Hunt Among the Killers of Men

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.”