by Ross Thomas
“Sounds okay,” Overby said.
“She’d go to Hong Kong with me, naturally.”
Overby grunted. “Bad idea.”
Espiritu smiled his agreement. “I suspected that if she did, I’d suddenly be leaving behind a very rich widow. But I told her to go ahead and make the initial contact.”
“Who with?” Stallings asked.
“Ernesto Pineda. He was a devious sort from up in Baguio who sometimes worked for us—and sometimes for his third cousin who’d be putting up the money.”
“This third cousin with all the millions,” Overby said. “You happen to remember his name?”
“Ferdinand Marcos—who else,” Stallings answered, deciding that the world was far more deceptive and dangerous than he had ever supposed. It was Wu and Durant’s kind of world. And Otherguy’s, of course.
Espiritu, still turned around in the front seat, looked at Stallings with something like approval. “So you didn’t really believe that nonsense about it being an American business consortium?”
Stallings only shrugged.
Espiritu nodded sympathetically. “Americans always seem to be swinging from utter naivete to raging paranoia and back again. But how could anybody believe a group of hardheaded American businessmen would spend one peso, let alone five million dollars, to get rid of me? I’m their blessed communist menace, Booth, that doesn’t cost them a cent. I’m what’s going to justify the coup that’ll dump Aquino and get things back to normal where deals can be cut and profits made.”
“If I was them, I’d pay you to stay on,” Overby said.
“Precisely.”
“And Marcos?” Stallings asked.
“As usual, he’s being more subtle. Maybe too subtle. He’s only agreed to pay me to go into exile. But he thinks he knows what I’ll really do once I get my hands on the money. He thinks I’ll buy weapons, sneak back here and raise hell. That, I suppose, is our unspoken agreement. The rest is foolishness.”
“And Marcos will wind up financing the NPA.”
“He prefers to think he’s financing a quick coup.”
“What would you really do, Al—with the money?”
Espiritu smiled. “I’m still not quite sure.”
Hungry for details, Overby asked, “So it was Carmen who worked out the deal with the cousin, what’s his name, Pineda?”
“Yes,” Espiritu said.
“Then what?”
“After the five million was transferred to Luxembourg—I think it was Luxembourg—Marcos could no longer control it. So Carmen quite sensibly executed the cousin who, after all, was our only real link with Marcos. She had a good mind, did Carmen.”
“The guy in Washington, Harry Crites,” Stallings said. “The one who recruited me. Does he know whose money it really is?”
“No.”
“Then who—” Stallings said, but was interrupted by Overby who had a question of his own. “Now which way?”
Espiritu turned around to look. They had reached a fork in the track. “To the right,” Espiritu said, “and I’d like to make a comfort stop, if you don’t mind.”
“Up around that bend okay?”
“Perfect,” Espiritu said.
When the Jeep was around the bend, Overby pulled it over to the edge of the track that had almost widened into a road. Espiritu got out and walked over to a thick wall of tropical foliage where he stood with his back to the Jeep. Stallings climbed out, slung his M-16 over his right shoulder, and joined him. Overby, now out of the Jeep, leaned against its front right fender and waited.
As they stood urinating, Espiritu said, “Remember my definition of terrorism, Booth?”
“Sure. Politics by extreme intimidation.”
“You said it needed work.”
“Still does.”
Espiritu zipped up his fly. “What about: ‘Politics without moral compunction’?”
Stallings thought about it as he zipped up his own fly. He shook his head and said, “That doesn’t quite cut it either.”
“I really don’t have any, you know,” Espiritu said. “Any moral compunction.”
Stallings turned to find Espiritu aiming the revolver at him.
“Well, shit, Al,” Stallings said.
“This will simplify things.”
Stallings looked at Otherguy Overby who still leaned against the Jeep’s right front fender. “Guess you’d like things simple too, Otherguy.”
Overby’s only reply was his remote, sealed-off look.
“You want to turn around, Booth?” Espiritu asked.
Stallings thought about it and was surprised by his decision. “Yes, by God. I think I do.”
Stallings turned slowly, discovering that of all places, Cebu was absolutely the last place he’d have chosen to die. He was almost completely turned around when he heard the two shots. They were fired so closely together they sounded like one. He tensed, waiting for the pain, even as his mind told him there would be none—not if he’d heard the shots. Finally, he turned to find Alejandro Espiritu sprawled facedown in the dirt, part of the right side of his head gone. The second round had made a hole dead center in the back of his blue shirt.
Otherguy Overby, the pistol he had paid $500 for on Pier Three dangling from his right hand, stared down at the dead Espiritu from less than six feet away.
He looked up at Stallings. “I don’t guess I’ve got a whole lot of moral compunction either,” Overby said.
“You’ve got enough,” Stallings said.
They heard the unmistakable sound of a Jeepney’s diesel engine long before it chugged around the bend in the road and came to a stop. Five armed men scrambled out. Stallings recognized them as five of the young guards who had been posted around the perimeter of the Espiritu compound.
Minnie Espiritu was the last one out of the Jeepney. She climbed down slowly from the rear, wearing her bright red slacks and a black cotton sweater. In her right hand was a machine pistol—an Ingram, Stallings saw, wondering where she had got it. She nodded at Stallings, gave Overby a sour look and walked over to where her brother lay dead.
She stared down at him for several moments before looking up at Stallings and Overby. “Which one of you killed him?”
When neither answered, she said, “Whoever it was saved me the trouble.” She looked back down at Espiritu. “We found Carmen in that silly cave of his. He kill her?”
“Yes,” said Stallings.
“He would.” She sighed heavily. “That Orestes kid, too?”
“Him, too.”
She shook her head, as if in disbelief. “The kid was my son. Picture that? Alejandro killing his own nephew?” She turned to look at both men again. “Yeah, I think you can picture that.”
She sighed again, even more heavily than before, and said, “He went bad by stages, you know. Not all of a sudden.” She looked at Overby. “Think he might’ve had a tumor on the brain or something?”
“I couldn’t say,” Overby replied.
Minnie Espiritu indicated the M-16 that was still slung over Stallings’ right shoulder. “That Orestes’ piece?”
He nodded.
“I’ll take it unless you wanta come help out with the revolution.”
“No, thanks,” Stallings said, unslinging the rifle and handing it to her. She gave it to one of the young guards and said something in Cebuano. The five young guards turned and headed toward the Jeepney.
Minnie Espiritu gave her dead brother a long look, turned to nod goodbye at Overby and Stallings, and started after the young guards. She turned back at Stallings’ question. “What do you want to do with Al, Minnie?”
She gave her brother one quick final glance. “The wild pigs’ll eat him by noon,” she said, turned and slowly walked to the Jeepney. After she climbed into its rear, the Jeepney bumped off down the rough road.
Otherguy Overby, ever literal, said, “There aren’t any wild pigs up here.”
“So?”
“So is that what they say when they
don’t want to say, ‘Who gives a fuck?’”
“How would I know?” Booth Stallings said.
CHAPTER 37
It was 10:29 that morning and already sweltering hot when Artie Wu ran out of road. He had driven the rented Avis van as close as possible to point B on Booth Stallings’ map, but the point still remained some four kilometers away. The mountain road Wu had followed out of Cebu City had disintegrated into a rutted trail two kilometers back. He stopped the van when the trail suddenly narrowed into a trace just wide enough for two small goats or one fairly large human.
He turned to Georgia Blue who sat beside him, studying the crude map. “This it?” Wu asked.
She nodded. “This is it.”
Without turning his head, Wu spoke to Durant who sat on the floor in the van’s seatless rear. “What d’you think, Quincy?”
“I think we should eat.”
“I think you’re right,” Wu said.
After they finished the box lunches provided by the Magellan Hotel, Artie Wu reached into the cardboard carton Durant had loaded into the van that morning and removed a three-inch stack of Filipino fifty-peso notes that was bound with a rubber band. He also took out a 35mm Minolta camera.
“Here,” Wu said, handing the camera to Georgia Blue who gave it a brief inspection before placing it in her shoulder bag.
Wu divided the stack of fifty-peso notes into guessed-at halves, giving one half to Durant who folded the currency and stuck it down into a hip pocket where it created a noticeable bulge. Wu slipped his own unfolded half into his right pants pocket.
“Okay,” Artie Wu said, “we’ll take it slow and easy and try not to hurt anybody.”
“These guys are pros, Artie,” Georgia Blue said.
“Then we’ll try not to kill anybody.” He looked at Durant. “You going to flank from right or left?”
“From the right, I think,” Durant said, moved ten feet off the trace and began inspecting what seemed to be an impenetrable barrier of green and black tropical rain forest. Georgia Blue used two seconds to give the contents of her shoulder bag a final check. When she looked up, Durant had disappeared.
“Still the show-off, I see,” she said to Artie Wu.
Wu smiled. “Why hide hidden talent?” He nodded at the trace that led into the rain forest. “Point or drag?”
“You giving me a choice?”
Wu nodded.
“Then I’ll take drag.”
Wu took out and inspected the five-shot revolver provided by Vaughn Crouch, shoved it back down into his right hip pocket, hitched his pants up over his big belly and strolled off down the trace, as if beginning his regular morning constitutional.
Georgia Blue slipped her right hand down into her shoulder bag and waited until Wu was twenty feet away. She followed after him then, walking with an athletic stride so smooth and effortless that her heels seemed to make almost no contact with the ground.
They walked like that for twenty-one minutes, Artie Wu in the lead, Georgia Blue twenty feet or so behind him, both moving at an unhurried but steady 105 paces a minute, both listening in vain for Durant on their right flank, but hearing only the fuck-you geckos and the scolding of angry birds.
Wu was wondering for the third or fourth time how such deep cool-looking shade could produce such insufferable heat when he heard the man’s voice shout the order.
“Freeze, Wu!”
Wu stopped but didn’t freeze. Instead, he raised his hands and turned slowly around. Ten feet away Weaver P. Jordan was in what Artie Wu always thought of as the TV Crouch: wide stance, knees bent, both hands holding the weapon—in this case a revolver with a three- or four-inch barrel.
“Morning,” Wu said just as Georgia Blue slipped out of the tropical rain forest and struck Jordan from the rear with a left-handed chopping blow that immobilized his left arm. Despite the pain, Jordan tried to swing his right arm around and bring the revolver into play. It seemed to be exactly what Georgia Blue expected. She grabbed his right wrist and brought it down and then up behind him, giving it a twist that dislocated the elbow. Jordan went to his knees, dropping the revolver. Georgia Blue kicked it away and then stamped on his left hand which he was using for support. Jordan collapsed, howling.
Just as the howl died away, Wu heard something metallic off to his right that sounded like the slide being pulled back on some kind of automatic weapon. With his hands still raised, Wu turned left just in time to see Durant use a stick to knock a machine pistol out of the hands of a man who wore what appeared to be designer jungle fatigues. The man wearing the camouflage fatigues was the elegant Jack Cray.
Although disarmed, Jack Cray was undismayed. He dropped into a slight crouch, both hands extended and weaving around in some kind of martial arts stance that apparently puzzled Durant who dropped his stick and backed up. With an odd wordless cry, Jack Cray leaped at Durant, trying for a knuckled jab to the throat. Durant slipped it easily and gave Cray a hard open-palm slap to the right ear.
“Fuckhead,” Cray said, abandoning his martial arts stance to put a soothing palm to the boxed ear.
“I’ll look after Mr. Cray, Quincy,” Artie Wu said with a solicitous smile. “You go tend to Mr. Jordan.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Durant asked.
“Georgia dislocated his elbow,” Wu said. “At least, I hope that’s all she did.”
Weaver P. Jordan looked up at Durant and said, “Will it hurt?”
“For a second.”
“Then fix it.”
With Wu, Georgia Blue and Cray looking on, Durant placed both hands on Jordan’s right arm—one on the bicep, the other on the forearm. “Look away, if you want to,” he told Jordan.
Jordan looked away just as Durant pulled so quickly his audience wasn’t even sure it heard the soft pop as the elbow was snapped back into place. Jordan howled again.
When he was through howling he glared at Jack Cray and said, “Trust her, you said. She’s practically one of us, you said.”
“I was obviously wrong,” Cray said and turned to Wu. “So where does all this leave us?”
“At a point of mutual distrust,” Wu said with a beaming smile.
Weaver Jordan got to his feet, glaring now at Georgia Blue. “You worked us pretty slick, Georgia.”
“Assholes are always easy,” she said.
“Everything is not lost, gentlemen,” Wu said, turning to Durant. “Wouldn’t you agree, Quincy?”
“Plenty of glory to go around.”
Jack Cray raised an elegant eyebrow. “What form does this glory take?”
“Human form,” Durant said. “Alejandro Espiritu.”
The raised eyebrow dropped back into place as Cray narrowed his eyes, giving his face an almost crafty look. The expression made Durant reflect that the only thing worse than being half-dumb was being half-smart.
“You want to sell us Espiritu?” Cray said.
Artie Wu looked almost hurt. “Sell him? Good Lord, no. He’s a gift—from all of us to all of you.”
“A gift?” Jordan said. “For free, you mean?”
“If it’s not for free, Weaver,” said Durant, “it’s not a gift.”
Jordan worried over Durant’s clarification as if it were a particularly abstruse concept. “I guess I don’t hang out enough with swifties like you.”
“Just why,” Jack Cray asked, “are you giving us Espiritu if, in fact, you are?”
“Bullshit aside?” Wu said.
Cray nodded.
“Because we’d like to spend our money without the Federales peering over our shoulders.”
Jack Cray nodded approvingly. “At last, a half-sensible answer.”
Which is all, Durant thought, a half-smart question deserves.
CHAPTER 38
Thirty-one minutes later the five of them reached the crude bamboo bridge that spanned the stream that flowed between the two steep ridges. It was point B on Booth Stallings’ rough map and Jack Cray, looking around, didn’t at all
like what he saw.
“Who picked this place?” Cray asked.
“Why?” Durant said.
“It’s a perfect trap.”
Durant looked up and around, nodding in what seemed to be surprised agreement. “I believe it is.”
“So who picked it?”
“Espiritu, probably.”
Jack Cray raked one ridge with his eyes, turned and did the same to the other one. “There’re bandits up on those ridges, aren’t there?”
“Why do you say that?” Artie Wu asked.
“Because you can feel the fuckers, that’s why,” Weaver P. Jordan said. “Because when some guy’s got a bead on you, you damn well sense it.”
Jack Cray moved as close to Artie Wu as he could without touching him. “Who’s up there, damn it?”
Wu sighed. “Mercenaries.”
“Mercenaries! Whose mercenaries?”
“They could be ours. Possibly Espiritu’s. Maybe even yours. It all depends.”
The shock appeared first in Cray’s eyes, popping them wide, and then flowed down to his mouth, giving him a dim, slack-jawed look. When he asked his question, it was in a low monotone that shock had robbed of all expression, even the normal rising inflection. “That was just a shuck about giving us Espiritu, wasn’t it?”
Wu gave the far ridge his own long look before replying. “There’s a small problem with that,” he admitted. “You see, to keep the mercenaries away from Espiritu and their hands off whatever price is now on his head, we had to promise them a couple of profitable hostages.”
Weaver Jordan turned apoplectic red. His voice was a shout. “Us? You promised them me and him?”
“You were handy,” Georgia Blue said.
Durant studied the glassy-eyed Cray and the crimson-faced Jordan. “How much would Langley pop for you two?” he asked. “A rough guess.”
Cray answered as if by rote. “Not a dime. The agency will not negotiate with terrorists.”
“No one need ever know,” Wu said.
“You’d know,” said Weaver Jordan.