockingly but certainly mock-serious only. “Don’t you dare touch one of those dirty
shamless sluts, Terry. It would break my fragile heart if you proved untrue.”

She’s laughing as I get into the car, still parked at that blocking angle to the curb, though the limo somehow managed to get away. And so am I. If Nadya’s got a heart, it’s probably at least part stone. But her mind, yeah, her mind is one I could love madly, truly. In fact, I already do, dammit.

I try emptying my mind on the long drive back to Kim’s. Manage to jettison a couple of doubts, a file of suspicions, a few desires and memories and some other junk that’s been piling up there lately. Don’t pay any attention to the traffic snarl, the snaking crowds of pedestrians downtown, the massive waves of apartment buildings that flow up the valleys between hills. Soon I’m in a calm, clear zone, the kind I frequently seek but don’t reach as often as I’d like. I’m barely aware when the car stops. I look out. It’s a moment or two before I realize we’ve reached Kim’s place.

Guess that’s why Sonny’s able to blindside me soon as I go in through the staff entrance.

“Why you people trying to mess with Mistah Kim, huh?” he barks, gripping my left bicep. “What shit you people pulling?”

“Let go of me, Mister Park. Right now, please,” I say. “Do that, and I will answer any questions I have answers for.”

“You better have answers, Mistah Prentice, or people goin’ down pretty soon,” Sonny says. But he releases my arm. “Mistah Kim, he’s very disturbed. That Westley, he call him here, say we gotta go Vlad right away. Don’t know why, Mistah Kim don’t tell me, just say get ready, we going tomorrow morning.”

Oh fuck, I’m thinking. Allison caved. But I take too long for Sonny.

“What’s this hurry-up shit? Bad, bad. Better stick to plan. Always better, stick to plan. Answer, Mistah Prentice.”

“I don’t know anything about Westley calling here.”

“You better know something. ’Cause it gets worse. Short time after Westley phone, that Miss Allison call. She say to Mistah Kim she talk to Westley, plan stays same-same. Mistah Kim, he don’t like any of this. Wants to know how come you people say one thing, then say another. Not the way Mistah Kim like to do business. Not the way I like, either. Bad, bad. Some kinda troubles for sure.”

“Listen, Sonny, it’s a misunderstanding.” I give him a slanted description of the scene with Allison, casting it as Westley hearing from the Russians they’d like to push up the meeting a couple of days, then asking Allison if that would be possible. She decides it is not possible. She decides we stay on the original schedule. And she’s in charge.

“That woman in charge? Not Westley?” Sonny’s voice is heavily doubtful. “First I hear about that. Here’s Mistah Kim’s message. You get that Westley to tell him what’s going on. And you get that fuckin’ woman up here to explain everything pretty quick. Better be good. Or Mistah Kim, he say he don’t go nowhere with you people. Nowhere. Never.”

I PHONE IN THE MESSAGE TO NADYA, NOT ALLISON. I
figure I’ve already pushed that one within an eyelash of kill-the-messenger mode; any more from me might be seen as active coconspiracy, provoke a strong, wrong reaction. “Oh dear. Very messy,” Nadya says, not bothering to ask why I picked her. She knows why. She’ll pass it on.

All I can do, meantime, is wait.

That gets spooky, fast. I expect some faint buzz, some hint of random static, at least that almost imperceptible tightening of the air you somehow sense before a big thunderstorm.

But there’s nothing. Kim’s place feels as tranquil as a Zen monastery. I sit there in the staff lounge for a long time. Don’t see Sonny, don’t see any Lees or Parks or Lees, don’t hear any phones ringing, any doors slamming, any Lincolns pulling into the drive, or pulling away.

I begin to believe everyone’s vanished, that I’m the only live body in the place.

I go into the staff kitchen, make myself a pot of cof
fee, take it back to the lounge, sip on the first cup while I check out the DVD library. A couple of shelves of martial-arts thrillers from the Far East’s Hollywood—Hong Kong. Not up for that, even though they always have a large laugh factor, fighters soaring impossibly through the air courtesy of special effects. Tucked away behind one set of discs, I find a porno cache, Thai-made. Definitely not in the mood for watching exquisite Thai girls, maybe fourteen years old, maybe a lot younger, pretending to enjoy humiliating sex acts with grown men, probably dogs and other animals, too. Even thinking about what’s on those DVDs makes me feel disgusted, angry.

Zero interest in the CD racks. And there aren’t any books in sight.

I go up one level. Nobody in the pool, nobody using the exercise machines. Feels like nobody ever does, maybe never has. The place doesn’t want me.

So I go down to my room, unholster the Wilson and the XD, remove the Korth from my special briefcase. Unload, check chambers, start carefully wiping down the Wilson with a silicon cloth. And stop abruptly; my tools are already free of dust, oily fingerprints, any blemishes at all. As clean as if they’d just come from the box. Reload, reholster, shut the Korth away. Kick off my shoes, lie down on the bed, hands clasped behind my head. Tense, then relax every muscle group I’ve got, starting with my feet and working up to my neck.

When I’m loose enough, I decide to try eyelid movies. Usually a pleasant enough way of filling empty time, especially if I begin with something sweet and recent. Like that night with Nadya, her eyes on mine as we made love. Cue up the mental tape, start. But something’s off, it won’t track. Damn. Nothing but gray horizontal bands, not even scrolling but jerking fast from bottom to
top. No sound, either. Just an aroma, some mix of wild honeysuckle and musk. Or the idea of such a scent; you cannot really ever recall smells, reexperience them the way you sometimes do touches and sights and voices.

Voices especially. Now, those you can frequently hear almost as clearly as if they’d been digitally recorded in your brain, even without a visual. I let go as much as I can, wait to see what voices might come.

That starts random, fractured, does a quick devolve to disorienting, then nightmarish.

“Any bored troubles just hanging out with nothing to do, they say, ‘Hey, there’s always Luther. Let’s go see him. He likes it.’”

“Wake up every morning, nothin’ but a blank facing you. Dead hours. Lot’s of ’em.”

“Pink mist! No head no more, Serb pig.”

“You’re a lying son of a bitch, Luther. You’re going on a job.”

“No one available I trust not to dump or waste the package if there’s an incident.”

Each distinct, the real thing in tone, timbre, pitch. Then here comes some devil’s chorus, everybody trying to shout everybody else down, demanding to tell of the terrible, soul-sickening things Luther Ewing’s seen and done: Light the fuckers up! I piss on your grave, little brother. C’mon, rock the fuckin’ casbah. No son of mine who goes merc can expect to be welcome in my house. Gunny numbah ten, Luther numbah one.

Orchestra starts roaring up out the background, no melody, raw noise: AKs sounding like corn popping extraloud in the microwave, timpani boom of my .45 as I cap someone, high laughter of a little kid dashing across the street, the heartbreaking, soggy slap of a bullet sprawling the kid into a blood pool, crack of the Serb sniper’s Dragunov that did it. Huge crescendo of RPG
explosions, fast sort of snip-snip-snip of M4s doing three-round bursts into flesh, a man’s girly scream squelched to a gargle as a piano-wire garotte tightens around his neck, the flat pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop of my MP5 on full auto, hosing a dozen kneeling, wailing Iraqi soldiers. AK corn-popping mixes with snare-drum reply from M16s. Howls and shouts, some hoarse and urgent, some agonized. Screams, wails, a thousand screams at once. And then a smell, a real smell, sickening-sweet blood mixed with burnt powder and hot grease.

Lying there, my whole being twists with regret and shame and horror at what I was, things I did. My stomach revolts, sharp pains stab up and down my chest, the overpowering sour burn as I swallow my own vomit before it can spew.

All at once I’m sitting up, drenched in something, eyes stinging and blurred. Barrel of the Wilson’s pointing at a figure of a man silhouetted by a door frame. Pull or not? Don’t know.

“Mistah Prentice? Hey, Mistah Prentice. You don’t wanna point that this way. Man, you looking sick as hell, Mistah Prentice.” It’s Sonny. Aw shit. Where the fuck have I been? How long was I there? I lower my pistol.

“That’s good, very good, Mistah Prentice. You need a doctor maybe?” Sonny says. I swipe at my face, hand comes away wet and salty. Shirt front’s wet, sticking to my chest.

“Nah, not sick. Not sick.”

“You sure, Mistah Prentice? Maybe I better get doctor, just check.”

“Think I dozed off.”

“Hunh.” Sonny moves near to the bed, watches as I holster the Wilson. Then he lays the back of one big
hand against my forehead for an instant. “No fever. Demon sleep, I think.”

“Say what?”

“Me, once in a while, same-same. Take a little nap, all kind of hell hit my brain. Demon shit. Wake up sweaty, shaky.”

“How real is it, when it happens to you?”

Sonny grunts. “Too damn real. That’s the problem. Realer than real. Demon shit. Gotta be. ’Cause nothing worse than real stuff.”

“Oh man,” I sigh, shaking my head.

“Hard to believe demons never visit you before, Mistah Prentice.”

“Not these kind,” I say.

“Me, I get right up, take a real hot shower, put on fresh clothes, pretty soon everything all right, everything normal then. You try that, Mistah Prentice. Okay? You do that, you feeling right after that, come to the lounge. Okay?”

“Yeah. Sure. It’s what I’ll do.”

“Demon sleep, that fucker ambush everybody sometime. Don’t mean nothin’, Mistah Prentice.”

“Nothin’,” I say. “Walk on.”

“Ho! What my father always sayin’. Long time before I understand. Once I do, I know he’s right, damn straight.”

The water that sluices the soap off my body somehow sluices the demons from my mind, too. Towel down, put on fresh skivvies, clean starched shirt, different suit. Feel like I’m a new man. But I do not look at my eyes in the mirror. Got a sense I need a longer interval before I’m up to that. So I just go into the lounge, grabbing and popping a bottle of Red Rock on the way.

Sonny’s lying on one of the sofas, no suit coat, tie loosened at the neck, sipping his bottle when I come in, sit opposite him.

“You good now, Mistah Prentice?” he asks.

“Never better.”

That draws a Buddha smile. “Hunh. Not sure about that ‘never.’ But maybe everybody, they at least a little better than two, three hours ago.”

“Yeah? Something go down I should know about? You sure weren’t feeling your usual cheerful self two, three hours ago.”

“Had damn good reasons. What goes down? I don’t know what, exactly. Guess only. Think maybe that Westley, he call back. Think maybe that Allison thing, she some kind of witch, come up here, meet with Mistah Kim, talk long time. Anyway, Mistah Kim calm down now. He say to me we stayin’ with original plan.”

“That’s good.”

“Maybe not, but anyway better than that switch shit.” Sonny looks at me awhile. “Tell you somethin’, your ears only, right?”

“Nobody else’s.”

“Me, I never feel happy about this trip. Worries me, Mistah Kim being okay with it.”

“Yeah, you’ve conveyed that before. Maybe you worry too much. What can anyone throw at us in Vlad that you and me can’t handle? Who’s gonna be dumb enough to try to ride the tiger?”

“Russkis that dumb.”

“They are, we eat ’em up. Yum.”

“Damn straight. They don’t trouble me so much. CIA fucks worry me lots. And then it’s just me. Very sorry ’bout that, but you one of them, Mistah Prentice.”

“Not one of them. I told you that before. Just working for them.”

“Same-same. I work for Mistah Kim, you work for them.”

“Not the same at all. You got loyalties to Mistah Kim.
Maybe you owe him. Your ears only? I got loyalties only to whoever’s a friendly, whoever sticks real tight with me in a situation, understand?”

Sonny nods, but I don’t know if he’s really getting it.

“I owe Westley and Allison and the rest nothing, least of all loyalty,” I say. “Same as the army. One obligation only: absolute total loyalty to the guys holding your flanks in the fight. Stay loyal, stay in the fight no matter what, until the enemy’s dead, or you are. Fuck anything else.”

“Some kind of philosopher, Mistah Prentice. Pretty good words. Me, I’m hoping we don’t have to find any hard way how true.”

Difficult to make any credible response to that. He won’t believe a new truth: at this point, he’s the person I trust most, suspect least, in the whole damn outfit. Even if it isn’t mutual. So I punt.

“My best guess, Sonny? We’re going to fly in, Mister Kim’s gonna do his business with the Russians, maybe drink a little vodka, eat some Beluga. Then we go see his good friends in Pyongyang. And pretty damn soon you and me will be right back here, laughing and wondering why we even bothered carrying all those guns.”

Sonny chuckles. “Yeah, turns out like that, joke’s on Sonny, Mistah Prentice. Be one time I’m glad big joke on me, for sure.”

“So. We’re on schedule. Two nights free. What about your promise?”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, some guy calling himself Sonny, looked a lot like you, was talking real big about how fine Korean girls were, Busan-side. Swore he’d prove it to me. I believed him.”

“Big joke on you, for sure,” Sonny says seriously. Then he laughs, sits up. “Got some inspiration, Mistah Prentice. Mistah Kim, he staying in tonight with girl
friend. I got the night off. What say you, me, we go get laid? I know this one place, really great.”

Sonny hasn’t driven more than a half a klick from Kim’s when I feel all wrong. I do not want to do this. I cannot do it.

“I’ve changed my mind, Sonny. No offense, but think we could just go back to Mister Kim’s? That be okay with you?”

He looks long at me, something like relief in those dark hard black eyes. “You sure? I make promise, I always keep it.”

“I believe that. But I’d be grateful if we gave this one a miss.”

“Okay, then,” Sonny says, hanging a sudden U-turn that barely misses causing a multicar crash. He is glad to be rid of an obligation he wasn’t keen on; he starts humming as we head back toward Kim’s, and pretty soon he’s cheerfully singing
“Lord lord, lord lord…All over the world…all over the world…”

“John Lee Hooker addict!” I say. “Who would’ve thought that?”

Sonny bobs his head, grins. I know which type for sure: he’s a little embarrassed I’ve discovered a secret of his, almost as if it’s some kind of vice. “Got every CD the man ever made,” he says. “Listen a lot, never make me sad. Why they call music like that ‘blues,’ Terry? Don’t blue me.”

“Just the name of a style, tunes all based on three chords,” I say, very aware and pleased with his form of addressing me. Good sign. “Lot of ’em are pure love songs. Sad-sounding, if you’re in a certain mood. But they got a happy side: the world’s rich with women, and there’s always a chance you’ll get together with a good one.”

“Damn straight. Where we be without good women?”

“Wishing we’d never been born,” I say. “Lucky for us, we never would be born, without women in the world.”

“Some kinda philosopher, that’s you for sure. Maybe you oughta change jobs, write some books.”

“What? There’s too much bullshit all over as it is. And you know you can’t believe anything you read. You gotta know the man that’s telling the tale, trust him, and hear it from his mouth.”

“Ah. Maybe that’s why I like John Lee very much. Me, I don’t believe he bullshittin’ one bit.”

“Doesn’t even know the meaning of the word,” I say.

Pretty soon we pull into Mister Kim’s compound, Sonny just waving at the Lee or Park or Lee stationed at the gate. But he doesn’t turn off the engine, even after I’ve climbed out.

I lean back in. “You’re not coming? You got someplace else you need to be?”

“Oh yeah, Terry. Home,” Sonny says. “Any night, any day I’m off duty, I go home. See my wife, my little boy. Good woman I got. My little boy, he something very special. Very fine son. Pretty soon, very fine daughter, too. Six, eight weeks only, she pop out. My wife, she’s patient. Me, I can’t wait to see her.”

“Hey, good luck,” I say, shutting the car door. But Sonny doesn’t pull away. Instead, he leans over to the open passenger window, motions me close. “Still early, Terry. Maybe you like to come see my little boy? Meet my wife?” he says.

At that moment, there’s nothing I’d like more.

Sonny lives in a new middle-class high-rise not ten minutes from Kim’s compound. The moment he swings open his apartment door, a whirling dervish about three feet tall with arms and legs thin as sticks comes hurtling across the living room and leaps up into his father’s
arms. He’s bright-eyed, piping rapid Korean I can’t follow. Sonny just beams at the boy, then hoists him onto his shoulders. A pleasant-looking woman, maybe late twenties and as pregnant as can be, waddles out of what must be the kitchen, wearing the broadest grin. Which narrows, turns shy when she spots me. Sonny walks over to her, the boy still on his shoulders, kisses her on the cheek, murmurs something in Korean. She nods, and her smile regains most of its radiance. She bows to me, goes back to the kitchen.