Chapter 15 Chapter Fourteen

Brian.Gately was unprepared for the brutal images that had popped up in his mailbox this morning.This picture evokes an unpleasant memory for him. During the summer of his thirteenth year, Brian volunteered at the Anglican church where his family worshiped.He's not a very religious teenager, and the doctrinal stuff confuses him.He also eschewed Bible studies, but the church itself (its organization and actual architecture) had a reassuring power, a quality he would later call grandeur.The church imposes a reasonable boundary on things, which is why his parents (who have lived through the economic chaos and religious disorientation of a post-time-swirl) attend church every week, and it's why Brian loves it.He also loves the pine smell of the new church and the sight of the stained glass breaking up the morning sunlight into color, so he volunteers in the summer, cleaning the church on drowsy days or serving older parishioners Open doors, run errands for the priest or choirmaster.In mid-August, he was called in again to set the table for the annual picnic.

Brian's suburb has well-kept parks and verdant valleys.The annual church picnic (a practice so bizarre that even the name sounds archaic) was held in the widest park.The picnic meeting is not just a picnic, but also a family spiritual communication day (according to the notice on Sunday), so many families will communicate, and sometimes even three generations of a family will participate.Brian is busy laying out vinyl tablecloths, lugging ice and soda buckets, passing hot dogs around during events, kids he doesn't know throwing Frisbees at each other, and toddlers getting in the way.It was an ideal day for a picnic, sunny but not too hot, with a breeze to blow away the smoke from the barbecue.Even at thirteen, Brian appreciated the slightly hypnotic atmosphere of a picnic, an afternoon suspended in time.

Then his friends Lyle and Cave show up and invite him to play.There is a small stream in the woods, where you can float or catch tadpoles.Brian asked the adults for leave, and walked into the green shade of the forest with them.The shallow stream flows like a ribbon over boulders extruded by ancient glaciers.By the stream, they found not only rocks to float in, but more amazingly, they found a settlement: a piece of torn canvas tent, all crooked, grocery bags, rusty cans (pork meat, etc.) , beans, cat and dog food), empty bottles and brown flasks, a rusted shopping cart and finally a wad of old clothes between two oak trees.Oak roots stick out of the ground and tangle with each other like fists.After a closer look, I found that it was not a bunch of old clothes at all, but a dead person!

The tramp has been dead here for at least several days, and no one has found out.The tattered red cotton shirt stretched tightly against his big belly, looking swollen and shriveled, as if something important had been sucked out of him.The exposed parts of his body had been eaten away by animals, his milky eyes had worms, and when the wind blew, the smell was sickening.Brian's friend Cave turned his head and immediately vomited in the clear stream. The three ran back into the park to tell Reverend Carlesso what they had found.The police arrived, and an ambulance arrived to remove the body, breaking up the suddenly heavy gathering.

Neither Cave nor Lyle came to Sunday services for the next six months, as if the church and the dead were connected, but Brian's reaction was the opposite.He believed in the protective power of the church precisely because he saw what was beyond it.He sees unholy death. He'd seen death, and death shouldn't have surprised him, but he was still horrified by what would come out of his mailbox twenty years later, within the hallowed walls of his office, where the carefully defined boundaries of his adult life were collapsing within the boundaries of. ☆ Two days earlier, he had received the brief, interrupted call from Liz.

The call came late at night.Brian had gone straight home that day from one of those long-winded consulate social nights.This kind of night is drinking at the ambassador's residence and chatting with generally suspicious people.Brian didn't drink much, but all he drank went into his head, so he put the car on autopilot on the way home.The car has a strict eye on the speed limit, which is really an idiot; plus it is restricted on a few streets with automatic driving networks, so it moves slowly.Slowly but safely, he returns to the apartment he once shared with Liz, which has an air of closet phobia and a smell that would be hopeless if it were not comfortably furnished.He took a shower before going to bed, toweled his body and listened to the silence of the city at night.He thought to himself: Am I inside or outside this boundary?

The phone rang while the lights were off.He brought the wedge microphone to his ear and heard her distant voice. He tried to warn her.She said something he didn't understand at the moment. Then the phone didn't work. ☆ Perhaps he should have told Simon and Will about it, but he hadn't.he can not.The content of the phone call was personal, to him alone, and for him alone.It didn't matter that Simon and Will didn't know.Early the next morning he sat in his office thinking about Liz and his failed marriage.Then he picked up the phone and called Peter.Kirchberg, who is the UN interim government's security and law enforcement liaison.

Cochber had done him a lot of little favors in the past, and Brian had returned a lot.The inhabited east coast of Equatoria is a United Nations mandate, at least in name, resulting in a complex set of laws that are frequently revised by international committees.The closest public police force here is the Interpol, but most of the daily law enforcement is carried out by soldiers wearing blue helmets.The result is a bureaucracy that does more paperwork than justice and exists primarily to smooth over conflicting interests between rival states.To do anything, you must know people.And Cochber was one of those people Brian knew.

Cochber answered the phone quickly, and Brian listened first to his inevitable complaints: the weather, the bullying oil cartel, his retarded subordinate.At last, when Cobb was recovering, he said: I'm going to give you a name. All right.He said, I still need it, the more work the better, right?whose name? Thomas.Kim Eun.He told him the spelling too. Why are you interested in this person? Ministry business.Brian said. Some American outlaw?Or a salesman selling high-quality babies, a traitorous organ dealer? similar. I try my best.You owe me a drink. no problem.Brian said. He didn't tell Simon and Will about this either.

☆ The photo came off his printer the next morning, along with an unsigned text message from Cochber. Brian looked at the photo, then put it face down on the table, and picked it up to look at it again. He's seen worse.But what he unconsciously thought of at the moment was the corpse he found outside the church picnic about a quarter of a century ago, lying between the bare roots of two trees, the eyeballs had turned milky white, and the body was covered with blood. Ant corpses.Now, just as he had then, subconsciously, he felt a flip in his stomach. It shows the broken body of an old man on a rock covered in salt.The marks on the body may be extensive bruises, or simply decay.But it was definitely a gunshot wound on the forehead.

Cochber's unsigned note read: Washed ashore near South Cape two days ago, undocumented, identified as Thomas S. W．King (U.S. Merchant Marine DNA Database).Are you people? It appeared that Mr. King had strayed beyond the confines of the picnic.So did Lise, and he was terribly dismayed at the thought. ☆ In the afternoon he called Peter again.Cobb.This time Cobb was less talkative. I have received the photo you sent me.Brian said. no need to thank me. What do you mean by your people? I think it's better not to discuss it yet. Is it American, you mean? no answer.your people.So, yes, the Americans, or Peter was implying Thomas.Jin Eun belongs to the Department of Genetic Safety?Or was it the department responsible for his death?Perhaps he was referring to one of your murders. Is there anything else?Kirchberg asks because I have a lot of work to do Do me another favor, said Brian, if you don't mind, Peter.I will give you another name.