Dead and Gone - Andrew Vachss [54]
“How did you—?”
“My parents knew they were coming. They knew there was no escape. My mother was a peasant born. She had friends in the fields. My parents handed me over. My new people tried to provide for me. It was … impossible.
“I … eventually lived with a guerrilla group near the Thai border. They purchased me from the people who had me. They were not freedom fighters; they were drug lords. When the leader discovered I could do sums very quickly, he got me books. About money. He was very interested in money.
“The books were mostly in English. Some were in Russian. There were Russian soldiers in the jungle. Independent outfits. It was as if they all knew governments would fall, but heroin would always have value. Like gold or diamonds. So they traded together. Made alliances. I became the translator for the leader. He could trust me, because I was a child, so I had no power. Even if I could have escaped, the jungle would have devoured me.
“I was very patient. One night I was able to leave. In Thailand, money is god. I had to be very careful. Anyone would hurt you. Anyone would take your money. But I did speak English. I found some students. American students. In the Peace Corps. One of them helped me buy papers. I came here. First to California. I had names of people. I found some of them. And then I found myself.”
“Why would you tell me this?” I asked her.
“To be fair. I know about you.”
“What could you know?”
“My … people, in New York, they say you are a man for hire.”
“Even if that were so—”
“But here, you are hunting for yourself. This is personal, not professional.”
“Why do you say?”
“Because of what you do not say. About money.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You hired me. I am a woman for hire, and you hired me. But you never discussed the price of my services. As if it did not matter to you. So either you are concerned only with your target, or you plan to cheat me. Or dispose of me.”
“You’re pretty relaxed for someone who’d even consider that last … thing.”
“All my life, I have had only minutes—minutes at the most—to make decisions about people. One day I will be wrong. That day I will die.”
“Is that … I don’t know, Buddhism or something?”
“It is the Zen of violence. It has no logic, only essence. There are no computations, no calculations. No facts. Therefore, no theories.”
“It sounds dangerous.”
“No. It is a total thing. Do you know the fear of not knowing? Do you understand the terror of being utterly without power, in the hands of those who might use you, might hurt you, might kill you … might do … anything?”
I looked at her, saw trace lightning the color of iodine flash in her black eyes. “Yeah, I do know,” is all I said.
“Yes,” she said, accepting my answer as truth. “So you do not wait for decisions to be made by others. You act. If you succeed, you hold the power of your decision. If you fail, you die. It is the only way.”
“The Tao?”
“If you like. The Way is not one way. We are born into this world differently, one from the other. There is no fate. No destiny. There is only random chance. When you act, you alter that randomness. It may be for your good; it may be for your death. But it is better to make the decisions for yourself. No matter the outcome, the fear is gone.”
“Fear is the key,” I told Gem later that night as she sat lotus-positioned on the carpet, a plain white tablet on her thighs. “Controlled fear. We have to spook them enough to get them out in the open, but not so much that they take off.”
“What they do not know, then?”
“Yeah, that’s the way I figure it, too. If we address it right to the drop box, they’ll know we have at least that much.”
“Do you know what you want to say?”
It was another hour before it was done. Gem worked silently, setting up her gear with the practiced, careful movements of a bomb-maker. First she sprayed some cleanser on the surface of the desk and wiped it vigorously