The Red Lotus

by Chris Bohjalian

“I don’t know. I mean, God, I was emailing you in the middle of the night. What does that tell you?”

  She nodded and looked deep into him, trying to read his face, to see what he really was thinking. But she couldn’t. He was, she decided, rather like her late boyfriend, a surprisingly good actor.

  32

  Douglas Webber gazed up at one of the leafless trees in the park across the street from the Episcopal Church, the sky behind it flat and pearl, and then at the statue of Peter Stuyvesant. He listened carefully as Oscar Bolton told him of the brunch he’d just finished with the ER doctor, and, he had to admit, the guy’s reconnaissance had been solid. At first, Douglas had been annoyed that Oscar had texted him—they were scheduled to meet on Sunday—but now that they were here, he was glad.

  “I knew it couldn’t wait,” Oscar had apologized when Douglas arrived, the irritation apparently evident on his face. “I knew it shouldn’t wait.” And then he told Douglas what the woman had said. Oscar had a good memory, and he had keyed in on a name: Sara Edens.

  “Alexis said she’d been talking to a lab rat named Sara Edens,” he was saying. “And I asked who that was, and she said the woman was just a friend. An acquaintance. She changed the subject. But Alexis had already told me that she wanted to see the labs.”

  “Do you know what Sara Edens does there? In the lab? She doesn’t work with Sinclair. I know the names of his assistants.”

  “Nope.”

  “The Korean, perhaps?”

  “That’s right. She works in a group that studies hantavirus. But even that doesn’t matter. What does is this: Alexis went out of her way to see someone from the labs to talk about rats. That’s what she said she was discussing with Edens: rats.”

  Douglas absorbed this information. It was utterly amazing the way Austin Harper and his greed were sending the project off the rails.

  No, that was only half right. Austin Harper had started the possible derailment, but Alexis Remnick was likely to finish the train wreck—unless he took care of her, too, which it was clear was now inevitable. “What else?” he asked Oscar.

  “She wanted to know if I’d been in Austin’s apartment.”

  “And you said?”

  “I lied. I said no. But the whole idea she was asking creeped me out.”

  He nodded. “It should. Trust your instincts. We are animals, and we have instincts for a reason.” Then he added, “And I like your instincts, Oscar. I really do. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I mean that. I dispense compliments judiciously.”

  “Also, I asked about Austin’s laptop. She doesn’t have it.”

  “I wouldn’t care if she did. Everything on it has been erased—just in case.”

  “Wow. I guess I should have assumed you were on that.”

  “You were smart to ask. Still, I’m sure she’s lying. I’m sure she has it.”

  A couple of pigeons landed on the sidewalk near them. Douglas understood why so many New Yorkers referred to them as rats with wings, but he never saw them that way. For all the fears people had of bird flu and avian-transmitted illnesses, it would be far more difficult to weaponize a pigeon than a rat.

  “So, what’s next?” Oscar asked him.

  “I hear concern in your voice.”

  “I’m trusting my instincts.”

  Douglas couldn’t restrain a small chuckle. “You guys in advancement. You—”

  “Please, don’t group me with Austin. I don’t like how that ended.”

  “Nor did he. I’m sorry, Oscar. I didn’t mean anything by that remark,” Douglas told him, and he meant it. “I want you to call Wilbur Sinclair. Now. Tell him it’s about someone who wants to fund some of his research. He’ll know what that means. Ask if you can meet at the labs today.”

  “Today?”

  “Today. Right now. He’ll join you. I promise. And then when you two are together, have him invite Alexis to the labs. He should be sure to tell her that Sara Edens had approached him and said she wanted a tour. Have him quote the things Alexis said to you at brunch today.”

  “She’s working tonight. Alexis.”

  “Well, she thinks she is.” He glanced at his watch. “See if she can be there at one. Sinclair will make himself available.”

  “Do I have to be there?”

  “After you have met with Sinclair?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Douglas considered this. Having him present would certainly entrench the fellow further—make him infinitely more culpable and infinitely more invested. But he was already going to be an accessory to murder, whether he knew that now or not. And Douglas rather doubted he had the stomach for what was likely to be the ER doctor’s final act. So he told him that he didn’t need to be there, once he had made sure that Wilbur Sinclair had invited Alexis Remnick into the labs. Then he gave Oscar the number for the scientist, and watched as the hospital executive asked Sinclair to meet him there. The whole conversation took about a minute and a half, including introductions.

  “He says he’ll be at the labs in forty-five minutes,” Oscar said.

  “Excellent. I’m going to assume that you two get Dr. Remnick there by one. Maybe by two. But text me one number: the time she will actually arrive.”

  “May I ask you one more thing?”

  “Of course.”

  “Won’t it look suspicious if Alexis is killed a week or so after her boyfriend dies in Vietnam?”

  “Her boyfriend was run over. An accident. That’s what the world supposes.”

  “And Alexis?”

  “The poor girl,” he said, sharing his epiphany. “The grieving girlfriend is going to kill herself. Makes all the sense in the world. Nothing suspicious about it. It’s actually downright romantic.”

  Then he shook Oscar’s hand and thanked him. This would turn out just fine; it always had in the past. Still, it was annoying that he was going to have to work again on a Saturday—even one like today, the middle of a dusky, autumnal weekend, the world above the brownstones and skyscrapers soporific and dull and depressing as hell.

  * * *

  . . .

  Toril Bjornstad had virtually nothing to do with FBI operations in America. She was an embassy officer in Cambodia. Likewise, although she presumed there were now CIA operatives in Da Nang and central Vietnam, she would have to wait until National Intelligence told her anything—if they told her anything—about who they were and what they had found. She might want to know what they were doing, but she didn’t need to know. Not yet. Maybe never.

  But as soon as Captain Nguyen had phoned her about the energy gels the American had brought to Vietnam, she’d sent up a flare. Austin Harper was a courier or salesperson, but he wasn’t the chemist. He hadn’t been working alone. And while his buyer here likely was dead, Toril was confident that the food chemist hadn’t been a solo practitioner who randomly—and brazenly—had decided to visit the North Korean embassy. The only question in her mind in this regard was whether Binh Pham’s group had something to do with her late brother, and whether his research with rats at the university in Ho Chi Minh City had been aboveboard or a cover for something darker.

  Now Toril finished a late dinner alone in her office at the embassy and took one of the sticky rice dessert cakes the chef had prepared for her to the window. Her favorite part was the sesame seeds that coated the exterior like icing.

  She stared out at the lit compound as she nibbled it, separated from the street by high walls and fences and barricades—by U.S. soldiers—and thought about the ER doctor who had accompanied Harper to Vietnam. As far as Toril knew, no one at the FBI seriously believed that she was working with him. Likewise, neither did Captain Nguyen. After all, it was Alexis herself who had turned over the energy gels with the pathogen. But no one was absolutely sure. And so the FBI had begun to track her.
When Toril had checked in just now, they told her that Remnick had just had brunch with a guy who worked at the hospital with Harper. This could mean nothing: she hadn’t let go of her dead boyfriend. Or it could mean everything: she had in fact been working with him, but he hadn’t told her the plague was in the gels. Or she was an accomplice, but she was trying now to divert suspicion away from herself, hoping that by turning them over she was suggesting her innocence.

  By now, the woman had probably seen the news of the recall—or she would soon. This afternoon in New York City. It had just hit the newspaper websites and the relentless, twenty-four-hour cable news cycle.

  The other piece of information they’d given Toril? They were getting officers in place right now to raid the hospital and shut down the university labs. The raid was going to occur by the end of the day. It was only taking this long because the labs were a biohazard risk in the middle of one hell of a big city, and that meant extraordinary preparations.

  She wiped her fingers, sticky from the cake, on a cloth napkin. She hadn’t seen betrayal as often as some of her associates in America had, because she’d only worked in the United States for four years before beginning her picaresque career at embassies around the world. This was her third. And the nature of her job in Cambodia and Vietnam was simply different from what it had been in America. But she’d seen enough in America before leaving: the husband whose wife had been laundering money and he’d never known; the mother of the grown son who’d kidnapped young girls and brought them across state lines before raping and (in one case) decapitating them; the parents of the two brothers who—as if it were 1933—were robbing little banks in Wyoming and Montana, and had shot to death tellers in both states. It was terrible for these family members to learn what the people they loved were capable of. Maybe that was why Toril had wanted the embassy posts.

  Assuming Alexis wasn’t Austin Harper’s partner, soon she would be living with the reality that the man had not merely lied about his family history and why they had gone to Vietnam on a bike tour. He’d carried plague with him across the planet and planned to sell it to some food chemist—now dead, like Austin—who was hoping to sell it to North Korea.

  She poured herself the last of the tea in the pot. Poor woman. Toril didn’t see how this could possibly end well for her.

  33

  What do you do with the dress of a dead woman?

  No, the question was far more specific than that, Alexis thought, after she finished speaking on the phone with Ken Sarafian.

  What do you do with the dress of a dead woman your dead boyfriend bought for her before she was murdered? Executed?

  As Alexis walked back to her apartment after brunch, she made a list in her mind of the little that she and Ken knew about Binh Pham. The woman had been a food chemist. She had a brother, also dead, who worked with rats at a university in Ho Chi Minh City. And she had come to New York in the summer.

  Alexis wondered after she had spoken to Ken whether she should have asked Oscar about the woman. Whether Austin had ever mentioned her. Whether he himself had ever met her.

  No, she had made the right decision. She couldn’t reveal to Oscar—at least not yet—that she knew about the Vietnamese chemist.

  An idea came to her: when she got home, when she could look at the images on her laptop screen rather than on her phone, she would see if Binh Pham still had her footprints on the social networks.

  * * *

  . . .

  The woman did. Alexis found her Instagram and Facebook accounts and surfed through them. They had not yet been memorialized: frozen in time by a relative.

  There were no photos of her with Austin or Oscar or even Douglas Webber. Not a one. But there, back on June 25, she had posted a photo of her sister and her at the top of the Empire State Building, the sky cobalt and the island stretching south to the Freedom Tower and the Statue of Liberty in the distant harbor. And standing to the side of the two tourists from Vietnam, just barely in the frame? Sally Gleason. The woman clearly had no idea she was in the photo. She was in profile, looking at something else. But that didn’t matter. For a long moment, Alexis stared at the three of them, her mind moving between how petite Binh was and the simple, disturbing, unequivocal fact that she had found the link. Here it was. The food chemist had been with Austin’s boss four months ago in this very city. No doubt she had been with her boyfriend as well. Alexis doubted she’d ever know, but she wouldn’t have been surprised if Austin himself had taken the photo.

  And if Sally knew that she was recognizable in this image on Facebook? Probably she would have insisted that Binh delete it. If she knew it was out there right now? She’d probably be livid. Or she’d just erase it herself—as she may have erased everything on Austin’s laptop and tablet.

  That is, if she had been the one to erase them. It was a diagnostic leap to suppose that had been the work of Sally Gleason. It was just as likely Douglas Webber.

  She couldn’t help but wonder if the two of them were working together.

  On any other Saturday, she would have gone to the gym and then tried to grab a catnap since she had the night shift in the ER. Sometimes the gym helped: it got her endorphins going and cleared her head, and frequently she could sleep for an hour or two afterwards. But she knew how wired she already was, and working out today might only exacerbate that. And so sleeping would then demand a Xanax. And she didn’t like to begin a shift with the lingering dullness of the med.

  And that meant that a nap probably wasn’t in the cards.

  And so instead of going to the gym, she gave in to the way her mind was racing. She taped four pieces of copy paper together, placed them on her modest dining room table, and began to map out what she knew and what she didn’t. See what the missing pieces were and where she might find them. Pattern recognition. She began by writing down names: names from the bike tour and names from the hospital and the names that surrounded Austin Addison Harper. She hadn’t really thought much about Scott and Giang and Colleen from Vietnam, but did they fit into this web somewhere? Was there a reason that Austin had chosen this particular excursion company rather than one of the larger ones, such as Backroads or Vermont Bicycle Touring? Did someone there work with Douglas Webber? Did Webber work for them? (No. Absolutely not. She had the sense that Webber was far too alpha to work for anyone.) She kept focusing on how she trusted no one who was involved with advancement at the hospital. She recalled the word that Captain Nguyen had used when they’d first met at the little boutique hotel in Hoi An, a word that had a different meaning for him than it had for her: doubtfuls. People whom you couldn’t decide were on your side or against you. People who might seem like they were on your side, but probably weren’t. They were all doubtfuls in Austin’s department at the hospital, she realized.

  And the same probably went for the labs. They worked with the rats. They worked with disease. That’s how Sally and Oscar and Austin were involved. That’s how Webber was involved.

  But, of course, the only person she knew in the labs was Sara Edens. She’d never met the mystical Wilbur Sinclair or any of the other scientists listed on the hospital website: Anil Bhattacharya or Ho-jin Myung or Judy Murray.

  She recalled that Sara had offered to give her a tour or see if Sinclair would. Alexis drew a star next to her name. She had seemed trustworthy when they’d had breakfast—she’d actually seemed rather nice and fun—but she, too, should be grouped among the doubtfuls. Trust no one in that wing.

  She wondered if Austin had been working with Sinclair or Bhattacharya or Myung—the ones whose work, Sara had said, involved rodents. She wondered if either Sally or Oscar was now picking up Austin’s slack.

  When she stared at the names and the lines she had drawn between them, it seemed clear to her that Austin either had been bringing something to Vietnam or planning to bring something back from Vietnam. Something other than that suit and her dress
from Hoi An. And he was bringing it from the labs or to the labs, and the food chemist was either the recipient or the provider.

  And that something had to do with rats.

  * * *

  . . .

  Initially Alexis was excited when she got the call and the fellow with the avuncular, gentle southern voice introduced himself as Wilbur Sinclair. She was still staring at her impromptu whiteboard on her dining room table.

  “Sara Edens suggested I give you a ring,” he said, and then added, “She told me about the death of your friend. I’m very sorry.”

  She stopped what she was doing and concentrated. She wasn’t surprised that somebody was at work amidst all the pipettes and spectrometers and cell cultures on a Saturday. The only people who seemed to work as hard as residents and interns were the human lab rats, the scientists—especially the competitive young doctoral candidates slaving away to earn their keep and justify their research grants. People like Sara. But, of course, this was one of the most senior university researchers calling, one of the four scientists there with their own labs and teams. And so her reflexive enthusiasm morphed quickly into what she presumed was a far more reasonable wariness.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’re very kind.”

  “Yes and no. I have manners. But I know well that no good ever comes from mistaking manners for kindness.”

  She smiled, though she was alone. “I’m guessing Sara told you I was hoping to get a tour of the labs.”

  “I never met your friend. The poor fellow who died. You know that, correct?”

  “No. I didn’t know that. But I hadn’t supposed that you had.”

  “But he was interested in mice. At least that’s what Sara tells me.”

  “Rats. I think he was more interested in rats.”

  “Well, you’re in luck because we have both. I’m here now, and I will be here another hour. No time like the present, right?”