Checkmate

“Good news, bad news,” Fisher told Lambert.

“Good news first.”

“I found Shek.”

“Outstanding. Bad news?”

“He’s a shrunken apple.” He explained, then said, “I’ve got the first and second floors to check, but so far there’s nothing here. My guess: This place hasn’t been lived in for five years or more.”

“Well, someone or something’s there. Otherwise, why the security? Why the guards?”

“Both good questions. Are we still getting the CIA frequency?”

Grimsdottir answered. “No change. It looks like a beacon of some sort. Like an SOS.”

* * *

Fisher went downstairs, passing the previous levels to the second floor. It was a mirror image of those above it, though on a much larger scale. At twelve hundred square feet, each of the four rooms had the square footage of a small house. He headed for the stairwell and started down.

The main floor was different from those above in only two ways. Instead of four rooms, there was only one, so vast it felt like a warehouse. And there was no dust. There were no signs of furniture or furnishings. On each of the four walls was a set of massive wooden double doors leading outside.

Fisher stood in the middle of the space, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

He heard an echoing click.

He drew his pistol, spun around.

Behind him a rectangular outline of light appeared in the wall, and he immediately thought door. He sprinted to the staircase and up to the second floor, where he crouched down. He leaned forward until he could see the door.

It opened. A uniformed guard stepped out, shut the door behind him, and walked toward the nearest exit. Fisher made a snap decision. He drew the SC-20, flipped the selector to Cottonball, took aim, and fired. With a thwump, the projectile hit the guard in the thigh. He staggered sideways, swayed on his feet, and then fell over.

Time for some answers, Fisher thought.

To ensure their chat would be private, he lugged the guard’s limp body up to the top level and laid him out on the floor beside Shek’s footlocker/tomb. He bound the guard’s hands and feet with flexi-cuffs, then sat down to wait.

He’d used a thigh shot to dilute the tranquilizer. After twenty minutes, the guard started to come around. Fisher flipped on his headlamp and aimed it into the guard’s eyes.

The guard squinted, tried to turn his head away. He mumbled in Chinese, which Fisher guessed was something along the lines of, What the hell’s going on?

“Do you speak English?” Fisher asked.

After a couple seconds, the guard said, “Yes, I speak English.” It was heavily accented, but clear enough.

“If you make a sound or lie to me, I’ll shoot you. Do you understand?”

All remnants of grogginess cleared from the guard’s face. “What is happening? Who are you?”

Fisher ignored the question. “What’s your name?”

“Lok.”

“Who do you work for?”

“I do not know.”

Truth. “How did you get here?”

“I left the Army last year. A friend of mine was hired by a security company. They pay well. I joined. I was sent here.”

Truth. “How long ago?”

“Six months.”

Truth. “Not counting guards, who’s here with you?”

“No one.”

Lie. Fisher moved the pistol in front of the headlamp so Lok could see it. “That was your one free lie. Let’s try again: Who is here with you?”

Lok swallowed hard. “Six. They are down there, in the subbasement. I do not know who they are. They work in a room… we are not allowed in.”

“And you don’t recognize any of them?”

“No.”

Fisher believed him. Private security firms were a dime a dozen and the quality of their work and personnel ranged from back-alley leg-breakers to professional soldiers protecting high-profile clients. Lok was one of the latter. Lok and his compatriots didn’t need to know anything but where to patrol and what to guard.

Fisher asked. “Do you know the name Bai Kang Shek?”

Lok nodded. “As I boy I heard stories. He disappeared, I believe.”

“Disappeared to here.”

“That was one of the stories, but I have never seen him here.”

Yeah, well, you’re leaning against him, son, Fisher thought.

Fisher could think of only one reason why anyone would freeze-dry Shek and take over his island: anonymity. Conversely, there were several good reasons to maintain this level of security: one, to nurture the legend that Shek the Recluse was alive and kicking on his island haven; two, because there was in fact something worth guarding here. Whatever that might be, Fisher had no doubt it was somewhere in the subbasement.

45

He questioned Lok for another twenty minutes, then darted him in the neck, left him sleeping in Shek’s funerary tower, and headed back down to the recessed door. Per Lok’s instructions, he found the latch embedded in the baseboard molding and gave it a soft kick. The door opened. Light seeped around the edges. He stood to one side, swung it the rest of the way open, and waited for the count of ten, then peeked around the corner. Clear.

He stepped inside, shut the door behind him. He was in a short corridor that ended at another door, this one with a small reinforced window set at chin height. Stenciled on the door was a cluster of yellow triangles on a black circular background — the classic symbol for a fallout shelter. Judging from the faded paint, this was a Shek-era addition, probably part of the pagoda’s original design. Yet another eccentricity in an already-full quiver of oddities.

Fisher reached up and unscrewed the lightbulb above his head, then flipped his trident goggles into place, switched to NV, and peeked through the window. There was no one.

He went through the door and found himself in a concrete room. A giant yellow arrow on the left-hand wall pointed downward. A single-strip fluorescent light flickered on the wall of the landing. He started down. He stayed close to the far wall, careful to keep his shadow from slipping over the railing. At the first landing he turned down the next flight, and continued down six flights. At the bottom was another windowed door through which he could see the back of a man’s head.

The guard was too close to the door to risk the flexi-cam, and without knowing whether the man had company, a snatch from behind was out of the question. Plan B, then.

From his belt he drew the sidearm he’d taken from Lok, placed it on the third step, then retreated beneath the stairwell. He drew his pistol and toggled the selector to DART, then fired at the door. The dart ticked against the steel, then skittered away. In the window the guard’s head turned. Fisher drew back under the steps, lay down on his back, and flicked the pistol back to single-shot.

The door creaked open. There were three seconds of silence, then a Chinese voice — frustrated, disgusted. Fisher assumed the words amounted to, Okay, which idiot dropped his gun?

Boots clicked on concrete. Fisher pictured the man walking and counted steps: four… five… six… Foot on the first step…