“You’re attracted to her,” Gabriel realized. “More than that, you’ve got the obligation of her sister hanging around your neck. Putting her in a human cockfight may not seem merciful, but it beats killing her—at least she has the chance to defend herself. Cheung is happy. And you get to control her. You’re her steward. Her trainer. Her keeper. Her man.”
Ivory shook his head forcefully, but not without a little sweat on his face.
“Beats buying yourself a wife—you didn’t even have to pay anything,” said Gabriel, gripping the bars. “You’re the guy who jams her with drugs, I’ll bet, and I’ll bet you do it in the most loving way. You take care of her after the fights, don’t you? Backrubs and front-rubs, all that. And this’ll go on until she dies, or maybe until you get tired of her, till your aching conscience quiets down. Then what? Do you throw her away, the way Cheung discarded Qi?”
Here at last was a charge Ivory could answer and he leapt at it. “The Nameless One failed Cheung. I corrected that oversight.”
“You corrected…you tried to kill her!”
“I trained her,” shot Ivory. “She was the best of our candidates! And at the critical moment, she failed. Her failure permitted Mr. Cheung to be wounded, something that is not allowable, and I—”
“You nothing,” Gabriel overrode. “You turned your back and Cheung threw her to the same pack of thugs and murderers that killed Valerie, assuming he didn’t participate himself. Only Qi somehow survived to come after you. Yes, you—not just Cheung, don’t fool yourself, she wants you, too. She wants to kill Cheung, but you…you she wants to humiliate. And what greater dishonor than to kill Cheung right under your umbrella of protection?”
Ivory’s stilted quiet was an indictment in itself. At last he said, “Her story will end very soon. Tuan betrayed her. He betrayed us, too, of course, but that is no more than one should anticipate from denizens of the Night Market.”
“And what happens to Tuan?” said Gabriel.
“Tuan’s story is already over.”
“I see. Did you kill him yourself?”
“It was my honor, and Tuan knew that.”
“Your honor,” Gabriel said. “You make it sound so very noble. Never mind the dirty, grubby politics of it—the fact that it also conveniently eliminates one of the three other power-bosses on the Bund. Who’s left that isn’t under your control yet? Hellweg, the water-and-power guy, right? And the fellow who runs the police; I forget his name.”
“Zhang,” said Ivory. “You are right—to win Zhang to our cause would be to put the entire army at our disposal.”
“Why not just kill him the way you killed Tuan?”
“Zhang has not betrayed Mr. Cheung. He will be offered a deal, as Mr. Hellweg will be.”
Gabriel almost wished Ivory weren’t being so open in discussing his plans—it surely meant he was confident Gabriel would never leave the cage alive.
“Listen, Ivory,” Gabriel said, figuring he might as well confront it head-on, “you and I can work out a deal, too.”
“I am sorry for your unfortunate confinement,” Ivory said, “but no. If I were to let you go, I would have to answer to Mr. Cheung. As I would if I allowed Qingzhao to continue living. There are no options.”
“There are always options,” Gabriel said. “And if I find one before you do, you may regret not making a deal with me.”
“You speak very bravely for a man in a cage, Mr. Hunt.”
“I’m not being brave,” said Gabriel, “just telling you the truth. I have something Mr. Cheung wants very badly. How long do you think he’ll keep me in this cage?”
Gabriel caught the fleeting expression of uncertainty that ghosted across Ivory’s face at this news. But he had no time to appreciate it, because while he was watching Ivory someone slipped up from behind and jammed a spike full of joy juice into Gabriel’s shoulder.
Chapter 15
Mitch’s defeated opponent from the Iron Fist bout that Gabriel had witnessed turned out to be a lot more important than anyone reckoned.
The woman’s name was Garima Bhatia; in her native Indian dialect “Garima” meant “prowess, strength and honor.” That she had been tough and competent did not matter. That she had lost money for some bettors did not matter. That she had been defeated by Mitch did not matter.
What mattered was that Garima Bhatia had died soon after the match from a brain aneurysm.
What mattered more was that Garima had been Mads Hellweg’s fighter, bonded and branded.
Mads Hellweg, the underground lord of New Shanghai’s water and power, had long distrusted Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung, and had significant reservations about the fixing of matches at the Iron Fist. For the purposes of inside intelligence, Hellweg had emplaced most of the Sikh guards used by Red Eagle, having obtained these men through the same channels and business interests in India he had used to procure Garima. But over the prior months the pipeline had broken down and his Sikh spies were being kept out of the information loop. Garima’s defeat had come at an inopportune time, never mind her death, and Hellweg was now in dutch with the local Triad shylocks.
Normally, Hellweg would have requested that Cheung use his influence to take some of the creditor heat off. Except he knew that Cheung was brimming over with his own plans and needed to curry favor with the selfsame Tong bosses to get what he wanted. Hellweg’s request was doomed to go into channels and never come out.
Plus, Cheung was visibly becoming increasingly erratic. Assassins were trying to kill him in public. He had taken to soliciting the counsel of an astrologer. And he had fallen into the habit of murdering rivals at the least disagreement or split-hair detail. Hellweg had begun to suspect his uneasy relationship with Cheung was going to blossom into a less-than-equal partnership.
Fortunately, Hellweg had other allies. Quietly marshalling their forces against the Tongs in China were the members of the Japanese yakuza. Though nominally subject to a cross-cultural cease-fire, they were just waiting for the right excuse to commence full-scale gang warfare in the streets of Shanghai. Hellweg had maintained a back-door deal with some of the oyibuns of the 30,000-strong Kobayashi Clan just in case it ever proved necessary.
And this, he thought, could be the moment. If he deactivated the Iron Fist using yakuza mercenaries, Cheung would blame the Japanese and drag the Tongs in for reprisal. Both sides would suffer glorious losses, including the Triad loansharks trying to bleed Hellweg, and Hellweg himself would skate blame-free.
Then, when the tumult died down, he could debut his own fighting pit, one strictly under his control.
Best of all, if Cheung didn’t suspect his involvement, he might even come to Hellweg for support, might ask him to help architect the retaliation against this bold, slap-in-the-face attack by Japan. This moment would bond them as equals in a way nothing else had to date…
Hellweg made the call on his ultra-secure landline.
The warning on the sarcophagus was clear. Basically, anybody who opened the tomb was to be cursed, blahblah, the usual rot.
Gabriel tilted back his pith helmet and mopped his head with a kerchief once white, now gone to oily yellow. Weeks of digging to find a burial chain-of-title regarding a Second Dynastic Period ruler named either Kaires or Seth-Peribsen; scholars disagreed. What Gabriel had found instead was more intriguing—an overlooked intermediate ruler, sort of a vice president, name unknown, signified only by a unique, untranslatable hieroglyph—a bit like the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, but without all the platinum albums.