The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [68]
“Yu Lung,” he said. “You’re a friend of—who was it again?”
“Le Thu.” Christopher found himself smiling broadly—Yu Lung had made magic efficient.
Christopher took the torn halves of the five one-hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet and laid them on the desk. The Chinese produced his own portions of the torn bills from a desk drawer and spent a moment fitting them together on the glass top of his desk.
“Is the fee satisfactory?” Christopher asked.
“I’ve drawn the horoscopes for you,” Yu Lung said. He spread six sheets of rice paper over the top of the desk. On each sheet he had drawn a circle; symbols connected by lines lay within the circle. A vertical row of Chinese characters ran down the edge of each page. Yu Lung looked expectantly at Christopher.
“I’m afraid I can’t read these without assistance,” Christopher said.
Yu Lung nodded. “As you no doubt suspected, there is a remarkable conjunction of forces between the four men and the two dates you gave me. The fates are acting quite strongly on one other. Do you wish a classical interpretation, or a Vietnamese reading?”
“Vietnamese, to begin with,” Christopher said.
“I thought you might, so I’ve added the geomantic factors as well. Briefly, three of these men are either dead already or will be on”—he ran his finger down a lunar calendar— “the next conjunction of their forces, which will occur, in Western time, seven years from now on the dates you gave me for the events.”
He pushed aside the charts that he had drawn for Kennedy, Diem, and Nhu on the basis of their birth dates and times.
“This fourth man,” Yu Lung said, tapping the Truong toe’s chart, “is active in the fates of the others. I see no danger for him. You understand, you’ve asked me to work from very limited information.”
“I’m impressed with what you’ve done. How much faith have you in your results?”
“Well, you understand that the basis of horoscopy in our system is that the stars and all the other portents predispose rather than predetermine an individual’s fate. A man’s acts can alter his reading—in other words, he can avoid destruction through wisdom, or cheat himself of good fortune through stupidity. But the forces here are quite clear.”
“And the factors other than horoscopy?”
“Yes, the geomantic factors. You understand the principle of geomancy, of course—one orients oneself to the natural world on the basis of harmony with the five natural elements, which are fire, water, metal, wood, and earth. None of these three men seems to have been in harmony with the world. In Vietnamese terms, they were all under the influence of the Ma Than Vong.”
“Which is?”
“A very colorful and malevolent force—the tightening-knot ghost. Ma Than Vong goads men to suicide, or into situations where their violent death is inevitable. One of the men, this one—a foreigner, I believe—am I correct?”
Christopher nodded. Yu Lung had shown him Kennedy’s horoscope.
“The foreigner was a powerful man,” Yu Lung said, “but his particular nemesis was Ma A Phien, whom the Vietnamese call the opium ghost. This man was predisposed to a death in the pleasures. Also, he was much involved with the am, the female spirit that stands for darkness and is associated with death. As for the others, who must be Vietnamese, there was a long period of the influence of duong, or the male spirit of light, or life. Then this force conjoins with the am spirit of the other man, and they are lost.”
“By whose error?”
“Their own, of course. As I said, we are dealing with predisposition, not predetermination. The horoscope is incomplete, as you must realize.”
“Incomplete? In what way?”
“There are other individuals involved. One in particular, who I could guess is a Vietnamese related in some way to the other two. Perhaps he lives elsewhere than in the place where his two relatives live, or lived. He exerts a force after their death.