The Stone Monkey

Wednesday, the Hour of the Rooster, 6:45 p.m.,

to Monday, the Hour of the Monkey, 3 p.m.

Chapter Forty-one

He stared out the window at the gray dusk, premature because of the lingering storm. His head drooped forward, heavy, heavy, immobile. This wasn't from damaged fibers of nerve but from sorrow. Rhyme was thinking of Sonny Li.

When he'd run the forensic unit he'd had the chance to hire dozens, probably hundreds of employees and to finagle – or bully – onto his staff men and women from other assignments because he knew they were damn good cops. He couldn't tell exactly what appealed to him about these people. Oh, sure, they had the textbook qualifications: persistence, intelligence, patience, stamina, keen powers of observation, empathy.

Yet there was another quality. Something that Rhyme, for all his rational self, couldn't define, though he recognized it immediately. There was no better way to say it than the desire – even the joy – of pursuing a prey at all costs. Whatever else Sonny Li's failings – his cigarettes at crime scenes, his reliance on omens and the woo-woo factor, he had this essential aspect. The lone cop had traveled literally to the ends of the earth to collar his suspect. Rhyme would've traded a hundred eager rookies and a hundred cynical veterans for one cop like Sonny Li: a small man who wanted nothing more than to offer to the citizens on his beat some retribution for the harms done to them, some justice, some comfort in the aftermath of evil. And for his reward Li was content to enjoy a good hunt, a challenge and, perhaps, just a little respect from those he cared about.

He glanced at the book he'd inscribed to Li.

To my friend…

"Okay, Mel," he said evenly. "Let's put this one together. What've we got?"

Mel Cooper was hunched over the plastic bags the patrolman had raced here from the crime scene in Chinatown. "Footprints."

"We sure it was the Ghost?" Rhyme asked.

"Yep," Cooper confirmed. "They're identical." Looking at the electrostatic prints that Sachs had taken.

Rhyme agreed they were the same.

"Now the slugs." He was examining the two bullets, one flattened, one intact, both bloody. "Check the lands and grooves."

This referred to the angular marks left in the soft lead bullet by the rifling in the barrel of the gun – the spiral grooves that spin the slug to make it go faster and more accurately. By examining the number of grooves and the degree of the twist, a ballistics expert can often determine the type of gun the shooter used.

Cooper, wearing latex gloves, measured the undamaged slug and the marks cut in the side from the rifling. "It's a forty-five ACP. Octagonal profile on the lands and grooves, right-hand twist. I'm guessing one complete twist every fifteen, sixteen inches. I'll look that up and -"

"Don't bother," Rhyme said shortly. "It's a Glock." The unsexy but dependable Austrian pistols were increasingly popular throughout the world, among criminals and police alike. "What's the wear on the barrel?"

"Sharp profile."

"So it's new. Probably the G36." He was surprised. This compact but extremely powerful handgun was expensive and wasn't widely available yet. In the United States you found it mostly among federal agents.

Useful, useful? he wondered.

Not yet. All it told them was the type of gun, not where the weapon or the ammunition had been purchased. Still, it was evidence and it belonged on the board.

"Thom… Thom!" Rhyme shouted. "We need you!"

The aide appeared immediately. "There're other things I need -"

"No," Rhyme said. "There aren't other things. Write."

The aide must have sensed Rhyme's despondency over the death of Sonny Li and said nothing in response to the sharp command. He picked up the marker and walked to the whiteboard.

Cooper then opened Li's clothes over a large sheet of clean, blank newsprint. He dusted the items of clothing with a brush and examined the trace that had fallen onto the paper. "Dirt, flecks of paint, the yellow paper particles that probably were from the bag and the dried plant material – spices or herbs – that Amelia mentioned," Cooper said.

"She's checking out the plant stuff right now. Just bag them and put them aside for the time being." Rhyme, who over the years had grown immune to the horror of crime scenes, nonetheless felt a pang as he looked at the dark blood on Li's clothing. The same clothing he'd worn in this very room not long ago.

Zaijian, Sonny. Goodbye.

"Fingernail scrapings," Cooper announced, examining the label on another plastic bag. He mounted the trace on a slide in the compound microscope.

"Project it, Mel," Rhyme said and turned to the computer screen. A moment later a clear image appeared on the large flat screen. What do we have here, Sonny? You fought with the Ghost, you grabbed him. Was there anything on his clothes or shoes that was transferred to you?

And if so, will it send us to his front door?

"Tobacco," the criminalist said, laughing sadly, thinking of the cop's addiction to cigarettes. "What else do we see? What are those minerals there? What do you think, Mel? Silicates?"

"Looks like it. Let's run some through the GC/MS."

The gas chromatograph / mass spectrometer would determine exactly what the substance was. Soon the results came back – magnesium and silicate.

"That's talc, right?"

"Yep."

The criminalist knew that talcum powder was commonly used by some people as a deodorant, by workers who wore tight-fitting rubber gloves for protection and by those who engaged in certain sexual practices using latex clothing. "Go online and find out everything you can about talc and magnesium silicate."

"Will do."

As Cooper was typing madly, Rhyme's phone rang. Thom answered it and put the call on the speaker.

"Hello?" he asked.

"Mr… Rhymes please."

"Rhyme is the name, yes. Who's this?"

"Dr. Arthur Winslow at Huntington Medical Center."

"Yes, Doctor?"

"There's a patient here, a Chinese man. His name is Sen. He was medevaced to us after the Coast Guard rescued him from a sunken ship off the North Shore."

Not exactly the Coast Guard, Rhyme thought. But he said, "Go ahead."

"We were told to contact you with any news about him."

"That's right."

"Well, I think there's something you ought to know."

"And what would that be?" Rhyme asked slowly, though his meaning was really: Get to the point.

He sipped the bitter coffee even though he hated it.

Seventeen-year-old William Chang sat in the back of the Starbucks not far from the family's apartment in Brooklyn. He wanted Po-nee tea – made the way his mother prepared it, brewed in an old iron pot – but he kept drinking the coffee as if he were addicted to the muddy, sour drink. Because that is what the pompadoured ba-tu across from him was now sipping; for William to drink tea would seem like a weakness.

Wearing the same black leather jacket he'd been in yesterday, the kid – who'd identified himself only as Chen – finished his conversation on a tiny Nokia phone and clipped the unit back onto his belt. He made a point of checking the time on his gold Rolex.

"What happened to the gun we sold you yesterday?" he asked in English.

"My father found it."

"Asshole." He leaned forward ominously. "You didn't tell him where you got it?"

"No."

"If you told anyone about us we'll kill you."

William Chang, hardened by his life as a dissident's son, knew not to give an inch with people like this. "I didn't fucking tell anybody anything. But I need another gun."

"He'll find that one too."

"No, he won't. I'll keep it with me. He won't frisk me."

Chen eyed a long-haired Chinese girl nearby. When he saw she was reading what seemed to be a college textbook he lost interest. He looked William up and down and then asked, "Hey, you want a DVD player? A Toshiba. It's sweet. Two hundred. A flat-screen TV? Eight hundred."

"I want a gun. That's all I want."

"And why don't you get some better clothes. You look like shit."

"I'll get clothes later."

"Hugo Boss, Armani. I can get you whatever you want…" Sipping the coffee, he studied William closely. "Or you can come with us some night. We're going to a warehouse in Queens next week. They're getting a shipment in. Can you drive?"

"Yeah, I can drive." William looked out the front window. He saw no sign of his father.

The ba-tu asked, "You got balls, don't you?"

"I guess."

"Your triad hijack anything in Fujian?"

William didn't exactly have a triad, just some friends who would occasionally steal cars and shoplift liquor and cigarettes from time to time.

"Hell, we hit dozens of places."

"What was your job?"

"Lookout, getaway."

Chen thought for a moment then asked, "Okay, we're inside a warehouse and you're on guard, you know. You see a security guard coming toward us. What would you do? Would you kill him?"

"What is this, a fucking test?"

"Just answer. You have the balls to kill him?'

"Sure. But I wouldn't."

"Why not?"

William sneered. "Because only an idiot would get executed over some clothes."

"Who said clothes?"

"You did," William replied. "Armani, Boss."

"Well, there's a guard. Answer me. What the fuck would you do?"

"I'd come up behind him, take his gun away and I'd keep him on his belly till you had all the clothes in the getaway wheels. Then I'd piss on him."

Chen frowned. "Piss on him? Why?"

"Because the first thing he'd do was go change his clothes – before he called the police. So the cops wouldn't think he'd peed his pants. That'd give us time to get away. And he never got hurt so the cops couldn't get us for assault."

This is what William had heard that some gang by the waterfront near Fuzhou had done once.

Chen wouldn't allow himself to be impressed. But he said, "You'll come to Queens with us. I'll meet you here tomorrow night. I'll bring some people."

"I'll see. I have to get back now. My father'll notice I'm gone." He took a wad of dollars from his pocket, flashed it at the ba-tu. "What do you have?"

"I sold you the only good one I had," Chen said. "That chrome baby."

"It was a piece of shit. I want a real gun."

"You do have balls. But you got a mouth too. You better watch it. All I've got is a Colt.38. Take it or leave it."

"Loaded?"

Chen fiddled with the gun inside the bag.

"Three rounds."

"That's all?" William asked.

"Like I said – take it or leave it."

"How much?"

"Five hundred."

William laughed harshly. "Three or I walk."

Chen hesitated then nodded. "Only 'cause I like you."

Both young men glanced around the Starbucks. The bag was exchanged for the money.

Without a word William rose. Chen said, "Tomorrow. Eight. Here."

"I'll try."

Chen laughed. "'Piss on him.'" He turned back to his coffee.

Outside, William started quickly down the sidewalk away from Starbucks.

The figure stepped out of the alley, moving quickly toward him.

William stopped, startled. Sam Chang walked up to his son.

The boy started walking again, fast, head down.

"Well?" Chang asked, falling into place beside the boy.

"I got it, Baba."

"Give it to me," his father said.

He passed his father the bag, which disappeared into the man's pocket. "You didn't tell him your name?"

"No."

"You didn't mention the Ghost or the Dragon?"

"I'm not stupid," William snapped. "He doesn't have any idea who we are."

They walked in silence for a few minutes.

"Did he charge you all the money?"

William hesitated and began to say something. Then he dug into his pocket and handed his father back the remaining hundred dollars of the cash his father had given him for the gun.

As they approached the house Chang said to his son, "I'm going to put it in the front closet. We'll use it only if the Ghost tries to get inside. Never take it with you anywhere. Understand?"

"We should each get one and carry it."

"Do you understand?" Chang repeated firmly.

"Yes."

Chang touched his son's arm. "Thank you, son. It was a brave thing to do."

You do have balls.…

"Yeye would be proud of you," his father added.

William nearly said, Yeye would still be alive if it weren't for you. But he remained silent. They arrived at their front door. Chang and William looked around. No one had followed them from the coffee shop. They pushed quickly inside.

As Chang hid the gun on the top shelf of the closet – where only he and William could reach it – the boy dropped onto the couch next to his brother and the baby girl. He picked up a magazine and thumbed through it.

But he paid little attention to the articles. He was thinking about what Chen had asked him. Should he meet with the other members of the triad tomorrow night?

He didn't think he would. But he wasn't sure. It was never a bad idea, he'd learned, to keep your options open.

Chapter Forty-two

John Sung had changed clothes. He was wearing a turtleneck sweater – which seemed odd in the heat, though it made him look pretty stylish – and new workout pants. He was flushed and he seemed distracted, out of breath.

"Are you all right?" Amelia Sachs asked.

"Yoga," he explained. "I was doing my exercises. Tea?"

"I can't stay long." Eddie Deng had gone back to the Fifth Precinct but Alan Coe was waiting for her downstairs in the crime scene bus.

He held up a bag. "Here's what I wanted to give you. The fertility herbs I told you about last night."

She took the bag absently. "Thank you, John."

"What's wrong?" he asked, scanning her troubled face. He motioned her inside and they sat on the couch.

"That police officer from China, the man who helped us? He was found dead about an hour ago."

Sung closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. "Was it an accident? Or did the Ghost get to him?"

"The Ghost."

"Oh, no, I'm sorry."

"I am too." She said this brusquely, dismissing the emotion in the best spirit of Lincoln Rhyme. She reached into her pocket and withdrew a plastic bag of the plant material she'd found at the scene. "We found this where he was murdered."

"Where?" he asked.

"In Chinatown. Not far away. We think it's some herbs or spices that the Ghost bought. Rhyme was hoping if we can figure out what it is we might find the store where he bought it. Maybe one of the clerks might know where the Ghost lives."

He nodded. "Let me see it." Sung opened the bag then shook some out onto the counter. He bent down, inhaled the aroma and examined the substance. She thought Lincoln Rhyme would use a gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer to do exactly the same thing, separating a mixture into its component parts and identifying them.

Finally he said, "I smell astragalus, ginger, poria, maybe some ginseng and alisma." He shook his head. "I know you'd like me to tell you it's sold in only one or two stores. But I'm afraid you can buy it at any herbalist, drugstore or grocery in China. I would suppose it's the same here."

Discouraged, she thought of something else. "What do they do?' Maybe the Ghost was suffering from some sickness or injury and they could trace him through other doctors as they'd done with Wu Qichen's wife.

"It's more of an over-the-counter tonic than a medicine. It improves resistance, tonifies your qi. Many people use it to heighten the sexual experience. Supposedly it helps men stay erect longer. It's not meant to treat a specific illness."

So much for that theory, Sachs thought glumly.

"You could check the stores closest to where the policeman was killed," Sung suggested. "But I suppose you've thought of that."

She nodded. "That's what we'll have to do. Maybe we'll get a break." She started to stand and winced as pain shot through her shoulder – a muscle she'd pulled on the Fuzhou Dragon.

"Taking your medicine?" he asked, chiding her.

"Yeah, I am. But you know how disgusting it tastes?"

"You can drink beer for pleasure. Here, sit down again."

She hesitated and lowered herself painfully to the couch. He moved close behind her. She could sense his proximity from the way the ambient noise in the room grew mute. Then she felt his hands on her shoulder as they began squeezing – softly at first then harder, more probing.

His face was near the back of her head, his breath caressing her neck. The hands moved up and down her skin, pressing hard but just short of the point of pain. It was relaxing, yes, but she felt momentarily disconcerted when the palms and fingers nearly encircled her throat.

"Relax," he whispered in that calm voice of his.

She tried to.

His hands slid to her shoulders then down her back. They moved forward along her ribs but stopped before he touched her breasts and returned again to her spine and neck.

Wondering if there really was something he could do for her – to improve the chance of her and Rhyme's having children.

Dryness in the kidneys…

She closed her eyes and lost herself in the powerful massage.

She felt him shift closer to her, getting better leverage, it seemed. He was only inches away. His hands moved up her spine to her neck once more, encircling them. His breathing was coming quickly – from the effort, she supposed.

"Why don't you take off that gun belt of yours?" he whispered.

"Bad karma?" she asked.

"No." He laughed. "It's interfering with your circulation."

She reached for the buckle and started to undo it. She felt his hand close around the thick nylon strap to help her remove it.

But then a harsh sound interrupted them – her cell phone ringing. She eased away from him and pulled the unit off her belt. "Hello? This is -"

"Sachs, get ready to roll."

"What do you have, Rhyme?"

There was no answer for a moment as she heard someone else in his room speaking to the criminalist.

A moment later he came back on the line. "The captain of the ship, Sen, is conscious. Eddie Deng's on the other line, interviewing him… Hold on." Voices, shouts. Rhymes commanding: "Well, we don't have time. Now, now, now!… Listen, Sachs, the captain spent some time in the hold of the Dragon. He overheard Chang talking with his father. Looks like some relative or friend arranged for an apartment and job for the family in Brooklyn ."

" Brooklyn? What about Queens?"

"Sam Changs the clever one, remember? I'm sure he said Queens to lead everybody off. I narrowed down the area where I think they are – Red Hook or Owls Head."

"How do you know?"

"How else, Sachs? The trace on the old man's shoes, biosolids. Remember? There're two waste treatment facilities in Brooklyn. I'm leaning toward Owls Head. It's more residential and's closer to Sunset Park, the Chinese community there. Eddie Deng's having his people from the Fifth Precinct call printing companies and sign painters in Owls Head. Lon's putting ESU on alert. And the INS's getting together a team too. I want you over there. I'll let you know as soon as I have an address."

She glanced up at Sung. "John, Lincoln 's found the Changs' neighborhood. I'm going over there now."

"Where are they?"

"In Brooklyn."

"Oh very good," he said. "They're safe?"

"So far."

"May I come? I can help translate. Chang and I speak the same dialect."

"Sure." Sachs said into the phone, "John Sung's coming with me and Coe. He's going to translate. We're on our way, Rhyme. Call me when you have an address."

They hung up and Sung stepped into the bedroom. A moment later he came out, wearing a bulky windbreaker.

"It's not cold out," Sachs said.

"Always keep warm – important for the qi and blood," he said.

Then Sung looked at her and took her by the shoulders, Sachs responding with a smile of curiosity. With sincerity in his voice he said, "You have done a very good thing, finding those people, Yindao."

She paused and looked at him with a faint frown of curiosity. "Yindao?"

He said, "It's my pet name for you in Chinese. 'Yindao.' It means 'close friend.'"

Sachs was very moved by this. She squeezed his hand. Then stepped back. "Let's go find the Changs."

On the street in front of his safehouse the man of many names – Ang Kwan, Gui, the Ghost, John Sung – reached his hand out and shook that of Alan Coe, who was, it seemed, an INS agent.

This gave him some concern, for Coe, he believed, had been part of a group of Chinese and American law enforcers pursuing him overseas. The task force had gotten close to him, troublingly close, but the Ghost's bangshou had done some investigating himself and learned that a young woman who'd worked in a company that the Ghost did business with had been giving the INS and the police information about his snakehead operations. The bangshou had kidnapped the woman, tortured her to find out what she'd told the INS and then buried her body on a construction site.

But apparently Coe had no idea what the Ghost looked like. The snakehead recalled that he'd been wearing the ski mask when they'd tried to kill the Wus on Canal Street; no one would have gotten a look at his face.

Yindao explained what Rhyme had learned and the three of them got into the police station wagon – Coe climbing into the back before the Ghost could take that strategically better seat, as if the agent didn't trust an illegal alien to be sitting behind him. They pulled away from the curb.

From what Yindao was telling Coe, the Ghost understood that there would be other cops and INS agents present at the Changs' apartment. But he'd already made plans to get a few minutes alone with the Changs. When Yindao had come to his apartment a few moments ago, Yusuf and another Uighur had been there. The Turks had slipped into the bedroom before the Ghost had opened the outer door and, later, when he'd gone to get his gun and windbreaker he'd told them to follow Yindao's police car. In Brooklyn the Turks and the Ghost together would kill the Changs.

Glancing back, he noticed that Yusuf's Windstar was close behind them, several cars away.

And what about Yindao? He might have to wait until tomorrow for their intimate liaison.

Naixin, he reflected.

All in good time.

Images of fucking her now filled his thoughts: he quickly lost himself in his continuing fantasies about Yindao, which had grown ever more powerful since he'd first seen her on the beach – swimming out to save him. Last night he'd given her only a chaste acupressure treatment, accompanied by some mumbo jumbo about it helping fertility. Their next get-together would be very different. He would take her to a place where he could play out all the fantasies that had been reeling through his thoughts.

Yindao, pinned beneath him, writhing, whimpering.

In pain.

Screaming.

He was now powerfully aroused and used the excuse of turning around to speak to Coe to hide the evidence of his desire. He began a conversation about the INS's guidelines for political asylum. The agent was blunt and rude and clearly disdainful, even of the man he thought the Ghost to be: a poor widower doctor, a dissident who loved freedom, seeking a better home for his family, harmless and willing to work hard.

Keep the piglets out of the country at all costs, the agent was saying. The message beneath his words was that they weren't fit to be Americans. The politics and morality of illegal immigration meant nothing to the Ghost but he wondered if Coe knew that there were proportionally fewer Chinese-Americans on welfare than any other nationality, including native-born whites. Did he know that the level of education was higher, the incidence of bankruptcy and tax evasion far lower?

It would give him pleasure to kill this man and he was sorry that he couldn't take the time to make it a long death.

The Ghost glanced at Yindao's legs and felt the churning low in his belly again. He recalled their sitting together in the restaurant yesterday, sharing his honest assessment of himself.

Break the cauldrons and sink the boats…

Why had he opened up to her in this way? It was foolish. She might have caught on as to who he was, or at least grown suspicious. He'd never been that frank with anyone in describing his philosophy of life.

Why?

The answer had to be more than his desire to possess her physically. He'd felt passion for hundreds of women but had kept most of his inner feelings to himself before, during and after the act. No, there was something else about Yindao. He supposed that it was this: he recognized something of his own soul within her. There were so few people who understood him… whom he could talk with.

But Yindao was this sort of woman, he believed.

As Coe was rambling on ad nauseam about the necessity of quotas and the burden on the social welfare rolls due to illegal immigration, even citing facts and figures, the snakehead was thinking about how sad it was that he couldn't take this woman back with him to show her the beauties of Xiamen, walk with her around Nanputou Temple – a huge Buddhist monastery – and then take her for peanut soup or noodles near the waterfront.

But there was no doubt that he wouldn't hesitate to do what he'd planned – take her to a deserted warehouse or factory and spend an hour or so fulfilling his relentless fantasy. And kill her afterward, of course. As Yindao herself had told him, she too would break the cauldrons and sink the boats; after she learned he was the Ghost she would not rest until she had killed or arrested him. She had to die.

The Ghost glanced back at Coe with a smile, as if acknowledging whatever the man was talking about. The snakehead focused past the agent. Yusuf and the other Uighur were staying right with the police car. Yindao had not noticed the van.

The Ghost turned back. His eyes swept over her. He then muttered a few words.

"What was that?" Yindao asked him.

"A prayer," the Ghost said. "I am hoping that Guan Yin will help us find the Changs' home."

"Who's that?"

"She's the goddess of mercy," was the answer, though it came not from the Ghost but from helpful Agent Alan Coe in the backseat.

Chapter Forty-three

Ten minutes later Lon Sellitto's phone rang.

Rhyme and Cooper stared at it rapt in anticipation.

The detective took the call. Listened. Then his eyes closed and he broke into a smile.

"They found the Changs' address!" he shouted and hung up. "That was one of the patrolmen down at the Fifth. He found a guy in Owls Head who owns two quick-print shops. Name's Joseph Tan. Our guy gave him the line about the family'd be dead in a couple hours if we didn't find out where they were. Tan broke down and admitted he'd gotten Chang and his kid a job and set 'em up in an apartment."

"He have an address?"

"Yep. Two blocks from the sewage treatment plant. God love crap, what can I say?"

Rhyme thought of Sonny Li's equally irreverent plea to the god of cops.

Guan Di, please let us find the Changs and catch the fuck Ghost.

He wheeled into position in front of the whiteboards. He gazed at the chart, the pictures of evidence.

Sellitto said, "I'll call Bo and the INS and get everybody going."

But the criminalist said, "Hold on a minute."

"What's the matter?"

"An itch," Rhyme said slowly. "I have an itch." His initial exhilaration at locating the Changs faded.

Rhymes head moved slowly from side to side as he took in Thom's careful jottings and photographs and other bits of evidence from this case – each adding to the whole grim story, like hieroglyphs in ancient Egyptian tombs.

He closed his eyes and let this information speed through his mind as fast as Amelia Sachs in her Camaro.

Here's the answer, Rhyme thought, opening his eyes once again and staring at the entries.

The only problem is that we don't know the question.

Thom appeared in the doorway. "Time for some ROMs," the aide said.

Range of motion exercises were important for quads. They kept the muscles from atrophying, they improved the circulation, they had a beneficial psychological effect too – which Rhyme publicly disavowed. Still, his sessions were partially based on the premise that there would come a day when he himself would use his muscles again.

And so while he groused and complained and gave Thom hell when the aide expertly performed the ROMs then measured the results, he secretly looked forward to the daily exercises. Today, however, Rhyme cast a strong glance at the aide and the young man got the message. He retreated to the hallway.

"What're you thinking?" Sellitto asked.

Rhyme didn't answer.

Engaged in its own range of motion exercises, his mind, unlike his lifeless limbs, was limited by nothing. Infinite height, infinite depth, past and future. The criminalist now mentally followed the trails of evidence that they had collected while working the GHOSTKILL case, some of them as wide as the East River, some as narrow and frail as thread, some helpful, some as seemingly useless as the broken nerves that ran from Lincoln Rhyme's brain south into his still body. But even these he didn't neglect.

GHOSTKILL

Easton , Long Island,

Crime Scene

• Two immigrants killed on beach; shot in back.

• One immigrant wounded – Dr. John Sung.

• "Bangshou" (assistant) on board; identity unknown.

• Assistant confirmed as drowned body found near site where Dragon sank.

• Ten immigrants escape: seven adults (one elderly, one injured woman), two children, one infant. Steal church van.

• Blood samples sent to lab for typing.

• Injured woman is AB negative. Requesting more information about her blood.

• Vehicle awaiting Ghost on beach left without him. One shot believed fired by Ghost at vehicle. Request for vehicle make and model sent out, based on tread marks and wheelbase.

• Vehicle is a BMW X5.

• Driver – Jerry Tang.

• No vehicles to pick up immigrants located.

• Cell phone, presumably Ghost's, sent for analysis to FBI.

• Untraceable satellite secure phone. Hacked Chinese gov't system to use it.

• Ghost's weapon is 7.62mm pistol. Unusual casing.

• Model 51 Chinese automatic pistol.

• Ghost is reported to have gov't people on payroll.

• Ghost stole red Honda sedan to escape. Vehicle locator request sent out.

• No trace of Honda found.

• Three bodies recovered at sea – two shot, one drowned. Photos and prints to Rhyme and Chinese police.

• Drowned individual identified as Victor Au, the Ghost's bangshou.

• Fingerprints sent to AFIS.

• No matches on any prints but unusual markings on Sam Chang's fingers and thumbs (injury, rope burn?).

• Profile of immigrants: Sam Chang and Wu Qichen and their families, John Sung, baby of woman who drowned, unidentified man and woman (killed on beach).

Stolen Van, Chinatown

• Camouflaged by immigrants with "The Home Store" logo.

• Blood spatter suggests injured woman has hand, arm or shoulder injury.

• Blood samples sent to lab for typing.

• Injured woman is AB negative. Requesting more information about her blood.

• Fingerprints sent to AFIS.

• No matches.

Jerry Tang Murder

Crime Scene

• Four men kicked door in and tortured him and shot him.

• Two shell casings – match Model 51. Tang shot twice in head.

• Extensive vandalism.

• Some fingerprints.

• No matches except Tang's.

• Three accomplices have smaller shoe size than Ghost, presumably smaller stature.

• Trace suggests Ghost's safehouse is probably downtown, in Battery Park City area.

• Suspected accomplices from Chinese ethnic minority. Presently pursuing whereabouts.

• Uighurs from Turkestan Community and Islamic Center of Queens.

• Cell phone calls lead to 805 Patrick Henry Street, downtown.

Canal Street Shooting

Crime Scene

• Additional trace suggesting safehouse is in Battery Park City area.

• Stolen Chevrolet Blazer, untraceable.

• No match on prints.

• Safehouse carpet: Arnold company's Lustre-Rite, installed in past six months; calling contractors to get list of installations.

• Locations of installations determined: 32 near Battery Park City.

• Fresh gardening mulch found.

• Body of Ghost's accomplice: ethnic minority from west or northwest China. Negative on prints. Weapon was Walther PPK.

• Details on immigrants:

• The Changs: Sam, Mei-Mei, William and Ronald; Sam's father, Chang Jiechi, and infant, Po-Yee. Sam has job arranged but employer and location unknown. Driving blue van, no make, no tag number. Changs' apartment is in Queens.

• The Wus: Qichen, Yong-Ping, Chin-Mei and Lang.

Safehouse Shooting

Crime Scene

• Fingerprints and photos of Chang Jiechi's hands reveal father – and son Sam – are calligraphers. Sam Chang might be doing printing or sign painting. Calling stores and companies in Queens.

• Biosolids on deceased's shoes suggest they live in neighborhood near sewage treatment plant.

• Ghost uses feng shui practitioner to arrange his living space.

Fuzhou Dragon

Crime Scene

• Ghost used new C4 to blow up ship. Checking origin of explosive through chemical markers.

• Large quantity of new U.S. bills found in Ghost's cabin.

• Approx. $20,000 in used Chinese yuan found in cabin.

• List of victims, air charter details and bank deposit information. Checking name of sender in China.

• Captain alive but unconscious.

• Regained consciousness, now in INS detention.

• Beretta 9mm, Uzi. Unable to trace.

Sonny Li Murder

Crime Scene

• Killed by new Glock 36,.45-caliber. (Gov't issue?)

• Tobacco.

• Flecks of yellow paper.

• Unidentified plant material (herbs, spices, drugs?).

• Magnesium silicate (talc) under fingernails.

The highway took a sweep around the Brooklyn army facility and Yindao steered the police station wagon onto an exit ramp, about as fast as the Ghost himself would have taken the turn in his BMW or Porsche, and descended into a pleasant neighborhood of tidy yards and red-brick buildings.

The Ghost glanced into the side mirror casually and noticed that Yusuf was still behind them.

Then he looked at Yindao, the profile of her beautiful face, her shimmery red hair pinned into a bun, the outline of her breasts beneath her black T-shirt.

He was startled by the blare of the woman's phone ringing again.

She answered it.

"Rhyme… yeah, we're in the neighborhood. Go ahead." She fell silent. "Excellent!" She turned to the Ghost and Coe. "He's found them. A friend of Changs got him an apartment and a job near here. It's not that far away." She turned her attention back to the phone. As she listened to what Rhyme was saying, though, the expression on her face grew momentarily dark. It seemed to the Ghost that she had tensed in reaction to whatever the man was now telling her. The Ghost wondered if Rhyme had learned something about him. He grew vigilant.

"Sure, Rhyme," she said finally. "Got it."

Yindao disconnected the call.

"Damn," Coe said. "I never thought he'd really be able to do it."

The Ghost looked at her. "So he got the exact address."

She didn't answer for a moment. Finally she said, "Yeah."

Then she began talking, just chatting like a schoolgirl, about her life in Brooklyn. The Ghost saw at once that this wasn't her nature and he grew even more suspicious. Whatever Rhyme had told her at the end of their conversation, he now understood, had nothing to do with the Changs.

He noticed her hand slip to her leg, which she scratched absently. She left her hand near her hip and he realized that the gesture was merely an excuse to move her hand to her gun.

With his eyes still on the road, the Ghost's hand now slipped casually to his side and then curled behind his back until it was touching the grip of his Glock pistol, which rested in the waistband of his workout slacks under the windbreaker.

Silence in the car as they drove for some minutes through residential streets. It seemed to the Ghost, though, that Yindao was merely driving in circles. He grew even more tense and cautious.

Another turn and, looking at the house numbers, she pulled up to the curb, put the car in park and set the brake. Pointing to a small brown-stone apartment building.

"That's it."

The Ghost glanced quickly but kept his attention wholly on Yindao.

"Not the shithole I was expecting," Coe said cynically. "Let's go get this over with."

Yindao said casually, "Wait." And she turned to her right to look at Coe over the seat.

The Ghost could see easily that it was a feint. She moved fast – far faster than the Ghost had expected. Before the snakehead could even close his fingers around his own pistol, Yindao had swept hers from her holster and was swinging the gun toward him.

Chapter Forty-four

The Ghost involuntarily flinched, half-expecting Yindao to shoot him without warning – which is what he, of course, would have done had the circumstances been reversed.

But the muzzle of the black weapon traveled past him in a blur and came to rest on the man in the backseat.

"Not an inch, Coe. Don't move an inch. Keep your hands where I can see em."

"What… What is this?" Coe asked, rearing back in shock.

"Don't move," she snapped. "One hand disappears and you're dead."

"I don't -" The agent blinked.

"You understand me?"

"Yes, I fucking understand you," he spat out angrily. "You better tell me what this is all about."

"On the phone a minute ago? Lincoln had a little more to tell me than just directions to the Changs'. He looked over the evidence a second time and made some phone calls. You thought you covered it up pretty well, didn't you?"

"Put that down, Officer! You can't -"

"He knows all about it. How you're the one working for the Ghost."

The agent swallowed. "Are you out of your fucking mind?"

"You're his guardian angel. You're protecting him. That's why you fired that shot at the Wus' place on Canal Street: you weren't trying to hit him.

You were trying to warn him. And you've been feeding him information – you told him the Wus were in the Murray Hill safehouse."

Coe looked around nervously, glancing outside. "This's bullshit."

The Ghost struggled to control his breathing. His hands shook. He was sweating furiously. He wiped his palms on his slacks.

"Don't worry, John," Yindao said to him. "He's not going to hurt anybody else." She continued speaking to the agent, "And you got the Ghost a nice new gun – a Glock. A new.45. Which happens to be the issue weapon in the INS."

"You're crazy, Officer."

"We've had reports all along that the Ghost was bribing people in the government over here. We just never thought it'd be an INS agent. Why all the trips to China, Coe? According to Peabody, none of the other field agents travel over there as much as you do. Sometimes apparently on your own nickel too. You were meeting your boss's snakeheads."

"Because my informant disappeared over there and I wanted to get the asshole who did it."

"Well, Rhyme's contacting the Fuzhou security bureau right now. He wants to look over the evidence in that case too."

"You're saying I killed my own informant? A woman with children?"

"We'll look at the evidence," she said coolly.

"If anybody said they ever saw us together, the Ghost and me, they're lying."

"That doesn't mean anything. He's not going to meet anybody in person who could testify against him. He's got intermediaries who do that."

"You're dreaming, Officer."

"No, we're just examining evidence," Yindao said. "Rhyme just ran your cell phone call record. A half-dozen calls to a dead-letter answering service in New Jersey in the past two days."

"Oh, bullshit. I use that for my local CIs."

"You never mentioned running informants before."

"Because it didn't have anything to do with this case."

Yindao snapped, "Were you going to call the Ghost when we got to the Changs' apartment? Or were you just going to kill them yourself?… And us too?"

Coe swallowed. "I'm not saying another word to you. I want to talk to a lawyer."

"You'll have plenty of time for that. Now, right hand on the door handle. It moves off by one inch, I'll park one in your arm. Understand me?"

"Listen -"

"Understand me?"

The Ghost looked at her flinty eyes and felt a chill himself. He wondered if she hoped the man would reach for his gun so that she could shoot him.

"Yes," Coe muttered, furious.

"Left hand, thumb and index finger only, on your weapon, grip first. Move real slow."

Disgust on his face, Coe carefully removed the weapon and handed it to her.

Yindao pocketed it and then said, "Out of the car." She opened her door and stepped out. Then she opened his, the pistol unerringly targeted on the agents chest. "Slow."

He followed her out. She gestured him around to the sidewalk.

"Face down."

The Ghost's heart – which had been pounding like a bird trapped in a glass case – calmed slowly.

Afraid, you can be brave…

This was the height of irony, he reflected. He did indeed have Americans on the take, even within the INS – a hearing officer included, which is why he'd been released so fast and easily yesterday morning. But he didn't know the names of everyone his agents had bribed here. And, as Yindao had just explained to Coe, he rarely had direct contact with any of them. As for knowing the location of the Wus' safehouse in Murray Hill – Yindao herself had given that information away when she'd asked if he wanted to join them there.

Since Coe was apparently working for him, should he now try to save the man?

No, better to cut him off. The arrest would be a good diversion. And Yindao and the others would be less cautious thinking they'd caught the traitor.

He watched as, on the sidewalk, she expertly cuffed the agent, holstered her weapon, then pulled Coe roughly to his feet. The Ghost rolled down his window and nodded toward the apartment. "Do you want me to talk to the Changs?"

"That's not their place," Yindao said. "It's still a few blocks from here. I lied – I had to keep Coe off guard. I picked it because there's a police precinct house around the corner. They're going to hold him for the FBI to pick up."

The Ghost looked Coe over and added a dismayed tone to his voice as he said, "You were going to tell the Ghost where they were. Those children… you were going to let him kill those children. You're despicable."

The agent stared back angrily for a moment – until Yindao roughly led him to the corner, where she was met by three uniformed officers, who took him into custody. The Ghost glanced behind him and saw, at the end of the block, Yusuf's van idling at the curb.

Five minutes later Yindao returned, climbed in the car, fired up the engine. They resumed their drive. She looked at the Ghost and shook her head with a grim laugh. "I'm sorry. Are you all right?" Although the incident had shaken her some, she now seemed more like herself. Relaxed and confident.

"Yes." The Ghost laughed too. "You handled that perfectly. You're quite an artist at your profession." His smile faded. "A traitor within the INS?"

"All that crap about the Ghost killing his informant. He suckered us." She picked up her cell phone and made a call. "Okay, Rhyme, Coe's in custody at the precinct… No, no problems. John and I are going on to the Changs' now… Where're the teams?… Okay, I'll be there in three minutes. We're not going to wait for ESU. The Ghost could be on his way there right now."

He could indeed, the snakehead reflected.

Yindao hung up.

So they would be there before everyone else. His liaison with Yindao would not have to wait after all. He'd kill the Changs, get Yindao into the Turks' van and escape. The Ghost's hand went to her shoulder and squeezed it. He felt his erection grow even more powerful.

"Thanks for coming along, John." She smiled at him. "What do I say for 'friend,' 'Yindao'?"

He shook his head. "That's what a man would say to a woman. You would say, 'Yinjing.'"

This was the word for male genitals.

"Yinjing," she said.

"I'm honored," he said, bowing his head slightly. He looked over her red hair, her pale skin, her long legs… "Your friend Rhyme is quite a detective. I would like to visit him after all this is over."

"I'll give you a card. I have one in my purse."

"Good."

Rhyme would have to die too. Because the Ghost knew that he also was a man who would never stop until he'd defeated his enemies. Po fu chen Thou… Break the cauldrons and sink the boats. Too dangerous to stay alive. She'd told him that he was paralyzed. How could one torture him, the Ghost wondered. His face, eyes, tongue… There would be ways, depending on how much time he had. Fire was always good.

Yindao turned abruptly down a one-way street and stopped. She examined the address numbers and then continued halfway down the block. She double-parked and left a police ID on the dashboard.

"That's the house there." She pointed to a three-story, redbrick house several doors away, the lights on in the ground-floor apartment. Modest but, the Ghost reflected, far more luxurious than the yellow-and-beige clapboard or cinder-block houses for which so many Chinese have Mao to thank.

They climbed out of the car and walked to the sidewalk, paused. "Stay out of sight," she whispered and led him close to a line of boxwood hedges. The Ghost glanced back. Yusuf had parked and, through the faint dusk light, the Ghost could just see him and the other Turk.

He leaned close and smelled scented soap on her skin and sweat. He found his arousal unabated and he pressed against her arm and hip as she examined the house. She nodded at the bay window in front. "We'll go through the back door – if it's unlocked. They'd be able to see us from the front and might run."

She gestured him to follow her around the back of the house nearest them, then together they cut through the backyards to the Changs'. They moved slowly, so they wouldn't knock into anything in the near-dark and announce their presence.

At the back door of the piglets' apartment they paused and Yindao looked into the window – at a small kitchen. No one was inside. "Always look through the back window first," she whispered. "My new police tactical rule." She smiled wistfully at this – though she didn't explain why.

"Come on," she said. "Move slow. Don't startle them. Tell them right away we're here to help. We want to protect them from the Ghost. And tell them there's a good chance for asylum."

The Ghost nodded and tried to imagine what their reaction would be when Sam Chang and his wife saw who the police translator was.

Yindao tried the door. It was unlocked. She pushed it open quickly – so it wouldn't squeak, he supposed.

How should he handle this? he wondered. He realized that he should probably debilitate Yindao immediately. She was too much of a risk merely to threaten. The best thing to do, he decided, was to shoot her in the leg – the back of her knee would be ironic, he decided, considering her arthritis. He and the Turks would kill the Changs. Then back to the Windstar. They would speed to a safehouse or a deserted warehouse somewhere, for his hours with Yindao.

They walked silently through the small, stifling kitchen.

On the stove a pot of water was heating. Half an onion sat on a cutting board, a bunch of parsley nearby. What, he wondered, had Mrs. Chang been making for dinner?

Yindao walked through the kitchen. She paused at the doorway of the corridor that led to the living room, gestured that he stop.

The Turks, he noticed, were outside, in the alley beside the house. Yindao's back was to him and he motioned them around to the front. Yusuf nodded and the two men moved off.

The Ghost decided that he would let Yindao precede him. Give her a minute or so inside the living room with the Changs to put them at ease and to give the Turks a chance to get in position at the front door. Then he would push inside and shoot her, which would be a signal for the Turks to break in and help him finish off the family.

Hanging back, the Ghost reached under his windbreaker and pulled his gun from the waistband of his workout slacks.

Alone, Yindao began to walk slowly into the dark corridor.

Chapter Forty-five

A sound nearby.

A footstep? wondered Sam Chang, sitting on his couch, next to his youngest son.

In the front? In the back?

They sat in the dim living room of their apartment, clustered around the television on which a talk show was playing. The volume was up but still Chang had clearly heard a noise.

A snap.

Yes, a footstep.

What was it?

A phoenix rising from ashes, a dragon angered that this heavy house had been built on his home?

The spirit of his father returning here to comfort them?

Perhaps to warn them.

Or maybe it was Gui, the Ghost himself, who had found them.

It's my imagination, Chang thought.

Except that he looked across the room and saw William, where he'd been reading a year-old auto magazine. The boy was sitting up, his neck lifted, head swiveling slowly, like a heron trying to identify the source of danger.

"What is it, husband?" Mei-Mei whispered, now seeing both their faces. She pulled Po-Yee to her.

Another click.

A footstep. He couldn't tell where it came from.

Sam Chang was on his feet quickly. William joined him. Ronald started to rise but his father waved the young boy into the bedroom. A firm nod at his wife. She gazed into his eyes for a moment then slipped into the bedroom with the toddler and her youngest son and shut the door silently.

"Do what I told you, son."

William took his position beside the doorway that led to the back of the apartment, holding an iron pipe Chang had found in the backyard. Together father and son had planned what they would do if the Ghost came for them. Chang would shoot the first person through the door – either the Ghost or his bangshou. Hearing the shot, the others would probably hang back, giving William time to grab the fallen man's pistol, so he too would have a weapon.

Chang then shut off two of the lights in the living room so that he would not be so evident a target but could see the assailant in the doorway in silhouette. He'd shoot for the head; from here he couldn't miss.

Sam Chang crouched down behind a chair. He ignored his exhaustion from the ordeal on the ship, exhaustion from the loss of his father, exhaustion from the erosion of his soul in these two short days, and with his steady, calligrapher's hands, pointed the weapon at the doorway.

Inside the town house Amelia Sachs stepped forward slowly into the dark corridor.

"Wait here a minute, John," she whispered.

"Yes" came the faint reply.

She stepped into the corridor. Hesitated only a moment and then called, "Now."

"What?" the Ghost asked, hesitating.

But instead of responding she spun back toward him, raising her own pistol so quickly that the motion of the black weapon was a gray blur. The abyss of the muzzle settled steadily on the Ghost's chest before he could even lift his own Glock.

Sachs's utterance hadn't been directed to the Ghost at all, but to the half-dozen men and women in full combat gear – Bo Haumann and other Emergency Services Unit tactical cops – who pushed into the small kitchen. They rushed in from the back door and past her from the living room, guns pointed at the shocked Ghost's face, screaming their deafening litany, "Down, down, down, police, drop your weapon, on the floor, down!"

His pistol was torn from his hand and he was flung facedown to the floor and cuffed and frisked. He felt a tug at his ankle and the Model 51, his lucky gun, was lifted away, then his pockets emptied.

"We've got the subject down," an officer shouted. "Scene clear."

"Outside, we've got two, both down and locked." Meaning on their bellies with cuffs or plastic restraints on their wrists. These were the two men in the Windstar Sachs had spotted following them. More of the Uighurs from the cultural center in Queens, she'd assumed.

"Any other minders?" Sachs bent down and whispered harshly into the Ghost's ear.

"Any -"

"We've got the two men who were following us. Anybody else?"

The Ghost didn't answer and Sachs said into her radio, "I only noticed the one van. That's probably it."

Then Lon Sellitto and Eddie Deng joined her from upstairs, where they'd been waiting, out of the way of the takedown team. They looked the Ghost over as he lay on the floor, breathless from the shock and the rough treatment. Amelia Sachs thought he looked harmless – just a handsome but diminutive Asian man with slightly graying hair.

Sellitto's radio blared with the message, "Snipers One and Two to Base. Okay to stand down?"

He turned the squelch down on his Motorola and said, "Base to Snipers. That's a roger." The big detective added to the Ghost, "They had you in their sights from the minute you stepped out of the station wagon. If you'd aimed your weapon in her direction you'd be dead now. Lucky man."

They dragged the Ghost into the living room and pushed him into a chair. Eddie Deng read him his rights – in English, Putonghua and Minnanhua. Just to make sure.

He confirmed that he understood, with surprisingly little emotion, Sachs observed, considering the circumstances.

"How're the Changs?" Sachs asked Sellitto.

"They're fine. Two INS teams're at their apartment. It almost got ugly. The father'd got his hands on a gun and was ready to shoot it out but the agents spotted him through a window with a nightscope. They got the apartment's phone number and called to tell them that they were surrounded. As soon as Chang realized it was a legit INS team and not the Ghost he gave it up."

"The baby?"

"She's fine. Social worker's on the way. They're going to keep them at their place in Owls Head until we're through with this piece of shit." Nodding toward the Ghost. "Then we can go over there and debrief them."

The town house in which they now stood, about a mile from the Changs', was a neatly decorated place, full of flowers and tchotchkes: a surprise to Sachs, considering that it was inhabited by one of the city's best homicide detectives.

"So this's your house, Lon?" she asked, picking up a porcelain Little Bo Peep statuette.

"It's my better other's," he answered defensively, using the cop's pet name for Rachel, his girlfriend (he'd combined "better half" and "significant other," in a rare display of levity). They'd moved in together several months ago. "She inherited half of this stuff from her mother." He took the figurine from Sachs and replaced it carefully on the shelf.

"This was the best we could do for a takedown site on such short notice. We figured if we drove too far from Owls Head, the prick'd start to get suspicious."

"It was all fake," the Ghost said, amused. It seemed to Sachs that his English was better than the dialect he'd affected when he'd been portraying John Sung. "You set me up."

"Guess we did."

Lincoln Rhyme's call – as they'd been driving through Brooklyn, on their way to the Changs' real apartment in Owls Head – had been to tell Sachs that he now believed the Ghost was masquerading as John Sung. Another team of INS and NYPD cops was on their way to the Changs' real apartment to detain them. Sellitto and Eddie Deng were setting up a takedown site at Sellitto's house, where they could collar him without the risk of bystanders' getting killed in a shoot-out with the homicidal snake-head and capture any bangshous with him. Rhyme assumed that they would be following Sachs from the safehouse in Chinatown or else would be summoned by the snakehead via cell phone when they arrived at the Changs'.

As she'd listened to Rhyme's voice, it had taken all of Sachs's emotional strength to nod and pretend that Coe was working for the Ghost and that the man who was supposedly her friend, her doctor, the man sitting two feet from her and undoubtedly armed, wasn't the killer they'd been seeking for the past two days.

She thought too of the acupressure session last night – coming to him with her secret, with her desperate hope of being cured. She shivered with repulsion at the memory of his hands on her back and shoulders. She thought too with horror that she'd actually mentioned to him the location of the safehouse where the Wus were staying when she'd asked him if he wanted to join them.

The Ghost asked, "How did your friend, this Lincoln Rhyme, know that I wasn't Sung?"

She picked up the plastic bag containing the contents of the Ghost's pockets. Inside were the fragments of the shattered monkey amulet. Sachs held it close to his face.

"The stone monkey," she explained. "I found some trace under Sonny Li's fingernails. It was magnesium silicate, like talc. Rhyme found out that it came from soapstone – which is what the amulet's carved out of." Sachs reached out and roughly tugged down Ghost's turtleneck, revealing the red line from the leather cord. "What happened? He ripped it off your neck and it broke?" She released the cloth and stepped away.

The Ghost nodded slowly. "Before I shot him he was clawing the ground. I thought he was begging for mercy but then he looked up and smiled at me."

So Li had scraped some of the soft stone under his nails intentionally to tell them the Ghost was actually Sung.

Once Cooper's report on magnesium silicate told them that the substance might be soapstone Rhyme remembered the contamination on Sachs's hands yesterday. He realized that it might've come from Sung's amulet. He'd called the officers who'd guarded Sung's apartment and they'd confirmed that there was a back entrance to the place, which meant that the Ghost had been able to come and go without their seeing him. He'd also asked if there was a gardening shop near the place – the likely source for the mulch that they'd found – and was told about the florist on the ground floor of the apartment building. Then he checked calls to Sachs's cell phone; the number of the cell that'd been used to call the Uighur center showed up in her records.

The real John Sung had been a doctor and the Ghost was not. But, as Sonny Li had told Rhyme, everyone in China knew something about Eastern medicine. What the Ghost had diagnosed about Sachs and the herbs he'd given her were common knowledge among anyone who'd been treated regularly by a Chinese doctor.

"And your friend from the INS?" the Ghost asked.

"Coe?" Sachs replied. "We knew he didn't have any connection with you. But I had to pretend Coe was the spy – we needed to make sure you didn't think we were on to you. And we needed him out of the way. If he'd found out who you were he might've gone after you again – like he did on Canal Street. We wanted a clean takedown. And we didn't want him to go to jail for killing someone." Sachs couldn't resist adding, "Even you."

The Ghost merely smiled calmly.

When she'd handed Coe over to the three cops from the precinct house, she'd explained to him what was going on. The agent, of course, had been shocked to have been sitting inches from the man who'd killed his informant in China and had begun to complain angrily that he wanted to be part of the takedown. But the order to keep him in protective custody had been issued by One Police Plaza and he wasn't going anywhere until the Ghost was in custody.

Then she looked him over. Shook her head in disgust. "You shot Sung, hid the body, then shot yourself. And swam back into the ocean. You nearly drowned."

"I didn't have much choice, did I? Jerry Tang abandoned me. There was no way I was going to escape from the beach without masquerading as Sung."

"What about your gun?"

"Stuffed it into my sock in the ambulance. Then I hid it in the hospital and picked it up after the INS officer released me."

"INS officer?" she mused, nodding. "You did get released awfully fast." The Ghost said nothing and she added, "Well, that's something else we'll look into." Then she asked, "Everything you told me about John Sung… you made it up?"

The Ghost shrugged. "No, what I told you about him was true. Before I killed him I made him tell me about himself, about everyone who was on the raft, about Chang and Wu. Enough so I could make my performance believable. I threw out his picture ID and kept the wallet and the amulet."

"Where's his body?"

Another placid smile was his response.

His serenity infuriated her. He was caught – and was going to jail for the rest of his life and might possibly be executed but he looked as if he were only being inconvenienced by a late train. Fury seized her and she drew back her hand to strike him in the face. But when he gave no reaction – no cringe, no squint – she lowered her arm, refusing to give him the satisfaction of stoically withstanding the blow.

Sachs's ringing phone intruded. She stepped away and answered. "Yes?"

"Everyone having fun?" Rhyme's voice demanded sarcastically.

"Having a picnic maybe? Taking in a movie? Forgetting about the rest of us?"

"Rhyme, we were in the middle of a takedown."

"I suppose somebody was going to call me eventually and let me know what happened. At some point… No, I won't, Thom. I'm pissed off."

"We've been a little busy here, Rhyme," she answered.

"Just wondering what was going on. I'm not psychic, you know."

She knew he'd already heard that none of their team was injured – otherwise he wouldn't be riddling her with sarcasm.

She responded, "You can stow the attitude -"

"'Stow'? Spoken like a true sailor, Sachs."

"- because we caught him." She added, "I tried to get him to tell me where John Sung's body is but he -"

"Well, we can figure that out, Sachs, can't we? It is obvious, after all."

To some people maybe, she reflected, though she was delighted to hear his characteristic barbs, rather than the flat-line voice of earlier.

The criminalist continued, "In the trunk of the stolen Honda."

"And that's still out on the eastern end of Long Island?" she asked, understanding finally.

"Of course. Where else would it be? The Ghost stole it, killed Sung and then drove east to hide it – we wouldn't look in that direction. We'd assume he headed west – into the city."

Sellitto hung up his phone and pointed to the street.

Sachs nodded and said, "I've got to go see some people, Rhyme."

"See some people? See, you are treating this like a goddamn picnic. Who?"

She considered for a moment and said, "Some friends."

Chapter Forty-six

She found the family standing outside a run-down house near Owls Head Park. The smell of sewage was heavy in the air – from the treatment plant that had both betrayed them and saved their lives.

None of the family was in handcuffs and Sachs was pleased at that. She was also pleased that two uniformed NYPD police were chatting good-naturedly with the boy who must've been the Changs' youngest son.

His father, Sam Chang, stood with his arms crossed, grim and silent, head down, as an Asian-American man in a suit – an INS agent, she assumed – talked with him, jotting notes.

At his side was an unhappy, stolid woman in her forties, holding the hand of Po-Yee. Sachs felt a huge thud within her when she saw the Treasured Child. The toddler was adorable. A round-faced girl with silky black hair cut in bangs and short on the sides. She wore red corduroy jeans and a Hello Kitty sweatshirt that was about two sizes too big for her.

A detective recognized Sellitto and walked up to him and Sachs. "The family's fine. We're taking them to INS detention in Queens. It looks like with Chang's record of dissident activity – he was at Tiananmen and has a history of persecution – he's got a good shot at asylum."

"You have caught the Ghost?" Sam Chang asked her in unsteady English as he joined them. He would have heard the news but understandably couldn't get enough reassurance that the killer was in fact safely in custody.

"Yes," she said, her eyes not on the man she was speaking to, though, but on Po-Yee. "He's in custody."

Chang said, "You were important with his capture?"

Sachs smiled. "I was at the party, yep."

"Thank you." The man seemed to want to add more but the English was perhaps too daunting. He thought for a moment and then asked, "I may ask you? The man, old man, killed in Ghost's apartment building? Where is body?"

"Your father?"

"Yes."

"At the city morgue. Downtown in Manhattan."

"He must have proper funeral. Is very important."

Sachs said, "I'll make sure he's not moved. After you're through with the INS you can arrange to have a funeral home pick him up."

"Thank you."

A small blue Dodge with a City of New York seal pulled up to the scene. A black woman in a brown pants suit got out, carrying an attaché case. The woman spoke to the INS agent and Sachs. "I'm Chiffon Wilson. I'm a social worker with Children's Services." An ID card was flashed.

"You're here for the baby?"

"Right."

Chang looked quickly at his wife. Sachs asked, "You're taking her?"

"We have to."

"Can't she stay with them?"

Wilson shook her head sympathetically. "I'm afraid not. They have no claim to her. She's an orphaned citizen of another country. She'll have to go back to China."

Sachs nodded slowly then gestured the social worker aside. She whispered, "She's a girl. You know what happens to baby girl orphans in China?"

"She'll be adopted."

"Maybe," Sachs said dubiously.

"I don't know about that. I just know that I'm following the law. Look, we do this all the time and we've never heard about any problems with the kids who go back to the recipient country."

Recipient country… The phrase troubled her as much as Coe's harsh "undocumenteds." Sachs asked, "Do you ever hear anything at all after they go back?"

Wilson hesitated. "No." She then nodded to the INS agent, who spoke in Chinese to the Changs. Mei-Mei's face went still but she nodded and directed the baby to the social worker. "She will…" Mei-Mei said. Then frowned, trying to think of the English words.

"Yes?" the social worker asked.

"She will be good take care of?"

"Yes, she will."

"She very good baby. Lost mother. Make sure she good take care of."

"I'll make sure."

Mei-Mei looked at the girl for a long moment then turned her attention back to her youngest son.

Wilson picked up Po-Yee, who squinted at Sachs's red hair and reached out to grip a handful of the strands with curiosity. When she tugged hard, Sachs laughed. The social worker started for her car.

"Ting!" came a woman's urgent voice. Sachs recognized the word for "wait" or "stop." She turned to see Chang Mei-Mei walking toward them.

"Yes?"

"Here. There is this." Mei-Mei handed her a stuffed animal toy, crudely made. A cat, Sachs believed.

"She like this. Make her happy."

Wilson took it and gave it to Po-Yee.

The child's eyes were on the toy, Mei-Mei's on the girl.

Then the social worker strapped the child into a car seat and drove away.

Sachs spent a half hour talking to the Changs, debriefing them, seeing if she could learn anything else that might help shore up the case against the Ghost. Then the exhaustion of the past two days caught up with her and she knew it was time to go home. She climbed into the crime scene bus, glancing back once to see the Changs climb into an INS minibus. She and Mei-Mei happened to catch each others eyes for an instant, then the door closed, the bus pulled into the street and the vanished, the piglets, the undocumenteds… the family began their journey to yet another temporary home.

Evidence exists independent of perpetrators, of course, and even though the Ghost was in custody Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs spent the next morning processing the information that continued to arrive regarding the GHOSTKILL case.

An analysis of the chemical markers in the C4 by the FBI had determined that the likely source of the plastic explosive used to blow up the ship was a North Korean arms dealer, who regularly sold weaponry to China.

Recovery divers from the Evan Brigant had brought up the bodies of the crewmen and the other immigrants from the Fuzhou Dragon, as well as the rest of the money – about $120,000. The cash had been logged into evidence and was being stored in an FBI safe deposit box. They also had learned that Ling Shui-bian, the man who had paid the money to the Ghost and had written him the letter that Sachs found on the ship, had an address in Fuzhou. Rhyme assumed he was one of the Ghost's little snakeheads or partners, and he emailed the name and address to the Fuzhou public security bureau with a note telling them about Ling's involvement with the Ghost.

"You want it on the chart?" Thom asked, nodding at the whiteboard.

"Write, write!" he said impatiently. They still would have to present the evidence to the prosecutors and reproducing the information as it was written on the whiteboards would be the most concise and helpful way to do this.

The aide took the marker and wrote down the information that had just come in.

• Ghost used new C4 to blow up ship. Checking origin of explosive through chemical markers.

• North Korean arms dealer is source.

• Large quantity of new U.S. bills found in Ghost's cabin.

• Total approximately $120,000.

• Approx. $20,000 in used Chinese yuan found in cabin.

• List of victims, air charter details and bank deposit information. Checking name of sender in China.

• Ling Shui-bian resides in Fuzhou. Name and address sent to local police.

• Captain alive but unconscious.

• Regained consciousness, now in INS detention.

As Thom was writing on the board, Rhyme's computer beeped. "Command, email," he snapped.

The computer accepted his gruff tone without affront and offered him the list of new messages.

"Command, cursor down. Command, double-click."

He read the message that had just come in.

"Ah," Rhyme announced. "I was right."

He explained to Sachs that the body of John Sung had in fact been found in the trunk of the red Honda that the Ghost had stolen. As Rhyme predicted, the car had been found sunk in a pond only 200 feet from Easton Beach.

So there would be one more murder count to add to the charges against Kwan Ang.

There was another message that interested him. This one was from Mel Cooper, who was back in his office at the NYPD forensics lab in Queens.

From: M. Cooper

To: L. Rhyme

Re: Results of chromatographic and spectrometric analyses of Department of Justice PERT Evidence Sample 3452-02

The official-sounding heading was in contrast to the informal message below it.

Lincoln :

We have met the dynamite and it is phony.

Dellray's butt wasn't in any danger. The perp screwed up and used dummy explosive – stuff used for training. I tried to follow up and trace it, but nobody has a database on fake bomb materials. Might be something to think about.

Rhyme laughed. Some arms dealer had scammed Fred Dellray's attacker by selling him the fake explosives. He was relieved that the agent hadn't really been at risk.

The doorbell rang and Thom went down to see who it was.

Heavy footsteps on the stairs. Two sets. He believed they belonged to Sellitto and Dellray – the cop walked with distinctive, heavy footfalls and the agent took the stairs two at a time on his long legs.

For a moment Rhyme, otherwise reclusive, was glad they were here. He'd tell them about the fake bomb. They'd all get a laugh out of it. But then he was aware of something else and an alarm bell went off inside his head. The men had stopped outside the doorway and were whispering. It was as if they were debating between themselves who should deliver bad news.

He was right about whom the steps belonged to. A moment later the rumpled cop and the lanky FBI agent pushed into the bedroom. "Hey, Linc," Sellitto said.

One look at their faces told Rhyme that he was also right about the bad news.

Sachs and Rhyme exchanged a troubled glance.

Rhyme looked from one to the other. "Well, Christ, one of you say something."

Dellray uttered a long sigh.

Finally the detective said, "They took him out of our jurisdiction – the Ghost. He's being sent back to China."

"What?" Sachs gasped.

Angrily Dellray said, "Bein' escorted onto a flight later today." The agent shook his head. "Once it takes off he's free."

Chapter Forty-seven

"Extradited?" Rhyme asked.

"That's the fuzzy little spin they're putting on it," Dellray growled. "But we ain't seen any single solitary arrest warrant for him issued by a Chinese court."

"What does that mean, no arrest warrant?" Sachs asked.

"That his fucking guanxi's saving his ass," Rhyme said bitterly.

Dellray nodded. " 'Less the country that wants the extradition shows valid paper, we never send nobody back over. No way."

"Well, they'll try him, won't they?" Sachs asked.

"Nup. I talked to our folks over there. The high-ups in China want him back, lemme quote, 'for questioning in connection with irregular matters of foreign trade.' Not a breath 'bout smugglin', not a breath 'bout murder, not a breath. 'Bout. Nothin'."

Rhyme was stunned. "He'll be back in business in a month." The Changs, the Wus and who knew how many others were suddenly at risk again. "Fred, can you do anything?" he asked. Dellray was well thought of in the FBI. He had friends at headquarters down on Pennsylvania Avenue and Tenth in D.C. and had a good stockpile of his own guanxi.

But the agent shook his head, squeezing the cigarette that rested behind his right ear. "This li'l decision got made in State Department Washington. Not my Washington. I got no clout there."

Rhyme remembered the quiet man in the blue suit: Webley from State.

"Goddamn," Sachs whispered. "He knew".

"What?" Rhyme asked.

"The Ghost knew he was safe. At the takedown he was surprised but he didn't look worried. Hell, he told me about killing Sung and taking over his identity. He was proud of it. If anybody else'd been collared like that, they would've listened to their rights and shut up. He was goddamn bragging."

"It can't happen," Rhyme said, thinking of the poor people floating dead in the Fuzhou Dragon and lying bloody on the sand at Easton Beach. Thinking of Sam Chang's father.

Thinking of Sonny Li.

"Well, it is extremely happenin'," Dellray said. "He's leaving this afternoon. And there's not a single damn thing we can do."

In the Federal Men's Detention Center in downtown Manhattan the Ghost sat across the table from his lawyer in a private conference room, which the lawyer's handheld scanner had assured them was not bugged.

They spoke in Minnanhua Chinese, quietly and quickly.

When the lawyer was finished telling him about the procedure for his release into the hands of the Fuzhou public security bureau the Ghost nodded and then leaned close. "I need you to find some information for me."

The lawyer took out a pad of paper. The Ghost glanced at it once and frowned. The lawyer put the foolscap away.

"There is a woman who works for the police department. I need her address. Home address. Her name is Amelia Sachs and she lives somewhere in Brooklyn. S-A-C-H-S. And Lincoln Rhyme. Spelled like in poetry. He's in Manhattan."

The lawyer nodded.

"Then there are the two families I need to find." He didn't think it wise to describe them as people he was trying to kill, even in the absence of listening devices, so he said simply, "The Wus and the Changs. From the Dragon. They might be in INS detention somewhere but maybe not."

"What are you -?"

"You don't need to ask questions like that."

The slim man fell silent. Then he considered. "When do you need this information?"

The Ghost wasn't sure exactly what awaited him in China. He guessed that he would be back in one of his luxury apartments in three months but it could be less. "As soon as possible. You will keep monitoring them and if the addresses change you will leave a message with my people in Fuzhou."

"Yes. Of course."

Then the Ghost realized that he was tired. He lived for combat, he lived to play deadly games like this. He lived to win. But, my, how tired you got when you broke cauldrons and sank boats, when you simply did not accept defeat. Now he needed rest. His qi sorely needed to be replenished.

He dismissed his lawyer then lay back on the cot in the antiseptically clean, square cell, the room reminding him of a Chinese funeral parlor because the walls were blue and white. The Ghost closed his eyes and pictured Yindao.

Lying in a room, a warehouse, a garage, which had been arranged by a feng shui artist in the opposite manner of most practitioners: the nature of his fantasy room would maximize anger and evil and pain. The art of wind and water can do this too, the Ghost believed.

Yin and yang, opposites in harmony.

The supple woman tied down on the solid floor.

Her fair skin in darkness.

Hard and soft…

Pleasure and agony.

Yindao…

The thought of her would get him through the difficult coming weeks. He closed his eyes.

"We've had our differences, Alan," Rhyme said.

"I guess." INS agent Coe was cautious. He sat in Rhyme's bedroom, in one of the uncomfortable wicker chairs that the criminalist had furnished the room with in hopes that it would discourage visitors from staying for long periods of time. Coe was suspicious about the invitation but Rhyme didn't want there to be any chance of someone's overhearing them. This had to be a completely private conversation.

"You heard about the Ghost's release?"

"Of course I heard about the Ghost," the man muttered angrily.

Rhyme asked, "Tell me, what's your real interest in the case. No bullshit."

Coe hesitated and then said, "The informant of mine he killed. That's it."

"I said no bullshit. There's more to it, isn't there?"

Coe finally said, "Yeah, there's more."

"What?"

"The woman who was the informant, Julia? We were… We were lovers."

Rhyme carefully scanned the agent's face. Although he was a firm believer in the overarching value of hard evidence he wasn't wholly skeptical to messages in faces and eyes. He saw pain, he saw sorrow.

After a difficult moment the agent said, "She died because of me. We should've been more careful. We went out in public some. We went to Xiamen, this tourist city south of Fuzhou. There're lots of Western tourists there and I thought we wouldn't be recognized. But I think maybe we were." There were tears in his eyes now. "I never had her do anything dangerous. Just glance at scheduling calendars from time to time. She never wore a wire, never broke into any offices. But I should've known the Ghost. Nobody could get away with even the slightest betrayal."

I am coming into town on bus, I'm saying. I saw crow on road picking at food. Another crow tried steal it and the first crow not just scare other away – he chase and try to peck eyes out. Not leave thief alone.

"The Ghost got her," Coe said. "She left two daughters behind."

"That's what you were doing overseas during the time you took off?"

He nodded. "Looking for Julia. But then I gave up on that and spent my time trying to get the children placed in a Catholic home. They were girls – and you know how tough a time orphaned girl babies have over there."

Rhyme said nothing at first though he was thinking back to an incident in his own life that was similar to Coe's tragedy. A woman he'd grown close to before the accident, a lover. She was a cop too, a crime scene expert. And she was dead because he'd ordered her into a booby-trapped scene. The bomb had killed her instantly.

"Did it work?" the criminalist asked. "With the girls?"

"No. The state took them and I never saw them again." He looked up and wiped his eyes. "So that's why I go on and on about undocumenteds. As long as people pay fifty thousand bucks for an illegal trip to America we're going to have snakeheads like the Ghost killing anybody who gets in their way."

Rhyme wheeled closer to Coe. "How badly do you want to stop him?" he whispered.

"The Ghost? With my whole soul."

That question had been easy. Rhyme now asked the hard one. "What are you willing to risk to do it?"

But there was no hesitation as the agent said, "Everything."

Chapter Forty-eight

"There may be a problem," said the man's voice through the phone.

Sitting in the middle row of a large INS van en route to Kennedy Airport, sweating Harold Peabody nodded as if the caller could see him.

He didn't need problems, not with this case. "Problem. I see. Go ahead."

The man beside Peabody stirred at these words, the quiet man in the navy-blue suit, Webley, who worked for the State Department and who'd made Peabody 's life unrefined hell since he'd flown in from Washington the afternoon of the day the Fuzhou Dragon sank. Webley turned his head toward Peabody but remained stony-faced, a skill he was extremely good at.

"Alan Coe disappeared," said the caller, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Manhattan office. "We had a report that he was talking to Rhyme. Then he vanished again."

"Okay." Peabody tried to figure out what this meant.

Behind Peabody and Webley were two armed INS agents on either side of the Ghost, whose handcuffs kept clinking as he sipped his Starbucks coffee. The snakehead, at least, seemed untroubled by the talk of problems. "Keep going," Peabody said into the phone.

"We were keeping an eye on Coe, like you said. 'Cause we weren't sure if he'd try to do harm to the subject."

Do harm to the subject… What a fucked-up way to talk, Peabody thought.

"And?"

"Well, we can't find him. Or Rhyme either."

"He's in a wheelchair. How hard is it to keep track of him?" Doughy Peabody was drenched. The storm had passed and, though the skies were still overcast, the temperature was in the high 80s. And the government van had government air-conditioning.

"There was no surveillance order," the ASAC reminded calmly. "We had to handle it… informally." His equanimity, Peabody realized, put the FBI agent in control of the situation and he reminded himself to try to gin up some more power.

Bureaucracy was such a bitch.

"What's your situational assessment?" Peabody asked. Thinking: How's that for jargon, you asshole?

"You know Coe's had a top-of-the-deck priority to get the Ghost himself."

"True. And?"

"Rhymes the best forensic detective cop in the country. We've been sniffing the thought that he and Coe're planning to take out the Ghost."

How do you sniff a thought? Peabody wondered. "How do you mean?"

"With Rhyme's grip on forensics they might've come up with some way to make it impossible to convict Coe. Manipulate the evidence somehow."

"What?" Peabody scoffed. "Ridiculous. Rhyme wouldn't do that."

These words now brought some emotion to Webley. He frowned.

"Why not?" the ASAC continued. "Ever since his accident he's not the most stable person in the world. He's always had this issue about killing himself. And it sounds like he got pretty close to that Chinese cop. Maybe when the Ghost shot Li it pushed him over the edge."

This sounded crazy, but who knew? Peabody caught people trying to sneak into the country illegally and sent them back home. He didn't know the workings of the criminal mind. In fact he had no experience with psychology whatsoever, except resentfully paying his ex-wife's shrink bills.

As for Coe, well, he definitely was unstable enough to try to cap the Ghost's ass. He'd already tried to take him out – at the Wus' apartment on Canal Street.

"What's Dellray say?" Peabody asked.

"He's operational in the field at this time. He's not returning calls."

"Doesn't he work for you?"

"Dellray pretty much works for Dellray," said the ASAC.

"What're you suggesting we do?" Peabody asked, using his wrinkled tan jacket to wipe his face.

"Do you think Coe's following you?"

Peabody glanced around him at the billion cars on the Van Wyck Expressway. "Like I could fucking tell," he answered, giving up entirely on the language of high-level government.

"If he's going to make a move it'll have to be at the airport. Tell your people to look out for him. I'll tell Port Authority security too."

"I just don't see it happening."

"Thanks for the assessment, Harold. But then again it was Rhyme who collared the prick in the first place. Not you." The line went dead.

Peabody turned around and studied the Ghost, who asked, "What was that about?"

"Nothing." Peabody asked one of the agents, "We have body armor in the back?"

"Naw," one answered. Then: "Well, I'm in a vest."

"Me too," said the other agent.

The tone of their voices said that they weren't about to give them up.

Nor would Peabody ask his agents to do so. If Coe made a move on the Ghost and he was successful, well, that was just the way it was. He and Rhyme would have to take the consequences.

He leaned forward and snapped at the driver, "Can't you do anything about the goddamn air-conditioning?"

The shackles binding his wrists felt light as silk.

They would come off as soon as he was at the doorway of the airliner that would carry him back home from the Beautiful Country and, because he knew that, the metal restraints had already ceased to exist.

Walking down the international corridor of JFK Airport, he was reflecting on how flying in the Far East had changed. Thinking of the early days when he would fly on the national airline of China: CAAC – which every English-speaking Chinese knew stood for Chinese Airliners Always Crash. Things were different now. Today it would be Northwest Airlines to L.A., then a China Air flight to Singapore with a connection to Fuzhou, business class all the way.

The entourage was a curious one: the Ghost, two armed guards and the two men in charge – Peabody from the INS and the man from the United States Department of State. They were now joined by two armed Port Authority guards, big men, nervous as squirrels, who kept their hands near their weapons as they surveyed the crowd.

The Ghost didn't exactly know what the uneasiness and firepower were all about but he supposed that there'd been death threats against him. Well, that was nothing new. He'd lived with death since the night the Four Olds murdered his family.

Footsteps behind.

"Mr. Kwan… Mr. Kwan!"

They turned to see a thin Chinese man in a suit walking quickly toward them. The guards drew their weapons and the approaching man stopped, eyes wide.

"It's my lawyer," the Ghost said.

"You sure?" Peabody asked.

"What do you mean, am I sure?"

Peabody nodded the man forward, frisked him despite the Ghost's protests and let him and the snakehead step to the side of the corridor. The Ghost turned his ear toward the lawyer's mouth. "Go ahead."

"The Changs and the Wus are out on bond, pending the hearing. It looks like they'll be granted asylum. The Wus are in Flushing, Queens. The Changs are back in Owls Head. The same apartment."

"And Yindao?" the Ghost whispered.

The man blinked at the crude word.

The snakehead corrected himself. "I mean the Sachs woman."

"Oh, I have her address too. And Lincoln Rhyme's. Do you want me to write them down for you?"

"No, just tell them to me slowly. I'll remember them."

After only three repetitions the Ghost had memorized them. He said, "You'll find your money in the account." No need to say how much money or which account.

The lawyer nodded and, with a glance at the Ghost's guards, turned and left.

The group continued down the corridor. Ahead of him the Ghost could see the gate, the pretty clerks behind the check-in counter. And through the window he caught a glimpse of the 747 that would soon take him west, like Monkey making his pilgrimage, at the end of which he found enlightenment and contentment.

His boarding pass was protruding from his shirt pocket. He had 10,000 yuan in his wallet. He had a U.S. government escort. He was going home, to his apartments, his women, his money.

He was free. He -

Then sudden motion…

Somebody was moving toward him fast and the guards were pulling him aside, their weapons coming out of their holsters again. The Ghost, gasping at the shock, thought that he was going to die. He muttered a fast prayer to his guardian, Yi the archer.

But the attacker stopped short. Breathing unsteadily, the Ghost began to laugh.

"Hello, Yindao."

She was wearing jeans, T-shirt and windbreaker, her badge around her neck. Hands on her hips, one of which rested very close to her pistol. The policewoman ignored the Ghost and glanced at the nervous, young INS agents. "You better have a damn good reason for drawing down on me."

They started to reholster their weapons but Peabody gestured for them not to.

The Ghost focused past Yindao. Behind her was a tall black man in a white suit and noisy blue shirt. The fat cop who'd arrested him in Brooklyn was here as well, as were several uniformed city policemen. But the one person in this retinue who captured his full attention was a handsome dark-haired man about the Ghost's age, sitting in a complicated, bright red wheelchair, to which his arms and legs were strapped. A trim young man – his aide or nurse – stood behind the chair.

This was, of course, Lincoln Rhyme. The Ghost studied the curious man – who'd miraculously discovered the location of the Fuzhou Dragon at sea, who'd found the Wus and the Changs and who had actually succeeded in capturing the Ghost himself. Which no other policeman in the world had ever been able to do.

Harold Peabody wiped his face with his sleeve, surveyed the situation and motioned the guards back. They put their weapons away. "What's this all about, Rhyme?"

But the man ignored him and continued to study the snakehead carefully. The Ghost felt a tickle of unease. But then he mastered the sensation. He had guanxi at the highest level. He was immune, even to the magic of Lincoln Rhyme, whom he asked bluntly, "Who exactly are you? A consultant? A private detective?"

"Me?" the cripple responded. "I'm one of the ten judges of hell."

The Ghost laughed. "So you inscribe names in The Register of the Living and the Dead?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I do."

"And you've come to see me off?"

"No," he answered.

Peabody said cautiously, "And what do you want?"

The State Department bureaucrat said impatiently, "All of you, now – just clear on out of here."

"He's not getting on that airplane," Rhyme said.

"Oh, yes, he is," said the dour official. He stepped forward, plucking the Ghost's ticket from his pocket and striding toward the gate agent.

"You take one more step toward that airplane," the fat policeman said to him, "and these officers're authorized to arrest you."

"Me?" Webley muttered angrily.

Peabody gave a sharp laugh and looked at the black agent. "Dellray, what is this crap?"

"Probably oughta listen to my friend here, Harold. In your best innerest, believe you me."

Peabody said, "Five minutes."

A regretful frown crossed Lincoln Rhyme's face. "Oh, I'm afraid it may take a little longer than that."

Chapter Forty-nine

The snakehead was far smaller and more compact than Lincoln Rhyme had expected. This was a phenomenon he recalled from his days running the NYPD forensics unit; the perpetrators he pursued took on disproportionate stature in his mind and when he saw them in person for the first time – usually at trial – he was often surprised at how diminutive they were.

The Ghost stood shackled and surrounded by law enforcers. Concerned, yes, but still in control, serene, shoulders and arms relaxed. The criminalist understood immediately how Sachs could have been suckered by him: the Ghost's eyes were those of a healer, a doctor, a spiritual man. They would dole out apparent comfort and invite sharing confidences. But, knowing the man now, Rhyme could see in the placid gaze evidence of a relentless ego and ruthlessness.

"Okay, sir, what's this all about?" asked Peabody's friend – Webley from State, as Rhyme now thought of him, echoing the man's own pompous identification of himself in Rhyme's living room the other day.

Rhyme said to the two men, "You know what happens sometimes in our line of work, gentlemen? I mean, forensic science."

Webley from State started to speak but Peabody waved him silent. Rhyme wouldn't have let anyone rush him anyway. Nobody hurried Lincoln Rhyme when he didn't wish to be hurried.

"We sometimes lose sight of the big picture. All right, I admit I'm the one who loses sight more than, say, my Sachs here. She looks at motive, she looks at why people do what they do. But that's not my nature. My nature is to study each piece of evidence and put it where it belongs." He glanced at the Ghost with a smile. "Like placing a stone on a wei-chi board."

The snakehead who had brought so much sorrow to so many lives said nothing, gave no acknowledgment. The gate agent announced preboarding of the Northwest Airlines flight to Los Angeles.

"We figured out the clues just fine." A nod toward the Ghost. "After all, here he is, caught, right? Thanks to us. And we've got enough evidence to convict him and sentence him to death. But what happens? He's going free."

"He's not going free," Peabody rejoined. "He's going back to stand trial in China."

"Free from the jurisdiction where he's committed a number of serious felonies in the past few days," Rhyme corrected sharply. "Do we have to squabble?"

This was too much for Webley from State. "Get to the point or I'm putting him on that plane."

Rhyme continued to ignore the man. He had the stage and wasn't relinquishing it. "The big picture… big picture… I was thinking how bad I felt. Here, I'd found out where the Fuzhou Dragon was and sent the Coast Guard after her but – what happens? – he scuttles it, killing all those people."

Peabody shook his head. "Of course you'd feel bad," he said with some sympathy. "We all felt bad. But – "

Rhyme kept steaming forward. "Big picture… Let's think about it. It's Tuesday, just before dawn, on board the Dragon. You're the Ghost, a wanted man – wanted for capital offenses – and the Coast Guard is a half hour away from interdicting your smuggling ship. What would you have done?"

The gate agent continued with the boarding of the flight.

Peabody sighed. Webley from State muttered something sotto voce; Rhyme knew it was not complimentary. The Ghost stirred but he remained silent.

Since no one was helping him out Rhyme continued, "I personally would've taken my money, ordered the Dragon back out to sea full speed ahead and escaped to shore in one of the life rafts. The Coast Guard and cops and INS would've been so busy with the crew and immigrants I could easily've gotten to land and been halfway to Chinatown before they realized I was gone. But what'd the Ghost do?"

Rhyme glanced at Sachs, who said, "He locked the immigrants in the hold, sank the ship and then hunted down the survivors. And he risked getting caught or killed to do it."

"And when he didn't kill them all on the shore," Rhyme took over the narrative, "he followed them to the city and tried to murder them there. Why on earth would he do that?"

"Well, they were witnesses," Peabody said. "He had to kill them."

"Ah, why? That's the question that nobody's asking." Rhyme asked, "What would it gain him?"

Peabody and Webley from State were silent.

Rhyme continued, "All that the passengers on the ship could do is to testify in one case of human smuggling. But there were already a dozen warrants against him for smuggling around the world. Homicide charges too – look at the Interpol Red Notice. It made no sense to go to all that trouble to murder them just because they were witnesses." He paused a histrionic few seconds. "But killing them makes perfect sense if the passengers were his intended victims."

Rhyme could see two different reactions in their faces. Peabody was perplexed and surprised. In Webley from State's eyes there was a different look. He knew exactly where Rhyme was going.

"Victims," Rhyme continued. "That's a key word. See, my Sachs found a letter when she went for her little swim in the Dragon."

The Ghost, who'd been staring at Sachs, turned slowly toward Rhyme when he heard this.

"A letter?" Peabody asked.

"It said, more or less, here's your money and a list of the victims you'll be taking to America… Are we catching on to the big picture, gentlemen? The letter didn't say 'passengers' or 'immigrants' or 'piglets' – or your own indelicate term, Peabody, 'undocumenteds.' The letter said quote 'victims.' I didn't realize at first when I had the letter translated that that was the exact word the writer used. And the big picture becomes a lot clearer when we look at who those victims were – they were all Chinese dissidents and their families. The Ghost isn't just a snakehead. He's also a professional killer. He was hired to murder them."

"This man is crazy," the Ghost snapped. "He's desperate. I want to leave now."

But Rhyme said, "The Ghost was planning all along to scuttle the Dragon. He was only waiting until the ship was close enough to shore so that he and his bangshou could make it to land safely. But a few things went wrong – we found the ship and sent the Coast Guard in, so he had to act sooner than he'd planned; some of the immigrants escaped. Then the explosive was too powerful and the ship sank before he could get his guns and money and find his assistant."

"That's absurd," muttered Webley from State. " Beijing wouldn't hire anybody to kill dissidents. It's not the 1960s anymore."

" Beijing didn't do it," Rhyme responded, "as I suspect you probably know, Webley. No, we found out who sent the Ghost his instructions and his money. Ling Shui-bian is his name."

The Ghost glanced desperately at the boarding gate.

Rhyme continued, "I sent the Fuzhou police an email with Ling's name and address and told them that I thought he was one of the Ghost's partners. But they sent back a message saying I must be mistaken. His address was a government building in Fuzhou. Ling is the Fujian governor's assistant in charge of trade development."

"What's that mean?" Peabody asked.

"That he's a corrupt warlord," Rhyme snapped. "Isn't it obvious? He and his people're getting millions in kickbacks from businesses all along the southeastern coast of China. He's probably working with the governor, but I don't have any evidence about that. Not yet, anyway."

"Impossible," offered Webley though with much less bluster than he'd displayed earlier.

Rhyme said, "Not at all. Sonny Li told me about Fujian Province. It's always been more independent than the central government likes. It has the most connections with the West and Taiwan – more money too. And the most active dissidents. Beijing is always threatening to crack down on the province, nationalize businesses again and put its own people in power. If that happens, Ling and his boys lose their income stream. So, how to keep Beijing happy? Kill the most vocal dissidents. And what better way to do it than by hiring a snakehead? If they die en route to another country it's their own fault, not the government's."

"And more likely than not," Sachs said, "nobody'd even know that they died. They'd be just one more shipload of the vanished." Nodding at Webley from State, she reminded, "Rhyme?"

"Oh, right. The last piece of the puzzle. Why's the Ghost going free?"

He said to Webley, "You're sending him back to keep Ling and his people in Fujian happy. To make sure our business interests aren't affected. Southeast China is the biggest site for U.S. investment in the world."

"That's bullshit," the man snapped in reply.

The Ghost said, "This is ridiculous. It's the lie of a desperate man." Nodding toward Rhyme. "Where's the proof?"

"Proof? Well, we have the letter from Ling. But if you want more… Remember, Harold? You told me that other shiploads of the Ghost's immigrants disappeared in the past year or so. I checked the statements from their relatives in the Interpol database. Most of those victims were dissidents from Fujian too."

"That's not true," the Ghost said quickly.

"Then there's the money," Rhyme said, ignoring the snakehead.

"Money?"

"The smuggling fee. When Sachs went for her little paddle in the Atlantic she found 120,000 U.S. dollars and maybe 20,000 worth of old yuan. I invited a friend of mine from the INS over to my place to help me look at the evidence. He -"

"Who?" Peabody asked sharply. Then he understood. "Alan Coe? It was him, wasn't it?"

"A friend. Let's leave it at that." In fact, the friend was Agent Coe, who'd also spent the day stealing classified INS files, which would probably cost him his job, if not earn him a jail sentence. This was the risk that Rhyme had referred to earlier – and that Coe had been only too happy to assume.

"The first thing he noticed was the money. He told me that when immigrants contract with snakeheads they can't pay the down payment in dollars – because there are no dollars in China, not enough to pay for transit to the U.S. anyway. They always pay in yuan. With a shipload of twenty-five or so immigrants, that means Sachs should've found at least a half million in yuan – just for the down payment. So why was there so little Chinese money on board? Because the Ghost charged next to nothing – to make sure that the dissidents on the hit list could afford to make the trip. The Ghost was making his profit from the fee to kill them. The 120,000? Well, that was the down payment from Ling. I checked the serial numbers on some of the bills and, according to the Federal Reserve, that cash was last seen going into the Bank of South China in Singapore. Which happens to be used regularly by Fujianese government ministries."

More rows were boarding. The Ghost was truly desperate now.

Peabody had fallen silent and was considering all this. He seemed to be wavering. But the State Department official was resolute. "He's getting on that plane and that's all there is to it."

Rhyme squinted and cocked his head. "How high are we now on the ladder of evidence, Sachs?"

"How about the C4?"

"Right, the explosive used to blow up the ship. The FBI traced it to a North Korean arms dealer, who regularly sells to – guess who? People's Liberation Army bases in Fujian. The government gave the Ghost the C4." Rhyme closed his eyes for a brief moment. They sprang open. "Then there's the cell phone that Sachs found at the beach… It was a government-issue satellite phone. The network he used was based in Fuzhou."

"The trucks, Rhyme," Sachs reminded. "Tell them about the trucks."

Rhyme nodded, never able to resist delivering a lesson in his craft. "Interesting thing about crime scene work – sometimes what you don't find at a scene is as important as what you do find. I was looking at our evidence board and I realized that something was missing: Where was the evidence of the trucks for the immigrants? My INS friend told me that ground transport is part of the smuggling contract. But there weren't any trucks. The only vehicle at the beach was Jerry Tang's – to pick up the Ghost and his bangshou. Well, why no trucks. Because the Ghost knew the immigrants would never get to shore alive."

The line of boarding passengers was shrinking.

Webley from State leaned down and whispered viciously into Rhyme's face, "You're in way over your head here, mister. You don't know what you're doing."

Rhyme gazed back at him in mock contrition. "Nope, I don't know a thing. Not about world politics, not about les affaires d'etat… I'm just a simple scientist. My knowledge is woefully limited. To things like, say, fake dynamite."

Which shut up Webley from State instantly.

"This's where I come in," Dellray said. "Unfortunately for you folks."

Peabody cleared his throat uneasily. "What are you talking about?" he asked – but only because the script called for him to pose the question, the answer to which was the last thing in the world he wanted to hear.

"The bomb in Fred's car? Well, the results came back from the lab about the dynamite. Interesting – it wasn't dynamite at all. It was sawdust mixed with resin. Fake. Used for training. My INS friend told me that Immigration has its own bomb squad and bomb training facility in Manhattan and he stopped by the place this morning. They have dummy explosives on hand to teach rookies recognition and handling. The sticks in Fred's car match the samples from there. And the numbers on the detonator are similar to some he found in an INS evidence locker – they were confiscated last year when some agents arrested a dozen illegal Russian nationals in Coney Island."

Rhyme enjoyed the flicker of horror in Peabody 's eyes. The criminalist was surprised that Webley from State could still manage to look so indignant. "If you're suggesting that anyone in the federal government would hurt a fellow agent -"

"Hurt? How could a small detonator hurt anyone? It was just a firecracker, really. No, the important criminal charge I'd think of would be felonious interference with an investigation – because it would seem to me that you might've wanted Fred off the case temporarily."

"And why?"

" 'Cause," white-suited Dellray took over, stepping forward, driving Webley from State against the wall, "I was makin' waves. Gettin' together the SPEC-TAC team. Who woulda taken the Ghost out no nonsense, not pissin' around like the INS folk were doing. Hell, I think that's why I was on the case in the first place. I din't know beans 'bout human smugglin'. An' when I arranged for an expert – Dan Wong – to take over the case, next thing we know his butt's on a plane headin' west."

Rhyme summarized, "Fred had to go – so you could dispose of the Ghost the way you'd planned – catching him alive and getting him safely out of the country as part of a deal between the State Department and Ling in Fujian." A nod toward the plane. "Just like what's happened."

"I didn't know anything about killing dissidents," Peabody blurted. "That was never expressed to me. I swear!"

"Watch it," Webley from State muttered threateningly.

"All they said was that they needed to keep the Justice Department minimized. There were important national security issues at stake. Nobody mentioned business interests, nobody mentioned -"

"Harold!" Webley from State cracked the whip. Then he turned away from the sweaty bureaucrat to Rhyme and said in a reasonable voice, "Look, if – I'm saying if – any of this is true, you have to realize there's a lot more to it than just this one man, Lincoln. The Ghost's cover's been blown. He's not going to be sinking any more ships. Nobody'll hire him as a snakehead after this. But," the diplomat continued smoothly, "if we send him back, that'll keep the Chinese happy. Beijing won't crack down on the provinces and the end result'll be a better economy for the people there. And with more American influence there'll be improved human rights." He lifted his hands, palms up. "Sometimes we have to make hard choices."

Rhyme nodded. "So what you're saying is that it's essentially an issue of politics and diplomacy."

Webley from State smiled, pleased that Rhyme finally understood. "Exactly. For the good of both countries. It's a sacrifice, sure, but it's one that I think has to be made."

Rhyme considered this for a moment. Then he said to Sachs, "We could call it the Historically Unprecedented Great Sacrifice for the Beneficial Good of the People."

Webley from State's face twisted at Rhyme's sarcasm.

"See," the criminalist explained, "politics are complicated, diplomacy is complicated. But crime is simple. I don't like complicated things. So here's the deal: either you hand the Ghost over to us for prosecution in this country or you let him fly back home. And if you do that we go public with the fact you're releasing a perp in a multiple homicide – for political and economic reasons. And that you assaulted an FBI agent in the process." He added flippantly, "Your choice. Up to you."

"Don't threaten us. You're just fucking city cops," said Webley from State.

The gate agent announced the final boarding of the flight. Now the Ghost was scared. Sweat on his forehead, face dark with rage, he walked up to Webley and raised his hands, the shackles jangling. He whispered angrily to him. The bureaucrat ignored him and turned back to Rhyme. "How the hell're you going to go public? Nobody's going to be interested in a story like this. You think it's fucking Watergate? We're sending a Chinese national back to his homeland to stand trial for various crimes."

"Harold?" Rhyme asked.

Miserable, Peabody said, "I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do."

"So that's your answer," Rhyme replied, smiling faintly. "That's all I wanted. A decision. You made one. Good." He thought, with both amusement and sorrow, that this was very much like playing a game of wei-chi.

"Thom, could you please show him our handiwork?" Rhyme asked his aide.

The young man took an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Webley from State. He opened it. Inside was a long memo from Rhyme to Peter Hoddins, international desk reporter with The New York Times. It described in detail exactly what Rhyme had just told Peabody and Webley.

"Peter and I are good friends," Thom said. "I told him we might have an exclusive about the Fuzhou Dragon sinking and that it had implications all the way to Washington. He was very intrigued."

"Peter's a good reporter," Rhyme said then added proudly, "He was short-listed for a Pulitzer."

Webley from State and Peabody looked at each other for a moment. Then they retired to the corner of the now-empty gate area and each made phone calls.

"We must have Mr. Kwan on board the aircraft now," the gate agent said.

Finally the two federal telephones were hung up and a moment later Rhyme had his answer: Webley from State turned without a word and stalked down the corridor to the main lobby.

"Wait!" the Ghost cried. "There was a deal! We had a deal!"

The man kept going, tearing up Rhyme's memo as he walked, not even pausing as he tossed it toward a trash container.

Sellitto told the gate agent to close the door to the aircraft. Mr. Kwan wouldn't be making the flight.

The Ghost's eyes bored into Rhyme's and his shoulders slumped, a clear flag of defeat. But an instant later it seemed that the despair from this loss was immediately balanced by the hope of future victory, the yang was balanced by a surge of yin, as Sonny Li might've said. The snakehead turned toward Sachs. He looked her over with a chill smile. "I'm patient, Yindao. I'm sure we'll meet again. Naixin… All in good time, all in good time."

Amelia Sachs returned his gaze and said, "The sooner the better."

Her eyes, Rhyme decided, were infinitely colder than his.

The uniformed NYPD cops took custody of the snakehead.

"I swear that I didn't know what this was all about," Harold Peabody said. "They told me that -"

But Rhyme had grown weary of the verbal fencing. Without a word he moved his finger slightly on the touchpad to turn the Storm Arrow away from the bureaucrat.

It was Amelia Sachs who provided the final interaction between the various branches of government regarding Kwan Ang, Gui, the Ghost. She held out her hand to troubled Harold Peabody and asked, "Could you give me the cuff keys, please? If you want the shackles back after he's booked I'll leave them at Men's Detention for you."

Chapter Fifty

Several days later the Ghost had been arraigned and was being held without bail.

The laundry list of offenses was long: state and federal charges for murder, human smuggling, assault, firearms possession, money laundering.

Dellray and his bosses at Justice had pulled some strings at the U.S. Attorney's Office and, in exchange for his testimony against the Ghost, Sen Zi-jun, captain of the late Fuzhou Dragon, was given immunity from prosecution on the charges of human smuggling. He would testify at the Ghost's trial and, following that, be deported to China.

Rhyme and Sachs were presently alone in his bedroom and the policewoman was looking herself over in a full-length mirror.

"You look fine," the criminalist called. She was due to make an appearance in court in an hour. It was an important session and she was preoccupied, thinking about her impending performance before the judge.

She shook her head uncertainly. "I don't know." Amelia Sachs, who'd never looked back when she gave up modeling, called herself a "jeans and sweats girl." Presently she was dressed in a crisp blue suit, white blouse and, my God, Rhyme now observed, a pair of highly sensible navy-blue Joan David's with heels that boosted her height to over six feet. Her red hair was perfectly arranged on top of her head.

Still, she remained his Sachs; her silver earrings were in the shape of tiny bullets.

The phone rang and Rhyme barked, "Command. Answer phone."

Click.

"Lincoln?" a woman's voice asked through the speaker.

"Dr. Weaver," Rhyme said to the neurosurgeon.

Sachs turned her attention away from couture and sat down on the edge of the Flexicair bed.

"I got your phone call," the doctor said. "My assistant said it was important. Is everything all right?"

"Fine," Rhyme said.

"You're following the regimen I gave you? No alcohol, plenty of sleep?" Then she added with some humor, "No, you tell me, Thom. Are you there?"

"He's in the other room," Rhyme responded, laughing. "No one's here to blow the whistle on me."

Except Sachs, of course, but she wasn't going to snitch.

"I'd like you to come into the office tomorrow for the final checkup before the surgery. I was thinking -"

"Doctor?"

"Yes?"

Rhyme held Sachs's eye. "I've decided not to have the operation."

"You're -"

"I'm canceling. Forfeiting my room deposit," he joked, "and down payment."

Silence for a moment. Then: "You wanted this more than any patient I've ever had."

"I did want it, that's true. But I've changed my mind."

"You'll recall I've told you all along that the risks were high. Is that why?"

He looked at Sachs. He said only, "In the end, I guess, I don't see that much of a benefit."

"I think this's a good choice, Lincoln. It's the wise choice." She added, "We're making a lot of progress with spinal cord injuries. I know you read the literature…"

"I keep my finger on the pulse, true," he responded, enjoying the irony of the metaphor.

"But there're new things happening every week. Call me whenever you like. We can think about options in the future. Or just call me to talk if you want to."

"Yes. I'd like that."

"I'd like it too. Goodbye, Lincoln."

"Goodbye, Doctor. Command, disconnect."

Silence filled the room. Then a flutter of wings and a shadow disturbed the peace as a peregrine falcon landed on his window ledge. They both stared at the bird. Sachs asked, "Are you sure about this, Rhyme? I'm with you a hundred percent if you want to go ahead with it."

He knew that she would be.

But he knew too, without a doubt, that he didn't want the surgery now.

"Embrace your limitations… Fate make you this way, Loaban. And make you this way for purpose. Maybe you best detective you can be because of what happen. Your life balanced now, I'm saying."

"I'm sure," he told her.

She squeezed his hand. Then looked out the window again at the falcon. Rhyme watched the oblique, pale light hitting her face with the demure illumination of a Vermeer painting. Finally he asked, "Sachs, are you sure you want to do this?"

He nodded toward the file on the table nearby, which contained a picture of Po-Yee, a number of affidavits and official-looking documents.

The top sheet of paper was headed: PETITION FOR ADOPTION.

Then she glanced at Rhyme. The look in her eye told him that she too was sure about the decision she'd made.

Sitting in the judge's chambers, Sachs smiled down at Po-Yee, the Treasured Child, who sat beside her in the chair where the social worker had deposited her a few moments before. The girl played with her stuffed kitten.

"Ms. Sachs, this is a rather unorthodox adoption proceeding. But I assume you know that." Justice Margaret Benson-Wailes, a heavyset woman, sat behind her abysmally cluttered desk in the dark monolith of Manhattan Family Court.

"Yes, Your Honor."

The woman bent forward and read some more. "All I can say is in the past two days I've talked to more people from Human Services, Family Services, city hall, Albany, One Police Plaza and the INS than I talk to in a month in most placements. Tell me, Officer, how's a skinny girl like you get so much pull in this city?"

"I'm lucky, I guess."

"More to it than that," the judge said, returning to the file. "I hear good things about you."

Apparently Sachs too had good guanxi. Her connections reached from Fred Dellray to Lon Sellitto to Alan Coe (who was, far from being fired, taking over early-retiring Harold Peabody's job at the INS). In the space of several days the miles of red tape that accompany most adoptions had been shredded.

The jurist continued, "You understand, of course, that the welfare of this child comes first no matter what and if I'm not convinced that the disposition is in her best interest I will not sign the papers." The woman had the same benevolently gruff air that Lincoln Rhyme had mastered.

"I wouldn't want it any other way, Your Honor."

Like many judges, Sachs had learned, Benson-Wailes was prone to lecture. The woman eased back in the chair and addressed her audience. "Now, the adoption procedure in New York involves taking a home study, undergoing training and spending time with the child and usually a three-month probation period. I spent all morning reviewing papers and reports, talking to the social workers and the law guardian that we appointed for the girl. I've gotten very good reports but this's been moving faster than the Bulls' slide after Michael Jordan left. So here's what I'm going to do. I'll grant foster guardianship for a three-month period, subject to supervision by the Department of Social Services. At the end of that time if there are no problems I will grant permanent adoption, subject to the standard three-month probation period. How's that sound to you?"

Sachs nodded. "It sounds fine, Your Honor."

The justice examined Sachs's face carefully. Then, with a glance at Po-Yee, she jabbed her intercom button and said, "Send in the petitioners."

A moment later the door to the justice's chambers opened and Sam and Mei-Mei Chang cautiously entered. Beside them was their attorney, a Chinese man in a light gray suit and a shirt so boldly red that it might've come from Fred Dellray's closet.

Chang nodded to Sachs, who rose, stepped forward and shook his hand then his wife's. Mei-Mei's eyes went wide when she saw the child, whom Sachs handed off to her. She hugged Po-Yee fiercely.

The judge said, "Mr. and Mrs. Chang, do you speak English?"

"I do, some," Chang said. "My wife, not good."

"You are Mr. Sing?" the judge asked the lawyer.

"Yes, Your Honor."

"If you could translate."

"Certainly."

"Usually the adoption process in this country is arduous and complicated. It is virtually impossible for a couple of uncertain immigration status to be given adoptive custody."

A pause while Sing translated. Mei-Mei nodded.

"But we've got some unusual circumstances here."

Another pause and the Chinese rattled explosively off Sing's tongue. Now both Chang and his wife nodded. They remained silent. Mei-Mei's eyes brightened, though, and her breathing was coming fast. She wanted to smile, Sachs could see, but she restrained herself.

"I'm told by Immigration and Naturalization that you've applied for asylum and, because of your dissident status in China, that it will probably be granted. That reassures me that you can bring some stability into the child's life. As does the fact that both you and your son, Mr. Chang, are employed."

"Yes, sir."

"'Ma'am,' not 'sir,'" sternly corrected Justice Benson-Wailes, a woman whose orders in court undoubtedly needed to be issued only once.

"I am sorry. Ma'am."

The judge now repeated for the Changs what she'd told Sachs about the probation and adoption.

Their understanding of English was apparently good enough so that they could comprehend the ultimate meaning of the justice's words without the need for complete translations. Mei-Mei began to cry quietly and Sam Chang hugged her, smiling and whispering in her ear. Then Mei-Mei stepped up to Sachs and hugged her. "Xiexie, thank you, thank you."

The justice signed a document in front of her. "You can take the child with you now," she said, dismissing them. "Attorney Sing, see the clerk about the disposition of the paperwork."

"Yes, Your Honor."

Sam Chang led his family, now officially increased by one, to the parking lot near the black-stone Family Court Building. This had been his second court appearance today. Earlier Chang had testified at the Wu family's preliminary hearing. Their asylum bid was less certain than the Changs' but their lawyer was guardedly optimistic that they would remain in the U.S.

The Changs and the policewoman now paused beside her yellow sports car. William, who'd been sullen and moody all day, brightened when he saw it. "A Camaro SS," he said.

The woman laughed. "You know American cars?"

"Who'd drive anything else?" he asked derisively. The lean boy examined the sports car closely. "This is fucking sweet."

"William," Chang whispered threateningly and received back a cold, uncomprehending look from his son.

Mei-Mei and the children continued on to their van and Chang remained beside the policewoman. Translating his words slowly, Chang said to the red-haired woman, "Everything you do for us, you and Mr. Rhyme… I am not knowing how to thank you. And the baby… See, my wife, she has always -"

"I understand," the woman said. Her voice was clipped and he realized that though she appreciated the gratitude she was uneasy receiving it. She dropped into the seat of her car, wincing slightly from a sore joint or pulled muscle. The engine fired up with a powerful rattling noise and she drove quickly out of the parking lot, spinning the tires as she accelerated.

In a moment the car was out of sight.

The family was due soon at a funeral home in Brooklyn, where the body of Chang Jiechi was being prepared. But Sam Chang remained where he was, gazing at the complex of gray courthouses and office buildings around him. He needed a moment of solitude, this man caught between the yin and the yang of life. How badly he wanted to slough off the hard, the masculine, the traditional, the authoritarian – the aspects of his past life in China – and embrace the artistic, the feminine, the intuitive, the new: all that the Beautiful Country represented. But how difficult it was to do this. Mao Zedong, he reflected, had tried to abolish old customs and ideas with a simple decree and had nearly destroyed his country as a result.

No, Chang reflected, the past was with us always. But he didn't know, not yet, how to find a place for it in his future. It could be done. Look at how close in proximity was the Forbidden Palace with its ancient ghosts to Tiananmen Square with its very different spirits. But he suspected that this reconciliation would be a process that lasted for the rest of his life.

Here he was, half a world away from everything familiar, steeped in confusion and beset by challenges.

And pummeled too by the uncertainty of life in a strange land.

But some things Sam Chang did know:

That at the autumn tomb-sweeping festival he would find comfort in tidying his father's grave, leaving an offering of oranges and conversing with the man's spirit.

That Po-Yee, the Treasured Child, would grow up to become a woman in complete harmony with this remarkable place and time: the Beautiful Country at the start of a new century, easily embracing the souls of both Hua and Meiguo , China and America, yet transcending each.

That William would eventually get a room of his own and discover something other than his father to be mad about but that little by little his anger would lift away like a phoenix rising from cooling ash and he too would find a balance.

And that Chang himself would work hard at his job, continue his efforts as a dissident and on his days off would enjoy modest pleasures – strolling with Mei-Mei through their neighborhood, visiting parks and art galleries and passing hours in places like The Home Store, where they would make their purchases or just walk up and down the aisles, examining the bounty on the shelves.

Finally Sam Chang turned away from the tall buildings and returned to the van, summoned by his desire to be with his family again.

Still dressed for her undercover work as a Manhattan businesswoman, Amelia Sachs strode into the living room.

"So?" the criminalist asked, wheeling to face her.

"A done deal," she answered, disappearing upstairs. She returned a few minutes later, as jeans and sweats as she could be.

He said, "You know, Sachs, you could've adopted the baby yourself if you'd wanted." He paused. "I mean, we could've done that."

"I know."

"Why didn't you want to?"

She considered her answer then said, "The other day I laid some brass on the deck with a perp in a Chinatown alleyway, then I went swimming ninety feet underwater, then was point on a takedown team… I can't not do things like that, Rhyme." She hesitated as she thought of how best to summarize her feelings then laughed. "My father told me there're two kinds of drivers – those who check their blind spot when they change lanes and those who don't. I'm not a checker. If I had a baby at home I'd be looking over my shoulder all the time. That wouldn't work."

He understood exactly what she meant. But he asked playfully, "If you don't check your blind spot aren't you worried about an accident?"

"The trick is just to drive faster than everybody else. That way there's no chance anybody'll be in your blind spot."

"When you move they can't getcha," he said.

"Yep."

"You'd be a good mother, Sachs."

"And you'll be a good father. It'll happen, Rhyme. But let's give it a couple of years. Right now we've got a few other things to do with our life, don't you think?" She nodded at the whiteboard, on which were written Thom's charts for the GHOSTKILL case, the same whiteboard that had been covered with notations from a dozen prior cases and would be filled with those from dozens of future ones.

She was, of course, right, Lincoln Rhyme reflected; the world represented by these notes and pictures, this place on the edge that they shared, was their nature – for the time being, at least.

"I made the arrangements," he said to her.

Rhyme had been on the phone, making plans to have Sonny Li's body shipped back to his father in Liu Guoyuan, China. The arrangements were being handled by a Chinese funeral home.

There was one more task attendant to the death that Rhyme needed to do. He called up a word processing program. Sachs sat down next to him. "Go ahead," she said.

After a half hour of writing and rewriting he and Sachs finally came up with this:

Dear Mr. Li:

I am writing to express my heartfelt condolences at the death of your son.

You should know how thankful my fellow police officers and I are for the privilege of having been able to work with Sonny on the difficult and dangerous case that resulted in the loss of his life.

He saved many lives and brought a vicious killer to justice – an accomplishment we alone could not have achieved. His actions have brought the highest honor to his memory and he will always have a place of great respect within the law enforcement community of the United States. I truly hope you are as proud of your son for his courage and sacrifice as we are.

Lincoln Rhyme, Det. Capt., NYPD (Ret.)

Rhyme read it and grumbled, "It's too much. Too emotional. Let's start over."

But Sachs reached down and hit the print key. "Nope, Rhyme. Leave it. Sometimes too much is a good thing."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

Sachs set the letter aside for Eddie Deng to translate when the young cop arrived later in the day.

"Want to get back to the evidence?" Sachs asked. Nodding toward the whiteboards. There was much preparatory work that needed to be done for the Ghost's trial.

But Rhyme said, "No, I want to play a game."

"Game?"

"Yeah."

"Sure," she said coyly. "I'm in the mood to win."

"You wish," he chided.

"What game?" she asked.

"Wei-chi. The board's over there. And those bags of stones."

She found the game and set it up on the table near where Rhyme was parked. She glanced at his eyes, which were examining the grid of the board, and said, "I think I'm being hustled, Rhyme. You've played this before."

"Sonny and I played a few games," he said casually.

"How few?"

"Three is all. I'm hardly an expert, Sachs."

"How'd you do?"

The criminalist said defensively, "It takes a while to get the feel for a game."

"You lost," she said. "All of them."

"But the last one was close."

She looked over the board. "What'll we play for?"

With a cryptic smile Rhyme replied, "We'll think of something." Then he explained the rules and she leaned forward, raptly taking in his words. Finally he said, "That's it… Now, you've never played so you get an advantage. You can make the first move."

"No," Sachs answered. "No advantages. We'll flip a coin."

"It's customary," Rhyme assured her.

"No advantage," Sachs repeated. Then dug a quarter out of her pocket. "Call it," she said.

And tossed the coin into the air.