Austin stared at the apparition.
“You’re willing to wipe out scores of your countrymen to stir up trouble with your government?” he asked.
“You know a great deal and very little,” she said. “What if we killed a few hundred, or even a few million, Chinese? We have a billion people. An epidemic would be far more effective for population control than the one-child-per-couple rule.”
“You’ll never be able to keep that virus contained, even with the vaccine the lab has been working on. It will move too fast. It will be in every country in a week or so.”
“Wouldn’t you say that the deaths of millions will be the most convincing reason for people to buy our vaccine?” she said. “Think of it as marketing and promotion.”
“You’re insane to think a scheme like that will work,” he said.
“It is our government leadership that is insane. Pyramid has been in our family for generations. Past governments that have tried to destroy our organization have paid the price. We were here long before those so-called leaders were even born. We won’t be thrown into history’s dustbin.”
The figure at the table seemed to glow incandescently as she launched into a diatribe against the Chinese Communist government for having the audacity to take on an organization that goes back hundreds of years.
Zavala had been staring spellbound at the woman.
“Kurt,” he whispered, “I can see through her. Look at her right arm, the one she’s waving around.”
Austin focused on the moving right arm. Through the material of her loose-fitting silk sleeve, he caught faint glimpses of the brick wall behind her.
“You’re right,” he said. “She’s nothing but a projection, like Max,” referring to the name Hiram Yeager gave to the holographic personification generated by his interactive computer.
The Dragon Lady noticed Austin’s grin and stopped her tirade.
“You are a strange man, Mr. Austin. Don’t you fear the prospect of death?”
“Not from someone who’s no more real than a comic strip.”
“Enough!” she snarled. “I will show you how real I am. My brother Chang awaits your arrival. He will make sure your death is long and painful.”
She issued an order in Chinese, and the guards moved in. “Wait a minute,” Austin called out. “What if I can produce Dr. Kane?”
She barked a second order, and the guards froze in their tracks.
“You said that Kane was in protective custody,” she said, “and couldn’t be reached.”
“I was lying . . . I do that a lot.”
“That’s true,” Zavala threw in. “Kurt is one of the biggest liars I know.”
Austin gave Zavala a sidelong glance that told him he was laying it on a bit too thick.
“Let me make a phone call,” Austin said, looking back at the Dragon Lady, “and I’ll set him up.”
Austin was trying to buy time, hoping to talk his captors into freeing him from his chair. His immediate plan was to grab a gun. It was a throw of the dice, but was all that he had.
“A futile effort, Mr. Austin,” she said. “I no longer care whether Kane lives or dies. His project is near completion and his services are not needed . . . Good-bye.”
Austin expected the Ghost Devils to move in again, but they had hoisted their weapons high on their chests and were staring toward the rear of the warehouse.
The hologram shimmered.
“What is that?” she asked.
In answer, an amplified voice came from outside.
“This is the FBI. Throw your weapons aside and come out with your hands up.”
It was a woman’s voice, speaking through a bullhorn.
Gordon Phelps had been off to the side, watching the exchange between Austin and the hologram. He stepped out of the shadows and into the spotlight. He yelled a command in Chinese to the Ghost Devils, then in English said to Austin and Zavala, “Don’t go away, boys.”
Then he and the guards ran back toward the loading-dock door.
Austin and Zavala exchanged a glance.
“No time like the present,” Austin said.
He jerked his wrist against the cuff, rose from his chair, and dragged it behind him, moving toward the Dragon Lady. After a few steps, he raised the chair to his chest, with the legs sticking out straight in front.
Zavala followed suit and got his chair into a similar position.
Together, they charged the table.
An actual person would have ducked or run for her life. But the system of camera, projectors, microphones, and computers that were the lifeblood of the holographic projection were not endowed with human instinct.
The figure seemed frozen in place. Only the facial features changed, and Austin and Zavala almost hesitated when the Dragon Lady morphed into a fierce-eyed man wearing a scarlet silk hat, then a series of fearsome male and female faces. Then the last face fuzzed at the edges and broke up into a cloud of swirling and sparkling motes.
There was only empty space by the time Austin and Zavala crashed into the table, overturning it. They climbed to their feet and saw Phelps standing under the spotlight where they had been sitting a moment before. He had the Bowen pointed in their direction.
“The boss isn’t going to like that,” he said in his lazy way.
“No, I suppose she won’t,” Austin said. “And that’s too damned bad.”
The corner of Phelps’s mouth turned up slightly.
“What were you saying about the lab vaccine and the virus?” he asked.
“The American and Chinese governments have been secretly working to develop the vaccine to head off a deadly virus, but your boss’s outfit stole the lab.”
“I know all about the lab,” Phelps said. “I’m the one who hijacked the damned thing.”
“If that’s true,” Austin said, “then you know where the lab is. Work with us to take it back from these clowns.”
“You weren’t kidding about the bug spreading to the States, were you?”
Austin looked him straight in the eye.
“What do you think, Phelps? What do you really think?”
“It’s not what I think but what I know,” he said. “I’ve got family in the States,” he added after a pause.
“There’s nothing to prevent them from getting sick,” Austin said. “You can’t let that happen.”
“I’m not going to let it. But I’ve got to do it my own way, and I work alone.”
He turned his head at the sound of more shots and shouting in the distance.
He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out the keys to the handcuffs, which he set on the floor. Then he unclipped the holster from his belt, slipped the Bowen back in it, and, bending low to the floor, sent it skittering across the floor and out of sight. A second later, he disappeared into the shadows.
When the warehouse lights snapped on a moment later, he was gone. Cate Lyons had one hand on the light switch, the other on a pistol. When she saw Austin and Zavala, she came running over to them.
“Are you guys okay? God, Joe, you look like hell. Sorry I’m late. I was waiting for backup. They’re searching the building, but I think everybody got away. Will one of you tell me what’s going on?”
Austin picked the key off the floor, unlocked his handcuffs, and did the same for Zavala. He stood up and retrieved his Bowen.
“We’ll tell you what we know on the way back to Washington,” he said. Austin clipped the holster to his belt. “Then we want to talk to a certain Agent Yoo.”
CHAPTER 29
AFTER LEADING ZAVALA TO FALLS CHURCH, CHARLIE YOO had headed back to FBI headquarters. He chatted with an agent from the Asian Crime Unit, looking for tidbits of information to pass along to his employers. As a member of one of the world’s largest crime organizations, Yoo got a perverse thrill wandering the halls of the world’s largest law-enforcement agency. He was still at the Hoover Building when Caitlin Lyons called and asked if they could get together for a drink at a Georgetown bar. Yoo jumped at the invitation. Caitlin was a good source of FBI gossip, and she was attractive as well.
He took the elevator down to the garage and was walking to his car when Lyons stepped out from behind a concrete pillar.