Quite abruptly, Gabriel found himself back in the world. Clean clothes, wired cash, at least semilegitimate to all outward appearance but for the recent scars on his head and neck. Michael Hunt was in the air over the Pacific Ocean, racing to pick up the lecture series where it had so unceremoniously been abandoned. Gabriel had e-mailed him a brief, discreet summary of everything that had happened, using carefully veiled language on the theory—hell, the certainty—that all outbound e-mail sent from the complimentary terminal in a five-star hotel’s business center would be read by the authorities. He’d sent another even briefer message to Lucy, at the anonymous e-mail address she’d given him before getting on the plane for Arezzo:
Am still in China, L, but M is gone—I’m sorry.
Her response:
Gone missing or gone dead?
To which he replied,
Don’t know which. Doesn’t look good.
She hadn’t written back.
Meanwhile, Gabriel prepared for his visit to the Night Market and his meeting with a contact called Red Eagle. Earlier in the day Qi had pulled together an assortment of goods—galvanized steel pails, tensile wire, firecrackers and cherry bombs, several large
jute bags of money all in coins. She did not specify their purpose. But she had pointed out several other things to Gabriel as they toured incognito, both their faces hidden behind the popular surgical-style paper masks many pedestrians wore and shaded by wide-brimmed hats.
“Nine corners,” she had said, indicating the zigzag bridge to the Tea House. “Nine turns, so that evil spirits will become disoriented and cannot pursue you.” Gunmen, Gabriel knew, might not be as likely as spirits to get disoriented, but the nine turns could still help break up lines of sight—and of fire.
Qi’s combat access to the Night Market was via tunnels beneath the Tea House, part of the old aqueduct system, and she’d showed him the exit she would use tonight. “Tuan has all the best maps,” she noted, adding that on auction nights, Cheung would have all the surface entrances and exits heavily fortified.
She had stopped next to a stand whose sign read
CRISPY FRIED ANTS
—
MARINATED SCORPION
—
TURTLE SHELL GELATIN
and ordered a vile-looking beverage from the vendor, a tiny man in an Edwardian suit with the obligatory status-symbol label sewn to his outer left cuff.
“God—what
is
that?” said Gabriel, his throat constricting at the sight of it. The stuff looked like deep red cough syrup with a floating skin of herbs.
“Double Penis,” she replied. “Deer and bull. Good for bones, circulation, heart, memory.”
“Also is excellent aphrodisiac,” said the vendor with a sly wink. He pointed out the source organs, hanging from a drying rack. The deer members looked like rawhide doggie treats two feet long. The bull penis was the size of a Louisville Slugger.
“Drink,” Qi said, as though sealing some covenant between them. “It’s expensive.”
Gabriel downed the viscid brew, keeping his eye on a Tibetan spinning a prayer wheel in the distance. He swallowed twice, then swallowed again. It seemed there was now a smoldering lump of raw lead between his lungs.
Qi had moved on to a small shrine with an urn for burning money. She lit joss sticks, bowed and offered some bills to the pot.
“Now you,” she said, gesturing for Gabriel to do likewise.
“But I don’t believe in—”
“You must believe in
something
,” she said, eyes flashing.
That had been their afternoon. Now it was nighttime.
Showtime.
The Iron Fist was exactly what its name implied: an under-the-table combat venue hiding in plain sight, where human beings tried to beat each other to death for money. Gabriel passed through several dining rooms and then a billiard hall before he found the grand stairway for which he was looking. It swept upward into a well appointed—and well guarded—amphitheater from which he could already hear the flat, meaty sounds of flesh battering flesh, lubricated by blood.
But no crowd noise. No jeers or cheers or frantic yelling.
Gabriel was admitted through a curtained foyer. The central focus of the room was the fighting pit, an oval thirty feet across at its widest point, girdled by a
chain-link barrier. Two gigantic urban predators, steroidal nightmares, sought to terminate each other in the pit. They were collared together by eight feet of chain. Each wore a spidery leather mask and a studded bludgeoning glove on one fist.
The room was opaque with cigarette smoke and crowded with bettors wall-to-wall, standing room only. They stood in total silence, like the spectators at a chess match. They wagered with nods and winks and raised fingers. Their manner was of banking, not bloodsport.
One of the fighters finally fell like a chopped oak and stayed still. He was dragged out of the ring by his feet. Then the onlookers came unglued, jabbering in fifteen languages, waving money, offering critique.
Two new opponents entered the ring. It was not obvious at first due to their masks and squarish figures, but they were both women.
“New fighters are always cause for excitement,” said a voice behind Gabriel. “Their odds are not known.”
“Do I know you?” said Gabriel.
The newcomer was a classically handsome Chinese man who looked like an executive or playboy, clad in an expensive tailored silk suit and obviously packing at least one sidearm in a shoulder rig. There was a fine-cut tightness to the material across his back that suggested body armor. His hair and eyes were jet. He smiled at Gabriel like a matinee idol.
“I am Longwei Sze Xie. Please call me Ivory, Mr. Hunt.”
This was the part where Gabriel would discover whether any of his hasty fabrications would hold an ounce of water. They shook hands in the Western fashion.
“Do I stick out that obviously?” said Gabriel.
“Forgive me,” said Ivory. “Part of my training. I always index newcomers…is ‘index’ the correct word?”
“I know what you mean.”
Ivory pointed to the fighter on the far side of the pit. “That is the fresh fighter. Called Jin Huáng, for our purposes.”
“Chinese for ‘yellow’ or ‘golden’?”
“Very good, Mr. Hunt. Of course there are a hundred character variants for ‘yellow’ in traditional Chinese. Depending on the usage,
jin huáng
could be an expression for mulled rice wine, pornography, an eel, Hell, or…”
“Or, if you reverse it to
huáng jin
,” said Gabriel, “it refers to the Yellow Turbans peasant uprising at the end of the Later Han Dynasty.” Gabriel silently thanked his brother Michael for this tidbit from his lecture notes, hoping he would not be called upon to discuss the matter in any more depth.
“Outstanding!” Ivory clapped his hands together. “Full marks. But then, of course, you are a man who knows his history.”
“That’s why I’d like to speak with Mr. Cheung.”
“Mr. Cheung is available later this evening, and has expressed great interest in what you may be able to tell him about Kangxi Shih-k’ai. You understand his need for a considerable degree of discretion and personal security. After we complete this diversion—and please don’t feel rushed in any way, if you are enjoying yourself—I should advise you in advance that I will have to search you, although I’m certain it is quite unnecessary.”
Oboy
, thought Gabriel,
this guy is
really good
at his job.
Jin Huáng danced into the fight, making her opponent swing the early blows, high, wide and powerful. None connected. She was going to air her opponent out a bit before wrecking and damage. The mob fell into library silence once more.
Gabriel and Ivory were able—and obliged—to whisper. Gabriel noticed the comm button seated in Ivory’s right ear.
“I hope I’m not intruding on Mr. Cheung’s, ah, other interests,” said Gabriel. “I mean, I understand tonight is—”
“Do not speak further of that here,” said Ivory. “That is privileged information. But rest assured I understand your meaning. You are an honored visitor here, and all courtesy must be extended.”
Spoken by anyone else, it might have been a veiled threat.
“Watch the combatants,” said Ivory. “There is no good or evil here. No ring characters or personae. Only a victor.”
“The last person standing.”
“Precisely.”
Jin Huáng dropped low and launched a perfect pivot kick to her attacker’s throat, which slammed the other woman down, sucking dirt in hulking gasps.
“Now, take a moment to admire that,” said Ivory. “A single blow decides the outcome of the entire contest. It is always one single act. An atomic explosion or the twitch of a fly’s wing—it is all the same, in all warfare, in all times. It always comes down to a single act at the correct time.”
“That is what makes history,” said Gabriel. “It’s what makes my job interesting.”
“Would you mind if I asked you what happened to your head?”
The scarlet crease from the bullet wound still defaced his temple in a spot impossible to hide or entirely cover with makeup, though he’d applied some in his hotel room. Perhaps the bullet had been fired at him by this very man, Ivory, with whom he was now conversing so pleasantly. The talk was lulling, almost coaxing or coddling, the kind of innocuous byplay that of course was just another form of warfare according to Sun Tzu.
“The Hunt Foundation jet has very small doors,” Gabriel said ruefully. “Hatches. No headroom. It looks worse than it is.”
“And your intelligence regarding Kangxi Shih-k’ai? What makes that special? Please forgive my natural curiosity.”
“I assume you mean apart from the historical record?”
“Yes. Mr. Cheung is an expert on that particular warlord.” The implications were clear, including
Don’t waste our time
and
If this is a bluff, we’ll know.
“My father’s journals,” said Gabriel, not exactly lying. “He recorded certain information. Longitudes and latitudes. Parallel evidence. I believe he was on the verge of a breakthrough at the time of his death.”
“That is a pity. A great loss.”
“Maybe I can salvage some little piece of that loss,” said Gabriel. “Maybe help find the Favored Son’s tomb at last, with Mr. Cheung’s help. It could benefit us both and become a great boon. For my father, not for me.”
“Ah, now
that
I understand,” said Ivory. “For you, it
is personal, a matter of legacy and duty. An emotional involvement beyond statistics and records and treasure.”
“Well, treasure wouldn’t hurt…”
Ivory permitted himself a small laugh. “Exactly. Come with me. It is time for us to go present you to Red Eagle.”
Red Eagle was a florid, pashalike woman who tipped the scale at about 350 pounds. Her surroundings were garishly Japanese but she spoke with an inflection favoring an affect for the American South.
Her chambers opened onto a wide balcony about five stories up inside one of the subway-crush of tall buildings that broke up this area of the Night Market into a series of large atriums. A few other bidding balconies could be seen across the vast open space above the tents and stalls of the vendors below. From such a balcony, a select section of the Night Market could be locked down with no indication whatsoever to the outside world. Below, the Beggar’s Arch and other tunneled accessways into this area would soon be sealed off by Cheung’s security force.
Which was why Qingzhao had chosen to come in via the sewer.
Red Eagle took a dainty hit from a hookah and offered the pipe to a Mr. Yawuro, an Armani-suited African gangster with a complement of Masai bodyguards. Red Eagle’s own guards and functionaries, Gabriel noticed, all seemed to be turbaned Sikhs. Cheung’s men were all clad in black-on-black. There were three other bonebreakers in Secret Service wash-and-wear accompanying a boisterous Texan (complete with Stetson) named Carrington. The real problem of any meeting
was finding a place to park all the bodyguards, and make sure their pecking order was not ruffled.
“Please try the quail eggs, Mr. Yawuro,” said Red Eagle. “They’re very special.”
Carrington made a face and scanned the room for more whiskey.
Having satisfied Ivory’s pat down, Gabriel was presented.
Carrington squinted at him. “I know you,” he said. “You’re that explorer guy. You was at the North Pole awhile back.”
“South Pole,” said Gabriel, who knew Douglas Carrington III was an oil man. Inherited wealth. Global pollution. Third World usury.
“Why, hell, son—you’re
famous
,” the Texan said broadly, getting the notice of everyone in the room. Gabriel watched a pit-viper expression cross the man’s tanned face. “And you’re rich, too. But you ain’t
this
rich.” He spun on Red Eagle. There were questions of privacy and decorum to be dealt with here.
“I may not have as much as you,” said Gabriel, “but I figured I could pick up something small.” The Texan eyed him unhappily, as though detecting the undercurrent of sarcasm Gabriel was trying so hard to hide.
“He is here for
me
, Mr. Carrington,” said Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung, interceding. “Be wise and do not insult my special guest, for he is a man who has at least
earned
his reputation.”
Carrington actually blushed, then gruffly apologized and retreated.
Gabriel almost felt like blushing, too, when in response to Cheung’s endorsement Red Eagle began fussing over him. She giggled like an adolescent and kissed his cheek, leaving a smear of crimson lipstick.
He found himself staring at her. There was, he thought, the distinct possibility that she was actually a he. Gabriel’s eye sought the seams of the illusion. Anything was possible here in this polyglot microcosm.
“I am honored to make your acquaintance face-to-face,” said Cheung.
Gabriel could not help wondering what that phrasing meant: Was Cheung toying with him? Had he made Gabriel from the security footage from the casino?
“I have read your book,” said Cheung with an eager smile.
“Which one?” said Gabriel.
“
Hunt Up and Down in the World
,” said Cheung. “Your most incisive chronicle of excavation and underground exploration. Some of it is quite exhilarating. Exciting and improbable, almost like pulp fiction. It speeds the blood.”