The Eye of God (6 page)

Her mother had been held at a prison outside Ho Chi Minh City—until she escaped during a prison riot a year later. For a short period of time, due to a clerical error, she had been declared dead, killed during that uprising. It was that lucky mistake that gave her enough of a head start to flee Vietnam and vanish into the world.

Had she looked for me?
Seichan wondered.
Or did she think I was already dead?

Seichan had a thousand unanswered questions.

“Guan-yin,” Pak continued. A faint smile traced his lips, mocking and bitter. “Such a beautiful name certainly did not fit her . . . certainly not when I met her eight years ago.”

“What do you mean?” Gray asked.

“
Guan-yin
means
goddess of mercy
.” Pak lifted his left hand, revealing only four fingers. “This is the quality of her mercy.”

Seichan shifted closer, speaking for the first time. “How did you know her?” she asked coldly.

Pak initially looked ready to ignore her, but then his eyes slightly crinkled. He stared harder at Seichan, possibly truly seeing her for the first time. Suspicion trickled into his gaze.

“You sound . . .” he stammered. “Just then . . . but that’s not possible.”

Gray leaned forward, catching the man’s eye. “This is an expensive hour, Dr. Pak. Like the lady asked . . . how did you know Guan-yin? In what capacity?”

He flattened the lapels of his suit coat, visibly collecting himself. Only then did he speak. “She once ran this very room,” he said with a small nod to indicate the VIP lounge. “As the dragonhead of a gang out of Kowloon, the
Duàn zhī
Triad.”

Seichan flinched at that name, unable to stop herself.

Gray made a scoffing noise. “So you’re saying Guan-yin was a
boss
of this Chinese Triad?”

“
Ye,
” he said sharply. “She is the only woman to ever become a dragonhead. To accomplish this, she had to be extremely ruthless. I should have known better than to take a loan from her.”

Pak rubbed the stump of his missing finger.

Gray noted the motion. “She had your finger cut off?”

“
Aniyo,
” he disagreed. “
She
did it herself. She came from Kowloon with a hammer and a chisel. The name of her Triad means
Broken Twig
. It is also her signature means of encouraging the prompt payment of a debt.”

Gray grimaced, clearly picturing that brutal handiwork.

Seichan was having no easier time of it. Her breathing grew harder, trying to balance this act with the mother who had once nursed a broken-winged dove back to health. But she knew the man wasn’t lying.

Gray was less convinced. “And how are we to know that this Triad boss is the woman we came looking for? What proof do you offer? Do you have a photograph of you with her?”

Inside the intelligence inquiry sent out broadly, Sigma had included a picture of her mother, one taken from the records of the Vietnamese prison where she had been incarcerated. They’d also posted possible locations, which unfortunately covered a large swath of Southeast Asia, along with a computer-enhanced image of how she might look now, twenty years later.

Dr. Pak had been the only promising fish to bite on that line.

“A photograph?” The North Korean scientist shook his head. He lit another cigarette, plainly a chain-smoker. “She keeps herself covered in public. Only those high in her Triad have seen her face. If anyone else sees her, they don’t live long enough to speak of it.”

“Then how do you—?”

Pak touched his throat. “The dragon. I saw it when she wielded the hammer . . . dangling from her neck, the silver shining, as merciless as its owner.”

“Like this?” Seichan slipped a finger to her collar and pulled out her own coiled dragon pendant. The intelligence dossier had included a picture of it. Seichan’s charm was a copy of another. The memory of the original remained etched in her bones, often rising up in dreams

. . .
of being curled in her mother’s arms on the small cot under an open window
,
night birds singing
,
moonlight reflecting off the silver dragon resting at her mother’s throat
,
shimmering like water with each breath . . .

Hwan Pak had a different memory. He cringed back from her pendant, as if trying to escape the sight.

“There must be many dragon pendants of a similar design,” Gray said. “What you offer is
no
proof. Only your word about a piece of jewelry you saw eight years ago.”

“If you want real proof—”

Seichan cut him off, standing and tucking the silver dragon away. She motioned for Gray to move aside for a private conversation.

Once they retreated to beyond the baccarat table, she spoke in his ear. Kowalski’s bulk helped shield them further.

“He’s telling the truth,” Seichan said. “We must move beyond this line of questioning and find out
where
my mother is in Kowloon.”

“Seichan, I know you want to believe him, but let me—”

She gripped his bicep to shut him up. “The name of the Triad.
Duàn zhī
.”

He went silent, letting her speak, plainly seeing something in her face.

She felt tears rising, coming from a place of happiness and grief, a place where night birds still sang in the jungle.

“The name . . . Broken Twig,” she said. Even speaking it, she felt something break inside her.

He waited, not understanding, but he allowed her the space to explain at her own pace.

“My name,” she said haltingly, feeling suddenly exposed, “the one given to me by my mother . . . the one I abandoned, a necessity to bury my childhood behind me . . . it was
Chi
.”

A new name allowed a new life
.

Gray’s eyes widened. “Your real name is Chi.”

“
Was,
” she still insisted.

That girl had died long ago.

Seichan took a steadying breath. “In Vietnamese,
Chi
means
twig
.”

She read the understanding in Gray’s face.

Her mother had named the Triad after her lost daughter.

Before Gray could respond, a sharp coughing sounded from beyond the door—but the noise came from no human throat. Bodies thudded out in the hallway, felled by the barrage of noise-suppressed gunfire.

Gray was already swinging to face that threat, drawing Kowalski with him.

Pak called from across the room. “You asked for proof!” He pointed his smoldering cigarette at the door. “Here it comes!”

Seichan immediately realized what Pak had done. She should have suspected it sooner, considering what they had just learned. She cursed herself. In the past, she never would have been blindsided like this. Her time with Sigma had softened her.

Pak backed away from the door, but he did not look scared. This was his play, a path to a far bigger payoff than Gray had offered, a possible way to clear
all
his debts. In a clever act of betrayal, the bastard had turned the tables on them, sold them out to her mother’s Triad, passing on a warning to a woman who had gone to great lengths to keep her face hidden from the world.

Such a woman would destroy anyone who got too close to the truth.

Seichan understood that.

She would have done the same.

You did what you must to survive.

1:44
A
.
M
.

Ju-long Delgado was not as understanding about the sudden turn of events at Casino Lisboa. He stood up and grabbed his cell phone.

On the plasma screen, he watched the three foreigners react to some commotion beyond the VIP room door. The two men flipped the baccarat table on its side, placing it between them and the door to act as a shield. On the other side of the room, the North Korean scientist seemed less perturbed, but even he retreated into a far corner, placing himself out of harm’s way.

With one thumb, Ju-long speed-dialed Tomaz out at the Lisboa. Earlier, Ju-long had specifically ordered his team
not
to pursue the targets until Dr. Pak left. He didn’t want any trouble with the North Koreans. He had many lucrative ties with their government, helping shuttle prominent members, like Hwan Pak, to and from Macau. In fact, he had visited Pyongyang himself, grooming and securing those connections.

As soon as the line was picked up, Tomaz reported in, panting heavily as if running. “We saw it, too, on the security feed,
senhor
. A firefight. I’m heading up there now. Someone is assaulting the same VIP room.”

A lance of righteous indignation stabbed through Ju-long. Was someone trying to steal his merchandise? Had a disgruntled bidder decided to circumvent the auction and take a direct approach?

Tomaz corrected him. “We believe it’s one of the Triads.”

He balled a fist.

Damned Chinese dogs . . .

His plan must have leaked to the wrong ears.

“How do you wish us to proceed,
senhor
? Back off or continue as planned?”

Ju-long had no choice. If he didn’t retaliate in full force, the Triads would take it as a sign of weakness, and he’d be fighting turf wars for years. The cost to his organization, along with the weakening of his position in the eyes of the Chinese officials who ran Macau, could not be tolerated.

Extreme measures were needed.

“Lock down the Lisboa,” he ordered, intending to make an example of the trespassers. “Bring in more men. Any known Triad on the property, whether involved or not, I want killed on sight. Any
suspected
ally, anyone who might have helped facilitate or knew about this strike, I want dead.”

“And the targets?”

He weighed the advantages and disadvantages. While the profits to be gained by the pair were considerable, their deaths could also serve as an important lesson. It would demonstrate Ju-long’s willingness to sacrifice profit in order to maintain his authority and position. Among the Chinese, honor and saving face were as important as breathing.

He allowed the anger to drain out of him, reconciling himself to the reality of the situation. What’s done is done.

Besides, in the end, their bodies could still fetch a tidy sum.

And a little profit was better than none.

“Kill them,” he ordered. “Kill them all.”

3

November 17, 9:46
A
.
M
. PST

Los Angeles AFB

El Segundo, California

Chaos still ruled the floor of the Space and Missile Systems Center.

It had been almost two hours since the satellite image of the smoldering Eastern Seaboard had glowed on its giant monitor. Base personnel had immediately confirmed that New York, Boston, and D.C. were all safe and unharmed. Life continued on out there without mishap.

The relief in the room had been palpable. Painter’s reaction was no exception. He had friends and colleagues across the Northeast. Still, he was glad his fiancée was in New Mexico. He pictured Lisa’s face, framed in a fall of blond hair, grinning at him with a trace of mischief that always set his heart pounding harder. If anything had happened to her . . .

But in the end, nothing was amiss out east.

So what the hell had the satellite transmitted as it crashed?

That had been the critical question of the past two hours. Theories had flashed across the floor of the control room.
Was the picture some extrapolation? Some computer simulation of a nuclear strike?
But all the engineers claimed such calculations were beyond the scope of the spacecraft’s original programming.

So what had happened?

Painter stood with Dr. Jada Shaw in front of the giant screens, along with a handful of engineers and military brass.

A satellite image of the island of Manhattan glowed before them. A young technician stood with a laser pointer in hand. He passed its glowing red dot across the breadth of the island.

“This is an image obtained from an NRO satellite at the exact same time that
IoG-1
burned past the Eastern Seaboard. Here you can make out the grid of streets, the lakes dotting Central Park. Now here is the same fractional picture taken by
IoG-1
.”

He clicked a handheld button, and another image appeared beside the first. The new picture was a blown-up section of the photo snapped by the satellite as it crashed, featuring the identical chunk of Manhattan.

“If we overlay, one atop the other . . .”

The technician worked his magic to superimpose the second over the first. Through the smoke and the flames, the grid of streets lined up perfectly. Even the lakes of Central Park matched in every dimension.

Murmurs spread through the crowd.

Dr. Shaw took a step forward to look more closely. She wore a frown of distaste.

“As you can see,” the tech continued, “this
is
New York City, not some facsimile. The destruction depicted is not some digital noise that inadvertently
looks
like the East Coast is burning. Not at this level of detail.”

To prove his point, the tech zoomed upon key locations of the island. Though the resolution became grainy, it appeared Manhattan was correct down to its tiniest details. Except now, the Empire State Building was a blazing torch, the financial district a cratered ruin, and the Queensboro Bridge a shattered twist of steel girders. It looked like some exquisite digital matte painting for a disaster film.

Boston and D.C. fared no better.

Questions flared among the audience, but Dr. Shaw simply moved closer, resting a hand on her chin, staring between the two images as they were split apart again.

General Metcalf called to Painter from a few yards away, irritation piquing in his voice. “Director Crowe, a moment of your time.”

Painter moved to join his boss in front of the world map.