Hunt Among the Killers of Men (3 page)

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.”

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
^th
and 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
^th
Century. 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
^th
Century—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.

Gabriel had already moved past both of them to be first through into possible hazard. “Hold it,” he whispered. “I don’t hear anything inside.”

They were at his back (in a classic triangle defense pattern, he noticed; good for them) as he toed the door open. His perimeter senses were keyed up full. His shoulders relaxed.

“Whatever happened here, I think they’ve already come and gone.”

Mitch sagged as though she knew what they would find. The one-bedroom was in a state of disarray that suggested a thorough yet not particularly malicious burglary—drawers dumped, knickknacks scattered. Mitch’s eyes went straight to the desk where it looked Valerie had had her computer setup.

“They took her hard drives,” Mitch said numbly. She dropped the keys in the newly empty space on her sister’s desk.

Gabriel scanned the room. “Two men, I’ll bet. One for lookout, one for the turnover.” He ran a finger over the surface of the computer table. “Powder,” he noted. “They came in wearing latex gloves.” He turned to Mitch. “I don’t suppose she told you what kind of evidence she had?”

“There wasn’t any time,” said Mitch. “She picked me up at Newark when I came in. We had lunch at some fancy joint, one of those places where they have a whole separate menu for water. We couldn’t talk too openly there, with all the waiters listening. She was going to tell me later—but first she had this meeting. I thought it was weird that it was so late at night, but she said these guys had come in internationally, were
still on Shanghai time. It was a ‘face’ thing. And the meeting was important to her—she was going to confront them with what she’d found, tell them she couldn’t be involved in any sort of cover-up; she wasn’t telling them what to do, just backing out gracefully herself. You see how well that worked. I was sitting around here like a patsy when the cops showed up, and meanwhile the Zongchang boys were private-jetting it back to the CCC.”

“So,” Gabriel said, “the first, best hope for the new, modern China, the dedicated wannabe chief big grand kahuna of the CCC, this guy who is Russian pretending to be Chinese, the guy hunting for a one-of-a-kind statue of a dead Chinese warlord, comes to New York and, confronted with evidence that he’s not what he says he is, kills the woman who found it and ransacks her apartment?” Gabriel was looking around the apartment—the leftovers of Valerie’s life—with a renewed intensity in his gaze.

“Yeah,” said Mitch. “Or it was done on his orders.”

Gabriel turned to Lucy. “Okay,
now
I’m interested.” He picked up the ring of keys. “Your sister gave you these?”

Mitch nodded. “In case I needed to go out before she got back.”

The bundle contained four door keys, a main entry key, a foyer key, a mailbox key, a trash-door key and a riot of dead weight in the form of a pewter Empire State Building, a rabbit’s foot (dyed pink), a big rubber sandal with the name VAL embossed on it…and something else.

“What’s this?” said Gabriel, peering closer.

It was a silver charm in the form of a little hardcover
book about a half-inch tall. The cover was engraved with the legend DRINK ME.

Gabriel pried the seam with a thumbnail and the tiny book popped open like a locket to reveal its cargo.

“Aha,” he said, looking at the narrow black sliver inside. It was plastic and had tiny metal contacts at one end. “It’s a…thing.”

“Give me that,” Lucy said. Gabriel plucked it out of the book and handed it over. He could navigate the tunnels of the Paris sewer system in the dark and tell you where an obsidian blade was made by the strike pattern on the stone edge; modern technology, though, was not his bailiwick.

Fortunately, it was his sister’s. “Memory stick,” she said, turning the sliver over. “Four gigs. The kind you plug into a cell phone.”

“Like this one?” Mitch held up a unit she’d unplugged from a charger dock that lay overturned on the floor. It looked like the kind of biz-crazy portable device that did everything except unzip your duds and make you see the face of God.

“We have a winner,” Lucy said, popping a hatch on the back of the thing and sliding the stick inside.

Mitch, meanwhile, was staring into one of the desk drawers, riffling its contents. “Her passport’s still here. Some credit cards. ID.” A tear leaked from one eye, dropped and spattered across the back of her hand.

“Let me see that,” said Gabriel while Lucy worked on the phone. “I’d like to see her face.”

The family resemblance was undeniable.

“This is some bizarre stuff,” said Lucy, scrolling through data on the phone’s tiny screen. “Mostly spreadsheets, it looks like. Amounts of money, invoices, bills of lading.”

“She must have known something was going to happen to her,” said Mitch, straining to keep the tremor in her voice from showing. Gabriel could tell she was the sort who wanted to be in control, in charge of her messier emotions, and who would beat herself up for any public display she thought looked weak. “To leave all this stuff behind.”

“We need to print this out,” Lucy said. “You can’t read it properly on a screen this size.”

“I’m sure Michael’s got a setup we can use, back at the town house,” Gabriel said. And to Mitch he said, “You want to come with us? I’m not sure it’s good for you to stay here alone.” He put a hand on Mitch’s shoulder, but she shook it off.

“I’m fine,” she said roughly, sounding anything but.

“I’ll stay,” Lucy said. “I don’t have to be on a plane till tomorrow morning—”

“I’m
okay
,” Mitch said. “You don’t have to get yourself in trouble on my account.” She turned to Gabriel. “And you don’t have to take care of me, either. I’m not a fragile flower. I’m a soldier, goddamn it. Or I used to be. I’m not going to sit around moaning or feeling frightened—I’m going to find the men who did this and make them sorry they did.”

“Maybe,” Gabriel said. “Or maybe they’ll make you sorry you did. I don’t think you know the kind of power you’re talking about taking on.”

“Listen, stud, if you’re scared and want to drop out, that’s fine,” Mitch said. “You posted bail. That’s plenty.”

“If you want to go up against the CCC and you want to live to tell about it,” Gabriel said patiently, “you’ll listen to me and you’ll do it very,
very
carefully.”

“He can be a pain,” Lucy said, “but he does know what he’s talking about, Mitch.”

Mitch threw up her hands. “All right. You’ve got something to say, I’ll listen. But I’m not waiting long.”

“Fair enough,” Gabriel said. And to Lucy: “I’ll be back as quick as I can. Couple hours at most. You guys can stick around here that long, right?” Lucy looked anxiously over at Mitch, who was pacing impatiently. She nodded.

“All right. Call me if anything happens.”

Gabriel left them to pick up the pieces at the apartment while he headed back to Sutton Place with the cell phone and the memory stick.

Michael would be able to print the document, and from there, well…they’d see what they would see. He shared Mitch’s preference for action and distaste for waiting around, but jumping into a conflict with the CCC wasn’t something you did lightly.

Or at least it wasn’t something
he
would do lightly.

It wasn’t two hours later that Valerie’s cell phone, now sitting in a docking station attached to one of Michael’s computers, started vibrating, and when Gabriel opened it and brought it to his ear, he heard Lucy’s voice shouting at him. “Gabriel? That you?”

“Yes.”

“She’s gone,” Lucy said. “I went to take a shower, and when I got out…”

“No Mitch,” Gabriel said.

“She left a note,” Lucy said. “Just one line.”

“And what’s that?”

“ ‘Enough’s enough,’ ” Lucy read. “ ‘I’m going to get those bastards.’”