by Michael Crow
“Oh man,” I sigh, shaking my head.
“Hard to believe demons never visit you before, Mistah Prentice.”
“Not these kind,” I say.
“Me, I get right up, take a real hot shower, put on fresh clothes, pretty soon everything all right, everything normal then. You try that, Mistah Prentice. Okay? You do that, you feeling right after that, come to the lounge. Okay?”
“Yeah. Sure. It’s what I’ll do.”
“Demon sleep, that fucker ambush everybody sometime. Don’t mean nothin’, Mistah Prentice.”
“Nothin’,” I say. “Walk on.”
“Ho! What my father always sayin’. Long time before I understand. Once I do, I know he’s right, damn straight.”
The water that sluices the soap off my body somehow sluices the demons from my mind, too. Towel down, put on fresh skivvies, clean starched shirt, different suit. Feel like I’m a new man. But I do not look at my eyes in the mirror. Got a sense I need a longer interval before I’m up to that. So I just go into the lounge, grabbing and popping a bottle of Red Rock on the way.
Sonny’s lying on one of the sofas, no suit coat, tie loosened at the neck, sipping his bottle when I come in, sit opposite him.
“You good now, Mistah Prentice?” he asks.
“Never better.”
That draws a Buddha smile. “Hunh. Not sure about that ‘never.’ But maybe everybody, they at least a little better than two, three hours ago.”
“Yeah? Something go down I should know about? You sure weren’t feeling your usual cheerful self two, three hours ago.”
“Had damn good reasons. What goes down? I don’t know what, exactly. Guess only. Think maybe that Westley, he call back. Think maybe that Allison thing, she some kind of witch, come up here, meet with Mistah Kim, talk long time. Anyway, Mistah Kim calm down now. He say to me we stayin’ with original plan.”
“That’s good.”
“Maybe not, but anyway better than that switch shit.” Sonny looks at me awhile. “Tell you somethin’, your ears only, right?”
“Nobody else’s.”
“Me, I never feel happy about this trip. Worries me, Mistah Kim being okay with it.”
“Yeah, you’ve conveyed that before. Maybe you worry too much. What can anyone throw at us in Vlad that you and me can’t handle? Who’s gonna be dumb enough to try to ride the tiger?”
“Russkis that dumb.”
“They are, we eat ’em up. Yum.”
“Damn straight. They don’t trouble me so much. CIA fucks worry me lots. And then it’s just me. Very sorry ’bout that, but you one of them, Mistah Prentice.”
“Not one of them. I told you that before. Just working for them.”
“Same-same. I work for Mistah Kim, you work for them.”
“Not the same at all. You got loyalties to Mistah Kim. Maybe you owe him. Your ears only? I got loyalties only to whoever’s a friendly, whoever sticks real tight with me in a situation, understand?”
Sonny nods, but I don’t know if he’s really getting it.
“I owe Westley and Allison and the rest nothing, least of all loyalty,” I say. “Same as the army. One obligation only: absolute total loyalty to the guys holding your flanks in the fight. Stay loyal, stay in the fight no matter what, until the enemy’s dead, or you are. Fuck anything else.”
“Some kind of philosopher, Mistah Prentice. Pretty good words. Me, I’m hoping we don’t have to find any hard way how true.”
Difficult to make any credible response to that. He won’t believe a new truth: at this point, he’s the person I trust most, suspect least, in the whole damn outfit. Even if it isn’t mutual. So I punt.
“My best guess, Sonny? We’re going to fly in, Mister Kim’s gonna do his business with the Russians, maybe drink a little vodka, eat some Beluga. Then we go see his good friends in Pyongyang. And pretty damn soon you and me will be right back here, laughing and wondering why we even bothered carrying all those guns.”
Sonny chuckles. “Yeah, turns out like that, joke’s on Sonny, Mistah Prentice. Be one time I’m glad big joke on me, for sure.”
“So. We’re on schedule. Two nights free. What about your promise?”
“Promise?”
“Yeah, some guy calling himself Sonny, looked a lot like you, was talking real big about how fine Korean girls were, Busan-side. Swore he’d prove it to me. I believed him.”
“Big joke on you, for sure,” Sonny says seriously. Then he laughs, sits up. “Got some inspiration, Mistah Prentice. Mistah Kim, he staying in tonight with girlfriend. I got the night off. What say you, me, we go get laid? I know this one place, really great.”
Sonny hasn’t driven more than a half a klick from Kim’s when I feel all wrong. I do not want to do this. I cannot do it.
“I’ve changed my mind, Sonny. No offense, but think we could just go back to Mister Kim’s? That be okay with you?”
He looks long at me, something like relief in those dark hard black eyes. “You sure? I make promise, I always keep it.”
“I believe that. But I’d be grateful if we gave this one a miss.”
“Okay, then,” Sonny says, hanging a sudden U-turn that barely misses causing a multicar crash. He is glad to be rid of an obligation he wasn’t keen on; he starts humming as we head back toward Kim’s, and pretty soon he’s cheerfully singing “Lord lord, lord lord…All over the world…all over the world…”
“John Lee Hooker addict!” I say. “Who would’ve thought that?”
Sonny bobs his head, grins. I know which type for sure: he’s a little embarrassed I’ve discovered a secret of his, almost as if it’s some kind of vice. “Got every CD the man ever made,” he says. “Listen a lot, never make me sad. Why they call music like that ‘blues,’ Terry? Don’t blue me.”
“Just the name of a style, tunes all based on three chords,” I say, very aware and pleased with his form of addressing me. Good sign. “Lot of ’em are pure love songs. Sad-sounding, if you’re in a certain mood. But they got a happy side: the world’s rich with women, and there’s always a chance you’ll get together with a good one.”
“Damn straight. Where we be without good women?”
“Wishing we’d never been born,” I say. “Lucky for us, we never would be born, without women in the world.”
“Some kinda philosopher, that’s you for sure. Maybe you oughta change jobs, write some books.”
“What? There’s too much bullshit all over as it is. And you know you can’t believe anything you read. You gotta know the man that’s telling the tale, trust him, and hear it from his mouth.”
“Ah. Maybe that’s why I like John Lee very much. Me, I don’t believe he bullshittin’ one bit.”
“Doesn’t even know the meaning of the word,” I say.
Pretty soon we pull into Mister Kim’s compound, Sonny just waving at the Lee or Park or Lee stationed at the gate. But he doesn’t turn off the engine, even after I’ve climbed out.
I lean back in. “You’re not coming? You got someplace else you need to be?”
“Oh yeah, Terry. Home,” Sonny says. “Any night, any day I’m off duty, I go home. See my wife, my little boy. Good woman I got. My little boy, he something very special. Very fine son. Pretty soon, very fine daughter, too. Six, eight weeks only, she pop out. My wife, she’s patient. Me, I can’t wait to see her.”
“Hey, good luck,” I say, shutting the car door. But Sonny doesn’t pull away. Instead, he leans over to the open passenger window, motions me close. “Still early, Terry. Maybe you like to come see my little boy? Meet my wife?” he says.
At that moment, there’s nothing I’d like more.
Sonny lives in a new middle-class high-rise not ten minutes from Kim’s compound. The moment he swings open his apartment door, a whirling dervish about three feet tall with arms and legs thin as sticks comes hurtling across the living room and leaps up into his father’s arms. He’s bright-eyed, piping rapid Korean I can’t follow. Sonny just beam
s at the boy, then hoists him onto his shoulders. A pleasant-looking woman, maybe late twenties and as pregnant as can be, waddles out of what must be the kitchen, wearing the broadest grin. Which narrows, turns shy when she spots me. Sonny walks over to her, the boy still on his shoulders, kisses her on the cheek, murmurs something in Korean. She nods, and her smile regains most of its radiance. She bows to me, goes back to the kitchen.
“They don’t speak any American,” Sonny says, gesturing toward an easy chair, inviting me to sit. He slips down on the sofa, switches the boy from shoulder to lap. The kid keeps stealing glances at me, then turning to Sonny and piping a few words, as if I’m a great curiosity. Which I guess I am. Sonny’s tone is so gentle and patient when he replies to what are obviously questions. It’s hard for a moment to reconcile the hard-eyed heavy I know with this obviously doting father.
“Tell you something, man,” Sonny says. “Wish to God I learn another trade when I was young. ’Cause this”—he makes a sweeping gesture that seems to take in his son, his wife, the neat-as-a-pin apartment—“this is all the world, for me.”
“That’s the problem. They get us when we’re too young and too stupid.”
“Hunh. Exactly right,” Sonny says. “Okay for some people, they born to it or something. Like that animal Mistah Boy. But big problem, if sometime you see better way, right way to live. I gotta work very, very hard to be somebody else, have this kind of life.”
Sonny’s wife returns bearing a tray with two bottles of beer and a dozen little bowls of Korean snacks I can’t ID. She giggles a little when I say “Thank you very much, Missus Park” in my fractured Korean, then gingerly eases herself onto the sofa, one hand cradling her enormous belly. The boy slips off Sonny’s lap, snuggles up between his parents. She ruffles his straight black hair, then gives Sonny a look of complete trust and adoration, which he returns.
A look I’ve never shared with anyone.
And suddenly I have a flickering image of Nadya and me, in a peaceful home with a child, gazing at each other in that same way. Fucking pipe dream, I know that. But the idea lingers anyway.
I don’t overstay, I feel like an intruder whose presense is soiling something delicate and fine. We chat a bit about the boy and the baby to come, Sonny translating. The boy’s curiosity eventually gets the better of caution, because he comes over to me, starts talking, touching my hand, trying to bend my fingers to show me how strong he is. Sonny and his wife laugh, a true couple.
When I’ve finished my beer, made some polite sounds to Missus Park, given the boy a good handshake, Sonny drives me back to Kim’s. We don’t talk much; he seems to be in some quiet state of grace.
“That was great. Thank you,” I say when we stop in Kim’s circular drive. “Get home safe, man.”
“You betcha,” he replies.
Then I shut the car door, watch Sonny pull away. And wonder, just for an instant, if I’ll ever have such a place to go.
twenty-four
SAME HYUNDAI, SAME STONE-FACED DRIVER, SAME—though I can’t be sure about the exact route—trip to the Lotte next afternoon. Mister Kim left early for his corporate HQ, Sonny’s either with him or at home enjoying a day off. Nadya, same proprietary air, waiting for me in the lobby. She smiles in that way I suddenly realize I’d miss terribly if she ever stopped giving it to me.
Allison’s another small shock when I see her in the spook suite. She’s deliberately scruffy, hair only finger-combed and yanked into that ponytail, pilled old sweater, patched jeans, hiking boots scarred and dirty. She looks like one of those so-serious Dutch girls backpacking their way through parts of the world they oughtn’t even dream of going, not if they knew shit about what could happen to them—or had enough imagination to consider it.
“Uh, they actually let you in the lobby, dressed like that?” I say.
“Skip the lame jokes, Terry,” she says, crisp and professional. There’s no sign I can recognize that she’s pissed over the near fiasco of yesterday, the face-off with Westley she had to’ve had, the diplomatic visit to Kim later. But she’s not the loose, easygoing Allison I like, either. “Let’s just get down to it.”
Rob’s on one of the sofas. Nadya sits on the other. I join her. Allison keeps standing.
“Right, the gang’s all here. So let’s run through this trip one more time, just to be sure we’re all on the same page,” she says. “Rob stays here for the duration. Are you all linked, Rob?”
“Yeah. I’ve established secure communications with our help on the ground in Vlad and Pyongyang. I ran four test messages with each. No problems. I’ll run another tonight, and another tomorrow.”
“Good. I’ll send you a retest from Vlad tomorrow,” Allison says. “Your arrangements, Nadya?”
“Arranged. Mister Kim has his usual suite at the Best Eastern Hyundai, on Semenovskaya Street. Sonny will camp in it. Terry’s in an adjoining room on one side, and Kim’s numbers man, old Mister Yoon, and his assistant have a suite on the other. I’m in a single on the floor above. Directly above.”
“Fine,” Allison says.
“On arrival, they’ll all dawdle in one of the restaurants, Terry and Sonny at the bar, Kim and Yoon at a table. I check in alone, sweep their rooms before they go up, mike Kim’s suite. That properly done, I signal Rob, he confirms the link. Then I go down, do my hooker act on Terry.”
“Good. If you don’t get hit on by our Russki slut, Terry, if she just walks right by like you don’t exist, you tell Sonny to get Kim out of there,” Allison says. “You do not, remember, speak or understand Russian. If she stops, starts flirting with you in broken English, you let Sonny know it’s okay to take Kim to the suite. After they’ve gone up, you take Nadya to your room. I’ve explained all this to Kim. Kim’s on board. Please arrange an ‘all clear’ signal with Sonny. A subtle one.”
“Will do,” I say. “Where’ll you be in all this?”
“Moving. A different place each night. But I will be close by always.”
“And the dinner with the generals?” I ask.
“Unfortunately, we have to let them arrange that. We don’t know where yet. It will definitely be someplace very good, which means very public. We’ll know exactly where some hours before, which will give Nadya time to check the place out. You follow Sonny’s lead on how to handle security going to, during, and coming back from the dinner. It’s important there’s no deviation from Kim’s normal Vlad pattern. He’s got to behave as he’s behaved on every previous trip, clear?”
“That bit sounds insecure,” I say.
“It has to be. But I’ll be near with Carlos. Out of sight to you, but everything will be on our screen. Nadya will be close, too. And you’ve got the Olympus, the cell phone, right?”
“What cell?” Rob says. “There’s nothing in the communications plan about Terry carrying a cell.”
“I decided, Rob, it would be a good idea. Just as backup, close quarters,” Allison says, voice even but brisk.
“Hell, if he’s walking around with it on, his location can be triangulated. Not good,” Rob says.
“Only by someone with equipment like yours, who also happens to be looking for him, and who also happens to know the number,” Allison says. “Nobody is likely to be looking for him. And it’d fail, anyway. The cell is brand new, no calls made, none received. Nobody knows the number but me. So, as you well know, no triangulation.”
That shuts Rob up, but he shifts his position slightly, tenses a little. I know what it is: he hates little surprises like this. Tough shit, pal, I’m thinking. Need-to-know only, and you, not me, didn’t have the need this time.
“Anything else?” Allison asks.
“The meet? The exchange?” I ask.
“We won’t know that for sure until after the dinner. We’ll be flexible. Since it’s a small item, there will be no need for skulking around, midnight meet in some waterfront warehouse or anything—as you’re no doubt used to and comfortable with. Our generals wouldn’t want that any more
than we would. Kim will ask for something semipublic, they won’t go for it, he’ll suggest his suite. I think they’ll agree.”
“If they don’t?”
“We’re flexible, as I said, Terry. Carlos and I and Nadya will be in the shadows anywhere Kim goes. It’s in the generals’ self-interest to do this straight, quick, and clean. And I’ve got an asset watching their backs, ready to interdict if they’ve got a local threat behind them. We’re covered all around.”
Now would be the time for Nadya to say something smart-ass, lighten everything up, the way she always does. She doesn’t. She avoids looking back when I try to catch her eye.
“Okay, then,” Allison says, “I’m flying out in a few hours, commercial, as per plan. Carlos’s ship docks tomorrow. Nadya and Terry go on Kim’s plane day after tomorrow, Nadya peels off at the airport. Next time you see her, Terry, she’ll be all over you in the Hyundai bar, offering you a special rate to get laid. Sound good?”
“Depends on the rate, and what it includes,” I say.
“Oh, the works. You know those Natashas.”
Do I? Seems not. Back at Kim’s, after I’m sure Allison has gone to catch her flight, I phone Nadya, suggest dinner. She teases around, but she’s flat, halfhearted about it, and finally begs off. Maybe tomorrow, she says. But she doesn’t say what the maybe might be.
Okay, I figure, we’re really on the job now, fun’s over, she’s behaving professionally. Normal, natural, and about time. After all, she isn’t some half-crazed SEAL, juked on adrenaline, ever ready to rock ’n’ roll. She knows she’s heading into something serious, wants to get herself clear and concentrated, not play. That’s what the rational part of my brain transmits, accepts. The more primitive part, where instincts reside, lights up a little, signals something’s off, something’s not quite as it should be.
Decide I’ll ignore it: the light’s dim, the signal weak.
And I have forgotten it, though I’m still disappointed and actually missing the girl, when Sonny appears in the staff lounge after dinner. I give him a detailed briefing of the meeting in the spook suite, all the arrangements. He seems satisfied, even appears to admire the thoroughness of Allison’s tactical dispositions.