He had soundlessly materialized from the scrub and now blocked Lee’s way to the water. He was physically frightening. His hardened Asian features seemed to have been hammered on an anvil. His thin-lipped mouth looked as if it could not be pried into a smile with a crowbar. He wore shorts, and the muscles on his arms and legs appeared capable of driving his knuckles or clublike feet through a brick wall.
Making him even more formidable was the automatic weapon cradled in his arms. The muzzle was pointed at her heart.
Despite her fears, Song Lee managed to croak out a question.
“Who are you?” she said.
“I am the ghost who watches,” he said with no change of expression.
What nonsense, Lee thought. The man was obviously deranged. She tried to assert control over the situation.
“Did you move my kayak?” she asked.
She thought she saw a slight nod of the chin.
“Then I’d appreciate your help in pulling it back to the water.”
He smiled for the first time and lowered the gun. Thinking that maybe her bluff had worked, she turned to grab the kayak.
“Dr. Lee?”
Hearing her name called, she knew this was no random encounter. She saw a quick movement out of the corner of her eye as the man raised his gun above his head and brought it down stock first. She felt an explosion at the back of her skull, and saw a flash of white light before the darkness closed in, and she was unconscious before she crashed facedown into the mud.
CHAPTER 23
THE FBI’S J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING HEADQUARTERS ON Pennsylvania Avenue is the antithesis of the bucolic, tree-shaded campus at Quantico. The hulking, seven-story structure was made of poured concrete, in the Brutalist architectural style made popular in the 1960s. The Hoover became even more fortresslike after the terrorist attack of 9/11. Tours for the public came to an end, and barriers were put up around the first floor.
Caitlin Lyons had called ahead, easing Zavala’s entry into the FBI’s inner sanctum. There was the visitor’s badge, and the pleasant guide, a serious young man this time, who miraculously managed to navigate the labyrinth of the corridors without having to resort to map or GPS.
The guide stopped in front of an unmarked door and knocked softly. A voice on the other side of the door said to come in. Zavala thanked the guide, and opened it.
Inside was an office slightly bigger than the gray metal table and chairs it contained. There was nothing on the walls except a black-and-white photo of the Great Wall of China.
A man sat behind the desk talking on the phone in Chinese. He waved Zavala to a chair, continued chatting a minute, then ended the conversation and set the receiver back in its cradle. Popping up like a jack-in-the-box, he shook Zavala’s hand as if trying to coax water from a reluctant pump, then settled back in his chair.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “I’m Charlie Yoo.” He flashed a friendly smile. “Please, no jokes about the last name. I’ve heard enough ‘Yoo-hoo’ and ‘How’s by Yoo’ around here to last a lifetime.”
Yoo was a pencil-thin man in his mid-thirties. He wore a stylishly cut shiny gray suit with a cobalt blue shirt and blue-and-red striped tie, a sartorial style more in keeping with a cocktail hour at the Willard Hotel than the bowels of the FBI, where conservative navy blue suits were the norm. Yoo spoke English with a New York accent, the sentences coming like bursts of photon energy.
“Nice to meet you, Agent Yoo. I’m Caitlin’s friend, Joe Zavala.”
“The man from NUMA . . . great organization, Joe. Please call me Charlie. Caitlin’s a fantastic woman and a terrific cop. She said you were looking into the Pyramid Triad.”
“That’s right. She thought you might be able to help.”
Yoo sat back in his chair and tented his fingers.
“Excuse me for asking, Joe, but NUMA is an underwater outfit, from what I’ve heard. Why would a guy from NUMA be interested in Chinese organized crime?”
“We wouldn’t be, ordinarily. But someone tried to sabotage a NUMA operation, and we have circumstantial evidence that the seafood subsidiary of Pyramid Trading may have been involved.”
Yoo hiked his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.
“Excuse me for being skeptical, Joe, but that doesn’t seem like Pyramid’s m.o. What’s your evidence?”
“Let me fill in the background. A few days ago, NUMA launched the Bathysphere 3, a replica of a historical diving bell, in waters off Bermuda. The dive was broadcast all over the world . . . You may have seen it on television . . .”
Yoo spread his hands apart, his empty palms signifying no. “I’ve been pretty busy, Joe. Haven’t watched much TV. Is this the op that Pyramid supposedly tried to sabotage?”
Zavala nodded.
“I designed the diving bell,” he said, “and Kurt Austin, my partner at NUMA, was the project leader. The most interesting part of the dive wasn’t transmitted because an underwater robot cut the bathysphere’s cable.”
“Whoa!” Yoo said, a wide grin on his boyish face. “An underwater robot. That’s pretty wild stuff, Joe.”
“I thought so at the time. When the cable let go, the sphere was buried a half mile down in muck.”
Yoo leaned forward across the desk. His grin had disappeared.
“You’re not kidding, are you? That’s an incredible story! How’d you get out of a situation like that?”
“Kurt made a rescue dive, and we were able to activate our flotation system. While we were on our way to the surface, the robot went after Austin. He beat the thing off of him and grabbed one of the pincers it had used to cut our cable. The pincer was stamped with a triangle identical to the Pyramid Trading logo.”
Yoo shook his head.
“You had me going there for a minute. Sorry, Joe, but the triangle is a pretty common symbol. It could mean anything.”
“I agree, Charlie, except for one thing. The robot is identical to one that Pyramid’s seafood division uses to inspect nets.”
“You know this for a fact?”
Zavala nodded.
“I know it for a fact, Charlie.”
Zavala reached in his pocket and extracted a folded copy of the magazine article about the Pyramid seafood division’s AUV, smoothing out the wrinkles on the desk. He put photos from Austin’s Hardsuit camera next to it. Yoo read the article and studied the photos.
“Wow!” Yoo said. “Okay, you win . . . Pyramid tried to sabotage your dive. But why?”
“Haven’t a clue. Which is why I went to see Caitlin. She said Pyramid Trading was the baddest of the bad when it came to Chinese Triads.”
“Pyramid is definitely a major player. But it’s one of hundreds of Triads based in cities around China. Did Caitlin tell you what I do?”
“She said you were a specialist in Chinese gangs around the world.”
“I’m more than a specialist, I’m a former gang member. I’m from Hong Kong originally. My parents moved my family to New York.”
“That accounts for the American accent,” Zavala said.
“Learned English on the sidewalks of Mulberry Street. That’s also where I joined the Ghost Shadows, one of the biggest gangs in the country.”
“Caitlin said the Ghost Shadows is a Pyramid gang.”
“That’s right. My family saw what was going on and moved back to China to keep me out of the gangs. Pop had a bicycle-repair shop, and he kept me so busy I was too tired to get into trouble. I kept my nose clean, went to college. Now I’m part of a special unit from the Ministry of Security.”
“How did you end up in Washington?” Zavala asked.
“Your guys needed my expertise. I’m over here for a few months sharing intel with the FBI. This is just a temporary office, as you’ve probably guessed.”
“Caitlin said that Pyramid was bucking the old traditions, consolidating its power, and that’s one of the reasons it’s in hot water with the Chinese government. That, and the safety scandals over contaminated products.”
“Caitlin’s the expert on the Triads,” Yoo said. “I’ll go along with what she says.”