Hostile Contact. Gordon Kent

the tea.

      “Not yet, Andy.” He didn’t say, It was only last night you asked for it, for Christ’s sake. Bobby never said things like that.

      “I’ll show you where I want it.” Piat licked his fingers and walked toward the Orchid House, a greenhouse perched atop a concrete model of a Javanese fortress, circa 1500. They went inside, where a broad path covered in bark mould wound through two full acres of flowers, which rose so high they screened the turns of the path, preventing long sight lines and making a perfumed maze with walls forty feet high. Four entrances, each arriving from a separate path through the minipark.

      It was one of the most perfect sites for a clandestine meeting that Jerry had ever seen. It was a site where a man could meet his agent while the whole world watched him, never really knowing whether they had met. It had George Shreed written all over it.

      Jesus, George knew his craft.

      “This is where the meeting’s going down,” he said. He led the way along the path, his left hand gently stroking the narrow leaves of a mountain orchid. “I’m going to tell you a secret,” he said. Bobby was behind him; when Piat turned, he saw that the little man looked worried. Agents didn’t usually get secrets. “Who d’you think chose this site? Go on, guess. Take a guess.” Bobby frowned still more. “George,” Piat said.

      “George!”

      “George Shreed picked it.” Jerry grinned. The hangover had receded and was a dull ache with a peculiar peacefulness spread over it. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. No need to know. But I thought you’d care. Because of George.” Bobby looked flustered and excited. Jerry had paid him a great compliment, made a great gesture of trust. The little man was absurdly flattered. Finally, he was able to say, “How is George?”

      Jerry realized that of course Bobby didn’t know. “ George is dead, Bobby. That’s what all this is about—the people who killed him are going to make this meeting. Then we’re going to get them.”

      Tears stood in Bobby’s eyes. All the pleasure of being told a secret was wiped away. “George dead?” he murmured.

      “We’re doing this for George, pal.” He touched Bobby’s shoulder. “Okay?”

      Piat located the actual meeting place, where the path curved and a bench stood among the orchid plants. He pointed out the main entrance, through which their man would come, and then walked to the one at the opposite point of the compass. “And this is where our guy will come in. Then he’ll walk around that way, taking his time, back the way we just came, to the meeting place. Got it?”

      Bobby nodded.

      “Our guy will carry a copy of The Economist to identify himself, and he’ll also have an envelope stuffed with what will feel like money, which he’ll hand to the guy who killed George, and your team with the camera will get a good picture. Got that?”

      “Got it, Andy.”

      Jerry smiled. “You haven’t asked who’s going to be our guy.”

      Bobby shook his head.

      “Go on, ask. You can ask, it’s okay.”

      Bobby knew then that he was supposed to ask. “Who?” he said, like a good stooge.

      “You.” Piat laughed and slapped him on the shoulder and headed for the far wall of the greenhouse, walked boldly past a young man raking bark mould off the path and another misting leaves with water, both of whom looked at him but were cowed by his eyes. He pushed past them down a maintenance trail and on to a battered sign with “Treetops” painted on it; directly below it was a less old but hardly new sign that said “Closed.” Jerry remembered when “Treetops” (the name borrowed from the famous African lodge once visited by Queen Elizabeth) was new, a viewing platform out over the entire Orchid House, back when its trees had been young and its vines small. Built cleverly of steel pipe disguised to look like branches, it was meant to recall those game-viewing, tiger-shooting platforms once put up in real jungles. Now, the trees reached to the roof and the vines were as thick as your wrist, and Treetops was old and sagging and probably unsafe.

      “Come on.”

      He climbed the imitation-treetrunk stair, ignoring the thought that every worker in the Orchid House was watching them. The old viewing platform was filled with rolls of hose and cuttings, and the protective railing was broken, and the pigeons that flew in and out of the broken panes of the greenhouse had used it as their personal privy. The platform, however, looked as if nobody had been up there for years, except, he now saw, for the odd, courageous tourist who climbed up to stand in the one spot where you could see through some of the greenery.

      Jerry lay full length, looking over the edge of the platform. “They need a few elephants,” he muttered. From up here, he could see most of the meeting site—the back of the bench, but not its legs because of the foliage, about three feet of path to the left of the bench, the side from which Bobby would come; and a little more on the side where he hoped Dukas would come.

      “I want the big ice bucket placed up here, okay? Roll it in a floor mat; I can lie on that.”

      “You going to—?” Bobby stopped himself. He had been about to ask a question. Piat ignored it, concentrated on the bark path beyond the bench. Have to wait until they’ve got the photo. Then shoot? Or wait until he starts out. He tracked an imaginary figure back toward the exit to his own right, seeing the path here and there as a red-brown stain among the green leaves and the flowers. There was one place that might do. Have to be ready, shoot as he moves into the open. Bang. Not such a long shot, but iffy because of the visibility.

      Then noise and a lot of running around; I leave the gun, just like Oswald in Dallas; I head for the stairs—He raised his head to look at the steep, winding staircase, then craned to look down. There was better cover from the leaves where he was, one now-huge tree masking most of the front of Treetops. A sober man without a hangover could shinny down the old scaffolding unseen. Climb down, no sweat, there’s a lot of uproar, our team is making noise and providing a diversion—what? He looked up at the glass roof, saw the lines of water pipes up there. He studied the vast space. “Can you get a stun grenade, Bobby?”

      “Not so easy. Maybe.”

      “Try.” He didn’t like the idea of the stun grenade; it was distasteful to him—unprofessional. However, he would have to be out and away before the Jakarta cops arrived. Not good to get caught up in all that now that he wasn’t Agency any more.

      Jerry got up and tried to brush the pigeon shit off his front, but the headache knifed back when he bent too far. “I think we’ll need four guys,” he said. He took ten American hundreds out of his wallet and handed them over.

      

      Ten minutes later, they were standing outside the Orchid House.

      “You know Si Jagur?” Jerry said.

      Bobby Li grinned. “Everybody in Jakarta know Si Jagur.” Si Jagur was a seventeenth-century cannon that sat in a public place and was both a totem and a sort of pet, also a good place to meet for a date—See you at Si Jagur.

      “Fatahillah Square,” Jerry said. “You’re going to go check it out every day. Here’s the deal: when our man’s ready to make the meeting, he’ll leave a chalk mark on Si Jagur. A circle with a little tail, sort of a letter Q. Got that? On the left-hand wheel as you stand behind the gun. Okay? He leaves the mark, that means the clock is running and the first meeting time is next morning at nine-ten. Mmm?”

      “I got you, Andy.”

      “I want you to check Si Jagur every day, starting today. You’ll have to set up a route that takes you there, going someplace you usually go. Mmm?” Jerry wanted something sweet, which he hoped would absorb or minimize or anodize or do whatever the hell sugar did to alcohol. If the alcohol he’d taken in was still alcohol, and not some poisonous shit that it turned into after it hit the gut. “You know the drill—you