The Eye of God (13 page)

Suddenly Kowalski bellowed behind him. “Don’t any of you speak goddamned English?”

A door opened at the end of the hall.

“I do.”

A figure stepped out of the shadows and into the hallway. He was a tall man, with his white hair pulled back in a knot of a ponytail. Though in his sixties, he moved with a silky power in each step. He carried a long, curved sword in one hand, an ancient Chinese Dao saber. His other palm rested on the butt of a holstered SIG Sauer.

“What do you wish to tell our esteemed dragonhead?” he asked.

Gray knew the wrong answer would get them killed.

“Tell her I carry a message concerning Mai Phuong Ly’s daughter.”

From the swordsman’s blank expression, the name meant nothing to him. As answer, he simply turned and walked calmly back into the shadows.

Again they were left to wait. One of the guards barked in Cantonese and forced Gray and Kowalski to retreat a few steps, so another could grab their weapons.

“This gets better and better,” Kowalski said.

The tension stretched to the tautness of a piano wire.

Finally, the swordsman returned, stepping again out of the shadowy doorway to confront them.

“With graciousness, she has agreed to see you,” he said.

Gray let the knot between his shoulders relax slightly.

“But if she doesn’t like what she hears,” the swordsman warned, “her face will be the last thing you ever see.”

Gray didn’t doubt that.

8:44
A
.
M
.

Seichan woke to darkness.

She remained motionless, a survival instinct going back to her feral years on the streets of Bangkok and Phnom Penh. She waited for her muzzy-headedness to clear. Memory slowly seeped out of a black well. She’d been grabbed, drugged, and blindfolded. From the bite of restraints, her wrists and ankles must also be bound. She still wore the blindfold, but enough light seeped through the edges to tell it was day.

But was it the same day she’d been grabbed?

She pictured the crash, Gray and Kowalski flying.

Had they survived?

She didn’t want to think otherwise.

Despair weakened one’s resolve—and she would need every bit of tenacity to survive.

She cast out her addled senses to gain her bearing. She lay on something hard, metal, smelling of motor oil. Vibrations and the occasional jarring bump revealed she was in some sort of vehicle.

Perhaps a van, maybe a truck.

But where were they taking her?

Why not just kill me?

She could guess the answer to that easily enough. Someone must have learned about the bounties placed on her head, someone who aimed to sell her.

“You may now stop pretending to sleep.” The voice came from a foot or two away.

She inwardly cringed. Her senses had been honed sharp by the coarse streets and back alleys of her youth. Still, she’d been totally unaware that someone sat so close. It unnerved her. It wasn’t just his silence, but his complete blankness. Like he didn’t exist.

“First, you may relax,” the man continued, his Cantonese formal and flawless but tinged with a European patois. Considering it was Macau, the accent was likely Portuguese. “We do not intend to kill you, or even harm you. At least, not me personally. It’s merely a business transaction.”

So she had been correct about someone selling her for profit. But it was little consolation.

“Second, in regard to your friends . . .”

This time she did flinch, imagining Gray’s face, Kowalski’s bluster. Were they still alive?

A soft scolding chuckle rose from the man.

“They are alive,” he said, reading her like a book. “But simply for the moment, I’m afraid. It took us a while to track them down—only to discover they had turned up in a most unexpected place, the home of a competitor. Which left me baffled, wondering
why
? Then I realized it didn’t matter. There is the old Chinese saying:
yi jian shuang diao
. I think it applies to this circumstance.”

Seichan translated in her head.

One arrow
,
double vultures
.

She went cold at the implication. The Chinese phrase was the equivalent of a more common idiom.

Killing two birds with one stone.

8:58
A
.
M
.

The elevators opened, delivering them from hell to heaven.

Gray followed the swordsman into what must have once been the apartment building’s penthouse. Here there was none of the stifling cramp and grime of the lower complex. The entire space was open, decorated in white furniture with simple, clean lines. The floor was polished bamboo. Potted orchids of every shade and shape dotted the room. A fish tank curved in the shape of a standing wave held myriad snow-white fish. It acted as a divider from a kitchen of stainless European appliances.

But the biggest difference from the hellish landscape below was the amount of light. Even the drizzling overcast day did little to dampen the brightness. Huge windows looked out over Kowloon, high enough to view the shining towers of Hong Kong City. In the center of the penthouse stood a glass-walled atrium open to the sky above, holding a fountain, along with a riotous spread of plants and flowers, all surrounding a fishpond with floating lilies.

A single lantern also gently rocked atop the water.

A slim shape in a belted robe bent over it. With a long taper in hand, she lit a fresh candle in the lotus-shaped lantern.

Gray pictured the festival at Macau, with its thousands of lights, each glow marking the memory of a past loved one.

Gray was marched out of the elevator and toward the atrium.

Kowalski looked darkly back at the elevator. “So why did we climb fourteen flights when they have a frickin’ elevator?”

Its use was likely restricted to the Triad, but Gray didn’t bother explaining, keeping his full attention on the figure behind the glass.

The swordsman led them to a few yards from the atrium door. “Remain standing.”

The woman—and it was plain from her petite bare feet and the curve of her hip that this was a
woman
—remained bowed before the lantern, hands now folded around the burning incense taper.

For a full two minutes, no one spoke. Kowalski fidgeted, but he had the good sense for once to keep his mouth shut.

Finally the woman gave a deeper bow toward the pond, straightened, and turned. Her robe was hooded against the drizzle, its edges long, folding around her face as she stood. She crossed to the atrium door and slowly slid it open.

With great grace, she stepped into the penthouse.

“Guan-yin,” the swordsman intoned, bowing his head.

“
M`h’ gōi,
Zhuang.” A pale hand slipped from a sleeve and touched the swordsman’s forearm, an oddly intimate gesture.

The dragonhead of the
Duàn zhī
turned next to Gray.

“You speak of Mai Phuong Ly,” she said, her voice low and calm but laced with the steel edge of a threat. “You come speaking of someone long dead.”

“Not in the memories of her daughter.”

The woman showed no reaction, a demonstration of her degree of control. After a long pause, her voice came back quieter.

“Again you speak of the dead.”

“She was not hours ago when she came to Macau looking for her mother.”

The only reaction was the slight lowering of her chin, perhaps realizing how close she had come to killing her own daughter. Now she was likely wondering if he spoke the truth.

“It was you at the Casino Lisboa.”

Gray motioned to Kowalski. “The three of us. Dr. Hwan Pak recognized your dragon pendant, said he knew you. So we came to Macau to discover the truth.”

A small sniff of derision. “But what is the truth?” she asked.

Doubt and disbelief rang in her voice.

“If I may . . .” Gray pointed to the pocket of his jacket, where they’d left his phone after the Triad members below had frisked him.

“With care,” Zhuang warned.

Gray removed his phone and pulled up the photo log. He scrolled until he reached a folder labeled S
EICHAN
. He flipped through photos until he came to one that showed a clear picture of her face. Seeing her now, an ache of fear for her safety struck him deeply, but he kept his arm steady as he held out the phone as proof.

Guan-yin leaned forward, her features still shadowed, making it impossible to read her expression. But in the stumble of her step as she moved closer, Gray read the recognition, the barely restrained hope. Even after twenty years, a mother would know her daughter.

Gray motioned for her to take the phone. “There are other pictures. You can swipe to view them.”

Guan-yin reached out, but her fingers hesitated as if a part of her feared the truth. If her daughter was still alive, what did that say about a mother who failed her?

Finally, fingers slipped the phone from his hand. She turned her back to Gray as she searched the folder. A long stretch of silence—then the woman trembled and slipped to her knees on the bamboo floor.

Zhuang moved so swiftly Gray hardly noted it. One moment the swordsman was at his side . . . the next, he was on one knee beside his mistress, with his Dao saber pointed back at them, cautioning them to remain where they were.

“It is her,” Guan-yin whispered. “How could this be?”

Gray could not imagine the emotions that must be warring inside her: guilt, shame, hope, joy, fear, anger.

The last two won out as the woman quickly composed herself, standing and turning to them. Zhuang joined her, protective—but from the depth of concern in his eyes, it was clear his need to shield her went beyond professional duty.

Guan-yin shook back her hood, revealing a long cascade of black hair with a single streak of gray along one edge of her face, the same edge that bore the curve of a deep purplish scar. It curled from her cheek to across her left brow, sparing her eye. It was too purposefully twisted to be a wound received in a knife fight. Someone had intently and painfully carved into her face, a memento of old torture. But as if to turn such a scar into a badge of honor—to perhaps wrest control from that old pain—she had her face tattooed, incorporating the scar, transforming it into the tail of the dragon now inked across cheek and brow.

It was an uncanny match to the silver serpent at her throat.

“Where is she now?” Guan-yin asked, her voice rising in volume, showing again that steel. “Where is my daughter?”

Gray swallowed back the awe at the sight of her face and quickly explained about the attack, its aftermath, and the abduction on the street.

“Tell me about the man you saw standing beside the car,” Guan-yin demanded.

Gray described the tall powerful-looking man with the trimmed beard. “He looked Portuguese, with maybe some Chinese blood.”

She nodded. “I know him well. Ju-long Delgado, the boss of all Macau.”

A shadow of concern swept her features.

If this hard woman was worried, that was a bad sign.

9:18
A
.
M
.

With a complaint of brakes, the vehicle came to a stop.

Seichan heard the stranger speak in low tones to the driver in Portuguese, but she didn’t understand the language. Doors opened and slammed.

A hand reached to her face. She thrashed back, but fingers merely removed her blindfold. She blinked against the sudden glare.

“Calm yourself,” her captor said. “We still have a long way to go.”

The man was dressed meticulously in a finely tailored silk suit and jacket. His dark brown eyes matched his shaggy hair and manicured beard, the latter shorn tight to his cheeks and square chin. His eyes, pinched slightly at the corners, revealed his mixed-blood heritage.

A glance around revealed she was on the floor of a panel van.

The rear door popped open, stabbing her eyes again with brighter light. Another man stood outside: he was younger, a smooth-faced brute with cropped black hair and massive shoulders that strained his suit jacket. He had striking ice-blue eyes.

“Tomaz,” her captor said. “Are we ready for the flight?”

A nod. “
Sim,
Senhor Delgado. The plane is ready.”

The man called Delgado turned to her. “I’ll be accompanying you on this flight,” he said. “To ensure I receive full compensation, but also I believe it would be a good time for me
not
to be in Macau. Not after what is about to transpire in Hong Kong. The aftermath will be bloody for some time.”

“Where are you taking me?”

Ignoring her, he scrambled out of the van and stretched his back. “It looks to be a beautiful day.”

His underling, Tomaz, grabbed her bound ankles and yanked her into the morning sunlight. A dagger appeared in his hands and sliced the plastic ties. Her wrists remained bound behind her back.

Placed roughly on her feet, she realized she was on the tarmac of some remote airstrip. A sleek jet waited thirty yards away. Its stairs were down, ready to receive its passengers. A figure appeared in the open doorway and stepped into the light.

A large splinted bandage covered his broken nose.

Dr. Hwan Pak.

“Ah, our benefactor.” Delgado headed toward the jet, checking the Rolex on his wrist. “Come. We don’t want to be anywhere near Hong Kong after the next few minutes.”

9:22
A
.
M
.

“That’s all you know?”

A mother’s love for her daughter ached in Guan-yin’s voice. She had questioned Gray intently for the past several minutes, probing Seichan’s past, trying to understand how she could still be alive.

They had retreated to one of the sofas.

Zhuang stood guard beside her. Kowalski had wandered over to the fish tank, tapping at the glass, his nose close to its surface.

Gray wished he could fill in more blanks for Guan-yin, but even he did not know the full extent of Seichan’s history, only fragments: a series of orphanages, a rough time on the streets, a recruitment into a criminal organization. As Gray recounted this past, Guan-yin seemed to understand. In some ways, both mother and daughter had taken parallel paths, hardened by circumstances but still able to rise above it, to survive and flourish.