"Been there, done that, señor. Tell you what, Joe, if Pyramid is involved in anything, it's part of something very big. Pyramid doesn't do things in half measures."
"Would the government crackdown have anything to do with what we've talked about?"
"Possibly. Pyramid has reacted like a wounded snake since the purge began. They've killed cops, judges, and top officials as a warning to the government to keep its hands off, but I don't see the connection with your Dr. Kane."
"Neither do I. Can you help?"
"I'll put you in touch with Charlie Yoo. He's an agent that the Chinese security agency sent over to work with the FBI. He's a specialist in gangs. Pyramid made a mistake underestimating you and Kurt. But a few words of advice…"
"We always listen to advice from a pro, Cate."
Caitlin put her hand on her holster, a reflexive gesture, as if she sensed danger.
"That's good, Joe, because if I know Pyramid, you and Kurt are in their sights. And they won't miss a second time."
Thousands of miles from Virginia, Pyramid Trading was also on the lips of Colonel Ming. The slender, soft-spoken man with the thick head of silver hair stood outside a dilapidated building in the slums of Shanghai. There had apparently been an attempt to burn the building, but the firefighters called in to keep the blaze from spreading to the nearby slums had nipped the fire in the bud.
The smoke still burned the colonel's eyes, even though he stood several hundred feet from the building. He didn't want the ash floating in the air to settle on his razor-creased Army uniform. Even if he had wished to get closer, he would have been prevented by the cordon of decontamination trucks and ring of armed police.
He turned to the Ministry of Health official, who had called him.
"I'm not sure why you asked me to come here," Ming said. "It appears that the city has the situation well in hand. There seems little need for crowd control by the military."
"This was no ordinary building and this was no ordinary fire," said the minister, whose name was Fong. "There were medical tests of some sort going on here."
"This seems an unlikely place for that sort of thing. Are you sure?"
Fong nodded.
"We found a number of people locked in cells," he said. "They had been left there to burn, but, fortunately, even though they were in poor condition, they were able to talk. They said they had been kidnapped, and that many people had been taken from their cells, never to return. We believe they were moved to labs, and, from the equipment we found, it seems they were the subjects of experiments."
"What kind of experiments, Fong?"
"We don't know specifically. But we did find traces of a virus strain that is of some concern to our ministry. It is the same virus that caused an outbreak in a village to the north. The person who caused that epidemic was from Shanghai."
"Quite the coincidence," said Ming.
"Even more, the person was employed in a security capacity by Pyramid Trading based here in the city. And, almost unbelievably, Pyramid owns this building."
"I think I know where you are going with this, Fong. It's well known that the Army operates a string of brothels in partnership with Pyramid. But there's no connection to this," he said with a wave of his hand.
"I understand that, Colonel, but perhaps you might want to reexamine your partnership when I tell you what else we found in the building: the remains of dozens of human beings, discovered in a crematory. We think they had been used in the experiments."
Ming's reaction was one of combined fear and revulsion, fear that his name had been linked to Pyramid, revulsion over the experiments.
He stared at the building, trying without success to imagine the horrors within its four walls.
"Thank you, Minister," he said. "I shall look into it and take the appropriate steps."
"I hope so," Fong said. "This is not good for China. Whoever is responsible must be brought to account, but it must be done quietly."
"I am in complete agreement with the need for discretion," Colonel Ming said. "And I think I know exactly where to begin."
CHAPTER 22
Dooley Green looked up from the outboard motor he'd been repairing at the end of the dock and his mouth widened in a gap-toothed grin when he saw the young Asian woman coming his way.
"Afternoon, Doctor," he said. "Going to take another crack at that pink bird?"
Dr. Lee tapped the zoom lens of the digital camera hanging from a strap around her neck.
"Yes, Dooley. You know how determined I am to get a photo of that beautiful roseate spoonbill."
"Spoonbills can be cagey all right," he said. "Kayak's waiting for you. I'll fetch your gear."
Dooley put his screwdriver down and got a kayak paddle and flotation vest from the boat shed. He and Lee walked along the beach to where a light blue fiberglass touring kayak sat on the sand with its bow partway in the water. Lee slipped her arms through the vest and snapped the buckles, then eased her slender body into the cockpit. Dooley handed her the paddle and pushed the craft into the water.
"I'll probably be back on the mainland by the time you get back, so just put your gear in the shed. Good luck with that spoonbill," Dooley called out. "And watch out for Granddaddy 'Gator."
Lee acknowledged the warning with an airy wave of the paddle.
"Thank you, Dooley. I'll keep an eye out for him."
The warning was a private joke. When Song Lee first arrived on Bonefish Key from China, Dooley told her about the monster alligator lurking in the mangroves. Seeing from her startled expression that she believed his tall tale, he had quickly explained that no alligator had been seen around Bonefish Key for decades.
Dooley watched Lee paddle the kayak to the mouth of the inlet and thought how fond he had become of the young Chinese scientist. He wasn't too old to appreciate her flowerlike beauty, but his interest was far from prurient. Lee was around thirty, the same age as a daughter who had disowned him years before. He had quit drinking, after running the family shrimp business aground on the shoals of gin, poker, and a series of wives, but he and his daughter were still estranged.
As Dooley went back to the outboard motor, Lee headed along the shore of the island and emerged from the mangroves into a small bay. She pointed the kayak's prow toward the stranded cabin cruiser, then left the bay and headed into the funnel-shaped cove Dooley had entered earlier that day on his tour with Gamay. Seeing a ripple on the water, Lee shipped her paddle and was rewarded a moment later when a shiny back scarred by propeller blades broke the surface.
Manatee!
She banged off some photos, until the lumbering mammal submerged to feed on the bottom. Lee took up her paddle again, heading farther into the cove. The distance between the mangroves diminished from a quarter of a mile to a couple hundred feet.
A great blue heron took off with a mighty flap of its long wings. Lee watched the big bird until it was out of sight, then she brought her binoculars to bear on a pair of snowy egrets wading in the shallows. Her heart skipped a beat at the flash of pink behind one of them.
The egrets moved, and she brought the camera up to her eye. Through the viewfinder, she saw a bird that looked like a flamingo with a duck bill. She snapped off several pictures of the roseate spoonbill, then reviewed the photos. They were all perfect. Lee was smiling when she took up her paddle again.
With a few strokes, she sent the kayak toward a weathered gray wooden post that stuck out of the water near the edge of a mangrove. It marked a narrow break in the otherwise impenetrable tangle of roots. The kayak's hull scraped an oyster bed and came to rest on shore.
Lee stepped into warm, knee-deep water. Although she knew that Dooley's giant alligator was a fable, she quickly hauled the kayak onto the narrow beach.
She grabbed a rucksack that held water and power bars and walked through a tunnel of trees for a hundred feet or so before she broke into an open area. A white sandy path wound through the cactus and shrub for a few hundred yards to the other side of
the island.
A rush of air off the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico cooled Lee's face as the path ended at a barrier beach. She strolled along the beach for a short distance and plunked down on the sand with her back against a sea-silvered driftwood log.
A blue-hulled fishing boat was anchored offshore just beyond the line of breakers. Otherwise, she had the beach to herself. She had seen the boat several times in the past week or so, but it had stayed a respectful distance away. She examined it through the zoom lens of her camera but saw no one on deck.
When she had first landed on Bonefish Key months before, Dr. Lee had been advised by Dr. Kane to find a distraction to take her mind off her work. Some scientists avoided burnout by fishing, others by playing chess or reading. A few spent too much time at the Dollar Bar. The daily kayak trips into the mangroves had been her salvation. The break she took each afternoon rejuvenated her, allowing her to work late into the night.
With the project nearly at an end, she would miss the remote beauty of the island when she returned to China. She wondered if her government would reward or even acknowledge her labors, or if she would just return to her country practice.
She gave in to her weariness and fell asleep. When she awoke, she glanced at her watch. She looked off along the beach and noticed that the blue-hulled boat had vanished. She frowned. She had regained her privacy, but it was time to go back to work. She got up, brushed the sand from her shorts, and headed across the island to her kayak.
When Lee broke through the tree canopy, she saw that the kayak was no longer where she had left it on the beach. She set her pack aside, waded out into the water, and visually searched the lagoon.
There was no sign of the kayak.
Lee turned back to the island, saw blue plastic gleaming in the grass, and let out a sigh of relief. The kayak had been pulled up into the tall grass on one side of the beach. She wondered why anyone would do such a thing and stepped into the grass to retrieve the kayak. It was a remote spot, and she felt uncomfortable knowing there was someone else on the island.
She was pulling the kayak back toward the water when she felt a prickling sensation that had nothing to do with the heat on the back of her neck. She turned and saw a man on the beach, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses.
He had soundlessly materialized from the scrub and now blocked Lee's way to the water. He was physically frightening. His hardened Asian features seemed to have been hammered on an anvil. His thin-lipped mouth looked as if it could not be pried into a smile with a crowbar. He wore shorts, and the muscles on his arms and legs appeared capable of driving his knuckles or clublike feet through a brick wall.
Making him even more formidable was the automatic weapon cradled in his arms. The muzzle was pointed at her heart.
Despite her fears, Song Lee managed to croak out a question.
"Who are you?" she said.
"I am the ghost who watches," he said with no change of expression.
What nonsense, Lee thought. The man was obviously deranged. She tried to assert control over the situation.
"Did you move my kayak?" she asked.
She thought she saw a slight nod of the chin.
"Then I'd appreciate your help in pulling it back to the water."
He smiled for the first time and lowered the gun. Thinking that maybe her bluff had worked, she turned to grab the kayak.
"Dr. Lee?"
Hearing her name called, she knew this was no random encounter. She saw a quick movement out of the corner of her eye as the man raised his gun above his head and brought it down stock first. She felt an explosion at the back of her skull, and saw a flash of white light before the darkness closed in, and she was unconscious before she crashed facedown into the mud.
CHAPTER 23
The FBI's J. Edgar Hoover Building headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue is the antithesis of the bucolic, tree-shaded campus at Quantico. The hulking, seven-story structure was made of poured concrete, in the Brutalist architectural style made popular in the 1960s. The Hoover became even more fortresslike after the terrorist attack of 9/11. Tours for the public came to an end, and barriers were put up around the first floor.
Caitlin Lyons had called ahead, easing Zavala's entry into the FBI's inner sanctum. There was the visitor's badge, and the pleasant guide, a serious young man this time, who miraculously managed to navigate the labyrinth of the corridors without having to resort to map or GPS.
The guide stopped in front of an unmarked door and knocked softly. A voice on the other side of the door said to come in. Zavala thanked the guide, and opened it.
Inside was an office slightly bigger than the gray metal table and chairs it contained. There was nothing on the walls except a black-and-white photo of the Great Wall of China.
A man sat behind the desk talking on the phone in Chinese. He waved Zavala to a chair, continued chatting a minute, then ended the conversation and set the receiver back in its cradle. Popping up like a jack-in-the-box, he shook Zavala's hand as if trying to coax water from a reluctant pump, then settled back in his chair.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," he said. "I'm Charlie Yoo." He flashed a friendly smile. "Please, no jokes about the last name. I've heard enough 'Yoo-hoo' and 'How's by Yoo' around here to last a lifetime."
Yoo was a pencil-thin man in his mid-thirties. He wore a stylishly cut shiny gray suit with a cobalt blue shirt and blue-and-red striped tie, a sartorial style more in keeping with a cocktail hour at the Willard Hotel than the bowels of the FBI, where conservative navy blue suits were the norm. Yoo spoke English with a New York accent, the sentences coming like bursts of photon energy.
"Nice to meet you, Agent Yoo. I'm Caitlin's friend, Joe Zavala."
"The man from NUMA… great organization, Joe. Please call me Charlie. Caitlin's a fantastic woman and a terrific cop. She said you were looking into the Pyramid Triad."
"That's right. She thought you might be able to help."
Yoo sat back in his chair and tented his fingers.
"Excuse me for asking, Joe, but NUMA is an underwater outfit, from what I've heard. Why would a guy from NUMA be interested in Chinese organized crime?"
"We wouldn't be, ordinarily. But someone tried to sabotage a NUMA operation, and we have circumstantial evidence that the seafood subsidiary of Pyramid Trading may have been involved."
Yoo hiked his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.
"Excuse me for being skeptical, Joe, but that doesn't seem like Pyramid's m.o. What's your evidence?"
"Let me fill in the background. A few days ago, NUMA launched the Bathysphere 3, a replica of a historical diving bell, in waters off Bermuda. The dive was broadcast all over the world… You may have seen it on television…"
Yoo spread his hands apart, his empty palms signifying no. "I've been pretty busy, Joe. Haven't watched much TV. Is this the op that Pyramid supposedly tried to sabotage?"
Zavala nodded.
"I designed the diving bell," he said, "and Kurt Austin, my partner at NUMA, was the project leader. The most interesting part of the dive wasn't transmitted because an underwater robot cut the bathysphere's cable."
"Whoa!" Yoo said, a wide grin on his boyish face. "An underwater robot. That's pretty wild stuff, Joe."
"I thought so at the time. When the cable let go, the sphere was buried a half mile down in muck."
Yoo leaned forward across the desk. His grin had disappeared.
"You're not kidding, are you? That's an incredible story! How'd you get out of a situation like that?"
"Kurt made a rescue dive, and we were able to activate our flotation system. While we were on our way to the surface, the robot went after Austin. He beat the thing off of him and grabbed one of the pincers it had used to cut our cable. The pincer was stamped with a triangle identical to the Pyramid Trading logo."
Yoo shook his head.
"You had me going there for a minute. Sorry, Joe, but the triangle is a pretty common symbol. It could mean anything."
"You know this for a fact?"
Zavala nodded.
"I know it for a fact, Charlie."
Zavala reached in his pocket and extracted a folded copy of the magazine article about the Pyramid seafood division's AUV, smoothing out the wrinkles on the desk. He put photos from Austin's Hardsuit camera next to it. Yoo read the article and studied the photos.
"Wow!" Yoo said. "Okay, you win… Pyramid tried to sabotage your dive. But why?"
"Haven't a clue. Which is why I went to see Caitlin. She said Pyramid Trading was the baddest of the bad when it came to Chinese Triads."
"Pyramid is definitely a major player. But it's one of hundreds of Triads based in cities around China. Did Caitlin tell you what I do?"
"She said you were a specialist in Chinese gangs around the world."
"I'm more than a specialist, I'm a former gang member. I'm from Hong Kong originally. My parents moved my family to New York."
"That accounts for the American accent," Zavala said.
"Learned English on the sidewalks of Mulberry Street. That's also where I joined the Ghost Shadows, one of the biggest gangs in the country."
"Caitlin said the Ghost Shadows is a Pyramid gang."
"That's right. My family saw what was going on and moved back to China to keep me out of the gangs. Pop had a bicycle-repair shop, and he kept me so busy I was too tired to get into trouble. I kept my nose clean, went to college. Now I'm part of a special unit from the Ministry of Security."
"How did you end up in Washington?" Zavala asked.
"Your guys needed my expertise. I'm over here for a few months sharing intel with the FBI. This is just a temporary office, as you've probably guessed."
"Caitlin said that Pyramid was bucking the old traditions, consolidating its power, and that's one of the reasons it's in hot water with the Chinese government. That, and the safety scandals over contaminated products."
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