‘Meet me by the river tomorrow,’ he whispered to her, knowing she would understand the place he meant, the verge where they had first kissed in the neon-lit rain.
She nodded, her eyes locked with his, and then she let her hand go loose, allowing the girls to pull her away to hide her; and then Kowalski was alone in the crowd, letting it pull him away in the opposite direction, his heart empty.
He had gone to the river the next day, waited there from dawn til dusk, all the while aware that the police would be looking for him, the gang too.
He continued to wait, looking for her from the shadows, but she never showed; knowing he was due to report for duty in just a few more days, he started to look for her through the city, starting with the bar she’d been pulled into on that first night.
But every way he turned he was met with stony silence, unable to gain any clue to her location; but then he went back to the bar for a final check, and a young girl came to him, passing him a note.
I am safe, it said simply. But I am afraid we can never see each other again. It is too dangerous, and I love you too much to do that to you.
I am sorry.
You will be in my heart forever —
Asami
Kowalski’s heart sank like a stone when he read the message, all of his half-envisioned dreams about their future together shattered irreparably.
But she was safe, and that was really all that mattered.
He just hoped it was true.
But for Kowalski, he knew it was time to return home; he’d outstayed his welcome here, and knew his luck couldn’t last any longer. The ‘unknown westerner’ would be found soon enough if he stayed, either by the remaining gang members or by the Bangkok police — and he didn’t know which would be worse.
And so Mark Kowalski accepted the situation for what it was and booked himself on the first flight home for the United States, unsure how he was going to continue with his life as it was.
It turned out that things returned to normal quite quickly for him back in the States — the discipline of military life gave structure that was comforting and even pleasurable, in a vaguely masochistic sort of way.
Later that year he was promoted to Lieutenant, due in no small part to his performances in Iraq, and then — his recent experiences making him even more driven and single-minded than he was before — he passed the arduous selection for the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, otherwise known as SEAL Team Six — his dream ticket.
He’d also moved in with his girlfriend Claire, the relationship — in the absence of his true love, Asami — somehow becoming more and more serious without him even realizing.
And then, when he got his papers to relocate to Dam Neck, Virginia — the home of Team Six — he had asked Claire to marry him, if for no better reason than being hounded into it.
It was destined not to last, and it didn’t — the couple was married in 2004, and divorced three years later after he had been recruited into the mysterious and clandestine Systems Research Group. He was operational too often, or else on training, to make a marriage work, and his heart wasn’t really in it.
But he could never quite rid himself of the nightmares of that dark, dingy, blood-spattered room. It was one thing to kill a man at long — or even close — range with a rifle or a pistol, as Kowalski had done many times in battle; but it was another thing entirely to do so with bladed weapons.
To be so close to your opponent, to feel their coppery, hot blood on your bare skin, their very life-force draining away over you as they breathed their last, was something he had never before experienced in quite the same way.
He’d seen bad wounds before — gut shots, rounds that had traveled through one man’s abdomen and intestine before coming out of his leg, IEDs that had blown limbs off — but the sights in that apartment block were singularly gruesome, and stayed with him for a long time afterwards. Skulls split wide open, internal organs eviscerated everywhere, the stench of blood and sweat and death; and all by his own hand.
He had become reconciled to killing long ago, but something about the savage deaths of those men in that Bangkok apartment served to change him in some indefinable way. If he had been inured to violence and brutality beforehand, now he had become even more so, and — despite the nightmares and the troubling images that continued to plague him for months to come — the incident in the end made him stronger, and more prepared to face the demons that would continue to come at him throughout his life.
And one more thing had also happened — except for the occasional nightmare of that bloody room, he had finally, mercifully, and entirely forgotten about the woman he had loved there.
Mark Cole stirred on his bed in the Beijing Grand Hyatt, having fallen into a nightmarish sleep, reliving his past life in vivid, Technicolor detail.
And then, all of a sudden, he sat bolt upright, sweat dripping down his face and neck despite the air conditioning.
Aoki Asami.
He couldn’t believe how long it had been since he had truly thought of her, remembered her; even when he’d been in Bangkok the year before, his memories had barely been stirred.
But having remembered at long last, seen her eyes again in those long-repressed memories, he was no longer in any doubt.
Aoki Michiko was Asami’s daughter.
She was his daughter, created by an intense love cut short all too soon.
But why did she hate him?
He had no idea what she had been told about him when she was growing up; perhaps Asami had told her that he was a monster, a villain, a psychopath? Or maybe Asami had gone back to her husband, given birth, and then Michiko had been abused by the man? Or Asami had been punished for her infidelity? Perhaps even killed? Would Michiko not then blame everything on Cole?
He felt the sweat start to pour again, wiped his face with his hand.
It was useless to try and second-guess anything; the things that could have happened to Asami and her daughter since she disappeared in Bangkok were infinite.
But one thing Cole had decided — when all this was over, he was going to take some leave and track Michiko down, just as she’d tracked him.
Only then would he learn the answers to his questions.
His heart rate increased automatically as he back-tracked his thoughts.
When all this was over?
He’d never intended to go to sleep, and he suddenly realized that he had no idea how long he’d been out of it.
As he raised his wrist to check his watch, he hoped beyond hope that it wasn’t all over already, hoped he hadn’t missed his appointment with Wu, his only clear shot at getting the man.
He looked at the time and his body relaxed slightly, his heart reducing its heavy beating in his chest.
It was okay; there was still time.
Cole knew his body had awoken him not because of the nightmarish images, but because it was such a finely honed machine that it knew he had a job to do. A sixth sense kept him constantly aware, always on the alert. It never let him down.
He shook his head in wonder; it would be literally impossible for him to sleep through an operation.
As he rose out of bed and strolled across the marble floor to the huge double wardrobes, his mind flashed again on those hacked, dead bodies lying in their thick pools of congealing blood, and asked himself — not for the first time — exactly what sort of man he was.
But he knew the answer already.