Black Heart, page 74
They stared at him. 'I'm thinking about what he pulled with the Gottschalk "assassination", What if he uses this cadre to pull off the same kind of terrorist action - after Gottschalk is President? Can you envision the kind of national acclaim the man would receive at successfully capturing such a crew? And, believe me, if Macomber's behind the cadre, Gottschalk will know how to defuse them at the last minute but only after he milks the most out of the media attention.'
'Christ,' Thwaite said, awed despite himself. 'He could do anything he wants after that.'
'Especially if, as we suspect, the Legislature's seeded with subverted senators and congressmen willing to support him.' Tracy thought of all the planning, all the time, all the money aid energy needed to support such an incredible operation. The thought that he - his 'Operation Sultan' - had been subverted tod used to fund this international nightmare filled him with 'oathing for the system that had spawned such a creation as the foundation in the first place. I Secrets, he knew, were always dangerously explosive. And a
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secret entity like the foundation multiplied that danger many times over. For the deeper the secrecy went, the less real control there had to be. And that meant more chance for something to go seriously wrong. Witness what had happened in March of
1969 in Area 350.
And there was a great deal of fear inside him, too. He had known Macomber was clever back then but he saw now that he had not suspected the half of it. The scheme was so brilliant and so dark with evil intent that Tracy knew with all his soul that Macomber had to be stopped immediately. The police could not do that: there was no hard evidence. He turned it over in his mind again, knowing instinctively what he had to do and what he might have to give up in the process.
Covertly, he looked at Lauren and felt his heart melt at the line of her cheek, the colour of her eyes, the sheen of her hair. He drank all this in as if it was for the last
time.
Then he began it as he had planned. They both stared at him as he told them what he had discovered in the foundation's files.
'This Murano was very speical,' he concluded. 'The reports about him struck us all as highly exaggerated. That was then. Now I'm inclined to believe them.' He ran his fingers through his thick hair. 'Thwaite, you and I have seen first hand the kind of incredible damage this man, Khieu, can do. There's no doubt in my mind that he's Murano's disciple. I was even able to get a description of him: rather tall for an Oriental, thin, well-built, thin face, wide lips and very, very handsome. He '
'Wait a minute,' Lauren interrupted. 'I think you've got it wrong. That sounds like a perfect description of Kim.'
Tracy felt his stomach lurch and he said, 'Where the hell did you meet Kim?' with so much force that Lauren winced and took an involuntary step backward.
'At ... at L - your father's apartment. He showed up the evening you left for Hong Kong. He came for the electronic bug. Your father gave it to him he seemed to know quite a bit about the ... place where you and Louis used to work.' She seemed panic-sticken at Tracy's anger. 'He ... he was very strange, Tracy. His eyes ... they showed something; something
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J can't quite explain. They made you want to reach out and take hold of him, comfort him. He seemed very sad.'
'Did he have a scar running down the side of his neck?' Tracy asked quickly. But he already knew the answer to that one.
Lauren shook her head. 'No.'
'She's met Khieu,' he said softly. 'Then Khieu killed my father. But why'? Because he had seen him? Then he would have come after you, as well, Lauren.' He took her arm. 'What else was said?'
'I don't know.' She was becoming increasingly frightened despite her vow to herself to help Tracy all she could. First the arms shipment for a small cadre, then news of this monstrous killer. The Monk had not said anything about these things. What was she involved in?
'Think!' Tracy cried. 'Come on!'
'I can't! I -'
'Come on, Tracy.' Thwaite's calming voice cut in on her roiling thoughts. 'Give her a chance, that's all.'
Tracy looked from one to the other. 'It's very important, Lauren.' His tone was more normal now. 'Very important.'
She was thinking furiously. 'Well... all I can think of is that Louis said something about -'
Tracy made a connection. 'About where I went?'
'No.' She shook her head, still trying to recall it clearly. 'No, he wouldn't do that.' She looked up into his face. 'But he did mention a name. Mizo. He -'
'Oh my God,' Tracy said. 'It's the same damn thing!' Now he knew how Mizo had got on to him so quickly. Khieu. And for just the same reason Khieu had killed his father.
Lauren saw his stricken face. Tracy, I'm sorry. He didn't know - Neither of us could have.'
Tracy was at last aware of all the elements, of how they fell into place, one by one. And he was stunned by the awesome complexity of it all, just as he was stunned by the force of evil behind it.
'First and foremost we have to neutralize Khieu,' he said. 'He's more dangerous than either of you can guess because we're lot just dealing with a simple human being here. It's become
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much more than that. I think the important thing to understand about him is that he's been programmed. He would not have done any of these acts without being directed; he'd have no
reason to.'
'It's Macomber,' Lauren said, turning around at last.
But she was looking at Thwaite, a desperate expression on her face. 'You can see that. The evidence all runs back to him. You
can arrest him now.'
Thwaite smiled thinly. 'Unfortunately, I can't. All we have here is a load of talk. We don't have one solid piece of evidence
I can take to the DA.'
'But if you went to him,' Lauren pleaded, 'laid all of this out
for him. Surely he'd see '
'He'd laugh in my face,' Thwaite said. 'The DA isn't interested in theories; neither are the courts.' He shook his head. 'No, we just have to wait and hope for a break. There's no way I can make a move against either one of them yet.' He stood up. 'We'll watch and wait.'
Lauren turned her head, stared hard at Tracy. 'That won't be
enough for him.'
'What's she talking about?" Thwaite said.
'You're right, Douglas.' Tracy put his hands in his pockets. 'There's nothing you can do now but wait.' He looked at his friend. 'But I'm not bound by that.'
'Now wait a minute. If you think I'm going to let you -'
'You've no say in it,' Tracy said. 'He's tried to kill me once in Hong Kong. D'you think he's going to stop now?'
Thwaite was quiet for a time, contemplating Tracy. 'Just what the hell you going to do?' His voice was soft but there was
a warning edge to it.
'I'm going in,' Tracy said. 'Right to the centre, where either of them can get at me. It's the only way.'
'The only way to commit suicide,' Thwaite snorted. 'Forget
it.'
'Look, Douglas,' Tracy said doggedly, 'you already know just how dangerous they both are. For the time being your hands are tied. But we know from the arms cache you intercepted that there's another piece of the puzzle we haven t
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Corked through. It's a time bomb in our pocket and the fuse Ljs already been lit. Whatever it is, it's already running.
'I know Macomber well enough to believe he's got a backap running somewhere. Your interception hasn't stopped him; jt'd be a serious mistake to think so. We've merely breached his security.
'But time's now an element against us. Who are those arms for and when will they be used? When? Tomorrow, next week
.or tonight? We don't know. And we can't afford to wait.'
There was silence in the room.
'Goddamn it!' Lauren screamed at Thwaite. 'Aren't you zoing to say anything. Aren't you going to stop him?'
'How can I? He's right.'
'Bastard!' she cried. 'You're both bastards!'
Tracy took a step towards her. 'Lauren, I warned you -'
'Don't expect me to be bound by anything I said before. I Jidn't know I was talking to a madman.'
He took another step towards her and she turned away, her jrms folded across her breasts.
'She's got a point, Tracy,' Thwaite said. 'I'm not going to allow you to go in alone.'
'No one's coming with me. That would be suicide.'
'I'm talking about a bug. I want you wired for sound. I'll have nyunit out of sight across the street; you get what we need on ape and we'll come in and get you so fast nobody'll know what at them.'
Tracy smiled softly. 'You're dreaming, Douglas. It'll never iippen that way.'
'Have faith.'
'It's not you. I know Macomber; I think I've come to know Khieu as well. They've both got something you'll never under-
tind. You weren't over there in the jungles. It's a different »'orld. A different logic applies.'
'I don't care about any of that bullshit.' Thwaite said. 'And pther should you right now. Concentrate on this. You won't |!ive this apartment unless you're wired.' I It was typical policeman's thinking and Tracy did not blame Pwaite for it. He was only reacting out of his own training.
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'Lauren -' he began.
'I've got nothing to say to you.' She turned away.
Tracy went to his bag, opened it. There, on top of the piie of his clothes, was the black velvet case from the Diamond House. Queens Road, steaming and jammed with tourists seemed like another world now.
He plucked out the case, went and stood behind Lauren. He felt her start slightly at his touch, twist her head. Her hair brushed against his cheek, setting off memories like a string of fireworks in his mind. He did not want to lose her; did not want to contemplate the possibility that he would never see her again.
On stiff fingers, he held out the velvet case, extending his arm until the case was in front of her. She was still for some time and at first he thought she was looking deliberately away. He waited.
'What's that?' she said in a small voice.
'I went shopping in Hong Kong,' he said. 'I bought this for you even though I didn't know whether you'd ever speak to me again.'
She whirled. 'Oh, Tracy, how could you have thought that?' She reached up, touched his cheek, pressing her palm and long fingers against his flesh. 'It feels like I've loved you forever. That somewhere inside of me I always knew you'd come for me.'
'Then why did you resist so long?' His eyes searched hers for the answer.
And she gave it to him even though she suspected he might not understand it. 'Because I've been a child all my life. That's what ballet is all about. At forty-five you're dead. As long as you're young, you can dance. I didn't want to grow up. And to love you, I had to. I knew that all along. Just as I knew I loved you from the moment we first kissed. But the thought of growing up terrified me. I thought I'd lose the dance. And where would I be without ballet?'
'And now?'
'Now I have you. I have myself. And I'll have ballet for as many more years as I can dance well. Somehow that's not so difficult to accept now; not so terribly frightening because don't have to face it all alone.'
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I She looked down at the black velvet box. 'What's inside?' I }jer voice had become small again, like a child on Christmas I 0oming.
1 'Open it.'
The blue-white diamond ring in its platinum setting winked up at her. Sparks of colour - red, green, blue, yellow, purple, shone in its facets.
'Oh, Tracy.' Her voice was a whisper. She took it out of the case. 'It's so beautiful.' She placed it on her finger. Abruptly the smile left her face and her head came up, her eyes locked onto liis. 'But why have you given it to me now.' 'Because,' he said, 'I'm coming back."
Khieu felt the elemental changes working their magic inside him. He had sent Eliott away, knowing that if he did not, the next minute he would have leapt upon him, plunging his stiffened thumbs into his eyes. It was not something he wanted to do yet the compulsion was there, sitting like a spider at the bottom of a night-dark pit.
His nostrils flared; the heavy sweet scent of blood was strong in the air of the basement, the rich fecund smell of rotting human flesh. They reminded him of home, of so many things.
Macomber, his father, his mentor, the man to whom he owed a debt he could never fully repay; he was a liar, a supreme manipulator. Khieu felt as if someone had stolen silently inside him, scooping out his guts - his very soul slipped away into the shadows before he could do anything to prevent it.
Everything he knew, everything he had been taught or told, a lie! His entire perception of the world, its workings, mechanisms, clockwork tickings - all wrong, all false!
He felt bereft, a child again, thrust back into the hell of Phnom Penh with his father dead, his mother catatonic and Samnang suddenly vanished into thin air.
Go! the command had erupted from somewhere deep inside torn. Follow Samnang! Follow your brother! And Khieu had done 'ts bidding, turning his back on the old colonial life he had Known in Sihanouk's court, bicycling out of the city, following
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his instincts, plunging into the reeking, screaming jungle, intc the arms of Chet Khmau.
Life as he had known it had ceased to exist. He had been born again, as if in another incarnation. Yet he could not fully forget his former life, the lessons so painstakingly taught him. And so he had superimposed one upon the other, two layers of tissue overlapping, the one colouring the other, though he struggled mightily to compartmentalize them. He had been only partially
successful.
And then he had met Macomber, the man who had executed Sam's murderers. How could Khieu ever repay that enormous debt? He had tried, over the years, bowing to Macomber's wishes. Could he do any less?
The training of Musashi Murano had been brought out, Chet Khmau reigning supreme. But what of his other side? His childhood training? The bright light he had once seen emanating from the master had never faded from his memory, the electricity of his touch, his gaze. And all the while, he had struggled to keep up with Preah Moha Panditto's lessons because he believed in him. He believed Musashi Murano. He '
believed Macomber.
He was sweating mightily, his muscles bunched and jumping with his inner tension. Where was he now? What was he to do? Who could he believe? Perhaps they were all liars. He seemed rooted to the spot, unable even to breathe.
Then he knew. Like a rush of wind in his ears, he was buffeted by currents he had only barely glimpsed before. Now the floodgates had opened and he felt on the brink of a revelation. An instant in time that burned forever, imprinted on his brain like a physical convulsion. The instant he had seen the bright light surrounding Preah Moha Panditto; the first instant of his touch; his first kill; the first time he and Musashi Murano had locked gazes; the moment he had held the loaded pistol, pointing it at Macomber's foce; the anticipation before opening Malis' door; the first time he had gazed into Lauren's eyes. A revelation just like those. Identical. His body shuddered and danced to its rhythm. He would acquiesce. He would do as Macomber ordered.
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er all, he owed his father a debt he could never fully repay. I's murder revenged. Apsara ordered it with her sinuous
icing fingers.
Lnd then he would destroy Macomber, slowly, a piece at a p, chipping away at his sanity, taking from him that which Beld most dear, rending it before his wide-open eyes. Khieu hted his father to know what was happening to him even as las occurring, so that he could imagine for himself what the I would be like: to burn and burn with apsara tearing at his
ihe end of all things.
e felt something coming. It was close, close. It was almost K. Not yet. Not quite yet. Khieu turned his head this way that to look. What was it?
Kt Macomber sat on the edge of his bed, shivering. It was lldaylight out but because his bedroom window faced north, M light was already quite dim and far away, as if viewed from It end of a tunnel. Even the patter of the rain on the window Ijge seemed remote, part of another world. He looked bleakly around his own apartment. He had not itned on the light. Shrouded in shadow, palms pressed between s knees, he rocked slightly back and forth as he used to when :was a child, unable or unwilling to go to sleep. That was a me when he wanted to cry out but he knew it would only mmon his nanny and what he had really wanted was his other. She was dead and he knew it; that was why he rocked id bit his lip instead of opening his mouth to call out. It was thinkable that his father would come. Even on the off chance M he was home, he was always too busy or too preoccupied ith his own world. As he grew into adolescence Eliott more un once had the sensation that his father had never been a child TOelf but had leapt directly into adulthood. Eliott stared sightlessly at the carpet in front of his feet. What 'really saw was the mutilated corpse of Joy Macomber; he saw iieu, scooping, scooping, his curved fingers black with her *nces; saw Khieu's haunted eyes, filled with death and tffering beyond comprehension; saw joy's dead eyes, filmy and
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dark as if blue gauze had been stretched over hollowed-out sockets. These images were more real to him than his present
surroundings.
Yet it was not Khieu he hated now, though he had envied the Cambodian for years, though Khieu had been the one who killed Kathleen. It was not Khieu's fault; he saw that clearly now, as clearly as he saw the other images.
He had grown up with the feeling that the outside world was evil, filled with a turmoil and chaos too complex for him to be able to handle. And now he was coming to see that it was not that way at all. He was beginning to understand the true nature of evil and it chilled him to the bone, shivering him with its I
implications.
He had grown up with a certain view of life. Where had it come from? Not from his mother; she had died when he was too young, he barely remembered her. Not from the teachers
at his school. Where then?
Khieu was taught to act a certain way in this country. He had been manipulated and used; he had been lied to. Had the same thing been done to Eliott?
