by James Phelan
“What we’re about is smaller, leaner government,” Anderson said, facing his old friend. “And I can make it work. You know that. I’ve got cross-party support on this from the leadership down.”
“I know. You’ve worked hard at this, but, like I said, this is the wrong administration to be selling to. Wait a few more years, then it might have a better shot.” The Vice President paused as his Secret Service detail chief appeared in his doorway and made a signal at his watch and departed from sight. “Right. I’ve got to go see a guy about a thing. I’m going to see you and Bellamy on Monday at the exchange, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“It’ll be big, even without what you’re asking of me. A great day. The start of something—you boys just need to stay patient.”
Yes, it will be big, it will be the start of something. Like you wouldn’t believe.
Thirty-four hours to deadline.
•
Walker woke to the sight of blood on his pillow. Not much, just a little reminder that he was now walking around with a tiny chip sewn into the back of his head.
The smells woke him. Ground coffee, and sizzling bacon. He trudged to the kitchen, where Bloom had set out plates and piled fried eggs onto dark toast, with sides of mushrooms and spinach.
“You’re quite the homemaker,” Walker said, flicking open the Herald Tribune and sipping the coffee. Black, hot and strong.
“You’ve got about an hour before you leave for your flight,” Bloom said. “You remember what I taught you?”
“Hell, all of it?”
“The important stuff.”
“Never put ice into Scotch.”
“Good.”
“Follow the money.”
“And find your man.”
“My man . . . what man? There’s no man here, he’s dead.”
“Bullshit. Your contact’s dead. Who’s he working for?”
“Originally? Osama bin Laden.”
“I don’t want to know. But that SOB is dead too. So keep looking for the next guy.”
“The next guy . . .”
“There’s always a next guy.”
“Always?”
“Always. People like to cover their ass.”
“Times have changed, Marty.”
“Not this much.”
“But this lead’s gone.”
“Without a trace?”
“Yes,” Walker replied through a mouthful of toast.
Bloom smiled.
Walker finally did too, then said, “Nothing disappears without a trace.”
“You missed something. Go back, figure it out. Make a list.”
“You and your lists.”
“Have they ever let you down?”
Walker paused, then took another bite. “No.”
“Good. You know what to do. Now, enough shop talk. Give me a few minutes of bullshit. How’s your sex life?”
Walker cracked up.
“I’m serious. I’m old, and the best I can do is look at all the beautiful women around here.”
“Oh Jesus . . .”
“I remember, back in the day, when I was younger than you are now, a posting in Micronesia, and there was a Polynesian honey. Bow Bow, that was her name.”
“I’ve heard this.”
“Damn, she was fine. Why I never stayed there . . .”
“You liked this game too much. Your whole life was ahead of you. You thought there would be a million more Bow Bows out there.”
“Mistakes, all of them. I’d be watching my grandkids by now if I’d stayed there.”
“Great-grandkids.”
“I’m serious, Jeddy boy. Don’t get stuck in a quest and lose what’s important.”
Walker was silenced. He knew there were only so many jokes he could make before he would have to have this conversation. “You’re talking about Eve.”
“She’s a fine woman. She loves you more than anyone should.”
“She’s moved on, long ago. I’m history.”
“She thinks you’re dead, jackass.”
The truth hit Walker in the gut.
“You never reached out to her; just watched from afar as she moved on, from grief to whatever semblance of love again she could muster.”
“What could I have done?”
“You could have walked away from all this.”
“And walked back into her arms?”
“Maybe.”
“And Jack Heller and whoever else at the Agency wanted me dead would have killed her too. I couldn’t go back.”
“Yeah, I know.” Bloom sipped his coffee. “I trained you too damned well. You watched me too damned close. Don’t make the same mistakes I did, that’s all I’m saying.”
“I already have.”
“Listen. This op you’re running solo, the forces you’re up against? This ain’t no training drill; hell, this ain’t no op against a cell of bad guys. This is national security up the wazoo against you and God only knows who else. You’re one man. And when they catch up with you—and they will—then it’ll be too late. Too late for anything and everything.”
“So what—just walk away?”
“I did. Look at me now. Sitting here in the sun. Looking at the women.” He leaned toward Walker. “Walker, you’re the closest thing to a son I have. You’ve got options.”
Walker looked away, couldn’t face the man who had been as much a father figure than the man who had raised him.
“I want to have more moments like this with you. I want to go fish the Caribbean like we always said we would. At least the Adriatic. Stay here. Drop this. There’s no rush.”
Walker smiled. “Fish from some drug-runner’s boat, and we’d use the crew as bait, like we used to say.”
“We’d catch a monster. Maybe two.”
Walker looked his mentor in the eye. “I have nothing but this right now,” he said. “And if I don’t do this, no one will. I’m on the clock—there’s a deadline. I’ll get through it. We’ll go fish the Caribbean, you’ll see; hell, I hear there’s even salmon fishing in the Yemen these days.”
Bloom wasn’t having it, but he let it slide. Walker saw that the old man’s eyes were wet. He passed over an envelope containing Walker’s new ID and a wad of cash.
“Thanks. For trying to talk me out, yet again.” Walker stood. Bloom too. They embraced. Walker couldn’t meet his gaze as he left, hoping to someday return and take that fishing trip.
“Oh,” Walker said, turning back, “there’s one last thing . . .”
42
Two hours later, Bill McCorkell sat at a table in a cafe in Dubrovnik and said, “Hong Kong?”
Bloom nodded. “But I never said that. You did.”
They had spoken for barely ten minutes, and promises were made, one old professional to another.
McCorkell stood, left a few euros on the table and patted Bloom on the shoulder.
“Enjoy your retirement.”
•
At the next table, Il Bisturi heard everything.
It made life easier. He had come here prepared to make Bloom talk, had looked forward to the challenge. Instead, all he needed to do was eavesdrop.
He waited for McCorkell to leave, then he walked to the bathroom, went out the back door and placed a call to Bellamy.
“Walker is on a plane, headed to Hong Kong,” Il Bisturi said.
“I know,” Bellamy replied.
Il Bisturi was silent a beat, then said, “You didn’t think to tell me?”
“I’m doing your job now, am I?”
The Italian was silent.
“I need you to get back to Rome.”
“What’s in Rome?”
“The woman who was with Walker.”
“The American—the agent who was in the car?”
“No, not her. An Italian. Her name is Clara. I will send you the details. I need you to pick her up and bring her to New York.”
“What for?”
“Insurance.
”
“But this target is going to Hong Kong—”
“And I have Hong Kong covered. But I may need you and Clara in New York.”
“I’m finishing this job, this guy.”
“You will. Get to Rome, get the woman, bring her to New York.”
43
Walker flew into Hong Kong as the sun was going down. The city was all golds and blues and studded with lights, twinkling, strobing, still, every beautiful detail of capitalism roaring along, illuminated.
Back in the day, when still on the government payroll, Walker had experienced the international transport perks otherwise out of his civilian league. Private entrances and exits, private customs contact, all of it expedited and proficient, thanks to diplomatic privileges. Today, however, Walker had to take the everyday, traceable route through the long line of international customs; fortunately the forged documents were faultless, complete with the used passports.
Customs cleared, Walker found a cab and made his way from Hong Kong International Airport to Kowloon, where he had a reservation at The Peninsula hotel. Outside, a roll-up of luxury cars delivered well-heeled guests to the 1928 hotel, amid white-gloved bellboys with pillbox hats buzzing like flies in the evening air. Walker passed the rows of the distinctive hotel-owned Rolls-Royce vehicles lined up in the driveway off Salisbury Road, the outside air heavy with tropical humidity that didn’t discriminate. He checked in with only his backpack, and handed over the credit card issued in the same name as the Canadian passport Bloom had provided: Felix Lassiter.
The receptionist worked with practiced felicity and handed over the room card. Walker’s room was on the twenty-seventh floor and looked out over the twinkling nightscape of Victoria Harbor. The interior color scheme—caramel, walnut and dark chocolate—was soothing, and the attention to detail, including vintage leather travel-trunk drawer handles, mahogany dining tables, Chinese ink paintings and Poltrona Frau dining chairs, were all things Walker would have enjoyed at another time. Contrasting it, or accentuating the hotel’s place in the twenty-first century, was the room’s technology, designed to provide touch-of-the-button access to almost anything the modern guest could desire: an in-room tablet, available in five languages and from which one could order room service, operate the TV, adjust the lighting and air conditioning and open and shut the curtains.
“Probably could have launched the Apollo program off this thing . . .” Walker said, taking a Heineken into the shower and washing the past twenty-four hours from his body, careful to avoid the wound at his side. He then dressed the wound with supplies provided by Bloom, shaved, and sat with a towel wrapped around his waist at the room’s compact desk, inspecting a map of the area.
Still waiting on Bloom’s confirmation, he was sure that the head-case meeting would go down in the chaos on Hong Kong Island rather than where he was now. From there, he would go home, for the first time in a year.
He dressed in his jeans and shirt and pocketed the passport and ID papers he would need for entry to the United States, along with the credit card and the US$5000 Bloom had provided, and the map. The final piece he took from his backpack was Pip Durant’s CIA identification card.
Tonight, he was posing as a head-case courier and needed to blend in to the corporate banking world that would be on Hong Kong Island. While the former was merely a matter of being in the correct place at the pre-arranged time, the latter meant that he had to look the part.
Calling the concierge, Walker obtained the address of the closest Paul Smith store, where he availed himself of a black suit, black shirt and a black tie flocked with a charcoal pattern of ivy. The cut at his side still wept, and the stitches at the back of his head, hidden beneath his hair, itched.
On the way through the mall he bought a pre-paid cell phone and sent a text to Bloom: CONFIRM HK.
He swallowed two more pain-killers as he made his way harborside, to the ferry, where he paid the HK$2 to get across to Hong Kong Island.
The cell phone chimed in his suit pocket: CONFIRM. HV RACE COURSE, Stable Bend Terrace. 2100–2130. FRIENDS EN ROUTE.
Walker looked around to make sure the coast was clear and then leaned with his back against the railing and dropped the phone overboard.
He had no friends here, and knew Bloom’s addition to be a warning. The “friends” tracking him were a known entity, which meant either a CIA grab crew or the B Teamers.
As he passed under the frenetic light show coloring and strobing the Hong Kong skyline, his mind swirled and eddied around the possibilities: how to deal with these friends, and whether Bloom’s assurances about the two-way chip in his head would be accurate. Anything and everything was possible.
Twenty-five hours to deadline.
44
Hutchinson picked up a Ford Taurus at the Houston FBI field office. On the passenger seat he had a street map open, Eve Walker’s address circled on it. He figured the drive was about half an hour.
•
After exiting at the Star Ferry terminal on Hong Kong Island, Walker spent fifteen minutes strolling around Central looking at architecture and shop fronts in order to be certain that he was not being tailed. Convinced he was clean, he took a cab from Central to Happy Valley Racecourse.
Outside the taxi window the scenery changed from densely packed glass-and-steel skyscrapers to generic concrete apartment towers, set among a backdrop of black-green tree canopies dotted with the houses of the über wealthy stretching up to Victoria Peak. They passed bustling night markets and steaming street food, a technicolor of organized chaos that knew neither limit nor constraint. Walker had once heard a description that living in Hong Kong was like being inside a pinball machine: being propelled at high speeds through space, bouncing between bright lights and dark passageways, a never-ending sequence of shadows and shines, a place where it didn’t cost much to play and when you started you soon realized that it was addictive, making you crave that high score, never really being able to tear yourself away, always remembering what it was like at those magical moments when everything seemed to come together and, for an instant, the world was just you and this city.
To Walker it seemed like New York City’s Chinatown had been bitten by a radioactive spider and in turn exploded exponentially into a seething, bubbling mass that refused to acknowledge physical limitations to its size. As the taxi drove and wove, he took in the effects of eight million people inhabiting an area a quarter of the size of New York City.
This was the center of the world. There was no night, no day, only the light of the sun and the light of neon. Whatever you wanted, Hong Kong would sell it to you. Anytime.
Walker was counting on that.
His taxi driver, a guy the other side of fifty who had seen Hong Kong through many phases, was talking rapid-fire, giving him tips on the races from a form guide that he studied all day, every day.
Walker nodded and listened and felt at the tiny bump at the back of his head, the urge to scratch it overwhelming. In an hour’s time he would be headed back to the airport, the data transferred. Downloading and deciphering it was a different story, but he would be one step closer to the culmination of a year’s work.
Walker knew it was time for him to step from the shadows and into the bright light.
Like a pinball machine, sometimes life needed a tilt, a shove, to produce the desired outcome.
Just a day from the deadline, he knew the time for a bump or shove was over. He had entered a period of consequences. The time to smash and crash was upon him.
Twenty-four hours to deadline.
45
Durant was on the road, having picked up his hire car at Houston Airport. He had the satnav system programmed with Eve Walker’s address, and figured he was about twenty-five minutes out.
•
Walker queued to get into the Happy Valley Racecourse. He checked the time: 8:34 pm.
Plenty of time.
It was Wednesday night; busy, but the queue was orderly and he moved throug
h along with groups of guys and girls who had come here after work and knock-off drinks or after dinner—either way, they had been drinking, and they were loud, happy, full of smiles and without a care in the world as they started the next part of their evening with a punt or two. Give it more booze and some losses and missed attention from someone they admired and they would leave the place with a whole different disposition.
He would be out of here by then.
In another life he would have put the $10 coin in the turnstile and joined the throngs enjoying the atmosphere of the public area: a broad spectrum of punters in attendance, numerous food and beer options, and the palpable buzz of lives being lived. Instead, he paid the $100 to enter the members’ concourse.
The beer garden was wall to wall with more expats and tourists than locals and he blended in, casually looking around, glancing up to the terraces where he was due at 9 pm. High grandstands and buildings enveloped the lush green track, which saw the field of horses pass the main straight and finishing post twice in even the shortest of races, giving the crowd plenty of opportunity to view and cheer on their selected pony.
Behind Walker two guys wearing jeans and polo shirts spoke to each other, occasionally looking around, their sweeping gaze taking him in too.
Walker moved on toward the enormous mounting yard. The two guys remained where they were. All bets were placed with a central betting authority, with numerous booths placed around the public area, complete with clipboard-carrying attendants hovering to help tourists complete their betting slips. Walker followed his cab driver’s advice and put HK$100 on horse seven in the next race, then did a circuit of the beer garden, which formed a clear path between the tents and stalls.
Always watching, always scanning faces and reading body language. To the average punter Walker was just another race-goer. To a fellow professional he might be considered a person of interest, someone worthy of a second glance and further thought.