“Seems one is a fool, the other a manipulator.”
“Unfortunately, there are no other contenders for control of China,” Pau said. “You and Minister Tang have done a masterful job of eliminating all challengers.”
“So do you say I am the fool or the manipulator?”
“That is not for me to decide.”
“I assure you,” Ni said, “I am no fool. There is corruption throughout our People’s Republic. My duty is to rid us of that disease.”
Which was no small task in a nation where 1% of the population owned 40% of the wealth, much of it built from corruption. City mayors, provincial officials, high-ranking Party members—he’d arrested them all. Bribery, embezzlement, misappropriation, moral decadence, privilege seeking, smuggling, squandering, and outright theft were rampant.
Pau nodded. “The system Mao created was littered with corruption from its inception. How could it not be? When a government is accountable only from the top down, dishonesty becomes insidious.”
“Is that why you fled?”
“No, Minister, I left because I came to detest all that had been done. So many people slaughtered. So much oppression and suffering. China, then and today, is a failure. There is no other way to view it. We are home to sixteen of the world’s twenty most polluted cities, the world leader in sulfur dioxide emissions. Acid rain is destroying our land. We pollute the water with no regard for consequences. We destroy culture, history, our self- respect, with no regard. Local officials are rewarded only for more economic output, not public initiatives. The system itself assures its own destruction.”
Ni cautioned himself that those observations could all be a deception. So he decided to utilize some misdirection of his own. “Why did you allow that woman to steal the lamp?”
Pau appraised him with a glare that made him uncomfortable, akin to his own father’s gaze that he’d once respected.
“That is a question to which you should already know the answer.”
MALONE TIPPED THE TRASH BIN OVER, FOUND HIS GUN, THEN bolted down the alley.
He should have known.
The courier was no victim. Just an accomplice who’d messed up. He came to the alley’s end and rounded the corner.
His two adversaries were a hundred feet ahead, running toward bustling Holmens Kanal, its lanes jammed with speeding vehicles navigating toward Copenhagen’s busiest square.
He saw the two dart left, vanishing around a corner.
He stuffed the gun away and mixed force with polite phrases to bump his way past the crowd.
He came to a traffic-lighted intersection. The Danish Royal Theater stood across the street. To his right, he caught sight of Nyhavn, busy with people enjoying themselves at colorful cafes that stretched the new harbor’s length. His two targets were making their way down a crowded sidewalk, paralleling traffic and a busy bicycle lane, heading toward the Hotel d’Angleterre.
A Volvo eased to the curb just before the hotel’s entrance.
The man and woman crossed the bicycle lane and headed straight for the car’s open rear door.
Two pops, like balloons bursting, and the man was thrown back, his body dropping to the pavement.
Another pop and the woman fell beside him.
Crimson rivulets poured from each body.
Fear spread, a ripple that sent a panic through the afternoon crowd. Three people on bicycles collided with one another, trying to avoid the bodies.
The car sped away.
Tinted windows shielded the occupants as it roared past, then whipped left in a sharp turn. He tried to spot the license plate, but the Volvo disappeared around Kongens Nytorv.
He rushed forward, knelt down, and checked pulses.
Both were dead.
The bicyclists appeared injured.
He stood and yelled in Danish, “Somebody call the police.”
He ran a hand through his hair and heaved a sigh.
The trail to Cassiopeia had just vanished.
He eased himself away from the throng of gawkers, close to the outside tables and windows for the Hotel d’Angleterre’s restaurant. People with shocked faces stood and stared. Dead bodies on the sidewalk were not commonplace in Denmark.
Distant sirens signaled that help was coming.
Which meant he needed to go.
“Mr. Malone,” a voice said, close to his left ear.
He started to turn.
“No. Face ahead.”
The distinctive feel of a gun barrel nestled close to his spine told him to take the man’s advice.
“I need you to walk with me.”
“And if I don’t?” he asked.
“You do not find Cassiopeia Vitt.”
SIX
SHAANXI PROVINCE, CHINA
10:00 PM
KARL TANG STARED OUT ACROSS THE VAST ENCLOSED SPACE. The helicopter ride north, from Chongqing, across the Qin Mountains, had taken nearly two hours. He’d flown from Beijing not only to personally supervise the execution of Jin Zhao but also to deal with two other matters, both of equal importance, the first one here in Shaanxi, China’s cultural cradle. An archaeologist in the Ministry of Science had once told him that if you sank a shovel anywhere in this region, something of China’s 6,000-year-old history would be unearthed.
Before him was the perfect example.
In 1974 peasants digging a well uncovered a vast complex of underground vaults that, he’d been told, would eventually yield 8,000 life-sized terra-cotta soldiers, 130 chariots, and 670 horses, all arrayed in a tightly knit battle formation—a silent army, facing east, each figure forged and erected more than 2,200 years ago. They guarded a complex of underground palaces, designed specifically for the dead, all centered on the imperial tomb of Qin Shi, the man who ended five centuries of disunity and strife, eventually taking for himself the exalted title
First Emperor.
Where that initial well had been dug now stood the Museum of Qin Dynasty Terra-cotta Warriors and Horses, its centerpiece the exhibition hall spanning more than two hundred meters before him, topped by an impressive glass-paneled arch. Earthen balks divided the excavated scene into eleven latitudinal rows, each paved with ancient bricks. Wooden roofs, once supported by stout timbers and crossbeams, had long ago disappeared. But to bar moisture and preserve the warrior figures beneath, the builders had wisely sheathed the area with woven matting and a layer of clay.
Qin Shi’s eternal army had survived.
Tang stared at the sea of warriors.
Each wore a coarse tunic, belt, puttees, and thonged, square-toed sandals. Eight basic faces had been identified, but no two were exactly alike. Some had tightly closed lips and forward-staring eyes, revealing a character of steadiness and fortitude. Others displayed vigor and confidence. Still others evoked a sense of thoughtfulness, suggesting the wisdom of a veteran. Amazingly, the still poses, repeated innumerable times in a given number of defined postures, actually generated a sense of motion.
