by Gabriel Hunt
“You sure about that?”
“As I said, it is not a choice,” returned Ivory. “We cannot abide allies who are less than committed to our purpose. Collaboration with our enemies is more than interference, it is antiparticipation.”
“I supplied the terra-cotta figures, as requested,” said Tuan.
“Yes. Four so far. Four figures of indeterminate origin, which Cheung found to be useless. A stalling tactic.”
“By which I take it to mean that Cheung destroyed them? In his search for a skeleton or a skull or a jewel or a key or anything that would relate them to the dynasty of the Favored Son?”
Ivory had, in fact, witnessed Cheung knock off the heads, lop off the arms, powder the fragments with the intensity of a junkie searching for a fix. He’d found nothing to assuage him. Each time his reaction had been more terrifying. Cheung needed a breakthrough to the past so badly that he was apt to start killing his own men left and right just to vent his rage.
“Cheung’s quest after his heritage is no longer a concern of yours,” Ivory said. “Even in that, you have failed him.”
Neither Cheung nor Ivory, nor for that matter Tuan, had any idea that the figures brought to the city by Qingzhao had come from outside the tomb, that they had been decoys, leftovers. Vague hints as to what lurked farther onward, nothing more.
“Further,” said Ivory, “you became culpable by dealing directly with the woman formerly known as Qingzhao Wai Chiu, when you know Cheung has designated her as one of the Nameless. The figures were brokered directly through your offices.”
“Guilty,” said Tuan. “But I did it to further my own interests, while providing a layer of insulation between the statues and Cheung himself. I may play both sides against the middle, as you say, but I never cheat anybody.”
“You were the conduit to the Nameless One,” Ivory insisted. “You should have informed us of this detail directly. Instead, you kept it shadowed. Needless to say, Cheung can no longer trust you with the lower Bund.”
“Is that why I received this delightful item?” said Tuan, meaning the little carved casket. “It’s quite exquisite. Is it Cheung’s own handiwork?”
Ivory nodded gravely.
“Then Cheung is serious about all this,” concluded Tuan sadly. “Real warlords,” he said, “found no dishonor in surprise attack, or night maneuvers, or bribery, or shifting alliances—these are our tools, the basic armament of deception.”
“In theory I agree with you,” said Ivory. “History bears you out. But Cheung’s intention is to rewrite history. That means new rules—his rules. There can be no gray area.”
“My friend,” Tuan laughed, “all of Shanghai is one gray area.” He finished his drink. “I’m not surprised by Cheung’s decision,” he said with a massive sigh. “I am surprised by his choice. I expected some cat-eyed assassin, skulking about in the shadows. Someone all steel and no heart.”
Ivory merely closed his eyes and nodded, respectfully.
“I suppose whistling up my bodyguards would be futile,” said Tuan.
“They have all left already,” confirmed Ivory.
Tuan spread his vast fingers across the tabletop like two opposing camps; the tents of honor versus betrayal, love versus hate, good versus evil. “Of all people,” he said, eyes down, “I hoped it would never be you.”
“So did I,” said Ivory.
Tuan extended his hand. Ivory accepted it. They clasped firmly.
With his free hand, Ivory drew his automatic and gave Tuan two in the chest and one in the head, to ensure a quick death. He held onto Tuan’s hand until the big man’s heart stopped forever.
Gabriel Hunt considered the limits of his cage.
The large, low-ceilinged room was like a pet sanctuary or a bondage emporium. A warren of floor-to-ceiling bars, wire cages, food pans, filth and dicey light. On a medical tray a series of prepared hypodermic needles was lined up like little soldiers.
His companions were the grist of the slave sale, snoring in drugged sleep or sitting in the corners of their cages with eyes full of fog, blinking little, breathing shallowly, zoned out.
This is no way to treat an honored guest, Gabriel thought.
A case-hardened padlock secured his cell; sadly, Gabriel had neglected to pack his secret agent kit. In any event he had been body-searched down to seams and naked skin before being remanded to Red Eagle’s custody. He presumed narcotics came next.
He wondered if Qi had gotten out.
Thinking about her, he realized this was how Qi had begun, perhaps in this very room. He might even be tenanting her old cage. This was the place that had set the path for her whole life.
One cage over, Gabriel saw the doll-eyed twelve-year-old, barely cognizant of her surroundings. She hummed softly and twirled her hair as though she had been left too long to simmer in a madhouse.
From his restricted vantage he could see another prisoner who reminded him very much of Qi—a ruined shadow version of her, same age and same general comportment. The woman was sleeping, or feigning sleep to avoid seeing where she was or attracting the attention of her captors.
It is a general rule of the flesh trade that high profit resides in the tarting up of what is, at heart, rather rude raw material. When up for bids in the open air, the girl would look heartbreaking, done up to entice you to save or pervert her. She would be a dazzling, powerful temptress. Between shows, however, they were all cast back into this dungeon to live like animals.
“Gabriel. You are…Gabriel,” said a voice.
He looked up, expecting a jailor or tormentor.
That is the fresh fighter. Called Jin Huáng, for our purposes, Ivory had said. Chinese for ‘yellow’ or ‘golden.’
“Yellow” for her hair, Gabriel realized, seeing it now for the first time. It had been shorn, military style, to within a quarter-inch of her scalp, as he could observe now that her fighting mask was off. New wounds on her face, from the pit. One eye crusted with blood from a hard hit. The green gaze of her other eye opaque with some cocktail of drugs in her system.
But it was Mitch Quantrill, live in the flesh, back from the dead, incontrovertibly standing there in front of him.
Chapter 13
Imagine you are in another country.
One where you cannot speak the indigenous languages, know no one local, are unfamiliar with the grid, and through no fault of your own, stick out like a hangnail on a sore thumb.
You obviously do not belong here.
And it is only a matter of time before some grown-up, some authority figure, strolls in and asks what the hell you think you’re doing.
So—what do you do?
Further imagine that after fewer than 24 hours on this alien planet, you have met the person who objectifies your hatred…and failed to kill him.
That during a mad popper-party of shooting, screams and panic, you may have caught a transient glimpse of an old ally from home—a glimpse so fleeting that it might have been a hallucination of wish-fulfillment.
But you cannot pause to debate that information because you have gained a new benefactor, a sharp Asian woman who knows how to deal with gunfire.
Your brain, playing mind tricks on you, gives you another flashpop look at the man you think you know, but already your mind is confusing the new helper with the old helper, and the endorphins are flooding because you are in wild retreat and have just stopped a bullet.
Stupid, careless, getting tagged like that.
None of this matters because in one stuttered, brokenfilm eyeblink of time, you’re facedown in a freezing, fast-flowing river with a bullet in your shoulder.
Now imagine what your last thoughts might be.
Sorry, Val. Sorry, Lucy. Sorry, everybody. I could not save anyone, or change a single bad thing. I have disappointed every person with whom I have ever come in contact.
But strong hands fish you from the black maw of the water, telling you no one should die so ignominiously just for the sake of being dead.
And your dying mind agrees that this, in fact, is a reasonable point of view.
So—what do you do?
You try to answer the question your rescuer has posed to you.
Where is Qingzhao Wai Chiu?
You say: Dead, I think. I’m not certain.
The rescuer says: Are you certain of anything?
Then he says: It is true that if I had needed to kill you, you would be dead. My offer still stands. I can show you a way out. No police. No adversaries.
But first there is the tiny matter of digging his own bullet out of your shoulder.
This is accomplished in an apartment…somewhere…an identity-less box, a clean and welllighted place, as Hemingway might have said. A window offers a choice view of Shanghai nightlife, far below.
You find yourself naked in an old-fashioned bucket shower, an anomaly in this modern place. You remember a water dipper. Stitches. Candlelight. A bowl of noodles. You’re disconnected, but ravenous. Ninety percent of your identity seems to have astral-projected out of your body and gone somewhere else, and you have a quick thought about the pharmaceutical painkillers that are probably coursing through your system along with the soup.
Then you forget the thought.
There is a saying in China, Noodle Man tells you. “The heat of anger burns only the angry.”
Great, you think. Did you read that on a fortune cookie?
The fortune cookie was invented in America, Noodle Man tells you with a total lack of irony.
Ivory, you remember. This person is called Ivory. He even introduced himself to you, back at the casino.
I need to express my sympathy, Ivory tells you. For your sister. Is it your intention to avenge her death?
Dumb question.
I did not participate, Ivory tells you. Romero, Chino, some of the others used her very badly. Cheung ordered it. I am far from innocent. It saddens me still.
Spare me, you think. This man Ivory consorts with Valerie’s murderers.
Unless he is lying about his own negligence or blameworthiness.
You feel you have begun something, Ivory tells you. A process in which you are trapped, and you feel a misguided urge to see it through to some end. The end can only be catastrophic for you. Do you see that?
Your brain tries to frame a counterargument but your thoughts are leaking out, wino-bagged in a sieve. Some drug in your blood is definitely messing with you.
Would you leave China now, if you had the chance? Ivory asks you.
So—what do you do?
It becomes very important for you to say the word NO. Aloud. Repeatedly.
Shanghai can be a very dangerous place. You are not sure if Ivory says this, or if you just think it. Fifty-fifty.
The drugs keep your brain drunk but your reflexes vital and threat-responsive, you discover later. Most likely, the prescription changed.
You are given an attacker and your entire personality reverts to instinct.
You are given a mask so you may be hidden in plain sight.
You fight through a waterlogged gray curtain, as though puppeteering a bloodless simulacrum in one of the violent games children so love to entertain themselves with back home, sitting lazily in front of the television. But there is no laziness to it here, nor even very much sitting. Just violence.
And in a way you accomplish what you came halfway across the planet to do. You kill. You prevail.
That is what you do. It is who you are, now.
The food, the drugs deftly separate you from a world that had little use for you, back there in behind-time.
It is not such a bad life, fulfilling in its primal imperatives. Fight. Survive. Eat. Sleep. Fight again.
You see a man in a cage, less fortunate than you. You are in control of your little universe. The man in the cage has no control. Perhaps you will face this Other in the fighting pit.
But a minuscule ember of memory remains. You recognize this person.
His name is Gabriel. You were introduced to him once.
“Mitch!” said Gabriel, bum-rushing his own bars. “Michelle! You’re alive!”
“I won,” she said, as though that were an answer. She regarded him oddly. Off-center. Head cocked. Sparse recognition in her green eyes. Yet she had remembered his name.
“Who pulled you out of the river?” Of the dozen questions Gabriel could have asked, this one floated to the surface first.
“Some man,” she said.
“Don’t you remember? We were at the casino. You were shot. We all went into the river together.”
“The dream,” she said. “The dream of being someone else.”
“It’s not a dream—look, Mitch, they did something to you. Shot you up with drugs or lobotomized you or…I don’t know.”
“Mitch,” she repeated.
Gabriel watched her worry the name in her head. It was a slim hope, a doomed chance for her real self to flicker alight.
“I am Jin Huáng,” she said. “I have fought five. I have won five.” She showed him the Iron Fist, still strapped to her hand.
“No, you’re not! You’re—”
“When your time comes,” she added curtly, “I’ll win against you.”
Chapter 14
“Jin Huáng, this is your rest period,” said Ivory.
Mitch hung her head and shuffled away.
“Await me,” Ivory said to her back. She stopped walking. Then started up again.
“You’ve drugged her into some kind of…robot,” Gabriel said from the cage.
“A preparation from Mr. Cheung’s resident mystic,” said Ivory. “It subverts the will.”
“I’ll say.”
Ivory unpocketed a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Gabriel.
“No thanks,” said Gabriel. “I never got to finish my drink.”
“We of course had your identity the moment you entered the Zongchang casino,” said Ivory matter-of-factly, not even looking at Gabriel. “I suspected some connection between you and this woman. The cameras confirmed it when you took them both into the river.”
“Well, good for you,” said Gabriel. “I gather this is the part where I’m just supposed to listen to your brilliant strategy and not ask you why the hell you have me locked up in a cage.”
“Unfortunately for you, you have been tricked into consort with the Nameless One,” said Ivory. “Mr. Cheung is very protective of his interests, and disapproves of those who would oppose him for shallow and misguided reasons.”
“You mean like because he murdered your newest fighter’s sister in New York?”
“Ah. That is the link, then.” Ivory rubbed his forefinger against his lips, a nervous gesture. “And you sought to redress this injustice?”
“Mitch did,” Gabriel said. “All I wanted to do was get her out of here. That’s the honest truth.” He hoped he sounded sincere. “This is not our country. Your fight’s not our fight.”
Ivory pondered a moment, then said, “Let me tell you a story.”
“I don’t see how I can stop you.”
“Let us say that this story is about an imaginary person named Valerie Quantrill. Who worked quite expertly in the transfer of digital data. Let us imagine that Mr. Cheung’s company hired her to bring everything in the organization online for access via the latest state-of-the-art equipment. Broadband literacy is essential to a man who aspires to take an entire country to a new horizon.”
“But he didn’t count on his imaginary data transfer czar being broadband-literate herself,” said Gabriel. “And stumbling on things he didn’t want her to know.”
“There was no stumbling, Mr. Hunt. It was deliberate, premeditated and malign. She hacked firewalls, she stole passwords. All deliberate. She deliberately gained access to data that was damaging to us. We foresaw blackmail, threats, sealed envelopes in secret drops. But Mr. Cheung was not enraged—he was pleased. He saw this initiative as a valuable skill. He seeks to encourage people to their best potential—that is why so many in China take
him seriously.”
“He’s a madman who participates in slave auctions,” said Gabriel.
“You persist in Western linear thinking,” said Ivory. “But I believe you to be an intelligent and perceptive man. Think of the small crime with yield for the greatest good.”
“Every madman in history has justified his madness that way. Look at Hitler.”
“Yes, yes, Hitler.” Ivory glared at him. “Are you quite through?”
“Not quite,” said Gabriel. “But I’m the one in the cage. I’m through if you say I’m through.”
“Let us say that instead of chastising Valerie Quan-trill, Mr. Cheung offered her a new and expanded role in his grand plan—one that would potentially have made her very wealthy, and free to move about the world as she pleased. And let us say further that she came to the meeting in New York to turn him down. That would have been an entirely honorable decision, you understand—but a bad choice. Mr. Cheung would have perceived her disinclination as a threat to use what she knew.”
“You mean he lost his temper and killed her. Hypothetically speaking.”
Ivory pressed his lips together and looked at the floor for a moment. He released a sigh, as though venting psychic decay.
“If this happened,” he said, “I assure you it was not with my approval.”
“You didn’t prevent it,” said Gabriel.
“Perhaps a Westerner cannot understand. It is not my place to prevent Mr. Cheung from doing what he wishes. I am bound by my fealty to him.”
“Fealty?” Gabriel shot back. “Ivory, he’s not even really Chinese!”
“I know. I have accepted this.”
“Look—you’re better than this guy. You saw Mitch come to kill him and you saved his life, but you saved her life, too. Only now you’re letting your sense of obligation hamstring you.”
“I saved her out of regret for her sister’s fate,” Ivory said. “Were I a disloyal man, I would not have informed Mr. Cheung. Instead I proposed an alternate course, and he approved.”
