by Greg Dragon
“Lithium carbonate?” Cheong took a step back, and his shoulders slumped as he saw her name on the bottle.
“What’s it mean boss?”
“It’s a chemical,” Cheong replied, “used for depression, bipolar disorder, and sometimes schizophrenia.” He shook his head. “It appears that our girl may be undergoing treatment for some mental . . . conditions.”
Chapter Thirty One
”You need to tell me what the hell is going on,” Angel said. “What the hell are they doing in that factory back there? What were those people who died on the train doing? What did they know?”
“It’ll be easier if we go back to Wenbai.”
“The factory?” Angel shook her head. “That’s the first place they’ll be looking for us. Those men back there— I can’t be absolutely certain they’re not the same ones I saw back at the factory this morning, but they’re dressed the same way, and they were armed. Now that they know you’re alive, they’re going to do whatever it takes to find you. They’ll assume you’re going to head for the factory or the village.”
Jamie shook her head. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t make sense. My gut is telling me to run in the opposite direction, to escape. They’ll know that, so that’s what they’ll expect me to do.”
She gestured out the window and winced from the movement, then pressed a hand to her side again. Angel was relieved to see that when she drew it away, there was no new blood soaking through the shirt she’d dug out of her spare bag in the trunk. Whatever wounds she’d reopened at the hospital, they’d clotted shut again.
“They’ll be expecting me to run to Chifeng,” Jamie continued. “That’s where they’ll be looking for me. There, or possibly Beijing. Not Wenbai. Besides, you said you wanted my help.”
Angel turned to her and frowned. “I do. But after what happened back there, I don’t think going back is the wisest thing to do right now. Whether or not you know anything, or think you know, they’re not going to take any chances. They’re going to want you quieted.”
“And you, too.”
“I’m not the one who knows something.”
When Jamie didn’t take the bait, Angel sighed. “That’s your cue to start talking.”
“I can’t,” Jamie whispered. “I mean, I’m not exactly sure of anything myself, that’s why I have to go back. I have some theories . . . .”
Angel huffed in frustration. “Theories? I thought you knew—“
“I tried to explain it to you back there,” Jamie said. “I saw the look on your face yesterday. I saw the way that boy that was with you looked at me. I know it all sounds crazy, but I am not crazy, I swear to you.” She stopped, as if suddenly realizing something, and frowned. “By the way, who was that boy?”
“One of the villagers. He was my interpreter.”
“What happened to him?”
“He’s dead. They killed him.”
Jamie blinked in surprise.
“You see how serious this is?”
“Is it because of . . . because—“
“Because of all this? Yes. Those men— I told you they’re bad news.” Angel gripped the steering wheel and focused as hard as she could to keep her voice from breaking. “They murdered the entire village. Everyone. Just . . . gone.”
Jamie let out a strangled cry. “Just like the people on that train. But— How? Why?”
“How? They incinerated it. Firebombed it by air. They burnt it all to the ground. They even torched the burial site last night. I saw them the day before sterilizing the crash site with napalm. They’re trying to get rid of evidence.”
“I— I guess I always suspected,” Jamie whispered, “but—“
“What don’t they want anyone to find?”
“Me.”
“Besides you.”
“No, you don’t understand. What they’re trying to hide, I’ve got it. That’s why you have to take me to the factory.”
“I have to get you someplace safe.”
Jamie slapped the window hard with her palm, then lurched forward in pain, clutching at her stomach. “I told you,” she groaned. “He’ll find me no matter where I go, the dark man. He’ll know. He’s probably with them. If that’s true, then I’m already a dead girl, unless . . . .”
“Unless what?”
“I don’t know!” she wailed.
“Then tell me exactly how are they going to find you?”
Jamie winced as she lifted her bottom out of the seat and pulled down the sweat pants Angel had given her, exposing her thigh. She pointed at the wound. For a moment, it looked to Angel as if it were smaller than she remembered it, even since their escape from the hospital a half hour before. But she knew that couldn’t be.
“The scar?”
“What’s inside of it!” Jamie shouted impatiently. She raised her hand again, but stopped herself from hitting the window. “That’s how they got them inside of me! The bone. It infected me!”
Ever since yesterday, and then again during the strange encounter inside the shower, alarm bells had been quietly ringing inside Angel’s head, but now they were jangling at full blast. Once more, the girl was spouting nonsense. What the hell could she be talking about? First it was bad spirits, then something infecting her. Which was it? And what did it have to do with the Americans finding her?
Angel tried to remain calm. “I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t either, not exactly. Not even yesterday. But I’ve had a lot of time to piece it together over the past few days. The game on the train, the touching. And then, when I saw my body in the shower . . . .” Her voice trailed off. “That’s when I knew for sure. They’re inside of me, doing things to me.”
“You suffered from a horribly traumatic event. It’s understandable that you might not . . . that you might not be thinking clearly.”
She was afraid Jamie would get angry again, but all the girl did was nod and gesture at her body again. She seemed almost to deflate. “I should have died a week ago. I thought I was lucky, managing to escape the crash without any broken bones. But I lost a lot of blood, more than should have been survivable. And I’d hit my head hard enough that I was in and out of consciousness.”
“You were lucky that someone found you and brought you to the hospital.”
Jamie’s face twisted. “I don’t remember much— stumbling through the wreckage, calling out. Flashes of memories. And then the . . . the dark man.” She lifted the shirt again. “I had massive bruising to my abdomen, possibly even organ damage.”
Angel drew her eyes away from the road and glanced quickly over. Yesterday, there had been large patches of yellowish-green discoloration on the woman’s torso, though it seemed that they were less colorful now. She hadn’t given it very much thought at the time, especially given the confusion, but even if she had, she would have guessed that they weren’t a result of the crash. After so few days, any such bruising would still be dark purple or, at best, brown, as the bilirubin in the leaked blood began to be broken down and reabsorbed by the body.
“I don’t think so,” Angel said.
Jamie rolled up her sleeves and showed her arms. They were deeply bruised. The lacerations were still raw, and some were still crusty with clotted blood and lymph. “Four days ago, my stomach looked as bad as this,” she said.
Angel frowned.
“You still don’t believe me.”
“I have a degree in medicine, Jamie. The human body just doesn’t heal that quickly, particularly fatty tissues of the trunk. Massive bruising — abdominal bruising — would take weeks to clear and the color to fade. It’s been barely a week. The timeline doesn’t fit.”
“Exactly. Pull over.”
“But—“
“I said pull over.”
They were on a rather long, flat stretch of road heading toward Chifeng with good visibility for miles in either direction. After checking the mirror and confirming that they were alone, Angel guided the car over to the side of the pavement and pu
lled the hand brake. She didn’t shut off the engine.
Since leaving Bairin Zouqi, she’d been keeping an eye on the fuel gauge. They still had a long way to go to get to Chifeng, and she was beginning to fear that they would need petrol before getting there. She still had some yuan in her pocket, but they would also need to buy some food.
She turned fully toward Jamie, and was startled to find the girl climbing out of the car. She reached over for her but missed. “Get back in here! Where are you going?” She pushed her way out through her own door and hurried around the front.
By the time she reached the girl, Jamie had already shed the pants and shirt Angel had given her. Being several sizes larger, they’d come off easily. Now she stood in the dirt, completely naked except for her socks. Her skin was crisscrossed with scabs, a patchwork of pink flesh and mottled bruises. Goosebumps spread over her as the chill wind blew. She spread out her arms.
“What are you doing?” Angel shrieked. “Put those back on! Get inside the car!”
“No!” Jamie shouted. “Look at me! What do you see? Look at me!”
Angel stumbled to a stop. Jamie had turned so that they were now facing each other. Then she slowly turned around, not stopping until she’d done a full circuit. Apparently satisfied with the shocked look on Angel’s face, she nodded once, then bent down and plucked the clothes from the ground and put them back on. Without another word, she climbed back into the car.
After a minute or so, Angel walked back to her side, got in, and pulled out onto the road.
“No,” she muttered to herself. “There has to be some sort of explanation.”
“There is,” Jamie replied. “And we’ll find it at the factory.”
But Angel kept shaking her head. It didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t natural. And yet how could she deny what she’d just seen? The pattern of healing had been all too clear. The cuts and bruises closest to where the bone had gone into her thigh were healing faster than those further away.
“How can that be?” she whispered.
“There was something in that bone that infected me,” Jamie said. “And whatever it is, it’s helping my body heal faster. Whatever it is, they put it in those factory workers, and that’s how it got inside of me. I believe that’s what they’re trying to hide.”
Chapter Thirty Two
Mabry Aston lifted his considerable frame out of the back seat of the car and told his driver to stay close behind; he didn’t intend to go very far into the village, certainly nowhere the car couldn’t go. Then he shut the door and started to pick his way through the rubble. He wanted to see Norstrom’s handiwork firsthand, up close, without a pane of glass in the way. He wanted to smell the scorched earth. He wanted to feel the charred remains crumbling beneath his feet.
He needed to be absolutely sure.
The phone in the pocket of his baggy slacks was a ponderous weight, bumping against his inner thigh with each step and reminding him that a call from the Ministry of Transport agent assigned to investigate the crash site was due at any moment. They’d spoken through a translator earlier that morning, when the man had offered to pick him up at the airport. Aston had declined the ride, claiming that he was already on his way after arriving in Beijing on an overnight flight. He stated that he was eager to assess the damage and determine if anything could be salvaged.
“You understand, don’t you?” he’d told the interpreter, hoping some measure of the fake contriteness in his voice managed to get through. “The company’s on my back. They want a preliminary idea of the losses before the insurance adjuster comes up with his own estimate, which will undoubtedly be lowball.” He’d chuckled, as if sharing some private joke. But the translation either failed, or the agent had no sense of humor, as he hadn’t responded in kind.
“Anyway,” Aston went on, feeling a bit put out, “we’ll try and streamline things for you guys so you won’t have to be out here any longer than you need to be. In fact, I plan on having a full materials manifest for you when we liaise around noon. But it’s the people we lost that deserve our attention, isn’t it? God bless their souls, and thank God there were no more casualties. I’ll personally visit each of their families — the conductor, brakemen, engineer, and fireman; I believe that’s it. You’ll find that we’ll take proper care of them.”
In fact, he’d already been out to the site that morning, both the real one and the staged one. He had to reluctantly admit that Norstrom and his team had done a bang up job of making the alternate site look pretty damn authentic. Now Aston just had to convince the investigators that it really was the true crash site and hope that they didn’t get some wild hairs up their asses and decide to check further up the track. Even the twenty or so miles separating the sites didn’t seem near far enough for his comfort, though Norstrom, in his supremely arrogant way, told him not to worry.
As far as convincing the agent to accept their assessments at face value, he knew he had his work cut out for him. He was a field agent, a low-paid worker who was unlikely to be accept his explanations out of hand, if only because he didn’t speak the same language, a language which usually included words like dollars and prostitutes and other expensive trinkets.
That was in contrast to the high up muckety-mucks in the Chinese government who were highly fluent in such terms. Oh, those idiots had expressed bitter outrage with the Americans for waiting four days before informing them of the crash. He’d personally tried to tell them that they had only just found out about it themselves and even went so far as to blame the port supervisor in Qinhuangdao for not reporting the missing freight when the train failed to arrive there on schedule. There had been a lot of accusations thrown about, the typical bureaucratic belligerence, all for show and serving to lay the groundwork for the ensuing financial discussions.
On a more practical note, it gave the clean up team time to do its job. He hoped Norstrom was grateful for that, though he doubted it.
In the end, the bribes had been sufficient enough to buy Aston the time he needed to sterilize the crash site of incriminating evidence and eliminate any witnesses. He was sure the Chinese government knew exactly what was happening, although those in positions of decision-making were happy enough to be kept in the dark as long as their pockets were well enough lined.
But this investigation agent, a certain Wang Jingping, was a pushy little fellow. He simply wasn’t high enough in the food chain to have gotten the message. For all he knew, he was there to investigate the derailing of a freight train filled with hazardous materials.
Once again, Norstrom had assured Aston that the staged site would quickly lead the agent to the conclusion that train had jumped the rails where two sections had come misaligned. “Winter upheaval,” he said. “Happens all the time. The ground freezes, swells. The rails are under a lot of tension. Then something snaps.”
The plan was that Jingping would be in and out in a couple of hours. The bodies would be collected. And Aston would assure them all that the Americans were fully prepared to clean the site up and restore it to its natural state. Further remunerations would be made. Perhaps a few dollars would slip into the agent’s own pockets, small change compared to what his bosses had coming to them. That was how things were done here.
“None of this is visible from the main road?” he called out to the man standing behind him. He didn’t bother to turn around to face Norstrom, not caring to know exactly how close he was. The man moved liked a ninja, which made Aston hate him all the more.
“We’ve got men ready to block the road leading here and the one leading to the crash site. The only way anyone’s going to find either of these places is by air or on the back of a mule. And, frankly, all they’ll see is a couple large scorched patches. They’ll think lightning strikes and wildfires and never give it a second thought.”
“They can think whatever the hell they want, for all I care, as long as it’s not the truth.” Aston turned around and waved the driver over. “Let’s go. I want that road blocked
off before anyone has a chance to make a wrong turn and screw everything up.”
They both turned for their respective cars just as their phones began to ring. Aston gave Norstrom a frightened look before answering his. He watched the other man take his call, lowering his voice and turning his back so that he couldn’t see him.
Mister Wang Jingping, came the tinny voice of the translator on the line, will be there in about twenty-five minutes. We just passed Goh Li Xhia factory at Wenbai.
“Um, good. That’s good,” Aston replied, still watching Norstrom. Something about the way the man’s muscular shoulders stiffened did not give him the happy feeling he so desperately wanted. “We’ve just arrived ourselves, but we’ll wait to do the walkabout together.”
Mister Wang Jingping would like to know if the reporter is there yet.
“Reporter? What reporter? I didn’t authorize any reporter!”
Mister Wang Jingping arranged it himself.
Aston squeezed the phone in his meaty hand. The last thing he needed was a snooping reporter. “Fine,” he said, his voice turning cold as ice. Norstrom had damn well better be right. “I welcome any opportunity for openness.”
In front of him, Norstrom pulled the phone away from his ear and pocketed the device. Then he turned and began to walk back toward Aston’s car. A muscle in his cheek kept twitching, drawing Aston’s eye. It was the only thing about the man that betrayed the emotions beneath his stony exterior.
“She’s alive,” he said. “The American woman. My men tracked her down to a Buddhist-run hospital in Bairin Zouqi, but she got away.”
For a moment, Aston said nothing. All he could think was, This isn’t happening.
“I’ve sent teams to Chifeng and a man to the American consulate in Beijing. We’ll get her.”
For a brief moment, the tic flared.
“Is that all?” Aston asked. His voice sounded suddenly too small, as if the incredible breadth of the sky above them were somehow attenuating the very air.