I scratch my jaw. “It’s the only explanation.”
“Why not?” Sun Bin says.
“He’s an ex-soldier. Tough as hell. Is he going to have the sensitive fingers of a microsurgeon?”
“Maybe not for working on the donee-but the donor is going to die anyway. What’s to be careful about, so long as he doesn’t damage the organ? Obviously, they must have trained him.”
“Psychologically, it would make sense. Give a pariah work, a profession, something to be proud of. Bring him back into the economic system, pay him well. Maybe he owns a house, a car, and a bank account. What more could anyone want in terms of human identity?”
“Something that gives him face?” Sun Bin says. “That’s sounds like a Chinese point of view.”
“So after he shot those three in a jealous rage, he removed their organs-for what?”
“Practice, of course. And don’t forget, he’s an understudy to the Yips.”
“But why didn’t he do it in the tunnels?”
“He did. That’s why there was almost no blood.”
“So why did he then bring the cadavers back up here where they were bound to be discovered?”
All three of us are seasoned cops. We know the answer to that one.
“He’s proud of himself.”
“He wants recognition for his achievement, his mastery of a difficult and respected skill, his power over life and death. It’s his final demand: that he be permitted to crawl out of his tunnels and reveal himself to the world as an expert surgeon.”
“But he cut off the fingertips?”
“Just because he’s insane doesn’t mean he’s stupid. His victim To was a real high-flyer. He didn’t want him identified.”
End of conversation. We are unable to look one another in the eye, because none of us has stopped thinking about Chan. I take over Sun Bin’s laptop for a moment in my constant search for the inspector, who is nowhere to be seen. Neither is Om. As I continue to scroll from one green image to another and from one page to another, both Sun Bin and Lek become interested in the underground society.
“It’s like they don’t want to see him yet.”
“Or maybe they can’t get into the operating theater.”
“There’s been no contact with him so far.”
“The Yips aren’t even going in that direction. They’re heading toward Zinna and his aide.”
“That’s a kind of communications center.”
“That’s right. That PC must be hooked up to the surveillance system.”
We stare at the two soldiers and the two American advisers, bathed in green in the cellar of the third house, sitting at a table with a tower PC and a set of monitors. They also seem at a loss as to what to do next. Now the four of them look up. Has there been a knock at the door? The aide takes out a pistol and stands flat against the side of the door, then pulls at a couple of bolts. The door opens. The Yips enter, with Om between them. Om looks upset, frightened, and angry. The Twins and the soldiers remonstrate with her. She shakes her head with a wild look in her eyes. One of the Twins slaps her face. Om stares at her in disbelief. The four of them herd her back into the tunnel system.
Sun Bin has become adept at manipulating the software, and we are able to follow the progress of the group until they come to a steel door. It must be one of the doors to the operating theater. It seems that Om has decided to obey her captors. She knocks on the door and seems to be speaking, even shouting. We switch to the operating theater, where Manu has frozen with one of the faces in his hands. He replaces the face-it is To/Wong-in the fridge and walks to the door. In another square, Om is pleading with her face to the door. In the next square, Manu seems to be squealing in anguish, quite beside himself. He picks up a machine pistol lying on one of the operating tables and stands by the side of the door, then releases some bolts. The door opens. Om steps inside. Manu slams the door shut and bolts it. We watch while Manu approaches the camera and points his pistol at it. The square on the monitor is full of his destroyed face for a moment, then it turns black.
We switch to the screen where we can see the closed door to the operating theater, with Zinna, his aide, and the Twins standing outside. Perhaps they expected Om to produce a docile Manu within minutes. They seem to be fretting and arguing. Zinna’s aide disappears, then comes back with a black backpack. He takes something out. It is another bag. From that bag he takes something that needs unwrapping. Now he is holding a black sausagelike object about twelve inches long in his hands. He kneels at the door to the operating theater and presses the puttylike substance around the edges of the door next to the locks. Now he takes some electric cable out of his backpack and presses one end of it into the explosive, then retreats while unwinding the cable. Zinna and the Twins retreat with him. Now they are back in the control room. The aide connects the electric cable to a switch. Sun Bin returns us to the door of the operating theater. We see a sudden cloud of dust envelop the camera lens. From the tunnel exit in the garage we hear a muffled explosion. All the screens go dark.
30
Two hours have passed, during which we’ve done nothing except stare at the blank monitor, wondering. Sun Bin owns one set of night-vision goggles, which he takes from his backpack and shows me. They consist of two heavy lenses that fit directly over the eyes and are held in place by a crisscross of straps over the head. He tries them on, then immediately takes them off. “It has to be dark for them to work.”
I pick them up to examine them. They were manufactured by a German firm. “Made in China,” Sun Bin says. “They’re my goggles,” he adds. “I should be the one to go.”
I shake my head. “No way. It has to be me.”
“Why?”
“ Gatdanyu. He saved my life. I owe him.”
Every now and then we return to the laptop to see if anyone has repaired the CCTV system. We are rewarded each time with a blank screen. Sun Bin and I think of Chan. Most of the time madness is an alienating condition; every crazy I’ve ever met has made me want to run. Except Chan. He has had the same effect on Sun Bin. “He’s a kind of prophet,” he says, “China style.”
“China style?”
“In the old days, we were all crazy like that. He’s so revolutionary, he could have been a Red Guard.”
I take the goggles, go into one of the bathrooms, close the curtains, and turn out the lights. The goggles work fine, but the images are green.
I take out my gun, check the chamber, grab a handful of bullets out of my bag, and cram them into my pockets. I stick the gun down my waistband at the small of my back and start to descend the stairs to the garage. I leave the secret door wide open. Natural light only illuminates the tunnel for the first twenty feet, though.
I discover that the goggles need some vestigial light, but I don’t dare use the flashlight that Sun Bin gave me. Deep inside the tunnel everything is pitch-black and I have to feel my way along the walls. I reason that if I can’t see with these state-of-the-art German goggles (made in China), neither can anyone else. I also remember that this tunnel leads directly to the door of the operating theater, which Zinna’s aide blew open. As I inch closer to it, I do not need visual clues. The stench of explosives, dust, blood, and guts is unmistakable. At the door itself I stumble over a body. There is no way of telling who it once belonged to, except that when I run my hand over it, I feel some long thick hair running through my fingers. I’m barely able to suppress the urge to flee: Panic Terror Claustrophobia. Any plausible excuse and I’m out of here.
When I inch my way into the operating theater, though, the goggles suffer overload and I have to rip them off. There is a single intense beam at the far end of the chamber, which is otherwise quite dark. Ever been scuba diving at night, DFR? Ever sink slowly down into that absolute liquid blackness that makes such a perfect proxy for everything terrifying, irresistible, and mysterious? If you have, you know how the mind goes when your underwater illumination focuses an intense lance of light into total blackness; it’s like a Buddhist concentration exercise with heavy gearing. And the cavern is so long the figures at the far end are miniaturized in exquisite detail. I can even see the single tooth poking out of Manu’s ripped lip as he bends over a figure strapped to a chair. In his big soldier’s fist he is holding a blade so fine it disappears when the light catches it head-on. It is wider than a normal scalpel, a
