Part 56 (2/2)

Father, he thought, I am finally nearing the top of the mountain. I hope I know what to do when I get there.

Just before one, they broke camp and, reviewing again Uncle Tommy's directions, pushed onward into the forbidding jungle. The towering foliage engulfed them completely. They might have been on the bottom of the sea. The light was entirely green, with an odd kind of luminosity, aqueous and heavy so that they felt weighed down by it.

Above their heads, birds screamed and cried, taking wing, now and again, with a noise that echoed through the jungle. Insects were everywhere, of every description, size and color but as they rose in elevation, their profusion diminished. Uncle Tommy had told them to look out for snakes and leopards.

Twice they had caught sight of monkeys but soon they were too high for many of these primates who seemed to prefer the warmer weather on the plateau.

It was pouring so hard now that even the branches of the lowest trees were turned to a pale green haze. They were soaked through their jackets and Bliss began to s.h.i.+ver. They crossed a crude rope bridge beneath which one of the many magnificent Shan valleys spread out, furry with rain.

Just beyond, they came upon a rough dirt track chopped into the jungle. The trodden-down ferns on either side attested to the constant use it got. Jake, on the lookout for soldiers, pressed them on. He was seeking some kind of shelter now. This was no weather for a prolonged trek.

Perhaps a half-a-kilometer on, they came upon a bamboo latticework shack. Two crude steps led up to a kind of overhang that could be called a veranda in only the loosest sense.

Jake suspected that there must be more houses in the immediate vicinity but with the heavy weather it was impossible to see more than a meter in any direction.

He took Bliss up the steps. A young boy no more than eleven emerged from the gloom inside the hut. He had a beautiful face with the typically blemish-free Burmese skin. This high up, its golden hue had been burnished copper by sun and scouring winds. His forearms and upper torso were covered with tattoos. He smiled when he saw them, started to chatter in a dialect neither of them understood.

Jake spoke to him in Mandarin and he pointed inside. Jake took Bliss into the hut.

The overpowering, sweet musk of opium pervaded the air and, in the twilight, they could make out an old man. He was turbaned, sitting cross-legged on a mat in one corner. He was smoking and, when he saw them, he lifted a languid hand, beckoning them forward.

He offered them opium, a gesture of friends.h.i.+p and hospitality in this part of the world. He took up a piece of sticky black substance, rolled it between his thumb and forefinger until it formed a ball. Then he popped it into the small bowl of his long-stemmed ivory pipe.

As he pa.s.sed it around, Jake could see that despite the chill he wore only a loincloth. His thighs and the backs of his hands were tattooed in the same repeating pattern as the boy. It obviously had ancestral significance.

The boy was nowhere in the hut and Jake rose, moving silently to the open door. He looked outside. The world was a teeming ma.s.s of gray-green. The rain hissed down, running in muddy rivulets. There was no other sound in the world.

He was turning back inside when a rift appeared at the periphery of his vision. It darkened as it widened and, before he could make another move, more than a dozen Shan tribesmen appeared through the mist and downpour. They were armed with AK-47 machine guns. Soviet weapons. All were pointed in his direction.

Standing in the doorway, totally vulnerable, he made no move at all. In a moment, the party of Shan moved aside. A tall, lanky figure towered over them to such an extent that Jake knew it was Caucasian even before the face become visible. A pale-eyed man with the ruddy complexion of the true outdoorsman. It was an American face, not a Russian.

”Well,” Tony Simbal said, striding up the steps to where Jake stood, ”what do we have here?”

”Maroc,” he said. ”By Christ, Jake Maroc!” Simbal leaned against the bamboo wall. Outside, rain thundered against the ground like a military drumroll.

”You're the guy who got the mole. Henry Wunderman.” Jake watched him from where he stood near the door. Bliss was still sitting next to the old man, who blithely continued with his smoking as if nothing out of the ordinary were occurring. One good sign: none of the Shan tribesmen had come inside. But the boy was here. Jake a.s.sumed that it was he who had gone to fetch Tony Simbal with news of the strangers' arrival.

Secrets stole across the floor, white wraiths, as insubstantial and hallucinatory as the opium smoke the old man was inhaling. ”Rodger tried to recruit you again, didn't he?” ”If you mean Rodger Donovan,” Jake said, ”the answer is yes.” ”Why didn't you accept?”

There it was, Jake thought. The suspicion. ”I'm done with that,” he said.

”But you're here,” Simbal pointed out. ”You and I in the same spot on the globe. I hardly think that's coincidence.”

”How long are you working for Donovan?” Jake asked.

”Months,” Simbal said, ”But he and I go way back. We went through high school and college together.”

”Stanford boys.”

”That's right.”

He's going to be no help at all, Jake thought. A company man and worse. Aren't clubs thicker than blood in some circles?

”You worked for Donovan a long time.”

”Worked with him,” Jake corrected. ”I worked for Henry Wunderman for a long time.”

”The mole,” Simbal said. ”Daniella Vorkuta's swift sword.”

Bliss, listening to the two of them as well as watching, knew what was going on. These were more than two males sparring for dominance of territorial rights. The feint and jab of the questioning held reverberations far beyond the ordinary conversation. Both were trying to probe for certain answers without revealing their own secrets. Perhaps it was she who first realized that what each was concealing was the same.

”So it seemed,” Jake said.

”Meaning?”

Jake moved around the room. It was getting damp so near the doorway. It was also disconcerting to see the Shan squatting in the storm, eyes on the hut. He knew the meaning of that display. He knew who was ultimately in control of this situation. There were too many AK-47S for any one man.

”Henry was an old hand. Recruited by Antony Beridien himself, the man who with John Kennedy's blessing created the Quarry.”

”Correct me if I'm wrong,” Simbal said. ”But Beridien recruited Rodger as well.”

”At another time,” Jake said. ”From another place.”

”The old guard always resents the presence of the new.”

”Yes,” Jake admitted. ”That's true enough. There was no love lost between Henry and Rodger.”

”Did you take sides?”

”I was far away,” Jake said, ”from it all. Office politics never interested me. I was always a field executive. But”

”Yes?”

”Henry recruited me. He came to Hong Kong and took me off the streets. I was running for the Triads, doing odd jobs, none of them very savory.” Jake looked at Simbal through the smoke. ”In a way, Henry Wunderman saved my life.”

”Killing him must have been a sad affair.”

”It was difficult.” Sad, yes, he thought. That was exactly what it was. He paid more attention. Perhaps, he thought, there is more to this man than I had thought.

Which was just what Simbal had on his mind. ”Everyone at Central is very grateful to you for what you did. Especially Rodger.”

”I imagine so,” Jake said carefully. ”Especially Donovan.”

”You don't like him.”

”I don't like what he represents.”

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