The Secret Cardinal

18

On the night they crossed the border, Kilkenny and the warriors rendezvoused with Roxanne Tao at the landing zone in the steppe twenty miles north of Chifeng Prison. Tao’s local contacts provided yurts to house the men and conceal their weapons and equipment. During their second night in China, Gates and the Alpha team dug into camouflaged positions around the prison and began reconnaissance.

Kilkenny had lain low during the past eight days, sequestered in the yurts while the other members of Bravo team ventured into the city of Chifeng with Roxanne Tao, getting a feel for their surroundings. Inner Mongolia’s tourist season was all but over, and a Caucasian face would draw more attention than he desired.

Kilkenny sat on the floor on the west side of the yurt — the men’s side — with his back to the fire. He was wearing his helmet, comparing Alpha team’s observations with information gathered by Chinese Roman Catholics on the heads-up display. The fresh intelligence confirmed much of what he had gleaned from the older data. It held no surprises.

Chifeng Prison ran on a tight schedule. The guards worked in three eight-hour shifts each day. The prisoners started their day in the middle of the first shift and returned to their cells halfway through the third — sixteen backbreaking hours making bricks, seven days a week. Trucks came and went at scheduled times, processed through the two gates with the same security procedures. Kilkenny had confidence in the information he had, but he really wanted the one piece he was sorely missing — the precise cell housing Bishop Yin.

‘Computer off,’ Kilkenny said, ending the review session.

He stood and stretched, pulled off the helmet, and absently scratched at the prickly red whiskers populating his jaw line. In addition to the scrubby beard, Kilkenny temporarily had suspended several personal grooming habits in preparing for the mission, and the prison pajamas he wore while sequestered in the yurt exuded that fusty odor he associated with a high school locker room.

Opposite the yurt’s door, on the north side of the circular dwelling, stood a traditional Buddhist altar. Kilkenny approached the domestic shrine — no different really from the religious items his grandmother kept atop her bedroom dresser — and offered a brief prayer of thanks for the people helping them.

The couple that provided the yurts owned few possessions, but what they had were well cared for. Through halting English, they let Kilkenny know that he and his companions were honored guests and, as if to emphasize the point, showed him their most prized possession. Hidden behind a false panel on the altar was a worn photograph clipped from a Taiwanese magazine — the Dalai Lama and Pope Leo XIV together in prayer. Kilkenny was humbled by the tremendous risk the couple took each day in possessing that image, a risk they accepted only because of a deeply rooted faith. Only here, in the wilderness along China’s northern border, could the descendants of Genghis Khan find spiritual contentment in a belief system that wedded traditional Tibetan Buddhism with Roman Catholicism.

Tao stepped into the yurt and removed her hat and coat. Everything she wore was chosen to emphasize that she was Chinese and not American. Even the way she carried herself had changed. Kilkenny considered how easily she had slipped into this native persona. The most significant change in Tao’s appearance, though, was the simplest to execute. Before leaving the United States, Tao cut the waterfall of silky hair that reached her waist, trading her tresses for a functional, military bob.

‘Time to do your makeup,’ Tao said as she placed a low stool and a tackle box on the floor near the fire. She pointed to where she wanted Kilkenny to sit.

‘I never thought I’d hear anyone say that to me,’ Kilkenny replied.

Tao started by cleaning and drying Kilkenny’s face, neck, and hands — areas of skin that would be visible when he was dressed. She laid out various prosthetics and began applying adhesive to Kilkenny’s skin.

‘Careful,’ Kilkenny said. Some of the fading bruises on his face were still tender.

He remained still as Tao affixed bits of latex to simulate edemas and lacerations. In the first pass, she fattened Kilkenny’s lower lip, blackened an eye and a cheek, and raised welts on his hands and forearms. Tao next softened the edges around the prosthetics with flesh-toned liquid latex, erasing seams that would destroy the illusion.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Tao asked.

‘Somebody has to let Yin know what’s happening. I’d hate for him to have a heart attack when Bravo shows up for his execution.’

‘But why you?. Why not one of the others?’

‘You mean someone of Chinese descent?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Better they stay outside. If something goes wrong, they have a chance of blending in and getting away. It was either going to be Max or me, and I’d rather have him running Alpha and covering my back.’ Kilkenny laughed.

‘What?’

‘On the flight over, Max asked me the same thing.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘That I’m the man on a rope, the guy they lower down into a deep hole to rescue someone trapped in the darkness. My job is to find the lost soul and hold fast to the rope. Yours is to pull us out.’

Tao stared into Kilkenny’s eyes for a moment and once more saw the strength of his conviction. They had saved each other’s lives more than once, and an absolute trust cemented their friendship.

‘That new haircut is still taking some getting used to,’ Kilkenny said, breaking the silence as Tao resumed work on his forehead.

‘For me too. I’ve had long hair since I was a little girl. At least it will all grow back and some deserving kids will benefit from my little sacrifice.’

After signing on for this mission, Tao donated her hair — in two twelve-inch-long chunks — to Locks of Love to make wigs for pediatric cancer patients. Kilkenny first saw her new bob when he landed in China. The change in Tao’s appearance was so severe that at first he didn’t recognize her — which of course was the idea.

She applied a mix of paints and powders to tint Kilkenny’s artificially swollen areas in shades of milky yellow, black, and blue. Around the open wounds, Tao dabbed on a dark viscous fluid that, as it dried, formed a crusty, fractured surface like coagulated blood. She also placed droplets of simulated scab on Kilkenny’s face and neck, mimicking blood splatter. On two of his fingers, Tao blackened the nails. Last, she smeared and dribbled simulated blood onto Kilkenny’s uniform, transforming him into a thoroughly abused prisoner.

‘Now, just sit there for a moment and let everything really set up,’ Tao said. ‘I have to get changed.’

She stepped behind a modesty curtain, removed her civilian clothing, and donned the dark gray uniform of an officer of the Ministry of Justice. Like U.S. marshals, cadres assigned to the Ministry of Justice were an armed force separate from the police and the People’s Liberation Army. This force provided security for the courts, oversaw the handling and transport of prisoners, and, as the insignia on Tao’s uniform indicated, executed prisoners.

‘How do I look?’ Tao stepped into view.

‘Like a death-row inmate’s worst nightmare,’ Kilkenny replied.

‘I thought men liked a woman in uniform.’

‘It depends on the woman and the uniform,’ Kilkenny said, recalling the first time he saw Kelsey in a NASA flight suit.

Tao caught the melancholy tone in his voice and dropped this line of banter. ‘Let me take a look at you.’

Tao slowly walked around Kilkenny, studying her handiwork at various angles.

‘I may not win an Oscar for best makeup,’ Tao said, ‘but it should do the trick.’