Emily eventually developed her own sense for the cameras, too. It wasn’t based on a whirring sound, or any deep insight into the locations where they were placed. She simply began to see the terrain the way the cameras did. She understood them, or the people looking at the monitors at the other end of them. When the land looked a certain way, she knew there would have to be a camera nearby. She became an invisible partner of the cameras, shared their view of the estate, but denied them any view of her.
Of course, the security guys knew all about her. She was the chauffeur’s daughter. When she was little, if they caught a glimpse of her on one of their monitors, she would run off with a shriek and a giggle, maybe return a little while later wearing a funny hat, or a new outfit. At least, that’s how it looked on the monitors. As she got older, they saw less and less of her. Eventually she fell off their screens altogether. Perhaps she was a bit of a mystery, some sort of recluse. They didn’t think about her much anymore. She was harmless, and they had more important things to worry about.
Michael Cardano seemed to be an important man. He once held some minor posts in the federal government. He had been a deputy to the Ambassador to the Philippines in the eighties, later held an obscure office in the Pentagon, and then worked briefly for a well known conservative think-tank. Most recently, he was a consultant to the State Department on Southeast Asian economies. But he also seemed to have an influence and importance that could hardly be accounted for by a mere perusal of the various official titles he had held. His professional acquaintances assumed he really worked for the CIA, or perhaps the NSA. That would at least account for the resources employed to secure an estate in the backwoods of Virginia someone of his professional attainments could hardly be expected to be able to afford. But in the end, no one inquired too closely into Michael Cardano’s finances, or into his work. Emily never gave it much thought, and her father certainly never discussed it with her, or anyone else for that matter.
Emily slid into the front seat of the family car. Her father grunted and she snorted. They both laughed. Thursday was meditation day. Sensei had the whole dojo doing an “iron wire” breathing technique for most of an hour. It involved breathing in and out very deeply and slowly while doing a dynamic tension exercise. It was intended to encourage his students to regulate their breathing so that they could hear it, coming in and going out, and hear past it to the stillness of their qi. It was one of Emily’s favorite exercises in the dojo, since it focused on what for her had become the central truth of her life, the central insight of her passion for martial arts training. It drove the boys crazy. They desperately wanted to succeed, to see what Sensei was trying to show them. They flexed and tensed their muscles and they breathed as deeply as they could. Some of them sweated through their uniforms. But they just could not figure out what to listen for. And they heard nothing.
Her father knew, they had talked about it before. There was something comical about the boys’ predicament. Emily could feel for them, but the fact is their failure was itself a simple human truth. One could wish them well, even lament their inability. But in the end, there was nothing to do about it but laugh.
“I have to go out of town tonight. I won’t be back until Saturday morning at the earliest,” her father said.
“Dad,” she groaned. “This was supposed to be our weekend.”
“I’m sorry, Chi-chan. It’s really out of my hands. Why don’t you go camping tomorrow without me? If I get back in time, I’ll try to find you. Then we’ll see how good you really are at covering your tracks.”
“You’ll never find me, old man!” she retorted.
“I already know you’re gonna climb out onto Promontory Rock and hide there. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you casing that spot. You can’t fool me!”
“Fine,” she said. “But if you don’t find me by Sunday morning, you’ll owe me big time!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
They rode home in silence the rest of the way. She was a little miffed with him for this change of plans. But there were plenty of pleasures for her out in the woods by herself. And he had been right about Promontory Rock. Damn!
By the time they arrived home it was already dark and Emily was hungry. Yuki, the cook, had something ready for her: hot soup with chicken and some flavored rice. Her father, it seems, had already eaten. He put the car away and retired to their apartment over the garage. Emily ate in the kitchen of the main house with Yuki. They talked about school, homework, boys, anything but the dojo. Yuki did not entirely approve of how much time she spent there. She wanted Emily to focus on school, to go to college, to find a profession. She had high hopes for this girl. She had practically been a mother to her for the last sixteen years, so maybe she had a right to stick her nose in to Emily’s life a little. But she also had no idea just how profoundly her experiences in the dojo had shaped Emily’s growing consciousness. To Yuki, martial arts was just a hobby, not something to take too seriously, certainly not something to build a life on, certainly not for a girl. No matter what that fool of a sensei thought.
Yuki had come to America years ago. Emily didn’t know the whole story. But there had been some sort of scandal involving Yuki’s father in Japan. He was a scientist, specializing in bio-engineering, genetics research. It must have been very cutting edge. There had been some sort of dispute about patent rights to a discovery he had been involved in. It was all hushed up in the end, but he was shamed by the episode and had taken his own life. Later, perhaps as an act of contrition, the company that had claimed the patent turned it over to the Japanese government. Though Yuki never spoke of it, Emily had the distinct impression from the little her father had told her of the matter that Yuki’s father had been falsely accused of industrial espionage.
Yuki was about the same age as Emily’s father, though it was hard to tell exactly how old she really was. She had enormous energy, much more even than could be expended in running the kitchen of a large and socially active household. She must have vast, secret hobbies, Emily sometimes mused. How else to account for all that energy, that vitality? Sometimes she teased her about it, needling her to find out what she really did with her spare time. But she could only push Yuki so far before she would turn a withering glare her way. Then it would vanish, and those familiar warm, dark eyes would reappear, smiling at her. Had there really been that much menace in her eyes? Or was it just a trick of the light? Emily was not really sure. Of course, she never doubted Yuki loved her, or that she was as close to a mother as she would ever have.
Emily did not know her real mother. She had never met her, never even seen a picture of her. According to her father, she came from Taiwan, the youngest daughter of a merchant family living in Taipei. She had been sent to school in Japan, where she met Emily’s father, who was in the navy and stationed there at the time. They were married and she returned with him to the states over the objections of her family. The marriage was apparently turbulent, and she left shortly after Emily was born, her father told her. He never heard from her or her family again. All she really knew about her mother was her name, Mei Li. Her father said her own name was a sort of anagram for her mother’s name.
For all anyone outside of the family knew, however, she was just Emily Kane, daughter of George Kane, chauffeur to an important family. Of course, anyone who saw her could not help but take notice. Her long, straight black hair was unusual, though she mostly kept it tied up in some sort of braid. Her eyes were black as coal, and very hard to read. But what really caught one’s eye was her posture and her confident gait. And she might smile at you. Was it just you, or does she smile like that at everybody? This girl is the very picture of balance and control. Everyone is her equal, no one her superior. But was there something else in those smiling, dark eyes, something perhaps even darker? Perhaps it was nothing, a trick of the light.
Emily finished her soup, kissed Yuki good night, and went up to the apartment to finish her homework and go to bed. Yuki watched
her walk across the compound to the garage and shook her head. “What’s going to become of that girl?” she wondered aloud.
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Chapter 3: Software
“Mike, you’re gonna have to turn ‘em over to us. You know that, don’t you?” the voice on the other end of the phone said.
Michael Cardano reflected on the quality of the tone of that voice. Several million lines of code and a few hundred miles of fiber optic cable lay between him and the man on the other end. The code was written to ensure the security of the connection, dissolving the vocal noises made at either end of the connection into miniscule bits, whirling them into a billion randomized patterns and then, at the last moment, reconstituting them into a facsimile of the original vocal intonations. Most of the code was actually tasked with recreating as accurately as possible the sound of the original voice. The voice from the phone sounded like the man Michael knew him to be. He could hear the tonal indicators of his emotional veracity. The sound was true to the voice. He hoped his own voice would sound as true at the other end of the line. He felt the need to be able to control the shading of his voice, to shape the way he was perceived, and he didn’t want the nuance he aimed to create to get lost in the code.
“You gotta be kidding,” he snorted.
“Nope.”
“You realize this is just more of Meacham’s bullshit, don’t you?” he needled.
Silence.
“He’s gonna flog this turkey all over the hill, and we both know it’s bullshit. That’s not how real soldiers work.”
“Maybe you’re right. So what?” the other man said.
“He’s gonna get us all killed... or worse. That’s what!” Michael muttered.
“That doesn’t change anything. You still gotta turn ‘em over. Are you gonna bring ‘em in, or do we have to come get ‘em?” he asked menacingly.
“Fine! I’ll need a couple of days. I’ll have ‘em there on Monday.”
He hung up the phone, not waiting for a reply. He knew the men on the other end would accede to his request. But he was equally certain they would come down early, sometime on the weekend. They would not wait for him. With a little luck, they wouldn’t come down before Sunday, late in the evening, hoping he would have his guard down. He needed to be ready to move on Saturday. A lot depended on Kane.
Michael first met Kane years ago in the Philippines. He was working out of the embassy in those days and occasionally needed a driver, and maybe even a bodyguard. The problem was a bodyguard large enough to be worth anything would spook his contacts. So he ended up taking a lot of chances. On one meeting, his boss arranged for a new driver, some kid from Subic Bay. He looked like a callow farm boy from Kansas or Iowa, who knows, maybe even Nebraska. He was smallish, on the skinny side. He wore a Marine uniform. That seemed improbable. As he sat in the backseat of their sedan it struck Michael that this kid wasn’t wearing any rank insignia. Just fatigues. He had assumed it was a uniform largely because the kid walked like Marine. You didn’t learn to walk like that in Kansas. Who was this kid?
His name was George. He had bounced around the services a bit. Started in the army, wanted to be a Ranger. He didn’t look like the physical type they favored. Somehow, he found his way into some obscure unit in the Navy. Being large wasn’t quite as useful on a ship. So here he was, working out of Subic, driving cars for the embassy. He must have washed out of some program or other, and now they didn’t quite know what to do with him. Meacham must have seen something he liked in him. He didn’t usually make mistakes about people. About everything else, maybe. But not people.
He was going to meet a Chinese contact. Tang. That was all he really knew about him. He was ready to sell something concerning the North Koreans. Exactly what wasn’t clear. But Meacham was willing to take a chance. He and Michael had been developing this contact for months and they wanted to get him to commit to something. They were driving through a seedy neighborhood in Manila. Of course, at that time, every neighborhood in Manila looked seedy to American eyes. The meeting was at an Italian restaurant, of all things. Was Tang joking? Or was he trying to put Cardano off his guard? Just don’t eat anything there, he thought to himself.
George pulled the car up in front of the restaurant. There was another car, in the alley, with a driver leaning against the passenger side door. He looked too tall to be a local. Another Chinese? That didn’t look promising. If Tang brought him along, maybe he didn’t have the nerve to breach security. Or maybe he was trying to do it right under their noses.
As Michael walked up the steps and pulled open the door he noticed George approaching the other driver for a cigarette. What was he up to? The room was empty and dark, a glow from the kitchen and whatever glared in through the dirty windows out front were the only light. A Chinese gentleman motioned to him from a booth at the far end. Was it Tang? It looked like him from that distance. Before he’d taken three steps, a strong hand reached around his face from behind and clamped a sweet smelling rag over his nose and mouth. Everything went even darker, and much more compressed.
He woke up, feeling groggy and nauseous some time later in the back seat of his car. George held a cool, damp cloth over his forehead.
“Here, drink this. You’ll feel better soon,” he said.
“What the hell happened back there?” Michael wheezed.
“Things went south in a hurry. I had to get you out of there. Fast.”
“Where’s Tang?” he asked, trying for some composure.
“Dunno. But those guys weren’t there to deal.”
“Shit!”
Back at the embassy compound, Meacham filled him in. Tang was dead. Or there never was a Tang. It was hard to tell. But the guys at the restaurant just wanted to throw Michael in the trunk of their car, and that would have been the last anyone ever heard of him. It was Meacham they must have wanted. Michael would not have been of much use, didn’t know enough. After they discovered their mistake they would have disposed of his body.
The local police came by the next day, alternately listless and officious, asked a few questions. An article appeared in the paper about four dead Chinese. There were no leads. They had been found in an alley behind an abandoned restaurant. When the police arrived, they found that some one had already taken fingerprints of the victims. At least, all of them had ink on the fingertips of their right hands. That was puzzling. The Chinese embassy was saying nothing in public, but screaming bloody murder behind the scenes. They may not have cared much for the lives of their operatives. But they were worried about being seen to have been outplayed, to have lost face. That might give encouragement in the wrong quarters.
But what had really happened in that restaurant? Those guys were big. At least the two he saw. Bigger than him, so a lot bigger than George. When Meacham showed him the police report, he noticed it didn’t mention any gunshot wounds.
George said nothing about the events of that day. Nothing about the restaurant. Nothing about Michael throwing up on the ride back. Nothing. Meacham had found him the perfect driver. A bodyguard no one would notice. Nothing about him drew anyone’s attention. No one felt threatened by him. Unless, of course, they looked in his eyes, those blank, dead eyes. Empty, like the eyes of a Midwest farm boy... and then some!
Michael left his den and went down to the basement. There were actually two basements under the main building. The lower one connected by passageways to the other buildings. It was not a huge underground complex, like you see in the old Bond movies. But it was very discreet. A quick search of the compound might not reveal the second basement, especially a search conducted in a hurry, perhaps under fire. It would be no good to hide down there in an attack. A more deliberate search would eventually reveal it. But you might be able to use it to elude intruders for a little while, perhaps long enough to escape through the long passage that led into the woods behind the main building.
The tunnel was concealed much more carefully than anything else in the basements. It might
take a full thirty or forty-five minutes to find it. It didn’t lead to the fences, or to any of the gates. It led further into the heart of the estate. A little bit of misdirection that might enable someone who really knew the woods well to get away. It would be very hard to track someone there, especially in the dark.
The upper basement was mainly for storage. The concrete floors were carpeted and the rooms were very well lit. A couple of them were casually furnished, like a suburban rec room. There was a ping pong table, a pool table, a TV room. Michael kept a small, private office down here, with the only computer terminal in the main house. The mechanicals were kept in one room, and in another the mainframes and servers that ran all the electronics on the estate. But there was no arsenal. It wasn’t that kind of place. The security guards had the only firearms on the estate. Michael figured the enemy he was really preparing for would always be able to outgun him, so there was no point investing his resources there. Instead, he focused on stealth and subterfuge, and better intelligence, he hoped.
The second basement was much darker, barely even lit. To get to it you had to climb down a ladder hidden behind the bar. It led almost fifteen feet down, well below the floor level of the upper basement. It was practically a cave. The temperature stayed a constant fifty degrees or so year round even though it was completely unheated. There were a few small rooms, with sparse furnishings, a few wooden tables and chairs, some benches. No electrical outlets. The few lights were powered by batteries connected to solar cells on the roof. He clearly did not intend to spend much time down here.
He sat in his private office and made his plans. They would have to spirit Yuki away from the estate, and the girl, too, he supposed. And they’d have to do it quickly. He was expecting that phone call, and had already begun making plans. He sent George to a safe house outside of Langley to meet a couple of his agency contacts. He was calling in some pretty old favors. He just worried George might not be able to persuade them to trust him. He trusted George implicitly, he had good reason to. But others often didn’t. Why should they?
Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) Page 2