The Fear Artist

25

Around six that morning, the rain breaks, and small, ragged patches of blue open up and glide slowly from south to north as though they’re the clouds and the gray is the sky. Low in the west, the horizon has the dull metallic shine of pewter. To the east Rafferty can see a dark, vertical curtain of rain.

He’s spent an anxious and mostly sleepless night. He seems to have sand beneath his eyelids and cotton wrapped around his brain; thoughts come slowly and shapelessly, and he has to force them to hold still while he examines them for usefulness. His center of gravity has risen uneasily to the region of his lungs and his heart, forcing him to sit low in the backseat of the cab with his knees jammed against the back of the driver’s seat.

“We’re doing this in order of availability, not importance,” he says to Ming Li, mostly to see whether he can compose the sentence out loud. He looks at the list in his hand and then at his watch-7:10. He sighs yet again and dials Arthit.

“There you are,” Arthit says. He sounds relieved.

“Here I am,” Rafferty says.

“To cut to the chase, the drug people have a line into the airlines that fly here from Kuala Lumpur,” Arthit says. “Your Mr. Bland, Edward Bland-”

“Eddie,” Rafferty says.

“Ah. Well, the ticket says Edward.”

“What ticket?”

“The one he bought last night. To Bangkok. This afternoon.”

Rafferty makes a writing pantomime in Ming Li’s direction, and she ransacks her bag.

“What time? What flight number? Which airport?”

“Wait. Okay, here we are. Flight 21, arriving at three-twenty P.M. at Suvarnabhumi, which is a good thing since the airport at Don Mueang is flooded out.”

Rafferty repeats the flight information as Ming Li jots it down. Into the phone he says, “Can you have someone there?”

“I could have Kosit call in sick.”

“I think it would be worth it. Bland’s coming either to blow something up or to finalize the plan to blow something up.”

“I’ll get him on it. Anything else?”

“Yes. Do you remember what channel shot the tape when the guy was killed? By the way, his name was Billie Joe Sellers.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was right when I said all this has to do with Vietnam. I found someone who knew him.”

Arthit says, “He was USA, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay. It was Channel Seven.”

“Could you call the news department and go all official and find out who tipped them to send the crew?”

Arthit says, “I’ve been wondering about that myself.”

Poke says good-bye and dials another number. “Vladimir. Get up now. Get Janos up, too.”

“MR.… MR. Rafferty?” Andrew’s hair is wet and slicked back, and his face is shining with soap and water. His school clothes are honor-student immaculate, and when he opened the door, he’d had the penny-bright Oh, boy, it’s morning! look that only children can manage, but it changes to dread the instant he sees Rafferty’s face. He glances at Ming Li, but then his eyes jerk back to Rafferty’s. “Has anything happened-” His voice breaks, and he licks his lips. “Is … is Miaow okay?”

“Anh Duong,” a male voice says, a no-nonsense voice with extra starch. Its owner asks a question in Vietnamese.

“It’s … ummm,” Andrew calls in English, and immediately lowers his voice and says, through his teeth, “Miaow?”

“She’s fine,” Rafferty says, and the man snaps his question again, in a tone that suggests long familiarity with command.

“It’s Mr. Rafferty,” Andrew says, a bit wildly. “Miaow’s … you know. And … and a lady.”

Ming Li says, “A lady?” and the door is pulled the rest of the way open.

The man who stands there isn’t much taller than Ming Li, but he seems to have a very high density. His face is almost square, wide-cheekboned and sharp-jawed, with small, hard black eyes and a mouth that pulls down, drum-tight, at the corners. He wears a white shirt and a dark, small-patterned tie, tightly knotted, over very fine navy blue slacks. His feet are in black socks. “Andrew,” he says in English. “Finish your breakfast.”

Andrew is gone so fast that Rafferty can barely see him move.

“And you are?” Andrew’s father is looking at Ming Li.

“I’m Miaow’s aunt,” Ming Li says. “Kind of.”

“I am Nguyen.” No name, no title. He steps back to allow them in, glancing down at a glittering steel watch as they pass. “I have coffee if you want some.”

Poke says, “Thank you. Have you got fifteen minutes?”

Nguyen says, “Does this concern my son and your daughter?”

“I wish it did.”

“Really,” Nguyen says. “Please go left, into the living room.”

“Can I help with the coffee?” Ming Li asks.

“No, Auntie, you cannot. Just go sit with your … whatever Mr. Rafferty is to you.”

“My half brother.”

“Yes, of course.” He shakes his head. “I’ll be back in a moment. And please. Speak softly. My wife is in bed with a migraine.”

Ming Li looks over at Poke as Nguyen turns abruptly. She fills her cheeks with air and lets it escape slowly between her lips. “Poor kid,” she whispers.

As she and Poke turn the corner from the hallway into the living room, she says, “Sheesh.” The room is larger than Rafferty’s entire apartment. But despite the sweep of space and the floor-to-ceiling windows, opening onto an expanse of gray sky and glinting buildings, the room feels rigid and cold. Rafferty has a sense that things he can’t see are whispering in corners. He instinctively dislikes the pale blue upholstery and the spotless white carpet, the permanent bouquets of silk flowers dead center on the dark, heavy tables. The whole place cries out for someone to come in and mess it up, and the reason for Miaow’s lie about Rose’s parents becomes even clearer.

“I’m not clean enough to sit down,” Ming Li whispers, her eyes on a sky-blue sofa. Along the longest wall, just a few feet from the windows, is a round table with three blue-silk-covered chairs pulled up to it and a fourth at a precise forty-five-degree angle. On the table in front of the angled chair are several newspapers, folded and stacked military straight. Rafferty lifts his eyebrows at the table, and Ming Li tracks him across the soft carpets to it. They sit, just as Andrew takes a speedy diagonal from what Rafferty supposes is the kitchen, heading for the entrance hall. His head is down, and he doesn’t look at them. They hear the outside door close, presumably behind him.

Five or six minutes drag past. Rafferty is tapping his foot and looking at his watch when Nguyen comes in with a teak tray in his hands. He’s put on his suit coat and buttoned it, a gesture that increases the distance between them. Ming Li scoots back in her chair to give him access to the table, and he puts the tray in its center. It contains a carafe, two cup-and-saucer sets in a thin, filigreed china with tiny blue flowers on it, and cream and sugar in matching containers. Nguyen pours for each of them, indicates the cream and sugar with his left hand, and sits, undoing the lower button on his suit coat as he does so.

The three of them face one another for a moment, and then Nguyen inclines his head and lifts his eyebrows. Ming Li spoons sugar into her coffee as Rafferty jumps in.

“Andrew says you have something to do with the Vietnamese diplomatic corps here.”

Nguyen nods once, as though to say Go ahead without necessarily acknowledging the fact.

Rafferty says, “Well, is that right? There’s no point in my wasting everyone’s time.”

Nguyen crosses his legs. “My son, Anh Duong-or Andrew, as he prefers-is an honest boy. As to whether you’re wasting my time, I’d need to know more to decide on that.”

“All right. Well, to come to the point, would you be interested in learning that someone who committed an atrocity against Vietnamese citizens, noncombatants, during the war-more than one atrocity, probably, but one I can absolutely prove-is here in Bangkok?”

Nguyen starts to speak, but Poke cuts him off with a lifted hand.

“And if you wouldn’t be interested in that, can you send me to someone who would?”

Nguyen says, “The person is American?”

“Yes.”

Nguyen looks out the window. “There have been a lot of Americans.” His English is perfect, if a bit prim. “There has been a lot of war. We are the only country ever to defeat America, China, and France. If we spent our time thinking about past wars, we would lack the energy to meet the needs of the present.”

“On September seventeenth, 1975,” Rafferty says, biting down on the words, “in the middle of the rainy season, two American soldiers and a CIA adviser, plus four Vietnamese troopers, entered a small village in the Delta, not far from Ninh Kieu. There were only two men living in the village then, both in their late sixties. Everyone else was either a woman or a child. By the time the squad left, five or six hours later, everyone in the village was dead. They forced everyone into a hut and blew it up.”

Nguyen continues to look out at Bangkok.

“They were herded into the hut like cattle,” Rafferty says. “Before the explosives went, off the people in the hut prayed to Buddha and Jesus.”

“So, obviously,” Nguyen says, “if you know that, not everyone died.”

“They also killed three boys,” Ming Li says. Her cheekbones are flushed with color. “They shot them point-blank through the forehead. They cut an ear off one of them. They were children.”

“Yes,” Nguyen says colorlessly. “I can see how that might affect you more than the deaths of the adults.”

Ming Li puts her cup down noisily and stands up. To Rafferty she says, “Come on.”

“Please,” Nguyen says. “Sit. More coffee?”

Rafferty inclines his head toward Ming Li’s chair, and after a moment she sits and says, “No.”

Rafferty says, “No, thank you.”

Ming Li’s mouth tightens, but she says, “No, thank you.”

Nguyen turns away from the window to face them and stretches his legs out in front of him, crossing one sock-clad ankle over the other. He sits back in his chair an inch or two, unbuttons his jacket the rest of the way, and studies Ming Li long enough to make her fidget. “You’re what-sixteen?”

“Eighteen,” Ming Li says.

“I think not.”

Ming Li shrugs and dips her index finger into her coffee and puts the finger in her mouth. It’s a tiny insult.

With his eyes still on her, Nguyen says, “Does my son have that?”

“Have what?” Rafferty asks.

“I am not an entirely unintimidating man,” Nguyen says. “Not many people have stood up to walk out of the room during a conversation with me. Telling me, in essence, to go fuck myself. You know my son, apparently. Would he do that?”

“Would he do what? Be brave? Rude? Impulsive?”

Nguyen looks down at his tie and straightens it a tiny amount. Without looking up at them, he says, “Unconventional.”

Rafferty says, “I don’t know. There are things we can’t know about people until the time comes and they either have what’s necessary or they don’t.”

“It’s a terrible thing to be a father,” Nguyen says. “There are so many ways to do it wrong.” He glances again at Ming Li. “So yes, the murder of children does affect me.”

“He’s a good kid,” Rafferty says, surprising himself. “I love my daughter more than life itself, and I’m glad she chose Andrew.”

Nguyen gives him a quarter-inch nod. “Thank you. But I think he chose her.”

“I suppose that’s possible,” Rafferty says, “but I doubt it.”

“I’ve been unhappy about it, to tell you the truth. Miaow is … perhaps too interesting. And not Vietnamese, obviously. And her family situation, if you’ll excuse my saying so, is irregular.”

“But it’s solid,” Rafferty says.

“And this is why it’s so difficult to be a father,” Nguyen says, as though Poke hasn’t spoken. “On the one hand, I want my son to obey me. It’s his filial duty. On the other hand, I’m secretly pleased when he behaves in a way that, as I said before, essentially tells me to go fuck myself. I worry about him being too docile. The world wipes itself on docile people.”

“He dyed his hair to match hers,” Rafferty says. “I’ll bet he didn’t ask permission.”

Nguyen almost smiles. “I wondered where the color came from.”

“It’s Miaow’s way of trying to be different.”

“Actually,” Nguyen says, and this time he lets the smile all the way out, “I don’t think that being different is going to be one of life’s problems for your daughter.”

“I don’t mean different from other people,” Rafferty says. “She’s got that aced. I mean different from herself, different from who she sees herself to be.”

Nguyen closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them again. “Of course.”

“This is all really sweet,” Ming Li says, “but we’ve sort of got an agenda?”

Nguyen looks at her again, leaning forward slightly as though to see her better. “You’re … what, little Auntie?” he asks. “Half Vietnamese?”

“Half Chinese, half American. Poke’s part Filipino. We share a father. What else do you want to know?”

“If you grew up in America,” Nguyen says, “your attitude is typical. If you grew up in China, you must know that you’re being extremely rude.”

Ming Li sits up and puts her hands in her lap and inclines her head. “I’m sorry.”

“On the other hand,” Nguyen says, “I admire you for it. But still, a conversation must be allowed to shape itself, to allow each of us to discover whom we’re talking to. Don’t you agree?”

“You’re completely right. I forgot myself.”

“Well, we’re past that now. Who were the survivors?”

“Two women and three children,” Rafferty says.

“How did they escape?”

“An American soldier got them out.”

“A white knight,” Nguyen says. “Or perhaps a black one. It’s a shame there weren’t more of them.” He looks down at his legs, uncrosses his ankles, and recrosses them the other way, with the left on top. “This was a terrible crime, but it happened decades ago. In wartime. Even if there’s no legal statute of limitations on war crimes, there’s an emotional limit. I have to tell you that I don’t know whom you should talk to. Vietnam is a different country than it was in the 1970s. And, as you may know, the snatch-and-snuff teams, as your soldiers called them, were partly an imitation of tactics used by the army of North Vietnam. Neither side had a monopoly on terrorism.”

“Well,” Rafferty says, “that’s a very even-minded attitude.”

“The heat of passion has cooled,” Nguyen says.

“Let’s see if we can’t strike a match,” Rafferty says. “About a week and a half ago, one of the survivors was murdered in the United States.”

Nguyen lifts his eyebrows. In a face as controlled as his, it looks to Rafferty like a tectonic shift.

“By the same man,” Rafferty continues. “Or, rather, by people working for him.”

“Can you prove that?”

“I can make an excellent case.”

“Was she still a citizen of Vietnam?”

“I don’t know. But her sister and her sister’s daughter are. And the two children who got away. And this man is after them, too. Now, today. Here, in Thailand.”

Nguyen fingers the knot in his tie, and Rafferty is certain he has no idea he’s doing it. His eyes are on his feet but focused about halfway down, on something only he can see. “And what do you want from me, Mr. Rafferty?”

“I may lose this fight. If I do, I just want to know that somebody else is going to kill him.”

“You must want it very badly.”

Rafferty says, “I do.”

“When I saw you at the door,” Nguyen says, “my first impulse was to make you wait for coffee while I called the police.”

“Yeah, I was getting a little antsy out here.”

“It would have been difficult for me to explain to Anh Duong why I turned Miaow’s father over to the police.”

“It’s not exactly the police.”

“No, it isn’t. And the implication of that-of the people who are looking for you-is that you’ve somehow brushed up against the War on Terror.”

“That’s the implication.”

“And then you talk to me about someone who was involved in the Phoenix Program. I’m assuming that what happened in that village was the Phoenix Program.”

“It was.”

“This is freshly interesting, since the Phoenix Program is one of the blueprints for the War on Terror.”

“Something done badly is worth doing badly twice. An American saying.”

“The man in the village is the man who’s after you?”

“He is.”

“I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for that, but I think I’ll dispense with it and go with my conviction that you’re in the right.” He looks at Ming Li. “Which is, in turn, based on the way you’ve presented yourselves-both of you-during this conversation. Instead of talking to my colleagues about you, I’ll focus on the recent murder of a current or former citizen of Vietnam and a present-day threat posed to other Vietnamese citizens, living here in Thailand. By a man who also happens to be a war criminal.” He shifts his weight onto one hip, reaches behind him, and pulls out a slender black wallet, which he opens to reveal a notepad and a thin gold pen. He removes the pen, clicks the point into position, and says, “Name?”

Rafferty says, “Murphy. Haskell Murphy.”

Nguyen puts the pen back without writing anything. He says, “Well, of course.”