Behind Cookhouse Doors

   Chau Trang’s veins filled with dread as he shone his flashlight on the cookhouse doors.
   The doors themselves were closed. The padlock however, usually locked from the 
completion of the evening meal until the first rays of dawn, hung loosely on its latch.
   Trang cast about the compound, seeking signs of life. He found none. At three in the 
morning, the only things that stirred resided in the jungle on the other side of the fence.
   He returned to the padlock. Perhaps the cookhouse staff had forgotten to lock it.      
   Except an earlier patrol would have spotted and reported it—which clearly hadn’t been done. 
   Another guard, perhaps looking for a snack? One of the cooks, intending an early start on the morning meal?
   No, Trang decided. Either would’ve gone directly to the kitchen, not through the hall.
   So who?
   Trang froze with a thought.
   What if they’re still in there?
   Instinctively, he reached for his radio—and hesitated.
   If he called it in, the compound would go into lockdown. Back-up would come to apprehend any intruders—but what if there was no intruder? What if they had already left?
   Or—what if there had been no intruder, and the doors had simply been left unlocked after all? He’d look like a fool for calling it in…
   Trang stood, thumb above the radio’s talk button, when from somewhere in the cookhouse came the sound of wood on wood, barely discernible to Trang’s already edgy hearing.
   His eyes widened. He listened intently.
   Nothing.
   He stood for a long moment, considering.
Trang took his hand away from the radio and pushed open the doors. They swung inward with an ominous silence.
   The hall was pitch-black. He shone his flashlight into the gloom, revealing two long rows of tables placed end-to-end, worn wooden benches lining them on either side. They extended to the room’s opposite end.
   He stepped in. His flashlight beam travelled long the centre aisle to the end, where it found a low stage and another table, this one perpendicular to the others.
   Unlike the other tables, plain and polished wood, the head table was draped with floor-length red silk.
   Trang let his light climb up to where Thic Bui Duong stood, arms open, welcoming Trang into the fold. The beam danced along the Glorious Celebration of the Red Twilight’s spiritual leader, coming to rest on his stained-glass smile. A source of warmth and joy in daylight hours, Trang found it a leering, spectral image in the cloying darkness.
   Turning from the glass pane, Trang crouched and swept the floor under the tables for anything that shouldn’t be.        
   Nothing. Raising his aim, he began to sweep the benches themselves when movement caught his eye.
   At the silk-enshrined table, a shimmer stole across the fabric.
   Trang stood and swallowed. Unslung his rifle.
   Wary of the open centre aisle, he veered left, keeping the wall beside him, and approached the stage, flashlight fixed on the tablecloth. His boots echoed on wooden floorboards, filling the space.
   He stopped halfway down, fear lancing his spine. The sudden sensation of eyes upon him—a presence so close it could touch him—he turned, his flashlight slicing through darkness at some unknown predator about to pounce.
   A chair at the head table scraped on the floor.
  Trang jumped and yelped. His rifle muzzle swung up and and around. Only sheer willpower prevented him from firing into the red silk tablecloth.
   The fabric rippled, as if caressed by an unknown wind.
   Trang took a deep breath. His pace quickened, rifle and flashlight guiding his path. He mounted the stairs and moved to the wall, directly below the stained-glass simulacrum of the Celebrated One. His view now encompassed five empty chairs and the empty space beneath the table.
   The space wasn’t empty.
   From underneath a figure crawled out.       
   Rising up, it grinned toothily at Trang.
   “Đụ má!” Trang swore.
   The long-tailed macaque barked at Trang, then ran to the corner and scaled the wall. 
Through a hole in the eaves, it slipped into the night.
   “Stupid monkey!” Trang shone his light under the table revealing the discarded wrappers of three Snickers bars and a half-eaten bag of Doritos. Unquestionably from the Celebrated One’s personal stash.
   “Đụ má!” Trang swore again.
   This he had to report. Not over the radio however; this called for discretion. The less the Celebrated One knew, the better for all.
   Trang darted out of the cookhouse.
   Interpol Agent Amy Nguyen waited only seconds after the sentry left before vacating her position. 
   Her arms and legs burned from extended planking—hands and toes on benches to her left and right, her body pressed against the underside of a table.
   She’d held her breath as the flashlight had tracked along the floor under her; then again when he stopped directly beside her, had started to turn.
   Con khỉ xinh đẹp!, she thought. Beautiful monkey!
   She crawled out from under the table and went to the stage. Feeling underneath at each seat, she found her quarry at the fourth spot, that of Phan Duc, the cult’s steward.
   She pulled out her penlight and eyed the SD card. If it contained what she’d been told—private conversations between Bui and an antiquities smuggler named Roger Harcourt—it would go a long way to putting Harcourt between bars, and might even help the Vietnamese government end Bui’s cult for good.
   Pocketing the SD card, she shone her penlight on the macaque’s point of egress, high above.
   “Selena, maybe,” she muttered, thinking of her lover, French illusionist and “Bonaparte Bandit” Selena Beauvoir. “Me, not likely.”  
   Turning away, she padded to the doors and slipped behind one, not a moment too soon.
   Chau Trang strode into the cookhouse, trailed by another sentry and their immediate superior. He led them to the macaque’s feast and the hole in the eaves, both which concerned his superior greatly.
   No one noticed a shadow slip out the door.
   Trang’s superior congratulated him on a job well-done, a crisis averted.
   All forgot about the unlocked cookhouse door.