Part 2 (2/2)

Nothing was said. The aborigines made no move; there was no animosity on their faces, no remorse, not even, McKenna had thought later, surprise.

”All right,” Deak had begun, beginning a speech McKenna knew well. McKenna drew his Magnum and shot them each once through the center of their foreheads. They pitched forward at once, covering the animal they had so recently slit open.

”Christ Jesus!” Deak swung on his partner. ”Have you gone mad? We were meant to take them back. Alive, mate. Ableedinglive!”

McKenna bolstered his weapon. ”Now you listen to me. We're more than two days into this stinking h.e.l.lhole. There were three of them and only two of us. How long would we realistically last? D'you think you could stay awake another night? Or get by on four hours sleep? What d'you think would happen if you closed your eyes even for a moment. They'd be all over you and then me, that's what. This was the safest way; the only way.”

They camped there for the night, feasting on the carca.s.s of the steer. But the flies had come, scenting the reek of death. It was odd to see them in the desert but they were unstoppable, crawling all over the steer and the abos without a trace of discrimination.

Tap-tap-tap. In the last of the light, McKenna had turned his head. Tap-tap-tap. His gaze followed the sound back to its source. A fly was beating against the open filmed eye of one of the natives as if it was a pane of gla.s.s, as if it were trapped.

Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap, over and over again, without meaning, until the tattoo began to grate on McKenna. He got up and walked over to the corpse. Tap-tap-tap. He looked down, into the opaque orb. Tap-tap-tap.

”G.o.d rot you!” His boot lashed out viciously, cras.h.i.+ng into the ashen face. ”Shuddup!” Wiped what was left of the fly off his sole. The dead abo wouldn't know or mind.

But that night, McKenna had heard the recurring sound again and this time he could do nothing to stop it. He was staked out on the sere desert floor, sunlight blinding him, and he felt them all over his exposed flesh. The flies crawling.

He awoke from the dream, dripping wet, his heart pounding painfully in his chest. Deak Jones was sitting close to him, his knees drawn up. He was staring into McKenna's face. When he saw him awake, he said, ”I was wondering if you could tell me how you're able to sleep.”

When they had returned to civilization, Jones had asked for a transfer and McKenna had not seen him again. But as for the tap-tap-tapping, that was another matter entirely.

Now, thousands of miles and thirteen years later, that moment in time rushed back on McKenna with the force of a piledriver. In two quick steps he crossed the small room and, reaching out a spatulate thumb and forefinger, squeezed the bloated black fly against the dirt-encrusted pane.

”Like getting rid of a pimple,” he said, and went into one of the two adjacent cubicles. He closed the door and locked it, sat down with the briefcase across his lap.

For a time he did nothing. He shook out a cigarette and lit up, taking the tobacco deep into his lungs. The air hissed in exhalation. It was like a sigh. Of resignation, perhaps?

With a sudden flip, McKenna unsnapped the bra.s.s latches. He opened the lid. Unconsciously he held his breath. The cigarette dangled loosely from his pursed lips, smoke curling past his eye.

”Christ!” It was a reedy whisper. As if of their own accord, his hands began to flip through the stacks of bills. Three thousand dollars U.S. currency. Part of his mind still numb, he did a recount and came to the same total.

Only then did he see the note. It was taped to the inside of the lid. He opened it. ”For services rendered,” he read. ”Should such a weekly stipend be of interest to you please come to Hair Pin Beach at two thirty this morning. At the second light stanchion three kilometers northeast of Stanley, walk straight down the beach to the edge of the water.”

The note, typewritten and obviously untraceable, was unsigned.

McKenna's gaze was drawn back as if by magnetic polarity to the contents of the briefcase. He gave a little s.h.i.+ver as if of antic.i.p.ation.

There was a small painting by Georges Seurat that Rodger Donovan had brought with him when he had moved into the office that had been Antony Beridien's, until the then-director of the Quarry had been a.s.sa.s.sinated.

Donovan thought of it as a most extraordinary painting. It had been a gift. Twice dailyat dawn and duskwhen the light from outside was right, the points of seemingly disparate colors swirled through eye and brain to create a unity of tone and, even, quite miraculously, form.

That was, Donovan supposed, why he was drawn so strongly to Seurat's work. It was the miracles the artist could perform. For Donovan was quite certain that no true miracles existed in day-to-day life. Seurat had the ability to take Donovan quite out of himself.

Now, with the heavy gun-metal rain rattling against the windowpanes, he turned away from his contemplation of a miracle. The buzzer sounded again and he said, ”Come.”

The thick door opened. Between two three-inch mahogany panels, a sheet of steel-alloy an inch thick protected him from the unlikely event of an attack. Unlikely because of the six-level security system he had had installed after the death of Henry Wunderman.

A tall, lanky figure stood in the doorway. He wore a Donegal-tweed sweater, pleated wool trousers the color of burnt b.u.t.terscotch and cordovan ta.s.seled loafers. His long frizzy hair and high forehead made him seem no older than nineteen or twenty, rather than his true age of thirty-one. He was pale-eyed and fair-skinned, with cheeks made ruddy in the winter by skiing, in the summer by windsurfing.

Donovan gestured to a bentwood chair. ”Take a pew, Tony.”

Tony Simbal's long strides ate up the distance between them. Like Gary Grant's, they were fluid, so effortless they attracted the attention of a majority of the female population in his immediate vicinity. He folded himself into the chair. His long-fingered hands neatly folded over his crossed knees.

”How was New York?” Donovan asked.

Simbal grunted. ”Grimy. And there's so much traffic these days you're forced underground in order to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time.” He grinned. ”Down there you need a .357 Magnum in order to survive.”

”Nothing untoward occurred, I take it.”

”Not really. I just bared my teeth at the natives. That seemed enough to keep the Zulus at bay.”

Zulus. Donovan gave a little laugh, his handsome blond visage breaking its somber facade. That word took him back. Tony Simbal was a relative newcomer to the Quarry. Still, he was one of the closest to Donovan. That was because the new Director had reached out his long arm and s.n.a.t.c.hed Simbal away from the DEA.

Donovan and Simbal had gone through the Stanford mill together. They had been fiercely compet.i.tive roommates, fraternity brothers and the best of friends. They had grown up together, their fathers vying for regional chess t.i.tles all along the Pacific coast.

In rebuilding the Quarry after the twin debacles of Beridien's and Wunderman's deaths, Donovan's aim was absolute trust. His recruitment of Tony Simbal was the essence of that trust. In high school, the two boys had actually gone after the same girl. She, being open-minded and flattered, had dated each one on alternating Sat.u.r.day nights until they had asked her to make a choice. She had told them that she could not because each had qualities she loved and did not want to give up, and that comment had sealed their friends.h.i.+p forever. After that, they continued to compete with one anothermostly in the academic worldbut neither really kept score of the victories and defeats. They seemed to share the elation and the disappointments equally, remembering what that girl in high school had told them. Now, long after both had forgotten her name, they recalled that moment in time as if it had the magical aura of Arthur pulling Excalibur free of the stone.

”No Zulus in Chinatown,” Donovan said now. Zulus had been their word for blacks on the wrong side of the law.

”No,” Simbal agreed. ”Only one very dead white man.”

”How bad was it?”

The tall man grimaced. He got up, restless in high-rises of any kind. He crossed to where the Seurat hung. ”Looked like a barbecue gotten all out of hand. His face was basically fleshless. Can you believe this, Alan Thune was roasted by a dragon.”

”Pardon?”

Simbal was still studying the Seurat. ”It was Chinese New Year. Thune was set to pick up payment for three-quarters of a ton of Number Four opium. The tears of the poppy. Instead he met up with a dragon. It opened its mouth and fried Thune.”

Donovan looked at him and Simbal smiled.

”The dragon's traditional at New Year's. A papier-mache head. People inside. Only this time there was also an antipersonnel flamethrower. ”

”There couldn't've been much left of him,” Donovan said.

Simbal grunted. ”There wasn't. But our boys did a DNT on him. All the molars were in the right place. It was Alan Thune, all right.”

”b.a.s.t.a.r.d.” Donovan sat back in his leather swivel chair. ”I only wish I had been the one to do it.”

Behind him, through the dark-blue latticework of the Bali micro-blinds, Simbal could see the White House, part of the immaculately tended rose garden. Both were partially obscured by the rain. He wondered what it was about Thune that had gotten under Donovan's skin. At Stanford, he remembered, there was nothing that fazed that handsome, placid facade: not the most difficult final, not the breakup with a girlfriend. It wasn't, Simbal had eventually learned, that Donovan did not have emotions, it was that he wasn't fond of putting them on display. As he had now.

”You spent two years in Southeast Asia,” Donovan said after a time. ”All that time you were monitoring the diqui.” Diqui, the Mandarin word for the planet earth, seemed an altogether accurate name for an organization of such vast power and influence. ”Any ideas as to what's going on?”

Simbal was still focused on the Seurat. ”This the real thing?”

”No,” Donovan said, ”a copy. I only wish I had the real thing. I'd have to go back to Paris for that.”

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