Jake Maroc - Shan Part 26

So he had been here after all.

Something about his walkhad he been hurt? Jake was about to climb out of the taxi when he heard an engine cough to life across the street. He turned his head, saw smoke coming from the tailpipe of a blue Nissan.

"The Mercedes," Jake told the driver, and the man nodded.

Mikio and his crew were already in the car and now the Mercedes was pulling away from the curb.

"Wait," Jake told the driver, "for the blue Nissan to pa.s.s." He saw the quick flick of the driver's eyes in the rearview mirror.

Then they were all in motion, wending their way through Tokyo's thickening traffic: Mikio, Jake, and the unknown enemy who had somehow known about this meeting.

In Jake's mind, Kachikachi's words echoing, There is talk of an escalation of the war.

When Tony Simbal drove his Saab up the long snaking drive leading to Greystoke he did so at slow speed. He had the windows and thesunroof open. Golden light poured into the velour interior with unaccustomed warmth. Though a breeze whispered through the tall sycamore and pine it contained not a trace of winter's biting chill.

All around him it seemed birds twittered and sprang from twig to branch as if delighted to be home again. Fleecy clouds hung in the sky, given a glow by the sunlight striking them, and every so often he sported a rabbit or a pheasant scurrying away from his pa.s.sage along the verge of the graveled driveway. Once he was certain he caught a quick glimpse of the rear end of a deer, bolting from his line of sight.

Simbal inhaled deeply, abruptly aware that, perhaps strictly out of defense, he had been breathing shallowly all winter long. In a sense, he thought, one barely lived in winter at all. Bundled and packed in layer upon layer of overclothes, one plodded through bleak days short on light and warmth and even color while one's nose slowly turned red and one's extremities became numb.

Simbal was thinking of Burma, of the Shan States, and the mysterious murders of Peter Curran and Alan Thune when he pulled up to the great nineteenth-century mansion owned by the Quarry and occupied by its Director. The gabled, turreted house sat within fifty acres or so that encompa.s.sed rolling emerald hills and a s.p.a.cious valley in Great Falls, Virginia.

The place still bore the stamp of Antony Beridien, the Quarry's former Director, so lately a.s.sa.s.sinated in the end phase of a plot, or so it had been rumored, devised by General Daniella Vorkuta and her mole inside the Quarry, Chimera, a.k.a. Henry Wunderman.

Beridien had been an inveterate collector of antiques, and the rooms and hallways of Greystoke were still filled with a rainbow of period pieces ranging from Federal to Chippendale to Louis XV to G.o.d only knew what.

As he cut the Saab's engine and the deep throb of the turbo died, Simbal saw Donovan hunched over his *63 Corvette. The car was Donovan's rather manic hobby. Every week it seemed that he was working to improve this or that aspect of the engine.

Donovan picked his head out of the automobile's maw and smiled, waved a hand holding a wrench. It was Sunday and Donovan was dressed casually in a pair of old, faded chinos, a similarly hued Ralph Lauren Polo s.h.i.+rt and worn Topsiders without socks. A green metal toolbox was at his side, along with a tray filled with a pitcher of lemonade, an ice bucket into which had been poked several bottles of Lite beer, and a variety of gla.s.ses.

"Help yourself, Tony," Donovan said, ducking his head back beneath the raised hood of the *Vette.

Simbal went across the gravel and popped the cap off a beer. He took a swig, watching the Director's work without much interest. He knew almost all there was to know about automotive engines of all sorts. So much time in the jungle made that a necessity. But it was hardly a love. He had other things to occupy his thoughts.

He looked around. Someone was working in the rose garden, carefully pruning on bended knee. Soon the bushes would be in bloom and that side of the mansion would be suffused with a scent as delicious as ardor.

"So," Donovan said, his head and shoulders out of sight, "what have you been up to?"

Simbal put the empty bottle aside and leaned against the warm fender of the car. "You remember a woman named Monica Starr."

"Mmm, sounds familiar. Girlfriend or business?"

"Both, actually." Simbal crossed his arms over his chest. "We had an affair while I was at the DEA. I ran into her the other evening."

"Oh, really? Where?"

"A party."

"That wouldn't've been Max Threnody's bash?"

"As a matter of fact it was," Simbal said. "Why?"

"No particular reason. I just like to know which hole my operatives are poking their noses into."

"You don't like Max, do you, Rodger?"

"Like him? Hmm, I never considered that alternative. Let's just say that I don't approve of the DEA, period. It's too much of a bureaucratic boondoggle for my taste, tied to Congress's ap.r.o.n strings. I don't think having to suck up to those idiots on Capitol Hill ever did anyone any good. Especially people in our profession. We need to be left alone by politicians. Autonomy is the only effective means of doing business. That way, instead of having to cut through red tape, one avoids it entirely."

There was a clanking from inside the Corvette and Donovan grunted. "Don't really understand how you managed to stay there so long. Compared to us, it's a very bourgeois operation."

"Maybe so, but their computer is the key we've been looking for against the diqui."

Donovan at last reemerged from his place of refuge. "Is that so?" He wiped his greasy hands on a rag and poured himself some lemonade. "Tell all."

Simbal told Donovan about his talk with Monica, about her unease regarding Peter Curran. When it came to Curran's death, Simbal did not leave out anything but, strangelyor so it seemed to himhe made it seem as if the DEA computer and not Max Threnody had divulged the cla.s.sified information.

"How'd you get access to the computer?" Donovan asked shrewdly. "The girl?"

Simbal nodded.

"Chasing after skirts," Donovan said ruminatively. "We did an awful lot of that together in college."

Simbal smiled. "We were terrors."

"No responsibilities then."

"No power, either."

Donovan looked at him. His clear blue eyes and handsome features made it appear as if he had just stepped out of a Calvin Klein ad. "But we did have power, Tony. A very real kind of power over women. They all wanted to be with us, remember?"

"Yeah." Simbal shrugged. "But to tell you the truth, now I'm not sure how much of that was real and how much we made up."

"What do you mean?" Donovan asked sharply. "We had them all a anyone we wanted, we bedded."

"Except Leslie."

Donovan put down his gla.s.s and pointed. "Get behind the wheel and start her up when I give you the signal." He did some tinkering and then said, "Okay."

Simbal turned the ignition and the thing began to purr like a great cat.

"Superb!" Donovan made one last-minute adjustment and closed the hood. "Let's take a spin."

Simbal got out and Donovan took his place behind the wheel. As soon as Simbal was in the pa.s.senger's seat, Donovan took off, sending a great spray of gravel upward in a graceful arc as he slewed them around.

"Do they know about this?" Simbal said, hanging on for dear life as the Corvette thrummed along.

"Who?"

"The government firm that pays our insurance," Simbal said over the mounting noise. He stole a glance at the dashboard, saw that they were closing in on 110 mph.

Donovan laughed and Simbal shouted, "How fast does this mother go?"

"We're going to find out right now," Donovan said, pus.h.i.+ng the accelerator to the floorboards. He whipped around a curve with such force that Simbal felt his neck crack uncomfortably. The road straightened out; the needle trembled at the 150 mph mark.

"How's that?" Donovan shouted, grinning.

Simbal, who was more at home in a jury-rigged World War II Jeep or on a donkey's back, heading down an Asian mountainside, said nothing; he was concentrating on keeping his stomach in place.

After what seemed an eternity, Donovan slowed to a more reasonable pace. Sunlight spun off the hood, refracting colors. The hills on either side of them were already lush, as if they were eager for summer to begin. They seemed haloed with the first misty buddings of springtime, ethereal, almost divine.

"Why did you bring up Leslie?" Donovan said after a time.

Simbal shrugged. "I don't know, really. Except that it seemed appropriate. We were waxing nostalgic weren't we? I don't know about you but I can't think about college without Leslie coming to mind. Un.o.btainable Leslie."

Donovan slowed even more; now they were merely cruising like any other sightseers out for an afternoon's spin. "She was probably gay."

"Gay? Jesus!" Simbal laughed. "What in G.o.d's name makes you say that?"

"She wasn't interested in us, right? She was the only one, buddy."

"I didn't say she wasn't interested in us," Simbal said a bit more soberly. "I said that she was un.o.btainable."

"Same thing," Donovan observed, "when you come down to it."

Simbal gave the Director a quick look. "I guess I'd forgotten what an ego you have when it comes to women. Face it, Rodger, they didn't all fall for the lousy lines we were handing out in those days. Anyway, all we wanted then was to f.u.c.k. Two studs out to rut. Our intellectual pursuits we reserved for the cla.s.sroom, if memory serves." He shrugged. "Maybe that's why Leslie wasn't interested."

"Christ, but I've never forgotten her," Donovan said all of a sudden. It came out with such intensity that Simbal felt compelled to remain silent. "She seems like a dream now, almost."

Donovan had slowed, pulling over to the shoulder. Now he stopped the car and turned off the ignition. The sudden cessation of noise was quite shocking.

"I remember her long blond hair streaming out behind her as she walked across the campus. It was as thick as honey. And her gray eyescould see right through you, it often seemed to me." Donovan put his head back against the leather seat. "Jesus, I wanted her."

"Sure you wanted her. Because you knew you couldn't have her," Simbal said. "Because without her p.u.s.s.y in your belt you weren't batting one thousand."

"No, you're wrong," Donovan said thoughtfully. "I wanted her because of her, I wanted Leslie." His eyes stared unseeing up at the underside of the roof. Outside, the calling of the birds continued to wash the entire valley in soft, arhythmic melody.

"I never told you this, Tony," Donovan said. "I never told anyone this, but one night just after we'd graduated, I went to Leslie's house. You remember her folks lived quite near the campus.

"I didn't call or anything. I don't think I had the nerve. I remember the look of the place, so warm and inviting in the dusk. I could imagine her with her folks and her younger sister sitting down to dinner and I felt this, I don't know whata compulsion?to join them.

"I remember climbing those stucco stairs, going past the huge yucca, all blue and a green so deep at that time of the evening it was near to black. It brushed my cheek.

"I rang the doorbell. I did it the instant I reached the top step. I knew I had to or I wouldn't do it at all.

"I suspected that her father or her mother would come to the door and I had rehea.r.s.ed a kind of speech for either eventuality. I wasn't prepared for what happened.

"Leslie opened the door. Leslie herself, with that warm light burnis.h.i.+ng her honey hair, outlining her body. It was a magical moment a something straight out of every fantasy I'd conjured up about her.

"Then I heard someone say, *Who's this?' It was a male voice, a young voice; certainly not her father's. Then I saw that he had come up behind her. His arm slipped around her waist, his body pressed against hers from behind. *Who's this, honey?'

"I had no answer to that, no explanation. So I turned and ran. A block away I stopped long enough to vomit into the bushes." Donovan closed his eyes and let enough air out so that Simbal knew he had been holding it in for the s.p.a.ce of several breaths.

"I'm sorry I brought her up, Rodger."

"Don't be," Donovan said. "I think about her all the time." He shook his head as if clearing mental cobwebs. "Now Leslie's taken on the aspect of the unicorn or the Holy Grail. Perhaps she's not out there at all. Perhaps we both made her up."

In a moment, Donovan started the engine. "The afternoon's growing old and we haven't finished our business." He made a broken U-turn and headed back to Greystoke.

"What about this woman, Monica whatever?"

"Starr," Simbal said. "Monica Starr. What about her?"

"She still got a thing for you?"

"She was having an affair with Peter Curran."

"Curran is dead, so you have informed me," Donovan said. "Was she also in love with him?"

"I don't know."

"Is she in love with you?"

"I don't think that matters."

For the first time this afternoon Donovan laughed. "Good old Tony. You're still loving them and leaving them. Well, in this case it's no doubt for the best. Who knows what Uncle Max has up his sleeve? I don't care that you once worked for him, you don't now. I don't believe he'd care for you doing your spook number in his territory."

"What does Monica have to do with that?"

Donovan did not like that question and he showed it. "Everybody's got a blind spot, Tony. Yours is Max. Didn't it ever occur to you that he put this Monica woman onto you deliberately?"

The little chill that had begun to coagulate in his lower belly when he saw Monica walk into Max Threnody's house the night before blossomed into all-out nausea.

"What's the matter, Tony?" Donovan said. "You don't look so well."

Simbal thought he'd better get it over with. "I never thought I'd say this, but Max is playing games with me. First he plays footsie, getting as close again as the Dutch uncle I thought he had been. Then he sics Monica Starr onto me and we reignite flames. Then he says, Go use her, buddy, she'll be your guide in the purgatory of the linked governmental computer files."

"So far, so good," Donovan said. "You've got your lead. Edward Martin Bennett. What more do you want?"

Simbal told him of the accident by which he ended up following Monica to Max's house.

Donovan grunted. "Now you see that Threnody's no better than the rest of the spook community," he said, overhauling an elderly couple in a Datsun. "He's got you covered six ways from Sunday, Tony. I wouldn't make the mistake of letting down your guard with him again."

"What I can't figure is what he wants out of all this."

"Don't be dense, it annoys me," Donovan said shortly. "He wants you to go after Edward Martin Bennett. If Bennett's involved with Peter Curran, it's a sure bet he knows who snuffed him. In any case, this one's a b.i.t.c.h, all right. Too many DEA pieces have gone belly up. Which is precisely why your friend Max has gone to such lengths to rope you in.

"You're perfect for the purpose, Tony, don't you see? Ex-DEA operative who's smart and seasoned. You know the ropes yet you're not tied to the DEA now. You're clean as a whistle. You can slide down the hole into this h.e.l.lpit someone's created and it won't cost Uncle Max the skin off his nose."

"But this is our ops. The Quarry's."