Snakehead (19 page)

Li stood up and walked across the windowless room, trying to contain his anger and frustration. It was almost more than he could bear to hear. The story was so familiar to him, he could tell her what would happen next.

‘They wanted me to work in a massage parlour. They said it was the only way I could make enough money to pay off the
shetou
. At first I refused.’ She shrugged listlessly. ‘But you can only resist for so long. There comes a time when you must accept the inevitable. In a way I was lucky. One of the boys thought I was pretty. Too good for massage, he said. So I started work at a club in Chinatown. The Golden Mountain Club.’ A jet of air escaped her lips and she shook her head. The irony was still not lost on her. ‘They called me a “hostess”, which meant that anyone with enough money could have sex with me. All the big
shetou
came to the Golden Mountain Club, and the
shuk foo
from the tongs. There were gambling rooms in back, and private rooms upstairs where they took the girls for sex. The other girls said I was lucky because I was prettier than them, and all the really important people wanted to sleep with me — the ones who paid the most money. I didn’t care. They were all the same to me. But sometimes they would give me five hundred dollars, more if they had won at the card table. And I was able to start paying off my debt.’

She shook her head, lost in some world of her own. And in a small voice she said, ‘I don’t know what happened. Maybe I offended someone, maybe the other girls were jealous and had it in for me. I don’t know. But one day my
ma zhai
told me I was fired from the Golden Mountain Club. He said he’d got me another job in a massage parlour, with an apartment up the stairs. I would only have to share with two other girls.’ She screwed up her face in disgust at some memory she was not about to share. ‘It was the worst thing ever,’ she said. ‘Even worse than the beatings. I’d been there for a month when you came with the INS.’

Her story ended as bluntly as it had begun. Li stood with his back to her, trying to make his mind as blank as the wall he was staring at. And when he could stand the silence no longer he turned and saw big wet tears streaming silently down her face.

She said, ‘When I saw you there, Li Yan, none of it mattered any more. Losing the baby, the beatings, the sex in squalid little rooms. All I felt was shame. That my own brother should know me for what I had become. And I could see myself through your eyes and know it, too.’ Her sobs came in short, rapid explosions from her chest, uncontrolled, uncontrollable. She buried her face in her hands, doubling over and letting her grief for the person she had once been completely overcome her. A long, deep, low moan escaped her lips, and Li felt it like a blade in his heart. He moved around the table and took her by the shoulders, lifting her to her feet, and drawing her into his chest, holding her tightly there to smother her sobs and never let her go again.

III

The still waters of Lake Conroe shimmered in the moonlight, caught in glimpses between the trees as Mendez drove them east on Lakeside. Exclusive residences sat darkly behind trees and hedges and high security gates. Mendez took a right, and they turned into a long dirt track that headed away from the water toward where a big old ranch house had its red-tile roof peppered with the shadow of a great oak tree shading the front porch. The house had been extended several times over the years, at the side and back, and rooms had been built up in the roof. To their left a couple of chestnut mares grazed in the moonlight behind a white painted fence, paying scant attention to the arrival of the Bronco.

Their headlights swept across the front of the house and Margaret saw the freshly painted pillars that supported the roof over the stoop, a red door set in the blue-painted clapboard siding. Bay windows overlooked the porch from the main front rooms. Fleshy shrubs grew in strategically placed pots. An old wooden rocking chair sat looking out over the pasture toward the lake. For some reason Margaret thought it looked as if it had been a long time since anybody had sat in it.

Mendez swung his recreational vehicle into a dusty parking area opposite a double garage built on to the side of the house. A security light came on, and Margaret saw that the garage was open to the elements, the door retracted into the roof. It was filled with all manner of junk accumulated over many years. Shelves piled with tools and offcuts of wood, extension ladders, stepladders, an old exercise bike, a lawnmower, the bench seat out of an old Chevy, a shopping cart.

She followed Mendez into the garage. ‘Sorry about the mess,’ he said. ‘Always meant to clean this out some day. Just never got around to it.’ A dog started barking somewhere in the house. He punched an entry code into a numeric pad on the wall beside an interior door and it swung open into a small bootroom. A rack of shotguns stood against the back wall, an antique gun cabinet with glass-fronted drawers filled with cartridges. The barking got louder. ‘Don’t mind Clara,’ Mendez said. ‘She can be a bit excitable. But she’s a great pointer.’ And as he opened the door into the kitchen, a large, shiny-coated red setter danced all around him in excitement, oblivious to Margaret. Mendez made a great fuss of her. He flicked on a batch of light switches and said to Margaret, ‘Go on through to the sitting room. Put your feet up. I’ll feed the dog and fix us a nightcap.’

Margaret wandered through a big square kitchen with dark wood cabinets and a large central island with a built-in hob and an extractor overhead. Dirty dishes, caked with the leftovers of solitary meals were piled on every available surface. A short panelled corridor led past a well stocked bar into an extensive sitting room with a wood-burning stove and the kind of huge television screen you find in bars where sports fans congregate to watch matches. Tall windows gave out onto a glassed-in porch at the rear filled with soft furniture and another TV.

She kicked off her shoes, sinking into the deep-piled carpet, and let herself drop into a big soft leather recliner to stare up at a fan turning lazily in the ceiling. For a moment, she closed her eyes and just drifted, wishing that sleep would take her and keep her until she could wake up when all this was over. Was it really only twenty-four hours since the briefing at USAMRIID? And she remembered again, with a start, that she hadn’t been able to get any of the things that Steve had asked her for. The books. His personal stereo, the photograph of his little girl. She remembered her hand and Steve’s separated by the glass of the isolation unit, and how she had felt his fear pass right through it. She felt guilty that she had barely given him a second thought all day.

‘Scotch?’

She opened her eyes, heart pounding, and realised that she had drifted off to sleep, although it could only have been for a few seconds. She swivelled in the chair and saw Mendez through the large hatch between the bar and the sitting room. ‘Vodka tonic, if you have it. With ice and lemon.’

‘No problem.’ He lifted a remote control from the counter and pointed it at the TV. The red standby light turned green, the receiver issued a brief, high-pitched whine, and the giant screen flickered to life. The CNN news desk came into sharp focus. Twenty-four-hour news. Margaret recalled many lonely nights in hotel rooms in China with only CNN for company, a tenuous link with home. ‘I’m a news junkie,’ Mendez said. ‘Only time this thing’s not on is when I’m out or sleeping. And sometimes even then I forget to turn it off.’

‘Well, you won’t miss much with a screen that size,’ Margaret said.

Mendez grinned. ‘Like it? I got it for the World Series. That’s my other vice. Sports. That and smoking.’ His grin turned sheepish. ‘Cigars.’ He nodded toward the back porch. ‘That’s my smoking room out there. Catherine wouldn’t let me smoke in the house. Hated the smell of it. Said it clung to the carpets and the furniture. Nearly five years since she died, and I still can’t bring myself to smoke in the house.’

He came out with their drinks, handed Margaret her vodka, and sank into the settee with a large Scotch on the rocks, and Clara trotting after him to settle at his feet. He lifted his glass. ‘Here’s to unexpected reunions,’ he said.

Margaret raised her glass. ‘I’ll drink to that. You saved my life tonight, Felipe.’ She took a long drink and felt the bubbles carry the alcohol into her bloodstream, and she sank deeper into the recliner. She closed her eyes and felt as if she were falling backwards through space. She opened them again quickly, afraid she would fall asleep and spill her drink.

‘Goddamn!’ she heard Mendez say. ‘They’re
still
at it.’

She looked at him, surprised, and saw that he was watching the TV. She glanced toward the screen and saw pictures of soldiers on the ground, carrying M16 automatic rifles. They were looking up as a US Army helicopter passed overhead, the downdraught from its rotors making waves through a tall green crop growing on the hillside. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘CNN are running a feature on this crop-spraying the US Army’s got involved in down in Colombia.’ He fumbled with the remote to turn up the volume.

A spokesman for the Colombian government said it had always been his country’s policy to cooperate with the United States in the war against drugs, but that the spraying of coca crops in the north of the country with the biological agent Fusarium oxysporum did not come within the terms of joint operations agreed by the two countries.

Political rhetoric on both sides of this controversial debate seems more designed to obscure than to clarify. For the Colombian government to admit that the United States has been taking unilateral action would be to play into the hands of its political enemies who claim that they are no more than puppets of the Americans.

‘It’s absolutely intolerable,’ Mendez said. He reduced the volume and turned to Margaret. ‘Do you know anything about this?’

Margaret waved a vague hand in the air. ‘I think maybe I saw something about it in
Time
magazine a few weeks ago. I didn’t read it, though. What’s the deal?’

‘The US government’s been spraying this
Fusarium oxysporum
all over parts of Colombia which have been identified as coca growing areas. The idea is to kill the plants where they grow and cut off the cocaine trade at source. It’s pretty much been recognised that we’ve been taking unilateral action without the active consent of the Colombian government. But the Colombians are scared to admit it, because it would mean admitting that they’d effectively lost control of their own country to a foreign power — no matter how friendly.’

Margaret shrugged. It didn’t seem like something she could get worked up about. ‘But if it’s killing off the coca crop, isn’t that a good thing?’

‘If that’s all it was doing, perhaps.’ Mendez took a stiff drink of his Scotch and sat forward, his face a mask of intensity. ‘But the fact is, not only are we spraying this stuff over another sovereign state, we’re doing it without any regard to what this phytopathogenic fungus is doing to the people who live in those areas. It’s insane!’

Margaret repeated the name of the fungus thoughtfully. ‘
Fusarium oxysporum
. I don’t think I know anything about it, Felipe.’

Mendez shook his head, wrestling to constrain his anger. ‘The government claims that its advisers were told by the scientists that they could develop a safe strain of
Fusarium
, resistant to mutation and sexual gene exchange. Crap!
Fusarium oxysporum
is well known to have very active genetic recombination. It is highly susceptible to mutation and chromosome rearrangement, with horizontal gene flow contributing to its variability.’

Margaret laughed. ‘Felipe. I’m not a student of genetics. I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

But Mendez didn’t respond to her amusement. He was too intensely focused. ‘The point is, Margaret,’ he said, ‘There is no way to control gene flow in
Fusarium
, and that’s what makes it such a successful pathogen. If you drench a geographical area with the stuff, which is what we’re doing, you’re not just going to kill the coca plant, you’re going to infect large numbers of people and animals with some pretty horrific diseases.’

‘God.’ Margaret sat up and took a sip of her vodka. ‘And does the government know about this?’

‘They damn well ought to,’ Mendez said. ‘There’s more than enough evidence out there.’

‘What sort of diseases are we talking about?’

‘Well, in humans with normal immune systems, you can expect widespread skin and nail infections, a pretty nasty respiratory disease, and fungal infection of the liver.’ Mendez took a gulp of his Scotch. ‘In people with underdeveloped or ageing immune systems, i.e., the young and the elderly, it’s known to cause an early ageing disease called Kaschin-Beck. It particularly affects children. But it’ll also affect chickens, rats, monkeys…’ He stood up and went to refill his glass. ‘For Christ’s sake, Margaret, it’s tantamount to waging biological warfare on the people of Colombia. Is it any goddamn wonder that others want to do the same to us?’

He took another large gulp of Scotch, forcing himself to take a deep breath, and then smiled. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s late. You’ve got problems enough of your own. And you’re not interested in all this stuff.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘It’s just one of my hobby-horses. When you’ve got time on your hands, sometimes you let things stew a little too much.’ He pointed the remote at the TV and switched it off again. ‘So,’ he said, returning to his seat and nudging Clara aside with his toe, ‘maybe we should change the subject, and you could tell me about you and your Chinese policeman.’

Margaret looked at him cautiously. ‘You tell me what you already know.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I did a little inquiring in the last twenty-four hours…’

She sighed wearily. ‘Don’t tell me you’re another of those who disapproves of cross-cultural relationships?’

There was sympathy in Mendez’s smile. ‘Hardly, my dear. As a Mexican who married a white, Anglo-Saxon American girl, I lived in one for more than thirty years. So I know what it’s like to have to deal with the unspoken disapproval of both your families, to be aware of the whisperings of colleagues.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘It was worse for Catherine, of course. Married to a spic, even one who was now an American citizen. She had to deal with a whole mountain of disapproval.’