French Kiss, page 45
Mun was on the mountainside with Ma Varada and Mogok. Ahead of them was a jungle so dense even the shadows were green.
“You want Virgil because he has designs on the Shan,” Mun had said to General Kiu, “and I want him because he ordered Terry’s death.” But he had wondered as he had laid out the deal whether that was in fact the situation.
“Ma Varada is the key,” he had continued. “She works for Virgil, but if we play it right, if she is convinced that I’ve saved her, I can turn her. Surely that is a more economical use for her than as an example to future spies.”
General Kiu had allowed Mun to cut Ma Varada down. The balance of Mun’s afternoon was spent tending to her, feeding her mind as well as her stomach.
General Kiu had insisted that Mun take Mogok along as guide until they were off the Shan. He did not want to involve any of his soldiers, since even a party of three was more conspicuous than he deemed wise. “The borders are already filling with Admiral Jumbo’s men,” he told Mun just before they left camp. “His alliance with the devil has propelled him from his lethargy.”
Mun, armed with a Russian Kalishnikov that was a twin of the one Mogok carried at the ready, took Ma Varada by the hand and plunged into the thicket.
It was dense and moist within the vast triple-canopied jungle. Already, since they had descended from the highest plateaus upon which the opium lords made their camps, the temperature had risen more than thirty degrees.
Mun considered General Kiu and thought that, perhaps, he had missed his true calling. With his ability to turn preposterous rhetoric into logical justification he would have been a natural as a missionary. As it was, he was content in his demagogue status. That was because as far as proselytizing was concerned, the two were synonymous.
Outside the Shan Mun could realize that to call it Eden or even Shangri-la was absurd, unless one imagined these places to be akin to enormously wealthy feudal kingdoms ruled by cruel despots, feeding off the pernicious fruits of their starving vassals’ labors. And yet, Mun had to admit that General Kiu had made that absurdity believable.
Was he any better—or worse—than Admiral Jumbo? Perhaps—if, as the evidence indicated, Admiral Jumbo had cut a deal with the Magician. But the explanation had been entirely General Kiu’s, and Mun distrusted that. He particularly distrusted General Kiu’s magnanimity in letting him and Ma Varada go.
As if to underscore Mun’s concern, Mogok tapped him on the back and said, “We’re being followed.”
Mun turned his head, but could see nothing through the welter of trees, vines, and underbrush. “Who are they?”
“Soldiers,” Mogok said. “But whether they are General Kiu’s or Admiral Jumbo’s I cannot say.”
Enfolded within the gigantic cathedral of the jungle, they were motes, like cast-off detritus riding an endless sea. The threat, unseen and unheard, lurked behind every scarred bole, every insect-laden vine.
Had Admiral Jumbo, through a spy, discovered what Mun and Mogok were up to? Or had General Kiu been lying to him all along, and had now ordered their execution?
They picked up their pace, which was difficult enough because of the density of the foliage. Now Mun could hear the distinct sounds of pursuit echoing through the forest. He saw the fright on Ma Varada’s face and pushed her onward down the Shan.
She stumbled over a root, arched out of the ground like an old man’s arthritic finger. Annoyed, Mun bent to pull her up, which was when the firing began. Perhaps, he thought later, this clumsiness on Ma Varada’s part had saved his life. Bark on the tree near which he had been standing shredded as the fusillade of bullets struck it.
Stretched full-length on the jungle floor, flung over Ma Varada’s body, Mun turned his head long enough to see Mogok just behind them. He was crouched, firing in short bursts into the dizzying green layers of the jungle.
He waved them on, following as he methodically sprayed the area behind them with fire. They were heading into a particularly dense pocket of foliage, and the air sat in their lungs like seawater.
To their rear the gunfire had increased. Mogok turned, crouched within a clump of ferns that reached over his head. He moved, to get a better shot, aimed. Then he was flung to the side, his head and torso ripped open by the massed machine-gun fire.
Mun turned, put his Kalishnikov to his shoulder. But the trigger wouldn’t work. The gun had jammed! Sweat broke out under his arms, along his spine. He was utterly defenseless.
He pushed Ma Varada down into the ooze of the jungle floor, then snaked his way toward where Mogok’s body lay sprawled. He waited, listening for the smallest sound. Had they seen him? Was he even now within their sights? It did not do to dwell on such matters, he knew. Without Mogok’s weapon they were dead anyway.
Cautiously, he reached out, pulled the AK-47 back toward him. When he had it, he scrambled back to Ma Varada, dragged her to her feet, and headed off through the thick, clinging underbrush.
The gun he had been given had proved useless. Karma. Or had it been deliberately disabled to make his execution that much easier?
No time to attack the puzzle now. Ferns and branch tips flicked by his face as he ran through the jungle. He could hear Ma Varada’s panting breath in his ear.
He took them along a zigzag path of his own making, hearing now and again a crash through the foliage behind them. Then he began to hear noise on either side of them and knew that the soldiers were trapping them like game in an ever-narrowing net.
No wonder there is so much noise from directly behind us! Mun thought. Those soldiers are the beaters, meant to push the quarry forward so that we can be picked up by the true hunters.
With this in mind, Mun brought them up short. Thinking, No step taken in vain, as Sun Tzu has written, he began to lead them back the way they had come.
“What are you doing?” Ma Varada whispered. Her face was pinched and filled with lines. She was clearly terrified.
“Quiet,” he said. “If you do not want to die, you will follow me silently, and do as I say without question.”
Now he used the sounds of the beaters to guide him. He checked his Kalishnikov; there was ample ammunition.
“They are so close!”
He ignored her tremulous voice in his ear, pressed on from tree to tree until he saw the first of the beaters. Then he pushed Ma Varada down against the thick bole of a tree before stationing himself in good position against a scabrous tree trunk.
When he had a clear shot at the beater, he squeezed the trigger and brought him down. Immediately, he was up and running to another position as automatic fire broke out from the hunters farther down the mountainside. They had not seen him, he knew, but were responding to the shots.
Two more beaters appeared, and he fired again, watching with satisfaction as they spun off into the underbrush. He was moving again, listening for the beaters. He did not know precisely how many soldiers had been assigned this task, but he could not imagine a commander utilizing more than four or five of his complement in this manner.
Three down, he thought, as he spotted the fourth and dispatched him with a short burst as he was still on the run.
Crouched against an outcropping of rock, Mun rechecked the Kalishnikov’s ammunition. He had been deliberately abstemious, wanting to give the hunters as little clue as possible as to his location.
He listened for further evidence of the beaters, heard none. He signaled for Ma Varada to join him. He would have preferred to wait longer, but knew they could not afford such luxury. All too soon the hunters would figure out what had happened, and would be after them.
He took her hand and crept from the protection of the rock face. And was brought up short by a harsh voice shouting, “Stand where you are!”
Mun began to swing his Kalishnikov toward the voice.
“Stop or I’ll cut you off at the knees.”
The fifth beater was very close. He was grinning, and Mun could see that the only reason he had not already shot them was that he was enjoying the situation too much.
“Did you think you were clever?” the beater said. “You were stupid.”
Mun could see his finger tighten on the trigger. The muzzle of the AK-47 loomed as large as the mouth of a mortar. He calculated the odds of him being able to aim and shoot in time. The machine gun was a clumsy weapon at this range, and Mun knew that he would be dead before he could even get his weapon into position. There was nothing he could do. He imagined the spew of bullets, the tearing pain, the cessation of life, and prepared himself.
“Why should I kill you now?” the soldier said, and threw a short length of cord at Ma Varada’s feet. “Tie him up, bitch. I want to see his face while I play with you. I haven’t seen a body as fine as yours in months. I want some diversion before I kill you both.”
The beater turned his attention to Mun. He was gloating. Then his eyes opened wide, and he said something imcomprehensible. Mun had been aware of a blurred motion from beside him, and now he saw the hilt of the knife protruding from the beater’s neck as he realized that Ma Varada had thrown it.
The man staggered, fumbling for the trigger of his machine pistol. Mun swung his weapon up, got off a short, reflexive burst into his chest that threw him deep into the underbrush.
Ma Varada ran to where the beater knelt, folded like a marionette, and, placing her foot against his chest, extracted her knife.
“Don’t forget his machine gun,” Mun said, and as they took off into the jungle, “Where did you get the knife?”
“I stole it from Mogok,” she said. “As it turned out, he didn’t need it, and we did.”
“Karma,” Mun said with a good deal of admiration.
“Karma,” she agreed, accepting his oblique compliment.
But they had not gone fifty yards when he spotted the forward patrol. The soldiers saw him at the same time, and rushed toward him.
He took Ma Varada by the hand and, lurching heavily to the left, veered off in that direction. He heard the firing begin behind him and knew that the soldiers were gaining. Still, there could be no question of turning to face them. They knew where he was, and that he was armed and dangerous. He had no illusions. He had been successful against the beaters because he had taken them by surprise.
He was about to ask Ma Varada about the terrain when he felt a tearing in his shoulder, as if it had been caught by a branch. Then from out of nowhere blood seemed to explode. Ma Varada screamed, and he turned to see blood covering her face and side. She had been hit!
Slowly, because she was staring at him with a horrified expression, he realized that it was he who had been hit. He looked down, saw his side drenched in blood. Abruptly dizzy, he stumbled.
Ma Varada wrenched her hand from his and, putting the AK-47 at the ready, turned on their pursuers. She hastened through the trees, firing off short, accurate bursts.
Mun saw one, then another of the soldiers fly backward beneath the fusillade. Then he was down on all fours, his vision blurry. His head shook back and forth like a wounded animal’s, and when he heard his name being called, he blindly brought his machine gun up.
Ma Varada pushed it out of the way and slapped him across the cheek. Slowly, his vision cleared.
“Can you get up? Can you walk?”
“The soldiers,” he breathed.
“Come on. I have bound your wounds,” she said, grunting as she put her arm beneath his. “Try now. We are almost out of their territory. Almost off the Shan Plateau. Almost safe.”
Mun gritted his teeth with the effort. The natural anesthetic of trauma was beginning to wear off, and the pain was appalling. With her help he rose and, together, they began to stumble down the mountainside.
Mun closed his eyes. Almost safe, she had said. Perhaps from Admiral Jumbo or General Kiu, whoever was the liar. But not from Ma Varada. He hardly knew her. He certainly did not trust her. Yet now he was utterly dependent on her for his life and well-being.
His pain made him helpless. He was obliged, in order to have a chance of surviving, to do what she ordered. He knew that he could die. His wounds might not be simple ones and, in this primitive land, if infection set in, he was a dead man.
He knew that he did not want to die, that if the end came without having reached the Magician, he would weep. He thought more about Terry now than he did about himself. Terry was why he had returned here; Terry was why he had done what he had done in the Shan. Without having a chance to avenge Terry’s death, Mun knew his life would have no meaning.
With these thoughts in mind he clutched at Ma Varada all the harder. He needed her to protect him. Karma had transformed her from a dupe into a goddess. In her presence he felt mortal and vulnerable. Now she had the power of life and death over him, and Mun, for the first time since he had left Vence, found himself praying.
Because he knew what the goddess was capable of. Her power was paradoxical: it nurtured, protected, and annihilated.
Morphée stood before the full-length mirror so that Milhaud could see all of her naked body at once.
From behind her, on the bed, he said, “Now get dressed slowly, one item at a time.”
She did as he bade, by the delicate motions of her hands, making love to her body as she knew he wished to do. When she reached a certain point (it did not take long), she heard him get off the bed. A moment later he was against her. She felt him hard and hot between her legs, and her eyes closed. She raised her arms over her head and, shuddering, pressed her damp palms hard against the mirror.
The newly created engine heated the room like a furnace.
“What is it like,” Milhaud said sometime later, “to dream of time?”
Morphée’s eyes were closed. In that state she seemed to him as mysterious as time. “You are French,” she said. “Even if I were to tell you, how could you possibly understand it?”
They were curled up on the bed, and he rolled her around so that he could better see her face. The light from the city seeped like excess energy through gaps in the velvet curtains. It struck her face in such a way that she appeared to be an apsara, one of the celestial dancers carved into the facades of Angkor’s ancient temples.
“Why must you talk down to me,” he complained, “as if I were a child or a member of an inferior race?”
“On the contrary,” Morphée said, caressing him, “I speak to you as I do because you are a member of a superior race.”
Milhaud recoiled as if she had struck him. “If that is a joke, it is a bizarre one.”
“But it is no joke,” she said. “That was the lesson you French taught us in Indochina. This was your particular talent: to rape us while assuring us of our inferior status in the world.”
“Not my talent, certainly. I never condoned such a philosophy.”
“Not you individually, darling,” she reassured him. “I meant you as a people.”
Milhaud lay back in the bed, suddenly depressed by the conversation. Morphée rose up on one elbow, looked down at him. She put a hand on his chest, feeling the beating of his heart. “Now I have upset you.”
“It’s not you,” he said, realizing it was the truth. What she had said had hardly come as a revelation to him. He had spent much of his life trying to atone for the sins his countrymen had committed in Indochina. No, his black mood was due to the Magician. It terrified him that his nemesis was out there, that, like the devil, he knew of Milhaud’s existence—his former life!—and was using him to his own, malefic purpose. All of a sudden Milhaud had begun to wonder whether he was deluding himself. Was he really free of the CIA’s influence? He knew that he could not be until he discovered what the Magician’s plan was. Only the possession of that knowledge would make him truly free.
Morphée kissing him gently, lovingly on the lips. “What is it you wish to know, darling?”
Milhaud stared past her to the ceiling, where reflections made by the traffic lights illuminated the ornate scrollwork, artistry of another century. “I want you to tell me,” he said slowly, “how you have freed yourself from the past.”
“I’m not sure that I can,” she said. “First, you would have to understand what it is like to be Asian.”
“To have been a prisoner or a slave, you mean.” He was thinking of how much a prisoner of the Americans he had been and, in a sense, still was. How he hated that humiliating position! “I know what that is like.”
“I don’t disbelieve you,” she said, “but you are mistaken.”
There it was again, that knowing tone. He could not bear it, so he told her everything. “I have been a slave to a group of Americans,” he began. “They ordered, and I obeyed. Now I think I have found a way to be free of them, but I cannot be sure. There is one American who still haunts me, who has, I suspect, tracked me like a bloodhound. He is the only person I am afraid of.”
Morphée stroked his forehead. “He will destroy you,” she said. “You can see that he has already tried.”
“What do you mean? He hasn’t tried to harm me.”
“Oh, but he already has,” she said. “You have only to see how much you hate yourself to know to what extent he has succeeded.”
He stared at her, thinking about what she had said. Is the truth always so painfully obvious when it is spoken? he wondered. And for the first time he understood the depth of her power. “You can help me,” he said. “What am I to do?”
“First, you must reject hate,” Morphée said. “Hate and fear are two sides of the same coin. When you hate, you fear yourself. Hate imprisons you in time. It is like a disease that turns minutes into hours. Once you let go of hate, all else follows. You are free of time, and of the past.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“Do I? I’m sorry. It is very difficult.”
Milhaud rolled over, so that he was looking at her bare body. “It must take a great deal of discipline,” he said, “not to hate, not to feel fear.”
“Discipline, yes,” she said. “But also emotion.”
“Emotion?”
“One must learn how to love even one’s enemies, especially one’s enemies.” She took his face in her hands. “That is what you taught me, darling, when I fell in love with you.”
