He stood behind her and gave her shoulders a squeeze.
“You got it, Harry.”
“I gotta go.”
“You said you were heading to the airport. Are you going to Hong Kong?”
“That’s right.”
“Good luck, Harry. Go get your daughter.”
“That’s the plan.”
Bosch quickly returned to his car and raced back to the freeway. Rush-hour traffic had thinned out and he made good time as he headed through Hollywood to the Cahuenga Pass and home. He started focusing on Hong Kong. L.A. and everything here would soon be behind him. It would be all about Hong Kong now. He was going to find his daughter and bring her home. Or he was going to die trying.
All his life Harry Bosch believed he had a mission. And to carry out that mission he needed to be bulletproof. He needed to build himself and his life so that he was invulnerable, so that nothing and no one could ever get to him. All of that changed on the day he was introduced to the daughter he didn’t know he had. In that moment he knew he was both saved and lost. He would be forever connected to the world in the way only a father knew. But he would also be lost because he knew the dark forces he faced would one day find her. It didn’t matter if an entire ocean was between them. He knew one day it would come to this, that the darkness would find her and that she would be used to get to him.
That day was now.
PART TWO:The 39-Hour Day
23
Bosch got only fitful sleep on the flight over the Pacific. Fourteen hours in the air, pressed against a window in the coach cabin, he never managed to sleep more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time before thoughts of his daughter and his guilt over her predicament intruded and jarred him awake.
By moving too fast to think during the day, he had kept himself ahead of the fear and guilt, the brutal recriminations. He was able to put it all aside because the pursuit was more important than the baggage he was carrying. But on Cathay Pacific flight 883 he could run no more. He knew he needed to sleep to be rested and ready for the day ahead in Hong Kong. But on the plane he was cornered and could no longer put his guilt and fear aside. The dread engulfed him. He spent most of the hours sitting in darkness, fists balled tightly and eyes staring blankly, as the jet hurtled through the black toward the place where Madeline was somewhere hidden. It made sleep fleeting if not altogether impossible.
The headwinds over the Pacific were weaker than anticipated and the plane picked up time on the schedule, landing early at the airport on Lantau Island at 4:55 a.m. Bosch rudely pushed around passengers reaching for belongings in overhead bins and made his way to the front of the plane. He carried only a small backpack containing things he thought might help him find and rescue his daughter. When the jet’s door opened he moved quickly and soon took over the lead of all passengers heading toward customs and immigration. Fear stabbed at him as he approached the first screening point-a thermoscan designed to identify fever carriers. Bosch was sweating. Had the guilt burning in his conscious manifested itself as a fever? Would he be stopped before he had even begun the most important mission of all?
He glanced back at the computer screen as he passed by. He saw the images of travelers turned to blue ghosts on the screen. No telltale blooms of red. No fever. At least not yet.
At the customs checkpoint an inspector flipped through his passport and saw the entry and exit stamps from the many trips he had made in the past six years. He then checked something on a computer screen Bosch couldn’t see.
“You have business in Hong Kong, Mr. Bosch?” the inspector asked.
He had somehow butchered the single syllable of Bosch’s last name, making it sound like Botch.
“No,” Bosch said. “My daughter lives here and I come to visit her pretty often.”
He eyed the backpack slung over Bosch’s shoulder.
“You checked your bags?”
“No, I just have this. It’s a quick trip.”
The inspector nodded and looked back at his computer. Bosch knew what was going to happen. Invariably when he arrived in Hong Kong the immigration inspector saw his law enforcement classification on the computer and put him into the search queue.
“Have you brought your weapon with you?” the inspector asked.
“No,” Bosch said tiredly. “I know that’s not allowed.”
The inspector typed something on his computer and then directed Bosch, as expected, into a chute for a search of his bag. It would waste another fifteen minutes but Harry stayed cool. He had gained a half hour on the schedule with his early arrival.
The second inspector carefully went through the backpack and made curious looks at the binoculars and other items, including the envelope stuffed with cash. But none of it was illegal to enter the country with. When he was finished he asked Bosch to step through a metal detector and then he was cleared. Harry headed into the baggage terminal and spotted a money exchange window that was open despite the early hour. He stepped up, pulled the cash envelope out of his backpack again and told the woman behind the glass he wanted to change five thousand U.S. dollars into Hong Kong dollars. It was Bosch’s earthquake money, cash he kept hidden in the gun locker in his bedroom. He had learned a valuable lesson back in ’94 when an earthquake rocked L.A. and severely damaged his house. Cash is king. Don’t leave home without it. Now the money he kept hidden for just such a crisis would hopefully help him overcome another. The exchange rate was a little less than eight to one, and his five thousand American became thirty-eight thousand Hong Kong dollars.
After getting his money he headed to the exit doors on the other side of the baggage terminal. The first surprise of the day came when he saw Eleanor Wish waiting for him in the main hall of the airport. She was standing next to a man in a suit who had the feet-splayed posture of a bodyguard. Eleanor made a small gesture with her hand in case Harry hadn’t noticed her. He saw the mixture of pain and hope on her face and had to drop his eyes to the floor as he approached.
“Eleanor. I didn’t-”
She grabbed him in a quick and awkward embrace that abruptly ended his sentence. He understood that she was telling him that blame and recriminations were for later. There were more important things now. She then stepped away and gestured to the man in the suit.
“This is Sun Yee.”
Bosch nodded but then put out his hand, a gesture he hoped would help him figure out what to call Sun Yee.
“Harry,” he said.
The other man nodded back and gripped his hand tightly but said nothing. No help there. He would have to take Eleanor’s cue with the name. Bosch guessed Sun Yee was in his late forties. Eleanor’s age. He was short but powerfully built. His chest and arms pressed the contours of the silk suit jacket to the limit. He wore sunglasses although it was still before dawn.
Bosch turned to his ex-wife.
“He’s driving us?”
“He’s helping us,” she corrected. “He works in security at the casino.”
Bosch nodded. That was one mystery solved.
“Does he speak English?”
“Yes, I do,” the man answered for himself.
Bosch studied him for a moment and then looked at Eleanor and saw in her face a familiar resolve. It was a look he had seen many times when they had been together. She wasn’t going to allow an argument on this. This man was part of the package or Bosch was on his own.
Bosch knew that if circumstances dictated it, he could split off and make his way alone through the city. It was what he had anticipated doing, anyway. But for now he was willing to go with Eleanor’s plan.
“You sure you want to do this, Eleanor? I was planning on working on my own.”
“She’s my daughter, too. Where you go I go.”
“Okay, then.”
They started walking toward the glass doors that would lead them outside. Bosch let Sun Yee take the lead so he could talk privately with his ex-wife. Despite the obvious strain playing clearly on her face, she was just as beautiful as ever to him. She had her hair tied back in a no-nonsense manner. It accented the clean line and determined set of her jaw. No matter how infrequently or what the circumstances, he could never look at her without thinking about the could-have-beens. It was an overworked cliché, but Bosch had always believed that they were meant to be together. Their daughter gave them a lifelong connection, but to Bosch it was not enough.