Doublespeak--A Novel

by Alisa Smith

  * * *

  BYRON AND I were going to cross the river to the warehouse to inspect the guns Bill arranged for this job. They were Nazi weapons of the kind the Soviets captured on the Eastern Front, so it would appear that Germans or Russians killed von Roth. Either was a logical conclusion. The Nazis still at large were killing any turncoats, knowing the Americans used the collaborators to rat out other war criminals for the Nuremberg trials. Meanwhile, the Russians would do anything to stop von Roth from using his knowledge of the Soviet regime to aid the Americans. During the Nazi occupation of the Ukraine for three years, von Roth had access to the Communist government records, and would have learned their tricks and secrets.

  I walked downstairs to Link’s room, where he sat by the radio, the static hissing as always. I found it disturbing. Bill insisted he was not an addict any longer, but he acted as strange as one. I turned the dial gently to shut it off.

  “We got what we need,” I said. “You don’t have to listen anymore.”

  “I like the emptiness.”

  “You sure you won’t come? If you’re really going to do this, shouldn’t you look at the guns?”

  “I know all I need to know. I’ve shot a lot of men.”

  I stood awkwardly beside him, wondering what else I could say, but when he put on the headphones and turned the radio on again, his back to me, I walked out the door. A good solid door, the kind you could slam behind you if you wanted. He didn’t care that I was helping him, and even risking my life for him. What would it take to heal him? Maybe shooting the Nazi would give him the redemption he needed, but I had a bad feeling about this mission. Link looked healthier now, his cheeks had filled out, but his mind was still funny. I could only hope that Bill’s clockwork planning, and the element of surprise, would win the day.

  * * *

  THE GATE TO the river closed behind us with a shriek that made us both jump. “Needs oiling,” Byron muttered. I stared at two boys in sarongs who stared right back at me, wide-eyed, one with his finger in his mouth. Bill wouldn’t tell them to stay off the path, because it was an ancient right of way, but he told us never to speak when they were there. Just in case. He knew how the unimportant folk could be used for intelligence, since it was what he himself had always done, even before he was a spy. Bill, a spy. It was so strange. But Miss Maggie was right—the skills were mostly the same. He had always had networks of informants.

  My clothes stuck to me with the heat as I stepped silently into the longtail boat and made for the shady spot in the middle, under the awning. Even without the children lurking, I would have stayed silent. I did not care to speak to Byron right now. When I was alone in my third-floor radio room this morning, Byron had come in and sat down, watching me work the frequencies a while. Then, out of the blue, he asked what led me to love men like Bill and Link. What kind of man was that, I demanded. He had coughed and turned red and stared at the ceiling, and finally said, “Bad men.” And I’d wanted to cry. “I thought Link was one of the good ones,” I’d said. “I thought I’d learned a lesson after Bill. I was wrong.” I didn’t like getting older. You were supposed to get wiser. Instead I just felt more aware of my flaws and mistakes, but still helpless to fix them.

  “I brought some limeade,” Byron said, pulling a green thermos out of his satchel. “Want some?”

  It was hot, even on the river. I nodded and took the bottle without looking at him. I drank some and couldn’t decide if it was more sweet or more sour. It was mostly bitter, I thought.

  “I’m sorry about what I said. Bill’s not so bad now,” Byron said.

  As we moved upriver I looked at the warehouses on the waterfront a while, white plaster edifices of surprising beauty given their mundane purpose. Men on the docks loaded rusty barges with sacks of rice. The men were scrawny as hyenas and I wondered how they had the strength to work.

  “He’s not so good either,” I said finally. “Why did you go back to work for him?”

  “My life in Sequim was a little too quiet. You’re always at the centre of things with Bill.”

  “True, but sometimes you might wish otherwise.”

  The longtail bumped against the landing, and the tillerman jumped out to hook the rope on a metal post. Bill’s warehouse did not have a privileged position, not being by one of the larger docks, but its inconspicuous placement in a nearby alley suited Bill perfectly. He was not shipping teak or rice by the ton, but opium and guns. The building was still close enough to the river to allow small shipments by that route, or he could use the newer roads. We stepped out of the boat and Byron hailed a rickshaw. I felt lazy using one for such a short distance, but I had learned that a few blocks in the tropics could feel like an eternity when walking under the open sun. I was glad when the rickshaw that pulled up had back-to-back seating, because then I did not have to discuss Bill any more.

  We entered the warehouse and Byron locked the door behind us. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim. “They’re supposed to be over here,” Byron said, waving me ahead as he moved toward the spiral staircase on our right. He stopped in front of a metal army trunk and turned the padlock’s dial, left, right, left. He yanked in annoyance at the rusty old lock, tried it again, and it opened with a rattle. He raised the lid and read off a piece of paper: “Three Walther PP pistols, two Mauser Karabiners, and an StG 44. That look right to you?”

  “I’ve never seen German guns. I’ve shot pistols and rifles kind of like those Karabiners, but not the other. That’s a sniper rifle. I assume Link knows how to use it.”

  “Bill wouldn’t have ordered it otherwise.”

  Byron’s continuing faith in Bill was touching, and made me feel a little better somehow. I picked up the German pistol and it felt heavy, smooth and cool. A nice ivory grip, crosshatched. Must have belonged to an officer. I supposed he was dead now, and this was suddenly all too real. “What exactly did you do in that place, Sequim?” I asked, trying to distract myself from grim thoughts. I put the gun back in the trunk.

  “Tended bar. Hunted ducks,” Byron said. “A goose for Christmas sometimes.”

  I became genuinely curious about his life since the gang. “Who did you spend the holidays with?”

  “Myself, mostly. I always had too many leftovers.” He dropped the trunk’s lid heavily and coughed at the dust it kicked up.

  “Was it true what Bill said, that Link was a traitor?” he asked, fiddling with the old padlock to close it. “I’m a bit concerned, since we’ve got to work with him and all.”

  “He gave information to the Spanish, who were neutral in the war. It was supposed to stop there, but it ended up with the Japanese. So.” I decided not to tell him about the part where our base was bombed as a result. It wouldn’t exactly increase Byron’s confidence in Link.

  “Kind of like how I thought I was working for Bill, but turns out it’s Miss Maggie.”

  Surprised at the comparison, I laughed, but the sound was small and hollow in the warehouse. “Miss Maggie is not the enemy.”

  “You all seem afraid of her.”

  “She knows too much about us. Nobody likes that.”

  We made to leave and our footfalls echoed, one-two, left-right, reminding me of the drills at Camp X. At which I had failed. Or had I? Had Miss Maggie been saving me for this? No, I was flattering myself. I was only one of the few who was cornered enough to take on a mission against others in my own agency. Dust motes swirled in the air, like miniature tornadoes.

  The warehouse door, which looked like something from a medieval castle, slammed shut behind us, and the sudden daylight was shattering as a migraine. A motion caught my eye and I stared into the searing sky.

  “Vultures,” I said, trying to shield my eyes from the sun with my hand without losing sight of them. The bright light made my eyes watery. “Chasing death.”

  “Can’t avoid death or taxes, they say.” Byron smiled at me. “Though I’ve always found ways for Bill not to pay taxes.”

  I wanted to hug B
yron for that. He always could make me feel better.

  * * *

  AFTER DINNER, SITTING at the table underneath the leers of the baby angels that I had not been able to ignore since Byron pointed them out one day, Bill was silent until the servants had cleared the last of the cutlery. The knives scraped jarringly against the platters with their peasant windmills. Were they the sort Don Quixote would have tilted against, I wondered idly. A sweet-natured Byron sort of project. I hated to admit I was nervous about the operation tomorrow. I had spoken little during the meal.

  “So. I have some news. About tomorrow night,” Bill said, his eyes anywhere but on mine.

  “This doesn’t sound good,” I said. I started reaching for the wine bottle to steel myself, but stopped my arm mid-air. I needed to be clear-headed.

  “Lena, you’ll be leading the operation.”

  I felt both fear and excitement—Miss Maggie must think I was ready. For once Bill would have to follow my orders, too.

  “I’m going to be strictly backup,” Bill said. He held a silver fork in his hand that he quivered in the air, over and over, in some kind of nervous tic. “I won’t be out there with you.”

  I stared at him. He’d been on every bank job I’d ever done. He was the leader. He gave us confidence in his plans by coming and risking his own neck equally with ours. And his joy in the moment had been my courage. I didn’t know what to say, but I didn’t want him to think that I needed him, that I wanted him with me.

  “What if Link won’t listen to me?” Because he was insane, I did not add. Because he had not forgiven me. Only trust or fear created followers who actually followed. He clearly had neither when it came to me.

  “He’ll listen.” Bill set his fork down and lined it up exactly against his knife. “I told him if he wants the Nazi dead, he’s got to.”

  Did Bill think this job would fail? “You’re using him. You’ve always looked out for yourself first,” I said, and shoved my chair away from the table.

  He fingered his linen napkin. “She said it had to be like that. Anyways, now you can win this one, for you. Don’t you want to prove yourself to Miss Maggie?”

  “You’re a coward,” I said, and ran from the room. My footsteps echoed hollow in the empty hall, my breathing ragged as I slammed shut my bedroom door. He was using me most of all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  FEBRUARY 11, 1946—LATE AFTERNOON

  AS THE SUN prepared to set, the library was suffused with a soft pink light, unsettling in its beauty and innocence that suggested naïve hopes. The three of us stood over a large table, going over the plan one last time. Bill traced his finger along the tunnel at the Talad canal. Link was nowhere to be seen. Lena asked where he was, but Bill just shrugged, saying a man had to prepare in his own way and to let him be. If we could not kill von Roth outside the palace gate, our plan hinged on the story of the ancient tunnel that Bill had wormed from Silanon the palace guard. He’d pointed out the location of a barred-up entrance concealed with hanging vines, but how did we know it really led into the royal temple? And if it did, might we emerge from the tunnel into a trap? In exchange for the information, the guard had been warned of the date of von Roth’s attack so he could absent himself from any danger or blame. Of course, this would also give him the perfect ability to betray our plan.

  “How can you trust him?” Lena dared to ask, echoing my secret worries.

  Bill stared at her with a flash of hurt that quickly turned to anger. “I been cultivating him a long time. I paid for his son’s surgery, rushed him to my own doctor and damn well saved his life. I think he’s mine.” He slammed his fist on the table. “In fact, I know it. Don’t I always know who’s mine? I got an instinct to see in people’s souls.”

  She looked unsettled when he said that but did not answer, and returned to studying the hand-drawn map unrolled on the table under his fist. I joined her, trying to commit the detailed drawing to memory. Our ability to do so and the accuracy of our source were the things on which our lives depended. I thought back to our shakedown of the guard. I decided he thought he was telling the truth, but we’d have to see about the reality of this tunnel. Some people liked to believe in the most unlikely stories.

  Last thing before we left, I watched Lena put on the leather holster for the Walther PP semiautomatic, which gave me a sense of dread. Guns always meant the possibility of death. Next she tried to strap a dagger under her sleeve, for emergency close combat. I didn’t bother with such-like, since I didn’t have her training. Really, you needed two hands to manage the buckles, and she was struggling, so Bill went over and did it up for her. It was a weirdly tender act as he brushed the skin of her wrist and she averted her eyes. Lena, don’t let him get to you again, I thought angrily.

  Link drifted into the library and we took it as our signal to leave. We trooped silently down to the dock. As the three of us sat in the longtail boat heading toward the palace, the setting sun impaling itself on the temple spires, Lena looked as glum as I felt. It was hard not to think Bill was abandoning us. Tonight Link was going after von Roth, with Lena and me as the only backup. Link stood alone in the prow, staring into the sunset as if to blind himself in the last searing light. Lena leaned her head against a post of the awning, her eyes closed. What Link was about to do was dangerous, and it was foolish for me to be involved. We were all drawn together by allegiances that were against our own happiness, or maybe even survival. I wanted to protect Lena and Lena wanted to protect Hughes. Bill needed to get the job done for Miss Maggie—her way, apparently. That must stick in Bill’s craw. In this mess, Bill and I were eye to eye on one thing, at least: Hughes would have to look out for his own skin. He was the only one who seemed hell-bent on this operation.

  At least Bill had planned everything, and that made me feel better. When he ran the gang, before the drugs, no one could beat him for plans, and that’s why the newspapermen called us the Clockwork Gang. Bill knew our skills and how best to use them. It seemed that Lena had been in this spy business during the war, and Link had been some kind of guerrilla fighter in Burma. Me, I’d been a bartender and an accountant. Heaven help me. I could call on some things we’d done in the bank robber days: sneaking around and outsmarting policemen. But the rewards compared to the risks on this job were not as clear. There were no bags of loot, no Emerald Buddha—just the hope of making it out alive. I wasn’t sure I could get attached to the idea of saving this king. I mean, nobody should be shot in his own bed, but there were guards paid to look out for his safety. For some reason Bill seemed to actually support King Ananda, beyond Miss Maggie’s orders. I suppose he liked the democracy this king envisioned, which would allow the people to elect any chosen rebel. Bill was a sort of natural-born communist. As long, of course, as it did not interfere too much with his personal riches. He was a puzzle.

  As we passed by the mouth of a smaller klong, I stared at the one-room houses lining its banks. On stilted porches, women washed laundry in tin buckets and hung it out to dry. Nearby were little patches of greenery, which Bill had told me were floating gardens. Men tossed scraps into the river for the carp to eat, and later they would eat the carp. The circle of life and death. It seemed more vicious than symbiotic.

  A train whistle blew somewhere, but it seemed only I felt its urgency. Lena did not rouse herself to look. And why should she? Sound carried a long way over the river. I studied Lena’s face, which was familiar and new at the same time. Sadder and leaner. Was it possible to do anything but think of the past when you heard a train whistle?

  The longtail bumped against the dock and we debarked, the sun below the horizon now and the light nearly faded. I felt none of my usual interest in the bustle of carts at the pier, selling their foreign wares, glittering bronze statuettes and clever woven baskets, and the oddments of peasant food. Kerosene lanterns threw guttering shadows which I told myself were not sinister. In the increasing dim away from the market, I looked only for the car that was meant to be parked near
by. Tick one off the list: it was there. We climbed in and I drove silently, not wanting to intrude on Lena’s own silence. Link could keep his mouth shut forever as far as I cared. We knew the plan inside out, anyhow. After minutes that passed too quickly, our last in safety for a good while, I pulled over to let Lena out in the back streets behind Saranrom Park. Link and I would meet up with her there shortly on foot, to stake out the southeast gate that Lena had identified as von Roth’s chosen entry point. Lena melted quickly into the night, and I couldn’t shake the desire to imprint a final image of her in my mind. I told myself I didn’t need one, not yet, anyhow. The rendezvous in the park was straightforward enough.

  The next street over, I dropped off Hughes. As he got out of the car, he had a strange look in his eye—I didn’t know how to describe it, full of purpose I guess, and happy for the first time since I had met him. Was that what a death wish looked like? In any case, it was good that Lena wasn’t here to see it. Five blocks from the park, I pulled the car into a garage on a soi, a sort of alley, branching off Asdang Road, where the city’s chaos reasserted itself beyond the angular walls and rational buildings of the palace district. Unfortunately, there was nowhere closer to keep a car. We could not do as we had done in the old days, when I waited outside the bank with the engine running. There were few private cars on the roads, so lingering would attract attention.

  On foot I crossed the street backing on Saranrom Park and entered the trees, which offered cover for our vigil over the southeast palace gate. Thankfully, the street itself was empty. Most of the people of Bangkok were poor, with no electricity to light their activities at home, so why not sleep? Also, they had not yet readjusted since the wartime curfews. Freedom is not just a law, but a feeling in the heart. I buttoned up my shirt against the mosquitoes that rose when I stepped through the grass. I wished I was still in that cozy library where we four gathered last night, the yellow lamplight pooling over the map. Planning was better than doing, in my opinion, just as Christmas Eve was always better than Christmas. The only present I might get tonight is a goddamn shot to the head, I thought, wincing as the Mauser Karabiner jolted against my shoulder blade, metal against bone.