The Stone Monkey (54 page)

"True. And?"

"Rhymes the best forensic detective cop in the country. We've been sniffing the thought that he and Coe're planning to take out the Ghost."

How do you sniff a thought? Peabody wondered. "How do you mean?"

"With Rhyme's grip on forensics they might've come up with some way to make it impossible to convict Coe. Manipulate the evidence somehow."

"What?" Peabody scoffed. "Ridiculous. Rhyme wouldn't do that."

These words now brought some emotion to Webley. He frowned.

"Why not?" the ASAC continued. "Ever since his accident he's not the most stable person in the world. He's always had this issue about killing himself. And it sounds like he got pretty close to that Chinese cop. Maybe when the Ghost shot Li it pushed him over the edge."

This sounded crazy, but who knew? Peabody caught people trying to sneak into the country illegally and sent them back home. He didn't know the workings of the criminal mind. In fact he had no experience with psychology whatsoever, except resentfully paying his ex-wife's shrink bills.

As for Coe, well, he
definitely
was unstable enough to try to cap the Ghost's ass. He'd already tried to take him out—at the Wus' apartment on Canal Street.

"What's Dellray say?" Peabody asked.

"He's operational in the field at this time. He's not returning calls."

"Doesn't he work for you?"

"Dellray pretty much works for Dellray," said the ASAC.

"What're you suggesting we do?" Peabody asked, using his wrinkled tan jacket to wipe his face.

"Do you think Coe's following you?"

Peabody glanced around him at the billion cars on the Van Wyck Expressway. "Like I could fucking tell," he answered, giving up entirely on the language of high-level government.

"If he's going to make a move it'll have to be at the airport. Tell your people to look out for him. I'll tell Port Authority security too."

"I just don't see it happening."

"Thanks for the assessment, Harold. But then again it was Rhyme who collared the prick in the first place. Not you." The line went dead.

Peabody turned around and studied the Ghost, who asked, "What was that about?"

"Nothing." Peabody asked one of the agents, "We have body armor in the back?"

"Naw," one answered. Then: "Well, I'm in a vest."

"Me too," said the other agent.

The tone of their voices said that they weren't about to give them up.

Nor would Peabody ask his agents to do so. If Coe made a move on the Ghost and he was successful, well, that was just the way it was. He and Rhyme would have to take the consequences.

He leaned forward and snapped at the driver, "Can't you do anything about the goddamn air-conditioning?"

The shackles binding his wrists felt light as silk.

They would come off as soon as he was at the doorway of the airliner that would carry him back home from the Beautiful Country and, because he knew that, the metal restraints had already ceased to exist.

Walking down the international corridor of JFK Airport, he was reflecting on how flying in the Far East had changed. Thinking of the early days when he would fly on the national airline of China: CAAC—which every English-speaking Chinese knew stood for Chinese Airliners Always Crash. Things were different now. Today it would be Northwest Airlines to L.A., then a China Air flight to Singapore with a connection to Fuzhou, business class all the way.

The entourage was a curious one: the Ghost, two armed guards and the two men in charge—Peabody from the INS and the man from the United States Department of State. They were now joined by two armed Port Authority guards, big men, nervous as squirrels, who kept their hands near their weapons as they surveyed the crowd.

The Ghost didn't exactly know what the uneasiness and firepower were all about but he supposed that there'd been death threats against him. Well, that was nothing new. He'd lived with death since the night the Four Olds murdered his family.

Footsteps behind.

"Mr. Kwan ... Mr. Kwan!"

They turned to see a thin Chinese man in a suit walking quickly toward them. The guards drew their weapons and the approaching man stopped, eyes wide.

"It's my lawyer," the Ghost said.

"You sure?" Peabody asked.

"What do you mean, am I sure?"

Peabody nodded the man forward, frisked him despite the Ghost's protests and let him and the snakehead step to the side of the corridor. The Ghost turned his ear toward the lawyer's mouth. "Go ahead."

"The Changs and the Wus are out on bond, pending the hearing. It looks like they'll be granted asylum. The Wus are in Flushing, Queens. The Changs are back in Owls Head. The same apartment."

"And Yindao?" the Ghost whispered.

The man blinked at the crude word.

The snakehead corrected himself. "I mean the Sachs woman."

"Oh, I have her address too. And Lincoln Rhyme's. Do you want me to write them down for you?"

"No, just tell them to me slowly. I'll remember them."

After only three repetitions the Ghost had memorized them. He said, "You'll find your money in the account." No need to say how much money or which account.

The lawyer nodded and, with a glance at the Ghost's guards, turned and left.

The group continued down the corridor. Ahead of him the Ghost could see the gate, the pretty clerks behind the check-in counter. And through the window he caught a glimpse of the 747 that would soon take him west, like Monkey making his pilgrimage, at the end of which he found enlightenment and contentment.

His boarding pass was protruding from his shirt pocket. He had 10,000 yuan in his wallet. He had a U.S. government escort. He was going home, to his apartments, his women, his money.

He was free. He—

Then sudden motion...

Somebody was moving toward him fast and the guards were pulling him aside, their weapons coming out of their holsters again. The Ghost, gasping at the shock, thought that he was going to die. He muttered a fast prayer to his guardian, Yi the archer.

But the attacker stopped short. Breathing unsteadily, the Ghost began to laugh.

"Hello, Yindao."

She was wearing jeans, T-shirt and windbreaker, her badge around her neck. Hands on her hips, one of which rested very close to her pistol. The policewoman ignored the Ghost and glanced at the nervous, young INS agents. "You better have a damn good reason for drawing down on me."

They started to reholster their weapons but Peabody gestured for them not to.

The Ghost focused past Yindao. Behind her was a tall black man in a white suit and noisy blue shirt. The fat cop who'd arrested him in Brooklyn was here as well, as were several uniformed city policemen. But the one person in this retinue who captured his full attention was a handsome dark-haired man about the Ghost's age, sitting in a complicated, bright red wheelchair, to which his arms and legs were strapped. A trim young man—his aide or nurse—stood behind the chair.

This was, of course, Lincoln Rhyme. The Ghost studied the curious man—who'd miraculously discovered the location of the
Fuzhou Dragon
at sea, who'd found the Wus and the Changs and who had actually succeeded in capturing the Ghost himself. Which no other policeman in the world had ever been able to do.

Harold Peabody wiped his face with his sleeve, surveyed the situation and motioned the guards back. They put their weapons away. "What's this all about, Rhyme?"

But the man ignored him and continued to study the snakehead carefully. The Ghost felt a tickle of unease. But then he mastered the sensation. He had
guanxi
at the highest level. He was immune, even to the magic of Lincoln Rhyme, whom he asked bluntly, "Who exactly are you? A consultant? A private detective?"

"Me?" the cripple responded. "I'm one of the ten judges of hell."

The Ghost laughed. "So you inscribe names in
The Register of the Living and the Dead?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I do."

"And you've come to see me off?"

"No," he answered.

Peabody said cautiously, "And what
do
you want?"

The State Department bureaucrat said impatiently, "All of you, now—just clear on out of here."

"He's not getting on that airplane," Rhyme said.

"Oh, yes, he is," said the dour official. He stepped forward, plucking the Ghost's ticket from his pocket and striding toward the gate agent.

"You take one more step toward that airplane," the fat policeman said to him, "and these officers're authorized to arrest you."

"Me?" Webley muttered angrily.

Peabody gave a sharp laugh and looked at the black agent. "Dellray, what is this crap?"

"Probably oughta listen to my friend here, Harold. In your best innerest, believe you me."

Peabody said, "Five minutes."

A regretful frown crossed Lincoln Rhymes face. "Oh, I'm afraid it may take a little longer than that."

The snakehead was far smaller and more compact than Lincoln Rhyme had expected. This was a phenomenon he recalled from his days running the NYPD forensics unit; the perpetrators he pursued took on disproportionate stature in his mind and when he saw them in person for the first time—usually at trial—he was often surprised at how diminutive they were.

The Ghost stood shackled and surrounded by law enforcers. Concerned, yes, but still in control, serene, shoulders and arms relaxed. The criminalist understood immediately how Sachs could have been suckered by him: the Ghost's eyes were those of a healer, a doctor, a spiritual man. They would dole out apparent comfort and invite sharing confidences. But, knowing the man now, Rhyme could see in the placid gaze evidence of a relentless ego and ruthlessness.

"Okay, sir, what's this all about?" asked Peabody's friend—Webley from State, as Rhyme now thought of him, echoing the man's own pompous identification of himself in Rhyme's living room the other day.

Rhyme said to the two men, "You know what happens sometimes in our line of work, gentlemen? I mean, forensic science."

Webley from State started to speak but Peabody waved him silent. Rhyme wouldn't have let anyone rush him anyway. Nobody hurried Lincoln Rhyme when he didn't wish to be hurried.

"We sometimes lose sight of the big picture. All right, I admit
I'm
the one who loses sight more than, say, my Sachs here. She looks at motive, she looks at
why
people do what they do. But that's not my nature. My nature is to study each piece of evidence and put it where it belongs." He glanced at the Ghost with a smile. "Like placing a stone on a
wei-chi
board."

The snakehead who had brought so much sorrow to so many lives said nothing, gave no acknowledgment. The gate agent announced preboarding of the Northwest Airlines flight to Los Angeles.

"We figured out the clues just fine." A nod toward the Ghost. "After all, here he is, caught, right? Thanks to us. And we've got enough evidence to convict him and sentence him to death. But what happens? He's going free."

"He's not going free," Peabody rejoined. "He's going back to stand trial in China."

"Free from the jurisdiction where he's committed a number of serious felonies in the past few days," Rhyme corrected sharply. "Do we
have to
squabble?"

This was too much for Webley from State. "Get to the point or I'm putting him on that plane."

Rhyme continued to ignore the man. He had the stage and wasn't relinquishing it. "The big picture ... big picture ... I was thinking how bad I felt. Here, I'd found out where the
Fuzhou Dragon
was and sent the Coast Guard after her but—what happens?—he scuttles it, killing all those people."

Peabody shook his head. "Of course you'd feel bad," he said with some sympathy. "We all felt bad. But—"

Rhyme kept steaming forward. "Big picture ... Let's think about it. It's Tuesday, just before dawn, on board the
Dragon.
You're the Ghost, a wanted man—wanted for capital offenses—and the Coast Guard is a half hour away from interdicting your smuggling ship. What would you have done?"

The gate agent continued with the boarding of the flight.

Peabody sighed. Webley from State muttered something sotto voce; Rhyme knew it was not complimentary. The Ghost stirred but he remained silent.

Since no one was helping him out Rhyme continued,
"I
personally would've taken my money, ordered the
Dragon
back out to sea full speed ahead and escaped to shore in one of the life rafts. The Coast Guard and cops and INS would've been so busy with the crew and immigrants I could easily've gotten to land and been halfway to Chinatown before they realized I was gone. But what'd the Ghost do?"

Rhyme glanced at Sachs, who said, "He locked the immigrants in the hold, sank the ship and then hunted down the survivors. And he risked getting caught or killed to do it."

"And when he didn't kill them all on the shore," Rhyme took over the narrative, "he followed them to the city and tried to murder them there. Why on earth would he do that?"

"Well, they were witnesses," Peabody said. "He
had
to kill them."

"Ah,
why?
That's the question that nobody's asking." Rhyme asked, "What would it gain him?"

Peabody and Webley from State were silent.

Rhyme continued, "All that the passengers on the ship could do is to testify in one case of human smuggling. But there were already a dozen warrants against him for smuggling around the world. Homicide charges too—look at the Interpol Red Notice. It made no sense to go to all that trouble to murder them just because they were witnesses." He paused a histrionic few seconds. "But killing them makes perfect sense if the passengers were his
intended
victims."

Rhyme could see two different reactions in their faces. Peabody was perplexed and surprised. In Webley from State's eyes there was a different look. He knew exactly where Rhyme was going.

'"Victims,"' Rhyme continued. "That's a key word. See, my Sachs found a letter when she went for her little swim in the
Dragon."