Mirek had gotten into a fight with a stranger at the bar. Rhea entered in the middle of it, the two men throwing fists and kicks at each other as they knocked over tables and chairs. Delton stayed behind the counter with a face twisted in anger, but he knew better than to try to intervene in a fight that involved the tall Cambodian.
Rhea rushed to the other side of the bar, nearly being hit in the head by a flying bottle. The few people in the bar made a wide circle, watching as the fighters hurled objects and fists.
"What the hell is going on?" Rhea asked Keith, who was standing a safe distance by the counter.
"Mirek is getting mad again. You going to be okay, Delton?" Keith looked at the man.
Delton grumbled and looked from Keith to Mirek. "Yeah, if that idiot stops getting into fights with people every other day. I swear if I have to replace one more table because of him, I'll take out his other eye."
"Why don't you just kick him out?" asked Rhea.
Delton sighed. "It's complicated. Rusakov thinks Mirek useful, and it's easiest to keep him in one place—for the most part."
"And despite his difficulties, he still proves useful on jobs," said Keith. "I hate to admit it, but that freak has saved our lives more than once."
The fighters continued to rip at each other, and Rhea was a little frightened for Mirek's opponent. Mirek had a broad smile plastered on his face, each hit and kick he took driving him forward, unlike his competitor.
"Should we stop him?" Rhea asked, eyeing Mirek's opponent as he began to wither.
"Not much we can do," said Delton, whipping the counter with a dishrag. He poured glasses of scotch and handed them to Keith and Rhea. She set the book on the bar and looked back at the fight to see Mirek smash his opponent's head into the wall. The man went limp, and Mirek dropped his grip. There was a dent and fresh blood on the wall. Rhea and Keith cringed. Delton's fury blistered.
Mirek took a seat on one of the stools between Rhea and Keith. Delton gave him a look.
Mirek groaned. "Will you give it a rest? This place has had worse done to it."
"You want a drink, pay for it," Delton said, looking away from him and compulsively wiping the counter again.
"Fuck that. Come on, I barely broke anything," Mirek argued, but Delton stayed silent.
"Delton."
He didn't look up.
"Delton."
No response.
"Delton!" Mirek smashed his fists onto the counter, left arm crashing onto Rhea's scotch. The glass shattered and liquor spilled onto the surface.
"Hey!" she yelled at him, "That was mine!" Without thought, she swung a punch to his arm. Her fist felt like it hit stone.
Mirek gave her a malicious look, and she tried to back down from the mistake. Before she could do anything, Mirek pushed her head down onto the bar counter, smearing scotch and broken glass across the side of her face as she felt his grip on her hair. He ripped her head up to smash it down on the counter with enough force to smash her skull, but before he could do so, the sound of a loaded gun got his attention. Delton's Remington 870 was pointed at his head. Mirek often got riled up after physical conflicts and had trouble coming down from them, and Delton wasn't sure how else to stop him.
The few people left in the bar knew enough to leave at the sight of the loaded shotgun, and the only sounds were Rhea's distressed breathing while Delton held Mirek's gaze in the hope his dynamism would deescalate. Keith watched with wide eyes, wondering if he would lose his bet with Orin and Pedro regarding how long the young woman would last in Samadoya. Finally, Mirek let go of her hair. She stood up, grabbed her book, and stumbled in her unlaced boots as she exited in a hurry.
When she opened the door, she took a seat on the edge of the sidewalk and wiped the liquor from her face. Veins ripe beneath her skin. She supposed that experience was overdue. She sometimes needed reminders of the people with whom she was dealing with.
☼ ☼ ☼
Rhea had fallen asleep on the living room couch with the novel on her chest, awoken by a rough kick to the stomach. She gasped for air as she was ripped out of her dreamless sleep and sat up to see Mirek staring down at her.
"Why did you do that?"
"I wanted you to move."
She growled, gripping her stomach and moving to the side. "What happened to your face?" There was a fresh cut on the left side of his jaw.
"Nothing."
"Whatever," she mumbled.
Mirek lit a cigarette, and the two sat quietly. Rhea grabbed her book that had fallen to the ground and tried to occupy her mind with fiction.
With a swing of an open door, Pedro entered from the stairs with a Franchi SPAS-12 in hand, Sade following with her katana, and the two sat down on the couch opposite Rhea and Mirek. Their clothing was smoking.
"You guys look like you've been having some fun," said Rhea.
"Just picked up a job from Rusakov," said Sade. "He told me to tell you he's picking you up today around noon for the meet, so don't go anywhere."
"Fun night?" Pedro asked Mirek, eyeing the cut.
Mirek smirked. "Tai's men are hardly a challenge."
"You keep messing with the triad they'll put a bounty in your head. You want to deal with the Alsini."
"I can handle assassins," Mirek spat, and Pedro rolled his eyes.
Sade got up to get some coffee while Pedro grabbed the shotgun and went to his room.
Rhea looked at Mirek again. "You should get someone to look at that," she said, eyeing the wound where a small trail of blood began to leak down his face.
"This is nothing. You wanna see laceration?" Mirek pulled off his bandana with a grin to reveal an eyeless socket, blistered from burns that had peeled back the skin. A black pit sank into his head. Half of his face looked like a skull.
"How'd that happen?" Rhea asked, stiff in her seat.
"An asshole ripped my eye out of my head with boiled tongs. But I got the bastard back," he grinned.
"You've killed a lot of people."
"Sure. I'm good at hurting people. It's the only thing I'm good at."
Empathy began to line Rhea's irises, but a glance from Mirek's remaining eye said he didn't want or need it.
Rhea retreated to her room for a shower and a change of clothes. She figured overalls were too casual, but her only other pieces were loose blue jeans and a pink t-shirt that read: NOT MY FIRST RODEO. Her only shoes were her honey suede ropers (stolen from a beaten drunk when Mirek knocked out a man at Sockeye) now stained and dented and withering at the soles.
She had grown up among the Cascade Mountains ranges, open fields, and cool temperatures. She craved that cold again. But temperatures like that scarcely came under the beating sun in the southern hemisphere. She missed the spruce trees and the eagles and the sharp cool air. Now her lungs were coated in grime and her home was a world away.
When she went back downstairs, the place was empty, and noon was approaching. She took her book and placed herself on the sidewalk out front, a few cars throwing trash at her as they passed. When a black sedan pulled up with a silver vulture engraved on the door, Rhea raised to her feet.
She was taken to a hotel in Mahkota and was led to a spacious room with large windows that let in light and provided a view of the city and the bay. If you didn't look closely, Samadoya was quite lovely. The mix of cultural architecture and compactness created many details and complexities that could be noticed with a careful eye.
Rhea stood at the window, eyes tracing the edges and grooves of buildings. Windows open where clotheslines hung simple garments, cars rushing down uneven streets. There was smoke piling into the air from far off, and she wondered when the entire city would go up in flames.
One of the guards approached her at the window—a tall man with thick shoulders and thick brown hair and tan skin, mid-thirties in age. He pulled a cigar out of a metal case and placed it between his teeth with a silver hand.
"Nice prosthetic," she said to him.
The man turned to her with a grin. "Courtesy of Mr. Rusakov. Lost it in a shootout." He moved the mechanical fingers and frowned. "It's not the same though. You ask me, I prefer to be made of flesh. To be able to feel things, even if they hurt."
"I used to think it was bravery to not feel pain," said Rhea, eyes still on the window. "But after this place, where pain seems to lurk everywhere, its just another part of life. Fearing it is pointless."
"An insightful look on a rotten place," said the guard as he puffed smoke from his mouth.
"I try to learn from my surroundings."
"Don't know how much you can learn here. I've only been to this city on occasion—and for the instillation of my prosthetic. Mostly only seen the Mahkota district…" the man swallowed, "…but I've seen some weird shit here."
Rhea turned to him. "Like what?"
The man shook his head. "Nothing worth talking about. All I have to say is that karma exists, even in a shit hole like this one."
Rhea wanted to press the guard further, but at that moment Rusakov arrived and the man went back to his post by the door while Rusakov approached Rhea.
"Your job here is as a mediator," he instructed. "Your primary role is to function as a neutral party to facilitate the discussion. You do not offer any perspective advice and restrict any pressure or aggression, or intimidation. I do not need you slipping in any hints or urges that do not come off my tongue, even if they may be beneficial to me. You translate the words as simply as possible and make sure my guest is clear in understanding. Not too hard, right?" he said with his yellow grin.
Rhea said nothing, giving only a nod. Rusakov smiled to himself at the simplicities it took to shake the young woman. She knew what level he stood on and knew she was far beneath him and that fact allowed Rusakov no doubt that instructions would be followed.
Rusakov gave a friendly welcome when the client arrived before taking a seat, with guards positioned behind him. The client—an older man with a bony frame and an expensive-looking suit—mirrored Rusakov's stature with his guards. Between them, Rhea sat wondering who would speak first.
Due to the client's slow-paced speaking, Rhea did not struggle as much as she feared. She kept attentive and focused, the language she learned over a year of wandering through Cambodia flowing back to her. They discussed in detail plans to expand arms trade further into southeast Asia. The client was the CEO of a rising oil and energy company—Southeast Harbor—quickly stretching its roots across Asia as the business turned to corrupt powers to continue to grow. Rusakov had plans to increase automotive use on the island and wanted to be the head of imported oil and other resources to push the desire for cars, attempting to jump up to his work of his newly purchased automotive engine producer: Zavolzhye Engine Factory.
Rusakov was willing to arm the Southeast Harbor plants with guns and ammunition, weapons powerful enough to scare away raiders attempting to steal what had already been stolen. In return would be oil imports to Samadoya, which would be controlled by Rusakov himself, making him the first importer and seller of natural resource oil in Samadoya.
"Upon agreement," Rusakov said while Rhea translated, "I can get you seventy crates of AK-74s over four months. Each crate will contain twenty-four pieces of artillery. These can be easily shipped to your rigs in the South China Sea; the weaponry moving from my stock here in Samadoya utilizing my cargo ships. However, to reach your rigs in Saudi Arabia and Yemen will require airfare."
"I heard your manufacturing comes from Russia," the client spoke in Khmer; Rhea spoke in English: "What are the legalities of your weapon productions? I've heard of illicit manufacturing done poorly that results in faulty mechanisms."
Rusakov folded his hands. "It's all licit on paper. I have arrangements with legit manufacturers, so there is no theft involved in the weaponry I sell. But as for your end of the bargain, I have four 25,000-square-foot warehouses that I want filled."
"I will follow your arrangement with me, in that I will release your order over four months. But I cannot just ship hundreds of barrels to Indonesia's borders without evidence of some sort of purchase or reason. It would give unwanted attention since I must work under the cover of the law—something that does not exist here. Your money will be rerouted back to you after I receive the final of your crates.
"You want a deposit?" Rusakov asked.
"The money," said the client through Rhea, "is not so much insurance as it is a cover of my tracks. I can then cover up the shipment trail, and the loss of profit will look as though it was from licit purchasing of firearms. Once my trail is covered, I can reroute everything back to you."
When Rhea finished translating, Rusakov gave a glare that told her he didn't trust the client's words. But he only gave a nod in understanding, and the Cambodian did not display any detection of Rusakov's distrust.
"We can use this city as a port of exchange," continued the client. "As for the shipments to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, I will manage the airfare. I know you distribute primarily by ships along the coasts. Too bad there are no landing strips here. All I need from you is to travel the crates to Phnom Penh. I will oversee things from there."
When the meeting was over, the men shook hands with the promise of a continuing partnership.
Rusakov gave Rhea a hard slap on the back. "Well done, my dear! As far as I can tell, your Khmer is perfect. What other languages do you speak? Do you know Indonesian yet?"
"I'm picking it up as I go, though many here speak English, I'm not as exposed to it as I was to Khmer. I did grow up speaking Spanish."
"Wonderful. I will keep that in mind. Now, I must send you off, hopefully for you to do some work as I will be sending a collector soon for your payment."
Rhea glared and Rusakov smiled as the girl was led to the car at the front of the building. She looked for the guard she had spoken to but the man was left with Rusakov, leaving her to mull over his statement: karma exists everywhere.