by James Church
“Blue like the sky in summer,” I said. I was fighting to stay awake, but Salvador had turned up the radio, and the battle was going against me. A woman on the radio was singing a sad song. I decided the brandy made me sad, too. I took another sip, barely twisted the cap back on the bottle, and fell into a mournful sleep. Linden trees receded on the horizon as I struggled against azalea bushes, monstrous things that pushed me again and again and again into a deep, greasy swamp of Chinese dumplings.
3
When I woke, I was sweating. Salvador was pulling onto a narrow road with no lighting and missing most of its pavement, so we bumped our way over a series of ruts in the dark until we came to an isolated warehouse. The entrance was nearly hidden, lit by a single bulb hanging on a long wire over the loading dock. It didn’t look like a place that had seen a delivery in years. The loading dock sagged; so did the stairs. I couldn’t see the roof, but a good guess was that it sagged, too.
“Home again,” Salvador said. “You can pay me later.”
I didn’t move. “You go in, I’ll just wait here.”
“Nope. There are people you have to meet and forms to fill out. It won’t take very long. They may even have a tweed jacket that fits. Then we’ll find you a bed and an air ticket home.”
“I can’t get out of the car. I can’t move. It’s my back.”
Salvador shook his head. “Don’t be difficult. I’ve had a bad night.”
“You’ve had a bad night? You’ve had a bad night? And I was at a carnival the whole time, is that it?”
“You’ll get your money, don’t worry.”
“What money? You think that’s what I’m here for? Keep it. You don’t have enough to make up for what I’ve been through. Use it to buy Rosalina a nice funeral. I don’t need anything but a ticket out of this madhouse.”
“I’ll help you ease out of the car.” Salvador had opened the back door. “Just move your legs a little, and use your hands to push yourself along. You can lean on me once you’re out.”
“I don’t lean on anyone. Not here, not anywhere. Get out of my way, and don’t hover. It makes me nervous.” My shoes were still wet from the rain, as were my trousers and my shirt. The night air was cool, and it carried the sounds of a guitar off in the distance. If I’d had the strength, I would have broken away and run into the darkness toward the guitar, but I was too exhausted, and my back wouldn’t have supported me running more than a few steps. There was nothing to do but walk with Salvador, slowly, up the rotten stairs and through a door—it had once been red, I noticed—that opened as we approached.
4
Vincente looked up as we entered. The space had once been a storage area, but now it was empty except for six chairs arranged in a loose semicircle. Four of the chairs were occupied. Vincente sat in one. Next to him sat the man who called himself Tomás. Luis was in the third chair, looking unhappy; next to him lounged the man I’d met on the bench outside the castle in Lisbon. He nodded at me. Luis had pushed his chair back so he seemed part of the group but slightly apart. He avoided my eyes. Tomás pretended to be preoccupied with adding figures in a small notebook that he balanced on his knee.
Salvador sat down in one of the empty chairs closest to Vincente. I remained standing. If I sat down, I knew I wouldn’t get up again without help.
“We don’t have time to go through everything,” Vincente said.
I couldn’t tell if we had come in while a conversation was already under way, or if they had been waiting for us. Vincente sounded tired, none of the bravado that had been in his voice every other time I’d heard him. “Some of the planning worked, most of it didn’t. Rosalina…” His voice trailed off.
Tomás coughed. “We disrupted the factory, that’s worth something.”
“It’s worth nothing if we can’t find the machine that got out. Someone please tell me they got hold of the routing.” Vincente looked at each of us in turn. “Someone? Did anyone do what he was supposed to do? Did we at least disable the goddamn thing? Inspector?”
No one spoke. They were all looking at me.
“Listen,” I said, “I was promised a brown tweed jacket. After what I’ve been through, it’s the least I deserve. And no, I didn’t fix the machine. It disappeared before I could get to it again. Here’s the gizmo you gave me.” I tossed it at Vincente’s feet. “Yakob, or whatever his name is, tried to get it from me, but I told him I’d lost it.”
“Well,” Tomás said, “that’s something. We should have gotten rid of that snake when we had the chance.” He turned to Vincente. “I told you he was a snake, right from the start.”
I expected Salvador to break in to say that Yakob had already known the routing, but he didn’t.
“Enough,” Vincente barked, “enough raking over bad decisions. We need to stop that machine. Inspector, you don’t have any idea what the route was? You didn’t hear anything at all?”
Again I waited for Salvador. I looked at him. He looked away.
This wasn’t my operation. I was only something the wind had picked up and blown into the middle of things. “Yakob thought he’d found a business card,” I said.
“Well, did he?”
“It was for a Chinese shipping company. I had my doubts.”
“And why is that?”
“It was covered with cheese.”
Tomás sat back and looked at the ceiling. “I think they’re going to use a small port in Italy,” he said. “One of the fishing ports. If they load the crates onto a fishing boat, they can transfer it to something larger later.” He looked at his watch. “They may already be on the A9 in France.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think I just saw the truck on the road a couple of hours ago.”
Luis smiled to himself. Salvador didn’t change expressions.
“Well, we can alert the ports, but I doubt if it will do any good.” Vincente waited for a moment for someone to contradict him, then went on. “If that’s all,” he said, “I have some phone calls to make. Tomás has the paperwork. Unless I hear differently, this team is dissolved, permanently, as of tomorrow at noon. Someone please find the inspector a place to stay tonight, and then get him on a plane and out of here as early in the morning as you can. I don’t want any footprints. No breadcrumbs. Nothing. Luis?”
Luis shrugged. “There’s a seven o’clock flight to Paris. He’ll be on it.”
“No, I’m not going to Paris.” I had never been to France, and I was damned if this was going to be my first visit. Not with the crummy passport I was carrying. The French have sharp eyes and short tempers when it comes to official documents. I’d never had to deal with it myself, but I’d heard the stories. “Find something else. Get me to Prague. I can get home from there by myself.”
“Jesus,” the man from the bench muttered.
“All right, we’re done.” Vincente opened his jacket and pulled a holster off his belt. “This has two rounds missing.” He handed the pistol to Tomás. “I know we’re accountable down to the penny, so I’ll pay for them with Yakob’s money. He won’t be needing it. Any objections?” Tomás said nothing, but Vincente hadn’t waited anyway.
Tomás pocketed the pistol and shook his head as Vincente walked into the shadows. “The man said we’re done. That means we’re done. I’ll get you the necessary paperwork tomorrow. Adeus.” He looked at me. “You need to get cleaned up.” He disappeared toward the back of the room.
A minute later, the man from the bench stood up. “I’ve got a plane to catch and a lot of reports to write. Good night, all.”
As soon as he was out the door, we heard a motorcycle engine start. The driver let it idle for a moment and then pulled away with a terrific roar.
Salvador waited another minute after that, as if this was a familiar ritual always to be honored before leaving. “Luis will find you a change of clothes and a hotel,” he said to me. “If you ever get back here, we’ll go to the Roman ruins.”
“I’ll buy dinner,” I said. “So
mething from the sea.” We shook hands quickly, and then I was alone with Luis.
Neither of us said anything. Finally I decided that one of us had to break the silence or we’d be there all night.
“I guess I don’t owe you anymore, Luis. We’re even, wouldn’t you say?”
Luis stood and paced slowly around the room. “This was a surprise to me, my friend,” he said. “I thought it would be something easy, like in Macau. But they chew up people here like they’re a plate of mussels.” He stopped. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m not,” I said. “But I’ll watch while you eat. Maybe I’ll join you in a glass of wine and a few pieces of bread. Listen, I hate to keep asking, but can you find me a jacket and some trousers first? I could use some dry shoes, too, if that’s not too much trouble. If I stagger into a restaurant like this, they’ll send me around to the kitchen door.”
“One thing,” Luis said. “No questions during dinner. That’s the rule. When an operation is over around here, it’s done. No one has a rearview mirror. Straight ahead, that’s the game. Not like in Macau. We practically walk backwards after an operation trying to figure out what went wrong.”
“A good way to end up in the swamp every time,” I said. “I mean, either way it doesn’t work. That’s why at home we used to look where were going, and look where we’d been at the same time. We couldn’t afford big failures in those days. I don’t know what is what anymore.”
“You might like a shirt, too.” Luis had a yellow tape measure out and was measuring my arm. “Stand straight,” he said. “You’re slumping.”
5
The restaurant was all candlelight, which was good because the only pants Luis could find were too long.
“If we were in Macau, I could have had those fixed in twenty minutes,” he said. “The tailor down the street from my office is a Malaysian who works for the Singaporeans. We help each other out. A little information goes a long way in Macau. Your people used to go into his shop, but they stopped a few years ago.”
“Tailored suits? My people?”
“Oh, sure. Some of them, anyway. Good suits, though their taste in ties wasn’t always the best. One time they went into the shop and bought fifty silk ties. Not real silk, of course, but they didn’t care. The main thing was the color. They all had to be red and black stripes.”
“Only that?”
“That’s what the tailor said they told him, only that.”
“Who came in the shop next, did your friend tell you?”
“Yeah, it was a South Korean. Two of them, actually.”
“Let me guess. They wanted ties. Had to be silk. Had to be black and red stripes. Not the other way around, right?”
“The tailor said he told them he had just sold the last one. They weren’t happy.”
“Of course not. They never are.” I took a piece of bread and broke it in half. “Why do we do this, Luis? Maybe I should switch to washing dishes and sweeping floors.”
“Well, it makes no difference to me.” Luis examined the wine bottle in the candlelight. “I’m staying in Macau from now on, no matter how many offers they send me from here, and no matter who signs the papers. I’ll clean tables in Lulu’s restaurant, and then I’ll sing to her at night under the stars. Come and visit us, Inspector. Don’t come back here.” He filled my glass and then his own. “There’s not much to toast, I guess. Saúde.” He tipped his glass and drained it. “You sure you won’t join me in dinner? Maybe an appetizer of artichoke and ham? Or the goat cheese and figs?”
I shook my head. “Do you think they have any vodka?”
Luis picked up the menu. “Russian?”
“Russian, Finnish, Mongolian, and Polish, exactly in that order.”
Chapter Three
By the time Luis got me to the hotel, I was singing an old song about a fisherman who fell in love with a wave.
“It was all we could find on short notice,” Luis said as he helped me up the stairs. “Very small rooms and very thin walls, but it will do for one night. The bathroom is at the end of the hall. You’re supposed to have a sink in your room. We’ll see.”
The room was so small the bed barely fit. The only other furniture was a tiny table with a lamp that didn’t work.
“They’ve hidden the sink,” I said, and collapsed on the bed. “Tell them you’re taking it off the bill.”
“The car will pick you up at five A.M., Inspector. Don’t worry about the airport; you’ll get through the security check with no problem, and I’ll make sure you have a seat on the plane. It’s a propeller plane. I hope you don’t mind. Some people think they’re dangerous.”
“Speaking of dangerous, what about the new Inquisition?”
“Don’t worry. By now Vincente will have pounded on a few desks in the local security offices about the factory that was operating here under their aristocratic noses. They won’t want any trouble while they figure out how to dodge this. They’ll ignore you. Shall I hang up your jacket?”
“There aren’t any hangers.” I shut my eyes. “You can’t even hang it over a chair.”
Luis reached into his coat pocket and took out a brown envelope. “This is fifteen thousand euros. It’s yours, don’t argue. Take it home; maybe you can use it to buy some exotic wood for a bookcase. I’ll put it next to you, here, on the pillow.”
“I’m going to ask you a question, Luis. Just answer me straight out, OK? And don’t say it depends on the question.”
“It always depends on the question, you know that.”
“Do they know where that machine is going? Do they know who bought it?”
“That’s two questions. But there is only one answer, so you can apply it to both. They think they do.”
“But they don’t know.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it? If they think they know, that’s all they need. Anything else would just get in the way.”
“My regards to Lulu,” I said, sitting up out of respect to a departing guest. “Adeus.”
“Five o’clock, Inspector. Have a safe journey home.” He patted my shoulder, backed out the door, and turned to go down the stairs. Suddenly he appeared again with a tiny bottle in his hand. “It’s Mongolian vodka,” he said. “It’s the biggest bottle I could find.”
2
The plane left late, at 7:45 A.M., which was just as well since they stopped me at the security checkpoint and wanted to know why I had no luggage. It turns out it wasn’t a propeller plane, but that didn’t make me feel any better when we went through a storm that threw everyone else’s luggage around the cabin. In Prague I ran to catch another flight, this one to Germany. The Germans scowled over my passport at the control booth but waved me through anyway. The next flight, overnight and crowded with Chinese who talked the whole way, got me as far as Beijing, and from there it was easy enough to find a plane to Yanji. I bought a red and black tie at the airport in Germany to help me convince my nephew I’d spent the last week visiting friends in Berlin.
There isn’t much else to do on an airplane but think unless you want to sleep. I did, but the Chinese didn’t, so I went over things in my mind. Luis had said there was no rearview mirror for the operation, but we were flying into the dawn, so I figured that counted as looking ahead.
There were enough facts jumbled together from the past week to support at least five different explanations. I decided to leave aside the characters in the drama for the moment and concentrate on the main events. My being recruited from northeast China to an operation in Spain wasn’t easily explained, unless they—I was going to have to work my way to who “they” were at some point—were more interested in nationality than personality. A particular flag had to be flapping in the breeze for anyone who was watching. As long as it was the right flag, it could have been anyone, and it turned out to be me.
If that was so, why the focus on dumplings? Japanese liked dumplings; so did Koreans, and so did Chinese. Then it occurred to me. They needed Mike, and the reason they needed Mike w
as they needed to point the way through Yanji. And they needed Yanji because … well, it was on the border with North Korea.
I stopped and chewed on that thought. Mike was a noodles man, so they made some noise that would leak into various channels that he was switching to dumplings. That would explain why a dumpling machine was supposedly on its way to Yanji. Only for anybody who saw even part of the trail, it wasn’t a dumpling machine.
That was one big part of the puzzle, or at least a few pieces of it. So why didn’t Luis’s friends just jump in and take down that factory? They didn’t like what it was producing. Why all this sniffing around? Why make something so simple into a dangerous high-wire act? It got Rosalina killed, and almost got me killed, too. If they didn’t want that damned machine going anywhere, just go the hell into the factory and pull it apart! Why all the mystery about where it was supposed to be going? It was going across the river from Yanji. That’s why I was pulled in. But if they already knew where it was going, what did they need me for? And why the shadow play about Japanese?
PART IV
Chapter One
The picture on the TV screen in the hotel room flickered briefly before it went blank. I felt Tuya shift her weight beside me.
“I thought this was an advanced country,” she said. “I can’t go to sleep without the TV on.”
“It will probably be just be a minute. Maybe someone in the hotel plugged in an iron or something.”
“Look out the window and see if this is the only building without electricity. Affrettando.”
I got up and pulled aside the curtains. The entire city for as far as I could see was black. The only lights were from cars moving through the streets. From below there was a screech of brakes and then a loud crash, then another, then yet another. Traffic lights were probably out as well. “I better call the office.”
My cell phone was dead. I picked up the receiver on the bedside phone. It was dead, too.
“Nothing doing,” I said. “It might be a few minutes more.” I could hear emergency generators starting up somewhere, but not in the hotel. Fire engines and police car sirens wailed through the streets. When I went back to the window, it was like being in another century, darkness below and stars above. I wondered what Uncle O would say.