Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Among the Killers of Men

“My responsibility,” said Ivory, more to himself than to his coworker.

“Stop the traffic and search these boats.”

The junk was captained by an old-school river rat named Lao, whose grin revealed he had had all his teeth replaced with steel substitutes decades ago. He was the first to be allowed to leave the supply berth at the Floating Feast Superior Restaurant, since all he carried was a hold full of tuna that could not be delayed, for spoilage.

When he put a little distance between himself and the Floating Feast, he saw the tuna piled in his hold begin to move.

Gradually, as though surfacing through a muck of cloudy fish jelly, Gabriel and Qingzhao materialized amidst the odiferous cargo. They had jumped into the belly of the empty hold and Qingzhao had used the cleaver to cut the net holding the fish overhead, burying them summarily.

The smell was…memorable.

Lao extended a courtly hand to help Qingzhao up to the deck first. He jabbered at her in reedy, mutated Mandarin.

“What did he say?” said Gabriel.

“He thanks us for the marvelous new knife,” said Qingzhao, indicating the cleaver, which Lao was turning over in his hands like a rare jewel.

His smile matched the metal cutting edge.

Gabriel wanted to say something ironic, tough and competent. But he raised one hand to his temple instead, where the bullet had stung him earlier and where he now was suddenly conscious of wetness welling. Instead of fish oil or the dank, frigid bilge water of the hold, his fingertips were smeared, he saw, with blood. The last thing he thought before he lost consciousness was: Well, I guess the whole lecture thing is pretty much blown.

Chapter 6

When Gabriel opened his eyes, he was staring at a parked motorcycle.

Which was odd, because he seemed to be indoors.

A series of smells hit his nose—smoke, burning wood, incense, packed dirt, pine-scented air, charred paper, and beneath all that a subtle tang of gasoline, gun oil and engine lubricant.

Most enticing of all was the smell of coffee.

The bike appeared to be a vintage German BMW R-71 from 1938. Four-stroke, 750cc, with a sidecar, just like dozens seen in every World War II movie ever made. This one looked newer, and was more likely one of the painstaking Chinese rebuilds called Changjiangs, very popular with motorcycle clubs in this part of the world.

He heard light rain pattering down into what sounded like a Japanese water garden.

He tried to rise and found he was lying on a rawhewn wooden pallet and facing a huge rope candle on a rusted bronze stand. The candle was fashioned on the same principle as the gigantic coils of incense Gabriel had seen in assorted Eastern houses of worship. It could burn for hundreds of hours if fed through the windproof receiver judiciously.

Wick-smoke twisted ceilingward and the sudden light of the flame made his head throb. The chamber was roughly circular, the walls formed of ancient cut stone blocks.

There was a dressing on his head. He touched it gingerly. He didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore, which was nice. He figured the bullet must’ve come closer than he’d realized, must have hit him a glancing blow, perhaps scoring a neat groove in his thick skull. He’d made it a while on adrenaline alone, but when that had run out…

He tried to stand up and experienced whirling vertigo. At first he thought it was from his injury but a moment later he realized that the floor of the room actually was slanted, and a moment after that he realized it was necessary to compensate for the incline of the building itself. The effect was disorienting, though he suddenly knew where he was: in one of the leaning pagodas outside Shanghai.

Through a small alcove he caught sight of the temple ruins outside.

He was halfway up a mountainside, inside snaggletoothed fortifications choked by wild foliage. The leaning pagoda jutted crookedly toward the stars, like Pisa.

Several centuries ago temples like this had served as waystations for travelers as well as locations for worship and ritual. They generally consisted of three sequential courtyards, each with its own shrine. He made his way through an overgrown courtyard to the nearest of the shrine rooms. It was so large Gabriel could see clusters of bird nests near the holes in the domed ceiling. It was mustier in here where the damp had gotten through to the limestone. Vines had claimed the walls.

Gabriel saw Qingzhao toss a packet of ceremonial money into the flames licking up from an iron urn. Greasy smoke corkscrewed into the air.

He cleared his throat and Qingzhao’s free hand shot up holding a gun whose barrel looked a foot long. Gabriel tried not to react. Turning her head his way, Qingzhao recognized him and gestured idly toward a small cookstove—pointing with the gun, of course.

“Coffee. All Americans like coffee,” she said, her voice having an almost African lilt concealed within it.

She saw him look at the money she was burning. “You wonder why I would burn—”

“For the dead to use in the next world,” said Gabriel. “Don’t burn enough, and you’re considered cheap. That’s the superstition, anyway. How much have you burned?”

“You can never burn enough.”

She offered him a tin cup of strong coffee that smelled just the way Nirvana is supposed to.

Gabriel’s eyes had adjusted to the sputtering light long enough for him to now make out a mural of a frothing demon on the far wall, obscured by wear and time and the overgrowth of underbrush. He touched the bandage on his head while Qingzhao, apparently, read his mind.

“You are embarrassed,” she said. “You are a strong American man, it is your job to save the girl, and here I have saved you instead.” She almost smiled. Almost. “I will not tell anyone and thus embarrass you further.”

Gabriel was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Why did you bring me with you?”

“I think you and I wish to kill the same man.”

“Sorry to say, lady, you’ve got that wrong. I’m not here to kill anybody.”

She stopped what she was doing and regarded him.

“I came here to find someone in trouble who needed help,” he said. “She jumped the gun and came here sloppy. Emotions on high-burn, full up with revenge. She didn’t even have a plan worthy of the name.”

“The blonde woman at the Zongchang.”

Gabriel nodded. “Now she did want to kill the same man you do—she believed Cheung murdered her sister in New York City, or had her murdered.”

“I sensed we had a connection,” Qingzhao said quietly.

“Wanting to kill Cheung? I think you’ve probably got that in common with quite a few people.”

“No. Something deeper. This woman wished to avenge her sister, who has been murdered.” She tossed some more money into the fire. “Cheung murdered me, as well.”

In a high-security chamber with walls of pumice situated atop the Peace Hotel, Cheung conducted his own rituals in the incense-choked, churchlike ambience.

Seated behind an artful, almost ephemeral desktop of hewn onyx, Cheung was working with a leather rollup of antique carving tools, delicately carving a detailed cherrywood casket about ten inches long.

Past the altarlike desk, past the bank of flat-screen monitors, several of his operatives worked damage control by phone, but none would proffer information or news, good or bad, until Cheung addressed them directly.

Finally, Cheung looked up and lit a long, poisonous-looking cigarette.

“Mr. Fleetwood,” he said.

Fleetwood, a rangy Anglo wearing octagonal glasses wired around his completely shaved head, terminated the call on his headset.

“How much will last night cost us?” said Cheung, meaning the free-for-all at the Zongchang, including janitorial services.