by Barry Eisler
“Everything is so . . . quiet,” Livia said.
Brother Panit smiled. “Always, but especially now, because hot season in Thailand not as popular to visitors. But all times the retreat is for meditative stroll. And meditative sitting in gardens. You can pass hours being with tropical tree and nature flower beauty. So yes, very quiet place. Peaceful.”
And no security cameras, Livia thought. Why would there be, in a place where they leave doors unlocked and cash in unattended desk drawers?
She noted that his syntax, which had been natural—presumably because their initial exchange about the room was rote—had grown strained as their interaction progressed.
“Thank you,” Livia said. “And . . . you have a hospice here, too, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. Saint Clare, named for Clare of Assisi, one of Saint Francis’s first followers.”
“Who are your patients?”
“The poor who are in the final stages of AIDS. Saint Francis’s path to God lay in his compassion for lepers. Today we embrace our patients with that same love and happiness.”
The syntax was natural again, so apparently they were back on familiar ground. He was accustomed to discussing the hospice with visitors to the retreat. Meaning her inquiries wouldn’t feel unusual to him. Or memorable.
“I had a friend who died of AIDS,” Livia said. This wasn’t technically true, but she’d worked with victims forced to live with AIDS transmitted by the men who raped them. “Thank you for what you do here. I think you must ease a lot of suffering.” The initial statement might have been untrue, but the accompanying sentiment was heartfelt.
Brother Panit offered a wai of acknowledgment. “I’m sorry for your friend. If you would like, you are free to visit the hospice. Only a few of our patients receive visitors. Mostly, the world shuns them, as it once did lepers. For such people, just to have a conversation can be a great comfort. And many of our guests find a visit to the hospice to be the most rewarding part of their stay. As we like to say: ‘Work is love made visible.’”
Again, the natural syntax, like something memorized from a brochure, for frequent use. “Of course,” Livia said. “Thank you for suggesting it.”
Once Brother Panit had taken his leave, Livia inventoried the contents of the pack. Mostly it was just spare clothes and a few toiletries. The relevant items were even fewer, and all sealed in individual plastic bags: A long-sleeved sweatshirt. Two back issues of Rider magazine—“Motorcycling at Its Best.” A roll of duct tape. And a pair of motocross gloves with wrist protection and carbon-fiber finger and knuckle inserts. None of it would be incriminating if anyone were to see it, and all of it was explainable by virtue of her enthusiasm for riding and plans to rent a bike sometime on her trip. Still, after changing into the sweatshirt, she took the pack with her. If things developed quickly, she wanted to be in a position to improvise and not have to run back to the bungalow for her gear. And if things went sideways, she wanted to be able to leave just as quickly.
She checked the Gossamer and confirmed that Square Head’s phone was at the hospice—less than a hundred yards from where she stood. She wanted to go straight there, but that might seem strange. So she forced herself to eat a light buffet lunch, included in the room charge. She kept on the boonie hat—not much of a disguise, but along with the eyeglasses, not useless, either. Sunglasses would have been better, but there was a fine line between obscuring your features naturally and drawing attention by overdoing it.
Like the reception area, the dining room was illuminated only by the natural light coming through its windows. There were three other people inside—two women sitting together, and a man by himself, all young, probably Aussies or Kiwis, all looking like trekkers. Livia nodded an acknowledgment and sat alone with a plate of rice and vegetables and a bottled water. She had a cover story prepared in case she had to engage anyone, but it was better to make as few contacts as possible. And in a place built for solitude and quiet meditation, a little aloofness was natural enough.
After lunch, she spent some time strolling the gardens. They really were startlingly peaceful: devoid of the sounds of traffic, construction, conversation, or any other human activity, noiseless beyond the buzz of insects and the chirping of birds. Birdsong would forever remind her of Nason, who had been such an uncanny mimic as a girl, and though she knew it was silly, the feeling that Nason was somehow with her, keeping faith with her, still needing her, was always a comfort. And especially now.
She imagined how she would appear to a casual observer: nothing more than a visitor to the retreat, strolling and lost in thought. Satisfied, she started reviewing her plan, imagining every way it could be interrupted or otherwise go wrong, devising improvisations. She had already done all of this, of course, but planning based on a map or its equivalent was one thing. Everything always needed to be refined after contact with the actual terrain.
The sun was well past its zenith when she emerged from the shade of the garden trees and followed a series of signs along snaking gravel paths to Saint Clare Hospice. To Square Head.
I’ve found him, she thought, using the long-ago pet name for Nason. And I’ll use him to find the others.
If anything, the hospice was even greener and more peaceful than the retreat. It consisted of a series of white buildings with red tiled roofs, all connected by walking paths lined with potted flowers and interspersed with shimmering ponds and copses of palm trees. She passed patients in hospital gowns playing board games, listening to a sermon from a friar in brown habit who looked Indian or Sri Lankan, receiving physical therapy from attendants in blue scrubs. Some of the patients, hunched and emaciated, were being pushed in wheelchairs by their healthier-looking peers. A few people nodded or waved, but no one paid her undue attention. It seemed Brother Panit was right—it wasn’t unusual for guests of the retreat to also visit the hospice.
In one of the gardens, a Thai man who was probably her age but looked at least twice that, with shrunken features and overbright eyes, gave her a weary wave and a wan smile. “Hello,” he called out in Thai-accented English. “Hello. Where you from?”
Even debilitated as he was, he’d made her instantly as a foreigner. Her features were local, but her posture, her gait, her overall presence . . . it all gave her away. It wasn’t as bad as if she’d been a statuesque blonde, of course, but still, she would need local exposure and practice if she really wanted to blend.
She walked over and shared her cover story with the man—visiting from San Francisco after grad school. His English was poor, and she sensed he understood little of what she said. But having her engage him in pleasantries seemed to make him happy, as Brother Panit had said would be the case, and for a moment his reaction eased her anxiety about facing Square Head. Besides, it never did any harm to practice a cover story, especially with someone unlikely to understand, or to remember, the details.
After a while she excused herself and found a bathroom, where she removed the sweatshirt, took the magazines from her pack, duct-taped them around her bare forearms, and pulled the sweatshirt back on. Then she re-shouldered the pack and made her way to one of the white buildings. None of the doors was closed, let alone locked, and in fact there were no signs of any security whatsoever. And why would there be? What kind of security was required at a leper colony?
The building contained a single rectangular room, three hospital cots along either side. Despite the open doors, the air smelled strongly of soap and disinfectant, none of it quite enough to conceal the odors of urine and disease beneath.
All the beds were empty save two adjacent at the far end on her left. She walked slowly up the center, her heart pounding. In the near bed was a woman, a blue gown loose as a sheet over her wasted body. Her eyes were closed and she was twitching slightly, whether from a dream or disease, Livia didn’t know.
In the bed beyond that was Square Head.
He lay on his back, slightly twisted away from her, both legs bent sharply, one against the bed, th
e other vertical. His body was skeletal beneath a formless blue gown, emaciation rendering his overlarge head more prominent than ever. His nose was hollowed out above a taped-on oxygen tube, his eyes enormous in their sockets, his knees and ankles giant bulbs connected by calfless shins. Beneath his gown, she could make out the outline of a diaper. Too far gone, it seemed, even for a bedpan.
For a surprising instant, she felt . . . sympathy. Compassion. And then she felt the memory of Nason, shoved back into the shipping container where they were held, bleeding and catatonic from the rape, and she felt a hot surge of satisfaction, a sweet, cruel joy, at his misery.
She forced herself to wall off the emotion. To get what she needed from this man, she had to be her cop self. She was here for information. She was interrogating a suspect. To that end, she would use all her skill, and exploit all his weaknesses. And allow herself to feel nothing about his crimes until she’d extracted what she needed from him.
At that point, she wouldn’t need to be a cop anymore. She could be something else. The other thing. The dragon.
She approached the bed, the soles of her hiking boots squeaking slightly on the linoleum floor, the room silent but for the hum of a few medical machines and the whoosh of a fan by one of the doors.
When she reached the bed, she stopped. He turned his head slowly and looked at her. A long, sibilant exhalation escaped him, and his wasted body seemed to slacken and settle farther into the bed. He groaned something in Thai.
“English,” Livia said. “I know you speak it. You dealt with Hammerhead getting me and Nason to Portland.”
There was a pause. Then he took a breath and whispered in English, “I knew you would come. I knew.”
Even aged and wasted and deformed as he was, there was enough of the face she remembered to take her back to the cold and the wind of the deck on that boat, the artificial turf biting into her knees, and the stink of curry on all of them as, one after the other, they made her do the disgusting thing. Making her believe if she did it she could save Nason.
She felt the dragon struggling, trying to get to the surface, to take back everything they had stolen from her.
Not yet. Not yet. NOT YET.
She forced herself back into cop mode. This man was about to incriminate himself. Maybe even to confess. There was nothing more critical in an interview than properly documenting a confession. She realized there might be a use to which she could put his.
She pulled the burner phone she’d purchased in Bangkok from her cargo shorts, switched it to video, and held it unobtrusively alongside the cot. “What do you mean?” she said.
He shook his head feebly. “It was wrong. I’m sorry. All I’ve done. Terrible things. I’m sorry.”
Even beyond her personal connection, she was sufficiently familiar with jailhouse conversions, and particularly death-row conversions, to remain unmoved.
On the other hand, how long did Square Head have? Days? Weeks, if that? What did he have to gain by pretending?
All right. Assume he’s sincere. Exploit that.
“If it was all so terrible,” she said, “why did you do it?”
“Chanchai. It was Chanchai. So afraid of him. All of us.”
Chanchai Vivavapit. The man she would forever think of as Skull Face.
“Are you really going to blame what you did on someone else?” she asked, feeling in control again. Feeling like a cop. “Is that what you mean when you say you’re sorry?”
“After you cut his eye, he . . . crazy. We should have stopped. Shouldn’t have done. I’m sorry. I wish . . .” His head rolled for a moment as though he was lost, and then he recovered himself. “I wish I could do again. Everything. I wish I could be better. The boy I was. The boy my parents . . .”
He didn’t go on, but she sensed an opening. “Where are your parents now? Don’t they visit you?”
He groaned. “Don’t want them to see me like this. To see my karma.”
She logged that for later use. “Why did you take me and my sister? Why us?”
“Chanchai knew. Chanchai told us.”
“Told you what?”
“We . . . supposed to. Senator wanted you.”
That tracked with what she knew. “But how? How did you find us? You had a photograph of my sister and me. How did you get it? Who told you the senator wanted us?”
“I don’t know. Chanchai told us. Chanchai.”
Damn it. It was maddening—to be this close, and yet still unable to get the pieces she needed.
“What about Sorm? Where can I find him?”
At this, his eyes seemed to brighten with fear. “I never know Sorm. Even Chanchai never know. Sorm is . . . devil.”
“Was he involved? Did he tell you to find my sister and me?”
“I don’t know. I never see Sorm. Bad man. Devil.”
She wanted to scream. “You said you knew I would come. How?”
“Chanchai. And senator. And senator’s . . . helper. The hotel room. Juntasa . . . he told me. He told me it was you.”
Dirty Beard. “He was there?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“He . . . bring . . . a girl. For the senator. And then you come. Chanchai told him. Told him to come for girl.”
It tracked with what she remembered. The senator told Skull Face to get rid of the girl. Skull Face placed a call. Matthias Redcroft, the senator’s aide, escorted the girl into the adjacent suite. Someone came to the door, beyond Livia’s field of vision. It must have been Dirty Beard. And then Redcroft came back, and the girl was gone.
“Where?” she said, struggling with her excitement. “Where did Dirty Beard—where did Juntasa get that girl?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must have some idea. Where?”
“Juntasa know. So many place. So many girl. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
She forced herself to think. Was she in danger? Square Head said he knew she would come. Did that mean the others did, too?
No. Because they aren’t plagued by mortal guilt and its unwelcome insights.
Still, she said, “Did you tell Juntasa you knew I was coming?”
“Yes.”
Shit, she’d been wrong. “When? When did you tell him I would come?”
“For all of us. That you would come for all of us. You are . . . our karma.”
Okay, then, she’d been right the first time—it wasn’t a prediction about where and when, more a prophecy of doom. General guilt, not specific insight. Of course Dirty Beard would be afraid she would come—how could he not be, after she’d left that hotel room an abattoir? But he’d have no way to know how she would track them. Or the order in which she’d move against them. She doubted he would waste resources in this godforsaken place, waiting for days or weeks or months on the off chance that she might show up.
Still, the possibility that she could have been anticipated was sobering. She was accustomed to hunting unseen. This time, she was expected. Meaning the hunting might be going both ways. She had to keep that in mind. And adjust her tactics accordingly.
She glanced at the woman in the adjacent bed. Her eyes were still closed, her body still trembling.
“Where can I find Juntasa?”
“Please. I accept my karma. I know why you come. I am ready. Please.”
“Where can I find Juntasa?”
“My karma. Please. I can’t anymore. Please.”
It was horrible. She had thought to threaten to kill him. Now he was begging for it. It was like entering for a judo throw, only to have your opponent turn your entry into a throw of his own.
She fought to regain the initiative. “I’ll be your karma. But tell me first how to find Juntasa.”
“I don’t know. At work. Headquarters.”
She already knew that and she wasn’t going to be able to touch him there.
“Juntasa,” she said. “You said he told you about Chanchai and the senator. How? How did he tell you?”
&n
bsp; “He call me.”
The thought of Dirty Beard warning Square Head, and maybe being warned in return, was unsettling.
“When?”
“No one talks to me now. Look at me. Look at my karma.”
“Does Juntasa have a phone? A mobile phone. Do you know that number?”
Square Head groaned and his eyes went to a small shelf alongside the cot. There were a few books in it, some clothes. An old photograph of himself when he was younger and healthy, with a small girl in his arms and an older couple alongside them. A daughter, she thought, and his parents. She should have noticed it earlier. If this all hadn’t been so personal to her, she would have.
And there, alongside the books, an older-model iPhone. She set down the pack, then reached across the bed and grabbed the phone. She pressed the power button, and the screen lit up with a message. It was in Thai, but she could see what it meant.
“The passcode,” she said. “Tell me.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. Please. I can only be responsible for my own karma. Please.”
She glanced at the photograph on the shelf, then back to him. “Tell me, or I’ll tell your parents what you did to my sister and me. And your daughter, unless she already knows because you did the same to her. I’ll tell them what you are.”
He licked his lips and shook his head spastically. “Please, no.”
“Yes. Unless you tell me the passcode. And show me which mobile number is Juntasa’s.”
He shook his head again. “They won’t believe you. No.”
“You won’t be around much longer to contradict my story. They’ll wonder why I would invent something so horrible. They’ll live the rest of their lives with doubts. Their memories of you poisoned. Their peace of mind destroyed.”