White Tiger

by Stephen Knight

  She knew Manning was perhaps more lethal than Baluyevsky, and most certainly smarter. Otherwise, Lin would not have recruited him. The old man must have sensed that Baluyevsky, for all his skill, would have been nothing more than a helpless sheep being led to the slaughter. Manning was not that way at all, and she knew if he’d had even an inkling as to who she was, she would be dead.

  Walking toward the elevator bay, she inserted a pair of ear buds into the recording device’s RCA input. As she entered the bay (once again with the assistance of the magnetic card she had liberated from Baluyevsky’s bloodied corpse), she played back the conversation Manning and Lin had had during their drive back to San Francisco. She had missed nothing, and it presented no further clues as to what Manning’s plan was.

  But she knew. Both men were upstairs, where there was almost no place to run. It was a trap. Manning intended to ambush her when she went for Lin Yubo.

  She called the elevator and pressed the button for the 46th floor, which was also leased to Lin Industries. As smart as Manning doubtless was, there were other ways to defeat an ambush.

  ###

  The manager and the hotel security officer granted Ryker and Chee Wei access to the room with barely any questioning. They stood in the doorway and watched while the two detectives pulled on latex gloves and went through the room with a practiced, methodical ease.

  There wasn’t much to it. While the hotel room was certainly upscale, it was also bereft of anything other than the most carefully-manufactured character—most certainly nothing like the Taipan Room at the Mandarin. Ryker didn’t need to turn it upside down to see that it had barely been used, if at all. While he’d been hoping the room had been used as a home base, he was disappointed to find that wasn’t the case. The closets and dresser were bare, and there were no feminine toiletries of any sort in the bathroom. The glass-walled shower was bone dry, the towels perfectly folded and aligned in the rack above the toilet. Of course, housekeeping had been through. Ryker asked about that.

  “I’ve already checked,” the hotel detective said. “The staff says the room’s pretty much been like this the entire time. No room service, no calls for extra towels, no nothing.”

  Chee Wei carefully stripped the bed and inspecting the linens. He looked up at Ryker after a few minutes and shook his head.

  “Nothing. Not a single hair. You want to get forensics in on this?”

  Ryker debated that, then turned to the hotel manager and the detective. “You guys mind if we call in some extra troops? We’ll keep things as discreet as possible.”

  “Is it absolutely necessary?” the manager asked. “This is a Saturday night, and we have plenty of filled rooms on this floor.”

  Ryker nodded. “Sorry, but it is.”

  The manager looked entirely unhappy about it, but he nodded his assent. Ryker looked at Chee Wei.

  “Go ahead and call in the troops. And have the local district send a cruiser over.”

  “Okay, but why?”

  “Because you’re going to stay here and keep an eye on things. I’m headed cross-town.”

  Chee Wei frowned. “Where to?”

  “One-oh-one California. I’ll bet you twenty bucks I’ll find Lin and his hired boy Manning there.”

  ###

  The time passed slowly, but Manning was used to waiting in place for something to happen. He had long ago trained himself to ignore boredom, and to stave off sleep through sheer discipline. Those were the major problems with pulling sentry duty like this. There was usually nothing to do, nothing to keep the mind occupied. Waiting in ambush took a great deal of patience, and Manning had had years to cultivate that specific skill, both inside the Army and outside in the private sector. While it had been some time since he’d had to tap that well of patience—working for Chen Gui was usually all rough-and-dirty work that was over in minutes, if not seconds—he still had the hunter’s knack for lying quietly in wait until his quarry showed itself.

  And as the sun slowly slid toward the western horizon, his gut told him he wouldn’t have to wait for much longer.

  The food arrived from a restaurant in Chinatown that served authentic Chinese food, not the overly sweet/overly sour fare that most Americans thought was the real deal. Manning paid for the order with his credit card and promised one of the security guards a $50 tip to bring it up to the office floor. That way, Manning wouldn’t have to go to the lobby to pick up the food and leave Lin alone. The young security guard took the bait, of course; he was all over the extra money. Manning wasn’t gone for long, and he found Lin was still in his office, checking his email and doing what work he could by himself. It didn’t seem like there was much for him to do. Manning figured he was more the type of boss who told other people what to do as opposed to actually doing anything himself.

  “Your food,” Manning said. He unpacked several containers and placed them on the credenza. Most were still warm.

  Lin rose and checked out the selection. He slid open a drawer and removed some very expensive-looking china and handed a plate to Manning.

  “I will not serve you,” he said, “so ‘help yourself’, as you Americans say.”

  “Thanks.” Manning didn’t serve Lin either, but did allow him to go first. The older man arranged different varieties of food on his plate in small, neat piles and returned to his desk. He had already warmed himself some tea from the electric pot on the desk. Lying next to it was the pistol. Manning quickly dumped three different dishes onto his plate with his chopsticks and headed for the door.

  “How long will we wait?” Lin asked.

  Manning turned back to him. “Not long.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s time to get this over with,” Manning said. He returned to the secretary’s office and left Lin alone with his dinner and thoughts.

  ###

  The patrolman didn’t seem very enthused to drive Ryker from the Hyatt to 101 California, and for good reason. The traffic was thick, and even worse, it was weekend traffic, which meant the out-of-towners were out in force. As the revelers were just getting started, the black-and-white squad car made some good time at first, but once it hit Kearny the traffic thickened enough that it took almost ten minutes to make it to the intersection with California.

  “You want the lights, Sergeant?” the patrolman asked.

  “Not necessary,” Ryker said, though he felt a peculiar anxiety beginning to build in his chest. And why was that? His instincts were trying to tell him something, but he didn’t exactly know what.

  “Then I guess we’ll get there when we get there,” the patrolman said, slouching in his seat. He was already bored as hell.

  Ryker wished he was also, but he was far from it. Far from it.

  ###

  The air duct was just large enough for her to fit, but not at all comfortably. It was a tight squeeze, and very, very dark despite the night vision monocle she wore over one eye. The aluminum duct felt thin and flimsy beneath her weight, and she feared it might give way and she would crash through the suspended ceiling onto the office floor below. Or worse, the duct might simply fold up and trap her, leaving her pinned inside. That was her greatest fear—being trapped with no chance of escape, alone in the darkness, until the police found her or she simply died from thirst and starvation. And with the accursed Lin Yubo so near…

  She pushed the thoughts from her mind and inched forward through the darkness on her belly, slithering through the ductwork like some sort of jet-black serpent, her movements slow and measured and precise. And virtually soundless. Stealth was her primary weapon now.

  She came to a junction where the ducts split off, up, down, left, and right. She moved to the edge of the intersection and peered down, the direction she needed to go. Darkness waited, so deep and impenetrable that even the night vision monocle couldn’t properly pierce it after a hundred feet or so. But she could make out junctions like the one she lay at below, one for every story. She only needed to make it to th
e next one.

  Slowly, carefully, she pushed herself over the edge until she hung head-down in the vertical duct. Using her arms and legs as brakes she slowly descended, leaving the ductwork of the 46th floor behind. She arrived at the 45th floor and slowly, oh so slowly, curled to her left and entered the horizontal duct there. She made very little sound the entire time, only a sliding scuffle here, a slight metallic creak there as the aluminum channel flexed beneath her body weight. She knew approximately where Lin’s office would lie, but she had no allusions about being able to attack him directly by alighting from the HVAC ducting. Nor would it be wise; Manning would likely be right with him.

  And for some reason, she did not want to kill Manning…but she didn’t know how that could be avoided.

  Slowly, she crept forward through the dark shaft, stopping every few feet to listen. All she heard were the sounds of the building, the air whispering past her, the gurgle of water in pipes. There was a distant metallic clicking sound, and it took her a moment to recognize it as a magnetic lock activating. And then—muted voices. Vague, indistinct, almost lost in the rumble of the building, but her keen senses picked them up the same way a bat’s sonar might detect a solitary moth fluttering along in the darkness. She peered through every vent she came across and found nothing more remarkable than empty cubicles or vacant carpet. Yet she was certain she was on the right floor…

  And then she smelled it.

  Chinese food. Wafting through the ventilation system, Very slight, but unmistakable.

  Spurred on by this, Meihua Shi pushed forward through the ductwork, her heart hammering in her chest.

  ###

  “But we didn’t call the police,” the security guard said. He was young black man with close-cropped hair who wrapped his arrogant air around him like it was an expensive topcoat. He glared at Ryker’s proffered badge and identification with surly eyes. Ryker sighed. He didn’t have the time to deal with some punk who had an attitude problem.

  “Yeah, yeah, I get that,” he said. He tried to step inside the lobby of 101 California, but the kid wouldn’t budge—he stood smack in the center of the doorway. He’d decided to make his stand. From the corner of his eye, Ryker saw the squad car he’d arrived in pull away from the curb and merge back into the weekend traffic. He was on his own.

  “Listen, you going to let me in, or not?”

  “Why should I?” the kid said. “We didn’t call you.”

  “Kid, let me ask you something—are you a special kind of stupid? Did you ride the short bus to school? I’m a police officer here on police business, and I need access to this building.”

  “You got a warrant?” the security guard said.

  Ryker looked past him at the older man sitting behind the desk in the lobby. The man watched the proceedings with something approaching a smile.

  “Hey pal, can you give me a hand here?” Ryker called.

  “We don’t need ‘a hand’,” said the younger man.

  The older black man slowly rose to his feet and started walking toward the door. His gait was slow and ponderous, as if his knees were giving him some trouble. The bemused expression he’d been wearing before was gone. Now, he was all business.

  “Malik! Let the man inside.”

  The younger security guard kept his eyes on Ryker. “But we didn’t call the po-lice,” he said.

  “Let him in.” The older guard made it to the lobby door and stood right behind the younger man, staring holes into the back of his head with his eyes. “Do it right now.”

  The young man glared at Ryker for a moment longer, then backed off.

  “Thanks,” Ryker said to the older man as he stepped inside. He presented his badge, and older man examined it for a moment then waved for him to put it away.

  “I was on the Job myself for over twenty years,” he said. “Patrol. Retired out of Mission four years ago.”

  “Ah—how’s life on the outside?”

  The older black man shrugged and waved a hand at the lobby. “A lot less threatening.”

  Ryker extended his hand. “Detective Sergeant Hal Ryker, homicide.”

  “Willy Terrell. Good to meet you, sergeant. What can we do for you?”

  “Looking for James Lin.”

  “I see.” Terrell hesitated for a moment. “And might he be expecting you?”

  “He might be, yes.”

  “You don’t sound so sure.”

  “I’m here on official business, Willy.”

  Terrell looked past Ryker’s shoulder. “Where’s your partner?”

  “At the Grand Hyatt, conducting part of the investigation there.”

  “What investigation is that?”

  “The son,” Ryker said simply. There was no need to be coy, especially since Danny Lin’s death had made the front page news. “And I guess you know that, right?”

  Terrell nodded. “Kind of big news around here.”

  Ryker glanced at the ceiling, several stories overhead. “Is Lin upstairs?”

  “He is.”

  “How do I get there?”

  “Follow me,” Terrell said. He started lumbering across the lobby, and glanced over his shoulder at the younger security guard. “I’ll be right back. Keep your eye on things while I’m gone, and if I come down and find you surfing porn on the workstation, I’ll kick your ass.”

  “In your dreams,” said the other security guard.

  ###

  It took almost thirty minutes for her to make her way to the side of the building where Lin’s office suite lay. The vents leading to the office itself were too small for her to make use of, unless her intent was to drop a hand grenade into the office and hope for the best. Of course, that was not part of the plan. The plan was to see Lin’s blood flow from her artful blade work, to peer into his eyes as the light in them slowly faded. But a direct attack was out of the question. The vents were just too tiny.

  But the single vent leading to the outer office was larger, and while not as wide as the duct she had crawled through for the past half hour, it was large enough. Slowly, she edged into it head-first, using the palms of her hands as brakes. Her shoulders barely fit, and she worried about her hips, but they were just narrow enough to allow her to slide her body inside the smaller channel. The aluminum sheath that made up the ducting flexed slightly, but the sound was virtually lost in the medley of background noise. She edged closer to the grating covering the vent’s terminus, barely moving now, descending only millimeters at a time, as silent as a phantom gliding through still air. She peered through the grate and looked into Lin’s secretary’s office. She could see only a small portion of the room; directly below her was a credenza and a patch of gray carpeting, over which a Persian rug had been thrown. She thought she saw a hint of a desk’s return, but the grating was too small to allow much more of the room to be shown. She examined the grate itself. It was plastic, and hinged on one side. Opposite the hinges was a small lever, meant to be pulled from the outside so the grate could be opened. She slowly reached for the lever with her left hand. As she did so, she heard a small squeak from below, something barely audible above the building noise that filled the duct. She watched as Manning suddenly appeared, leaning back in an office chair, his hands clasped behind his head. She couldn’t see much more than that, only the top of his head and a bit of his shoulders. His attention was not directed at the vent overhead.

  And so, this is how it will be.

  With that thought, Meihua Shi closed her legs and allowed her body to fall through the grate life a warm knife through butter.

  ###

  “So the department’s still the same, huh?” Terrell asked as he escorted Ryker to the elevator bank.

  “Same thing. More politics, though. Tough to get work done.”

  “Tell me about it.” Terrell punched the UP button and turned back to Ryker. His expression still wasn’t very friendly, but it was more welcoming than the one the kid had shown him at the door. “Politics are the death of the departm
ent. When that lesbian became the chief a few years ago, that absolutely blew my mind.”

  “She’s gone. Replaced by a guy named Hallis.”

  “He and I worked Tenderloin together, and later in the 80s, Western Addition. He was an okay cop then, I thought. How is he as a chief?”

  Ryker shrugged. “Not a lesbian.”

  Terrell allowed himself a glimmer of a smile, then looked up as the elevator arrived and the doors slid open. He preceded Ryker inside and pressed the button marked 45.

  ###

  The ceiling collapsed before Manning could do anything more than fling himself forward, out of the secretary’s chair. Even as he did, he felt something bite the back of his left shoulder, something that penetrated the fabric of his jacket and the shirt underneath. As he hit the carpet, he cursed himself for not having the foresight to wear body armor. What the hell had happened to all his training?

  He rolled onto his back as quickly as he could, moving fast, the injury to his shoulder not slowing him for a moment. Behind him, the chair he had sat on was flung into the wall, striking it so hard that it shattered into two pieces and cracked the expensive mahogany paneling. A figure clad in black from head to toe caught itself on its hands, folded at the waist, and alighted on its feet like some sort of circus performer. A small slit in the black hood was just wide enough for the assassin to see through. Black eyes glittered there, eyes that Manning recognized, though when he had last seen them they were full of a different kind of passion.

  “Shi Meihua,” he said quietly, as he brought up the Smith & Wesson. His training had reasserted itself fully now. He pushed his personal feelings aside and allowed it to take over. The person who stood before him wasn’t his lover of no more than sixteen hours ago; the person there now was a target, someone who intended to kill him unless he struck first.

  There was no hesitation on her part, and she hurled the knife she held at him with expert accuracy as Manning fired, aiming for her center of mass. Two rounds found their target, and she was flung against the credenza, arms flailing beneath the power of the double impacts. At the same time, her knife slashed through Manning’s abdomen; it had been skillfully thrown, and it cut deep into his liver. Manning ignored the spike of pain as he gathered his feet beneath him and stood, reaching across his body with his left hand. He grasped the knife and pulled it out, gasping slightly as a greater degree of pain lanced through him, a kind of agony he had thought he’d grown used to. As the black-clad figure rebounded off the credenza and fell toward the carpet, Manning tracked it with his pistol, but he was off by just a fraction. His responses slowed by the spreading web of pain, he was slow to respond to the change in her body’s attitude. She wasn’t slumping to the floor, a victim of what had to be two fatal shots. Instead, she gathered her legs beneath her and hurtled toward Manning like a guided missile.