Fearless ; The Smoke Child

by Lee Stone

  ‘The Albanian’s dead,’ he said, with something of a flourish.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Glinka asked, his mind casting around for a way to salvage the story. ‘How’d he die?’

  The shopkeeper shrugged.

  ‘Ask them in the café,’ he said.

  ‘They knew him?’

  ‘Ask the girl in the café,’ he said again, and he spread his palms to say he had spilt everything he knew.

  Glinka headed back into the rain. The wind was blowing straight down Williamsbridge Road, and he felt like he was swimming across a fast-flowing river as he crossed it. He headed between the two housing blocks, where the shopkeeper had pointed. Siberia was deserted. Glinka didn’t like it at all. He was the only one still out there, exposed and vulnerable. And there was no Albanian to protect him. Because the Albanian was dead. Glinka looked up from time to time as he walked, scanning the vicinity, but the rain hammered into his eyes and made it impossible for him to make out anything much at all.

  The walkway opened up onto another road with a cluster of run down shops on either side; the café nestled pretty much dead center. The place was doing a decent trade, with a few sodden customers reviving themselves in the warm. There was something old enough for Glinka to recognize playing on the radio as he waited for his coffee and he asked the barista if she knew the song was called. She told him it was a particular favorite of hers, and Glinka began to wonder whether all might not be lost. She was as wide as she was tall with a round face and knowing brown eyes and had the manner of a natural trusting woman who had learned to be cautious.

  ‘Do you know the Albanian?’ Glinka asked as she poured the flat white he’d ordered.

  ‘What Albanian?’

  She didn’t look up from the cup.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Glinka persisted. ‘I was just talking to a guy who said you’d know.’

  The barista shrugged and reached out for Glinka’s money.

  ‘I don’t know who told you that,’ she said. ‘By they should mind their business. And so should you, if you’ve got any sense.’

  She blew out as she pushed down the lid on Glinka’s cardboard cup and slid it across the counter. She spoke with a warm matriarchal hum, and Glinka felt more chastised than threatened by what she said.

  ‘Quicker you tell me, the quicker I’ll disappear,’ he offered.

  Her eyes flicked from him to the rest of her customers who were huddled in the back of the place like pirates returned from a cruel sea.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, taking so quietly that Glinka had to lean across the counter to hear her. ‘You shoot at enough muggers and rapists and druggies and pushers, one of them will turn around and shoot you back. And that’s what happened. And now he’s dead.’

  ‘They shot him?’ Glinka asked.

  The barista took a moment, they way people do when they can feel themselves slipping into a conversation they’d rather avoid.

  ‘Not exactly,’ she said.

  Glinka raised an eyebrow. She yielded.

  ‘He was on the sidewalk, right over there.’

  She pointed through the window to a spot just outside the café.

  ‘He was watching something across the street. I don’t know what, an altercation maybe or some deal going down, but he was watching it when a garbage truck hit the curb and flattened him.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Glinka said, which brought her up short enough that he noticed the cross on a delicate chain around her neck and he held up a hand and apologized.

  ‘I thought it was an accident,’ she said with a reproving scowl. ‘But do you know what they did?’

  Glinka shook his head and leant in as her voice dropped even further.

  ‘They picked him up off the floor and threw him into the back of the truck. Like garbage. They hit the button and crushed him up. And just like that he was gone.’

  ‘And everything went back to shit?’ Glinka offered.

  ‘You know it did,’ the barista said. ‘Every day I thanked the Lord for that guy, you know? A couple of people bitched about him being a vigilante, said he had no right to break the law. Small-minded, you ask me. And I’ll tell you something: If the police had come calling, I wouldn’t have given them a goddamned thing. I can be real busy making coffee, when I need to, if you know what I mean? End of the day, I made a lot more money when he was keeping the scum away, and a lot more of it stayed in my cash register without being creamed off by gangsters.’

  ‘Like Jimmy Penh’s guys?’ Glinka asked.

  Her friendly eyes narrowed, and he knew instantly he’d said too much.

  ‘What do you know about Jimmy Penh?’ she asked. ‘Are you a cop? Because if you are, I already told you, I didn’t see a thing.’

  ‘I’m a reporter,’ Glinka said. ‘I’m writing a feature about the Albanian guy.’

  She looked at him suspiciously, and then turned her back, slipping his note into the cash register and scraping the change from the drawer.

  ‘Listen,’ Glinka said. ‘You make coffee; I write stories. We’re both just trying to feed our kids. Am I right?’

  ‘You got kids, do you?’ she asked as she turned back around and handed him his change.

  ‘Sure.’

  Her scowl lifted a bit.

  ‘Well then, I understand why you’re asking the questions,’ she said. ‘But I’ve got kids too, so you’ll understand why I’ve got nothing more to tell you. I don’t know who he was or where he came from. I just know that one day he turned up, and things started getting better. He’s fixed things. That’s why I never charged him for his coffee.’

  Glinka looked down at the small pile of change she’d rested on the counter.

  ‘You sure as hell charged me for mine though.’

  ‘Like you said,’ she smiled, ‘we’ve all got kids to feed.’

  Glinka scooped up the change and thanked her, shouldering back out through the door and huddling over his coffee to protect it from the rain. It was about five seconds before he realized he had company. Two guys had followed him out of the café and were milling just behind them. One of them was on a mobile phone, and both had pulled their leather jackets above their heads for shelter. The taller of the two hunched against the wind to light a cigarette.

  ‘You’re a newsman, right?’ he asked, without turning around.

  Glinka sighed as the guy’s smoke washed over him.

  ‘That obvious huh?’ he asked, for the second time in an hour.

  ‘You’re brave, coming into Siberia on your own.’

  The wind, which was already fierce, ratcheted up another notch. Glinka was glad he had not shaved for two days, because the stubble offered his face some small protection.

  ‘Reporters don’t always find good stories by hanging around in the safest part of town, you know what I’m saying?’

  Under the shelter of his leather jacket, the man took a drag on his cigarette, studying Glinka as he sucked in the smoke.

  ‘Listen,’ Glinka said when the silence became ominous, ‘I’m not going to ask you who you are…’

  The guy let out a deep rich laugh that cut through the rain.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said, ‘because I’m not going to tell you.’

  ‘I’m writing about the Albanian guy who was out here playing Robocop for a while. Did you know him?’

  The guy took another drag.

  ‘Not really,’ he said, blowing more smoke. ‘But I know Jimmy Penh.’

  He dropped his cigarette, ground it into the floor, then without warning he stepped forward and punched Glinka hard in the stomach. Glinka was not used to physical violence, and he sank to his knees as much in shock as in physical pain. The second man, who was broad and muscular, stepped forward and wrapped his leather jacket around Glinka’s head tightly, so that the entire world went black.

  ‘I know that Jimmy doesn’t like questions.’

  Rough hands pushed Glinka down the stairs and through the stream of water that was running along the gutter. Gli
nka figured they must have walked across the spot where the barista had watched the truck smash into the Albanian. And now he too was being spirited off, which scared the hell out of him. He had been so determined to interview the Albanian without anyone stealing his story he had left only the most obscure reference to the meeting in his diary. In the darkness, he prayed for someone to come and help him. But deep down he knew that nobody would. This was Siberia, and the Albanian was gone. He fell twice over the rough ground, hitting his head. Each time, the men pulled him back to his feet and kept the leather jacket wrapped tightly around his face.

  They took him to a place nearby and put him in a room with a bare single bed tucked against one wall and not much room for anything else. They stripped him naked in case he tried to run, then they walked out of the room and closed the door quietly and left him to his thoughts. He stood stock still for a couple of minutes, every sound amplified as he strained to hear where they had gone. Waiting to see if they would come back. When they did not, he moved slowly onto the bed and drew himself up into the corner of the room. He pulled his knees to his chest and crossed his legs, covering his modestly as best he could. And slowly, a paralyzing reality dawned on him: he was beyond help, with no way of knowing what his captors would do to him next.

  When the woman had arrived to feed him, he had jumped almost out of his skin. If the men were dealing, then the woman was using. No question about that. She was wearing a chocolate brown Hustler crop top and purple underwear. Nothing else. And she wasn’t shy. There wasn’t much skin on her bones, and her teeth had seen better days. She had the look of a woman who was aging fast. She had paid no attention to the fact that he was naked either. Probably meth, Glinka figured. Not that he was an expert, but he’d watched Breaking Bad a few times, and she had that hollowed out look that people associate with a nasty addiction.

  First time she came in to Glinka’s room, she had given him a pop tart and a can of soda. Then, most recently, a carton of microwaved noodles. Glinka had tried to strike up a conversation with her, but she wasn’t in the mood to make much sense.

  ‘Where have they gone?’ he had asked. ‘Are they coming back?’

  For a moment she had been so impassive that he could not tell whether she had even understood what he had said. She left the pop tart and soda on top of the dresser and turned to leave.

  ‘I’m not a bad guy,’ Glinka said. ‘There’s no reason for me to stay here.’

  She stopped and looked at him, her big blue eyes twitching and blank. Glinka tried to imagine her in her prime, with a little more meat and a little more soul.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’m scared.’

  She turned back from the door, circling on one foot the way a catwalk model would do, and accentuated the swing of her slim hips and she moved back towards him. Glinka drew back into his corner to protect himself, suddenly aware of his nakedness. He felt like a flustered debutante, suddenly aware of his aging body. No tan. Wiry pepper-gray hair. No definition. No definition for a long while. It occurred to him he had abused his body as bad as the girl had abused hers. The only difference was that it had taken him two decades longer, and he had chosen neglect over recklessness.

  Regardless, she climbed onto the bed and crawled towards him on all fours. She made a grotesque seductress. Up close her teeth were wrecked, and she had tried to compensate with bright heavy lip gloss. Her skin was grey-white under geisha blusher. Her eyes were somewhere else. When she came close, he smelled strong coffee of her breath. She ran a finger along his thigh. It felt like a spider crawling across his skin. He was frozen with fear. What if the men walked in now? Who was she to them? What if they flew into a rage? Equally, what if he rejected her? What would she do then? She seemed deranged enough already. Glinka shrunk back further into his corner, pushing his skin against the cold wall.

  30

  There were three hundred and eighteen people on board the Boeing 777 as it crossed through the air above the Arabian Sea. Charlie Lockhart and Kate Braganza were among the two hundred and eighty souls crammed into Coral class at the back of the airplane. Twenty business passengers half-filled the Pearl cabin. The rest of the manifest comprised flight crew and attendants, and a single passenger in the first class Diamond cabin. He was an unusual first class flyer. Two of the crew were assigned to look after his every need, but he insisted there was nothing he wanted. He waved away the food menus. He took no solace in the Islamic prayers that appeared on his flat screen TV before take off, nor any great comfort from the wide leather chairs.

  Lim did not fly first class for the luxurious surroundings, but for the privacy the cabin afforded him. After all, the courier was a slippery one. She had come back from the dead, according to the rumors in Kep. She had even evaded Ta Penh, spirited away from Kampot Jail right from the old man’s grasp. He had returned from the town bruised and spitting and bathed in blood. Even now, she had almost slipped through immigration without Ta Penh’s people spotting her. It had nearly worked, except for a vigilant guard who had wanted to ingratiate himself with the old regime.

  Lim was equally wary of the woman’s companion; the man who he had seen disappearing into the alleyway in Kep, emerging moments later while Rith and Chhan lay dying in the darkness. Now he was helping the woman, which meant Lim would have to deal with him. Ta Penh wanted him dead, along with the girl. But more than anything, Ta Penh wanted the box.

  Lim knew what the box looked like. Lim had seen it in pride of place when he occasionally visited the old man. Protecting the empire. It was made of dark teak and carved ornately with a pattern of interwoven flowers and vines from the Cardamom Mountains. At one time, the box had been highly polished, but in recent years Lim had noticed scratches and gouges across its surface. It bore the scars of the revolution, just like they all did. Lim had opened the box only once, and only for a second. It was expertly made, and the hinged lid had sucked like a vacuum as he pulled it apart. Inside, the wood was rough and unfinished compared to the intricately carved exterior. The black cotton wrappings inside the box were exactly as Ta Penh had described them. Lim knew what they contained. He pulled the cotton back just far enough to see the golden skin and felt the hairs on his neck stand up. It was old magic. Powerful magic. Once he had seen it, Lim had tucked the black cotton shroud back as he had found it and carefully closed the wooden lid.

  Four years ago, when Jimmy Penh left Paris for New York, Ta Penh decided that the box would be more useful protection for his son’s blossoming new American enterprise. So Lim himself had been sent to New York and to meet with Jimmy, delivering the box and its contents before returning to Phnom Penh. Now the woman had been chosen to return the box, and it was the woman had betrayed them. She was an American, and all Americans were avaricious. They coveted land and power and above all money. She could not understand what the box contained, but Lim’s guess was she had coveted it none the less, because the fact they had asked her to take it implied it was of considerable value. So he would watch her carefully from the shadows until she led him to the things she had stolen. He would arrive unseen. He would find the box. And he would kill the woman who had stolen it.

  31

  The 777 did not land at JFK airport on the first attempt. The wind caught it as the wheels hit the tarmac, and it lurched violently to the one side. The pilot aborted and pulled the plane sharply back into the air; the airframe juddering with the strain. Within a few short seconds, they were back into the clouds, and the view from Lim’s window was swallowed up by the thick gray soup. Lightning split the afternoon sky as the airplane descended for a second time. Once it was low enough for the view to return to Lim’s window, he saw the New Jersey Bight brooding and churning in battleship gray below them. The pilot joined the final approach over Long Beach, huge breakers tearing at the dunes and the boardwalk below. Two buildings were on fire beyond the beach, and black smoke billowed sideways across the neighborhood in the vicious wind.

  As they descended, Lim caught sight of his own
face reflected in the glass. He realized he looked troubled, and he corrected his features to better conceal his emotions. The truth was, he felt unsettled. The aborted landing was another unusual event to add to the storm and lighting, the broiling sea, and buildings burning in New York City. Was it a coincidence that he was being greeted by turmoil, after everything that had happened in Cambodia? The deaths of Rith and Chhan? Ta Penh’s decision to leave the safety of the mountains and break into Kampot Jail? The woman who had come back from the dead? All of it was disordered and chaotic, just like it had been since the carved box went missing.

  The pilot landed the plane on the second attempt, huge sprays of water spreading either side of its fourteen giant tires as it aquaplaned along the surface. Eventually it slowed down and taxied to the terminal. They whisked Lim through immigration like a rock star and emerged into the main building long before the woman he was watching. The terminal was cavernous, its architecture stripped back and its mechanics exposed. Bare white columns soared towards the huge steel skeleton roof while an incessant churn of colors and cultures milled across the polished floor below.

  Lim slunk into a Starbucks on the mezzanine and grabbed a table that looked down at the crowds spilling out of the arrivals hall. It was a full twenty minutes before the courier and her friend emerged. Lim watched them wander through the crowds. She had changed into jeans and a pair of western heels. She was pulling the suitcase that Chhan had spotted when she arrived in Phnom Penh. The suitcase Rith had searched through at The Happy. The suitcase where the box should have been, but wasn’t.

  The two of them looked relaxed, if a little punch drunk from the long flight in economy. Lim watched them sweeping along with the crowd and was about to set down his coffee and go after them when the woman touched the man’s arm and they both slowed down. She pointed, and Lim watched them head for the restrooms. Lim sat back down again, picked up his coffee, and nursed it between his hands. He took a sip of coffee and waited. But not for long. The woman re-emerged after a few seconds and looked around furtively. Lim set down his cup and leaned forward, intrigued. As he watched, the woman began to move quickly across the concourse, cutting through the crowds of passengers and heading for a set of black metal lockers on the other side of the room.