Zhou Zhi chuckled. “Like the American pilot who got you into this shit in the first place…what do they call him? Tombstone Jack? He sure as hell buried your reputation with United Bamboo.”
For a moment, the world seemed to fall utterly still and silent. To Bai Suzhen, it was as if all the air had been pumped out of the room, leaving only a vacuum.
Voice steady, head held high, her face not betraying the rage that filled her, she said softly, “I will not tolerate disrespect from you, Zhou Zhi.”
“I have my sources of information,” Zhi retorted. “Maybe I don’t know how reliable they are about you and the American, but I know he’s more to you than a business associate.”
“Your sources of information are not only unreliable,” stated Bai, “they are liars. I met Kavanaugh when he flew relief missions after the tsunami. I met many Americans then…many Australians, many Englishmen engaged in the same work. They all came to the White Snake club to see me dance.”
“But you set only one of them up in business,” Lady Hu pointed out.
“Not just me—Howard Flitcroft, too. Kavanaugh showed respect for our triad’s influence in the area by coming to me. He dealt with us honorably and so we entered into an arrangement. It was not personal.”
“Not personal?” echoed Jimmy Cao incredulously. “The man brought you a crazy story about finding an island full of mud that cured diseases and yo
u fucking bought into it! The fountain of youth, my dick.”
“ShÎo luō suō!” Lady Hu hissed venomously. “Watch your language!”
Jimmy Cao brayed out a scornful laugh.
“He brought me a story,” replied Bai Suzhen. “And he brought me proof. I saw the material, I
read the scientific analysis from accredited universities and scientists.”
“He also told you about dinosaurs on the goddamn place—did he show you proof of them?
Without hesitation, Bai said, “Yes.”
“Be that as it may,” Zhou Zhi said snidely. “All of us must answer to United Bamboo when they ask questions, even Madame White Snake.”
“I answered everyone’s questions over two years ago,” Bai Suzhen retorted, sweeping the three people with a challenging stare. “The notion of owning a piece of a luxury resort and spa on a private island awakened a kind of greed in you that surprised even me. You didn’t care whether the spa delivered what it promised. When you were offered the chance to exploit it in return for start-up capital, none of you hesitated. Particularly you, Zhou Zhi. You wanted to be the first to take the mud bath and put the stick back in your old carrot.”
Zhou Zhi fidgeted, averting his gaze. Bai repressed a smile at even so small a victory.
“Our plans were not realized,” she continued. “The death of the other investors, the legal and political fallout that resulted, the civil lawsuits, the manner in which Flitcroft kept the undertaking a secret…all of that contributed to, in corporate jargon, ‘a lack of alignment.’ ”
Brusquely, Zhou Zhi said, “You’re wrong.”
Bai lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “No one is to blame.”
“Kavanaugh is to blame,” Cao said. “He escorted the investors into the place without proper security. They all died.”
“He nearly did, too,” Bai countered. “It’s a waste of time to go over this again. If you want to sell off our remaining assets of Cryptozoica Enterprises, you don’t need me as your go-between.”
“Yes, we do,” said Lady Hu. “You are the senior shareholder.”
“Flitcroft is the senior shareholder,” Bai Suzhen replied.
“He controls all of the intellectual property and ancillary rights,” the old woman said. “The tangible assets are ours. You will sell them and divide up the proceeds to reduce the White Snake triad’s debt.”
Bai Suzhen did not even try to repress her outrage. “Reduce the debt? It was a risky venture. All of you knew that. Now you react like members of an investment club from Fresno when you didn’t get the big payday you were hoping for?”
“We were not playing the stock market,” Zhou Zhi growled. “This was a loan to build a business. The business did not materialize but the debt remains…with accrued interest.”
Struggling to tamp down her rising fury, Bai demanded, “How much interest are you talking about?”
Jimmy Cao smirked around the cigarette in his mouth. “We haven’t decided yet. But you could start paying it down right now, babe.”
He touched his fly suggestively.
Zhou Zhi chuckled. “I like that idea. You’re older than my usual masseuses, but you could probably be trained.”
Grunting, he pulled off his sock, exposing a tiny foot. The arch was crisscrossed with a livid blue and red network of blood vessels broken by trying to support his ponderous weight. The nails on the nubbins of his toes were thick and brown. Bai was put in mind of a pig’s hoof. The disgust surging within her did not show on her face.
Grinning, Zhou Zhi said, “I suffer from certain decrepitudes, from bad feet to other parts of my body that don’t work as well as they used to. You could help me with that and I could help you with your money problems. It’s only fair.”
Bai Suzhen glanced from the leering face of Zhi to the grin creasing Jimmy Cao’s lips. The cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. Lady Hu’s expression was impassive, all emotions locked away behind a seamed and wrinkled mask.
With a sigh, Bai Suzhen ran a hand over her forehead and whispered, “All right, Jimmy.”
Leaning toward him, she plucked the cigarette from between Cao’s lips and shoved the red, glowing tip up the man’s left nostril.
He howled, clawing at his face, falling over backward.
Bai bounded to her feet with a dancer’s grace, uncoiling from the floor, right hand slipping inside her jacket and withdrawing the CZ75 from the holster in the same smooth motion. She leveled it at Zhou Zhi’s shock-slackened face, then adjusted her aim a trifle and squeezed off a single round.
The sound of the shot was lackluster, like a distant handclap. She doubted the report penetrated out into the foyer where the bodyguards waited. There was nothing lackluster about Zhou Zhi’s reaction when the bullet trimmed off the top of his big toe, taking the horny nail with it in a spray of blood.
Squalling in fear and agony Zhi toppled over sideways, plucking at his foot. Bai Suzhen whirled back toward Jimmy Cao, who dislodged the cigarette from his nostril and groped beneath his suit jacket. She jammed the barrel of the CZ75 hard against the side of his neck.
“You’d better be grabbing for something to blow your nose with,” she said flatly. “Babe.”
Cao raised his hands and she reached in under his coat, found the butt of a Glock 9mm and pulled it out the holster. She tossed it across the room, into the shrubbery.
“You have a buyer?” she demanded, digging the bore of her pistol against the underside of his jaw.
Swallowing hard, Cao said hoarsely, “An Englishman.”
“His name?”
Cao’s lips peeled back over his teeth. “I don’t remember. Something French.”
Bai Suzhen pressed harder with the automatic. “You said he was British.”
“He lives in London, but he has a French name.”
“Send him to me and I’ll deal with him on my own terms. If you and Zhi want your cut, you’ll stay out of my way.”
Bending close, she switched to English and whispered into his ear, “Or I’ll have your balls cut off, pickled and sent to me in a Ming vase. Do we understand each other, you little Taiwanese piece of shit?”
Jimmy Cao couldn’t nod because of the painful position of the gun barrel, but he said hoarsely, “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes—Madame White Snake.”
Bai Suzhen whipped the gun away from Cao’s neck and he sagged over the table, gagging and coughing. Returning her pistol to the shoulder holster, she glanced contemptuously at the whimpering Zhou Zhi, still vainly groping for his bleeding foot.
Turning toward Lady Hu, she inclined her head and upper body in a deferential bow. “I regret you had to see this, grandmother.”
The old woman’s lips twitched. “Do not. I found the display very entertaining. I wondered when you would lose your tempers with these two pigs.”
Bai Suzhen smiled fleetingly and asked, “Do you know the name of the buyer?”
“Aubrey Belleau,” Lady Hu answered. “I shall report to him that our business meeting concluded satisfactorily and he may contact you on Little Tamtung. You are truly the white serpent of good fortune. May you prosper and enjoy a safe passage, granddaughter.”
May 9, Chubut Province, Patagonia
Honoré Roxton pushed up the brim of her dusty white Stetson and returned the hollow-eyed stare of the Troodon skull, half buried in the loose dust and dirt. She said, “This is just one of an amazing treasure trove of fossils that have been unearthed in Patagonia, giving paleontologists our first view of the whole range of life in the mysterious middle Jurassic period.”
She spoke with the crisp and ear-pleasing enunciation of a well-educated Britisher. “The Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary deposits here have revealed a most interesting vertebrate fauna. This, together with the discovery of the perfect cranium of a chelonian of the genus Myolania, which may be said to be almost identical with Myolania oweni of the Pleistocene age in Queensland.
“The Patagonian Myolania belongs to the Upper Chalk, having been found associated with remains of Dinosauria, like this sample of the Troodon. Aaron, what can you tell us about this species?”
Aaron Edwards carefully brushed dust away from the fangs of the skull with a whisk broom, but the incessant breeze blew it right back, filling the crevices between them. In a quavering, nervous voice, the young blonde man said, “Well, it’s generally believed that predatory theropods like the Troodon had developed fully functional binocular vision that controlled the coordination between running, hand movement and visual information about moving objects.”
The twenty-one year old graduate student from Muncie, Indiana glanced up at Honoré.
He blew grit away from a partially exposed vertebra, then sneezed explosively. Honoré managed to keep from laughing, although she wasn’t able to repress a grin. Turning toward the cameraman, she said dryly, “I believe that calls for a cut.”
Byerson, the director stepped forward, his bearded face locked in a frown. “I believe that's my call, Doc.”
“And that’s my student,” Honoré replied, nodding toward the young man. “I’d prefer his respiratory distress not be televised.”
Aaron smiled up at her gratefully, then sneezed again.
“Go blow your nose,” Honoré directed.
As the young man climbed out of the shallow, square-cut pit, Honoré brushed dirt particles from the long red-blond hair that spilled in a wind-tangled cascade from beneath her hat. Thin to the point of being gaunt, with lean muscles curving down from her shoulders to her forearms, Dr. Honoré Roxton fought back a sneeze herself. Wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, old jeans and scuffed hiking boots, she knew she presented a decidedly unglamorous image of a female paleontologist.
She wore wire-rimmed glasses over her leaf-green eyes, even though Byerson had begged her to wear contacts instead, claiming that the intense color of her eyes was her best feature. However, she knew her eyes would quickly become wet and red when particles of grit worked themselves beneath the lenses. Already she felt chafed and sticky from the sand that had crept through her shirt, into her bra and clung to her skin.
Byerson glanced at the sky lowering over the snow-capped Andes. “We might have time for one more setup before we call it a day.”
“For example?” Honoré inquired.
“How about you holding up a leg bone or something and talking about it?” the cameraman asked. Like Byerson, he was an American, but he seemed to be the product of a distinctly lower-end education.
“Like I’m the host of a Home Shopping Network program?” Honoré demanded. “You do understand that fossils are
imitations
of the bones, not the real thing?
Various minerals form a mold around the original material, but it’s not always perfect. For example, pterosaur bones are very thin and rarely escape crushing during fossilization.”
“Great,” replied the man, peering through the viewfinder of his shoulder-mounted camera. “Grab a bone out of the ground and say the same thing while I’m rolling.”
Byerson rolled his eyes in good-natured exasperation. “Shut up, Bill. Doc, how about we get some scenes of you sketching the skull? I understand you’re a superb scientific artist.”
Honoré smiled self-consciously. “Nowadays, a detailed record of a dig is maintained by digital cameras.”
“Yeah, but it’s an old tried and true technique dating back to Victorian-era paleontologists, right? I think our viewers would get a kick out of seeing how you guys used to do it.”
Honoré’s smile vanished. “Just how old do you think I am, Mr. Byerson?”
A chill gust of wind threw a pinch of dust into Byerson’s face and he grimaced. “To be honest, Doc, filling an hour of air time with one scene after another of college students digging in the dirt doesn’t make for good TV, not even on the Discovery Channel. But you’ve got a great speaking voice and you’d be majorly telegenic if you took off those damn glasses and put on some lipstick.”
“Would you like me to flash some cleavage, as well?” Honoré asked coldly. “I could borrow a pair of low-riders from one of my interns and bend over more often than I have been.”
Ryerson shrugged. “It might not be a bad idea, but I think a 30 second spot of you drawing pictures of a dinosaur skull, with the appropriate voice-over, ought break up some of the academic monotony.”
Honoré sighed. “All right, then. Amanda—!”
A brown-skinned girl standing at the rim of the excavation turned toward her. Her hair was a rat’s nest of dreadlocks and beaded braids. “Yes, Dr. Roxton?” Her voice held a strong Liverpudlian accent.
“Would you mind fetching my sketchbook and a few pencils from the op center?”
Amanda Redding formed an OK sign with her thumb and forefinger and jogged toward the main camp. For miles around it was basically flatland, with not even sproutings of scrub to relieve the sameness of the terrain. A lifeless and sere lake basin spread out like a vast bowl of desolation.
There was nothing left of the lake, not even a few ponds. It looked as though an impossibly huge animal had stomped a hoof print into the center of the basin, sinking it well below the foothills of the mountain range.
Mineral deposits in the rugged Andes range glittered dully with the reflected radiance of the sun. The jagged serrations of the white peaks resembled the points of diamonds.
A dozen dust-filmed Land Rovers and a cluster of tents formed an uneven wall around the outer perimeter of the site. Rock hammers clicked, dental picks ticked and the little red marker flags fluttered in the constant breeze. Twenty people labored among four square-cut, sectionized pits, sifting through sedimentary gravel and carefully whittling away at stone with putty knives.
Honoré Roxton glanced at the cameraman and sighed. She didn’t feel comfortable lecturing students in her paleontology classes at Oxford, so to look and sound at ease in front of a camera was a real stretch. But, she had learned that in order to acquire funding for her research projects, as well as guarantee her tenure, she had to present herself as something of the Jane Goodall of paleozoology, the attractive, fairly youthful public face of a largely misunderstood scientific discipline.
If she had to give the impression that she was a cross between Lara Croft and Indiana Jones while she made the rounds of talk shows or served as the anchor of Discovery Channel specials, she had resigned herself to it.
“Doctor Roxton!”
Honoré turned in the direction of Amanda’s voice. She gestured to the big main operations tent that held most of their equipment. “London calling on the Wi-Fi!”
Honoré frowned, confused. She glanced at her wristwatch. Not only was it very late in England, she had no immediate family in London and most of the people she considered friends were with her at the site.
Quickly, she climbed out of the pit and crossed the open ground to the tent. As she reached Amanda, she asked, “Who is calling me out here?”
The young woman mimed patting a child’s head at waist level and made a face as if she tasted something sour. “Himself the elf.”
Honoré instantly knew to whom Amanda referred, and a shudder shook her frame. “Oh my God,” she murmured.
Despite its size, the tent felt crowded, filled as it was with packing crates, drafting tables, toolboxes and three state-of-the-art computer consoles. By the time she had sat down in the camp chair before a monitor screen, taken off her hat, put on the headset and adjusted the video feed, she felt nominally prepared to speak to Dr. Aubrey Belleau.
As one of the preeminent curators of London’s Natural History Museum as well as her self-appointed mentor, Belleau’s credentials were worthy of respect, even if his personal behavior had earned little more than contempt.
The screen framed only Belleau’s head and shoulders but that view was sufficient exposure for Honoré. She had seen the man naked in a hot tub several years before, the memory of his gnarled, misshapen body still gave her occasional nightmares.
Aubrey Belleau affected the kind of neatly trimmed beard once known as a Van Dyke. His dark blond hair was swept back from an exceptionally high forehead. Under level brows, big eyes of the clearest, cleanest blue, like the high sky on a cloudless summer’s day, regarded her intently. He wore a fawn-colored blazer. A silk foulard swirled at the open collar of his black shirt. A gold stickpin gleamed within its folds, topped by a tiny insignia resembling the Masonic all-seeing eye. Although she had never inquired, she assumed he held membership in a local lodge.
Although his size was not apparent on the monitor screen, Dr. Aubrey Belleau could have been classified as a dwarf, since his height did not exceed four feet, even with lifts in his shoes.
“Hello, Aubrey,” Honoré said into the mouthpiece. “You’re up early—or staying up very late.”
The man showed the edges of his teeth in a perfunctory smile. He wore a headset identical to Honoré’s. “It’s worth losing a bit of sleep so I may see and speak with you, darlin’ Honoré.” He emphasized the last syllable of her name, drawing it out like taffy so it sounded like “Honor-raaaay.”
“You didn’t make a satellite call at this hour just so you could get a peep at me, Aubrey.”
His eyes widened in mock hurt. “Would it be so bad if I had?”
Honoré sighed. “The last I heard, you had just exchanged vows with Mrs. Aubrey Belleau…version three point oh.”
“Your information is out of date, darlin’. My divorce from that soddin’ cow became final last month.”
Honoré smiled slightly at his use of vulgar slang. Despite his name, Belleau had been born in England fifty-three years before and she had never heard him so much as whisper a word of French, even to order wine.
“Aubrey, I’m very busy.”
He uttered a short, barking laugh. “I know. I arranged the whole Discovery Channel special, of course.”
“Of course,” she said patronizingly. “You’re a grand arranger.”
“Ain’t I just. Well, now I’m arranging something else.”
“What might that be?”
“The museum and the board of department directors at the school of Anthropology all agree you’re the best candidate—no, strike that. You’re the
only
candidate to carry through with this.”
Trying to soften the sharp edge of impatience in her voice, she said, “I’m waiting, Aubrey.”
Belleau paused. She didn’t know if he was doing so for dramatic effect or if it was due to a transmission lag in the wireless transmission. “Tell me…what do you know of Cryptozoica?”
Honoré did not respond immediately. Wonder and conjecture wheeled through her mind as she flipped through her mental Rolodex. “Do you mean that fraudulent ecotourism business a year or so back?”
“I do. And it was a bit over two years ago.”
“I really don’t know anything specific about it,” she stated. “I do remember several universities were solicited to fund a scientific research station on an island somewhere in the South Seas. It all turned out to be some sort of elaborate con perpetrated by an American multimillionaire, didn’t it? Howard somebody.”
“Howard Philips Flitcroft,” Belleau said.
“Right. A typical blustering Yank showman. Far too much money and too few brains as a balance.”
“Perhaps. But Flitcroft didn’t perpetrate a fraud. If anything, he was the victim.”
“As I recall, there were hucksters pushing a fantasy about an island spa where the rich received longevity therapies…it was supposed to be populated by prehistoric survivors and in return for outrageous fees, the hucksters would schedule and arrange scientific tours.”
“It all depends upon your definition of outrageous fees, I suppose,” replied Belleau indifferently. “Thirty-five thousand pounds doesn’t seem too outrageous in exchange for observing and perhaps interacting with actual dinosaurs.”
“True enough,” she said dismissively. “If there were truly dinosaurs on the island instead of moving models or some other mechanical replicas that can be found at any well-financed theme park or seaside holiday town. There are similar attractions in Brighton.”
Belleau smiled. “I’d agree entirely, if the creatures in question were fabrications. However, in the instance of Cryptozoica, the dinosaurs were indeed real animals.”
It required a few seconds for Honoré to fully comprehend the implications of Belleau’s comment. She demanded, “Are you implying that Cryptozoica
wasn’t
a fraud?”