by Matt Miksa
“No. They are the lost souls of the deceased—the shamans who lost their battles.”
“They look evil, possessed. Is that why they shun the sunlight?”
“On the contrary, Doctor. The light is guiding them. According to the Bon faith, that’s how these men reach the beyond. Their detached souls must come from the sun and walk toward the darkness.”
The bhikkhu flipped to another section of the book, and Jo caught her breath when she saw the image on the page. The monk’s explanation replayed slowly in her mind. “They come from the sun,” she murmured. Sumati had said the same thing about the sick man. After the interview, a team of scientists had spent the entire afternoon picking through a patch of spruce trees along the eastern edge of the village, the direction of the sunrise, but they’d turned up nothing. Jo had concluded that Sumati’s reference to the sun was just delirious babble. But Jo was mistaken. The drawing in the monk’s book explained everything.
“We’ve been looking in the wrong place!” Jo slapped the tattered tome with her palm, releasing a puff of dust. Before the old monk could react, Jo zipped up her jacket and bolted from the library. She’d left a faint handprint on the page, directly on top of an intricately sketched traditional Tibetan symbol for the sun—a wheel, with eight spokes protruding from a goldenrod hub.
CHAPTER
25
Dzongsar Village, Tibetan Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China
KALINA GRIPPED THE limestone wall and climbed silently toward the monastery’s pitched roof. Her small fingers slid easily into the narrow grooves in the masonry. She balanced her weight on the pointed tips of her boots, which she’d expertly wedged into deep crevices in the weathered stone. The woman had shed her couture evening gown for a tactical body suit and grappling gear. Truthfully, Kalina felt equally comfortable in either attire. The smooth polyurethane fabric hugged her lissome figure, allowing her to snake up the fifty-foot edifice unencumbered.
Slipping into the Q-Zone had been simple. The young guards, anesthetized by boredom, had failed to notice a shadowy silhouette slinking through the thick brush. Infiltrating the monastery would require more skill and patience, however. Kalina had no idea how many people were inside, or how many were armed. If anyone got in her way, she’d simply cut them down. The most effective way to terminate the investigation would be to terminate the doctors and scientists running it. They’d scurry like field mice until she dropped them, one by one. Then she’d hunt her primary target. He’d be tougher to dispatch. Ideally, Kalina would pad noiselessly into her target’s bedroom and eliminate him in his sleep. If she found him awake, it could get messy.
The assassin pulled herself onto the sloped eave of the monastery’s roof. Despite the exertion, her breath remained measured. From this elevated vantage point, she could see the entire village. The whitewashed dwellings reflected the moonlight, looking like the crooked molars of a sleeping giant. A few emaciated dogs trotted through the deserted streets, pausing to scavenge rotted fruit from heaps of rubbish. Dzongsar Village might as well have been the end of the earth.
The monastery’s roof cascaded in a series of tiers, like layers of a cake that got smaller toward the top. A row of tiny, paneless windows lined the gaps between each tier to ventilate the fortress. Kalina leaned through one of the windows and peered into the cavernous chamber below. Her long, sable braid dangled into the room.
Rows of folding tables crossed the floor. Blocky equipment and clusters of glass containers spread across nearly every available inch of horizontal space. Refrigerators hummed in the corner. The space had a modern atmosphere that contrasted with the historic architecture. It looked like a laboratory.
Kalina removed a five-clawed grappling hook from her belt and fastened it to the end of a long nylon cable wrapped snuggly around her waist. She wedged the hook’s sharp flukes into the grooved lip lining the window’s frame. Holding the line taut, she leaned backward and silently rappelled into the lab. The search for her target, Officer Olen Grave, began.
CHAPTER
26
Beijing, People’s Republic of China
PRESIDENT LI BINGWEN watched a perfect crimson bead form on his fingertip. He’d pricked himself tugging stubborn weeds from his rose garden. Li worked an old towel in his soiled hands, leaving muddy streaks on the terry cloth. His manicured hedge of white China roses shimmered in the glow of approaching headlights. Squinting, the president watched a black sedan roll up the gravel driveway of his private estate.
Only a handful of people could have made it past the security guards. The sedan crunched over loose pebbles and rumbled to a stop about ten meters away. A familiar figure emerged from the vehicle’s rear passenger side. Li grimaced and pulled himself up to stand.
“Don’t get up on my account,” the silhouette said. “Those bushes won’t prune themselves. What in God’s name are you doing out here so late anyway?”
President Li wobbled on two stiff legs. His aging knees ached from kneeling too long. He rarely spent time in the garden anymore—he employed a crew of capable grounds keepers. Yet tonight the thought of those pernicious weeds growing taller and thicker, sucking the nutrients from his flower bed with impunity, had simply been too unsettling. He’d spent the last hour outside, confronting the vegetative invaders.
Li approached his visitor with a stooped yet confrontational stride. Within seconds, he stood nose to nose with General Huang. “I should ask you the same thing,” Li spat. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
“Then how else would I have had the pleasure of enjoying this breathtaking landscape? It’s quite masterful, what you’ve done with the grounds.” The general gestured facetiously toward the expansive natural tapestry of lavender Russian sage, speckled toad lilies, and plum trees blanketing the hillside, running up to the base of President Li’s palatial residence. “How do you find the time, comrade?”
“Get to the point, Yipeng. You didn’t drive all the way out here to admire my withering peonies.”
“Withering, indeed.” General Huang’s disingenuous grin melted into his customary glower. “Xu Kang is dead,” he said bluntly.
The president nodded silently. He’d expected the news. At last count, the bombing of the Great Hall of the People had claimed fifteen victims. As of yet, the public was unaware that a member of China’s highest political body was among them. Xu, one of the Politburo Standing Committee’s newest members, had stood only a few paces from the blast site. His injuries had been inoperable.
Xu Kang’s luck had been bound to run out sooner or later. Three years ago he’d been an unremarkable Party boss in Shanghai. Since then, Xu’s career had skyrocketed. He owed his success to General Huang, who had handpicked Xu for ascension into the upper echelon of Beijing politics.
The choice made perfect sense. Xu hailed from a distinguished family of PLA heroes and was staunchly promilitary. Huang had needed friends at the top. Of the committee’s seven members, only two could be counted as his allies. Three out of seven votes had relegated him to the minority—not a position Huang enjoyed. So, last October he’d convinced the Politburo to increase the members of its preeminent council from seven to nine. With two new slots up for grabs, the general had stacked the deck with Xu and another of his puppets from Guangzhou. President Li had never determined how Huang pulled it off, but presumably his strategy involved the typical blend of bribery and blackmail. Overnight, the general’s power base on the committee had expanded to five voting members, including Huang himself. A majority. The maneuver had allowed Huang to blindside President Li at the next plenum and commandeer China’s top military post.
“Your coalition is down a man. Xu’s soul has barely left his body, and you’re already vying for my vote,” Li said, disgusted. If the general hoped to retaliate against Taiwan, he would need to convince Li’s faction to change its position.
“We haven’t time for grudges, Bingwen. Not since the fall of the Qing dynasty has our country faced an existen
tial crisis of this magnitude. Our enemies are pounding on the gates. The Chinese people see only weakness in their government. We mustn’t forget, revolution runs deep in our veins. The bombing was just the beginning.”
“You think the attack was a targeted assassination? And we’re next?”
“This isn’t about you and me, comrade. You must see that. The entire system is crumbling. Men like us are all that hold this government together. We must put our differences aside and act. Tonight.”
The president lowered his voice. “If we invade Taiwan, it will mean war with the Americans.”
“I refuse to accept that as an inevitability. Washington is completely overextended in the Middle East. The Americans can’t afford another unfounded war,” Huang countered.
“They would be coming to Taiwan’s defense. What makes you think the U.S. would view that as unfounded?”
“Because we were not the aggressors! The People’s Republic of China is a sovereign nation defending itself against a vicious biological attack. Taiwan’s attack. Tell me this, Bingwen, if Iran dropped a dirty bomb on Times Square, fifty thousand American soldiers would swarm Tehran within hours, would they not? Taiwan hit us ten days ago, and we’ve done nothing but give speeches. How many of our people must die from this virus before we acknowledge the real disease is our own cowardice?”
“You’re wrong, Yipeng. Now is the time to be cautious and prudent, not impulsive. We still don’t know where Blood River virus came from. Not definitively.”
“I suppose an infected NSB officer just happened to wander into the TAR for some sightseeing,” Huang quipped.
“It’s all circumstantial. Chang was operational—no doubt about that—but we have no evidence that his illness had anything to do with his reason for visiting Tibet. What if he contracted the disease by accident? We mustn’t hurl Asia into chaos because some insect bit an NSB officer on his way to having tea with a handful of Tibetan separatists.”
“You’re not thinking clearly. Asia is already in chaos. You can’t see the bloodshed from inside this compound, but China is suffering. The war is at your doorstep, comrade.”
Li moved in closer to the general until he could smell the man’s breath. His footing felt more solid than before. “Unless you can prove Tang’s complicity—that Taiwan intentionally unleashed the virus—you’ll never convince me to support an invasion. Your stranglehold over the Standing Committee died with Xu. At best you’ve got four votes, and that’s not enough.”
General Huang’s steely eyes revealed no expression. Li doubted the man had ever believed this late-night entreaty would succeed.
“Do you know the worst part about all this?” Huang asked. “Taipei is counting on us being too divided and too craven to fight back. President Tang is using our weakness against us, and it’s working.”
Without waiting for a retort, the general returned to his sedan. Before ducking into the back seat, he said, “You may want to wash out that cut, comrade. We’d hate for it to get infected.”
Li felt the warm trail of blood dripping from his finger. He hadn’t noticed the wound open up again. The rose’s thorn must have punctured the skin deeper than he’d thought.
General Huang’s car crunched down the path, turned the corner, and drove out of view. A moment later, another set of headlights appeared at the mouth of the driveway, racing toward President Li, kicking up clouds of gray dust. Li recognized the vehicle. It was a police cruiser. The same model used by the army. Huang’s army. President Li dropped the mud-stained towel, defeated. They were coming for him.
CHAPTER
27
Dzongsar Village, Tibetan Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China
OLEN SPRINTED THROUGH thick smoke. Swirls of dust enveloped him. Seconds later he was facedown in the dirt, spitting gravel. He’d tripped over something.
A body.
No, an arm. Its contorted elbow twisted unnaturally from a bloodied stump. Five crooked fingers snatched his ankle.
Olen scuttled away and pulled himself up briefly, but an explosion forced him back to his knees. A stinging pain ripped through his side. His shirt felt wet and sticky. He was bleeding out.
* * *
The man’s heart thumped as he slept. The woman standing over his unconscious body could see it pulsating in the center of his bare chest. He had kicked off the blankets, which made it easier for her to see whether he had anything in his hands. She would work quickly and slip out of the monastery unnoticed. She raised a pair of needle-nose wire cutters and inched toward the man’s throat.
* * *
Olen’s lungs filled with blood. His legs seized up. He sucked in shallow, dust-filled breaths, then coughed violently, choking, struggling to the end.
Olen burst awake, disoriented from the nightmarish dream. A woman stood over him, wielding some kind of knife. He rolled onto his side, toward the attacker. Reaching up, Olen grabbed her outstretched arm and pulled her off-balance with a firm grip. Shifting his weight, he hurled the woman onto the mattress and snatched the weapon from her hand. He rolled on top of her, pinning her to the mattress, and pressed the tip of the wire cutters to the soft skin just under her jawbone.
“Kipton! Stop! It’s me!” the woman shouted.
Olen sat up, keeping his attacker immobilized under his body. He relaxed when he saw the distress on Jo’s face.
“There are easier ways to get me into bed, Doctor,” Olen said.
Jo rolled her eyes. “If that were my goal, you’d be the one on bottom.”
“Sounds fun. Minus the part when you slice off my balls.” Olen tossed the wire cutters on the bed.
Jo’s eyes traced down Olen’s naked chest, slick with sweat. The key hung from his neck, inches from Jo’s face.
He followed her gaze. “Ah, you know what it opens. You could’ve just asked me for it.” Olen pulled the chain over his head and dropped the key into Jo’s open hand. “Are you gonna let me in on your little secret?”
* * *
Jo explained the story she’d heard from the monk, about Sumati and the Black Sect. “I think Sumati believed patient zero was the physical embodiment of a lost soul—a dead man, overcome by demonic spirits, searching for the path to heaven, stuck in a kind of earthly purgatory.”
“Neat,” Olen said. “How does that help us?”
“According to the monk, followers of the Black Sect are deeply religious people. They see things differently. For them, the natural world and the spiritual world are not as distinct as in Western faiths. Sumati said patient zero ‘came from the sun.’ This makes more sense to me now. The Bon faith explains that the souls of the dead follow the path of the rising sun in search of the afterlife.”
“So, patient zero entered the village from the east. We should search there, retrace his path through the brush, search for anything that might explain how he got sick.”
“No, we’ve already checked the east side. We need to search near the other sun.”
The answer clicked in Olen’s mind. “The painted rocks near the field. It’s not a flower; it’s a sun,” Olen said. “Sumati must’ve seen patient zero emerge from the woods behind those stones.”
“Right where you said the boy found this key.” Jo raised her fist, clutching the chain.
“Do you think the key belonged to patient zero?”
“Like you said before, people don’t lock their doors in Dzongsar. This key was brought here by a visitor, an outsider,” Jo replied. “Patient zero hid something out there, in the forest, behind those rocks.”
Olen pouted. “I’m hurt, Jo.”
“Because you thought I was trying to murder you in your sleep with wire cutters?”
“No, because you weren’t going to take me with you.”
“Do I still have that choice?” Jo asked.
“Not a chance, Doc.”
CHAPTER
28
Dzongsar Village, Tibetan Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China
&n
bsp; THE EVENING CLOUDBURST had softened the soil into slop. Jo hopped over puddles of rainwater, refusing to allow another storm to soak her newly dried boots. Her leaps and lunges amused Olen, who trudged indifferently through the sopping terrain.
The clearing ended at a thick tree line about a hundred yards ahead. The field looked much larger without the children playing on it, scampering after an underinflated soccer ball. A generous moon offered more than enough light for them to stay on course. The heavy clouds had passed, and countless glimmers dusted the night sky. Underneath the universe, here in Dzongsar Village, Olen felt incredibly isolated. Beijing was a world away. Washington even farther. A man wandering out of these woods—alone and delirious—seemed absurd.
“The key,” Olen said. “What exactly do you expect to find out here?”
“A lock,” Jo teased.
Olen guided Jo to the precise spot where the kid had found the key. It took only a few minutes to discover the tree—Jo noticed it first—and the small cross etched into its bark. The marking was subtle. If they hadn’t been examining the tree line so intently, they might have missed it altogether.
“A crucifix?” Olen asked. He tried to sound naïve, but his gut told him the marking was not a religious symbol. It reminded him of something he’d seen many times before, in Paris, Moscow, Baghdad. A signal site for a dead drop.
To communicate covertly, spies like Olen sometimes rolled messages into tiny tubes and hid them under bridges or rocks, anywhere out of sight, and then signaled to their contacts that they were ready for pickup. Sometimes the signal was a chalk mark on the side of a mailbox or a piece of chewing gum stuck to a street sign. Or a scratch in the bark of a tree.
But there can’t be a dead drop hidden in the dark depths of the Tibetan rain forest. Right?