Insane or not, Bai Kang Shek’s taste in architecture was exquisite.
Fisher counted four guards, two on the front steps and two along the side closest to him. Unable to see the other two sides, he had to assume another four guards, for a total of eight.
His study of the surveillance package had revealed a chink in the pagoda’s armor—and as with the hibiscus hedges all over the compound, it involved landscaping. The pagoda was enclosed on three sides by acacia trees. With thick, gnarled trunks and sturdy limbs, the acacia reminded Fisher of a slightly flattened broccoli floret. These trees had been allowed to overgrow the third-floor roofline.
Twenty minutes later, having crawled inch by inch across the driveway and into the grove, Fisher stood up behind an acacia trunk and let out a relieved breath. He peeked around the tree to confirm the guards hadn’t moved. He grabbed a branch above his head and chinned himself up.
The branch he’d scouted earlier extended horizontally from the trunk, over the heads of the guards, and ended a few feet over the roof. Here again, patience would be the key. If he hurried or panicked, he was finished. The guards would blast him out of the tree.
He started moving. The branch quickly tapered to the diameter of a fence post. With his every step it bowed slightly, forcing him to freeze and listen. A breeze had picked up, so the rest of the trees were moving, but he wasn’t about to push his luck.
Step . . . freeze. Step . . . freeze. Step . . . freeze.
It took five minutes to cover the last ten feet, but finally he reached the end. He transferred one foot to the tiled roof, made sure he was balanced, then brought his other foot down.
He crouch-walked up the slope to the open-faced balcony, then snaked his flexi-cam up and over the railing and did a quick scan with NV, infrared, and EM. Nothing.
He grabbed the railing and pulled himself inside.
44
HE
found himself in an empty room. Judging from the thick layer of dust and windblown silt on the teakwood floor, it had been empty for years. He padded to the door, pressed his ear to it. Hearing nothing, he slid the flexi-cam under the door. The lens revealed an empty hallway. Unsettled by the camera’s passing, a dust bunny drifted past the lens like a fuzzy tumbleweed.
Fisher opened the door. Here, too, the floor was covered with an even layer of dust. There were no footprints, no marks. It was like freshly fallen snow. The rattan walls were bare, but he could see faint rectangular outlines where artwork had once hung.
What was going on here? Beyond the obvious lack of furnishings and the layer of dust, there was an odd feeling to the place. Abandonment. Neglect.
He looked around and found three other rooms like the first, each of those also empty. The hallway was laid out like a plus sign, with one room on each of the four quadrants. At the end of the north hallway he found a spiral staircase. He climbed to the next level.
Though half the size of the floor below, it was identical in layout. He checked each of the rooms with the same result: empty. He climbed the stairs to the fifth level and found the same empty quad of rooms. He moved on. At the top of stairs, he found a locked door.
He picked the lock and eased open the door. Its movement stirred up a cloud of dust that swirled in his headlamp. The dust was where the similarity to the previous levels ended. Measuring roughly ten feet to a wall, the space was stacked high with dozens of cardboard boxes. The open-faced windows were covered with plywood that had been painted black.
Fisher opened the nearest box. Inside, he found empty picture frames, wadded-up clothing, a hairbrush. . . . Personal detritus. He checked another box: more of the same. He was turning to leave when something caught his eye. Behind one of the boxes, he saw the corner of a wooden footlocker.
Curious now, Fisher carefully moved boxes until he could reach the footlocker. He flipped the latches and lifted the lid. Inside was a thick, clear plastic bag, shrunken as though all the air had been sucked from it. Through the plastic he could see a gnarled brown . . . something. He leaned in for a closer look.
It took a few seconds for him to register what he was seeing.
Staring back at him was a human face.
He recoiled a few inches. Then leaned in again. Sealed in the bag’s airless environment, the face and body had turned leathery with dessication, skin stretched taut over sharp edges of bone. Still, Fisher recognized the face.
Bai Kang Shek
.
HE
punched up the OPSAT’s comm screen, set the encryption buffers, and keyed his subdermal.
“Good news, bad news,” Fisher told Lambert.
“Good news first.”
“I found Shek.”
“Outstanding. Bad news?”
“He’s a shrunken apple.” He explained, then said, “I’ve got the first and second floors to check, but so far there’s nothing here. My guess: This place hasn’t been lived in for five years or more.”
“Well, someone or something’s there. Otherwise, why the security? Why the guards?”
“Both good questions. Are we still getting the CIA frequency?”
Grimsdottir answered. “No change. It looks like a beacon of some sort. Like an SOS.”
FISHER
went downstairs, passing the previous levels to the second floor. It was a mirror image of those above it, though on a much larger scale. At twelve hundred square feet, each of the four rooms had the square footage of a small house. He headed for the stairwell and started down.
The main floor was different from those above in only two ways. Instead of four rooms, there was only one, so vast it felt like a warehouse. And there was no dust. There were no signs of furniture or furnishings. On each of the four walls was a set of massive wooden double doors leading outside.
Fisher stood in the middle of the space, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
He heard an echoing
click
.
He drew his pistol, spun around.
Behind him a rectangular outline of light appeared in the wall, and he immediately thought
door
. He sprinted to the staircase and up to the second floor, where he crouched down. He leaned forward until he could see the door.
It opened. A uniformed guard stepped out, shut the door behind him, and walked toward the nearest exit. Fisher made a snap decision. He drew the SC-20, flipped the selector to Cottonball, took aim, and fired. With a
thwump
, the projectile hit the guard in the thigh. He staggered sideways, swayed on his feet, and then fell over.
Time for some answers,
Fisher thought.
To ensure their chat would be private, he lugged the guard’s limp body up to the top level and laid him out on the floor beside Shek’s footlocker/tomb. He bound the guard’s hands and feet with flexi-cuffs, then sat down to wait.
He’d used a thigh shot to dilute the tranquilizer. After twenty minutes, the guard started to come around. Fisher flipped on his headlamp and aimed it into the guard’s eyes.
The guard squinted, tried to turn his head away. He mumbled in Chinese, which Fisher guessed was something along the lines of,
What the hell’s going on?
“Do you speak English?” Fisher asked.
After a couple seconds, the guard said, “Yes, I speak English.” It was heavily accented, but clear enough.
“If you make a sound or lie to me, I’ll shoot you. Do you understand?”
All remnants of grogginess cleared from the guard’s face. “What is happening? Who are you?”
Fisher ignored the question. “What’s your name?”
“Lok.”
“Who do you work for?”
“I do not know.”
Truth
. “How did you get here?”
“I left the Army last year. A friend of mine was hired by a security company. They pay well. I joined. I was sent here.”
Truth
. “How long ago?”
“Six months.”
Truth
. “Not counting guards, who’s here with you?”
“No one.”
Lie
. Fisher moved the pistol in front of the headlamp so Lok could see it. “That was your one free lie. Let’s try again: Who is here with you?”
Lok swallowed hard. “Six. They are down there, in the subbasement. I do not know who they are. They work in a room . . . we are not allowed in.”
“And you don’t recognize any of them?”
“No.”
Fisher believed him. Private security firms were a dime a dozen and the quality of their work and personnel ranged from back-alley leg-breakers to professional soldiers protecting high-profile clients. Lok was one of the latter. Lok and his compatriots didn’t need to know anything but where to patrol and what to guard.
Fisher asked. “Do you know the name Bai Kang Shek?”
Lok nodded. “As I boy I heard stories. He disappeared, I believe.”
“Disappeared to here.”
“That was one of the stories, but I have never seen him here.”
Yeah, well, you’re leaning against him, son,
Fisher thought.
Fisher could think of only one reason why anyone would freeze-dry Shek and take over his island: anonymity. Conversely, there were several good reasons to maintain this level of security: one, to nurture the legend that Shek the Recluse was alive and kicking on his island haven; two, because there was in fact something worth guarding here. Whatever that might be, Fisher had no doubt it was somewhere in the subbasement.
45
HE
questioned Lok for another twenty minutes, then darted him in the neck, left him sleeping in Shek’s funerary tower, and headed back down to the recessed door. Per Lok’s instructions, he found the latch embedded in the baseboard molding and gave it a soft kick. The door opened. Light seeped around the edges. He stood to one side, swung it the rest of the way open, and waited for the count of ten, then peeked around the corner. Clear.
He stepped inside, shut the door behind him. He was in a short corridor that ended at another door, this one with a small reinforced window set at chin height. Stenciled on the door was a cluster of yellow triangles on a black circular background—the classic symbol for a fallout shelter. Judging from the faded paint, this was a Shek-era addition, probably part of the pagoda’s original design. Yet another eccentricity in an already-full quiver of oddities.
Fisher reached up and unscrewed the lightbulb above his head, then flipped his trident goggles into place, switched to NV, and peeked through the window. There was no one.
He went through the door and found himself in a concrete room. A giant yellow arrow on the left-hand wall pointed downward. A single-strip fluorescent light flickered on the wall of the landing. He started down. He stayed close to the far wall, careful to keep his shadow from slipping over the railing. At the first landing he turned down the next flight, and continued down six flights. At the bottom was another windowed door through which he could see the back of a man’s head.
The guard was too close to the door to risk the flexi-cam, and without knowing whether the man had company, a snatch from behind was out of the question. Plan B, then.
From his belt he drew the sidearm he’d taken from Lok, placed it on the third step, then retreated beneath the stairwell. He drew his pistol and toggled the selector to
DART
, then fired at the door. The dart ticked against the steel, then skittered away. In the window the guard’s head turned. Fisher drew back under the steps, lay down on his back, and flicked the pistol back to single-shot.
The door creaked open. There were three seconds of silence, then a Chinese voice—frustrated, disgusted. Fisher assumed the words amounted to,
Okay, which idiot dropped his gun?
Boots clicked on concrete. Fisher pictured the man walking and counted steps: four . . . five . . . six . . . Foot on the first step . . .
Fisher pushed off the wall and slid out, gun coming up. The man sensed movement and started to turn, but too late. Fisher fired. The bullet penetrated beneath his left earlobe. The Glaser Safety Slug had devastating effect, instantly pulverizing the man’s brain stem. The man tipped sideways, but even as he started sliding down the wall, Fisher was up and moving. He caught the body as it fell, then dragged it beneath the stairwell. He checked the steps and wall for blood, wiped up two spots, picked up Lok’s gun.
A
quick peek revealed the corridor was empty and thankfully short, with two rooms on each side and a vaultlike door at the end—which led to what Lok had called “the room.” The floor was covered with two black rubber tiles Fisher guessed were vibration dampeners. Shek had spared no expense on his doomsday bunker.
Fisher punched up OPSAT’s comm screen: The mysterious CIA signal was still there, and unless he’d missed finding something above or there was yet another level below this one, the beacon was coming from the first room on his right.
Time to solve a mystery
.
HE
slid the flexi-cam beneath the door. In the fish-eye lens he saw what looked like a college dorm room. Two single beds, one each on the left and right walls, separated by a desk, a clothes bureau at the foot of each bed. On the left-hand bed, a man reclined. He suddenly sat up and dropped his feet to the floor. He was Chinese. He rubbed his face in his hands, looked around.
Agitated,
Fisher thought.
He withdrew the flexi-cam, briefly considered his options, then decided simple was easier. He drew his pistol then lightly tapped his index finger on the door three times. From inside, the bed creaked, footsteps approached. The door swung open.
Fisher didn’t give the man a chance to react. He barreled through the door, palm against the man’s chest, shoving him, gun in his face. The man’s legs bumped into the bed rail and he fell backward onto the bed.