Hong Kong (41 page)

"Where did you find this?"

"Taped inside the air return ducting in Kent's cube, downstairs. I found a screwdriver in her desk and went looking for something to unscrew."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"We need to talk," Jake said to Tiger Cole. He and Carmellini had just gotten through two circles of armed guards around the museum exhibit trailer and had been allowed to enter. Cole was watching the video from the York units, which were being positioned in preselected hiding places in Kowloon. Kent was at the main control panel. Beside her sat a Chinese student from Hong Kong University whom Cole thought brilliant.

"Give me two more minutes," Cole said.

"Where are you putting those things?"

Cole kept his eyes on the computer monitors. "In shops and basements, just getting them out of sight."

"This will be the acid test, huh?"

"They were designed for night fighting in urban areas. The official designation is AVSPU, for Assault Vehicle, Self-Propelled, Urban. The army put them in a class with hummers and armored personnel carriers."

When the last York was in place, Cole turned to Jake. "What can I

do you for?"

"A short talk with you and Ms. Kent. Got a private place?" "There's a tiny office at the end of this trailer." "That'll do."

Cole spoke to Kent, and she got up from the control panel and followed Cole and Jake. Carmellini hung back, then followed her.

She glanced around at him, didn't say anything. She was wearing tennis shoes, jeans, and a pullover today; Carmellini had never seen her in anything but a dress or skirt. Her abundant hair was pulled back in a ponytail, making her look like the girl next door.

The office was small, with just a desk and two chairs. Jake snagged one and motioned Kent into the other. Cole stood. Carmellini waited until the door closed on the three of them, then went looking for Kent's purse.

Jake laid the passport on the small desk. "Explain this," he said to Kerry Kent.

She didn't reach for it. Jake passed it to Cole, who opened it, flipped through it, then tossed it back on the desk.

She nipped on her lower lip, but not a trace of emotion showed on her face.

After about ten seconds, she reached for the passport. She spent at least half a minute examining it, then laid it back on the desk.

"I never saw it before," she said.

"Wrong answer," Jake Grafton said sourly. "I know a lot and can guess at a lot more. Believe me, your future depends on how clean you come, right now."

"I'm a British citizen. I work for the SIS. I don't have to tell you anything."

"Another wrong answer," Jake said.

They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Cole opened it and Carmellini passed in a shoulder purse. Cole made room for him.

With another glance at Kent, Jake opened the purse, looked in. "Aha." From its depths he removed a Derringer, a small two-barrel single-action .22 caliber. "Would you look at this."

He opened the action. Loaded. Snapped it shut and passed it to Cole.

"Want to talk now?"

"Why?" she said. "You don't know anything."

"You should have gotten rid of the gun. Do the British still hang people?"

"It was given to me."

"By whom?"

"Wu Tai Kwong."

"Wrong answer again. How about Sonny Wong?" She leaned back in her chair and looked in every face. "You don't have proof of anything," she said. "Carmellini must have planted that gun in my purse."

Jake stood. "Tommy, stay here with Ms. Kent. Don't let her touch anything, call anyone, speak to anyone. We'll be back." He walked through the door and Cole followed him. "What was it about the pistol?" Cole asked as they walked to the York control console.

"Wasn't that CIA agent, Harold Barnes, shot with a twenty-two?" A look of surprise crossed Cole's face. "I can't recall." "I can," Jake Grafton said. He paused behind the York master control panel. "I read the report. Twenty-two slug at point-blank range above the right ear. The Hong Kong police turned the bullet over to the FBI."

"Kent?" He sounded skeptical.

"Perhaps. I'm guessing, but it fits. Now tell me, what would happen if someone changed some of the lines of the code that the Yorks use to separate the good guys from the bad guys?"

Cole pursed his lips thoughtfully. He went over to the keyboard and began typing. He spent two minutes studying lines of software code. "Looks okay," he muttered and came back to the control menu.

"But if one of the Yorks started shooting our guys, I would see it. I'm right here."

"That problem could be easily solved with a bullet." "We've got to trust people," Cole responded. "There's no other way to do it."

"Wake up, Tiger. Kerry Kent and Sonny Wong aren't on the same sheet of music that you and Wu have been singing from. A wise man surrounds himself with people he trusts and checks on 'em constantly." "You're right, of course."

"Where's your television helicopter?" Jake asked. "You and I need to take a ride."

"It's back at the TV station. The PLA would gladly pot it over Kowloon tonight."

"Call the station and have the pilot fly it down here. You and I need to borrow it."

"Want to tell me what's going on?"

"Not yet. Like she said, we need some proof. Call the station and get us a chopper."

The helicopter, a Bell 206 JetRanger, landed in the street. The pilot was a small man in his mid-twenties. As the chopper was making its approach, Jake turned to Tiger Cole and said, "We better take assault rifles, just in case."

"Okay." He borrowed rifles from two of the men guarding the trailer.

The pilot flew the helicopter between the office towers of Victoria, then dropped to fifteen feet above the waters of the strait. They flew over the trucks and armed rebels who were guarding the tunnel and kept going. Cole pointed to a building, and the pilot slowed to a hover over the street in front of it. He let the chopper descend straight down, cushioning it at the bottom, until the skids kissed. Cole got out and led the way.

They were in front of a laundry. Not many civilians around, although heads peered out windows all along the block. With Cole leading, the two men went through the laundry, out the back, and down an alley. Forty feet or so down the alley, they knocked on a back door. It opened a crack.

Cole said something in Chinese, and the door opened.

A York unit, Alvin, stood near the front of the building, which was a shoe shop. A curtain hung between it and the shop door. It stood facing the curtain, a belt-fed machine gun in its hands and an electric cord hanging from its back. "We're charging the battery," Cole explained, gesturing at the cord.

"Yeah. Are there any access panels on this thing?"

"Yes. Three, actually. One in his abdomen under the UWB radar, one in his back above the electrical socket, and one in the back of his head."

"Open 'em up. Let's take a look."

Cole didn't hesitate. From a trouser pocket he produced a small cloth bundle. He unrolled it, revealing four tools. One looked to Jake like a plain Phillips screwdriver. Cole used it to open the panels.

From his shirt pocket he produced a penlight. "This is a regular flashlight or a red-light laser. I use it to check the sensors. Use the white light." He showed Jake the control.

Jake peered into the back of Alvin's head. It was full of wires, contacts, and component connections. "Take a look," Jake told Cole and held the penlight for him.

"What are we looking for?"

"Anything that isn't supposed to be there."

"Looks okay to me."

"Next panel."

Of course, they found what they were looking for in the last panel, the one on the abdomen. Cole almost missed it. A tiny bare wire, no more than an inch long, protruded from the top of a solid black plug-in component.

Cole used his fingers to remove the connection, then began tugging on the bare wire. It turned out to be six inches long, a small antenna, and was connected to a small radio receiver, a AAA battery, and a blasting cap buried in about three ounces of malleable plastique explosive.

"A bomb."

"If it went off, what would it do?"

"Destroy the main power supply. The York will just stop, wherever it is. Think Kent did this?"

"She had access and motive."

"How did you know it was here?"

"Someone paid Kent a lot of money in the last four months," Jake replied. "A million and a half pounds. I'm betting it was Sonny Wong. He then kidnapped Wu and Callie and demanded fifty million American from you and ten from Rip, Wu's brother-in-law. He's your security chief, and he's dirty."

Cole used a pocketknife to cut the wires leading to the head of the blasting cap, which protruded from the plastique.

Jake continued. "Either Sonny Wong is going to kill you, Wu Tai Kwong, and the folks loyal to Wu, then take over the rebellion and lead it himself, or he sold the rebellion to the Communists. They pay him, he wipes out the rebel leadership—at a profit, which he pockets— and disables the Yorks. The PLA defeats the rebel army and hangs a couple hundred traitors as an example to everyone. Voila! everything is once again copacetic in Communist heaven."

"We've kept a tight rein on everything."

"You're planning a goddamn revolution involving hundreds—for all

I know thousands, maybe tens of thousands—of people all over China and you think the Communist leadership didn't get wind of it? Maybe in Oz, baby, but not in the real world. Hell, man, the folks in Silicon Valley are selling high-tech secrets to anyone with money. You know that! Cash is king! Sonny Wong may be a patriot, but he can be bought. Kent's a chippie; you could buy her for pocket change."

"Okay, okay." Cole shook his head. "Yeah. Okay."

"You better visit all these Yorks and see what Ms. Kent was up to in her spare time. I'll take the chopper back to the barn and have a little chat with our lady friend from SIS."

"Okay," Cole said. "Send the chopper back for me. I'll meet him where it is."

"Give me the bomb." Jake held out his hand. Cole handed it to him. "When you get back, Carmellini and I are going to need some weapons. What have you guys got in inventory?"

"A little bit of everything for the Yorks."

"I need two silenced submachine guns, a couple of silenced pistols, and two fighting knives."

"You going to get Kent to tell you where Callie is?"

"Uh-huh."

"Don't do anything you'll regret."

"I intend to get my wife back alive," Jake Grafton said. "Whatever happens to anybody who gets in the way is their tough luck."

Tommy Carmellini and Kerry Kent were still seated in the small office at the end of the museum exhibit trailer. "Any problem?" Jake asked.

"She offered me some money."

Kent was staring at a spot on the wall, her face a mask.

"Anybody talk to her, she talk to anybody?"

"No, sir."

Carmellini got out of the chair and Jake sat. "I don't have a lot of time," he said to Kent. "I'm not going to fool around. I want the truth and I want it now."

She didn't say a word.

"You understand that you're never going to see a dollar of that money. It's history. Forget about it. The SIS will confiscate the account. What we're talking about now is your life."

Jake Grafton leaned forward and stared across the desk into Kerry Kent's eyes. In spite of herself, she found she couldn't look away. "Tell me where my wife is. If I get her back safe and sound, you live. If I don't, you die. It's that simple."

She said nothing.

"Carmellini," Jake said. "Get me a roll of duct tape."

The CIA officer went through the door.

Almost too quickly for the eye to follow, Kent lashed out at Jake Grafton's throat with the cutting edge of her hand. Jake took the blow on his forehead and went for her with both hands. He got his left hand around her neck, his thumb on her windpipe, and squeezed for all he was worth while he used his right to pop her hard in the nose.

Cartilage shattered and blood spattered everywhere.

The fight went out of her. Grafton released his grip.

She sat dazed, bleeding freely, then her eyes focused again.

She held her shirttail to her nose, exposing her bra. Jake didn't take his eyes off her. Amazingly, he felt better.

"Asshole," she hissed. "Hitting a woman."

Carmellini opened the door, then paused. Jake stood up and took the tape.

"We'll tape her to this chair. Put her in it."

That didn't take much wrestling. Jake began wrapping tape around her. "Put her hands behind her."

"What about her nose?"

"Never heard of anyone dying of nosebleed. If she croaks we'll put her in the medical textbooks."

Kent screamed. Jake punched her again, medium hard, and she stopped.