Snakehead

I

It was after ten when she got back to Houston. The sky had cleared and the mercury fallen. The night air had a chill cutting edge to it as she crossed the car park and up the ramp into the lobby of the Holiday Inn. At reception they told her that Li was in room 735, and she rode the elevator up to the seventh floor. Her head felt full of fog. Nothing seemed clear to her any more. All the shapes and patterns of her life, which she had tried so hard these past twelve months to define with decision and clarity, were blurred and confused. She felt vulnerable and, worst of all, lonely. The safety and comfort she had hoped for at the Mendez ranch had vanished in a moment. And now there was only one avenue left open to her. But it was a road she had travelled before and found it led nowhere safe.

Li opened the door of his room and stood against the light, naked except for a pair of boxer shorts. He loomed over her, taller than she ever remembered him. The television was on in the background, his room filled with the smoke of many cigarettes.

‘Room service,’ she said.

He said, ‘I didn’t order anything.’

‘I read your mind.’

‘And what did you see there?’

‘Two people. A bed. Sex. Sleep.’

‘In that order?’

‘In any order you like.’

He pursed his lips and stood for a long time thinking. ‘I don’t have any change,’ he said.

She frowned. ‘What for?’

‘A tip.’

‘It’s a complementary service.’

‘In that case you’d better come in. I’ve never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth.’

She pushed the door shut behind them. ‘I’m not sure I like being called a horse.’

‘But you have such lovely fetlocks.’ He stooped to crook an arm behind her knees and lift her off her feet. She put her arms around his neck.

‘As long as you don’t feel the need to take a horsewhip to my hind quarters.’

He smiled. ‘Some women quite like that.’ He paused. ‘I’m told.’

‘Not by me. I’d be inclined to think it might spoil the ride.’

‘Or spur you on to greater things.’ He laid her on the bed and leaned over her, so that his breath brushed her face.

She grinned and slipped a hand inside his boxers. ‘That’s all the spur I need.’ And she closed her eyes and let a huge wave of sexual escape break over her. For a few minutes of exquisite pleasure she could be free of a life that was falling apart yet again. She felt his hands on her skin, his lips on her face, her breasts, and as he entered her, she flung her legs around his back and pulled him to her so tightly that she squeezed all of the air out of his lungs.

Afterwards, they lay for a long time in silence. The light of the television flickered in the darkness of the room, the canned laughter of a nonexistent studio audience modulating in time to the regulation thirty-second gags of some mediocre sitcom. Eventually, Li raised himself on an elbow and saw that Margaret’s face was wet with tears. He sat upright. ‘What’s wrong?’

She reached up and ran her fingers over his split lip, the bruising high on his cheek and around his left eye. ‘It’s just me,’ she said smiling sadly. ‘And life. I never seem to get the two things running in harmony.’ And she told him about Mendez. His abortive sexual advances. A sad and lonely only man, she said. And she told him how she was homeless now and unable to concentrate on her work, or on anything very much. She told him about the virus they had taken from Steve during autopsy. How it had used him to grow stronger, smarter. And she told him about her despair that there would ever be a way out of any of it.

He wiped the tears from her face with the flat of his hand. He had a great need to talk to someone, but she was too fragile right now to share his burden. So he held his peace and asked her about Xinxin and Xiao Ling.

Margaret shook her head. ‘Xinxin won’t speak to her, won’t even acknowledge that she’s there. And your sister isn’t making much of an effort to change that.’

He heard the disapproval in her voice, and his own despair welled up inside him. He lay down again beside her and dragged the top sheet over them both, and they fell back into silence. After a time he reached for the remote and switched off the TV. Outside, the sound of late night traffic on Main drifted up to the open window. He heard Margaret’s breathing slow and thicken and he turned over on to his side, pulling his legs up in the foetal position. He knew he wouldn’t sleep. There was too much going on in his head. And then he felt Margaret shifting in the bed beside him, and the warmth of her body as she turned to fit herself into the curve of his back, pulling her legs up behind his. An arm slipped through his, and her hand cupped itself around the curve of his chest. He felt her breath hot on his neck. He wished he could lie like this forever.

Her eyes flickered open and she saw the red glow of the digital bedside clock. It was 2.30 a.m. The sheet was twisted around her waist. She reached over to find the reassuring warmth of Li and found the bed beside her empty and cold. She rolled over, immediately awake, and the shadow of his absence was dense and dark. She sat up and saw the silhouette of a man standing against the net curtain at the window. He seemed to be staring out into the streetlit night. ‘Li Yan?’

The figure turned. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I couldn’t sleep.’

‘Come back to bed. I know how to make you sleep.’

She heard his smile. And the regret in his voice. ‘Too much on my mind. Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘You’ve never asked me before.’

‘We’re in America now. I feel self-conscious about it.’

She laughed. ‘Smoke, for God’s sake!’ He lit a cigarette and she said, ‘So what’s on your mind?’

‘Fear.’

‘What are you afraid of?’

‘I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to my sister when the ah kung’s little horses get to her. Which they will.’

She pulled her knees up to her chin. ‘She’s under armed police guard, Li Yan.’

She saw the shake of his head. ‘They’ll still get to her. These people never give up.’

‘But why?’

‘Because she can identify the ah kung. She has seen him, and he knows it.’

‘How does he know?’

‘Because I told him.’

Margaret stared at him hard in the darkness. She saw the end of his cigarette glow red as he drew on it, and then the shadow of the smoke against the window. She felt herself tensing. ‘You know who he is?’

He nodded. ‘I wasn’t certain. Until I made a phone call shortly before you showed up tonight.’

‘Who is he?’

Li snorted in the dark. ‘A man of impeccable reputation. Chairman of the Houston-Hong Kong Bank, board member of the Astros baseball team, elected member of Houston City Council.’

‘Soong?’ Margaret said, incredulous. ‘The guy you met at the stadium yesterday?’ She saw him nod his acknowledgement. ‘How do you know?’

‘Wang’s diary spoke of the ah kung’s nickname. Kat. The Cantonese word for “tangerine”, a Chinese symbol of good fortune. Soong wears a ring with the character for “tangerine” engraved in amber — amber the colour of tangerine. It is a very old ring, and the engraving is almost worn away. You can’t see it with the naked eye. When I asked to run my thumb over it, he must have been gambling on my not being able to feel it either. But it was there, and I could read it with my skin as clearly as if I could see it. Kat.’

She watched him smoke in silence, running everything he had told her through her mind. Finally she said, ‘If “tangerine” is a universal Chinese symbol for good fortune, then it could be coincidence. There could be hundreds, maybe thousands, even millions of people wearing jewellery engraved with that character.’

‘That’s what I told myself,’ Li said. ‘Then it occurred to me that it was such a big, ostentatious ring, that no woman he had slept with could have failed to notice it.’ He moved toward the bed to stub his cigarette out in the ashtray and sat down on the edge of the mattress. ‘That’s how Xiao Ling knows him. She was a gift to him while she was working as a hostess at the Golden Mountain Club. When I called her, she remembered the ring quite clearly.’

‘Arrest him,’ Margaret said.

Li laughed. ‘And charge him with what? Wearing a ring? Your law enforcement people would laugh me out of the country.’

‘At least you know where to start looking.’

He gasped his frustration. ‘Margaret, a man like that will have been meticulous in covering his tracks. It could take months of investigation, and we might still find nothing. Meantime, all he has to do is get rid of my sister and we won’t even have someone to say they heard him called Kat.’

‘He’s bound to make a mistake, Li Yan. Sometime. Somewhere.’

Li waggled his head. ‘People like Soong don’t make mistakes, Margaret. That’s why they don’t get caught.’

‘Everyone makes mistakes,’ Margaret said. ‘Otherwise you and I would be out of a job.’

The long single ring of the telephone startled them. Li looked at the phone and it rang again, but he made no attempt to answer it.

‘It’s not for me,’ Margaret said. ‘No one knows I’m here.’

Li picked it up on the third ring. Soong’s voice was barely a whisper, scratchy and tight with tension. His Mandarin, despite his previous protestations, was fluent. ‘You know who this is?’

Li said, ‘Yuh.’

‘I know who the ah kung is,’ he said.

Li heard the blood rushing in his ears. ‘Who?’

‘I can’t tell you on the phone. And the minute I do we’ll both be in danger.’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘A meeting.’

‘When?’

‘Now.’

Li glanced at Margaret. Her face reflected the pale light from the window. She was frowning. ‘Where?’ he said.

‘My suite at the stadium. I’ll leave the side door unlocked. Come straight up. And in the name of the sky, don’t tell anyone.’

A click sounded in Li’s ear and the line went dead. Slowly he replaced the receiver and sat lost in thought for more than a minute.

‘Li Yan?’ Margaret put a hand on his shoulder.

He turned. ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘He just made a mistake.’

He relayed the conversation to her and she said, ‘But you’re not actually going?’

‘Of course.’

‘For God’s sake, Li Yan, it’s a trap. Surely you must see that? It would be madness to go on your own.’

He said, ‘So I get the full weight of the task force behind me and we storm the stadium. Then what? There’s still no proof against him. No evidence of anything. He’s so careful, he didn’t even say his name on the phone.’ He stood up. ‘The only way I’m going to get him is to let him play his hand. Compound the mistake.’

In a sullen silence, Margaret watched him dress. She knew there was no point in trying to make him change his mind. She had known him long enough to know what an exercise in futility that would be. When he stooped to brush her cheek with his lips, she whispered, ‘Be careful.’ And the moment he was out of the door, she snatched her purse and retrieved the list of telephone numbers sent to her by FEMA. She switched on the bedside light and ran her fingers down the names until she found the number of Fuller’s cellphone. She snatched the phone and punched it in.

II

There was nothing moving along Texas when Li got there. The grounds of the Annunciation Catholic Church lay brooding in silent darkness on the south side of Minute Maid Park. East on Texas, the lights of an occasional vehicle on the freeway raked across the flyover. On Crawford nothing stirred. No sound, no light, no movement. Houston was a city without a heart. No one lived at its centre. When the shops and offices closed for the day, and the last fan had left the stadium, it was a dead place. Empty. Even of muggers, for there was no one to mug.

Still, Li felt conspicuous as he drifted quickly under bleaching street lights, wondering if hidden eyes were watching his approach. The core of him was stiff with tension, but he forced his body to relax so that he could move freely. He hurried past the metered parking slots below the towering south wall of the stadium, under the ornamental canopies over the windows of the official Astros shop, to the double glass doors that opened on to the wide sweep of stairs that led from club level up to the private suites. He pushed each in turn. The left door opened and he slipped inside.

Light from the street fell in through tall windows on each level and lay in rectangles across the green-carpeted stairway. Li went up the steps two at a time to the suite level. On the landing he stopped and listened, straining to hear anything above the rasp of his own breath and the hammering of his heart. Three openings down, he saw a crack of light under the door to Soong’s suite. There was no sound. He looked along the dark, carpeted curve of the concourse and decided to make his approach from another angle. He slipped past Soong’s suite and fell into a long, loping jog through the food hall, past the Whistle Stop bar, which sold libations to the wealthy, past the panorama of windows that looked out on to the night-cloaked field. There was very little light out there. The sky had cleared, though it was studded with stars, for there was no moon. Through a swing door at the end, he found himself on the concrete staircase that Soong had brought them up the previous day. Arched windows on the landing threw light from the street across the stairs as he hurried down to ground level. Hanging signs pointed along the colonnaded walkway beneath the train to sections 100–104. Li plunged into its darkness and ran past the arched openings, beyond the Home Run Pump — a mock Conoco gas pump that lit up when the Astros struck gold — to the far concourse beneath giant billboards advertising Coca-Cola, Miller Lite, UPS. Behind floor-to-ceiling glass, the tables of Ruggles restaurant were pooled in darkness.

Li stopped and looked back across the field, and saw the solitary light shining in Soong’s suite, like one gold tooth in a mouth of blackened stumps. Its light tumbled feebly across the seats below and lay in a faint slab on the grass. A light above the elevators at the far side of the concourse told him that they were still powered. He rode up to the next level and made his way beneath the giant scoreboard to the seating at the far side of the stadium. He jumped up and caught the rail dividing the suite level from the one below and swung himself upwards, hooking a leg over the top rail and pulling himself up behind it. He was on a level again with the light from Soong’s suite but still had the length of the stadium to traverse. He broke into a jog again, following the concrete behind the seats and then vaulting the dividing rails that split the east side into sections at regular intervals.

Now just two suites away from the light spilling out into darkness, he stopped to catch his breath and listen again, his face shining with sweat. He caught the faint sound of a voice through glass, and very carefully approached the windows of Soong’s suite. Below he could see, in the palest of lights, the geometry of the baseball field, the pitcher’s mound like a moon orbiting the batter’s circle, the grass diamond delineated by red blaize that looked from here as black as tar. He listened hard. There was not even the faintest echo of bat on ball or of chanting fans. The stadium was only a handful of seasons old. If there were ghosts here, they would be the ghosts of trains, of porters and passengers, drivers and linemen. But there was nothing. Just the muffled sound of Soong’s voice. Li manoeuvred himself into a position that let him see in without being seen himself. Soong was talking animatedly on the telephone, but Li couldn’t make out what he was saying. Soong hung up and lit a cigarette. The ashtray on the table was full to overflowing. The room was thick with smoke, like smog. Soong began pacing, and then suddenly he stopped and looked right at Li. Li froze, and for a moment felt trapped in the gaze of the ah kung. Then he realised that from the inside all Soong could see was a reflection of himself. He was looking at himself in the glass. Gone were the jeans and the baseball jacket. He wore a sombre blue suit, starched white shirt and red tie. This was serious business. Li wondered if he was impressed by what he saw. As Soong raised his cigarette to his mouth with his left hand, he saw his ring reflected in the window, and he paused, with his hand at his face, to run the fingers of his right hand over the faded etching in the fossilised resin that was the amber stone. A small vanity had betrayed a larger vice.

Li stepped forward and slid the door open, taking some pleasure from the fear that blanched Soong’s face and made him turn, startled, with a small cry.

Smoke swept past Li, drawn out by the chill night and sucked into the void. He raised his eyebrows in an expression of surprise. ‘I thought you were expecting me.’

Soong recovered his composure quickly. ‘Of course.’ He smiled. ‘But not by the tradesman’s entrance.’ It was a quick-thinking put-down, designed to re-establish his position of power. He turned to the table and lifted a black rectangular box about the size of a TV remote. It had a loop of chrome at one end, and looked like the kind of wand security men employ at airports to detect metal. ‘You don’t mind if I check you for wires.’ It wasn’t a question.

Li shrugged, and Soong quickly ran the wand over him from head to foot, front to back. Satisfied that he was clean, Soong dropped it back on the table and said, ‘Smart man. Maybe we can get down to business now.’

Li said, ‘You were going to tell me who the ah kung is. The one they call Kat.’

Soong smiled. ‘I don’t really need to do that, Mr. Li, do I?’ Li canted his head and shrugged his eyebrows and Soong added, ‘But, you know, I’m not the monster you think I am.’

‘You have no idea what I think, Soong.’

‘Oh, I could have a pretty good guess. I’m sure you’re thinking how you would love to get me in an interrogation room back in Beijing, stick me with a cattle prod, deprive me of sleep. And you’re probably wondering how it was with me and your sister. When I fucked her. You know, that night at the Golden Mountain Club.’ It was a deliberate and spiteful provocation, Soong testing his power, pushing Li to the limit, wondering perhaps just how far he could go. ‘Well, she was just another whore.’

With a composure that he didn’t feel, Li said, ‘And you were just another trick.’ He scratched his chin thoughtfully, trying to recall her exact words. ‘What was it she said…? Short and fat, with a big belly and bad breath. They get on top of you and hump for a couple of minutes and then they’re all spent. It’s hard to tell who you’re with. Sound about right?’

Soong glared at him. He was vulnerable on vanity. ‘I offer our people the chance of a better life,’ he said in a voice that barely concealed his anger. ‘Hope, not hardship, Mr. Li. Dollars, not deprivation. In China they have no freedom. In America at least they can dream.’

‘You’re a real philanthropist,’ Li said.

Soong bristled. ‘No, I’m a businessman. Nothing in life is free And, of course, there is a price to pay. But I enable them to pay it. I lend money to the families in China so they can make down payments to send their loved ones to Meiguo—to the Beautiful Country. When they get here, I find them jobs so that they can pay off the debts and pay up the balance. I make it possible for them to send money home to their families in Fujian. And I am much more efficient at it than the Bank of China.’ He snorted his derision. ‘They take three weeks to send cash. Their exchange rates are terrible, and they will only deal in yuan. My rates are as good as any you can find in America, I deliver the money in a matter of hours, and always in dollars.’

‘What a hero,’ Li said. ‘If you were a Catholic they’d make you a saint.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘And I suppose the sixty thousand dollars you charge is just to cover expenses.’

‘It is an expensive business, transporting people halfway across the world, providing papers, accommodation, bribing officials. But, of course, I make a profit. It is the business I am in.’

‘The exploitation business,’ Li said. ‘Charging poor people more money than they could dream of in a lifetime to come to America and be forced into slave labour. An only slightly more sophisticated version of what the British did to the Africans two hundred years ago.’

Soong was losing patience. ‘There is no point in debating the issue with you, Li. You will never be convinced. But every single Chinese I bring into this country has the chance to work his way to freedom.’

‘In brothels and gambling dens?’ Li had a vivid picture in his head of his sister, tears streaming down her face, as she sat in the interview room at the Holliday Unit, and he took a long pull at his cigarette to try to keep his anger battened down.

Soong hissed his frustration. ‘I never pretended it was easy,’ he snapped. ‘I travelled the same road myself, and look where I am now. I don’t know many who would exchange their shot at the American Dream for life under the Communists.’ He stabbed a finger in Li’s direction. ‘And as for your precious Chinese government, their attempts at stopping illegal immigration are a joke. Hah! I’ve seen the posters in Fujian myself. WE MUST INTENSIFY OUR EFFORTS IN STOPPING THE PATHOLOGIC SOCIAL TREND OF IRREGULAR IMMIGRATION. And…ATTACK THE SNAKEHEADS, DESTROY THE SNAKEPITS, PUNISH THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. It’s pathetic!’ Pinpoints of light burned deep in his black eyes. ‘The truth is, Beijing wants them to go. There are too many people already in China, and too few jobs. And once they are here, all those illegal immigrants send money home. They inject millions into the local economy of Fujian. An economy that would probably collapse without them.’ Tiny specks of spittle were gathering around the corners of his mouth. ‘The snakeheads are the people’s friends.’

‘Shutting the air vents in that truck and murdering ninety-eight people wasn’t very friendly,’ Li said.

Soong’s face coloured. ‘That was an accident. The vent got closed by mistake. It was a terrible thing.’

‘Yeah, it cost you six million dollars.’

‘Actually,’ Soong looked at him very directly and said levelly, ‘it was more than that. I have already ordered that every penny paid to send these poor people to America be paid back to the bereaved families.’

‘I’m sure that will more than compensate for their loss,’ Li said.

Soong almost flinched from the acid in his tone. ‘I didn’t like you the first time I met you, Li,’ he said. ‘And you’re not doing anything to change my first impressions.’ He paused to take a deep breath and steady himself. ‘It gave me nothing but pain to see my fellow countrymen die like that.’

Li leaned forward to stub out his cigarette. ‘Is that why you’re injecting them with a lethal virus?’ He saw Soong’s jaw clench, and the skin darken around his eyes.

‘That,’ Soong said, in a low, dangerous voice, ‘was nothing to do with us.’ He paused for a long time, then he said, ‘About six months ago we subcontracted the final leg of the journey — the border crossing — to a well-establish gang from Colombia. They had been bringing drugs into the United States successfully for decades. They knew all the routes, every trick. And their success rate has been 30 percent higher than ours.’

Li frowned. ‘Why would Colombian drug smugglers want to bring in illegal Chinese?’

‘Because the money’s just as good, but the risks are a lot lower,’ Soong said. ‘The penalties handed out by courts in the US for people smuggling are much lighter than they are for drugs.’

‘So why were they injecting them with the flu virus?’

Soong shook his head grimly. ‘We have no idea. We made contact with them immediately after our meeting with you yesterday. Of course they denied it, but then they would, wouldn’t they?’ He walked toward the window and gazed at his own reflection for a moment. ‘But we’ll find out,’ he said. ‘We owe them around ten million dollars. As of today I have put a stop on all payments.’ He turned and smiled at Li. ‘We may be about to witness the first ever Chinese-Colombian war. One way or another we’ll come up with answers and put a stop to it.’

Li said, ‘And how are you going to stop me having you arrested?’

Soong laughed in his face. ‘You can’t have me arrested, Li. You have no evidence. Not a scrap. And I am a respectable citizen, a democratically elected member of the city council.’

Li started to circle the table, Soong watching carefully his every step. ‘Tell me how you managed to keep your identity a secret for so long, Soong,’ Li said.

Soong shrugged. ‘Quite simple. When you employ so many people in so many different countries, you never deal directly with any of them. Everything is delegated. So there are only a handful of people who know my real identity, and they are all making far too much money to betray me.’

‘So what am I doing here?’

‘You’re here to be bribed, Mr. Li. To put your tail between your legs and fuck off back to where you came from. And take your sister with you. That way you both get to live long and happy lives.’

‘No one walking around with a killer virus in their genes is going to live a long and happy life,’ Li said.

Soong waved his hand dismissively. ‘Like I said, I’m not going to debate this with you. Name your price.’

Li said, ‘You can’t count that high.’

Soong let his double chin sink on to his chest, a smile on his thick lips. He gave a gentle shake of his head. ‘Why did I just know you were going to be one of those?’ he asked. Then he lifted his head and said brightly, ‘I’ll tell you why. Because my whole organisation operates on the basis that people everywhere are corruptible. And they are. From high and low-ranking officials in the Chinese bureaucracy, to immigration and law enforcement officials across the world. Almost everyone has his price. I say “almost”, because there are always the exceptions. The ones who think they know better, or think they are better. Losers. People with a gift for dying young. You develop an instinct for them.’

‘What a fine judge of character you are,’ Li said.

Soong searched Li’s face to find in it a reflection of the irony in his voice. But his expression was blank. There was something infuriatingly superior about him, and it was getting under Soong’s skin. He said, ‘It is for occasions just such as these that I took out my own insurance policy right here in the United States. In spite of what Congress might like to tell the world, officials in Meiguo are just as corruptible as they are in the People’s Republic.’

His eyes lifted beyond Li toward the door, and Li cursed his lapse in concentration. He felt, more than heard, the movement behind him, and turned as the door swung open. His stomach lurched as he saw Margaret standing in the doorway, bloodless and scared. Perception followed a split second after incomprehension, but in that tiny fraction of time he felt as if the eight pints of blood coursing through his veins had turned to ice. And then he saw the gun at her head and, as she moved out of the shadow, the tense face of Fuller immediately behind her. ‘Damn you, Li,’ the FBI agent hissed. ‘I knew you were going to be trouble.’ He glanced nervously at Soong. ‘Just as well the bitch called me, or she’d have been a witness to your phone call.’

Soong grinned. ‘It was easy keeping him talking. He was eager listener.’ And he turned smiling eyes on Li as if to try to underline his superiority while undermining Li’s.

Fuller pushed Margaret into the room. He had her hair held in a tight bunch in his fist at the back of her head, his gun pressed to her skull just above the ear. ‘What now?’ His eyes were glassy and unfocused, a reflection of his uncertainty.

Li exhaled deeply, thoughts tumbling through his mind like a waterfall, but any clarity obscured by the spray. ‘Change of circumstances,’ he said, turning to Soong. ‘We could discuss your offer now.’

‘Too late,’ Soong said. ‘I couldn’t trust you. You’ve already played your hand. And, like you said, I’m a fine judge of character.’

‘For Christ’s sake speak English,’ Fuller said edgily. Li glanced at him and knew that his fear made him even more dangerous.

‘We were discussing the terms of a bribe,’ he said.

Fuller flicked darting eyes toward Soong who gave the slightest shake of his head.

Margaret was watching him closely. She said in as strong a voice as she could muster, ‘You don’t want to kill us in here, Mr. Soong. You’d leave too many traces. Blood is very hard to get out of a carpet.’

Soong nodded. ‘This true. Maybe more fun to shoot you in head down on field. Chinese-style execution.’ He smiled at Li. ‘That how you do it in PRC, yes?’

But Fuller wasn’t playing. ‘No games, Soong. Let’s just take them somewhere safe and get this over with.’

‘And if we refuse to go?’ Margaret asked.

‘Then I’ll fucking shoot you where you stand,’ Fuller said. ‘I think Mr. Soong can afford to replace the carpet.’

‘I’m sure Mr. Soong can afford lots of things.’ The voice came out of left field, taking them all by surprise. Hrycyk stood in the shadow of the door, his gun pointing directly at Fuller. ‘I’m sure he can afford to pay lawyers to keep him on Death Row for ten years. But this is Texas. We’ll still juice him in the end.’ He nodded toward the FBI agent. ‘Why don’t you just lay that gun on the table, Agent Fuller?’ He let a tiny jet of air escape from between discoloured front teeth. ‘Fucking FBI!’

Fuller swung toward Hrycyk, pulling Margaret in front of him, and fired toward the INS man. Hrycyk spun away against a panel of switches on the wall, a bullet spitting from his gun. Margaret saw blood running on varnished wood before the lights went out. But she had no time to think about it before all the air was knocked from her lungs as Li piled into both her and Fuller, smashing them against the wall. The three of them fell in a tangle to the floor. Margaret was trapped between the two of them, wriggling to get free. And then her head was filled with light and a crashing pain as Fuller’s foot made contact with her skull. She gasped, and felt the power ebbing from her limbs. She went limp, a dead weight on top of Li, but still vaguely conscious. She was aware of Li pushing her aside and clambering to his feet. In a moment the light came on again, and Li was crouching beside her, helping her to sit up.

‘I’m okay, I’m okay,’ she heard herself saying, and she looked around the room, which was burning out in her head in the sudden light. Soong was lying bleeding profusely on to his carpet from a wound high up in his thigh. He was clutching his leg and whimpering in fear and pain. Hrycyk was on his feet again, leaning against the door by the light switches, blood oozing through the fingers of a hand clutching his upper right arm.

‘Sonofabitch, sonofabitch!’ he kept saying.

There was no sign of Fuller. Fear stabbed jaggedly into Margaret’s consciousness. She struggled to her knees. ‘Where is he? Where’s Fuller?’

Li jerked his head toward the sliding glass door. ‘Out there somewhere.’ And even as he said it, they heard him clattering across plastic seats in the dark.

Hrycyk held out his gun toward Li. ‘Go get him.’

Li hesitated. He glanced at Margaret. ‘I’m fine,’ she said.

‘Jesus Christ, go!’ Hrycyk screamed.

Li stood up, took the gun from his outstretched hand, and then slipped out into the darkness of the stadium.

Margaret sat gasping on the floor. She had a hammering headache now. Hrycyk stood in the doorway, breathing stertorously. Soong was still whimpering and bleeding on the carpet. Margaret struggled to her feet and crossed to Hrycyk. Without a word she took his hand away from his arm and peeled off his jacket. He let her tear away the sleeve of his shirt without protest, keeping his eyes averted. He didn’t even want to look at the wound. He heard Margaret gasp derisively.

‘What a baby,’ she said. ‘It’s just a scratch.’ She pulled a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘Is this clean?’ He nodded, and she used it to make a pad to place over the gouge that Fuller’s bullet had taken out of the flesh of his upper arm. She tied it on with shreds of his shirt sleeve, ignoring his grunts of pain as she pulled the knots tight. ‘That’ll do until we can get you some proper treatment.’

The sound of a shot ringing around the stadium startled them. Hrycyk said, ‘Li’s going to need some light out there.’ He switched off the lights in the suite and took her out on to the terrace. Silhouetted against the Houston skyline beyond, they could just see the outline of the replica locomotive sitting halfway along the tracks. ‘Far end of those tracks,’ Hrycyk said, ‘there’s a small control room where they turn on the floodlights. Guy did it when we were here yesterday and they was closing the roof.’

Margaret looked at him. ‘Why are you telling me?’

‘Because you’re going to have to turn them on.’

Margaret shook her head, panic setting in. ‘I don’t know how to get down there.’

‘Neither do I,’ Hrycyk said. ‘But you’re in better shape to do it than me.’

Margaret glanced back at the shadow of Soong on the floor, a dark pool spreading in the carpet around him. ‘What about him? He could bleed to death.’

‘Like I give a damn,’ Hrycyk said. ‘Anyway, I know how to tie a tourniquet. So tight he’ll squeal like a stuck fucking pig.’

She retraced Li’s footsteps of less than thirty minutes before, running along the carpeted concourse on suite level, past the Whistle Stop bar and the food hall. She stopped briefly to press her face against the glass and peer out through the darkness of the stadium to try to get her bearings. The locomotive track ran off at right angles from the left, at least one level down. A smeared impression of her features remained on the glass as she ran on to the end of the hall and out on to the landing. Another window, twice her height, looked directly onto the track below. She found herself looking along its length, beyond the locomotive huddled darkly halfway down, to the tiny control booth at the foot of glazed scaffolding that rose two hundred feet up into the roof at the far side of the ground. She wondered why she could see it so clearly and for a moment thought that someone somewhere must have turned on a light. Then she saw that the moon had risen over the east side of the stadium, full and clear, casting its silvered glow brightly across the field of play. By contrast, the seats along the east wing were thrown into deep, dark shadow.

As she ran down the concrete steps to the level below, she heard another gunshot. It cracked in the stillness like a dry twig underfoot. Margaret stopped and listened. But there was nothing else to hear.

Facing her, on the next level, was a door with a narrow glass panel. On the wall next to it was a sign which read: ROOF ACCESS. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Margaret ran to the door and peered through its tiny window. It opened onto the top of the colonnaded corridor that supported the superstructure upon which both the locomotive and the stadium roof supports ran on different lengths of rail. She pulled the handle, and to her surprise the door opened. The cold night air exploded in her lungs and made her head ache even more. The pain came in pulses, with the pounding of her heart. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears.

To her left, several storeys of red brick administration building rose above her. Straight ahead, the green-painted steel superstructure that bore the weight of the locomotive. She ran along the concrete beneath it, her head level with the rail line, and found herself suddenly bathed in moonlight, the stadium laid out below her on one side, the street thirty feet down on the other. The locomotive, which had appeared almost like a toy from a distance, loomed directly overhead, huge and forbidding. She ducked under the rail line and scanned the seats around the ground. At first she saw nothing at all in the shadow. And then a movement caught her eye away to her right, high up near the far roof. She saw a figure running between rows of seats but couldn’t tell who it was. And then, perhaps forty feet below, on another level, another figure climbing up over the tiers, trying to reach the staircase that would lead him higher and on to the same level as the other man. He was clearly in pursuit. It had to be Li. In a moment, they would both come out of the shadow and into the full glare of the moon.

Margaret didn’t wait to watch. She slipped back under the rail line and sprinted for the control capsule at the far end. It was shaped like a lozenge standing on end, with windows curving round on each side. A short metal staircase on the right led up to a tiny railed landing. The door gave way at the push of her hand, folding in the centre and opening in. Inside, lit by the moon, was a bewildering array of levers and switches on a console built into the forward curve. Margaret stared at it, panic rising in her throat, half choking her. She gasped for breath, caught it, and then began throwing every lever and switch she could reach. She felt the deep vibration and growl of a motor springing to life somewhere beneath her, and the control capsule suddenly jerked forward. Margaret lost her balance and fell backwards, clutching at air. The back of her head hit something solid and very hard and was filled with a blinding light. And then blackness.

Li was still in the shadow of the east stand when he saw Fuller emerge into the moonlight. Somehow he had managed to get himself on to the top level, above the suites, where the seating rose up in breathtakingly steep tiers to the roof. Li would have to get back inside and up the internal staircase.

At first, Fuller had headed north, toward the huge electronic scoreboard, scrambling loudly across the seats. Li had been able to follow the noise. And then almost on a level with the Miller Lite billboard, he had caught sight of him for the first time. Fuller had seen him, too, and fired on him, wildly wide of the mark. But it had forced Li to go more carefully. And then he lost sight of him again, and for several minutes heard nothing, fearing that somehow Fuller had found a way out of the stadium. That was when a single shot shattered the plastic seat to his right, and he had looked straight up to see the grim determination on Fuller’s face as he leaned over the rail above him, gun poised for a second shot. Li threw himself into the shadow of the overhang, landing awkwardly and winding himself in the process. He lay curled up for a good thirty seconds, gasping for breath and thinking he was going to vomit. And in those stricken moments, he heard Fuller moving away on the upper level, crashing over seating and heading back for the south end of the stadium. Even in his distress Li figured that Fuller had probably parked out on Texas, and that that’s where he would want to exit the stadium.

Now he ran up stairs to a door that took him inside to club level. He shook his head and wiped away the sweat that was running into his eyes. He paused for a moment to recapture the breath that rasped in his chest, and he cursed the day he had been tempted to take up smoking again. Hrycyk’s gun was slippery in his hands as he reached the internal staircase. He stopped to wipe his palms on the seat of his pants, and then forced himself to climb the two flights two steps at a time. When he reached the top landing, his whole body was shaking. However much oxygen he sucked in it wasn’t enough. His legs were about ready to buckle under him. He pushed open double doors and emerged into brilliant moonlight, teetering momentarily on the edge of a staircase that dropped away in front of him at an impossibly acute angle. The field was a long way below, and he wondered, incongruously, what kind of view you would get of the game from here. The players, surely, would be absurdly small, the ball impossible to follow. And yet there were at least another twenty rows of seats piled up behind him.

He scanned the rows of empty seats above, stretching away in a wide sweep to his left and into shadow. There was no sign of Fuller anywhere. And suddenly everything was plunged back into darkness. A large cloud, sailing on the back of the chill night breeze, had blotted out the moon. Li was aware of a strange, distant humming, but had no time to figure out what it was before he saw the dark shape of a man rising up on the edge of the roof forty feet above. He felt the bullet whistle past his ear, before he heard the crack of the gun. And then he saw Fuller fall, hitting the corrugated roof with a smack. The FBI agent grunted as the air was knocked from him, and then cried out in helpless fury as his gun went skidding from his hand and clattering off into oblivion. Li heard the scrape of metal on metal as it went sliding away across the roof and knew it was safe, for the first time, to move freely in the open.

He dragged weary legs up the final flight of steps to the point where mesh fencing stretched across tubular steel sealed off the top of the stand from the roof. He could see from the distortion of the mesh that this was where Fuller had climbed up before him. Tucking his gun in his belt, he pulled himself up, hand over hand, fingers slotting through mesh, until he was able to grasp the lip of the roof and swing himself on to the corrugated outer shell of it.

Slowly, he straightened up, careful to maintain his balance. It was breezy up here, and he felt the wind whipping around his legs. The roof rose in front of him at a steep angle and fell away to his left. The field was more than two hundred feet below him now, the diamond tiny and insignificant. The towering skyline of downtown seemed just a touch away, and he was scared to look down toward the freeway in case he canted toward it and fell to his death.

At the apex of the roof, another fifteen feet above him, Fuller crouched on all fours, too terrified apparently to move.

‘Give it up, Fuller,’ Li shouted. ‘Come down.’

Fuller shook his head mutely.

Li cursed inwardly and dropped on to all fours himself. He had never been good with heights. He crawled up the lip of the roof toward the FBI agent, not quite sure what he was going to do when he got there. He stopped about five feet short of him and could hear his breathing, see the panic in his eyes. They were both drenched in sweat. For an eternity they stared at each other; hostility, fear, all wrapped up together along with a heightened sense of vulnerability. Li felt like he was clinging to the edge of the world.

Fuller sprang at him like a cat, with an almost animal growl. There was madness in his eyes. Li was completely unprepared, and felt himself slipping over the edge as he tried desperately to get out of the way. Fuller’s elbow caught him in the face and he felt blood in his mouth. His fingers slid across the corrugated metal like fish on ice. He felt his nails tearing as he tried to dig in. But it was hopeless. There was no way he could stop himself. And then he felt himself tipping backwards into space and knew that his body would be shattered by the rows of seating that waited for him like so many teeth a hundred and fifty feet below.

But he fell no more than a handful of feet before hitting hard, riveted metal. Something unrelenting and sharp cut his cheek. He barely had time to realise that he had fallen into the cradle that held the floodlights when he became aware of Fuller jumping in beside him, stooping quickly to pull the gun out of his belt. Li made a feeble attempt to stop him, a hand clutching at nothing. Fuller climbed on top of the gantry, straddling the struts immediately above Li’s prone form and pointed the gun down at him. There was a strange, manic smile on his face. A man who had pushed himself so close to death, felt its breath in his face, that he knew now he was invincible.

Li accepted death then. Accepted its inevitability. And with that acceptance came the startling revelation that nothing in life really mattered much after all. All the pain and fear, the blood, sweat and tears, hopes and ambitions. They all came to this. Death. An end. How pointless it all had been. Margaret, Xiao Ling, Xinxin. And fleetingly he wondered if there really was life after death. If, perhaps, he would meet his uncle again, have one more chance to beat him at chess. Or, maybe, as many chances as exist in eternity. He almost laughed. Laughter close to tears.

A blinding light filled his world. An excruciating pain in his head. He had often wondered what it would feel like to die. But he had not expected the pain. He blinked fiercely and saw Fuller still standing over him, an arm shielding his eyes. He felt the heat of the lamps next to his head, and realised that someone had turned on the floodlights. But still he did not seem able to move. Fuller drew his arm away from his eyes and looked down at Li again, startled, discomposed. And beyond him, Li saw a shadow passing over, huge and dark. Fuller sensed it, too, and looked round as nine thousand tons of retractable steel roof swept him off the gantry and locked into place, crushing him against the fixed girders of the south stand. Li felt warm blood wash across his face, and for a moment the floodlights turned crimson.

Margaret stood on the steps of the control cabin looking up through bullet-proof glass, green-painted beams and struts soaring into the sky above her, and understood that somehow she had managed to close the roof.

When pain and consciousness had seeped slowly back into her head, she had realised that the control capsule, at the base of the outer roof struts, had travelled along a hundred metres of track, back toward the south stand, and come to a standstill against a concrete buffer. The huge, supporting wall of steel and glass that held up the inner section of roof on her left was still gliding past. Disoriented, and fighting an urge simply to close her eyes and drift away again, she had dragged herself to her feet, without any real idea of how long she had been out. It was then she had seen, clearly marked, the panel of switches for operating the floodlights. She cursed herself for having allowed panic to blind her earlier. She threw the switches and saw the stadium snap into sharp relief, the green of the field, the red of the blaize, vivid and unreal. For a moment she had been dazzled, and then the deep vibration that came up through the floor beneath her had stopped as the glass wall on her left shuddered to a halt.

She left the capsule and hurried down the steps, running along the concrete to the door that would lead her back into the stairwell. Below her she saw uniformed and plainclothes officers fanning out across the field, and became aware for the first time of the wailing sirens that filled the night. Each jarring step filled her mind with pain, and somewhere at the back of it, struggling for conscious space, was a large, prickly ball of fear. What had happened to Li?

On the stairs she heard the boots of police officers hammering up from the level below. She turned and ran up the next flight, past the suite level to the upper concourse, and out onto the terraces of seating where she had last seen Fuller heading. The whole stadium was laid out beneath her, brightly lit under the dazzle of floodlights, empty rows of dark green seats stretching away on all sides. A noise behind her made her turn, and she saw the bloody spectre of a man staggering down the steps toward her. It took a moment for her to realise that it was Li, and she let out a tiny gasp of horror. He reached the step above her and stopped, dark eyes staring out from his crimson mask. She could see no visible wound, and the blood was drying rust red on him already. His legs folded beneath him, and he sat down hard on the concrete steps, fumbling for his cigarettes. He pulled a crushed one from the pack and lit it.

‘Where’s Fuller?’ she asked in a small voice.

He took several pulls on his cigarette before blowing the smoke from his lungs. He looked up at her and said grimly, ‘He’s dead.’

III

It was a perfect morning. The sky was a clear, pale blue. Dew lay white on the grass of Sam Houston Park. The long shadows of downtown skyscrapers reached across the tiny patch of parkland like dark protective fingers. The sun peeped between the glass and concrete structures, flashing off windows, lying in long yellow strips. A mist rose off the pond like smoke, sunlight playing in the water of the fountain. A chatter of early morning birds flew screeching playfully between the spars of the old red-roofed bandstand that stood dwarfed and incongruous in the centre of the meadow.

They walked beneath the wet, shiny leaves of dripping trees, and Margaret saw that they each left trailing footprints in the dew. The first few cars were turning off the freeway into the grid system of streets in the city’s centre, the vanguard of the 137,000 people who worked in downtown during the day. The early morning air was chill yet, but they were warmed by the coffee they had picked up from a Starbucks, minutes after it opened.

Hrycyk’s face was a pasty, puffy white, and there were deep shadows under his eyes. He had refused to be taken to hospital for treatment, and the medics had cleaned and dressed his wound at the stadium and put his arm in a sling. He had found an overcoat in the trunk of his Santana and draped it now over his shoulders for warmth. The stadium manager had allowed Li access to the home team dressing room to shower, and got him pants, tee-shirt and a jacket from the Astros shop. He looked like a walking ad for the team. The long shadow of his peaked baseball hat hid the bruising on his face and the newly acquired gash in his cheek.

Margaret rubbed the goosebumps on her arm. She shivered in the cold each time they moved out of the sunlight, and she was glad of the hot, sweet coffee burning its way down inside her.

It had been Hrycyk’s idea to come here, a short fifteen-minute walk from the stadium. All hell was going to break loose in the hours ahead, he had said, and they were unlikely to have another chance like this to exchange information.

So far they had exchanged nothing. Soong had been taken, under armed police guard, for emergency treatment at a facility in medicine city. He would face hours and days of intensive interrogation when he was fit. None of them knew yet whether he would make it easy or hard. But Li suspected Soong would fight it all the way, although he had said nothing as they walked in silence through the deserted downtown streets. Now he accepted an offer of a cigarette from Hrycyk and struck a match to light them both.

Hrycyk sucked in a lungful of smoke and squinted at Li. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘I hate you people.’ He paused. ‘But I hate the FBI more.’ He rubbed his face with his left hand, cigarette pinched at the end of his index and middle fingers. ‘Thing is, it was you that put me on to him. Way back at Yu Lin’s house. When you said it was too big a coincidence that he got murdered the day we were going to pull him back in. That there had to be a leak in the agency.’ He pulled up a gob of phlegm from his chest and spat on the grass. He glanced self-consciously at Margaret. ‘Sorry, Doc.’

‘That’s alright,’ she said. ‘After two years in China I’m used to it.’

He gave her a look, as if he resented the implication that he might be guilty of behaving in some way like a Chinese. Then he turned back to Li. ‘Thing is, I spent my life in the INS. No way could I believe any of the guys I worked with would be capable of betraying one of their own like that.’

‘Even a Chinese?’ Li asked.

Hrycyk grinned reluctantly. ‘Even a Chinese.’ He paused, and the smile faded. ‘Only person outside the agency who knew we were bringing him in was Fuller.’ Some bitter thought flitted through his mind and soured his expression. ‘We had the bastard tailed. Tapped his phones, even his mobile. All strictly in-house, if you get my meaning.’

‘In other words you didn’t have the authority to do it,’ Margaret said.

Hrycyk shrugged. ‘I couldn’t comment.’

They walked past the perfectly preserved homes of Houston’s earliest worthies, saved from demolition and transplanted here by the visionaries of the Harris County Heritage Society. Pillars and balconies, white picket fences, shady terraces. An old log cabin, an ornate Victorian bungalow. They contrasted bizarrely against the downtown skyline.

Hrycyk said to Margaret, ‘My people got me out my bed last night after your call to Fuller. He came right off the line and called Soong at the stadium. I alerted the cops and went straight there.’ He looked at Li. ‘Lucky for you guys I did, otherwise you’d both be dead meat by now.’ He chuckled, amused by what he perceived as the irony of the situation. ‘Jesus. I can’t believe I actually saved the life of a Chinaman.’

‘So now you are stuck with me forever,’ Li said.

Hrycyk frowned. ‘How come?’

Margaret said, ‘There is an ancient custom in China, Agent Hrycyk, which says if you save a person’s life, you become responsible for them for the rest of it.’

Hrycyk stared at her. ‘You’re shitting me?’

Margaret said, ‘It is an obligation you cannot escape.’

And Li said, ‘So whenever I am in trouble you can expect a call.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Hrycyk spluttered.