The Eye of God (14 page)

In the end, Gray could not paint a full enough picture to satisfy a mother who missed so much of her daughter’s life. He doubted any number of words could fill that void.

“I will find her,” Guan-yin swore to herself.

She had already passed down a command through her organization to discover where Ju-long Delgado might have taken her daughter. They still awaited word.

“In the past, I failed her,” Guan-yin said, as one finger rose to wipe a tear from the edge of her dragon scar. “My Vietnamese interrogators were cruel, crueler than I suspected even back then. They told me my daughter was dead.”

“To make you despair. To make it easier to break you.”

“It only made me
angry,
more determined than ever to escape and get vengeance, which eventually I did.” A glint of fire burned through her haunted look. “Still, I did not give up. I searched for her, but it was made difficult in those early years, as I dared not set foot again in Vietnam after escaping. Eventually I had to give up.”

“It hurt too much to keep looking,” he said.

“Hope is sometimes its own curse.” Guan-yin looked to her folded hands in her lap. “It was easier to bury her in my heart.”

Several long moments of silence stretched, marked by the tinkling of the fountain in the atrium.

“And you?” Guan-yin asked, her voice faint. “You have risked much to bring her here, to come to me now.”

Gray did not need to acknowledge that aloud.

She lifted her face to stare him in the eye. “Is it because you love her?”

Gray met those eyes, knew he could not lie—when the first explosion shook the complex.

The blast rocked the entire apartment tower. Water sloshed in the fish tank. The long-stemmed orchids swayed.

“What the hell!” Kowalski yelled.

Guan-yin was on her feet.

Her shadow, Zhuang, already had a phone at his ear, talking swiftly, moving to the wall of windows. Smoke rose up through the rain from below.

Another explosion erupted, sounding farther away.

Guan-yin followed her lieutenant to the window, towing Gray and Kowalski with her. She translated what she overheard from Zhuang.

“Cement trucks have pulled up to all the entrances, coming from all directions at once.”

Gray pictured the large vehicles squeezing down the narrow canyons surrounding this mountain, converging here in a coordinated assault. But they were not
cement trucks . . .

Another blast from another direction.

. . .
but bombs on wheels.

Someone intended to bring this entire place down around their ears. Gray could guess who: Ju-long Delgado. He must have discovered Gray and Kowalski had come here. The passage of their pale faces through here would be hard to miss.

“We need to get out!” Gray warned. “Now!”

Zhuang heard him and agreed, turning to his mistress. “We must get you to safety.”

Guan-yin stood her ground, back straight, the dragon shining more prominently on her angry face. “Mobilize the Triad,” she ordered. “Get as many residents to safety as possible.”

Gray pictured the mass of humanity below.

“Use our underground tunnels,” she said.

Of course, the Triad would have secret ways into and out of their stronghold.

“You must first go yourself,” Zhuang pressed.

“After you pass on that order.”

It seemed this captain was willing to go down with her ship—and it was coming down. Loud splintering crashes echoed as parts of the complex collapsed. The pall of black smoke now covered the entire wall of windows, as if driven upward by the muffled screams from below.

Zhuang returned to his phone, shouting now to be heard. Moments later, loudspeakers blared throughout the complex, echoing across its many levels, as the command of the dragonhead was spread to all.

Only then did Guan-yin relent.

Zhuang wisely led her away from the elevators. He ushered her through a double set of doors to the same stairs they had climbed earlier.

“Hurry now! We must reach the tunnels!”

As they descended at a run, pandemonium overtook the central courtyard. Multiple fires glowed below. Several floors down, a section of bridge that had spanned the space suddenly broke, spilling a handful of flailing people into the fiery depths. The apartment building across from them began to fold in on itself, imploding floor by floor, falling crookedly away, slowly ripping itself free from the other towers.

Gray ran faster now, leaping from landing to landing. Guan-yin kept pace with him, Zhuang at her side, Kowalski trailing.

A thunderous crack shook the stairs, sending them all to their knees.

The entire stairwell began to peel from the side of the tower.

“This way!” Gray hollered.

He leaped from the stairs, across the growing gap, and reached the tower’s exterior hallway that faced the courtyard. The others followed. Guan-yin tripped, slipping out of her lieutenant’s arms as he jumped. Left behind, she teetered at the edge—but Kowalski scooped her up and vaulted with a bellow to join Gray.

“Thank you,” Guan-yin said as he set her down.

“We’ll never make it to the tunnels,” Gray said.

No one argued, accepting his grim assessment. Fires raged fiercely below, roiling with smoke, continually fueled by whatever tumbled into them from above.

“Then where do we go?” Kowalski asked. “We’re still a good ten stories up, and I forgot my wings.”

Gray clapped him on the shoulder, appreciating the suggestion. “Then we’ll have to make our own.” He faced Zhuang. “Take us to the closest corner apartment.”

Ever the lieutenant, the swordsman obeyed without question. He rushed them into the inner labyrinth of the tower. In a few short turns, he reached a door and pointed.

Gray tested and found it locked. He backed a step and kicked his heel into the deadbolt. The aged wood frame offered little resistance, and the door ripped open.

“Inside!” he yelled. “I need bedsheets, clothing, laundry, anything we can tie together to make a rope.”

He left this chore to Kowalski and Guan-yin.

With Zhuang in tow, he hurried through the sliding doors to the outside. Like all the other balconies he had spotted from the street, this one had been turned into a steel cage, sealed from the outside with chain-link fencing.

“Help me,” Gray said and set about freeing a section from the balcony rails.

As they worked furiously, the tower rumbled and shook, slowly coming apart as it was eaten below by fire.

At last, Gray kicked a piece of fencing loose and sent it tumbling through the smoke to the street below.

“How’s it going with the rope?” he yelled into the apartment.

“We’ll never make something long enough to reach the ground!” Kowalski called back.

That wasn’t the plan.

Gray moved inside to check on their handiwork. He found the two had managed to knot together a length of about twenty yards. The tower gave a massive shake, helping him make his final decision.

“Good enough!”

Gray hauled one end outside and tied it to the balcony’s top rail. He tossed the rest of its length over the edge.

“What are you doing?” Kowalski asked.

Gray pointed to the open balconies of the building across the narrow street.

“You are stupid mad,” Kowalski said.

No one argued.

Looking down, Gray again wondered how the cement trucks had made it through such a tight squeeze of alleys to reach here. But at the moment, he silently thanked the Hong Kong city planners who allowed such dense construction in Kowloon.

Gray mounted the balcony rail and grabbed their makeshift rope. Holding his breath, he lowered himself down hand by hand. A few slips made his heart pound harder, but as he climbed, he silently eyeballed the distance to the neighboring building, judging the length of free rope he would need.

Once satisfied, he began to shift his weight, setting the rope to swinging. He ran his boots along the caged balconies, passing through thick smoke, burning his eyes. Within a few passes back and forth, his arc began to swing clear of the building, stretching toward its neighbor.

Not far enough.

Needing more distance, he ran faster across the balconies, extending the arc of each swing wider and wider. Smoke continued to choke his throat, growing ever thicker, making it harder to catch his breath.

But he dared not stop.

Finally, sweeping out over the street, the tips of his toes struck the far balcony. It was not enough to gain purchase, but the contact fired his determination. Swinging back again into the smoke, his feet sped across the rain-slick balconies.

C’mon . . .

“Pierce!” Kowalski yelled from the balcony. “Look below you!”

Gray searched under his legs as he ran. The end of his rope must have brushed through a hot patch at some point and caught fire. Flames chased up the rope toward him, trailing fiery cinders of cloth.

Oh
,
no . . .

This time, when he felt his momentum ebbing, he kicked hard off the last rail he could touch, trying to eke out a few more yards of swing, knowing this was his last chance.

Then back he fell.

Gravity dragged him across the surface of the fiery tower and out over the street. Bending at the waist, he kicked his legs up and stared through them. The balcony swooped toward him. Timing it as well as he could, he lifted his feet to clear the rail—then clamped his knees down and successfully hooked the top bar.

Relief swept through him.

In that moment of inattentiveness, he slipped and lost his hold. His legs slid along the bar until only his heels remained hooked to the rail. He hung there, knowing it couldn’t last.

Under him, flames swept up the rope.

Then hands suddenly grabbed his ankles.

He stared past his toes to see a man and woman, husband and wife, the owners of the apartment, gripping him, coming to his aid. They pulled him over the balcony’s rail to safety. Back on his feet, he stamped and slapped out the flames from the rope and tied its end to the top bar. All the while, the pair chattered to him in Cantonese, clearly scolding him at such a rash action, as if he had done it on some lark.

Once the rope bridge was secure—or as secure as he could make it—he called over to the others.

“One at a time! Hands and legs! Climb over!”

Guan-yin came first, moving swiftly like a gymnast, barely disturbing the bridge. She bowed her thanks to the couple, as Zhuang came next, his sword slung over his chest and hanging under him.

Kowalski followed last, fueled by a string of curses.

Apparently the gods were not happy with his profanity. Halfway across, the far end of the bridge frayed away and snapped, sending him plummeting toward the street.

Gray gulped, his belly pressed hard against the rail, not knowing what to do.

Luckily, Kowalski kept his massive meat hooks on the rope. As the slack ran out, the rope flung his bulk toward the façade below. He crashed headlong into a balcony three stories down, bowling into a group of onlookers gathered there.

Cries of shock echoed up.

“Are you okay?” Gray hollered, bending over the rail.

“Next time,
you
go last!” Kowalski bellowed back.

Gray turned to find Zhuang gently wrapping his mistress’s face in a crimson silk scarf, hiding her again from the world.

Once covered, she turned to Gray. “I owe you my life.”

“But many others lost theirs.”

She nodded at this, and they both soberly observed the aftermath of the attack. Across the way, the rusted mountain slowly succumbed to the fires, crumbling and crashing to ruin.

Behind them, Zhuang conversed rapidly on his phone, likely assessing the damage.

After a minute, he returned to his mistress’s side. They spoke with their heads bowed. Once her lieutenant stepped back, Guan-yin faced Gray.

“Zhuang has heard news from Macau,” she said.

Gray tensed for the worst.

“My daughter still lives.”

Thank God.

“But Ju-long has whisked her off the peninsula, out of China.”

“Where—?”

Her scarf failed to muffle the dread in her voice. “To North Korea.”

Gray pictured that reclusive country, an isolated no-man’s-land of macabre desolation and dictatorial madness, a place of strict control and impenetrable borders.

“It’ll take an army to get her out,” he mumbled to the smoke and fire.

Guan-yin clearly heard him, but instead said, “You never answered my earlier question.”

He faced her, finding only a terrified mother staring back.

“Do you love my daughter?”

Gray could not lie, but fear choked him silent. Still, she read the answer in his eyes and turned away.

“Then I will give you that army.”

SECOND

SAINTS & SINNERS

Σ

7

November 18, 1:34
P
.
M
. ORAT

Aktau, Kazakhstan

“It looks like the ocean.”

Monsignor Vigor Verona stirred at the words of his niece. He lifted his nose from a DNA report. He kept returning to the papers over and over again, sensing he was missing something important. The results had been faxed from the genetics lab just before the early-morning flight to this westernmost port city of Kazakhstan.

He took a deep breath and pulled himself back to the present, needing a break anyway.
Maybe if I clear my head
,
I’ll figure out what is nagging me.

He and Rachel were seated at a small restaurant overlooking the Caspian Sea. Beyond the windows, its wintry waters crashed against the neighboring white cliffs for which the small town of Aktau had been named. The team from Sigma was scheduled to meet them here in less than an hour. Together, they’d take a chartered helicopter from here to the coordinates Father Josip had hidden inside the inscribed skull.

“Once upon a time, the Caspian was indeed an ocean,” Vigor said. “That was five million years ago. It’s why the Caspian still has salt in it, though only about a third of the salinity of today’s oceans. Then that ancient ocean became landlocked, eventually drying out to become the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea . . . and where we’re headed next, the Aral Sea.”