Authors: Michael Crow
THERE’S A CAR—NOT ONE OF THE LINCOLNS, BECAUSE
I don’t rate and anyway I’m supposed to keep a low profile—idling quietly in the driveway when Sonny and I emerge from the house. Hyundai’s biggest sedan, a sort of seaweed green they don’t export, driver dressed casual, like it’s a taxi. “One of my guys, Mistah Prentice,” Sonny says. “He take you to where your women are, wait, bring you back whenever.”
“Whenever,” I say, getting in. “What about that good time you promised me?”
“Ho. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow night, we do just like I say.” Sonny chuckles. JoeBoy’s departure has cheered him, I guess. “Unless that Miss Allison, she put you on leash like some dog or what not.”
“In your dreams, Mistah Park,” I say.
“Not mine, you bet, Mistah Prentice. That kinda woman, she’s not my type one bit. She like some kinda man with tits.”
Wrong about that, Sonny. That’s what I’m thinking as I’m driven down into the gut of Busan, not bothering to
say a word to the driver because I’m sure he won’t answer with anything but a grunt even if I use my bit of Korean. Sonny hasn’t learned—never will, the kind of life he leads—what I did in the hard school: women are a different species, so many of them smarter and more ruthless than us. Allison’s shown a portion of her smarts, not all; she’s keeping some in reserve. Ruthless? Almost certainly. To what degree I won’t find out till Vlad. And likely not then, unless she says “Bright” and I have to hammer someone. Curious to see how she handles ordering an assassination. How she maintains, once it’s done. Too bad it’ll be arm’s length; I’d know for sure if she watched while the XTPs blast flesh and bone into hamburger, smelled the smell of it.
Wipe all that crap, I tell myself. Stay in the now. Futures always come to you out of the blank. Ugly, beautiful, any gradation in between, they find you, brand you, slip into your accumulated past. Happens real fast. No point or purpose, trying to see ’em coming.
I try zeroing on what’s framed by the car window instead. And register some stuff I hadn’t on the way in, though none of it seems worth saving and storing. Where Kim’s place is must be the only area in this jammed city where there are any private houses left. The narrow defiles that run down from the mountains to the water are crammed to overflowing with tall apartment blocks, some clearly luxury ones, some middle-class, some pretty shitty, but they’re lower down, mainly hidden. Feels like a sort of hive, or ant colony. Traffic’s a bitch everywhere, and real aggressive; if it was like this in any city I know in the States, you’d see cars stopped in the middle of streets, guys punching each other’s lights out, pumped on road rage and cheered on by a huge chorus of honking horns. None of that here. Must be a game—all this dangerous cutting off, scraping past, bulling ahead—that Koreans enjoy playing.
It’s no more decorous when my driver squeals to a stop almost perpendicular to the curb, completely blocking a big limo about to pull out from the entrance of the Lotte Hotel, a double-slab glass tower maybe forty stories tall. He ignores the limo driver’s harried gestures, turns off his engine, apparently considers he’s satisfactorily parked. I walk into the lobby through doors held open by kids in white sailor suits and caps, other people heading out without acknowledging their existence. The multinational five-star deluxe world, part of a constellation where it’s impossible—and unimportant, mostly—to know if it’s Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, or Tokyo pulsing outside. Rich locals, Texas “awl boys,” coveys of ranking
zaibatsu
Japs and lone American CEOs outpacing their small entourages, all in a quiet swirl but never colliding, never mixing. All under the discreet observation of hotel staffers, ready to glide up to anyone who appears to require something and inquire, in English, if they may be of assistance. I see Nadya sitting catlike in one of a couple dozen big, cushy chairs, cup of tea on the little table before her, looking like the house’s pampered pet. She smiles, waves me over as she rises to her feet.
“Terry darling. Seems like ages. Want you up in my suite chop-chop,” she says, linking an arm to one of mine, leading me into a manned elevator, saying, “Thirty-four,” to the operator, who bobs his head and obeys.
Her spike heels don’t make a sound as we go down a thickly carpeted corridor to its end, where there’s a single door. She dips a card into the lock slot, gently nudges me inside, secures the door behind her. Instinctual scan: lounge with twin sofas, center, facing each other across a glass-topped coffee table; straight on, a wall of glass, panorama of the harbor. Ninety left, a half-open door,
flash of Allison pulling a sweater over her head. Ninety right, door wide, Rob hunched at a desk flush to a window, twin black laptops and drab-green mil-spec communications box lit up, neat little satellite dish stuck to the glass with suction cups. Must stash the box and the dish whenever the maids come to make up the room. Butt of his SIG’s peeking out from an inside-waistband holster.
“Hey, Terry,” Allison says, emerging from the room I figure she’s sharing with Nadya.
“Thought you GS people had a per diem, traveling. Never cover even a quarter of this,” I say.
“Special allowance for hardship postings,” Allison says, motioning me to have a seat on the sofa where Nadya’s already assumed her catlike curl. I sit. Allison doesn’t. She paces awhile by the big window.
“Are you okay up at Kim’s?” she asks. “The situation is good? All secure?”
“It’s fine. Sonny’s a pro. Got it organized,” I say.
“Is he still feeling kind of hostile toward us? Toward what we’re going into?”
“He’s all right with it.” I don’t feel like mentioning what he said about ensuring Mister Kim’s life expectancy. “Hates Vlad, though. Says the Natashas there turn his dick into an icicle.”
Nadya hoots. “Poor dear. He’s clearly consorted with the wrong type of Russki.”
“Certainly must have. We know some—naming no names—who have just the opposite effect, don’t we, Terry?” Allison says, looking at her. Then, facing me, “What about our Mister Kim?”
“Talk’s getting kind of loose, isn’t it?” I say. “This place swept?”
“Before we even unpacked. We added our counter-bugs, too. It’s standard procedure. You know that,” Alli
son says. She seems wrapped maybe one turn tighter than I’m used to. “Kim?”
“Haven’t seen him. Been in his quarters. Presumably with his girlfriend. Sonny said he’s been missing her.”
“That checks out,” Allison says. “We knew she was there waiting for him to arrive.”
“So you summon me down here to ask questions you already know the answers to? Or just because you’ve missed me?”
“Of course we’ve missed you,” Nadya says. “Twenty-four hours without seeing you is about as much as we can bear.”
“Can we stay focused here, Nadya?” Allison says. “There’s been a development, Terry. Westley got in touch. Nadya’s generals have become impatient all of a sudden. They want to move everything up a couple of days. That means we go to Vlad tomorrow.”
“No way. No fucking way,” I say, standing up. “What kind of ops have you been on? Rule number one for this type is never change the plan. Never. Guys you’re dealing with want to change, it means they’re under pressure from somewhere. That means big danger. Or they want to rip you off. That’s good-as-dead danger. You with that?”
Allison gazes at me as if I’m some newbie who’s only supposed to speak when asked to. “I don’t see your problem, Terry. We’re ready. What’s a day or two?”
“Didn’t you hear?” I’m talking louder than I like to. “Problem one is that Carlos, the guy who’s supposed to watch your back, won’t have even reached Vlad before the deal goes down. So you maybe get capped, but hey, no big deal, to me. The big deal is what I said: the generals are either in trouble and need to move fast—or else they’re planning to smoke Mister Kim and the rest of us, take the money, and keep the merchandise.”
“Oh, your thinking’s stuck with drug deals, and—” she starts.
“Never change the plan. Never. There’s no fuckin’ difference between a multimillion-dollar coke or smack buy and this, except maybe weight, or political shit. A buy’s a buy. Anywhere, anytime. The rule holds. Fuck! Can’t you comprehend that, Allison?”
“Westley wants to do it.”
“So
fuck
him. You’re in charge, right? Or was that bullshit? If you are in charge, tell Westley we stick to plan. Tell him to tell the generals no changes in schedule. Otherwise, this thing’s aborted.”
“You don’t have any say in that, Terry.” Icy. She’s not liking this one bit.
“What? You think I’m frontin’? Dig it: I tell Sonny what I just told you. Sonny goes postal. He knows how we play. And he makes sure his Mister Kim stays right here in his ’hood. Vlad’s a no-go. Guaran-fuckin’-teed.” I
am
frontin’, big. I don’t have a choice, though. I only hope Allison’s not conscious of the fact that Sonny wouldn’t dare to tell Kim not to go, wouldn’t presume to even suggest any such thing.
“You had better stand down, Terry. I don’t respond well to threats.” Harder voice. Now she’s wrapped two turns too tight.
“No threat. Just truth. What? Can’t take it? I’ll lay it out again, large: sellers try changing, they got serious reasons. Gotta cover their asses, or wanna be fucking yours. Maybe you’re willing to take it up your sweet butt, but you really down with jeopardizing your package, your entire op?”
“Do you want to make some kind of intelligent point, Mister Prentice? Offer some advice from your vast experience—which right about now is coming across as real overrated, just a lot of narc-type jive?”
“Okay. Plain and simple. You tell Westley—or you go through that back channel you claimed you have with Langley and get Langley to tell him—absolute negative on any change. You or Langley tell Westley to turn bitch, suck the generals’ cocks if that’s what it takes to make them stick to schedule. Or don’t you have the stones for that?”
“Wow! Terry sounds quite nonnegotiable, doesn’t he?” Nadya says. I sense rather than see Rob slip into the lounge from his communications center. I turn a little so my back’s to a wall and all three of them are in my sight zone. Escalation’s seeming like a possibility here. You never know, with Company people.
“Everything’s negotiable at some level,” Allison says. She paces before the window, stops, stares out at the view for what feels like too long. I know she’s hating everything I’ve said, especially my last line. I hope she’s pro enough to get beyond it, see the real point.
“Allison?” Nadya says softly.
“Goddammit,” she says, not turning. “Goddamn! Right, then. All right. I’m telling Westley we stick to plan.”
“But Westley said—” Rob starts.
“Don’t you dare, Rob!” Allison spins and snaps. “Don’t even think of going there. The decision’s mine. I’ve taken it. Clear?”
“As crystal, love,” Nadya says. “No worries. Right, Terry?”
“I’m on board. Totally. We’ll make it happen, the whole deal,” I say. Then I shrug slightly, let my arm muscles go down a notch from combat-ready level, but keep my mind cold, focused. Bad sign, this bullshit about change. Even worse, how high the tension torqued up over it.
Nadya must feel it, too. She moves to damp things down. “Well, that’s that, then, I suppose. I’m famished.
How about you, Terry? Yes, of course you are. Allison, may Terry and I be excused for lunch, please?”
Allison makes a small smile. It’s costing her, that’s plain, but she does it. Then she nods assent.
“Now that was brilliant!” Nadya says. We’re in one of the Lotte’s restaurants—there’s fourteen, count ’em, she picked the Korean one—and chowing on some kind of tasty seafood dumplings.
“What?”
“Well, from the audience’s view. Picture as we set our scene: attractive, ambitious young woman entrepreneur in conference about the largest deal of her career with one of her slightly older assistants. He’s businesslike, quite attractive in his nicely tailored suit. And suddenly he’s shouting like a gangster rapper. ‘Smoke yuh ass, bitch! Goin’ postal, holy ghostal!’” She giggles.
“You think I was acting?”
“Oh, the contrast was amazing. Perfectly played.”
“And the content?”
“Would’ve been quite staggering,” she says, “if I wasn’t in complete agreement. Have been since the moment Allison mentioned her brief communication with Westley this morning. I’d said my little piece before you arrived. She wasn’t having any. Thought it best to let you go it alone.”
“So you understand something’s wrong here?”
“Well, of course! But absolutely not surprised. It’s the nature of these things, I suppose. There are always a few bumps, a bit of rough road, on any op. It would be a bit boring, otherwise, don’t you think?”
I laugh. Little Nadya’s tough enough. I ask her if she thinks Allison will stick with the plan or cave for Westley.
“Stick. She has to now. Matter of pride, all that rubbish. You made it impossible for her to back down. But of course you know that.”
“I know nothing’s ever sure, that’s what I know. What do you think the generals are up to? They’re your boys.”
“Nothing terribly sinister, I’m thinking. I doubt they have—what was that colorful expression you used?—oh yes, ‘the stones’ to try any radical actions with a serious personage such as Mister Kim. Additionally, they’re very interested in repeat business. They’re probably testing their leverage. And they do like to bark orders just to see which way people will jump, and how fast. A military thing, I imagine.”
“Not running scared, then? Not feeling heat from somewhere?”
“Anything’s possible. But it’s unlikely in this case. They have, after all, very brutally expelled the local mafia from their sphere of interests. I can’t imagine anyone else who might be in a position to threaten them.”
“Not big guys in Moscow? Government or mob?”
“If either were fully aware of what Bolgy and Tchitch have been up to, I think the stroke would have been applied well before now.”
Far from hard intel, but somehow I feel eased by what she says. Nadya, light and sassy as she acts, is probably the most professional member of this team. Certainly the brightest.