by Tim Lebbon
Packard smiled. It sounded fine. Non-combative, but that was okay, that was cool. He could spend another few days in the air with his men. The gate could wait.
“Sir?”
“Packard?”
“Thank you.” Packard hung up and listened to the storm increasing in strength.
THREE
Where others would see the results of war, Bill Randa saw only opportunity.
The Saigon streets were buzzing. Motorbikes and scooters wove in and out of slower traffic, leaving behind clouds of exhaust fumes and the echoes of horns. Larger vehicles trundled along in chaotic queues, passengers blank-faced as if already resigned to never getting where they were going. Headlights splashed building facades with darting lights. Raised voices added to the hubbub, and although some of them sounded angry, Randa knew that was not the case. He’d heard such voices raised in anger. This was simply a typical street scene, and however out of place he and his companion Houston Brooks might look, they did not seem to be unwelcome here.
Randa led the way. He was more than twice Brooks’s age, and with those years came confidence. All his confidence was born of knowledge. He knew that to walk these streets would be relatively safe this evening because he’d researched the area to ensure that was the case. He knew where he was going, because he’d taken time to discover where the man he sought hung out. He was a man who came prepared, and that had always stood him in good stead. Now, more than ever, such preparedness would make what came next the success he had always desired.
Brooks followed with a natural and unspoken acceptance of Randa’s superiority.
They turned down an alley. It was darker, quieter, and the stench of stillness hung heavy. Small shapes darted to and fro, keeping to the shadows so that it was difficult to make them out. Randa guessed they were dogs. At that size, he hoped so.
A group of Vietnamese men threw dice against a wall and exchanged cash. Their constant low-level chatter would set some people on edge, but Randa took comfort. It meant that they were immersed in their own activity and not concerned with his. As he and Brooks passed them by, a couple of them looked up and away again. He sensed no threat from them.
Further along the alley, a huge doorman blocked the entrance to the gambling den Randa was seeking.
“You sure we really need this guy?” Brooks asked, looking around as if something smelled. In truth it did, but Randa hardly noticed.
“Is your Yale degree supposed to lead us through the jungle?” Randa asked without even looking at the younger man. “Besides, my father said never judge a man on where he drinks. Only that he holds it well.”
Randa approached the big doorman and spoke to him. His Vietnamese was perfect and fluent. Yet another example of being prepared.
The doorman considered for a while, then nodded and opened the door. Randa glanced back. Brooks looked impressed, as well as uncertain about what Randa had said. He wasn’t about to offer him the information. It was good to keep these youngsters on their toes.
The gambling den’s interior was everything the exterior had advertised—dark, dingy, smoky, and filled with shouts and laughter, challenges and cheers. Dice and card games were the order of the day. A few card tables sat around the place, but there were also groups playing dice on the floor and on the bar. Any and every space seemed to be taken up with gambling men and women. Randa saw a small scattering of Westerners among the Vietnamese, just as he’d expected. Money was money, whatever colour the hand that dropped it on the pile.
Randa approached the bar, Brooks trailing behind him. A few people glanced his way, but no one seemed interested. At the bar, he shouldered his way in and nodded at the barman. Randa guessed from his bearing that this man was also the proprietor.
“Looking for Conrad,” Randa said. The barman shrugged.
Randa placed his hand on the bar with a five-dollar bill beneath it. He tapped his fingers and the barman stared right through him. Randa lifted his hand and dropped another five he’d been holding folded between his second and third fingers.
The barman grunted, then nodded towards the rear of the large, low-ceilinged room. “Pool table,” he said.
“Right.” Randa left the cash and headed deeper into the bar. At the back of the room, almost hidden in a haze of smoke and noise, was a single pool table. It was poorly lit with one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, and surrounded with several people watching the current game.
One of them was the man Randa sought, James Conrad. Perhaps he dwelled in these sorts of places because he wanted to fade away, but there was no hiding the colour of his skin, nor his military bearing. Though slight of build and unimposing compared to some of the men around him, it was all in his eyes.
“That him?” Brooks asked, but Randa didn’t even bother answering. Of course it was him.
As if to prove the point, Conrad potted the black to win and stood, stretching his back, and placed his hand on a pile of notes on the pool table’s edge.
His opponent moved quickly. A big Vietnamese man, he slammed his hand down on top of Conrad’s and pressed in close, almost nose to nose.
“You hustle me!” he said. Randa knew seven languages, and understood what the man was saying. “This money is mine.”
Some men might have tried to talk it through. Some men would have drawn away, attempting to settle the sudden tension in the air with a measured response, perhaps some sort of mutual agreement beneficial to both parties. But those men would not have seen that this was a situation beyond saving by negotiation or grace. Even Randa could see that, in the bigger man’s stance, his menacing air, and the sudden tension in those around the table.
Conrad saw it too.
With one hand he spun the pool cue and slammed its heavy end down on the thug’s head. The man cried out and brought up both hands, but before he could press them to the pain in his scalp, Conrad had already poked him in the eye with the cue’s thick end. He staggered back, tripped over a bar stool and went down. Bottles spilled and smashed. A few people moved out of his way.
One of the thug’s friends was coming for Conrad from behind, wielding a bottle ready to smash it across his head. Without turning, Conrad swung the cue once more, holding with both hands this time to lever it back and up between his attacker’s legs. He let out an explosive, “Oomph!” as the cue slammed into his balls, dropped the bottle, folded in half. Conrad placed his boot against the man’s head and pushed. Still breathless and nursing his bruised genitals, the man rolled back and curled himself up against the wall.
Conrad barely seemed to have moved. He held the pool cue in one hand, end down, looking around the table at the other spectators. He caught Randa’s gaze only briefly, then his eyes flickered aside, still checking for danger from elsewhere. The invitation was obvious, but no one took him up on it. As Conrad reached for the dollar notes now strewn across the felt, Randa delved into his pocket and threw a rolled wad of money onto the pool table. It rolled across and nudged against Conrad’s hand.
He’s dangerous, Randa thought. He’s killed. All that is obvious. And if he doesn’t like being seen, doesn’t want to be recognised? He worried that Conrad might have another swing of that pool cue ready for him. But he had to try.
And the money had certainly grabbed the ex-soldier’s attention.
“A moment of your time?” Randa asked.
“I’m busy.”
Randa looked around the bar. The burst of violence had attracted only brief attention, and already the music was turned up again, chattering voices and the bustle of drinking and hustling flowing in to fill the silence like smoke.
“Doing what?” Brooks asked.
Conrad scooped up the money he’d won. “Spending this.”
“There’s more where that came from,” Randa said, nodding down at the rolled wad of notes. Conrad looked from Randa to Brooks and back again, then pocketed the cash.
“Okay. You’ve bought my attention. But you have to drink with me.”
“The
y sell decent whiskey in this place?” Randa asked.
Conrad smiled. “No.” He nodded across to a table in the corner, raised his hand to the barman, and stepped over the man still nursing his balls.
Now it’s time to buy his commitment, Randa thought. And suddenly, in the face of this gritty, grimy reality, the things he had to say sounded like a true flight of fancy.
* * *
Conrad stared at them both for a long time. He’d been right, they didn’t serve good whiskey, but that hadn’t stopped him from sinking a third of a bottle while Randa and Brooks set out their reason for being here and seeking him out. Randa ensured they kept to the scientific aspect of the expedition for now, holding back on the more outlandish Hollow Earth theories and what Senator Willis called his ‘Monster Hunting Madness.’ He was already afraid that Conrad might need only the smallest of reasons to say no. He could see that the soldier was far more complex than first sight would have people believe. Money drove him, and drink, but deeper down there was a whole lot more. Randa could not even begin to probe those depths. Not yet. But he hoped he would be given time.
Randa could sense Brooks thinking of more to say, greater ways to entice Conrad, but everything they were willing to reveal was out there. That, and the roll of cash in Conrad’s pocket.
He viewed them over the top of his whiskey glass, then broke out into a huge grin.
“You won’t last a day,” he said.
“What?” Brooks asked. He was drinking as well, but slowly. Randa was worried that he’d blurt something about their real reason for going on this journey, because he knew the time for that wasn’t yet. They’d push Conrad further away, not pull him in closer. He was a pragmatist, and little about Monarch and their search sounded rational.
“Untouched biodiversity?” Conrad said. “That’s a fancy way of saying uninhabitable. Rain, heat, mud, disease-carrying flies and mosquitoes. Little shelter, rations at a minimum, no resupply. Sure, you load up on Atabrine for the malaria, but other bacteria? Ones we don’t know about?” He drained his glass, leaned forward and poured some more. “And we haven’t even gotten to all the things that want to eat you alive.”
Randa put his glass on the table and nudged it towards Conrad, who poured in another two fingers.
“I sense that a negotiation is in progress,” Randa said.
There was an envelope on the table containing more money. The cash he’d thrown to Conrad had been simply to grab his attention, but in the envelope was ten times that amount. Conrad had not touched it, but it sat there between them, a plea and a promise. He could buy a lot of bad whiskey with that, Randa had thought as he’d placed the envelope down, but he berated himself soon after. This image of Conrad—drinker, hustler, haunter of smoky dives—might have been accurate, but it was not who he really was. Perhaps now that the war was over he was in a holding pattern, just waiting to see what came next.
Perhaps he didn’t want anything to come next.
“We’ll double that,” Randa said.
“Triple,” Conrad said. “Plus a bonus if we all make it back.”
“If?” Brooks asked, looking at Randa wide-eyed. “Pay the man! I mean… I mean, I think we should fairly compensate Mr Conrad. For his expertise.”
Randa grabbed his refilled glass and raised it for a toast. “To profit during peacetime,” he said.
Conrad joined the toast and sipped from his glass. “One more question,” he said. “You came here looking for a tracker.”
Randa nodded. Brooks froze with his own glass tipped to his lips.
“So who, or what, am I tracking?”
“Mr Conrad,” Brooks said, putting his glass down without drinking. Randa was glad, and he was also impressed to see that Brooks had hardly drunk anything. Young and green he might be, but he knew the value of keeping his head. “This is all the information that we have, okay? There is no map of this place. To our knowledge no one’s ever been there before, or if they have they didn’t see fit to chart the place and make that information available to the world. So we need someone with your skills and unique expertise in jungle terrain to lead our ground expedition.”
“We’re just scholars and scientists,” Randa said. “We need someone with experience in case things go sideways.”
“Sideways,” Conrad said. “Right.” He swigged some more whiskey and slammed his glass down on the table.
Done deal, thought Randa. He should have been relieved: they were one step closer to their mission. But though he was excited, their reasons for hiring this man played on his mind. He was a tracker, true, but he was a killer as well. He knew the jungle, but he had no inkling of the things that might be waiting there for them.
The deception did not sit well with Randa, but for now it would have to stand. The time would come when he could tell Conrad of the true nature of their expedition. He only hoped that time was a moment of peace, not danger and threat.
The drinking den in which they sat suddenly seemed much less dangerous when he compared it to where they were about to go.
FOUR
Mason Weaver looked into the eyes of the traumatised child and wished she could not see. Photographs told so much more than being there ever did. She remembered seeing this young girl staring at her with the remains of her bombed and burning village in the background, feeling sad about it, taking the picture, then moving on. It was just a moment amongst many other bad ones, and a few minutes later she’d forgotten about the little girl.
Now, seeing the image forming and emerging in the tray of chemicals in the darkroom, Weaver realised that this was a picture that could touch nations.
You didn’t want me there, she thought, looking into the girl’s eyes. You’d hate it if you knew this picture existed. She saw that truth in the girl’s eyes and recognised it so well, because it also existed in her own.
Weaver had only ever wished to live in the background, which was why she spent most of her life behind a lens.
It was probably her father’s fault. She didn’t think about the past too much, but when she did it was with a feeling of sinking sadness rather than anger or regret. He’d been a good man, but in his goodness he’d managed to give the young Weaver a sense of insecurity that had plagued her through her teens and into adulthood. He had wanted the best for his only daughter. Nothing was ever quite good enough for her, and that included the things she did as well as the things done by those around her. If she performed poorly in a school test he blamed the school, but she always read an underlying blame in his voice for her, whether it was really there or not. In his quest to create from his child the adult he desired her to be, he forgot to consider everything that she wanted. It was a benevolent dictatorship, and by the time Weaver was old enough to even begin to understand what damage such control was bringing down upon her, it was too late. The damage was done.
She was only sixteen when he died. At the funeral she’d felt invisible, as much a ghost as he might have been, drifting from room to room during the wake at their house with no one seeing her. Her mother had spent the day standing in the kitchen making endless cups of coffee for the mourners. She had no siblings. So Weaver had wandered the house, never finding comfort in any one place and constantly seeking something and somewhere she could not find.
She’d left home six months later, going to college and returning only for brief visits, and she’d spent from then until now still seeking that thing, that place. It was only through the lens of a camera that she started to feel close.
Weaver moved the photo back and forth in the tray, waiting for exactly the right moment to remove it.
The phone on the wall started ringing. She’d been waiting for a call all day, but now was the most pressing time. If she left the photo for too long it would overexpose and be ruined, and she knew already that this was one of the best shots she’d ever taken.
“Come on, come on,” she whispered, nursing the photo towards perfection.
The phone sounded impatient.
“Weaver.”
“Mason, it’s Jerry.”
Her heart skipped. This is the call I’ve been waiting for! Jerry had come to report on the war for various European news agencies, but his talents had stretched much further than being able to get a story. It turned out that Jerry could get almost anything. He’d become known as something of a fixer amongst the journalistic family in the Far East—arranging interviews with generals, embedding reporters with Special Forces teams, extracting information from embassy staff; he also had a handle on where and when big announcements would be made, and he knew his way around military circles and society like no one else.
He also had contacts in the highest and lowest places, and he often teased that he was owed many favours. For what, Weaver had never been able to discover. Any enquiries into Jerry’s life before he’d appeared on the scene had led to dead ends. Weaver assumed he’d been involved in something covert and very probably illegal, but she didn’t care. Whether his was a good heart or bad, Jerry had his uses.
She tried to rein in her excitement, but as soon as Jerry started asking how she was, what the weather was like, and whether she’d seen the news about something-or-other, she almost leapt down his throat.
“Hey, Jerry, just tell me, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, but the son of a bitch still paused for a second before saying, “You’re in.”
“Really? Oh God, thank you.” She crooked the phone between her cheek and shoulder, keeping her eyes on the photo as she used tongs once again to lift it into the fixer tray.
“Here are the details.”
“Okay, wait, let me grab a pen.” She plucked up a pen and scoured the messy desk for a spare sheet of paper. In the end she wrote on the back of her hand. “Okay, go.”
“It’s the Athena, docked in Bangkok, eighteen hundred tomorrow.”