James Rollins: The Eye of God: A Sigma Force Novel

Chauvinist bastard . . .

“So you know the woman we seek?” Gray started.

“ Ye, ” Pak answered with a swift nod. He had lit a fresh cigarette and puffed out a stream of smoke, plainly nervous. “Her name is Guan-yin. Though I doubt that is her real name.”

It isn’t, Seichan thought. Or at least it wasn’t.

Her mother’s real name had been Mai Phuong Ly.

A flash of memory suddenly struck her, unbidden, unwelcome at the moment. As a girl, Seichan had been on her belly beside a small garden pond, tracing a finger in the water, trying to lure up a golden carp—then her mother’s face reflected next to her, wavering in the rippled surface, surrounded by a floating scatter of fallen cherry blossoms.

They were her mother’s namesake.

Cherry blossoms.

Seichan blinked, drawing herself fully back to the moment at hand. She was not surprised that her mother had adopted a new name. She had been on the run, needing to keep hidden. And a new name allowed a new life.

Utilizing all of Sigma’s resources, Seichan had discovered the identity of the armed men who had taken her mother. They had been members of the Vietnamese secret police, euphemistically called the Ministry of Public Security. They had learned of her mother’s dalliance with an American diplomat, her father, and of the love that grew from there. They had sought to pry U.S. secrets out of her.

Her mother had been held at a prison outside Ho Chi Minh City—until she escaped during a prison riot a year later. For a short period of time, due to a clerical error, she had been declared dead, killed during that uprising. It was that lucky mistake that gave her enough of a head start to flee Vietnam and vanish into the world.

Had she looked for me? Seichan wondered. Or did she think I was already dead?

Seichan had a thousand unanswered questions.

“Guan-yin,” Pak continued. A faint smile traced his lips, mocking and bitter. “Such a beautiful name certainly did not fit her . . . certainly not when I met her eight years ago.”

“What do you mean?” Gray asked.

“ Guan-yin means goddess of mercy .” Pak lifted his left hand, revealing only four fingers. “This is the quality of her mercy.”

Seichan shifted closer, speaking for the first time. “How did you know her?” she asked coldly.

Pak initially looked ready to ignore her, but then his eyes slightly crinkled. He stared harder at Seichan, possibly truly seeing her for the first time. Suspicion trickled into his gaze.

“You sound . . .” he stammered. “Just then . . . but that’s not possible.”

Gray leaned forward, catching the man’s eye. “This is an expensive hour, Dr. Pak. Like the lady asked . . . how did you know Guan-yin? In what capacity?”

He flattened the lapels of his suit coat, visibly collecting himself. Only then did he speak. “She once ran this very room,” he said with a small nod to indicate the VIP lounge. “As the dragonhead of a gang out of Kowloon, the Duàn zhī Triad.”

Seichan flinched at that name, unable to stop herself.

Gray made a scoffing noise. “So you’re saying Guan-yin was a boss of this Chinese Triad?”

“ Ye, ” he said sharply. “She is the only woman to ever become a dragonhead. To accomplish this, she had to be extremely ruthless. I should have known better than to take a loan from her.”

Pak rubbed the stump of his missing finger.

Gray noted the motion. “She had your finger cut off?”

“ Aniyo, ” he disagreed. “ She did it herself. She came from Kowloon with a hammer and a chisel. The name of her Triad means Broken Twig . It is also her signature means of encouraging the prompt payment of a debt.”

Gray grimaced, clearly picturing that brutal handiwork.

Seichan was having no easier time of it. Her breathing grew harder, trying to balance this act with the mother who had once nursed a broken-winged dove back to health. But she knew the man wasn’t lying.

Gray was less convinced. “And how are we to know that this Triad boss is the woman we came looking for? What proof do you offer? Do you have a photograph of you with her?”

Inside the intelligence inquiry sent out broadly, Sigma had included a picture of her mother, one taken from the records of the Vietnamese prison where she had been incarcerated. They’d also posted possible locations, which unfortunately covered a large swath of Southeast Asia, along with a computer-enhanced image of how she might look now, twenty years later.

Dr. Pak had been the only promising fish to bite on that line.

“A photograph?” The North Korean scientist shook his head. He lit another cigarette, plainly a chain-smoker. “She keeps herself covered in public. Only those high in her Triad have seen her face. If anyone else sees her, they don’t live long enough to speak of it.”

“Then how do you—?”

Pak touched his throat. “The dragon. I saw it when she wielded the hammer . . . dangling from her neck, the silver shining, as merciless as its owner.”

“Like this?” Seichan slipped a finger to her collar and pulled out her own coiled dragon pendant. The intelligence dossier had included a picture of it. Seichan’s charm was a copy of another. The memory of the original remained etched in her bones, often rising up in dreams

. . . of being curled in her mother’s arms on the small cot under an open window , night birds singing , moonlight reflecting off the silver dragon resting at her mother’s throat , shimmering like water with each breath . . .

Hwan Pak had a different memory. He cringed back from her pendant, as if trying to escape the sight.

“There must be many dragon pendants of a similar design,” Gray said. “What you offer is no proof. Only your word about a piece of jewelry you saw eight years ago.”

“If you want real proof—”

Seichan cut him off, standing and tucking the silver dragon away. She motioned for Gray to move aside for a private conversation.

Once they retreated to beyond the baccarat table, she spoke in his ear. Kowalski’s bulk helped shield them further.

“He’s telling the truth,” Seichan said. “We must move beyond this line of questioning and find out where my mother is in Kowloon.”

“Seichan, I know you want to believe him, but let me—”

She gripped his bicep to shut him up. “The name of the Triad. Duàn zhī .”

He went silent, letting her speak, plainly seeing something in her face.

She felt tears rising, coming from a place of happiness and grief, a place where night birds still sang in the jungle.

“The name . . . Broken Twig,” she said. Even speaking it, she felt something break inside her.

He waited, not understanding, but he allowed her the space to explain at her own pace.

“My name,” she said haltingly, feeling suddenly exposed, “the one given to me by my mother . . . the one I abandoned, a necessity to bury my childhood behind me . . . it was Chi .”

A new name allowed a new life .

Gray’s eyes widened. “Your real name is Chi.”

“ Was, ” she still insisted.

That girl had died long ago.

Seichan took a steadying breath. “In Vietnamese, Chi means twig .”

She read the understanding in Gray’s face.

Her mother had named the Triad after her lost daughter.

Before Gray could respond, a sharp coughing sounded from beyond the door—but the noise came from no human throat. Bodies thudded out in the hallway, felled by the barrage of noise-suppressed gunfire.