When he was allowed to surface again, Marguerite del Coda was at the foot of his bed, which itself was a haven of white cotton sheets and warm blankets with cool air-conditioning. She was watching him curiously. He flopped a hand in druggy recognition. “’Lo, Marjrit…”
“Hey, your own self, Kyle,” she said. The voice was pleasant, but cool with a touch of worry.
“Luke?” Breathing came hard. Splitting headache. “Catch Luke?”
“No, but we’ll talk about that later. He played us all for fools and we were really worried that he’d have you trapped in Afghanistan.” She squeezed his big toe hard. He flinched. She smiled. “You’ve been unconscious since they brought you in yesterday, so they want you to have some rest and recovery. You did a great job out there, Kyle.”
“Bruce and… Ingmar?”
“Already debriefed and gone. They told me about your idea, but I have my doubts. I’ll try is all I can say. Meanwhile, you’re being sent over to the Landstuhl medical center. An interrogation team flies in from the Death Star to dig around about what happened. After that… we just have to wait and see. Kyle, I don’t know if what you want to do is possible. It could do serious harm.”
“Try.” His voice was hoarse in a raspy throat. Swanson balked for a moment about the briefers. They would be building a book on Luke Gibson and kicking over a lot of stones hat had never been exposed. He didn’t like the exertion that would be required to answer their questions, but he would just have to endure. He closed his eyes and breathed evenly. He couldn’t move his head. Opening his eyes again, it seemed as if he were looking through the face guard of a football helmet. Tried to reach, but his wrist was lashed.
“Okay.” She gave another squeeze and studied the darkening bruises that covered most of his face and arms, and the tubes feeding in the meds. A bad cut on the back of his head required stitches, and the helicopter medic reported that while checking for a possible concussion he had discovered a possible skull fracture and spinal trauma. She wondered if Swanson had finally pushed himself beyond his limits. He was now headed for X-rays and CAT scans.
She stepped away and two nurses swept into his room, while two others pushed in a gurney. They read the charts and machine screens, and one punched the morphine feed. Swanson’s eyelids closed and he was gone, heading down deep to where the nightmares lurked, fully anticipating another spitting match with the Boatman.
Instead, he found himself feeling comfortable on a wharf that he recognized, a pier of heavy pilings extending from a concrete walkway. Somewhere on the Massachusetts north coast. Lobster boats canopied with nets bobbed at anchor, and frilly ice floes decorated the small, restless waves. A figure stood waiting for him, but it wasn’t the dreaded Boatman. It was a small blond woman in a thick white wool sweater with a rolled collar and tight jeans tucked into black leather boots. Coastie? When she turned, the smile on her face lit the sky with gold. In the dream, he walked toward her, she reached out her hand to grab his, and they fell together in an embrace that he never wanted to end.
Luke Gibson had followed the Chemin du Roy, the King’s Highway — the old family footsteps — from the Chinese border with Afghanistan all the way to the best watering hole in Asia, the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondent’s Club. It was an area where friendships required generational ties, and his tribe had been passing through Honkers since long before it ceased to be a British colony. They knew people.
He had made his way by helicopter, automobiles, small planes, junks, and powerboats. Once the border guards entered his cover name and code into the system, he was vouched for by intelligence officers in Beijing; the way was cleared to the family’s privately owned flat on the thirteenth floor of an apartment building on Cloud View Road. The harbor below had a bronze look in the setting sun and was crowded with ocean-tough freighters, some warships, and the reliable old Star Ferries that still churned from the island over to the Kowloon side, packed with people, despite the highway bridge. The flat was almost an heirloom, and he felt the presence of his forefathers there, all the way back to the Brits, and was almost sorry he had murdered one of them. It was kept clean by an amah, who had telephoned ten minutes after he arrived offering to cook dinner. He smiled. Talk about networks. He hadn’t been in town for almost a year, and the amah was already on the job. He declined.
The noise of the city roared up the heights — car motors and yells, and the eternal slapping of mah-jongg tiles. Furniture from all over the Orient had been collected here and tastefully arranged in strong, dark patterns and curves. Gibson pushed back a thick bamboo chair and used a knife to pry up a square of parquet floor: two pistols, Canadian passport, press badges, credit card and cash in various currencies. He removed the new identity, some money, left the guns, covered the square again.
After a shower in the master bedroom, he pulled a tailored gray suit from the closet. The amah kept his wardrobe fresh. A generous absentee foreign landlord was a gift for the whole family, and was pampered, no matter the nationality. After all, Hong Kong was about money.
A taxi ride down to Central and he found Detective Inspector Susannah Lai waiting at the Great Bar. The FCC had always adapted with the times, and since the Vietnam years, when it had been a playground for rowdy war correspondents, it had slewed back into the grasp of the Old China Hands, the diplomats and public-relations and businesspeople — a two-way mirror into and out of Communist China.
Lai waved him over, and he gave her a light kiss on the proffered cheek. “Long time no see, Luke. You have been a naughty boy.” She was elegant in her mid-forties, with shining hair and a figure that demonstrated that she exercised daily. Dainty and dangerous, Lai was an agent of the Beijing government’s intelligence service, with a detective’s badge in Hong Kong.
“Great to be back, Susannah.” A pair of cold gin and tonics appeared before them, and he toasted her. “We must fight malaria every day.”
She signaled a waiter and they went upstairs to a quiet table in the corner, windows on two sides and the Bank of China hulking like a giant among the business buildings. Lai ordered a salad, and Gibson chose a chicken curry.
“I can give you seventy-two hours on the island, Luke.” Her hands folded on the table. “You are radioactive-hot, my friend.”
“Works for me. Many thanks for expediting the trip from Afghanistan.”
“No problem. That’s a big public-relations black eye for Washington, so we’re glad to help. I can offer to move you deeper into China, even Beijing or Shanghai for a while, until they lose interest.”
Gibson drained his glass and ordered another. “Thanks. The CIA may lose interest in me, but I still have unfinished business with them. So I must decline, although I appreciate your having my back.”
She smiled. “My help is not free, you know.”
Gibson was ready. He took a flash drive from his shirt pocket and put it beneath the folded linen napkin. “This is a proposed merger deal between two major software companies in Silicon Valley. Completion would open the way for advancement in military laser technology — specifically, airborne weaponry. You may want to wreck that partnership. I understand that not all the board members on either side are happy, because they don’t want to share that Pentagon pie.”