by Paul Moomaw
Biven stretched back slightly in the chair. “We have a good forked attack going, just like chess. If Parker moves, we smoke him out. If he doesn’t, we set Meissner up. We can’t lose”.
The other man laughed, a strained, raspy sound, as if laughing were not something he did often. “Your optimism, given your years of experience, disappoints me. We can always lose. Parker has friends at the very highest level. Only the most convincing evidence will touch him; and he isn’t, after all, very likely to go after Pray himself, smoking gun in hand. Nor, for that matter, has our old friend Herr Meissner survived over the years by being a fool.”
Biven offered up one of his patented boyish grins. “I suppose I need to psyche myself up a little, just to keep from being utterly depressed at this point.”
“Understandable. Your job is to be the optimist, and mine is to throw the cold water, right?” The bald man laughed again. “Speaking of cold water, have we turned anything on that plutonium?”
“Not a goddamn thing. I’m afraid it’s gone for good.”
“No chance it will end up on Meissner’s front porch?”
Biven snorted and shook his head. “He does everything at arm’s length. The stuff will undoubtedly never get close to Austria.”
“I suppose you’re right. A shame; it would simplify things.” The bald man started to reach for one of the folders on his desk, the ritual move that indicated an interview was over. Then he paused.
“Pray is a friend of yours, I believe,” he said. “Miss Villani, also.”
“More or less.”
“Does it bother you to use them as bait?”
Biven examined his carefully manicured fingernails, then gazed steadily at the other man.
“Gabriela owes me one,” he said. “And Pray left the Firm, didn’t he?” He smiled and cocked his head to one side. “Once you jump the fence, you’re just another game animal.”
Chapter 16
Flight 834 dipped its left wing in salute to the city of Vienna, and began the final descent to Schwechat Airport, which lay hidden below a thick layer of cloud. Gabriela stared through the window at the clouds, and Pray stared at Gabriela, whose red hair glowed in the mid-morning light that streamed through the window, framing the curve of her cheek. He wondered how you make conversation with someone who has poured a drink on your head.
Gabriela turned away from the window and gazed intently at Pray, who embarrassed himself by flinching at her vivid, green eyes.
“I think I should apologize,” she said.
“Apologize for what?”
“For Coeur d’Alene. I must have made a mess of your clothing.”
“Not really. I have very thick hair. It can hold at least a double scotch.”
“I’m sorry, anyway. I’m getting too close to forty, and I’m not handling it well.”
“And throughout all eternity, I forgive you, you forgive me,” Pray said. “William Blake,” he added with a weak grin.
“You really are out of control with that stuff, aren’t you?” Gabriela said. But she smiled, flashing even, white teeth, and turned back to the window. Pray watched her silently for a moment.
“Now you mention it, I can tell,” he said.
“Tell what?” she asked, her gaze directed at the wet expanse of green and brown that spread below the 747 as it broke through the clouds.
“That you aren’t in your twenties.”
She looked at him again, the smile broader. “He knows how to be nice.”
“Forty’s not that bad, anyway,” Pray said. “I hit forty-one just last month and didn’t feel a thing.”
“You’re a Libra?”
“I guess so.”
“I’m a Leo. What’s your moon?”
“My moon?”
“Your moon. What sign is your moon in?”
“I didn’t even know I had one. I don’t care much about astrology.”
The green eyes darkened. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t.” Gabriela returned her attention to the window. As the plane set down, Pray busied himself examining his fingernails. He wondered if she was always so touchy, and made a firm decision not to inquire.
* * *
They were standing in the middle of the foreign arrivals concourse when Gabriela turned suddenly to face Pray, placed her hands on his hips, then began slowly to circle him, her eyes locked on his.
“What are you doing?” Pray asked, pivoting to follow, trying to ignore the fire that ran from her hands to his groin.
“Look over my shoulder and tell me if you recognize the man who’s staring at us,” she said.
Pray scanned the crowded concourse. “Other than a good-looking blonde giving me the eye, I don’t see anything,” he said.
“Look again,” she said. “He’s tall and dark, but not very handsome; horn-rimmed glasses, goatee and mustache, in a green loden overcoat.”
“No dice,” Pray said after he had surveyed the crowd once more. “But I’ll try again—and again, and again, as long as you keep holding me.” Then he yelped as Gabriela dug sharp fingernails into his sides.
“I guess he left,” she said, releasing Pray.
“Maybe you imagined it,” he said. She shook her head emphatically from side to side.
“I know what I saw. You could say I’ve been sensitized to being stared at.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Pray said, and started to walk toward the exits, then stopped again. “Oh, shit,” he said.
“What now?”
“I don’t see your tall, dark stranger, but I see someone else—somebody who’s not supposed to know I’m in Austria—and he sees me.”
Weaving rapidly toward them through the crowd was Chet Tarbell.
“Who sees you?” Gabriela asked, gazing in the same direction. Before Pray could answer, Tarbell stood before him, hand extended.
“Hot damn,” he said. “The man with the golden parachute. What are you doing here?” He gave Gabriela a head-to-toe look. “And who is this?”
“Chet Tarbell, Gabriela Villani,” Pray said, shaking the offered hand.
“I’m Mr. Pray’s personal secretary,” Gabriela said. She simpered and wiggled like the world’s biggest bimbo. Pray stared at her, amazed at the metamorphosis.
“Chet is with the Company,” he said finally.
Gabriela beamed at Tarbell and wiggled some more. “The real CIA?” she squealed, loud enough that two or three passers-by looked around.
Tarbell didn’t seem to mind. He took Gabriela’s hand and went through the motions of a mock kiss over it. “Kuss die Hand,” he said. Pray squirmed. The Chet Tarbell he had known in Vietnam had been a courtly man, but with the natural, unself-conscious elegance of his Gulf Coast breeding, not ersatz European. Tarbell looked older, too, he thought, older than he should have—and a little tired, his face marked by a fine network of broken veins of the kind that can signify too much tropical sun, or too much booze.
Tarbell straightened and gazed at Pray. “What does bring you to Vienna, Adam?” he asked.
“Just a pleasure trip,” Pray said. Tarbell glanced again at Gabriela.
“You bet,” he said.
“Are you off to somewhere?” Pray asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I assume you haven’t opened a branch office here at Schwechat.”
Tarbell laughed. “No. Just seeing Susan and Elaine off on a trip.” He glanced at his watch. “Can I offer you a ride?”
“We have a rental car waiting.”
“Fine, fine. Where are you staying?”
“We’ll be at the Koenig von Ungarn, on the Schulerstrasse, for the time being.”
Tarbell’s eyebrows shot up. “Very fancy indeed. But then I guess you’ve just got dollars to burn these days, don’t you?” Pray thought he heard a tinge of envy, or sarcasm, or something equally unlike the old Chet Tarbell, who had been an unflappable, unaffected, and generally unimpressed-with-bullshit partner in Vietnam.
“Life’s all right,
” he replied. “Maybe we can get together for a drink.”
“You bet,” Tarbell said.
Pray picked up his bags and headed for the exits. When he reached the doors, he turned and looked behind him. Tarbell still stood there, watching them.
* * *
The Koenig von Ungarn was, as Chet promised, pretty fancy, Pray thought, as they entered the building, which dated from the Eighteenth Century. A lounge, done in a sort of art-nouveau that Pray found a little too precious, filled what had once been a central courtyard. The lobby and reception desk displayed themselves discretely behind doors of heavy, beveled glass. The price was pretty fancy, too, Pray thought. Gabriela agreed.
“A thousand schillings a night?” she asked, as they stood in the main bedroom, filled with furniture that looked as old, and elegant, as the building. A wrought iron, spiral staircase led to an upper story that contained a pair of twin beds. “Will the Agency pay for this?”
“Sure,” Pray said. “They never have had any sense about money.” And even if they don’t, he thought, I’m rich, aren’t I? It was still a thing he had to remind himself of.
“Which floor do you want?” he asked. “This one’s got more trimmings, and it’s closer to the bathroom.”
“I like the one upstairs. I get a closer look at the sky.”
“That puts me between you and the door. What if I’m a beast?”
Gabriela sauntered across the ornate rug and pushed Pray in the chest with an extended knuckle. It wasn’t a gentle push.
“I can take care of myself, cutie.” She walked to a small wet bar which stood against an inner wall. “Brandy and soda?”
“You’re a quick study.”
“I know.”
She returned with Pray’s brandy, and a scotch for herself.
“Why doesn’t he like you?” she asked as she handed him the drink. “Chet Tarbell, I mean.”
“What makes you think he doesn’t?”
“Didn’t anyone ever educate you about women? We know those things.”
Pray shook his head. “I suppose Chet’s a little uncomfortable around me. Sudden wealth, and all that. I notice you’ve been awfully intimidated, yourself.” He got ready to duck, then relaxed as Gabriela’s scotch stayed in her hand. “And I don’t think Chet has fared as well as he’d like in the Company. He’s had some bad luck. He got caught up in Phoenix, for instance.”
“He was in Arizona? I thought you couldn’t operate in the States.”
Pray shook his head. “Operation Phoenix. It happened in Vietnam. CIA ran it, and nearly ran itself into a ditch doing it. The idea was to pry terrorists out of the landscape, but the good guys wound up being the terrorists, at least as far as a lot of people were concerned. There were allegations of torture, and murder. I guess a great many of them were true. They had Congressional hearings later, and some reputations got ruined. Chet survived, but I think it hurt his chances to move up.”
“Well, whatever the reason, he doesn’t like you,” Gabriela said. “Take my word for it.” She drained her glass and went to the bar to pour herself another drink. “He likes women with big boobs, though,” she said over her shoulder.
Pray laughed. “I suppose your sixth sense tells you that, too?”
“He liked mine, anyway,” she said, returning from the bar. She stood in front of Pray and stared hard at him, as if she were trying to read something in his face.
“He wasn’t surprised to see you, either.”
Pray realized as she said it that Gabriela was right. Tarbell had gone through the motions, but it hadn’t rung true. He nodded.
“There was the man you thought you saw, too.”
“The man I saw, period.”
“Right. The man you saw. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” He walked to the window and gazed at the city. It was raining again, and everything had a polished look. “I think,” he said, and drained his drink, then headed toward the bar for another. “I think I’d better pay Chet a visit, just to let him know what a jade addict I’ve become.
“If he knew you were coming, he won’t believe a thing you tell him,” Gabriela said.
“Yeah,” Pray said. He hoisted his glass in her direction, then took a big swallow. “Looks like we’re off to a hell of a start, doesn’t it?”
Chapter 17
On the far northeast corner of Singapore Island, facing east, away from the Malay Peninsula and toward Borneo, spreads Changi Airport, new and modern, one of the world’s finest, with long enclosed ramps to take passengers directly from their air conditioned jetliners to the airport’s air conditioned interior.
At the back side of the airport, in the cavernous and very emphatically not air conditioned cargo customs building, Chan Lee Han paced around the inspection bay, which had been his domain for just under two months, and glanced repeatedly at his watch.
Han wished he could wait outside, where the night air felt almost cool compared to the oven-like atmosphere inside the metal building, which never seemed to give up its heat. He glanced again at his new watch, a fancy, gold-colored affair he had bought on his first payday. Philippine Airlines Flight 503, bearing a shipment which required Han’s special attention, was late. He tugged at the starched collar of his uniform, which made his neck sore despite having wilted in the heat. His feet hurt, as well; they weren’t used to standing around on hot concrete for hours, encased in stifling shoes of black leather.
Han walked away from the entrance and back to the scarred wooden table and rickety chair that served as his office. He looked at his watch again. In another few minutes his boss, Kim Yuan Sung, who was also his father-in-law and the person who had obtained this job for him, and who was as predictable and regular as the quartz movement inside the watch, would make his rounds. It was important that the shipment pass through before Kim arrived. He was a stickler, Han knew, who never took anybody’s word for anything, and would insist on a full inspection. That would be even more true after the disaster of the previous week, when a terrorist’s bomb had blown an Air Canada L1011 into small pieces only half an hour after it had taken off from Changi. The shipment Han waited for was to be transferred to this evening’s Air Canada flight, headed for Bombay. Where it might travel from that point, Han neither knew or cared. His job was to insure its safe passage, uninspected, between the Philippine Airlines Airbus and the Air Canada Lockheed. Then his debt to his younger brother would be paid. Chan Hua Peng had promised him that, and had been at pains to point out that it was a small thing he asked in return for having provided his older brother with the funds that had allowed Han to marry. Peng always seemed to have plenty of money, although he had no visible employment. Chan Lee Han had never let himself wonder where the younger Chan’s income came from. It sufficed that the money was there, that it supported their mother in reasonable comfort, and had been available to Chan Lee Han when he had needed it most. Han felt a brief moment of shame at the thought of that. The oldest son should be able to provide for himself. But Han was also a realist; some things outranked shame. He had taken the money, and now the debt had to be discharged.
Chan Hua Peng had promised his older brother that the shipment was not dangerous.
“I think it isn’t even illegal,” he had told Han. “It just needs to be kept from certain prying eyes. You have my sacred word for that.”
Han had never noticed any great religious fervor in his younger brother, and doubted that Peng held anything sacred.
But no matter, he reminded himself. I owe a debt, and it has been called.
Finally, a small, orange forklift towing two Philippine Airlines cargo trailers grumbled through the entrance and headed for Han’s inspection bay. He made out the symbol he had been told to expect—a stylized mountain in light blue with the letters NWT superimposed in green—on the two crates which were the cargo train’s only load. All was as it should be, so far.
“Unhitch me,” the forklift driver said. Han nodded and smiled, and silently released the wagons from the t
ractor. The driver waved and wheeled back toward the entrance.
A multi-layered carbon shipping form lay on one of the crates. Han slipped it into his clipboard. The form declared that the two large crates contained machine parts, with duties already paid. Han looked cautiously around, then pulled a ball point pen from his shirt and filled in the date and time. He paused, took a deep breath, then added his signature to attest that he had inspected the crates. Only then did he glance over his shoulder to see the worst of his fears coming true. Striding toward him in his peculiar, bird-like waddle, his stomach swelling the shirt of his uniform as if he carried a large ball inside it, came Han’s father-in-law.
Kim Yuan Sung beamed at his son-in-law as he approached. Han knew that Kim liked him, approved of him very much. He had, in fact, practically volunteered his daughter in marriage. Han also knew that Kim had used his influence to wangle this job for his son-in-law—a sign of great trust. Han winced with guilt at the thought.
“How is the job going tonight?” Kim asked.
“Very quiet.”
“What have we here?” Kim reached for the clip board.
Han handed it to him reluctantly. “Machine parts,” he said. “Just passing through from Manila. They need to be moved quickly to make the Air Canada flight to Bombay.”
Kim’s brow furrowed at the mention of Air Canada.
“You have inspected it carefully, of course?” As he spoke he directed his eyes at the obviously untouched seals on the crates.
Han shrugged and followed his father-in-law’s gaze. He twisted on the soles of his uncomfortable new shoes. “It did not seem that necessary. The parts come from a large, American company.”
Kim shook his head with a smile. “No, Han. I think you still have much to learn.” He pointed to the customs form. “Your signature is on this. That means your honor is at stake.” He turned to the crates and straightened slightly. “This cargo must therefore be inspected.”
Han bowed slightly. “Yes, Father-in-law.” He picked up a pry bar and took a step toward the crates.”