Palace Council

by Stephen L Carter

  But neither was it the invariable custom to have married professors father children by their students and then to have both parties act as if nothing had happened. Something wasn’t right.

  In early April, Eddie stopped by Perry’s house in Kowloon, as he did at least twice a week. He found the sign gone, and the house occupied by an elderly Swiss trader who insisted that he come in for tea. The trader had very strong views about the war, but, alas, lacked any knowledge of the prior occupant.

  The golden boy was gone. It was time for Eddie to go, too.

  A few days before his departure for India, Eddie dined with Lieutenant Cox. The two had stayed in touch since their chance meeting in Saigon after Quang Tri. Then the lieutenant had been angry and tense. Tonight he was relaxed. Eddie asked what he thought of the theory behind the war, the idea that the Communist advance had to be stopped in Vietnam, lest the other countries of the region fall like dominoes.

  Cox thought this one over. “I’m an officer in the armed forces of a democracy,” he finally said. “It’s my job to go where they tell me, Mr. Wesley. The day I decide I have a different job, that it’s up to me to figure out whether I like the theory of the war, is the day we stop being a democracy. Know why? Because that’s the day the military takes over.”

  Eddie found the answer so troubling that he walked the streets for an hour trying to sort things out. It struck him that what Benjamin Mellor called the Palace Council must have exactly the opposite theory: they had no patience with democracy, and would be more than happy to take over.

  Still brooding, Eddie wound up at a jazz club in Lan Kwai Fong, soaking up atmosphere and music. He returned to his flat close to midnight and, if not for the rather pleasant buzz fogging his brain, might have sensed something amiss even before he opened the door, and certainly right after, because they had removed the overhead bulb, causing him to stumble into the room, hands out in front, searching for the table lamp beside the sofa, so that when they grabbed him he was briefly too disoriented to fight back, and briefly was all they needed. Three minutes later, gray duct tape over his eyes and mouth and around the wrists secured too tightly behind his back, Eddie was bundled into the service elevator. Struggling, he felt the floors dropping away. A flurry of well-placed punches reduced his feistiness. They dragged him off the loading dock and threw him into a truck that went jouncing off, one of them sitting atop him just in case. The ride seemed like hours but probably was just minutes, because time stretches when you are terrified. All he could think of was Benjamin Mellor. Whatever had happened to the professor was about to happen to Eddie.

  The truck juddered to a halt. Nobody had spoken a word, and Eddie, mouth taped, could hardly ask any questions. When they lifted him to the ground, he kicked out hard behind him and made satisfying contact, even being rewarded with an exhalation of pain and a rich curse in what sounded more Hakka than Cantonese: Chinese is not an inflected language, which is why it sounds singsongy to unsophisticated Western ears, but hang around Hong Kong long enough and you begin to catch the different intonations. He felt a thrilling stab of pain in his kidneys and thought it was a knife, but some people’s fists will do that. A clout on the back of the neck laid him flat. They carried him up a flight of stairs and down a flight of stairs and tied something around his ankles. He heard the slosh of liquid, very near. They ripped off his shirt and lifted him onto some kind of platform, and then, before he could gain any sort of orientation, just let go, dropping him, headfirst, into a tank of freezing-cold water.

  And left him there.

  The rope held his feet. Only his head and upper body were beneath the surface, but that was enough to make him panic. He could not twist up. He could not break free. He could not breathe. He thrashed. The iciness eased into his head, and into his bones. He was dizzy with fear but also with nearing asphyxiation. His lungs pounded. If only he could see, he might be able to think, but the tape on his mouth and eyes made pain and panic worse. If he screamed he would drown. If he breathed he would drown. Then he was up again, out of the water, dangling from the rope, struggling for breath through his nose.

  A voice, Chinese but speaking English with that same uninflected accent: “Where is she?”

  Before Eddie could process the question, he was down in the tank again, head and shoulders beneath the icy water, needing to gasp for air but not daring to. His chest seemed to constrict. His heart jumped and shuddered. The blood pounding in his ears was impossibly loud. His thoughts refused to coalesce. He was going to drown.

  Out again.

  “Where is she?”

  But for the tape he would have tried to answer, just to stay out of the water, except that nobody seemed to care about his answer. In again, this time all the way to his waist, and now in the midst of his mind-stealing terror he realized that he had forgotten to inhale during his brief period above the water. Air exploded from his lungs, into his covered mouth, and up through his nose. Water burned its way in. Everything ached. He felt as if his brain was congealing, but probably it was just trying to die.

  Out again, suspended, shivering, gasping not only through his nose, from which water and blood alike freely flowed, but also through his mouth, because the tape had loosened a bit. Never had he been so grateful for the simple existence of air.

  “Where is she?”

  Eddie knew he could never survive another dunking, and tried to signal that there was nothing he would not do or say to stay out of the vat, but he lacked any means to signal them, and, besides, he was already in again. He kicked and struggled with what strength he had left, but the amount was zero. He felt his life force fluttering weakly away. His skin was numb. His brain was numb. His lungs were numb. His heart was numb. They had to understand. He would do anything. Anything. It was not a matter of courage versus its opposite. Courage was a myth, a fantasy, an imaginary trait dreamed up by those who had never been blindfolded, gagged, and trussed upside down under the water.

  Out again. In again. Out again. In again.

  The next time they pulled him up, the tape on his eyes was also looser, and he could see, mistily, metal walls, a concrete floor, and, worst of all, the water, cold and dark and filthy, waiting directly beneath for the next dunking. He knew he was seeing everything for the last time. He strained to force a word or two through shivering lips but could only cough blood into the gag. He was not even sure what he was trying to say. Maybe goodbye.

  Only they seemed to prefer hello.

  They swung him wide of the tank and cut the ropes. He hit the floor and lay in a heap. It was not possible, gasping only through his aching, bloody nose, to get enough air, so he decided that dying on the concrete was as easy as dying in the tank.

  Footsteps approached. A figure crouched beside him.

  A whisper in his ear, the same voice, chilly as the water, and as willing to end his life. “You don’t know where she is, do you, Mr. Wesley?”

  He could not even croak. He did not think of lying. He shook his head. A rapid-fire argument took place somewhere in the room, but not in English.

  The voice again, this time with instructions: “Whatever you think you know, Mr. Wesley, you do not know.”

  Fine with Eddie. No idea what it meant, but it sounded just fine.

  They lifted him to his feet and pulled his shirt back on. They wanted him dry. That was why they had taken it off before shoving him into the tank, and why they had dunked him only waist-deep. Eddie congratulated himself on this deduction as they dragged him, coughing and choking and spitting water and blood, out of the building and into the truck. After a short drive, they cut the bonds on his wrists and yanked the tape from his mouth. “None of this happened,” the voice informed him. They poured something over his face and upper body. Cheap wine. For good measure, they poured it down his throat, too. The truck slowed but never stopped. They lifted him and pulled the tape from his eyes, the pain making him cry out. They threw him out the back and slammed the doors long before it occurred to him to turn his
head and get a good look at his tormentors. He landed on something squishy and disgusting. Garbage, his exhausted mind informed him. Mostly dead fish. The drenching odor was almost as bad as the water. Still, his legs were free, weak but functional. His hands were free. He could at least crawl out of the garbage. But even crawling seemed like an awful lot of work, so Eddie closed his eyes instead. The last image in his mind before darkness settled in with all the sweetness of rescue was of what he had seen on the floor of the warehouse.

  A Baby Ruth wrapper.

  CHAPTER 46

  Yet Another Old Friend Returns

  (I)

  THE OWNER of the fish market found him in the morning, wine-soaked and bloody and incoherent but, fortunately if surprisingly, with wallet undisturbed, so that, from the moment of his admission to the hospital, enterprising staffers knew his name and were able to call their newspaper contacts. EDDIE’S DRUNKEN NIGHT IN HK, as the British tabloids called it, became worldwide news. The doctors decided he did not have to stay overnight. A British police inspector openly disbelieved that he had been kidnapped, and the inspector’s Chinese colleague sat silently, allowing him to go on disbelieving. It occurred to Eddie that every word out of his mouth would just make things worse, so he bade them good day and asked for a ride home. The Chinese officer drove him.

  “You are a very lucky man,” the officer said as they fought the snarly traffic. “The triads have only warned you, not killed you. To be killed by them is not a pleasant experience.”

  “Not being killed by them wasn’t so pleasant, either.”

  “They are not pleasant people, Mr. Wesley.”

  “It wasn’t the triads,” said Eddie after a moment. His voice was weak. He shivered.

  “Do you have enemies, sir?”

  “Millions.”

  The officer gave him a searching look. “Is there anything you would like to tell me, sir?”

  Eddie drew a roguish grin from deep within his reserves. “Believe me, Inspector, I wish there were.”

  The apartment had been searched, and not by the police. His notebooks were gone. His summaries of what he had learned, and what he had guessed. No matter. Nothing was irreplaceable. He could reconstruct it from memory.

  They had also taken his notes for the Southeast Asia novel he had planned. They were less replaceable. He wondered if he could negotiate, get them back.

  Then he laughed at himself, realizing how punchy he must be.

  He looked at the bulletin board. They had taken the photo of Junie’s law-school class, and that loss hurt more than his bruises.

  Later. Worry about it later. Moving to the sofa, to say nothing of the bedroom, seemed like a lot of unnecessary work. Exhausted, he almost missed the knock. It came a second time, authoritative and peremptory.

  Eddie creaked to his feet and peered through the peephole, expecting David Yee or perhaps Perry Mount, dropping by with candy bar in hand, just to make sure Eddie no longer knew what he thought he had known. What he saw almost knocked him over.

  He opened the door.

  “What have they done to you?” said Margot Frost.

  (II)

  MARGOT BREWED TEA in the kitchenette, but not before making him comfortable on the living-room sofa, pillows for his head, a blanket for his body, clucking like a mother hen. She was a little softer, a little rounder, a little more somber, a little less playful. She was a political wife now, married to presidential timber, and probably could not afford to stay long in the apartment of so notorious a libertine as the acclaimed Edward Wesley Junior. But she seemed in no hurry to go. She was in Hong Kong for a week with the children and their nanny, while Lanning and half a dozen other Senators did the obligatory fact-finding tour of Vietnam.

  “Everybody does one these days,” she explained.

  “I’ll say,” he muttered.

  Watching her move smoothly around his flat, Eddie remembered the last time they had been together, the terrible explosion in Harlem that had killed Kevin and sent Lanning’s approval ratings skyward. He remembered how everybody said that Margot provided both the brains and the ambition in the marriage. Most of all, he remembered that George Collier used to work for Margot’s father.

  Eddie rolled over, groaning, and not only from physical pain.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Not really.”

  She smiled.

  Lanning was in Vietnam, where Eddie had been but now wasn’t. Margot was in Hong Kong, where Eddie now was. The front man was away finding facts. The brains of the outfit stood in Eddie’s kitchen. He watched her. Margot kept smiling and clucking and assuring him that everything was going to be fine, even though he had expressed no sense that anything would not. He remembered the Cross of Saint Peter around her neck the night they met, and how she had warned him that some things cannot be stopped.

  “What do you think?” Margot murmured at one point, spooning the tea into his mouth because he was too tired to sit up. Her hip snuggled warmly against his leg. “Do you know why they did it?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Were they sending you a message? Was that it? Oh, Eddie, dear Eddie, have you been poking your head into other people’s business? Or just sleeping with the wrong man’s wife?”

  But Margot laughed alone.

  “Do you think it’s that article you wrote? About the CIA and Operation PHOENIX? Are they punishing you for that? Because, if they are, we should tell Lanning. We can’t let them get away with this, dear.”

  Eddie shivered. Margot kept referring to what “they” had done to him, even though the papers had twisted the story around to make it sound as if Eddie had done it all to himself: selecting the nearest trash bin to sleep off a bad drunk. She stood up and went to the kitchen to freshen the cup. She seemed to know where he kept his tea, and where he kept his cups, and where he kept his blankets. He wondered how long Margot had spent here last night while the place was being searched; or if she might even have been in the warehouse while they took him to pieces, standing silently next to Perry as he munched calmly on his Baby Ruth.

  Finally, Eddie said, “How long have you been in Hong Kong?”

  “What?”

  “When did Lanning leave town?”

  Margot was sitting next to him once more, trying to make him open his mouth. Chicken broth this time. “Lanning flew straight to Saigon. He’s meeting us back here next week.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why, Eddie Wesley. I hope you’re not suggesting anything untoward.”

  “Untoward?”

  “Number one, I’m not that kind of woman.” Smiling, Margot laid a finger across his lips. “Number two, even if I were so inclined, you’re not in any kind of condition.”

  “Ah. True.” He shifted position, sucking greedily on the spoon. From what he could tell, the broth was not poisoned. He closed his eyes for half a minute, or maybe half an hour, because when he opened them Margot was on the settee, reading, without permission, the draft of his latest essay about the war. It was one of the few pieces of paper left in the place. He said, “What time is it?”

  “Time for me to go. Can’t have people talking.”

  He gestured with his chin. “I’m pretty sure I left that in the other room.”

  “That’s where I stole it from.” She grinned. “You’re a brilliant writer, Eddie. And you’re right about the war.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” She stood up. “We’re going to stop it.”

  “We?”

  “Lanning. Me. You. People of good will, Eddie. That’s who ends most evil things. People of good will, working together.”

  “We’ll work together,” he agreed, watching. “We’ll shake the throne, won’t we?” Quoting Perry Mount. “End the agony, once and for all?”

  Margot frowned. “I better go,” she said again. She kissed his forehead.

  “Margot?”

  “Yes, Eddie?”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “To Hong Kong? To wait
for Lanning and give the children a vacation, I told you.”

  “I mean here. My flat.”

  Margot had found her wrap. “Oh, well. I couldn’t let them get away with this. I had to make sure you’re okay.” Her voice trembled unexpectedly. Her eyes glistened. “I can’t believe what they did to you.”

  Because they didn’t tell you first? Or because it was worse than you expected?

  Aloud, he said, “Does Lanning know?”

  “Know what?”

  “About the Project.”

  The thick, owlish brows furrowed. “What project?”

  Eddie took his time, and not only for effect. “What you’re doing with Perry.”

  She sat next to him again, felt his wrist, the side of his neck. “I think you’re delirious, Eddie.” Another soft kiss on his forehead. “Go to sleep. Do you have a friend you want me to call? Otherwise, I can make sure somebody checks on you in the morning.”

  Sleep indeed tugged at him, but he had to finish. “I don’t think Lanning knows. I think this is your own thing, isn’t it? He’s a…a stuffed shirt.”

  Margot bristled. “Lanning is a very intelligent man,” she announced crisply, a statement for the press from an irritated wife. “You can’t believe what you read in the papers.”

  “How true.”

  “I’m sorry. We’re sensitive on that point. People are always saying—”

  “I know what they’re saying.” He sighed, squirmed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sleep, Eddie.” She half stretched beside him, hugged him into her warmth. “I’m just glad to see you’re okay,” she said into his hair. For several minutes, they held each other, although the holding was mostly friendship—if even that.

  “Margot?”

  She stirred beside him. Perhaps she had been dozing, too, for her voice was far away. “Yes, dear?”

  “Remember Palm Sunday three, four years ago? When Lanning spoke at Saint Philip’s in Harlem?”

  “The day poor Kevin died.”

  “Yes. Ah.” Adjusting position again. But nowhere was comfortable. “Did Lanning write his own speech?”