Time out of mind. Minutesor was it yearslater he crawled down from atop the ruined well. Beneath the dripping villa"s overhang, Ross Davies was sleeping. Zilin crawled inside, out of the cold and the damp and the utter blackness. He put his arms around his drawn-up legs and shivered violently.
It was only then that he smelled the nauseating scent of bitter almonds and, turning his head, saw the top of the bitten-through hollow tooth, saw his friend"s torn, breathless lips a deep, unnatural shade of blue.
IV.
EXISTENCE.
VIVARTASIDDHA.
Spring-Summer Present.
Miami/Moscow/Hong Kong/Shan/ Washington "He"s ghosted."
"What?"
"Ghosted, dude. You know, gone. The motherf.u.c.ker"s gone."
"Bennett?"
Martine Juanito Gato de Rosa c.o.c.ked his head. "You think I got all the water out of your lungs, dude? Maybe I missed some."
"Whoa! Any more mouth-to-mouth," Tony Simbal said, "and I might fall in love with you."
It was dark down there, and cold. Simbal had never been so cold in his life. But thank Christ for the cold; that was what had revived him. Without the cold he would have dropped like a stone to depths that the Cuban could not reach without a set of artificial lungs. Simbal shivered, still feeling the effects of the cold and the dark.
The Cuban"s topaz eyes opaqued. "What a f.u.c.kin" waste." He sat with the gray blanket emblazoned with MIAMI METRO POLICE in black stenciled letters. He"d flashed his credentials at the cops who had come in response to some citizen"s irate phone call and, after taking cursory statements, they had left, sirens screaming to the site of a real disaster, a hotel fire downtown. The paramedics had worked on Simbal"s cuts and abrasions. They had wanted to take him to the hospital for tests and observations but he had refused. "Maria wasn"t like the mean b.i.t.c.hes you usually find down here, holding on to the fringes like dogs to a bone. She had a useful mind."
In the cold and the dark there was no breath. That was the thing that gnawed at Simbal"s mind still. No air, no life. He imagined the lungs ceasing to work as the cold and the dark crept in, trickling downthe nostrils, between the tightly clenched teeth until it became a tide. Drowning. He shivered heavily again and pulled the rough police blanket around him more tightly.
"Look at my suit," the Cuban said. There was real mourning in his voice now. "I might as well throw it in the incinerator, all the use I"ll get out of it now. You know how much this b.a.s.t.a.r.d set me back?"
"Shut up."
"What?"
"I said shut up. The Company paid for that item, didn"t it?" He meant the CIA. "Well, yeah." "So stop b.i.t.c.hing."
The Cuban put his head down. "It"s not the motherf.u.c.king suit, dude. s.h.i.t, man."
Simbal was trembling, aftershocks following the quake.
"That hijo de puta turned his gun on her and blitzed her out. Just like that. It takes a cold, cold heart to do it, I"ll tell you. A voodoo spook is right."
"Martine, shut up." But he was listening to the Cuban very closely now, trying to interpret a feeling.
"Why for you tell me to shut up, man," the Cuban said in an aggrieved voice. "Who d"you think dived in, with all the sharks and s.h.i.t, and pulled you out."
"No sharks that close in, Martine."
"You never heard of poetic license, dude? Madre de Dios, I save your unbelieving hide from a watery grave."
"And I appreciate it, Martine, really I do, but will you kindly, for Christ"s sake, keep your yap shut for a minute."
The Cuban looked out at the lights bobbing across the marina. "That"s no way to show your appreciation, man."
"You say Bennett"s disappeared."
Gato de Rosa was watching the water. "Ghosted, dude. Like the tide."
"Maybe not," Simbal said.
The Cuban turned to look at him. "What do you know that I don"t." "Run-Run Yi."
"The Chinatown Yi? One of the three brothers who run the diqui in New York."
"The same. I spotted him at the party. He and Bennett were talking." "So?" The Cuban shrugged. "Ain"t that what parties"re all about?" "Not this one," Simbal said. "Remember what Bennett said? Hewasted Alan Thune. Run-Run Yi was Thune"s big booster within the diqui. Word I got was that Yi was putting Thune up for a big promotion."
Gato de Rosa"s topaz eyes opened wide. "And you think a"
Simbal nodded. "If something was wrong with Thune, chances are that same thing is wrong with Yi. Who knows, maybe the two of them were skimming or, even, planning to go into business for themselves."
"If you"re right," the Cuban said, "we find Run-Run Yi and we"ll find Bennett as well because Bennett"s here to ice him."
"My thought precisely."
The Cuban rose, shed his blanket. "Let me make a couple of calls. Someone"s gotta know where Yi is staying."
Someone did.
"The Yak says Run-Run"s booked into the Trilliant on the Beach."
"The Yak?"
"Listen, hombre, if you had as much hair as this dude, they"d call you the Yak as well." His fine cream-colored silk suit was an unholy mess, crinkled and bagged at knees and elbows. "Let"s get us some dry duds." He held out his hand. *Then find Yi." He pulled Simbal to his feet. They were standing very close. "Wherever this b.a.s.t.a.r.d goes now, I"m going with him."
"Bennett"s my objective."
"Not anymore," the Cuban said. "Not after this."
The Trilliant lived up to its name, a fiery jewel of a place, so modern its triangular pyramidal shape was dizzying. Between its melon-colored sloping facade and the ocean, an enormous triangular lagoonlike pool with a central island dotted with palm trees was lit up like an airport runway.
Gato de Rosa grunted as they pulled up and a uniformed attendant took over the fire-red Ferrari. "Wait"ll you get a load of their golf course," he said. "The back nine packs quite a kick. The trap on the seventeenth hole"s got more than water in it, It"s got a f.u.c.king croc, too." He laughed shortly.
Emormous pale pink flagstones led up to the glittering smoked-gla.s.s and brushed-bronze entrance. Plantings of palm, azalea and bougainvillea flanked either side.
"First cla.s.s," Simbal said.
"Yeah," the Cuban said, "if you can stand this s.h.i.t for more than an hour."
Inside, the air conditioning took their breath away.
"Jesus," Simbal said, "where"s my parka?"
"Wha.s.samatter," Gato de Rosa said, "you got something against freezing to death?" He went over to an industrial-size marble-topped credenza upon which were sitting a line of pink dialless telephones. He picked up a receiver, asked for the number of Run-Run Yi"s room. The operator would not give it to him and he did not want her to ring the room.
He sauntered over to the reception desk, waited for the swarthy-skinned concierge to get off the phone. Gato de Rosa called him softly over, transferred a twenty into the man"s waiting hand. The bill pa.s.sed between them with the kind of mysterious adroitness shown at a magician"s convention. They spoke in Spanish for less than thirty seconds.
In a moment, Gato de Rosa was back. "What d"you expect," he said in a moment. "Thirty-seven-oh-one-and-two. Top-floor suite. That"s five bills a night."
"Who said crime doesn"t pay," Simbal said as they headed for the bank of burnished-bronze elevator doors. Each was emblazoned with the triangular pattern that was the hotel"s logo. It was woven into the custom carpeting along the lobby floor.
"Your paisan say whether old Yi was in?" Sirnbal asked.
"He thought yes."
"Any visitors?"
The Cuban looked at Simbal with some skepticism. "Come on, he"s the concierge not Superman. The Trilliant"s a G.o.dd.a.m.ned big place. A truckload of Marines could come in and he might not know it."
"But at least you determined yours was the first bribe he"d taken tonight."
Gato de Rosa laughed.
The sight of Bennett stepping out of one of the elevators cut it short. "Hijo de puta!"
The lobby was jammed with guests in glittery outfits. Music was blaring from off to the left and the general flow of the people was in that direction. A late floor show at the nightclub. The amount of diamonds on display would have made even Murph the Surf salivate.
Bennett was making his way against the flow of the crowd. He seemed in no hurry and hadn"t bothered to look behind him. Like most madmen he was very confident. Simbal and the Cuban started after him, shouldering their way through the Nipon and Ungaro dresses, the After Six tuxes. Clouds of Norell and Chanel No. 5 clung to them.
Bennett disappeared through a side door and they picked up their pace. Through the doors they found themselves in a concrete corridor. The floor was covered with Astroturf. Affixed to one wall was a signthat said: NO SWIM SUITS ALLOWED IN THE LOBBY and Simbal said, "s.h.i.t!," breaking into a sprint. He remembered what the Cuban had said, that Bennett never went anywhere not accessible by boat.
They went through gla.s.s doors that opened at their approach, skirted the lighted swimming pool. It was as large as a ballpark. Past the lip of the vast concrete ap.r.o.n on which over a hundred lounge chairs were neatly arrayed in precise rows, were set a flight of wide stairs. They were dusted with sand and they went down them three at a time.
In the glow from the pool lights they could see Bennett already at the water"s edge. As Simbal watched, he plunged into the surf and came up with a twist of his head. Hard, powerful strokes took him past the crash line. The Cuban went into the water after him.
Moments later, Simbal caught sight of the sleek black cigarette bobbing at anchor.
"G.o.dd.a.m.n it!" he said and began to run back toward the hotel.
The double mahogany doors to the suite were unlocked. Run-Run Yi lay on a sea-green sofa that wrapped around the living room. His flat Cantonese face was white as rice paper. His chest fluttered inconstantly and his eyes were closed.
Simbal knelt, felt for a pulse. "Elder Uncle," he said in Cantonese, "you"re going to be fine. Bennett did this to you. Edward Martin Bennett. Why?"
Run-Run Yi"s eyes opened but Simbal knew that he wasn"t seeing anything except what was in his mind. "Bennett needed me dead," he said slowly, softly, painfully.
"Like he needed Alan Thune dead?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Yi said nothing. His eyes rolled in pain.
"Why, Elder Uncle? Why did Bennett need you and Alan Thune dead."
The Chinese murmured something and Simbal, desperate, said, "What?" very loudly.
And when he heard it, it did not compute. "Arms?" he said. And then with more urgency, "Elder Uncle, did you say arms?"
Yi"s eyelids fluttered. "I"m dying," he said in a guttural voice, thick with his own fluids. "You must inform my brothers."
"Yes, yes."
"All G.o.ds bear witness," Yi whispered. "I curse my murderer to sixteen generations."
"Bennett wanted you and Alan Thune dead because of arms?" Simbal said. He was very close to the other man now and could smell the peculiar odor of death stealing over him.
"Yes." Yi"s lips were trembling. "Is it cold in here?" "The arms, Elder Uncle."
"That is the province of the new generation, it seems. Bennett, Mako, the others." "What others?"
Consciousness was coming and going. Yi"s eyes fluttered closed. He seemed to be marshaling his energy. "Arms, antipersonnel weapons Blackman T-93swe are told, are what we must now transship. But there is no profit in these arms. We are not selling them." "What then?" "Stockpiling." "In Asia?"
"Asia, South America, Europe, America. All places." "But why?"
A pink bubble formed between Yi"s trembling lips. "Thune was against it. I was against it. We should have known better. But it is dangerous. So dangerous for the world."
"What kind of danger?" Simbal urged, his face close to the other"s. "The worst kind." "What do you"
"These weaponswill have the power to destroy the world." The cold sweat was rolling off Yi"s flat face. His skin had taken on an awful pallor. "When Bennett"
Simbal waited, breathless. He could hear his pulse hammering in his ears. Mother of G.o.d, he thought. What have I fallen into? " *When Bennett," " he repeated.
"Bennett is the jinn who opens the door." What did that mean? "Where has he gone?" "To the Shan," Yi said, and shuddered. "The source." "Elder Uncle?" Simbal reached out, felt for a pulse that was not there. In a moment, he sat back.
The diqui into arms shipments? he wondered. Antipersonnel weapons, specifically Blackman T-93 one-man rocket launchers. Why? And how could those small arms cause the destruction of the world? Simbal found himself shivering, He felt as cold as the dead.
"What was that all about, man?" Gato de Rosa said, coming into the room. He was making puddles on the thick carpet. Simbal did not look at him. "Bennett?" "The cigarette," the Cuban said. "It was waiting for him."