Part 44 (1/2)

He took a moment to breathe deep, to drown his emotions in a void of nothingness, to forget his rage, his fear, his friend, his need for revenge, to forget even himself. He became nothing so that he would be all. He was not angry, not calm. He rose silently to his feet and stepped through the door, sank down on one knee behind a table and drew his first shaft.

The quiet, a.s.sured words of Is.h.i.+da, his ros.h.i.+, filled his mind like the somnolent tolling of a great bell.

”Be simultaneously the aimer and the aimed, the hitter and hit. Be a full vessel waiting to be emptied. Loose your burden when the moment is right, without thinking or direction, and in that manner know the Way.”

He stared without seeing, forgetting whether his targets were men or bales of hay, loosed his first shaft, dropped his hand to the quiver at his belt, took out his next arrow, nocked, lifted the bow, and drew the string while the first shaft was still on its way.

The first arrow hit while he was s.h.i.+fting his aim to take in the third target. They realized they were being attacked by the time the second arrow had struck and the fourth was released. By then it was too late.

He had chosen the order of his targets before becoming submerged in the void. The first was the man guarding the hostages with the drawn gun. The shaft struck him in the back, high on the left side. It skewered his heart, sliced through one lung, and burst out half a foot from his chest. The impact hurled him forward, astonished, into the arms of a waiter. They both stared at the b.l.o.o.d.y aluminum shaft protruding from his chest. The gunman opened his mouth to swear or pray, but blood gushed forth, drowning his words. He slumped forward, his legs gone rubbery, and the waiter dropped him.

The two who held Minh released him. He slumped to the floor as they reached for the weapons at their belts. One had his hand pinned to his stomach before he could draw; the other was nailed to the wall. He dropped his pistol and clutched at the shaft pinning him like an insect staked to a drying-board. The last, the one who had been questioning Minh, whirled around and was struck in the side. The arrow angled upward, slipped between his ribs, pierced his heart, and punched upward through his right shoulder.

Nine seconds had elapsed. The sudden silence was broken only by the pained weeping of the man nailed to the wall.

Brennan crossed the room in a dozen strides. The hostages were still too stunned to move. Two of the thugs were dead. Brennan took no pleasure in their deaths, as he took no pleasure in killing deer to provide meat for his table. It was just something that had to be done. Neither did he waste his pity on them.

The one who was gutshot was curled up on the floor, unconscious and in shock. The other, pinned to the wall by the shaft that had pierced his chest, was still alert. Fear twisted his face and when he looked into Brennan's eyes his sobbing grew to a wail.

Brennan stared at him without remorse. He drew a shaft from his quiver. The man started to babble. Brennan slashed out. The broadhead cut the man's throat as easily as if it were a razor. Brennan dispa.s.sionately stepped aside from the sudden spurt of blood, slipped the arrow back into the quiver, and knelt down by Minh.

He was badly hurt. All his limbs were broken-it must have been agonizing to have been held up the way he was-and internal damage must have been ma.s.sive. His breathing was shallow and shuddering. His eyes were swollen shut. They probably wouldn't have focused even if he could have opened them.

”ong la ai?” he breathed at Brennan's gentle, probing touch. Who are you?

”Brennan.”

Minh smiled a ghastly smile. Blood bubbled on his lips and gleamed on his teeth.

”I knew you would come, Captain.”

”Don't speak. We have to get help-”

Minh shook his head. The effort cost him. He coughed and grimaced in pain.

”No. I am dying. I must tell you. It is Kien. This proves it. They wanted to know if I told anyone, but I would say nothing. They don't know of you.”

”They will,” Brennan promised.

Minh coughed again.

”I had hoped to help. Like the old days. Like the old days.” His mind wandered for a moment and Brennan looked up.

”Call an ambulance,” he ordered. ”And the police. Tell them there's three more on the street in front. Move.”

One of the waiters leaped to follow his orders while the others watched in mute incomprehension.

”Help you,” Minh repeated, ”help you.” He fell silent for a moment and then seemed to make a supreme effort to speak rationally and clearly. ”You must listen. Scar has kidnapped Mai. I was following him, trying to get a lead to where he had taken Mai, when I saw him and Kien together in the back of a limousine. Go to Chrysalis, Crystal Palace. She might know where he's taken her. I couldn't . . . find . . . out.” His last sentence was interrupted by b.l.o.o.d.y fits of coughing.

”Why did they take her?” Brennan asked gently.

”For her hands. Her b.l.o.o.d.y hands.”

Brennan wiped the beads of sweat from Minh's forehead.

”Rest easy now,” he said.

But Minh didn't listen. He rose up, clutching Brennan's arm.

”Find Mai. Help. Her.”

He settled back, sighed. Blood bubbled on his lips.

”Toi met,” he said. I am tired.

Brennan clenched his jaw against the ache and answered softly in Vietnamese.

”Rest, then.”

Minh nodded and died.

Brennan let him down gently and sat back on his heels, blinking rapidly. Not another one, he said to himself. Not another death. It was another thing Kien had to answer for.

He stood, looked around, and saw nothing but fear on the faces of the people he had rescued. There was no sense in waiting. The police would only ask awkward questions. Like his name. There were plenty of people who would like to know that Daniel Brennan was still alive and back in the United States, Kien only one among them.

He had to leave before the police arrived. He had to follow the slim lead that Minh had left him. Chrysalis. Crystal Palace.

But he stopped, turned to the freed hostages.

”I need a pen,” he said.

One of the waiters had a felt-tip marker that he wordlessly handed to Brennan. He paused for a moment. He wanted Kien to wake up at night in a cold sweat, thinking, wondering. It wouldn't get to him right away, but, with enough messages, enough dead agents, it eventually would.

He scrawled a message next to the man nailed to the wall by his arrow. It said: ”I'm coming for you, Kien.” He stopped before signing it. His name wouldn't do. It would take the fear of the unknown from his attacks and give Kien, his agents, and his government contacts too concrete a clue to follow. He smiled as sudden inspiration struck him.

The code name of his last mission in Vietnam, when Kien had betrayed him and his unit into the hands of the North Vietnamese, had been Operation Yeoman. That name would make Kien think. He might suspect that it was Brennan who stood behind the name, but he wouldn't know for sure. It would gnaw at him in the night and salt his dreams with memories of deeds he'd thought long buried. It was also an appropriate name in a grimly ironic way. It suited him well.

He signed the short message Yeoman Yeoman and then, in a burst of final inspiration, drew a small ace of spades, the Vietnamese symbol of death and ill-fortune, and colored it in. The Vietnamese waiters and kitchen help muttered to themselves at the sight of the mark, and the waiter from whom Brennan had borrowed the pen refused to take it back with quick, birdlike shakes of his head. and then, in a burst of final inspiration, drew a small ace of spades, the Vietnamese symbol of death and ill-fortune, and colored it in. The Vietnamese waiters and kitchen help muttered to themselves at the sight of the mark, and the waiter from whom Brennan had borrowed the pen refused to take it back with quick, birdlike shakes of his head.

”Suit yourself,” Brennan said. ”How do I get to the Crystal Palace?”

One of them stammered directions and Brennan went back out through the kitchen, into the dark alley. He disa.s.sembled his bow, slipped it back into its case, and was gone before the police arrived. Still wearing his mask, he kept to the alleys and dark streets, pa.s.sing other phantom figures in the darkness. Some watched him, some were absorbed in their own doings. None tried to stop him.

The Crystal Palace, on Henry, was part of a block-long three-story rowhouse. About half the row had been destroyed in the Great Jokertown Riot of 1976 and had never been rebuilt. Some of the debris had been cleared away, some remained in great piles sitting next to tottering walls. As Brennan pa.s.sed he saw eyes, whether human or animal he couldn't tell, gleaming out from cracks and crevices within the piles of wreckage. He wasn't tempted to investigate. He went far- ther down the street to where the rowhouse was still intact, up the short stone staircase under a canopied entrance, through a small antechamber, and found himself in the main taproom of the Crystal Palace.

It was dark, crowded, and smoky. There was an occasional obvious joker, like the short, blubbery, tusked fellow peddling newspapers by the door and the bicephalic singer on the small stage managing some nice harmony on a Cole Porter tune. Some were normal enough until one looked close. Brennan noticed one man, normal, handsome even, except that he lacked a nose and mouth and had instead a long, curled proboscis that he extended like a straw into his drink as Brennan watched. Some wore costumes that called attention to their strangeness, as if to proclaim their infection in a defiant manner. Some wore masks to hide their deformities, although some who wore masks were naturals, or nats, in joker slang.

”You a salesman?”

It took Brennan a moment to realize that the question was directed at him. He looked over to the end of the long wooden bar where a man sat on a high stool, swinging his short, stubby legs well clear of the floor. He was a dwarf, about four feet tall and four feet wide. His neck was as tall as a can of tuna fish and as thick as a man's thigh. He looked as solid and expressionless as a slab of marble.