The Thieves of Legend

by Richard Doetsch

  Jenna looked scared and nervous. She gazed around the restaurant as if people were watching her. “You should go to the embassy—”

  “Can’t,” KC said quickly.

  “Police?”

  KC shook her head.

  “Why you?” Jenna said.

  KC explained what had happened; she told her everything short of what she was planning to do tonight.

  “Two days ago, I blew up my life. I walked away from everything, the man I loved, the friends and the world I had grown fond of. I can’t help thinking all this wouldn’t have happened if I had just stopped and looked around, if I had thought about him instead of myself. He’s the man I love; I would do anything to save him.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Jenna’s voice was laced with fear.

  “Relax,” KC said. “No harm will come to you. The focus is on me.”

  “You’re telling me for a reason, KC.”

  KC picked up her napkin and wiped her mouth, and as she laid the napkin back in her lap, she saw the drop of blood. She had always been healthy and ascribed it to the incredible stress she was under.

  “Are you okay?” Jenna asked, seeing the concern on KC’s face.

  “I’m fine,” KC said. She took a breath and whispered, “I need your security card.”

  “Why?”

  “You can just say that you lost it.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jenna said.

  “They have the man I love. I have to make this right.”

  Jenna sat there, staring at KC, thinking, the moment dragging on until…

  She reached into her bag, pulled out the card, and handed it to KC. “Do you want me to call the embassy?”

  “No. All they’ll do is arrest me, and Michael will die.”

  “I can’t stand that woman,” Jenna said. “I didn’t like her from the moment she hired me.”

  KC smiled. “You and I have a lot in common.”

  “Are you going to be all right?” Jenna was regaining her composure.

  “We’ll see.” KC nodded.

  “That’s why you wanted to know about the tunnel?”

  KC nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Well,” Jenna said, leaning closer. “There is something you should know about those tunnels… .”

  CHAPTER 22

  MACAU

  Michael had a plan. He sat at the work bench in the safe house in the heart of Macau, alone with his thoughts, while Jon headed back to the Venetian.

  As much as Michael didn’t want to include Jon in his planning, he knew he needed him not only to gain access to the depths of the Venetian, but to help him understand the mind-set of the guards and the security personnel, to offer cultural details, to procure supplies, and to translate the Chinese language.

  Michael had sent him out at dawn with a shopping list: Many of the items were common, some were difficult to procure, and several near impossible to obtain. But six hours later, Jon had returned with everything on Michael’s list.

  In the small kitchen of the apartment, two large pots were at a boil, a makeshift ventilation hood above them drawing the noxious fumes through a tube out the window. The mixture of mothballs, sugar, and hydrogen peroxide was already almost a paste. The electronic detonators lay in wait on the counter.

  Alone in the apartment, Michael took inventory of the weapons on-site: a small arsenal, enough to equip a strike force with not only pistols and submachine guns, but explosives, communication devices, and body armor.

  He made quick work of the lock on the filing cabinet. Michael was more than shocked at the various clandestine Asian operations conducted by Colonel Lucas and his various teams over the years, operations on allies and enemies alike. He examined the redacted dossier on Jon Lei. He was a subcontractor from the Tridiem Group, but beyond his military service there was nothing but blacked-out history—his birthday, his relationships, everything hidden from Michael’s prying eyes.

  Michael looked at an operation file dated three days ago. It contained a vague outline on the procurement of the box in vault number 16; it showed a time frame and bios on him and KC, their talents, and recent jobs. No one outside of his close inner circle of Simon, Busch, and KC was aware of his recent activities, or so he’d thought. With an unsettled feeling in his gut, he closed the file, and laid it on the workbench.

  He picked up one of the Venetian’s gambling tokens and examined it. Having seen the sublevels, having walked the areas he needed to access, he was more equipped to identify vulnerabilities. Michael realized that the one thing that could roam freely within the casino was its most precious item: the token, the elegant house money that was a conduit to capturing the contents of people’s pockets, their credits cards and their wealth. The Venetian’s emphasis on protecting the token and its fear of the token’s vulnerability were the beginning of a plan.

  Before him sat circular tokens of each denomination: $5, $10, $25, $100, $500, $1,000, and $10,000. The intricate design of the larger denominations—the holograms and artwork—could be replicated, but not in the time frame Michael had to work with and not on the scale he would require. But that was not his plan. He had delicately cut each token open with a small electric handsaw and extracted the RFID chips, the heart of the token’s security.

  Michael took a chip and laid it under the mounted magnifier, enhancing the image tenfold. The wafer-thin RFID microchip was manufactured by TSI, a company he was familiar with; it looked like a piece of copper foil no larger than a U.S. dime. There were two parts to the device: a programmed, integrated circuit for storing and processing information, modulating and demodulating a radio-frequency signal, and the antenna, which wrapped around the chip like a tightly wound maze, for receiving and transmitting the signal. This particular microchip was an active RFID tag, with a microbattery that allowed the chip to transmit signals once it was placed into service and activated by the Venetian’s security system.

  While Carl, the security manager, had spoken of the token, he did not realize that, as with every security system, there were vulnerabilities, safeguards, and back doors.

  While Michael was an expert in security and his company had the reputation of being a leader in preventing penetration, much of his work had shifted from the mechanical world of locks and safes to computer-assisted safeguards. He had designed all manner of firewalls, encryption, and ID cloaking for his clients to supplement the alarm systems hardwired into bricks and mortar. He understood the simplicity of the RFID chip before him as if he had designed it himself. While Rene Clauge, the young MIT grad, might have pounded his chest in pride at his innovation, Michael spoke the language and knew that the former MIT student had simply enhanced a safeguard similar to the one used in the retail industry to prevent the theft of ladies’ dresses, electronics, and sneakers.

  Michael fired up the computer, affixed several small wires to the chip in front of him, started the diagnostics, and began to backward-engineer the chip.

  In a similar fashion he figured out how to penetrate the sublevels of the Venetian—for just as with the RFID chip, the more sophisticated the security system, the more room it contained for error and vulnerability.

  Michael looked back at the operation file on the desk, picked it up, and reread it. In the dossier on him and KC and their illicit backgrounds, the identification of who supplied the info had been redacted. Michael trusted Simon and Busch with his life, as did KC. He couldn’t imagine who would sell them out, but someone had.

  Michael glanced at the security monitor and saw Jon returning, no doubt to seek an update, to emphasize their deadline, to hear the plan.

  Michael returned the operation file to the filing cabinet and locked the cabinet. Even though Jon had a bull’s-eye on Michael and was itching to take his life, Michael would include Jon in his planning. But that didn’t mean he’d include him in his endgame.

  Because Michael had every intention of spending the rest of his life with KC.

  Michael had a plan.

&nbs
p; THE LEARJET FLEW in over the China Sea, swooped down over the Pearl River Delta, and touched down at Macau International Airport, taxiing to the private terminal.

  The two men exited the jet with their luggage over their shoulders; dressed in khakis and sport coats, they looked like they were heading to the golf course instead of the casino.

  Sergeant Ken Reiner was large, intimidating, with a hard jaw and a heavy brow. He was known for his toughness both in and out of the ring and had escorted many full-bird colonels and generals abroad not only because of his intelligence and ability to get things done, but because of the sheer brute force he projected. Reiner was a last-minute addition to the team; General Garland had called him personally, apologizing for pulling him from his family after only one day back from a month in Germany.

  The general was concerned for Colonel Lucas’s well-being. Lucas had lost several members of his team in a botched operation off the coast of Italy only days earlier, and had yet to stop since. He had been to New York, Los Angeles, and now China all in a matter of days, assembling a team outside the military, a group of for-hires composed of former spec-ops and private contractors, their identities being held close to the chest for fear of a breach of security in light of the Italian debacle.

  Lucas was known as a tough commander but he looked out for his team as if they were his family, putting his own life on the line too many times to count in order to save a man in trouble. He was equally ruthless in carrying out his assignments, known for crossing the line on several occasions, breaking rules and laws to get a job done. Some said it was why he had yet to make general after so much time in the military, but truth be told, Lucas preferred the field over the desk and politics.

  Reiner read the eyes-only file. Lucas had been after a man named Xiao for several years on suspicion of terrorist activity, supplying arms to enemies of the state, and, most recently, a direct threat against military personnel. Lucas’s intel had uncovered that Xiao was close to possessing a weapon that he was looking to sell and would be publicly demonstrating it before the week was out. Lucas’s team had failed to intercept the unidentified weapon, and now Lucas was in an all-out race to find it before others did.

  While the file stated that Xiao had been left for dead on a scuttled yacht in the Tyrrhenian Sea, there was mention of a suspicion that he had survived and was far closer to obtaining the lockbox with the weapon than Lucas was.

  They were up against a hard clock, a drop-dead time only three days away. It was Reiner’s express directive to assist the colonel and keep him safe, for it was feared that Xiao’s ultimate target was not a military base or a U.S. installation or facility, but Lucas himself.

  CHAPTER 23

  1960

  Lily and young Jacob moved into her brother’s house in a small, affluent section of Macau. The house was large by Macau standards and afforded Lily and her ten-year-old son their own rooms in a small wing of the Mediterranean-style house.

  While Lily had rejected her heritage, her family legacy, she couldn’t help the familial bond she had with her brother, Kwon. Despite knowing what he had become, how dangerous he was, he was only dangerous to others and would protect her and Jacob with his life.

  There was no disguising her bruises and injuries, so Lily had no choice: She told her brother what had happened between her and Howard, told him of the alcohol-induced violence, the way he treated her as inferior, how she feared leaving Isaac behind. But she was very careful not to tell him of the box she carried and what it contained, for as much as she loved her brother she feared what he would do if it came into his possession.

  Kwon became enraged at the sight of her, that someone would do this to his sister. Lily had to do everything she could to stop him from sending people after Howard to seek retribution. He was Jacob’s father, Isaac’s father. She couldn’t bear what the death of a parent would do to them. She made Kwon swear that for as long as he lived no harm would ever come to Howard Lucas.

  Kwon was unmarried, his focus always on business, though he longed for a son—someone he could trust, someone who could assume his mantle when the time came. He grew close to Jacob, but Lily insisted that Jacob be shielded from Kwon’s world, from the violence and darkness of it all. And Kwon agreed; he loved and respected his younger sister and would do nothing to offend her as long as she lived.

  One evening Lily went for a walk. She passed St. Christopher’s Church and the Rao Buddhist Temple, glad to be in a world she understood, among people she felt comfortable with. Despite what her father had been and her brother had become, this was the world she knew and where she felt at home.

  And it was on those streets as she walked back to her brother’s house that she was killed. No one saw the assailant, no description was given. She was merely found dead in the street in a pool of her own blood, a single bullet through her head. There was skin beneath her nails; she had struggled against her attacker only to die in the end.

  Her brother raged against the world at his sister’s death. He ordered the assassin found, a bounty placed on the head of her killer. There were whispers on the street of retribution, of revenge not against Kwon for his past deeds but against Lily. Word of an American talking to her in a café, arguing with her, demanding the return of something she had stolen, but beyond the man’s young appearance, his tattered green military shirt and blue jeans, no one knew anything else.

  Kwon searched her room, trying to glean why someone would kill Lily, why someone would go after the innocent sister of the head of a Triad, knowing it was a death sentence. It didn’t take him long to find the lockbox with Howard Lucas’s name on it. He broke off the lock and found the book, marveling at its antiquity, thumbing through its pages. He drew out a black lacquered piece of wood, an antique whose images would frighten some, but certainly not a man who possessed more fearsome tattoos on his body. But being prudent, he sealed it back up, putting it back in the box and tucking it under the bed.

  Kwon broke the news to Jacob, holding him as he wept. Jacob had loved and worshipped his mother, and when he finally looked up from his grief, he told Kwon that he had to tell his brother and his father of her death.

  And in that moment, Kwon made the decision that would shape the boy’s life, his entire world. He had wanted a son and loved Jacob dearly as his own. He couldn’t bear sending him back to the U.S., back to his father, a man who filled him with such anger. For Lily’s husband had struck her, beaten her on numerous occasions, and had never reached out to his own son, never made any attempt to contact him.

  It was the last place Kwon would let Jacob go. So in order to erase the longing Kwon knew would arise, he told him a story. He told him of his mother’s death, how it was at the hands of the American military, at the hands of his father, who had sent an assassin for hire to steal a box from his mother. It was an action of jealousy and hate of all things Chinese.

  Kwon took the devastated boy as his own, a child who had lost both his mother and his father on that night. He thought of killing the man, Lily’s husband, but he had made her a promise. More important, having Howard alive could prove to Kwon’s advantage.

  And in his dark ways, in much the way he manipulated his own people, he further shaped Jacob’s thoughts and opinions. Slowly, Jacob began to embrace his uncle, embrace China, Macau, and Hong Kong. He learned the ways of the street and the world from his uncle’s perspective, finally developing a thirst for it, a need to cast away his father’s lineage and embrace his mother’s heritage, his Chinese half.

  Kwon taught him how to fight, a combination of styles more suited to the streets than some dance or movie. He taught him the various styles of wushu, what Americans called kung fu; he showed him how different situations required different methods. He taught him the dao—the Chinese sword. He taught him of its beauty and how it should be handled and revered. He taught him the gun (staff), the qian (spear), and the jian (two-sided broadsword). These were elegant weapons from a forgotten age, which most considered inferior to
a gun, but Kwon thought of them as honorable and equally deadly.

  Kwon had kept Lily’s box, never revealing its contents or existence to Jacob, thinking it cursed, thinking that it was followed by death. He had skimmed the book, understanding its value, but not comprehending its true historic worth. He sold it to a friend, his attorney and business associate who had helped to make much of Kwon’s business legitimate, assisting in laundering money, keeping his name apart from his true underworld dealings. The man was as violent and deadly as Kwon but hid his dealings behind titles, degrees, and pinstripe suits. The Italian was a collector as opposed to an investor who would seek to sell the book at a profit; he had a passion for antique weapons, swords, guns—items that dated to the feudal ages.

  In the year of Jacob’s sixteenth birthday, in Kwon’s eyes Jacob became a man. On his way home from school—Kwon insisted upon not only high school, but college—Jacob was attacked. It was a young gang, four of them, like a pack of dogs, their strength in their numbers. They leaped upon Jacob, knocking him to the ground, kicking him in the gut, the face. They ripped the school bag from his shoulder, the shoes from his feet, the shirt from his back, all the while taunting him as gwailo, a foreign devil.

  While Jacob had been trained in wushu, had mastered sparring and street fighting, it was always within the confines of a gym, under the tutelage of teachers, never in the outside world, where his life was on the line, where there was no second chance, where there was no do-over.

  As he lay in a ball, burying his face in his knees, Jacob was gripped in fear and shame. All that he had been taught was useless, the arrogance for thinking himself immortal, indestructible, was a façade of wrongful pride.

  And as the thought of death filled him, he thought of his mother, dying on the streets in the same manner, unable to defend herself against the assassin, against the man his father had sent. And as the rage filled him, it wiped away his cowardice. An awakening took place within him, as if his true self had lain dormant all of these years. He buried the pain deep inside him, the fear left him, and instinct finally took over.