by Lee Stone
‘Especially if you can’t walk away from a story?’
Lockhart held up his hands in concession.
‘Maybe,’ he smiled. ‘It’s a weakness.’
Marie held his gaze and said: ‘It’s a strength. It was always your strength.’
She looked at him, remembering Evanko, the man who had changed everything for Lockhart. She remembered the death squad who came to London looking for him and how Lockhart had published Evanko’s story, anyway. Evanko had been the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lockhart had been the guy who was brave enough to line up alongside him.
‘What’s her name, this drug runner?’
‘Matilda,’ Lockhart said. ‘The girl who died in Kep was her twin. Matilda was in trouble and they’d switched identities to dodge a bullet.’
‘How?’ Marie asked.
Lockhart breathed out. Marie was what every good editor should be; a perfect blend of ally and cynic.
‘She was planning to leave Cambodia using her sister’s passport. The guy she was delivering to has friends at the airport and she wanted to slip back without being noticed.’
‘Why?’ Marie said. ‘What does she gain by coming back to New York without them knowing?’
It was a good question.
‘She left this suitcase at JFK before she flew,’ he said. ‘She picked it up when she came back.’
Marie looked at the black case Lockhart had dragged into the newsroom with him.
‘She came back so she could keep whatever’s in that case?’
‘That’s one possibility,’ Lockhart said. ‘But I don’t think that’s it. She has a dark line across her stomach. I saw it on the plane on the way out. It’s a linea nigra. She was pregnant, not so long ago. Why would a new mum take a risk like that? And why would she travel across the world without her new-born kid?’
Marie felt a twinge in her stomach.
‘Maybe she lost the baby,’ she said logically. ‘Or gave it up for adoption. Or lost it to a partner. I can think of reasons.’
‘What if that’s how they made her take the case though?’ Lockhart said. ‘What if the reason she put her sister in danger was because she was facing the even worst prospect of them having taken her child?’
‘Possible,’ Marie said. ‘But hardly conclusive.’
‘She’s a bright woman,’ Lockhart said. ‘Imagine some drug gang takes her kid to force her to do the job. She has to go through with it, or she’s putting the kid in danger. But she’s petrified that she’ll get caught at customs and spend the first few years of her child’s life in a US jail, or worse still she’ll get caught in Cambodia and never come home. So she leaves the suitcase at the airport, flies out to Cambodia for a few days on her own passport, but meets her sister in Kep. Then using her sister’s passport, she slips past the gang and back into the US…’
‘… so they don’t know she’s coming.’
Lockhart smiled.
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘She’s found a gun from somewhere and she’s planning to get her baby back. Which is why I’ve got to find her.’
Marie looked intrigued.
‘So what’s in the case?’ she asked. ‘Cash?’
‘Yup,’ Lockhart said. The soft reflection of the streetlights below turned the ceiling green to red. ‘And an empty box.’
Marie Sanders thought about it.
‘I like the empty box,’ she said, sounding intrigued. ‘What’s it for?’
Lockhart shrugged.
‘I don’t know. Matilda said she heard the gang talking about crack, but I can’t make that stack up any more than you can.’
‘Okay,’ Marie said. ‘So who’s running the show?’
‘A guy called Ta Penh. It was one of his men who killed Matilda’s sister.’
‘How do you know that?’
Lockhart’s face darkened as he remembered the alleyway behind the Rabbit bar and the two men who had died there.
‘Because I caught up with him afterwards,’ he said quietly.
Marie looked at him from across the table, smart enough not to ask him what had happened. She wondered what the years on the road had done to him. Wondered how much he had changed.
‘I met a lawyer in Cambodia who said Ta Penh has been hidden away in the mountains since the revolution went pear-shaped,’ Lockhart continued. ‘But suddenly last week he suddenly reappeared and started chasing us across the country. They way I see it, if you’re running a global smuggling franchise, you expect to lose cash from time to time. But Ta Penh has never come looking for money in the past. He’s always stayed hidden. Which makes me think this isn’t about the money. It’s about whatever was supposed to be in that box. And it must be important to bring him out of hiding.
‘And whoever took it from the case must have known it was valuable, else why take it but leave thousands of dollar bills behind?’ Marie added.
‘I need to get online,’ Lockhart remembered. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Be my guest,’ Marie said, and she pushed her laptop across the desk. Suddenly, Lockhart felt full of energy and purpose. Marie watched him, the same Lockhart she had known all that time ago, like the last year had never happened to either of them.
‘It’s our story if it comes off though,’ she added. ‘That’s the deal.’
‘Sure,’ Lockhart said. ‘But the usual rules apply, if you don’t mind. No publishing until I’m long gone. Fair?’
‘Sure,’ Marie said. ‘Deal.’
40
Ten minutes later, Ruslen Elm watched Lockhart move through the newsroom, the stranger apparently unfazed by the surrounding chaos. Banks of plasma screens were showing rushes from cell phone videos and traffic cameras while reporters yelled pleas and instructions across the floor. Before long, Lockhart had reached the glass wall that separated the newsroom from the world it was constantly reporting.
‘So much for goodbyes,’ Elm said. ‘Do you think he’ll make it back tonight?’
‘Who knows,’ Marie smiled, watching him go. ‘I hope so. Took him a year last time. He had to skip town.’
Elm looked at her.
‘Long story,’ she said when Elm opened his mouth to ask her about it. ‘Too long for tonight.’
Elm took the hint and changed tack.
‘What do you think about Pelham Heights?’ he said, shuffling the print outs from Glinka’s computer on the desk until they made a tidy pile. Marie watched him.
‘I think Lockhart’s right,’ she said.
‘Just because we hit an address in New York with his theory about grid numbers?’
‘No. Just because he’s always right.’
‘Nobody’s always right.’
Marie pushed back in her chair.
‘Ruslen, are you feeling sore because Lockhart spotted something you missed?’
Elm stopped shuffling and looked at her.
‘Something we both missed,’ he said.
She held his gaze and after a moment he smiled and said, ‘Whatever. Maybe I’m a bit sore.’
‘Well, don’t be,’ Marie said. ‘I worked with Lockhart in London. Never knew anyone with instincts like his.’
‘Such great instinct that he’s been on the run for a year?’
Marie sighed and stood up. She walked across the room and poured coffee from a steaming pot. Caffeine and refined sugar. Elm’s only vices, from what she could work out.
‘Sit down, Ruslen,’ she said.
Elm did as he was told and eased himself cautiously into the seat Lockhart had vacated moments earlier. Marie swung back around behind him with the coffee, nudging the door closed with her foot as she passed. Elm heard the latch click closed and raised an eyebrow as his editor returned to her chair. She watched the shipwrecked sky for a moment before taking a deep breath.
‘My predecessor made a lot of good decisions in his time,’ she began. ‘But getting rid of the liquor cabinet from this boardroom was not one of them. Moments like these require brandy. I’ve been
around long enough to remember the days when newspapers were fuelled by the stuff.’
Ruslen Elm raised his coffee cup.
‘Next best thing,’ he said.
‘God bless you for being so easily pleased,’ she said. ‘Ruslen, do you remember the Pulitzer party we threw last year?’
‘I remember it until about midnight,’ he said. ‘I get a little hazy after that.’
She smiled.
‘How long have you been on the paper?’
‘Four years.’
‘How many Pulitzer parties have you been to during that time?’
Elm looked confused.
‘Just the one,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘Because during that time Charlie Lockhart has won two all by himself.’
Elm stopped and looked at Marie, leaving his coffee cup hovering an inch from his lips.
‘Nobody wins two Pulitzers.’
‘Not strictly true,’ Marie said. ‘But I grant you Lockhart’s a rare breed. That’s why I trust his instinct.’
Elm nodded and lowered his cup.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I get that. So, why’d he go missing for a year?’
‘Stop speaking in the past tense,’ Marie said. ‘He’s still missing. He’s missing right now. And neither you nor I have seen him, you understand?’
Elm raised his hands up in surrender to Marie’s firm tone.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘No problem. Who’s he running from?’
Marie wondered how much to tell him.
‘We ran a story on the London Times about voting irregularities in a small region of Ukraine. It was inside pages stuff, nothing earth shattering, but it chimed with a couple of British stories that were doing the rounds at the time, and so there was a certain zeitgeist about it and the Times published. Two weeks later, Lockhart gets a call from a guy in London called Mykola Evanko. He makes wild claims about the corruption being far deeper than we had reported and offering evidence that strings were being pulled from the very heart of government.’
‘Could he stand it up?’
‘Yes. Spectacularly so, as it turned out.’
‘What happened?’
‘Lockhart got a call from Mykola’s wife, saying he was feeling unwell.’
‘As in cold feet unwell?’
‘No. As in his hair fell out and his organs began to fail.’
‘Shit,’ Elm said. ‘What happened?’
‘Someone poisoned him with Polonium 210,’ Marie said. ‘We only learned about it afterwards. You ever heard of it?’
Elm shook his head.
‘It’s a radioactive isotope, and it’s a nasty way to go. It’s almost impossible to treat, and it works slowly so that whoever administers it has plenty of time to get away.’
‘Who can get their hands on material like that, let alone smuggle it into the country?’ Elm asked, pushing his glasses a little higher up the bridge of his nose.
‘The smuggling’s easy. Polonium-210 hardly gives off enough alpha waves to get through a piece of paper. It doesn’t set off standard radiation detectors. But once it’s in your body, it kicks the shit out of you.’
She said the last bit quietly. Elm watched her shoulders fall, and for a moment he guessed she was back in London, reliving whatever part she had played in Evanko’s demise.
‘The first bit,’ she said eventually, ‘the who of it all? That’s not too hard to fathom out either. There’s only a short list of suspects, because you need your own nuclear reactor to manufacture polonium-210. So if someone dies that way, it’s state sponsored. Russia makes more of the stuff than anyone else, but Ukraine had produced enough to kill Evanko.’
‘Did Lockhart prove it?’
Marie shook her head.
‘You don’t get to prove who fired a bullet while it’s flying straight at you. It wasn’t the first time Lockhart had put himself in harm’s way, but this was something serious. A security team from MI5 turned up at More Square two days after they isolated Evanko. They told Lockhart they believed the person who poisoned Evanko was still in London, and that Lockhart was in line. The Times backed him to go into hiding, and MI5 set him up with a new passport which he’s been traveling on ever since.’
‘Nice way to see the world, until the money runs out,’ Elm said.
‘Unless you’re leaving your family behind,’ Marie said. ‘Not so great then, huh?’
Elm whistled low.
‘He’s never been back for them?’
‘He can’t. MI5 thought they’d be used as collateral, so they were taken into a domestic protection scheme. There’s good evidence that the kill team is still after Lockhart, the vindictive bastards. Lockhart won’t go back to England in case he takes the trouble home with him. He even leaves them clues to keep them coming after him, to keep them away from England. That’s why he still publishes stuff.’
‘Poor guy,’ Elm said. ‘All that time knowing your family’s waiting, but not daring to go near them. It’s like spending a year with a splinter just under your skin.’
‘The management at The Times told him they’d sit on the report, crack open his pension pot and wire out a reasonable chunk of cash four times a year,’ Marie said. ‘But Lockhart refused to leave unless they published the story. The last call he made from the office was to Evanko’s family. He didn’t want them to hear the news of Mykola’s death from a stranger. When he was done, he sent me a four-word text, left his cell phone on his desk, and disappeared. He slipped out past MI5 and made his own way out of the country.’
‘What was the text?’ Elm asked, intrigued.
Marie smiled.
‘It was Latin,’ she said. ‘You ever get a text in Latin?’
Elm shook his head.
‘I’m not moving in the right circles, I guess. What did it say?’
‘Fiat justitia ruat caelum.’
She took a sip of her coffee, waiting to see whether Elm could translate. It wasn’t a test. Not exactly.
‘That’s a classy exit line,’ Elm said. ‘Let justice be done though the heavens fall.’
Marie looked impressed.
‘Exactly right, Mr. Elm,’ she said. ‘We’ll make an editor of you yet.’
41
Lockhart found the cafeteria on the fourteenth floor and grabbed a corner table. The place was deserted, and the lights were dimmed. The air smelled of coffee and carbs; the time-honored fuel of late night reporting. A self-serve Costa machine the size of a wardrobe hummed noisily on the other side of the room and eventually Lockhart gave way to temptation. He leaned back in his chair and waited for the drink to cool, rubbing his knuckles into his eyes until stars appeared below the far-off ceiling. Beyond the soaring double height windows the storm raged on, hailstones pulsing at the glass.
He took a gulp of the mocha, pulled open Marie’s laptop and fired up Google. For a moment, the page blurred in front of him and he thought about how long it had been since he slept. He’d managed a few hours over the Atlantic, but the plane had touched down at JFK eight hours ago and a lot had happened since then. He ran a hand through his hair and felt the dull ache where the baseball bat had connected with his skull, and in the warm yellow glow the urge to sleep wrapped around him like a duvet. Slowly the website came into focus, and he remembered Matilda, somewhere out in the storm. He was a journalist. He knew how to find people. He would find Matilda Braganza. He just hoped he could find her before she did something stupid.
If he was right, if someone had taken her child, then she was somewhere out in the cold with a gun and a plan to get her baby back. But it would be a bad plan, clouded by a mother’s longing and a sister’s grief. Matilda was smart and determined, but her head was full of revenge and regret. The people she was hunting were criminals. Drug dealers. Gang members. They’d chew her up. He shook his head in frustration and began typing.
Googling NYC and Kep only delivered results about a jewelry store on the Upper East Side and nothing about underworld gangs and drug cartels. Lockhart
wasn’t surprised. But he knew from experience that it was best to start with the obvious stuff and then dig deeper. He thought about what Matilda had told him. About the bar she had worked in on Amsterdam. Typed in Amsterdam and Cambodia, but that just returned a load of Trip Advisor pages. Lockhart rubbed his eyes again and settled back into his chair. His spine clicked into place and he took a breath before immersing himself into the research. For the hell of it, he typed Cambodia and Crack. Google pulled up a couple of random pages, and a line of blue text that said: Did you mean Cambodia and Krak?
‘No, I did not,’ Lockhart muttered, and he was about to close the page when he stopped and thought again.
‘Or did I?’
He clicked through the link and a series of links displayed.
Kun Krak and Kuman Thong, the first link read. Necromancy and the Occult in Cambodia.
Lockhart hit the link and opened a grim page detailing the ritual and practice of witchcraft in the country he had recently fled. Under the page’s main header was a picture of a carved box, just like the one he had left inside the suitcase in Marie Saunders’s office. He took a sip of his mocha and drew his chair a little closer, highlighting sections of the article with his mouse as he read. It was a travel blog, written by a glamorous-looking woman called Audrey Dufour, a French woman whose brief biography reported she had fallen in love with a Cambodian monk and witnessed firsthand the dark magic he practiced. Since returning to her native France, apparently broken hearted - she had spilled her inside track on the more gruesome events she had witnessed.
Dufour described the Kun Krak as the Smoke Children of Cambodia, babies ripped from their mothers’ bellies, mummified in ancient nightmarish ceremonies. She told how many of the Cambodian villagers she met had believed that these brutally murdered children would bring them prosperity.
Lockhart stared at the screen. Maybe this was what Matilda overheard? Not crack, but Kun Krak. Maybe this was what had been inside the suitcase?
The blog described the ritual of creating a Kuman Thong, roasting the body of the dead child. Dufour a ceremony she had witnessed near the Thai border in a village cemetery. Audrey confided that she sometimes wakes in a cold sweat, transported back to that place, a scene from which her soul would never truly escape.