THEY SAT IN silence as more people gathered, men in black and white, women in every color in the universe, laughing among themselves, kissing, hugging. Mai was amazed at her sex, sometimes, because of the female ability to enjoy power, status, position. Not the ingrown satisfaction shown by males, but an overt celebration, a genuine happiness.
“Do you expect to see Virgil?” Phem asked.
“I’m done with Virgil,” she said. She smiled at him in the dark and let her smile seep into her voice. “What are you asking, you old gossip?”
“Nothing whatever; we all know that the mission comes first,” Phem said.
“Ah, the mission. Well, I can tell you, Virgil got about as much of this mission as he could possibly tolerate,” she said.
Phem giggled. “I think he gave as good as he got. You seemed… your aura was very smooth when you returned.”
“You are worse than your mother,” Mai said.
“My mother…” Phem said, and his voice trailed away. Then: “When they find the electronics on the truck, they will be… amazed.”
“Who knows, maybe they’ll never find it,” Mai said.
“Oh, I think they will. If Sinclair is correct, Virgil is a smart man,” Phem said. “When you vanish, when the investigation is curtailed, he’ll begin to think. He’ll find it eventually.”
“He is smart, but not that smart, I think,” Mai said.
MAI LAY BACK in the truck and thought about the mission so far. If they had been sent simply to remove the men, there would have been no problem; but that’s not the way the mission had been briefed. Simple death would not have brought the necessary satisfaction.
Not to Grandfather, anyway.
The mission had begun to evolve after Chester Utecht had gotten drunk with several old friends, including one who’d long been paid by the Vietnamese government to keep an ear on the Chinese in Hong Kong. The informant-not a spy, but simply a man who listened, and who occasionally found an envelope with three or four thousand yuan under his door-had told a strange tale of a man who’d stolen a ship full of bulldozers at the end of the war, just before the final victory.
And with the theft, there’d been murder. The story came out of a drunken fog, and back in Hanoi had rung no bells at first. Instead, the story of the bulldozers and the murder circulated simply as a tale… and then an old man, high in the government, heard it. Heard it almost as a joke. Within a day, he’d followed the story back to its source and had identified Utecht.
The Vietnamese had no desire to disturb the sleep of the Chinese, and so they moved carefully, lifted Utecht, and visited him with a moderate amount of pain before the old man told the story again. But he had only two names other than his own; and one of those names was his son, a name he gave up in croaking horror and despair.
He’d been left in an alley, dead, and full of alcohol. There’d been no stir at all, no ruffle in the leaves of the Chinese peace.
The ear had gone to his funeral, with twenty thousand crisp new yuan in his pocket; had seen the younger Utecht, had chatted with him and taken down the details, and sent them along.
Another twenty thousand, in gratitude, and the investigation moved on. Details were difficult to develop. Then, fortuitously and fortunately, an agent in Indonesia, on an entirely different mission, had found indications of an al-Qaeda effort in San Francisco, with (perhaps) critical munitions shipped from Jakarta through the Golden Gate.
It was all very foggy, but the Americans’ Homeland Security was needy, in a time of declining budgets and controversial war. An exchange had been made, a liaison forged, one that would be both reliable and deniable. He was a well-known former radical activist with ties to the Vietnamese government, but who’d actually been an active CIA agent from the beginning-a man who could see his comfortable end-life ruined by disclosures from either the American government or the Vietnamese. Further, a man with a daughter, now working in Europe, who could be held over his head, an implicit, unspoken threat…
A man who could be grasped and twisted into the necessary shape for the job.
A CAR WENT BY at high speed, followed by another car, down the hill, cutting in toward the country club; gathering Republicans turning to stare. Mai watched through the glasses, then lifted a walkie-talkie-an ordinary plastic walkie-talkie that Tai had bought at a sporting goods store-and clicked it four times.
Two seconds later, listening, two quick clicks.
She said the same word three times: break break break.
Phem looked up when he heard the critical abort code, then down the hill at the country club. “What?”
“We have a problem,” Mai said. She pointed down the hill and said, “See that long blond hair?”
“Virgil,” Phem breathed.
One minute later, Tai slipped into the driver’s seat.
Mai said, “Go.”
23
SHRAKE WAS on a date and nobody knew where, and Jenkins said that he never took a cell phone with him because somebody might call him on it. Jenkins had been in a sushi bar, eating octopus and drinking martinis out of a flask, though he said he was totally sober and could be there in ten minutes. Del ’s wife was pregnant and going to bed early, so Del had no problem and could be there in fifteen.
Two extra guys, Virgil thought, should be enough. They agreed to meet at the Pomegranate, a once-trendy salad-and-dessert place seven blocks from the Sinclairs’ condo. Virgil had forgotten to eat, and suddenly realized that he was starving. He got an apple salad and a piece of carrot cake and wolfed them down, saw Jenkins go by in his Crown Vic, looking for a parking place, and then Del in his state Chevy.
They arrived together. Jenkins got a chocolate mousse and Del said he wasn’t hungry, and Del asked, “What’re we doing?”
“We need one guy on the back, by the porch. I can point it out from the back side of the house-the condo’s an old house, and it’s got porches on the ground floor. It’s almost like a bunch of town houses. The other two of us go to the front door. The back-door guy is whichever one of you can run fastest.”
Del looked at Jenkins and said, “You’re pretty quick on your feet.”
“Yeah, I can do it.”
Virgil said, “There’s a possibility that these guys are involved in the lemon killings… a good possibility. They at least know something about them. So we gotta take care. Know where your weapon is; somebody’s a professional killer. Stay on your toes.”
“You think…” Del ’s eyebrows were up. “Maybe some armor?”
“If you want, but I don’t think it’s necessary,” Virgil said. “It’d be weird if there were any shooting right there. I mean, this guy is semi-famous.”
“But the daughter is an impostor,” Jenkins said. “Maybe she’s another Clara Rinker.” Clara Rinker had been a professional killer working for a St. Louis mobster, who’d been taken down by Davenport ’s team a few years earlier. She was believed to have killed thirty people.
“Look-do what you’re comfortable with,” Virgil said, gobbling down the last of the carrot cake. “My sense is, we won’t be doing any shooting. But know where your weapon is. If we go in, and there are a couple of Vietnamese guys there… then take care. Take care.”
THEY CIRCLED Sinclair’s block and Virgil pointed out the back of the condo, the porch where Sinclair was working. “There’s somebody in there,” Jenkins said.
Virgil dug out his binoculars and put them on the lighted porch.
Sinclair was there, bent over a laptop. “That’s him,” Virgil said. As Virgil watched, Sinclair sat up and stared straight out into the night for three seconds, five seconds, and then went back to the laptop.
The house that backed onto the condo was also lit. Jenkins said, “I’m gonna knock on the door there, tell them what’s up, so they won’t be yelling at me and calling St. Paul when I sneak through their yard.”