The Fourth Watcher (29 page)

Rafferty lowers the lid and puts the suitcase at Chu's feet. “I'll take her now.”

Chu says, “Certainly.” He waves Sriyat forward. They move slowly, Noi taking tiny steps as Rafferty's heart pounds angry fists on the
inside of his chest. Hoping Fon is in position, he turns to gesture her to them and sees her, arms crossed and shoulders hunched against the cold, halfway to the end of the building. As she nears them, Chu registers her. He looks at her analytically and then brings his eyes, ancient and unsurprisable, to Rafferty. “You must have more charm than you've shown me,” he says.

“Can the chat,” Rafferty says. “Noi's got to lie down and get dry.”

Fon is at his arm by now, returning Chu's interested appraisal with the kind of disdain that could freeze a bar customer at thirty feet. She is covered in goose bumps but not shivering, and Rafferty knows she is denying Chu any pleasure, however small, she can withhold. He wants to kiss her.

“Go with her, Noi,” Rafferty says. “It's almost over.”

“Poke,” Noi says. Her voice is sandpaper on silk. “Is Arthit here?”

“Not yet,” Rafferty says, surprised by the sudden spark in Chu's eyes, feeling that there's something wrong about it. He pushes it aside, forcing himself to stay focused on
this
moment,
this
exchange, the need to get Noi around the corner of that building and into that car. “We brought you some painkillers,” he says.

“Arthit and I love you,” Noi says in the same frayed voice, all strain and tendons. “Miaow and Rose are fine.” Fon puts a sheltering arm around her and leads her slowly into the rain. Sriyat gives the suitcase a curious glance, puts one hand above his eyes to keep the rain out, and retreats, back the way he came.

Chu says, “One down.” He is watching Fon's rear end. “If only I were younger.”

“That would be nice,” Rafferty says. “Maybe someone could kill you before you get to this point.”

“There is no reason for this business to be any more unpleasant than necessary. We both want the same thing.”

“Rose, now,” Rafferty says.

Chu says, “Rubies.”

Rafferty doesn't even look back this time, just raises a hand and brings it down again. Chu leans forward and says, “This one is prettier.”

“If you want to see her up close, get Rose out here.”

“Rose,” Chu says. “Unusual name for a Thai girl.”

Rafferty raises his hand again, the sign for Lek to stop. “Colonel
Chu. As you say, I have to do business with you, but I don't have to make small talk with you.”

“You're mistaken,
laowai.
If I want to chat with you, you'll chat with me. If I want you to hop up and down on one leg and do birdcalls, you'll do that, too.” He leans forward, close enough for Rafferty to smell the cigarettes on his breath. “You can walk away when we're done. Until then you do as I say.”

Rafferty can't look at him, can't let the man see his eyes. “Speech over?”

“If I choose it to be.”

“And do you choose it to be?”

“For the moment.” He whistles again. Rafferty is powerless to keep his head down. He strains to see past Colonel Chu, to see through the rain. To catch a glimpse of Rose.

“She's coming,” Chu says. “It's interesting. You have no feeling at all for one family, but you'll put your life on the line for the other one.”

“What do you want, Chu? Do you want me to agree that it's interesting? Okay, it's interesting. It's fucking fascinating. A lot more fascinating than this conversation. Can we get on with it?”

“Occasionally,” Chu says, “I think it's too interesting.”

“I chose one family,” Rafferty says. “I was stuck with the other one.”

“Mmmm,” Chu says. “Here she is.”

Sriyat has both hands around Rose's upper arm, but she pulls it away and gives him a look that, Rafferty thinks, should dissolve him where he stands. Rafferty signals for Lek to come the rest of the way. “Your goddamn rubies,” he says.

“Not all of them,” Chu says. “Some of them will be yours soon.” He watches Lek come. When she starts to hand Rafferty the box, he snaps his fingers, and she looks up, confused. “To
me,
” Chu says.

“When Rose is here,” Rafferty says.

Lek steps back, the box clutched to her bare stomach. Unlike Fon, she is shivering. And then Rose says, “Hello, Poke,” as though she's just come back from an hour at the library, and a band around Rafferty's chest breaks, and he throws his arms around her.

They hold each other for the space of a dozen heartbeats, and then Rose disengages herself and says, “Miaow.” She kisses Rafferty on the
cheek and looks beyond him and says, “Hi, Lek.” Lek smiles like a lighthouse in the rain, gives Rafferty the box without a glance at Chu's outstretched arms, and holds out a hand to Rose.

“Let's get you dry,” Lek says. “In fact, let's get both of us dry.” The two women turn and move off, toward the car at the far end.

Rafferty hands Chu the open box, and Chu reaches straight to the bottom and pulls out the envelope. He opens it and thumbs through the papers, then slips it into the pocket of his slicker. His eyes come up to Rafferty's. Rafferty is trying to look surprised at the envelope.

“A detail,” Chu says. “Nothing important.” He is running his fingers through the rubies. Cupping the box against his body with his left arm, he reaches inside the slicker with his right, and Rafferty puts a hand on his hip, as close to the gun as he can get it without giving it away, but Chu comes out with a jeweler's loupe and a small flashlight. He screws the loupe into his right eye, flicks on the light, and examines half a dozen stones, taking his time. Then he removes the loupe, drops it into the box, and says, “I'll do you the honor of not counting them.” He puts his left hand back under the box.

“If you're short,” Rafferty says, “you know where to find me.” He turns to look over his shoulder at Rose and Lek, most of the way to the end of the warehouse by now, and sees someone a dozen steps behind them.

Sriyat.

“Where's he going?” he asks Chu.

“I have an exit to arrange,” Chu says. “This is the time to arrange it.”

Rose and Lek turn right, around the corner of Warehouse Two. Sriyat goes left, behind Warehouse One.

“Any more surprises?”

“Not from my end,” Chu says. He is still holding the box of rubies, and Rafferty thinks,
Both hands busy.

The thought must have shown in his face, because Chu says, “Now, now. We're doing so well.”

“If you can see all that, how did you ever let Frank get away?”

Chu nods as though he's been waiting for the question. “This is a time of great opportunity. Expansion everywhere. New markets opening up. I took my eyes off him for too long. When the cat's away—”

“If I were you,” Rafferty interrupts, “I'd stick with the canned East
ern wisdom, all those wheezes about enlightenment and confronting our fears, and leave the Western clichés to people with too much sense to use them.”

“Let's not spoil things. I've actually enjoyed dealing with you. You have many characteristics I admire. You're devious, ingenious, energetic. You have a certain flair, which as far as I can see you're wasting completely.” Chu eyes him speculatively, and then he laughs. “What I think you're doing,” he says, “is stalling. Do I sense a little reluctance after all?”

“You have my daughter,” Rafferty says. “I'd give you five copies of my father for her.”

“One will do.” Chu takes his open cell phone out of the pocket of his slicker and says to the fat cop, “Pradya. Bring him around.”

“Tell Pradya to stop the moment he can see us,” Rafferty says. “If he doesn't, I'll have him shot, and we'll see what happens after that.”

Chu gives him the flicker of a smile and repeats Rafferty's command into the phone. Then he turns and shouts, “Come!”

The rain has lightened to the point where Rafferty can almost see the far corner of the warehouse. A form emerges, a larger form behind it. Like a color at three or four fathoms, shifted to the blue, Miaow's pajamas take what seems like an eternity to warm to pink, and when they do, Rafferty can't do anything about the catch of breath.

“A father,” Chu says with considerable interest. “Selling a father.”

The man grasping Miaow's neck is the one with the broken tooth. He steers her toward them and then stops, looking past them at something, and at the same moment Rafferty hears a shout behind him.

The fat cop is struggling with Ming Li, who has grabbed her father's arm and is pulling him back with all her strength. Her head whips back and forth in the rain,
No
, and her hair flies around her like snakes, suddenly frozen into sculpture by a flash of lightning. Chu says into the phone, “Point the gun at her, you idiot. I want both of them.”

Pradya levels the gun at Ming Li's head, and she stops. One hand drops, and then the other, and all her strength deserts her, and she sinks to her knees at Frank's feet and cups her face in her hands.

“There's a lesson there,” Chu says. “It's her father, after all. Pradya, bring her.”

Rafferty says, “One at a time, remember?”

“I'm getting bored,” Chu says. “Just take the rubies, and let's get it over with.”

Rafferty shoots one more look at Ming Li, sees Pradya pulling her to her feet as Frank stands there, loose and empty, looking a century old. Rafferty dismisses the image and crouches down, sinking his hands into the loose stones in the box.

“In fact,” Chu says above him, “we'll take them all.”

The gun in his hand is aimed between Rafferty's eyes.

“I just can't make it work,” Chu says, shaking his head. “I know that Western culture doesn't honor old people, and I know that you and your father have had problems. But no matter how hard I try, I can't believe that you actually intend to let me take him.”

“Believe it.” Rafferty looks over his shoulder again, sees Sriyat and two other men shepherd everyone around the corner. Fon and Lek are half dressed. Rose has her arm around Noi. Leung's hands are once again on top of his head. Sriyat and the two others have weapons trained on all of them.

“And even if I could believe it, there are all these
witnesses,
” Chu says. “I can't leave them behind. So I'm afraid you'll all have to board the ship with us. A short sail, followed by a long sink. Except for Frank, of course. I have other plans for Frank.”

“You forgot Arthit,” Rafferty says. “You haven't got Arthit, and he knows everything.”

“I have the hospital's name, the room number. A policeman of his rank gets shot, everyone knows.”

Rafferty shifts a millimeter or two, centering his weight over his heels. “So what? Only cops can get anywhere near him.”

“That's right,” Chu says. “Only cops. And tonight he'll be visited by two he's not expecting.”

“More information than I need,” Rafferty says, just as Ming Li screams again, in anger this time, and beyond Chu he sees the man with the broken tooth pull a gun and shove Miaow violently to the pavement, and as she falls, there's another whiplash of lightning and a burst of wind, and Rafferty clamps his teeth tightly, closes his eyes, and presses down on the lever at the back of the suitcase.

He hears a little metallic click, not much louder than someone flicking a lighter, and opens his eyes to see the bottom of the suitcase pop
up, maybe three inches, maybe four, and a few loose bills flutter up and get caught by the wind.

The barrel of Chu's gun touches the center of Rafferty's forehead, and he looks up to see Chu studying the suitcase quizzically. “What was that?” he asks. “Special effects?” And the pressure of the gun on Rafferty's forehead lessens slightly as Chu pulls back on the trigger.

And then it's as though the suitcase somehow contains all the light that's falling on the other side of the world, the bright side, and the light abruptly expands and escapes, cracking open the darkness with a dazzle that turns Chu stark white, followed by a deep, percussive boom, and suddenly the bottom of the suitcase is five feet in the air, and rubies and money are everywhere: rising against the rain, whirled and tossed by the wind, and pelted earthward by the weight of the falling water.

Chu was looking down when the bottom of the case exploded, and now he backs away, blinded, the hand without the gun in it clawing at his eyes, a shining-wet black figure in a downpour of water, money, and precious stones. Some of the money is plastered to Chu's slicker.

Rafferty hears two shots from behind and sees Chu trying desperately to focus his eyes just as a massive strobe of lightning freezes money, rain, and rubies in midair. Past Chu, Rafferty sees Miaow, flat on the pavement with Ping lying across her, the gun in his hand. Rafferty has his own gun out now, and he leaps across the suitcase and brings the gun up two-handed with everything he has, raking it across Chu's throat, trying to crush the larynx, then slamming it back against the man's cheekbone, and Chu's head whips around, taking his shoulders with it, the slicker billowing out like a magician's cloak. Rafferty is on his feet now, seizing Chu's gun hand at the wrist, grabbing his elbow, and bringing up a knee to break the arm across it.

Chu screams, pivots, yanks the broken arm back, and screams again as a bullet hisses through the rain, just missing his ear, and he freezes. Ping, still covering Miaow with his body, sights to fire again. Rafferty holds out a hand, palm up, to stop him, then kicks Chu's legs out from under him. Chu goes down, a slight, crumpled form in a wet black shroud, twisting in pain as money rains upon him.

Rafferty reaches down and takes Chu's gun and pats him for another. Chu hisses at him but doesn't move. Once he's satisfied that Chu has nothing else, Rafferty turns to see one of Chu's men flat on the
ground, arms and legs splayed, and the other with his hands in the air. Pradya, Sriyat, and Leung all hold guns. Frank has Ming Li in his arms. Rose is half carrying Noi back to the car, with an over-the-shoulder look at Miaow.