by Sam Masters
128
Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami
The presidential visit puts some energy into the antiseptic air and makes the early morning hours pass more quickly.
Once Clint Molton leaves, nurses flit into Zoe’s room more attentively than ever. Naturally, during their visits they are keen to ask Ghost what the President had said and what he was like.
Around 3:00 A.M. the excitement fades and the lieutenant is left on his own again. Occasionally, he picks up Zoe’s camera and notebook and imagines what she had done with her last day, from the moment he left her flushed pink from their lovemaking to the second he found her bloodred and unconscious.
Life seemed so fragile.
Letting her accompany him in the Gerbers’ kitchen had been a mistake. The horror of the scene had touched her. He’d seen it in her face at the time. Her whole being had blotted up the violence and emotion spread in front of her. He guesses she only survived true trauma because she’d had her camera. The lens became a shield. It objectified things. Allowed her to see the two women as critical objects, to be framed properly, correctly focused, and diligently captured. But afterward she probably had craved a sense of balance, needed to find perspective for the photographs, something to validate them as more than proof of her journalistic voyeurism. He knows that if he’d stuck to rules and regulations, she’d have stayed on the other side of the tape and the chain of events that brought her to this ER would never have begun.
He tells himself not to feel guilty. That life is packed with awful twists of fate and that’s just how things are. But he doesn’t believe a word of it. He is to blame. And if she dies, it will unquestionably be his fault.
Looking at her pocketbook, it seems to Ghost that Zoe risked her life for a story. Her first true piece of photojournalism. Sadly, she had gotten lost along the way. If her intention was to tell the world about the heartfelt relationship between mother and daughter, then she’d have been better going back to the village school they’d both attended, or asked in the clothes stores where they shopped together, or even gone down to the local gym where they regularly cycled side by side on spinning bikes. His office had found all that stuff, from house-to-house inquiries as they looked for someone who knew family or friends who could identify the bodies.
Ghost taps the red book on his knees. He finds it intriguing that Zoe took almost the same direction that he would have had he been treating the dog as a murder suspect and not just a dumb animal. She’d sought out its antecedence and its known contacts. Tracked down its last movements and identified all key events in its life.
He could see that she’d found the kennel where the Gerbers bought the dog, but after that several things puzzled him. Most of all, what was the connection to the shelter? To Chen? And why had she left Chen’s house and gone straight to a dog show—one that fatally ended with the animals turning on the audience?
129
North Korea
Standing on the apex of the roof, Jihai sees moonlight through a crack in the timbers.
He walks a thin joist and through other cracks spots floodlights, horizontal rain, and blackness.
No one has entered the shower block for several hours, and he’s beginning to feel that now is time to make his move.
He tiptoes back to the board where he made his entry and prizes it up with his fingers. It’s heavy and awkward to move but he manages to slide it across as gently and quietly as possible, then grabs the cleaning equipment and lowers himself down onto the top of a toilet in the farthest cubicle.
A motion sensor triggers a light, and for a moment he thinks the door opened and someone came in.
As quickly as possible he replaces the board, puts the cleaning equipment back in the corner, and slips his white lab coat back on. If he’s caught, there’s a chance he can still explain his presence with the papers in his pocket and his friend in a bed a few doors away.
Péng is on his mind as he slips out of the shower block into the corridor.
The place looks deserted.
Three doors are open to his left and three to his right. He can’t resist walking by to take a look.
The first room he comes to is a nurses’ station, and two male nurses look questioningly at him.
He tries to drift by but one of them shouts after him. “Hello.”
Jihai knows there’s no point running. They’d raise the alarm within seconds.
He turns, pulls the faked authorization papers out of his pocket and speaks in his best Korean. “I’ve come for the sick scientist. The one brought in earlier from the research bunker.”
The small dark-haired male nurse has red eyes and looks as if he’s just woken. “Come for him?”
“Yes. Where is he?”
“I’ll show you.” He leads the way around the corner, past several more rooms and then around another corner. “In here.” He pushes the door open.
Jihai hears the buzz of flies.
The lights come up and he sees three steel gurneys. All are covered with white sheets.
“The one on the right,” says the nurse unemotionally. “He was last in.”
Jihai is not sure what to do. He feels compelled to look but at the same time wants to remember his friend as he was.
He walks to the gurney and pulls back the sheet.
Pain hits him like a plank across the face.
Péng is there. But he isn’t. All the laughter and light that made him a best friend was gone.
“Yeah, this is him.” Without thinking, Jihai slips the brake off and spins the gurney around.
The nurse stands back so he can push his way through the door. “Where are you taking him?”
“His family will come from America. I must take his body to Panmunjom to be collected for burial. You know about Chinese burial rituals, yes?”
The look on the young nurse’s face shows he doesn’t.
“Do you not believe in God and a life after ours?” Jihai asks.
He looks offended. “I am Shaman. My mother was a mudang.”
“That must have brought great honor to your family.” Jihai bows his head respectfully. “This man here is a Taoist—” He touches Péng’s shoulder. “—and he must have a special burial. Just as your mother spoke to spirits, so too must his family. They must begin the ceremony to free his body from the demons that seek to prevent him rising to heaven.” He adds a layer of lies. “And it must happen within twenty-four hours or else he will be damned—as will anyone who prevented the ceremony taking place.”
The nurse picks up the implication. “I am not stopping you. Take him.”
Jihai takes a chance. “I need your assistance. I need you to show me how to get to the Joint Security area so the body may be picked up by the Americans.”
“I can take you to the guards at the gate,” says the nurse, “but not until my shift finishes.”
“When is that?”
He glances at his watch. “Six hours from now.”
“Not good enough.” Jihai steps forward. “There will be a diplomatic and religious incident if I don’t get this body to the pickup point within the hour.”
130
Beijing
Xian is relieved to find that he has a late night visitor to his office.
He looks across the top of his newly poured whiskey as Minister Chunlin sheepishly heads toward the chair on the other side of his expansive desk.
“Would you like a drink?” He holds up the expensive liquor that Molton had given him as a gift.
“I would, Mr. President. Thank you.”
Xian takes a glass from the cabinet behind him, unscrews the Macallan and pours a generous measure. “Why did you not contact me about the State of Emergency?” He passes the glass over. “And why do you come to me now?”
“Thank you.” Chunlin takes the whiskey. “I did
not know of the American announcement. Xue Shi has circumvented most of my senior reports and cut off my principle communication sources. I am becoming isolated from my own operatives.”
Xian takes a jolt of the whiskey. His instincts were right. Power is shifting. Only it is moving faster than he had suspected. “How does Xue Shi control your own people? Do they not have loyalty to you?”
“They do. But they have loyalty to their own lives. On a daily basis they see Zhang’s ruthlessness and they rightly fear for themselves and their families.”
Xian swirls the whiskey in the glass and peers at its rich, fiery colors as he thinks things through. “And you, Geng, have you come to fear him too? Do you sit with me now at his bidding?”
“No.” The minister looks hurt. “He has forbidden me to talk to you.”
Xian feels his temper rise. “Then in being here you put yourself at risk.”
“I still have friends. There is still loyalty.” He drinks a little and draws breath, a sigh of relief at being able to let out some of the fear inside.
The president tops up their glasses, “I am pleased to hear that there is some immunity to the disease of treachery. Fear of death can turn the staunchest of allies into the worst of traitors.” He looks into Chunlin’s eyes.
“I would never betray you.” His voice rings with indignation.
Xian wants to believe him. Their history is strong. “So what is so important that you risk your life in coming to me?”
“There has been an incident in North Korea that Zhang has forbidden me to talk to you about.”
“Go on.”
“Hao Weiwei has killed his son, a doctor, and himself.”
“No.” Xian looks shaken. “I know the man well. He is one of our brightest brains, our most distinguished scientists.”
“Was, Mr. President. He killed himself and left some kind of suicide note. I do not know the contents but I suspect they explain the reason for the shootings.”
“I am sure they do.” He reaches for the phone. “I will call Zhang to account, immediately.”
Chunlin puts a hand on the receiver. “Please forgive me, Mr. President. It would be better if you didn’t.”
Xian glowers at the impertinence. Then he softens. Chunlin obviously has a plan. “Why? What have you in mind?”
“A way, Mr. President, a way to use this to ensure that the ambitions of General Zhang and Xue Shi do not ruin the reputation and future of our country.”
131
Bristol, Liberty County, Florida
They come from the south.
Out of the Apalachicola Forest, west of where it bumps into Lake Talquin, east of Sheppard and north of Mystic.
Out of the place where some claim Noah built his ark.
Out of the dead of night, the pits of darkness.
They come with slobbering jaws, haunted eyes, and the thunder of a cattle stampede.
More than a hundred weaponized dogs are hurtling toward the small, sleepy town of Bristol.
It’s barely 7:00 A.M. and its thousand citizens are only just stirring. Early starters wander in the moist morning air. They are expecting nothing but another day as placid as the last in the Florida panhandle.
Emily Stokes straps her two children into their car seats and thinks about her long journey west to visit her mother in Pensacola. The two aren’t getting on and a heart-to-heart is in the cards.
She looks down the road toward the Baptist Church. There’s something on the blacktop rolling her way, like a two-foot-high tidal wave. Emily squints and struggles to make out what it is. Old Mrs. Emmings is doddering around down there, getting her newspapers from off the lawn where that stupid Ryland kid threw them from his bicycle.
“Dear God.”
The words are as close as the thirty-five-year-old has ever come to a profanity.
Priscilla Emmings has been knocked down by what looks like a giant pack of dogs and they’re trampling right over her.
Emily rushes to the front door of her tidy three bedroom home, shuts it, and runs back to her car.
Two-year-old Jade greets her mother’s return with a familiar statement. “I want to pee-pee, Mommy.”
“You’ll have to wait until we’re at Grandma’s, honey.” She looks out of the Chevrolet window. The dogs are less than a hundred yards away. Too near to take the kiddies out and into the house and maybe even too close for her to get off the short drive and head down to the 20 and out of town.
She decides to sit it out.
Four-year-old Henry gets excited and points. “Look at all those doggies. Wow!”
“Yeah, let’s wait a minute and watch them.” She turns and gives her children a reassuring smile.
They’re close enough now for Emily to see their shapes and sizes. They look mainly mongrels, dirty. Black-and-whites with shaggy coats, bit, by the looks of things.
She locks the door. The central locking clunks and the kids sense a change in the air.
“Want a wee, Mommy.”
“Watch the doggies, honey.”
Emily starts the engine. They’re only twenty yards away and she somehow feels safer if she can at least move the car.
Now that they’re closer, they look like wolves, a massive pack of charging wolves.
Jade starts to cry.
“It’s okay, baby.”
But it isn’t.
A wild dog crashes into the passenger side of the car. Another hits the trunk. A third crashes into the back fender.
The thumps are frighteningly loud. And more and more are happening. It’s as though the car is being hit in a multiple pile-up.
Both kids are crying.
There are so many dogs now that they’re blocking the light at the windows.
Emily can barely see as she slips off the hand brake and screeches off her strip of asphalt.
A huge Alsatian hits the windshield.
Henry screams.
The Chevy’s wheels bump over dogs hit by the front bumper.
Something hits the driver-side window, and despite trying to stay calm, Emily shrieks.
Another dog hits the cracked windshield.
Its paw juts through.
Dangles through the crack like a monstrous limb appearing through a lake of ice.
Emily floors the accelerator.
The dog’s leg doubles back and breaks. It falls from the windshield and she can see road.
Open road.
Escape.
132
North Korea
Jihai stares imploringly into the eyes of Shin Kung, the nurse.
He’s the son of a mudang, a form of Shaman priestess, he must have seen his mother fall into trances, communicate with spirits, cast spells, and tell fortunes.
Jihai hopes to turn the experience to his advantage. “You have been brought up to respect the dead. To know that they have their needs. What would your mother say to you if you told her that you turned your back on me and my friend’s needs?” He grips the cold metal gurney where Péng lies. “Would she approve? Or would she think you had discredited your family and especially her.” He sees the words have struck home. “Help me. It is fate that I have found you. Ten minutes of your time will mean an eternity for my friend.”
Shin nods. “I will help.” He walks to the side of the room and removes a new body bag from the stacks on a shelf. “We must cover the corpse. The weather is still severe.” The nurse hands the bag to Jihai. “You begin to put him in this. I will get his medical papers.”
Jihai takes the plastic cover and feels his heart start to race. Every step toward freedom brings with it a greater fear of capture.
Rigor mortis has set in on Péng’s corpse and the stiffness makes it difficult for him to do much more than get half the body into the zip-up.
Shin return
s with a brown A4 envelope and two greatcoats. He folds the envelope and places it in the pocket of one. “The storm is still raging and there are no waterproofs, but these will protect us a little. I have told my colleague I am going to help you take the body to the gatehouse and he is calling the guards and telling them to expect us.”
Jihai feels another surge of apprehension. He’d believed his best chance at the gates would be the element of surprise. It had worked coming into the hospital, and with Shin in tow it might have worked again. But if the guards contact their military superiors and Beijing is called, then his plan will collapse.
“Lift please.” Shin is tugging the bag underneath Péng.
Jihai puts his arms under his old friend and heaves him up while the nurse shuffles the bag under.
Shin makes the final adjustments and passes the scientist a coat. “Follow me. We go out through the rear of medical center.”
They push the gurney down several corridors and Jihai sees a number of other people working. No one questions the sight of two men with a body bag. They are just glad it isn’t them having to push the thing.
Shin knocks down the metal lock bar on two rear doors.
The wind rips them out of his hands and flings them hard against the outside of the building.
Jihai has to help bolt them into the floor.
The rain is still torrential. It comes unseen out of the blackness of night and then like millions of thrown stones bounces off the puddled road leading through the camp.
The two men push the gurney out into the savage storm, apply the brake and rush back to shut the doors.
Within seconds their hands and faces are whipped raw.
The wind is soon behind them, but the downpour penetrates their coats. Their necks and backs soon become soaked.
The blacktop is full of potholes and every ten yards or so a wheel of the gurney dives dramatically and the two men have to stop and lift it out of the craters. More than once they have to reposition the body bag to prevent it from slipping to the ground.
Up ahead Jihai sees the intense whiteness of searchlights and the shadowy outline of meshed gates, coiled barbed wire, watchtowers, and guards.