“What is it? Trouble?” Asgar stared through the night to where Jon was watching the men make their way down the stairs into the valley and the crescent of carvings.
“Feng Dun’s not with them,” Jon said. He stopped and stared. He swore.
“That’s one hell of a surprise.” As the five men continued downward, another man had appeared in the moonlight and started down, too, carrying a medium-sized suitcase. Ralph Mcdermid himself. “It’s Mcdermid. The big honcho we think masterminded the whole deal.”
“The muckity-muck himself? Isn’t that odd?”
“Maybe not. Feng’s gotten the manifest only once. He’s botched it every other time. Mcdermid might’ve decided to take no chances. He’s probably decided that Li Kuonyi and her husband would tend to trust him more. If the two million isn’t legitimate, they know he can’t stall and blame someone else to gain time. On the other hand, maybe he’s here because he no longer trusts Feng.”
“He might’ve bribed his people away from him,” Asgar said.
“Right. Still, I don’t like unexpected developments from the enemy. It usually means I’ve missed something.” The armed band continued to descend warily and in open order, looking as if they were guarding against an ambush. Mcdermid halted the group at least twenty feet above the grotto floor and motioned them to hide facing the Sleeping Buddha.
The Altman CEO used a bush for cover. Asgar said, “Looks as if Mcdermid expects Yu and Li to come down the stairs, too. He’d be able to confront them there.” If that was what Mcdermid had in mind, this time he was the one who was wrong. A burly man appeared first, walking alertly alongside the Sleeping Buddha in the moonlight. He came not down the stairs but emerged from somewhere to the Buddha’s right, from among the statuary, just as David Thayer had suggested was possible. Through Jon’s binoculars, he saw what appeared to be a 9mm Glock tucked inside the man’s waistband in front. Li Kuonyi followed onto the grotto walkway.
She stopped beside the burly man and gazed all around. She wore a sleek, black pantsuit and a high-collared hooded jacket against the chill of the mountain mists and carried an attache case, where the manifest likely was. Jon strained to see her face, but her high collar covered much of it, and her hair was hidden beneath the hood. Still, he had no doubt who she was. He would not soon forget the image of her drinking alone in the silent mansion in Shanghai. The man who walked close behind as if afraid to be alone was somewhere in his early thirties, with a boyish face and a slim, wiry body. A man who watched his weight and took very good care of himself. But not now.
Strain showed in his glazed eyes and furrowed brow. He looked dissipated and frightened. Days with little sleep had taken their toll on the man Jon suspected was Li Kuonyi’s husband, Yu Yongfu. He wore a crumpled Italian suit that was probably custom made, a wilted regimental tie loose at the throat, scuffed dress boots, and a wrinkled white-and-blue-striped shirt. He stayed close behind his wife, his gaze darting nervously into every shadow.
A fourth person — another man — glided out of the dark to join them. Jon did not recognize him. Slimmer, his eyes had an unnatural gleam, like a bipolar patient in a manic state. Clearly another enforcer and far more dangerous.
With Li Kuonyi in the lead, the four walked past the Sleeping Buddha and peered up the stone steps.
She set the attache case on the ground and called out in English, “Feng?
I know you’re there. We heard you. Do you have our money?”
Admiral Stevens Brose announced, “Three hours, sir.”
“Don’t you think I can count, Admiral!” the president snapped. He blinked and took a long breath. “Sorry, Stevens. It’s this waiting and not knowing what, if anything, is happening. We’ve been down to counting minutes before, but those were attacks initiated by an enemy, and all we could do was use everything we had to stop the attack. This is different. This is a confrontation we initiated, where we can’t use anything we have, and soon I’m going to have to give an order that could send us, China, and the rest of the world into a war none of us will be able to control. There’s someone in China who wants that, and he’ll be there to act — retaliate — as soon as we move on the Empress.”
They were alone in the situation room. The admiral had requested the meeting, and the president had thought it best to talk where no one else could hear them. All the high-ranking military and civilian defense personnel were already walking on nails, and the talkative West Wing staff was oddly silent, as if holding their collective breath.
“I don’t envy you, sir.”
President Castilla gave a humorless laugh. “Everyone envies me, Stevens.
Haven’t you heard? I’m the most powerful person on earth, and everyone wants to be me.”
“Yessir,” the admiral said. “The Shilo isn’t going to get there in time.”
“Then may God, and our man in China, help us.”
There was an electric pause as Li Kuonyi and her terrified husband waited for Feng Dun to appear.
Through his binoculars, Jon watched Ralph Mcdermid’s emphatic but whispered orders to his men. From the distance and in the green glow of night vision, Jon thought the Altman CEO was telling them to stand by, on no account to do anything without his signal.
Then Mcdermid stood up from beneath his bush and descended the stairs, smiling and carrying the suitcase.
He had nearly reached the bottom, when Li Kuonyi announced, “That’s far enough.”
“She’s speaking English,” Asgar noted.
“If her gunmen don’t know English, then it’s a good way to make certain they don’t really understand what’s going on,” Jon said.
“Who are you?” she asked Mcdermid suspiciously. “Where’s Feng Dun?”
“I’m Ralph Mcdermid, Mrs. Yu. I’m the one who’s going to pay you two million dollars.” He patted his suitcase.
Jon saw Yu Yongfu whisper in his wife’s ear. Her eyes widened, as if Yu had confirmed Mcdermid’s identity. “Is that the cash?” “Indeed, it is,” Mcdermid said. “Is the document in your attache case?”
With the toe of her shoe, Li touched the case. “Yes. But before you have any ideas about taking it from us by force with the men you’ve hidden up there, you should know the case is booby-trapped. I’ll trigger it the moment you make one wrong move. Is that clear?”
Mcdermid smiled at Li Kuonyi as if she were the most delectable woman he had ever seen. As if he enjoyed every moment of doing business with her, and Jon understood for the first time the false face Mcdermid showed the world was, to him, simply business. Even in pleasure, it was no doubt business. And, of course, all business was pleasure, a game to be won, the higher the stakes, the better. Life as transaction. It was an automatic reaction, like breathing.
“Perfectly,” he told her in his genial voice. “You’ll want to count the money, of course.”
“Of course. Bring it down here and return to where you are now.”
Mcdermid descended the final few feet, laid his suitcase flat on the ground, and climbed backward, never taking his gaze from Li and the three men, while above him his hidden gunmen waited with their assault weapons aimed.
A sense of excited expectancy radiated from the couple even from where Jon, Asgar, and the Uigher fighters watched from the hillside. The husband and wife glanced at each other, their eyes alight.
Li Kuonyi told Yu, “Examine it, my husband.”
His face eager, Yu squatted and unhooked the clasps on the suitcase. For a moment, Li Kuonyi and the two bodyguards took their eyes off the hill to watch the suitcase’s lid being raised. That was their mistake.
As if on signal, Feng Dun arose from the thick shrubs on the slope above where Mcdermid’s five men lay, an assault rifle in his large hands. He fired, and the long bank facing the Sleeping Buddha erupted in a barrage of automatic fire. The noise was volcanic, shattering the stillness of the night, as the bullets whined and screamed, hailing down on Li Kuonyi, her husband, and their two bodyguards. None had a chance.
Li Kuonyi’s throat was nearly severed, blood spouting as she fell. As bullets riddled his chest, Yu Yongfu
