Fowler knows now it wasn’t an inside job. These people took it upon themselves to grab Robinson, with Suong’s implicit blessing. Which leaves Fowler with an even larger question, one Mr. Suong can’t answer.
Who the hell is Robinson?
And why is he worth either helping or grabbing?
33.
The Caltex gas station is about fifteen minutes outside of Phnom Penh. Its bathroom is a wooden outhouse with a rubber hose in the corner. There’s no floor, just a layer of hard dirt that cracks under Kyle’s new canvas shoes purchased inside the gift shop. The hose coughs gray water that smells both mineral and toxic. Kyle keeps his eyes and mouth shut while he runs the sporadic stream over his head.
In addition to the shoes, Kyle picked up a small pocket mirror with a yellow kitten embossed in the corner. He holds it up to take stock. His face is puffy around the eyes and lips. He looks even more like Robinson now that his face has a little heaviness to it and his lower lip is a swollen heart. He runs a wet finger over his gums and teeth to wipe away the dried blood. He looks one more time in the mirror. At least I have the pain to remind me that it’s still my body and not just Robinson’s rental.
He steps outside into a sea of motos and rusted 1970s gas-guzzlers.
The fuel station is a row of blue drums with a siphon attached to the side of each one. He slides on a pair of sunglasses and looks up to the sky. He’s never seen one like it. Lizard-skin surface. Butter sun. Clouds shiny and plump and with such curly tails, they remind him of fattened pigs ready for slaughter. And it all combines to make him obsess over one fact.
I’m going to die here.
I’m never leaving this place.
All the subterfuge, all the residence changes, all the deliberate artifice—all of it was a prelude, a rehearsal for his meeting with Robinson.
Kyle’s been knocking on death’s door for a year. Eventually, someone was going to answer. And it turned out to be Robinson, wearing his exceptional suit, offering drinks and casual conversation.
Time to knock on Robinson’s door one last time.
Kyle walks over to Lara, who is filling up the gas tank while smoking a cigarette. “This look any better?”
“Good enough,” she says. “Just keep the sunglasses on. I’m checking the oil before we go. Get in the car and wait.”
Kyle nods. Lara’s conversation is distinctly lacking in ornament.
34.
Robinson’s hotel appears to be part of a French plan to reconquer all its former colonies by way of affordable luxury. The hotel is a familiar chain, but instead of the faceless slab of franchise glass and concrete that the chain’s hotels hide behind in most Western cities, here, the building is all rococo and bamboo, decked out with the gossamer lanterns the French favored before they were kicked out after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Colonial kitsch for tourists, a theme park for ersatz glory.
Kyle and Lara walk into the lobby, and it’s packed with men and women in suits. A business convention just ended in the hotel’s conference center, and the French manager—slick-bald, the chandelier’s bulbs causing the beads of sweat on his forehead to twinkle—is walking around shaking hands and making sure everyone found the service agreeable.
Kyle stares at the businessman bouillabaisse. Goddamn, practically every country on the map is represented here. It makes him think of one of Neil’s drunken stream-of-consciousness rants about business in the twenty-first century:
“These people are the reason you need regulation…because they don’t have countries anymore. Any company worth its salt is multinational, and the responsibilities of its management are to the shareholders, not to the citizens. The individual laws of countries are things to be squeezed around, not obeyed. There’s no loyalty. These fuckers will tank a country’s economy if it keeps the board happy and their pockets lined. And a government can’t stop them…fuck, they can just buy a new one. Our ‘elected’ leaders serve at their pleasure. Like everyone else.”
Lara drags Kyle by the elbow over to the check-in counter.
There’s no line. They walk right up to the clerk, who says with a huge smile: “Hi. How may I help you?”
“Hello,” Kyle says, starting to sweat noticeably and having trouble getting his mouth and brain to sync. “My name is Julian Robinson and I’m a guest at this hotel…”
Lara gives Kyle a quick jolt to the ribs, reminding him not to be so formal; he’s supposed to be a guy who forgot his room key.
The clerk runs her tongue over her teeth, checking for any mishaps with her freshly applied cinnamon lipstick. “Are you here for one of the conventions?”
“Actually, I was out enjoying your lovely city with my friend”—Kyle motions with his head toward Lara—“when I realized…I seem to have misplaced my room key.”
“Oh, dear…”
Kyle’s face falls. “Is that a problem?”
“Not at all. Your name and room number again?”
“Robinson. Julian Robinson. Room three fourteen.”
“Okay. I need to see your passport, sir.”
“Certainly.” Kyle hands her Robinson’s passport.
The clerk scrunches up her face as she inspects the picture and the man before her with a swelling lip and sunglasses.
Lara picks up on it and says: “Mr. Robinson is having an allergic reaction to some fish we ate for dinner. It’s why his face is…swelling.”
The clerk looks at Kyle. “Too bad, Mr. Robinson.”
Kyle’s heart sinks. This is what happens when you choose the worst possible option. He hears a ticking in the back of his head.
“About the fish,” the clerk says. “Happens to so many people when they visit.” She reaches under the counter, then hands Kyle a plastic key card with a magnetized stripe. “My name is Carola, and I’m here all night to help you.”
“Thank you,” Kyle says. “You’ve been most…”
Lara gives him a none-too-subtle shove toward the bank of elevators.
They stand outside room 314. The embossed number on the door frame floods Kyle with trepidation. Thus far, nothing positive has come from his time in that room, and he doubts a second trip is going to reverse the trend.
Kyle’s about to run the key card over the contact strip when Lara stops him. She checks how many bullets she has in the chamber of her Walther PPK and then nods.
Kyle raises the key. Stops.
Lara turns, eyeballs the hall, then turns back to him. “What is it?”
Kyle points to the pulsing green light. “It’s not locked.”
Lara’s stunned, pushes on the door. It gives, no resistance.
Kyle doesn’t like this at all. Robinson doesn’t strike him as the kind of guy who spends quality time in an unlocked room.
Lara runs her finger along the wall looking for the light switch.
“Robinson,” she says.
Kyle stands behind her. “Maybe he already left town?”
The curtains are drawn.
“Then why would they give us his room key? He didn’t check out. He’s still here.” Her finger finds the light switch. “Robinson…I’m gonna turn on the light.”
She lets a few seconds pass, opens the door a little farther, and then they notice the smell.
Like warm semiconductors. And cordite.
“Robinson,” she says. “I’m turning on the light.”
But neither one of them really wants to.
One more time.
“Robinson,” she says.
And this time she turns on the light.
35.
This man didn’t want to die.
The nightstand is overturned; the lampshade is askew; the mirror looks to Kyle like it’s trying to avert its glass glaze.
Lara lingers as Kyle approaches the wall, puts his hand to it.
The blood is still warm.
A few feet away, a Chinese man dressed similarly to Kyle’s kidnappers lies in a pool of blood. The stain flares out from under his outstretched
arms and keeps growing. He’s been shot several times. Forehead. Side of the face. Chest. An intimate kill. Someone got within a lover’s distance when he did the deed.
The exit wounds of the facial shots took his jaw and ear with them.
Kyle moves closer, trying to steer around the blood, but there’s no way to do it. For some reason, he finds it more appropriate to crawl over. You can’t tower over someone who’s suffered this kind of abuse. You owe him a primal level of respect. You have to go down on hands and knees.
Even though Kyle knows it’s futile, he lowers his ear to the man’s chest. Shocking silence. Not even a distant drum.
“What are you doing?” Lara says. “There’s no point.”
Kyle ignores her, sits next to the body, and takes the man’s hand in his own. Obviously it’s too late, but Kyle wants the man to know that someone held him, that someone knew there was no reason, no matter who he was, for him to die alone, far from home, in such a horrible way.
Kyle also does it because he knows it could easily have been him sprawled out and shot up on Robinson’s floor, and he hopes that some similarly kind stranger would have shown his corpse the same mercy.
Then the wave of nausea hits, not the kind that can be ignored. Kyle rises, pushes Lara out of the way, and races to the bathroom, leaving bloody footprints in his wake.
He falls to the floor, knees hugging the bowl, and everything comes up in a trail of acid from the base of his stomach. When there’s nothing left to throw up, he rests against the cold outer door of the shower stall, closes his eyes, and sucks in air.
Panic breaths. Opening his mouth to swallow all the air in the world. He’d scream if he could find enough air to start.
And when he opens his eyes, he realizes he’s been sitting in a puddle of blood. He shifts; his clothes sound like a sopping sponge.
He struggles to focus, spent from vomiting.
He lines up his planes of vision and sees another dead body—this one also Chinese and likely the victim of the same bullet enthusiast responsible for the body in the other room. More of this man’s insides are sliding down the wall than remain in the cracked container of his body.
Kyle shakes his head, starts to laugh. It had to be two bodies. It had to. Somehow, one wouldn’t have sufficed. He yells out:
“Lara…you better get in here.”
Fowler whips his car into the hotel’s underground parking garage while talking on his cell to Rebecca. “I just pulled in.”
“You got my e-mail, then?”
“Yeah.”
“The credit trace popped up immediately. He used the card there last night,” she says. “But I haven’t been able to tie anything using the Social or passport number.”
“Keep going.” Fowler scans the parking lot, row after row of rental cars. “I want you to take that picture of Robinson and go to all the expat places you can think of. You know the scene better than I do. See if anyone knows him.” Fowler pulls up to a valet and says, “Lot’s packed. You guys giving something away in there?”
“Meetings are finishing up,” the valet says. “People should be leaving soon.”
Fowler starts doing laps around the tiered lot. “I’ll call back,” he tells Rebecca.
Kyle steps out of the bathroom, still in a daze.
Lara’s stripped down to a black tank top and jeans. He’s transfixed by her exposed shoulder blades. They jut out of her back like the mourning stumps of mythic wings.
She notices Kyle’s sleeve drenched in blood. “Go put on one of Robinson’s suits. You can’t go back downstairs like that.”
Kyle checks the sleeve. “Yeah. That’s a good—”
“Fast. We don’t want to be here.”
There’s a darkness, a terrible depth to Lara’s beauty, something that moves beyond the boundaries of traditional aesthetics and into the realm of transcendence. Her beauty inspires fear. It physically scares Kyle to be in proximity to it.
“Faster,” she says, clicking her tongue like a clock.
“Hey,” Kyle says, sorting through the suits and wire hangers, “would it kill you to be the slightest bit polite? I’m not asking for nice—okay, I know we’re not even in the vicinity of nice. But could you at least not bark at me?”
“Do something right,” she says.
He pulls a charcoal suit from the closet and strips down.
He goes to the wastebasket to toss his soiled shirt inside and stops short when he sees his own passport lying on the corner of the desk. He opens it, flips through the pages—nothing’s changed. “Why did he leave this behind?” he says to Lara, holding up his passport.
Lara walks over, inspects the pages. “I have no…”
Then Kyle looks at the bed. Amid the tumult of twisted sheets are the clothes he lent Robinson to add more realism to the plan.
He points at the bed. “That’s…that’s really bad too.” There’s no other way to interpret these signs. “We…we walked right into a crime scene. That he wanted to pin on me.” He’s been set up; framed is not nearly an active enough verb to describe this type of absolute fucking. Passport plus clothes plus two dead bodies equals even more trouble than he’s in back home. “He set me up for these two. He set me up.”
Lara pockets Kyle’s passport. “Look,” she says, indicating the bed, “I’ll take care of this. Go change.”
Fowler makes his way across the grounds, past the domed gazebos overflowing with indigenous shrubbery, past the floodlit pool packed with convention guests, several of whom sip champagne in the emerald-tiled Jacuzzi. “I’ll call you if I find anything,” he says to Rebecca as he whirls through the revolving glass door into the lobby.
He approaches the check-in desk, hands one of the two uniformed women his ID, rests his elbows on the counter, and says, “I’d like to know when one of your guests checked out.”
The check-in girl stares at Fowler’s ID, not comprehending.
“I’m CIA.”
“Oh.” She looks again. “I see.”
Fowler does his best impression of a smile. “Yeah. They got us everywhere.”
“What was the guest’s name?”
“Robinson. Julian Robinson.”
A clerk nearby perks up. “Mr. Robinson.”
Fowler slides over to her. “You know him?”
“Mr. Robinson didn’t check out. He’s in his room. Is he expecting you?”
“No.”
The clerk frowns. “Well, I have to call him. It’s hotel policy. I must announce you.”
Fowler takes his ID from the first clerk and hands it to the second. “No, you don’t.” The clerk scrutinizes it. “It’s real,” he says, and grabs it back.
She nods and says, “I have to get the manager, Monsieur Fresson, to let you in. There are rules here. This is not some boarding house,” she adds with the propriety of someone who grew up in one. “We…I must call the manager. We are the representatives of a major multinational chain, and there are rules…”
She’s still going when Fowler makes a break for the elevators. “Tell the manager to meet me up there!” he shouts.
Fowler loses his momentum at the bank of elevator doors. They’re making local stops. Sclerotic slowness. He curses under his breath, pulls out a cigarette.
He checks his two guns, one holstered on the shoulder, one on the ankle, easy access. He changes his mind about the cigarette, puts it behind his ear, and waits on the fucking elevators congested by convention-goers.
The door of one pops open, revealing a tableau of executives in bathing suits. Fowler watches the parade of middle-aged spread given form by forgiving elastic waistbands and padded cups.
Fowler can’t get over the number of them. They just keep coming. How many bloated plutocrats can this gilded box hold?
He pushes his way in, not bothering to wait for everyone to get out.
Kyle buckles his belt, slides the suit jacket on. “I’m ready.” The pounding glare of salmon and green city lights filters in through th
e curtains.
Lara doesn’t respond. She’s stripped the bed bare and is now relieving the dead men of their identification
Kyle crosses the room and stands before her, trying to figure out the best way to engage her in actual conversation. “I want to thank you for everything you’ve done. Really. Thank you.”
Nothing. She pockets the dead men’s documents.
He doesn’t let her silence deter him. “But I’m going to ask you to drop me off at the American embassy. I have…I have to try to explain this.”
“How are you gonna do that? Show them Robinson’s passport?”
“No. I’ve got mine back.”
“No. I’ve got yours.”
“Wait a minute…”
“You go there as Robinson, you’re responsible for killing two people…”
“I’m going as me. I have to try and get someone to believe me.”
“And if you show them your passport, what happens? You said yourself you’re in trouble back home. They’ll bounce you back to the States. So you can go as Robinson or yourself. And you’ll end up in jail either way. Least, that’s how I see it.”
“I want my passport back.”
Fowler’s sprinting down the corridor, taking in the room numbers through his peripheral vision. He dodges around a room-service tray covered in dishes—discreet lobster claw jutting out from under a china cover—necking couples dressed to the nines, and more convention guests sporting swimwear, starched hotel towels wrapped around their sagging shoulders.
Fowler sprints to room 314 and pulls his gun out of his shoulder holster right as a maid emerges from a side stairwell. She’s in full uniform, cuffs and frills, vacuum cleaner in tow, and when she sees Fowler, gun at his side, she yells:
“Gun. Gun.”
Lara rushes to the door, peers through the peephole to check the source of the chaos. The maid is still standing in the hallway screaming, “Gun.”
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