Black Heart, page 37
The Monk looked politely curious. 'Yes? How so?' 'Thought maybe you were a communist.' 'A free trader has no politics,' the Monk said, his head beginning to nod a bit. 'Can't afford to.'
'But you're loyal to the People's Republic. Surely you're political to that extent.'
The Monk stared out over Macomber's head towards the spreading boughs of an ancient gingko tree. 'It's said that tree's four hundred years old.' He sighed deeply. 'That is how old I feel, Mac-omber, I will tell you truly.'
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'I have seen them come and go here. The powerful and the shrewd. They all get sliced up in the end and me along with them.'
'You're still here,' Macomber pointed out. 'Thriving.'
The Monk's head swung around and he looked into Macomber's eyes. There was a glow there. 'But I have no one. Once I had a wife, a precious daughter. All gone now ... China has swallowed them whole.'
'I don't understand.' Macomber leaned over, poured more vodka into the other's cup.
'Once, long ago or so it seems to me now -1 had a brother. He was a wilful man, a violent man. He hated the Americans.' The Monk picked up the paper cup. 'My Government found a use for him. They trained him and put him into the field. He was immediately successful. So successful in fact that they requested he begin recruiting other agents.'
'When was this?' Macomber inquired.
'1967.' The Monk closed his eyes as he took in the liquor. He must be swimming in it by now, Macomber thought. He edged closer. Perhaps the Chinese would let something slip; something incriminating. Macomber liked having information about other people. It ensured they would do as they were told.
'What happened?' he prodded gently.
The Monk's eyes had glazed slightly but Macomber's question brought him back. 'Among the people he found was a woman. A beautiful woman. A half-caste, part Khmer, part Chinese.' Wings brushed through Macomber's mind. 'He trained her and she became his most successful agent. She was cunning, resourceful and utterly amoral.
'You must understand that my brother was a driven man. He was never content with today's success; he was constantly looking ahead. And this woman had given him an idea for a daring coup. He would infiltrate her into the Special Forces compound at Ban Me Thuot.' Macomber heard a startled cry down deep inside the core of him. He held his tongue for fear of breaking the Chinese's train of thought. His heart raced with dread and when he tried to speak his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. 'What,' he managed to croak out at last. 'What was her name?' The Monk's eyes crossed in concentration. 'Hideous. It was
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hideous I tried to block it out.' He was rambling and Macomber held his breath. Tisah, that was it. My brother set her in place, gave her instructions to use all her knowledge to form illicit liaisons with the high-ranking "spook" officers there.'
Liaisons. The plural of the word resounded in Macomber's shocked mind like mortar fire. Tisah, he thought. You were
mine. Only mine!
'As I said, she did as she was told and the information she fed my brother was first-rate. He was very pleased.' A shadow seemed to pass across the Monk's countenance. 'Then one day everything changed.'
'What do you mean?' Macomber was appalled to hear thai
his voice was a hoarse croak.
'Or, more accurately, something changed her. She stoppec completely giving intelligence. Fearing for her safety 015 brother went in after her. She was not in her own house.' know, Macomber thought in an agony of tension. What hac happened to his Tisah? Now, after all these long years of not knowing, he was about to stumble on the truth. In, of all places an ancient garden in China.
'He knew the names of her contacts her lovers, to be mor to the point - and he went to their billets.' A cold chill crept through Macomber at the thought. He had never known. He had thought at the time that she might have been working for the communists; he did not think he could forgive her. But over the years he saw that he had. Only her, of all people. He could forgive Tisah. She had brought him life in the midst of death. Only she had come to save him.
And now he knew the ultimate truth about himself. If she were indeed a communist agent, it did not matter. He trembled with the force of that revelation. It did not matter! What were all his carefully constructed political building blocks in the face of this one incandescent love? Love!
If Tisah were indeed alive that was all he cared about. H < mind was on fire at the thought that he might, if he was abu to manoeuvre the Monk in just the right way, at last be able K discover the truth. Alive! The word flared in his mind.
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Slowly, he thought, gagging on the rush of questions he longed to ask the Chinese. Go slowly or you'll lose it all now.
'You used a word before,' he said as calmly as he could. ' "Hideous." What was hideous?'
'Why, the aftermath, of course,' the Monk said in a tone of voice that indicated he could not understand why Macomber had asked for an answer to such an obvious question. He appeared very drunk now and inwardly Macomber laughed in secret delight.
'When my brother returned to his base camp, he found a message awaiting him. He had been recalled; his superiors were furious. The last of his information from Tisah had proved false. Men and supplies had been committed to a fictitious offensive; they had been, to a man, destroyed by an ambush. My brother was in disgrace.'
The Monk's voice came to an abrupt halt. A combination, perhaps, of the emotions of his words and the heat of the liquor had burnished his face with sweat. His eyes were hooded and sleepy, his balance slightly askew.
Just when Macomber felt compelled to urge him on, he began again, his voice softer than before. 'In his cell, my brother realized what had happened. Tisah had made special mention of her last contact, an American Special Forces soldier. He was very canny, she had said in one report. Very smart. She thought he might be the most dangerous of all the men at Ban Me Thuot to approach. But the promise he seemed to hold out of secret knowledge far beyond what she had been able to scavenge before, drove her onward.' /
His shiny, moon-lit face swayed a little, like flowers in the spice-laden breeze from the east. 'In prison, you see, there is much time to ponder that which has taken but seeming moments to unfold; time enough to return and sift over every tiny detail, remembered now in the utter silence of isolation.
My brother knew that she had been turned by this very dangerous man. Her last contact.
'Well' - the Monk spread his fingers like delicate branches the knowledge did him no good, of course. It was a bad time 'or our Government, an evil time. They accused my brother of
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everything including treason; they wished, in the essence of it, to make an example of him. They did just that. They killed him; they killed all of his family. Then they started on mine. 'First my eldest son disappeared, then my middle son was reported missing from school. Then my wife and baby daughter. As a lesson to me. "They will be returned to you," I was told, "when we are satisfied as to your innocence. In the meantime, an enemy of the State has no family".'
The Monk put his fleshy cheek against the heel of his hand. 'Eventually, the men in power were deposed. Others came to take their place. I was vindicated but as for my wife and children ... no one knew or was willing to tell. No one.'
The Monk rose unsteadily and with the slow and overly careful motions of a drunk leaned against the parapet of the bridge. He appeared to Macomber to be an old man now, the soft wrinkled light striking him in such a way it turned his skin to vellum. 'So here is your definition - is that the correct word?
- of hideous, Mac-omber. I want no more part of that.' He spat wetly over the side.
Macomber pulled himself together as he stood up. He watched the Monk carefully, knowing that the moment had at last come. 'And the girl?' he said slowly, easily. 'Tisah.' It was the hardest word for him to say. 'What became of her?'
For a time, there was silence. Macomber heard the soft whine of insects and, below them, in the water, came a dull splash as of a frog jumping in.
The Monk stared down into those black depths, as if he could re-read the past in the streakings of mud lying along the bottom. 'Of course, no one will know now precisely what happened that night. My brother was able to piece together most of it, however.'
'Tisah had begun to balk at her dual duplicity. So much so that her last contact must have come to the conclusion that she was more trouble alive. He came to her flat in the middle of tlu
night.'
'She must have heard him, perhaps only at the last possible instant. In any event, she escaped, fleeing into the jungles of Cambodia.'
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^ Macomber's heart was throbbing so painfully that unconsciously he grabbed at his breast. His eyes seemed to go in and out of focus. Alive! his mind screamed. Tisah's alive!
He took deep breaths. Prana. Even so, he was a while at it. He stared at the pitted, pock-marked cornice of the stone bridge, reminding himself of the immutability of things. After he was certain his voice would not betray him, he said evenly, 'I want you to find her for me.'
The Monk made no move; he continued to contemplate the water just as if Macomber had not spoken. Then his head shook from side to side as if he wished to physically shake off the sorrow that seemed to engulf him. 'This was an evil man who cut her, Mac-omber. Quite an evil one.' He turned slowly. Moonlight silvered his face and, for just an instant, a butterfly flitted past his ear. He did not seem aware of its presence.
'To you, perhaps, this man is a hero, yes?,' he went on. 'But I know him as evil." His eyes were dark and somehow luminescent. Macomber thought the excess of liquor had made them so. 'Now you say that you want me to find Tisah for you. It is not unknown to me that you were in Ban Me Thuot, Macomber. Yes and it has also come to my attention what you were doing there. I would be a most abject fool not to have checked out your background before I agreed to this meeting.' He put his hands together as if praying. 'I know what you are.'
'What I have been,' Macomber corrected.
The Monk shrugged. 'Call it what you want. It occurs to me that I do not know your motivation in this.'
'It's none of your business.'
The Monk's eyes were half-closed, the upper lids floating up and down slightly. 'Allow me to say, Mac-omber, that though we may be business partners in one venture, we are not on the same side of the wall, as you might say.'
'You just spent the better part of a quarter-hour telling me how you hated the PRC's guts.'
The Monk looked downcast. 'Then we both spent that time m vain. Do not confuse politics with loyalty. How I feel about Wy Government is one thing; my love for China can never be questioned.
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'Therefore, when you ask me to find for you a half-Chinese from out of your past a spy who, for many long months worked against you - I must then ask myself the next logical
question. Why?'
His head came up and his black eyes glittered in the moonlight with an unnatural force. 'Do you wish to finish what you began fifteen years ago, Mac-omber?'
'What?'
'Will I search through all of Cambodia for you, bring you your Tisah and like your Christian Judas watch while you
execute her?'
'What - What are you saying?' Macomber was almost shouting. 'That / was her last contact?'
'You're a very dangerous man, Mac-omber. That much I do
know."
'I'll give you five hundred thousand extra if you find her.'
'My dear sir -'
'All right. Another million!'
'What are my assurances that -'
'I wasn't her last contact, damnit!'
'I never said you were,' the Chinese said blandly.
'If I knew who he was, I'd kill him myself!' Macomber said thickly. 'That's how I feel about him.' In the silence that followed, the eerie hollow sort that rang out after a military bombardment, Macomber looked hard at the Monk. 'Does this mean,' he said softly, 'that you know who her last contact was?'
'In point of fact I do.' He came away from the side of the bridge at last. 'I have carried that knowledge with me for many years. It is my brother's only legacy.'
'I want to know,' Macomber said hoarsely. His mind seemec on fire. The thought that someone at Ban Me Thuot had triec to kill Tisah acted like a painful burr in his heart. 'I want to know
that, too.'
'Yes,' the Monk said seriously, 'I see that you do. I see the tigei of revenge inside you; I have distilled the nature of your spirit.
He toddled sloppily to the apex of the bridge and there turnec back to face Macomber. 'So I perceive the true nature of rrn poor brother's legacy at last. It has a purpose after all.
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'Yes I will find this Tisah for you, Mac-omber, for I know that she is still alive.' He raised an arm. 'And as for the other, the information is yours. I need not be burdened with it any longer.
'Before he died I saw my brother. He wept in my arms because he knew what they were going to do with him, though I, in my ignorance and naivety, would not believe him. That is how I have remembered him for all these years. Perhaps now, when I give you the name of the man who traduced Tisah and, through her, him, I will be able to forget.
'His name is Tracy Richter.'
Tracy's flight was at 6.00 p.m. Before heading out to the airport he stopped by his father's to pick up the Care package the old man had prepared for him.
It was not only his own quest which occupied his mind now, it was the overall picture. He tried to fit Roland Burke's death into the scheme of things; he tried to come up with the foundation's angle. Their interest made him curious. He had begun to wonder if there was some kind of foreign security angle. Had John been into something that Tracy hadn't known about? Tracy thought that it was highly unlikely. But, he had to admit to himself, it was still a possibility.
His mind was so involved with these enigmas that he was totally dumbfounded when Lauren opened the door to Louis Richter's apartment.
They stared at each other for a long electric moment. He thought later that perhaps there had been an instant within the time span of the first shock of recognition when, if he had been quick enough about opening his mouth, he would have had a ghost of a chance with her.
In that moment he saw her as others, perhaps, did from the remoteness of the stage, the aura of her profession, an icy mask about her features and, without a word, she stepped back so that he could go on past her.
He heard the echo of the door closing at his back as he went down the entrance hallway. Lauren crossed straight to the kitchen, disappearing.
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'What is she doing here?' Tracy asked his father. 'I've been calling her all over trying to track her down.'
Louis Richter put his arm around his son's shoulders. 'I think this is the only place she feels comfortable in at the moment.' He saw the look on his son's face. 'Come on,' he said softly, 'time heals all wounds ... even hers.'
In his back studio, he said, 'I don't think it's all you. I think it's eating away at her insides.' 'What is?'
'I don't know all of it.' Long ago he had shuttered the window in this room for security as well as safety precautions He had never bothered reopening it. Now in that absence of light, Tracy could see his face as if it were already a skull, as if it had already been stripped of all flesh and only a thin covering of varnish laid over the bare bone. It angered him to see death hovering so close to his father.
He gripped Louis Richter's shoulder as if by that firm contact he could somehow transfer a part of his own vital energy to the
old man.
Louis Richter's eyes were full and he turned away because he did not want his son to see him cry. He cleared his throat. 'It has to do with ... something in the brother and sister aspect of it... I'm not certain.'
'There's so much I want to say to her.'
'I know,' Louis Richter said, turning back. 'And you'll hav< your time, believe me.' He picked up a grained pigskin toiletrie case from the top of his workbench. He pushed it into Tracy'
hands.
'Don't open it now,' he said. 'Let the Customs people do that
if they want.'
Tracy took the Care package, put it under his arm.
'Tracy ...'
'I'll be careful, Dad.'
'I know you will,' Louis Richter said.
Tracy leaned forward, kissed his father's cheek. The skin felt as oddly smooth and new as a baby's. Then he turned and went out of the apartment. As he passed, he could hear Lauren working in the kitchen. It seemed hard to open the door. But
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he found that was not nearly as difficult a task as walking down the hall to the elevator and the waiting street.
Macomber saw he had made a mistake. The Monk must have given the taxi driver a tip, after all, because the hunk of metal was still waiting for them when they emerged from the labyrinthine depths of Yu Garden. Macomber felt satisfied. The deal was set and he had picked up a stray bit of very valuable information in the process. The six million suddenly looked like a small price tag. That bastard Richter, he thought. How I hate him.
The Monk opened the taxi's back door and Macomber climbed in. The door closed behind him and he turned.
Til take another route,' the Monk said. He yawned hugely. His eyes had slowed to somnolent slits. 'You'll agree it's wisest that way.'
'Oh, yes. Certainly.' Now that the business was over, Macomber was anxious to be away from this uncouth man, this febrile country. He longed to return to the hotel and make his call.
The Monk folded his arms as support for his chin. Macomber saw with dismay that flecks of dinner's grease still dotted his chin. The sight disgusted him.
'There is,' he said, 'a matter of the payment.'
Macomber tried not to breathe. 'One-third will be deposited into the bank you designated in Hong Kong tomorrow morning, one-third on the date of the first delivery, the final third in December when the bulk of the consignment arrives.'
