Checkmate

“Since we don’t have interior blueprints, there’s no way to tell where exactly that is — upstairs, downstairs… ”

“I’ll figure it out. We don’t know if this is an informant, a case officer, an agent — nothing?”

“Nope,” said Lambert. “Use your discretion. Whoever it is, if they’ve got the inside scoop on Shek, get it. Whatever it takes.”

Curveball, Fisher thought. He loved surprises as much as the next guy, but preferred his at Christmas and on birthdays, not in the middle of a mission. Then again, as the saying went, covert ops were about expecting — and handling — the unexpected.

* * *

He ducked into the garage. The dirt floor smelled of oil and gas. He picked his way along the back wall and stopped behind the third jeep. He lay down on his back and squirmed under the chasis. From his pouch he pulled a quarter-sized plastic disk. Inside it was a six-gram wafer of WP, or white phosphorus, which when ignited burns at five thousand degrees Farenheit. If necessary, this would provide a spectacular diversion as the WP ignited the fuel tank and the rest of the jeeps exploded in domino fashion. He peeled back the adhesive and stuck the disk to the gas tank, then punched the correct screen on the OPSAT and checked the disk’s signal.

He wriggled out and trotted to the garage wall and peeked around the corner. The road was bordered on both sides by outbuildings and ended at a circular driveway before the pagoda. All the outbuildings were dark, save for the third one on his left, where a light showed in a curtained window. From inside Fisher could hear strains of Chinese guoyue music and male laughter.

Off-duty guards or compound staff? he wondered. If the former, it would be good to know where reinforcements would be coming from in an emergency.

He creeped across the road until he could see through the curtain. He pulled out his binoculars and zoomed in on what looked like a card table. A hand moved into view and slapped down a mah-jongg tile. There was laughter and clapping. The owner of the hand stood up. Fisher saw a hip holster with the butt of a pistol jutting from it. That answered the question: guards.

Fisher considered his options, and quickly dismissed his impulse to plant wall mines. One on the door and one on the window would almost certainly wipe out everyone inside, but it would also draw down on him the remainder of the security force. As usual, less was more. No footprints.

He moved along the back of the guard quarters, paralleling the road until he reached another line of hibiscus hedges that bordered the turnaround. He dropped flat and peered through the hedge. Here he had a unobstructed view of the pagoda.

The overhead surveillance photos hadn’t done it justice. Like a wedding cake with successively smaller layers, the pagoda’s six stories formed a sixty-foot-tall truncated pyramid. Seeing it up close, Fisher now had a sense of its grand scale. The lower level measured hundred feet to a side, or ten thousand square feet; the next level was half that, and so on to the top level, the tip of the pyramid, which was no larger than an average-sized bedroom.

The pagoda’s exterior was two-toned red and black, the paint so thick with lacquer it shone in the moonlight. The sloping roofs, each shorter than its predecessor by a few feet, were covered in terra-cotta tiles and supported by massive wooden crossbeams. Paper lanterns dotted the lower eaves, casting pale yellow light on the front steps and the wraparound porch.

Insane or not, Bai Kang Shek’s taste in architecture was exquisite.

Fisher counted four guards, two on the front steps and two along the side closest to him. Unable to see the other two sides, he had to assume another four guards, for a total of eight.

His study of the surveillance package had revealed a chink in the pagoda’s armor — and as with the hibiscus hedges all over the compound, it involved landscaping. The pagoda was enclosed on three sides by acacia trees. With thick, gnarled trunks and sturdy limbs, the acacia reminded Fisher of a slightly flattened broccoli floret. These trees had been allowed to overgrow the third-floor roofline.

Twenty minutes later, having crawled inch by inch across the driveway and into the grove, Fisher stood up behind an acacia trunk and let out a relieved breath. He peeked around the tree to confirm the guards hadn’t moved. He grabbed a branch above his head and chinned himself up.

The branch he’d scouted earlier extended horizontally from the trunk, over the heads of the guards, and ended a few feet over the roof. Here again, patience would be the key. If he hurried or panicked, he was finished. The guards would blast him out of the tree.

He started moving. The branch quickly tapered to the diameter of a fence post. With his every step it bowed slightly, forcing him to freeze and listen. A breeze had picked up, so the rest of the trees were moving, but he wasn’t about to push his luck.

Step… freeze. Step… freeze. Step… freeze.

It took five minutes to cover the last ten feet, but finally he reached the end. He transferred one foot to the tiled roof, made sure he was balanced, then brought his other foot down.

He crouch-walked up the slope to the open-faced balcony, then snaked his flexi-cam up and over the railing and did a quick scan with NV, infrared, and EM. Nothing.

He grabbed the railing and pulled himself inside.

44

He found himself in an empty room. Judging from the thick layer of dust and windblown silt on the teakwood floor, it had been empty for years. He padded to the door, pressed his ear to it. Hearing nothing, he slid the flexi- cam under the door. The lens revealed an empty hallway. Unsettled by the camera’s passing, a dust bunny drifted past the lens like a fuzzy tumbleweed.

Fisher opened the door. Here, too, the floor was covered with an even layer of dust. There were no footprints, no marks. It was like freshly fallen snow. The rattan walls were bare, but he could see faint rectangular outlines where artwork had once hung.

What was going on here? Beyond the obvious lack of furnishings and the layer of dust, there was an odd feeling to the place. Abandonment. Neglect.

He looked around and found three other rooms like the first, each of those also empty. The hallway was laid out like a plus sign, with one room on each of the four quadrants. At the end of the north hallway he found a spiral staircase. He climbed to the next level.

Though half the size of the floor below, it was identical in layout. He checked each of the rooms with the same result: empty. He climbed the stairs to the fifth level and found the same empty quad of rooms. He moved on. At the top of stairs, he found a locked door.

He picked the lock and eased open the door. Its movement stirred up a cloud of dust that swirled in his headlamp. The dust was where the similarity to the previous levels ended. Measuring roughly ten feet to a wall, the space was stacked high with dozens of cardboard boxes. The open-faced windows were covered with plywood that had been painted black.

Fisher opened the nearest box. Inside, he found empty picture frames, wadded-up clothing, a hairbrush… Personal detritus. He checked another box: more of the same. He was turning to leave when something caught his eye. Behind one of the boxes, he saw the corner of a wooden footlocker.

Curious now, Fisher carefully moved boxes until he could reach the footlocker. He flipped the latches and lifted the lid. Inside was a thick, clear plastic bag, shrunken as though all the air had been sucked from it. Through the plastic he could see a gnarled brown… something. He leaned in for a closer look.

It took a few seconds for him to register what he was seeing.

Staring back at him was a human face.

He recoiled a few inches. Then leaned in again. Sealed in the bag’s airless environment, the face and body had turned leathery with dessication, skin stretched taut over sharp edges of bone. Still, Fisher recognized the face.

Bai Kang Shek.

* * *

He punched up the OPSAT’s comm screen, set the encryption buffers, and keyed his subdermal.