Eleven Twenty-Three (55 page)

After a while, I swallow another one of the
Xanax they gave me in the hotel and hold Tara close. Fully
understanding my role now, I open the portfolio and focus my
attention on the documents from the briefcase. It’s better this
way.

His name is Sonjay Brohns, and he will return
home from Beijing just in time for Christmas.

Document Five

“Even under the tranquil blanket of winter
snow, Beijing is still technically considered a desert.”

Beijing, PRC

Population at 05:25 PM GMT + 08:00 on Monday,
December 24, 2007: 16,908,202

Population of Lilly’s End at 04:25 AM EST on
Monday, December 24, 2007: 0

“How many historic events have only the two
of us witnessed together? How often did we make or change history?
And our names can never grace any pages of record. No monument will
ever bear our image. Yet, once again, tonight, the course of human
history will be set by two unknown men standing in the
shadows.”

- Chris Carter, “Musings of a
Cigarette-Smoking Man”

“It is not your country’s problems that
overwhelm you, but your egotistic belief that you can be
instrumental in solving them.”

- John Burdett,
Bangkok Haunts

“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear
of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge
of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”

- Aung San Suu Kyi, “Freedom From Fear”
speech

05:25:
23 PM

History may be written by the winner, but
it’s always been carried out by the ghost.

The waiter comes by, takes our order, and
pours hot water from a chipped porcelain teapot. He leaves, and I
stare for a long time out the window, at the fresh snow drifting
down on the city. People bundled up in thick coats and hidden
beneath umbrellas and wool hats and scarves shuffle along outside.
A taxi goes by, kicking gray sludge onto the sidewalk. A man
brushes ice from the seat of his bicycle, lights a cigarette, and
pedals off. Tara hands me a cigarette and takes another for
herself. She ignites them with a small lighter that she bought from
a newsstand earlier today.

“What did you order?” I ask. “I was
distracted by the snow.”

“Some kind of fish, and um…oh, I got your
favorite,
ding-ding chao mian
…and then broccoli, mushrooms I
think, and—”

“Sounds good,” I interrupt. “But we don’t
have that much time. I’m afraid I’ll have to leave early.”

“Well, we’ll see,” she says. “Just wait until
you hear from someone.”

I nod and take a drag from my cigarette. I
notice that there is no ash tray on the table, and I forgot the
word for it. I flick the embers onto the floor.

On a television mounted on above the fish
tanks,
Titanic
plays on mute with Mandarin subtitles. A
bored waitress sends text messages while occasionally glancing up
at Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet making love in the back of a
Model T.

Tara notices the movie and takes a tentative
sip of water.

“Do you think the filmmakers were trying to
insinuate that Rose and Jack were the first two teenagers in
history to have sex in the back seat of a car?” she asks. “It
always seemed that way every time I watched this movie. But if
that’s the message they’re sending, I think it’s preposterous.
Someone would have figured it out long before that, don’t you
think?”

I check my phone. No messages. No missed
calls. I look at the time and slip the cell back into my coat
pocket.

“I’m not so sure, Sunshine. I mean, the Model
T had been around less than four years when the Titanic left
England. It’s not like the wealthy owners of the first Ford
prototypes looked at their brand-new modes of transportation and
automatically thought how convenient it would be to screw someone
in the back seat. That’s like Prometheus farting into his own
fire.”

“Why not?” Tara asks, laughing.

“Because people don’t think like that. They
don’t immediately resort to their base urges every time a new
achievement in history takes place. Next you’ll be saying that the
Wright brothers raped a girl on one of their early flights over
Carolina, or that John von Neumann invented the EDVAC computer
purely as a means to manipulate others and broadcast porn.”

Tara formulates a quick retort, but I
promptly lose track of her ramble and can’t bring myself to
concentrate any longer. I stare out the window. The snow outside is
so white, so illusory, that I drift off and don’t return again
until my cell phone vibrates in my pocket.

I cough and tell her to hold that thought. I
pull out the Nokia they gave me and flip it open.

“You got a message?” Tara asks in a panic.
“What does it say? What’s going on?”

2013 DELAYED UNTIL 2152. BHAMO INTERNATIONAL
BLDG @ 1900. STE 3502.

沿着鬼街一直走，然后在东直门左转。大概走
500
米
.

I read the transmission repeatedly, looking
for answers hidden between the simple directions and Chinese
characters. I find none.

“Well?” Tara is saying impatiently.
“Yes?”

“Good news,” I finally answer, snapping my
phone shut again. “We can enjoy a peaceful, relaxed dinner
now.”

“Are you sure? What if—?”

“Everything is okay, Tara. Relax. Look, here
comes the broccoli.”

Our dishes are brought out in five minute
intervals. We dig into each with unconvincing relish. The
chow
mian
is too salty, the broccoli is too Chinese, the mushrooms
are soaked through with vinegar, and the fish is spicy. Still, we
insist each dish is one of the finest we’ve had here. The plastic
chopsticks keep slipping out of my grip. When we fail to raise any
suitable conversation to take our minds off of the airport tonight,
Tara and I order a couple of bottles of Yanjing.

We don’t finish anything except the broccoli.
The waiter notices our interest in the images on TV and the fact
that our Mandarin is limited to food words and polite expressions,
so he quickly changes channels to CCTV International. He turns the
sound back on and gives us a thumbs-up/thumbs-down. I nod to him
quickly to help Tara avoid remembering anything Julie used to
do.

An English-language talk show called
Dialogue
is starting, and one of the guests tonight is a
British human rights activist named Guy Horton. The other is an
American journalist who prefers to remain anonymous in lieu of the
discussion topic, but who I instantly recognize as Alex Jones.

“All I wanted as a kid was to design dreams,”
I whisper to myself. “Instead I pencil in nightmares.”

I take a swig of beer, and then three
more.

“Merry Christmas, Sunshine,” my three-year
girlfriend says to me, either not hearing or totally ignoring my
last comment.

“Merry Christmas to you. I can’t tell you how
relieved I am to hear someone say that to me. You know—”

“I don’t want to have the conversation we’re
about to have, if that’s okay,” Tara says. “Let’s focus on the
objective later and try to be holly jolly as much as possible for
now.”

“I couldn’t agree more. And after next week,
hopefully we won’t have to discuss it ever again. 2008 will be our
year, Sunshine. I promise.”

“The fish was good, wasn’t it?” Tara says,
fiddling with her plastic chopsticks.

On the television, Alex Jones argues that
what happened a couple of weeks ago down in Florida was most
definitely
not
smallpox, and that something very sinister is
afoot. He questions why not a single person on earth was able to
communicate with any of the town residents while this was
happening. He demands to know why there were no phone calls to
family. And where were the e-mails, the Youtube video posts, and
the blogs? The cell phone pictures? The satellite photos? Why was
any and all contact with the small beach town cut the moment the
first residents died?

“Heck, does smallpox seep through the phone
lines now, too?” he guffaws. “Were these poor bastards’ last wishes
to speak to friends and loved ones on the outside simply
denied
in the interest of some vague notion of national
security? Or did that town just slip into a time in history when
phones didn’t exist yet? I mean, come on, people. What
really
happened in Lilly’s End?”

Guy Horton and the Chinese host shake their
heads in disbelief. Horton drinks from a glass of water and the
show cuts to file footage of happy survivors waving to the camera
from in front of the CDC headquarters in Atlanta; shots of
monstrous flames rising above a Florida tree line; a speech from
President Bush; candlelight vigils in Tallahassee; Dick Cheney
smirking at the camera from his compound in Montana; Bono removing
a pair of $974 sunglasses to mourn for the cameras at a European
awards show; and Britney Spears recording her Lilly’s End benefit
song, “Beach Townz (Dance Away the Grief),” in a posh studio
somewhere.

I roll my eyes and order two more beers, even
though Tara has yet to finish her first. Outside on Gui Jie, a man
buys a bootleg DVD from a woman with a frostbitten jaw. A girl in
nurse’s garbs and a thin Adidas jacket scampers after a bus that
skipped her stop. A bicycle hits the icy curb and sends a teenage
boy slamming against a parked Toyota. A little girl chats on a pink
cell phone. White flurries continue to fall on Beijing.

“Listen,” I say, finishing my second Yanjing.
“I think we should get married.”

Tara pushes a stray piece of fish from one
side of her plate to the other. She presses her tongue against the
inside of her cheek.

“Marriage?”

“Yeah, babe. Marriage. After the job, I think
maybe we should get married, you know?”

“Is your proposal romantic or strategic?” she
asks, not looking up from the table.

“Um…a little of both?”

A long pause.

“Layne…let’s talk about this later,” she
sighs.

“Later
when
, Tara? Later—when?”

“Just later. After tonight. After the job.
That
later, all right?”

I nod solemnly and motion to the waiter to
open the next bottle.

After we pay our bill and step outside into
the cold, I assure Tara that in all likelihood I will be back
before eleven o’clock, and that we can open our gifts at midnight
to honor her family’s Christmas tradition and because I have to
catch a flight in the morning. She smiles when I say this and gives
me a hug. Pale tan businessmen, babysitting grandmothers, and
spoiled only-childs fumble past us on the sidewalk. Neon lights
gleam on the puffy white surface of Gui Jie. I tell Tara that I
feel like we’re actors on a set.

“Be careful tonight, Sunshine. Never forget
who we’re dealing with here.”

“Tara, it’s fine—after this we’re—”

“
Please
, Layne, okay? I’m well aware
of what’s supposed to happen after your obligations are through,
but you still need to watch yourself
now
, in the present
moment. Okay? You never know what they’re up to, regardless of what
any stack of papers said.”

I nod indignantly to this and give Tara
Tennille another long hug. I decide not to tell her that I know
she’s crying.

“I’ll see you back at the hotel,” I whisper
into her ear. “I love you. Don’t worry.”

We kiss, two anonymous haunts on a snowy
Christmas Eve in the city.

PARENTHESIS

We are the seventh vowel. The missing
permutation. Rain-bleached scraps of child’s clothing deteriorating
in a jungle. The misbegotten reels between the present and the
past. We are the gray space between the raindrops and the
close-mouthed strangers on the subway.

We do exist, but our stories do not.

We are the forgotten.

06:54:31 PM

After paying the taxi driver, I enter the
lobby of a random office building on Dongzhimen and nod to the
security guard. Once I’ve punched in the code and stepped onto the
elevator, I stare into the lens of the surveillance camera all the
way up to the thirty-fifth floor.

I am a cog in the machine that fuels
despair.

When the elevator doors open, I take a few
tentative steps out into a sleek silver corridor lined with six
closed offices, spaced about twenty feet apart. Before I have the
chance to wander from room to room in search of the correct one,
the fifth set of windowless double doors opens and a thin
stubble-faced man in a black business suit emerges. He motions for
me to follow him.

It occurred to me on the overnight flight
back East that, in exchange for our survival, there will be many
things we can never speak of again.

I am led into a large glass room with high
ceilings and a circular meeting table occupied by twelve unsmiling
men sitting primly in tall leather-backed chairs. It’s cold. Their
breath steams. I slip both hands into the pockets of my coat and
wait while the men murmur details to one another in a language I’ve
never heard before. When I glance across the room, I see Hajime
standing over by the floor-to-ceiling windows. He doesn’t look at
me, and instead takes another sip of coffee while looking out over
the hazy city skyline. A few feet away from him, there is a table
with a Schlesinger American Belting attaché case resting silently
on its transparent surface.

My true past is now forever confined to
silent subtexts wedged between lines of permanently curt
conversation and obtuse early-morning lamentations.

They continue talking in hushed gibberish. I
notice absently that not one of them is black, and am momentarily
troubled. After the discussion ends and a long moment passes, one
of the men, a beetle-like figure in a stuffy black sweater and
tinted reading glasses, clears his throat to speak.