Ruthless.Com

Chapter Sixteen

"I'm telling you, if those people in the Press Office don't start doing their jobs, I'm going to give every one of them the boot myself, and Terskoff is the first guy whose ass gets to meet my foot," said President Richard Ballard, referring in his momentary pique to White House Press Secretary Brian Terskoff.

"Quite frankly, I don't think they're to blame," said Stu Encardi, whose official job title was Special Aide to the President, and who was now just waiting for the breeze to stir. "You know how it is with reporters. They cover what they want to cover."

Ballard pulled a disgusted face. "Oh, come on. We're about to enter into a genuinely world-changing treaty with Japan and other Far Eastern countries, we've got three regional leaders and yours truly participating in a signing ceremony aboard a nuclear sub, and you're trying to say the crypto issue is sexier? That's absurd."

"You think so?" Encardi said. "Granted, the numbers tell us people were hardly paying attention to crypto until this week, and they still don't get what the whole damn thing's about. But from my perspective, it's this escalating Gordian-Caine spat that's the hook for reporters. The treaty represents cooperation and harmony, and, well, conflict being the essence of drama—"

"Spare me," Ballard said. "What the hell should we do as an attention grabber, get Diver Dan and Baron Barracuda down there underwater with us?"

"Excuse me, sir?"

"Never mind, you're twenty years too young," Ballard said, cocking an ear skyward. "By the way, doesn't the breeze sound pretty moving through those leaves?"

"Yes, sir, it does."

They were standing under a willow oak that a former First Lady had planted on the South Lawn as an everlasting reminder of her tenure at the White House, much as Encardi himself had been planted among the President's circle of confidants by his lovely missus, who had taken a shine to the thirty-year-old Yale man when he'd been one of the coordinators of Ballard's re-election campaign, sensing in him a kindred soul of similar outlook and attitude, and later finagling her husband into making him a member of his post-election advisory staff, feeling he would be the ideal surrogate to carry her approximate viewpoint to Ballard — be it on matters political or personal — whenever she wasn't physically present to do so herself.

Generally speaking, Ballard considered Encardi an insightful, practical, and dedicated pup, and liked having him around as the personification of his wife's weltanshauung. Still, he was occasionally bothered by the fact that the aide boasted a profusion of hair to rival a Hungarian puli, while only a miracle of artful combing concealed his own advancing, Rogaine-resistant baldness.

He also became annoyed when Encardi borrowed his wife's verbal tics, such as following every Presidential statement with a "You think so?" and beginning his replies with a pedagogic "Quite frankly," or "From my standpoint," both hearkening back to Mrs. Ballard's decades-long career as a college teacher. These were the sort of things that would make borderline days turn bad, and bad days a little worse, except when the gorgeous weather and the sound of the breeze rustling through Ballard's favorite tree made everything under God's blue sky appreciably better.

"Stu, let me give you some instant perspective," Ballard said. "Two days from now I'll be signing the crypto legislation while Roger Gordian makes a fuss down the Hill. Two months from now everyone will have forgotten all about it, and think Morrison-Fiore is the name of some Vegas animal-training act. But in the interim I'll have closed a deal that establishes the guidelines for America's security role in Asia over the next twenty years, and probably much longer. There's my posterity, or a decent chunk of it. We just have to make sure people notice."

Encardi regarded him in the light shade of the tree as the wind brushed through the drooping canopy overhead. There were gnats or something swirling around them. In fact, there were always bugs under this tree. For some reason he didn't quite get, they seemed particularly attracted to the vicinity of the goddamned willow.

He swished a squadron of tiny winged harriers away from his face, convinced he would be a much happier man if just once the POTUS would elect to stroll under a dogwood, elm, or alder while seeking to restore his inner calm.

"I'm thinking we need to make sure Nordstrum from the New York Times is given the red-carpet treatment," he said.

"And / thought we were already doing that," the President said.

"Well, we are, but we can always roll out more rug," Encardi said. "Nordstrum's the biggest proponent of our Asia-Pacific policy in the national media. Why not assist him in gaining interviews with the Japanese Prime Minister, as well as the Malaysian and Indonesian heads of state? Invite him to the dinner you'll be having aboard the Seawolf? Anything to give him a steady stream of material to write about."

Ballard stretched broadly and inhaled the fragrant air of the White House grounds, sunlight striping his face as it filtered through the long bushy willow leaves.

"Ahhhhh, I'm feeling almost relaxed," he said. "Isn't it a spectacular morning?"

"Spectacular," Encardi said listlessly, swatting away an insect.

Ballard looked at him.

"Your idea about Nordstrum sounds fine to me, but only for starters," he said, his brow creasing in thought. "You know, now that you mention him, it's kind of odd Roger Gordian hasn't convinced Nordstrum to write more about the encryption issue in his columns. He's a paid consultant for UpLink International, did you know?"

Encardi considered that a moment and shrugged.

"Could be he disagrees with Gordian on that one," he said.

"Or just finds the crypto stuff as dull and relatively inconsequential as anybody else," the President added.

Swathed in virgin wilderness, the atoll was one of hundreds speckling the Celebes Sea west of the Sabah coast and bordering on the Philippines' territorial waters. A circular reef formed a breakwater around its shoreline, where a dense band of mangroves buttressed it against tropical storms and enclosed the rain forest that lay further inland, itself a protective horseshoe surrounding the lagoon at the island's center on three sides.

The same terrain characteristics that sheltered the atoll from the ravages of sea and weather had made it an undetected — and virtually undetectable — site for the pirate enclave. Few outside their brotherhood had ever located it, fewer still had penetrated its natural lines of defense, and none who did so without invitation had left it alive.

Zhiu Sheng had been there but once before, and then only for a quick pass around the island's rim at the request of General Kersik, who'd wanted him to have a firsthand acquaintance with the logistics of the planned Sandakan invasion. Today, however, he was headed for the interior. An hour ago, the Chinese fishing trawler that had brought him from the port city of Xiamen in Fujian province had steered slowly through the narrow inlet to the lagoon, and then dropped anchor near the sand belt. The timing of its arrival had been propitious; minutes afterward, the stacked, charcoal-gray clouds of an anvil thunderhead had burst open with a flash of lightning that illuminated the sky for several seconds, ushering in a fierce tropical downpour. Had the boat still been in open waters, the rough surf and buffeting winds might have capsized it.

When the rain eased off, the vessel's crew, a dozen trusted, handpicked soldiers from commando units in the Guangzhou Military Region, had gotten to work offloading its cargo of unmarked crates into the dinghies that bore them ashore. Per their orders, they had on civilian khakis. For their part, Xiang and the handful of pirates who'd met them on the beach wore army camouflage fatigues, something that had not slipped past Zhiu's keen sense of irony. Far too often in the world, he thought, the roles of men became confused and indefinable.

Now, the large crates balanced on their shoulders, their shirts soaked with perspiration, the soldiers were tramping through the knee-high water of a stream that bent and twisted between narrow lanes of cycads, their pirate guides leading them ever more deeply into the jungle. At first they had needed to hack their way through the epiphytic vines and creepers with machetes, but the undergrowth had thinned in the half-light below the treetops, allowing for better progress.

A lifelong city dweller, Zhiu nevertheless felt pressed, hemmed in, and that feeling was becoming more intense as he went along. It was as if he'd been bumped backward millions of years to some prehistoric epoch, a setting to which men like Xiang seemed as plainly suited as he himself was to the streets of modern Beijing. Trailing behind the giant as they crossed the stream, he recalled the moment he'd first seen him in the Thai's hiding place, guarding the door to where the prisoner was being held — his eyes staring with an impassive watchfulness that seemed to take in everything around them, yet let nothing escape their surface. Though that look had chilled him, Zhiu had not fully understood it, not then, not even after what Xiang had done to Max Blackburn. But here, in this old and alien forest, he did. Here, he had come to recognize it as a look with origins beyond human memory, a look of primordial jungle and swamp, a look which belonged entirely and exclusively to the cold-blooded, pitiless hunter.

Zhiu waded on. Though his shoulder pack contained only rations, water, and a first-aid kit, the passage through moving water had tired him, and he could see his men approaching exhaustion under the heavier weight of their burdens.*

He was glad when Xiang finally mounted the stream bank and led the party back onto the forest floor.

It took another twenty minutes before they reached the camp, a cleared area with a group of temporary thatch shelters in front of a spoon-shaped limestone outcropping. Zhiu peered through the foliage screening the perimeter, and saw Kersik and five or six others near one of the hooches, all except the general carrying ported combat rifles — battered Russian AKMs from the looks of them. Like Xiang's pirates, the men wore jungle camo fatigues, but that was the extent of the comparison. Their training and discipline were evident at a glance, making them far more similar to his own team.

These were experienced soldiers, no doubt chosen from the KOSTRAD Special Forces divisions Kersik had commanded before his retirement.

Zhiu raised his eyes to the arched ceiling of leaves without tilting back his head. He could not see the snipers guarding the perimeter, but knew they must be hidden somewhere up above him, ready to pick off unwanted intruders from their firing positions.

"Ah, Zhiu, you've arrived," Kersik said, spotting him. He came forward and parted the brush. 4 4Our cause brings us to meet in unusual spots, don't you think?"

"Yes," Zhiu said, stepping past Xiang to take Kersik's offered hand. "This one, I confess, breathes down my neck with its heat and humidity."

Kersik smiled a little. "I suppose being a native of the islands makes me impervious to their effects." He gave Zhiu's men an estimating glance, then nodded in apparent approval, as if impressed by what he saw. "Come, you all must be tired. I'll show you where to put the shipment."

Motioning for them to follow, he turned back toward the camp and strode to the rock formation behind the hooches. A matting of palm fronds, sun-dried and bound together with rope, covered a large section of the stone face. Kersick called over a pair of his soldiers, gave them a mild order in Bahasa, and waited as they lifted aside the matting to reveal a pocket cave, its mouth about five feet high and equally wide.

Curious, Zhiu approached the cave, bent over slightly, and leaned his head in for a closer look. The opening seemed to give into a space of some depth — in fact, he could not see to the back of the tunnel. Beetles and other insects crawled in the thick layer of guano covering the rocks beyond the cave mouth. He listened a moment, and heard the faint flutter of roosting bats.

Unusual spots indeed, he thought.

He straightened and faced his men.

"We'll bring the arms in there," he said, gesturing at the cave entrance. He paused, thought of the slippery bug-ridden coat of guano they would have to walk over. "And be careful where you step," he added.

Anna was sitting on the living room sofa, her legs tucked under her, when Kirsten came in from the guest room after having gotten off the phone.

"I've just spoken with the police in Singapore," she said. "I gave them my name, told them about the men that went after me and Max, told them where I'm staying.

They already seemed aware of what happened outside the hotel."

Anna gave her a look that said she'd expected as much.

"In a country where chewing gum's contraband and spitting on the street is a crime, a scuffle of that sort wouldn't go unnoticed," she said. "What did they want you to do?"

"They tried persuading me to return to the island and meet with an investigator, but I said I wouldn't. That I felt it was too dangerous to go back unescorted. When they realized I wouldn't budge, they said they'd have to arrange something with the police in Johor and would get back to me."

Anna nodded sympathetically. "How do you feel?"

Kirsten wondered how to reply. She hadn't been to her own home for almost a week, was hiding from men who had been trying to abduct her or worse, and was still waiting to hear from Max after having left several unreturned messages on his answering machine. All of which left her very frightened and confused.

Furthermore, she felt vaguely as if she'd betrayed him by calling the authorities after he had specifically told her to wait for him to contact her, and had tried giving her the name of someone else to reach if he didn't. But he'd never finished getting it out of his mouth — either that or she hadn't heard him clearly from inside the cab — and though she was guessing the person might be someone at UpLink. her sister and brother-in-law had advised her not to call there, insisting it wouldn't do until she had a clearer idea of what Max had been into. For all she knew, they'd repeated endlessly, the Americans had dragged her into some kind of dishonest business. And without evidence to the contrary, it had been impossible for her to dismiss that possibility without seeming unreasonable.

Which left her with Anna's question. How, then, would she describe her psychic and emotional state? How to express the incommunicable?

She looked at her sister from the entryway, thinking.

"I feel," she said at last, groping for words, "as if the sky is upside down and world is in the wrong place. The wrong place, you understand?"

Overwhelmed, Anna started raising her hand to her lips in a gesture of mute distress, but caught herself at the last moment and let it drop back onto her lap.

"I'm trying, Kirst," she said in a dry, scared voice. "Please believe, I'm trying my very best."

"Truly, I consider the orchid to be the embodiment of our Asian heritage," Fat B was saying. "Lasting yet delicate, its success, its flowering, dependant upon an exacting set of conditions."

"Is that so?" Commander Sian Po of the Singapore Police Force said.

"Truly, truly," Fat B said. "Nurtured in the rich soil of their evolution, orchids thrive in abundance, generation upon generation draping our hills, blanketing our heaths and gardens. Change what is essential to their natural state… go too far trying to cross cultures.. spoil the purity of their time-honored lineage… and they wane like homesick souls. And while you may call me eccentric, I have always held to the belief that their colorful blossoms are inhabited by the spirits of our ancestors."

"There is a widespread fancy that certain varieties may actually steal one's spirit, you know. That their sublime beauty, drawing its energy from the feminine principle, may entrance a man and capture his essence, drain his very yin.''

"No, no, I think that is ridiculous."

"Well, I do, too. For that matter, I think this is all a pile of shit, so let's drop it. You arranged this meeting. If you have something to say, say it."

Fat B glanced at him and nodded.

They were looking out over the rail of a walking bridge that spanned a koi pond in the orchid gardens on Mandai Road in the north of Singapore Island, admiring the darting fish and the silver-tinged purple brightness of the bamboo orchids planted near the pond.

"Do the names Max Blackburn or Kirsten Chu mean anything to you?" Fat B asked.

The commander shook his head. "Should they?"

Fat B hesitated. "There was a disturbance on Scotts Road last Friday evening. Surely you're aware of it."

The commander did not shift his gaze from the orchids. A short, heavy man with rather mashed-looking features, he had arrived here for their clandestine appointment sans badge and uniform, not wishing to be identified as a police officer, let alone one of high rank. It would, he knew, be very bad indeed if he were seen consorting with a disreputable character like Fat B.

"Scotts is Central… 4A' Division," he said. "Not my jurisdication."

Fat B found his brevity curious. He leaned forward with his elbows on the rail and gazed past the pond to where the flowers were quivering in a light breath of breeze, their glow in the copious sunshine surpassing even that of the hand-painted butterflies on his shirt.

"Your Geylang command encompasses thirteen neighborhood police posts and over three hundred officers," he said. "The incident to which I am referring involved a scuffle on the street in front of a large hotel. A very busy location. My information is that there were witnesses. Do you mean to tell me there were no reports? No departmental bulletins?"

The commander turned his head toward Fat B and gave him a phlegmatic look.

"Assuming there were," he said, "what connection do you have to the occurrence?"

"None, I assure you." Fat B shrugged. "Like yourself, I try not to stray beyond my own purview. But on occasion people ask me things, and I do my best to give them answers."

"And how generous are these people in their gratitude?"

"Very."

The commander inhaled, then let the air rush out his lips.

"Something odd did happen outside the Hyatt, and maybe inside as well," he said. "Exactly what, I'm not sure. But CID's involved."

"Criminal Investigation?"

"Yes. And more than one line element. Rumor has it that both the Special Investigation Section and Secret Societies Branch have their noses in this."

"Tell me everything that is known about the incident."

"There isn't much. Or if there is, the CID hotshots are keeping it to themselves." Sian Po shrugged. "I've heard a bystander gave us an anonymous call, and it was corroborated by another report. There was a confrontation at a taxi stand involving a quai lo, a woman, and some others. The woman rode off in a cab, and the white man stayed behind and is supposed to have been followed into the hotel lobby. We don't know what happened afterward, but it was all over by the time a patrol car arrived. Everyone involved seems to have vanished, and few bystanders admit to having seen anything. But that's the way it is."

"Nobody wants trouble, lah."

The commander nodded, and released another sigh.

"Even so," he said, "trouble comes."

They were silent a while. Fat B's eye caught a compressed medley of color flitting under the surface of the pond — a large rainbow koi. It darted into the shade of a water lily and stopped abruptly, its long body hovering in perfect stillness.

"Should Missing Persons reports be filed on either the quai lo or the Chu woman, I would very much appreciate being apprised of their sources," he said. "Also, my inquisitive friends would find any clues I could pass along about the woman's present whereabouts to be of special value."

Their eyes met.

"Your friends," the commander said. "What will they do if they locate her?"

"I don't ask."

The commander looked at him for a full minute without saying anything, then slowly nodded.

"I'll see what I can do," he said.

Fat B grinned with satisfaction. "And I'll make it worth your while."

The commander lingered on the rail another moment, then turned to leave. Fat B didn't move. He did not think Sian Po would be inclined to stroll from the garden in his presence.

The commander took two steps up the bridge and paused, motioning toward Fat B's shirt with his chin.

"Those butterflies are quite splendid," he said. "They are of the Graphium species, are they not?"

Fat B nodded.

"I've heard they survive by sucking the piss of higher animals from the ground," the commander said.

Fat B controlled his reaction.

"Thank you for sharing that with me," he said. "Outwardly we are very different types of men, you and I, but love and knowledge of nature is our bond."

The commander looked at him and grinned unpleasantly.

"The money helps," he said, and strode away.