The Eden Center was a complex of shops and restaurants that served the Vietnamese population of Falls Church.
"He doesn't like Vietnamese food," Austin said. "Try finding his phone."
Wilmut traced Zavala's cell through its GPS chip.
A second blinking star appeared on the outskirts of the city, several miles from the first. Wilmut enlarged the map and switched to a satellite picture. The star was on one of a couple of dozen rectangles, apparently the roofs of large buildings. He zoomed in.
"Looks like an industrial complex," Wilmut said. "All the buildings look pretty much alike."
"I need an address," Austin said.
Wilmut punched a button and GOOD LUCK FORTUNE COOKIE COMPANY appeared on the screen. He laughed, and said, "Guess he likes Chinese food."
Austin thanked Wilmut, and rode the elevator down to the garage to pick up his Jeep Cherokee. As he drove along the Potomac, he found Caitlin's number in his directory. She immediately recognized his voice.
"This must be my lucky week," she said. "The two handsomest men at NUMA calling me. How are you, Kurt?"
"I'm a little worried about Joe. Do you know anything about an FBI Asian gang stakeout involving Charlie Yoo?"
"No such thing, Kurt. Charlie is a guest of the Bureau. He is notified of field ops only at our discretion, and we don't have anything like that going."
"That's what I thought," Austin said. "Thanks for your help, Caitlin."
"What the hell—"
Austin clicked off, and the unfinished question was lost in the ether. Driving with one hand, he quickly programmed the address Wilmut had given him into the dashboard GPS unit.
Next, he reached for a rack under his seat, pulled out the holster containing his Bowen revolver, put it on the seat beside him, then stomped on the gas.
CHAPTER 27
Dooley's vintage single-wide mobile home on a Pine Island canal was no five-star hotel, but it had distinct advantages that would not be found at the Four Seasons.
Pine Island was several miles distant from Bonefish Key. The trailer had a water view. And it had Dooley Greene sitting in a deck chair at the end of a dilapidated dock, cigar stub clenched between his teeth, 16-gauge shotgun on his lap, keeping an eye peeled for trouble.
Relying on his deep knowledge of local waters, Dooley had earlier made a fast crossing to the mainland. He had kept his boat's running lights turned off until he headed into a canal lined with mobile homes. As the boat coasted up to the dock and Dooley killed the motor, Gamay confronted Paul.
"Before I burst from curiosity, please tell me how you happened to dash from one coast to the other and arrive just in time to rescue the fair maidens in distress. You weren't scheduled to arrive here for a couple of days."
"Kurt called and said he might have unknowingly sent you into danger. I couldn't reach you by phone, so I put the seminar on hold and flew standby to Florida."
"How'd you hook up with Dooley?"
"More good luck: he hooked up with me," Paul said. "I was at the Pine Island Marina looking for a ride to Bonefish Key, checking out boats and desperately hoping someone had left a key in the ignition, when Dooley saw me and asked what I was doing. When I mentioned your name, he jumped at the chance to take me to Bonefish. He then noticed that two kayaks were missing, and figured out where you might have gone."
"Thanks, Dooley," Gamay said. She gave him a peck on the cheek. "You're probably wondering what all this is about."
"You learn that it's healthier to mind your own business around here, Dr. Gamay, but I'll admit to being a little curious about what's going on."
"You're not the only one."
Gamay glanced at Song Lee, who had been huddled on a seat during the trip to the mainland.
Dooley tied up the boat and led the way to the trailer. He extracted a six-pack of Diet Coke from the refrigerator, passed three cans around along with a bag of Goldfish crackers. Without saying a word, he took his shotgun out of a locked cabinet. With the 16-gauge slung over one arm, he ambled out to the dock with the rest of the six-pack.
Song Lee and the Trouts went into the trailer and sat around a Formica-and-chrome kitchen table. She sipped her Coke like an automaton and stared into space.
Gamay sensed that Lee was in shock from the violence she had witnessed.
"It's okay, Dr. Lee," she said. "You're safe now."
Lee turned her head, and Gamay saw tears glistening in her eyes.
"I'm a doctor," Lee said. "I'm supposed to save lives, not take them."
"You saved our lives," Gamay said. "That man and his friends would have killed us both."
"I know that. Still…"
"Do you have any idea who they were?" Paul asked.
Lee wiped the tears away with the back of her hand.
"He said he had been watching me for days," she said. "He was waiting for me where I had left the kayak and forced me to go to the house. We were waiting for people coming to take me away. I pleaded with him. We argued. That's when I grabbed the knife and ran."
Gamay put her hand on Lee's forearm.
"I think you had better start at the beginning," Gamay said.
Lee gulped down her Coke like a thirsty longshoreman, then began to tell her story.
She had been born in a rural part of China, excelled in science as a college student, and went to study in the U.S. on a grant from the Chinese government. She had seen firsthand the ravages of disease among the poorer citizens of China and wanted to do something about it. She specialized in immunology at Harvard Medical School, and did her residency at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Returning to China, she found a job with a government program targeting the health of slum dwellers. The work centered on prevention, making sure that people were immunized and eliminating the sources of disease in the water and air. Her success led to a position in a hospital, where she was working at the time the SARS epidemic broke out.
Finally, Lee told Gamay how she had been exiled to the countryside after questioning the government's response to SARS, and about her redemption and assignment to Bonefish Key, to work on a vaccine, based on an ocean organism, for a new virus strain.
"The blue medusa?"
"That's right." She seemed surprised. "It's related to the highly toxic sea wasp. How did you know about it?"
"I badgered Dr. Mayhew, and he showed me the research room."
"I'm amazed that he allowed you to see it," Lee said. She stared at Gamay as if she were seeing her for the first time. "I just realized that I really don't know who you are."
"I'm a marine biologist with NUMA. I came to Bonefish Key because I was interested in ocean biomedicine."
"From the looks of it, you were more interested in me," Lee said.
"Sometimes things just happen," Gamay said.
Lee smiled.
"You sound like a Chinese philosopher, Dr. Trout. Anyway, I'm glad you were interested or I might not be here."
"Dr. Mayhew said the blue medusa was a new species."
"That's right. Bigger and more aggressive than the sea wasp. After the work moved to the new lab, they were going to use genetic engineering to produce a more powerful toxin."
"I wasn't aware there was another lab," Gamay said.
"It was secret. They called it Davy Jones's Locker. Dr. Kane and Lois Mitchell, his assistant, left Bonefish Key and took a number of scientists and technicians with them. Dr. Mayhew and the remaining staff stayed on to make sure there were no flaws in the original research. I was charting the probable spread of the virus and how best to contain it."
"How effective was the toxin-derived drug?" Paul said.
"It was limited at first," Lee said. "The medusae toxin is incredibly unpredictable. Even a small amount could kill a human, and at first more lab animals died than were cured. Then we made a huge breakthrough in identifying the molecular makeup of the microbe that produces the toxin. We were on the verge of synthesis. And clinical tests would have been the next step."
So
ng Lee's eyelids had been drooping as she talked, and Gamay suggested she lie down on the sofa. Then she and Paul stepped out of the trailer into the warm Florida night.
"Thanks for coming to our rescue, Galahad," Gamay said.
"Sorry if Sir Dooley and I cut it too close," Paul said. "What's your reaction to Song Lee's story?"
"I know for a fact that she didn't make up the man she killed or his trigger-happy pals, so I assume that everything else she said is true."
"I'll talk to Dooley. Maybe he can fill in the gaps."
As Trout approached the dock, he smelled cigar smoke before he saw Dooley. Trout started to speak but Dooley shushed him. Trout listened, and he heard the murmur of an engine echoing off the canal. Dooley mashed his cigar out with his shoe, grabbed Trout, and pulled him down behind a pile of wooden fish boxes.
The engine sound came closer, and a boat nosed into the canal. It was moving at a crawl, its spotlight sweeping back and forth, until it came to the end of the canal, where it made a U-turn and headed back to open water.
Dooley's 16-gauge followed the boat until the sound of its engine could no longer be heard. He lit up another cigar.
"I'll keep watch, but I think maybe we'd better get Dr. Lee out of here," he said.
"No argument there," Trout agreed.
Trout went back to the trailer. As he was telling Gamay about the suspicious boat, his cell phone buzzed. He checked the caller ID. Austin was calling to check on Gamay.
"I'm in Florida now," Trout said. "Gamay is all right. But we ran into trouble off Bonefish Key."
"What sort of trouble?"
"Gamay was attacked along with a Bonefish Key scientist named Dr. Song Lee, who was working on something called the blue medusa."
"I want to talk to Dr. Lee in person," Austin said. "Call NUMA and have them send a plane down right away to pick you up. Joe and I will be leaving town in a few hours. Meet me at the airport."
"I'll get right on it."
"Thanks. I've got another favor." He gave Trout a phone number. "Call Cate Lyons, Joe's friend at the FBI, and extend my apologies for cutting her off. Tell her I'm heading for the Good Luck Fortune Cookie factory in Falls Church. Got to go."
Moments later, Trout relayed Austin's message to Lyons, who thanked him and hung up. As he tapped out the number to connect him with NUMA's transportation department, he said, "We're flying back to Washington tonight. Kurt wants to talk to Song Lee as soon as possible."
Gamay shook her head.
"Kurt's instincts were right on the mark as usual," she said. "He said to look for something funny on Bonefish Key."
"This is about as funny as it gets," Paul said.
Gamay glanced over at the slumbering Chinese woman, thinking of their close call in the abandoned boat, and then looked at the serious expression on her husband's face.
"If it's so funny," she said, "why isn't anybody laughing?"
CHAPTER 28
A few minutes before Austin called the Trouts, he had driven past the Corvette parked near the Eden Center clock tower and thought that Zavala must have had a good reason to leave his pride and joy unattended. He drove onto Wilson Boulevard and joined the traffic that moved at an agonizing crawl. Eventually, the suburban malls and neighborhoods petered out, and he was moving through an industrial-commercial area.
The GPS unit indicated that he was about a block from his goal. Reasoning that a turquoise Cherokee might attract unwanted attention, Austin parked it in an alley between two buildings. He made his way on foot to the front gate of the Good Luck Fortune Cookie Company. The parking lot was empty, and the only light came from above the door to the office.
The gate was locked. Austin walked the perimeter of the chain-link fence to the rear gate. He pushed the gate open and made his way to a rear loading dock lit by a single bulb. He kept to the shadows as much as possible.
He wondered if he had the right address. Those doubts vanished when a figure stepped out from behind a Dumpster and blinded Austin with a powerful flashlight.
A deep voice said, "Hold it right there, soldier. Put your hands in the air."
Austin stopped in his tracks and did as he was told. He sensed rather than saw someone creeping up behind him and felt his pistol slip from its holster.
"That's better," said the voice. "Turn around… real slow. I'm giving you friendly warning. These guys call themselves Ghost Devils, and they mean it. I wouldn't screw with them."
At least a half dozen other figures had materialized from the shadows.
"Are you a ghost or a devil?" Austin asked.
The man stepped closer.
"Just a guy doing his job. The name is Phelps." He turned the flashlight beam up to show his face, the angle turning his droopy smile into a Halloween mask. "This place is loaded with cameras. A moth couldn't get close without being picked up. We've been watching you ever since you showed up at the front door. Thanks for making my work so easy."
"My pleasure. But how do you know I didn't let myself get caught on purpose?"
"I don't, which is why we're being real careful handling you."
"Where's Joe?" Austin asked.
Phelps pointed his flashlight at the loading-dock door.
"That way," he said.
The door slid up. Phelps led the way up the stairs to the dock and herded Austin through the door into the dark warehouse. Phelps hit a switch, and the interior was flooded with light. The big space was empty except for a pile of smashed cardboard cartons against one wall and two chairs side by side facing a screen.
"Fortune cookie business must not be very good," Austin said.
"That's a cover," Phelps said. "Place is used mostly to hold smuggled illegal aliens. Besides, you don't want to know your fortune. The folks I work for aren't too happy with you."
Austin would have agreed that his prospects for a long and happy life were slim. In addition to Phelps, he was guarded by the tough-faced Asians, all men in their twenties, dressed in black running suits and shoes. They had red bandannas tied around their heads. They looked dangerously unpredictable, but from the cocky way they slouched around with their weapons they appeared undisciplined as well.
Phelps was a tall man in his late forties. He wore jeans, Doc Martens boots, and a black T-shirt that displayed his ropy arms. He wore a U.S. NAVY SEALS baseball cap on his head. And he had Austin's Bowen, which he examined with appraising eyes.
"Nice piece," he said.
"Thanks. When do I get it back?"
Phelps chuckled, and slid the pistol into its holster, which he clipped to his belt. He glanced at his watch and called to a couple of Ghost Devils. They went through a door leading to the front of the building and came back after a minute with Zavala. They shoved him over into one of the chairs and motioned Austin into the other. Both men were then handcuffed to the armrests.
Zavala's face was caked with dried blood, but he still managed to smile when he saw Austin.
"Hi, Kurt, nice of you to crash the party. Time to leave?"
"You'll have to ask Mr. Phelps. Are you okay?"
"Charlie Yoo set me up, and some of these guys used my face for a punching bag, but nothing broken that I know of."
"We'll have to remember to pay them back for their hospitality." Zavala smiled through bloodied lips.
"That's what I like about you, Kurt. The glass is always half full. Whoops—"
The warehouse went dark just then, and the two men were enveloped in almost total blackness. After a moment, a spotlight directly overhead blinked on, and they found themselves at the center of a circle of bright white light. A second overhead spot came on about twenty-five feet to the front of where they sat.
The screen was gone, revealing a table covered in green baize. Behind the table sat a woman who seemed to be scrutinizing the two men from NUMA. She was dressed in a dark purple, two-piece outfit, and a cloak the same color was draped around her shoulders. Her dark hair was parted down the middle, and high, arched brows framed a Eur
asian face.
Austin stared at the woman in disbelief.
"This is crazy," he whispered, "but I know her. She's the Dragon Lady."
"I've seen worse-looking dragons. Why don't you introduce me?"
"Not sure I can, Joe. The Dragon Lady wasn't a real person."
Zavala turned and looked at Austin as if his friend had lost his marbles.
"I'm the one who got his brain bashed around," Zavala said. "She looks pretty real to me."
"Me too, Joe, but the Dragon Lady was a character in a comic strip. Terry and the Pirates… Stereotypical femme fatale. My father used to read it to me when I was a kid. She was always causing trouble. Damn. What was her name?"
The woman's lips parted in a smile.
"My name is Lai Choi San," she said in a voice that would have been seductive it if hadn't been drained of all emotion. "Bravo, Mr. Austin. Few people know I even have another name. I have been looking forward to this meeting."
"I wish I could say the same," Austin said. "Now that we're good friends, maybe you'd like to tell us why you invited us here."
He could hardly believe he was talking to a comic-strip character. Next, he'd be chatting with Roger Rabbit.
"For a start, I want you to tell me the whereabouts of Dr. Kane," she said.
Austin shrugged.
"Kane is under government protective custody. I can't tell you where they are holding him. Apparently, someone is trying to kill him."
"Really?" she purred. "Who would want to do that to the brilliant doctor?"
"The same people who hijacked the lab that was developing a vaccine from the medusa toxin."
The woman gave him a slow-burn stare, and her face actually seemed to glow with anger. Austin passed it off as a manipulation.
"What you don't know," she said, "is that Pyramid created the new virus. Our pharmaceutical company was experimenting with an influenza vaccine for the world market and inadvertently produced the more virulent and adaptable strain. They wanted to destroy it, but wiser heads prevailed."
"Why didn't wiser heads prevent the virus from breaking out?"
"That was an accident, something we would have avoided until we had developed the antidote, which would have gone to members of my organization first. You see, the virus fit in with our larger plan of destabilizing the government. The outbreak of SARS almost toppled China's leaders. Just think how the public would react to their impotence in dealing with an even more lethal virus. They would see Pyramid step in and cure the masses. In return, we would acquire power and fortune. We would replace the Chinese government."
Medusa Page 22