Blindfold Game

JANUARY

HUGH LEFT BALTIMORE ONE evening at 8:30 p.m. and arrived in Hong Kong the next day at 1:05 p.m. He didn’t sleep well on jets, spending most of his time holding them in the air by the armrests, and he was feeling distinctly travel worn when he came through customs.

He was also weighed down by the possibility that he was going to be fired for any number of reasons, among them disobeying a direct order and misuse of public funds, but he shoved that into the back of his mind and pushed through the crowd to the curb. A taxi pulled up and Arlene’s voice said, “Get in.”

He did and they pulled away with a lurch and a corresponding roar from a muffler that sounded as if it were hanging by a thread.

“How was your flight?”

“Give me a Super Cub anytime,” he said. “What have you got?”

“No hello after I’ve spent two and a half months in the wilderness for you?”

“Hong Kong isn’t exactly the wilderness, Arlene. Come on, give.”

Arlene’s smile was small and satisfied. “I found him.”

“You told me that six weeks ago. What else?”

She pretended to pout. “I don’t get to brag?”

“Later. Talk.”

“I had a couple of local contacts, and one of them knows someone in Chinese customs. Turns out they’ve been interested in Fang and Noort-man for some time. They’ve compiled quite the little dossier.”

“You didn’t manage to score a look at it?”

She smiled again.

“God, I’m so smart,” Hugh said.

“For what?”

“For hiring you.”

She laughed. “Naturally I agree.”

“What was in the dossier?”

“Our boy’s been busy.” She recounted half a dozen of Noortman and Fang’s jobs, including the most recent one. “They took a tramp freighter”-she closed her eyes for a moment-“the Orion’s Belt, carrying a load of Chilean lumber from Valparaiso to Mumbai. Near as our friends can figure, Noortman, uh, rerouted the cargo to Sumatra and sold it on the black market. The Indonesians are desperate for construction materials after the tsunami, and they don’t ask a lot of questions when a load of two-by-fours shows up at the dock.”

“What did they do with the ship?”

“Sold it to shipbreakers in Alang.” At his look she elaborated. “A beach on the west coast of India.” She shrugged. “An efficient means of disposing of the evidence. I was writing a story on Mumbai a couple of years ago and I took a trip out there. Hell of an operation. The beach is six miles long and on any given day there can be as many as two hundred ships being scrapped at once. The ship would have been gone in as little as six months. Maybe a year. Like I said, efficient.”

Sara would have hated the very idea of an operation like Alang’s, Hugh thought. “Can our friends in Hong Kong prove any of this?”

Arlene snorted. “It was a French-owned, Liberian-flagged freighter carrying a Chilean cargo bound for India, with Indian officers and a Filipino crew, taken by pirates of multiple Asian nations in international waters. No one country even has jurisdiction over the crime scene, never mind any evidence that would stand up in court.”

“Yeah,” Hugh said. “So?”

“So, I’ve been watching Mr. Noortman.”

“Have you? Any company?”

“Are our friends watching him, too, do you mean? They say not. I’d say yes, just not twenty-four seven. Noortman has done nothing to offend the local laws, which would be the smart thing to do if he wanted to stay here. Thou shalt not shit in thine own nest.”

Hugh couldn’t argue with that. “Where are we going?”

“To a restaurant with a conveniently placed front window. I’ve already reserved a table with a view of our boy’s office building.”

“Marry me,” Hugh said.

She grinned. “You’re too old for me.”

“Noortman actually has a storefront?”

“Oh yeah, Hong Kong Fast Freight, Ltd., is very much on the up-and-up, licensed, bonded, registered, incorporated, files quarterly tax returns, contributes to enough local charities in small enough amounts to stay low on the local social radar screen. All perfectly aboveboard and squeaky clean.” As an afterthought she said, “Of course, this is Hong Kong. Squeaky clean in Hong Kong isn’t squeaky clean in, say, Seattle. Or for that matter Beirut.”

“I thought everything tightened up after the Chinese took over.”

Arlene gave him a look. “It’s still Hong Kong.”

Hugh, who wasn’t about to admit that he’d learned most of what he knew about Hong Kong from the www.discoverhongkong.com Web site while he was sitting in the Baltimore airport waiting for his flight to board and the rest from James Clavell during the flight, gave a noncommittal grunt.

“You’ve been here before, right? So I don’t have to give you the tour?”

Half a dozen times to change planes, and once to meet in the British Airways lounge with a snotty little shit of a case officer who had started their conversation with a recitation of his family tree, which appeared to reach all the way back to the Mayflower, and reached forward to several members of Congress, a cabinet-level post in the current administration, and a Supreme Court justice. It had ended with the snotty little shit of a case officer white-faced and trembling, mumbling out his report of the nascent Islamic terrorist cell in Egypt he had stumbled across in his posting to the American embassy in Cairo. The report had been unexpectedly useful, but Hugh, who saved the rough side of his tongue especially for arrogant little pricks just starting out in the agency, didn’t make the mistake of saying so. Said prick was now warming the most junior of junior charge d’affaires seats in the American embassy in Zaire (or the Democratic Republic of the Congo or whatever the hell they were calling themselves nowadays), which gave Hugh the warm fuzzies all over whenever he thought of it, which wasn’t often.

“I’ve been here before,” Hugh said without elaboration. He was a desk man, not a field agent. He shook off his fatigue and watched the approaching skyline with interest. From a distance Hong Kong looked like a multitowered castle built on a tall green promontory, surrounded by the world’s largest moat. The water was crowded with craft of every kind and size, from homemade junks to boxy ferries to sleek cruise ships.

As they entered the city proper, Hugh saw a lot of concrete, a lot of neon, and a shitload of people, many in cars. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper stop and go, and none of the drivers would have made it a hundred feet on an American street without being pulled over for felony tailgating. Everyone, pedestrian and driver alike, ignored the stoplights, and Hugh saw a black Mercedes roll through an intersection against a red and literally hit a woman in the crosswalk. The car was moving slowly enough that all it did was hoist her up on the hood. She slid down and yelled at the driver. The driver stuck his head out the window and yelled an uncomplimentary reply, and for a minute Hugh felt like he was in New York.

“Here we are,” Arlene said, and leaned forward to tap the driver on the shoulder. They screeched to a halt, Arlene handed over an alarmingly thick wad of banknotes and they got out, elbowing for room on a street of storefronts thronged with people. “This way,” Arlene said, and led Hugh through a glass door into a tiny anteroom with a podium barricading the rest of the establishment from just anyone who might wander in off the street. Arlene smiled at the hostess, who didn’t smile back until the two hundred and fifty Hong Kong dollars Arlene tipped her disappeared down the front of her dress. She turned to lead them into the restaurant proper.

Arlene noticed Hugh’s expression and said in a low voice, “Relax. It was only about thirty American, and that’s cheap for a sit-down restaurant in Hong Kong.”

“It’s not that,” Hugh said, looking over her shoulder.

“What is it, then?” Arlene followed his gaze, and her eyes widened. “Holy shit.”

Noortman was sitting at the table in the window right next to the one the hostess was standing beside, menus in hand, watching them with an impatient look on her face.

For a moment Hugh was transfixed, and then he recovered his wits. “Smile and talk to me,” he whispered to Arlene, and gave her a gentle shove forward.

“What if he recognizes me from Pattaya Beach?” Arlene hissed.

“He won’t, he was too focused on his next big score,” Hugh said, and prayed he was right.

It was a safe bet, as today Arlene was dressed in a deep blue suit, cream-colored silk shirt, heels, and pearls, and her hair had been moussed and blow-dried into a smooth knot at the nape of her neck. She looked nothing like the zaftig tourist in the Bermuda shorts the previous October.

Noortman, on the other hand, looked exactly as he had in the photographs Arlene took of him. His nose was aquiline but his eyes were Asian, and his teeth were square and white, with the exception of the gold-encased incisor that flashed when he smiled. His skin was sallow, his stylishly cut hair dark but not black. Like Arlene, he was dressed to suit his environment, in a charcoal striped suit with a dark red tie that matched the silk handkerchief peeping from his breast pocket. The watch on his wrist had the glint of Rolex gold. His shoes probably cost even more.

He was drinking tea as he scrolled down the screen of a laptop. The server brought a tray just then and made a distressed sound. Noortman looked up and smiled. Hugh was in the middle of being seated but it looked like a perfectly ordinary smile, no fangs showing, although it was a smile that seemed familiar, crooking up at one side in what could almost have been called a sneer. Otherwise, Noortman looked like any other young and ambitious Hong Kong businessman.

He became aware that Arlene was giving him a minatory look, and he realized their server had materialized. On impulse he told the server, “Tiger Beer.” He smiled across at Arlene, and said in a voice just above a whisper, “You didn’t think that because this restaurant was so close to his office that he never came in here? Even pirates have to eat.”

Arlene hooked a thumb toward her sternum and mouthed words that Hugh couldn’t understand. He shook his head. Arlene leaned forward. He met her halfway. “What?” he said.

“He’s gay, right?” Arlene whispered.

“What? I don’t- That’s what it says in his files. So what?”

“After I leave, pick him up.”

“What?” Noortman looked up at Hugh’s unguarded exclamation and then went back to his braised abalone in oyster sauce.

“Pick him up,” Arlene repeated. “You’re a hunk, he’s probably drooling into his plate over you right now.” She reached into her bag.

He said the only thing he could. “I am not a hunk!”

She rolled her eyes. “Right. Robert Redford has nothing to worry about.” She pulled her hand out of her bag.

“Arlene, I-”

“His apartment is close by his office. That’s probably where he’ll take you. I’ll follow.”

“Arlene, we don’t even know if Noortman makes a habit out of picking up guys off the street, I can’t just-”

“We don’t know what kind of security he’s got on his office or who else is keeping watch on it. Getting into his apartment is our best bet.” Her bag vibrated. “I’m so sorry, please excuse me for a moment,” she said to Hugh in a louder voice, in French, accompanied by a dazzling smile. She pulled out a cell phone and flipped it open. She listened for a moment and then let loose with more and very rapid French. “No, it’s quite all right, Veronique, I’m only five minutes away. Offer him some tea, let him look over the closing papers, and tell him I’ll be there immediately.” She flipped the phone closed, shouldered her bag, and rose to her feet. She smiled down at Hugh, an infinitely kind smile, and, still in French, said in a soothing voice, “I’m so sorry our luncheon has been cut short, Mr. Reeve. As I was saying, I have several properties that I believe would interest you. Please call my assistant at this number”-Arlene handed Hugh a small square of stiff paper that later proved to be the business card of Arlene’s accountant-“to schedule showings. A bientot.”

With that, Arlene marched off, leaving Hugh seated at his table facing Noortman seated at his. Hugh’s beer came and he downed half of it at one go. He looked up to see Noortman smiling at him. There was definitely something about the smile, but he still couldn’t place it and he had other things to worry about.

Hugh could give a shit if men slept with each other so long as he wasn’t one of them. He didn’t care if they married and adopted seven kids and watched The Birdcage every night on the Bravo Channel. He himself was a flaming heterosexual. It wasn’t that he thought Arlene’s idea was bad, per se, it was just that he didn’t have the first clue how to go about picking up a man.

Noortman was still smiling at him. What the hell. For starters, he smiled back. He even went so far as to salute Noortman with his beer.

The next thing he knew they were seated at the same table, his or Noortman’s he could never remember, the hostess cooing at Noortman in Mandarin and Noortman kissing the back of her hand with his seductive sneer. Then Noortman was speaking to him in flawless French and he was replying, and they were having a stimulating and informative discussion on Hong Kong real estate, which moved on to globalization and from there to the films of Pierce Brosnan, for whom Noortman appeared to harbor an inordinate fondness.

Noortman mentioned that he dabbled in Hong Kong properties himself off and on. What precisely was Hugh looking for? Hugh replied that he was interested in warehouse space along the waterfront for his import-export business. He was presently looking at various properties with a broker.

Really, said Noortman, how very interesting. He was in the import export business himself and had extensive contacts with Hong Kong shipping firms. Now that he thought about it, he was convinced that just the other day someone had spoken of a very desirable property for sale, located conveniently near Central. He was sure he still had the listing. Would Hugh like to see it?

Of course Hugh would, who by this time was feeling much more relaxed. It turned out that picking up a guy wasn’t all that different from picking up a girl. He managed not to flinch when Noortman smiled deeply into his eyes, and by a superhuman effort didn’t jump when Noortman’s knee rubbed against his beneath the table. By superimposing a woman’s face over Noortman’s features-it didn’t matter that it was Sara’s face he saw, he told himself-he was even able to put what he hoped was a little heat into his own expression.

It must have worked, because shortly thereafter Hugh found himself walking down the sidewalk, following Noortman as the other man wove a sinuous path between the moving mass of humanity that was Hong Kong. A horn honked, a jackhammer sounded, and people talked loudly in Mandarin and ten other languages, a few of which Hugh didn’t recognize, which only added to his feeling of unreality.

Noortman turned down a side street, much quieter in volume and much tonier in appearance, with awnings out to the curb and uniformed doormen guarding brass-fitted doors. Noortman went into one, Hugh tagging along behind and doing his damnedest not to look around for Arlene.

An elevator whisked them up seventeen floors, and Noortman let them into a spacious apartment furnished with leather and teak and glass. There were intricate Afghan rugs scattered artfully across a maple floor waxed to a golden shine, and the crystal lined up over the bar looked fresh out of the vat at Baccarat.

“A drink?” Noortman said. “I have some very nice scotch.”

“Sounds good,” Hugh said.

While Noortman busied himself at the elegant wet bar, Hugh admired the sweeping view of the mainland, the Star Ferries working the sea between it and Hong Kong Island. Even at this distance the ferries looked ready to sink beneath the weight of rush-hour traffic, which Hugh had decided in Hong Kong was probably twenty-four hours a day.

He wondered where the hell Arlene was. He wondered how long he could delay the inevitable before Noortman became suspicious. He wondered if this qualified as cheating on Sara. He wondered if the sweat pooling in his armpits was beginning to show.

He became aware of Noortman standing behind him. Deliberately relaxing his jaw, he turned.

“You’re so tall,” Noortman said in a soft voice. He reached a hand up to touch Hugh’s hair. “Your hair is beautiful. Is it real?”

“Am I a natural blond?” Hugh said. He tried to laugh and had to abandon the attempt when his voice cracked. “Yes.”

“And your eyes, so brown. It’s such a wonderful contrast.” Noortman took a sip of his drink. “People tell me I have a smile like- What is the name of that American singer? The one who shakes his hips?”

“Elvis!” Hugh said. “I knew you looked familiar.”

Noortman smiled, satisfied. He took another sip and set the glass down. He took Hugh’s glass and set it down, too. A foot shorter than Hugh, he let his hand slide up Hugh’s lapel to his neck, and pulled his head down.

A moment later there was a knock at the door. Noortman pulled back, swearing under his breath. “I’ll get rid of them. Don’t move.”

He went to the door, and Hugh, disobeying orders, followed behind on silent feet. Noortman opened the door and Arlene was there and already swinging her bag. It caught Noortman a hell of a thump on the left side of his head and he crumpled into Hugh’s arms.

“Where the hell were you?” Hugh hissed at Arlene, dragging Noortman into the dining room and sitting him down in one of the chairs. “I actually had to kiss the guy, for crissake.”

“Think of it as taking one for the team,” Arlene told him, and hauled out a roll of duct tape.

“Notice my self-control,” Hugh said. “You still live.” He took the duct tape from Arlene and wrapped it around Noortman’s torso and the chair back, Noortman’s wrists and the arms of the chair, and Noortman’s ankles and the legs of the chair.

“All right already,” Arlene said. “The idea is to immobilize him, not shroud him.”

“He’s a spurned lover,” Hugh said; “he’s not going to wake up happy.”

He added, “You tell anyone I kissed him and you’ll never work on this planet again.”

“It got the job done, didn’t it? Stop being such a big baby.”

Noortman groaned. After a moment his eyes opened and he stared at Hugh, at first bewildered, and then, as realization flooded back, hurt. Hugh felt ridiculously guilty.

“Mr. Noortman,” Arlene said.

His gaze shifted to her. His brows came together and his voice came out a raspy husk of its former mellifluous self. Everyone was speaking French. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“We have some questions for you, sir,” Arlene said formally. She reached into her bag and, before Hugh’s disbelieving and slightly affronted eyes, produced a large claw hammer. The wood of the handle was worn smooth and the metal of the head was rusty and flaking. “We have no wish to resort to violence, Mr. Noortman, but we mean to have the answers to our questions before we leave.”

After a moment Noortman got his jaw back into working order and said in a slightly shaky voice, “Questions? What questions? I demand that you release me at once. There has been some terrible mistake.” He appealed to Hugh. “We were having such a good time. I don’t understand what is happening here. Please let me go, and let us talk about this, get things straightened out.”

“Jaap,” Hugh said gently.

Noortman’s eyes widened. “How do you know my given name? I didn’t tell you. I-”

Hugh knelt down next to Noortman’s chair and smiled. “Jaap Noortman, Junior. Born in Singapore in 1970, graduated from the University of Singapore in 1986. Worked a year for your father in the Department of Customs, until you were recruited by the pirate Fang Ho to help him identify and move the cargoes he hijacks in the South China Sea. How am I doing so far?”

Noortman swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was born in Singapore, yes, but I am a respectable businessman. I run a legitimate freight concern here in Hong Kong, you can ask anyone. There has been some mistake.” He tried to smile, first at Hugh and then at Arlene.

The now familiar sneer was missing in action. “Please, untie me, and I will verify my identity.”

“We know who you are,” Arlene said, and took the hammer. “Gag him,” she told Hugh.

Hugh hesitated, and then did as he was told. This man had conspired in too many deaths for Hugh to feel compunction now. Arlene was right. The Koreans had been on the loose too long, Fang and Noortman had been active in their cause for too long, too much had been set into motion and too much was at risk. There was no time now for subtle.

Hugh overlapped the duct tape at the back of Noortman’s head and stepped back. Arlene raised the hammer. Noortman’s eyes bulged but Arlene didn’t wait, she brought the head of the hammer down as hard as she could swing it on Noortman’s right knee.

Her grunt of effort was drowned out by Noortman’s muffled scream. The duct tape strained as he tried to double over. Tears streamed from his eyes, mucus from his nose. He made gagging sounds. Hugh kept his face impassive and reached out to rip the duct tape from Noortman’s face. He lost some hair as well as some skin. He screamed.

“Quiet,” Arlene said, looking as bored as she sounded, “or we’ll have to gag you again.

“What do you want?” Noortman said, his breath coming in sobs. “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!” The blood had soaked through his pants and his knee was already beginning to swell into a misshapen lump, straining his pants leg.

“I want to know where your partner is, Jaap.”

Noortman shook his head, moaning. “I can’t, I can’t.”

“Gag him again,” Arlene said. Hugh, a little pale, stepped forward with the duct tape.

“No,” Noortman screamed. “I can’t tell you, I can’t, he’ll kill me!”

“Then answer,” Hugh said.

“We know you’re working for the two Koreans. What did they hire you to do? Where is Fang now?”

“I can’t! He’ll kill me, I tell you! He has killed others! He’ll kill me, too!”

“I know,” Arlene told him, “and I’m sorry about this, but I really am in a hurry.” She nodded at Hugh. A little pale, he tore off a length of duct tape and stepped forward.

Frantically, Noortman tried to jerk his head out of the way. Arlene grabbed a handful of his hair and held him still while Hugh taped his mouth again. Noortman screamed behind the gag, and kept screaming as the hammer came down again on the same knee.

This time Noortman threw up behind the gag, and when Hugh ripped it free he had to step back quickly to avoid being hit by the braised abalone in oyster sauce he had just watched Noortman eat. Arlene grabbed Noortman’s hair and yanked his head upright. “In October you met with two men from North Korea in a cafe in Pattaya Beach, Thailand. Who were they? What did they want?”

The bottom half of Noortman’s right leg was canted at a hideously awkward angle. Blood ran into his fashionable leather shoe and stained its gold buckle. “I can’t, I can’t,” he moaned.

Arlene raised the hammer, and this time she reversed it so that the claw side was down. Noortman saw it and screamed again.

AN HOUR LATER ARLENE and Hugh were in a cab on their way back to the airport. “Where the hell did you get that hammer?” Hugh said at random, trying not to think of the scene they had left behind in Noortman’s apartment.

“There were a bunch of construction guys doing a remodel on a shop. There was an open toolbox with the hammer sitting right on top.”

“Well done,” Hugh said, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“What’s wrong?” she said, unruffled, matter-of-fact. “We got what we needed.”

“Yeah,” Hugh said. “We did that.”

Her expression softened. “You’re not in the field a lot, are you, Hugh?”

He tried to smile. “Once a desk man, always a desk man.”

The things he had done in Noortman’s apartment would haunt him for the rest of his life. Noortman had broken so quickly and so completely, he had given them everything they had asked for and more, but Hugh could find no cause in that for self-congratulation, and definitely none for humor.

“What next?”

Hugh thought about it. “Home,” he said.

Arlene cleared her throat with delicacy. “Are you, ah, calling in first?”

“You mean the director?” Hugh thought about that for a while, too. He had a cell phone, but he always used a landline when he could. Cell phone signals were far too easy to tap into. “I’ll call him from the airport.”

“Will he believe you?”

Hugh took a deep breath and let it out. “Probably not. That’s why I’m going home.”

“Home,” she said. “You don’t mean D.C., do you.”

He didn’t answer. They rode for a few minutes in silence.

“Hugh, is this the smart thing to do?”

Hugh gave Arlene one incredulous look, and laughed out loud.

NOORTMAN LAY ON THE exquisite Afghan carpet where he had fallen from the chair when they’d cut him free of the duct tape. He didn’t know how much time had passed. The bleeding had stopped, and so long as he remained absolutely motionless his leg didn’t hurt.

Of course, if he so much as twitched, the pain was agonizing and all-encompassing, subsuming every other sense. At some point, he would have to crawl to the phone and call for help, which he planned to do as soon as he summoned up the necessary strength.

The color of blood was no longer pleasing to him. He would never again be able to tuck a red silk handkerchief into a pocket and think of his father. Instead he would think of himself, broken, bleeding, lying in his own filth, a victim of strangers who had invaded his own home.

The police, yes. He should call the police. As soon as he gathered a little more energy.

They would want to know what had happened. He had invited a stranger into his home and had been attacked, that was what he would say. Of course, his description of his assailant would be suitably vague. He wouldn’t want Reeve interrogated, something that could cause untold complications. As a foreign national residing in Hong Kong, he had to be careful not to make a fuss. If he did, the notoriously parochial local police would find a way to invite him to leave.

He had never been a very good liar, so it was going to take some thinking out before he made the call, and he hurt very much and he was very tired.

And yet, and yet, he knew a tiny spark of triumph growing deep inside him.

He had told them, yes, told them enough for them to stop hurting him.

But not everything.

The fibers of the carpet pressing into his cheek, he smiled.