Hunt Among the Killers of Men

Chapter 12

Qingzhao could not believe she had missed the shot, and quickly chambered her tracer—her followup round, to track and correct aimed fire.

She’d had Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung dead in her sights on the balcony across from her, with only a ten-degree angle of correction for a downward shot. The picture in the crosshairs told her that Cheung was history. Her trigger pull was a steady, clean, slow squeeze.

But the man standing next to Cheung had died instead.

Which meant that the sights on this ex– Royal Marines rifle had been tampered with.

Her tracer shot strayed to bounce off one of the hanging cages and ignited the wallpaper inside Red Eagle’s eyrie. Perhaps it was because Qi, too, had seen the young girl up for sale, so much like herself, once; perhaps it was because Qi had fired with tears welling in her eyes? But no—the tracer proved the weapon’s sights to be decalibrated. The scope was supposed to have been zeroed. It obviously had not been. Useless.

Even more useless: The adjustment ticks on the scope had been shaved down, preventing a fast adjustment with a coin edge or anything else.

Cheung was under cover by now. Ivory’s response was frighteningly efficient.

She could have chambered the next powerful Magnum round and taken out one of the bodyguards, but there was little point.

Her window of time had spoiled faster than burning paper. Without checking the window again she fired up her preset fuses and ran from the room, abandoning the rifle and going hot on her backup pistol—a supersized Ruger revolver, so as to avoid even the faintest possibility of a jam.

Ten seconds later, cherry bombs, M-80s and firecracker strings began to detonate around the perimeter below. This would give eager bodyguards false gunfire they would waste time trying to track. The final fuse crisped the support rope for her buckets of coins, which tumbled loose and sprayed a metallic rain of money from the sky, all jingling downward to spin and roll across the cobblestones of the Night Market. Everyone below would scramble to collect the coins, which was good for Qi’s escape plan. Sentries would be blocked, hazarded, mobbed and trafficjammed as they tried to fan out from the archways.

From the doorway into the wild free-for-all of the Night Market, it was five swift steps to the bridge to the Tea House. Qi sprinted across, zigzagging. The propane tanks she had emplaced earlier were still in position. She shot each one with modified tracers like the big hazard-striped rounds she had used at Pearl Tower. Both tanks combusted and blew spectacularly, punching the air out of the space with twin fireballs and lopping off the first fifteen feet of the bridge, which noisily redistributed itself over the surface of the pond water, blackjacking a few curious fish.

Inside the Tea House was a narrow stairway leading down to a supply room with a trapdoor in the floor. The access led down into the sewer system, where Qi had a small motorboat waiting.

Gabriel was not there to meet her as planned.

She had to leave the area now. She waited a few extra beats anyway.

At the very least, she had seen Cheung crawling on his hands and knees, clothing disheveled, panic on his face.

That would have to do until next time.

At the top of the Peace Hotel, Cheung commanded an entire floor. From the elevators one walked across his Junfa Hall, a long corridor lined with statues of Chinese warlords and decorated with ostentatious Peking Opera weapons on wall displays. But for the sliding glass doors, all bulletproofed, and the sentries at each end, the hall held the stately ambience of a museum.

Ivory found Cheung in his Temple Room, a chamber enameled in shiny black and hung with silks. Catercorner to a small shrine was a custom dentist’s chair on a hydraulic riser. Mugwort leaves smoldered from a salver next to a sterile work tray.

A technician in a crimson medical tunic was meticulously inserting long acupuncture needles into Cheung’s face and scalp.

Cheung indicated his eyebrow. “Here. Deeper.”

Dinanath waited in one corner with the behemoth Tosa dogs on stand-down. Cheung ignored them and kept his gaze on Ivory.

Lurking silently in her usual corner was Sister Menga, a white-haired, pink-skinned Taoist soothsayer with the bearing of a lifelong martial arts practitioner. She was one of Cheung’s spiritual advisors and seemed to thrive on breathing fog-thick incense smoke.

“Do we know whose base area is the Night Market?” said Cheung, already knowing the answer. Ivory nodded.

Cheung handed Ivory the small carved casket he had been tooling earlier. His expression was benign, yet made hideous by all the needles sticking out of his face.

The Tosa dogs snarled, sensing the gravity of the moment.

Ivory nodded, turned and departed.

Tuan hand-fed a toucan from his table in the Pleasure Garden and meditated on the little coffin that had just been delivered to him. He treated himself to an extra goblet of absinthe and waited for Ivory to arrive.

Ivory entered the room with no fanfare.

Tuan spoke first. “Real warlords made no such foolish rules as Cheung demands.”

“This was not a personal decision,” said Ivory, taking the seat across from the big man.

It was all smoke in any event, Tuan knew. “Real” warlords were rapists and plunderers, thugs and mercenaries risen to glory via massacre, whose idiom was the raid, not the bargaining table. Once they got legitimized, the rigors of politics almost always unseated them.

Ivory helped himself to the glass that had been put out for him. “Tell me about the rifle,” he said.

Tuan chuckled. “You already know about the rifle.”

“A very efficient weapon for its intended purpose,” said Ivory, who had examined the gun once it had been recovered from the Night Market. “But tampered with so as to be useless for that purpose. Why?”

“To even the odds,” said Tuan. “A last-minute change of heart. A perverse notion of fairness in combat.” He lifted his big hands to the air. “What does it really matter, now?”

“You supply the rifle,” said Ivory. “But you make sure the sights are skewed. You are still trying to play both sides against the middle, Tuan. Unwise, given your position in this scenario. It suggests that you would prepare to align yourself with whichever side emerged victorious. It should be clear to you that Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung is destined to rule New Shanghai. It is an inevitability, not a choice.”

“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.