Snakehead tct-4

by Peter May

  Steve frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just got called back to Washington, sir. Urgent. There’s a flight from Hobby in just under an hour.’

  Steve turned to Margaret. ‘Guess that answers my question.’

  ‘Your presence is required, too, ma’am,’ the investigator said.

  Margaret was taken aback. ‘Me? Why?’

  ‘No idea, ma’am. Guess it’s a need-to-know basis.’

  Steve turned to her again, grinning this time. ‘Hey, I know this great little place in Washington…’

  II

  Li stood in the car park of the Houston District Office of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service of the United States watching groups of immigrants, mainly Hispanics, gathered under the trees outside the door of the two-storey building on the corner of Greenspoint and Northpoint. Traffic on the Interstate, a couple of blocks away, was a distant rumble. A black uniformed officer approached him.

  ‘Sir, do you speak English?’ Li nodded. ‘Sir, you cannot hang around this area. Either get in line or move out to the street.’

  Li sighed and took out his ID. ‘I’m waiting for Agent Hrycyk,’ he said.

  The officer examined his plastic photocard with its US and PRC emblems. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said, tipping his hat, ‘thought you was an immigrant.’ And he moved off, embarrassed, toward the groups by the door.

  Li glanced up at the verdigrised miniature of the Statue of Liberty that stood on a plinth overlooking the car park. Many of the original immigrants who had come to populate this vast country had had to pass beneath the eagle eye of this lady on their approach to Ellis Island. More than two hundred years later, in Texas, they were still having to do the same thing.

  Hrycyk came hurrying through the crowds of would-be Americans at the main entrance and flicked Li a look. ‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ he said. ‘You are an observer here. You are not an active participant. If and when I want your help, I will ask.’ And he carried on across the car park to his battered old Volkswagen Santana. He had the driver’s door open before he realised that Li had not followed him. ‘Are you coming or not?’ he called. ‘’Cos if not, I’m quite happy to leave you here.’

  Li sighed and walked over to the car and got in the passenger side. Hrycyk started the motor and lit up a cigarette. Li lowered the window on his side.

  ‘Did I tell you you could open the window?’ Hrycyk growled. ‘I did not tell you you could open the window. It fucks with the air-con. Please close it.’

  ‘I will if you put out your cigarette,’ Li said evenly.

  Hrycyk glared at him, and then stubbed out his cigarette viciously in an overflowing ashtray. ‘I don’t know what gives you people the idea you can come over here and start telling us what to do, but if you think you’re gonna have me dancing to your tune, you got another think coming.’ He jammed the shift into drive, and they lurched forward at speed toward the exit, where an irritated Hrycyk then had to stand on the brakes and wait until there was a gap in the traffic.

  On the opposite side of the street rows of single-storey brick buildings advertised passport photos in five minutes. They were doing brisk business, even at this hour of the day. Hrycyk glanced at Li and then followed his gaze. He snorted. ‘Fast food immigration. It’s a goddamned boom industry around here.’

  He drove them south in heavy traffic on Interstate 45, turning west on to the 610, connecting eventually with Westheimer and heading into the setting sun toward the jewel in Houston’s shopping crown, the Galleria. They were going, he explained grudgingly, to meet an INS agent who had been working deep under cover in the Chinese community for nearly eighteen months.

  ‘He’s Chinese, I assume,’ Li said facetiously.

  ‘Of course he’s fucking Chinese!’ Hrycyk didn’t see the joke. ‘You don’t think we’d send a Caucasian in there with Yul Brynner make-up, do you?’ Li didn’t want to inflame him further by asking who Yul Brynner was. ‘When I say deep cover, I mean deep cover. We haven’t even had contact with this guy for more than three months. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d gone native on us, switched sides. I wouldn’t trust any of you people as far as I could throw you.’

  Li let all of Hrycyk’s aggressive anti-Chinese prejudice slip by him. One day, perhaps, there would be a reckoning. But right now it was not politic. ‘So why are you making contact now?’

  ‘Why do you think? Ninety-eight dead Chinese in a truck, and the brass in Washington crawling all over the Justice Department demanding results. We don’t want to blow this guy’s cover if we can avoid it. But it’s time for us to know what he knows. And if we have to, we’ll pull him.’

  * * *

  The Galleria was a shopping mall of typically Texan proportions, on three levels and with tentacles spreading out, it seemed, in all directions. It was still jam-packed with early evening shoppers, and Li hurried after Hrycyk past a bewildering display of shops and fast food outlets. They stopped at an open-plan Starbucks coffee shop overlooking a huge ice-rink. Hrycyk looked around as if he expected to see someone there. Then he approached the counter and ordered a cappuccino. He turned to Li and said brusquely, ‘Sorry, they don’t do tea?’

  ‘I’ll have a white mocha,’ Li said and drew a look of surprise from the INS man. He shrugged. ‘I’ve developed a taste for the stuff.’

  ‘First Chinese I ever knew that didn’t have his face stuffed in a jar of green tea,’ Hrycyk growled. ‘I suppose you think I’m paying?’

  ‘Good of you to offer,’ Li said.

  They sat at a table by the rail looking down on the ice-rink. A dozen or so kids, watched by proud parents, careened across the ice performing triple salcos with the fearless ease of the young. Their yells of glee echoed up into the arched glass roof fifty feet above them, punctuated by occasional sprinklings of applause.

  Hrycyk stuffed his shirt back into his pants where the stretch of his belly had pulled it free, and took out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Any objections?’

  Li shook his head.

  Hrycyk lit up. ‘By the way, we found out who owned the truck. It was bought five days ago by a company which was only registered in Mexico City the week before. The names on the registration are phony, of course. No way of tracing them.’ He took a long slug of his cappuccino and a deep draw on his cigarette, then glanced at his watch.

  ‘So what are we doing here?’ Li asked, sipping at the hot sweet chocolate-coffee mixture.

  ‘You ever seen a Chinese in a Starbucks?’ Hrycyk asked.

  ‘You’re looking at one,’ Li said.

  ‘Jesus Christ, apart from you!’ Hrycyk’s patience with Li was wearing thin.

  Li thought about it. He regularly drank at a Starbucks in Georgetown, but the only Asians he had ever seen in there were second- or third-generation Americans. Chinese, as a rule, did not drink coffee. ‘Guess not,’ he said.

  ‘You see?’ Hrycyk pointed an accusing finger at him. ‘That’s the thing about you people. You think you’re so fucking superior. You come to America, make no attempt to integrate. You take over a corner of whatever city you end up in, call it Chinatown and turn it into the place you just came from. That’s why it’s safe to meet our man here. Because the Chinese hardly ever leave Chinatown, and they don’t drink coffee. Oh, sure, you’ll try it sometime, but you always turn up your noses. ’Cos it’s not Chinese. It’s too goddamned American!’

  Li looked at Hrycyk with an intense dislike. Conveniently the INS agent appeared to have forgotten he was sitting drinking coffee with a Chinese who liked the stuff. ‘It’s funny,’ he said, ‘how everything “American” seems to come from somewhere else.’

  Hrycyk glared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, that cappuccino you’re drinking…isn’t that Italian? And isn’t the coffee itself probably Colombian?’ He paused to let Hrycyk stew on this for a moment, then added, ‘And isn’t Hrycyk a Polish name?’

  ‘Ukrainian,’ Hrycyk growled.

  ‘Very American,’ L
i said.

  Hrycyk thought about a comeback. But it was either too strong or not clever enough, and he clearly decided against it. He looked at his watch again. ‘Bastard’s late,’ he said. ‘He should have been here waiting for us.’ The air fibrillated with the distant sound of Hrycyk’s cellphone and he fumbled in his pocket to retrieve it. He snapped it open and barked, ‘Hrycyk,’ into the mouthpiece. He listened intently for several moments, then said, ‘Shit,’ and flipped the phone shut. He looked at Li. ‘Our undercover man is late in more ways than one.’

  * * *

  Yu Lin lived in a terraced pink brick condominium on Ranchester, in the heart of suburban Chinatown. Living accommodation was on the second level, up green-painted metal stairs. Several squad cars, a paramedic van, a forensics vehicle and other, unmarked cars, were crammed into the small parking area out front. A large crowd of Asian onlookers had gathered in the street, demonstrating that indefatigable Chinese quality of curiosity. Flashing police lights cut through the twilight, illuminating dark eyes and patient faces.

  Hrycyk drew his Santana in under a dusty tree and Li followed him as he brandished his badge and pushed his way through the crowd of police officers at the foot of the stairs. They clattered up the steps, turning left on the balcony and along to the open door of what had been Yu’s apartment. It comprised a small open-plan kitchen-living area and one tiny bedroom. Yu was in the bedroom, sprawled on his back across a bed coloured dark red by his blood. He had been hacked almost to pieces. Hrycyk looked at him dispassionately. ‘That was careless,’ he said softly.

  The apartment was full of police officers and medics. Li had half-expected to find Margaret there, but of course she was otherwise occupied. A pathologist from the Medical Examiner’s office was examining the body, the flash of his photographer’s camera throwing the scene into bleak relief. The lead homicide officer shook Hrycyk’s hand and said, ‘Doc thinks it was a machete. Maybe several. He’s counted thirty-six wounds so far.’

  ‘Who reported it?’ Hrycyk asked, and Li realised that racist though he might be, Hrycyk was nobody’s fool. He had gone straight to the key question.

  ‘His girlfriend found him.’ The homicide man nodded toward the living room. ‘She’s out there. Doesn’t speak a word of English. She was hysterical, apparently. It was a neighbour who called it in.’

  Li leaned into Hrycyk and said quietly, ‘Does she know who he was?’

  Hrycyk shook his head. ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Do you want me to speak to her?’

  Hrycyk hesitated. It probably stuck in his craw, but he didn’t have much choice. ‘Go ahead,’ he said curtly.

  Li made his way back into the living room where a slight, long-haired girl sat on the sofa. She could only have been eighteen or nineteen and there was very little flesh on her bones. A female police officer sat beside her holding her hand. Li nodded to the officer who stood aside to let him sit next to the girl.

  ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’ he said in Mandarin.

  The girl looked at him for the first time, startled. Fear was written all over her face. She drew back. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m a police officer,’ Li said. He took her hand gently in both of his. ‘No one’s going to hurt you. No one’s going to make you do or say anything you don’t want to. Okay?’

  She nodded, reassured by his tone and his manner. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Have you known Yu Lin for long?’

  ‘Couple of months,’ she said.

  ‘And you don’t speak any English.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How long have you been in America?’ Li asked. She cast him a look of concern. ‘It’s alright,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell them. It doesn’t matter a damn to me if you’re illegal or not.’

  ‘Eight months,’ she said. ‘I came with my brother. My uncle is with one of the tongs here in Houston. He paid our shetou, and now we work for him. Already my brother is a dai lo, you know, a gang leader.’

  Li nodded. ‘And Yu Lin?’

  ‘I met him at the club where I work. But my brother doesn’t like me seeing him. We are Fujian. He is Taiwanese. My brother says he is not a real Chinese.’

  Li flicked his head toward the bedroom. He said, ‘Do you think your brother did this?’

  Her bottom lip quivered for a moment, like jelly on a spoon, and then her face crumpled and she burst into tears. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Take it easy.’ And he put both his arms around her and she pressed her face into his chest, and he felt the sobs shake her fragile frame. There was nothing, he knew, that he could do for her. Her lover had been hacked to death. Her brother was shaping up as a suspect. It would not be long before the authorities discovered that she was an illegal alien, and she would be hauled up before the immigration court and threatened with repatriation. Her American Dream was very quickly turning into a nightmare.

  He nodded to the female officer who came to offer comfort in his place as he gently disentangled himself. He found Hrycyk outside on the balcony, leaning on the rail smoking a cigarette. Hrycyk turned a pensive gaze on him. ‘Well?’

  ‘Looks like Yu got himself into conflict with the girl’s brother,’ Li said. ‘Could be that simple.’

  ‘Or it could be that he’d been rumbled and they decided that he knew too much.’

  ‘That’s possible, too,’ Li said. ‘In which case you’ve got a leak in the agency.’

  Hrycyk straightened up, bridling. ‘What the hell d’you mean?’

  ‘It’s a bit of a coincidence that they should decide to take him out the very day he’s scheduled to break cover and meet up with you. I mean, how would they know that?’

  Hrycyk glared at him, but the implications of what Li was saying were not lost on him. Hrycyk’s cellphone rang again. He threw his cigarette butt down into the street and answered it. He listened in silence, flicked Li a glance, then said, simply, ‘Sure,’ and hung up. He thought for a moment, then looked at Li again. ‘We got fifty minutes to get across town to Hobby and catch the next flight to Washington.’

  III

  The rain was driving horizontally across the tarmac at Dulles. The temperature had tumbled to just a few degrees above freezing. Their airport security vehicle ploughed through the darkness on the apron, the lights of the main terminal receding behind them, the rain caught in their headlights like stars at warp speed. Li peered through the windshield trying to see where they were going. Hrycyk had been less than illuminating, and Li suspected that was because he had no idea where they were going, or why.

  There were lights up ahead now, and the roar of an engine. As they drew close, an army-camouflaged helicopter took shape in the dark, buffeted by the wind, lights blazing, rotors turning. It was waiting for them. Their driver drew up alongside it, and Hrycyk cursed when he realised he was going to have to get out in the wet. He pulled up his collar, hunching himself against the downdraught and the rain, and slipped out into the night. Li ran across the tarmac in his wake. Uniformed arms extended from an open doorway and drew them up into the belly of the chopper. In the faint yellow electric light of the interior, he saw colourless faces looking up at him. Margaret, Fuller, Major Cardiff in his Air Force blue. Someone handed him a helmet with a built-in headset, and strong hands pushed him down into a canvas seat. The door was pulled shut as he slipped on his helmet and heard Hrycyk’s voice. ‘What’s all this about, Sam?’ They lurched to one side as the helicopter lifted off into the night.

  Fuller shouted above the roar of the engine, ‘They’re flying us up to a little town in Maryland called Frederick. The army base at Fort Detrick.’

  ‘What the hell’s there?’ Hrycyk demanded to know.

  ‘USAMRIID,’ Fuller said, and when Hrycyk looked blank, spelled it out for him. ‘The United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.’

  ‘Jesus!’ It was the first time Li had seen Hrycyk overawed by anything. ‘That’s the bi
owarfare defence place.’ He thought about it for a moment, glanced at Li, then turned back to Fuller. ‘Christ, and they’re going to let a foreign national in there? A Chinese?’ Fuller just shrugged. Hrycyk was completely nonplussed. ‘For God’s sake, Sam, what is going on here?’

  ‘You’ll find out when we get there, Mike,’ Fuller shouted.

  Li looked to Margaret for some kind of elucidation. She gave the merest shrug of her shoulders. And he saw that Steve Cardiff, sitting next to her, was pale as a ghost.

  * * *

  By the time their chopper touched down on the landing pad at Fort Detrick, the rain had stopped. Stars twinkling in a very black sky, were periodically obliterated by occasional scurrying clouds. An almost full moon cast its silver light across the landscape, and in the distance you could see the outline of the Catoctin mountains of western Maryland traced against the sky. The group was driven across the base in two army jeeps, and Li saw the flashing orange lights at the security gates, before they turned into the car park outside the USAMRIID building. It was a collection of ugly, windowless concrete blocks, designed to contain the most dangerous organisms on earth. It wouldn’t win any prizes for its architecture.

  In the front reception area they had to fill out forms and were in turn handed guest security passes by a silver-headed security man. A young uniformed woman with hair neatly plaited up the back led them along a wood-panelled corridor. Portraits of past USAMRIID commanders followed their progress to the Joel M. Dalrymple conference room, where a large oblong table had been set up with more than twenty seats around it. There were already a dozen other people standing about in groups talking, several of them in uniform. Li took the opportunity of whispering to Margaret, ‘What are we doing here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said grimly. ‘But I have a real bad feeling about it.’

  Steve brought over an older man in a dark suit to meet Margaret. Li drifted away.

  ‘Margaret, this is Dr. Jack Ward,’ Steve said. ‘Dr. Ward is the Armed Forces medical examiner.’