by Tham Cheng-E
Julian, his face red as a baboon’s bum, blinks out a couple of tears.
“There are many techniques to a covert kill.” Marco digs his knuckles into Julian’s scalp. “If you want, I could to show you how far this could go. No traces, no blood, no forensics. Just a bad day to catch crooks without your seatbelt on. I could write a novel of a report on this. I’d even arrange your funeral and weep with your grieving folks. So don’t try getting all tough with me, comprende?”
Julian’s lips turn purple. He struggles to nod and a string of snot drops from his nose.
Marco lets him go, sending him away with two friendly slaps on the back. “Talk to chief for me.” He raises his voice and makes sure Landon hears it.
/ / /
Landon watches Julian stagger towards his car and drive away. The new arrival, Marco, lights a cigarette and saunters back over. He pops a smoke ring and grins, revealing his parted incisors. “I like to take things a little lighter. Works better with the rookies.”
Landon gives a perfunctory smile and finds himself staring at Marco’s glass eye.
“Bad accident, rammed into the steering and crushed half my face.” Marco exhales and squints at him through the smoke. “Happened in “85, they weren’t good at reconstruction surgery then.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“Don’t be.” Marcos draws again. “You got into an accident yourself?” He gestures at the scars on Landon’s forearm with the cigarette.
“Must’ve been so traumatic that I can’t remember.”
Marco checks a slip of paper he retrieves from his pocket. “It says here you’re Chinese.”
“I’ve been led to believe I’m mainly Chinese and Malay.”
“Forget about the search warrant.” He takes another draw of his cigarette and waves the glowing stub between his fingers. “My guy’s just toying with you, wanted a fast break. We haven’t got enough evidence to link you with the fraud, except the implication of your ID. I figured no one would be that stupid to use one’s own ID in a forgery.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Marco barks out a laugh, drops the stub and stamps on it. “In any case, may I request a little tour of your house? Nothing more than a formality, you know, just to make sure everything’s sitting well.”
Landon holds the gate open. “After you.”
“Thank you.” Marco’s good eye disappears in a large, gracious smile as he steps past Landon and onto the driveway.
They enter the house to find the couch empty; one of its armrests bears the depression made by a human head. Marco points his chin at the mess on the coffee table. “Had company?”
“Had a friend over for the match last night.”
“Ah!” Marco reels in surprise. “How’d it go?”
“Five-three to Portugal.”
“Who would’ve thought!” Marco roars with laughter. “The odds flipped. Those poor bookies.”
From the back of the house they hear the sounds of flushing, and the toilet door open and striking a wall. Cheok emerges from the kitchen, the hair at the back of his head flattened like wheat stalks in a crop circle. He staggers past Marco without paying any attention to him, apparently reeling from the hangover. He goes to the yard and out of sight. Then they hear the rattling of plastic buckets and the brush of a besom.
“He’s Cheok,” says Landon. “He tends to my garden now and then.”
Marco regards him with little interest. “Heard you got medical issues?”
“I have amnesia.” Landon produces a pack of capsules. “Thiamin supplements and Midazolam. I’m at risk of seizures because of it, and I forget recent things, even my stolen IC.”
“Awful.” Marco makes a face. “Must’ve been such trauma that gave you this and the scars. How on earth do you remember anything? Tattoo them on your chest?”
Landon chuckles at Marco’s allusion to an old film. He waves his phone. “I make little notes here and there.”
“Don’t we all?” Marco grins. “But first you got to remind yourself to put in that reminder.”
“I haven’t lost that much brain function yet.”
Marco laughs, then switches topics. “You’ve always lived alone?”
“Since my mother died.”
Marco walks over to the curving staircase. “May I?”
“Please.”
He takes the handrail and starts climbing. “This your family home?”
Behind him Landon nods. “Yes, as far as I can remember.”
“Must be really old.” Marco enters the study. “Got a tenure on it?”
“It’s freehold.”
Marco whips about. “My, my.” His smile is shifty. “You’re sitting on gold.”
“I’m not supposed to sell it.”
“No?”
“No, really.” Landon scratches the back of his ear. “It’s an honour-and-heirloom thing under oath. I had it written down all over so I wouldn’t forget.”
Marco smirks. “I wouldn’t dream of keeping what my father left me.”
“What’s that?”
“Congenital heart disease.” Marco’s laughter rings far and hollow in the high-ceilinged hallway. Landon merely smiles obligingly. “Lighten up!” Marco slaps him on the arm and checks his watch. “What else you got in the house?”
They come to the room with the red Mandarin gown and the leather trunk heaped full of journals. “You a writer or something?” says Marco.
“Journals mostly, some poetry.”
“Poetry. So what do you do?”
“I’m a barista.”
“My my.” Marco leans away from him. “Criminal? Real estate? Delinquent?”
Landon coughs out a laugh. “No ah…I make coffee, professionally.”
“Ah! A barrister!” Marco’s voice travels across the hallway.
They explore the attic and then trudge back downstairs and to the back of the house. Marco surveys the kitchen without touching anything. He pops his head into the lavatory, makes a face, and steps away. Landon leads him back to the living room.
“Do you have a lawyer?” he asks.
Landon shakes his head.
“Then you must have a deed. May I see it?”
Landon’s mind races. There is only one spot in the house where he keeps such stuff. He returns to the kitchen and pulls open almost all drawers in sight before he notices the larder by the corner—the old kind with framed doors, wire netting and a steeple with a ring attached to its point so you could hang it from a rafter. It has been choked with documents and papers ever since the household fridge took its job almost a century ago.
A pile of paper spills out when Landon opens the larder door. He riffles through them, sweeps out another pile and shudders as a hard sneeze takes him. From the same pile he pulls out a grey-blue envelope thick with documents. He upends it and slides out a stack of certificates, old letters and a deed dating to January 17th 1972, bearing his current name. It has an identity number matching the one he now uses.
Back at the living room Marco is smoking, leaning against a side door that leads out to the yard. He graciously steps aside when Cheok enters from the same door with a watering can.
“You a guard?” says Marco as Cheok passes him.
Cheok dispenses a hard stare; his eyes bloodshot from the alcohol. “I am a gardener, not a guard. Please, smoke outside the gate. Not in the garden.”
Marco snaps a laugh and plucks the cigarette from his lips as Landon strides up with the heavy, yellowed piece of paper. Marco takes it and scans it through. “Arthur Lock your father?” he asks.
“That’s right.”
Marco turns on his phone camera. “You don’t mind if I—”
“Not at all. Go ahead.”
Marco lays the deed on the floor and snaps it. He then picks it up almost reverently with both hands and returns it to Landon. “Nineteen seventy-two? You must’ve been an infant when you got this house.”
Landon chuckles modestly
. “I don’t look my age.”
At last Marco moves out of the door. He offers his hand, beaming widely. “Thank you, Mr Lock. You have been very forthcoming.”
Landon takes it. “My pleasure.”
Without warning, Marco wrenches up the handshake and caps a gleaming, egg-shaped instrument over Landon’s fingertip. A depression mysteriously appears over its surface and delivers a jolting prick. Marco then stashes it and lets go of Landon’s wrist—all with fluid precision. “DNA verification, nothing more.”
Landon, speechless, examines the microscopic red dot on his finger as Marco walks away.
/ / /
The GTR whines to life, its 3.8-litre V6 rumbling. The coupé purrs down Clacton Road and rounds a bend. Marco pulls over at a bus stop, lights his third cigarette, and with his free hand opens an antiquated device fashioned of bronze and black leather fortified with brass at the edges. Inside a screen of convex glass folds up and a dull blue light flickers.
The keypad flips open to reveal a tray containing a clear, gelatinous substance, into which Marco sets the egg-shaped instrument. He draws deeply on his cigarette and scans the rolling script. Three more draws and he flicks the stub out of the window and speaks into the device, “One-Niner-One. Run blood Serum diagnostic.”
The device speaks in soft, irregular clicks. More text appears on screen. Marco checks the traffic around him and speaks again into the device. “Track signature from blood sample.”
A soft whir, and a profile unravels. There is a head-shaped blank where a mugshot would have been.
Name: Qara Budang Tabunai
Race: Mongol-Han
Born: 5 November 1644
Last Contact: 14 March 1822
A knowing smirk passes across Marco’s face. He taps on the keypad and speaks into the device, “Confirm location track.”
The device clicks away like a camera’s shutter and then lapses into silence. Marco scowls when it reports tracking failure thrice. He takes out a small touchpad and switches it to a street map. Twice the touchpad attempts and fails to triangulate Landon’s position, and as a result suffers the brunt of Marco’s wrath when he hurls it over the dashboard. For God’s sake, what is wrong with this one? All Chronies can be tracked. Chronies are supposed to be tracked. It’s in their darn blood to be tracked!
Marco strains to calm himself. His thick chest deflates with a great exhalation. Experience has taught him that anger masks reason. He looks beyond the window into the rushing traffic and mulls over his options, unaware of the mite-size camera inside the plastic covering of the dome light.
/ / /
Far out of sight, Julian nestles in his car and watches Marco on a folding screen the size of a postcard. He loses the profile for an instant when Marco shifts, but gets it right back when Marco leans over and mulls by the window. When Marco pulls out of the bus stop Julian starts the car and follows him.
8
THREE YEARS EARLIER
THE SELECTION FOR CODEX took three months. Candidates were expected to receive the call for a final assessment interview. If you didn’t receive the call in four weeks, you didn’t get the interview and you’d failed Selection for good.
John received his after six months.
He shuddered. He remembered how close to death he had been at the end of Selection. It wasn’t about the grit, guts, or sweat they’d squeeze out of you like they did in the Special Forces. Selection was a waltz—a refined excruciation of everything except your lungs and muscles. No long runs, no endurance marches, no killer loads, no weapons training, no close quarter combat, no air-drops, no hostage rescue. They expected you to know all that already. Selection was mental and candidates suffered alone. No camaraderie and no patsonthe-back. Throughout Selection there was just you and the Coach.
The Coach was standing beside a burnished stainless steel surgical chair. He was wearing a balaclava like an executioner and John knew him only as T-Eleven. The room was tiny, nine by nine feet, made of raw concrete like a bunker.
As if on cue the Coach pointed to a steel cylinder on which the word GAS was stencilled. It was stowed under the chair and connected to a silicone mask by a silicone hose. “You have forty per cent chance of death. Upon death full disbursement of your death benefits goes to your next-of-kin, whom I believe is…” he flips a page on his clipboard, “your wife, Ginny Tay, age 37?”
“Affirmative.”
John didn’t even know why he’d say that. The proposal was as ludicrous as anything could get. The word just slipped, like it did a thousand times over because in Selection that was the only thing he could say. It was the only thing he was supposed to say.
John looked at him. “You mean I could die?”
T-Eleven stepped aside from the chair like a sommelier and offered him the clipboard. “Sign here and you may leave.”
This was it. This was why only a rumoured two per cent finished Selection, and even less conquered it. John’s knees went soft, his guts churned because his heart had sunk right down to them. He touched the icy surface of the raw steel and started crying. T-Eleven strapped him in, fitted the silicone mask over his face, and the gas started hissing like a gloating serpent.
T-Eleven scribbled on the clipboard. His actions were insouciant, remorseless. It was just another day at the office. Even though there was neither odour nor pain, John wept because that was the only sensible thing left to do. The weeping rendered his large, leonine face flushed and moist. His strong, massive chest convulsed, and with tremendous effort he kept his roiling mind on Ginn and their daughter.
/ / /
John rounded the last bend and drove along Changi Coast Road in the slanting, dappled shadows of the flanking trees. The gas was real, and instead of killing him, it put him in a coma for three days. Ginn came by the hospital only on the fourth day because they wouldn’t let her in before that.
They had told her it was heat exhaustion from the Selection’s endurance march and had expected her to believe that rot. Her eyes were red and bulbous, and in them John saw relief and anger all at once. He reached out to touch her cheek with a secret bitterness; he couldn’t tell her the truth. At the beginning of Selection, he’d signed the Maximal Secret Non-Disclosure Act.
Break it and it would be the gallows. No trial, no inquisitions.
The trail brought him to an old warehouse facility with rusting tin sheets for walls and a caved-in roof of spindly, twisted metal battens. A marshal made him leave his car on a patch of broken concrete and continue on foot.
John was blindfolded and led into an interior where he felt the tingle of air-conditioning on his skin. He counted descending steps and entered an elevator that went a long way down. Fifty-four paces later the blindfold was removed. Reflexively, he squinted in anticipation of glare and found that the room, with its walls of darkwood and steel, was warmly lit.
The marshal tapped a card on a reader. “Look into the eyelet, sir.”
He did and the wall before him slid open. By its thickness he could tell it was a vault door, resistant to most bunker-buster ordinances.
Beyond it, a sterile corridor stretched into the distance. The walls were steel and there were steel doors set into them with no knobs or handles. All of them had the same sheen as the surgical chair in the gas chamber and filled his chest with ineffable dread. He had to be careful with everything CODEX, even an interview. Many things could happen in a CODEX interview.
“You have the room number, sir?” the marshal asked.
“Yes. Could you tell me wh—”
“Then you may proceed, sir.” The marshal departed without telling John where room RX-4328 was.
Six minutes remained before the appointed time. Behind him the vault door rolled shut, and a deep hum filled the space, like the bowels of a great machine. Each door had a retina scanner, and above it a tiny steel button shaped like a rivet. At the top of each doorframe he found numbers and alphabetical prefixes etched into a piece of steel.
John broke into
a run that took him past rooms bearing numbers that had no connection with one another. He entered another corridor, found no RX rooms, backtracked and turned two corners before he realised that the alphabetical prefixes corresponded mathematically to the room numbers.
When he finally unravelled the equation the answer brought him panting before a door like the others. He disentangled his nerves and pushed the rivet-like button. A pleasant chime, not unlike that of an expensive hotel room. The click of an opening latch. He nudged the door with a finger and swung it open.
“Most people would’ve expected it to slide,” said a voice.
John knew better than to appear tentative. He entered boldly and found the room lined with rows of common filing cabinets, all of them empty. There was a desk of white glass, and behind it sat an aged man with an olive-shaped face and large, hairy ears.
“Thaddeus,” said John, his heart jolting with a spark of recognition. “Should’ve guessed.”
“What’s the distance from your car to the spot where your blindfold was removed?” said the man, ignoring the condescension on John’s face.
“Cut the crap, Thaddeus. Just tell me if I’m in or out.”
“The world could’ve ended in the eight minutes you took to find me. The distance, please.”
John’s mind raced. Three hundred and fifty-six paces. He could do a hundred metres in 65 paces. Apply a factor for staircases, inclined surfaces. “Five hundred and eighty-six, give or take five metres.”
“I’ll cut to the chase.” Thaddeus peered at him over his reading glasses. “I don’t think you’re cut out for this.”
“Then why did you call me?”
“Because I don’t decide Selection alone.”
“Someone thinks I should be in.”
“I disagree.”
“What are you going to do, Thaddeus?”
“I could talk to the top, get you a raise or something, chart out a career path for you in the regular force.” Thaddeus laced his fingers over the table.