The Truth Itself

by James Rayburn

  Just waiting.

  She heard a boat blast in, the tillerman cutting the engine, letting the prow find the sand with a wet scrape. Before the long-tail had fully beached Hook plunged from the boat, splashing through the low water.

  She stood and walked toward him and when he saw her he grabbed her hand and said, “Kate, I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m sorry,” his breath coming in shallow gusts, the stink of vomit, blood and terror cloaking him.

  “Calm down, Harry.”

  “He set an ambush for me with Betty as the bait and I fucking walked right into it and now he’s got Suzie.”

  Kate put an arm around his shoulders and, as if he were elderly and infirm, led him away from the boats and the tourists, to a quieter part of the beach, where they were hidden in the dark, whispering palms.

  Seating him on the sand, crouching before him, her face close to his, she said, “Talk to me, Harry. Tell me everything.”

  Hook nodded and, fighting to control his sawing breath, he told her what had happened in the Carnahan’s house and how, when he’d gained consciousness and run to the beach, he’d tracked down a boatman who’d remembered a tall farang carrying a sleeping girl onto a long-tail.

  Told her that Morse and Suzie could be anywhere by now, traveling into the night on the mainland or hidden on one the countless small islands that spread like buckshot across the Andaman Sea.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Philip Danvers sat at his fireside, his legs covered by a quilt—despite all his efforts he could not get warm—and sipped from a glass of Cutty Sark.

  Tonight he didn’t listen to music. He’d tried, but even the gentlest sonata hurt his ears, the strings too strident, the horns too harsh. It was one of the mysteries of his failing body that even as his eyesight dimmed so his hearing seemed to have become more acute.

  Earlier he’d had to get very close to his television set to catch the latest on Fingergate, to see the smug face of Congressman Antoine Mosley who had appeared from stage left and anointed himself Lucien Benway’s swart inquisitor.

  Did it please Danvers, what he had wrought?

  Less than he would have imagined.

  Vengeance, he supposed, always left a bitter taste in the mouth.

  And what he had spent his dwindling days doing had been out of anger. A very particular old man’s anger that had come not from the heart or the belly, but from the liver and the low, muddy entrails, a by-product of disillusionment, disappointment and spite.

  Well, that anger was spent.

  And now that it had lifted from him like a broken fever, he supposed he should contemplate nobler feelings. Like love.

  Given his sexual proclivities, he’d never allowed himself the indulgence of romantic love. He’d had to make do with lust. Lust that had demanded of him clandestine gropings and couplings that, after a brief frisson of excitement, had left him hollow and ashamed.

  Was it a coincidence, he’d often pondered, that so many spies of his generation and the one that preceded it—Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt et al—were homosexuals?

  Didn’t hiding a man’s true nature perfectly equip him for a life of espionage?

  So, he wondered, watching the flames and hearing the wood spit and spark, what was it he loved now?

  Not his surrogate family.

  Not anymore.

  Lucien Benway was a sociopath, Harry Hook a burned out case and Kate Swift—no matter how he parsed it—a traitor.

  He felt for them what he imagined most elderly parents felt for their adult issue: disappointment, guilt, sadness, recrimination and (when it came to Harry and Kate) the melancholy that is left when love has cooled.

  So, what was it that he loved?

  Nothing.

  There it was. He loved nothing.

  He sighed and finished his drink and was trying to summon the energy to stand and cross to the sideboard and pour another when he heard the crunch of footsteps on the gravel of his driveway.

  The steps grew louder as the visitor crossed the paving stones and approached the door.

  He heard a rusty squeal as the ring of the brass knocker—bolted to the mandible of the pharaoh Ramses—was lifted, followed by a sharp smack as it connected with the striking plate. Just one knock, as if whoever was out there was certain he would hear it.

  Danvers levered himself from his chair and walked slowly toward the door.

  When he opened it he was unsurprised to see Lucien Benway standing on his doorstep, a coil of frigid breath escaping his lips.

  “Lucien.”

  “Philip.”

  “You’re alone?”

  “Yes.”

  Danvers stepped back and gestured toward the fireside. “Then come on in.”

  Benway shook his head. “No, thank you.”

  “What? Are we going to stand out here and natter?”

  “No, we’re going for a walk.”

  “Are we now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what if I’m not in the mood for a walk?’

  “I have to insist.”

  “Well. Then let me get my coat.”

  Danvers lifted the Burberry that hung from the coat rack, grunting as he battled to get his arms into it. He buttoned the coat and joined Benway on the porch.

  “Where’s your car, Lucien?”

  “I took a cab to that god-awful strip mall and then walked here.”

  “I see. A night for walking, is it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  With that Benway set off across the flagstones toward the trees. He paused and looked back, waiting for Danvers, who employed a geezer’s shuffle to catch up with him.

  Together they walked slowly through the snow into the trees, the bare branches of the silver birches ghostly in the dim moonlight.

  When the lights of the house had been lost to sight, Benway said, “I think this is far enough, Philip.”

  “Far enough for what?”

  Benway seized Danvers by the shoulders and flung him to the ground. His hip struck a snow-covered rock and he heard it shatter like a piece of Meissen china.

  Pain had been Danvers’s constant companion these last days, a dull, throbbing pain, that seemed to radiate from somewhere low outward into the rest of his body. But this pain was loud and sharp and intense and he felt tears in his eyes.

  Tears that would freeze all too soon.

  Lucien had a sturdy branch in his hand and he swung it and broke Danvers’s left knee. More pain.

  Benway crouched and frisked him.

  “My telephone is in the house, Lucien.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe a fucking word that comes from your mouth, won’t you, Philip?”

  Benway finished patting him down, and stood, breathing heavily.

  “Goodbye, Philip.”

  “Auf Wiedersehen, Lucien.”

  The little man spat a laugh before he turned and trudged away like a malevolent goblin from a children’s fable, his footsteps filling with snow and disappearing within seconds.

  Philip Danvers lay and looked up at the snow falling like blown cotton from the dark heavens.

  So, he thought, this is how it ends.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Hook and Kate were in the house up in the jungle. Hook paced, his heavy tread causing the house to creak and sway. Kate sat in the cane chair, looking composed and almost tranquil, only the occasional swiping away of a tendril of hair from her face a tell that she was anxious.

  Hook’s cell phone lay on the table and he stared at it as he paced, willing it to ring.

  “Relax, Harry, he’ll call,” Kate said.

  “Why is he taking so long?”

  “Now you’re talking like a grandfather, which is kind of endearing, but not exactly reassuring, if you get me.”

  “I do,” he said. He stopped by the window and looked out into the night. “He’s softening us up.”

  “Exactly. And he knows he can do it, because this isn’t just some operation. This is personal.�
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  “Yes.”

  Hook had to push away an image of the child lying dead.

  As if reading his mind, Kate said, “He can’t kill Suzie, Harry. Not yet. We may be personally invested but we’re still pros and if he wants something from us he’s going to have to give us proof of life.”

  She spoke calmly, dispassionately and he knew it was her way of tamping down her apprehension, of keeping alive the belief that she would see her daughter again.

  Kate had managed the situation—and him—since meeting Hook at the beach. He’d wanted to question more boatmen, question taxi drivers and touts, question anybody who may have seen anything, even though he knew that it was just a form of busy work, a way of keeping himself distracted, but Kate had insisted that they return to his house and wait.

  And stay focused.

  When they’d arrived she’d asked for his phone and sat down with it at the table, her fingers a blur on its face.

  “What are you doing?” he’d asked.

  “Downloading an app that’ll allow us to record incoming calls.”

  “Can’t the phone do that?”

  “No cell phone can. Privacy laws have the manufacturers running scared. But some tech head, who’s probably a twelve-year-old kid in Seoul or Minsk, has that one licked.”

  She’d finished her task and placed the phone on the table, where it lay.

  Mute.

  Kate looked at him as he paced and said, “Would a Scotch help, Harry?”

  He swung on her. “Jesus, are you crazy? What good would I be drunk?”

  “I’m not talking drunk, Harry, I’m talking maintaining. Having you jonesing for a drink is about as bad as having you drunk.”

  Hook didn’t reply and she stood and went into the kitchen. He could see her through the doorway as she opened the closet above the sink and removed the bottle of Cutty Sark. When she broke the seal he may not have heard the “Hallelujah Chorus”, but it was close. She poured two fingers into a shot glass, added a cube of ice and brought the drink through to him.

  “Just this one,” she said. “And take it slow, okay?”

  He nodded, too desperate to feel affronted by her mothering, and raised the glass to his lips, catching the peaty vapor of the booze before he felt it bitter on his tongue. He took a sip and let the alcohol warm his belly and almost immediately felt an easing of his tension as the liquor worked its dark magic.

  The alchemical moment was enhanced when he heard the chirp of his cell phone.

  He set the drink down and approached the phone, seeing UNKNOWN CALLER on its face.

  Kate hit the green button and speakerphone, then activated the app, and nodded at Hook.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “You know who this is, Harry?” Morse said.

  “Yes.”

  “Is Kate Swift with you?”

  “First I need to know the child is alive,” Hook said, his eyes fixed on Kate’s.

  There was a bump and a scrape and then Suzie said, “Harry?”

  “Yes. Are you okay?”

  “I’m scared, Harry.”

  More bumps and scuffs and then Morse was back. “Let me to talk to Swift.”

  “I’m here,” Kate said.

  “Well, well,” Morse said, “in the pink.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You’re going to go public that you’re alive and well, that you faked your death in that plane crash. You’ll call The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Al-fucking-jazeera. You’ll video call to show that you’re you. You’ll send them fuckin stool samples if they want, are you getting me?”

  “Yes, I hear you.”

  “Once the news of your miraculous return from the dead hits the mass media I’ll release your brat. Okay?”

  “I’ll do it. But I need to see her.”

  Silence, then a video image appeared on the screen: Suzie, bound and gagged, tied to a chair.

  The image disintegrated and Morse said, “Okay, you do what you need to do.”

  He was gone.

  When Kate tried to speak Hook shut her up and grabbed her arm and walked her to the window.

  “Listen.”

  “To what?”

  “Hear that amplified voice?”

  “What is it?”

  “A truck that drives around town with a message on a loop advertizing a titty bar.”

  When she nodded, he said, “Play back the last moments of the call.”

  She worked the phone, turned up the volume and played back Morse telling her to do what she needed to do.

  “Hear what I hear, in the background?” Hook asked.

  “That message. Jesus. They’re here. They’re in town.”

  “Let’s go,” Hook said, running for the door.

  Kate grabbed her arsenal and followed. Hook already had his bike started by the time she reached the bottom of the stairs and they flew down the rutted trail, hit blacktop and then they were in the main road.

  Hook turned a corner and there the truck was, heading their way, with its speakers and girlie banners and blaring looped message in Thai-accented English: “Lucky Bar. Open now. Beautiful girl. Beautiful supermodel from Bangkok.”

  He sped along the road in the direction from which the Toyota had come. This was Thai Town, away from the tourist center. Small sidewalk restaurants, a 7-Eleven, cell phone suppliers, the post office, a computer shop, a florist, a hair stylist, most of the buildings shuttered and closed.

  No hotels. Not even a backpacker hostel. The buildings dwindled into the jungle and Hook began to lose hope, when he spotted a couple of lights through the bush.

  A small dirt road led off the main drag to three rundown resorts lost in the tangled vegetation.

  Hook turned onto the track, killed the engine and they freewheeled until they reached a fork and saw two sets of bungalows in the jungle to their left, and one to their right.

  He stopped the Yamaha and they sat in silence for few moments, listening to the sounds of insects and cicadas and night birds. The air was hot and thick and the smell of cooking drifted in.

  Kate was off the bike, the Remington already free of the backpack, its amputated barrels gleaming in the light of the fat yellow moon that floated above the cliffs.

  Hook put a hand on her arm.

  “Wait,” he said.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  When she heard the scratch of Lucien’s key in the lock of the front door Nadja opened the refrigerator and took out the ice tray, twisting it like she was breaking a chicken’s neck, and freed two cubes. She dropped the cubes into Lucien’s favorite glass and poured a stiff jolt from the bottle of Cutty Sark.

  That he persisted with this inferior whiskey irritated her, particularly since his relationship with his erstwhile mentor had soured.

  But persist he did.

  Like he persisted with the disgusting Turkish cigarettes that were imported for him, at great cost, by a downtown tobacconist. Perhaps, because so much of Lucien’s life was manufactured (his name, his almost neutral accent, his veneer of sophistication, his absurdly conservative wardrobe) these little habits were the bolts that held the whole rickety construction in place.

  Why she was thinking these things she didn’t know.

  Or, rather, she did know. Only too well.

  She was thinking them in order not to think about the other thing.

  The thing she was about to do.

  Lucien ditched his jacket in the hallway and walked along the corridor in his shirtsleeves, looking distracted and preoccupied. No doubt after his brush with the media outside, though with the weather and the hour only a few lowly diehards remained.

  He made for the stairs, ignoring her.

  “Lucien?” she said.

  He stopped with one foot on the bottom step and a hand on the banister. “Yes?”

  “Have a drink with me.” She held out the glass.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

 
“I had it delivered.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “There is no catch.”

  “No?”

  “No.” She shrugged. “I spent my day cooped up in this house all alone.”

  “So even my company is better than none at all?”

  She produced a reasonably convincing laugh. “I suppose so.”

  “You could talk to the rabble outside.”

  “And what would I say to them?”

  “You’ve led a colorful life. You’d fascinate them with your tales of soft beds and hard battles.”

  She shook her head at him in mock admonishment. “Lucien, really.” Then she smiled. “See. This is fun. Just like the good old days.”

  “There were no good old days.”

  She lifted the glass again. “Oh, come on.”

  He shrugged and walked into the kitchen toward where she stood positioned so that he had his back to the pantry as he approached her, just as she and Janey Burke had planned.

  The sliding door to the pantry rolled open silently and Janey stood frozen for a moment in the glare of the strip lights.

  Nadja met her eyes, silently willing her into motion, all the while posing with a smile fixed to her face and the Scotch in her hand like a greeter at a convention.

  Lucien took the glass from her and lifted it to his lips. “Cheers.”

  Finally Janey moved, bursting from the pantry, holding a plastic laundry bag in her gloved hands, raising it like a parachute and dropping it over Lucien’s head in one rapid movement.

  Shocked, Lucien spilled whiskey onto his shirt and the glass fell from his hand and shattered on the tiled floor.

  Just as they had rehearsed earlier—using a bolster from the couch in the living room as a stand-in for Lucien—Janey pressed the bag to his face while Nadja kneeled and took him by the knees. Lifting his flailing feet from the ground (collecting a child-sized brogue in the mouth that she hoped would not result in a swollen lip) she toppled him to the floor, Janey sliding a cushion under his head to prevent visible injuries.

  Lucien fought them with a manic strength, bucking and twisting, nearly unseating the two women who piled atop him, pressing him down with their bodies, both of them using their hands to mash the bag to his face, his features visible through the transparent plastic, his eyes bulging and his mouth sucking at air that wasn’t there.