by Barry Eisler
At least she’d mentioned his history with Skull Face. Implying she knew much more and would catch him in any lies. At least she’d done that.
A moment went by, punctuated by nothing but the smell of his sweat and the sound of his breathing. Then he whispered, “Sorm.”
Yes.
“Rithisak Sorm?”
His eyes widened at the mention of the name. She nodded, in confirmation to him and satisfaction to herself. Her tactics were coming back to her.
“Sorm told you to take Nason and me.”
“Yes.”
“And how did he know where to find us?”
“He . . . just know. Everything he know. Everyone.”
His English was degenerating, she noted, from fear and pain and exhaustion. She had to be careful to manage that. Not to let him get to the point where he would invent or imagine whatever he thought would please her and alleviate his suffering.
“Who was Sorm working for?”
“Sorm . . . work for everyone. And everyone work for Sorm.”
His mind was starting to drift, his answers to fragment. She had to keep him focused.
“Who gave him the order? Was it the senator?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe senator. Maybe Thai bosses. Senator . . . he know everyone, too.”
All right, maybe it didn’t matter that much. Ultimately, it was the senator, whether directly to Sorm or through intermediaries.
“Second question. Pay attention. The night I killed Vivavapit and Redcroft and the senator. The night I butchered them, yes? There was a girl at the hotel. A girl you brought to the senator so he could rape her. Where did you get her?”
“I didn’t want. Senator, he—”
She jammed the point of the Infidel against the skin under his eye again. Again he yelped and tried without success to pull away.
“Where. Did you get. That girl.”
“Sorm. I get from Sorm.”
“Sorm gave you the girl?”
“Yes. He always can get. Anything. Everything you ask.”
“No. I told you, we’re not going to play that game where everything is someone else’s doing. Maybe Sorm provided her, but don’t tell me he handed her off personally. You took care of that. You brought her to the room, and you picked her up at the door from Redcroft when the senator was done with her.”
She didn’t know for sure it had been Dirty Beard, but she was confident enough to accuse him outright. A gambit she’d used countless times while interrogating suspects. And now, if she was lucky, he’d feel that if she knew this much, there was no harm in confirming the rest.
His eyes widened, and she knew she’d been right. He shook his head, but too late—the eyes were the tell, and she’d already seen it.
“No!” he sputtered. “I didn’t, I wouldn’t—”
She pressed the Infidel hard. The point broke the skin under his eye and he howled.
“You want me to think she appeared and disappeared by magic?” she said, her voice rising. “Is that what you’re fucking telling me?”
He vibrated his head—plainly too afraid to shake it.
“Then where did you get her?” she shouted, flecks of spit hitting him in the face. “Where did you take her? Where? Where?”
The dragon had her. She couldn’t hold it back anymore. She tightened her grip on the Infidel, took him by the hair with her free hand—
“Night Market,” he bleated. “Srinakarin. Night Market.”
Her heart kicked hard. It tracked with what she’d seen on the Gossamer. The dragon didn’t care. It offered up an image of his skewered eye.
Back off back off BACK OFF
“Where you went two nights ago?”
He glanced at her, his expression one she had seen many times before in reaction to a successful probe: a mix of horror at the scope of her knowledge, and resignation that the escape routes he was hoping for were all walled off.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“And where you went tonight, too?”
He didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. His face said everything she needed to know.
“Who did you meet there?”
“Leekpai. I meet Leekpai.”
“Say his full name.”
“Udom Leekpai.”
“Keep going.”
“Leekpai . . . he the one. Who give me girl for senator.”
She struggled with the dragon. “Where does Leekpai get the girls?”
“I don’t know. Maybe villages. I don’t know. When senator want girl, I go to Leekpai.”
“Why did you meet him two nights ago, and then again tonight? Were you picking up more children to deliver?”
“No. He give me money.”
“Money for what?”
“Because . . . I police.”
“Your cut of the profits. From selling children to be raped.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
“Why two nights, then? Don’t tell me you pick up your bribes every day.”
“Leekpai not have all money first time. Sometimes he not have. So I go back.”
It might have been true. She didn’t have enough information to know.
“Where at the Night Market? And before you answer, the way I’ve been tracking you is accurate to within about three feet. Whatever you tell me, I’m going to check.”
“He have stall. Many stall. He tell me where to meet.”
“He’s not holding slaves in a stall. Where does he keep the children?”
“Container. Shipping container. Stalls pack up in container when market closed. When I need girl, he take me to container.”
She struggled to push back the excitement again, and the rage. “Where is his container?”
“It . . . outside. Outside stalls. But so many container. He take me.”
She didn’t know whether he wouldn’t be more detailed, or couldn’t. And hurting him wouldn’t clarify anything. He’d start screaming east, or west, or the blue one, or the striped one, or container number thirty-three, or whatever.
But she thought she might have another way.
She wiped the Infidel across the sleeve of his shirt, cleaning the bit of blood on it, then closed it and clipped it back in her pants. She searched his pockets. It took her only a moment to find his cell phone. She pressed the “On” button and was unsurprised to see a passcode lock.
“What’s the passcode?” she said.
“I tell you, you let me go?”
“You’re going to have to tell me more than just that. But it’ll be a step in the right direction.”
He nodded and spoke four digits. She input them and the phone unlocked. Naturally, it was all in Thai. But the interface was easy enough, and she went to the address book. She held it so he could see.
“I’m going to scroll through. When I get to Leekpai, you tell me.”
He did. She checked and saw a one-name entry she recognized from the spelling as Udom. The other entries were two names. So for this one, it seemed, he preferred not to include a last name. That was promising. She used her phone to snap a photo of the entry.
“Now Sorm,” she said.
It was the same for Sorm—a first-name-only entry for Rithisak. She snapped another photo.
She scrolled through the list of recent calls, and saw calls to and from “Udom” for both nights Dirty Beard had been at the Night Market. All right. It seemed he was telling the truth. About Leekpai, anyway. But there were no calls to or from “Rithisak.” She would come back to that.
“Now,” she said, “tell me what you were doing in Pattaya two nights ago.”
This time, there was no horror in his eyes at the extent of her information. Just the resignation.
“Sorm call me. He say he need money. That why I go to Night Market. Money from Leekpai. And I give to Sorm.”
“Why does Sorm need money? He doesn’t have an ATM card?”
“He not say. I give him what Leekpai give me. And go back when
Leekpai has more. My . . . my part.”
“You mean Leekpai was short, but you gave whatever he had to Sorm. And came back for your own cut after.”
“Yes. That.”
She wondered if it was true. If it were, why would someone like Sorm be so desperate for cash?
She held up his phone. “There are no calls to or from ‘Rithisak,’” she said.
“Sorm not call from his phone. Call from new phone.”
She looked and saw calls to and from a number with no name associated with it, meaning not one in his contacts list.
“Why is he using a new phone?”
“I don’t know. I don’t ask.”
“Does he ordinarily call from his own phone?”
“Yes.”
If it was true, it was interesting. Sorm needed quick cash. And seemed suddenly afraid to use his own phone. Something was going on with him. But she didn’t know what.
“But you met Sorm in Pattaya. To give him money.”
“Yes.”
“Where in Pattaya?”
“His club. Les Nuits. Hotel Ruby.”
That tracked with what she’d observed with the Gossamer. It seemed he was telling the truth. At least about the most important things.
Where to get to Sorm.
And where—maybe—to find that little girl.
“Okay?” he said, looking up at her. “I tell you everything. Okay?”
She squatted alongside him and looked at his face, still sickly green in the reflected glow cast by the SureFire, his eyes wide with hope and fear.
“Remember what you made me do?” she said quietly, after a moment. “On the deck of that ship. When I was thirteen.”
“Please. Chanchai. We were afraid.”
“You didn’t look afraid. Not even a little. You looked like you were doing exactly what you wanted to. Night after night after night.”
“Please.”
“And do you remember what you did to my sister?”
“Please.”
“I do. Because for me, anything you did to her was worse than everything you did to me.”
“I’m sorry. Please.”
“And then I spent sixteen years not even knowing what had happened to her. Whether she was alive. Whether she was dead. Whether some sick, degenerate, sadistic monster like you was raping her night after night after night.”
“Please. Please.”
“You know, your partner Sakda talked a lot about karma right before I killed him. Do you believe in karma?”
“Yes. But also I believe . . . mercy.”
“I’m not sure I believe in karma. Sometimes I guess I do. The things you absorb when you’re a child . . . they stay with you.”
“Please.”
“But after you and Sakda and Vivavapit stole Nason and me, and raped us, and sold us, I grew up in the West. And they don’t really believe in karma in the West. In the West, they believe in hell.”
“No. Please.”
“You’re lucky,” she said. “For you, it’ll be over in minutes. For me, it’s been my whole life. And it’ll never go away. I’m beginning to realize that, more and more. There are things I do that dull the pain. But only for a while. And then there’s always just . . . more pain. Forever.”
“Please.”
“Unless there really is a hell,” she went on. “In which case, the next few minutes will be just a preview for you. I don’t know. You won’t be able to tell me. Unless one day I see you in hell myself.”
She stood, picked up the gasoline canisters, and moved them to the hatch. Then she stepped out, leaned inside, and unscrewed each one. The smell of gasoline was overpowering in the small space.
He struggled against the handcuffs and the duct tape. “No!” he shouted. “No, I told you, no, I sorry, I sorry, no, please, please!”
She picked up one of the canisters and circled the truck, dumping it out on the hood and the roof as she walked. When it was empty, she threw it in back again.
“No!” he kept on shouting. “Please, stop, no!”
She reached in and picked up the Surefire. Then she kicked over the second canister. The gasoline poured out of it, flowing over the floor, soaking into Dirty Beard’s clothes.
“Mai!” he screamed in Thai, his voice high and hysterical now, his body thrashing in the gasoline. “Mai, mai, mai, mai, mai!”
Then his voice cracked and he stopped. The interior of the truck was suddenly, strangely silent. She pointed the flashlight at his face, and watched for a moment as he stared at her, hyperventilating with terror, his teeth bared, his eyes bulging.
“That’s funny,” she said. “I used to beg you, too. Remember?”
This time, he didn’t speak. He threw back his head and wailed.
She moved back, took out the Zippo, flicked it to life, and tossed it into the truck. Instantly the interior erupted in a ball of orange fire. She stepped farther from the inferno, and then farther still as the heat became increasingly intense. From inside, she could just make out Dirty Beard, bucking and twisting and thrashing. Even the roar of flames wasn’t enough to drown out the peals of his agonized shrieks.
In seconds, the vehicle was a fireball—the wheels, the paint, everything ablaze. She continued to back off as the heat grew increasingly intense. At twenty feet away, she could no longer hear Dirty Beard, whether because of the roar of flames or because he was past screaming.
She imagined they’d identify the bodies from dental records. But whatever evidence of her presence might have been in the truck would be incinerated now. And though she doubted the previous owner would be a useful lead to her, they wouldn’t find him, either. The VIN on the aluminum plate below the windshield would melt. The one on the sticker on the driver’s door frame would be gone entirely. And the others she had filed off. The truck would be useless to anyone investigating. It was nothing but a funeral pyre now.
She turned, pulled on the goggles, and started walking toward the tree line. There was a road beyond it. Tomorrow she would get rid of the extra guns and the contaminated clothes. But for now, she’d just find a tuk-tuk, or a cab. Get something to eat. Drink another bottle of water. Go back to the hotel. Take a scalding-hot shower. Get in bed. Replay all of what had just happened. She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, at least not for a long time.
It didn’t matter. Tomorrow she would go to Pattaya to deal with Sorm. She had an idea about how. She thought it would work. But she still didn’t like it.
16
Dox strolled along Beach Road in Pattaya, the beach in question to his left, a long string of cheap restaurants and stores and bars to his right. The palm trees were swaying by the water and the noonday sun was partially hidden by clouds, but still it was like walking through an open-air steam room, with even the stray dogs of the area taking a break from begging and foraging to lie motionless in whatever pavement shade they could find instead. He didn’t mind the climate, though. Heat and humidity had always suited him. Cold, on the other hand, he didn’t much care for. Back in the day, he’d trained with SEALs on Kodiak Island in Alaska, at the Naval Special Warfare Cold Weather Detachment, and calling conditions on Kodiak Island “cold weather” was like calling bubonic plague a damn runny nose. And then there was the Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, California, and a deployment in Norway, for God’s sake, practically the North Pole. If he never saw snow again—hell, if he never saw his breath fog up again—he would die a contented man.
He’d rented a motorcycle—a Kawasaki Z800 because the shop was out of anything smaller, not that he minded a big bike, but it didn’t blend quite as well here in Pattaya. He’d thought it best to park a little ways off and walk to meet Kanezaki’s contact. He was sure Kanezaki was all right. But still, that sword guy in Phnom Penh hadn’t just materialized out of the ether.
There was some motorcycle traffic—Pattaya wouldn’t be Pattaya without the incessant background buzz of two-stroke engines—but this was a relatively quiet time of day.
The partygoers were still sleeping it off, the clubs wouldn’t open for at least another six hours, and anyway, who in his right mind wanted to be out and about when the afternoon was at its most sultry?
Well, a few people, at least. The expats who made the beach town their retirement homes, for example. They were mostly Australian and British, sixties on up, with stick arms and beer bellies, divorced, rheumy-eyed old men subsisting on their pensions and trying to persuade themselves that Pattaya was a paradise, where you could sip from dewy bottles of sixty-baht Singha beer al fresco all day and get chased by pretty brown prostitutes outside the go-go bars all night. Where your money, such as it was, made you matter. Not like at home, where leveling things off every afternoon at the local pub with a pint, or three or four, would be prohibitive and, worse, make you feel pathetic, like the old men you’d seen doing the same when you were younger. No, that wasn’t you. That was someone else. Pattaya was paradise, and don’t you forget it.
He kept moving along, wondering why he was feeling so cynical. It wasn’t really like him. He tried to shake it off.
Kanezaki had told him the lab boys had schematics for the Les Nuits nightclub, and in fact for the entire Ruby Hotel. And they’d used their phone-tracking “national technical means” to track the burners Sorm was using to a VIP room at the back of the club. Apparently the VIP room doubled as a safe room, because it had reinforced doors front and back, one attached to the club and the other opening onto a riser of stairs that led to a fire exit at the rear of the building. And though Dox would have preferred something classic and simple, like bursting in, dropping the guy with two in the chest and one in the head, and getting the hell out of Dodge, Kanezaki was insistent about the indictment and Sorm being taken alive. So Dox’s role was somewhat unaccustomed: drop any bodyguards, toss in a multibang flashbang to disorient Sorm and anyone else inside, and drag or chase Sorm down the stairs and out the back, where a detachment of contractors would grab him, bag him, and render his ass to New York for trial.
The tricky part was, apparently the club entrance was staffed by a bunch of former Royal Thai marines, with metal-detector wands, sidearms, and a no-nonsense attitude. They’d be focused on what was coming in through the club entrance, not on people running down the stairs on the other end, so the getaway wouldn’t be a problem. No, the problem wouldn’t be getting out, it would be getting firearms and flashbangs in, as such items had a tendency to set off metal detectors and upset former Royal Thai marine guards. Meaning he needed a way to get in there after hours so he could have the gear already in place when the club opened. The good news in that regard was that the hotel and club had state-of-the-art security, which against your average intruder offered a lot of advantages, but which against the Kanezaki geek squad meant a hacked hotel server and the doors being opened and closed remotely whenever Dox gave the word.