by Alisa Smith
“There’s nothing left anyone can do to me.”
“What happened?” I whispered. I traced my finger on his gaunt cheek, felt the dint of the bullet scar.
He took my hand and gently removed it from his face, a more stinging rebuke than any anger he might show. “One of those miracles of war. I got shot through the head, clean, and it only took out my back molars. Didn’t need them anyways. The Japs only fed us a cup of rice a day. Once we finished building the railroad, fall of forty-three, they moved my camp into Siam, and we repaired the line after Allied bombings. I got pretty sick. Beriberi, dysentery, typhus, and malaria, but at least it took me off the work crew sometimes. The British found my camp about a month after the Japanese surrender and put me in their hospital.”
It was like he was talking about someone else, someone he didn’t much interest himself in. I could hardly imagine the horror of what he’d been through. If what had been between us was love, I would have sat at Link’s side, holding his hand, waiting for the healing to come, forever if need be. However, he clearly did not want me to do that. I could hardly bear his indifference, but I would have to learn to accept it. I still owed him a debt.
“Is there any way I can help you now?” I asked.
“Talk to Bill. He’ll tell you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
JANUARY 25, 1946—NOON
BILL HAD INSISTED that I stay with him in the library, which I found strange because he wasn’t speaking to me at all. He sat in his green velvet armchair, for once reading one of the leather-tooled books from the library’s original collection: Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. I remembered it from our bookshelves when I was a boy. My father had liked to read it, as instruction for cutthroat business practices, I supposed. Later I made my way through those shelves when I was a lonely teenager, trying to understand the man who had abandoned us. I never did.
“Remember you said to me the other day, ‘Know thine enemy’?” I finally said to Bill. “It’s from that book you’re reading. Not the Bible.”
“What do you know. You’re right,” he said, looking at the cover and returning to his reading. Had he just brought me here for the pleasure of ignoring me?
I stood up and examined the aspidistra by the window, which looked droopy. I liked looking after plants. I remembered I was dusting my favourite agave when Bill came to my office in Seattle back in the day and first offered me work with his gang, fixing his taxes. I pressed my finger in the soil and it was bone dry. “I’m going to water the plant.”
“Not now, By God. It’ll keep.”
I stared at the clock and wondered at how time crawled. After a while I decided the hands weren’t actually moving. It must need winding. No matter how impatient you are, at least one minute goes by, even when it feels like ten.
Then Lena burst through the doors in a rage. She stood there like Joan of Arc with her hands on her hips. No wonder Bill needed to prepare himself with that book.
“What have you got Link into?” she asked.
“The question is, what have you got him into? Or really, let’s lay this on the proper doorstep.” He calmly put a bookmark in at his place, closed the book, and laid The Art of War on the table near his hand. “What’s Miss Maggie got him into?”
That seemed to take the air right out of her. “Miss Maggie?”
“Yeah.”
Her lips formed into silent words that I took to be, Oh God. Lena looked hesitantly to where I was sitting in the corner. “Does he know about her?”
“Nope. But he might as well. He’s my associate in all my undertakings. This is my current undertaking.”
Lena seemed upset and nervous, and I got up to leave. “You two can hash this out.”
“Sit you down, By God.” His voice bore no argument and I sat. I hated witnessing their fights in the old days. If he tried to hit her again, goddamn it, nothing would hold me back from defending her.
She had gathered her strength up, her posture ramrod straight as she advanced toward him with her hands clenched into fists. “You’re lying.”
“Don’t you remember, I never lie?” He laid a hand on his heart. And it was true, when I thought of it, he never had, although he’d been known to keep me in the dark a good long while. He was like a river at night, its course unseen. Deep and dangerous. You had to be a damn good swimmer.
They stared each other down, but it was Lena who looked away.
“By God, will you please help Lena to a chair? I think she would be more comfortable sitting while we wait.”
“Wait for what?” I asked, but he didn’t answer.
Lena did seem unsteady on her feet so I did as Bill asked. Like a maître d’ at a fine restaurant, I pushed the chair in for Lena while she sat. Meanwhile Bill went to the library door and whispered something to a person outside. I saw the flash of a pink turban, and was irritated to think that Dass must know things that I didn’t.
Minutes passed, the silence not even relieved by the ticking of the clock, long since run down. The aspidistra yearned for water. Then the old phone in the hall jangled. The three of us turned our heads as one toward the harsh ringing outside the door.
“It’s for you, Lena,” Bill said.
Like a sleepwalker she headed toward the sound, and disappeared into the dark of the corridor. The ringing stopped.
“Can I water the plant now?” I asked.
“Not if you got to leave the room,” Bill said.
I sighed. He was not a nurturing personality. I fidgeted with a paperweight on the table, until I realized it was a scorpion encased in the glass and nearly dropped it. “This is a dreadful artifact.”
“I don’t pretend to understand the mind of the man who last owned this place, but I kind of like that thing. Better than the porcelains.”
This banter was just a way to pass the time until Lena returned. I could sense that Bill wasn’t really listening, and all his energy was focused on the door that Lena would walk through. Unless this strange telephone call made her run for the hills. I hoped one of them would explain what was going on.
Finally, she returned, sat on the velvet chair, and crossed her slender hands in her lap. She looked like someone at a funeral.
“So?” Bill asked. “What did Miss Maggie say?”
“That I should follow the orders of William Yardley.”
“By God, could you confirm that I’m William Yardley?” Bill said.
“Yes.”
“That’s a stupid alias,” she said. I was glad this backtalk seemed to shake her a little from her daze.
He smiled. “Made Miss Maggie madder than a hornet. That’s why I picked it.”
“Could someone please tell me who Miss Maggie is?” I said. “Everybody else seems to know.”
“I’ll go first,” Bill said. “Lena is used to keeping everything clammed up in her line of work. Remember how I told you that I had a benefactor that got me out of jail?”
“Yes.”
“That was Miss Maggie.”
“So you told her everything,” Lena said. “That’s how she got her hooks into me.”
“Frankly, I don’t know what I said in my ravings when she dried me out. But blame yourself. You’re the one that led her straight to me when you visited the jail.”
She groaned with rage. “You were threatening to blackmail me!”
“You didn’t have to visit me in person.”
“Bloody hell, I wish I’d never met you,” she said, and jerked her head away to look at the point in the room furthest from him.
“You got to take responsibility for your past,” he said, walking toward Lena. She cringed and he halted, but he kept up his jocular tone. “Like I have. If you think rational-like, you’ll see it worked out for the best. You got a fancy secret service job. Isn’t that something?”
When she spoke, it was to the far corner. “Yes, my work is important to me. I made it to second-in-command of my decryption unit. But because of you blabbing about my past, Miss Maggie ca
n throw me in jail whenever she wants.”
“Lena, don’t you get it? She never will. She recruited you because you were a crook. That’s Miss Maggie’s game. The other spymasters are building their units out of their Harvard pals. Nancy boys. That’s fine if you want gossip from an ambassador, but you want an operation done? They don’t know their ass from an assassin! You want to steal something, blow something up? The skills you need belong to a crook. I got to credit Miss Maggie with being a visionary.”
Lena stood up and walked over to the shelves, where she kept her back turned as she made a show of studying the titles. “These are not your books,” she said.
“I own them.”
She pulled one down. “Not the same thing. I bet you’ve never read Shakespeare.”
Bill closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Lena, sit you down. We have work to do.”
She remained standing, the ceiling fan ruffling her hair. She wouldn’t look at Bill. It was high noon in Bangkok, and even the birds outside had gone quiet. I was glad of the reprieve. The birds of this land were unusually sinister and cold-hearted. Back home, all the innocent barred owl asked was, “Who cooks for you?” I missed the simple days at my saloon in Sequim. When Link was in the mountains of Assam, he told me, he heard the constant cry of “brainfever!” from birds in the trees. It had haunted him. When he got malaria, that was all he heard running through his burning mind. He later found out from Dass it was a common hawk-cuckoo, making up for its dull brown appearance with its startling message. Dass had also told him that the Bengalese thought the same bird said, “My eyes are gone,” while in the Hindi tongue they argued it was, “Where’s my love?” Maybe all those messages were the same thing.
“I’m not really AWOL, am I?” Lena said.
“Miss Maggie sees all and knows all,” Bill said. “You’re here with her blessing. She knows what a great team we used to be.”
“Why didn’t she just transfer me to Bangkok?”
“This is a very deep operation. I don’t believe she’s authorized for it.”
“Oh God. What do I have to do?”
I didn’t want Lena to be unhappy, but I couldn’t help feeling excited about the idea of us all working together again. Surely Bill had a place for me in all this. He always did.
“The Harvard men have the President’s ear,” Bill said, evading her question. “Miss Maggie’s networks could get axed. But it’s not for Miss Maggie that I’m concerned. You understand the fallout if she’s cut, honeylamb?”
“Don’t call me that.”
I gave her a sympathetic smile, to no effect. She was staring at the pattern in the Persian carpet.
“We’d no longer be protected by her, and we could be called to account for our crimes. That would mean jail for you, death row for me. So the Harvard men got to fail. To be particular, Knowlton Gaige’s unit. He has something planned here in Bangkok that’s part of a bigger strategy against the Commies. It boggles the mind.”
At this Lena finally looked at Bill. “He’s using Nazis. Here?”
Bill nodded. “Gaige will do anything to stop Siam from electing a Communist government. Siam has always been a leader in the Far East. If they vote red, other countries would follow.”
“This man would really kill a king?” I asked.
“Some piss-pot crown is just a chess piece to him. After the war, killing is easy. When it’s the leader, you win faster.” Bill strolled over to the window and absently picked some leaves from the aspidistra. I wanted to say, Hold on, what did that plant ever do to you? but Bill was on a roll. He explained that Prime Minister Pridi, a war hero hand-chosen by the king, had rallied an influential group of Communists around him. The peasants and factory workers were on board. They were only waiting for King Ananda to approve the new constitution and the Communists would seek an official majority in Parliament. The Russians were delighted and the Americans, apparently, alarmed. Gaige’s mission—his obsession, really—was to keep the Communists from gaining power.
King Ananda’s brother, next in line for the throne, did not have these same ideals. He would not ratify the new constitution and the Communists would be outlawed again. If an assassination was required, so be it.
“So when we break into the palace, we really aren’t stealing that Emerald Buddha,” I said, and Bill laughed.
“I wish. That would have been more fun,” he said. “This is all politics. What a pain.”
The US government openly supported the anti-Communist Chinese Nationalist Army, he continued. Meanwhile, Gaige had private dealings with the Chinese Nationalist warlord who escorted Bill’s drug shipments through Burma. Under the table, Bill said, Gaige supported various key players in the Far East opium business because they were prepared to fight Communists. Communists were bad for business. This was a cheaper way to fund a war, and technically opium was legal here, so the Americans had a defence if their involvement in the trade ever came to light.
“Now you know why I’m an opium dealer,” Bill said, snapping another frond off the poor plant. “Miss Maggie wanted me in the centre of it all, and with my past it adds up. Gaige is the one funding Chief Phao’s drug empire here in Bangkok. And Phao is my buddy now.”
“Oh Jesus,” I said.
“Wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. The chief would be a dictator, but he’d keep the peace and he’s far right. So Gaige will overlook the rest.”
“Chief Phao is bad enough, but no one in America knows who he is. I still don’t get how we could work with Nazis,” I said. “After all the American soldiers they killed in Europe? And the death camps? It’s like dealing with the devil.”
“There’s always got to be a new devil. To Gaige and his buddies, the Commies are it. The Nazi intel on them is the best there is. So Gaige is recruiting fascists from the SS. Interrogation, murder, whatever you want. They’re efficient, you got to admit. Only a few people know about it. Like a bunch of gazooneys, the US army is out hunting for Nazis to bring to trial, not knowing some of the worst are hid by their own government.”
I must have had a dubious expression on my face, because Lena said, “It’s true. I decoded a cable about the American secret service recruiting Nazis in Berlin.”
“That’s where you come in, Lena,” Bill said. “Find Gaige’s transmissions and figure out his plan. We need the date. Byron, can you get a couple of radios in here?”
“An American model,” she said. “The SSTR-1 portable has the best range. But that was OSS issue. Could be tricky.”
“I can find anything,” I said, perhaps a little too proudly. “The Japs captured a lot of Allied gear in Burma, and it’s all for sale now.” I took a few steps toward the door. Then a thought struck me. “Wait a minute. Does Miss Maggie know I was in the Clockwork Gang too?”
Bill rolled his eyes, and Lena gave me a pitying look. Well, dang it. Every time I learned something new, it turned out there was somebody else out there bossing me around, which made the bottom of the totem pole ever further from the top.
“You still haven’t told me what Link’s got to do with this,” Lena said. “After all he’s been through—”
Bill held up his hand to cut her off. “It’s not me. He’s a bit obsessed with this Nazi business. For starters, he’ll take shifts listening to the radio.” He lowered his hand and his face softened until he looked almost shy, a state I hadn’t seen in him since he first courted Lena. “Like when you’re at the party with me tonight. You are coming, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she sighed.
The party. Of course, I was not invited.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
EVENING AT THE PALACE
THE DRESS BILL gave me was not what I would choose, but I had to admit it was beautiful: hand-woven silk in shimmering pink and green, with a demure princess neckline, short sleeves and a long, fitted skirt. Bill said all the women would wear traditional gowns because it was a royal event. So he was controlling everything, right down to the wardrobe
. Typical, I thought as I combed my hair, wincing as a tangle yanked at my scalp. My feelings about this operation were mixed, to say the least. While I was used to keeping secrets, I had never been undercover before. I was relieved that Miss Maggie thought I could do this after my lacklustre showing at Camp X. I never thought she’d give me the chance to go into the field. Of course, that made me worry I might fail, and the opportunity would never be repeated.
On the other hand, I suspected that she couldn’t get anyone else to do this. Only people who had more to lose if they refused. Like me. This mission to destroy a Nazi agent was at odds with other spymasters’ schemes. Was I just mixed up in the naturally vicious jockeying for promotions or a bigger budget in the secret service—or could this job be treason? No, I thought, pulling apart a tangle with my fingers. Surely the President could not approve of using Nazis. Not with public sentiment against them so hard in the war. And I felt that Miss Maggie would not make a move if the penalty to herself was too steep.
If we got caught, might she just cut us loose?
I thought back to her Shemya visit, and the way she had so quickly approved my leave. At the time I had wondered what her purpose on the island was, and felt wounded that she didn’t need me there at all. Now, I understood. I had been her mission. Whether I was valuable or expendable remained to be discovered.
I smoothed my skirt in the looking glass and patted my hair, jamming in another bobby pin. I could hardly recognize myself in this foreign dress. How did my life end up like this, with me going to a royal party in Siam as a spy? Well, I could keep my face blank. I’d been hiding things for a long time.
Was I on the right side? I didn’t know if Miss Maggie actually opposed using Nazi agents. All I could tell was that she was against some SSU leaders who were using Nazi agents. That would have to be enough, for now, because Miss Maggie had me boxed in. Just thinking of the Nazis filled me with rage. What had the war been for? I would be glad to derail these men’s plans. I wondered how far the rot spread—but one or two key men would be enough. The old OSS structure, with individual units walled off for security, meant they could keep their doings concealed. In the war, our budgets did not need to be detailed or explained. A sense of untouchability had developed, and the SSU leaders had apparently become warped by their growing power, until they lost grip of what the common person found morally acceptable. It was always possible to justify your actions to yourself. I was guilty of that too. I had robbed banks after I decided the rich were corrupt. In the Depression they looked on coldly while others suffered, while postmen like my father lost their jobs and died of poverty and broken hearts. But I had to admit I had also done it for the thrill. It was a point of pride that we never harmed an innocent bystander in our jobs, but it was a horrible truth that some policemen had died in hunting us. Kill or be killed, I could imagine Miss Maggie whispering.
