Douglas Preston - Gideon’s Sword

Immediately Gideon thought back to the dirty X-rays. Maybe Wu had placed the information inside his body. “Wu also had a list of numbers that he’d memorized. What were those?”

She looked at him. “How do you know about the list of numbers?”

For a moment, Gideon held his breath. “Because I followed him from the airport. I saw his cab get rammed by the SUV. I dragged him free. He thought I was Roger Marion, he told me the numbers. I tried to save him. I failed.”

There was a lengthy silence. Finally, the old woman spoke again.

“We don’t know what the numbers mean, either. All he told us was the numbers had to be combined with the thing he was bringing to us. The two had to be put together for the secret to be complete. One without the other wouldn’t work — both were necessary. It was his way of protecting the secret. He was to give them both to Roger.”

“And you did all this for Wu — just on the basis of his assurances, without knowing what it was?

“Dr. Wu was a very advanced Dafa practitioner. His judgment was completely sound.”

He was close — very close, maddeningly close. “How did he describe this secret information? Was it a set of plans, a microchip — what?”

“He referred to it as an object. A thing.”

“Thing?”

“He used the word wù , which means ‘thing, object, solid matter.’ It’s also the Chinese word for ‘physics.’ Not the same word as his name, by the way. It’s pronounced wù , with the lower tone.”

Again Gideon’s thoughts returned to the X-rays of Wu’s lower body. They showed his crushed legs full of bits and pieces of metal and plastic from the accident. He had looked carefully over all those specks and marks — but could he have missed something? Could one of those irregular spots have been the object? He’d been looking for a set of plans, a microchip, a micro-canister. But it might have been something else entirely. Maybe it was a piece of metal.

A piece of metal…

O’Brien had said his physicist friend, Epstein, told him the numbers looked like a metallurgical formula. That was it. That was it.

“You have to understand,” said Madame Chung. “Dr. Wu wasn’t planning to defect to the United States or anything like that. He’s a loyal and faithful citizen of China. But as a scientist, he felt in this case he had a moral imperative. His intention was for us to broadcast this great secret to the entire world, through our servers, in such a way that it could never be hidden again. It was to be a gift, you see — a gift to the world. From us.”

So Mindy was wrong about his motives, Gideon thought. But he had more important concerns at the moment. His mind was racing. Wu’s legs were full of metal, and his body was still in the morgue. Waiting for him, as next of kin, to claim. Good God, all he had to do was go down there and cut it out.

But first he had to get the X-rays and figure which piece of metal to cut out. He needed to visit Tom O’Brien first, and his friend the physicist.

He found Madame Chung staring at him. “Mr. Crew,” she said. “You realize that when you retrieve whatever it is Dr. Wu was bringing us, you’ll have to bring it back to me.”

He stared back at her.

“You do realize that, don’t you? It is an obligation you cannot escape .” And her musical voice cheerfully emphasized these final words as she gave him another bright smile.

Gideon Crew arrived back at the Waldorf around eleven in the evening, slipping in via the staff entrance and avoiding Saint Bart’s, where he feared Nodding Crane might still be waiting with his guitar. Thinking about it on his drive back from New Jersey, he realized that, from the steps of Saint Bart’s, Nodding Crane had a clear view of the windows of both his rooms, as well as both the main hotel entrance and the 51st Street entrance. Gideon couldn’t be sure the man knew of both rooms — but he had to assume he did. Nodding Crane had picked his location well.

Cursing his stupidity, Gideon punched the button for one of the service elevators and rode it up to the floor of his backup room. Once there, he carefully slipped in, not turning on the light in case Nodding Crane was still watching from below. Then again, maybe the man was waiting for him in the room. Gideon paused, listening. For the first time, he wished he hadn’t lost his handgun in the river or, at least, had asked Garza for another.

What unnerved him most about Nodding Crane wasn’t that the man had been tailing him so successfully. No — it was how damn good the man was on Blues guitar. Despite what Jackson had told him, he’d assumed Nodding Crane was a sort of Chinese contract killer, a caricature out of a kung fu movie, an expert in martial arts but unfamiliar with American culture, hobbled by his foreignness and lack of familiarity with the city. Now he realized these assumptions were false.

Gideon shivered. The room was silent, the air still. At last, he moved toward the bed and pulled out the Pelican case from underneath. In the reflected light from the window it looked undisturbed. He dialed the combination and opened it, slid out the manila folder containing Wu’s X-rays and medical report, then closed and locked it again. He removed his coat, slid the folders under his shirt, put his coat back on.

He momentarily thought of his own X-rays and CT scans, then forced the thought away. He would surely fail if he lost his focus now.

A growing hubbub of sirens sounded on the street out front. Gideon sidled up to the window and peered out. Something was going on at Saint Bart’s. Several ambulances and a slew of cop cars had pulled up, blocking the northbound lanes of Park Avenue, and a crowd was growing. The cops were setting up barricades and pushing the crowd back. Nodding Crane and his guitar were nowhere to be seen, and it was likely that, with all the activity, he’d moved off. But he would still be around, watching — Gideon was certain of that.

He slipped out of the room, easing the door shut behind him. The brightly lit hallway was quiet. He had to get up to see Tom O’Brien, and he had to do it in such a way as to make absolutely sure he wasn’t followed. The subway trick was a pretty good one, but Nodding Crane might be ready for it a second time. And he was pretty sure Nodding Crane was wise to his disguises by now.

He gave it some thought. The Waldorf had four exits, one on Park, one on Lex, and two on 51st Street. Nodding Crane could be watching any one of them. He might even have seen Gideon enter the hotel.

Damn. How was he going to get up to Columbia?

He had an idea. The crowd in front of Saint Bart’s just might, ironically enough, be a good place in which to lose a pursuer. He would find his opportunity in the crowd.

He took the elevator downstairs, walked through the lobby, and exited through the main door.

Gideon walked briskly toward the crowd, which was now spilling into Park Avenue, blocking traffic. Amazing how in New York a crowd could develop at any time of the day or night. He glanced about again, but Nodding Crane was nowhere in sight — at least, not in any way that he recognized. He wasn’t surprised; he knew now he was dealing with an exceptionally clever adversary.

He merged into the fringes of the crowd and began forcing his way through. If he could get to the other side fast enough, his pursuer — if there was one — would be forced to do the same. And that would render him visible.

As he reached the middle of the crowd, there was a collective gasp. EMTs had appeared in the door of the church with a stretcher, wheeling it down the handicapped ramp. A body bag lay on it. Somebody had evidently died — and, given the large police presence, it would appear that somebody had been murdered.