Ruthless.Com

Chapter Eleven

Although it was only a little past eight in the morning, Zhiu Sheng had noticed a dramatic reduction of trade at the floating market as the motor canoe brought him to where the waterway narrowed and the wooden stilt houses of impoverished locals came crowding up on either bank. Most of the peddlers and buyers had appeared at daybreak, preferring to get their business out of the way before the heat and humidity became too oppressive — the former with their goods displayed on the decks of small boats or log rafts, the latter poling along in shallow dugouts, or arriving via klotoks like the one he had hired, forming long lines of slow-moving watercraft in the canals twisting through outer Banjarmasin like the tentacles of some languorous octopus.

Zhiu saw small boats loaded with bananas, star fruits, lichees, melons, and salaks; with green vegetables; with fish, eel, cray, and frog; with selections of precooked foods. Conspicuously, he did not see a single vender selling chicken meat, once the largest source of animal protein for Indonesia's citizens, now an imported delicacy served mainly to foreigners in Jakarta's expensive restaurants. Rising feed prices coupled with the devaluation of the rupiah had devastated the poultry industry when the so-called "Asian miracle" lost its glow, resulting in most of the native breeding stock being liquidated. The American chicken farmers had moved in to exploit the livestock shortage and essentially captured the market… their success ironically assured by the greed of Chinese and Malaysian feed producers, who had refused to lower their prices or extend credit to the Indonesians.

Zhiu understood supply and demand, but it vexed him nonetheless.

He rode in silence, looking with steady fascination at the other vessels winding along the canal. In addition to the market craft, there were postal boats, water buses, and tublike rice barges with sailcloth tops wobbling toward docks at the city center. It was a scene that brought back memories of his last visit to this district nearly three decades ago, when Sukarno's PKI was at its height of power and had sought to establish a united Communist front with the government in Beijing. He had come, then, as an official envoy of Zhou Enlai to help organize state construction projects… a straightforward assignment for a man whose revolutionary passion was still in full blush.

Like many things in life as one became older, the circumstances of his present trip were laced with greater complexity, Zhiu thought.

He accepted the differences and rarely looked back on his beginnings, but supposed returning to this place after so long a duration of years had made him reflective. How hard Sukarno had struggled to eradicate the stain of Western cultural influence, and how painfully he would have viewed its indelibility. Even here it could not be ignored. A few moments earlier, a group of white tourists had darted past in rented speedboats, reminding him of noisy macaques with their round eyes, sunburned red cheeks, and loud excited voices. But he'd clamped down on his annoyance, preferring, as always, to look on the bright side. At least the water spouted by their outboards dispelled the mosquitos, and added a relieving coolness to the semblance of a breeze coming off the Barito River.

"Pelan-pelan sayaZhiu told his canoe guide in Mandarin-accented Bahasa. He pointed toward a woman selling rice cakes from a boat that had been cobbled out of warped old boards.

"Ya"

The canoe man cut his motor, paddled up to the rickety boat, and reached down beside him for a bamboo pole with a nail fastened to one end. Extending the pole across his bow, he speared a rice cake for Zhiu Sheng and held it out for him to sample.

Zhiu took a bite, swallowed, and tossed a bronze-colored coin onto the vender's deck.

"Terima kasi banyak" she said, smiling with gratitude.

Zhiu instructed the guide to restart the outboard, and settled back for his light breakfast.

A short while later, the canoe man turned a bend in the canal, swung toward a house and rice barn overhanging the near bank, and informed his passenger they had reached their destination. Zhiu did not bother saying that he'd already guessed it for himself. The further they had progressed beyond the market, the more he'd sensed eyes watching from behind shuttered windows, and noticed hard young men tracing his progress with quick, covert glances from the walkways connecting the ramshackle structures.

Khao Luan was like a feudal warlord to the people of this area, giving them just enough to keep them loyal, but not so much that they might become independent of him.

Now the canoe man again silenced his engine, and rowed up to a ladder running into the muddy water from the dwelling's front door. Three teenagers sat on separate rungs — two boys in faded denim shorts and T-shirts, and a girl wearing similar shorts and a halter of some sheer, revealing material that had been tied below her breasts to expose her midriff. There was a kind of affected sexuality about her that at once saddened and disgusted Zhiu Sheng. The boys also seemed to be playacting at roles they did not quite grasp, sitting with their shoulders hunched and smoking unfiltered cigarettes as they listened to an enormous radio blasting out American rock music.

They slouched under the hot sun, staring into the water as if they might find something other than aimless drifts of reeds and sediment beneath its torpid surface.

The Asian miracle, Zhiu Sheng thought dryly.

He saw them raise their eyes from the crawling water as his guide brought the canoe up beside the ladder. All of them had bad complexions. All looked dirty and undernourished. Their expressions were bored and impassive and uniformly sullen.

He waited until the canoe had been lashed into a berth composed of four vertical bamboo poles, then paid the guide, lifted his carryall onto his shoulder, and rose to step ashore.

The teenagers watched him a moment longer. Then the taller of the boys stood up to block his approach, crossing his arms over his puffed-out chest, doing what he thought was expected of him under some artificial standard of toughness.

It would probably kill him in a streetfight before he was twenty.

Zhiu Sheng finished his rice cake, then rubbed his fingertips together to wipe off its pasty residue.

''Saya mahu laki bilik,'' he said from the prow of the boat. "I'm here to see the men inside."

The tall boy stared down at him, letting his cigarette dangle from his lips the way they did in American gangster movies. The smoke curling from its tip carried the pungently sweet odor of cloves.

"What is your name?" he asked.

Zhiu was in no mood. "Go on. Let the men know their friend from up north has arrived."

"I asked you—"

"Berhenti!" Zhiu checked him with a motion of his hand. "Stop wasting my time and do it."

The boy stared at him for a second, then turned and went up the ladder to the door, taking longer than he should have, wanting to save whatever face he could with his companions.

Let him have that, at least, Zhiu thought. He may never have anything else.

The boy knocked on the door — two slow raps, a pause, followed by three rapid ones — and waited a moment before pushing it open. Then he leaned his head through the entry and said something and waited some more. After a brief interval Zhiu heard a male voice answer from inside the house. Though the words were unclear to him, their tone was unmistakeably harsh and reprimanding.

The boy turned from the door and shooed away his friends, who climbed down to the landing and went hurrying off somewhere along the bank.

"Ma'af saya," he said nervously, offering Zhiu Sheng a contrite bow. "I did not mean to offend—"

"Never mind."

His patience exhausted, Zhiu brushed past him and ascended the shaky ladder, half expecting it to buckle under his feet.

He was met at the entrance by a pair of lank, brown-skinned islanders with undulant kris tattoos on their hands. Was it not said that such a dagger could claim a victim merely by being driven into one's shadow? Perhaps so, Zhiu thought. But ancient myths aside, he believed the semi-automatic rifles slung over the men's shoulders would prove much more lethal.

"Selamat datang," one of them said. He bowed his head deferentially. "Welcome."

Zhiu nodded and went inside.

The interior of the dwelling was a large rectangle, its floor and walls made up of bare plywood boards, the high peaked roof supported by tiers of slanting beams. Midway down the length of the right-hand wall was a closed door with a third islander standing guard in front of it. Towering and rigid, he had coarse features, long black hair, and was bare-chested under an open denim jacket with cut-off sleeves. The blockish muscles on his torso and upper arms were heavily covered with tattoos. In addition to his rifle, he carried a knife — a kris, no doubt — in an elaborately tooled leather sheath on his belt.

Zhiu ran his eyes over to the middle of the room, where the men he had come to meet — General Kersik Imman, Nga Canbera, and the drug trafficker, Khao Luan — were waiting at a long plank table.

Glancing up from a conversation with the others, Kersik was the first to acknowledge his presence.

"Zhiu Sheng, you look well," he said, dipping his head. "How was your trip?"

"Hot, tedious, and hopefully worthwhile," Zhiu said.

A smile touched Kersik's thin, lined face. While the eyes below his shaggy brows were as strong and sharp as ever, he had aged a great deal over the past several months and, in civilian clothes now, possessed an almost grandfatherly mien that hid his true severity of nature.

By contrast, Zhiu thought, Canbera looked scarcely older than the children outside, and like them seemed to be working at a role that was beyond him. Political subversive, champion of the poor. His soft features and vain demeanor put the lie to it, though. As did his social position. The eldest son of a diamond baron, Nga had been born into immeasurable wealth, and handed control of Banjarmasin's largest bank only to serve as a place marker on his family's sprawling financial game board. He understood nothing of human struggle, and less of material hardship. Nor did the spoiled upper-class activists with whom he secretly consorted… and whose national reform movement he was helping to fund.

He was a narcissistic dabbler, interested in gratifying his own conceits, and would leap for the safety net of privilege if the consequences of his actions overtook him.

"Sawasdee. My place isn't nearly as well appointed as Kersik's residence, but, as a humble exile and outsider, it's the best I can do."

This from Khao Luan himself. Seated at the head of the table, he raised his hands in the traditional Thai greeting, palms together as if in prayer, his fingertips just below his nose to indicate familiarity. On their previous meetings, Zhiu noted, he had steepled his hands lower and closer to his chest — the stranger's wai.

The significance of the gesture was not lost on Zhiu, and it admittedly distressed him… for was a man not measured in large part by his associations? Still, he returned it without hesitation. The time for misgivings was long past. And corrupt as his occupation might be, the Thai was without pretense and worthy of respect.

"Please," Luan said, indicating an empty chair on his right. "Make yourself comfortable."

Zhiu went over to the table and regarded him carefully. Round and balding, Luan had a smooth wide forehead, bow-shaped lips, and a light mustache and chin beard. His cheekbones were perfectly flat and covered with soft, shiny pads of flesh. He sat with his chair pushed back from the table, his short-sleeved batik shirt hanging out over his waist sash, straining at the seams around his big stomach, and unbuttoned at the collar to reveal a thick ring of Hmong silver. There were dark blotches of perspiration on his chest and under his arms.

"The American," Zhiu said, lowering himself into his chair. "Where is he?"

Luan nodded toward the door in the right wall.

"My friend Xiang and his sea wolves are keeping a close eye on him."

"Has he told you anything?"

Luan was silent a moment before replying.

"He's been, ah, unable to communicate this morning, but I expect he'll be coming around shortly," he said. "Maybe then we'll all learn what we want to know."

Zhiu darted a surprised glance across the table at General Kersik. "He was captured, what, four days ago?"

Kersik brought his head up and down, a slow nod.

"He's a tough one," he said.

"No need to be concerned, we'll get what we want out of him soon enough," Luan said. He smiled thinly. "The White Lady has her ways."

Zhiu raised his eyebrows. "Heroin?"

"They've scarcely been apart since we introduced him to her yesterday," Luan said. "She'll charm him into talking."

"It is barbaric."

"It is necessary," Kersik said. "And preferable to some alternatives."

"As our prisoner should conclude for himself before too long," Luan said.

They were quiet. Zhiu found himself staring at the enormous pirate. He seemed somehow to exist in his own space, immovable and dangerous, his calm unfeeling eyes those of a Mesozoic creature poised to strike.

"What I think ought to worry us is the woman," Nga said.

Zhiu shifted his attention to him. "Chu, is that her name?"

"Kirsten Chu. She's dropped out of sight. And there's no telling what she's discovered about our involvement with Monolith, or what sort of proof she's taken with her. A tremendous amount of information could have been routed through her division of the company."

"I assume we have people looking for her in Singapore?"

"And elsewhere," Luan said.

"Still," Nga said. "It could hurt us badly if the Americans learn of—"

"I've been trying to reassure Nga that he's jumping ahead of things," Kersik interrupted. "Let's stay with what we know. This could have been a case of industrial espionage, having nothing to do with us."

"She's repeatedly accessed Monolith's most sensitive financial databases from her office computer terminal. Made dozens of telephone calls to the UpLink groundstation in Johor.. and probably many more that can't be traced because they went to a secure line," Nga said. "Are you suggesting that we simply forget about her?"

"You really must try to become a more receptive listener," Kersik said. "Without the American to guide her, it's likely she won't know where to turn, or what to do with any documentation she might have. Probably she'll surface on her own. If not, we'll eventually find her." He motioned toward Zhiu Sheng with a slow, gliding wave of his hand. "Let us put speculation aside, and get to the point of why our comrade has traveled here."

Zhiu nodded slightly. Despite his equable manner, Kersik was looking hard at him.

"I've brought positive news," he said. "Those I represent are prepared to supply whatever munitions you require. The high-speed boats will be more difficult to obtain, but should also be forthcoming."

"And the landing craft?"

"You'll have to settle for fewer than requested."

"How many?"

"Three, perhaps four."

Kersik pinched the bridge of his nose. "The assault rifles, they've never been fired?"

Zhiu knew he was thinking about their integrated silencers, which quickly became ineffective with use.

"They are factory-new Type 85's."

Kersik continued to look thoughtful. "We must be guaranteed prompt delivery. As you know, our window of opportunity is quite small."

"Any date we agree upon will be firm," Zhiu said. "You have my word."

Kersik drew a long breath.

"I'm concerned about how the reduced number of watercraft will effect our invasion capabilities," he said. "It means revising the entire operational plan."

"Perhaps not as drastically as you might think. The attack boats are heavily armed. And the amphibious craft can be refitted to hold larger complements. Insofar as available manpower, there would likely be no difference at all. If you want me to go over the specific modifications—"

"Later," Kersik said. He hadn't taken his eyes off Zhiu's face. "Your government. What is its position toward our venture?"

"Officially, nothing is known of it."

"And speaking practically?"

"I can tell you there will be no opposition at any level," Zhiu said, selecting his words with utmost care.

Kersik nodded with satisfaction.

"Yes," he said. "That much is good news."

Zhiu let his eyes roam around the table.

"I hope, then," he said, "that none of you will object to the terms of payment."

Luan pursed his lips, reacting with predictable wariness.

"Which are?" he said.

"I'm obliged to require the full sum in advance."

"What?" Nga said, his eyes flashing incredulously. "You can't be serious."

Zhiu remained very still.

"We are asking for a great deal on short notice," he said. "The suppliers have expenditures of their own. It is reasonable for them to expect hard currency in return for the risks they are taking."

"And what of our risks?" Nga said in a tight voice. "I've done much for you and the Zhongnanhai you represent. My bank's international position could be irreparably damaged if things go wrong."

"That is very much appreciated. But, regrettably, this isn't a situation in which my superiors can barter off a portion of the cost, or make any other concessions."

Nga bridled. "Forgive me, Zhiu, but it sounds to me as if you're offering up excuses for PLA profiteers. How can you expect us to—?"

"Enough," Kersik interjected. "I understand your frustration, Nga. But we are compelled by certain exigencies, and must acknowledge that our needs are rather special." He glanced at Luan. "What do you say?"

The Thai hesitated a moment, then shrugged his chunky shoulders.

"Attached as I am to my money, I nevertheless consider my portion of the expenses already spent, and suppose it makes little difference when I physically part company with it," he said. "Let's not bicker over what can't be changed, and instead move on to important matters of planning. We've been so focused on Sandakan and what comes after, that none of us are talking about the data-storage vaults in the United States. They are essential to our success and at least as highly guarded as—"

The door to the rice barn opened, surprising them. They fixed their attention upon Xiang as one of his pirates leaned through from the other side, addressed him in a low whisper, then withdrew into the barn, leaving the door ajar.

Xiang turned back around, looking straight at the Thai.

"The American's opened his eyes," he said.

The room went silent.

Luan smiled slightly and cast an eager glance around the table.

"Excuse me, brothers," he said, heaving his bulk off the chair. "I have to go to work."

He followed Xiang into the barn, pushing the door heavily shut behind him.