The boy flapped on, down dark hallways, up rickety staircases, darting from one building to another. Finally he confronted a door with a peephole in it. He knocked. After a moment, the door opened. A small man stood there. Small even by Hong Kong standards, but filled with the taut energy of a fighting cock. His nose had been smashed enough times that it lay almost flat across his cheeks. His name was Chou Hu, or so he said. Probably he had lied; that was the way in the Walled City.
The boy respected Chou. Everyone in the Walled City respected Chou, and this was an accomplishment. Here, respect could be won only one way.
The boy could not tell if Chou was alone in the dark room. Up and down the corridor, other doors stood partly open. Were more quiet, watchful men behind those doors as well? Were guns pointing at him right now?
He bowed respectfully, then pulled an envelope out of his pocket and held it out. “A new message for you, sir.”
“Open it,” Chou said. “Then hand me the paper.”
The boy swallowed. He knew why he was being asked to open the envelope: It might explode. He had heard of such things.
Hands sweating, he tore the end off the envelope. Nothing happened. Letting out a long breath, he pulled out a single slip of paper and handed it to Chou without even glancing at it. He didn’t want any of these watchful people to think he had read the note. Especially since he didn’t even know how to read.
Chou took the slip of paper and opened it. In the gloom, his eyes moved from side to side. He nodded. “Go back to Mr. Blossom,” he said. “Tell him the location is ready for another visitor. And tell him something else as well: Tell him his money is welcome, but we’d prefer blood. Can you remember that?”
The boy nodded. Being without the written word, he had developed an excellent memory.
Perhaps too good. That night, Mr. Chou would pursue him through the Walled City of his dreams.
Tombstone hated civilian airports. He hated the crowds, hated waiting in lines, hated the smiles of the ticketing clerks, which managed somehow to be obsequious and surly at the same time.
Still, being in an airport meant one terrific thing, at least on the debarking end: It meant you’d survived yet another flight during which someone else controlled your fate.
His knees were still a bit wobbly from the landing. The pilot had bashed the Boeing 737 down like he was trying for the three-wire. Obviously this was a guy who believed the old saw, “Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.” Or maybe he’d just been in a hurry to get out of the air, which had been far from smooth. The flight down from Singapore had meandered through cathedrals of billowing cloud.
Inside, Kai Tak Airport looked like all airports, from Germany to Iowa. There were even a lot of people from Germany and Iowa. You could tell the latter because they were leaving, and they looked nervous.
There were also a lot of armed guards around. They looked nervous, too, as well as grim.
Tombstone stood in line at Customs, trying not to let his impatience show. When he was asked his purpose in Hong Kong, he swallowed the urge to say, “I’m here to make sure the United States can beat the PLA’s ass out of the sky for generations to come.” Instead, he just said, “Business,” and was promptly allowed through. Maybe the suit had been the right idea after all.
Shouldering his overnight bag, he followed the flood of humanity toward what the signs assured him was the exit. From there, he’d grab a taxi and head straight to Martin Lee’s address. He’d already decided not to phone first, lest he warn his wary contact off.
He still had no idea exactly what he was going to say when and if he did meet Mr. Lee. What
Then he remembered how he’d spent the last half hour of the flight: staring fixedly out the window. Not at the clouds, but at every passing airplane. Wondering if the next one would be manta-shaped and carrying air-to-air missiles. Wondering if he, Tombstone Magruder, was going to die in an aircraft with someone else at the controls.
No. He was here for a reason, and he’d do the best he could to complete his mission.
As he was making his way across the main lobby toward the doors, eyeing the taxis lined up outside, he heard a soft voice say, “Admiral Magruder?”
He halted and turned. A young Chinese man stood nearby, his hands folded in front of him. He wore an expensive-looking charcoal suit. Tombstone recognized him instantly, from the photographs he’d been shown. “Mr. Lee?”
The young man nodded, looked around nervously.
“How did you know I was coming in?” Tombstone asked.
“I… I am sorry I didn’t answer your calls before, sir. I was frightened. For my wife, you understand. But now she is gone from Hong Kong. She is safe. So I… I wanted to talk to you. I called America. I spoke with your uncle; he told me you were coming.”
“Well, it’s good to meet you.” Tombstone held out his hand. Lee shook it quickly, still looking around.
“It is not safe,” he said. “Please come with me, quickly.”
Tombstone followed the smaller man outside, where Lee gestured away a swarm of taxi drivers, then walked into a parking garage and up to the last thing Tombstone had expected to see: a large black American car, a Lincoln. Not quite a limousine, but close. It had a limo’s black window glass and boomerang-shaped antenna on the back. “This is from the MEI fleet,” Lee said, almost apologetically. “Always available for executive use.” He pointed a remote control at the car and an alarm bleeped off. Tombstone heard locks pop open. Lee walked to the trunk and opened it. It was enormous inside; Tombstone’s overnight bag looked like a Chicklet in there. Lee moved toward the passenger side, which Tombstone found to be an enormous relief. He couldn’t imagine the nervous little man driving this boat.
But when he opened the left front door, he was confronted by an empty seat. Where the hell was the steering wheel? Then he remembered: Hong Kong had spent most of the last hundred and fifty years under British management, which meant people drove on the wrong side of the road around here. For the right amount of money, American car manufacturers were willing to take that idiosyncrasy into account.
Sighing, Tombstone slid into an atmosphere of leather and cigar smoke.
On the opposite side of the vast bench seat, Martin Lee perched like a tiny porcelain doll, the steering wheel rising almost to the level of his eyes. “Seat belt, please,” he said gravely.
Tombstone had just clicked the buckle home when something hard and quite cold ground into his head just behind the bend of his jaw. “Please do not move,” a voice said in his ear. The accent resembled Martin Lee’s, but it was a man’s voice. “Or you will die.”
Tombstone glanced at Lee. He was staring at the dashboard, head lowered.
“What is this?” Tombstone asked.
“I am sorry,” Lee told the dashboard. “They have my wife. I am very sorry, sir.”
“No more talk,” the man behind Tombstone said, and a moment later, Tombstone winced as a coarse bag was hauled over his head.
TEN
“This is very irregular, to say the least,” Sarah Wexler said as she mounted the last step to the top of the Lincoln Memorial. T’ing was standing in the shadow of one of the columns. Wexler found herself glancing around for bodyguards — or assassins — or something. She had no idea; she was functioning entirely on instinct.
“No one knows you came?” T’ing asked. He was wearing his usual charcoal suit and white shirt.
