Jake Maroc - Shan Part 58

"You're right," Simbal said into the silence. "Kam Sang is what it has been about from the beginning."

"What do you mean?" Jake asked.

"Kam Sang was the reason Donovan brought me into this. Two of his agents went underground in the diqui. They were killed, but just before that they managed to report to Donovan that the diqui was interested in the Kam Sang project."

Jake nodded. "That's why. And now you know where Donovan's interest in Kam Sang comes from."

"Daniella Vorkuta?"

"Right," Jake said. "Vorkuta again."

Simbal shifted his position. "But what is it exactly that was discovered at Kam Sang?"

The green bower dripped all around them. The jungle, weeping with moisture, fell away from them in a hard line. It devolved here and there, as it descended in raggle-taggle fashion, into rocky scree upon which great black birds sat, cawing.

Theyalong with perhaps a score of Shan warriorshad come some fifteen kilometers from the tiny village of the tribe loyal to Simbal. In that time, they had ascended perhaps a further five hundred meters. The air now had about it the tang of ozone that scoured the back of the throat and tended to sear the inside of the nostrils. One had to be in good shape here or the relative scarcity of oxygen would inordinately tax the cardiovascular system.

"We're very near," Jake said. "According to Uncle Tommy."

The storm had not blown over, merely seemed to be taking a breather. But, for now, at least, the air was calmer than it had been for the past twenty-four hours. The two dozen or so Shan soldiers were grouped loosely through the small clearing. Simbal had set guards every fifty meters at a one-hundred-meter perimeter.

"We're into General Kuo's territory now," he said. Wisely, he saw no point in pressing the Kam Sang issue. Deeds not words, he had learned in the Shan, were the only basis of trust. "He's the head man all over these parts," he said. "Very bad dude."

"We're going to have to go right down his throat then." Jake pointed. "a.s.suming Uncle Tommy was giving me the straight goods."

Through the dense foliage within which they crouched they could just make out patches of a structure.

"Looks like an opium factory," Jake said, sniffing the air.

"Bingo. Maybe the biggest one in the Golden Triangle. Kuo's the only one fanatic enough about security to keep his factory at his base of operations. The other generals like to take it down the mountain before refining it." Simbal shifted his position. "We haven't got the firepower, you know," he said. "Kuo's men will chew us up and spit us out."

"I don't give a s.h.i.t about General Kuo," Jake said. "I wasn't thinking about taking your Shan soldiers with me."

"You mean just us, don't you?"

Jake looked at him. What did he really know about this man? At the killing ground, Fo Saan said, trust no one. "That's entirely up to you," Jake said.

Simbal waited a minute. "You're a hard one, aren't you? What do you think you're trying to prove?"

Jake kept his eye on the opium factory. It was important to get a sense of the minute-to-minute movement around the site.

"You've got a bad att.i.tude, you know that?" Simbal tore a bit of fern in two. "That's going to get you killed one of these days." He jerked his head in Bliss's direction. "I hope you've provided for your lady love, *cause she's going to need some comfort after you're gone,"

"Do you always talk so much?"

"Only when I have something on my mind."

"Okay," Jake said, "you've done your duty. Feel better now?"

"That wasn't for me, buddy," Simbal said. "It was for your benefit."

Jake said nothing. In five minutes he had counted no less than forty Shan at the factory. Not a good sign.

"What we've got to do," Jake said, "is find some way in and out of there."

Simbal snorted. "How about a couple of pine boxes. That's the only way we're coming out of that fortress if you insist on doing a duo number. Unless maybe you've got a couple of those miniaturized nuclear warheads we could lob at them."

"You'd better go to a movie for that," Jake said. "We're not likely to get any help here."

At that moment they heard voices raised, quickly stifled. They left their position, went back through the jungle.

They saw a man standing on the periphery of their makeshift camp. He wore a bush jacket over a buffalo plaid flannel shirt, Nike sweat pants and Eddie Bauer hiking boots. On his head was the kind of expedition fedora Harrison Ford made famous in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Bliss, who had been given a spare AK-47 from one of the Shan, had it trained on him. "I found him lurking in the underbrush," she said, when she heard them approach.

"Jesus," Simbal said, "what the h.e.l.l are you doing here, Rodger?" There was no reason to let him know he had been expected.

Rodger Donovan put his hand out and gingerly pushed the muzzle of the submachine gun aside. "Time for a little vacation from Washington," he said, coming up to them. Turned his head. "h.e.l.lo, Jake. I haven't see you in a while." He redirected his gaze. "The information you gave the Cuban was quite detailed. From that, I gather you never expected me to make it out of my director's chair."

"You're not a field man, Rodger," Simbal pointed out.

Donovan frowned. "Have I dressed wrong?"

Simbal laughed. "If only this were a movie set."

"Never mind that," Donovan said, "I'm here, aren't I? Now I want an update on the diqui." He saw the look pa.s.s between Jake and Simbal. "I must've missed plenty since you're here, Jake. What's your interest in this?"

"What happened, Donovan," Jake said, "things get a little bit too hot for you back home?" "Meaning what?"

"Meaning this," Simbal said, thrusting the sheaf of incriminating evidence at him.

Donovan took it and slowly went through the doc.u.ments. "What's this supposed to be?" he said.

"Your epitaph," Jake told him. He handed over the photograph, gave a silent prayer that Simbal would not get carried away and mention Apollo.

Donovan looked down at Daniella Vorkuta's slightly blurred face. "Not a very good likeness," he said.

"And you should know," Simbal said archly. "You know what your mistake was, Rodger? Hanging that d.a.m.ned Seurat in the office. If you'd left it at home, you'd be okay now. But Max saw it and knew it for the real thing right off. He'd seen it before, you see. At an auction in Paris. He was there when it was sold. To a KGB lieutenant named Daniella Vorkuta."

"I see,"

" *I see'? " Simbal cried. "Is that all you have to say?"

"You're Chimera," Jake said. "You're Vorkuta's mole. You always were." He was trembling visibly. "You set me up to kill Henry. My best friend, my mentor. You"

He leapt at Donovan, who threw up his hands to ward off the attack. Simbal jumped between the two, turning toward Jake, pushing him back. "Stop it!" he shouted. "Jake, that won't solve anything!"

Jake thought of the moment in time when he had first met Henry Wunderman. The man had come to Hong Kong to seek him out. Tell me, he had said, why are you still on this rock, running errands for the Triads? Because I'm half Chinese, a very young Jake had said. And if you were fully Chinese? Wunderman had asked. I'd find a way to make the Triads work for me. Wunderman had smiled. Suppose I can show you a way to do that, he had said. Would you be interested? Jake sure was. And then Wunderman had said to him, This also might be the way to find out what happened to your father. Wunderman hadknown that about him: Jake's secret desire. "There's Henry's death to be accounted for," Jake said at length.

"And your guilty conscience," Simbal said.

Jake allowed himself to be pushed back. He felt Bliss at his side. "He's right, Jake," she said.

"Sure," Simbal said, a gleam in his eye. "Now that we know about you, Rodger, here's what we're going to do with you. We're going to put you back in place as Director of the Quarry, only now you'll be running for us."

Donovan grunted. "Nice touch," he said, "but someone's already thought of that."

"Yeah?" Simbal said. "Like who?"

Donovan looked at him. "The President of the United States."

"What?"

He turned to Jake. "I wasn't the one who set you and Wunderman against one another. And it wasn't Daniella either, though she thought it was. It was the President."

"I don't believe you," Jake said.

"On the face of it, I don't blame you," Donovan admitted. "But think about it for a minute. What better way to cement my ties with Daniella?"

"Henry was a sacrifice?" Jake said incredulously. "And I was the stalking horse?"

"That was it, yes," Donovan said. "And who better than you, Jake? Daniella hates and fears you. With you in the picture, she never suspected a thing."

Simbal thought about all this for a moment. "One thing doesn't make sense, Rodger. If you're a triple, working for the President, how is it that Max wants you dead?"

"So it was Threnody who gave you this evidence." Donovan sighed. "I should have known he'd get to you somehow. You were always his fair-haired boy, Tony. How he resented my taking you away from him! I'm still getting interdepartmental memos about agency raiding."

"Come on, Rodger, that's not what this is about," Simbal said skeptically.

"In a way, it is," Donovan said. "You see, Max wants my job. He's got access to the President now himself. Well, I'm sure he told you that. It's been Max's lifelong dream to get that kind of power."

"What are you handing us?" Jake said. "Someone outside the Quarry sphere would never have a chance. It's simply not the way things are done there."

Donovan had a sad look in his eyes. "You've been away a long time, Jake. It wouldn't've been the way in the old days. Beridien never would have permitted it. But he's long gone and times have changed.

"The President needed to appoint someone unconnected with the Quarry to head the inquiry into Antony Beridien's a.s.sa.s.sination. He needed someone who commanded respect, who had seniority, He chose Max Threnody. Ever since, Max has been working on the President to have me replaced. Once exposed so intimately to the Russians, he maintains, my loyalty remains suspect."

"Does Max know about Leslie?" Simbal asked.

"He seems to know b.l.o.o.d.y everything about me," Donovan said. "So there it is. I had an affair with a KGB lieutenant in Paris. She looks amazingly like a girl I was hung up on in college. Max put two and two together."

"You make it all sound very innocent," Simbal pointed out. "You can't tell me that you weren't aware of what you were getting into."

"I wanted her," Donovan said in a self-righteous tone. "She knew all the right strings to pull."

"You had no choice," Simbal said, "is that what you want us to believe?"

Donovan stared at them.

"Oh, come on," fake said.

Donovan watched him, wary for another attack. He almost flinched when he said it. "She's beautiful, s.e.xy andTony, you'll understand thisso much like what Leslie was in my mind. I would have to have been inhuman to turn her down."

"When did you start tripling?" Jake asked.

Now Donovan averted his head. The dripping of the water was a doleful sound. "Not for a long time."

"How long?" Jake pressed.

"Jesus," Donovan said.

"Rodger, you'd better tell us," Simbal advised. "I've got orders from Max to terminate you and Jake would just as soon see you dead. It sounds odd, but at this stage we're likely to be the only friends you've got."

Donovan plucked the fedora off his head, flung it into the jungle. "Why the h.e.l.l am I wearing that, anyway?" One of the Shan sentries retrieved it, stuck it on his head. He didn't look any more ludicrous than Donovan had. "Not until after."

"After what?" Jake said.

"Beridien's a.s.sa.s.sination."

"Ah, s.h.i.t," Jake said. "I should kill you right now. You and Vorkuta cooked that up."

Donovan nodded silently.

"Rodger," Simbal said softly, "when Max ordered me to terminate you he said that it was on the President's authority."

"I suppose he knew you were in no position to check," Donovan said.

"Meaning?"

"This is strictly internal. The President wants the matter settled one way or the other."

"Wouldn't the President rather keep you in place as a triple agent?" Simbal asked.

Donovan nodded. "All things being equal. But they're not. Max has seen to that. He's put a doubt in the President's mind as to my loyalty.

"So it's between me and Max," Donovan said. "A fight to the finish. Max wants me out any way he can. He knows it's not going to be easy. But this was a perfect way. I would have done the same thing. Who's going to conduct an official inquiry out here in G.o.d's boondocks?" He gave a dry, ironic laugh. "The truth would never come out. Plus you'd be tied to him forever if you managed to kill me. He'd have something on you for the rest of your life." There was a defiant look in his eyes. "Still want to go through with it?"

Simbal turned to Jake. "What do you think? Is he lying or telling the truth?"

"There's one thing that bothers me," Jake said. "You said that Threnody told you Bennett and Curran pickpocketed the DEA computers of names, places, networks."

"Well, there's something I can straighten you out on," Donovan said. "Sometimes half a truth is the best lie there is. What those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds also took are all the strategic deployment directives for the President's newly formed elite ant.i.terrorist unit."

What am I missing? Jake wondered. Drugs and Kam Sang and the theft of ant.i.terrorist directives. I've got pieces but no whole. Nothing fits.

Outwardly he showed nothing of his confusion.

Simbal, too, had some hard thinking to do. He recalled Run-Run Yi's words, Bennett is the jinn who opens the door. With ant.i.terrorist strategic deployment directives? How? These weapons, Yi had said, will have the power to destroy the world. Blackman T-93 antipersonnel rocket launchers? How? And again he thought, What have I falleninto? He felt like a rat in a darkened maze. "I don't know," he said. "Why would Max lie to me about that?"