The Dragon With One Ruby Eye

by Paul Moomaw

  “Give it to me,” Kim said.

  Han gave him the pry bar and stood to one side, his brain spinning, as Kim slipped the bar under the lid of the crate and leaned on it. One end of the lid broke free with a loud, cracking groan that echoed inside Han’s mind.

  What in the name of the gods do I do now? he asked himself as Kim repeated the process at the other corner of the crate.

  Kim slid the lid halfway off the crate and peered inside. “Everything seems to be in order,” he said, and Han breathed a silent prayer of thanks. “So far,” Kim continued, and Han held his breath again.

  “Help me with these,” Kim said. Han looked into the crate. It was filled to the brim with what appeared to be gears and bearings, all wrapped in heavy, oiled paper.

  “You see? Just machine parts,” he said.

  “Perhaps. Help me with these,” Kim repeated. He lifted one of the gears out of the crate and placed it gently on the concrete floor.

  The two men removed the top layer, revealing still more gears and bearings.

  “Enough?” Han asked.

  Kim shook his head. He pulled out another wrapped machine part, and his eyebrows shot up.

  “What is this?” he said. Han felt suddenly nauseous, and prickles of sweat broke out on his face and neck.

  “What is what?” he asked.

  Kim had pulled more machine parts from the crate, revealing a layer of metal bottles. He pulled one of the bottles out, and gazed at Han with a triumphant grin. “Not a machine part, agreed?” He set the bottle down on the floor and looked at it. “But what is it?” He twisted the top, which resisted briefly, and then began to turn smoothly, rising from the bottle neck on lubricated threads.

  Kim removed the top and peered into the bottle. “Drugs, I wonder?” he muttered, rocking the bottle back and forth. He laid it on one side, then raised the bottom, and a bit of black powder poured onto the floor. Kneeling, he fingered it, put a little on his tongue. “No particular taste,” he said, then made a face. “It stings.” He stood up and placed the bottle upright.

  “This must be reported, of course,” he said, then glanced at Han with a look of pain on his face. “Oh, son-in-law, why did you sign that form in ink? I will argue for you, of course; you lacked experience, but . . .”

  Han felt dizzy, in a turmoil. His life was at an end. He would lose his job. Worse, the shipment would be impounded, would not find its way to Bombay, and then the gods only knew what the shadowy people Han’s younger brother worked for might do. He took a step toward Kim.

  “It isn’t really our concern,” he began, then shut his mouth as he saw the shadow pass across Kim’s eyes. That had been the wrong thing to say to this most law-abiding man. Han stood next to the crate, fingering a heavy, paper-wrapped bearing.

  “This must be reported at once,” Kim repeated. “You will stay here and make sure no one touches anything.” He turned and started to walk away.

  Refusing to let himself think, Han picked up the bearing and slammed it into the back of Kim’s head. The plump man groaned and straightened, then slumped to the floor. His body knocked the metal bottle over as it fell, and more of the odd, black powder spilled.

  Han was in a panic. He looked around. Mercifully, no one was paying any attention. He grabbed Kim and pulled him to his feet, then slipped his arms under the older man’s and half-dragged, half-walked him to the door of a supply closet. He opened the door and shoved Kim in, then stood there, practically hopping from foot to foot, his mind still in chaos. He looked down at Kim, then stepped through the door and pulled it to, leaving it open enough to allow a thin line of light.

  Kim groaned and stirred. Han clenched his fists and took a deep breath. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. It was a switchblade, a razor sharp stiletto his younger brother had given him. Han had carried it for years, and had enjoyed impressing friends with its looks; but he had never expected to use it for anything more lethal than cutting rope.

  Kim groaned again and lifted his head. In the dim light Han saw his father-in-law’s eyes widen as he stared first at Han’s face, then at the knife.

  Han closed his own eyes and plunged the knife into Kim’s chest. It scraped against rib, and the older man screamed. It was a soft, hopeless little scream, but in Han’s ears it echoed like a promise of doom. He jerked the knife blade free and plunged it convulsively into Kim’s chest again. Kim’s body jerked and sagged, and then was still.

  Han stepped back into the customs bay and closed the closet door quickly behind him. He walked, trying to move slowly, naturally, back to the crates and knelt by the fallen bottle, sweeping up as much of the black powder as he could with his hands and pouring it into the bottle. Then he screwed the top back on, and placed the bottle back into the crate.

  Working quickly, he replaced the machine parts, closed the crate, and re-sealed it. At one point, he felt tears rolling down his cheeks, and wiped them away with his hands. As he did, he realized the black powder still covered them, and wiped them off on his trousers.

  He took the customs forms, placed them on the table, and went to find a fork lift driver to carry the crates to the Air Canada loading area. Then he took a last look at the closet door which hid his father-in-law’s corpse, turned, and walked out into the night.

  Chapter 18

  Chet Tarbell’s office was small and drab—standard CIA—with one small window that opened onto an alley. Pray settled himself into a worn swivel chair with a padded vinyl back and smiled at Tarbell.

  “Better than the sweatshop they used to keep me in,” he said, continuing his line of thought aloud.

  “Could be worse,” Tarbell said. He perched on the edge of his desk and gazed down at Pray. “Have any trouble finding it?”

  “I just followed the old rule and mooched around until I ran into the room with the loudest radio.”

  Tarbell laughed. “Television, is what it is,” he said, and pointed to a small set tucked away in a corner of the room, behind the desk. “Austrian TV ain’t the most exciting stuff in the world; but they talk a lot. That’s better than music for masking conversations, you know.” He paused, grinned crookedly at Pray. “So you can tell me what you’re really up to.”

  “You spooks are always so suspicious,” Pray said. “Can’t believe someone could just take a vacation and shop for a little jade.”

  “Jade? The green stuff?”

  “I collect it these days.”

  “You collect stuff in diplomatic pouches, too, seems like.”

  Pray narrowed his eyes and stared up at Tarbell, wondering what he knew.

  “Just some personal stuff I forgot to bring,” he said, keeping his eyes on Tarbell, watching for any sign of belief or disbelief. “A friend did me a favor and shipped it over.”

  “Right,” Tarbell said, nodding. “Must be pretty personal, all right,” Tarbell added. “When I asked what was in it, I got stonewalled.”

  Then it was Pray’s turn to decipher truth from falsehood, but Tarbell’s manner offered no clues. If he knew what the pouch contained, that would remain his secret.

  “Three can keep a secret, if two are dead,” Pray murmured.

  “What say?”

  “Benjamin Franklin.”

  “You still do that, huh?” Tarbell walked to a cupboard and retrieved a bottle of bourbon. “Drink?”

  “Sure,” Pray replied, not sure at all. The offer surprised him; he hadn’t known Chet to be an office drinker in the past.

  “Don’t worry,” Chet said as he handed Pray a glass with a couple of fingers of straight bourbon in it. The one he kept had a little more. “I don’t make a habit of this.”

  “I didn’t know I looked worried.”

  “Maybe you didn’t. Maybe I’m just feeling touchy.” Tarbell lowered himself into one of two chairs next to his desk, and waved at the other. “Grab a seat.” He tilted his glass to Pray. “Here’s to the life of the idle rich,” he said, and swallowed half the contents of the glass.
“How is it, anyway? It has its ups and downs, I guess?”

  “Not really. Too much smooth sailing, if anything. How are things with you?”

  “Not many ups and downs here, either.” Tarbell drained his glass and refilled it. “Can’t expect many, though.”

  “Seems pretty nice to me. A beautiful city, right next to the remains of the Evil Empire. You get to cross swords with the bad guys. Lots of excitement.”

  Tarbell rose and walked to the window. “What excitement?” He turned to face Pray. “Vienna is a backwater since the Soviets fell apart. The glamour boys are all in Asia and Latin America. Places like Vienna are for guys like me—the ones who aren’t going anywhere.”

  Pray started to protest, and changed his mind. He held out his glass for a refill.

  “I always wondered if Phoenix had tripped you up,” he said.

  “Bullshit! I know two or three guys who were deeper into that mess than I ever dreamed of being—guys with really dirty hands, bloody hands, to tell the truth. They’re doing fine. One of them’s already a supergrade hotshit, and the others aren’t far behind.” Tarbell poured another drink, spilling a little onto the desk, then dropped heavily into his chair. He raised his feet and dropped them noisily onto the desk.

  “The trouble, old buddy . . .” He stopped and grinned widely. “That’s the trouble, right there. I’ve never learned to stop saying ‘old buddy.’ You ever hear of William Le Queux?”

  Pray nodded. “The English spy novelist.”

  “Right on. William Tufnell Le Queux. He made such a stir with his writing that a lot of people give him credit for creation of British intelligence. But the establishment never accepted him. You know why?”

  Pray shook his head. “No.”

  “He didn’t go to the right school, he didn’t belong to the right clubs, and he spoke too goddamn many foreign languages, that’s why.” Tarbell sighed heavily and stared into his glass. “That’s me, old buddy. If you want to make it with the Company, reach the inner circle, you’ve got to belong to that old boy’s network—go to the right school, that kind of thing.” He grinned crookedly at Pray. “And I’m afraid, I’m just goddamn afraid, that Spring Branch High School in Houston, Texas, really ain’t the right kind of school, don’t you know?” He took a swallow of whiskey, and a little of it dripped onto his shirt. “Don’t you know,” he repeated, and laughed. “That’s it, right there. You’ve got your old boys, and your good old boys. Old boys say ‘don’t you know.’ The only people say ‘old buddy’ are us good old boys.”

  Tarbell put his glass down and combed his hair roughly with his fingers. “It took me a long time to understand that, Adam—the difference between an old boy and a good old boy. I could have saved a lot of wasted hopes if I had understood that from the beginning, ‘cause then I could have told, right from that first day in Arlington, stuffed into the Broyhill Building with all the other new recruits, who was going to make it, and who wasn’t.”

  “But you’re good, Chet,” Pray said, remembering the Tarbell he had first met in Vietnam: tough, and smart, and competent.

  “Oh, they know that,” Tarbell said. “And they’ll use me as long as I let them.” He sloshed a little more whiskey into his glass and stared at it. “Or until I stop being all that good.” He stretched back into his chair, gazed at Pray. “I never understood why you got out, Adam. You belonged, you know? Right family, correct school, all that shit. You could have made it right to the top layers. Adam Pray, superspook. Why the hell’d you quit?”

  Pray shrugged. “I’ve asked myself that. I’ve wondered if I would have stayed, if Dear Auntie’s money hadn’t offered me an out.”

  “And?”

  “Pure hindsight, of course, but I think I would have quit anyway, sooner or later. I suppose you’re right, that I could have risen. But I looked in my magic mirror one day, and asked myself, if everything went just right, and I didn’t get sacrificed on the altar of some Chief of Station’s mistake, what would be the most I could hope for.” Pray laughed at the memory. “I kept seeing Terry Parker’s face staring back at me. I tried to put myself in his shoes, bouncing around from station to station, dressed just right, throwing my weight around, frightening subordinates, trying to feel important.” He shook his head. “It just didn’t fit.”

  “In the universe of CIA, Parker is an important man, Adam. And he’s going to be more important as time goes by.”

  Tarbell’s voice held an edge. Pray looked at him in surprise. He would not have cast the other man as a Terry Parker fan.

  “Pretty small universe, Chet,” he said quietly.

  Tarbell stared steadily at Pray. “Yeah. But it’s the only fucking universe I’ve got.”

  “And I don’t think the less of you for staying in it. I think the less of the agency for not giving you what you’ve earned.”

  “Well, maybe some day they will,” Tarbell said.

  Pray didn’t believe it. He doubted that Tarbell did, either. He stood up, realizing as he did that he was a little drunk.

  “Let’s get together while I’m here,” he said.

  “Sure,” Tarbell said. He grinned. “I’m dying to get to know your redhead.” He waved his glass. “And, Adam, don’t take all my bitching and moaning too seriously. When I think about it, I’ve done pretty damn well for a good old boy from Houston.”

  But he didn’t offer to shake hands, and Pray noticed as he walked out that Tarbell was reaching for the bottle again.

  Chapter 19

  At eight, Joshua Dorn had learned to value isolation. When his parents angered him, or he them, or when he felt sad, or when his head simply had too much spinning around in it, he crawled up into his window cave—an attic dormer with a tall, skinny, dirty window. He got to it through a trap door in the ceiling of the upstairs hall which, if he stood on the big round knob at the corner of the staircase banister and stretched carefully, he could push open just enough. He would leap, and dangle, and pull himself through, carefully sliding the trap door closed behind him. Then he could sit on the floor and stare out the window, through a pair of old opera glasses his mother had given him, at the traffic crossing Lake Washington on the Mercer Island Bridge, or right into the big window of the house across the street, which was below him despite being three stories tall, because of the steepness of the south Seattle hillside which fell, street by street, to the lake.

  Joshua liked to watch the neighbors’ window at night. It opened onto a large room where the owners spent a lot of time, sometimes alone and sometimes with friends. When they were alone they usually fought; Joshua could see them yelling even though he couldn’t hear them, and they would wave their arms. Once, the man hit the woman and knocked her down, and she threw a drink at him and it spilled all over. Then they turned off the lights, and Joshua didn’t get to see what happened next.

  When they had visitors, everyone would drink, and dance around, and sniff cocaine. Joshua knew about cocaine from the television, and knew what it meant when people bent over a table with straws in their nostrils, and blew their noses a lot afterwards. Joshua was pretty sure his father used cocaine. Once, he had heard his mother, in one of their fights, scream at his father and call him an addict.

  Today, it wasn’t dark yet. Joshua had stayed home from school, saying he felt ill, but really wanting time alone, time to think, because things had been different recently, and he didn’t understand. Early in the afternoon, after the cleaning lady had finished her work, he had abandoned his bed and climbed into his window cave. He hadn’t been there more than half an hour when he heard voices and realized that his parents were already home. Joshua’s father had been home a lot recently, which was one of the things Joshua didn’t understand; before, his father had almost never been home. It was another thing his parents had fought about sometimes. They sounded as if they were fighting now, and Joshua wondered if this time it was because his father was home too much.

  He turned to his window and hugged himself.

 
The narrow street, a challenge to navigate in the evenings when people were parked along it, was empty. No, a car was coming down it. Joshua watched as the vehicle, a dark blue BMW, approached. His interest increased when the car pulled against the curb in front of Joshua’s house. It had out-of-state license plates. Joshua leaned closer to the window, craning his neck to get a better look at the plates. Joshua memorized the number automatically, without thinking. When he had been very small, his father had taught him the license plate game, and played it with him when they went somewhere in the car. His father never played the game with him any more, but Joshua still liked it. Memorizing a license plate always made him feel better, somehow.

  Two men got out of the back seat of the car. A third man stayed behind the wheel. The other two men talked briefly to the driver, who nodded and pointed with his lips at the Dorn house. Joshua had read in a book about Indians that they pointed with their lips instead of their fingers. The driver had dark skin and dark hair, and Joshua wondered if he was an Indian.

  The other two men weren’t Indians. They had pale skin, and pasty gray scalps that showed because they had shaved their heads. Joshua had seen others like them, down in the Broadway district in Seattle—mostly teenagers with shaved heads, black leather jackets with pieces of metal all over them, dirty T-shirts and heavy black boots. The pair at the car looked like grown men, and they didn’t wear leather jackets. One of them did have boots on, though.

  Joshua recoiled from the window as the man wearing boots suddenly looked up. He had a thick, blonde mustache that covered his teeth when he smiled, as he was doing now. Joshua feared momentarily that the man had seen him, but he didn’t say anything to his companion, and the other didn’t look up at Joshua’s window.

  The men split up. The one in boots mounted the curving, stone steps that rose from the street to the front door. The other made his way toward the back, through the overgrown rhododendrons that crowded the base of the house.

  Joshua’s parents were still fighting when the doorbell silenced them. For a long time, Joshua heard nothing. He scuttled back to the trap door, slid it open just a crack, and put his ear to it. He heard his mother’s voice—it had always carried better than his father’s anyway, especially when she was angry. She didn’t sound angry. She was saying “Please, please, please,” over and over again. Joshua thought she sounded frightened, but he couldn’t be sure, because he had never seen or heard her frightened before.