Hunt Among the Killers of Men

Chapter 18

Gabriel riffled Qi’s first-aid supplies for saline with the thought he might be able to play alchemist and whip up a larger batch of the mystery drug from the eight cc’s he had remaining in the syringe. Mitch had lapsed into comfortable silence in the big iron tub, much akin to a heroin nod. Without a fresh application of the drug, the slamming headaches and disorientation would soon resurge, and without a medical facility at hand, Gabriel was trying his best to preload a stopgap.

All the supplies he and Qi had ferried back from her bartering excursion were still here, indicating that whatever had happened to Qi, she had not yet abandoned her stronghold. But of saline there was none. Gabriel gently set the precious syringe down under a protective protrusion of rock and turned his attention back to the big bronze statue.

He had gathered 200 feet of climbing rope in 50-foot coils, along with a basic climbing kit—a bandolier of base hooks, rock anchors, carabiners, pitons and spikes; a vertical harness, an array of belay and rappel geegaws, plus a couple of high-impact strap-lamps. Among his other tools and gear were a crate of chemicals in plastic bottles, and a few sticks of dynamite, this last courtesy of Qi’s armory.

“How’re you doing, Kangxi, old fella?” he said. “Still rotting away inside? Still got bats in your belfry?”

Those bats needed to tell Gabriel how they normally got out of the cave to hunt. He presumed a hole in the ceiling somewhere, fifty or sixty feet above the dung-fouled bowl of the floor.

Only once he’d found this secret could Gabriel put the Killers of Men to work on his behalf.

Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung spoke multilingually. Leftovers were handled by interpreters.

“I particularly wish to thank our brothers from Sechen Tong for attending,” he said. “It is their work in chemical engineering that will permit us shortly to commence worldwide distribution of our new narcotic, which we have elected to call ‘freon’ for short. General Zhang’s selfless work with the constabulary of the military police and affiliated forces has proven invaluable, and his men have proven to be compassionate and worthy.”

Zhang, in the dress uniform of his office, bowed slightly.

“As the West becomes more socialist, so do we inevitably become less communist,” continued Cheung. “It is a new century. It is the order of things.” He opened his fingers into a butterfly. “Information now flies freely through the very air. This in no way should be perceived as a threat.”

Mads Hellweg shuffled foot-to-foot, waiting to be congratulated for his supposedly equal role in the coming new order.

Qi’s hand drifted back toward her gun. Was it Cheung’s intention to bore them all with a banquet speech?

“I further wish to assure all of our most honored Tong brothers that your Japanese counterparts have been assuaged. I have taken independent action to ensure their noninvolvement. The ruffled feathers are eased.”

Hellweg narrowed his gaze. What?

Cheung was looking directly at him. “Your plot to disrupt was obvious and doomed,” he told Hellweg. Then with the air of someone bestowing a great boon, he handed the little wooden casket to Hellweg.

Ivory saw confusion mar Hellweg’s gaze. The man did not understand the meaning.

It became clear as Cheung unholstered the revolver on his belt and fired point-blank, not stopping until all six heavy-powder rounds were snugged deeply into Hellweg’s chest. The cacophony of report seemed to stop time itself.

Hellweg staggered backward without a word and fell with his legs in a figure-four. Gunsmoke grayed the air.

Everyone in the room was frozen in tableau, as though posing for a Renaissance painter.

Ivory’s crew had all drawn down on Hellweg’s bodyguards. Qi, following suit, had pulled her pistol and leveled it at the nearest subject most likely to preserve her disguise.

The uncertainty in the room was thicker than the drifting webs of gunsmoke. Half the other bodyguards had freed their weapons, but nobody dared to aim at Cheung. Ivory had a gun in each hand, pointed at two different men.

Nobody held as much import in that instant as General Zhang, whose hand had flown down to his sidearm. It hovered there, tentative as a hummingbird.

Cheung watched him. “If I have done wrong, General, then it is your duty to kill me right now.”

Zhang sought out Cheung’s eyes. Their communion was massive. He slowly withdrew his hand from his holster. Cheung smiled.

“You see? The General is with us.”

Ivory had to admire the sheer bravery on display, no matter how foolhardy it might have been. Cheung was showing the assembly the sort of leader he was. This was a public demonstration of his capacity to rule as well as a test of his personal magnetism. If he could swing Zhang, then he could swing the Tongs, and the traditionalists, too, especially since he had just coldly blown down another invading outsider. He’d still need to verify his true Chinese identity in the bloodline of older warlords, of course; there would be no winning over the hard core without that. But today’s events would go a long way toward silencing his critics.

Hellweg’s bodyguards were left dangling. Most of them were not aiming at anyone. They were gawping at their dead boss, now full of holes and slowly cooling on the cobblestoned floor. To a man, they were all hired Chinese muscle.

“We welcome you,” Cheung told them. “You were misguided, but now your minds have been set free. Ivory will see to your employment needs.”

Hellweg’s men took their cue and departed en masse with nervous shows of respect.

Call it charisma or call it power, Cheung ruled the room. His aspirations were not delusional, thought Ivory. This man could really do it, and he had just proven it.

It was that unmitigated show of power that had caused Qi to hesitate, just at the microsecond she should have been blowing Cheung’s brains all over the tapestry.

Now Ivory’s grip closed on her forearm from behind. His other hand already had her gun.

“You’re coming with me,” he said.

As though he had known all along it was her, Cheung gave a little nod and motioned his partners back to business.

Gabriel fired a round from the Navy Colt into the blackness of the cavern, and the bats all freaked out, taking wing.

He ducked down among the dung-encrusted impalement victims, these skeletal Killers of Men, to observe. He wore a hat borrowed from Qi’s stores and the rainfall of batshit, both dislodged and fresh, descending from on high spattered on its crown and brim. He tracked their nightwing pattern with a handheld million-candlepower spotlight.

There.

There, in the back curvature of the ceiling about sixty feet from the cave floor, was a geological rupture that resembled a scowling stone mouth. The bats were piling through it in a centrifugal pattern that indicated it was fairly large. Apparently it led to a switchback to the surface, presumably S-shaped, since that would account for the fact that it admitted no light to the cavern in daytime.

Gabriel roughed out the distance and calculated as best he could the location of the rift on the outside of the mountain. It would have to be on the eastern slope—the steepest and most overgrown side, from what he had seen.

The vent was funnel-shaped, with the wide end inside the cavern. He headed toward its opening, lugging his climbing gear behind him. It should be possible to arrange a mechanism that would lift him toward the opening…

Gabriel had no way of knowing that, as he worked out this problem in engineering, back in the city the Hellweg Tower—sometimes called the Tower of Flame—was already burning for real, a five-alarmer that froze traffic for miles and caused firefighters from four districts to be called in as reinforcements.

He knew nothing about this. He concentrated instead on the work he was doing. Even when it was done, he still had some repairs he wanted to make. So he needed to work hard and work fast and not be distracted.

So he shut out all thoughts and got to work. Only one thought made it past the barrier he’d erected, and it was a thought about Qi: Where the hell was she?

The monastery had stood since 247 A.D. on the out-skirts of Shanghai with the presence of centuries crushed upon centuries, witness to the rise and fall of monarchs and tyrants. Like Longhua Temple it was configured in a time-honored seven-hall structure. Bald monks in yellow robes glided phantomlike through halls appointed with intimidating idols while huge coils of incense smoldered like mutant beehives, rendering the air particulate and opiate.

Ivory had held Qi at gunpoint for more than an hour, all the way from Tuan’s funeral to this place, and she liked to think the stress fatigue of staying alert for her every twitch and gesture was beginning to tire him. They held fast in the First Hall while Ivory conferred with a man in monk’s robes.

“You bought off Buddhist monks?” said Qi.

“Pan Xiao is not a monk,” said Ivory.

Only then did Qi notice the baffled gun muzzle, barely visible, winking in and out of view beneath Pan Xiao’s robes as he moved. Some automatic equalizer on a shoulder sling, positioned for rapid deployment.

“Please,” Ivory said, indicating Qi should precede him along the corridor. He had to stay ready to shoot her at the first sign of misbehavior or trouble.

He directed her by lantern-light down narrow wooden stairs. They were about two floors beneath street level.

A warren of disused corridors led to a now-dormant fermentation room and abandoned wine cellar. After a few more twists and turns they came to what appeared to be a vault door, anomalous in its stainless-steel frame against the ancient stonework of the wall.

Qi anticipated some sort of dungeon, cell or holding area. When Ivory key-coded the door and opened it, she was frankly startled.

Ivory had brought modernity to this modest series of rooms in the form of electric lights, motion sensors, a security system and several computer monitors arranged on an old rolltop desk. Fish paddled about in a backlit 50-gallon aquarium and a small bonsai tree thrived under an expensive multiband growth light. The furnishings were all handworked wood, apparently antiques.

Sure this was some kind of trick, Qi said, “Your apartment is in the city.”

“My apartment is not my home,” said Ivory. “It is necessary for appearances. No one knows of this place.”

“Not even Cheung?”

Ivory pursed his lips slightly. He closed the big iron door, then showed Qi he was standing down with the gun. He would not wield a weapon in here, and he was trusting her to listen to whatever he had to say. This was implicit when he stated, “I could have let Cheung have you back at the funeral.”

Then, maddeningly, he began to make tea as though it was the most natural thing in the world, even turning his back on her once or twice.

“Have you ever suffered a crisis of faith?” he said.

“Not religious,” Qi said, slowly taking a seat in an armless, hardback “drawer chair.”

“That’s exactly what Michelle Quantrill told me when I asked her the same question. You two have much in common.”

“I never saw her before the Zongchang casino,” said Qi.

“Nevertheless.”

“Why am I here?” Qi asked. “Why didn’t you do your duty and kill me when you had the chance?”

“Because I am finding out that some things transcend duty,” said Ivory. “Or at least some duties transcend others.” He waved this rather significant confession away. “Your holy war is to kill Cheung. Yet despite multiple opportunities, you have not. My conclusion is that you are more interested in discrediting me through attrition. To avenge your status as a Nameless One.”

“Perhaps I’m just a lousy shot,” she said. They both knew it was not true.

“You were dealt with unfairly. Michelle Quantrill’s sister was dealt with unfairly. It is the way of things in Cheung’s vision of the world. But while I might be your adversary, I am not your enemy.”

“That sounds terrific,” said Qi. “But what does it mean?”

“You have heard the parable of the warrior of great honor,” said Ivory, serving them both tea in small hammered cups that were both exquisite and comfortably weighty. “He was obligated to a cruel and uncouth master. He discovered such honor as his can be a trap, a snare that tightens the more you struggle against it. The more he tried to serve his master honorably, the more obligated he became, and the more implicated in cruelty himself.”

“You have already betrayed Cheung by sparing me. He will not forgive this.”

“He might not,” acknowledged Ivory. “But I need to see you and this other woman clear of Shanghai. Then my obligations will be ended, and Cheung can take such measures as he will.”

“You are wrong,” said Qi, “that we two are the only ones you have wronged. You have involved this man Gabriel Hunt as well. The stain of your crisis of honor is spreading like a disease.”

“You are correct. If I kill you now, my obligation to Cheung is served, but I have dishonored myself. If I do not kill you, if I let you go free, you have sworn to slaughter the man to whom I owe loyalty. There can be no honor in that. Is there any solution?”

He took a sip of tea as though it was the last one of his life, then handed Qi his pistol.

“I leave the dilemma in your hands.”

Ivory resumed his seat. And waited.