Don Winslow - The Trail to Buddha_s Mirror

“Pardon me?” Kitteredge asked.

“He develops a romantic obsession for the woman,” Levine explained as he drilled Graham with a shut-the-fuck-up glare that didn’t shut him the fuck up.

“So,” Graham continued, “Blue Suit over here knows free labor when he sees it and stands back while Neal gets deeper and deeper into the shit, and now he shows up here and tells us Neal is gone. So, Mr. Simms, the word I don’t understand is ‘gone.’ Maybe you can explain that?”

Simms looked to Kitteredge as if he expected him to intervene.

Kitteredge did. “Yes, Mr. Simms, perhaps you could explain?”

“Neal Carey telephoned me from the YMCA in Kowloon and said he had Pendleton and Li Lan and please come and get him. I of course said I would, and sent the nearest available resources over. When they got there, perhaps forty-five minutes later, Carey, Pendleton, and the woman were gone. When I got there in another hour, they were still gone. That was six weeks ago. We have since managed to track them as far as a temple near the Walled City.”

“What’s that?” Levine asked.

“It is the eighth circle of hell. It is an area only about the size of three football fields, yet perhaps the densest maze in the urban cosmography.”

Kitteredge leaned over his desk. “Mr. Simms, please spare us any further demonstrations of your… erudition. We all acknowledge that you are intelligent. You may take that as a stipulation, and please begin to speak in English.”

Simms flushed. He didn’t particularly care for Yankees, or Irishmen, or for that matter Jews, and he was having to put up with an especially unpleasant combination of all three.

“The Walled City is a no-man’s-land. It had its beginnings as a fort that became a haven for squatters during the early days of British colonization. Neither the Chinese nor the British attempt to administrate it, so it is controlled by an uneasy confederation of tongs. Tongs, or Triads, are gangs-”

“We have them in New York,” Graham said.

“How nice for you. Anyway, the original walls have long since crumbled, but the area is actually an impenetrable maze, a hovel of the worst kind of crime: Drugs, extortion, slavery, and child prostitution flourish there. The police rarely venture inside, and tourists are warned that even to step into the Walled City is a risky proposition. People simply disappear.”

Gone, Graham thought.

“If Carey was lured into the Walled City, I’m afraid he is in desperate trouble.”

“He’s a tough kid,” Levine said, but Graham could hear the fear in his voice. Ed Levine always said that he hated Neal Carey, but Graham knew better. Besides, Neal was Ed’s employee, one of his people, and Ed Levine was fiercely protective of his people.

“That won’t do him much good, I’m afraid,” Simms answered. “If he’s in there, he’s in one of the most vicious slums in the world. A place without law, ethics, or morals. A jungle.”

“What will happen to him?” asked Kitteredge, who had a banker’s way of cutting to the bottom line.

“I doubt they’d murder him outright, unless the Li woman ordered it.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s much more valuable alive.”

“To whom? As what?”

Simms smiled tightly. “A white youth would be an oddity there, to say the least. A commodity. They will probably auction him off to the highest bidder. This really is excellent tea. What is it?”

Simms’s hand reached for the teapot but never made it. A hard rubber artificial arm slammed it to the table and held it there.

“Go in and get him,” Graham said.

“Impossible. Now remove your arm, please.”

“Go in and get him.”

“I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

Graham pressed down hard. “Yeah. Do some of your fancy CIA shit on me. Terrify me.”

“Ease up, Joe,” Levine said. Graham could feel that the big man was getting ready to move, to peel him off Simms.

“I’ll break his fucking wrist, Ed.”

“Have you all considered the possibility that your Carey isn’t in the Walled City at all? That perhaps he is cashing a check in Peking, or on a nice beach in Indonesia somewhere, laughing at all of us?”

Simms was trying to maintain his cool, but the voice betrayed pain.

“Mr. Graham,” said Kitteredge, “please release your… hold… on our guest’s arm.”

Graham pressed down a little harder before letting up. He looked Simms in the eye and repeated, “Go in and get him.”

Simms ignored him and turned to Kitteredge. He was red in the face and rubbing his wrist as he asked, “What do you want me to do, Mr. Kitteredge?”

“Mr. Simms, I want you to go in and get him.”

“Look, Carey has disobeyed every single directive we’ve issued. He’s blown a major operation. And, frankly, I don’t know whether (A) we can find him, and (B), if we do, whether we could get him out.”

Levine came from around the desk, leaving his usual position on the right hand of God. He leaned against the Man’s desk and looked down at Simms. “In that case, I don’t know whether (A) we can continue our current financial relationship with AgriTech, or (B) we may have to call in our paper.”

Simms blew his cool. “You don’t fuck with the government.”

“Watch us.”

“You think you can take on the CIA? You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

“We know enough to launder your goddamn money for the past ten years,” Levine said.

Kitteredge raised a hand to object. “I’m not sure I would call it ‘laundering.’”

“Taking their slush fund, running it through the Bank, and then loaning it back to to their pet corporation to pay for research? Come on, Mr. Kitteredge, what would you call it?”

“Patriotism.”

Nobody answered that one.

Kitteredge smoothed back the unruly lock of ash-blond hair that fell across his forehead. “For an… organization… such as ours, it is our duty and our privilege to support our country. Because we are who we are, that support often takes a covert form. So be it. We do what we can do. However, gentlemen, in this particular case we have erred grieviously. We have-albeit unwittingly, and I am very angry about that, Mr. Simms, very angry-sent our colleague, Neal Carey, into dangerous waters without the proper navigational aids. Thus, sailing in the dark on uncharted waters, he has foundered. If he has indeed… drowned… we must mourn him. But if he is marooned, we must rescue him. We will use-and you will use, Mr. Simms-all our resources to do so. Am I understood, gentlemen?

Ed Levine and Joe Graham nodded.

“Mr. Simms?”

Simms nodded.

“The tea is black gunpowder. Many of my ancestors invested in the China trade,” Kitteredge said.

“Tea traders?”

“Uhhmm. And opium, of course.”

Right, thought Graham. Opium in and tea out. Sounds like money in the bank. Make that money in the Bank.

“Take some with you, Mr. Simms. I’ll have my secretary make up a package,” Kitteredge added.

The abruptness of the dismissal startled Simms. Just who the unholy hell did these people think they were? Nobody wanted to find young Neal Carey more than he did. He shook Kitteredge’s hand, nodded to Levine, and ignored Joe Graham as he left the room.

Kitteredge sat back in his chair and touched his fingertips together at his lips. He looked like he was praying, but Graham knew it was a habit he had when he was in deep thought. So Graham just shut up, something he thought he maybe should have done earlier, because maybe the Man was searching for just the right words to fire him.

Finally he spoke. “Ed?”

“I think we have to assume that Carey’s been the subject of hostile action,” Levine said. “Carey’s an arrogant, undisciplined, unreliable fuck-up, but he’s no traitor.”