Black Heart, page 52
'GNP, hell,' Macomber said. 'The economy's not in such bad shape.'
'Yeah?' Findlan looked at him sceptically. 'What d'you know that no one else does, huh?'
'It's a matter of re-education, that's one side of it. That's what Gottschalk will begin to stress as soon as he gets into office. Let me tell you something, Marcus, the GNP looks like shit only when you study it as if we were an industrial nation.'
'You mean we aren't?'
'Hell, no. That kind of thinking's outmoded. We've gone beyond industrialization. Today, we're basically a serviceoriented nation.'
'What, you mean like doormen and waiters? What the fuck is that?'
'You'll pardon me for saying this, Marcus, but that's precisely the kind of wrong-headed thinking we're going to have to do away with.
'Look, I'm in the service business.'
'You? You're a manufacturer.'
'Yes. Metronics builds armaments, puts things together. But I don't manufacture. I buy my raw materials from manufacturers like US Steel, Teledyne. Even our silicon chips come from other service companies, not manufacturers. You see the difference? The entire entertainment field is service-oriented. But the GNP's not biased towards that; it's biased towards manu-
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facturing. Of course, it looks like shit. But it's not giving us a true picture of the strength we have today.'
Macomber reached into his pocket, produced a sheaf of computer readouts. Take a look at these, Marcus. They show jji un-biased reading of our current GNP. You judge for yourself-'
Even while he was reading, Findlan did not stop walking. He merely glanced up every three or four seconds; it was ingrained in him. Macomber could imagine him making love to his wife, looking up every three or four seconds.
Findlan whistled lightly. 'You certain of these figures, Del?'
'Absolutely.' He was not lying.
'But this is incredible. It shows a full forty per cent difference. V^e that better off than we're being told?'
Macomber nodded. 'Yes. But it's going to take some time to reeducate government and the public. While that's going on, though, our second phase will be initiated.
'Gottschalk's learned from the past. He doesn't want to be constantly at odds with Capitol Hill. That's why he's going to let them in on every major decision he's going to make three to six months before he makes it public. The members of our angka will be spreading the policies, talking them up slowly so that we'll have support already built-in when we go public. No member of the Hill enjoys being surprised by Administration policy; that gets their back up and I don't blame them a bit.'
Findlan gave the computer read-out back to Macomber. 'All of that's positive ... very positive. But even you've got to admit that we've got weak points in our economy. Automotive manufacturing is at the top of the list. We used to be numero uno until we allowed the Japs to get the upper hand. Christ, even the Swedes make better cars than we do now. Can you imagine? The goddamned Swedes*.'
'As far as Detroit is concerned,' Macomber said, 'I think it's already gone too far. They've made their bed of nails, now they've got to lie down in it and bleed a little.
'Anyway, Detroit's not the future of America - that's manufacturing philosophy. The future now is in miniature computer chips and we're already beginning to lose that race to the
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Japanese again. What we've got to do is beat them at their own game.
'The Vampire, which you've seen in action, uses a laserinitiated computer system that, right now, is unique. I got the idea but I'm not about to trumpet my own horn. I'm no engineer. I went to Japan two years ago and hired away one of their top brains. There were certain things he wanted; I gave them to him.
'Now I'm the first to admit that kind of thing's not easy. Those bastards're fiercely loyal to the company they work for. Usually, they're there literally for life. That's how things go in Japan; that's one of the ways they beat us blind. What the fuck do they know from unions? Not a thing. Their cornpany is their second family; it's secure as hell. And I'll bet there're a helluva lot of unemployed auto workers hanging around Detroit these days who'd give their eye teeth now for a set-up like that.'
They came out of a cool arched hallway, into the hot sunlight again. Macomber saw the menorah tree; they were back where they had started from.
'But my point is that the chip market now is where autos was just at the point when the Japanese were beginning to come up There's where we've got to concentrate our business efforts, otherwise we're going to end up a second-rate power by the end of the I99o's.'
Findlan stopped in front of the tree, looked at it for some time just as he had when Macomber had first spotted him. 'Well,' he said in his slow drawl, 'I always knew the team you were putting together was strong enough, Del. I just wondered about the overall philosophy behind it. Now I have no doubts. None at all.'
He turned towards Macomber. Til see you,' he said, 'come January one.'
Macomber nodded. 'Welcome to the angka, Marcus.'
For long stretches of time, Khieu wished to avoid buildings now. He was returning from lunch to his office at Pan Pacifies when, as he ascended in the elevator, he was quite certain a
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bamboo pike, hardened and blackened on its pointed end, was being hurled downwards to split the top of his skull.
He had shivered like a great sigh amid the agglomeration of businessmen and women, had got off on the next floor and had walked down to the lobby, crossing quickly to the glass doors and out onto the street. Blindly, he crossed Madison Avenue, went west into Central Park.
In the heat of the day, children played near the watchful eyes of their mothers; ice cream vendors sold their wares.
Once, off to his right, hidden behind thick foliage, he heard odd, tinkling music and, moving towards it as if in a trance, he came upon a round structure within which painted wooden horses moved up and down as they circled to the music.
He stopped and stared, fascinated by a sight he had never before witnessed. Then he found himself digging in his pocket, paying his fare and climbing on a cream-coloured palomino with flying mane and a red-tongued open mouth.
The music started up and the world began to spin. He moved up and down astride the palomino, gripping the central pole that ran up into the ceiling with sweating hands, while the children with whom he rode watched him cry.
When at last his horse slowed and finally stopped, when the music faded into silence, the children all around him began to dismount or, as with the younger ones, were helped off.
Khieu stayed on, staring at the trees before him, hearing the sharp bird calls, the monkeys' chattering, insects' buzzing like beaten brass. Blood flowed along the ground, first winding serpentine through the underbrush, then gushing as if through a burst dam.
'Hey, Mister.'
A tugging at his leg, as if from far away.
'Mister?'
His head swung away from the trees dancing in the wind, downwards to a small face peering up at him. A child no more than six, his hair and eyes light. He was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt that said AC-DC on it, a musician in red and black holding an electric guitar like a machine-gun.
'You all right?' the child said. 'I saw you crying.'
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'I'm all right,' Khieu said, holding on, still.
'I thought you might've lost your kid or something, the way you were so sad."
Khieu smiled, shook his head.
'Bobby, you come away from there now.' A woman called from the sunshine, shading her eyes from the glare even though she wore dark glasses. 'I told you one ride and that's all. Now come on.'
The boy smiled at Khieu. 'I hope you stop crying,' he said. Then he had leaped from the edge of the revolving stage and was gone, a brilliant white mote in the glaze of afternoon light.
A fat man with a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth was making the rounds of the horses, picking up litter. 'You staying on for another ride?' he wanted to know.
Khieu shook his head, climbed down at last and went away from there, wondering where the boy had gone to.
Sometime later, he found himself on Broadway, across the street from Lincoln Center. He could not imagine why he had come. He felt hungry or empty, he could not decide which. After a time, he was convinced it must be empty because the thought of food was entirely unappealing.
He stared across Broadway and the nexus of Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues which met each other at Sixty-fifth Street. Down a block, he began to see young men and women emerging from the entrance to one of the Lincoln Center buildings that was below street level.
They all had the same look to them but he could not quite make out what it was. They waited in a small group for the light to change, then crossed east, turned north towards him.
Then, as they came closer, he understood. They were dancers. Ballet dancers from Lauren's company. He took a deep, shuddering breath. Was that why he had come here? Was it to see Lauren? He did not know. But one way to find out was to leave now. He scanned the group coming towards him, saw that she was not among them.
He could not leave.
It was as if the soles of his feet had grown roots, anchoring
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(mil to this spot The group of dancers went past, talking animatedly among themselves
Now he could not stare directly at that underground entrance but could only look at its reflection in a store window
That was the first time Mails appeared to him, dancing, a reallife, acephalous corpse, resurrected Her bloody fingers weaved the story of her life since he had abandoned her And those fingers accused him Not in an angry way but gently, so gently that the tears flooded through him, running down his face, dropping one by one between his rooted feet
He could have gone farther in Kampuchea should have gone all the way back into Phnom Penh But he could not After the slaughter in the jungle to the north, he could not bear to be within the borders of his home anymore He had dropped the AK-47 and had fled back across the border into Thailand He did not care anymore whether or not he had located this Tisah, even his duty to his father could not survive the horror he had discovered aboard the houseboat on the Mekong tributary
He could not yet say what, but something was ascending within him, something cold and relentless gaming hold with each new breath he took In his mind, thoughts seemed to shake themselves apart and fragment like an ice floe breaking apart in warmer water Precisely what was happening to him he could not say
Lauren
He saw first her head, then her shoulders, then the rest of her emerging from the depths She moved along the pavement with the liquid roll of the tide Coming towards him
He saw her hair shining, pulled back from her face like a polished helmet He saw her eyes, their colour subtly like the earth rich and running with spilled blood, a hint of dark red, m their depth motes like splintered chips of stone And in their depths he recognized the motivation for his being here and he sobbed out loud
As he breathed, as he ate, as he slept though fitfully, he must destroy Lauren Now that Louis Richter was gone, she alone could link him with the apartment, she alone could tell them Kim had been there, Kim the Vietnamese, and they would soon
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find out that it had not been Kim. Kim had been elsewhere at that time; she had not seen a Vietnamese at all but another kind of Oriental entirely: a Khmer.
She was the trail back through which Tracy Richter would come to him and, through him, to Macomber. The angka security would be breached. But Richter was being taken care of a half a world away in Hong Kong; he would not return to these shores.
But if he did?
Thus Lauren must die for without her eyewitness account there was no one, no one to link Khieu with Louis Richter's murder. The angka would be safe.
A wind was rising and a coldness he could not tolerate. Winter chilled his bones, congealed his blood. Apsara was coming like an avenging angel, a pristine virgin, dancing, dancing on the wings of an icy wind, coming down the street, through the pane of glass against which he stood.
He ran.
Tracy awoke to the creaking of timbers and the smell of stirfried vegetables cooking. He turned his head and groaned. Gingerly, he put two fingertips up alongside his head, pushing through the thick hair to get at the scalp. He winced, the breath whistling out through his clenched teeth.
He tried to sit up, his stomach immediately beginning to turn over and he lay back down. But his own sodden stale smell assaulted him, drove him up again. He gripped a wooden post with both hands, pulled himself shakily to his feet. He leaned hard against the post, trying to breathe normally.
Then he fell, crashing into a pile of pots and pans.
'Shit!' he breathed, holding his head in his hands. If only it would stop pounding. He felt as if he had a triphammer going off inside it. As for the rest of him, he did not even want to take inventory. The boat rocked and his stomach rebelled. He willed the nausea down.
He heard sounds above and behind him, tried to turn while still on the deck. Pots and pans scattered again and he held his ears to shut out the din.
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'Oh, God!' he groaned.
'Are you all right?' A soft voice in the Tanka dialect.
'Yes,' he answered automatically. 'No ... I don't know.'
Strong hands gripped him, drew him gently to his feet. 'Over here,' the voice said, guiding him to the berth from which he had just arisen. ,
'Uh, no,' Tracy said. 'If you don't mind, I think I'd rather go above-decks.'
'I don't mind. If you can tolerate it, I'll help you get there.'
Tracy peered into the dim light, saw a wide flat face, seamed with a network of lines that appeared to have no beginning and no end. Wide-apart black eyes, a flat typically Chinese nose. It was a face that contained wisdom, friendliness, contentment.
'Where am I?' Tracy asked as the man guided him over to the stairs.
'On my junk,' the man said. 'We are anchored off Aberdeen. We picked you out of the water like a fish.' He laughed softly, almost a sigh. They began to climb the steps slowly. 'My little granddaughter wanted to know if we were going to eat you for dinner.'
'And what did you tell her?'
'I said, No, you had no fins, no tail, no scales. I showed her.' That sighing laugh again. 'She was disappointed.'
'I'll try to make it up to her,' Tracy said, feeling the wind ruffling his hair, then caressing his cheeks. He stopped, halfway out of the hatchway, taking deep breaths. He looked around, saw a great many faces staring at him from the deck.
'We are Tanka,' the old man said. 'There are many of us.'
And then Tracy remembered. Aberdeen Harbour was just one of a number of berths around the Colony where the Tanka, the boat people who fish for their subsistence, had their floating communities. They worked perhaps fifteen hours a day, beginning in the very early hours of morning, returning with - more often than not -just enough to keep the large family alive. They were the true indigenous people of Hong Kong. It was his luck that he had been pitched into water thick with their junks and sampans.
Half out of the hatch, Tracy held on to the thick oily canvas.
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He saw at least twelve faces. The old man, who had introduced himself as Ping Po, went around the circle, introducing his family. Tracy bowed to all of them in turn as he came up fully on deck. All around, yellow lights like fireflies bobbed across the water, evidence of the surrounding floating city. Far away, it seemed, the distance no doubt increased by the night, he saw the green-tinged lights of Aberdeen itself.
He put his hand up to his head. 'How long have I been here?'
'Let me see," Ping Po said, squinting into the darkness. 'The coming morning will bring two days. Yes,' he nodded to himself, 'that is correct, because yesterday we had an exceptional catch, double what we usually bring in.' He smiled. 'You have been lucky for us.'
He turned, picked up a small bundle onto his hip, wrapping it in his arms. 'And here is my little flower, Li, my granddaughter.'
Tracy leaned towards her, saw her face, round and perfect and beautiful in the flickering lamplight. 'I am sorry you could not eat me,' he said. 'Will you forgive my bad manners?'
The little girl giggled, turning her head away from him and, clinging with tiny tight fists to her grandfather's cotton shirt, buried her face in the crook of his shoulder.
Tracy reached out, stroked her back gently. 'May I?' he inquired of Ping Po.
The old man nodded, delivering up the child to Tracy's embrace. Everyone else on the junk was still and silent, watching expectantly.
Tracy took Li, who gave up a tiny cry at being separated from her grandfather. But once in Tracy's arms, she put one finger in her mouth, her large eyes staring at him inquisitively.
'I have never seen anyone as beautiful as you,' Tracy whispered to her, taking her across the deck to the railing of the junk. Li was delighted, squirming in his arms to free one hand so she could point to the criss-crossing wakes of the man-powered sampans, pale and faintly phosphorescent.
She told him how her father went to work, how he fished, how she waited for him to come out and Tracy sighed, holding
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her weight against him, feeling her small heart beat and somehow gaining strength from its passion and newness.
'You're nice,' Li said after a time. 'I'm glad we didn't eat you.' Tracy laughed and the child put her thin arms around his neck. As if that were a signal, the family sprang to life and, minutes later, they were all belowdecks, sitting crosslegged on mats with the matriarch, Ping Po's wife, serving them all.
Slivers of fish were interspersed throughout bowls of fresh vegetables stir-fried in sesame and hot chilli oils, and steaming rice. Tracy brought the bowl up to his face and, in true Chinese fashion, shovelled the food into his mouth with quick, economical flicks of his chopsticks. He smacked his lips loudly while he ate, belched gently at the end of the meal to let his hosts know he had appreciated the food. And indeed he judged it to be the best meal he'd ever had.
