Timothy Hallinan - The Fourth Watcher

“We started when she was two,” Frank says. “She was drawing maps by the time she was six. At seven she followed me across town without my knowing it.”

“Not easy,” Leung says.

“Not that hard,” Ming Li says, grinning.

“And the point was. .?” Rafferty asks.

“Anything that was on my map that wasn’t on theirs was leverage. Ming Li was on my map. Leung was on my map.”

Frank absently checks his watch. “So Ming Li was a double-edged sword, although Chu didn’t know it. He didn’t know he’d given me Leung either. Chu assigned Leung to keep an eye on me for an operation in Pailin, in Cambodia. Industrial rubies, smuggled as costume jewelry, the biggest, ugliest stuff you ever saw. Millions of dollars’ worth, set into crud too vulgar for Imelda Marcos. No customs officer in his right mind would think it was real. Like me, Leung was under a certain amount of pressure.”

“Sister,” Leung says. “Chu never threatened her, just sent her chocolates on her birthday every year. So I’d know that he could get to her whenever he wanted to.”

“And Leung was better than I was,” Frank says. “So I learned from him, and then I turned it around, and when he called Chu to report in, I was there.”

“With a gun,” Leung adds. “We had a candid exchange of views.”

“And came to an understanding. That was two years ago. We took our time, because you don’t hurry with these boys. Five days ago Leung’s sister fell off the map, went down the rabbit hole. Caused no end of consternation on Colonel Chu’s end of the phone. I helped out as best I could, sent his guys to three or four plausible places, and while the hounds were hunting, I made Wang disappear.”

“This isn’t about that,” Rafferty says. He is so tired he can barely stand upright. “This isn’t just an escape. It’s bigger than that.”

“He’s not slow after all,” Ming Li says.

Frank’s eyes are on Poke, the fleck of gold in the left one catching the light. “You’re right, Poke. It is. I did something before I closed up shop in China. I stole the rest of Colonel Chu’s life.”

“This is great,” Rafferty says. He is still at the window and feels as though he has been there for hours. “You took something that could have been business-nasty, dirty business, but business- and you turned it personal.”

“Afraid so.” Frank shells another peanut, and Rafferty suddenly feels beneath his bare feet the sharp edges of peanut shells, perpetually scattered over the living-room carpet in Lancaster. Remembers his mother grumbling behind the vacuum.

“Essentially, that makes me fair game. My family and me.”

“You were always fair game. Chu isn’t someone who plays by rules. This is a guy who would shoot a hotel telephone operator who got his wake-up call wrong.”

“In case you think Frank is just being vivid,” Ming Li says, “he’s not.”

“So you. . what? You tried to kill him? Obviously, you missed. But this means no negotiation, doesn’t it? One of you is going to have to die.”

Frank smooths his long, thinning strands of hair. “I didn’t say I tried to kill him, Poke. I said I took the rest of his life.”

Rafferty brings up his hand and massages his eyes. His chest feels uncomfortably dense, as though his lungs are full of water. “The rest of. .” The phrase means nothing, but a word pops into his mind, and he looks at his father. “What box?”

“Ah,” Frank says. He looks at Ming Li.

“You said Chu wouldn’t want anyone to know about the box. What box?”

“Good for you,” Frank says. “Actually, there is probably some room for negotiation, enough at least to get him within range.”

“Of what?”

“A really good gun.” Frank leans down and reaches beneath the bed, and when he comes back up, there is a leather box in his hand, about the size of three hardcover books in a stack. It has a small clasp on the front, and Frank twists it open and lifts the lid. “Pailin,” he says.

Rafferty crosses to the bed, leans forward, and sees rubies, maybe three or four hundred of them, anywhere from half a carat to two or three carats. They shine under the fluorescents like frozen blood.

“They’re flawless,” Frank says. “Most rubies are occluded, did you know that? They’ve got clouds of opaque mineral material in them. Very few are clear enough to cut into big stones. That’s why they’re so expensive. Chu’s been sifting through the Pailin take for decades to fill this box. It was part of his getaway stash, just in case.”

“Worth how much?” Rafferty asks. He can’t take his eyes off them.

Frank looks down at them regretfully. “Well, if you have the luxury of selling them one at a time, through legitimate channels, maybe three million. The way I’ll have to do it, I figure I’ll get one.”

“Is this about three million dollars, or is it about face?”

“Both. And something else. Dig down through the rubies. All the way to the bottom.”

Rafferty sits and does as he’s told, the rubies cold and smooth on his skin. At the bottom of the box, he feels paper. A large envelope. He works it out carefully, not wanting to spill any of the rubies from the box.

“Open it.”

The envelope is half an inch thick. He opens the flap and pours the contents onto the bed. He sees papers, folded in thirds, and an American passport. When he opens the passport, he sees a photo of an old man with a large mole on his cheek and the name irwin lee. Slipped into the passport are a Virginia driver’s license in the same name, and a Social Security card.

“What the hell?”

“Look at the other papers.”

The deed to a house in Richmond, Virginia, also in the name of Irwin Lee. Credit-card statements, some of them showing activity less than a month old. Irwin Lee is a vigorous consumer. Rafferty says, “This is a whole life.”

“It’s Chu’s future,” Frank says. “He’s had someone being Irwin Lee for almost fifteen years. Creating a space for Chu to slip into, like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle.”

“It’s his retirement plan?” Rafferty asks.

“He’s more than seventy,” Frank says. “There’s a generation behind him that’s getting impatient. They’re entrepreneurs, Poke, like so many people in China today. They’re tired of the old ways and the old men who won’t let go of them. If Chu doesn’t make a move of some kind, he’s going to get the ax, and that’s probably not a figure of speech.”

“Jesus,” Rafferty said. “Why didn’t you just kill him?”

Frank is silent, but Ming Li says, “Because we wanted him to suffer first.”

“You have to understand, Poke,” Frank says. “We never thought he’d come here. We were only going to be in Bangkok long enough to sell the rubies, and then we were going to disappear off the face of the earth.”

Poke says, “But I talked to Arnold.”

“Yeah,” Frank says. “And Arnold was a stumblebum.”

“Let’s assume you can still get out of here. Do you actually know somebody who has a million on hand to pay for a box of rocks?”

“Sure,” Frank says. “The North Koreans. Anything that’s discounted right now, anything they can turn around-”

Rafferty slices the air with the edge of his hand, and Frank stops in mid-word. “How do you know the North Koreans?”

“My shop, so to speak,” Frank says, as though it were obvious. “And shops like my shop. They’re among the very few people in the world who’ll do business with the North Koreans.”

Rafferty reaches out, grabs a handful of his father’s peanuts, and gets settled. He smiles at Ming Li, who gives him a puzzled smile in return. “Do tell,” he says.