Stealing the Dragon

by Tim Maleeny

  Xan cleared his throat behind her, and Sally realized she’d been holding the object for a while. Tearing her eyes away from it, she carefully handed it back to Hong.

  “It’s lovely,” she said respectfully. “But why show it to me?”

  Hong nodded as he set the heart back inside the incense burner, closing the lid with both hands. “Why indeed?” he asked. “Because you are one of us, a direct descendant of our five ancestors, the monks of Shao Lin. You are stronger, smarter, and more formidable than our opponents. And you, too, have the heart of a dragon.”

  Sally bowed her head respectfully but said nothing.

  “And one day,” continued Hong, “someone else will be sitting in this chair. So I wanted you to understand your connection to the clan. To the Triads. To your own place in history, and the history we will make together.”

  Sally nodded again, forcing a smile. She was moved and intrigued by Hong’s words but also trained to mistrust flattery in all forms. She heard a slight scraping on the rice paper and sensed Xan shifting his weight. Xan didn’t like where this was going.

  “I am an old man,” said Hong, lifting the incense burner and returning it to the cabinet. “And one day will leave this middle kingdom for the next journey. But they say a man lives on through his sons, and I have two.”

  Xan’s feet shifted again on the rice paper. This time Sally heard a slight tear.

  “I want you to meet them,” said Hong. “So that you will recognize them, when they call upon you as I have.”

  Hong moved his right hand under the desk as if pushing a button, and Sally heard movement at the far corner of the room. From behind the wooden screen two men approached, both in their thirties, the paper under their feet tearing with every step.

  The man in front had the blackest eyes Sally had ever seen, pools of ink that seemed to draw light from the air around him and cast the rest of his face in shadow. He was clean-shaven, his hair slicked back from his forehead, his body trim in an expensive suit. He walked directly up to the desk, obscuring Sally’s view of his brother. His cold gaze moved past Sally and landed on Xan, where it held for a long minute before turning back toward his father.

  “This is Hui, my eldest,” said Hong proudly. “He is our White Paper Fan.”

  Sally nodded in greeting, thinking Hui didn’t look much like an accountant.

  “And this,” said Hong, gesturing behind Hui, “is Wen. He is the Grass Sandal.”

  Public relations, thought Sally. Bribing reporters, threatening editors, then smiling for the cameras. A man with two faces—I wonder what he looks like?

  As Hong finished his introduction, the younger brother stepped to the side, moving past Hui into Sally’s line of sight. She breathed in sharply as he looked back at her, his expression one of polite disinterest. He had longish hair and slightly hunched shoulders, and Sally had seen him before.

  In Tokyo, standing on a bridge, talking fast and moving his hands as he berated the man next to him, a yakuza. She was sent to Tokyo to find a traitor, and she had found him. And now he stood before her, untouched. Sally realized that the film she took in Tokyo hadn’t been ruined, after all.

  It had been buried, along with the truth.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  San Francisco, present day

  The warehouse looked like a mausoleum.

  Unlike most of the corrugated boxes that lined the streets south of Market, the GASP warehouse was a converted federal building, a former courthouse from the days when the city could afford to provide some form of justice in every neighborhood.

  The unadorned gray concrete of the exterior had all the charm of Tiananmen Square, but the heavy doors were flanked incongruously by ornate columns that gave the effect of pomp with no circumstance. The building was so big and unattractive, it had only been used as a warehouse since the courthouse closed. Other buildings had been constructed around it, and the spaces between them were dark and littered with trash and empty boxes.

  Cape couldn’t stop yawning, even though the temperature outside had plummeted and he was shivering inside his coat. It was the middle of the night, only a few hours till dawn, but he felt as though he’d been awake for days.

  One of odd things about San Francisco was how quiet the streets became after dark. Unlike New York, where the apartments were squeezed among the restaurants and businesses, everyone living right next to each other, San Francisco had an almost suburban feel about it. Many neighborhoods were either entirely commercial—in which case they shut down at night, or mostly residential—in which case the streets stayed busy after dark.

  But not long after. At three in the morning south of Market, there was nothing to do unless you were up to no good. Cape had to admit he fell into that category.

  Taking a crowbar from his car, Cape walked to the side of the GASP warehouse, looking for a service entrance or window. The warning stickers on the massive front doors assured him that the building was guarded by a state-of-the-art alarm system. An image of a snarling Doberman added menace to the claim. Cape had found that most companies were too cheap to spend a lot of money on state-of-the-art alarms and preferred to spend a little money on stickers. And the ones that did install security systems tended not to advertise the fact, preferring to catch the thieves red-handed or just scare the crap out of them.

  Cape was counting on the fact that GASP was in financial trouble, but he needed something to test the integrity of the alarm system.

  He chose a rock.

  He found one in the alley between the GASP building and the warehouse next door. It was roughly the size of a softball. A series of windows were placed six feet off the ground on the right side of the building, their smoked-glass surfaces thick and opaque—the kind of windows you see in public high schools and hospitals. Taking aim at the nearest one, Cape hurled the rock overhand and prepared to run like hell.

  The rock tore through the ancient glass with a solid thunk, making a hole twice its size but leaving the rest of the window intact. Cape peered through the opening for any sign of flashing lights, cocked his ears for any echo of barking Dobermans. But there was nothing. Walking quickly but quietly back to his car, he listened for sirens as he pulled away from the curb.

  If it was a silent alarm, the typical response time was ten minutes or less. Cape drove around until he found a Wendy’s drive-through near the highway that was still open. He ordered a fried chicken sandwich, fries, and an iced tea, then added a chocolate shake to the order as an afterthought. Cape told himself the calories would keep him awake, but his subconscious wasn’t buying it. He just wanted the chocolate.

  Twelve minutes later, Cape drove past the warehouse and saw nothing had changed. Five minutes later, he drove past again and decided to stop procrastinating. Parking the car down the block, he reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a pair of unlined leather gloves. Then he jogged to the side of the building and worked his way toward the back.

  As Cape rounded the corner of the building, he saw what he was looking for: two sets of double doors, rear exits from the courthouse days. Wedging the crowbar between the first set, he threw his weight against it until he heard a satisfying crack. Shifting the bar lower, he repeated the move, then shifted the bar again until the right-side door was half off its hinges. An old bicycle chain was looped ineffectually between the two doors, but Cape was able to duck under it as he squeezed through the opening.

  Pulling a flashlight from his pocket, Cape stepped inside.

  The space was cavernous. The building had been gutted, the old walls removed to make way for the boxes and containers that would take the place of jurors and judges, benches and galleries. Cape’s light dissipated into the gloom.

  Boxes were everywhere, heavy wooden crates four feet high, labeled with letters and numbers, presumably inventory codes for the jeans. The boxes were stacked, four or five together, forming a series of barricades twenty or more feet high around the warehouse.

  Using the crowbar
, Cape tore off the face of the nearest box, the wood wrenching away from the nails with a tortured squeal. A pile of jeans spilled lazily onto the floor at Cape’s feet, the rivets and buttons glinting in the beam of his flashlight. Turning the light to peer into the box, Cape saw a piece of paper and reached in to grab it.

  It was a computer printout of the shipment, detailing the style and quantity of jeans. Nothing about it looked out of place until Cape noticed the date, almost a year ago. Cape looked at the jeans on the floor. According to this piece of paper, they should have been in stores months ago, adorning the backsides of young men and women shortly after that. If Michael Long was carrying inventory for this long, his company was in big trouble. And if he wasn’t selling jeans, how was he keeping the company afloat?

  Cape found a gap between two of the stacks and made his way deeper into the warehouse. Finding another opening in the next wall, he stepped through, expecting to find yet another stack of boxes. Instead, he found a boarding house.

  Hidden within the perimeter of boxes was a vast open space filled with rows upon rows of cots. Cape was reminded of images from the national news during hurricane season, when high school gymnasiums along the Florida coast were converted to shelters. To the left was a row of portable toilets, the type seen at construction sites, and to the right were a handful of rolling tables holding a television, VCR, small hot plates, and a microwave. Power cords snaked through the gaps in the wooden crates to a wall outlet thirty feet away.

  Cape took a step forward, doing a quick count of the rows. There were easily enough cots to house the refugees from the ship, maybe more. Cape played the flashlight across the makeshift beds, straining his eyes against the gloom.

  That’s when he realized someone else was in the warehouse.

  Near the center of the sea of beds, a man sat alone, his back propped up by a stack of pillows, his legs outstretched on a cot. His face was lost in shadow, his body a silhouette against the darker black of the warehouse. Cape couldn’t tell if the man was facing him, watching him, or sleeping. He clicked off the light and stood stock still, trying to hear past the pounding of his own heart and the blood rushing in his ears.

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Cape could still see the outline of the figure on the bed and, as far as he could tell, the man hadn’t moved. That meant he hadn’t seen Cape, or he was asleep. As he moved forward on the balls of his feet, Cape considered a third possibility but hoped he was wrong.

  Cape was unarmed and exposed, a feeling he didn’t like much. As he got within ten feet of the cot, he raised the crowbar with his right hand and readied the flashlight with his left. When he stepped within five feet he flicked the light on, aiming for the man’s face.

  At first Cape thought the man was smiling like a lunatic, so bizarre was his expression, until Cape blinked and his eyes adjusted to the light, telling his brain what it had refused to register. Cape dropped the crowbar, the metallic echo bouncing around the deserted building.

  The man’s throat had been slit from ear to ear. His head sagged forward, his chin buried in the cut, giving the illusion of a clown’s smile painted in red across his cheeks. Cape grimaced as he knelt beside the man and examined the wound.

  The man’s fixed stare showed no hint of surprise, the eyes dull and lifeless. He was Chinese, with longish black hair and a small gold hoop in his left ear. Cape noticed a tattoo on his left forearm, two Chinese characters in blue-black ink. On the floor below his left hand was a Chinese language newspaper, its surface dotted with red spots that looked almost black in the halogen gleam from the flashlight.

  Blood from the cut had run down his chest and pooled around his waist, painting the surface of a gun that rested in his lap. Cape couldn’t read the markings through the coagulated blood, but it looked like a Beretta 9-millimeter. Cape didn’t bother disturbing the scene to examine the gun—it was obvious it hadn’t been fired. There didn’t seem to be any wounds other than the brutal gash in the man’s neck—in fact, he looked utterly relaxed, as if he’d been reading when his attacker struck and couldn’t be bothered to struggle or stand up.

  A rat scurried across the cement floor, making the hairs on Cape’s neck stand on end. He’d been here too long and found too many corpses for one night’s work. He’d already decided to leave this one where he found it.

  Exiting the way he’d come in, Cape walked quickly but quietly to his car, tossing the crowbar and gloves on the back seat. He was feeling paranoid and had to fight the urge to open his trunk to see if another body was inside, but time was running short and he wanted to get off the streets before sunrise.

  It was only ten minutes later that he pulled into his garage and took the stairs up to his apartment, but it felt like an eternity. His body ached and his head was pounding. Without turning on the lights or even taking off his shoes, Cape walked across the loft and lay down on his bed, his mind racing with images from the past twenty-four hours. He had a sense he’d forgotten to do something important, but as he closed his eyes to concentrate, he fell asleep just as the sun came up.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Hong Kong, 10 years ago

  “You lied to me.”

  Sally’s tone betrayed her impatience. Dismissed from the meeting with the Dragon Head two hours earlier, she had waited in the shadows of the courtyard for Xan to emerge. An hour ago she watched as Zhang Hong’s two sons cut across the courtyard toward the guest houses—she assumed they lived in Hong Kong but were both staying the night.

  But still Xan lagged behind, so Sally remained invisible and counted down the minutes. She wanted to confront her teacher far from any rooms, lights, or listening devices.

  Xan didn’t flinch when she stepped out of the darkness. “You are mistaken,” he said in a tired voice. He looked nonchalantly over his shoulder toward the great house, his massive frame backlit by the moon.

  “If you recall, you never knew what happened to the film,” said Xan, his voice low but firm. “I kept you in the dark.”

  “As always.”

  “To keep you safe, little dragon,” replied Xan. “But let us be clear with one another. The only person I lied to was shan chu.”

  Sally stared at him but said nothing.

  “An act punishable by death,” Xan added.

  Sally’s eyes remained hard but her expression softened slightly. “Why?”

  Xan sighed. “Tell me, now that you’ve met the Dragon Head, what do you think?”

  Sally shrugged. “He seems…” she hesitated. “He seems different than I expected.”

  Xan smiled without warmth. “Perhaps he seems more human?”

  Sally nodded.

  “More so each year,” muttered Xan. “Some men harden their hearts as they grow older, but shan chu is softening like an overripe pear. In his youth, he was fearless. Ruthless, even.” Xan clenched his fists, the knuckles cracking loudly in the empty space. “But now he dotes on his sons, getting himself ready for the next life. What did you think of his sons, by the way?”

  “The eldest is formidable,” replied Sally, remembering the black eyes and the stillness of the man. “He walks without fear, and there is no life in his eyes. No hesitation.” She paused, thinking of the younger brother, the man she’d seen in Tokyo. His weak posture and impatient gestures. A small man acting big. “Wen is a coward,” she said simply.

  “He is a traitor,” hissed Xan. “He sleeps with the yakuza.”

  Sally visualized that day in the park, Wen and Kano on the bridge, talking like old acquaintances. As her thoughts turned to Kano, the tidal wave of emotions from that night in Tokyo washed over her, and she felt the muscles in her jaw tighten. She looked at Xan, her eyes shining with moonlight.

  She said, “Tell his father.”

  Xan shook his head, a cynical laugh under his breath. “Years ago, yes, that’s exactly what I would do. But now? Shan chu would be heartbroken, but I fear he lacks the will to do what is necessary.”

  “Does his brothe
r know?”

  Xan frowned. “I doubt it. I’m told the two don’t get along—Wen resents his older brother’s power in the society. And while I can’t say I have much fondness for Hui, I don’t believe he would betray our clan.”

  “Would you follow him?” asked Sally. “If Hui became shan chu?”

  Xan blinked, surprised at the question. “One day I may have to,” he said, his tone resigned. “That is the life I chose.”

  Sally wanted to say something but only nodded.

  “But I won’t tell Hui, either,” said Xan. “He might tell his father, and then I’ve not only lied to shan chu, I’ll have shamed him before his firstborn.”

  Sally studied Xan’s face in the moonlight, the ragged scar twisting like a night crawler as he frowned, his eyes turning back toward the great house. Sally realized Xan could have returned to his quarters unseen, even by her. He knew she would be waiting, and he wanted to tell her something—something he wasn’t quite ready to say.

  Sally waited until his gaze had returned to her before she spoke. “Then you really don’t have any choice about Wen.”

  Xan nodded slowly, his face flat as a rock.

  “You have to kill him,” said Sally, her tone matter-of-fact.

  Xan looked away again. “Shan chu would look to me,” he said, his voice like the rustling of the leaves. “If not for the son’s death, then for his protection.” He shook his head. “No, I realized Wen must be killed while I am with his father, so any suspicion would turn toward our enemies. The hand of a yakuza must be seen, a single blow with a sword.”

  This time Sally nodded. “Then I will kill him. Tonight.”

  Xan met Sally’s gaze as he shook his head again. “No, little dragon, too risky. He might have recognized you from Tokyo.”