The Orpheus Deception

by David Stone

  She knew that Gospic had sent Emil Tarc to Singapore a couple of months ago. And Gospic had confirmed his interest in Singapore by sending Lujac to follow Dalton. And Tarc? Tarc the madman? Tarc the enforcer? Where was Tarc? And what was Tarc doing wherever he was? What did it have to do with this sailor? If it had anything to do with this sailor. A tanker had gone down. The Mingo Dubai. Was Gospic involved in the sinking of this tanker? If so, why? For what gain?

  And what was in all of this that might be good for the Lovely and Talented Kiki Lujac? Lujac watched the rooftop for a while longer, long enough to get the idea that Dalton wasn’t coming back out anytime soon.

  “Corporal Ahmed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me more about this ship. The Mingo Dubai?”

  “It just a tanker. Sank in a big storm.”

  “When?”

  Ahmed shrugged, his mind inward, seeing ruin and prison and the cane and a lifetime of unspeakable sexual degradation behind the hanging blankets in Cluster C at Changi. Later events showed Corporal Ahmed that this vision of his future was overly optimistic.

  Lujac’s razor voice sliced through the fog.

  “Ahmed? Don’t piss me off.”

  “Not sure. Maybe three weeks ago? Maybe four.”

  “What kind of ship was it?”

  “Old. Like a scow. Only big. Five hundred feet. Registered in Belize. The owners already got a claim in, for the sinking. They say this English sailor, he the first mate. He drunk, left the wheel in a big storm. Sank the ship when the waves come over the side of it. Now he tell a story about how it was pirates. Nobody believe him. But they find something in him—in his body—that made Minister Chong think he is a spy. So they put him in Cluster C and let the bad boys go loose on him.”

  “What did they find? In his body?”

  Ahmed shrugged again. Ahmed’s shrugs were getting on Lujac’s nerves. Something would have to be done about Ahmed, but Lujac hadn’t decided what that something would be.

  “Like a tube. Electric. It say where you are, where you go.”

  “A GPS locator?”

  Another fucking shrug.

  Try not to frighten him, Kiki. Be patient.

  “Okay, a GPS locator. And they went to work on him because of it?”

  “Yeah. At first, he don’t say anything. Then they use some drugs and later they get the tools out. He say he was a spy, okay, but not anymore. Chong don’t believe him, say to really hurt him bad. So they do. After that, he stop saying anything. Just take whatever they do. No more words.”

  “Okay. He said the ship had been taken by pirates? How did they do it? I mean, how did he say they did it?”

  “He say they come in a fast motorboat. Alongside.”

  “Okay. Anything else? This is a big tanker, right? Five hundred feet, that’s a lot of tanker. How did they get up the sides?”

  Ahmed looked up at Lujac, his face sagging.

  He looked ancient.

  “He talking nonsense.”

  “What nonsense did he talk?”

  “He say they do it with magic.”

  “Magic? He said they did it with magic? What kind of magic?”

  “I don’t know. Sergeant Ong only know this from the one of the guards who beat him.”

  “What—listen to me, honey bunny—what exactly did the man say to the guard? What did Ong tell you he said? Get the words as right as you can. Think really hard.”

  Ahmed gave the matter some prolonged thought. Watching him do it was painful for Lujac, who wanted to help him with the work but knew that once he got going on the kid he wouldn’t stop until he killed him.

  “The guard say the guy blame magic for the pirates getting on board.”

  Magic? It made no sense. What the hell kind of . . . ?

  “Did you ever see a list of the sailors on this boat?”

  “You mean, like a manifest?”

  “Yes. A crew manifest.”

  “No list. Too much junker boat for good crew list. Crew from all over. New Guinea. Pakistan. Korea. Never leave ship in port, so no Immigration fuss. Live all the time on ship. In the beginning, before they find the electric thing in his stomach, Fyke say the names of the men he can remember.”

  “Do you remember any of those names?”

  More hard thinking. More teeth gritting so hard in Lujac’s head that the muscles of his neck began to hurt.

  “Many Dyak and Malay, I remember. Also some European names.”

  “Can you remember any of the European names?”

  “They were funny. End in icks all the time.”

  “Ended in what?”

  This conversation was verging on the ridiculous.

  But he felt he was close to . . . something.

  “End in icks. Like Bukovic; that was one.”

  “Can you remember any more?”

  Ahmed shook his head, his face crumpling as tears began to come.

  “What you going to do with me?”

  “Look, sweetie, I still have the camera. You’ve been with me all night. I haven’t e-mailed the shots to anybody. I haven’t even taken the disk out of the camera. That kid at the Fragrance, he’s just another dead bone monkey nobody will ever give a shit about. You help me do my job here, I’ll give you the camera. As a gift. You hit DELETE, and life is but a song.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m a supersweet really nice guy who happens to be burdened with a very short temper. Now, answer the fucking question, sweetie. More names?”

  “No. My head hurt. Can’t think. I need to sleep.”

  “Sleep soon, darling. Come on. Ends in ick? Right. What . . . ?”

  Wait a minute. Not magic. Majiic!

  Vigo fucking Majiic.

  Emil Tarc’s flunky. Emil Tarc’s gofer. Wherever Tarc went, you’d find Vigo Majiic, lurking about in the tall grass. Majiic had been sent somewhere almost six months ago . . . sent to some kind of school. What kind of school . . . ?

  He flipped the cell open, punched in the Odessa number. It rang and rang, and then Larissa answered. She sounded sleepy and pissed off.

  “Yes.”

  “Cabbage, this is me.”

  “It’s the middle of the night, Kiki.”

  “Not where I am. I’m trying to reach somebody, maybe you can help me with it.”

  “Is it family business?”

  “Not really.”

  “You woke me up for something personal?”

  Lujac tried to imagine a guy who had feelings. How did guys with feelings do regret? They went all sort of soft and whiny, didn’t they?

  “I know, Cabbage. I apologize. I really do. I wasn’t thinking. I know I can be a prick.”

  “You can’t be anything but a prick. Like bats have to be bats because they can’t be birds. Fine. Now I’m awake. Who do you want to reach?”

  “You remember the kid—big, lanky kid—who was always hanging around when we were over in Trieste. Black goatee, chin kind of sunk in?”

  “Yeah. Vigo Majiic. Why do you need to talk to him?”

  “Things are wrapping up here. I’ll be home in a couple of days. I have a shoot in Geneva, for Chopard. My key grips are on a job. I remember Vigo used to work part-time for a photographer in Trieste, a few years back. I figured I’d maybe give him some work.”

  “When do you need him?”

  “Mid-December?”

  “Let me see . . .”

  Lujac heard some keystrokes, a chair creaking. Behind that, something like a drumming sound. Rain. It was still raining in Kotor.

  “No. He’s not available anymore. He left the firm months ago.”

  “Yeah? Where’d he go?”

  “Back to school, it says here.”

  “School? What school?”

  “I don’t know. I can ask Daddy or Poppa. Poppa sort of liked him.”

  Dead end. Time to deflect.

  “No. Not important. Can you think of anybody else I could use?”

  “Now I’m your
employment agency?”

  “Okay. Let it—”

  “Wait. We owed him a payroll check. I’ll see where we sent it.”

  Lujac said it wasn’t necessary—he didn’t want Gospic to know he’d been interested in the whereabouts of Vigo Majiic just yet—but she was already on the computer. A minute passed. No movement on the rooftop deck across the forest. And Corporal Ahmed had just cracked wide open, like an oyster, leaking self-pity. He was stretched out full on the sofa, one arm thrown out and the other across his eyes. His cheeks were wet and he was drooling, and his bony chest was heaving like a damsel’s bodice. Now and then, some sort of raspy whimper would emerge from somewhere in his lumpy little throat. The kid was really grinding on Lujac’s nerves.

  “Not here. Sorry. Must have lost it.”

  “Never mind. If he’s not available, it really doesn’t matter.”

  “Okay. How’s it going in wherever you are?”

  “Just about through here. Can I call your father later?”

  “He’s been asking.”

  “I know. I don’t want to use his number in Kotor.”

  “Have you ever?”

  “Once. A few days ago.”

  “Well, don’t use it again. Not ever. It’s not secure. He’s setting up another system. He’ll call you on that one when it’s ready.”

  “Man. It was deeply encrypted. Branco had it done by a pro from Zurich.”

  “It’s been compromised.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Daddy was on it when someone broke the line and threatened him.”

  “Jesus! Who?”

  “A cop named Brancati.”

  “Brancati? The Carabinieri major in Venice?”

  “That’s right. Powered straight through the fire wall and gave it to Daddy right in the ear. In the clear. Daddy was livid.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said Daddy was un uomo dentro la marcia funebre.”

  “A man in a death march? Did he say why?”

  “He didn’t have to.”

  The Vasari woman. Radko must have gotten to her.

  “Okay. The phone’s a negative. Then how do I reach him?”

  “Keep your cell on. He’ll reach you.”

  “Okay. Thanks for—”

  “Wait. Four-sixty Alexander Road.”

  “What?”

  “I found where we sent the check. To the school. It was in the personnel file.”

  “Okay. Four-sixty Alexander Road?”

  “Suite 1900. Hey, this is odd. Where are you?”

  “Singapore.”

  “Well, you’re in luck. So’s Vigo. His mailing address is 460 Alexander Road, Suite 1900, Singapore 119963. You can go see him yourself.”

  Vigo Majiic is in Singapore. Doing what?

  “I have the address on Google. Hold on—”

  Lujac held, trying to convey the subliminal impression that he was just being polite, that he really had no special interest in Vigo Majiic.

  “It’s a school. They have a website. It’s the Singapore Maritime Academy. They train people for the Merchant Marine. Vigo Majiic went off to be a sailor.”

  “Majiic is a sailor?”

  “I’ll bet you like sailors, Kiki. All that blow the man down stuff?”

  “Yeah. Yo ho! Thanks, anyway. Bye, Cabbage.”

  “You keep your cell on. Daddy’s going to call.”

  “Yeah. Look, Larissa. A little favor? Don’t let him know I was bugging you for personal stuff. He’s a little touchy about that kind of thing.”

  “Yes. He is. And why should I care if Daddy’s pissed off at you?”

  “No reason. Sorry I asked. See you around.”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  27

  The Deck House, Hendon Hills Golf and Country Club, Changi Village, Singapore

  Miss Lopez checked the patient and the monitors, and then left them alone together. The slatted blinds had been lowered, and a rectangle of barred light lay across the pale green sheets of Fyke’s hospital bed. An IV drip stood by the bed, a plastic line snaking into the sheets on the far side of the bed. The room smelled of disinfectant and soap and cigarette smoke. The room was large, floored in aged teak, with bamboo walls and a roof made to look like palm thatch. The pool house furniture had all been removed, and now there was nothing in it but a shiny new hospital bed, a rack of monitors, and three cane chairs arranged around the bed.

  Fyke lay on his back, the sheet pulled up to just below his throat. His thick arms lay outside the sheets. His hands were wrapped in white bandages. The bed had been sized for Asian bodies, so Fyke’s massive frame overflowed it in all directions. His eyes were closed, and his chest was rising and falling in a deep and even rhythm, his lips half open. He had lost weight since the old days, when they had run through the shattered streets of Pristina, carrying a dead arms dealer and laughing like drunken loons. His cheeks were drawn and pale, and his beard had been shaved off by someone good at the work.

  Miss Lopez had told Dalton what had been done to Raymond Paget Fyke, in clinical detail, her anger and outrage only evident in the small red circles on her cheeks and the intensity and clarity of her language. Dalton had taken it in and asked her a few questions about possible remedial surgery, about Fyke’s chances of living a normal life.

  Her replies had been short and hard-edged, delivered in a quavering whisper driven by withering scorn and white-hot rage.

  “He had a full upper denture, which, miraculously, the medics were able to find. But they knocked out a few of his lower teeth. He’ll need a full bridge or implants. They went at him with some sort of iron bar. Worked over his torso. From the rope burns on his wrists, they must have strung him up on a meat hook. You follow? Lots of blood in his urine. Cracked a few of his ribs. The medics at Changi are very good at repairing these sorts of injuries. God knows, they get enough practice. I’m worried about his heart. He’s ripe for a real myocardial infarct, and when it happens it’ll probably kill him. So what could be done for him was done. He’s amazingly strong. Tough as boot heels. Otherwise, he’d be dead. It would have been easier on him if he had died early in the process, but they kept a doctor around to prevent the grosser infections and to keep him from a fatal shock response. Kept his blood pressure up, that sort of thing. They even gave him saline and transfusions. Very professional. Very fucking professional.”

  She had stopped there, gathering herself, her black eyes glittering.

  “As for the rest, they hit all the standard bases for sadistic asshole jailers. Cigarette burns all over his back and arms. Signs of scorching, in pairs, probably electrical, around the scrotum. The usual device is a handheld Taser. At least he still has all his gear. That surprised me. I guess they were saving that for later—a threat stops working when you carry it out—and then you showed up and stopped the party. It’s a good thing you did, because the way they were going they probably would have killed him in another week or so. They get carried away. It stops being about whatever they wanted to know and it just becomes a matter of breaking the man, because if they can’t break him they feel like losers, like he’s beaten them. As for the psychological damage, I’m not qualified to say. I know they used lysergic acid on him, and some other hallucinogens. He’s loaded up on Narcan, which is—”

  “I know what Narcan is.”

  She gave him a look but didn’t ask the question.

  “Okay. Narcan helps. But there could be long-term effects. This sort of drug loads up in the limbic system—”

  “I know. I had the same thing done to me, okay?”

  “Touchy?”

  “Yes. It was about a month ago.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Are you . . . ?”

  “Okay? No. I’m still seeing the ghost of a dead friend.”

  “Waking or in dreams?”

  “In dreams now. Waking? That seems to have stopped.”

  “Memory okay? Cognition?”

  “Cognition normal. My memory is w
orking better than I’d like.”

  She paused, worked it through, smiled a nice smile at him then.

  “I guess, in your line of work, a good memory is a mixed blessing.”

  Dalton said nothing to that.

  She blinked at him and then got back to business.

  “Well, psychological damage. In similar cases, and I’ve seen a few come out of the same wing at Changi—they make something of an art of it there—the post-traumatic reaction sets in over the next few weeks. You’ll get rage, grief, hysteria, shame, a burning sense of personal violation almost identical to a victim’s response to rape, depression. Followed by a prolonged period of apparently miraculous recovery. Then—not always but often—a few months later, when it all sinks in and the fog clears and the long-term impact really registers, they kill themselves.”

  Dalton took it all in and thanked her for her analysis in a reasonably steady voice. She had slipped out then, to sit in the sun and smoke cigarettes and get her anger under control. Kwan had tactfully, and wisely, withdrawn, and Dalton was alone in the pool house with what was left of an old friend.

  Earlier in the day, in anticipation of his medevac extraction, Lopez had reduced the morphine drip enough to bring Fyke back up to the surface without letting the pain come back too. Dalton watched the cardiac monitor for a while and then saw the number blip from 63 to 79 in a second. He looked at Fyke’s face and saw that Fyke’s eyes were open and looking right at Dalton.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Fyke said, in a whisper, his mouth twisting into a leer. “It’s the crocodile.”

  “Ray,” said Dalton, softly. “You look like shit.”

  Fyke’s lips tightened, showing white as he grinned.

  “So do you. You need to back off the heroin. Where the hell am I?”

  “You’re safe.”

  “With you in the room? I bloody doubt it. Are we still in Singapore?”

  “For now. They’re bringing in a chopper. One of ours. Marines. From now on, you’ll be with our people and nobody else. We’ll go to Seletar. They’ve got a Gulfstream there. The crew is ripping out seats to make room for your bed. Miss Lopez is going with us, all the way to Guam—”