by Lee Stone
‘I’ll miss you,’ Kate said, her voice thick and slow. ‘I’ll miss you when you move on.’
She stood up and took his glass, heading over the to kitchen to find more ice.
‘You are moving on, right?’ she asked over her shoulder as she went.
She slid open the cutlery draw and glanced down, ice running up her spine when she saw the gun she had borrowed from Sean at the Tiger Club. She reached in and ran her finger along the edge. It looked ugly and reassuring, nestled in with the usual contents of the drawer. It was cold to touch, smooth and strangely seductive.
‘I can’t stay,’ Lockhart said. ‘Moving on is what keeps me safe.’
His voice brought her back to reality, and she pulled her hand from the drawer and closed it noiselessly. She walked back to the sofa, handing Lockhart a glass and sitting down on the same sofa as him. She drew up her knees and tucked herself into a tight, comforting ball. For a moment he remembered how she had looked when he had found her in his beach hut in Kep, her legs drawn up in the same protective way, looking like a delicate wounded bird. Now, even with her Cambodian tan, it struck Lockhart that she looked worn and gray compared to the honey-kissed care-free girl in the photograph. The grief of losing her sister, the guilt of surviving, had drained a part of her soul from her. Lockhart hoped silently that she’d get it back.
He could see the words ‘don’t go’ forming on her lips. But he had already taken a risk in coming back to New York. Taken a risk to make sure she got home. Serious people had been hunting him down since his Ukrainian source had been killed, and although they would never expect him to turn back on himself, there was still a chance that blind luck would lead them to him if he didn’t keep moving forwards. But to stay any longer, to sleep in the same place for more than a night would be reckless. Dangerous for him, and for Kate. He could feel her watching him, weighing him up.
‘There’s room here,’ she said eventually. ‘If you wanted to stay?’
Slowly she stretched her legs out, casually brushing his knee with her toe. He pulled away. A tiny movement which she took for what it was: rejection. She drew her knees into her chest and gave him a reproachful look. Something damaged. Something complicated. Another reason to leave.
‘Trista?’ she asked, remembering what he had told her in Fischer’s house before they left Cambodia.
Lockhart nodded.
‘What was she? Your wife? Your girlfriend?’
Trista was a splinter just beneath his skin, unforgettable, and yet unreachable. There had been no closure, no goodbye, and no matter how many miles he traveled, her memory clung to him like a perfume on his clothes.
‘It’s complicated,’ Lockhart said. ‘We should be married by now.’
Kate’s eyes widened.
‘You missed your own wedding?’
‘Believe me,’ Lockhart said. ‘I didn’t have a choice.’
He tried pull his mind back from the past to focus on the present.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just… I should go.’
He figured he had done the right thing by Kate Braganza; he had watched her safely home. But now that job was done, the only thing keeping him in the room was curiosity. Something about her still didn’t stack up. She was still keeping something back. He had always known it, ever since he’d seen the dark line on her belly on the flight from Frankfurt. Why travel across the world so soon after having a baby? And where was the child, anyway? How many young women travel alone to Cambodia to meet their sister in a back end bar? And how tangled could Matilda have become in Ta Penh’s organization without Kate knowing something about it?
He had forced the questions to the back of his mind while they were in Kep: survival had been more important than curiosity. But now the reporter in him was awakening. Now, in the stillness of her apartment the questions all surfaced again, humming like a refrigerator in the quiet of the night. Kate saw the questions swimming through him, and he knew instantly she had mistaken them for something else.
‘Don’t go,’ she whispered.
He looked past her, not wanting to engage. His focused instead on the photograph of Kate on the beach and noticed something strange. In the top corner of the picture was a lens flare. The warm sun was glinting from something and refracting at the moment the shot was taken. Kate was wearing tiny studs. Three tiny diamonds studding her ear. He leaned closer to the photograph, studying it. Her hand was raised across her forehead, shielding her eyes from the sun. Along the side of the pinkie was a Sanskrit tattoo. Lockhart had traveled through Asia and guessed that it was a Buddhist prayer. He turned back and stared at Kate on the sofa. She’d tucked her legs up under herself and had wrapped an arm around her own waist. She was swilling the bourbon, and the lamplight was playing in the soft amber tones of the liquid. Her fine and slender fingers had no sign of a tattoo.
‘What is it?’ Kate asked.
Lockhart took stock for a moment before stepping over the point of no return.
‘They guy in the picture,’ he said. ‘What was his middle name?’
She faltered and spread her hands.
‘Charlie, I…’
‘Too slow,’ he said. ‘What car did he drive?’
‘Why are you…?’
‘Too slow. Where did you go on your first date?’
She looked scared now.
‘That’s an easy one,’ Lockhart told her. ‘And you don’t know. And you couldn’t remember the code to your own front door when we were trying to get out of the storm. And by the way, when you hammered on the door, the concierge let you in. He knew you. Knew your name. He knew you’d been on holiday. But you didn’t know him at all. You told him my name, but you didn’t tell me his.’
She shook her head slightly; a tiny and hopeless denial. She opened her mouth and spoke so quietly that a hoarse whisper caught in her throat. She took a slug of whiskey and swallowed it down as her shoulders began to heave with the effort of suppressing a sob. A first tear spilled down her cheek, and in her eyes Lockhart saw the fear and frustration of someone who had been caught lying but now desperately wanted to be believed.
‘You don’t have a tattoo on your index finger,’ he pressed. ‘And you don’t have your ears pierced. And you’re not Kate Braganza.’
It was like the storm had sent a lightning bolt through the window and struck them both mute. The air settled, and the woman in front of Lockhart looked petrified, lost for words.
‘No,’ she said eventually. ‘No, I’m not.’
36
The old subway station on 18th Street was damaged and broken down, just as Lim remembered it. Anything of value had been ripped from the walls years ago so that only a metal and stone carcass remained. The abandoned platforms were surrounded by crumbling brick and slapdash concrete. It took Lim five minutes to find the rusting iron door they had shown him on his first visit. It was heavy, and it complained as its arthritic hinges ground against one another as he wrenched it open. Once he was on the other side, Lim shouldered the metal door back into its frame and started down the worn concrete steps into the perpetual night.
The smell of rot and grease, ancient smoke and burned electrical cable, grew stronger as Lim descended. If the sweet perfume of the Cardamom Mountains was heaven, then this was surely hell. In the tunnels paint peeled in great swathes from the brick-arched ceilings, littering the dirt gray floors beneath. Decades of elaborate graffiti had spread across the walls like mold, and the floor was strewn with fallen bricks and charred wooden planks.
He was looking for The Rat. His real name was Veasna, but Lim thought the nickname suited him well. He did not know how Veasna had come to be called The Rat, but it had happened long before he had buried himself under New York City. He had been a tunnel dweller during the revolution, when Ta Penh had used him as a spy in Phnom Penh. And now he was a spy again, spying for Ta Penh on the men in New York.
Lim felt a distant rumbling and slowed his pace, stepping away from between the metal tracks an
d pushing himself against the wall. The station was abandoned, but the 4, 5, and 6 trains all rumbled through the tunnels, and for Lim there was no way of knowing whether he was on a live track. Soon the noise passed, disappearing further into the belly of the labyrinth. As the train’s dull glow receded, Lim saw a body moving in the other direction. A man passed him in and dissolved back into the blackness as quickly as he had materialized.
Lim could not suppress a sense of anticipation as he neared the place where he had last seen Veasna. He wondered how he might have been affected by such a long time underground. Lim’s eyesight was becoming more accustomed to the darkness, and he wondered how well Veasna might see after so long in the tunnels, and whether he could ever adjust to life on the surface again. Another face emerged from the gloom, this time wearing nothing but filthy underwear and a gas mask and held an axe in his right hand. Just like the other face, the man in the mask ignored Lim and was soon lost again in the darkness.
Two minutes later, Lim arrived at an intersection. Several brick arches connected several abandoned lines, and a pathway ran through the arches at right angles to the tracks. Eventually, it widened out into a cavernous opening some fifty yards from the track. At the edge of the opening was an old pink deck chair, frayed at the edges, with a plump brown cushion on the seat. The cushion moved as Lim approached, and something scuttled off into the darkness. Lim picked it up and dusted it off before replacing it on the deck chair and sitting down. He waited patiently, letting the still air settle around him.
‘Lim,’ a voice said eventually. ‘Hello.’
The voice was thin and reedy. The tone was calm; not quite disinterested, but not overtly excited either. Lim was impressed.
‘Hello,’ Lim said, and he watched as the man emerged from the shadows. Veasna had been a soldier, and a disciplined man, but as he stepped out from the dark Lim could see that he had allowed himself to go a little to seed. He had become pale and emaciated, and a tangle of grey-brown hair covered his jawline. His eyes bulged and his cheekbones stood out like razor blades tucked just under his translucent skin. His lips moved incessantly, preparing for an important proclamation that never quite arrived.
‘Do you remember me?’ Lim asked.
Veasna stared at him. His eyes gleamed as though they had somehow learned to capture every tiny sliver of light in the gloomy place. He said nothing for a moment, and Lim began to wonder if the endless night had corrupted his mind.
‘I remember,’ the Rat said. ‘How is the old man?’
‘Ta Penh is fine,’ Lim said. ‘But he has some concerns.’
Again, the Rat took his time answering. There was a stillness about him that Lim admired. A stillness that can only be taught through soldiering. Lim knew Veasna had the ability to wait. He had been waiting for many years.
‘I know about his concerns,’ the Rat said.
Lim nodded. ‘Of course you do.’
With that, Veasna turned and walked back into the gloom. The blackness folded around him the way the ocean consumes a drowning man as he sinks to the depths. Lim stood up from the deck chair and followed. As they walked further under the city, he noticed the walls becoming slick with oil and tar. Years of polluted dust was mixing with the unstoppable storm above. The Rat led and Lim followed, watching the blue sparks cracking through the air like lightning whenever a subway train trundled past.
‘What can you tell me?’ Lim asked as they walked.
‘The girl has the money,’ Veasna said. ‘And Jimmy is angry as hell.’
‘It’s not about the money,’ Lim told him. ‘There was… something else in the package.’
Veasna’s footsteps faltered, but then he picked up his pace and continued walking until they reached a widening in the tunnel where he stepped off the tracks and began kicking away at the black dust from the side of the rails. A round iron portal came into view, like the top of a buried submarine. The Rat turned a round handle and the sound of grinding metal echoed through the tunnel. He looked up at Lim, and for the first time he smiled.
‘Follow me,’ he said, and slipped into the hole and out of sight.
Lim went after him cautiously, lowering his legs through the portal and easing himself down. It was a tight squeeze, and he felt his hips crushing against the sides of the gap. Once he was through, he let himself drop into the darkness, landing almost immediately on the soft floor below. He heard the Rat moving around the place, and after a moment the room came to light. Once Lim’s eyes became accustomed to the glare, he saw that the room had originally been some kind of engineering trench, the width of the subway track and only a few feet long. It was cramped, and looked exactly like Veasna’s old place in the tunnels under Phnom Penh. It stretched far enough to accommodate a makeshift bed and a tall cupboard, all nailed together from scrap wood. Old clothes and mismatched rugs softened the edges of the place. Veasna had found a power source and had squirreled away a small microwave oven, a kettle, and a tiny television set. A single shelf was filled with Khmer books and amulets. Lim looked up to the black hole in the ceiling. It was a long journey back to the surface, and it was hard not to feel like the walls were closing in.
‘It’s good to see you, old friend,’ Lim said.
Veasna said nothing. His unblinking watery eyes watched Lim as he settled on the edge of the bed.
‘You have not been seduced by American opulence,’ Lim said as he looked around the room. ‘I look forward to telling Ta Penh that you have stayed loyal all these years.’
Veasna scowled and his sharp eyes glinted in the light from the exposed bulb.
‘Have you come to check up on me?’
‘No,’ Lim said. ‘I have come to ask for your help.’
Veasna turned away from Lim and filled a cheap white kettle with water from a plastic bottle.
‘Help with what?’ he said.
Lim cleared his throat.
‘You and I are opposite sides of the same coin,’ he began. ‘You know that. You operate in the shadows here in New York, and I do the same in Phnom Penh. You watch the consignments come and go, just as I take care of them back at home. The last consignment didn’t arrive. And that is why I’m here. To ask you if you saw it leave.’
The kettle clicked off with a snap like a trigger, and Veasna stood up.
‘You said there was more than money in the consignment,’ he said. ‘What has Ta Penh told you about that?’
‘Everything,’ Lim said. ‘Why else would he have sent me this far from home?’
Veasna turned and poured the tea without answering. He showed no hurry in completing the task. He had been this way for as long as Lim had known him. He would answer when he was ready, and not before.
‘Ta Penh has sent you to find the Smoke Child,’ he said eventually. ‘Am I right?’
‘Yes,’ Lim confirmed. ‘He wants it back.’
Lim kept his answer short because he was beginning to feel uneasy. The walls felt tight again, and the conversation was straying into a territory he never enjoyed. Khmer magic and ritual were bloodthirsty and unpredictable. The less he knew about it, the easier he slept.
‘The Smoke Child served him well in Kampuchea and kept him safe in the Mountains,’ Veasna said. ‘There are many dangers hiding in those trees, but the Smoke Child was watching over Ta Penh. So how come it ended up here in New York, do you think?’
Lim took a sip of his tea and looked at the Rat over the rim of his cup.
‘Expansion,’ the Rat said, answering his own question. ‘When Jayavarman made himself king, at the birth of the Khmer empire, our country spilled over our borders to seize power in much of Asia. Later, we ourselves were seized by the French. And which do you think was best for us? Seizing or being seized? Victory or defeat?’
The Rat stopped and sipped his tea, allowing his words to settle.
‘My point is this,’ he said after a moment. ‘If you do not expand, you will be expanded upon. You will be consumed by somebody else’s expansion. So when Jimmy re
turned from Paris, Ta Penh sent him to seize New York. And he sent with him the power that had kept his own empire strong for so many years. He sent the family protector. The Smoke Child.’
‘And now this world is conquered,’ Lim said. ‘Jimmy has sewn up New York. And Ta Penh wants the Smoke Child back. Did you know that?’
The Rat took a moment to weigh up the information.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I did not. Let me guess. It was in with the last shipment?’
Lim nodded gravely.
‘Exactly. It is missing. Ta Penh wants to know who took the shipment to the airport?’
Veasna could sense that what Lim was telling him was true. Something terrible had happened. Something terrible that he should have seen coming.
‘I can’t be sure who took the shipment,’ he said slowly.
Carefully.
Lim’s jaw set, and his fear of the tight space evaporated as quickly as his respect for the loyal soldier.
‘It’s your job to be sure,’ he said. ‘It’s your job to watch and listen.’
Lim thought about threatening Veasna, but he knew it wouldn’t work. Veasna was immune to such menacing. He was at home in his tunnel and no doubt he could fight better than anyone else in the dark.
‘I do not know where the shipment has gone,’ he repeated. ‘But consider this: Jimmy Penh has been sending money back for three years. There has never been a problem until now. And this month the system has failed. Why?’
Lim said nothing, his sharp eyes hooded in concentration.
‘Two things have changed,’ the Rat continued. ‘First, the consignment contained more that just cash this time, right?’
Lim nodded.
‘And second, Jimmy Penh cut me out of the loop this time.’
Lim looked up from his tea, intrigued.
‘I have always chosen the courier,’ Veasna continued. ‘But not this time.’
‘Who chose?’
‘Jimmy’s American. His name is Jake Leisler.’
‘I met him,’ Lim said. ‘He picked me up at JFK. What use would an American have for the Smoke Child?’
