The Scarlet Crane: Transition Magic Book One (The Transition Magic Series 1) (6 page)

The cab dropped them a half block from the narrow wooden bridge five minutes before the deadline. They sat on a bench facing the shrine across fifty feet of rank water. A footpath dotted with open air restaurants circled the lake. Residual twilight and street lamps cast enough light to see the island. Colors were bleeding to gray.

“I think I see a big guy in a patterned shirt. I can’t be sure,” Stony said. “I don’t see anything else that sets off alarms, but I doubt I would from here. We might as well do this.”

At seven ten they rose and approached the bridge. “See you shortly,” Stony said. She pulled the Glock, held it inside her jacket, strolled across the arched span and faded into the evening gloom.

John cast a quick look around and saw no one was approaching the bridge. The evening breeze carried soft conversations and laughter from the restaurants.

He glared at his watch as if time were the enemy. Four minutes. The island yielded nothing. Five. No sounds, no movement. Six.

He was starting to think about the embassy when he spied movement on the other side of the bridge. Stony had rematerialized and was waving him across. They met at the top of the bridge’s arch.

“It’s our source, the Hawaiian-shirt guy who was tailing us. Calls himself Mr. Dihn. Has a bodyguard with him. He didn’t like that there are two of us and really didn’t like that I was carrying. It took a little time to explain that I’d shoot them before I give it up. No one else on the island.”

Her voice sounded calm, but John noticed that her body had pulled into itself, a coiled spring.

“Dihn’s a jittery mess. You’ll need to go slow with him, Dish. Have to anyway; his English is weak.”

They descended the arch to the island, where they were met by the muscle. Six-four, dressed in black, with a corded scar that zig-zagged from his hairline, down his cheek to his neck, and disappeared under his shirt.

The guy patted John and Stony down briefly, then nodded the two of them forward, remaining behind at the end of the bridge.

Mr. Dinh’s bulk blocked the base of the shrine, an illuminated granite spire that rose behind him. John guessed he was five-eight and weighed maybe 250 pounds. No body fat.

The stench from the lake was trumped by a fog of garlicky sweat leaking from Dinh. Garish rings glittered from the fingers of both hands.

Stony turned and faced away from John, guarding his back.

Dinh spat, tugged at his groin. “You the boss?”

“Yeah. I’m Dr. John Benoit. I report to the Director of the DTS.” He offered his hand. The thug glared and then crushed it with one sharp pump.

Dinh rolled his shoulders. He glanced left, right, and jerked his face back to John. “Chasing me stupid. Your man stupid and dead. You not careful, I get dead too.”

“You have anything useful to say or just bullshit?” John asked. He took a half step toward Dinh, who retreated to keep his distance, eyes widened. “Well? What’ve you got for me?” John felt Stony lean gently against him, a welcome reminder she was there if needed.

“Not bullshit,” Dinh said.

“Did you meet Agent Adams?”

“Never met, followed. Chinese knew he was here. Killed him.”

“How do you know it was the Chinese?” John asked.

Dinh laughed. “Everybody knows but Americans.”

“Tell me what you know. If it’s valuable, I can pay.”

“Fuck money.” John jumped at Dinh’s growl. “I got plenty money.”

“Yeah,” John said. “From fencing stolen property and selling drugs. You sell kids too, Mr. Dinh?”

Even in the dim light, John could see Dinh’s face turn a deep red. The fat man spat on John’s shoes and said, “Fuck you. Fuck the Chinese. Chinese stealing kids. Not me. Want fucking Chinese gone. Fucking Viet People’s Army interested now. If they involved, they take a cut of my business. Fucking bad shit.”

“Tell me about the kidnapping.”

“Told you. Chinese steal kids. Not in China. In Vietnam. Bangkok. Who know where else? Chief who gets kids for Chinese in Zurich.”

“They were in Transition?” John asked him.

“No. Young ones. Six or seven.”

Dinh handed John a piece of paper.

“What’s this?”

“Zurich Chief name.”

CRACK! CRACK!

Dinh collapsed. Dark stains spattered the shrine, oozing into a mosaic of thin red snakes sliding toward the ground. John dropped to the ground beside Stony. Screams came from the shore on the other side of the bridge; tables and dinnerware clattering.

She snarled, “You hurt?”

“No,” John whispered.

“Get to the bridge, fast. Stay low. Move!”

They crawled on their bellies. The bodyguard lay across the entrance to the bridge, the side of his head gone.

“Stay on my right,” Stony said. They clambered over the body and ran across the bridge, bent at the waist, heads low.

Once on the other side, they veered away from the restaurants, toward the street that faced the lake. Police sirens grew louder, converging from all points.

Hanoi

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam

“Slow down,” John said. “We don’t want to stand out.”

Police cars wailed past the two agents as they walked from the shrine in silence.

Sweaty from the heat and shaky with adrenaline, John worked to absorb the shooting and its implications. Kids were being stolen for some sort of twisted Transition experiment. China—and, as only John knew, perhaps the PRK—was at the center of the plot, and whoever was running it was willing to kill to keep it secret.

So why aren’t we dead? The sniper was good and had time for more shots.

They reached the intersection of Tràng Thi and Bà Triệu streets. The air was heavy with fumes and the drone of traffic—a perfectly ordinary Hanoi crossing on a hot fall evening, fifteen minutes and five hundred feet from a murder.

John hurried to the curb and raised his arm to hail a cab. Three empty taxis sped past. “Shit.”

“Let me,” Stony said as she shuffled in front of John. She didn’t get her arm raised half way before a taxi—a1960’s VW bus—pulled to the curb. She looked at John with a smile. “Cabbies prefer women—it’s a universal thing.”

They piled into the back seat of the wheezing microbus.

Life has not been kind to this beast.

The gravel on the street was visible through large holes in the floor. John guessed from the smell that the car’s exhaust emptied just beneath them. No air conditioning, but no glass in the windows either, so it was only stifling. He wondered what the guy did when it rained.

“Take us to the U.S. Embassy,” John said, in English and then Vietnamese, keeping his face in the shadows. This was one of the phrases he’d committed to memory in the event—unlikely, he’d thought—of an emergency.

The cab crawled through the evening crush of scooters, bicycles, and wandering pedestrians. The trip passed in a sweaty, nauseating mix of exhaust and noise.

John called Marva’s personal cell number; she answered in one ring. “It’s Benoit. We’re okay, but there’s been a shooting. Two dead. Contact the U.S. Ambassador and get us cleared. Brief you once we’re in.”

* * *

The VW squealed to a stop before the closed embassy’s gate. John tossed two bright green 50,000 dong bills—ten bucks—over the seat and hustled from the cab. The shaded two-lane street was calm. Two bike riders chatted quietly as they pedaled past. The heavy night air carried the whisper of a distant siren.

The embassy had been an office building. The slender five-story structure of yellowed concrete and black glass sat about thirty feet from the street, across an expanse of lush grass dotted with beds of orchids and fronted by a twelve-foot wrought iron barrier that ran along the edge of a sidewalk. A closed iron gate blocked an entrance wide enough to permit a car to enter the grounds. An intercom panel was embedded in a colonnade to the left of the gate, below a small brass plaque proclaiming this the Embassy of the United States of America.

John hurried to the intercom and punched the only button. Quiet. He looked up at the closed circuit camera mounted on the building, raised his DTS badge, and mashed the button again.

It took about a minute for a disembodied voice to respond. “That’s sufficient sir. How may I help you?” The siren he’d heard when he got out of the cab was louder, like a distant train approaching a lonely crossing on a foggy night.

“This is an emergency. We’re DTS agents and need shelter in the embassy. I’m Senior Agent Dr. John Benoit. The ambassador should have contacted you.”

“Sorry sir, but no one’s called about you or anyone. What’s the nature of the emergency?”

Shit. Marva must not have been able to reach the ambassador.

“I can’t disclose that.”

“I can’t admit you without authorization, and there’s no one here who can do that. You need to come back in the morning at nine.”

The siren’s warble was a few blocks away, no more.

John said, “I’ll tell you what, son. Call the ambassador or anyone else that’ll make you feel better, but get approval and open the damn gate. If it takes you more than thirty seconds, I’ll make calls of my own and shit will rain down on your head. I’d hate—”

“One moment, sir.”

A car with flashing blue lights turned onto Long Ha about four blocks away and accelerated toward them.

John mashed the button again. “We’re dying out here! The police are about two blocks away. Open the gate.”

An agonizing pause. John turned to Stony. “Toss the Glock onto the grounds.” Stony started to comply just as a buzzer sounded and the gate began to open. They scrambled through the narrow gap, the gate closing behind them as the police car screeched to a halt. An officer leaped from the car, weapon drawn, and bellowed through the fence.

The front doors to the embassy building swung open. A harried looking Marine Private First Class waved to John and called, “Wait in here while I explain to Hanoi’s finest that this is way over his pay grade.”

* * *

John and Stony watched through a window as the embassy guard approached the gate. The Hanoi officer was loud enough to be heard through the glass. The Marine pushed a card through the bars of the gate. The cop grabbed it, took a quick look, shredded it, and tossed the pieces in the air. He flipped two middle fingers at the embassy and returned to his car.

The guard returned to the embassy and logged John and Stony in. All the bureaucratic barriers to their entry had fallen.

“Thanks for the rescue,” John said. “What was on the card?”

“Sir, you’re welcome. It had a message in Vietnamese directing him to contact our liaison in the morning if he wished to file a complaint.” He closed his logbook. “I’m to make you comfortable in the ambassador’s conference room. He asked that you wait for his arrival before contacting your director.” He led them to a spartan room on the top floor that contained the usual secure video equipment.

John sat at the table, dug a piece of paper from his pocket, and handed it to Stony. “Dinh gave me this just before he was killed. Said this is the name of the business running the kidnapping operation.”

She read the message and muttered, “Heritage Trading—Zurich. We paid a lot for this. Hope to God it’s true.”

* * *

The ambassador rushed into the conference room an hour later. “Pete Hogan. Sorry to keep you waiting.” He appeared to be in his early fifties, with hair more gray than black, dressed in wrinkled khaki pants, a pink polo shirt, and creased deck shoes with no socks. John caught a whiff of grilled chicken and bourbon as they shook hands.

Hogan sat down in front of the video comms dashboard and punched in a call to DTS. The screen came to life with Marva at her conference table, Akina sitting to her left.

“Morning all,” she said. It was nearing ten a.m. in Washington and she looked as fresh as John felt tired. “Mr. Ambassador, I wanted us all on the call because we may need your assistance.”

John interrupted. “That’s fine, Director, but nothing we say leaves this room. Someone in the embassy may be playing both sides of the street. It appears we have a leak, one that led to Quince’s death and to tonight’s shooting.”

The ambassador’s tanned face paled, then reddened. “I have a hard time believing that. It’s much more likely you were followed by agents related to your investigation. But if there is a leak, I want it eliminated and I’ll work with you to get that done.”

“Appreciated,” Marva said. “Let’s table that discussion for now. What’ve you learned, John?”

They spent the next ninety minutes reviewing what had happened since John and Stony’s arrival in Hanoi.

Ambassador Hogan seemed shaken, but remained silent. A frown grew on Marva’s face as the details emerged. “One thing you didn’t cover. Why are you and Stony still alive?”

“Who knows?” Stony said. “I gotta believe the sniper could have killed at least one of us, so there are layers here we don’t yet understand.”

“Too damn many layers,” Marva said. She paused for a few seconds. “John, what I told you in Washington … I’m authorizing you to share that with Stony.”

John doubted he’d ever see a signed memo that granted him authority to share the possible North Korean involvement. But at this point, covering his ass didn’t matter. He would’ve told Stony anyway. He glanced sideways at Hogan. If the ambassador was bothered by this cryptic exchange, he didn’t show it.

“The two of us are obviously burned in Vietnam,” John said. “Before he was killed, Dinh said the kidnappings were also happening in Bangkok. I’ll head there and work with the national police to see if I can uncover anything related to a spike in child disappearances. I want Stony to return to D.C. to dig into patterns of kidnapping in other countries and to go deep on Heritage Trading. Assuming the Heritage info holds up, we’ll hook back up in Zurich.”

Stony grimaced, obviously unhappy. “John, the director can assign a team in D.C. to do that research. I can be more helpful with you.”

“Yeah, but I want you there,” John said. “I don’t want this to be some academic exercise that takes too long and produces nothing. Drive that team hard and get results yesterday. I want to know the scope of what we’re dealing with and I want to know what the head of Heritage Trading puts on his toast in the morning.” While he was talking, he scribbled a note and passed it to her.
Sit tight. I’ll explain
.

She glanced at the message, scowled, and nodded.

Marva said, “If that’s settled, Stony, I’ll have your team ready by the time you get here. John, I’ll work with the Secretary of State to get you an introduction in Bangkok.”

“Thanks, Director. That’s all for now.”

The ambassador ended the call, thanked them for including him, and left the conference room.

“So why the hell are you sending me to D.C.?”

“Partly what I said. But also something that I’ll cover privately with the director. The leak could have come from Washington or Vietnam. You go figure it out and shut it down.”