Jade War

CHAPTER 55 Final Preparations

The Kekon Journal is an independent weekly Kekonese-language newspaper published in Espenia, with a wide circulation among overseas Kekonese. Its editorial stance has long been favorable to the Kekonese government, but in recent years, and following a relocation from its original headquarters in Southtrap to a larger office on Jons Island, the newspaper has included more in-depth reporting and critical coverage of Kekon’s clan system, Espenian foreign policy, and international regulation of jade, among other topics of interest.

Under the guise of an Espenian-born journalist named Ray Caido, Anden requested a personal interview with Zapunyo on behalf of the Kekon Journal. In his correspondence with Zapunyo’s aide Iyilo, he emphasized that the expatriate Kekonese population was very interested in hearing opposing viewpoints regarding the jade trade; this would be the smuggler’s once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tell his side of the story and repudiate the negative coverage in the mainstream media. All of Anden’s false credentials were meticulously supported, using the same No Peak resources that created and maintained shell companies such as Divinity Gems, and with the help of the Dauks, who were owed personal favors by the newspaper’s editor in chief from a time in the past when he had gotten into some trouble with finances.

“The thing about Zapunyo,” Hilo said over the phone, “is that he makes himself out to be a humble Uwiwan farmer turned entrepreneur. When I met him, he could’ve spent the whole day telling me his fucking sob story and lecturing me about how it’s the Green Bone clans that are the real villains for making his business so difficult. If there’s anything that’ll lure him into a face-to-face meeting, it’s a chance to talk to someone who’ll listen to him.”

The Pillar’s assessment proved correct; after some back-and-forth correspondence with Iyilo, Anden was able to secure an interview with Zapunyo during the time when he would be in Port Massy, the day after his arrival in the city and before his scheduled surgery at Wigham-Cross Truthbearers Hospital. The meeting was scheduled to occur at the small Uwiwa Islands Cultural Heritage Center & Tea Gardens in the Quince area, which would afford a view of the Iron Eye Bridge and would present a good background for photographs. Anden would be unarmed and accompanied only by Rohn Toro, posing as his photographer. Rohn’s black gloves would be carefully hidden on the premises the day before the event. During the false interview, Rohn would retrieve his gloves, put on his jade, and kill Zapunyo.

The assassination plan was formed over several conversations at the Kaul family dinner table. Secrecy was of the utmost concern, since after Tau Maro’s betrayal, it was safe to assume that Zapunyo might have other spies within No Peak circles and they could not risk any word of the plot reaching him in the Uwiwa Islands. In order to throw off any suspicion, false rumors and death threats against the smuggler were deliberately set into motion, hinting at a more obvious plot that involved striking when he was in the hospital room recovering from surgery, when they knew the smuggler was bound to take extreme precautions. A new phone with a speaker, connected to a secure line that was known only to immediate family, was installed in the dining room of the main house on the Kaul estate so that Anden, waiting at designated times in his apartment in Port Massy, could be remotely brought into the discussion.

Anden found this arrangement difficult; the meetings were always midmorning in his time zone, which disrupted his day, and being able to hear but not see what was going on gave him a strange and lonely feeling. He could picture all of them in the dining room—Hilo at the head of the table, a cigarette in hand, Tar next to him, Kehn’s empty chair, Wen filling teacups, Shae holding Jaya on her lap—all while Anden sat alone on his bed in his small apartment, his ear pressed to the receiver, trying to hear the muted long-distance conversation over the sound of his building’s noisy central heating system. Sometimes Anden could hear the shouts of Niko and Ru playing in the other room or coming over to the adults to ask for this or that and being told to say hello to their uncle Anden on the phone before being shooed away again.

At times Anden thought it almost comical that he would have to make some excuse to leave on an early, extra long lunch break from working at the Janloon Trade Partnership Liaison Office in order to take part in conversations with his family back in Janloon, all to plot the murder of a man he had never met. He felt no moral qualms about assassinating Zapunyo, nor resentment over the efforts he was being asked to make. He understood how important this was to his cousins as well as to Wen, who always visited him on her business trips and whom he felt closer to now than he ever had while living in Janloon. It was only ironic to him that this was how he would finally be returning to Kekon. After the deed was done, both Anden and Rohn Toro would have to leave the country. Anden was instructed not to say anything beforehand to the Hians, or to his friends or coworkers. He had to be ready to depart quickly, and Shae would take care of the rest. If all went according to plan, after three and half years in Espenia, he would be going home.

Anden did not quite allow himself to believe it. In a way it seemed fitting, almost poetic: Killing Gont Asch had ruined him as a Green Bone and led to his exile; this deed would end his time abroad and return him to Kekon with the proof that even without jade, he was not useless, he was still a force in the clan, still a Kaul. Not long ago, it would’ve been all Anden wanted, but now he faced it with bittersweet melancholy. He was impatient to return home, but not happy to leave Port Massy after all. When he’d arrived, he’d seen nothing but the impersonal concrete grayness of the vast foreign city. Now he could say that he’d seen the fierce, enterprising life that pulsed like jade aura through the veins of its streets and in the marrow of its steel structures. Port Massy had been and still was the trading post of the world, a market where anything could be found, bought, and sold, a place that held a little of everything in its grasp—even jade and Green Bones, along with uncountable other wonders known and unknown—and still, somehow, was its own self, standing without compare. Anden would never think of his biological father with anything but indifference and disdain, but now he thought that perhaps the man was simply typical of his race and couldn’t be too badly blamed; Port Massy owed its unique glory to the mercenary wayfaring nature of the Espenian people, and as the meeting with Zapunyo neared, Anden found himself appreciating, even admiring, the city more than he ever had before. Wen was correct; he had friends here now, an independent life that he was proud of in many ways, and he thought constantly and sorrowfully about what he was giving up.

He’d tried to call Cory again, on more than one occasion, hoping to explain things better than he had in their last conversation, but his friend refused to answer any of his calls. He learned from the Hians that Cory had taken an internship at a big law firm in AC and would not be returning to Port Massy over the summer. At times, Anden felt as if he’d made a terrible mistake, that he ought to take the bus to Adamont Capita and find Cory in person and say that he’d been wrong—who cared what Dauk Losun wanted? What did their families matter, what did law school or even the entire Amaric Ocean matter? They could run away together; it would be daring and romantic. Lying awake with his cock in his hand, Anden would groan with the childishness of the thought and with the simultaneous depressing certainty that he’d doomed himself to be alone forever; he was never going to find anyone else like Cory, who wouldn’t even talk to him anymore.

At last, Anden sat down and wrote a letter, which he mused gloomily was a very cliché post-breakup thing to do, but so be it. Cory, he wrote, You have every right to be angry at me, but I know that you’re too good of a person to stay in a bad mood for long, and I hope that after a while, we’ll be able to remain friends. Don’t blame your da. It was my decision in the end. Even though it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, I made the choice I hope is better for both of us. I can’t explain everything right now because they’re “clan things” like you said, but I will soon. Sitting at the cramped desk facing his tiny apartment window, Anden agonized over how much to justify himself, how to sound sincere without being maudlin, starting and discarding several versions of the letter before deciding, fuck it, Cory was probably going to throw it in the trash without reading it anyway. You were my first. You made Port Massy a special place for me, and you’re a better, more generous person than I am. You deserve the best of everything.

Anden mailed the letter to Cory’s address in Adamont Capita. Doing so was painful but took a burden off his mind, and afterward, he awaited Zapunyo’s forthcoming arrival with impatience. If all went according to plan, in a few weeks he’d be on a flight back to Janloon. Of course, there was a reasonable chance he would be dead—shot by Zapunyo’s bodyguards, but he had seen Rohn Toro’s abilities and knew the man’s reputation was well earned, so he trusted in their odds of survival. Having been trained at the Academy and raised in the Kaul family, Anden had been indoctrinated since childhood with the idea that for Green Bones, the possibility of death was like the weather—you could make attempts to predict it, but you would likely be wrong, and no one would change their most important plans due to threat of rain.