by Toby Neal
“Will she be able to tell this is gone?”
“There was an extra empty bottle in her kit. I filled it with liquid and substituted it.”
“But she might notice that one’s gone.”
“You will have to return the bottle to me as soon as you can, so I can put it back.” Kupa’s dark brown eyes were expressionless.
“Thank you. I wish there was more I could do, or say. I will find a way, as soon as I can, to do what must be done.”
“Three drops in each drink was what I gave Pim Wat’s plastic surgeons.” Kupa said. “More than that, and the poison might be detectable. Less than that, they could just be paralyzed, and not die.”
Connor nodded. “This is going to work.”
Kupa shrugged. “It will be what it will be.” There was a fatalistic note in her voice; she was prepared for death.
“Stay positive,” Connor said. “We’re going to get through this. Together.”
Kupa’s plump, collagen-filled lips formed a mirthless smile. “I know you will do your best.” She turned and slipped out the door.
Connor looked down at the bottle. Brown plastic, with a screw top—the type that aspirin came in before the label was applied.
He had asked the Master for a chess game tonight. Perhaps the chance to administer the poison would present itself, but in any case, he needed to find a way to remove the poison from the bottle, and carry it in to doctor their drinks or food less obviously than a palm-sized bottle half-full of clear liquid.
Connor went into the rustic bathroom, searching through the cabinet there for anything he could use to carry the poison in a more concealed way. Nothing. Being in the stone outhouse was like returning to the twelfth century. Perhaps Nam could find something appropriate in the kitchen. He rang for Nam; Kupa’s husband might as well know that the plan was a go.
Nam arrived more quickly than Connor had anticipated, his normally calm face crinkled with worry. “She brought it to you?”
“She did. But I need to transfer it to something less obvious.” Connor frowned down at the bottle in his hand. “I wish we could test it, first, too.”
“I have been catching rats near the kitchen. We could administer it to one of them.”
“Good idea. Why don’t you find me some sort of spice jar or other container, and bring up a rat when you return.” The ghost of a smile tugged at Connor’s mouth. “Though I don’t know how you’re going to explain that.”
“We trap the rats and put them outside,” Nam said with dignity. “We only kill humans in this compound.”
Connor smiled at the black humor. “I will wait for our test subject,” he said.
An hour or so later, Nam, Nine, and Connor were looking at a large, brownish gray rat in a wire trap. The creature wasn’t frightened; it sat on its haunches and cleaned its whiskers. “It’s downright fat,” Connor said.
“The cooks put scraps outside the kitchen door for the animals,” Nine said. “They all deserve to live; they are moving up the wheel of reincarnation.”
“I wonder where on the wheel the rat is.” Connor had transferred the poison to a small bottle of ear wax dissolver that Nine had found in the community medicine cabinet. He’d refilled the original bottle to the same height with water, and handed it to Nam. “Get this back to Kupa. See if she can replace it before tonight.”
“I will.” The man whisked the bottle into his garments.
Connor used the eyedropper to draw up the poison, and administered one droplet carefully to a lump of natural cane sugar. He put the lump into the cage through the entry hole at the top. The rat picked up the lump of sugar in its front paws, and ate it quickly.
A moment later, the animal keeled over without a sigh or a spasm. Nam, Connor, and Nine stared at it. “Seems dead.”
Nam lifted the rodent by the tail and waggled it back and forth. “The poison’s a paralytic,” he said. “I can’t tell if it’s still alive.”
“Check for a pulse,” Connor said.
Nam felt the fur under the animal’s jaw for a long moment. “Nothing.”
The three men look at each other. “I will find a way to serve them tea as soon as I can,” Connor said.
Chapter Thirty-One
Pim Wat
Day 7
Pim Wat looked out the window of the Yām Khûmkạn’s helicopter as it circled over her sister Malee’s adjoining properties on the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand. As always, old memories rose up as she looked at the run-down family compound where Sophie had been born. Pim Wat and Frank had raised her for her first twelve years of life, living in close quarters with Malee and her family, until their divorce and Sophie’s departure for boarding school.
Malee now lived in the adjoining house, separated from the original property by a tall fence with sharpened stakes at the top to prevent thieves. The contrast between the two dwellings was stark: Malee’s house was verdant with gardens and flowers, and brightly painted in culturally popular colors; but the property where the sisters had lived together during the time they were raising young children had fallen into disrepair. The plants in the yard had died without watering or care, and shingles and tiles were missing from the wooden roof.
The pilot circled the chopper and found an open area to land in the town square. Pim Wat took off her helmet and handed it to him. She tightened the scarf that concealed her hair, and exited the aircraft. One of the ninjas from the Yām Khûmkạn jumped out lightly behind her. She didn’t care to have an audience for what she was about to do, but the Master had insisted she always have a guard these days.
“I won’t be long,” she told the pilot. “Be back here in about an hour.”
She ducked away from the prop wash as the helicopter powered up to take off. She headed down the quiet street with its well-watered, ornamental orchid trees shading the road. This quiet area of Bangkok’s suburbs was no longer a fashionable neighborhood, but Pim Wat still liked the aesthetic of it, and the nearness of the mighty Ping River, visible beyond a dock area at the end of the street.
Pim Wat hadn’t called her sister to let her know she was coming, so she wasn’t surprised that it took a while for Malee to open the security gate and to admit her and her guard. “Sister! I am surprised to see you,” Malee said.
Pim Wat could smell Malee’s fear, and it made her smile. “I have been making the rounds of forgiveness,” Pim Wat said. “It’s your turn for a visit, Malee.”
“We did not part on good terms,” Malee said. “I’m glad to see you looking so well.”
“No thanks to you, foul betrayer,” Pim Wat said. Her eyes were hard on her sister’s soft, pretty face.
“That’s the Pim Wat I’ve always known. You’ve never been much of a one for forgiveness.” Malee narrowed her eyes. “My husband is due back any moment.”
“No, he isn’t. I’ve been monitoring you.” Pim Wat gestured toward the ninja lounging against the closed gate, looking around, his arms crossed on his chest. “Can we go inside? I’m thirsty.”
“Of course.” Malee made a visible effort to get her nerves under control.
Pim Wat’s sister wore an unfamiliar garment, a lovely fitted kaftan that touched the back of her knees. Pim Wat hadn’t seen her sister in over two years, and Malee had spent that time working on herself, it seemed. She had lost weight, her calves looked toned, and her bronze skin gleamed. “You’re looking well, sister,” Pim Wat said.
“As are you, Pim Wat, as I’m sure you know.” They had entered the house, and Malee slammed the door behind Pim Wat, flicking the deadbolt. She fisted her hands on her hips. “You don’t even look like yourself!” She hissed. “How dare you come here after what you tried to do to me!”
Pim Wat smiled. “I love it when a target makes my work easier.”
Malee’s shapely brows rose in consternation. “What do you mean?”
Looking at Malee’s face was, for Pim Wat, like looking at herself in the past. The softness and lack of definition that had made Malee
’s face different from Pim Wat’s was gone, likely through her sister’s dieting. Her features were sharper and more beautiful. The girls had been mistaken for twins when they were younger. “You should have lost weight a long time ago,” Pim Wat said.
“I want you to leave,” Malee said. “You tried to kill me last time we saw each other. I have nothing to say to you.”
“And you held me prisoner after stealing my grandchild from me,” Pim Wat said. “And then you colluded with my daughter in turning me over to the CIA. Do you have any idea what those two years were like for me, in their interrogation camp?”
Malee’s eyes dropped. Her hands flew to her cheeks. “I tried not to think about it, Pim Wat. I know you would rather have died. But you survived and overcame, as you always do.”
“It’s true. I am a phoenix,” Pim Wat said. “I’m very good at surviving situations like Guantánamo. Unfortunately for you.” She spun Malee and pushed her between the shoulder blades, shoving her towards the kitchen. “This won’t take long.”
“What are you going to do?” Malee’s voice had gone high with alarm. Pim Wat spotted Malee’s hand sliding into her pocket as she fumbled for her phone.
Pim Wat whipped the phone out of her sister’s pocket and threw it across the room. It broke with a crash against the frame of the large bay window lined with brocade pillows where Malee liked to read in the afternoon.
She pushed Malee again, and this time her sister fell to her knees with a cry, landing on the cool tile floor. Pim Wat jumped onto her back, pinning her down with a knee between her shoulder blades.
“Please, please, Pim Wat. We’re sisters,” Malee cried. “Have mercy!”
Pim Wat took a knife from her small waist pack. “I am having mercy. I’m not going to kill you.” She reached over and pulled a dish towel off of the nearby rack, and stuffed it in Malee’s mouth. “You might want to bite down on something. This is going to hurt.”
Malee screamed into the towel, her wail of agony only slightly muffled, as Pim Wat reached down and sawed through the Achilles tendon at the back of Malee’s ankle. Blood flowed freely. Malee flopped back and forth like a fish.
Pim Wat stood up. She walked over to the sink and rinsed her blade, wiping it clean on a fresh white linen towel. She tossed the towel to Malee. “Don’t worry. That’s all I’m going to do. But you’ll never walk normally again; just a little reminder that you shouldn’t have betrayed me.”
Malee curled up and applied the towel to her mutilated ankle, sobbing, as Pim Wat walked back to the front door.
“You’ll be fine,” she said. “We’ll go shopping next time I visit.” She shut the door and rejoined the ninja at the house’s gate. “Let’s go. I still have some time to browse the shops in the town square before the helicopter comes back.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sophie
Sophie set down the phone on the park bench beside her. She looked around the park, reorienting herself in time and space after the call with Connor. Anubis sat beside her, leaning gently against her leg, while Ginger nosed around the corners of the bench, making sure to mark every bit of it.
Off in the distance, a white egret picked its way across the smooth lawn, and a flock of mynah birds chattered loudly in the top of one of the nearby banyan trees. Beyond them, she could see the ocean, and a beautiful white boat sailing away somewhere.
If only she could get on a boat and sail away, if only there were some part of the world that was safe enough for her to hide in, with her children, with Armita. With Connor.
But refuges, anywhere in the world, were few for the likes of them. Maybe, by taking this next step, Sophie could expand that circle of safety just a little more.
She had just agreed to her own mother’s death.
Sophie breathed through a wave of nausea. Morning sickness. That’s what it was.
Sophie looked down at her phone, and scrolled to Marcella’s number. She called with a press of her thumb.
“Hey girl!” Marcella’s voice was upbeat. “The day’s still young. What are you up to?”
Sophie shook her head, and then remembered Marcella couldn’t see that gesture. “I don’t have time to talk, Marcella. I just called to let you know that Connor has agreed to try to do away with Pim Wat and the Master in return for immunity.”
A short, charged pause.
“That’s amazing.” Marcella’s voice was tight with excitement. “I didn’t really expect it to work.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s going to be able to do it.” Sophie’s stomach knotted with dread. “He says they are too dangerous, separately, to leave either one alive. Both have to be taken out at the same time, and the only thing he can offer the team is proof of death. But he did offer to kill them for you.”
Marcella was silent.
Sophie cleared her throat. “They’re planning to kill me, Marcella. They each had different reasons for wanting me dead. Mother wants revenge because I turned her over to the CIA. And the Master thinks I’m a distraction to Connor and his duties at the compound. But, they want my children. Pim Wat plans to kill me after my baby is born.”
Marcella cursed. Sophie could almost see her friend’s vigorous Italian hand gestures to go with her colorful language. “This must be really hard, Sophie.” Marcella’s voice softened. “I can’t imagine how painful. But you know your mother isn’t right in the head. She isn’t wired to love anybody in a normal way. It’s not your fault.”
“I know that.” Yet the voice of the depression argued: Your own mother wants you dead; you’re not worth loving. You’re cursed. How could one person have so much bad luck?
“You should make an appointment with Dr. Wilson. Talk it through. Promise me you will.”
“Yes. I will. But I have to go now. Tell the team what Connor said. He said he would provide the proof of their death in our chat box when it was done. He doesn’t want us communicating anymore for safety reasons.”
“I love you, Sophie. I’m so sorry about your mother.”
“She’s not dead yet.” Sophie ended the call. She slid the phone back into her pocket and stood up from the bench. Marcella might have been saying, “I’m sorry,” because it sucked to have a mother like Pim Wat.
That was certainly an understatement.
Sophie might not survive it.
Sophie headed into the office. She had spent most of the morning dealing with her personal business, and it was past time she dug into the computers that Leede and Raveaux had left for her in their makeshift lab.
Sitting down in the dim basement in front of the next computer she needed to dig through was a relief to Sophie’s frayed emotions. Once she was “wired in” to her classical music and the threads of the keywords she was searching using the DAVID program, her conscious mind seemed to turn off. She was pure logic: sorting, noting, following, manipulating—her brain pinging with messages of irregularities among numbers and traces.
No messy emotion marred her focus.
She was getting closer to finding someone who had activated an auto deduction system from the bank account of Kama`aina Schools’ main budget, and found a way to hide small withdrawals under a variety of expense accounts.
Maybe she could identify all the categories that the deductions were occurring under, but it would be more efficient to pass that piece of it to Leede. Sophie punted those threads into a subcache for the other investigator.
Sophie needed to track where the money was going. Once they found that link, hopefully, they could trace it to whomever was accessing that account. Sophie hunched forward, her fingers flying as she hacked the bank’s central server, her soul relieved to flee matters of the heart.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Raveaux
Day 7
The next morning, Raveaux sat in the consultation chair in front of Heri Leede’s desk, one ankle cocked over his knee. He slid one of Gita’s old bookmarks between the pages of his Jack Reacher paperback, as his new investigative partner wa
lked into her office.
“I see you’re making yourself right at home.” Leede went behind her desk and sat down.
Raveaux tucked the book inside his jacket pocket. “I was five minutes early. I let myself in. I hope that’s all right.”
“Shows that you know your way around a pair of lockpicks, and that I need a little more security around here.” Leede was annoyed, but trying not to show it.
“I apologize. You have nothing to worry about from me,” Raveaux said gently. “I will wait in the hall next time.”
Leede took off her ridiculous little plaid pork pie hat and tossed it, with perfect aim, onto the hook of a freestanding coatrack. “It’s fine. I’ll have a key made for you.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“But maybe I want you to have a key.” Leede leaned back in her chair. She spun back and forth, eyeing him. “Sophie rang me while I was on the way over. She has a couple of leads for us to follow up on. The first is the name of the bank, and the account number, where the deposits are being skimmed into. She is really very good at what she does.” Leede flicked on her computer. Weary shadows that even her rhinestone-edged glasses could not conceal, showed under her bright blue eyes in the monitor’s glare.
“Did my dinner not agree with you?” Raveaux asked. “Did you sleep badly?”
Leede took off the glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Just shoot me now, if I can’t stay up for a few hours past my bedtime drinking wine with a handsome man. Besides, I had a whole day to recover.”
“I enjoyed it,” Raveaux surprised himself by saying. “You’re good company.”
“And your cooking was superb. I’m sure Sophie thought so too, even though she left early.” Leede formed a little pyramid with the tips of her fingers and stared at him over them. “Are you interested in Sophie? Am I wasting my time flirting with you?”