Rogue Angel - False Horizon Part 37

"Let's suppose he told me that if I ever showed my face in Katmandu again, he'd have me drawn and quartered."

Annja smiled. "Sounds about right."

"When Tuk told me that Tsing was involved I kept an even lower profile. Specifically, I flew to India and stayed there until I knew what was going on. Once you were off to Jomsom and Mustang, something didn't feel right, so I flew back into the country, waiting for Tuk's phone call."

"But when it came," Annja said, "we'd already crashed."

"Exactly. By then, I didn't much care if Tsing knew I was back. I went to him, prepared to offer a truce until I could find you, but he'd already chased you up to Jomsom. Or actually, I think he was chasing Hsu Xiao because she tried to poison him."

"So, by the time all of this was happening, we were already at the fabled Shangri-La."

"Yes, well, that does sound better than nuclear waste facility masquerading as a mystical land."

Annja hefted her bag. "You ready to go?"

Garin rose. "Sure am."

They walked out of the hospital together and the weather was spectacular. Annja took a deep breath and exhaled. Her body felt good. Not perfect, but really good. And well on the mend.

She felt rested. Better than in a very long time. "I'm looking forward to going home," she said.

Garin smiled and handed her a plane ticket. "Here you go. It's first cla.s.s."

"First cla.s.s? What did I do to deserve this?"

"As if you didn't know."

Annja laughed. "What about you, Garin? Where are you off to now?"

"Ah, well, you know how it is. Lots of things to do and see. Lots of other activities to keep me busy."

Annja looked at him for a moment. "Maybe someday you'll stop doing whatever it is that you do."

"Maybe," Garin said. "And maybe someday you'll stop what you do, too."

"I don't know if I can. The sword seems to have my destiny all mapped out but d.a.m.ned if I can fathom it."

"We all have our destinies to play out, Annja," Garin said. "But play them out we will. And maybe when they're done and finished, we can actually live how we want to. You know, if you happen to believe in free will and all."

"Free will," Annja said. "That's quite a concept." She turned her gaze away.

"Looking for something?" Garin asked.

"I was hoping to see Mike. I haven't seen him since the mountain. He left me a message saying something about his brain tumor, but then it got cut off and I never learned what was going on."

"Maybe Mike's got his own destiny to play out, too." Garin smiled. "Remember, nothing's ever quite what it seems, is it?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Garin kissed her on the cheek. "Goodbye, Annja. I'll be seeing you around. We won't always be friends, but we won't always be enemies, either. Remember that the next time you want to kill me."

Annja looked at him for a long moment and then stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on his cheek. "You do the same."

"I shall."

She watched him walk away and vanish into the crowd. Annja never knew how such a large man could so easily disappear, but somehow he always did.

Annja looked around. She needed a taxi and then it was a trip to the airport followed by a long flight home. She wondered if they served ice cream sundaes on the plane?

A taxi sidled up next to her and she got in. "Airport, please."

"Why the h.e.l.l do you want to go there?"

Annja looked up and then saw the face of the driver. "Mike!"

He grinned at her. "Hey, kid."

"What are you doing driving a cab?"

Mike nodded at her ticket. "You got time to take a ride? Maybe have a conversation about stuff?"

"My flight's not for hours yet. I've got some time."

"Good." Mike eased out into the traffic and they drove through the congested streets of Katmandu. Gradually, the city limits fell behind them and they pa.s.sed into more rural areas. Annja looked out of her window and watched the children playing soccer and laughing and running through the streets.

"What's going on?" Annja asked.

"You'll see," he said.

He pulled over near the airfield where they'd been stowed aboard Tsing's plane and switched off the cab's engine. Then he got out of the car and leaned against the hood.

Annja followed him. "It's great to see you again, you big lug."

He hugged her and then set her back down. "Sorry, I haven't been around. I had to take care of some things."

Annja nodded. "I heard. Tuk said something about your cancer being in remission. That's wonderful news! Congratulations."

"Thanks. But it's not in remission."

"It's not?"

"No. It's gone. Completely."

Annja felt her heart leap. "Even better! Wow, how did that happen?"

Mike shrugged. "I don't want you to get mad at me, okay?"

Annja backed away. "What is it?"

"I never had it to begin with."

"What?"

Mike held up his hands. "Annja, hear me out-"

"You faked that? I was beside myself with grief for you and now you tell me it was all a lie? How dare you!"

"I had to lie, Annja."

"Why in the world did you have to lie?"

"Because that was part of my cover."

Annja frowned. "Cover? What cover? You're a teacher, Mike. You don't need a cover."

"The teacher thing is my cover. The brain cancer was another facet of it. Together, they helped sell me."

Annja shook her head. "Jesus Christ, don't tell me you're a spook."

"Guilty."

Annja sighed. "How the h.e.l.l did that happen? The last I heard you were doing great at your job and you had a great career."

"I do have a great career. But it's doing something other than teaching. The Agency uses me for a variety of unorthodox a.s.signments, and the rest of the time I'm a mild-mannered teacher. It works out very well."

"CIA?"

"Yes."

"You don't look like a case officer."

Mike smiled. "Not everyone who works for the CIA, works for the CIA, if you get my meaning."

"I don't."

"The Agency uses a whole network of independent contractors. It goes back many years. In this country there is a network of people who can be called upon at any time to step up and take on a.s.signments best handled by someone other than official CIA officers, even those deep-cover guys. So the Agency uses us and we're sort of cutaway from the apparatus as a whole. It gives us better flexibility and more freedom to pursue what needs to be done without a whole bunch of hamstringing oversight."

"If you say so."

"Don't be upset with me, Annja. I feel bad enough that I had to get you involved in this. It's all my fault that this happened to you and you got so banged up. But I needed you to come along or I never would have been able to sell it to Tsing."

"Sell what to Tsing?"

Mike sighed. "For a long time now, the Agency has suspected that the Chinese have been dumping nuclear waste somewhere, but we never knew where. Some a.n.a.lysts thought it was a safe bet that they were dumping it at sea, but we've been watching for signs of that and never caught them doing it. That left either s.p.a.ce or they were burying it.

"Now the Chinese have a fairly admirable s.p.a.ce program, but they're not anywhere ready to start shipping rockets full of waste to dump up there. So that left burying it."

"Would they really do that?"

"China's got more environmental waste than almost any other country on the planet, including us, if you can believe that."

"I don't know if I can."

Mike continued. "We'd heard rumors about a construction project that happened over near Mustang, but we never had a solid lead to follow until a few weeks ago. One of the contractors offered a map of the area on the black market."

"A map? That one you had that supposedly showed the way to Shangri-La?"

"The same. Of course, Tsing tried to buy it back, but the dealer said no way. We heard about it and the Agency figured I would have the best chance of acquiring the map."

Annja shook her head. "Wait-why would Tsing need to buy back a map to a place he already knew all about? Didn't he help build it?"

"He sure did. But he wanted the map so he could make sure it was off the market. He didn't need it per se, it was just his attempt to contain an information leak."

"But why go to him for the fifty thousand you needed to buy the map? Couldn't the Agency just front you the cash?"

Mike frowned. "No, Tsing was too well connected in Chinese Intelligence to ever believe that I had the capacity to finance the map purchase. If the Agency fronted me the money, Tsing would have known who I was immediately and just had me killed."

Annja sighed. "I'm still confused as to why Tsing even brought us before him and told you that he was interested in finding Shangri-La. What was that all about?"

"The code name for the supposed location of the nuclear waste facility we had learned about was always Shangri-La. The contractor who put the map on the market called it that, after what the Chinese planned to name the place."

"So, a dual-meaning sort of thing, huh?"

"To Tsing, I was just a history teacher looking for the fabled location of the real Shangri-La. In his mind, he was going to get the map back. In my mind, I was working to ascertain the exact location of a nuclear waste facility built and operated by the Chinese government. Three layers of duplicity, I guess you could say."

"And one very confused Annja Creed."

"Welcome to the intelligence world."

"No, thanks." Annja turned away. "What happened to the facility, anyway? I haven't seen any mention of it on the news."

"That's because there hasn't been any."

"How in the world could they possibly keep that a secret?"

Mike shrugged. "They had help."

"Who?"

"Uncle Sam."

"We helped them? Why the h.e.l.l would we do such a thing? They d.a.m.n near contaminated an entire country. The world deserves to know what happened."

"Things aren't that black and white anymore, Annja. The cold war's over and we live in a new world now. Enemies aren't always enemies. Friends aren't always friends. About the best we can manage now is a sort of gray relationship where hopefully we all get along and manage to keep the world spinning."

"So we helped them keep the lid on this?"

"More than that, we helped them clean it up."