by Michael Crow
“How’s that?”
“Westley’s staying with Kim. You’ll be staying on the compound with Kim’s security guys. Rob and Nadya and I are camping out about a mile away. You could call it a motel, but it’s a dozen little log cabins around a main cabin. Very fancy cabins, actually. Four-star accommodations.”
“And what am I going to be doing, exactly?”
“Well, first you’ll meet Mister Kim. See if he approves of you. If he does, you and one of his guys will team up, do what security always does.”
“If Kim doesn’t approve?”
“Oh, he will. He knows all about you.”
“And if I don’t approve of him?”
“You’ll have to deal with it. Prep’s over. As of today, you’re on the job.”
fifteen
“HELLO, MISTER PRENTICE,” KIM SAYS, SHAKING MY hand, smiling. “Are you by chance Native American?”
We’re standing on the redwood deck partly cantilevered out over the Pacific, Kim’s house set back maybe a hundred meters, and Westley’s just made the introduction. He’s hovering at my elbow now. Allison, Rob, and Nadya are just behind. They’ve already been presented; that hierarchy thing Eunkyong was so firm about. I’m not surprised by my ranking, but Kim’s idea of an opening line is something else.
“I believe there’s Lakota, perhaps some Comanche in my bloodline, sir,” I say, bowing very slightly, a little less than I’ve been instructed to. Fuck the truth.
“I hope you don’t think me blunt, Mister Prentice,” Kim says. Damn, I was sure I’d kept all feeling masked. “Only a bit of pretty outdated Korean culture, this interest in physiognomy. You’re not offended?”
“Offended? Not at all, sir. I’m proud of my ancestry.”
“Yes, I share that. So when I first came to America as a student, I’d get angry as hell when people almost automatically assumed I was Chinese. Or, worse, Japanese.”
Westley laughs softly. “You know Americans, Mister Kim.”
“Oh, I do now. Now I know very well that those who haven’t spent time in Asia simply lack an eye for the differences. And I understand those differences even seem quite subtle to those more well traveled, though they’re far from subtle to us.”
“The attendant on your plane, Mister Kim, was clearly Japanese. The pilot was Korean. But the copilot was probably Cantonese, or at least his grandparents were,” I say.
“An experienced eye, Mister Prentice,” Kim says. “And what did you see in the face of the man at the front gate?”
“A mix of Manchu and Mongol, I think. His grandparents would’ve likely arrived in Korea during or just after World War Two.”
“Your Mister Prentice is very sharp,” Kim says to Westley.
“Our team members are always experienced, and professional,” Westley says.
“Mister Prentice, let me introduce you to my assistant, Mister Park,” Kim says. A Buddha steps forward, six-two and maybe 240 pounds of him, face expressionless. He was not presented to Allison and the rest. Hierarchy again. “What do you make of Mister Park?”
“South Korean by name, but from the far north by blood,” I say.
“Ha-ha!” Kim smiles at Park, who bobs his head. Then Park and I shake hands, and I say, “Always a pleasure to meet a colleague,” in passable Korean. He grins.
Kim gestures toward the house, which appears to be an enormous plate of glass framed by redwood logs at the corners, and leads the way. Park sticks close to him, which gives Nadya the chance to slide by me, ram an elbow into my ribs and mutter, “Bloody show-off.” Inside, Kim suggests coffee and a chat to Westley and the others. “Perhaps,” he says, “Mister Prentice would like Mister Park to show him our arrangements?”
Westley nods at me, and I go off with Park on a tour. “How much you know, Mistah Prentice?” he asks as soon as we’re out of earshot, heading down a corridor lined with celadon porcelain vases—probably priceless antiques, plain-looking as they are—on wooden pedestals.
“Enough,” I say.
“I already figured that. I mean Korean talk.”
I laugh. “Memorized a few phrases, like the one I used with you. That’s all.”
“Pretty good trick, Mistah Prentice. You gotta lot of those? You some kind of tricky fella?”
“Usual tricks of the trade.”
This brings on a Buddha smile, narrows the hard black slits of his eyes. Then we’re outside, moving along the compound’s perimeter in bright California sun. Park slips on shades. “Goddamn bright. Most days, fog, lotsa clouds, like at home,” he says.
He doesn’t say much else for a while. We just walk. Everything’s a test, I’m thinking. Thanks, Allison.
The side of the house that faces the road has no glass; it’s all wood with a kind of gull-wing tiled roof that’s traditionally Korean, according to the photos in the books Eunkyong made me study. The grounds look wild, nature undisturbed for the most part. But there’s some telltales here and there. Little humps in the ground that don’t look quite right, for instance.
“You got motion sensors in the ground, and you got infrared beams on those,” I say, pointing to the posts of the slatted wood fence anyone could climb. Park just grunts.
I start scanning more intently. In some of the wind-bent, torturously twisted coastal pines I see boxes no bigger than cigarette packs, almost but not quite perfectly camo’d, like the cameras serious deer hunters place along likely buck trails. “Smile, Mister Park,” I say. “We’re on TV right now, aren’t we?”
“Hunh,” he mutters, keeps walking. I stop.
“Seen enough,” I say. “The place is taped. You got a guy in a room somewhere twenty-four seven, watching monitors. Also watching a computer screen with an image of the fence perimeter. The line’ll start strobing exactly where anybody or anything breaks the beams. I’d have to see a schematic to tell if the system has any video shadows. But it wouldn’t matter much, would it? Because there’s multiple beams along the fence top, since a single can be stepped over by guys who figure there is one. And nobody can come under cleanly because the motion sensors’ll give them away.”
“Right so far, Mistah Prentice,” Park says.
“Power goes down, you got a generator that kicks in automatically. But there’s a second or two delay before the monitors go back on. Somebody really clever could take advantage of that, get pretty close to the house. But then they’d fry. Because you’ve got every possible entrance wired, instant battery backup.”
“Goddamn right.” He’s grinning.
“If I want to take this place out, it goes out, though.”
“How you do that, Mistah Prentice?”
“Roll up in a van, forget stealth, just stand on the roof and send about six RPGs into the place. Then a couple of LAWs, just ’cause I like fireworks with big booms.”
Now the Buddha laughs. “You musta spent a lot of time in crazy places. This is California, Mistah Prentice. No craziness like that here.”
“Nah, nothing like that here. Never happen, Mister Park.”
“California. So hey, you call me Sonny, okay?” he says, leading me to the left side of the house and down some steps to the entrance of a wing that’s less than half aboveground. Inside, there’s the room I expected: a bank of monitors, a computer, and intercom, radio and phone setups. A Korean sitting on a swivel chair turns, glances without much curiosity at me for a second, then turns back to the screens. I see not only the outside is covered; on one screen the corridor with the celadon vases appears, on others other rooms, and on one the great glass-walled room overlooking the pool, deck, and ocean, Kim and Westley and the rest sitting around talking. There’s no sound.
We move along a short corridor lined with doors. Sonny opens one. “Yours,” he says, gesturing into a room that could be one lifted whole from a decent airport hotel, except it has no windows. It does have a big bed, a desk with a laptop, a TV, a mini–stereo system on it, an overstuffed easy chair, big closet set in one wall, and a full bathroom, co
mplete with white hotel towels. My suitcase is already on the luggage rack.
“Good enough,” I say.
“Damn bunker,” Sonny says. “Me, I’m in the next room. Don’t like being underground.”
So, this Buddha’s a little claustrophobic. I’ll remember that.
“Let’s get outside, Mistah Prentice,” he says, and then we’re through another door, up another set of steps and onto the deck around the pool, salty sea-taste in the wind. Sonny sucks in a deep breath.
“Ahh. Good, good. This I’m liking. Mistah Kim, he love this, too. We got places like this in Korea,” he says, sweeping his arm toward the gnarled trees, the cliff, the glittery heaving expanse of ocean.
“You work for Mister Kim long?”
“Ah, six, seven years.”
“Professional question?”
“Sure thing, Mistah Prentice.”
“You ever have to take out anyone coming at Mister Kim?”
The Buddha stops his raptuous comtemplation of the sea, looks obliquely at me. “No,” he says, after a moment.
“You ever have to defend him at all from an assault, a snatch attempt?”
“No.”
“Security always this heavy?”
“Heavy? Nothing heavy here, Mistah Prentice.”
“Don’t think most of the neighbors have more than standard burglar alarms. Which makes motion sensors, guys like you, and the video watcher in the bunker kind of heavy by local standards. Like you said, this is California, not some crazy place.”
“You got some kinda point here, Mistah Prentice? Some kinda problem or something?”
“No. Just a little curious how long things have been this way.”
“Long time, just me with Mistah Kim.”
“Good enough,” I say. “So when did it ratchet up?”
“Ratchet?”
“When did the electronics, the extra men get added?”
Sonny looks at me fully now. Can’t tell exactly what’s going on behind those black slits. Could be suspicion, could be some quick calculation of how much he ought to reveal.
“Little while after Mistah Kim start going up to the North, that Mistah Westley start coming around a lot. That Mistah Westley, he start telling Mistah Kim I’m not enough anymore.”
“Mister Westley, he’s kind of nervous,” I say. “Sees ghosts, I think.”
“Hah!” Sonny barks. “That’s exactly what I think. Sees a damned lot of ghosts. Everywhere, all the time. Keeps telling Mistah Kim ghost stories. Mistah Kim, he don’t believe in ghosts. But pretty soon I got a lot of assistants anyhow. Pretty soon we got motion sensors, all kinda shit. Military-type shit.”
“And no ghosts ever show up?” I say.
“Fuck no. Any do, they probably belong to Mistah Westley, damn straight.”
I can’t tell if he means me or not.
sixteen
SO I’M ON THE JOB, BUT NOT FULL-TIME. AND NOT EXACTLY concentrated, either, because just what the job is remains as grayly opaque as the billows of fog that rise up and roll over the cliff before every dawn, shrouding the house and grounds. Figures move through it, shapes waver in it, like images in dreams. The sun soon burns that away, everything material becomes sharp and precise.
There is a clear routine. I breakfast with Sonny and his three assistants; Sonny’s a cigarette-first man like me, while the others—Lee, Lee, and Park, no further ID given—chow on some kind of gruel, except for whichever one had night duty in the monitor room. That one gets a stew and rice and a beer. The assistants are silent in my presense. Sonny gives them a few orders my Korean’s not limber enough to follow, then he and I go off and give the house a quick patrol. After, we do the same on the grounds. Sonny always takes a huge, deep breath, sniffs, and shakes himself like a wet retriever the moment we’re out the door.
Mostly we orbit around Kim, once he’s up and about, but at a distance, always eliptical. Mostly we’re outside by the pool, watching Kim and Westley and Allison and Nadya and Rob sitting around inside, talking. They move anywhere, we trail them, closer but always out of earshot. I feel like a rookie patrolman, walking the smallest beat in the precinct, measureable in meters instead of blocks.
“This is boring me to fucking death,” I mutter on maybe the third morning.
“Ah, you get used to it, Mistah Prentice,” Sonny says. “Easy life, this. Or you one of those crazies, like to be in some goddamn firefight all the time?”
“Say half-crazy, maybe.”
“Firefights even half the time? Oh, that is full crazy, Mistah Prentice. Completely.”
He’s right, of course. But I see no advantage in adjusting his attitude toward me by agreeing with him. Let him think I’m some kind of juked-up maniac, under control for the moment but unpredictably explosive.
Then I get a little hit of mind-gaming, which is something at least. It’s midafternoon, mare’s tales streaming in the Pacific sky, me smoking out on the overlook where I was introduced to Kim, Sonny off taking a piss or something. There must be some kind of lull in the daily players’ huddle inside, because suddenly Allison’s beside me, forearms resting on the redwood rail, shoulder brushing mine.
“Hey, boss,” I say, not much enthusiasm evident.
She hears the flatness, but stays silent for a moment, looking out to sea. No usual clever Allison comeback. She’s still looking there when she says, “What’s your read so far, Terry?”
“No read at all, since I’m not in the loop,” I say. “Some impressions from the periphery, that’s it.”
“I’m always interested in impressions.”
“Are you? That’s never been my impression of you.”
“Lame, Terry. I liked it better when you were smart-assed and sharp. Have we left you alone with that Buddha too long? Are you losing your edge a little? Going contemplative?”
“You amaze me, Allison. So perceptive.”
“Poor Terry, feeling left out,” she says, glancing at me, smiling, then turning back toward the water. “Those impressions you mentioned. Care to cut to them?”
“Okay. Sonny’s a little disaffected. Thinks Westley’s probably bad news for his Mistah Kim.”
She faces me now, eyes to eyes. “He told you that?”
“Not in those exact words. But, yeah, he said it.”
“Any sense why?”
“He was Kim’s only security until the trips to the North started and Westley came around. Said Westley sees ghosts everywhere. Convinced Kim to ramp up his security. You know, I imagine, the extent of it here?”
“Three guys, the usual alarm system?”
“Take it higher, Allison. Take it up to spook-house level. Complete video coverage all the time, inside and out. I can sit in the monitor room and watch all your meetings. Plus perimeter defenses up to in-ground motion sensors. That I know for sure. Shit, there may even be claymores. Sonny said it was military-grade.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, and feature this: Sonny’s been baby-sitting Kim for seven years. Never once faced a threat, let alone had to take one out. He says if any damn ghosts do show up, they’ll be brought by Westley. And he doesn’t dig that. At all.”
“Not good,” Allison says. “Is he a threat? Could he turn on Kim?”
“Don’t you get it? He’s exactly the opposite. He’d take a bullet for Kim. Secret Service presidential protection detail–style. But he’d be smiling as he smoked Westley. On a nod from Kim. Or any of us, on his own hook, if he decides we’re endangering Kim.”
“Is this instinct only, Terry? Or do you have something more?” She’s at full attention now.
“Nothing more. Except I’ve known guys like Sonny all my life, zones cold and hot. Shit, I’m like Sonny. So I generally trust my instincts, even if you don’t. I’d likely be dead by now if I didn’t.”
“Trust isn’t the issue, Terry. It’s real-world possibilities based on hard intel I need.”
“Can’t help you out there, Allison. I’m just a contractor, o
n the wrong side of that big glass wall.”
Allison has a moment of what feels like intense internal debate. Her fists are clenched tight as they go, and she’s not even aware of it. She looks out at the waves, the hypnotic way they come on, line after line, to suicide at the cliff base. She looks back at me, searching my face and eyes.
“I think…” she starts, then pauses. “I’m thinking maybe it’s time you do need to know some things.”
“Yeah?” We both feel more than hear Sonny’s heavy tread on the planks behind us.
“Soon,” she says quickly, then turns, waves at Sonny as they pass, heads back to the house.
“Hey, she pretty good-looking. How come I don’t notice that before?” he says when he reaches me. Then he nudges me with a heavy elbow, laughs. “You got something going with her, Mistah Prentice? You bouncing her good or something?”
“I keep trying,” I say. “She keeps turning me down.”
“Ah, hate when they do that. Make a man crazy. You and me, we don’t get some soon, we probably pop!” He clutches his balls, laughs louder. “Me, I can’t wait to get back to Busan. Damned straight. Promise you, Mistah Prentice, you and me gonna have a lot of fun in Busan. Plenty girls never turn you down, Busan-side.”
“Believe it when it happens.”
“You can believe. No damn ghosts I’m talking about.”
Twenty-four, plus or minus one, Sonny off taking care of personal business again, me smoking on the overlook, and it’s Westley’s forearms resting on the rail. Quick work, Allison, I’m thinking, before the man even opens his mouth.
“Better view than the one you had last time we worked together, eh?” So says The Man Who Isn’t There. But he is. He was. He’d appear at every unlikely place in Sarajevo, this faint weird glow about him, as if he could stroll down Sniper Alley with complete confidence no bullet would ever touch him.
Have to credit Westley for wading through the shit, when he probably could have stayed comfortably behind a desk at Langley, or one of our embassies, punching our buttons by remote control. He was full field, all the way. Maybe I only dislike him because he’s smarter than me.