Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Among the Killers of Men

“No, you’re not! You’re—”

“When your time comes,” she added curtly, “I’ll win against you.”

Chapter 14

“Jin Huáng, this is your rest period,” said Ivory.

Mitch hung her head and shuffled away.

“Await me,” Ivory said to her back. She stopped walking. Then started up again.

“You’ve drugged her into some kind of…robot,” Gabriel said from the cage.

“A preparation from Mr. Cheung’s resident mystic,” said Ivory. “It subverts the will.”

“I’ll say.”

Ivory unpocketed a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Gabriel.

“No thanks,” said Gabriel. “I never got to finish my drink.”

“We of course had your identity the moment you entered the Zongchang casino,” said Ivory matter-of-factly, not even looking at Gabriel. “I suspected some connection between you and this woman. The cameras confirmed it when you took them both into the river.”

“Well, good for you,” said Gabriel. “I gather this is the part where I’m just supposed to listen to your brilliant strategy and not ask you why the hell you have me locked up in a cage.”

“Unfortunately for you, you have been tricked into consort with the Nameless One,” said Ivory. “Mr. Cheung is very protective of his interests, and disapproves of those who would oppose him for shallow and misguided reasons.”

“You mean like because he murdered your newest fighter’s sister in New York?”

“Ah. That is the link, then.” Ivory rubbed his forefinger against his lips, a nervous gesture. “And you sought to redress this injustice?”

“Mitch did,” Gabriel said. “All I wanted to do was get her out of here. That’s the honest truth.” He hoped he sounded sincere. “This is not our country. Your fight’s not our fight.”

Ivory pondered a moment, then said, “Let me tell you a story.”

“I don’t see how I can stop you.”

“Let us say that this story is about an imaginary person named Valerie Quantrill. Who worked quite expertly in the transfer of digital data. Let us imagine that Mr. Cheung’s company hired her to bring everything in the organization online for access via the latest state-of-the-art equipment. Broadband literacy is essential to a man who aspires to take an entire country to a new horizon.”

“But he didn’t count on his imaginary data transfer czar being broadband-literate herself,” said Gabriel. “And stumbling on things he didn’t want her to know.”

“There was no stumbling, Mr. Hunt. It was deliberate, premeditated and malign. She hacked firewalls, she stole passwords. All deliberate. She deliberately gained access to data that was damaging to us. We foresaw blackmail, threats, sealed envelopes in secret drops. But Mr. Cheung was not enraged—he was pleased. He saw this initiative as a valuable skill. He seeks to encourage people to their best potential—that is why so many in China take him seriously.”

“He’s a madman who participates in slave auctions,” said Gabriel.

“You persist in Western linear thinking,” said Ivory. “But I believe you to be an intelligent and perceptive man. Think of the small crime with yield for the greatest good.”

“Every madman in history has justified his madness that way. Look at Hitler.”

“Yes, yes, Hitler.” Ivory glared at him. “Are you quite through?”

“Not quite,” said Gabriel. “But I’m the one in the cage. I’m through if you say I’m through.”

“Let us say that instead of chastising Valerie Quan-trill, Mr. Cheung offered her a new and expanded role in his grand plan—one that would potentially have made her very wealthy, and free to move about the world as she pleased. And let us say further that she came to the meeting in New York to turn him down. That would have been an entirely honorable decision, you understand—but a bad choice. Mr. Cheung would have perceived her disinclination as a threat to use what she knew.”

“You mean he lost his temper and killed her. Hypothetically speaking.”

Ivory pressed his lips together and looked at the floor for a moment. He released a sigh, as though venting psychic decay.

“If this happened,” he said, “I assure you it was not with my approval.”

“You didn’t prevent it,” said Gabriel.

“Perhaps a Westerner cannot understand. It is not my place to prevent Mr. Cheung from doing what he wishes. I am bound by my fealty to him.”

“Fealty?” Gabriel shot back. “Ivory, he’s not even really Chinese!”

“I know. I have accepted this.”

“Look—you’re better than this guy. You saw Mitch come to kill him and you saved his life, but you saved her life, too. Only now you’re letting your sense of obligation hamstring you.”

“I saved her out of regret for her sister’s fate,” Ivory said. “Were I a disloyal man, I would not have informed Mr. Cheung. Instead I proposed an alternate course, and he approved.”

“And if he hadn’t? If he’d told you to kill her? What would you have done?”

“I would have killed her,” Ivory said, but he said it quietly, in a voice of utter commitment but also some sadness.

There was a deep conflict aboil just under Ivory’s bulletproof surface. Gabriel had sensed it the first time they had met.

“You’re attracted to her,” Gabriel realized. “More than that, you’ve got the obligation of her sister hanging around your neck. Putting her in a human cockfight may not seem merciful, but it beats killing her—at least she has the chance to defend herself. Cheung is happy. And you get to control her. You’re her steward. Her trainer. Her keeper. Her man.”

Ivory shook his head forcefully, but not without a little sweat on his face.

“Beats buying yourself a wife—you didn’t even have to pay anything,” said Gabriel, gripping the bars. “You’re the guy who jams her with drugs, I’ll bet, and I’ll bet you do it in the most loving way. You take care of her after the fights, don’t you? Backrubs and front-rubs, all that. And this’ll go on until she dies, or maybe until you get tired of her, till your aching conscience quiets down. Then what? Do you throw her away, the way Cheung discarded Qi?”

Here at last was a charge Ivory could answer and he leapt at it. “The Nameless One failed Cheung. I corrected that oversight.”

“You corrected …you tried to kill her!”

“I trained her,” shot Ivory. “She was the best of our candidates! And at the critical moment, she failed. Her failure permitted Mr. Cheung to be wounded, something that is not allowable, and I—”

“You nothing,” Gabriel overrode. “You turned your back and Cheung threw her to the same pack of thugs and murderers that killed Valerie, assuming he didn’t participate himself. Only Qi somehow survived to come after you. Yes, you—not just Cheung, don’t fool yourself, she wants you, too. She wants to kill Cheung, but you …you she wants to humiliate. And what greater dishonor than to kill Cheung right under your umbrella of protection?”

Ivory’s stilted quiet was an indictment in itself. At last he said, “Her story will end very soon. Tuan betrayed her. He betrayed us, too, of course, but that is no more than one should anticipate from denizens of the Night Market.”

“And what happens to Tuan?” said Gabriel.

“Tuan’s story is already over.”

“I see. Did you kill him yourself?”

“It was my honor, and Tuan knew that.”

“Your honor,” Gabriel said. “You make it sound so very noble. Never mind the dirty, grubby politics of it—the fact that it also conveniently eliminates one of the three other power-bosses on the Bund. Who’s left that isn’t under your control yet? Hellweg, the water-and-power guy, right? And the fellow who runs the police; I forget his name.”