The shaman passed through his field of vision, casting ash into the air. The fine dust floated down, catching the light of the fire. In it McCarter saw a face.
He tried to focus but the shaman waved a hand through it and the dust scattered on the current.
“What have you given me?” he asked weakly.
The young man answered. “The potion is to calm the dark ones, to make them unaware.”
McCarter could not follow anymore or even pay attention. He felt less pain, that was for sure, but he was more certain than ever that he was on the way to the great beyond.
He thought of his wife, who had died from cancer several years earlier. There were people in this life that made it seem worth all the trouble, made it feel like things would always get better no matter how bad they were. McCarter’s wife had been one of those people.
As college students in the mid-1960s, they had endured racial slurs and threats together. And of the two of them, it had been she who’d insisted that minds would change. When their first child had been deathly sick with pneumonia, she’d promised him that their son would be fine, and he grew up to be a strong young man. And even when she’d lain dying herself and McCarter had stood at her bedside, she had been the one to comfort him.
“If this is my time,” he whispered, “then let me find you.”
The shaman moved past, chanting and whirling like a dervish, shaking some feathery wand. It was all a blur.
McCarter ignored him now. “Let me see you again,” he said aloud to his wife. “If it’s time, bring me to you.”
The shaman was over him now, gazing through the smoke and the haze into McCarter’s eyes. There was something in his hand.
McCarter looked past him. “Bring me to you,” he said again, and then he heard the woman’s voice. It was his wife. She whispered back to him.
“No,” she said. “Bring me … to you.”
And then the shaman raised a cast-iron rod from the glowing embers of the fire and plunged it downward. The molten tip burrowed into McCarter’s open wound; his head tilted back and he screamed.
CHAPTER 9
Lantau Island, three miles east of Hong Kong, December 2012
Hawker arrived at Chep Lap Kok Airport shortly after midnight. He stepped off a cargo flight from Nairobi dressed as a member of the crew and helped to supervise the unloading.
Then, instead of reboarding the aircraft or entering the brightly lit passenger terminal, he traveled with the freight to the huge warehouse at the edge of the ramp.
The whole thing had been prearranged, the night foreman and a customs officer dutifully taking their bribes and hiding him. A new set of clothing was handed over, along with travel papers and a stamped passport. Thirty minutes later Hawker was streetside with the rest of the second-shift crew, stepping onto a bus that would take him to Hong Kong’s central district.
At two o’clock in the morning, the city was ablaze with lights, skyscrapers outlined in white and yellow, others up-lit by colored floods, while the ever-present glow of the orange halogen bulbs reflected on the layer of clouds that hung over the city. Though not quite deserted, the streets were quiet, at least by Hong Kong standards.
Hawker wandered around the district for twenty minutes or so, getting his bearings, stopping for an English language newspaper and a bite to eat: Cantonese chicken and a cup of green tea.
In many ways Hong Kong was the same as Hawker remembered, the same neon face for the world to see, the same subconscious buzzing of energy, even at night. It even smelled the same; food cooking and salt air mixed with the exhaust of idling traffic.
To many that would have seemed impossible a decade and a half earlier, as the British prepared to hand the territory back to the Chinese and the threat of communist rule loomed. Many had expected a muting of Hong Kong’s vibrancy, with the imposition of communist taxation, regulation, and bureaucracy. A duller, grayer place was the likely outcome. Certainly money had been fleeing the island for years before the switch.
But it hadn’t happened that way. Aside from growing bigger and brighter, Hong Kong remained the same densely packed bundle of energy it had always been. The place was New York or London on speed, a more youthful and less restrained Tokyo. Its spirit, rather than being dulled, had infected the mainland, right up to the highest levels of the Communist Party, with mini versions of the great city sprouting in Shenzhen, Tianjin, and Chongqing. As it turned out, China hadn’t taken over Hong Kong after all; Hong Kong had taken over China.
As if further proof were needed, Hawker’s last foray into China had been with the state as an adversary. That monolithic source of power no longer existed in the same way. In all likelihood, Kang could be as much an enemy of his own country as he was currently an enemy of Hawker and the NRI. And that fact was important, because though any action against Kang would be dealt with harshly in the aftermath, especially if linked to the United States, the machinery of the state had better things to worry about in the meantime. If he was right, the only real security he would have to deal with would be Kang’s.
Hawker made his way to the Peninsula Hotel and checked in under the assumed name on the passport: Mr. Thomas Francis.
“Are there any messages for me?” he asked.
“There is one message,” the clerk replied in English. She handed Hawker an envelope.
Hawker opened it. A single sheet of hotel stationery. No name, only three words. It read: Enjoy the view. He put it in his pocket and went to his room.
Sitting down, he flipped open a laptop computer that Moore had given him and signed on to the Internet. Using an encryption program, he secured the connection and checked for any messages. There were none. Next he tapped the account that Moore had set up.
Once the security protocol went through, Hawker saw the balance for the first time: $1.4 million. A life’s savings, pledged to save a life. But then Danielle wouldn’t have been in danger had Moore not convinced her to work for him once again.
Hawker stared at the screen. The truth was, he would have come for Danielle without any payment at all. But the money in front of him wasn’t without meaning. It was enough to change Hawker’s life, enough that he could escape the world he’d lived in for the past twelve years. And the thought had a magnetic attraction that he could not fully deny.
He transferred half the money to an account of his own. The rest would wait; that was the deal. Then he logged out of the site, closed the browser, and shut the laptop.
Glancing at the note he’d been given at the front desk, he stood and walked to the picture window of his seventeenth-floor room. Moving his face up against the glass, he exhaled, creating a slight fog on the window-pane.
A small arrow appeared in the condensation, drawn with fingers and the subtle oils that resided on them. From Hawker’s point of view, it led directly to a moped rental kiosk on the opposite side of the street far below.
He reached out with his hand and wiped the window clean. He would meet his contact there in the morning.
CHAPTER 10
Danielle stood in the darkness, the filth in the air surrounding her. Hearing more movement, she stepped back in a defensive posture, waiting for something or someone to attack her.
“Show yourself,” she demanded.
A voice called out to her. “You disturbed our rest. So why don’t you show yourself.”
An oil lantern was lit, lending a fraction of light to the room. As her eyes adjusted Danielle saw a figure moving forward: an older Asian man, with a scraggly beard and mustache. Four or five bodies lay on the floor around him, covered with filthy blankets. She guessed they were sleeping. Beyond them were more stone walls and the remnants of cast-iron bars rusted and flaking.