Weaponized (16 page)

O
n a raised stage alive with blinking lights, a young local girl in a Stetson and a jean skirt karaokes. She works the microphone in her hands, oblivious to the sexual overtones. Behind her, on a flat-screen television, the lyrics bounce and stream, which is helpful for the audience, because she’s massacring the song.

Rapid lyrics don’t translate to the torpor of the Khmer tongue without casualties.

In the lounge area, a gaggle of young girls entertains the local press corps—middle-aged men with pitted salamander faces. They lean back on leather couches while the girls straddle their chests or sit in their laps.

One of the girls puts a reporter’s hand over her hint of breast, takes a hit of smoked heroin, and blows a thick cloud into his mouth.

Two others have gone down to their panties for a reporter who sits there looking as if he can’t be bothered to glance at the pair scissoring each other on a sofa.

Fowler looks over at the two girls. One has pink streaks in her hair. The other one has red.
Yeah,
he thinks.
I’ve come to the right place.
Find clues in a reprobate foreigner’s hotel room, and they’ll likely lead you to Pang.

In a room cordoned off by a muscular gargoyle of a guard, Fowler sees a soccer game playing on a flat-screen, sees a blackboard listing the teams, sees men holding fistfuls of bills before a roulette wheel, sees the elderly feeding coins into slot machines and drinking down complimentary beer.

The gargoyle telegraphs a message:
Move it the fuck along.

The reason Pang took it upon himself to “entertain” the press corps had everything to do with that room. A few months ago, one of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s men went into an underground gambling den and lost close to eight hundred grand in one evening, and the press broke the story. In a country where the bulk of the population lives on less than a dollar a day, it caused a furor. If a government minister could afford to drop that kind of money, then surely those corruption charges must be true.

In response, Hun Sen ordered his officials to shut down the dens and told citizens it was their solemn duty to tip off the government if they knew of any establishments his people had missed. He even set up an anonymous hotline.

Pang decided the easiest course was to get the press corps laid and throw them a few hundred American a month. They were the reason the dens got busted in the first place. So Pang fed them girls and drugs, and they in turn fed Pang’s disinformation to the people and—more important—Hun Sen’s ministers, and in record time, Pang was back up and running.

Gambling is an essential and tragic piece of the Khmer DNA. Fowler’s seen men bet on the amount of rainfall during a monsoon. When the storm passed, the guys would get a ruler, climb up to the roof, and crown the winner.

Fowler reaches the end of the corridor, bangs on the door to Pang’s office.

P
ang answers after undoing four or five dead bolts and a chain and punching in a code. He’s on the phone, working the filter of a cigarette between his teeth like a nervous test-taker with a pencil while shouting orders in Khmer.

He beckons for Fowler to enter.

Fowler takes a seat, listens to Pang conducting heated business—although most conversations in Khmer sound heated to Fowler, since he understands about 20 percent of the content, at best. He taps his foot on the floor and lights a cigarette.

Pang finishes his call, tosses the prepaid cell into the garbage, where it joins a graveyard of junked phones. “I’m so sorry for making you wait.”

“It’s okay,” Fowler says. “I’ve got time.”

Pang dusts clumps of cigarette ash from his seat cushion before he sits down. “Oh no. You’re an American who has time. You’ve been here too long, haven’t you?” Pang laughs at his own joke. His English is functionally perfect; he speaks it with as much of a French accent as a Khmer one. “You’ll have to excuse me…this is most embarrassing…but I can’t seem to remember you.”

“We met a while ago,” Fowler says.

“Under what circumstances?”

The singer outside switches from Lady Gaga to Wall of Voodoo’s new-wave classic “Mexican Radio.”

“It’s terrible, isn’t it?” Pang shakes his head before Fowler can answer. “She practices every day and never gets any better. It’s a sin, an absolute sin, what she does to music.”

Fowler nods and smiles. “It is…certainly awful.”

“But she’s my niece…what can I do? If I don’t let her sing, God knows what she’ll do with her mouth.”

“Not a lot of good options for girls her age around here.”

“Not at all.”

Fowler takes a drag off his cigarette. “Passports. That’s how we know each other.”

Pang remembers, then tries to laugh it off. “Such an unfortunate incident. Really. Not the best foot for the two of us to start on. And your name again?”

“Fowler. And the unfortunate incident,
Pang,
was that I had to let you go. You were guilty as hell. I found a whole box of stolen passports in here.”

“That’s not my line of business anymore, if it ever was,” Pang says, coy. “So if that’s why you’re here, we have nothing to talk about.”

“It’s not why I’m here.” Fowler reaches into his pocket, places the ten-thousand-dollar chip on Pang’s desk. “It’s one of yours.”

Pang picks it up, holds it to the light. “There are dozens of casinos in this city. Maybe more.”

“None of them let people play for stakes like that.
You
do. Because you’re the only one who can guarantee that kind of payout if someone wins. Because you got your little nonexistent passport-and-prostitution business.”

“Is that all?”

“I got more.”

“Continue.”

The way he says
continue
makes Fowler realize Pang’s most irritating quality: every word he utters sounds like an act of martyrdom he’s enduring on your behalf. “This guy,” Fowler says, and hands over the photo. “He was here recently. I found your chip in his hotel room. You see him? Remember him?”

Pang glances at the picture. “Doesn’t look familiar. But I do most of my work back here. I don’t often mingle with the customers.”

“Even when they’re dropping ten grand a hand?”

“I have people for that.”

“You’ve also got a pink-haired dancer. I know you do. I saw her when I came in.”

“I very well could,” Pang says.

“You very well do.”

“Look, Mr. Fowler. I don’t hire the girls. I don’t mingle with the customers. I run this club. I do all my work from back here. I’m not the…concierge,” he says, with evident distaste.

“I found some of what I’m pretty sure is her hair in the shower.” Fowler points to the photo. “In that man’s shower.”

“And what did this man do?”

“Escaped from the airport, killed two men that I know of, eluded me at a hotel.”

“Oh, dear.” Pang leans back in his chair. “But, you see, I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him. He escaped from you?”

Fowler grits his teeth. “He did.”

“Obviously this is personal, then.”

“Do you know him or not?”

“I told you no. But what I can do is let you talk to the girl with pink hair.” He laughs. “Really. I don’t even know her name.” He picks up the phone, dials, waits for someone to pick up, and then speaks in Khmer to whoever’s on the other end.

“She’ll be here in a moment,” Pang says.

A
bout thirty seconds later, instead of a supple private dancer with hot highlights, two of Pang’s personal bodyguards come into the office, and tip Fowler’s chair over before he has a chance to react.

While Fowler’s splayed on the floor, one bodyguard puts a boot on his throat. The other puts similar footwear across Fowler’s knees. They’ve got him trapped.

Fowler cranes his neck to the side, sees Pang bolt out the emergency exit, which sets off the fire alarm.

What Pang’s guards don’t know—and, really, how could they?—is that Fowler hasn’t had a chance to inflict violence on anyone in a while, and instead of getting rusty, he’s been hoarding his worst impulses.

Fowler sizes up the situation, readies his attack. The first thing Pang’s guys have going against them is they’re bulky and squat. Too may steroids and not enough natural height. Fowler can use gravity and their mass against them. Plus, like most rank amateurs, they thought securing Fowler’s legs was the crucial thing, not realizing someone with his kind of training is equally fluent with his arms.

Fowler reaches up to the one with a shoe on his throat, grabs his nuts in the palm of his hand, twists, squeezes, and drags him down to the floor by the soft sack.

That guy is downed, disabled, and rolling around the carpet screaming in falsetto.

Fowler takes care of his partner in five seconds with a few well-placed chops to the windpipe and neck that rob him of consciousness. His eyes roll back and he lands on Pang’s desk.

Fowler takes half a second to catch his breath, fight the burning in his lungs, and he can’t help but laugh as he thinks:

Yeah. I think that chip definitely was Pang’s.

Fowler unholsters his gun, barrels through the emergency exit.

F
owler rushes into the street—lozenges of city light streaming over him—and spots Pang jumping into the back of a tuk-tuk.

Fowler points his gun at him. “Pang. Stop. I’m the goddamned CIA. Don’t do this.”

Instead of the desired—from Fowler’s perspective—effect of freezing Pang in his tracks and forcing him to walk over with his hands up, Pang turns around and squeezes off two shots at Fowler.

Fowler ducks, and even though both shots miss, the margin isn’t exactly comfortable.

Pedestrians and tourists scream, scramble from the bullets, block Fowler’s field of vision. He loses Pang in the shuffle.

Fowler sprints over to the tuk-tuk, gun drawn. Pang isn’t in the backseat anymore.

Fowler turns the gun on the tuk-tuk driver and yells, “Where the fuck did he go?”

The driver points across the street, to a hotel that burned down a few weeks back. The building’s scorched spine has been converted into a squatter’s shack, like any city property, charred or not, left unoccupied for more than twenty-four hours.

The exterior is gone—you can see into the rooms, and they’re packed with families existing in lurid semidarkness.

Fowler cuts across traffic, holding up his hand, making his gun apparent, and bolts through the gaping tunnel that used to be a door.

Pang hauls through the lobby, a crumbling crematorium of scorched furniture, unsettled floorboards, and stray pages of financial documents and guest logs that fly through the asbestos air.

Fowler fires a warning shot at Pang. “Stop!” he yells, coughing. The air is noxious. He can hardly breathe.

Pang is running too fast to turn around and shoot at Fowler.

Fowler picks up the pace, gags.

Fowler’s right on Pang’s ass but can’t overtake him; the bastard’s too fast and lean. Fowler pivots, lunges forward, grabs Pang by the shoulders, and tries to drag him down.

But Pang’s built up too much momentum to stop, even with Fowler hitching a ride on his shoulders. He ends up dragging Fowler for a few feet before crashing into what remains of a wall. Given their combined weight, they go right through it and end up back on the street, covered in plaster and ash.

They’re on their backs, coughing, wheezing, trying to recover from a high-speed chase between two unrepentant chain-smokers past middle age.

Fowler rolls over, plants his knees around Pang’s torso, shakes the plaster from his hair, then hauls off and punches Pang in the face.

Pang responds with a piglet squeal, shocked and annoyed. “That wasn’t necessary,” he says, wheezing.

“Yes, it was,” Fowler says. “You’re an asshole.”

Fowler rises to his feet, pulls out a pair of flexi-cuffs. “Send in your fucking boys to work me over.” He kicks Pang in the ribs, hauls him to his feet, and cuffs his wrists. “I know you know Hun Sen, but you still don’t get to shoot at me.” He marches Pang in front of him back toward the club. “Now I get to meet this girl with pink hair you don’t know.”

K
yle stands before the bedroom mirror, knotting a silk tie and studying his face. The swelling has gone down, but his lips and cheeks don’t sync up with the rest of his features, like the work of a carpenter stuck with an uneven level.

Lara steps out of the bathroom toweling her hair, which when wet becomes a basket of black ringlets. She hands Kyle two thumb-size bottles of Absolut left over from her plane ride. “Found them in my luggage. Liquid courage.”

Kyle stares at them in his palm. “Thanks.”

She walks over to the bed, opens her suitcase, and takes out a small safe. “Robinson never brings his jewels with him on business. He always has me carry them.” She puts a key in the lock. “They’re yours for today.”

She puts a pinkie ring the size of a doorknob on his finger, hands him a diamond-encrusted watch that twinkles like icicles in the sun, then wraps the same watch around her own wrist. “For our anniversary.”

Kyle looks at the watch up close, astounded by the wealth. “Christ…where do you get something like this?”

“You don’t.” She laughs. “It’s custom. Everything Robinson owns is custom. The suit you have on. Linen. Hand-sewn for him in Milan. He never wants anything that isn’t made specifically for
him.
” Lara notices Kyle hasn’t cracked open either of the bottles. “Drink up.”

Kyle downs the first shot, grits his teeth. “Can I ask you something?”

Lara adjusts the towel tighter over her breasts. “Go ’head.”

“What you
did
to the guys who kidnapped me…they never stood a chance. From what I could hear, they barely had time to draw on you. And you didn’t miss. How did you do that?”

“My brother was ten years older than me. He was a soldier, won medals for his shooting. Best sniper in the army. He was sure Russia would be invaded by the Muslim caucuses one day and he might not be there to protect us. I was the most athletic one in the family, so he taught me how to shoot.” She points to the tattoo that wraps around her shoulder and trails toward her neck. “That’s for him. We lost him in Chechnya.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think he planned on coming back. That was his last stand. He was making one last kamikaze effort to save the empire personally. For that alone, he was the most honest man in Russia. It wasn’t about terrorism or Islam to him. He was too pure. It was a total property grab.”

“Robinson know your brother taught you to do that?”

“Sure, but that wasn’t his main interest in me. Robinson’s capable of all that on his own.” Her eyes zero in on him. “And since we’re asking questions, I got one for you.”

“Okay,” Kyle says, not sure where this is going.

“I Googled you last night,” she says. “And got about ten million hits. You’ve been holding out on me. Holy shit right, you got
some
passport issues. You worked for Christopher Chandler. They called you Chandler’s brain.”

Kyle nods. “Not at all…”

“Come on. You’re famous. I know all about you. I’ve read about it for months. I didn’t recognize you.”

“Why would you? I’m not
me
anymore. I’m supposed to be Julian Robinson.”

“Right,” she says. “So you’re a genius or something. That’s what everyone says, right?”

Kyle can’t help but smile. “If I’m a genius, why am I in this situation?”

“I’ll give you that.” She laughs. “But you really do what they say?”

“No.”

Lara’s eyes search him. “So why’d you run?”

“A lot of people who I didn’t want to talk to really wanted to talk to me.”

“So those people think you did it.”

“That’s right.”

“Like that guy Kuo. The Senate guy. He’s on TV all the time talking about you and Chandler. He really doesn’t like you.”

“Right. Which is how Robinson got me into this. He told me he had info on Kuo.”

“It might not have been a lie. I’m sure he does. He has info on everyone.”

Kyle takes another drink of vodka. “Not much help to me now.”

“Okay, but still, holy
shit
. You’re a total celebrity,” Lara says. “You’re way more wanted than Robinson. Think about it, right? That’s kind of crazy.”

“It’s something.”

“All the tech guys I know in Europe and Russia…you’re like their god. When the newspapers printed what you did for Chandler…I mean, wow. But you didn’t do it, so what does it matter? Now I’ve got no story for them.”

Kyle avoids her eyes.

“What’s Chandler like?” she asks.

Kyle shrugs. “As a person?”

“You go around the world, everyone’s got a theory about him. Go to the Middle East and they think he was the real U.S. president for eight years.”

Before Kyle can answer, Lara’s cell phone rings. She checks the number, picks up, and answers in Russian. The call is quick, thirty seconds at most, no pleasantries.

“Andrei is expecting us in an hour,” she says.

Kyle tries to hide his panic, but it comes out in his hands, his feet, and his right eye, blinking back fear.

“How’s your nose?”

Kyle breathes in. “Okay. Tell me straight. Andrei doesn’t buy this, neither one of us is walking out of there. Right?”

“That’s right.”

“And if things go wrong, there’s no way you can shoot us out of this one?”

“Nope,” she says. “So you gotta do good and get us what we need.”

Kyle feels the pressure building in the center of his forehead and trying to run an express line to his nose. He takes another shot of vodka.

You are Robinson.

You are the kind of man who can walk into a room and collapse it to your will.