Dance with the Dragon (25 page)

“I think it was a couple of months after my first translation job that he asked me to go with him to a meeting in Mexico City. We’d fly down in a private jet Thursday afternoon and be back in New York sometime late Sunday night. I was to pack evening clothes—there was going to be a soiree at the Chinese embassy—but he told me to pack casual as well, and to bring a bathing costume. We were going to be guests at an important Mexican’s house up north.”

McGarvey held himself in check. He was surprised but he didn’t let it show. “Where was that?” he asked casually. “Do you remember?”

“Chihuahua,” she said bitterly. “Just like the little dog.”

“Do you remember the important Mexican Liu was meeting with?”

“He was a pretty guy. Miguel something.”

“Roaz?”

She gave McGarvey a sharp look. “How did you know?” she demanded. “Are you playing some fucking game with me? Because if you’re a bastard like the others, you can get the hell out of here.” Her voice was hoarse, just a little above a whisper, and she seemed to have trouble catching her breath.

“No games,” McGarvey told her. “Liu is back in Mexico and he’s still working with Roaz. We just had no idea it had been going on for so long.”

She was only slightly mollified, not sure if he was toying with her for some dark reason. “All men are pigs,” she said, and from her point of view she was right. “What is he doing there this time?”

“I can’t tell you that, except that another young woman is involved with him and her life is in danger.”

“You bet it is,” Monique said. “But maybe I won’t help you unless you tell me.”

“I can’t,” McGarvey said. “But I can pay—”

She waved him off. “I don’t want your money.” She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them it seemed as if she had come to a difficult decision. “Just promise me that what I tell you will help bring him down.”

“That and more,” McGarvey said. “And I’ll also promise that whatever you tell me will be kept confidential. I’m not going to write any sort of a report, so no one else will know anything about this. Except for Liu when I tell him.”

Monique’s breath caught in her throat. “Are you going to kill him?”

“I can’t say.”

She sat forward, an intensity on her sagging features. “Kill him,” she said with passion. “He’s a monster. Do it!”

“Whatever happens to him, we’ll make sure that he’ll never hurt anyone again.”

She said nothing.

“What happened to you in Mexico?”

She hesitated for another moment. But then she brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes. “The reception at the embassy was great. Nice people, some of them very important. And they all seemed to have a lot of respect for Liu, which at the time I thought was odd. He was only a major. There was champagne, and I remember afterward driving back out to the airport for the flight north. A car and driver were waiting for us, and we were taken to this nice house up in the foothills. It was behind walls, but inside it was like a palace. Big swimming pool, lot of people, including a bunch of young girls. Some of them were just kids. And more champagne.”

“Did you know any of those people?”

“Liu introduced me to just about everybody, but I don’t remember the names. It’s been a long time, and by then with all the champagne I had to drink, I wasn’t focusing real well.”

“Were there a lot of men? Mexicans?”

She nodded. “Old men,” she said. “Maybe your age or even older, pawing at the young girls. I thought it was disgusting, and at one point I said so to Liu. But he said things were different in Mexico than elsewhere, so I wasn’t to be so quick to judge.”

McGarvey suppressed a faint smile. It seemed as if half the world had been calling him old lately. “You weren’t happy about the situation.”

“No, but I didn’t say anything else about the young girls that night. And later…” She hesitated for a beat. “Later it was too late.”

“What happened that night that made it too late?”

“I was an attractive woman in those days. I had a nice figure, pretty hair, good complexion, and I took care of myself. The right diet, good makeup, a hairstyle, manicure, and pedicure every week. Chic outfits. So some of those guys were hitting on me, and when I complained to Liu he just laughed and told me to flirt with them, and that nothing would come of it. He’d make sure of it.”

“So you did.”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“It got very late. I was tired and mostly tipsy on champagne. All I wanted to do was go to bed. But Liu talked me into staying up for just an hour or two longer, until dawn. When the sun came up, they would have a breakfast by the pool to celebrate the new day. They called it a ‘survival party.’ But I was dead on my feet, so Miguel offered to give me a little something to keep me going. A shot of vitamin A or E, or something like that.”

“Did you take it?”

Monique nodded. “It worked. I was flying right through breakfast. It wasn’t vitamins. I found out later that it was heroin, and I was hooked. But even that wasn’t the worst.”

“What was?”

“When I finally woke up the next afternoon, I was naked in bed and two of the girls from the party were making love to me, while a couple of Liu’s old men were standing around watching.” She looked away. “That was the lowest point of my life. But it got a lot worse after that.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

THE APARTMENT

Monique stood up with some difficulty, as if she were having a problem with her balance. “I wish I had some tea, something to offer you.”

“It’s all right,” McGarvey told her. “Are you okay?”

“Just have to use the
toilette,
” she said. She went to the tiny bathroom between the bedroom and kitchenette, and without bothering to close the door, she unhooked her bib overalls, pulled them down around her ankles, then lowered her panties before she sat down on the toilet and peed. When she was finished she dried herself with some toilet paper.

She looked out at McGarvey, who had turned away. “You see I have no shame left. Liu burned it out of me.”

“Maybe it’ll come back,” McGarvey said as she pulled up her panties and the overalls, and came out to the sitting room.

“I don’t think so,” she said matter-of-factly. “And when I’ve finished telling you everything, I don’t believe you’ll think so either.”

“Have you told any of this to anyone?”

“No,” she said, and she remained standing for a couple of moments longer, as if she were in agony and sitting down again would make it worse. Or if she sat down she would have to continue with her story, which was obviously causing her a great deal of pain.

“Perhaps getting it out in the open will help,” McGarvey said. “At the very least we’ll both get what we want. And that’s stopping Liu.”

“I think you’ll have to kill him in order to accomplish that,” she said, and she sat down, put her head back, and closed her eyes. “We flew back to New York Sunday afternoon, but I slept most of the way up, and when they dropped me off at my apartment, Liu came up to make sure that I’d be okay, because I was getting a little jittery. He gave me another shot to calm me down, and the next thing I knew it was later in the week. Thursday or Friday maybe.”

“Do you remember how you felt?”

“At first when they gave me the shots I’d fall asleep, and when I woke up I’d feel like
merde.
But later, maybe after a couple of weeks, when I got a shot I’d be flying, I mean really flying up over buildings, or around the apartment like a balloon that’s just been popped. All I wanted then was to have sex. But he’d never allow it, except that he brought me some things.” Monique opened her eyes. “You know, sex toys. Dildos, a vibrator, stuff like that. Wanted me to experiment, find out what felt good.” She shook her head. “I wanted him to make love to me, and he brought me toys. I tried to make him understand that I was willing to do
anything
for him. Anything he wanted.”

“That’s what he wanted,” McGarvey said.

“That was just the prelude. Even going back to Mexico for six months was nothing but an extended prelude for the real score.”

“You went back?” McGarvey asked. “Willingly?” It was a stupid question but he had to ask it. He wanted to keep her in the frame of mind in which she was so angry about what Liu had done to her that she wouldn’t hold back anything, no matter how degrading it had been.

Monique laughed bitterly. “I was a heroin addict. The word ‘willingly’ had absolutely no meaning for me.”

“Do you take drugs now?”

“No. But that’s a long story, too.” She fell silent again, lost in her own bitter thoughts.

“Mexico,” McGarvey reminded her.

“Oui,”
she said, coming back. “All of a sudden he started being nice to me. One day he gave me something different, and although I was flying again, I was more in control. I was happy, and up, but not crazy. We went shopping, new clothes, some jewelry, nice stuff. Shoes, scarves, hats, even sexy underwear and little bikinis.” She blinked owlishly. “I hadn’t lost my figure yet, and with the right makeup and contacts it was nearly impossible to tell that I had become a junkie.”

“Were you always with Liu, or were there other people around?” McGarvey asked.

“There were others, but don’t ask me to give you any names. They were just faces. Sometimes young pretty girls, sometimes young pretty men, boys actually.” She crinkled her nose. “And it must have been winter by then, because I remember this fur coat. Sable, I think. It was the most wonderful thing I’d been given.”

“Did you go anywhere with Liu like you’d done at first? Parties, receptions?”

“Once I’d learned how to handle my addiction I was allowed to come to a couple soirees at Liu’s apartment. But I’d never get to stay for more than an hour or two before I’d be driven back to my apartment.”

“You were alone. Why didn’t you just walk away? Try to find your husband?”

“Have you ever been a drug addict, Mr. McGarvey?” she asked, but she didn’t wait for an answer. “You stay close to your source. Anyway, I was still in love with Liu. I still had hope.”

McGarvey felt sorry for her, but burning her had been standard tradecraft. Every intelligence agency in the world had used sexual indiscretions and drug addictions as a means of controlling case subjects, what were called johns. It was the same term whores used for their clients, and for just about the same reasons.

“He took me to Washington the week before we left for Mexico, and this time it was a party at the State Department for the new secretary of state. She was an unattractive older woman, but she seemed to be very intelligent. I remember she had kind eyes, and she knew that something was troubling me. But she never asked, of course.”

“Did you talk to anyone there?” McGarvey asked.

“Lots of people, but I don’t remember any of the details.”

“Did Liu introduce you to anyone specific? Maybe someone he wanted you to get to know?”

Monique shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “That came later, after Mexico. I’ve already told you that all that shit, everything with Liu, was nothing more than a dress rehearsal. He had one specific job for me to do, and he spent more than a year getting me ready.”

McGarvey wanted to ask: For what, or for whom? But he let her continue with the story in her own way. She was back there now, in living color, and the sharp pain was clear on her face, in her eyes.

“This time we flew directly to Chihuahua, where I was set up in my own apartment in one wing of Miguel’s house. I remembered that I was worried because the arrangement looked a little too permanent for my liking. But when I said so, Liu promised that I would be staying for only a few months. He said it was terribly important for him. For us.”

“How long was it before the first party?” McGarvey asked.

She laughed bitterly. “You don’t miss much, do you?” she said. “The very next day the girls starting showing up around noon, then the caterers and barmen after them, and the musicians later, and finally the men. Gross, fat old pigs. And right from the start I understood what kind of a soiree this was going to be. The girls started shedding their clothes even before dark, and the pigs chased after them. Along the back of the pool patio were some cabanas where the pigs went to screw the girls. Everybody was having a grand time. A million laughs.”

“You were Liu’s star,” McGarvey said. “What was your part?”

“I got a general. Ernesto something, I don’t remember, except that he wasn’t as bad as some of the others. And he was a gentleman, more or less. But when I refused to go to bed with the man, Liu took me aside and practically exploded. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another human being lose control like that. I thought he was going to kill me.” She shrugged. “Of course in the end I took the general back to my apartment, where we had sex. Afterward he gave me some money, which Liu said was mine to keep, but I didn’t care about it. All I cared about was getting my next fix, which Liu promised would never happen unless I did as I was told. His message, and my plight, couldn’t have been clearer.”

“What else happened that night?”

“Nothing,” Monique said. “I remember taking a very long shower after the general left and Liu had his little chat with me, but I can’t remember drying off and going to bed.” She averted her eyes. “A lot of nights ended that way.”

The tradecraft that Liu had used on Shahrzad had been exactly the same with Monique. First he controlled them with money or drugs, and then he forced them to use their sex to target someone specific. It had been Updegraf with Shahrzad, and McGarvey wondered who it had been ten years ago—certainly not some Mexican general. Anyway, Monique had mentioned the real score, which apparently had come after Mexico.

“So you had sex with whoever Liu set up for you, and in exchange you got your shots every day,” he said.

Monique’s lip compressed. “Not much of a bargain, was it?”

“No it wasn’t. How long did it go on?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know exactly, except that I think it was winter when we went down there, and it was late summer by the time Liu brought me back to New York.”

“Was he there in Mexico with you the entire time?”