Two Songs This Archangel Sings m-5 Page 10

  "Go back to New York, think about the things you've told me, and try to sort some things out."

  "You said that these men wish to kill you, too. You're in a great deal of danger yourself, aren't you?"

  "Some."

  "Then you must be doubly careful. You're being followed."

  I turned quickly toward Loan Ka, swallowed hard. "How do you know that?" I asked, trying to keep my sudden attack of panic out of my voice. If it were true, I didn't even want to think about the possible consequences to this man and his family, and to Kathy.

  "You've attracted a great deal of attention from the time you rode your bike into our neighborhood and tacked up the first poster. Many eyes have been watching you. Those same eyes watched what was going on around you; it was observed that a car was following you on your rounds-a late model Ford, dark blue or black."

  My mouth was very dry, and I swallowed again. It didn't help. "Loan Ka, I could have sworn I wasn't being followed. I kept looking back-"

  "You wouldn't have seen him. He took care to keep a safe distance behind you, and he was driving with his lights out." The Hmong took a slip of paper out of his pocket, handed it to me. "This is the license plate number of the car, written down when the car passed under a streetlight. People who caught a glimpse of his silhouette described him as a very big man. One caller said he thought the man might be Oriental, but not Hmong-perhaps Chinese or Vietnamese. I thought the information might be useful to you, and I'm sorry I don't have a better description."

  "Thank you, Loan Ka," I said quietly as I put the slip of paper into my pocket.

  "Would you like us to do something about this man, Mongo? The enemy of you and Archangel becomes our enemy, and there are many good warriors in this neighborhood. We have long memories and have not forgotten or lost our fighting skills."

  It was certainly a tempting thought. My enemies knew I was alive and, despite all the precautions I had taken, I'd been followed, not only to Seattle but through its streets. Still, it would have been an easy matter to shoot me or simply to run me down while I was pedaling merrily along on the bike. It seemed that the word had gone out that there'd been a change of strategy and the quarry was not to be damaged-at least for the time being.

  "No, Loan Ka. If this one disappears, whoever's behind him will just send someone else. It's probably better to leave him in place; it's enough for me to know that he's there."

  "As you wish, Mongo. Just let me know if you change your mind. The big Oriental can be made to disappear very quickly."

  "Loan Ka," I murmured, hoping the others could not hear, "I believe you and your family may be in danger now. Just the fact that you've talked to me could make you a target. I was careless; I shouldn't have come here. It might be best if you all went away for a while."

  The Hmong dismissed the suggestion with a casual wave of his hand, spoke in a normal tone of voice. "As I said, Archangel's and your enemies are mine. After the Pathet Lao and Colonel Po, there are few things we fear. This man in the car is not one of them. We'll be careful, but we're safer here then we would be anywhere else."

  "It's not just the man in the car, Loan Ka. There are others. These men are very dangerous. I'm concerned for you-for all of you."

  "Don't be, my friend. There's nothing to worry about. In the meantime, I'm gratified that we could be of some small help. You must be very tired. Jimmy will take you back to your hotel now, or wherever else you wish to go."

  "Loan Ka-"

  "We'll be safe, Mongo. Don't worry. Just make certain that you protect yourself."

  "I have to go back to the hotel to pick up some clothes," I said with a sigh. "Then I could use a lift to the airport. There's a late flight to New York."

  "As you wish," the Hmong said, nodding to the boy named Jimmy.

  "Sorry about your car, Loan Ka," I said, heading toward the door.

  "It's not a problem; the insurance company will pay for it. If only all things could be as easy to repair as broken windows."

  "Yes."

  "When you find Archangel, tell him that the Hmong have not forgotten."

  "I'll tell him, but it won't be necessary. He knew you wouldn't forget."

  9

  Loan Ka's son and I were alone on the highway-until a car, traveling at high speed, shot by us and quickly disappeared into the darkness up ahead. The car had sped by too fast for me even to identify the make, much less note the license plate number, but it was enough to make me suspicious-and sufficiently nervous to ease the Beretta surreptitiously out of its shoulder holster and hold it in my hand, next to my right leg.

  We reached the airport without incident, but I was still suspicious. I asked Jimmy to take a turn through the parking area collectively used by the car rental agencies for returns, and almost immediately spotted a dark blue, late model Ford; the license plate number matched the one on the slip of paper Loan Ka had handed to me. Whatever else my shadow might be, he was a clever fellow; after seeing me leave the hotel with my bags, he'd preceded me to the airport and would be accompanying me on my flight back to New York. Cute. At the least, I hoped it meant Loan Ka and his family would be safe.

  The "red eye" flight from Seattle to New York was less than half full, and I was the last passenger to get on. The best candidate for the man who was tracking me was sitting by himself in the window seat over the left wing. He was big, all right, and even though he was seated and slumped forward slightly as he read a magazine, I estimated his height to be at least six feet five or six inches. Not certain what, if anything, I wanted to do next, I squatted down in the aisle and pretended to tie my shoelace while I thought about it.

  I decided that there was no way the man could know that I was aware he was following me. It was some advantage, but so minuscule as to be virtually worthless. Since I couldn't very well follow him while he was supposed to be following me, I was left in an almost totally passive position while he controlled all the options-including that of perfunctorily blowing me away if his marching orders were abruptly changed. I'd never liked passive positions and, as risky and uncertain a move as it might be, I decided to gamble for more while I had the opportunity, to see what would happen, or what I might discover, if I put a sharper edge on the situation.

  "Mind if I sit here?" I asked as I dropped into the empty seat next to the big man. "I get airsick if I don't sit over the wing."

  The man lowered his magazine and casually studied me with khaki-colored eyes that were so pale as to seem almost white; they were cold eyes, startling and chilling, and I had the distinct impression that they were mocking this feeble effort on my part to challenge and outwit him. Now that I was actually sitting next to him, I could see that he was more than just big-as a premiere NFL running back is more than just big, with enormous shoulders and torso narrowing down to a slim waist and hips, heavily muscled thighs that seemed to bulge even inside the pants of the finely tailored gray, three-piece suit he was wearing. He would be enormously strong, I thought, and — even more dangerous for me, since it would negate the one real physical advantage I had-quick, despite his looming size. He was certainly capable of much more than just following a man; if he was a killer, he would be a good one, and his body would be all the weapon he needed.

  "Not at all," the pale-eyed man replied easily. "Would you prefer to sit here by the window?"

  "No, thanks," I answered, managing what I hoped was a smile on a face that felt like rapidly setting concrete. "I also get airsick if I can see the ground."

  The man grunted amiably, then turned his attention back to his magazine-a month-old issue of Sports Illustrated.

  I didn't like anything I saw or sensed. It's sometimes possible, I'd learned from past experience, to extract a surprising amount of information about a person in a brief period of time just by being in close physical proximity and engaging the person in some light conversation-the reason I was sitting where I was. Hands, clothes, mannerisms, reactions, choice of reading material, a piece of paper sticking out of
a pocket, an accent, choice of words or topics of conversation, even odors-all can merge together to form a composite picture of a person which, while blurry and incomplete at best, can nonetheless provide valuable clues to character and, sometimes, be a predictor of behavior. Not this time.

  What I was getting from this man was nothing; too much of nothing.

  He had not reacted at all to my sudden appearance. The winter eyes had revealed nothing but keen intelligence and-perhaps-a hint of bemusement behind a thick scrim of control. I put his age at around thirty-five. His hair was a light brown, cut short. To me he looked more European or American than Oriental-but then, only one of Loan Ka's informants had suggested that the man might be Asiatic. He had a rather triangular face, with a high, broad forehead tapering into shallow cheekbones, thin lips, and a surprisingly narrow chin for such a big man.

  He was slumped in his seat, leaning to his left at an awkward angle, as if favoring a stiff neck or sore back. He held the magazine with his fingertips, and when he turned the pages it was with quick, nervous movements. His legs were crossed, and he would occasionally tap his right foot nervously against a brown cowhide attache case he had placed on the floor by his seat. The image he projected was of a well-dressed and, despite his size, slightly effeminate businessman or accountant.

  But "projected" was the key word, and I had the distinctly unnerving feeling that the man was playing games with me, enjoying a private joke at my expense. Of course, I had to take into account the possibility that he was a slightly effeminate businessman or accountant, and not the man who had been following me. But the blue Ford had been parked at the airport, and my seatmate was the only fellow passenger who came even close to fitting the description Loan Ka had given me.

  I recalled the many conversations Veil and I had had regarding the ninja art of "psychological disguise"-meaning, in the case of the ninja, that a person did not have to be truly terrible to be truly terrifying, and vice versa. The point, always, was to lull and coax your enemy, or quarry, into perceiving you as you wanted him to perceive you. What and who you really are, Veil had always said, was nowhere nearly as important as what others thought you were. This was the axiom that the ninja used to create a desired reality from illusion.

  It was a set of skills I had, of necessity, used all my life, without ever having a label for what I was doing. Now I suspected that these same skills were being used against me in an attempt to disarm and beguile.

  I knew I had made a mistake in confronting this man. I had hoped at least to shake him, to gauge him as an opponent, and, if I got lucky, perhaps to learn something that would be useful to me in my search for Veil. But in trying to inflate my small advantage, I had seen it blow up in my face; I was the one who was shaken, thoroughly intimidated by the man's physical size and psychological control. All I had accomplished with my stunt was to drive my tracker even deeper into the deadly shadows at my back.

  Responding to a very real sensation of queasiness in the pit of my stomach, I indulged in a little psychological disguise of my own; I removed the airsickness bag from the pouch on the back of the seat in front of me and cradled it in my lap, then closed my eyes and pretended to fall asleep. I felt like the village idiot.

  10

  Garth heartily concurred.

  "What are you, the fucking village idiot?!"

  "It seemed like a good idea at the time," I replied lamely, reaching across the kitchen table for another doughnut. Garth's shift didn't begin until one in the afternoon, and we were enjoying a late breakfast while we considered together what I had-and hadn't-learned from the Hmong in Seattle. "I wanted to see if I could get some kind of line on the guy."

  "You got a line on him, all right. Now he knows you're on to him."

  "Not necessarily," I said without conviction. "There were enough people on the plane to make it seem reasonable for me to choose to sit next to him purely by chance."

  "You still acted like the village idiot. You should have taken up the Hmong on his offer to have the man taken out."

  "No. They'd just have sent somebody else."

  "Yeah, but probably a smaller edition. This big guy sounds really spooky."

  "That's a pretty good description."

  "And we still don't know who's behind him."

  "True, but it's interesting that they've decided to follow instead of kill me. These people aren't stupid."

  Garth nodded in agreement as he took a bite out of a doughnut and washed it down with black coffee. In the morning light his skin seemed to have a greenish pallor, which I didn't like. He'd lost weight, and it occurred to me that he hadn't looked well for weeks. It bothered me.

  "They tried to kill you in the beginning because they figured you as a loose end that could be chopped off quickly," Garth said when he had finished chewing. "Their main concern was in catching up with Kendry, but they quickly learned that finding Kendry wasn't going to be as easy as they'd thought. He was playing games with them, mostly hide and seek. Then two of the front-line players lost their lives and their right thumbs, so they decided that it might be easier to let you find Kendry for them. They're using you as a stalking horse." Garth paused, smiled thinly. "After all, you're the one whom Kendry's considerate enough to leave clues for."

  "Yeah."

  "Your friend Kendry is a real prick, Mongo. He's tied you across the mouth of a cannon. He's using you as a stalking horse, too."

  "It does look that way. It seems like he needs me to gather evidence that will indict a person or persons unknown."

  "Damn it, he's the evidence!"

  "No, not evidence; he's the story, and it has to be corroborated."

  "Well, he should have told you the story. Kendry damn well knows who wants to kill him, and it would have been nice for him to share the information with you before he sucked you into a situation where you almost got your ass cooked and could still end up with bullets where your brains used to be. Nobody else might have believed him, but you would have. He not only put you out in front of him, the son-of-a-bitch left you blindfolded on a killing ground."

  "We've played this number, Garth, and there's no sense in doing it again," I said with some impatience. "Before we can pass judgment on Veil's methods, we have to find out who's trying to kill him, and why. When I found out that Liu Sakh Po was involved in this thing, it crossed my mind that he was the man we were after; after that last series of articles on him appeared in the Times, he could have started worrying about the loss of his low profile and wanted to erase links to his past. Or he could have feared that Veil would find out where he was and come gunning for him."

  Garth looked skeptical. "You said the articles appeared six months ago."

  "Precisely; too much time between events. If it is Po who's gunning for Veil, it wasn't the articles that triggered him. But I don't think it is Po. The men who tried to cremate me and the big guy on the plane aren't Po's type of people. Po's a low-class thug, and he uses other low-class thugs. The thugs I keep bumping into are nothing if not high-class. Still, the good colonel most certainly knows things we want to know, which is why I'm going to take a spin up the Thruway to see him."

  "Dumb idea, Mongo; seriously dumb. There's no way he's going to talk to you about anything, much less about things he wants kept hidden. You'll just end up with low-class thugs chasing you along with the high-class ones."

  "You're probably right. But I have to follow the bread crumbs wherever they lead, and right now Colonel Po is standing right in the middle of the trail. How can I go around him? He was one of the three men in the helicopter that came to take Veil away from the Hmong village, and he'll know the names and functions of the other two. He may know who wants Veil dead; it could be the man whose blood was on Veil's uniform."

  "What blood?"

  "Loan Ka told me that Veil had blood all over the front of his uniform when he came to warn the village of the attack."

  "It was probably Kendry's blood."

  "That's possible. But if it was
Veil's own blood, it means he was wounded after he cleaned out the brothel and took the children to the Catholic Relief Agency. Kathy, the Hmong girl, was very clear on the point that Veil's uniform was clean when he walked out of the brothel, so the blood got there sometime between early morning, when he dropped off the children, and the afternoon, before he got into the helicopter. It was sometime during those hours when he found out about the plan to attack Loan Ka's village."

  "You said the girl told you Kendry looked like hell. Maybe he already knew about the operation and had been brooding about it."

  "Veil would have flown to warn the village as soon as he learned of the plan. If he'd known earlier, he could have avoided a situation where he had to shoot at his own people. No. He learned about it that same day, with only hours to go before the American and South Vietnamese commandos were scheduled to reach the village."

  "Who did he learn it from?"

  "The person or persons he went to see right after dropping off the children. Veil was enraged, so he would logically go to see the person he held responsible for the children ending up in a brothel-the man who'd made the decision to replace Veil with Colonel Po."

  "One or both of the other two men in the helicopter."

  "Right. Po was a monster, and everyone in the American and South Vietnamese command structure knew he was a monster. But not the Hmong. The Hmong finally unmasked him and drove him and his men out of the village, but not before they'd done irreparable damage to the children. This was the account Veil went to settle. There could have been a fight, with fists or guns, and Veil wound up with blood all over him. During the course of the confrontation, he learned about the plans for the attack. He just had time to abort it, but not to avoid actions that would brand him a traitor. It's doubtful that Veil would have known where to find Po so quickly; it was an American he went to see."

  Garth absently sipped at his cold coffee, finally looked up at me and nodded in approval. "I like it, brother," he said simply. "It could very well have gone down that way."