Gabriel typed: YOUR PIG MOTHER EATS NIGHT SOIL.
Mitch read this over his shoulder and gave him a look of confusion crossed with bemusement—but it was cut short by what appeared to be a sudden migraine jolt that caused her to pinch the bridge of her nose and squeeze her eyes shut, wetly.
“You okay?” said Gabriel.
She waved away his concern. “Mm-hm, yeah. It’s just a spike—like brain freeze from ice cream, you know?” Gabriel knew—but he didn’t think ice cream had anything to do with it.
Su-Lin typed back on her keyboard: I LOVE YOU, TOO.
I NEED A WEAPON, Gabriel typed. He took the ungainly Beretta back from Mitch, passed it across the counter. I CAN TRADE THIS IN.
Su-Lin gamely dug under her counter and came up with the same modified .36 Colt revolver Gabriel had lost after his visit to Tuan with Qingzhao. It was like seeing an old friend. He wondered how many times she’d sold and resold the same guns.
IT HAS ALREADY BROUGHT GREAT PROFIT, Su-Lin typed, SO I GIVE SPECIAL PRICE TO YOU.
DONE, Gabriel typed. NOW FOR MY FRIEND?
Chapter 17
“We need to get out of the middle of this thing,” said Gabriel. “Nobody is going to back down. Everybody is going to get killed.”
The leaning pagoda was within view as they crested a jut of rock. Mitch was climbing right behind him, but her attention seemed to be wandering and she had gone from breathing nasally to orally—not a good sign, for someone as fit as she was.
“You’re part of it now, too,” she said, her breath more ragged than it should have been.
“No, I’m not, and neither are you. We get to Qi’s place, I call my brother. I’m pretty sure Qi’s got a secure cell phone or can bash one up. Michael calls the embassy and the Marines and we burn our tail feathers straight out of here.”
“You still don’t get it, do you?”
He turned and gave her a hand over the next rise. “You’re going to tell me that the guy who imprisoned you, drugged you, turned you out to fight for money, the guy who imprisoned me, for god’s sake, has some kind of hypnotic hold over you that’s going to keep you trying to kill phantoms?”
“No,” she said. “Stop. Please. I’ve got to stop.” She halted, bent over, hands on her thighs.
Mitch sat down heavily on a knobby outcrop of feldspar.
“It is the drug?” said Gabriel.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I can’t tell if this is an aftereffect, or withdrawal, or bad chemistry, or what. But it’s starting to hurt so bad I can’t keep my eyes open.”
“You can’t go to sleep,” warned Gabriel. “You might not wake up.”
She took a deep breath and her vision seemed to clear slightly. “He told me a story,” she said. “A parable.”
“Ivory?”
“Yes. He asked if I’d ever had a crisis of faith…god, I can’t remember what he said. It seemed to make a lot of sense at the time. He was talking about himself, I’m pretty sure, and about Valerie. He said he didn’t kill her. But he didn’t stop it when he saw it happening.”
“That was his crisis of faith,” said Gabriel.
“Exactly. His duty versus his honor. Very Chinese.”
“I know how this one ends,” said Gabriel. “Betrayal. It’s who betrays whom I’m having a hard time figuring out.”
Meanwhile, Gabriel was suffering his own crisis. He still had a syringe of the Iron Fist happy-hour cocktail in his pocket. He’d grabbed two and only used one on the gunner in the cage room. The other he’d begun thinking he could get to a lab, have them break it down, analyze it. Synthesize countermeasures.
But if what he was seeing in Mitch was the first stage of withdrawal, he was going to have to use the needle on her. Perhaps diluted. Perhaps in increments. But even so, the sample would soon be gone—and she’d be rendered a null-sum as a team member for the duration.
Part of his mind—the impatient part, the selfish part, the part that had so often kept him alive in tight spots—was asking what, really, did he owe her? Hadn’t he picked up that check? Hadn’t he been picking them up for Mitch ever since he’d posted her bail back in New York? Hadn’t he paid plenty in skin and blood and gunfire; in nightmares and pain?
But his sense of justice was at stake here. That was the other part of his mind, the part that kept getting him into all those tight spots in the first place. He had allowed the undertow to drag him this far because Lucy was relying on him—and because men like Cheung needed taking down. And if Mitch’s tragedy was a minuscule one for planet Earth, so what? Move a single grain of sand on a beach, everything in the world is changed. How’s that for Zen?
“I’m not so sure Qi won’t just shoot us on sight,” said Gabriel, considering their range from the pagoda. “If Tuan knew her whereabouts, then Ivory knows, which means Cheung knows. And if she’s found out that Tuan’s dead, that he betrayed her…”
“…she may be in a mood to shoot anyone that approaches.”
“Keep your eyes open,” Gabriel said.
“I’ll try,” Mitch said.
But Qingzhao was not to be found.
They entered the pagoda without incident and searched from room to room without turning her up. Mitch doubled over with a cramp about the time they entered the third of the shrine rooms.
“God, this feels really…weird,” said Mitch, breaking a sudden sweat. Her temperature was skyrocketing.
The puzzle-box base of the idol was securely shut. Qi’s bike was gone.
But most of her hair was still here. It lay at the foot of a narrow mirror, hacked off in clumps, apparently with the combat knife lying atop one clump.
The water in the big iron cauldron was room temperature. Gabriel decided to stick Mitch inside to keep her from running too hot. She didn’t resist as he undressed her. He helped her up and over the side. She settled in, laid her head back against the rim. Her head jittered against the metal, perspiration beading on her brow.
He had ten cubic centimeters of amber fluid in the needle.
Okay, give her two.
He did not want to waste time or serum on a skin pop that might not take hold, and she was compliant when he tapped up a vein in her forearm. He uncapped the syringe. It was the sort of small, disposable plastic hypodermic found at free clinics all over America. The Iron Fist had probably went through these things by the gross.
Very carefully, he allowed about a drop and a half to enter her system.
Her response was instant. The tremor in her head and neck vanished, and she seemed to nod off. Gabriel hurriedly checked her pulse (slow), respiration (shallow), pupil dilation (considerable). Her breathing was barely audible but regular. She wasn’t dead.
He checked her again about every two minutes while he fired up a few torches and managed to get some coffee going on Qi’s campstove.
It was the better part of an hour before Mitch cracked her eyes open. Her pupils were huge. Her green irises had subsided to a pale shade similar to algae.
She brought up a handful of water as though it was a rare treasure, and trickled it over her face. Droplets hung from her brow, nose and chin as she watched the water return to the tub in a stream. Her expression was concentrated, one of almost religious intensity. She ignored Gabriel checking her vital signs. Watching the water was paramount right now.
“Are you back?” said Gabriel. “You okay?”
In response she grabbed his wrist, pulled him close. “Where am I? Who are you?”
“I’m Gabriel,” he said.
“Who?”
“Lucy’s brother.” Her face relaxed at the mention of Lucy’s name. Her grip did, too. He pulled his arm free. “Lucy,” she whispered. “Come here, Lucy.”
“Mitch,” he said. “Lucy’s not here.”