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torrent of water pouring in through the rent windscreen adding its additional weight and the car sank with a belch of upwards seeking air.
The stinging chill of the water partially revived Tracy. His head ached. With his wrists and ankles bound he had no way of swimming,and unless he was able to rise and breach the surface he would quickly drown.
Blackness all around him, a throbbing in his left side, his lungs struggling to extract all the oxygen from the air he had inhaled on his way out of the doomed sedan. Waves of dizziness washed over him, the blow from the water's surface awakening his recent injuries.
But worse still he had lost all sense of direction. He seemed to be sinking and he abandoned himself to instinct, trusting the organism to find its own way, knowing that it viewed its survival as paramount.
He swallowed foul water, choking, was buffeted by mean currents, struck out silently with whatever parts of his body still functioned. Grey bubbles trailed from between his clenched lips as if with each one another bit of his life was failing.
Then abruptly, unexpectedly, he breached the surface, gasping in surprise because somehow he had not seen the lightening of the water, assumed that his eyes had been shut and began to worry in earnest. He could not remember closing his eyes; they should not have been closed because he needed all of his senses alert if he was going to make it. If instinct was being impaired then he truly was in serious trouble.
He went under heavily again but with enough oxygen this time and kicked out as best he could with his legs in concert, straining to remain near the surface.
Water rolled off his hair and into his eyes. He was wheezing from lack of oxygen, his mouth opened wide, bunking incessantly in order to see clearly. The crest of a wave slammed into him, filling his mouth and throat with salt water so that he gagged, swallowed reflexively, then vomited up the vile stuff immediately. He lost orientation in the process.
Pain flooded him and, simultaneously, a weakness suffusing his muscles and he thought, None of it was worth anything, not
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all the planning or the execution because I'm going to die anyway, far from home and Lauren.
At that moment, his left shoulder struck something hard and he struggled to turn towards it, awkward still, but orienting instinctively. Side, he thought. This is on my side. He turned again. So this way must be up.
Rough barnacles scraped his flesh, flailing off the material of his shirt. Salt water invaded, stinging and that pain, sharp and external and, above all, new, brushed the cobwebs from his mind.
He reached upwards along the hard, curving flank of the obstruction, felt himself being pulled upwards from his watery grave. He groaned as his already taxed muscles were stretched. Then he was out of the water, being drawn aboard the ancient junk. A jabbering in his ears. Not Cantonese, not Mandarin but intelligible still. But he was too exhausted to think, to even make a reply. Peering faces, open and concerned. A dimly-remembered, confused trip across the slippery deck, the sharp pungency offish innards.
Then he was bundled below, into warmth, the incredible softness of a straw mattress and sleep. Blessed sleep.
Louis Richter felt a breeze on his bare back, as chill as death, got his hand around the barrel of the deodorant can. Then he felt fingers like iron spikes gripping him, throwing him away from the open cabinet.
He cried out, his balance gone, his heels skidding across the damp tile floor and he was crashing backwards. He thought, for that instant airborne, that he would surely break his back on the hard floor. Then he slammed into the bathtub, the water breaking his momentum.
There was a shadow above him, looming spectrally down from the ceiling as if larger than life. He lifted his arms as if to feebly ward off a blow. But all the while he was fumbling off the can's cap. The shadow came closer, bending down and Louis Richter knew that this was his one chance.
He depressed the stud, heard the whoosh of the chemical spray. There was a soft grunt and the grip on him eased. He
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scrambled up and was delivered a blow to the point of his chin which drove all coherent thought from his brain.
Dazed, he sat heavily back in the water, his head lolling. The world was composed of shades of grey, all colour gone, fallowing in the warm water, he no longer could distinguish up from down, right from left. It was if he were floating in space, disoriented and disintegrating.
He thrashed irrationally like a baby seal about to be clubbed. His swollen tongue crept out from between his lips. His eyes rolled wildly in their sockets and his breathing was stertorous.
Then one thing penetrated the haze closing down his mind, a beacon in the fog: it was one lone note, singing. He wondered where it came from until he saw the glint directly in front of his eyes, a thin horizontal thread, moving inexorably towards him. What was it?
He lifted his head higher and his gaze found a slight crescent of the face looming over him. Silvered high cheekbone, the straight, handsome brow, the shadowed eye. It was Kim, the Director's emissary.
And abruptly, the sight galvanized him, the mists clearing. He could think again, knew, instinctively, all of it. And the knowledge of the terrible danger he had placed Tracy in was sufficient to light in him one last flame of life. Though the disease ravaging him depleted his strength, though he had no weapons but his body and his mind, Louis Richter fought back.
His hands came up, the fingers curling around the horizontal glint. He cried out with the pain as he tried to bring it down and away from his throat. It was steel piano wire and it bit into the flesh of his palms like a surgeon's scalpel.
But Khieu had had enough. His eyes were still stinging from the noxious chemicals of the spray and he allowed the old man to grip the wire, brought the ends around in a loop, trapping the hands within a circle. And now he entwined the strand ends, pulled mightily so that the singing increased as steel scraped against steel climbing inwards, cutting off the old man's circulation.
Khieu grunted with the effort and Louis Richter screamed from the depths of his being as the steel wire bit through his skin,
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lacerating the raw bleeding flesh beneath. But still he held on, knowing that to let go would seal his death.
Sweat rimmed Khieu's beautiful brow as the hot salty blood drooled down Louis Richter's wrists, running in rivulets across his arms to expand like dark clouds in the bathwater.
The wire sang a high keening note. It was at the bone now, sawing back and forth and the old man gathered himself. Pain ribboned him, shaking his shoulders, turning his arms to lead weights. He brought his feet up under him and launched himself upwards, screaming.
But Khieu was ready for him, whipping the wire away from the bloody pulp that had once been one of nature's great wonders, wrapping the wet wire around the old man's neck. He jerked once, twice.
Louis Richter heard the singing once more but now the one note had turned into many. And then the violence of the dream ended, all pain died and everything was as it had been ... once upon a time.
. once
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'A goddamned piece of tinfoil!'
'All that elaborate secrecy,' Commander Brady said, 'and we find nothing but a crumpled-up gum wrapper.'
They were back in Silvano's office, grouped around the table as Thwaite carefully unwrapped the layers. The Juicyfruit wrapper came away, revealing the inner shell of tin foil. It had been stuck at the back of the locker.
Silvano handed Thwaite a pair of jeweller's tweezers and he pried apart the edges. They all stared at what the foil contained.
Thwaite said, 'Who wants to call the lab?'
'Fold it up and I'll take it down to Maurice." Silvano grinned. Til persuade him that our, ah, project has priority.'
'How'11 you do that?' Thwaite asked.
Til take him out to dinner.'
'Christ,' Brady said, 'he's an easy bastard.'
Silvano laughed, taking up the sphere of foil with the tweezers and heading for the door. 'It ain't the food so much, Commander,' he said. 'It's the twins I know out near the lake I take him to see afterwards.'
Silvano returned in just over forty minutes. He had in tow a rail of a man with a long beaked nose and tufted eyebrows. His thin jowls were blue-black with stubble.
Silvano carefully closed the door behind them before he made the introductions. 'I think you'd better give them all of it, Maurice.'
The chemist nodded. 'Right.' His brown eyes were large, slightly exophthalmic so that he looked as if he had corrective lenses on. 'The white powder Art here asked me to identify is heroin. Pure heroin.' He looked at them in turn. 'Now I'm talking about the one hundred per cent straight uncut stuff. Frankly, I've rarely come across such super horse.'
'You think it's new?' Thwaite said.
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'You mean just in from the Golden Triangle?" Maurice shrugged. 'If you want my opinion, I'd say it's been untouched by American hands or chemicals.'
'Okay,' Brady said, 'so it's choice quality stuff. Where does that leave us?'
'You've only heard half of it,' Silvano said. 'Maurice?'
'Very interesting," the chemist said. 'There was some writing on the inside of the foil. The horse was covering it and I had to use a couple of this and that to get it up to full readability.' He produced a small notebook, flipped up pages until he came to the right spot. He consulted his notes. 'I got a name and a street for you guys. No town; no address.'
'Let's have it,' Thwaite said.
'I got an Antonio Mogales,' Maurice said, looking up. 'I got a Mackay Place. Either of those ring a bell?'
And Thwaite thought, good Christ, that's Bay Ridge' 'Tonio, you sonovabitch!
There was a quality about the Cloisters that never failed to move Macomber. Perhaps it was the sense of great antiquity, the milieu of European history, of power direct and uncompromising. The thunder of hooves to battle, the darkening of plains with the blood of infidels. The Crusades... a holy quest. Victory for God and country.
The thick stone walls, the cool echoes, the stillness of the air itself, as if it held the weight and solemnity of that European millennium, all these and more bound him to this place.
He arrived forty-five minutes early so that he might be able to savour this atmosphere before his appointment. Consequently, he was in good humour, having calmed himself sufficiently from the aftermath of Khieu's puzzling report. It was disconcerting enough to hear that he had not been able to locate Tisah but to witness the manner of that report was even more disturbing. At least, as far as Tisah was concerned, there was always the Monk though Macomber disliked having to rely on him.
But as for Khieu, Macomber was at a loss to explain his son s inward bent since his return. Now, in some subtle way,
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Macomber found himself sorry that he had ever sent Khieu back to Kampuchea. He should have seen that such a trip might prove difficult, even traumatic for him. But Macomber had been blinded by his awakened love for Tisah - to see her again, to hold her, to take her in his arms - it was too much for him to think about for long. He burned for her, even now after seeing the consequences of Khieu's return.
What had happened to him there to cause such inwardness? He had provided no details and Macomber's probings had been useless. But much of his regret, he knew, stemmed from Khieu's failure to uncover Tisah's whereabouts. Macomber thought about her constantly now ... he could not wait for the Monk's message, Tisah's arrival.
He turned a corner and saw Marcus Findlan standing in the small courtyard, hands hanging loosely at his sides, looking at that tree with seven sculptured branches like the arms of a Jewish menorah.
Marcus Findlan was well over six feet tall, slim-hipped, with ruddy leathery skin. His lined face, clear light eyes that seemed to reflect the sky and wide-shouldered bearing made him seem like a marshal from out of the old West. Not especially surprising since in his youth Findlan had been sheriff of his native town ofGalveston.
Since that time, he had lost only a bit of his Texas drawl. In fact, Macomber was of the opinion that Findlan cultivated that accent. In the midst of the grey power bureaucracy of Washington it gave him an immediately recognizable character ... one that fitted perfectly his hard law-and-order image.
He had first come to the attention of the local FBI unit during his stint in Galveston which, being on the Gulf of Mexico, was the next logical off-loading point for marijuana after the Fed crackdowns in Rio Hondo and Port Isabel to the south.
Findlan and his deputy burned about a ton and a half of the stuff, chased the smugglers down the gulf all the way to Matamoros, just over the Mexican border, where Findlan shot three of them dead before they wounded his deputy severely enough to make him pull out.
The FBI liked that but he didn't like them much. They were
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too straight-laced for his style of warring against criminals and, in any case, he thought Hoover a dangerous maniac.
As it turned out, the CIA was more his style and his advancement within the organization was nothing short of meteoric. He possessed the innate instincts for getting out of tight scrapes. Time and again they used Findlan on operations they thought unsalvageable, where broken bones of those operatives who had gone before littered the shadowed ground.
Then some bright spark called him in to find a deeply entrenched mole and so began one of the company's most infamous non-publicized purges. The resultant carnage left Findlan within arm's length of the top and, inside of three years, he had become the head of the CIA.
'Marcus,' Macomber said. 'It's a treat to see you away from Washington.' He did not extend his hand; one did not do that with this man.
Marcus Findlan turned, nodded. 'Del. It's good to see you.' They began to walk. Meetings with Findlan were always peripatetic; he felt safer that way. 'Good to be out of that madhouse by the Potomac for a while. Griffiths's been raked over the coals so many times now by Sullivan's committee, he doesn't know whether he's coming or going.' He meant the Secretary of State.
'That was his problem before the hearings,' Macomber said. 'And how're you making out under all that scrutiny.'
Marcus Findlan gave a lopsided smile, the result of a bullet graze during his youth in Galveston. 'Just about as well as you would in the same situation, Del. I've movin', makin' way for the other guy. Hell, it was Griffiths' fault all the way. You know how State likes to think they run us. My only mistake was in giving Griffiths his head in Cairo. It didn't make it any easier when I paid my respects to Billiejean DeWitt. She and Roger were friends of mine. But, shit, there's just so long I can cry mea culpa. There's a lot of that going around these days, anyway, what with the President owning up to his idiotic comment to Sullivan. I'll be happy to let Griffiths take his share.'
There was a young woman on a stone bench, her head tilted back. In her lap was an artist's pad with an unfinished pencil sketch in a sure-handed architectural style.
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Macomber led Findlan past. 'Do you think he'll go down?'
'Personally, I think he's finished as of yesterday. I heard part of the testimony and there's was more to come this afternoon. By tonight I don't think Lawrence will have any choice. He's been wounded once already; he'll have to ask for Griffiths' resignation or risk certain defeat in November.'
'November's why we're both here,' Macomber said.
They turned a corner, came out onto a balcony overlooking the steep wooded hillside down to the Hudson.
'How're things shaping up?'
'You tell me.'
Findlan gave a short laugh. 'I'm not omniscient, Del, despite the slings and arrows of my critics.'
'I have no secrets from you, Marcus. That was your stipulation. I've rilled you in far more than I have any of the others. But then you're far more important to me than any senator or representative could be.'
The palace guard.'
Macomber knew he was being tested; the mine field of lies and truths he was feeding Findlan was a more complex matter with each meeting. 'Not in the least.' He knew that Findlan could not bear to think of the company in that light. Ever since Nixon, he was a very wary fellow on that score.
A young couple appeared in the archway on their right. Macomber listened to their idle chatter while he waited for them to leave.
At last, he said, 'You're much too distrustful of politicians, Marcus. Where's your faith?'
'I was born without it, Del. When people talk to me of faith, I tune into another channel. It's a damn poor substitute for power.' They began to walk again as Findlan became restless.
'All right. What we - Atherton and I - want from the CIA is, I think, precisely what you want now and cannot get from this administration. Increased appropriations and leeway.'
'And the quid pro quo,' Findlan said bluntly, 'is that the company washes your dirty linen before the public can smell it.'
Macomber stopped. 'Neither Atherton or I,' he said coldly, plan to have any dirty linen.'
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'I appreciate that, Del.' They continued their walk. 'Nothing a Texas boy like myself appreciates more than his freedom. Hell what I need"s leeway, just like you said. Then I can build thi company back into the first rank.' He fell silent as they passec a pair of girls with their mother. When they were alone again he said, 'But I'm still not sure of things. You and Gottschalk'n so hellbent on foreign policy, I get stitches in my side sometimes thinking about how he's gonna handle domestic issues like the economy. It's in a helluva mess now ... has been for some years. You don't just flush a thing like that away in two years time It's maybe a decade in the making. Now your boy's gonna be saddled with the stink come January. Everybody I know on tht Hill's screaming about the GNP.'
