Hunt Among the Killers of Men (4 page)

“For god’s sake, Gabriel, you don’t know anything about the Han Dynasty,” Michael grumbled. “The
Later
Han Dynasty? The Three Kingdoms and the Period of Disunion? You’ll never get away with it.”

“For one or two lectures? I think I can. And then you can take over from me after that, finish the tour yourself.”

“What, are you going to speak to Mandarin students in Cantonese?”

“I’ll speak English. They’ll chalk it up to American arrogance and move on. They’re used to it.”

“You…you don’t even have a
degree
!” Michael protested, flustered. If you started counting up Michael’s assorted doctorates on your fingers, you’d be compelled before long to remove your shoes.

“We’re not talking about a debate, Michael. I don’t need to hold my own. You’ll give me your slides and I’ll work off them. Not like I can’t regurgitate names and dates with the best of them.”

Michael switched gears: “You don’t even know if this Cheung had anything to do with that woman’s death.”

“Well, according to
you
, these documents show
he’s guilty of plenty else.” He waved the sheaf of printouts in Michael’s face. “Arms trafficking, drug smuggling, racketeering, not to mention a murder or five.”

Michael flushed crimson. “Gabriel…it’s a different country. Different laws. We’d be intruding where we’re not invited.”

“My specialty,” said Gabriel, with slightly more pride than he needed to drive his point home. “One day of travel in, one day out. In between, a couple of days of poking around the edges of things. See what spills forth. Michael—it’s what the Foundation does
best
, don’t kid yourself. You clear the paperwork and I kick down the doors.”

“You really think,” Michael said, “there’s a second terra-cotta army out there no one’s ever seen, waiting to be discovered.”

“I do,” Gabriel said. “And even if there isn’t, there’s a young woman out there who’s going to get herself arrested and executed for trying to kill somebody who, as you point out, we don’t even know has done anything—not to her, at least.”

“This is the girlfriend of your…what was she again, one of your nurses in the hospital in Khartoum?”

Gabriel had made up a story, at Lucy’s request; she didn’t want Michael to know she was in New York. So Gabriel had, but he unfortunately no longer remembered what it was he’d said. “Something like that. Look, Michael, it won’t cost much—”

“It’s not about the money, Gabriel. It’s the principle of the thing.”

“I agree. And as a matter of principle, I don’t like to let innocent people get themselves killed when I can prevent it.”

“I suppose,” Michael said in a resigned tone, “you’ll be taking the jet.”

“Yes,” said Gabriel. “For two reasons. One: I can’t go as you on a commercial flight—they’ll check my passport.”

“What’s the other reason?”

“Because I don’t want to run
this
through baggage check.”

Gabriel hoisted up his work-belt, worn around the world in one situation or another. It was tooled steerhide with faded intaglio, furry at some of the rivets, an old friend and constant companion that had seen him through more than one tough scrape. Lashed to the belt was a big holster. Sheathed inside was an even bigger sidearm, itself a pricey antique, Gabriel’s own restored single-action Colt Peacemaker—a first-generation Cavalry model circa 1880 with the 7 1/2-inch barrel, chambered for the .45 “Long Colt” cartridge. The original heavily distressed ivory grips had been replaced, by Gabriel himself, with burnished mahogany.

Nearly two centuries ago, Samuel Colt had been the man who did not understand the meaning of the word “impossible” when naysayers told him the idea of a repeating handgun could never be realized. While he did not actually invent the revolver, he won his first patent in the early 1800s and was instrumental in introducing the use of interchangeable, mass-produced parts.

Whenever people said “impossible,” or that a thing
should not
be done or
could not
be done, Gabriel always thought of old Sam Colt.

Michael was staring at his older brother with an odd tilt of his head, like an explorer mantis or a curious
puppy. “Okay,” he began carefully. “What part
aren’t
you telling me? What are you leaving out?”

“There is one thing,” Gabriel said.

“I knew it.”

“The name of the man behind the second terra-cotta army,” said Gabriel, not without a dramatic flourish. “It’s Kangxi Shih-k’ai, Michael. The Favored Son of China. The last real-man warlord before the modern world stomped them down. The Vlad the Impaler of Chinese history—the history that the Cultural Committee never talks about during stuff like the Olympics. We’re not talking about an ordinary monarch, Michael. We’re talking about one of the most frightening figures of his time, or any time. You remember what he called his champions while he was alive?”

“The Killers of Men,” Michael murmured.

“The Killers of Men, that’s right. And this is the man who constructed a second terra-cotta army as a monument to his ego, and nobody has ever
seen
it. Can you imagine what those figures must be like? Wouldn’t you want us to be the first in the world to see them, to bring them to light?”

Gabriel hefted an original hardcover first edition of
Space, Time & Earthly Gods
by Ambrose and Cordelia Hunt, first published in 1982, the year their daughter Lucy had been born. “Take a closer look at Appendix III—the one where they listed what they thought were the greatest undiscovered treasures of the modern world.”

The Hunt Foundation’s foundation (as it were) was the success enjoyed by Gabriel and Michael’s parents through a series of improbably popular books that conjoined history, religion, linguistics and anthropology
for the modern reader. Ambrose and Cordelia Hunt were hailed as the new Will and Ariel Durant, and at the time of their mysterious disappearance (to this day, even Michael was hesitant to say “death”), their fame had spread worldwide.

Gabriel gestured with the book; did not open it. “It’s right there at big number four, before the Bermuda Triangle pirate shipwrecks and after the ‘lost pyramid’ scroll that supposedly explains the destiny of the world. It doesn’t say what it is, exactly, but it talks about ‘the legacy of Kangxi Shih-k’ai.’ Check Dad’s journal library and you’ll find a lead he recorded, right outside Shanghai. It’s one of the last entries before they vanished.”

During the Mediterranean leg of a Millenniumthemed speaking tour at the end of 1999, Ambrose and Cordelia Hunt were among the passenger contingent of the
Polar Monarch
, a luxuriously appointed cruise ship of Norwegian registry. The ship disappeared from sea radar for three days, then reappeared near Gibraltar without a living soul on board. Three crew members were found in the wheelhouse with their throats slit. Subsequently, bodies and stores began to wash ashore, but a dozen or so passengers were never recovered in any form—including Ambrose and Cordelia Hunt.

“You’re not making this up, are you?” said Michael.

“Kangxi Shih-k’ai was on Mom and Dad’s Most Wanted list. They were on the verge of something and they knew it; they just never had the time to pursue it. Now, I’m not saying there’s a connection to Michelle Quantrill and this Russian who wants to run China…but it’s enough to make me think there really is something there in China for us to find. It’s
time, Michael. We should have gone after this years ago.”

“Time for you to ruin my reputation on the lecture circuit, you mean,” Michael said sourly.

“Come on, no one will pay attention to the lectures themselves,” said Gabriel. “You know how it goes in China—they’ll want to wine and dine us and tour us around to demonstrate their cultural diversity and goodwill. And I’ll be perfectly charming, I promise.”

Michael put a hand to his forehead and massaged the deep furrows that had appeared there. “This is sounding worse and worse,” he said. Then, as he usually did, he diplomatically tabled the topic. “Let me think about it.”

Which was all the approval Gabriel needed.

It was still startling for Mitch to see uniformed police and soldiers carrying automatic weapons in an airport, even in a foreign country.

The Customs official was unreadable: Round head, military crop, unblinking eyes, a knife scar on one side of his mouth. “Remove glasses,” he said to Mitch, speaking in fractured English.

They examined each other. The official spot-checked the entry form boxes on
Criminal convictions
and
Contagious diseases.
Mitch had the feeling she had been processed and found lacking, no doubt an impression the uniforms cultivated deliberately.

He did not stamp Mitch’s passport. “Stand in blue area, please.”

Mitch was directed to a gauntlet of interview cubicles, where a burly Chinese soldier eviscerated her carry-on bag. She was directed to strip down to her underwear and was scanned with a multiband detector.
Then into a scanning booth, to insure no contraband was up her ass or down her throat. Only then did a uniformed female supervisor show up, a black Eurasian who gave Mitch the once-over with disdain. It was designed to be as humiliating and intimidating as possible.

The soldier handed a business card to the supervisor. She squinted first at it, then at Mitch. “Your work is in computers,” she said in flawlessly mellow Oxford English.

“Yes,” said Mitch, trying to find her shirt in the tangle of clothing on the table.

“You are a consultant for Zongchang, Ltd.” Nothing the humorless supervisor said was a question. It was rhetorical prodding, bald statements of facts intended to provoke a confirmation or denial.

“Yes.”

“That is a good job for a foreigner to have.”

“Yes it is.”

About an hour later, Mitch finally made it to the overburdened taxicab queue. If one arrived at the city’s more modern Pudong Airport, one had the option of taking the MagLev train the thirty kilometers or so into downtown. Mitch had flown into Hongqiao International, and as an outsider unfamiliar with the grid, was stuck with cabbing it. She knew that if the meter crested more than 200
renminbi
she would have to have words with the “
helpfull, clean, professional, English-spakeing Driver
“—as a sign on the inside of the door informed her.

Most commercial cabs in China are compact cars with a Plexi-shield folded around the driver’s seat only, giving the pilots an odd, bottled aspect and muffling nearly everything they say.

“Is biggest of all large bridges,” the driver told her as they chugged across the modernist swath of Nanpu Bridge. “Most excellent photo opportunity!”

“We
are
going to downtown Shanghai, right?” said Mitch.

The driver nodded enthusiastically. “Three times! In 1997!”

It was all right. She could already see the spire of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower on the Bund.

Outside the Dongfeng Hotel, the scene was a casserole of Grand Central Station rush hour mixed with Casablanca; a huge and bustling open-air marketplace full of hucksters, eccentrics, exotics and bums. Even the poorest citizen was proud of his suit jacket; in fact, there was a thriving subindustry whereby designer labels could be sewn onto the sleeve of virtually any garment. The visible labels (usually on the left cuff) were a weird sort of status symbol, whether you were riding a bike or stepping out of a limousine. The sheer crush of human bodies was fantastic: thousands of people, hundreds of bicycles (ten abreast and moving fast on each side of Zhongshan Road), citizens hustling about in a floral rainbow of ponchos, pushcart cages of live food. Mitch saw one intrepid cyclist precariously transporting enough strapped-on TV sets to fill a 4x4.

A liveried doorman took her shoulder bag at the entrance to the Dongfeng.

The rooms at the Dongfeng featured card-access slots on the doors but still used old-fashioned keys. Mitch slumped on a double bed, trying not to let all her energy leak out, wondering where the surveillance camera might be hidden. They certainly were omnipresent
in every other part of the hotel, particularly the elevators, which seemed to have two per car. She thought about this as she undressed, thought about the bored government functionary charged with watching this particular room’s feed. Probably just made his day, she thought as she pulled a black dress out of her bag and slipped it on over her head.

Downstairs, a very polite but very confused concierge tried to help her get where she needed to go.

Mitch tapped Valerie’s business card. “This? Here? Zongchang? Yes?”

The concierge seemed conflicted; apparently there was more than one destination called Zongchang. “A taxi can take you from hotel if you really wish to go,” he said, implying that perhaps she did
not
want to go.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung,” she said.

“Oh. I see.” He scribbled a square note to be handed off to the next cabbie. “This is the Zongchang you seek.”

“She’s lost her mind,” Lucy said.

Gabriel and Lucy sat in the war zone that had once been Valerie Quantrill’s apartment.

“Near as I can figure, she took all the cards,” said Lucy. “The business stuff, the photo ID, the credit cards. She left the keys so I’m guessing she wasn’t planning to come back.”

Gabriel still had a clear mental image of Valerie Quantrill’s photo ID. The sisters had looked close enough to one another for Mitch to pass the quick scrutiny she’d get at an airport counter, especially if she’d done something to make her hair match. “A last-minute
ticket to Shanghai’s not cheap…but if Mitch maxed out the credit cards she could’ve swung it. And if she got a style cut or a wig…”

“She could pass for Valerie,” Lucy said. “Fly on her passport. It’s soon enough, maybe nobody knows Valerie is dead yet.”

“The people who killed Valerie know.”

“Goddamn it,” Lucy said. “Why’d she pull something like this?”

“She’s your friend. Don’t ask me.”

“Gabriel, if I’m not on a plane in four hours, I’ll have the police forces of two countries after me!”

“So get on a plane,” Gabriel said.

“
Someone’s
got to help Mitch,” Lucy said.