The Visitor (25 page)

The director found the picture in the file. It was of the baron and baroness in the Paris train station, but it was not very good, as Ralls had said. Their faces were grainy and the number of fingers could not be ascertained.

“So what about the seven fingers and the fingerprints?” he asked.

“Extra fingers isn’t so rare as you might think,” Ralls said. “Or so I am told by a doctor friend of mine. Having six is fairly common, and more than five is called ploydactyly. If a baby has an extra digit at birth, and it is deformed at all, they usually cut it off. As for the bizarre skin pattern on the fingertips, it’s a dead end. She has no record anywhere that we can find, including Interpol, and we can find no background information on her at all.

“As for the strange rocket craft, we were utterly unable to find any trace of it, who built it, or even who
might
have built it. We cannot find any motive for the trek the pilot took across the US. The only law the pilot broke was a misdemeanor of not filing a flight plan for any pilot going over eighteen thousand feet in US airspace. Can you imagine trying to extradite her? We go to a federal judge and say that we have a single sighting of a red-headed female from a nearby pilot through his canopy, but no rocket was found, and we have no other evidence, other than DNA and fingerprints that were probably taken illegally under French law. ‘But judge, we would like you to issue an extradition order for the misdemeanor of flying too high without a flight plan.’”

“That would be rich,” Hauser said. “We would be the laughing stock.”

“What do you think about whether or not she was the hypersonic pilot?” Ralls asked. “I have a gut feeling that it could be her, but I do not have any hard evidence. I have tried to run down all possibilities, but I’ve found no sign of any involvement by anyone else. I’m reminded of a Sherlock Holmes quote from the
Sign of Four
, ‘Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.’”

“I cannot let a potential threat to the US, by someone having a manned craft that can go that fast, just lie,” Hauser said. “Even if they, or whoever made it, did not have sophisticated guidance systems, a suicide bomber could Kamikaze one of our cities with a dirty nuclear bomb and we could not stop it. I deal with actual or potential terrorist threats all the time and, to me, this has the potential. Keep on it.”

CHAPTER 18

The hands of Madman Cheng’s knock-off waterproof wristwatch were all pointing up as midnight arrived. He was waiting in a dark cove on Mainland China for his passengers. The commotion of people coming down the trail could be heard, and he hid, in case it was not the people he expected. As they approached, he could see there were six people, and then he recognized the man who worked for him. Madman stepped out of his hiding place in the bushes and turned on a flashlight to lead them to him.

He greeted his helper and then the five passengers. The average age appeared to be early twenties, and none were married. They were all ambitious, trying to get to Taiwan for a better life.

Madman looked at his hand-written list of passengers and asked who was who.

“I’m Mee Noh Yew,” the youngest of the ladies said.

“Do you have the one hundred dollars?”

She handed Madman a crumpled one hundred dollar bill from her pocket.

 
Madman looked at the next person, a male. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Tai Won Ong.”

“Good,” Madman said to the young man. Tai gave his stack of Yuan to Madman, who looked at it disdainfully. “It’s supposed to be in dollars.”

“I could not get any in the time I had,” Tai said. “I had to get some of this at the last moment from friends, and I had no time to get to a money changer.”

Madman was unhappy about it, but it was too late. He took the Yuan and put it in his pocket. He turned to the next, a lady with short cropped hair.

“I’m Ma Tuyit To,” she said. She then gave her money to Madman and he checked off her name.

The next was an older man of thirty. “I’m So Su Mee.”

It was slightly unusual to see a Chinese man of thirty without a family, and these people were not supposed to have any family to leave behind in China.

“Where’s your family?” Madman asked him.

“My wife and son were killed in an accident, and I have nothing left. So I’m going to start a new life.”

There was no way to verify his story, but it really did not matter. Madman was going to take him anyway. He took the man’s money and checked off his name.

He turned to the last, a man of twenty two years.

The man held out his money. “I’m Sum Ting Wong.”

Madman completed the list. Everyone was accounted for and had paid. Madman would get the balance on the shore in Taiwan. It was not unusual for that to happen, as the Chinese had so little that they often did not have enough to pay the full fare. Relatives or contacts in Taiwan would pay the balance on those occasions. In this case, it would be Deng Lee, working for the baron.

“All right,” Madman announced. “Now, we’re going to cross the Taiwan Strait. It is very important that you do exactly as I say. If you do not, you will be knocked out of my boat and you will drown in the sea. To avoid being caught, we have to race across the sea.”

The five passengers stared at the strange craft in fear and amazement. It was made of white, round, PVC drainage pipes, glued and tied together. There were two keels in the catamaran fashion, each fifteen feet long, made up of pipes a foot and a half in diameter. The front of the keels had tips made of cones that had the points turned up to cut through the waves. In between the large pipes was a flat platform of PVC pipes, each four inches in diameter, sitting out of the water the height of the catamaran’s hulls. The rear had a makeshift bracket holding an enormous, American V-6 outboard motor with two hundred and fifty horsepower. The huge engine looked very out of place fastened onto a boat that was made up of so few dollars in PVC pipe. The motor had come from a Chinese ring in Southern California that stole cars and put them in shipping containers bound for China. Madman had gotten the engine for one-fourth the price.

The entire purpose of the materials used in the boat was to minimize any heat signature, as the Taiwan military FLIR cameras on their helicopters and planes could easily pick out the heat signature of a human body or a motor against the cold sea. The PVC pipe gave no signature at all. The major heat came from the motor, over which he had installed a cold water bladder that sucked up water from the sea and drained it out quickly, cooling the outer surface of the motor case and creating a cold buffer of water and neoprene in between the hot motor and the radar.

There was an overall benefit to the makeshift boat, which was that it cost almost nothing, except for the motor. If the boat ever flipped over and sank in high waves, got shot up by the government, or was seized--all of which had happened to him previously--he would not lose a major investment.

The passengers would give off a heat signature themselves and, to reduce that, Madman had acquired several blankets that were made for forest fire fighters to cover themselves in case of a flashover while they were fighting a fire. The blankets were made from a fabric developed with a coating that resembled aluminum foil on one side and was designed to keep out most all heat. With the reflective coating of foil turned to the inside toward the body, the blankets kept the passengers’ heat signature contained and invisible to the expensive thermal imaging cameras and radar the Taiwan government had bought to monitor the Taiwan Strait.

All in all, Madman had a craft that gave off hardly any heat signature, was below the larger waves, and went across the ninety miles of the Taiwan Strait so quickly that it was nearly impossible to detect. But on important occasions such as this, Baron had also bribed someone in the military to make sure that no one signaled any alert during the designated time period.

“Now, each of you is to lie down on the floor of the boat and hold on with one of the short ropes,” Madman told the group. “You are to lie down on the pipes and keep your faces down to avoid giving off a heat signature that can be detected by special equipment the military have. Do you understand?”

There being no questions, the Chinese, each with a knapsack of their most precious belongings--most of which were simply clothes--lay down on the plastic pipes and hung onto the ropes.

The passengers would soon learn that Madman Cheng had not earned his name by a fluke. He had been so named because he went so insanely fast across the Taiwan Strait that he was nearly impossible to catch.

Once the passengers were in place and huddled up close together, Madman put two of his heat-shield blankets around them and fastened them with a nylon rope, as if trying to bundle them. He put on a suit, consisting of a pair of overalls and a make-shift pullover top with a hood whose cord pulled tightly around the outside of his face, which he had made for himself of the same material with the foil to the inside.

“Everyone ready?” he asked.

The frightened Chinese grabbed on tightly to the little ropes as Madman pushed the strange craft away from the shore. The craft drifted out twenty feet and was race ready.

“Everyone hold on,” he said loudly.

He started the monstrous outboard motor. As it sprang to life, Madman put a wide leather belt with two metal rings on it, one on each side, around his waist. Two nylon ropes were attached to the deck, each with a ring connector on it, which he fastened, one to each side of his belt. This would hold him to the boat. Otherwise, at the speeds he would be traveling when bouncing off waves, he would be thrown off. He also put on goggles, black plastic with clear lenses, and looked like a crazed WW I fighter pilot.

“Here we go!”

Madman engaged the propeller and pushed the throttle. The boat leaped, its front end pointing up, then slowly laying down into skimming position as its speed increased. Sixty, seventy, eighty, and then ninety miles per hour, the unusual craft bounced off the waves, pounding its passengers violently.

Madman was at his best. The horrified Chinese, scared nearly to death, managed to hang on for their lives, the salt water spraying them from time to time. On larger waves they were bounced into the air, each holding on to his rope for dear life. Madman stood to the aft, his ropes holding him to the hull, the spray of the sea soaking him as he maintained control of his stealthy craft, traveling at an unimaginable pace across the Taiwan Strait.

The wild ride came to an end, and Madman eased off the throttle as he approached his secret spot on the Island of Taiwan, formerly known as Formosa, where Deng Lee and Nikolay Bogomazov waited for them. As Madman approached the shore he shut down the massive outboard and coasted the final twenty yards. A big sigh of relief could be heard from the passengers and they started to chatter to each other, not having been able to talk during the ordeal.

“Be quiet!” Madman barked in Mandarin.

“Come this way, and no talking,” Lee said, beckoning to them.

They scurried ashore like rats off a ship, grateful to be safe from the death-defying experience at sea with Madman Cheng. Nikolay stood by, taking charge, but he could not communicate as he did not speak Mandarin. Lee and Madman huddled together regarding payment. Lee gave him the agreed amount, the difference of what the baron was paying and what the passengers had paid. Then, turning so that that Nikolay and the passengers could not see, Madman slipped a bag containing a kilo of heroine out of his coat, and passed it to Lee.

Lee looked inside and weighed it in his hand as best he could to see if it was a full kilo. “Is this pure and uncut? If you have cut this, you will owe me money. I’m paying for pure heroin.”

“It is one hundred per cent pure.” Of course, Madman lied, but the cut was only ten percent. If Lee had not ground him down so much in advance on the price, Madman would not have had to cut it. They had set up arrangements in advance on the Internet. The baron didn’t know about the transaction, but such side deals were common. Their business complete, they parted and Madman left for another daredevil passage across the Taiwan Strait.

Lee addressed the group in Mandarin. “Mr. Bogomazov will be hiding you for several days on a ship in the harbor. I’ll accompany you there for now, but then I’ll go and he will be looking after you. You will stay there until all the arrangements are made for your papers, a job, and a place to live. You must not cause any problems for him. Understood?”

They all nodded. Then Lee and Nikolay led them to a minivan that was waiting on the road.

***

The cargo hold was a plain, steel, dark room. There was no shortage of space on the freighter
Sokol
that had been exclusively chartered for the trip, so Nikolay had the crew set up good-sized compartments for the prisoners. The compartments were twenty feet square and just as tall, making it impossible for the prisoner to climb out. A minimal Russian crew had been hired and were only told of the destination. They were of a type, experienced in moving contraband, that knew not to ask questions about the nature of the cargo.

The walls were metal, plain, and without windows. Each of the compartments had an access door on one side, by which the prisoners’ provisions could be brought, always with an armed escort. One was set up for the Chinese. Another was made ready for the Tibetans. Nikolay had been told to make them comfortable, so he had lowered a portable, construction-site toilet; mattresses; and a table and chairs into each of the compartments. He had also provided a mahjong set for the Chinese. A drop cord with electricity for light bulbs ran down the wall. The large hatch cover was to be kept open for them when weather permitted, but it had started to pour rain the day the Chinese came and the hatch had to be closed. Much to Nikolay’s satisfaction, the group made no protest when the ship departed Taiwan, as they all presumed that the ship was simply being moved to another harbor on the island.

The ship was piloted into the bustling Hong Kong harbor. The human cargo was moved into two secret spots, created for smuggling, in the structure near the bottom of the hull. The cargo hold that had been set up for them was cleaned out, in case an inspector should want to examine the ship.

While the crew made the ship ready for its next journey, the captain, Nikolay, and two Russian members of the crew went ashore to collect the two Tibetans. They presented their documents--signed by General Lee Dai Kwok of the Chinese Army, stating that the two Tibetans were officially exiled from the People’s Republic of China and were to be released to their ship for exile out of China--to an official in a building next to the wharf. General Lee Dai Kwok had been paid handsomely by the baron.