Douglas Preston - Gideon’s Sword

Instant chaos. Now he saw Jackson’s strategy. He fired two more shots, adding to the panic: more doors were flung open, screams, people climbing over cars, shrieking, running like mad in every direction.

The blue suits rose and tried to press their way forward against the fleeing crowd, but it was like fighting an incoming tide. Gideon fired again, high, this time in all directions, boom boom boom boom! The panic spread and the suits once again dove for cover. The crowd surged outward, triggering panic in more distant cars, which emptied in turn, in ever-expanding waves. He heard Jackson firing the S&W somewhere behind, the snub-nosed revolver louder than his.32. At the noise, part of the fleeing crowd reversed direction in a panic, people colliding into one another, scrambling under cars. Gideon heard windows breaking, horns blaring. He tried to locate the blue suits but they had completely vanished in the surging mob, pinned down or maybe even trampled.

Suddenly the door was pulled open and he swung around to see Jackson. She passed the back of one hand across her forehead and holstered her weapon. “Time to split.”

He jumped out and they ran with the mob, heading back out the sunken approach. It was like an infection, the mob steadily growing as people continued to abandon their cars in a spreading pool of frenzy. It appeared that people were assuming a terrorist attack.

Swept along by the mob, they emerged from the sunken roadway. The crowd spilled over a cement barrier wall, tumbling down a short embankment and onto Hung Hing Road, where they poured in a screaming mass northward into the Hong Kong Yacht Club. The crowd instantly overwhelmed two men in a pillbox at a barrier gate, knocked it down, and scattered down the gracious, tree-lined avenue into the club grounds.

“Stay with me.” Jackson split off from the main throng and doubled back down a service road, crossed a set of railroad tracks, and climbed over a chain-link fence. They ended up leaving the crowds behind, running along a promenade overlooking Victoria Harbour. The promenade curved around to a paved asphalt jetty that stood out into the harbor. She had been yelling into her cell phone for a while and now she snapped it shut.

“Out there.” She ran down the broad tarmac jetty.

“It’s a dead end!” he cried. But then he saw, ahead, a huge yellow H stenciled on the tarmac, inside a yellow circle. He looked up and, on cue, heard the sound of a chopper, coming in low and fast. It swung around the jetty, decelerated, then settled, rotors slowing. They ran toward it as a door opened. No sooner had they jumped in than it took off again, sweeping across the harbor.

Mindy Jackson settled into a jumpseat, buckled her seat belt, and turned to him. She eased a notebook out of her pocket, along with a pen. “I just saved your ass. Now you’re going to tell me the numbers. And no more bullshit.”

He told her the numbers.

They boarded the first commercial plane out, an Emirates flight to Dubai, using their diplomatic stamps to bypass passport control. They arrived in Dubai about nine o’clock local time. Their connecting flight to New York wasn’t until morning.

“Bur Dubai Hotel is rather nice,” Mindy Jackson said as they passed through customs and headed for the taxi queue. “You owe me a stiff one.”

He spread his hands. “Drink, or…?”

She colored. “Drink. A stiff drink . What a mind you have.”

They got into a cab. “The Bur Dubai,” she told the driver, then turned to Gideon. “The Cooz Bar is a jazz-and-cigar kind of place. Red velvet chairs, leopardskin bar stools, lots of blond wood.”

“Funny, I didn’t take you for a cigar smoker.”

After crawling through nighttime traffic, the cab finally pulled up in front of the hotel, two curved, ultramodern black-and-white buildings intersecting each other. They went straight to the bar without checking in, just in time to catch the second set.

As they were seated, the big band began to play. Predictably, the opening tune was the Ellington number “Caravan.” Gideon listened; they weren’t half bad. The waiter came over.

“I’ll have an Absolut martini,” Jackson said, “dry and dirty, with two olives. And,” she went on, eyeing the cigar list, “bring me a Bolívar Coronas Gigantes.”

Gideon ordered a beer, going light after his overindulgence the night before. The waiter returned with the drinks and the cigar.

“You going to smoke that?” Gideon asked, eyeing the torpedo-shaped aluminum tube.

“No, you are. I like watching a man smoke a cigar.”

Giving in to his baser instincts, Gideon removed the cigar, ran it under his nose. It was very fine. He cut off the end with the supplied trimmer and lit it.

Jackson eyed him sideways. “Like I said. You look good with a cigar.”

“Let’s just hope I don’t get cancer and they have to cut my lips off.”

“Such nice lips, too.” She sipped her drink, still looking at him. “You know, I’ve never seen anyone with quite your looks. Jet black hair, bright blue eyes.”

“Black Irish. Except I’m not Irish.”

“I’ll bet you sunburn easily.”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Here, so far from home, Jackson seemed like a different person. “You have any idea what those numbers mean?” he asked her.

“Not yet. I’ve already phoned them in.”

“I’d like to know if they find anything.”

Jackson remained silent. The band slid into another Ellington classic, “Mood Indigo.”

Having given her the numbers, Gideon felt he could push just a little harder. “So tell me more about this Nodding Crane character. He sounds like something out of a Bond movie.”

“In a way he is. A bred assassin. We know very little about him — comes from the Chinese far west, of Mongolian extraction, got more than a little Genghis Khan in him. He was raised — so we hear — in a special training unit that immersed him in American culture. Employed by the 810 Office, apparently.”

“The 810 Office?”

She looked at him strangely. “For an operative, even a private one, you’re unusually ignorant.”

“I’m a new hire.”

“The 810 Office is the Chinese version of the Gestapo or the KGB, only smaller and more focused. It’s under the personal control of a few top Communist Party officials. Nodding Crane is one of their best men, and it appears he’s been chemically and hormonally pumped up. He’s trained to the max, but he’s not the crude killing machine you might think. He’s intelligent and, like I said, steeped in American pop culture. I saw one report that says he plays bottleneck guitar. Blues.”

“Seems hard to believe. But if he’s so good, why did he fuck up with Wu?”

“Fuck up? His orders were to kill Wu and escape. And that’s exactly what he did. The collateral damage was of no consequence — to him.”

“But he didn’t get the plans.”

“He didn’t expect to — not then. That’s phase two. He’s working on that now.”

“Why’s he after me?”

“Come on, Gideon. There are half a dozen witnesses who saw you writing down those numbers. He doesn’t need the numbers — his job is to make sure anyone who knows them is dead.”

Gideon shook his head, took a small puff from the cigar. “If he’s that good, I’d be dead already.”

“You’ve been awfully clever so far. Or maybe it’s dumb luck. Thing is, you’re unpredictable. Going to Hong Kong — that’s the last move anyone would have expected.”

“You expected it.”

“Not at all. There’s a general alert on you at the airports, your exit was flagged. When you return to the States, Nodding Crane’ll be waiting for you. I doubt you’ll survive.” She smiled and fished an olive out of the glass, lobbed it into her mouth.