Gideon’s Sword

by Douglas Preston; Lincoln Child

  The voice was so loud it brought everyone in the echoing lobby to a standstill.

  She busted into the group like a bowling ball into a set of pins, pushing Gideon to one side. Then she wheeled about and shouted at them again. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I’m CIA assistant bureau chief here and this is my colleague. He’s got diplomatic immunity! How dare you disrespect diplomatic status!” She seized Gideon and yanked him toward the door.

  Half a dozen handguns were immediately out, pointing at her. “You go nowhere!” the lead man shouted, advancing toward her.

  Her own weapon came out in a flash, an S&W .38 chief’s special. There were sudden screams in the lobby as the guns were drawn, people ducking behind chairs and vases. “Oh yeah?” she cried. “You want a shootout with the CIA right here, right now? Come on! Think of the promotion you’ll get for shooting up the lobby of the Tai Tam Hotel!”

  As she spoke at high volume, her voice ringing out, she continued hauling Gideon toward the door. The men seemed frozen as the two barged through an emergency exit, where she shoved him into the backseat of a waiting Crown Victoria. She got in behind him and slammed the door and the car screeched from the curb, leaving the group of blue-suited Chinese running to their SUVs.

  “Motherfucker,” she said, shoving the S&W back into a shoulder holster and leaning back in the seat with a sigh. “Motherfucker. What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

  “I owe you thanks—”

  “Thanks? You owe me your life. I can’t believe you walked your ass right into the lion’s den like this. Are you crazy?”

  Gideon had to admit it seemed, in retrospect, a foolish decision.

  She glanced back. “And now they’re following.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Airport.”

  “They’re going to stop us from leaving the country.”

  “They’re confused. They’re asking for instructions. It all depends on how fast the intelligence bureaucracy can get their shit together. You know how to handle a handgun?”

  “Yes.”

  She pulled a .32 Walther from her waistband and handed it to him with an extra loaded magazine. “Whatever you do, for God’s sake don’t shoot anybody. Follow my instructions.”

  “Okay.”

  She spoke to the driver. “Slow down, let them get closer.”

  “Why?” the man behind the wheel asked.

  “It may reveal their intentions. Are they just following? Or do they want to run us off the road?”

  The driver slowed considerably and the lead black SUV came cruising up, fast, in the left lane. It braked to their speed, a smoked window came down, and the muzzle of a gun poked out.

  “Duck!”

  The round blew out both rear windows, showering them with little cubes of glass. At the same moment their driver made a sickening evasive move, veering across four lanes of traffic on the Eastern Island Corridor, wheels squealing on the diamond-cut surface.

  “You ascertained their intentions,” said Gideon drily.

  “Yeah, and it looks like they got their instructions.”

  The car was accelerating again along the corridor, weaving through traffic, heading for the exchange leading into the Cross-Harbour Tunnel.

  “There’s going to be a traffic jam at the tunnel,” said the driver. “What’ll we do?”

  Mindy didn’t answer. Gideon looked back. The SUV—and the two others—were whipping through traffic, pacing them.

  Thunk! Another round punched through the side of their car with the sound of a sledgehammer on steel. Jackson leaned out the broken window, fired five shots in rapid succession. The SUVs took evasive action, dropping back.

  Crouching by the floor, she snapped open the cylinder, shoved in fresh rounds, snapped it shut. “Keep your head down.”

  “There’s no way they’re going to let us out of the country,” Gideon said.

  Thunk! Another round clipped the rear of the car.

  Gideon ducked, his hands over his head.

  “It’s a lot harder than it looks to shoot a handgun from a car,” she said. “It isn’t like in the movies. Give me your passport.”

  He fished it out of his pocket. He could hear the roar of the engine, the wheels squealing, the blaring horns of cars rapidly falling away behind—and now the sounds of sirens. She snatched the passport, reached into a bag, and pulled out an embosser and a small circular stamp. Opening the passport, she stamped it, signed it, and embossed it. “You now have diplomatic status,” she said as she handed it back.

  “Is that CIA standard issue?”

  She smiled grimly as the car slowed.

  Gideon peeked out. They were entering the sunken approach to the Cross-Harbour Tunnel. The black SUVs, in dropping back, had gotten stuck many cars behind.

  The traffic slowed further, bunched, and finally came to a halt.

  Gideon peered out the window again and saw the blue suits pouring out of the black SUVs a hundred yards behind. They raced toward the Crown Vic, fanning out among the cars, guns drawn.

  “We’re screwed,” he said.

  “Not at all. As soon as I get out, start firing your gun over their heads. Be sure not to hit anyone.”

  “Wait—”

  But in a flash she jumped out, running at a crouch, dodging the lines of stopped traffic. He aimed slightly over the heads of the approaching suits and depressed the trigger, the handgun kicking back, one, two, three shots, deafeningly loud between the enclosed walls of the sunken approach. The suits dove to the ground and a chorus of screams rose up around him, doors flying open, cars emptying.

  Instant chaos. Now he saw Jackson’s strategy. He fired two more shots, adding to the panic: more doors were flung open, screams, people climbing over cars, shrieking, running like mad in every direction.

  The blue suits rose and tried to press their way forward against the fleeing crowd, but it was like fighting an incoming tide. Gideon fired again, high, this time in all directions, boom boom boom boom! The panic spread and the suits once again dove for cover. The crowd surged outward, triggering panic in more distant cars, which emptied in turn, in ever-expanding waves. He heard Jackson firing the S&W somewhere behind, the snub-nosed revolver louder than his .32. At the noise, part of the fleeing crowd reversed direction in a panic, people colliding into one another, scrambling under cars. Gideon heard windows breaking, horns blaring. He tried to locate the blue suits but they had completely vanished in the surging mob, pinned down or maybe even trampled.

  Suddenly the door was pulled open and he swung around to see Jackson. She passed the back of one hand across her forehead and holstered her weapon. “Time to split.”

  He jumped out and they ran with the mob, heading back out the sunken approach. It was like an infection, the mob steadily growing as people continued to abandon their cars in a spreading pool of frenzy. It appeared that people were assuming a terrorist attack.

  Swept along by the mob, they emerged from the sunken roadway. The crowd spilled over a cement barrier wall, tumbling down a short embankment and onto Hung Hing Road, where they poured in a screaming mass northward into the Hong Kong Yacht Club. The crowd instantly overwhelmed two men in a pillbox at a barrier gate, knocked it down, and scattered down the gracious, tree-lined avenue into the club grounds.

  “Stay with me.” Jackson split off from the main throng and doubled back down a service road, crossed a set of railroad tracks, and climbed over a chain-link fence. They ended up leaving the crowds behind, running along a promenade overlooking Victoria Harbour. The promenade curved around to a paved asphalt jetty that stood out into the harbor. She had been yelling into her cell phone for a while and now she snapped it shut.

  “Out there.” She ran down the broad tarmac jetty.

  “It’s a dead end!” he cried. But then he saw, ahead, a huge yellow H stenciled on the tarmac, inside a yellow circle. He looked up and, on cue, heard the sound of a chopper, coming in low and fast. It swung a
round the jetty, decelerated, then settled, rotors slowing. They ran toward it as a door opened. No sooner had they jumped in than it took off again, sweeping across the harbor.

  Mindy Jackson settled into a jumpseat, buckled her seat belt, and turned to him. She eased a notebook out of her pocket, along with a pen. “I just saved your ass. Now you’re going to tell me the numbers. And no more bullshit.”

  He told her the numbers.

  36

  They boarded the first commercial plane out, an Emirates flight to Dubai, using their diplomatic stamps to bypass passport control. They arrived in Dubai about nine o’clock local time. Their connecting flight to New York wasn’t until morning.

  “Bur Dubai Hotel is rather nice,” Mindy Jackson said as they passed through customs and headed for the taxi queue. “You owe me a stiff one.”

  He spread his hands. “Drink, or…?”

  She colored. “Drink. A stiff drink. What a mind you have.”

  They got into a cab. “The Bur Dubai,” she told the driver, then turned to Gideon. “The Cooz Bar is a jazz-and-cigar kind of place. Red velvet chairs, leopardskin bar stools, lots of blond wood.”

  “Funny, I didn’t take you for a cigar smoker.”

  After crawling through nighttime traffic, the cab finally pulled up in front of the hotel, two curved, ultramodern black-and-white buildings intersecting each other. They went straight to the bar without checking in, just in time to catch the second set.

  As they were seated, the big band began to play. Predictably, the opening tune was the Ellington number “Caravan.” Gideon listened; they weren’t half bad. The waiter came over.

  “I’ll have an Absolut martini,” Jackson said, “dry and dirty, with two olives. And,” she went on, eyeing the cigar list, “bring me a Bolívar Coronas Gigantes.”

  Gideon ordered a beer, going light after his overindulgence the night before. The waiter returned with the drinks and the cigar.

  “You going to smoke that?” Gideon asked, eyeing the torpedo-shaped aluminum tube.

  “No, you are. I like watching a man smoke a cigar.”

  Giving in to his baser instincts, Gideon removed the cigar, ran it under his nose. It was very fine. He cut off the end with the supplied trimmer and lit it.

  Jackson eyed him sideways. “Like I said. You look good with a cigar.”

  “Let’s just hope I don’t get cancer and they have to cut my lips off.”

  “Such nice lips, too.” She sipped her drink, still looking at him. “You know, I’ve never seen anyone with quite your looks. Jet black hair, bright blue eyes.”

  “Black Irish. Except I’m not Irish.”

  “I’ll bet you sunburn easily.”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  Here, so far from home, Jackson seemed like a different person. “You have any idea what those numbers mean?” he asked her.

  “Not yet. I’ve already phoned them in.”

  “I’d like to know if they find anything.”

  Jackson remained silent. The band slid into another Ellington classic, “Mood Indigo.”

  Having given her the numbers, Gideon felt he could push just a little harder. “So tell me more about this Nodding Crane character. He sounds like something out of a Bond movie.”

  “In a way he is. A bred assassin. We know very little about him—comes from the Chinese far west, of Mongolian extraction, got more than a little Genghis Khan in him. He was raised—so we hear—in a special training unit that immersed him in American culture. Employed by the 810 Office, apparently.”

  “The 810 Office?”

  She looked at him strangely. “For an operative, even a private one, you’re unusually ignorant.”

  “I’m a new hire.”

  “The 810 Office is the Chinese version of the Gestapo or the KGB, only smaller and more focused. It’s under the personal control of a few top Communist Party officials. Nodding Crane is one of their best men, and it appears he’s been chemically and hormonally pumped up. He’s trained to the max, but he’s not the crude killing machine you might think. He’s intelligent and, like I said, steeped in American pop culture. I saw one report that says he plays bottleneck guitar. Blues.”

  “Seems hard to believe. But if he’s so good, why did he fuck up with Wu?”

  “Fuck up? His orders were to kill Wu and escape. And that’s exactly what he did. The collateral damage was of no consequence—to him.”

  “But he didn’t get the plans.”

  “He didn’t expect to—not then. That’s phase two. He’s working on that now.”

  “Why’s he after me?”

  “Come on, Gideon. There are half a dozen witnesses who saw you writing down those numbers. He doesn’t need the numbers—his job is to make sure anyone who knows them is dead.”

  Gideon shook his head, took a small puff from the cigar. “If he’s that good, I’d be dead already.”

  “You’ve been awfully clever so far. Or maybe it’s dumb luck. Thing is, you’re unpredictable. Going to Hong Kong—that’s the last move anyone would have expected.”

  “You expected it.”

  “Not at all. There’s a general alert on you at the airports, your exit was flagged. When you return to the States, Nodding Crane’ll be waiting for you. I doubt you’ll survive.” She smiled and fished an olive out of the glass, lobbed it into her mouth.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. I might point out that now I’ve told you the numbers, you’re a target yourself.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  He took another puff. “How could Wu just walk off with the plans, anyway?”

  “Maybe he’d been considering it for some time. He’s one of their top people, he’d have had complete access. It could be the honey trap was the final push he needed.”

  “How do you know he even had the plans?”

  “That’s the intelligence we received. It was expensive, and it’s ironclad.”

  “Could the scientist himself be a red herring? A setup?”

  “Doubtful.”

  “Any specifics about the weapon itself?”

  “That’s the scariest part. We don’t know if it’s an enhanced thermonuclear device or something completely new. The mix of scientists at Lop Nor suggests the latter—there’s a lack of nuclear physicists and HE experts on site, but a lot of metallurgists, nanotechnologists, condensed matter and quantum physicists.”

  “Quantum physicists? It sounds like it might be an exotic particle weapon—a laser weapon, mini black hole—or even a matter–antimatter device.”

  “You’re smarter than you look. What exactly do you do at Los Alamos, anyway?”

  “I design and test high-explosive lenses.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s classified. Suffice to say they’re lenses of conventional high explosive that go into the assemblies used for imploding the cores of nuclear devices.”

  She took another sip of her drink. “And just how does somebody go about getting background experience for a job like that?”

  Gideon shrugged. “Well, in my case, I liked blowing things up.”

  “You mean, like cars? People?”

  “Nah. Started out as kid stuff. I used to make my own pyrotechnical devices, mixed my own gunpowder. Fireworks, sort of. I’d set them off in the woods behind our house and charge neighborhood kids a quarter to watch. Later on they proved to have…other uses.” He yawned.

  “Quite the renaissance man. Want to order food?”

  “I’m too tired to eat.”

  “Tired? In that case, should we book two rooms?” Her voice trailed off and her lips curled into a suggestive smile.

  He looked at her green eyes, glossy hair, freckled nose. He could see the pulse in her throat throbbing softly. “Not that tired.”

  She dropped a fifty on the table and rose. “Good. I’d hate spending the government’s money on a room if no one’s going to use it.”

  37

  Roger Marion locked and
bolted the door to his apartment with a sigh. It was a busy Thursday in Chinatown and Mott Street had been awash with humanity, the animal murmur still filtering up into his apartment through the closed and barred windows looking onto the fire escape facing the street.

  He paused to collect himself, to reestablish the center of calm destroyed by the city’s incessant chaos. He closed his eyes, entered into stillness, and performed the set of movements known as mile shenyao, his motions free and unconstrained. He could feel the Law Wheel turning, turning, forever turning.

  When the exercises were complete, he went into the kitchen to make tea. Placing the kettle on to boil, he took down the heavy iron teapot and a can of loose white tea, arranging them on the counter. Just before the water came to a boil he removed the kettle, poured some water into the iron pot to heat it, swished it around and dumped it out, spooned in a batch of curly white tea leaves, and covered them with more hot water. He carried the pot and cup into the living room and found a man standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed, a smile on his face.

  “Tea, how lovely,” said the man in Chinese. He was dressed in a nondescript suit, white shirt, gray repp tie; his face was as smooth and unlined as a bolt of silk; his eyes cool and empty, his movements graceful. Underneath the clothes, Marion could see he was a perfect specimen of lean athleticism.

  “It must steep,” said Marion, revealing no surprise, although it astonished and confounded him that the man had been able to enter the apartment. “Allow me to bring another cup in for you.”

  The man nodded and Marion turned, going back into the kitchen. As he took the cup down from the cupboard, he eased a small knife out of a block on the counter and slipped it behind his back.

  Back in the living room, Marion placed the cup beside the pot.

  “I prefer white tea to be steeped at least ten minutes,” said the man. “Which will allow us time to talk.”

  Marion waited.