The Trail to Buddha_s Mirror

8

Neal shuffled down the hotel hallway in his Chinese clothing. He was played out. The debriefing had taken over two hours, and he had told Simms everything. He had told him about the bus tickets, about the art gallery, about the dinner. He had even told him about the seduction in the hot tub. Told him about everything except the shot that had almost killed him.

He wasn’t sure why he had held that back, except that he suspected Simms knew about it anyway, and he had wanted to see if the CIA man brought it up. He hadn’t.

The hallway was empty. No protective net, no Doorman. Obviously Chin was through protecting him. Good, he thought. I’ve had all the protection I can stand. He fished his room key out of his pocket and opened the door.

Ben Chin was sitting on his bed.

“You were great back there on the Peak,” Neal said. “Too bad there weren’t any old ladies for you to push around.”

“You’re alive, aren’t you?”

“The Doorman isn’t.”

Chin shrugged. “He did his job.”

“That’s right. Where were you?”

“Doing my job. I followed your friends.”

“Bullshit.”

“True. I went up into the gardens and picked up their trail.”

“Where are they?”

Chin looked down at the bedcover. “I lost them coming off the ferry.”

“Kowloon side?”

“Sure.”

Neal went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. He was as tired as he could ever remember being. His chest ached from the old shotgun wound he’d taken the last time he’d stepped in between predator and prey, and he just wanted to fall asleep in a steaming bath. He brushed his teeth, rinsed his mouth out, and then ran hot water to shave. When he was finished he stood in the bathroom doorway and said to Ben Chin, “You’re fired. Get out.”

“You’re the one who fucked up, not me.”

“You lied to me. You brought your crew along when you promised me you wouldn’t.”

“If I hadn’t, you’d be dead.”

“So the Doorman’s dead instead.”

“It was his job to die so you could escape.” Chin’s jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. “Would you rather be dead instead of him? Tell the truth.”

The truth. What the hell does the truth have to do with anything?

“No,” Neal said. “No. I wouldn’t.”

Chin smiled triumphantly-one of those smiles that says, That settles it, then.

“Where’s your crew now?”

“They don’t want to work with you anymore.”

Okay, Neal thought. Which means you know what happened up there. You know your boys left me for dead. Why were you waiting for me here, then? Why weren’t you surprised to see me walk in?

Okay, you can’t give Chin the chance to realize he just screwed up.

“So,” Neal said. “You couldn’t stay on their tails, huh?”

“It’s hard to do without help.”

Right, Neal thought. He peeled off the Chinese clothes and changed into the black pullover, jeans, and tennis shoes he had last worn in Mill Valley. Then he took two glasses off the bar, poured two fingers of scotch into each, and handed one to Chin. It gave him a chance to look right into Chin’s eyes.

“It’s okay,” Neal said. “I know where they are.”

Oh, yeah, Neal thought as he saw Ben’s eyes widen ever so slightly, you’re interested. But why? Because she was responsible for killing one of your boys? Job satisfaction?

“Where?” Chin asked.

“They’re at the Y.”

“How do you know?”

“Bob Pendleton may be a hell of a biochemist, but he makes a lousy fugitive. He was fiddling with a key chain when I saw him. I got a quick look at the thing. It had the YMCA symbol on it.”

“There are two in Kowloon. One right by the ferry, the other up Nathan Road.”

“The second one is in Yaumatei?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go.”

“I thought I was fired.”

“You’re rehired. I need someone who speaks Chinese and who can bribe a desk clerk. With money, not muscle, right?”

“Right.”

Right.

It was two in the morning and there were still people on the street. The lost souls of the small hours lingered on the edges of the light pools thrown by the streetlamps, or hovered around the fires set in trashcans. Vagrants slept on cardboard sheets in the middle of the wide sidewalks or crouched in the doorways of closed shops. Most of the night clubs and gambling joints were still open, their neon lights reflecting brightly off the puddles in the gutters. A few prostitutes too old or too ugly for the tourist trade farther down the road stood stoically outside the gambling halls, hoping to rent a celebration to the winners or solace to the losers. Here and there a slice of darkness broke the neon glow, and each niche was like a cave that sheltered a human being-a scraggly kid too weak to join a gang, a dull-eyed opium addict lost in his private dream, a psychotic woman babbling her outrage at omnipresent enemies, a hungry mugger waiting for the improvident drunk to stumble by at the right moment-each a player in the slow game of musical chairs that makes up the urban food chain.

The YMCA was on Waterloo Road, two blocks west of Nathan. Neal waited on the steps while Ben talked to the nervous night clerk. The place reeked of good intentions and bad bank statements. Metal screens shielded the broken glass in windows and doors. The pea-green high-gloss paint was cheap and easily cleaned, and the smell of disinfectant overpowered the aroma of the musty mud-brown carpet.

It was the sort of place that offered anonymity and Neal knew that Li Lan or her handlers must have chosen it quite deliberately.

Chin’s conversation didn’t take long.

“Room three-forty-three,” he said to Neal, as if it were an offering.

“Thanks. See you tomorrow.”

“I’ll wait down here.”

“No.”

“Dangerous neighborhood this time of night.”

“Go home.”

Chin shrugged. “Whatever you say, boss.”

“That’s what I say.”

Chin turned around and went out the door. Neal watched until he had turned the corner on Nathan Road.

Neal was surprised that the elevator had an operator, an old man with withered legs and a grotesquely distorted face. Neal held up three fingers and the man leaned forward on his stool and used a lever to shut the door. The elevator whined with age as it crawled up the three floors.

The third-floor corridor was narrow, and covered in old green carpeting. Neal stood outside of 343 for a full two minutes and listened. He couldn’t hear anything. It’s just another gig, he told himself as he took his AmEx card from his wallet and slipped it behind the bolt. The lock gave up quicker than a French general, and Neal was in the room just as quickly.

A shaft of light from a streetlamp pierced the thin curtain and outlined her in a golden glow where she lay sleeping on the bed. Pendleton lay beside her, his back toward the door. Neal shut the door behind him, just the way Graham had taught him to, keeping the knob open until the bolt was aligned and then slowly letting the knob turn shut. Then he squatted next to the bed, brought his right arm over her head, and clapped his hand over her mouth as his thumb and index finger pinched her nostrils shut. He put his left hand under her jaw and pressed his thumb and index finger under the two joints. Her eyes popped open and she stared at him in fright. He slowly shook his head back and forth, and she accepted this warning to keep quiet. He stood up slowly and lifted her by the jaw. She grabbed his wrist and he squeezed harder. Her eyes widened in pain. He lifted until she was perched on her toes and then walked her to the bathroom door and set her down on the edge of the bathtub. He closed the door behind them, then turned on the light.

“Hi,” he whispered. “Bet you didn’t think you’d see me again, huh?”

She didn’t answer.

“The CIA is looking for you, but I guess you already know that.”

She shook her head.

“Right. Anyway, they have a pretty good deal to offer you. I think you should take it. We can wake up Bobby baby in a minute and use the phone. I’ll make the call for you, but I want you to answer a few questions for me first.”

She was staring at him. Just staring, and it was making him mad.

“What was that all about back in California? The little striptease that ended with a bang? That’s a lousy way to set somebody up, and why set me up anyway? Why did you think you had to kill me?”

She kept on staring. He tried to look back into her eyes and ignore the fact that the T-shirt was all she was wearing.

“Goddamn it, I deserve an answer!”

“I didn’t try to kill you. Someone was trying to kill Robert.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I only wanted to make sure you would stay there, in the hot tub, while we had a chance to escape. Then I heard the shot… I became afraid… I ran away.”

“You thought I was dead.”

“Yes, until you began leaving those messages everywhere. I was happy you were alive, but I wanted to warn you of the very big danger. So I wanted to have a meeting with you, but you came with that man.”

“What man?”

“The man who was hunting us in California. The very big Chinese man.”

“I came with a Hong Kong man.”

“No. I saw him at hotel in San Francisco.”

“Mark Chin?”

“I do not know his name.”

Mark Chin and Ben Chin, who looked so much alike… she thought Ben was Mark, figured she’d been tricked, and called out the troops.

“Are you with CIA?” she asked.

“No, I’m a private cop.”

“I do not understand.”

Neither do I. “Did you think I had come to the Peak to kill you? To set you up?”

She nodded.

“Do you think that’s why I’m here now?”

She nodded again.

“Because you think I’m CIA?”

“No.”

“Who, then?”

“White Tiger.”

White Tiger? What the hell is a White Tiger?

White Tiger, she told him, was one of the most powerful of the Hong Kong Triads. It had been shattered during a government crackdown in the early Seventies, and its leaders had fled to Taiwan, where they found a warm welcome in the form of shelter, money, and sage leadership. Reorganized and refinanced, White Tiger reinfiltrated Hong Kong and recolonized outposts in New York, London, Amsterdam, and San Francisco. It was involved in the usual gang enterprises of loansharking, drug dealing, prostitution, and extortion, but it also took out subcontracts from the Taiwanese secret service for surveillance jobs, kidnappings, and hits. Its primary role in Hong Kong was to serve as a counterbalance to the procommunist Triads, such as the 14K.

“And you think Chin is White Tiger?”

“Of course.”

Of course. I was set up from jump street, or at least from Kearny Street, at the good old Chinatown Holiday Inn. Mark Chin was on the same trail I was, and let me bird-dog for him. He took my hundred bucks at Coit Tower, walked down to a phone booth on his way to Pier Thirty-nine, and called in some troops, who put such a good tail on me I didn’t catch it. He must have been cracking up when I came to him and asked him to hide me in Hong Kong. He passed me right along to cousin Ben, who I brought up the Peak with me as protection. And who I also brought right here. Shit.

He asked Lan, “What does Taiwan have against the good doctor?”

Pendleton answered as he opened the bathroom door.

“They don’t want me to go to China,” he said. “What the hell is going on here?”

Neal stood up slowly and raised his hands in front of his chest. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out, and I don’t think I have a lot of time to do it.”

“You got that right,” Pendleton said. “Can you at least let her get dressed?”

“Yeah.”

Lan got up and went back into the bedroom. Neal could hear her opening drawers. He wondered if she was going to come back in with a gun. He wondered why he trusted her not to.

“You were telling me about Taiwan,” Neal said as if they’d been interrupted during polite chatter at a cocktail party.

“The Taiwanese want me dead.”

“Why?”

“They’re AgriTech’s biggest customer.”

“I had a long talk with a guy named Simms last night.”

“Who’s he?”

“He works with Paul Knox.”

“Oh.”

“Oh. And he told me about the stuff you create in your test tubes, Doc. Why should Taiwan give a shit?”

“We were developing it for sale to Taiwan.”

“Why does Taiwan want an herbicide that kills the poppy?”

“Because heroin is power. Because they want to control the warlords of northern Thailand, Laos, and Burma. The border countries. And they sure as hell don’t want the PRC to have it, because the PRC would use it. Heroin is one of Taiwan’s biggest businesses. They’re scared shitless of the PRC getting that kind of hammer over them.”

So it was the Taiwanese, using their White Tiger subcontractors, who had taken a whack at what they thought was Pendleton in the Marin County hot tub. The Taiwanese want him croaked, the CIA want him alive, and they’re both using me to nail him. But what does Pendleton want?

“And you’re planning to take your product to the PRC?”

“I’m planning to go with Lan.”

Lan appeared in the doorway. She had put on a pair of blue jeans, a black pullover jersey, and sandals.

“She doesn’t love you,” Neal said. “Don’t you know that? She’s a Chinese spy. They sent her to sleep with you. It was in her job description.”

“I know all that. She told me.”

“Can we get out of the bathroom?” Neal asked. “It’s starting to feel like the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera.”

Lan and Pendleton sat on the bed, which seemed appropriate enough to Neal, and he sat down in the old overstuffed wingback in the corner, by the window.

“So it’s true love, right?”

Right. They told him the story, sharing the narrative like newlyweds telling a stranger how they met. She was a spy of sorts. It was her ticket out, the price for a life of relative freedom in Hong Kong and America. She really was a painter, and that was her cover in the States. Her handlers approved because it gave her access to culture, which in the States meant money, which meant power. She made it a point to attend all the cocktail parties, all the receptions, all the corporate bashes. Usually her bosses required nothing more than simple reports on who was who, who was doing what, and who might be sympathetic toward a struggling nation of communist reformers.

Then Pendleton’s conference had come along. She’d picked him up in an expensive restaurant-charmed him, flattered him with the simple gift of attention. She’d led him into leading her to bed, taught him the things that her trainers had taught her, talked to him, listened to him.

In the morning she reported back, in the afternoon received her orders, and that night went back to his bed. She took him to the clouds and the rain, and then lay still in his arms as he told her about his life, his work, his secret dreams. They went on a long, early-morning walk in Chinatown, watched the old ones do t‘ai chi, shopped in the markets, went for dim-sum and tea, and then back to bed. She had to go to Mill Valley for her show, and he visited her there and met her friends, and went there every day.

Then he came: the White Tiger soldier, Mark Chin. Their escape was narrow, they needed somewhere to hide, and Li Lan talked to her good friend Olivia Kendall. In the quiet of the Kendall house, Lan and Pendleton talked for hours, told each other the heretofore covert parts of their lives, wondered what to do. Pendleton knew that AgriTech would come looking for him, maybe send a Company errand boy to fetch him, and sure enough, Neal had turned up. They weren’t sure whether he was CIA or a rent-a-cop hired by AgriTech, but they had to get free of him. Along with dinner, they cooked up a plan to give him the slip: get him drunk, get him unclothed in the hot tub, and give him a good reason to sit there and wait for Li Lan to come back. Only, of course, Li Lan wasn’t coming back. They were going to run to Hong Kong, where she would play along with her bosses and their 14K allies to hide long enough to figure out what to do. She was as surprised as Neal when the shot whooshed through the air. Scared, she had run all the faster, and they’d caught the next flight to Hong Kong.

According to plan, she should have just turned him over to her handlers, but she hedged. They were in love, truly in love, and she knew full well what was in store for him in the PRC. And her life of freedom would be over. Her cover blown, she could not return to the West. She would be given some drab bureaucratic job, and there would be no more decadent painting. So she made up stories, said she was having difficulty persuading him, she needed more time, more space. Besides, their trail was still too hot. She urged patience.

“Then I turned up again,” Neal prompted.

She nodded. “You were telling everyone where we were.”

So she had to stop him. He was bringing the world down around them. Her bosses were getting nervous, White Tiger might pick up the trail, the CIA was surely sniffing around. He was putting them in great danger. Himself as well: Her bosses wanted to have him killed. So she had to stop him, had to meet with him to persuade him to stop this crazy search.

“That’s when you called me to set up the meeting at Victoria Peak. But you still weren’t exactly sure who I was, so you brought backup along, just in case,” said Neal.

“Her people insisted,” Pendleton said. “These 14K goons trailed along. And it was a good thing they did.”

Because she spotted Ben Chin, whom she mistook for his cousin. Not that it made any difference, he was still a White Tiger Triad member assigned to kill them. She thought that she had made a terrible mistake, that Neal was not a private detective or a government agent, but a White Tiger hireling paid to set them up. She ran him right into the ambush, the ambush that Ben Chin was too smart to fall into. He went right for his target, but couldn’t catch them in a spot where he could gun them down and hope to get away. They shook him off and came back to their hideout, the obscure YMCA.

“And now you have come again,” Lan said. “But alone.”

Not quite, Lan. But he skipped that part for the moment, and told them about Friends of the Family, about his assignment, about being duped by the Chins. He told them about Simms’s rescue, about the debriefing, and about the deal that Simms would offer if he had the chance.

“I don’t know,” Pendleton said. “Can we trust them?”

“It’s not a matter of trust. You have something they want.”

“Li Lan, you mean.”

“There’s a wicked kind of symmetry in this situation. You can go to China, where she turns you over, or back to the States, where you turn her. The issue is simple. Which is better? You go to China, you’re a prisoner for life and so is she. You go back to the States, she’s a prisoner for a while and you’re a free man. They’ll even let you stay together, as long as you’re a good boy.”

“What’s in it for you?”

Good question, Doc. What is in it for me? I lose Li Lan, but then again, I never had her. And maybe if I bring you back, the powers that be will let me come back too, back to my comfortable cell. Maybe that’s the best you can expect in this world, a comfortable cell.

So he explained his deal to them. If he could bring them in, he could go back to school, back to his own research.

“We can have it all,” he said. “You can play with your test tubes, you can paint, I can muck around with eighteenth-century literature. It’s what I’d call a happy ending.”

“Except Li has to betray her country,” Pendleton said, although it was more like a question.

She stared at the floor. “It is not a country. It is a prison.”

“What about family?” Neal asked.

“Dead.”

He wanted to hold her. Throw his arms around her and tell her that it was all right, that there were all kinds of families and that she had found herself a new one. She looked tired and hurt and played out.

“Shall I make the call?” he asked.

Pendleton looked at Lan. It was her decision to make.

“Please,” she said.

Neal picked up the phone and dialed the number Simms had given him. It took a couple of minutes to clear for Simms to come to the phone.

“Did you forget something?” asked Simms.

“Your order’s ready. You want to pick it up or you want me to deliver?”

“Jesus H. Christ. Where are you?”

“A YMCA on Waterloo, near Nathan Road.”

“Stay put! I’ll be there in an hour.”

“Hurry up.”

Simms’s voice took on an edge. “Is there a problem?”

“There could be,” Neal said, wondering where Ben Chin was, “but I don’t think the problem will happen as long as I’m here.”

“I’ll get someone right there.”

“How will I know him?”

“Ask him the subject of your would-be master’s thesis. He’ll know.”

“You guys think of everything.”

“We try.”

“I’m only turning them over to you personally. Deal?”

“Deal.” See ya.

So that’s that, Neal thought. An hour or so and it’s over. And I’ll never see her again.

That’s when he heard the awful screech of the elevator, heard the doors slamming shut on the third floor, and stopped wondering where Ben Chin was.

Neal met him in the hallway. “What are you doing here?”

Ben Chin raised his hands into a fighting position. “The game’s over, Neal. I’m here to get them.”

“You’ve been trumped.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that they represent some valuable assets to the CIA, who are not going to be happy with you if you waste them. So let’s not fuck around, okay?”

Chin dropped his hands and smiled. Then his right hand came up and it had an automatic pistol in it. He pointed the silenced muzzle at Neal’s face.

“I don’t give a shit about the CIA. I don’t work for the CIA. I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t care very much one way or the other. So you walk away and we both forget we ever met. Or I do you right here. Either way, they die. So let’s not fuck around, okay?”

Either way they die. Simms’s second choice. And Pendleton and Lan didn’t care about you getting killed, Neal. They figured it was better you than them. Well, better them than me.

“Okay.”

“That’s what I thought. Door locked?”

“Not anymore.”

“You get out of here, Neal. You’re too far up Nathan Road. Way too far.”

Neal walked past him down the hallway. Chin turned the doorknob with his left hand and slowly opened the door. Pendleton was sitting on the bed. Lan was standing by the window. Chin dropped into the shooter’s position-knees bent, both hands on the pistol’s grip-and brought the barrel down until it was pointed at Li Lan’s heart. She looked at his eyes.

Neal barrel-rolled him from behind, taking him in the back of the knees and sending him flying onto his ass. Neal jumped on top of him and grabbed his wrist.

Chin was fast. He used his free hand to punch Neal in the side of the head and then he threw him off. He kicked Neal in the ribs, and the force of the blow crashed Neal into the hallway wall. This took about a second and a half, and neither Li nor Pendleton moved an inch. Neal slumped against the wall. His head was spinning and he couldn’t catch his breath to move. The pain in his ribs doubled him over.

“Asshole,” Chin said. He raised the gun to finish him off.

Li Lan flew, or at least it seemed that way to Neal. One second she was standing against the wall and the next instant she was flying through the air, her legs curled beneath her. She flew until she was even with

Chin’s head, and then her right leg shot out like a snake striking. The foot hit him on the underside of his jaw and his head snapped backward. He was unconscious even before the back of his head hit the wall and he slid to the floor.

He woke up hearing Li Lan urging him, “Come, come. We must go.”

He was lying on the bed in their room. He felt like throwing up, and his rib cage felt as if somebody had stuck burning matches into it. She would have looked like an angel to him if he hadn’t just seen her kick a man’s head about off. Maybe she looked like an angel anyway.

“Come on. We must go,” she said.

He shook his head. That was a mistake-Quasimodo crawled in and started ringing the bells. “We have to stay put. Simms will be here soon.”

Pendleton pointed to Chin. “He won’t be out forever.”

“He might be dead,” Neal said.

“Yes, he may be,” said Li Lan. “We must go now.”

Pendleton jerked him to his feet. The corridor wasn’t spinning. It was lurching like a broken carny ride with a drunken operator at the controls.

“Where are we going?” Neal asked.

“I know a place to hide until we can call your Mr. Simms,” Li Lan said. “Now come, please.”

“We should take the stairs. Elevators are traps,” Neal said. He leaned over painfully and picked up Chin’s gun. “I suppose you know how to use one of these things?”

“Yes.” Li Lan took the pistol, unscrewed the silencer and dropped it to the floor, then stuck the pistol in the front of her jeans, under the jersey. “Can you walk down the stairs?”

“If you’re absolutely sure I can’t just lie here and take a nap.”

“Where we are going you can rest.”

“Where are we going?”

“To see Kuan Yin.”

“Naturally.”

Elevators may have been traps, but the stairs were murder. Each step drove a jolt of pain through Neal’s ribs and up into his head. He was beginning to wish Li Lan had let Chin shoot him.

When they reached the door to the lobby he said, “You’d better let me go first. Chin may have friends down here.”

He didn’t. He was so fucking arrogant he had come alone. Neal signaled his new friends and he, Li, and Pendleton strolled right out the front door onto the street.

Chin’s crew stood across the street, leaning against a parked car.

“Hi!” Neal shouted as he waved. “Boy, I’ll bet you never thought you’d see me again, huh?”

The three thugs straightened up and started for him, spreading out as they did. Neal walked slowly toward them as Lan and Pendleton moved sideways behind Neal’s screen, getting ready to run up Waterloo to Nathan.

“Yeah, I beat the crap out of those guys back on the Peak! Thanks for leaving us back there, by the way! Now don’t come any closer! The lady has a gun! Show the boys the gun, Lan!”

Li Lan showed the gun.

A boy inside the parked car stuck the barrel of an M-16 out the window.

Li grabbed Pendleton’s hand and ran. The sniper in the car couldn’t sweep fire without hitting his own guys, and was about to pop off a single round into Neal’s chest when the car took off after the runners. The car doors swung open and the other punks scrambled into it as it headed up Waterloo Road. Neal ran after them and saw Li lead Pendleton into an alley. The car screeched to a stop, and three of the hunters got out. The car went on to circle the block, probably to cut off the other end of the alley. They were setting up a classic block-and-sweep operation wherein the three “sweepers” would drive their quarry into the “block”-in this case bursts of fire from an M-16. Li and Pendleton were trapped.

Neal flattened himself against the wall of the building. He looked up and saw a fire escape. Jesus loves me, he thought, this I know… Hong Kong or no Hong Kong, a city is a city, and nobody does a city better than your friend Neal Carey.

Pulling himself up onto the fire escape, he climbed to the roof of the building, then crawled to the edge and peered down through seven stories of darkness into the alley. He could just make out Li and Pendleton, who were working their way along the near wall, trying to make it out to the other side. Shit, didn’t they realize they were caught in a trap? He could also see the three hunters spread out across the alley, moving steadily and confidently.

Well, maybe he could worry them a little bit.

It took him maybe thirty seconds to find something. A concrete block had been set near the door of the stairway, probably to prop it open in the heat of the day. He carried it to the edge of the roof, tiptoeing along until he was even with the line of sweepers. He hefted the block up to his waist and flung it over the side.

It missed the end sweeper by a good foot, but the sound was like an explosion, and fragments of concrete flew everywhere. The three men dropped to the ground. One of them held a hand over his eye and screamed.

Lan and Pendleton stopped and looked up.

“Don’t go out the alley!” Neal yelled.

They squatted behind some garbage cans and froze.

Ah, rooftops, Neal thought. Tar Beach. The last refuge and repository of the cityscape. The final storage place. He found a cardboard carton overflowing with beer and wine bottles, evidence of some husband’s secret tippling. He carried it over to the edge of the roof and looked down to see the two unwounded sweepers get up carefully and slowly begin moving up the alley.

Neal was impressed with the aerodynamics of the wine bottle as it plummeted through the night sky. He had given it a slight backflip, so it revolved end over end in a gentle arc before smashing on the concrete of the alley floor. The sound was spectacular. The two sweepers dove for cover on either side of the alley. He aimed his second one at the sweeper on the far side and scored a direct hit on his back. The sweeper yelped and rolled backward to the near side. Neal launched another one, and then another, and then risked a long peek over the edge. The two sweepers had their faces pressed up against the near wall.

Your basic standoff.

A burst of machine-gun fire raked the edge of the roof and sent Neal sprawling. Lying flat along the edge, he risked opening one eye, and saw the boy with the M-16 advancing from the other end of the alley, gun held at his hip. He was shouting to his comrades. You didn’t have to speak any Cantonese to understand that he was asking them what the fuck was going on, or to comprehend that they were trying, as quickly as possible, to tell him to shut the fuck up. The boy stopped and just stood there in the alley, rifle on hip, finger on the trigger, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing happened. Li Lan was either too scared or too smart or both to go against an M-16 with a pistol, although the boy made a perfect target standing for a one-shot deal. Maybe, Neal thought, she can’t see him from where she is. That must be it. Maybe I’m the only one who can see him, which really stinks. Why me?

Neal reached out and pulled the carton away from the edge. Crawling on his belly, he pushed the box in front of him. It seemed to take forever to reach the point where he figured he’d be about even with Machine Gun Kelly. He inched the carton to the roof’s edge and peeked over. The boy was starting a cautious advance, moving sideways, close to the near edge of the wall so as to give Li Lan as small a silhouette as possible.

Neal wished he had paid even a little bit of attention in Mr. Litton’s physics classes back in high school. Litton had always been hauling the students up to the roof to drop shit off and then perform calculations, but Neal was goddamned if he could remember what the calculations were or what they were intended to prove except the fact that he was the dumbest kid in physics class. So he just shoved the carton off the edge of the roof and hoped for the best.

One of the sweepers must have seen it go, because he shouted a warning to the gunner, who had a natural but stupid response: He looked up.

That cost him the two precious seconds in which he might have ducked, or run, or even just covered his head with his hands. But he didn’t do any of those things. He just looked up into the darkness, not seeing anything at all until the whole sky was filled with one massive, empty beer bottle hurtling straight toward his face.

Then the alley became a cacophony of shattering glass, thumping bodies, trashcans tipping over, and the clatter of a rifle hitting concrete.

And pistol shots.

The two sweepers hit the dirt as soon as their buddy with the rifle went down, and Li Lan popped a couple off above their heads to make sure they stayed down as she and Pendleton came back up the alley toward Waterloo Road.

Neal got up and ran across the roof. Shit, he wasn’t going to lose them again. He hit the fire escape and scurried down as fast as his legs and his ribs would let him.

“Hurry!” Li Lan yelled.

She and Pendleton were standing on the sidewalk waiting for him.

“Why didn’t you grab the rifle?” he asked her as he hit the street.

“Come on!”

They ran after her down Waterloo onto Nathan and followed her as she turned right onto the broad street. She hailed a taxi on the corner and they all got in.

“Wong Tai Sin,” she told the driver.

“Haude.”

The driver took a right and headed north, up the Nathan Road. Way up, through the sprawling tenements of Mongkok, past Argyle and Prince Edward Street and into Kowloon City, a nest of shiny skyscrapers that literally towered over the surrounding slums. The driver turned onto Lung Shung Road and stopped in front of a massive building with red columns and a garishly yellow roof.

Li Lan paid the driver and gestured for the men to get out.

“Where are we?” Neal asked.

“Wong Tai Sin Temple,” Li answered. “We are coming to thank Kuan Yin.”

“Who’s Kuan Yin? Your case officer?”

She shook her head and laughed. “Kuan Yin is goddess of mercy. She has been very kind to us tonight.”

“Goddess? What kind of communist are you?”

“A Buddhist communist.”

“And this is a twenty-four-hour temple?”

“Gods do not sleep.”

“Mao wouldn’t like hearing this.”

“The Chairman is dead. He has met the Unpredictable Ghost.”

“Who’s that?”

“The Unpredictable Ghost guards the next world. He guides souls to the next world.”

“Which next world? Heaven or hell?”

“You don’t know. That is why he is called unpredictable. I will show him to you in the temple.”

“No thanks.”

She laughed again. “Sooner or later you will meet him. Better to know him sooner.”

“Better later.”

“As you think. Come. First we get our fortunes told.”

“You really do make a shitty Marxist.”

She led to them to where an old man sat behind a tiny, ramshackle booth on the outside of the temple. She handed him some coins and he handed her a bright red cup with holes in its cover. She held the cup up to her ear, tipped it upside down, and shook it. A stick fell out. She caught it in her other hand and gave it to the old man, who studied it intensely and then began to talk to her in rapid Chinese. She smiled broadly and answered. Then she bought another cup and handed it to Pendleton.

“Do one, Robert. Prayer stick. It will tell you your fortune.”

“I know my fortune. I’m going to live happily ever after with a beautiful woman whom I love very much.”

“Thank you, Robert.”

Neal thought he might throw up, and it wasn’t his ribs.

“What’s your fortune?” he asked.

“To go inside the temple.”

“Listen, we have to get hold of Simms. He’s probably at the Y right now, going nuts.”

“Just quickly thank Kuan Yin.”

“Quickly.”

They went up the steps past elaborately carved railings. A large screen was set in the middle of the entrance, leaving a narrow passage on either side.

“What’s this for?” Neal asked.

“Bad spirits can only move in straight lines,” Li Lan explained. “Therefore they cannot get into the temple.”

Every bad spirit I know is absolutely incapable of moving in a straight line, but never mind, Neal thought.

They stepped around the screen, presumably leaving any bad spirits behind, and into an enormous chamber. Dozens of shrines lined the two side walls, each shrine an altar presided over by a statue of its particular spirit. Even at this hour of the day, some pilgrims knelt at the altars, praying, and other devotees had left burning sticks of incense, small piles of apples and oranges, or coins as offerings or invocations. Rich red fabrics hung from the walls and large rectangular lamps hung from the ceilings, which, combined with the burning candles and sticks of incense, cast the room in a dark golden light.

The shrine at the front wall dominated the room. A large statue of a young woman sitting in the full lotus position occupied a broad platform. Her face was alabaster white, her eyes almond-shaped, her smile beatific. She wore a diaphanous gown slung over one shoulder, a headpiece of gold laminate, and black-lacquer hair piled high on her head. The effect was a strange combination of garishness and benevolence.

“Kuan Yin,” whispered Li Lan.

Li Lan knelt at the railing below the platform. She touched her head to the floor three times, then repeated the series twice more. She stayed hunched over, and Neal could see her lips moving. She was speaking to her goddess. Neal and Pendleton stood awkwardly behind her.

When she got up, she went to Neal and said, “We must see to your injuries.”

“We must call Simms.”

“How can we call him if he is at the Y, going nuts?”

“We call the Y and have him paged.”

“I am not waiting out in the open for your Simms to arrive. Too dangerous.”

She had a point. A five-year-old kid can keep a secret better than a cabdriver who’s offered cash, and it was a safe bet that Chin’s gang, and maybe Ben Chin himself, were strongarming the neighborhood to find the cabbie that had driven off with Li and the two kweilo. And it wasn’t exactly rush hour-the cabbie wouldn’t be that hard to find.

“Where do you want to go?” Neal asked.

“It is arranged.”

It’s arranged. Swell.

“By your handlers. No way.”

“Not by my handlers. By them.” She waved her arm impatiently around the temple.

“By who?”

“By the monks. Do you really think I stopped to get our fortunes told? Do you think I am a superstitious idiot? I stopped to arrange a hiding place.”

“You know these people?”

“These people are all the same every place.” She looked at him stubbornly. “Long before there was a communist party, there was Kuan Yin. Now… let’s go!”

“I don’t know.”

Pendleton grabbed his elbow. “I do. I don’t want to hang around here waiting to get blasted to bits by a machine gun. You can trust Li Lan with your life. I have.”

Terrific, Doc. Every time I’ve trusted Li Lan, I’ve just barely gotten away with my frigging stupid inane life. Nevertheless, the good doctor has a point, and I don’t much fancy going back out on the street.

“So let’s get going,” said Neal.

“Finally.”

She knew just where she was going. She strode to the corner of the room and knelt down at the shrine, beneath the statue of an old man wearing a torn robe, a hideously mocking grin, and carrying what looked to Neal like a gold ingot. She performed the nine bows, and then took a small bell from the altar railing and rang it just once. Then she turned to Neal.

“Neal Carey,” she said, pointing at the statue, “meet Unpredictable Ghost. Unpredictable Ghost, Neal Carey.”

“Pleasure,” Neal muttered.

A monk appeared from behind the shrine. He was tall and thin. His head was shaved and he wore a plain brown robe and sandals. He returned Li Lan’s bow and motioned for them to follow him.

There was a red curtain behind the shrine, and behind the curtain was a wooden door. It opened to a stairway that took them down to a basement, which looked like a maintenance shop for the temple. Wooden lathes, jars of paint, brushes, candles, and parts of lanterns lay scattered about in no discernible order. Here and there a head or a hand or a trunk from a statue was set on a small worktable. Body Shop of the Gods, Neal thought. The monk led them through this room into a boiler room, through a plain, functional metal door, and into a corridor. Down two more steps and they entered a corrugated metal tube.

It was as narrow and dark as a walkway in a submarine. Every thirty feet a naked light bulb dangled from the low ceiling. Moisture dripped from the seams in the sides and tops of the tube. Neal could hear traffic noises above them and realized they were going underneath the street.

“Are we in the goddamn sewer?” he asked Li Lan.

“Quiet.”

He turned around to Pendleton. “Are we in the goddamn sewer?”

“Looks like a goddamn sewer to me.”

“Christ, I didn’t like reading Victor Hugo, never mind living it.”

“Quiet.”

They went up two steps and then through another door. They were in a basement of sorts, a small, musty, dirt-floored chamber. The monk stepped onto a short ladder and unlocked a hatch. Then he stood at the bottom and gestured for them to climb up. This was as far as he went.

Li Lan went up, then Pendleton. He took his sweet time about it, Neal thought, impatient to get above ground again. He followed Pendleton up the ladder and was instantly sorry.

He was in hell.

It was an alley, maybe four feet wide, maybe a little less. A sliver of daylight revealed filth-encrusted walls, on which moss, urine stains, and dirt competed for space. The ground beneath him was a mix of mud, shit, broken glass, and some cracked and broken planking.

Neal covered his mouth and nose with his hands, but the stench was overwhelming. His eyes teared and he fought back retching.

Tenements loomed above him, so high and close they looked as if they were about to topple over. Homemade bridges crossed the alley, veritable villages of hammocks were strung from one side to the other, tangles of wires and cables looked like jungle vines.

Here and there holes had been punched in the lower walls, and people were burrowed into them. Neal could see them peeking out at him through iron grilles and bamboo screens.

He heard Pendleton mutter, “Jesus. Jesus Christ.”

And the sounds, the sounds were horrible. Amid the din of thousands of voices just talking, Neal heard babies crying, children screaming, old people moaning. In the distance ahead he could hear a pack of dogs growling, and from inside the walls around him he could make out the scurrying feet of rats.

Neal reached ahead and grabbed Li by the shoulder.

“Where are we?”

“The Walled City.”

“What is it?”

“It is what you see.”

She brushed his hand off and started ahead. He pushed Pendleton aside, grabbed her by the collarbone, and spun her around.

“What is it?” he asked again.

“It is the Walled City!” she screamed at him. “People-you would call ‘squatters’-live here. The gangs rule it. It is drugs, it is prostitutes, it is sweatshops. It is rats, it is packs of rabid dogs. It is children gang-raped and sold as slaves, it is people living in holes! It is filth. It is when nobody cares!”

“I never knew a place like this existed.”

“Now you know. So what?”

“What are we doing here?”

“We are hiding.”

“For how long?”

“Don’t you like it here?”

“For how long?”

She calmed down. He hadn’t seen rage in her before, and it scared him. Pendleton stood aside like a frightened, overgrown child.

“Until you can phone your Simms.”

“Can he get in here?”

“With the people he knows.”

“Gang people, Triad people?”

“Of course.”

“Are there telephones here?”

“There is everything here.”

She turned around and went ahead. She turned left into a slightly wider alley where people sat slumped against the walls in a doped-out haze. Then she turned right into a concrete tunnel, where they walked through muck, stepped over sleeping bodies, and ducked under dangling light bulbs and power cords. They stepped into another alley, narrower and filthier than the last.

“Jesus!” Pendleton gasped.

A pack of rats was feeding on the bare feet of a human corpse. Neal hunched over and finally vomited, trying hard not to touch the walls.

“Come on,” Li Lan hissed. “We are there soon. It is better.”

The alley led to a T-junction. They went to the left, then through a series of zigzags, then straight on and made two more rights.

We’re in a goddamn maze, Neal thought, and we can hardly see the sky. He suddenly realized that he wouldn’t stand a chance of finding his way out of there. Not a chance.

They came onto a small circular patch of bare din that formed a hub for five alleys.

Four teenage boys, dressed in sleeveless white T-shirts, baggy khaki slacks, and rubber sandals squatted in a circle, smoking cigarettes and rolling dice. It was clearly their turf. The boys stared at the newly arrived trio with amazement. An unexpected bonanza of rape and pillage had been dropped in their midst. The biggest one, the leader, rose to his feet and approached Li Lan. He gazed at her with frank sexual interest, stretched his face into an exaggerated leer, and made a comment to his buddies. They chirped with amusement and got to their feet. The leader pulled a knife from his pants pocket and held it up to Li’s face.

Pull the gun, Lan, Neal thought. This is no time to be a Buddhist.

She didn’t pull the gun, but said what sounded to Neal like two words. The boy’s grin crumbled into a frown of concern and his hand dropped to his side. He barked an order to the others and they took off running down one of the alleys. Then he launched into a monologue of obsequious friendliness. Neal didn’t understand a word, but knew shuffling when he heard it, and this kid was tapdancing for his ass. Li wasn’t buying it. She stood looking at him sternly, not throwing him as much as a crumb. The kid started to shuffle harder.

Ten minutes later, Neal saw why. The two errand boys came back escorting a guy who had “honcho” written all over him. He was older, maybe in his early twenties, and sported a gray pinstriped suit, a blue shirt, a plum tie, and a charcoal fedora. A lit cigarette was jammed in the corner of his mouth. He didn’t show any fear toward Li, but he was polite and respectful, bowing slightly to her as he approached and then nodding to Neal and Pendleton.

He listened to Li for a minute, nodded again, and quietly issued orders. The three boys started to run off, but he stopped the leader, then gave him a vicious backhand to the face. The boy fell into the dirt, picked himself up, bowed to Li Lan, and ran off. The honcho shook his head, then reached into his jacket and produced a pack of Kool Lights. He offered one to Neal and Pendleton, who declined with polite smiles and shakes of the head.

“He’s a stupid boy,” he suddenly said. “Useless. I will kill him if you wish.”

“Thank you for the courtesy, but no,” Li answered.

He’s a clever bugger, Neal thought. Making the offer in English to give Li tremendous face in front of her guests.

He turned to Neal. “Don’t worry about White Tiger. They are big men in Kowloon. This is not Kowloon.”

This isn’t Kowloon, thought Neal. This isn’t even the fucking earth. The honcho’s appearance had attracted an audience. The local kids were gathered around them in a wide circle, and Neal looked up to see people looking out the windows of the ratty concrete and wooden buildings that surrounded the circle. The alleys were filling with wishful gawkers.

“Mr. Carey will need to use a telephone,” Li said. Neal got the idea she said it just to fill a silence.

“Sure… anything,” the honcho said casually.

Yeah, okay, how about a helicopter?

The honcho’s acolytes pushed their way through the crowd and apparently announced that they had accomplished their mission.

“Will you come with me, please?” Honcho asked Li. The crowd parted in front of him as he led them up one of the alleys, into a courtyard ringed by shacks full of sewing machines, through one of the shacks and out a back door into another alley, and then into a cul-de-sac.

At least it looked like a cul-de-sac. When Honcho led them down a stairway into what appeared to be a basement building entrance, the steps ended in a concrete wall. Just to the right, however, there was a narrow crack in the wall. Honcho turned sideways and squeezed through, motioning his guests to follow.

Neal could just fit through the crack, and he shuffled along sideways for about ten feet, trying not to scrape himself on the walls, which pressed against his back and his nose. The walls were home to about ten thousand strains of exotic bacteria, and Neal figured that one open wound would be good for about twenty-five different blood tests. He could feel slime rubbing off on his shin and pants, and was grateful for once that he couldn’t see up or down. He didn’t want to know.

This alley, if you could call it that, ended in another wall. This time the crack led off to the left, and Neal endured another twenty feet of rising claustrophobia before they reached their apparent destination. He had to hand it to old Li Lan: She couldn’t have found a better place to hide.

Some jerry-rigged wooden steps rose straight up from the alley into a dark hallway. They passed by two closed doors before knocking on the third.

Neal followed them in through Door Number Three, not really thinking he’d find Monty Hall, the patio set, and the trip to Hawaii. What he did find was a bare, low-ceilinged eight-by-eight room. In the right corner a homemade ladder provided shaky access to a primitive loft that had been literally carved out of a wall. The loft was just large enough for a stool and, incredibly, a telephone. Maybe it was for running a book, maybe for taking drug orders, maybe it was for calling up local shops and asking them if they had Prince Albert in a can, but there it was. A stubby black rotary telephone. Neal wasn’t sure he had ever seen anything so beautiful in his whole life.

An old man and a boy squatted on the floor of the main room. They held rice bowls to their lips, and their chopsticks were flashing furiously, scooping the dirty white rice into their mouths. The old man wore a sleeveless T-shirt that may have been white sometime during the Sung Dynasty, and a pair of khaki shorts that came down to his calves. His white hair had been shaved close to the scalp, and he had a wispy white beard. His eyes were dull and yellow and showed the resentment he felt at being interrupted in his meal.

The kid, on the other hand, was delighted. He stared unabashedly at Neal, and dropped two or three grains of rice onto the black sports shirt he wore over denim cutoff and rubber sandals. His grin showed bad, crooked teeth, and his eyes looked milky and runny. Infected. Neal figured the kid to be maybe twelve, the old man about a hundred and twelve.

The kid reached under his shirt and came out with a comic book, which he held up to Neal’s face.

“Hulk!” he screamed, then screwed his face up and hunched over, growling and showing teeth. “Hulk! Hulk!”

“That’s pretty good,” Neal said, trying to be friendly.

He reached for the comic book to express admiration, but the kid snatched it back. Then he pulled himself up, threw out his chest, put his hands on his hip, and flashed a confident, macho smile.

“Superman?” Neal asked.

The kid shook his head, then hit him with the smile again.

“Batman,” Neal said.

“Batman! Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da… Batman!”

“You’re good.”

“Marvel Comics. Ding hao! Marvel!”

Honcho pointed to the horizontal telephone booth above them with deliberate nonchalance. “Ma Bell,” he said. “Knock yourself out.”

Pendleton had flopped down in a corner, head in hands. He was done in. Li Lan stood in the center of the room, looking at nothing, expressionless, waiting for the next thing to happen. Neal knew that the next thing was to call Simms and arrange to get the hell out of here. Wherever here was.

“Are you guys ready to do this?” he asked Li and Pendleton.

Tough shit if you’re not, he thought, because we are definitely doing this.

Pendleton kept his head in his hands, but nodded.

Li Lan said, “Yes, we are ready.”

“It’s a local call,” Neal said to Honcho as he climbed the ladder.

“Doesn’t matter,” Honcho answered. “We don’t pay.”

The loft was the size of a baker’s oven and about as hot. There was no room to stand up, and Neal had to bend over, even sitting on the stool. The phone cord came through a small hole that had been drilled in the wall.

It’s a nice scam they have going here, Neal thought. Stealing phone service. Wonder how much they charge the locals to make a call. He dug in his pocket for Simms’s number.

Great. There was no fucking dial tone.

“I think I’m not doing this right,” he said.

Li Lan came up the ladder and leaned into the loft. Even in this sewer she looks gorgeous, Neal thought. Absolutely killer. And she was looking into his eyes so deeply he thought for a moment that he actually might die.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be sorry. Just show me how to use the phone.”

She reached over and gently pulled the cord. It fell out of the hole.

“Is not real,” she said.

A dummy phone for the dummy.

“Why?” he asked.

This time the eyes were angry. As cold and hard as ice.

“You can see all this,” she said, sweeping her arm around to indicate the neighborhood, “and ask why? Why I am a communist? Why I fight for the people? The question you should ask is why you are not, why you do not. You created all this, you made it. Now you can live in it.”

He couldn’t breathe. His chest felt like it was in a vise. Live in it? Live in it?! She can’t mean what I think she means. Jesus God, please, no.

He could barely make himself ask the question, and it came out in a hoarse whisper. “Are you leaving me here?”

“Yes.”

Not even a hint of regret. Cold, hard, and straight.

She started down the ladder. He grabbed the top of it and held on, then twisted himself onto the ladder. He stopped when he felt the blade press against the tendons of his knee. He looked down to see the boy, all of his bad teeth showing in an immense and joyful grin, holding the chopper to his leg. The message was clear: Make a run and you’ll be hobbling for life. And anyway, where would you run? Neal climbed back into the cave. The boy pulled down the ladder, then reached up and took away the stool.

Honcho, Pendleton, and Li were gone.