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A young Asian waitress appeared wearing a blue airport uniform. "Two coffees, please," Smith requested. She nodded and left.
"I... er.. I think I may have something that belongs to you," he said very quietly. The girl's expression changed entirely. Suddenly she looked like a very small, very vulnerable hunted animal. The blood seemed to drain from her face. "Oh yes," he continued in the same low, intimate tone, "I found your sweet-box. Now, what are we going to do about it? Eh?"
She looked on the point of fainting, unable to find her voice.
"May I.... have it back please?" she whispered, begging him with her big pitiful eyes.
"Are you going to tell me what it's all about?" he suggested in the kindliest voice he could muster.
She seemed to consider the question. "Isn't it obvious?" she whispered at last.
"No. I don't think so. I don't think you've ever done anything like this before. Am I right?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes, Rose. It matters. Why did you do it?"
She sat quite still for a few moments, her shoulders heaving slightly. She seemed to be having trouble getting proper control of her breathing. "Don't worry," Smith said in an attempt to calm her down, "I'm not any kind of a policeman or anything like that. I just want to know what it's all about. Talk to me. Trust me. Who knows, I may even be able to do something to help."
"No," she said firmly, "you can't help. Nobody can help."
"Try me."
The coffee arrived and Smith paid and sorted-out the milk and sugar before they went on. "You were about to tell me about it," he coaxed.
"I.... have a sister," she began falteringly, "two years younger than me. We come from a very good family. Our father was once the Prime Minister of this country. Now he is the leader of one of the two main opposition parties. We... live quite well..."
"I understand. So, how did all this start?"
"My sister has a boyfriend... an American man. His name is Miller. When she first met him, he seemed very.. charming. He treated her very well. He took her to parties. He took her abroad. But then... she began to discover things about him. She discovered why he wanted her for his girlfriend. It was because of our family.."
Smith was in no hurry. He sipped his coffee and waited for her to continue.
"This man, Miller. He is involved in terrible things. Things that I cannot even bring myself to say."
"Drugs? Prostitution?"
She nodded. "Those... and worse. Have you heard the term 'snuff movies'?"
It was Smith's turn to grow pale. "You mean films of murders. Real murders. Torture. That sort of thing?"
She glanced around before she answered. "That is his biggest source of income. He manipulates people, Mr. Smith. Including my sister. Everyone who works for him is an addict. Heroin is very hard to get in this country now. Very expensive. Partly because of what my father did when his party was in power. But that is only a detail. What matters is, his people's wages are paid in heroin. If they leave him, they cannot survive."
"Are you one of his people? Are your wages paid in that way?"
"No. He would not trust me to do this if I was addicted. My sister is ... in his power. And she is also his insurance policy. My family can not fight him while that link exists. He can destroy us more easily than we can destroy him. So, you see, Mr. Smith, it is all a nightmare. There is no way out for my family."
Smith nodded thoughtfully. "Does your father know all this?"
"Oh no! And please, he must never find out. It would be so... shameful. Will you promise me please that you will not let him find out? My sister would kill herself if that happened."
"It sounds to me that your sister is killing herself anyway." He toyed with his coffee-cup. "You don't think it will end here do you? You know he'll want more from you. More deliveries, more jobs, more risks. You'll get caught sooner or later. You almost did today."
"There is nowhere that I can go, Mr. Smith. There is nobody who can help me."
Smith considered the problem for a few minutes. "Is your sister with him all the time?"
"At the moment, yes. Papa thinks she's abroad studying."
"Is she a prisoner, or does she want to be with him?"
"I don't think she's in love with him any more. She tells herself she is because without him the heroin dries up."
"Well, that's something positive. And from what you tell me, he isn't going to trust any of his own people to pick up this consignment. It's going to have to be handed over to him in person. Right?"
"Yes. I am to meet him at midnight tonight."
"On his own?"
"No. Far from it. All his people will be around him. But even if we could get him on his own, even if we told the police, we couldn't be sure they would arrest him. A lot of them are probably on his payroll. It's hopeless. There's no way to get him."
Smith leaned back and scratched his head. "I admit it needs a bit of thought. But there must be some way to do it." Smith's foot idly hit into the bag under the chair. It gave him an idea.
"Okay, Rose. Here's the germ of something. Suppose that you fail to get the package back from me. Suppose that I walk out of here with it and go and book-in at a hotel. You tell Miller I've still got it. What happens then?"
"Are you serious? He'll come after you, of course. He'll kill you if it's the easiest way to get it back. Without hesitation."
"But I suspect he won't move about very much in the daylight. Am I right?"
"Probably. I've only ever seen him after dark."
"Then that gives me a few hours, doesn't it?"
"A few hours to do what?"
"I'm not sure yet. Tell me about these 'snuff movies'. The people who get killed - where do they come from?"
"Street-children. Down-and-outs. Vagrants. Sometimes he kidnaps children from farming families. Sometimes I think he just entices them away - tells them he can get work for them in the city. All kinds of things."
"And doesn't anybody ever notice? Don't the disappearances get reported?"
"Of course. There's a whole organization trying to trace them. They have an office in the city."
"Really. That's interesting. Can you take me to it?".
O
It was close to closing time when Smith and Suavarose pulled-up to the door of the building that housed the Missing Persons Bureau. Rose waited to pay the taxi-driver while Smith hurried up the stairs, afraid that he would be too late to talk to anybody. To his relief the door was ajar and there were two people in the room, an oldish man of Oriental appearance standing by the table and a young European-looking woman seated behind it. Some typewritten papers were scattered before them, prominent among them a picture of a little girl, possibly the man's granddaughter, aged about five or six. She was smiling in a lovely unselfconscious way at something to the left, out of camera-shot. Smith went straight in without knocking.."
"Sorry to interrupt," he said awkwardly, "but it's desperately important, and I haven't very much time. Do you speak English?" They both nodded, the man turning to face him.
"Have you heard of a man named Miller?"
The girl started as though he had shouted an obscenity at a prayer-meeting. "I'll take that as a yes. If I could get him to show himself, on his own, is there anything you could do about it? Are there any police officers you can trust?"
The girl swallowed hard and got up and shut and locked the door before she answered. "Who are you, Sir?" she asked in a hushed tone.
"I really don't think that matters. What's the answer? Can you help me or not?"
The girl stood in front of him, her lips trembling. She was too frightened to speak. Instead the man spoke, collecting-up the papers from the table as he did-so. "Perhaps I can help you. Unlike the young lady, my life is quite close to its natural end."
"You mean you know some honest policemen," Smith demanded eagerly, "people we can trust to arrest Miller?"
"Yes," the old man assured him, nodding his head gravely, "if you can get Miller into the open, the way you describe, I can arrange everything else."
A smile spread across Smith's face. This thing might not be quite as tough as he had feared.
O
Smith lounged on a comfortable chair in a quiet corner of the hotel bar. On his lap he had his Company's newly-issued lap-top computer. He pretended to type but in reality it was displaying only a collection of little colored icons against a blue field. The computer was window-dressing. On the floor beside him the black hold-all rested against his feet. On a similar seat, at a table a few meters away Suavarose sat quietly reading a novel, and occasionally sipping a gaudily-colored cocktail that she would normally have enjoyed but which now tasted bitter and unappetizing. The old man from the Missing Persons Bureau sat at the same table, a glass of beer at his hand, idly playing with Smith's new cam-corder, balancing it on the table and staring down at the little viewfinder-screen whose tiny but crystal clear picture of the room seemed to hold endless fascination.
Smith did not know in detail where the police were concealed, it was better that he did not, but he was confident that this aspect of the meeting had been fully organized. As he pretended to type, he watched the little digital clock on the computer-screen. Midnight twenty-one. He knew that it wouldn't be very much longer. His heart pounded. What in heaven's name had inspired him to get involved in this, he wondered. There was no need for him to be here. No need for him to do this. It was just because he couldn't get Rose out of his thoughts. A girl he had never laid eyes upon before that day. A girl who had tricked him into drug-smuggling. He must be stark raving mad, he decided. Or in Love? Was there a worthwhile distinction between those two states?
His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a tall, rather elegant and well-dressed man in his early middle-age. He was clean-shaven with dark, slightly graying hair and carried a business briefcase. He seemed to be heading straight for where Smith was sitting. Smith's heart skipped a beat.
"Ah, good to see you," said the new arrival cheerily in a Southern States American accent, "I don't think you know me, but...."
He did not finish the sentence. He would never utter another. As he got to that point in what he wanted to say there was the sound of a muffled gunshot
and blood spurted from the left side of the man's chest. It was particularly shocking because Smith realized that what he was seeing was the exit-wound. The man had been shot from behind.
As the bar became totally silent, and Smith too found that he had lost the power of speech, the old Asian man walked casually around to where the man lay with his eyes still open, his dying gasps still spluttering from his mouth, and produced the photograph of the little girl from his breast pocket. "This is my granddaughter, Mr. Miller," he said quietly, "I think you may remember meeting her." With that he held the gun with its large silencer to the man's forehead, "You will be pleased to know that I am filming this," he said equally quietly, and pulled the trigger. This time there was an explosion of blood that splattered Smith's computer screen, as well as his suit and his black hold-all.
"I'm afraid I didn't get around to telling the police, Mr. Smith," said the man quietly, "I rather wanted to see Mr. Miller alone."
"But... it's murder," Smith managed to rasp breathlessly.
"No, Mr. Smith. Murder is the killing of a human being. This man's membership of the human race was no longer current."
The man returned to his seat as though nothing had happened and put the gun away. In the most surreal way, like a tape-recording that had been paused and then started-up again, the sound of people talking, and even laughing, recommenced all around the little tableau. People got up from where they were sitting and gathered around to look at the body, still chattering in a very normal sort of way, as though the shooting had formed part of an entertaining floor-show. The man sat back in his seat and seemed to relax. He took a sip from his glass and a faint smile flickered across his face. Suavarose whispered something in his ear and he got up very calmly and turned to leave. She hugged him once and squeezed his hand. Then the crowd parted to let him through and he quietly left.
Smith began to feel as though he were in a dream. He got up and seemed to float light-headed over to where Soavarose was standing. She was pale, but was actually smiling.
"What did you say to him?" he whispered.
"I said: 'Today you have done a good day's work. It is time for you to go home and rest'. It's a line from an old folk-song. The next line goes: 'If you stay any longer in the paddy fields it will be dark, and the cobras will come out to bite your ankles'."
He found that he was shuddering slightly and he put his arms around her for comfort.
"Why don't you put your things away," she said quietly, "and... in the morning... I'll take you to meet my sister." AN END
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