Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Lieutenant Bui Ton Tan was a thirty-three-year-old officer in the Vietnam People’s Police, Ho Chi Minh City Public Security Office. He’d worked a full eight-hour shift today, getting off at eleven, and he’d been here in the bar less than fifteen minutes. He just wanted to get a couple of beers in him before going home for the evening.

He’d been halfway into his objective when he saw the two big foreigners in the bar and realized they were looking at him. It took a moment for him to be certain, not that the men were hiding it. On the contrary, they seemed to be going out of their way to stress the fact they had taken an interest in him.

And this was deeply troubling in light of the news he’d received today.

He’d spent the day patrolling the Cat Lai Ward in District Two and hadn’t had any direct contact with anyone in Con Ho Hoang Da, but he had received a text message this afternoon from one of his fellow cops who also moonlighted at the guard shack of the headquarters building. The message said all the guards had been warned about a potential attack from an unknown group of white foreigners, and everyone would be brought in for overtime to deal with the threat. Bui was confused by this; he’d heard about a threat in Hong Kong from a group of Tay, a Vietnamese word used to refer to non-Asians. But that had been earlier in the week and he’d heard nothing since. The Wild Tigers had next to no close connections to Tay in Ho Chi Minh City, so he immediately asked for more clarification, but his colleague had just said they’d need Bui to come in to the gatehouse tomorrow for a full shift on his day off from the police department.

He’d learned nothing else about the danger, but now a pair of big, mean-looking Tay were here.

Bui thought about calling out for help from men here in the pool hall, but the other Wild Tigers present were just young dealers and street thieves. He didn’t know any of them — he worked security at the HQ, after all — and he wasn’t sure enough of the nature of this threat to just assemble a quick posse of strangers. Anyway, as far as Bui was concerned he didn’t need anyone else. Although these two guys were both six inches taller and forty kilos heavier than he was, Bui was carrying his police-issue Makarov pistol in a shoulder holster.

He wasn’t worried about his personal security, but he was somewhat concerned about why the hell these two big Tay were consulting their mobile phones and then looking back up at him.

After quickly downing his second bottle of beer, he decided the prudent course of action would be to just walk out the back door, climb onto his bike, and get out of here. He’d text the security office at the Wild Tigers and report the incident as soon as he was clear.

Bui nonchalantly unzipped his jacket so he could grab his pistol in a hurry if he had to, then slid off the bar stool without looking at the two big men. He nodded to a couple of distant acquaintances on the way out the door and stepped into the alley.

A light but steady rain fell, which pissed Bui off, because he’d left his poncho at the station. He walked up to his Kawasaki bike and fished through his jeans pocket for his keys, keeping one eye on the back door of the pool hall in case the foreigners appeared.

“Chao chu.” Hello, sir. It was a woman’s voice, close behind him in the dark, in the opposite direction from the back door. The voice surprised him because he hadn’t seen anyone around when he came out the door, but the surprise did not scare him at all. He turned around. “Yeah?”

To his astonishment a Tay woman stood there in the dimly lit alley, holding a black bike helmet in her hand.

He didn’t even have time to get a good look at her before she smashed him in the face with it.

Bui flipped backwards over the seat of his bike and then down onto the wet cobblestones. He saw nothing but stars for a moment; his lips and nose burned with pain, but he did not lose consciousness. He blinked hard, then reached into his jacket to pull his pistol, but just as the little weapon cleared the leather of his shoulder holster he felt strong hands on the wrist of his drawing hand, twisting it around, removing the weapon easily.

Bui looked up and saw that the woman had come around the bike and now she stood over him, the gun in one hand, the bike helmet high above her head.

“How about another?” She said it in English, and he understood only because of her tone and the context of the situation.

Bui shook his head to clear away the stars, spit blood, and then said one of the few phrases he knew in English, because it perfectly applied to his sentiment. “Fuck your mother, bitch!”

He had only a slight recognition of the helmet arcing down towards his face before the lights went out completely.

Zoya sat in the front room of the safe house, her legs crossed and her eyes on the lights of the car pulling up the drive. She looked at her watch and sighed.

Ruslan and Sasha had gone to bed as soon as they arrived and moved the blindfolded prisoner to a three-meter-square laundry room in the back of the house, tying his arms behind his back and his legs to his chair. Zoya watched them do this, thanked them for their help, and empathized with their obvious disappointment that they hadn’t been the ones to bash the prisoner in the face.

In the vehicle on the way from the scene Sasha had reported to Zoya that her prisoner spoke neither English nor French. Zoya made a call while following the minivan on her scooter, and she requested that a Vietnamese interpreter from the SVR Residency be sent over immediately to interpret.

She’d woken her SVR contact from a deep sleep to do this, and was first told to come to the consulate on Ba Huyen Thanh Quan Street, sometime the following day after nine a.m.

“I don’t do embassies,” was Zoya’s reply, and, after just a little pressure, her contact assured her he’d have an interpreter on the way within the hour.

Zoya sat and stewed the entire time she waited for the interpreter to arrive, but she recognized that there was a benefit in this. The guy in the back was doing exactly the same thing. If Zoya was lucky there would be plenty of time for her prisoner to think about his situation, to wonder about his fate, and to resolve to do something to help himself.

Like talk.

After the vehicle parked, Zoya led a young Russian woman into the safe house with a quick handshake and a check of the woman’s credentials. Zoya offered no ID of her own. The new arrival was SVR, of course, but she was just an interpreter; Zoya saw this immediately. The woman was still in her midtwenties, and she seemed utterly bewildered to be called out into the night like this to work at some safe house she’d never heard of with a covert operative she’d never met. Zoya assumed this girl’s whole world consisted of reading military or trade documents or translating recorded phone conversations and writing reports for her desk-riding superiors at the embassy.

The two women walked together towards the back of the house without any conversation, then arrived at the door to the laundry room, and here they stopped.

Zoya said, “Sorry, long night. What did you say your name was again, dear?”

“Svetlana. Call me Sveta.”

“Okay, Sveta, did someone explain what we are about to do?”

“No, ma’am. I’ve been told nothing other than this address.”

“Fine. I’ll brief you now. We are going to obtain information from a man who is tied and blindfolded in a room here in the house.”

“Oh. I see,” Sveta said. The girl wore no makeup, so it was easy for Zoya to watch the color drain from her face.

But Zoya was all business; she had no time to bring little Sveta gently into her world. “We will do this by escalating means, beginning with simple questions, and then continuing to harder measures, if required.”

The younger woman’s eyebrows furrowed, then her eyes widened when Zoya leaned closer to her.

“Here’s a prediction. They will be required.”

Sveta’s voice cracked. Compared to Zoya she sounded meek, mousy. “Da. Ponial.” Yes, understood.

“You are to provide the man with a translation of what I say, and you will provide me with the translation of what he says. You and I will speak English, not Russian. Any delay, reticence, unease… any sense that you are bothered by anything that happens in that room cannot be tolerated. He will hear your discomfort and use it as an avenue to resistance. I can break through his resistance, but that takes time, and I do not have time for him.”

Sveta looked like she would rather be anywhere else on planet Earth right now.

Zoya said, “Your background. I take it there is no military service?”

“No, ma’am. Moscow State University. Then I spent two years here working in the natural gas sector before coming in—”

Zoya cut her off. “Listen to me. We aren’t going in there to hash out a gas shipment.”

“I understand.”

Zoya put her hand on the doorknob. “I hope so. Everything is on the table through this door. I don’t think I’ll have to gouge the man’s eyes out… surely it won’t come to that.”

“No… no, ma’am.” Sveta looked like she was about to break into tears.

Zoya closed her eyes. Took a couple of slow breaths. “Listen, if you cry right now, we can’t go in there, and that will ruin my night. Please don’t ruin my night.”

“Of course not. I am… I am ready.”

“Khorosho.” Good.

Sveta saw Zoya push the handle on the door, and then her eyes lit up. “Wait. A guard.”

“A what?”

“A guard. Shouldn’t we take a guard in there with us? In case he—”

Other than a little roll of her eyes, Zoya ignored the comment. Instead she just opened the door and entered. After a moment’s hesitance, Sveta followed her in and closed the door behind her.

The two women sat down across a little table in front of the blindfolded man. Bui heard the movement in the room and swung his head around. In Vietnamese he said, “Who is there? What the fuck do you want with me?”

Sveta stared at the man’s busted lip, swollen nose, and blood-crusted nostrils, saying nothing until Zoya bumped her knee with her own.

Sveta translated his words into English.

Zoya did not answer; instead, she said, “You and I don’t have to have a bad time tonight. We can take care of this quickly. We can come to an agreement, and you can be on your way.”

Sveta did her job, but when Bui shouted something, Sveta looked reluctant to interpret.

Zoya bumped her knee harder this time.

The young SVR interpreter cleared her throat and turned to Zoya. She smiled apologetically, awkwardly, then said, “Are you that bitch who hit me? I will fuck you for that.”

Zoya fought a smile of her own. “A tempting offer, but I’ll have to pass.” She shook her head. “No, don’t translate that.”

Sveta just nodded.

Zoya leaned forward on the table and spoke, and Sveta translated her words effortlessly now. “Your name is Bui Ton Tan. You are a lieutenant with the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Police. You also work, illegally, as hired security for Con Ho Hoang Da. Once a week you drive a motorcycle in the motorcade of Captain Tu Van Duc, the head of the organization, and three times a week you work at the gatehouses on the perimeter of the office building in the Binh Thanh District. I would like to talk to you about this work.”

The man still seemed utterly confused to be here. “Yeah? So? Who are you? Why do you care?”

“I ask questions. You answer questions,” Zoya said.

When Sveta translated this, Bui began to stand, though his ankles were tied to the chair and his arms were cinched behind his back.

He screamed, “To hell with you, bitch!”

Sveta translated.

Zoya launched out of her chair and came around the table. She shoved him back down into his seat, took his arms, and wrenched them up high at the wrists. To alleviate the pain Bui had to bend forward, and when he did the female Russian operative slammed him in the back of his head, smashing his face into the table.

The Vietnamese police officer screamed in pain, and blood sprayed a few inches in all directions, spotting the table’s white surface.

Sveta recoiled in horror, and Zoya, still leaning over the wailing man, shot daggers from her eyes at the young girl.

The young interpreter got control of her emotions, and she looked down to the floor.

Zoya twisted the man’s hand until he dropped back to the chair. “Tell him he is not leaving till I have what I want, and if he doesn’t tell me now, he will leave carrying one of his arms out of here in a plastic bag.”

Sveta did this, keeping her voice calm. When Bui replied, still with his mouth pressed into the table, Sveta looked up at Zoya.

“What do you want to know?”

“I want to know where Fan Jiang is.”

Sveta translated this, waited for the response, and then delivered it.

“I have no idea who that is,” she said.

Zoya sat back down after patting the man on his back. She took a moment to adjust her shirt, to push a strand of her chin-length brunette hair back behind her ear, and then she nodded. “Okay, Mr. Tan. This, I believe. It is very likely you have no idea of the identity of the young Chinese male who appeared here earlier in the week and joined your organization. I will show you a photograph to help you.”

Zoya stood again, pulling her smartphone out of her pocket. She tapped the screen, put the phone on the table in front of Bui, then stepped around him. She took his head, pushed it down inches from the image of Fan on her phone, and pulled off his blindfold.

The Vietnamese police lieutenant could see nothing in front of him other than the image. He looked at the picture for several seconds. Finally he nodded, and he spoke.

Sveta looked at Zoya, standing behind the prisoner. “Yeah. I’ve seen him. Came in yesterday morning. So what?”

Zoya smiled a little and winked at Sveta. “So… tell me more.”