Part 48 (1/2)

Simbal sighed. ”I'm tired,” he said.

”Hey, don't bulls.h.i.+t me, dude,” the Cuban insisted. ”You were talking to the c.h.i.n.k. I heard you.”

”He was ranting,” Simbal said. He felt as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

”Bulls.h.i.+t!”

”d.a.m.n-f.u.c.king-right!” Simbal flared. He stood up. ”You let me handle Bennett.”

”f.u.c.k that!”

”You've got no choice. It's out of your hands now.”

”You think so?”

Something in his tone sent a warning bell through Simbal. He remembered the feeling he had tried to interpret from the Cuban's words while they were at the marina.

Abruptly, he began to walk across the room. When he got to the front door, the Cuban said, ”Where you going, dude?”

”See you around sometime, Martine.”

Gato de Rosa jumped up. ”Hey, hey, you can't do that. Hey, dude!”

Simbal turned around. ”What are you going to do, shadow me?” He gave a ghostly smile. ”You know better than that.”

There was silence for a time. They stared at each other.

”Hey, man, this suite's gonna begin stinking like a tuna boat any minute.”

”You going to tell me who it was you called from the marina, Martine?”

”I told you, dude.”

”Yeah. Right.”

”Oh, s.h.i.+t.” Gato de Rosa came across the room. ”He told me to keep an eye on you. He told me to go where you went. I don't think he trusts you, dude.”

”Who's that?” But he already knew.

”Max,” the Cuban said. ”It was Max.”

Max Threnody, Simbal thought. First he got to Monica and now the Cuban. But Gato de Rosa was a SNIT and Max was the head of the DEA. Just what the h.e.l.l is Max up to? Simbal wondered.

”You tell Max that if he wants me shadowed he can G.o.dd.a.m.ned do it himself. I know where Bennett's off to and that's where I'm going.” With each word getting closer to the Cuban.

”You're going to have company, then, hombre.”

”Bulls.h.i.+t,” Simbal said. Moving very fast he went beneath Gato de Rosa's suit jacket. Pulled out the tiny snub-nosed .22. ”A woman'sweapon,” he said, ”but you know better than I do the damage it can do this close in.”

”Hey, dude, hey. You crazy?”

”Nothing personal, Martine.” Simbal leveled the .22. ”Get over to the couch.”

”Hey, for Christ's sake, man, lighten up, uh?”

”Just do as I say,” Simbal said low in his throat.

He used the belt from Yi's silk robe to tie the Cuban's hands behind his back. ”I don't mind letting you walk around,” he said. ”The police will be here before you can get out of that. I'll be long gone by then.”

”Gone where, dude? Where you off to?” The Cuban's eyes had turned the color of coffee.

Simbal took the bullets out of the .22 and threw them at Gato de Rosa's feet. ”Tell Max when he gets here.” Tossed the gun after them. ”Tell him I've gone to the Shan.”

Qi lin slept.

”You see how marvelous the human brain is.” Huaishan Han stared down at the supine form with such hunger in his eyes that Chen Ju was momentarily appalled. ”You see how fantastically complex a machine it is.” Huaishan Han's odd, bowed gait was exaggerated by the bare-bulb lighting, turning him into some truly grotesque figure. ”Colonel Hu knew and appreciated that.”

Chen Ju grunted. ”Colonel Hu is dead.”

Huaishan Han smiled and again Chen Ju felt a little thrill go through him. That smile was the kind used by those more than a bit mad. ”Always the pragmatist, my friend, eh?” Han nodded. ”But I divine your message.” His hand moved out, stroked Qi lin's unlined brow. ”Yes. She killed Colonel Hu, and she escaped his compound. A heavily fortified military complex, I might add.”

”It seems to me,” Chen Ju said, ”that whatever it was Hu did to her, didn't take.”

”Is that so?” Huaishan Han gave off that smile again, as a lambent sun throws off heat. ”The war in Cambodia had marked Colonel Hu irrevocably. He was a master at his trade, true enough. But he drank himself into a stupor almost every night. The men had begun to question his commands, his leaders.h.i.+p.

”You know what that meant. His unit was hand-picked to accept orders unthinkingly. That was essential, especially if they were going to march into Kam Sang, disarm the members of the army guardingthe installation, imprison everyone withinincluding members of the intelligence serviceand take what we require.”

Huaishan Han sighed. ”In short, my friend, Colonel Hu had become a liability.” He reached out, stroked Qi lin's brow once again. ”My precious lizi, my plum did just as I asked. Do you think it was joss that brought her within sight of General Kuo's soldiers? No, no. She was programmed for all of this. To kill Hu, to escape and come here.”

Chen Ju looked doubtful. ”But how?”

”With this.” Huaishan Han produced a bottle of alcohol, a wad of cotton. He took Qi lin's arm and turned it so that the inside of her elbow was facing him. Using the cotton, he swabbed down an area of her skin. In a moment, he had a syringe in his hand. He uncapped it, squeezed a bit of the clear fluid out its tip. Then he inverted it, plunged it into Qi lin's vein. ”A steady supply of this drug. It was Hu's own discovery. It works directly on the central cortex, inhibiting ego and superego. In effect, it stimulates the primitive emotions. Hate, fear, desire become matters of life and death. In this unbalanced state, the subject is akin to a piece of clay, ready to be molded by the artisan's fine hand.” He put the materials back in his pocket.

”And she knows nothing of this?”

”There is a consciousness-blocker,” Huaishan Han said. ”She is mine from the inside out. Mine forever. By coming here, by escaping, she proved her skills to me. Now she has a most difficult task before her.”

Huaishan Han looked up at Chen Ju. ”Many before her have tried to kill Jake Maroc s.h.i.+. All have failed. Joss, eh? But I have found that jossis like the tide of the ocean. It flows, it ebbs. You see?”

I want to control the world, Chen Ju thought, and this old, broken man is concerned with nothing more than warping a young girl's mind. It is shameful. He seeks only personal revenge, a petty and foolish undertaking at best. The fall down the well did more than disfigure his body, it scarred his mind as well. Once he would have understood the grand design that I am weaving; once he would have joined me.

Chen Ju shook his head. Perhaps his many years in the Shan had changed him subtly. There wealth meant nothingwarlords strolled their compounds with handfuls of rubies, sapphires, Imperial jade in their pockets. They guided the distribution of the tears of the poppy and thereby reaped enormous profits. But their power was over people. Material wealth in the Shan was secondary. The reason that the Americans and the Russians had been locked, out of the Shan was that they had no mastery over the people. Their CIA and KGB, respectively, had invaded the Shan using basically the same methodology: handing out money to everyone they met.

The Shan laughed at the Westerners; their warlords sneered at them and turned them away. Power was distribution. Control of the farmers who grew their fields of poppies; control of the armies who guarded the factories where the raw opium was refined, and guided the mule trains down the steep sides of the Shan to where greedy wholesalers waited.

And if Chen Ju had learned anything during his long exile from Hong Kong it was this: that true power resided in man's mastery over his fellow man. Those who wielded only wealth possessed an illusion.

Huaishan Han, so long deprived of true power, had filled his villa with the acc.u.mulated archaeological wealth of the centuries. But what meaning did it have? When he died, that wealth would be reapportioned, broken up, dispersed like so much sand. What would be left? Nothing. Nothing at all to mark his pa.s.sing.

But Chen Ju knew that what he himself had embarked upon would surely change the world for all time. Like the pharaoh Cheops he was building an eternal monument to mark his brief time upon the earth.