Shadows of War

The shelling stopped so abruptly that Jing Yo didn’t realize at first what had happened. He turned back, disoriented. Then he remembered Ai Gua. Fearing the worst, he began moving cautiously in the direction where he’d last seen him.

Someone shouted to him on his left.

“Halt!”

The command was in Chinese.

Jing Yo turned. Four men, guns ready, were standing ten yards away.

“I am Lieutenant Jing Yo,” he said loudly. “Chinese commandos.”

“Lieutenant!” Ai Gua rose and waved on his right.

The four soldiers eyed him warily.

“We have taken the tower,” he told the men. “Get your commander — the tower is secure.”

6

Bangkok

Peter Lucas had met Jimmy Choi only once, and then for only a few minutes in an airport lounge, but the meeting had burned an indelible image of the South Korean mercenary into his brain. He saw him now as Jimmy spoke over the phone, his voice a sharp rasp, his English clipped and slangy. In Lucas’s mind’s eye, Jimmy had a gold buzz cut, a day-old beard, a gold chain dangling over the dragon’s claw tattoo at the apex of his breastbone. He was dressed in a precisely tailored black suit, with an open white shirt, tails out. He was slouching and grinning.

Jimmy was chewing something — probably a cigar, given his affection for Habanos. He was drinking something too — Lucas had finally tracked him down in a bar in Mandalay, Myanmar.

“Pete — what can I do to the CIA today?” asked Jimmy.

“I need help in Vietnam.”

“Bad place to be right now,” said Jimmy.

“What are you drinking, Jimmy?”

“Shirley Temple. Yes?” The mercenary laughed.

“I have somebody I need to get out. They’re far north, near the border.”

“Ho-ho — very expensive proposition.”

“Can you do it?”

“Where we go?”

“Up near the Chinese border. Somewhere near Lao Cai. I don’t know exactly where yet. I’ll have the information in the next twenty-four hours.”

Jimmy didn’t answer for a second. Lucas heard the ice in his glass clinking.

“Lao Cai very interesting place,” said Jimmy, exhaling as he smoked his cigar. “Too much interest for me.”

“The person I need to get is not in Lao Cai. He’s in the area near there.”

“Even more interesting. Ho-ho, Uncle Pete, you have one very expensive problem on your hand.”

Lucas decided to try a different tack. You couldn’t threaten a man like Jimmy Choi directly; he would surely stand up to anyone who seemed to bully him. But you could hint that his future would become, as Jimmy liked to put it, “interesting” if he didn’t do what you wanted.

“What are you doing, Jimmy? Working for that drug dealer again?”

“Ho-ho, I am on vacation.”

“Yeah, right. Mandalay is quite the vacation spot. Who were you hired to assassinate?”

“Ha-ha, Uncle Pete, you are so funny. You should come here and keep me company. The tables are hot.”

“Since when do you gamble?”

“I gamble every day. Not with money.” Jimmy laughed at his joke and took another draw on his cigar, a long one. Lucas saw him smiling.

“I can get a plane to meet you in Laos,” offered Lucas.

“Ho-ho, no thank you. I do my own transportation. I own two planes now.”

“Business is that good, huh?”

“Oh, you pay for it. Always pay.”

He might have added, through the nose. When they got to the point, it turned out Jimmy wanted five million dollars.

Park had authorized five hundred thousand.

“I might be able to swing one million,” said Lucas. “But I don’t know.”

“One million — ha! I cannot find Vietnam on a map for one million dollar. Let alone Lao Cai.”

“What if we paid it to one of your Chinese bank accounts?” said Lucas. “Denoted in Chinese currency?”

“China money not very good. Much inflation. Maybe we try euro?”

“Inflation is never a problem for a man like you, Jimmy — you spend it before you get it. The equivalent of one million dollars, in yuan, ten percent up front, the rest on delivery.”

Jimmy Choi laughed. “You hack into account and steal it when we done?”

“If I did that, Jimmy, you’d never let me sleep in peace.”

“You got that right, buster.” Jimmy laughed.

They negotiated a bit more — the mercenary wanted the money figured in euros and deposited in a South African bank, not even admitting that he had accounts in China. He was not particular what currency the transaction originated in, as long as the fee was sufficient to cover any currency charges.

“And expenses,” said Jimmy just as Lucas was about to conclude that they had a deal.

“Screw you. Your expenses come out of your share.”

“Gas very expensive today,” said Jimmy. “I see markets going crazy as we speak. We work out compromise. You give Jimmy your credit card number and everyone relaxes.”

* * *

Convincing Park to okay the one million dollars wasn’t easy. Lucas wasn’t sure whether he was really worried about the money — which would have been uncharacteristic — or if he was having second thoughts on the whole enterprise. Finally, his boss agreed.

“But no results, no money.”

“That’s why I’m only paying him ten percent up front,” said Lucas.

“What’s going on in Hanoi?” asked Park.

Two of the agency’s three officers were in Saigon; the other was filing reports every half hour. Their status — more specifically, the question of who was leaking information to the Vietnamese — had been put on hold temporarily. But Lucas was still being very careful about what information they would receive: they hadn’t been told about the mission, and wouldn’t be.

“I expect that they’ll find out at some point,” Lucas told his boss. “We may never really know the entire story there.”

Park said nothing. Lucas knew he was in the process of setting up an elaborate and time-consuming trap to test each officer; it could take weeks or even months to figure out what was really going on. The alternative was to flush all three careers, which Park clearly didn’t want to do.

“What’s going on in the city?” he asked. “The airport is completely out of commission?”

“There were still fires burning there fifteen minutes ago. Power is still on, there and down in the capital, but the landlines are down. The cell system is still up; the military is using it as an alternative. They’ve shut down all the servers they know about — the last independent blogger went offline just before I called.”

“Do you think they can stop China?”

“How do you stop the ocean?” said Lucas.