T. Bunn - The Great Divide

Another slow nod. “Yes.”

“She had it planned down to your handing me the documents. She learned that from Dee Gautam, I imagine. Feed the information to the poor dumb slob of an attorney. Do it slowly. Let him hook himself good and hard, then reel him in bit by bit.”

“That’s right.”

Bile rose in his throat. “Shame she didn’t mention to Alma and Austin that they needed to find somebody better. Somebody who wouldn’t let them crash and burn.”

“Nobody could have done a better job,” she said, her voice too soft to vanquish even a flickering flame.

Yet it was enough to ignite his fury. He smashed his fist down on the table, but she did not flinch, did not even blink. “Gloria is dead, Kirsten. She’s dead. And the case is lost.”

Kirsten’s gaze seemed made from the same fabric as the night, empty and endless. “She was dead before she left.”

He leaned back, searching for a hold on his anger, feeling it seeping away like water through a fist. “What?”

“It’s the only thing that has kept me going. Knowing how she was. She was dead inside. She told me that a hundred times. A thousand. She was just looking for a place to lay her body down.”

It came to him then, the filtering down from the realm beyond logic. “The boyfriend.”

“Gary Loh was finishing medical school when they met. He was brilliant, he loved life, he loved Gloria. They were made for each other. Seeing them together gave you hope for love in a world …” She stopped, breathed hard, looked out the window. “Before he started his internship, Gary went to Hong Kong. That was, oh, eighteen months ago now. It was his second trip. There was a missionary group working there, one partnered with our outreach program. They worked in the red-light district down by the docks, mostly with prostitutes and homeless and addicts. They were Hong Kong’s only outreach program among the heroin addicts. Gary loved the work. He talked about it all the time. That was just a part of how he was, this mercy he felt for the helpless.”

Marcus nodded, not understanding yet, but knowing it was coming. “Britain gave Hong Kong back to China.”

“Hong Kong’s takeover occurred the year before Gary arrived. The Beijing government treats all addicts as capital offenders, the same as pushers. First they warned the clinic, then they raided it. Gary fought back. We heard about this later, from one of the survivors. He had a number of patients who were too ill to move. He tried to bar the soldiers’ entry into the clinic. They beat him with their rifle butts. His skull was crushed. He was flown home in a coma and died three days later.”

“And Gloria took it hard.”

“She just withered up inside. She was kept so sedated I doubt she even knew there was a funeral at all. For days and days she only said one thing to me that made any sense, one thing you could recognize as real words: Don’t tell my parents, I don’t want them to know. A week or so after the funeral, she called to tell them she and Gary had broken off the engagement. She had to say something. They knew the instant they heard her voice that she was torn apart.” Her gaze revealed a trace of the agony that had emptied her. “I made a terrible mistake then. I should have ignored her and told them everything. They would have stopped her. Had her committed or forced her to get help. I don’t know. Something. Then she wouldn’t have …”

Marcus waited until he was certain she could not go on. “But you didn’t.”

“She was my friend. As soon as she came off the sedatives, she grew so determined. I mean, the very same day . Over and over she said she had to find some way to make them pay. It was like some kind of chant, I heard it that often. Some way to give meaning to Gary’s death. She talked about it all the time. I didn’t mind so much, at least she was eating again and making sense and getting better. At least she was involved with life. Or so I thought.”

“Then she found out about the joint venture.”

“Gloria had been working for almost a year on her thesis about New Horizons’ labor practices when Gary died. The company was a natural target for her. She had friends from church in almost every corporate department. New Horizons is a foul breed, always had been. Just the kind of group to suck money from kids.” She stopped for a breath. “Gloria had pretty much stopped work on her thesis and was spending all her time protesting against the Chinese. Then two things happened at once. An assistant manager at the company heard from somewhere that Gloria was fighting the Chinese on human-rights issues. She handed over documents about the joint venture.” Another shaky breath. “And then came the first rumors about New Horizons’ wanting to demolish the church.”

“You mean the cemetery,” Marcus corrected.

She gave a minute shake of her head. “It was never about the cemetery. That was just their opening salvo. Gloria knew because the secretary to the board has a sister in the congregation. Randall Walker appeared before the New Horizons board and said, Complain about the cemetery and ask the city council to condemn it. Do it just before you leave for the conference in Switzerland and let the lawyers take the heat.”

“Randall,” Marcus said. “I should have smelled his hand in this.”

“Once the cemetery was condemned, the plan was to move immediately to include the church as well. They needed the land for further expansion. It was all mapped out. The city council knew and approved.”

“Of course they would.” The thought of his grandfather’s land being handed over to those vultures on the hill sharpened his outrage. “It meant more jobs.”

“Jobs and investment and development. The works. Then you showed up, bypassed the council and the local judges, and had a new federal judge overturn all their carefully laid plans.”

Marcus rose from his desk and went to inspect the darkness without. “Back up to Gloria and her plan.”

“She worked at it night and day. Six months, eight, all the time I was waiting for her to find some reason to live. Something that would keep her here. I thought at times that she’d found it in this battle. But I was wrong. Then she discovered something new, something so urgent and exciting she dropped all her work in my lap and said, I’m going and I’m not coming back.”

Marcus said to the night, “General Zhao.”

“I should have said something. I should have stopped her. I should have warned her parents and called the police, something.”

Marcus shut his eyes to the agony of wrong choices. “The bed in the guest room is made up. You’re welcome to stay if you like.” When she did not answer, he felt driven from the room by his own lack of answers. “Good night.”

For once it was an idea that woke him, and not the nightmare. Marcus was on his feet and moving before he was even fully awake.

He was halfway down the stairs before he registered the change to his home. He sniffed the air, turned, and walked back to the top landing. Marcus walked down the hall, and stood staring at the closed door. The fragrance was stronger there, a taste of softness and light that rested easy on the palate. Marcus knocked on the door. A clear soft voice said come in. Marcus opened the door and stood looking down into eyes that spoke of a heart that was wounded yet still found the strength to care. He found himself thinking of words old Deacon had spoken on the phone the night before, utterances drifting through his mind in time to the faint trace of Kirsten’s perfume. Words like turning and hope .

He said to her, “I’m flying up to Philadelphia. There’s something I need to do.” When she merely nodded her response, he added, “You need to tell Alma and Austin what you told me.”