Don Winslow - The Trail to Buddha_s Mirror

Thick red drapes masked wall-to-ceiling windows, and a rich Oriental carpet covered the floor. The effect was one of tremendous quietude. An enormous black enameled desk took up most of one wall, and a smaller black enameled coffee table flanked by a sofa and two straight-backed chairs occupied another. The man was sitting in one of the chairs. His tie was unknotted, his shoes were off, and he was sipping from a nearly translucent cup.

“You want some tea?” he asked Neal.

“Fuck you and your tea. Who are you?”

“Sorry about the coolie clothing. It’s all we had around.”

Neal didn’t answer.

“My name is Simms,” the man said. He had thick blond hair cut very short, and blue eyes. He looked about thirty plus.

“Are you with Friends?”

“I’m not against them.”

“I’m not in the fucking mood-”

Simms set his cup down. “See, I really don’t care what you’re in the fucking mood for. I just had to kill someone because of you, because you just couldn’t do what you were told. So let’s forget about your mood, all right? Have some tea.”

Neal took the other chair. He poured himself a cup from the teapot that was set on the table.

“And please don’t trouble yourself to thank me for saving your ass. I’m just a public servant doing my job,” Simms said.

“Thank you.”

“You’re just barely welcome. Believe me, Carey, if I didn’t need you, I just might have let them chop you up, I’m that pissed off at you.”

The Book of Joe Graham, Chapter Eight, Verse Fifteen: Don’t give the bastards anything, not when you’re right, and especially not when you’re wrong.

“Boo-hoo, boo-hoo,” Neal said. “And by the way, fuck you. I’ve been doing this shit for half my life and I’ve never seen anyone killed before. Now I see a kid get his legs half hacked off and another get his face blown away and I’ve got blood all over me, literally and figuratively, and I figure you’re involved in all of it. So don’t give me this guilt trip, you preppie fuck. I have plenty already.”

Simms smiled and nodded his head.

“Can I have a real drink instead of this goddamned tea?” Neal asked.

Simms went to the sidebar and poured Neal a healthy scotch.

So you have a file on me, Neal thought. And you’re not with Friends. Which leaves alphabet soup.

“CIA?” Neal asked.

“If you say so.”

“So AgriTech is just a paper corporation.”

“AgriTech is real, all right. It has laboratories, offices, a lunchroom, company picnics, the whole nine yards.”

The whiskey burned pleasantly in Neal’s stomach. He wished he could just go out and get drunk.

Instead he said, “Yeah, AgriTech also has a treasurer named Paul Knox, who has a-how shall I put this-‘fantastic’ employment record.”

“Paul’s a good man.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’s a credit to his race and a terrific fourth if you’re caught short at tee-off time, but I want to know why one AgriTech research scientist is worth all this killing.”

Simms held his teacup gently in both hands and inhaled the smell, as if the answer were in the tea’s aroma.

“AgriTech,” Simms explained in a slow, soft drawl, “is what we call a ‘bench company.’ It’s a place to put players you can’t use on the field at the moment but who you want around in case you need them. In the good old days before Watergate and Jimmy ‘I’ll never lie to you’ Carter, we had a lot more money to keep people on our full-time payroll. As it is now, anytime we want to hire a janitor, we have to appear before a Senate subcommittee and explain to some alcoholic wazoo why we can’t clean the toilets ourselves.

“So we took some of the monies that were sitting around in nooks and crannies and invested it in businesses that perhaps needed a little help. We even created companies out of whole cloth. These companies are expected to conduct actual business, turn a profit, meet a payroll-”

“The whole nine yards.”

“-and in return they employ some people we can’t keep on our lists but might want to use from time to time. Naturally, we need to have understanding people in executive positions in these companies, because, as you have demonstrated, the books do not always bear the closest of scrutinies.”

“And these execs might have to okay some frequent and lengthy leaves of absence.”

“That too.”

“But Pendleton isn’t on an authorized leave.”

“Not hardly.”

“So what happened?”

“So what happened is we got greedy. See, we had ourselves this bench company called AgriTech. AgriTech makes pesticides. At the same time, we found it a little difficult to obtain appropriations for research funds. So it seemed like a natural solution to ask AgriTech to carry a little bit of that load for us.”

Neal finished his drink. He didn’t feel any better.

“So you funneled illegal money into AgriTech to conduct unauthorized chemical experiments.”

“Which is another way of putting it.”

“Under the watchful eye of Paul Knox.”

“Probably.”

“And Robert Pendleton was conducting the actual research.”

“Can I freshen that drink for you?”

“So that whole story I was given about chickenshit-”

“Was chickenshit. For all I know, Pendleton might have been working on some sort of super-fertilizer for AgriTech, but for us he was working on herbicides.”

Neal took the fresh glass from Simms. Well, well, well, Doctor Bob, he thought. This does put a different light on things. Good old, kind old Doctor Bob doesn’t make things grow, boys and girls-he makes them die.

“You see,” Simms continued, “if you know how to make something grow, you have a pretty good shot at knowing how to make it not grow. Killing it when it’s still in the ground is a whole lot nicer for all concerned than spraying it with, for example, Agent Orange.”

“It’s real humanitarian work, all right.”

“It is, in fact. Especially if the plant you’re thinking about killing is the poppy plant.”

The next shot of scotch still didn’t provide Neal the soothing warmth he was after. “Okay, so Pendleton gets the Nobel Peace Prize. What’s your beef with him?”

“The woman, of course.”

Of course.

“You’re an art critic?” Neal asked.

“She’s a spy.”

“Oh, come on!”

This is getting too fucking ridiculous, Neal thought. Li Lan a spy? Next thing you know he’ll tell me A. Brian Crowe is an FBI agent.

“She’s a Chinese operative,” Simms insisted. “Look, Pendleton went to this conference of biochemists at Stanford. The opposition covers those things as SOP. We do the same with their meetings. Li Lan-and let’s call her that for convenience, who knows what her real name is-is assigned to snuggle up to one of the scientists. Share a little pillow talk, you know: ‘Who are you? Where do you work? Gee, that’s fascinating, tell me all about it.’ It just gives the opposition an idea about who’s up to what. Usually it doesn’t go beyond that, but little Li hits a home run. The mark falls in love with her.

“She contacts her bosses, who do a little research of their own. Let’s face it, Carey, if a half-baked rent-a-cop like you can tumble AgriTech, Beijing can do the same. They tell her to stick with him, do that voodoo, etcetera, until he’s so pussy-whipped he’ll follow her anywhere.”

“Like to Hong Kong.”

“Like to Hong Kong, where he’s just a midnight boat ride from the PRC. Maybe they grab him, maybe they’ve already turned him and he goes willingly, but whichever… Li Lan gets a promotion and Pendleton gets an eight-by-ten hospitality suite in some Beijing basement and an opportunity to answer all kinds of interesting questions on a daily basis.”