Beloved Enemy (13 page)

“Iraj, what is accomplished when you speak to me like that?” She studied his face. “Do you expect to intimidate me? Really? After all this time?” She placed her hand on his thigh. “And what would be the point, when you need my cooperation.”

He looked down at her hand, then away, but she could feel his muscles tense and relax against her palm and fingers.

“Iraj,” she said now, “we’ve always had a—how shall I put it?—a conflicted relationship, full of discord, love, and hate. The truth is we frighten each other—don’t bother to deny it. And, anyway, what’s the harm in telling the truth? It can only bring us closer together. That
is
what you want, isn’t it?”

“What I want…” He looked straight ahead, and then, presumably because he felt that wouldn’t work, he turned his gaze back to her. “Your grandfather and I embarked on a partnership two decades ago. I have waited, I have been patient. Now I want the fruits of my hard labor. I want to know these twenty years of patience were worthwhile. I want his legacy.”

“And what about us?”

He grunted. “There will be no
us
as long as McClure is alive.” A terrible smile flashed across his face and was as quickly gone. “I know that stony expression all too well. You have no answer for that.” He shrugged. “But, then, how could you?” He moistened his lips, took her cigarette, sucked smoke deep into his lungs, letting it drift slowly out through his nostrils. “So you see we are at an impasse.”

“Not really.” She took the cigarette back, finishing it. “To answer your question, I do know the names of the other two people.”

“And?”

“I know it’s not in your nature, Iraj, but ask me nicely.” She stroked his thigh. “That’s the only way out of our impasse.”

“There are other ways,” he muttered.

She lifted her hand. “All right then.”

“No, no,
chérie
.” He took her hand and gently drew it back to him. “Bringing the other two people to us will benefit you as well as me. After all, you’re as anxious for it as I am.”

Knowing this was all the concession she would get out of him, she said, “Legere has the third piece.”

“I hate that fucker. He’s as duplicitous as he is malicious, just like his father.” Iraj’s expression was expectant. “And the fourth, the one who is in possession of the final piece of information that will lead us to Dyadya Gourdjiev’s legacy?”

“Jack McClure.”

“What?” The word fairly exploded from deep inside him. “I don’t believe you!”

She shrugged, her eyes never leaving his, never blinking.

“How could he entrust anything to the American agent?”

“He liked Jack,” Annika said neutrally, carefully. “He trusted him.”

“More than you or me?” Namazi gave a harsh laugh. “I don’t think so.”

“So. Solve the mystery yourself. Tell me where my grandfather stashed the money and the files.”

With a disgusted hissing sound, the Syrian turned away from her, to again stare out the window.

“If I see McClure again,” he said softly, “I will kill him.”

“That’s your jealousy talking, Iraj.” Annika put a hand on his forearm. “Don’t be like that.”

There was silence, then, just the soft hum of the car’s oversized engine, the gentle soughing of the wind against the bodywork.

After a long time, he said, “If McClure has a usefulness, so much the better. But once he tells us—”

“He can’t. Jack doesn’t know he knows. His part of my grandfather’s legacy is locked away inside his brain.”

“When did Dyadya Gourdjiev tell him?”

“He must have told him when he was in the hospital in Moscow.”

“Hmm.” He turned back to her again. “But yet, there will come a time when you will extract the information from him. Then his usefulness will be at an end.”

“You won’t kill him, Iraj.”

“No?” He nodded. “All right, then. You’ll do it,
chérie
. You’ll kill Jack McClure.”

N
INE

K
AMPAENGPHET
R
OAD
was lit up like a souk. By the time Jack arrived on a motorcycle taxi, the nighttime antique furniture market was in full swing. Bare bulbs were strung up in shallow arcs above the jumble of stalls lining either side of the road. Gaily striped awnings were stretched out over offered goods, sporting tiny twinkling colored lights on their undersides, the better to entice shoppers to take a second look.

As Jack picked his way through the deluge of shoppers, gawkers, and hustlers, he kept a sharp eye out for Jaidee. Dao had described her to him: a tall, slim girl with a doll-like face and shining black hair down to the small of her back. She had a beauty mark at the left corner of her mouth and the tattoo of a dragonfly on the side of her neck.

He passed many shops selling furniture, new, old, and purported antique, but also vendors of masks, lurid costume jewelry, blank CDs, rope sandals, cheap-looking electronics, and, of course, food. Food was everywhere, from barbeques, where people stood and ate as the juices dripped down their chins, to restaurants with plastic tables and chairs, packed with diners scarfing down seafood and blazing hot noodle dishes.

Jack spotted Jaidee at almost the same moment she saw him. Their gazes locked, keeping track of each other even when shoppers hurrying to and fro interfered with their lines of sight. He hurried across the road to where she stood, at the edge of a rug stall, out of the strongest eddies of people and taxis.

He was almost to her when he spotted the motorcycle taxi weaving down the road. He noted it, but not with any degree of alarm. After all, only hours before it looked as if a taxi was going to run Dao down, until she stepped smartly out of the way.

This one wasn’t anywhere as near to Jaidee. Not, at least, until it swerved at the last moment. The helmeted driver’s right arm shot out and grabbed her. Swinging her up onto the motorcycle behind him, he took off.

Jack sprang after them, moving along the snaking path the motorcycle clove through the crowd. For the length of the night market, there was nowhere to go except along the road, the shops and stalls smashed in together cheek by jowl.

At lightning speed, Jack’s brain had automatically mapped the scene in front of him in three dimensions, so that when a grocer pushed a wooden cart in his path as he crossed the street, Jack leaped atop it then vaulted across to the other side without missing a step.

The cyclist was hampered by Jaidee’s constant squirming, forcing him to keep one hand off the handlebars in an attempt to keep her under control. This distraction, combined with the people slow to get out of the driver’s way, allowed Jack to make a certain amount of headway.

But they were already nearing the far end of the market, where the cyclist could veer off in one of multiple directions and put on enough speed to leave Jack behind. Jack knew if he was going to get Jaidee back, he would have to do it within the next minute or two.

The crowd was even denser here, and dashing along the road had turned from difficult to virtually impossible. Veering to the right, Jack climbed onto the front edge of a stall, upending half the display of masks. The owner shouted, raising his fist as he came after him, but Jack had already jumped up onto the wire holding the series of lights that lit up this side of the street.

Pulling himself hand over hand, Jack used his lower body as a pendulum, building up enough momentum to launch himself forward. He flew through the air, over the heads of the shoppers and strollers. Grabbing a handful of a cotton awning, he ripped it off as he landed on the rear end of the motorcycle taxi.

He swung his arm in a twisting motion, like a toreador with his cape, and the section of cloth fluttered down over the front of the motorcycle. The cyclist had to let go of Jaidee in order to maintain control of his vehicle. The moment he did so, Jack wrapped one arm around Jaidee’s waist and snatched her off the cycle.

They fell, scattering screaming pedestrians in every direction. Jack wrapped her in his arms, protecting her as their momentum propelled them along the street and into the front of a stall selling carpets.

With carpets rolling everywhere, Jack picked his head up, brushed aside a couple of piles of wool, and saw that the cyclist had managed to free himself from the twisted piece of awning. Jack pulled Jaidee to her feet, but before he had a chance to move her to a place of safety, the owner of the carpet stall grabbed hold of her, shouting into his face.

The cyclist had turned his vehicle around and was heading at full speed toward Jack, Jaidee, and the vendor. Jack waited, judging distances and vectors as the motorcycle hurtled toward him through a field now clear of people who had already scrambled away.

The cyclist loomed larger and larger as he charged on. At the last instant, Jack took up a tightly rolled carpet and, bending his upper torso back as counterbalance, swung the heavy mass in a blurred arc. It struck the cyclist on his shoulder, knocking him sideways off the vehicle, which spun on, riderless, into two stalls across the road.

The cyclist skidded on his side, struck a shopper, and his helmet popped off. Now Jack saw that the cyclist was a young woman. She saw Jack staring at her, scrambled up, and ran, weaving through the crowd whose collective curiosity had brought it back, lapping at the empty circle in the road beside the carpet shop.

Jack took advantage of the rising chaos to shove the shop owner away from Jaidee. Taking her hand, he headed into the heart of the throng, where people were packed most closely, eeling their way through, even though the occasional hand clutched at them and, here and there, a voice was raised. But those querulous few were soon drowned out by the congestive roar of those many at the back, clamoring for a view of the incident, about which they knew nothing.

At the far end of the market, Jack turned left, heading down a narrow lane fronted by dilapidated buildings, filled to overflowing with multiple families, festooned with washing on grimy lines.

“Are you all right?” Jack asked as they sped down the alley.

Jaidee nodded.

“Did you see the cyclist’s face? Did you recognize her?”

“I saw her,” Jaidee said in the high, piping voice of a songbird. “I don’t know her name, but I’ve seen her. She hangs out at a club called WTF.”

“The one at Thonglor Soi 10?”

“That’s the one.” She glanced at him briefly. “Do you know it?”

Leroy Connaston had been shot to death at WTF. Now the same girl who hung out there had tried to abduct Jaidee before she had a chance to talk to Jack. Dennis was right: there was a local leak here in Bangkok.

He would need to think about the connections, but first he had to get them to a safe spot, where he could question Jaidee without fear of interruption.

He turned to her. “Do you know a place—?”

She nodded. “Follow me.”

*   *   *

“Thank you,” Jaidee said.

“You never would have been in this position if it weren’t for me,” Jack told her.

“I don’t know. Ever since Leroy was killed I’ve felt eyes on me.”

She had taken him to a small café perhaps a half-mile from the night market. No street in Bangkok was quiet, but this one came as close as was possible. They settled onto rattan chairs on opposite sides of a small bamboo table.

“Have you actually seen someone following you?”

“No,” Jaidee said. “It’s just a feeling I can’t shake.”

She ordered them Thai iced coffees, a plate of dragon fruit, and
Khao Niaow Ma Muang
, sweet mango sticky rice. The coffees arrived almost immediately. Jack dumped in two packets of sugar, slowly stirred the liquid with a long spoon, and took a sip. He had directed them to a table in the rear, having first located a rear exit to the café. He had no desire to be trapped in this small space in case the cyclist had somehow managed to follow them.

“But who would want to follow you?” Jack said, thinking of Naresuan 261’s interest in Connaston.

Jaidee shrugged in the peculiarly Thai manner. “This is Bangkok. Everyone is followed at some time or other, whether the surveillance is official, semi-official, or the object of a bribe. There are too many people in Bangkok with secrets. In fact, people come here to bury their secrets.”

“Do you have secrets, Jaidee?”

She laughed softly. “What I do is secret. As far as the authorities are concerned, I am a masseuse, but that isn’t where I make a living.”

“But no other secrets.”

She looked at him with an odd expression. “Not like Leroy. He was a basket of secrets.”

“Really? What sort?”

“Do you think he’d tell me?”

“I believe in pillow talk, Jaidee. Many a secret has been lost in the aftermath of sex.”

It seemed to Jack that she was looking at him in an entirely new light. “In my line of work, the time after sex is used to dress and leave the spa. No one lingers.”

“Not even Leroy Connaston? Dao tells me he was one of your best clients.”

“Clients.” Jaidee shrugged again. “You could call them that, I suppose. I wouldn’t.” She shook her head as the desserts were set before them. “The people who come to the spa are lowlifes. There is an entire group that wants only virgins. There’s a doctor we take the youngest girls to, over and over. Eternal moons, we call them.” Her mouth twisted in distaste. “Dao and I came to the spa when we were older, so we never had to go through that phase of the moon.

“But you’re right.” Taking a spoon, she scooped up a bite of the sticky rice. “Leroy was different. He was a gentleman. He wanted to stay afterward, always. He liked to lie with me, to hold me.” She sighed wistfully. “I liked it, too.”

“And what did he tell you during those times? I’m betting he didn’t fall asleep.”

A slow smile of remembrance curled her full lips. “No, he didn’t fall asleep. He claimed he never slept. Maybe that was an exaggeration, I wouldn’t know. But with me he never closed his eyes, not for a moment.”

“What did he whisper in your ear?”

“He poured out his anxieties. Maybe because he liked me, or, more likely, because he thought me ignorant, that I wouldn’t understand most of what he told me. But I did. I understood it all.” She showed him a shy smile. “I educated myself.”