by Barry Eisler
There were a few work messages. And one from B. D. Little, left the previous evening, asking that she call him back.
Before leaving, she’d signed up for an international plan—call anywhere from anywhere for thirty cents a minute. She didn’t know where she’d be reaching him, but if he were in the States, it would be the middle of the night. She didn’t care. She pressed “Call Back.”
She waited while the call went through. Then: “B. D. here.”
She’d been expecting something like Hello, Livia. He didn’t recognize her number? She wasn’t buying it. “You called?”
“I did. You’re a hard person to reach.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean?”
“I guess your phone’s been off.”
She’d interrogated enough suspects to recognize when a cop was fishing. And to know better than to respond with anything the cop could then use.
“I’m in a new place. Lots to see.” Neither confirming nor denying that the phone had been off. Essentially saying nothing.
“Oh, I get that. I can be the same way when I travel. But I’m glad we’re talking now.”
She didn’t respond. The less you said, the less you had to explain.
“Anyway,” he went on after a moment. “How’s it coming out there? You feeling like maybe you want to be on the team?”
“I’m not sure yet. I’ve only been here two full days.”
“Of course, of course. But I’d love to hear your preliminary impressions.”
“I’d rather absorb a little more and then issue a final report. I don’t want to get your hopes up prematurely.”
He laughed. “Okay, fair enough. Just don’t forget to check in from time to time, okay? I like to be able to reach the people I’m working with.”
“You’re not working with me. At least, not yet.”
He laughed again. He put up with a lot of pushback. Either he was an exceptionally affable person, or he really wanted her. For what, though?
“You are tough. But okay, fair point. Thanks for calling, and I hope the trip goes well.” He clicked off.
There had been a slightly false note to that I like to be able to reach the people I’m working with line. If she didn’t know better, she might have thought he was trying to get her to think that phone calls were his only way of being in touch with her.
But if he had a Gossamer himself, and of course he would, he’d be able to monitor her cell phone’s movements. Gossamer, hell, he probably had people who could hack the mobile-phone company’s own database. Or who were receiving the data with the mobile company’s full knowledge and cooperation.
Well, no problem so far, because she’d left the phone in the hotel room as a precaution.
Yeah, but then he knows what hotel you’re staying at.
She realized she should have powered down the phone before arriving at the hotel.
Something else occurred to her. Had he called the hotel in the middle of the night, and told someone to put the call through to the room? I’m sorry, sir, your party isn’t answering.
Explainable, of course. I was wearing earplugs. Didn’t hear the phone.
But Little wouldn’t ask for an explanation. He’d assemble the pieces quietly and draw his own conclusions.
She remembered Lieutenant Strangeland’s admonition: There are depths to this thing. I know that. I can’t see them, but I feel them. And if I’m not seeing them, then neither are you.
Shit, she’d been complacent. She considered what else she might have overlooked.
Could you be under physical surveillance?
That was a sobering thought. On the one hand, probably not. On the other hand . . . how had Little put it? We have so many resources to waste.
She hadn’t been followed to the Franciscan retreat. She was sure of that. There had been long stretches on those secondary roads where there wasn’t another car in sight.
But she had to be more careful. She had to assume she was being watched.
She went out, leaving her cell phone behind again. After an hour of tuk-tuk rides, BTS Skytrain station changes, and two river crossings, she was sure she didn’t have a tail. Maybe she was being paranoid. Still, it would be smart to get a room at another hotel. Keep the first one, crash at the second. Just in case.
She found a mobile-phone vendor and bought a new burner. At a place called Rocket Coffeebar, she uploaded the photo of Square Head’s mobile-phone contacts and the video of his confession from the old burner to the new one, purging and then tossing the old one in a sewer after heading out again. She’d connect the new one to the cellular network and the Internet later, far in time and distance from where the old one had been permanently switched off.
She paused to check the Gossamer. Dirty Beard was at headquarters. From where she stood, he was only a couple of kilometers away. She wondered if he’d heard that Square Head had died. And if so, whether he suspected her.
She realized he could find out. A cop, calling the retreat center, speaking with Brother Panit, asking whether an American woman of Thai ethnicity had visited recently.
It doesn’t matter. You’re going to tell him yourself.
There was a motor-scooter dealer right next to the hotel, and she rented a Suzuki Nex—a toy compared to the Streetfighter, but perfect for getting past, through, and around Bangkok’s legendary traffic. She spent the afternoon reconnoitering. And as the sun was setting through the polluted haze in the western sky, she rode out to the Rot Fai Night Market, the evening breeze a mercy on her damp tee shirt. She was curious, of course, because Dirty Beard seemed to have business at the market. But her primary purpose was a vehicle.
The market had opened only an hour or so earlier, and the parking lot wasn’t yet crowded. She left the scooter and went inside. The density of the place was staggering. There must have been two thousand colorful tents, all crowded together over several acres at least, surrounded by shipping containers and trucks and brick-and-corrugated-metal buildings. She wandered for over an hour, the smells of fried rice and braised pork surreal on the night air, like a memory from her childhood calling from a reanimated past.
When she felt she’d seen enough, she went back to the lot. There were numerous small delivery trucks parked along the curb. She came across several possibilities, but she was looking for something just right, and took her time before she found it. And there it was, double parked, this one old and dilapidated, two seats up front, windows rolled down, windowless cargo area behind. The hatch was open, and though the dome light seemed not to be working, she could see the cargo area was half-filled with crates of vegetables. A shirtless Thai man with long, stringy arms was hustling back and forth between the truck and the Night Market entrance, where he would disappear around the corner and then return a few seconds later, moving fast and breathing heavily, beads of sweat running down his back and chest. Obviously, he was making deliveries to some of the food stalls. Livia glanced inside the truck as she passed, and saw what she’d been hoping for: the key in the ignition.
Based on what she’d seen in the cargo area, she estimated the man had another dozen trips. He was already winded. His pace would likely slacken.
It did. She watched from the shadows beyond a streetlight, obscured by passing crowds, as the man went back and forth again and again, huffing harder and sweating more profusely with each trip. She didn’t need a stopwatch to recognize the intervals were getting longer. And as he turned the corner for the eighth time, she slipped out of the shadows, closed the rear hatch, opened the driver’s door, eased inside, and turned the key.
The starter coughed fitfully and died.
Fuck.
She turned the key again. The starter groaned a little more gamely, but still sputtered out. Shit.
But the guy had driven the damn thing here. And if the starter were that crapped out, he would have left the engine running. Probably it was just a faulty relay. She turned the key again. Again the starter coughed and
died.
She adjusted the side-view mirror. No sign of the guy, but she couldn’t have more than a few more seconds.
Abort. Get out. Find another.
Instead, she turned the key again. The starter coughed, faltered, caught . . . and the engine growled awake.
She popped it into reverse, fought the impulse to hit the gas, and backed up smoothly to create room between her and the car double parked in front of her. She glanced in the side-view and saw the guy coming around the corner. He cried out something in Thai and started running.
Livia cut the wheel right and cleared the car in front of her. The guy must have gotten an adrenaline burst, because as winded as he’d looked, he was able to reach her faster than she’d anticipated. He pulled abreast and got a hand on the door, his eyes desperate, almost terrified. He yelled, “Mai! Mai!” No! No! But it was already too late. She shot ahead and the man fell back. She cut around two cars in front of her and almost turned the wrong way on the street before remembering that in Thailand she had to drive on the left side. She swung left, swerved around more traffic, and was out, just another vehicle among thousands, tens of thousands, like it.
For a full second, she felt triumphant. She’d done it! It had been risky, and close, and crazy with that faulty starter, but she’d done it. She had the vehicle she needed. Her plan was good. It was going to work. She was going to get Dirty Beard, and then, and then . . .
An image cut through her exultation: that man’s eyes. His desperation. His terror.
She realized he’d been no delivery-truck driver, paid a wage by a company that would be insured against loss. That man worked for himself. And that truck was probably everything he owned. Everything his family depended on. If he couldn’t afford to replace a faulty starter relay, what were the chances that he had any kind of insurance?
Not your problem. Keep going. Drive. Dirty Beard. That’s what matters.
She tried to listen to that part of her mind. To ignore the image of those wide, terrified eyes.
She couldn’t.
She circled the Night Market and double parked about fifty yards back from where she’d taken the truck. She got out, took the key, and walked forward, looking for the man. If she saw him, she would toss him the key and take off running. She was in shape, while he was winded. She had no doubt he’d settle for the key and find his truck, and probably not even try to chase her. She’d figure out another way to get the vehicle she needed.
Ten yards ahead, she spotted him. It wasn’t hard. He was sitting on the curb, his face in his hands, sobbing. Scores of people glanced at him as they passed, but no one stopped to help or even inquire.
Her resolution faltered. Without thinking, she kept walking, stopping just in front of him and holding out the key to the truck. “Khor thot ka,” she said, using some of the Thai she remembered. “Khor thot ka.” I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
The man looked up. He saw her. He recognized her. She expected him to fly into a rage, and she was ready to toss him the key and take off. But he didn’t. He came shakily to his feet and just looked at her, crying harder.
It was unbearable. “I’m sorry,” she said again in Thai. “I’m sorry.” She held out the key.
He shook his head and wiped his face. “Why?” he said in Thai. “Why did you do that?”
She struggled for a moment. It was hard because she understood more Thai than she could speak. “Come. Please. I’m sorry.”
The man shook his head, plainly at a loss.
“Please,” she said again, motioning in the direction of the truck. “Please.”
Still shaking his head and slack jawed with apparent shock and relief, the man took the key and followed her to the truck. She motioned that he should open the hood. He reached inside and did so.
It was an older engine—everything visible and accessible. She pointed to the starter.
“Broken,” she said. “Broken.” She pointed to herself. “I fix.”
The man said nothing. He seemed stupefied.
It took her less than three minutes to locate the corroded wires that were causing the problem, scrape them clean with the knife she was carrying, a Benchmade 3300 Infidel with a four-inch tactical-black blade, and reattach them properly. “Go,” she said, pointing to the driver’s seat. “Go. Start. You try.”
His expression poised uneasily between suspicious and bewildered, the man did as she asked. He turned the key and immediately the engine came smoothly to life.
The man laughed delightedly and looked at her. She smiled at him. He cut the engine and got out of the truck.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
He smiled and shook his head. He must have been so relieved to have his truck back, and so confused, that he didn’t care about anything else.
She was still horrified that she could have been so blinded by her lust for revenge that she would have ruined this man’s life pursuing it. That for a moment, she had forgotten who she was.
Or who she thought she was.
Something occurred to her. Maybe it would have worked sooner. But maybe not. Because before, weirdly, they didn’t know each other. Or trust each other.
She gestured to the truck. “How much?”
He shook his head. “How much what?”
“Money. You sell. I buy.”
The man laughed. “Now you want to buy it?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. How much?”
“I can’t sell it. I need it. It’s why I was so angry.”
He hadn’t looked angry. He’d looked bereft. But that was a harder thing for a man to admit to.
“I give . . . two thousand dollar. American dollar. Okay?”
The man’s eyes widened. “What? No, I can’t—”
“Two thousand. American dollars. Right now. Okay?”
The man shook his head, stupefied again.
She reached into a cargo-pants pocket and pulled out a roll of bills. She counted out twenty hundreds, making sure he could see each one.
She extended the cash to him. “Okay? I give money. You give truck.”
“Why?”
“I want truck.”
“You don’t have to. It’s okay.”
“I want to. Please.”
He stared at the money for another moment. Then his face broke out in a huge smile and he nodded. “Okay. Okay, thank you. Okay.” He took the bills and handed her the key, then just stood there, beaming as though he’d won the lottery after an incredible reversal of fortune. Which, she supposed, was pretty much what had happened.
She pointed to the back and paused, trying to remember the Thai word. “Vegetable,” she said, after a moment. “Your vegetable.”
The man laughed, retrieved the remaining crates, and set them on the sidewalk. “Thank you,” he said in English, pressing his palms together in a high wai.
She shook her head and returned the wai. “Thank you.”
She got in the truck. It started up easily and she drove off, waving a last time to the man before pulling out into traffic.
She was happy. Relieved. It had all worked out. She had everything she needed now. The fuel was gathered. All she needed to do was arrange it. And light the match.
But she was also uneasy. She remembered when she’d been in college and had come across the Nietzsche quote: Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. It had felt like he was speaking to her, warning her, her specifically.
She had always promised herself she would never cross that line. But she realized now the line might be harder to see than she’d thought.
She shook off the feeling. She would think about it later. Now she had to focus.
She found herself thinking about a place she’d come across online. An airplane graveyard, in Bang Kapi, a suburban Bangkok neighborhood about twenty kilometers east of the city center. It sounded unusual. Not well known, even among locals. And isolated.
She decided to take a look for herself. A graveyard felt right for what w
as coming.
12
The next day, Livia visited all the places she needed to see, but particularly the airplane graveyard. She rode out on the Nex and instantly liked what she found: an empty, overgrown rectangular field, maybe four acres total, enclosed by a concrete wall on one long side; trees, underbrush, and a drainage canal on the other; a six-lane divided road in front; and another canal at the far end. Within, for reasons no one seemed entirely clear about, were the enormous, scavenged remains of a pair of huge commercial passenger jets.
She circled the area a few times, getting familiar with its layout and rhythms. She was still in the city, no doubt, but it was nowhere near as dense or noisy as the Central Business District. The buildings were lower, with a few high-rise condominiums that stood out by contrast. The roads weren’t terribly congested. And though there was still plenty of urban background noise, it was nothing like the din of construction and traffic and commerce of central Bangkok.
A long driveway ran adjacent to the site’s western wall, and she followed it to a restaurant called Green View Chill Cuisine. A sign said they would open at five for dinner. That was fine. She parked the Nex at the far end of the driveway, almost at the edge of the canal.
There was a break in the wall here, she saw. And though the far end of the graveyard was thick with trees, there was a dirt road snaking through them. She followed the road. It was narrow and rutted and disused, but she thought her newly acquired delivery truck could handle it.
The field itself looked like a crash site—as though a pair of white planes had collided at low altitude and plummeted into a green field, scattering their innards on impact. Here was an enormous, skeletal fuselage. There, a giant, amputated wing. And there, a dismembered tail. Everywhere was the detritus of commercial air travel: seats and oxygen masks. Overhead luggage racks, one side closed and locked, the other open to the sky. A flight-instrument panel, the pilot’s seat still attached to the flooring connected to it. And all of it gradually disappearing beneath weeds and dead leaves and vines.