by Michael Crow
“Okay, Luther, okay. Dig: this older guy, who don’t bother trying to disguise what he is or any other dumb shit—such as tellin’ us we ain’t handlin’ our ragheads efficiently—he hangs for a while. Just watching, know where I’m at?”
“That’s Westley, all right.”
“Anyway, when we’re just about finished cleaning the Taliban clocks, he asks me if I’m interested in another line of work. Something, he says, that would broaden my scope. No more military chickenshit. Mucho travel, mucho adventure. It’s sounding real fine, since I ain’t much lookin’ forward to going back to the States and the fuckin’ training routine at base camp again.”
“So? You discussed options with Westley?”
“Discuss, yeah. That’s the exact fuckin’ word the man used. My enlistment’s running out in a few months—which he already knows somehow. He’s discussing some better pay, too. Better? Shit! Talkin’ four times what I’m getting from the army. So I don’t re-up, I sign on with Westley. Since then, a couple of neat jobs in the Philippines, a couple down Colombia way.
“Poor career move, JoeBoy.”
“Poor my ass, motherfucker! Best thing that ever happened to me. Snake, Tark, Radar, Tony Ducks from the old crew, they go into Kurdland. Fuckin’ Snake. That little sideshow against the Iranians who’d staked a claim in Iraqi Kurd territory? Medium-intensity assault, the fucks all surrender? Maybe three KIAs our side? Well, Snake’s one. Smoked, man. Figure that. No more.”
“Aw shit. Not Snake. That really sucks.”
“Yeah. So now all Professor JoeBoy does is drop into some jungle from time to time, show the locals my moves, take ’em into a little bang-bang, chopper out. Got a nice apartment in Panama City, another in Davao. Got the sweetest pussy ever, one living in each place. When I gotta work, I work for a while, maybe four-five weeks straight. But average it out, figure I’m on the job about five days a month. Spend the rest of my time fuckin’, suckin’, going to the beach, going out to eat, going dancing. Whole lot better than barracks life. Come to that, whole lot easier than bein’ a narc. Which you were, last time we talked. What’re you doing here, Luther?”
“Got suspended for six months. Broke a little rule,” I say. “And instead of taking a nice road trip to Mexico, I fucked up again, discussed with Westley, signed on for a short-time-only gig, baby-sitting Mister Kim. And since this is damn far from Panama, Colombia, or Mindanao, and there’s no jungle but a concrete one, what the fuck are you doing here?”
“Short-time gig only. Covering some bitch’s ass in Vladivostok. Name’s Allison. You know her? Got a sweet ass? Am I gonna like pushing up against it?”
“Affirmative, both counts. Thinking love at first sight, you two. She really digs hairy-ape types, JoeBoy.”
Fucking Westley. Poor, sorry-ass JoeBoy. But at least Allison will have competent backup in Vlad, because he’s real good with his tools, and the same with his hands.
We cover the grounds, talking biz instead of bullshitting. Security’s pretty much the same deal as the Big Sur place, except there are a few more men. I’d noticed most of the neighboring places are modern, but Kim must really love big wood beams and columns and gull-winged tile roofs. Silla architecture, I think that’s what Eunkyong called it. Very old Korean vernacular. This place isn’t old, of course. And inside it’s kind of schizoid. A large room where Kim might entertain, for instance, looks like a museum, everything very traditional, very antique. Other parts of the house are right-this-minute, one room with a huge plasma TV screen dominating a wall, Samsung’s latest video array, Bang & Olufsen sound system, leather Saporiti chairs and sofas. Same as the California place. Two underground levels here instead of one, though. First has the pool, the gym, the monitor room. Second’s staff quarters. Nice touch I notice when I’m shown my room: a big rice-paper window streaming light. Bulb light, yeah, and if you slid the window open you’d see a bare concrete wall with a fixture, but it dispels most of the feeling of being in an underground bunker. Nice staff lounge down there too, done up with the same plasma TV, the same audio and video systems I’d seen upstairs.
JoeBoy’s showing all this off as if he owns it. We finish in that lounge. Nobody else is around. I settle into a chair, he goes to a kitchen off to one side, returns with beers.
“Ahh,” he sighs, settling into the cushions of the sofa. “Easy duty, man. Everything a man could want. You want a girl? Tell one of Sonny’s guys, a girl shows up in your room. Nice young Korean girl, unless you specify Thai or Jap. I sampled, came out favoring Korean. Toned, strong bodies, amigo. Give you a hot workout.”
“Sounds like Allison,” I say. May as well jerk JoeBoy’s chain a little, just for the hell of it.
“Hoo-ah! Then I won’t be so sorry to leave.”
“Say what? You jumping ship already?”
“Jumping on one—tomorrow. I’m Carlos Martinez, going into Vlad as a Costa Rican deckhand. No habla Russki, what the fuck. It’s a sailors’ town. Nobody bothers you, long as you stay down in the docks district. The female-type ass I’m gonna enjoy coverin’, she flying in the day I dock. She finds me, I stick to her butt. That’s what Westley said.”
“And where’ll she find you?” Handy thing to know, just in case.
“Some seamen’s hotel called, shit, what’s the name? ‘Dumb’ something. Nah. Dom Pokrovsky, yeah. Westley said four, five days max, Allison flies away. And so do I. Back to Busan, don’t even leave the airport, make a connection to Manila. And then home to Davao. You oughta come down there when you’re done doin’ what you do. Nice beaches, great food. And my little friend knows some sizzlin’ Filipinas just dying to meet a man like you. You ain’t done the juicy with a Filipina, you ain’t lived yet, amigo.”
“Might do that,” I say, sure I never will.
“Good to go, motherfucker! Taxi from the airport to the Hotel Insular outside town, on the beach. Drivers all know it. Funny fuckin’ sign at the lobby entrance. Says ‘Check guns, please. NO DURIAN.’ Ask the desk guy where Big José stays. He’ll get you there. Real good times. Guarantee it, bro.”
Dinner’s in-house with JoeBoy, Sonny, a couple of Lees and Parks and one Kim, unrelated, plus a Chun. They don’t have a lot of surnames in Korea, Eunkyong had told me, and about thirty-five percent of the whole population is either a Kim or a Lee. Chun’s a wild card. But it’s as before: Sonny’s boys don’t want to—or can’t, because they have no English—talk. They shovel up chow, concentrated as hungry dogs, then slink off to wherever. So afterward, it’s just Sonny and JoeBoy and me in the lounge.
I last about one slow beer. In the service, JoeBoy was my brother, we were that tight. We lived tight, fought tight. But now he gets deep into the remember game. “Remember that time we choppered in…Remember how we smoked…Remember how Snake was rattlin’ those fifties…” War stories, big and braggy and mostly bullshit. I guess I talked that way once, too. But it was a long, long time ago. I was a kid, we all were kids. I’m not anymore. And pretty soon, though I feel bad for thinking it, I am thinking JoeBoy’s a loud-mouthed asshole, a guy stuck in a time warp, drunk on the past and babbling. It’s boring, then it’s irritating, JoeBoy’s jive. But he doesn’t get it, just stays in the same groove. Clear why Sonny’s down on him; I’m heading that way, even if I don’t want to. So I start yawning, complaining about super-bad jet lag, promise I’ll catch him before he leaves, and go hit my rack. I don’t take advantage of the room services that night. I crash.
JoeBoy goes. When I wake up next morning, shower, dress and go out to the lounge, Sonny’s waiting for me with a pot of coffee. Hands me a note: “Post-op, haul to Davao, pronto. J.”
“You sleep okay, Mistah Prentice. You feeling pretty good.” It’s a statement more than question.
“Very fine. Even better when I’ve had coffee and one of these,” I say, lighting a Camel.
“Miss Allison, Miss Russki Girl, they want to see you pretty soon,” Sonny says. “Hey, maybe Miss Allison, she missing bouncy.”
&nbs
p; “Don’t think so. She’s a serious woman. Sure she wants to talk business.”
“Hunh. Women got no business in our business, for sure. You guys making big mistakes, with women.” Sonny shakes his head. Whether it’s sorrow or pity, I can’t read.
“Ask you one thing?” Sonny doesn’t wait for a reply, just goes ahead. “How come you friends with some low-life like Mistah Boy?”
“We did some combat together. Think you must’ve heard too much about it, last night.”
The Buddha grin appears. “Yeah, know how that is. You don’t like a guy before, you like him plenty after. He’s your brother. If he’s any good. This Mistah Boy, he any good?”
“Oh yeah. You want a target lighted up, he really lights it. Never have to worry about your back either, if he’s watching it. But you don’t like him much. Any reason?”
“Yeah, that fella make too much noise in my head, someways.”
“Mine too, last night. He’s picked up some bad habits somewhere. Might change your opinion if you go into a hot zone with him, though.”
“Might. Might. But I like to feel sure before.” Sonny laughs then. “Don’t need to say it, Mistah Prentice. I know pretty good you can never be sure, before.”
“Good thing, then, those guys dropped in on us in California. Now you and me, we know, right?”
“Damn straight. You and me, good to go, okay?”
“Okay by me. Any time, any place.” Big-time lie, but one I really want him to believe. So I make it sound solid, straight.
“Pretty soon, pretty soon. Meantime, you and me got not much to do. Mistah Kim, he want to stay home, private. Miss his girlfriend pretty much,” Sonny says. “Guess you better go see your women. But I tell one story first. My father, he got the same job as me, with Mistah Kim’s father. Just my father, no more assistants, those days. Senior Mistah Kim, he die natural, some kinda cancer, old guy, you know? My Mistah Kim, he gonna die same way. Natural. Long, long time from now. Old age. I make damn sure of that, understand? No Westley, no nobody stop me.”
“Roger that,” I say. “Mister Kim, you, me, we’re all going to live to be ninety. Won’t vouch for Westley, though.”
“Nobody care much, that one go down,” Sonny says.
twenty-two
THERE’S A CAR—NOT ONE OF THE LINCOLNS, BECAUSE I don’t rate and anyway I’m supposed to keep a low profile—idling quietly in the driveway when Sonny and I emerge from the house. Hyundai’s biggest sedan, a sort of seaweed green they don’t export, driver dressed casual, like it’s a taxi. “One of my guys, Mistah Prentice,” Sonny says. “He take you to where your women are, wait, bring you back whenever.”
“Whenever,” I say, getting in. “What about that good time you promised me?”
“Ho. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow night, we do just like I say.” Sonny chuckles. JoeBoy’s departure has cheered him, I guess. “Unless that Miss Allison, she put you on leash like some dog or what not.”
“In your dreams, Mistah Park,” I say.
“Not mine, you bet, Mistah Prentice. That kinda woman, she’s not my type one bit. She like some kinda man with tits.”
Wrong about that, Sonny. That’s what I’m thinking as I’m driven down into the gut of Busan, not bothering to say a word to the driver because I’m sure he won’t answer with anything but a grunt even if I use my bit of Korean. Sonny hasn’t learned—never will, the kind of life he leads—what I did in the hard school: women are a different species, so many of them smarter and more ruthless than us. Allison’s shown a portion of her smarts, not all; she’s keeping some in reserve. Ruthless? Almost certainly. To what degree I won’t find out till Vlad. And likely not then, unless she says “Bright” and I have to hammer someone. Curious to see how she handles ordering an assassination. How she maintains, once it’s done. Too bad it’ll be arm’s length; I’d know for sure if she watched while the XTPs blast flesh and bone into hamburger, smelled the smell of it.
Wipe all that crap, I tell myself. Stay in the now. Futures always come to you out of the blank. Ugly, beautiful, any gradation in between, they find you, brand you, slip into your accumulated past. Happens real fast. No point or purpose, trying to see ’em coming.
I try zeroing on what’s framed by the car window instead. And register some stuff I hadn’t on the way in, though none of it seems worth saving and storing. Where Kim’s place is must be the only area in this jammed city where there are any private houses left. The narrow defiles that run down from the mountains to the water are crammed to overflowing with tall apartment blocks, some clearly luxury ones, some middle-class, some pretty shitty, but they’re lower down, mainly hidden. Feels like a sort of hive, or ant colony. Traffic’s a bitch everywhere, and real aggressive; if it was like this in any city I know in the States, you’d see cars stopped in the middle of streets, guys punching each other’s lights out, pumped on road rage and cheered on by a huge chorus of honking horns. None of that here. Must be a game—all this dangerous cutting off, scraping past, bulling ahead—that Koreans enjoy playing.
It’s no more decorous when my driver squeals to a stop almost perpendicular to the curb, completely blocking a big limo about to pull out from the entrance of the Lotte Hotel, a double-slab glass tower maybe forty stories tall. He ignores the limo driver’s harried gestures, turns off his engine, apparently considers he’s satisfactorily parked. I walk into the lobby through doors held open by kids in white sailor suits and caps, other people heading out without acknowledging their existence. The multinational five-star deluxe world, part of a constellation where it’s impossible—and unimportant, mostly—to know if it’s Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, or Tokyo pulsing outside. Rich locals, Texas “awl boys,” coveys of ranking zaibatsu Japs and lone American CEOs outpacing their small entourages, all in a quiet swirl but never colliding, never mixing. All under the discreet observation of hotel staffers, ready to glide up to anyone who appears to require something and inquire, in English, if they may be of assistance. I see Nadya sitting catlike in one of a couple dozen big, cushy chairs, cup of tea on the little table before her, looking like the house’s pampered pet. She smiles, waves me over as she rises to her feet.
“Terry darling. Seems like ages. Want you up in my suite chop-chop,” she says, linking an arm to one of mine, leading me into a manned elevator, saying, “Thirty-four,” to the operator, who bobs his head and obeys.
Her spike heels don’t make a sound as we go down a thickly carpeted corridor to its end, where there’s a single door. She dips a card into the lock slot, gently nudges me inside, secures the door behind her. Instinctual scan: lounge with twin sofas, center, facing each other across a glass-topped coffee table; straight on, a wall of glass, panorama of the harbor. Ninety left, a half-open door, flash of Allison pulling a sweater over her head. Ninety right, door wide, Rob hunched at a desk flush to a window, twin black laptops and drab-green mil-spec communications box lit up, neat little satellite dish stuck to the glass with suction cups. Must stash the box and the dish whenever the maids come to make up the room. Butt of his SIG’s peeking out from an inside-waistband holster.
“Hey, Terry,” Allison says, emerging from the room I figure she’s sharing with Nadya.
“Thought you GS people had a per diem, traveling. Never cover even a quarter of this,” I say.
“Special allowance for hardship postings,” Allison says, motioning me to have a seat on the sofa where Nadya’s already assumed her catlike curl. I sit. Allison doesn’t. She paces awhile by the big window.
“Are you okay up at Kim’s?” she asks. “The situation is good? All secure?”
“It’s fine. Sonny’s a pro. Got it organized,” I say.
“Is he still feeling kind of hostile toward us? Toward what we’re going into?”
“He’s all right with it.” I don’t feel like mentioning what he said about ensuring Mister Kim’s life expectancy. “Hates Vlad, though. Says the Natashas there turn his dick into an icicle.”
> Nadya hoots. “Poor dear. He’s clearly consorted with the wrong type of Russki.”
“Certainly must have. We know some—naming no names—who have just the opposite effect, don’t we, Terry?” Allison says, looking at her. Then, facing me, “What about our Mister Kim?”
“Talk’s getting kind of loose, isn’t it?” I say. “This place swept?”
“Before we even unpacked. We added our counter-bugs, too. It’s standard procedure. You know that,” Allison says. She seems wrapped maybe one turn tighter than I’m used to. “Kim?”
“Haven’t seen him. Been in his quarters. Presumably with his girlfriend. Sonny said he’s been missing her.”
“That checks out,” Allison says. “We knew she was there waiting for him to arrive.”
“So you summon me down here to ask questions you already know the answers to? Or just because you’ve missed me?”
“Of course we’ve missed you,” Nadya says. “Twenty-four hours without seeing you is about as much as we can bear.”
“Can we stay focused here, Nadya?” Allison says. “There’s been a development, Terry. Westley got in touch. Nadya’s generals have become impatient all of a sudden. They want to move everything up a couple of days. That means we go to Vlad tomorrow.”
“No way. No fucking way,” I say, standing up. “What kind of ops have you been on? Rule number one for this type is never change the plan. Never. Guys you’re dealing with want to change, it means they’re under pressure from somewhere. That means big danger. Or they want to rip you off. That’s good-as-dead danger. You with that?”
Allison gazes at me as if I’m some newbie who’s only supposed to speak when asked to. “I don’t see your problem, Terry. We’re ready. What’s a day or two?”
“Didn’t you hear?” I’m talking louder than I like to. “Problem one is that Carlos, the guy who’s supposed to watch your back, won’t have even reached Vlad before the deal goes down. So you maybe get capped, but hey, no big deal, to me. The big deal is what I said: the generals are either in trouble and need to move fast—or else they’re planning to smoke Mister Kim and the rest of us, take the money, and keep the merchandise.”