Jeffery Deaver - The Stone Monkey

The lawyer nodded.

"Then there are the two families I need to find." He didn't think it wise to describe them as people he was trying to kill, even in the absence of listening devices, so he said simply, "The Wus and the Changs. From the Dragon. They might be in INS detention somewhere but maybe not."

"What are you -?"

"You don't need to ask questions like that."

The slim man fell silent. Then he considered. "When do you need this information?"

The Ghost wasn't sure exactly what awaited him in China. He guessed that he would be back in one of his luxury apartments in three months but it could be less. "As soon as possible. You will keep monitoring them and if the addresses change you will leave a message with my people in Fuzhou."

"Yes. Of course."

Then the Ghost realized that he was tired. He lived for combat, he lived to play deadly games like this. He lived to win. But, my, how tired you got when you broke cauldrons and sank boats, when you simply did not accept defeat. Now he needed rest. His qi sorely needed to be replenished.

He dismissed his lawyer then lay back on the cot in the antiseptically clean, square cell, the room reminding him of a Chinese funeral parlor because the walls were blue and white. The Ghost closed his eyes and pictured Yindao.

Lying in a room, a warehouse, a garage, which had been arranged by a feng shui artist in the opposite manner of most practitioners: the nature of his fantasy room would maximize anger and evil and pain. The art of wind and water can do this too, the Ghost believed.

Yin and yang, opposites in harmony.

The supple woman tied down on the solid floor.

Her fair skin in darkness.

Hard and soft…

Pleasure and agony.

Yindao…

The thought of her would get him through the difficult coming weeks. He closed his eyes.

"We've had our differences, Alan," Rhyme said.

"I guess." INS agent Coe was cautious. He sat in Rhyme's bedroom, in one of the uncomfortable wicker chairs that the criminalist had furnished the room with in hopes that it would discourage visitors from staying for long periods of time. Coe was suspicious about the invitation but Rhyme didn't want there to be any chance of someone's overhearing them. This had to be a completely private conversation.

"You heard about the Ghost's release?"

"Of course I heard about the Ghost," the man muttered angrily.

Rhyme asked, "Tell me, what's your real interest in the case. No bullshit."

Coe hesitated and then said, "The informant of mine he killed. That's it."

"I said no bullshit. There's more to it, isn't there?"

Coe finally said, "Yeah, there's more."

"What?"

"The woman who was the informant, Julia? We were… We were lovers."

Rhyme carefully scanned the agent's face. Although he was a firm believer in the overarching value of hard evidence he wasn't wholly skeptical to messages in faces and eyes. He saw pain, he saw sorrow.

After a difficult moment the agent said, "She died because of me. We should've been more careful. We went out in public some. We went to Xiamen, this tourist city south of Fuzhou. There're lots of Western tourists there and I thought we wouldn't be recognized. But I think maybe we were." There were tears in his eyes now. "I never had her do anything dangerous. Just glance at scheduling calendars from time to time. She never wore a wire, never broke into any offices. But I should've known the Ghost. Nobody could get away with even the slightest betrayal."

I am coming into town on bus, I'm saying. I saw crow on road picking at food. Another crow tried steal it and the first crow not just scare other away – he chase and try to peck eyes out. Not leave thief alone.

"The Ghost got her," Coe said. "She left two daughters behind."

"That's what you were doing overseas during the time you took off?"

He nodded. "Looking for Julia. But then I gave up on that and spent my time trying to get the children placed in a Catholic home. They were girls – and you know how tough a time orphaned girl babies have over there."

Rhyme said nothing at first though he was thinking back to an incident in his own life that was similar to Coe's tragedy. A woman he'd grown close to before the accident, a lover. She was a cop too, a crime scene expert. And she was dead because he'd ordered her into a booby-trapped scene. The bomb had killed her instantly.

"Did it work?" the criminalist asked. "With the girls?"

"No. The state took them and I never saw them again." He looked up and wiped his eyes. "So that's why I go on and on about undocumenteds. As long as people pay fifty thousand bucks for an illegal trip to America we're going to have snakeheads like the Ghost killing anybody who gets in their way."

Rhyme wheeled closer to Coe. "How badly do you want to stop him?" he whispered.

"The Ghost? With my whole soul."

That question had been easy. Rhyme now asked the hard one. "What are you willing to risk to do it?"

But there was no hesitation as the agent said, "Everything."

"There may be a problem," said the man's voice through the phone.

Sitting in the middle row of a large INS van en route to Kennedy Airport, sweating Harold Peabody nodded as if the caller could see him.

He didn't need problems, not with this case. "Problem. I see. Go ahead."

The man beside Peabody stirred at these words, the quiet man in the navy-blue suit, Webley, who worked for the State Department and who'd made Peabody 's life unrefined hell since he'd flown in from Washington the afternoon of the day the Fuzhou Dragon sank. Webley turned his head toward Peabody but remained stony-faced, a skill he was extremely good at.

"Alan Coe disappeared," said the caller, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Manhattan office. "We had a report that he was talking to Rhyme. Then he vanished again."

"Okay." Peabody tried to figure out what this meant.

Behind Peabody and Webley were two armed INS agents on either side of the Ghost, whose handcuffs kept clinking as he sipped his Starbucks coffee. The snakehead, at least, seemed untroubled by the talk of problems. "Keep going," Peabody said into the phone.

"We were keeping an eye on Coe, like you said. 'Cause we weren't sure if he'd try to do harm to the subject."

Do harm to the subject… What a fucked-up way to talk, Peabody thought.

"And?"

"Well, we can't find him. Or Rhyme either."

"He's in a wheelchair. How hard is it to keep track of him?" Doughy Peabody was drenched. The storm had passed and, though the skies were still overcast, the temperature was in the high 80s. And the government van had government air-conditioning.

"There was no surveillance order," the ASAC reminded calmly. "We had to handle it… informally." His equanimity, Peabody realized, put the FBI agent in control of the situation and he reminded himself to try to gin up some more power.

Bureaucracy was such a bitch.

"What's your situational assessment?" Peabody asked. Thinking: How's that for jargon, you asshole?

"You know Coe's had a top-of-the-deck priority to get the Ghost himself."

"True. And?"

"Rhymes the best forensic detective cop in the country. We've been sniffing the thought that he and Coe're planning to take out the Ghost."

How do you sniff a thought? Peabody wondered. "How do you mean?"

"With Rhyme's grip on forensics they might've come up with some way to make it impossible to convict Coe. Manipulate the evidence somehow."

"What?" Peabody scoffed. "Ridiculous. Rhyme wouldn't do that."

These words now brought some emotion to Webley. He frowned.