Fisher ignored the question. “What’s your name?”
“Lok.”
“Who do you work for?”
“I do not know.”
Truth. “How did you get here?”
“I left the Army last year. A friend of mine was hired by a security company. They pay well. I joined. I was sent here.”
Truth. “How long ago?”
“Six months.”
Truth. “Not counting guards, who’s here with you?”
“No one.”
Lie. Fisher moved the pistol in front of the headlamp so Lok could see it. “That was your one free lie. Let’s try again: Who is here with you?”
Lok swallowed hard. “Six. They are down there, in the subbasement. I do not know who they are. They work in a room . . . we are not allowed in.”
“And you don’t recognize any of them?”
“No.”
Fisher believed him. Private security firms were a dime a dozen and the quality of their work and personnel ranged from back-alley leg-breakers to professional soldiers protecting high-profile clients. Lok was one of the latter. Lok and his compatriots didn’t need to know anything but where to patrol and what to guard.
Fisher asked. “Do you know the name Bai Kang Shek?”
Lok nodded. “As I boy I heard stories. He disappeared, I believe.”
“Disappeared to here.”
“That was one of the stories, but I have never seen him here.”
Yeah, well, you’re leaning against him, son,Fisher thought.
Fisher could think of only one reason why anyone would freeze-dry Shek and take over his island: anonymity. Conversely, there were several good reasons to maintain this level of security: one, to nurture the legend that Shek the Recluse was alive and kicking on his island haven; two, because there was in fact something worth guarding here. Whatever that might be, Fisher had no doubt it was somewhere in the subbasement.
45
HEquestioned Lok for another twenty minutes, then darted him in the neck, left him sleeping in Shek’s funerary tower, and headed back down to the recessed door. Per Lok’s instructions, he found the latch embedded in the baseboard molding and gave it a soft kick. The door opened. Light seeped around the edges. He stood to one side, swung it the rest of the way open, and waited for the count of ten, then peeked around the corner. Clear.
He stepped inside, shut the door behind him. He was in a short corridor that ended at another door, this one with a small reinforced window set at chin height. Stenciled on the door was a cluster of yellow triangles on a black circular background—the classic symbol for a fallout shelter. Judging from the faded paint, this was a Shek-era addition, probably part of the pagoda’s original design. Yet another eccentricity in an already-full quiver of oddities.
Fisher reached up and unscrewed the lightbulb above his head, then flipped his trident goggles into place, switched to NV, and peeked through the window. There was no one.
He went through the door and found himself in a concrete room. A giant yellow arrow on the left-hand wall pointed downward. A single-strip fluorescent light flickered on the wall of the landing. He started down. He stayed close to the far wall, careful to keep his shadow from slipping over the railing. At the first landing he turned down the next flight, and continued down six flights. At the bottom was another windowed door through which he could see the back of a man’s head.
The guard was too close to the door to risk the flexi-cam, and without knowing whether the man had company, a snatch from behind was out of the question. Plan B, then.
From his belt he drew the sidearm he’d taken from Lok, placed it on the third step, then retreated beneath the stairwell. He drew his pistol and toggled the selector to DART, then fired at the door. The dart ticked against the steel, then skittered away. In the window the guard’s head turned. Fisher drew back under the steps, lay down on his back, and flicked the pistol back to single-shot.
The door creaked open. There were three seconds of silence, then a Chinese voice—frustrated, disgusted. Fisher assumed the words amounted to, Okay, which idiot dropped his gun?
Boots clicked on concrete. Fisher pictured the man walking and counted steps: four . . . five . . . six . . . Foot on the first step . . .
Fisher pushed off the wall and slid out, gun coming up. The man sensed movement and started to turn, but too late. Fisher fired. The bullet penetrated beneath his left earlobe. The Glaser Safety Slug had devastating effect, instantly pulverizing the man’s brain stem. The man tipped sideways, but even as he started sliding down the wall, Fisher was up and moving. He caught the body as it fell, then dragged it beneath the stairwell. He checked the steps and wall for blood, wiped up two spots, picked up Lok’s gun.
Aquick peek revealed the corridor was empty and thankfully short, with two rooms on each side and a vaultlike door at the end—which led to what Lok had called “the room.” The floor was covered with two black rubber tiles Fisher guessed were vibration dampeners. Shek had spared no expense on his doomsday bunker.
Fisher punched up OPSAT’s comm screen: The mysterious CIA signal was still there, and unless he’d missed finding something above or there was yet another level below this one, the beacon was coming from the first room on his right.
Time to solve a mystery.
HEslid the flexi-cam beneath the door. In the fish-eye lens he saw what looked like a college dorm room. Two single beds, one each on the left and right walls, separated by a desk, a clothes bureau at the foot of each bed. On the left-hand bed, a man reclined. He suddenly sat up and dropped his feet to the floor. He was Chinese. He rubbed his face in his hands, looked around.
Agitated,Fisher thought.
He withdrew the flexi-cam, briefly considered his options, then decided simple was easier. He drew his pistol then lightly tapped his index finger on the door three times. From inside, the bed creaked, footsteps approached. The door swung open.
Fisher didn’t give the man a chance to react. He barreled through the door, palm against the man’s chest, shoving him, gun in his face. The man’s legs bumped into the bed rail and he fell backward onto the bed.
“Not a sound,” Fisher warned.
Mouth agape, arms raised, the man nodded. “Okay, okay . . .”
English. Well modulated, very little accent. “Shut up,” Fisher snapped. “Interlace your hands across your chest.”
The man complied and Fisher checked the room. Only one of the bureaus contained clothes. No roommate. Fisher stood over the man. “We’re going to make this quick. I’m going to talk, you’re going to listen. For the past few hours you’ve been transmitting a beacon signal on a CIA carrier frequency.”
“No, I—”
“Yes, you have. Tell me why.”
The man hesitated.
Fisher said, “If I had a problem with your beacon, you’d be dead right now. The fact that you’re not should tell you something. The fact that I’m not Chinese should also tell you something. You can either believe me, or not, but I don’t have the time to waste on you.” He leveled the pistol with the man’s forehead.
“Okay, okay, wait. It’s in the desk drawer.”
“Open it. Slowly.”
The man did so. He pulled out a white 30GB iPod Video, unplugged a wire, and handed it over. “There’s a phone conduit behind the desk; I tapped into it.”
“Clever,” Fisher said. “Yours?”
“No. My handler gave it to me.”
This would be a CIA case officer from the Near East Division. The modified iPod would have come from Langley’s wizards in the Science & Technical Directorate. Fisher handed the iPod back.