by Todd Merer
His laugh came over my earphones like milk pouring on Rice Krispies. Snap. Crackle. Pop. He said, “I knew what was gonna happen next before it did. The people who bought the hat then wanted to buy the head it sat on. A guy known as Lucky, who never loses a bet.”
Lucky again. Was it Duke who’d bought his hat?
“Here’s the kicker,” said Richard. “The Chinese are very serious about gambling. Everything’s auspicious. This guy Lucky always wins. Everyone wants to bet along with Lucky; they’d kill their mothers to find him. Which led to the predictable. A hot war in which a lot of people got killed. As I said, this went down back in 2006. Five years to the day after 9-11 . . .”
Again, he paused, as if choking up at the thought of 9-11. Not surprising. Guys like Richard begin as patriots before eroding to pilferers. Guess he still had a vestige of the old rah-rah left. He gestured at Stella.
“What was supposed to be a strictly business deal turned out to be what I call the War of ’06. Stella’s parents and cousin were killed during it. As payback, the parents of those who killed Stella’s parents were themselves wasted. Eventually people on both sides got tired of killing. By 2007, live and let live had broken out.”
“Happy ending. Why are you telling me this?”
“My lab guys did some electronic fiddling with the hat before the sale, so afterward we could track where it went. I put some people together, and they got me the hat back. A little violence goes a long way. And there was nothing the other side could do about it, because they only dealt with me and Albert. Me, I’m just a scrambled voice on a satellite phone. Albert, I put him on ice. Stashed him as a material witness. You’re wondering what happened to the ten mil, right?”
“Wrong.”
“Bullshit. The ten mil’s still sitting in its numbered account until a worthy cause comes along. Like you, pally.”
“Like me. Sure. Right.”
“Hey, I kid you not. There’s a score for you if you do the right thing by me. Getting back to what happened . . . Years pass, Albert’s getting older; he wants a comfy old age and starts thinking maybe I forgot about the numbered account. So he makes a deal with Uncle—yeah, Uncle—to snatch me and stick acupuncture needles in my balls until I give up the rest of the numbers. Trouble is, Uncle’s senile; he can’t get his act together. So he hands the deal to his top guy, Scar. A bright boy. Knows you don’t fuck with the feds, so he doesn’t lift a finger. Tells Uncle it’s going slowly, but in fact nothing’s going on. You know Scar, right? Your client?”
I nodded, marveling at how figures from the past can suddenly return and kick sand in your face. I waited for Richard to keep talking, but he shut his trap, probably having realized that he’d told me more than intended.
Finally, I filled the silence. “So who is this Lucky guy?”
Richard’s mantis goggles turned to fix upon me again. “This whole thing goes back to the thirties, when there was a commie revolution against the Chinese Nationalist government. A very bloody affair, even from my perspective. Whole families were divided.”
Families? Both Missy Soo and Stella had alluded to family, but I still couldn’t see that picture.
“The fighting ended when the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan and set up their own government, ceding mainland China to the Reds. But there’s still plenty of bad blood between the factions. Like over who controls fishing rights and oil exploration in the South China Sea, which they both claim.”
“That’s what this is all about?”
“What the hell did you think?”
In truth, I didn’t know what to think.
Once more in silence, we skimmed the coast, white crests of rollers coming in off the Caribbean in the quarter moon’s light. Abruptly, the copter banked right and tilted upward, and once again the outside world turned black.
The control dash panel lights glowed softly. A dial blinked electronic numbers . . . 7,500 . . . 8,000 . . . 8,500 . . .
We were fast-climbing higher.
With each blink of the altimeter, my understanding grew. The motley crew—Stella, Uncle, Duke, Richard—had been, yes, evaluating me as a potential member. Of course, Dolores had already decided I was worthy . . . which made me wonder: Was the smartest, wiliest woman I’d ever met the real mover behind what was shaking?
Had to be. I couldn’t see her working for anyone else. Or falling under anyone else’s spell. Especially not a giant rodent like Richard.
Speaking of the rat bastard, it occurred to me that Richard hadn’t chosen to store the priceless hat in a secure government depository. Instead, he’d made Duke its curator. Which begged a question: Was Duke some kind of master spy, or was their alliance based on something else?
There was only one thing that I was sure of: No way Richard would pay me a cent. Good. That spared me the temptation.
The altimeter moved: 10,000 . . . 10,500. It stopped at 12,000.
Outside, the blackness was graying toward dawn, and soon I could make out steeply sloped terrain . . . and then, ahead, emerging from mist, an enormous peak whose cone was white with snow that reflected the still-unseen sun. I knew exactly where we were now:
The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
Sombra’s lair. I’d been there on my previous misadventure, a much longer journey that I’d been forced to make on horseback. If this was where Duke wanted Stella to hide, he couldn’t have picked a better spot.
I got a bit shaky when the helicopter hovered and began descending, for there was nothing below but dense forest . . . but then the big machine tilted, angling, and another vista was revealed: a flatness cleverly concealed beneath overhanging treetops. As we lowered, I realized it was much larger than a copter pad, a soccer-size field studded with well-tended huts shaded by trees. Camouflage city. Again, I watched Stella walk unsteadily until she was gone from view. Still drugged, I thought.
My turn to deplane.
Gone were the mercs. Instead, my escorts were two copper-colored Indians with long, jet hair ponytailed over their white garments. One was a teenager; the other could have been his older brother, both of them lean, lithe, and graceful. And well-mannered to boot; courteously, they invited me to accompany them.
We skirted the village. Mostly women and children. Cooking pots. Laughter. But also here and there armed men and sandbagged positions protecting antiaircraft batteries. Last I’d been in the village, I’d seen the Logui-constructed defensive positions against incursions by soldiers, paramilitaries, and narcotraffickers; since then, their capabilities had clearly been professionally upgraded.
I heard a whirring: the NOTAR copter rising above the thatched roofs. For a moment, I glimpsed Richard at the window. Then the chopper was gone.
I followed the two Logui from the village up a steep path hacked through the jungle. After a while, we came to steps: weathered stone slabs that wound up the hillside. Up and around we went until I felt like an ant walking up a screw. It got colder by the turn. Once, through a break in the trees, I glimpsed the mountainside below and far beyond it the Caribbean, hazy in the sun. Maybe three vertical miles down and five miles distant horizontally. I was beginning to run out of steam, but my guides kept on keeping on, and I didn’t want to lose them. Not up here. They rounded a bend and stopped. I rounded the bed and stopped, too.
“Anawanda,” the older said, reverentially.
“Anawanda,” the younger softly repeated.
To them, the mountain was the navel of the world. From this perspective, I understood their belief. The mountain filled the horizon: a magnificent, sun-blocking mass, its flanks a hundred shades of green with deeply shadowed folds streaked by mist, threaded by waterfalls rushing from its cap of eternal snow.
“Anawanda,” both my escorts repeated as one.
The name echoed as if in a grand cathedral.
I nodded, picturing its high priestess.
Alune, She Who Knows Most of All . . .
CHAPTER 10
Mandalay, Burma. September 1942.
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Thus far, it had been both the worst and best year of Ming Chan’s life. The worst being the disaster that had befallen Lucky. It seemed impossible. Ming himself had installed Lucky comfortably in a remote jungle in the highland triangle where the French colony of Laos, Thailand, and British Burma converged. Only fierce Shan tribes dwelled there. Despite European fastidiousness, borders were merely lines on a map; no topographers dared venture into a trackless jungle ruled by savages.
But Ming had bravely introduced himself to a Shan chieftain, which led to a degree of respect, which in turn led to a business arrangement in which the Shan received many golden coins in exchange for guarding what Ming referred to as both “Lucky” and the “Ming Treasure,” which suggested to the Shan that it belonged to Ming Chan. Ming had no compunctions about dealing with the Shan; for all their ferociousness, they honored their promises.
Yet somehow Lucky, “Ming’s Treasure,” had vanished without a clue.
The Shan guards were tortured unmercifully but knew nothing; they’d claimed to have been incapacitated by a tincture distilled from poppies, which grew everywhere. For a moment, Ming considered suicide, then angrily punched a tree. Nursing his bruised fist, he cursed his loss of temper. He was not some insane Japanese kamikaze samurai, despite Li-ang’s seeming fascination with the latter. No. His race was mankind’s oldest and wisest. Somehow he would regain the crate and its precious contents.
He considered his new reality.
Only he and his personal aide knew of the theft. The night after it was discovered, Ming’s aide disappeared; just another deserter, hardly noticed. Now Ming alone knew of Lucky’s disappearance, and at least for the present, he could return to war joyously—
But what about after the war?
Surely, it would not end for many years; the present struggle was hardly the beginning of the end. Still, the day would come when he’d have to admit his failure.
Lucky . . .
Apart from the legendary father of the Kuomintang, Sun Yat-sen, and its current leader, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Lucky was the most revered personage in all China. And he, young and upcoming Captain Ming Chan, under whose command Lucky had been lost, risked becoming the most despised man in Nationalist China, his career irretrievably ruined.
He would not let that happen. He would continue his duty with head high. He would protect his beloved country and soon-to-be expanded family.
For this was also the best year of Ming’s life.
Li-ang was pregnant. He hoped and prayed she would give him a son.
During her labor, Ming paced, smoking furiously, half listening to the radio, which was tuned to SEAC, the South East Asia Command station. The announcer was an American. Probably broadcasting out of Australia, where the Yanks were pouring in under the command of the legendary General MacArthur, a man Ming disdained as a vain fraud.
The announcer continued.
The Japanese advance had finally been stopped by the Americans at the Battle of the Coral Sea (in reality a standoff, in which both sides sustained heavy losses but the Japanese push toward Australia had been deterred). Now a great battle had taken place near an obscure atoll named Midway, a clash of the American and Japanese main battle fleets, although, incredibly, the ships themselves never engaged. The era of airpower had arrived. Four Japanese carriers had been sunk, and the legendary Admiral Yamamoto had retreated in disgrace on his now-obsolete flagship, the formerly invincible battleship Yamato.
From the nursing station, a gaggle of young interns clapped at the news. But Ming was not elated. Following the civilian bombings of Chongqing, he hated the Japanese more than ever and loved China more passionately, but he no longer cared a penny for his Kuomintang comrades, whose corruption sickened him. Not to mention what they would do to him if, when, they discovered the loss of Lucky and the Ming Treasure.
Ming lit another cigarette and went on pacing.
Forget all that, he told himself.
For now, he only wanted a son.
In the birthing room, Li-ang was crying because at the height of the pain of childbirth, she’d thought of the American pilot, a memory she could not erase.
An hour earlier, she had borne twins.
She’d kissed her firstborn baby, then handed it to her maidservant Aung. “Take her to where she’ll be safe.”
Watching her firstborn depart, Li-ang wiped tears from her cheeks. When she’d learned she was pregnant, fearing Archie had fathered the child, she’d looked for Archie. The airbase had moved, and the Tigers were no longer independent, now a unit of the Nationalist air force. But Smitty’s news had been bad. Archie had died flying the Hump.
The remaining baby began yowling, and Li-ang tried—unsuccessfully—to force Archie from her mind. The past was gone. Forget what might have been. Think only of her new child. The one she still had . . .
Aung emerged from the birthing room, cradling bunched blankets.
My son, thought Ming. But the maidservant hurried past him.
“Where are you going?” asked Ming.
“Disposing of soiled sheets,” said Aung. “Go in and see your child.”
Ming entered the birthing room. He held his breath upon seeing the baby in Li-ang’s arms. Then the air went out of him. It was a girl.
Li-ang read Ming’s disappointment. As if addressing a child, she said, “Women are more powerful than men. Think of my cousins, the Soong sisters. Ai-lang is married to the richest man in China. Ching-ang is the most powerful woman in Communist China. Mei-ang is betrothed to our President Chiang Kai-shek. Perhaps our little girl someday shall . . . ?”
Rather than swelling with pride and joy at her words, Ming took out a small, ornate medal, a rare honor accorded only to Nationalist China’s best and boldest. He put it in Li-ang’s palm and closed her fingers around it.
“They said the medal represented my finest moment. They were wrong. This is my finest moment. To be with my daughter, who already is as beautiful as her mother.”
A tear rolled down Li-ang’s cheek.
“Are you sad?” he asked.
“Happy.” The baby began to cry. Nursing her, Li-ang let Archie fade from her mind. For long months, she’d feared her swollen belly held Archie’s child. But the ancestors had blessed her. One of her two babies, this little girl was a perfect Chinese doll, exactly like the generations of Soo females before her.
“Aung, bring water,” yelled Ming. “Where did that good-for-nothing girl go to?”
“To clean herself . . . for our daughter’s sake.”
But Ming sensed something was wrong.
Later that night, Ming visited Aung’s quarters and told her to come along with him. They walked through the jungle to the edge of an old quarry. In the moonlight, water shimmered two hundred feet below. Ming asked Aung what else besides soiled sheets she’d been carrying. Aung began to cry. He gripped her arm and moved her to the edge of the precipice.
“Another child,” Aung cried. “A twin, born dead.”
Ming was shaken. “Was it a boy?”
Aung swore it was a girl, and Ming believed her. Now he understood Li-ang’s strange mood, and his heart filled with love at the thought of having a wife who chose to bear the brunt of tragedy alone. The shame of bearing two girls, not a son . . . he vowed never to reveal his knowledge to Li-ang.
Aung watched him silently, resigned to her fate. Ming knew little about the maidservant, only that she was a widowed Burmese peasant with a grown daughter, another of the millions who must perish on behalf of the struggle for a new order. A silent prayer for her soul floated through his mind. Then he pushed her, and she dropped like a stone.
She didn’t scream.
Shanghai. 1952.
The car was an old but immaculately polished Russian ZiL limousine. Red flags fluttered above its headlamps. The driver wore sergeant’s chevrons. The vehicle drove at a steady thirty miles an hour, passing empty stores on a frigid avenue with few people and no traffic.
Fr
om the back seat, Ming looked out grimly. He wore the uniform of the victorious Communist People’s Liberation Army, unmarked but for four discreet general’s stars. His rank wasn’t all that had changed. In the civil war that continued after the Japanese defeat, Lucky had become an afterthought. It had been an ugly war, in more ways than one. Ming had personally killed dozens of enemies but at the cost of a shattered hip—he now limped terribly—and the right side of his face, which had been reduced to an empty socket ridged with burn scars and nerveless muscles that sagged.
But his Li-ang wouldn’t care; her beautiful eyes only saw his inner self. And now, home from the wars, he and his family would dwell in the real China.
Red China.
For, incredibly, Ming had switched sides during the civil war.
Although his ferociousness in battle had earned him a designation as a Hero of the People, which was a ticket to the inner circles of the Kuomintang, he’d become appalled at the rampant corruption and nepotism of the Nationalists. They were not the new China he’d envisioned. So he and his little family had crossed the lines into Red territory, where he was hailed as a native son that good fortune had returned to the fold.
As converts to religions and political movements are wont, Ming was now a purist, devoting his life to the communist cause of lifting China from poverty. To that end, he would find the Ming Treasure and personally introduce the auspicious Lucky to the chairman himself.
But not just yet.
For in the national realignments in Southeast Asia following the war, Lucky’s hiding place had become inaccessible: Burma was now the isolationist dictatorship known as Myanmar, Laos was a battleground between communist rebels and the colonialist French, and Thailand had become a closed nation ruled by harsh dictators. Thus, the theft was forgotten by all but Ming, who’d carried the memory throughout his many travails as a soldier.
He’d taken part in Chairman Mao’s struggle that had expelled the Nationalists to Taiwan. He’d served in the Chinese People’s Republic’s defense of its sister socialist neighbor, North Korea; under Field Marshal General Ming Chan, the People’s Liberation Army’s sheer manpower had enveloped a force of American marines at a reservoir the childish enemy lightly referred to as the Frozen Chosin. Ming recalled the images vividly: wind whining over an iced-over reservoir, where blood clotted on new-fallen snow; pieces of Chinese boys armed with trumpets and wooden rifles killed by gweilos; dead Americans grotesquely frozen upright . . .
