"If he's going to make a move it'll have to be at the airport. Tell your people to look out for him. I'll tell Port Authority security too."
"I just don't see it happening."
"Thanks for the assessment, Harold. But then again it was Rhyme who collared the prick in the first place. Not you." The line went dead.
Peabody turned around and studied the Ghost, who asked, "What was that about?"
"Nothing." Peabody asked one of the agents, "We have body armor in the back?"
"Naw," one answered. Then: "Well, I'm in a vest."
"Me too," said the other agent.
The tone of their voices said that they weren't about to give them up.
Nor would Peabody ask his agents to do so. If Coe made a move on the Ghost and he was successful, well, that was just the way it was. He and Rhyme would have to take the consequences.
He leaned forward and snapped at the driver, "Can't you do anything about the goddamn air-conditioning?"
*
The shackles binding his wrists felt light as silk.
They would come off as soon as he was at the doorway of the airliner that would carry him back home from the Beautiful Country and, because he knew that, the metal restraints had already ceased to exist.
Walking down the international corridor of JFK Airport, he was reflecting on how flying in the Far East had changed. Thinking of the early days when he would fly on the national airline of China: CAAC--which every English-speaking Chinese knew stood for Chinese Airliners Always Crash. Things were different now. Today it would be Northwest Airlines to L.A., then a China Air flight to Singapore with a connection to Fuzhou, business class all the way.
The entourage was a curious one: the Ghost, two armed guards and the two men in charge--Peabody from the INS and the man from the United States Department of State. They were now joined by two armed Port Authority guards, big men, nervous as squirrels, who kept their hands near their weapons as they surveyed the crowd.
The Ghost didn't exactly know what the uneasiness and firepower were all about but he supposed that there'd been death threats against him. Well, that was nothing new. He'd lived with death since the night the Four Olds murdered his family.
Footsteps behind.
"Mr. Kwan . . .Mr. Kwan!"
They turned to see a thin Chinese man in a suit walking quickly toward them. The guards drew their weapons and the approaching man stopped, eyes wide.
"It's my lawyer," the Ghost said.
"You sure?" Peabody asked.
"What do you mean, am I sure?"
Peabody nodded the man forward, frisked him despite the Ghost's protests and let him and the snakehead step to the side of the corridor. The Ghost turned his ear toward the lawyer's mouth. "Go ahead."
"The Changs and the Wus are out on bond, pending the hearing. It looks like they'll be granted asylum. The Wus are in Flushing, Queens. The Changs are back in Owls Head. The same apartment."
"And Yindao?" the Ghost whispered.
The man blinked at the crude word.
The snakehead corrected himself. "I mean the Sachs woman."
"Oh, I have her address too. And Lincoln Rhyme's. Do you want me to write them down for you?"
"No, just tell them to me slowly. I'll remember them."
After only three repetitions the Ghost had memorized them. He said, "You'll find your money in the account." No need to say how much money or which account.
The lawyer nodded and, with a glance at the Ghost's guards, turned and left.
The group continued down the corridor. Ahead of him the Ghost could see the gate, the pretty clerks behind the check-in counter. And through the window he caught a glimpse of the 747 that would soon take him west, like Monkey making his pilgrimage, at the end of which he found enlightenment and contentment.
His boarding pass was protruding from his shirt pocket. He had 10,000 yuan in his wallet. He had a U.S. government escort. He was going home, to his apartments, his women, his money.
He was free. He--
Then sudden motion . . .
Somebody was moving toward him fast and the guards were pulling him aside, their weapons coming out of their holsters again. The Ghost, gasping at the shock, thought that he was going to die. He muttered a fast prayer to his guardian, Yi the archer.
But the attacker stopped short. Breathing unsteadily, the Ghost began to laugh.
"Hello, Yindao."
She was wearing jeans, T-shirt and windbreaker, her badge around her neck. Hands on her hips, one of which rested very close to her pistol. The policewoman ignored the Ghost and glanced at the nervous, young INS agents. "You better have a damn good reason for drawing down on me."
They started to reholster their weapons but Peabody gestured for them not to.
The Ghost focused past Yindao. Behind her was a tall black man in a white suit and noisy blue shirt. The fat cop who'd arrested him in Brooklyn was here as well, as were several uniformed city policemen. But the one person in this retinue who captured his full attention was a handsome dark-haired man about the Ghost's age, sitting in a complicated, bright red wheelchair, to which his arms and legs were strapped. A trim young man--his aide or nurse--stood behind the chair.
This was, of course, Lincoln Rhyme. The Ghost studied the curious man--who'd miraculously discovered the location of the Fuzhou Dragon at sea, who'd found the Wus and the Changs and who had actually succeeded in capturing the Ghost himself. Which no other policeman in the world had ever been able to do.
Harold Peabody wiped his face with his sleeve, surveyed the situation and motioned the guards back. They put their weapons away. "What's this all about, Rhyme?"
But the man ignored him and continued to study the snakehead carefully. The Ghost felt a tickle of unease. But then he mastered the sensation. He had guanxi at the highest level. He was immune, even to the magic of Lincoln Rhyme, whom he asked bluntly, "Who exactly are you? A consultant? A private detective?"
"Me?" the cripple responded. "I'm one of the ten judges of hell."
The Ghost laughed. "So you inscribe names in The Register of the Living and the Dead?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I do."
"And you've come to see me off?"
"No," he answered.
Peabody said cautiously, "And what do you want?"
The State Department bureaucrat said impatiently, "All of you, now--just clear on out of here."
"He's not getting on that airplane," Rhyme said.
"Oh, yes, he is," said the dour official. He stepped forward, plucking the Ghost's ticket from his pocket and striding toward the gate agent.
"You take one more step toward that airplane," the fat policeman said to him, "and these officers're authorized to arrest you."
"Me?" Webley muttered angrily.
Peabody gave a sharp laugh and looked at the black agent. "Dellray, what is this crap?"
"Probably oughta listen to my friend here, Harold. In your best innerest, believe you me."
Peabody said, "Five minutes."
A regretful frown crossed Lincoln Rhyme's face. "Oh, I'm afraid it may take a little longer than that."
Chapter Forty-nine
The snakehead was far smaller and more compact than Lincoln Rhyme had expected. This was a phenomenon he recalled from his days running the NYPD forensics unit; the perpetrators he pursued took on disproportionate stature in his mind and when he saw them in person for the first time--usually at trial--he was often surprised at how diminutive they were.
The Ghost stood shackled and surrounded by law enforcers. Concerned, yes, but still in control, serene, shoulders and arms relaxed. The criminalist understood immediately how Sachs could have been suckered by him: the Ghost's eyes were those of a healer, a doctor, a spiritual man. They would dole out apparent comfort and invite sharing confidences. But, knowing the man now, Rhyme could see in the placid gaze evidence of a relentless ego and ruthlessness.
"Okay, sir, what's this all about?" asked Peabody's fr
iend--Webley from State, as Rhyme now thought of him, echoing the man's own pompous identification of himself in Rhyme's living room the other day.
Rhyme said to the two men, "You know what happens sometimes in our line of work, gentlemen? I mean, forensic science."
Webley from State started to speak but Peabody waved him silent. Rhyme wouldn't have let anyone rush him anyway. Nobody hurried Lincoln Rhyme when he didn't wish to be hurried.
"We sometimes lose sight of the big picture. All right, I admit I'm the one who loses sight more than, say, my Sachs here. She looks at motive, she looks at why people do what they do. But that's not my nature. My nature is to study each piece of evidence and put it where it belongs." He glanced at the Ghost with a smile. "Like placing a stone on a wei-chi board."
The snakehead who had brought so much sorrow to so many lives said nothing, gave no acknowledgment. The gate agent announced preboarding of the Northwest Airlines flight to Los Angeles.
"We figured out the clues just fine." A nod toward the Ghost. "After all, here he is, caught, right? Thanks to us. And we've got enough evidence to convict him and sentence him to death. But what happens? He's going free."
"He's not going free," Peabody rejoined. "He's going back to stand trial in China."
"Free from the jurisdiction where he's committed a number of serious felonies in the past few days," Rhyme corrected sharply. "Do we have to squabble?"
This was too much for Webley from State. "Get to the point or I'm putting him on that plane."
Rhyme continued to ignore the man. He had the stage and wasn't relinquishing it. "The big picture . . . big picture . . . I was thinking how bad I felt. Here, I'd found out where the Fuzhou Dragon was and sent the Coast Guard after her but--what happens?--he scuttles it, killing all those people."
Peabody shook his head. "Of course you'd feel bad," he said with some sympathy. "We all felt bad. But--"
Rhyme kept steaming forward. "Big picture . . . Let's think about it. It's Tuesday, just before dawn, on board the Dragon. You're the Ghost, a wanted man--wanted for capital offenses--and the Coast Guard is a half hour away from interdicting your smuggling ship. What would you have done?"
The gate agent continued with the boarding of the flight.
Peabody sighed. Webley from State muttered something sotto voce; Rhyme knew it was not complimentary. The Ghost stirred but he remained silent.
Since no one was helping him out Rhyme continued, "I personally would've taken my money, ordered the Dragon back out to sea full speed ahead and escaped to shore in one of the life rafts. The Coast Guard and cops and INS would've been so busy with the crew and immigrants I could easily've gotten to land and been halfway to Chinatown before they realized I was gone. But what'd the Ghost do?"
Rhyme glanced at Sachs, who said, "He locked the immigrants in the hold, sank the ship and then hunted down the survivors. And he risked getting caught or killed to do it."
"And when he didn't kill them all on the shore," Rhyme took over the narrative, "he followed them to the city and tried to murder them there. Why on earth would he do that?"
"Well, they were witnesses," Peabody said. "He had to kill them."
"Ah, why? That's the question that nobody's asking." Rhyme asked, "What would it gain him?"
Peabody and Webley from State were silent.
Rhyme continued, "All that the passengers on the ship could do is to testify in one case of human smuggling. But there were already a dozen warrants against him for smuggling around the world. Homicide charges too--look at the Interpol Red Notice. It made no sense to go to all that trouble to murder them just because they were witnesses." He paused a histrionic few seconds. "But killing them makes perfect sense if the passengers were his intended victims."
Rhyme could see two different reactions in their faces. Peabody was perplexed and surprised. In Webley from State's eyes there was a different look. He knew exactly where Rhyme was going.
"'Victims,'" Rhyme continued. "That's a key word. See, my Sachs found a letter when she went for her little swim in the Dragon."
The Ghost, who'd been staring at Sachs, turned slowly toward Rhyme when he heard this.
"A letter?" Peabody asked.
"It said, more or less, here's your money and a list of the victims you'll be taking to America . . . . Are we catching on to the big picture, gentlemen? The letter didn't say 'passengers' or 'immigrants' or 'piglets'--or your own indelicate term, Peabody, 'undocumenteds.' The letter said quote 'victims.' I didn't realize at first when I had the letter translated that that was the exact word the writer used. And the big picture becomes a lot clearer when we look at who those victims were--they were all Chinese dissidents and their families. The Ghost isn't just a snakehead. He's also a professional killer. He was hired to murder them."
"This man is crazy," the Ghost snapped. "He's desperate. I want to leave now."
But Rhyme said, "The Ghost was planning all along to scuttle the Dragon. He was only waiting until the ship was close enough to shore so that he and his bangshou could make it to land safely. But a few things went wrong--we found the ship and sent the Coast Guard in, so he had to act sooner than he'd planned; some of the immigrants escaped. Then the explosive was too powerful and the ship sank before he could get his guns and money and find his assistant."
"That's absurd," muttered Webley from State. "Beijing wouldn't hire anybody to kill dissidents. It's not the 1960s anymore."
"Beijing didn't do it," Rhyme responded, "as I suspect you probably know, Webley. No, we found out who sent the Ghost his instructions and his money. Ling Shui-bian is his name."
The Ghost glanced desperately at the boarding gate.
Rhyme continued, "I sent the Fuzhou police an email with Ling's name and address and told them that I thought he was one of the Ghost's partners. But they sent back a message saying I must be mistaken. His address was a government building in Fuzhou. Ling is the Fujian governor's assistant in charge of trade development."
"What's that mean?" Peabody asked.
"That he's a corrupt warlord," Rhyme snapped. "Isn't it obvious? He and his people're getting millions in kickbacks from businesses all along the southeastern coast of China. He's probably working with the governor, but I don't have any evidence about that. Not yet, anyway."
"Impossible," offered Webley though with much less bluster than he'd displayed earlier.
Rhyme said, "Not at all. Sonny Li told me about Fujian Province. It's always been more independent than the central government likes. It has the most connections with the West and Taiwan--more money too. And the most active dissidents. Beijing is always threatening to crack down on the province, nationalize businesses again and put its own people in power. If that happens, Ling and his boys lose their income stream. So, how to keep Beijing happy? Kill the most vocal dissidents. And what better way to do it than by hiring a snakehead? If they die en route to another country it's their own fault, not the government's."
"And more likely than not," Sachs said, "nobody'd even know that they died. They'd be just one more shipload of the vanished." Nodding at Webley from State, she reminded, "Rhyme?"
"Oh, right. The last piece of the puzzle. Why's the Ghost going free?" He said to Webley, "You're sending him back to keep Ling and his people in Fujian happy. To make sure our business interests aren't affected. Southeast China is the biggest site for U.S. investment in the world."
"That's bullshit," the man snapped in reply.
The Ghost said, "This is ridiculous. It's the lie of a desperate man." Nodding toward Rhyme. "Where's the proof?"
"Proof? Well, we have the letter from Ling. But if you want more . . . Remember, Harold? You told me that other shiploads of the Ghost's immigrants disappeared in the past year or so. I checked the statements from their relatives in the Interpol database. Most of those victims were dissidents from Fujian too."
"That's not true," the Ghost said quickly.
"Then there's the money," Rhyme said, ignoring the snake
head.
"Money?"
"The smuggling fee. When Sachs went for her little paddle in the Atlantic she found 120,000 U.S. dollars and maybe 20,000 worth of old yuan. I invited a friend of mine from the INS over to my place to help me look at the evidence. He--"
"Who?" Peabody asked sharply. Then he understood. "Alan Coe? It was him, wasn't it?"
"A friend. Let's leave it at that." In fact, the friend was Agent Coe, who'd also spent the day stealing classified INS files, which would probably cost him his job, if not earn him a jail sentence. This was the risk that Rhyme had referred to earlier--and that Coe had been only too happy to assume.
"The first thing he noticed was the money. He told me that when immigrants contract with snakeheads they can't pay the down payment in dollars--because there are no dollars in China, not enough to pay for transit to the U.S. anyway. They always pay in yuan. With a shipload of twenty-five or so immigrants, that means Sachs should've found at least a half million in yuan--just for the down payment. So why was there so little Chinese money on board? Because the Ghost charged next to nothing--to make sure that the dissidents on the hit list could afford to make the trip. The Ghost was making his profit from the fee to kill them. The 120,000? Well, that was the down payment from Ling. I checked the serial numbers on some of the bills and, according to the Federal Reserve, that cash was last seen going into the Bank of South China in Singapore. Which happens to be used regularly by Fujianese government ministries."
More rows were boarding. The Ghost was truly desperate now.
Peabody had fallen silent and was considering all this. He seemed to be wavering. But the State Department official was resolute. "He's getting on that plane and that's all there is to it."
Rhyme squinted and cocked his head. "How high are we now on the ladder of evidence, Sachs?"
"How about the C4?"
"Right, the explosive used to blow up the ship. The FBI traced it to a North Korean arms dealer, who regularly sells to--guess who? People's Liberation Army bases in Fujian. The government gave the Ghost the C4." Rhyme closed his eyes for a brief moment. They sprang open. "Then there's the cell phone that Sachs found at the beach . . . . It was a government-issue satellite phone. The network he used was based in Fuzhou."