Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Among the Killers of Men

“Unlike me, for instance,” Gabriel said.

Lucy nodded, and the look of utter confidence in her eyes shot right through Gabriel’s defenses. It was like when she was eight years old and he was twenty, freshly back from a year in North Africa, and she’d listened to his exaggerated tales of his exploits with rapt attention each night after Michael had headed off to bed. She’d believed he could do anything. He’d believed it for a while himself.

“And who is this woman?” asked Gabriel. “Why is it so important to you to help her?”

Lucy paused before answering. “She’s a friend,” Lucy said. “I’ve known her a long time. She got me through some very bad stuff. I owe her a lot.”

“All right,” Gabriel said. He mulled over the possibilities. “The CCC,” he said. “Well, moving around inside China’s easier than it used to be, though you’d still want cover for something like this. One possibility, Michael was telling me about a lecture series he’s setting up at a bunch of Chinese universities. He’s supposed to give the lectures himself—but who’d really complain if I showed up with him?”

Lucy allowed herself the ghost of a smile. “Or instead of him. You’d really wake up some of those rooms.”

“No doubt,” Gabriel said. “So, tell me straight: what exactly is it you want me to do?”

“First thing is help me get Mitch out of jail,” said Lucy. “And then convince her that she doesn’t need to fly to China to kill this guy.”

“Because I’ll do it for her? I’m not some sort of assassin, Lucy.”

“You’ll think of something,” Lucy said. “You always do.”

Chapter 2

Michelle “Mitch” Quantrill was a piece of work indeed. Twenty-nine years old, tall and square-cut, sturdy and practical, strong, attractive but not glamorous, zero makeup. Blonde hair, cut indifferently. Eyes of milky green.

For Gabriel, it was worth the bail money just to meet her. And to see her and Lucy together provided some interstitial links.

“ Not what you think,” chided Lucy, but Gabriel had a feeling it was exactly what he thought.

“You’re Lucy’s brother?” said Mitch. Her handshake grip was strong and to the point.

“One of them,” Gabriel said.

“Well, I appreciate your getting me out of there. I was beginning to lose my mind.”

They caught a cab outside the precinct house and told the cabbie to take them to Valerie’s apartment, a building near 45 thand Eighth.

“Have you ever heard of Kangxi Shih-k’ai?” said Mitch, who was in the backseat with Gabriel. Lucy was turned around in the passenger seat up front, watching them through the Plexiglas divider.

“Sure. The warlord of warlords,” Gabriel said. “Around the turn of the century—the last century—he mantled himself the Favorite Son of China. He’s said to have personally killed twenty thousand enemies. He died in, what, 1901 or 1902, something like that? Assassinated by his own bodyguards, as I recall.”

“Right. Well, Valerie told me that working at Zongchang she’d uncovered some kind of dirt on a guy named Cheung—the guy in charge of the CCC, the one they’re saying will be the new Mao? She said she’d found proof he wasn’t Chinese at all—he’s really a Russian trying to pose himself as a Chinese. Specifically, as a blood descendant of Kangxi Shih-k’ai, who was known to have over two hundred children.”

“Cheung is the guy who collects the statues,” said Lucy.

“What statues?” said Gabriel.

“The terra-cotta warriors. Life size.”

“You mean the famous ones?” said Gabriel. “Those are all in government hands. They have been since they first started digging them up in the 1970s.”

Gabriel dredged up what he knew about China’s First Emperor and his statue-making predilection.

In 246 B.C., the then 13-year-old Emperor Qin had tasked over 700,000 workers with building his mausoleum. The project, including the terra-cotta army of over 8,000 figures, took nearly forty years to complete. When a group of farmers digging for a well in Shaanxi Province uncovered the first terra-cotta head in 1974, they had no idea they had uncovered the archeological find of the 20 thCentury. It dwarfed even Howard Carter’s 1922 uncovering of Tutankhamen’s tomb—yes, Qin’s tomb was larger, the size of two entire cities, complete with a pearl-inlaid ceiling to simulate nighttime stars. Besides the figures of soldiers, generals (the tallest figures, averaging six feet in height), acrobats, strongmen and musicians, there were 130 chariots drawn by 520 terra-cotta horses, not to mention another 150 additional horses for the cavalry. The “four divine animals“—dragon, phoenix, tortoise and a sort of giraffe-like chimera called a qilin —were represented, as well as the unicorn, or xiezhi. Diggers found the remains of artisans and craftsmen (in addition to all of Qin’s barren concubines), suggesting that they were sealed inside the complex to prevent them from divulging their knowledge of the tombs…or of the 30-meter-high adjacent building discovered nearby in 2007 by Chinese archeologists. The side building remained unexplored to this day.

“Cheung has offered a flat ten million dollars to anybody who can find the terra-cotta warrior of Kangxi Shih-k’ai,” said Mitch.

“But that makes no sense,” said Gabriel. “Kangxi Shih-k’ai lived at the end of the 19 thCentury—the terra-cotta warriors are two thousand years older.”

“Kangxi Shih-k’ai apparently had his own terra-cotta army made,” Mitch said. “That’s what Valerie told me. And it has never been found.”

“Hold on,” Gabriel said. “You’re saying he built an entire second terra-cotta army and buried it somewhere in modern China and nobody has ever heard about it except your sister?”

“No, Mr. Hunt,” Mitch said. “Except my sister and this guy Cheung. And he’s looking for it.”

“Did she say what he wants with it?”

“The main resistance Cheung is getting to the rise of the CCC is from old-school Chinese traditionalists. If he can prove he’s somehow related to Kangxi Shih-k’ai, that resistance evaporates.”

“And how would the statue prove anything?”

“Because it contains Kangxi Shih-k’ai’s skeleton,” she said. “Sheathed in lead and gold. Or at least his skull—Valerie wasn’t clear which. But something. Something Cheung could use to perpetrate a bit of DNA flummery, I guess, or maybe that wouldn’t even be necessary. It’s such a powerful cultural icon, just possessing it would give him enormous credibility.”

“Your sister told you this?”

“Yeah,” said Mitch. “Right before she went to a meeting with Cheung and wound up dead.”

The cab drew up to the curb beside Valerie’s building. Gabriel gave the driver a twenty and followed Mitch out the door.

They plodded through the typically New York experience of the walk-up: twelve steps, turn; twelve steps more. Mitch had a fistful of keys out, but it was Lucy who reached the apartment door first. She paused, then raised one hand in a silencing gesture.

“Hang on,” she whispered. “It’s already open.”

Upon sighting the forced door and the visual evidence of damage to the jamb and molding from a professional jimmy—someone had come prepared enough to outfox the overkill of multiple locks in Manhattan—each of the three people in the stairwell reacted differently.

Lucy, experienced in urban rat-traps, flattened against the wall so as to provide herself with maximum cover should an assault issue from the doorway.

Mitch’s hand automatically flew down to draw a gun she did not possess. It was a flicker, a notion instantly replaced by the reset of her body into a defensive combat stance, one forearm up to shield, the other to strike, sharp key-points extending between her knuckles.