"Eunuchs don"t exist anymore," he declared.
"Why would you think that?"
Thoughts of being recorded faded. "Who are you?"
"I am a person who appreciates our ancestry. A man who witnessed the wholesale destruction of all that we have held sacred for thousands of years. I am Chinese."
He knew Pau had been born in the northern province of Liaoning, educated in France at a time when young Chinese had been allowed to attend universities abroad. Well read, a published author of six historical treatises, he"d managed to survive all of Mao"s purges, which, Ni a.s.sumed, had been no easy feat. Eventually, Pau had been allowed to leave the country-rare beyond rare-taking with him personal wealth. Still- "You speak of treason," he made clear.
"I speak the truth, Minister. And I think you suspect the same."
Ni shrugged. "Then you would be wrong."
"Why are you still standing here? Why do you continue to listen to me?"
"Why did you show me that video?"
"Faced with death, he who is ready to die will survive while he who is determined to live will die. That thought has been expressed another way. Shang wu chou ti."
He"d heard the phrase before.
Pull down the ladder after the ascent.
"The most common interpretation instructs us to lure the enemy into a trap, then cut off his escape," Pau said. "Different adversaries are lured in different ways. The greedy are enticed with the promise of gain. The arrogant with a sign of weakness. The inflexible by a ruse. Which are you, Minister?"
"Who is luring me?"
"Karl Tang."
"Actually, it seems more like you are doing the luring. You haven"t answered my question. Why did you show me that video?"
"To prove that you know little of what"s happening around you. Your self-righteous commission spends its time investigating corrupt officials and dishonest Party members. You chase ghosts, while a real threat stalks you. Even within your sacrosanct world, which prides itself on being the Party"s conscience, you are surrounded. Eunuchs still exist, Minister."
"How do you know any of this?"
"Because I am one of their number."
EIGHT.
Ca.s.siopeia Vitt was shoved back into the room that had been her prison for the past two days. Her shirt was soaked, her lungs aching from trying to breathe.
The door slammed shut.
Only then was she allowed to remove the blindfold from her face.
Her cell was perhaps four by two meters, under a staircase, she a.s.sumed, as the ceiling sloped sharply. The room was windowless, light coming from a low-wattage bulb that was never extinguished. No furniture, just a thin mattress lying on a plank floor. She"d tried to learn what she could during the limited times she"d been removed. It appeared she was inside a house, the distance from here to the torture room only a few steps and in between them a bathroom that she"d visited twice.
But where was she?
Two days ago she had been in Antwerp.
She bent forward, hands on her knees. Her legs were limp, her heart pounding, and she shuddered.
Twice she"d been strapped to the board, the towel slapped across her face. She"d thought herself capable of withstanding anything, but the sensation of drowning, while her arms and feet were restrained, her head lower than her legs, was proving too much. She"d read once that mental violence needed no punches.
She believed it.
She doubted she could take another session.
Near the end of the first one, she"d involved Malone, which seemed like a smart play. In the few hours between leaving Pau Wen"s residence and her capture, she easily could have handed the artifact off.
And they"d apparently believed her.
Cotton was all she had.
And she could not give these people what they wanted. Would they kill her? Not likely, at least until they made contact in Copenhagen.
After that?
She didn"t want to think about the possibilities.
She was proud that she hadn"t begged, whined, or compromised herself.
But she had compromised Cotton.
Then again, he"d told her many times that, if she ever needed anything, she shouldn"t hesitate. This situation seemed to qualify.
Over the past two days she"d played mental games, remembering dates in history, forcing her thoughts away. She"d multiplied numbers to the tens of thousands.
But thoughts of Malone had also kept her grounded.
He was tall and handsome, with burnished-blond hair and lively green eyes. Once she"d thought him cold, emotionless, but over the past year she"d learned that this was not the case. They"d been through a lot together.
She trusted him.
Her breathing settled. Her heart slowed.
Nerves calmed.
She stood upright and rubbed her sore wrists.
Pushing forty years old and in another mess. But usually it beat the heck out of anything else she could imagine doing. Actually, her project to reconstruct a 14th-century French castle, using only tools and materials available 700 years ago, was progressing. Her on-site superintendent had reported a few weeks ago that they were at the 10% point in construction. She"d intended to devote herself more to that endeavor, but a call from China had changed that.
"They took him, Ca.s.siopeia. He"s gone."
Lev Sokolov was not a man p.r.o.ne to panic. In fact, he was a smart, clever, concise individual. Born and raised in the old Soviet Union, he"d managed to flee, escaping to China, of all places.
"My son was playing at his grandmother"s vegetable stall," Sokolov said in Russian, voice cracking. "One of his grandmother"s neighbors pa.s.sed by and offered to bring him back home on his way, so she allowed him. That was eight weeks ago."
"What about that neighbor?"
"We went straight to his door. He said that after giving him money for sweets, he left him at our apartment block. He is a lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He sold him, Ca.s.siopeia. I know he did. There is no other explanation."
"What did the police do?"
"The government does not want to talk about child stealing. To them it"s isolated and under control. It"s not. Two hundred children disappear here every day."
"That can"t be right."
"It is. Now my boy is one of them."
She hadn"t known what to say.
"Our options are limited," Sokolov said, his voice wretched with despair. "The media is too close to the government to do anything. The police will not speak to us. Even parents" support groups that exist for others like us have to meet in secret. We plastered the province with posters, but the police threatened to arrest us if we kept on. No one wants reminders of a problem that officially doesn"t exist." He paused. "My wife has fallen apart. She is barely coherent. I have nowhere else to turn. I need your help."
That was a request she could not refuse.
Five years ago Lev Sokolov had saved her life, and she owed him.
So she"d obtained a thirty-day tourist visa, bought a ticket to Beijing, and flown to China.
She lay down on the mattress, belly-first, and stared at a wall of unfinished gypsum. She knew every crack and crevice. A spider occupied one corner, and yesterday she"d watched it snare a fly.
She sympathized with that fly.
No telling how long until the next time she"d be summoned. That all depended on Cotton.
She was tired of being caged, but a four-year-old boy was depending on her. Lev Sokolov was depending on her.
And she"d messed up.
Footsteps outside the door signaled someone was coming. Unusual. She"d been visited only five times. Twice for torture, a third to leave some rice and boiled cabbage, two more to take her blindfolded to a bathroom a few feet down the hallway.
Had they discovered Cotton to be a dead end?
She extended her arms above her head, palms flat on the wood floor, which pulsated with each approaching step.
Time to do something, even if it"s wrong.
She knew the drill. The lock would release, the door would open on squeaky hinges, a blindfold then tossed inside. Not until its elastic was firmly around her head would anyone enter. She a.s.sumed her captor was armed and he was clearly not alone, as at least two had always been with her. Both times a man had questioned her, the same man who"d spoken to Malone via computer in a clipped voice with no accent.
A key was inserted in the lock.
She closed her eyes as the door eased open. No blindfold was tossed inside. She cracked her lids and saw a shoe appear. Then another. Perhaps it was feeding time? The last time food had been left, she"d been asleep, dozing from pure exhaustion. Maybe her jailers thought she was too spent from the ordeal to be a threat?
She was indeed tired, her muscles aching, limbs sore.
But an opportunity was an opportunity.
The man entered the room.
Pressing her hands onto the floor, she pivoted up and clipped the legs out from under him.
A tray with bread and cheese clattered away.
She sprang to her feet and slammed the sole of her boot into the man"s face. Something snapped, probably his nose. She pounded her heel into his face one more time. The back of his head popped against the floorboards and he lay still.
Another kick into the ribs made her feel better.
But the attack had generated noise. And there was at least one more threat lurking nearby. She searched the man"s clothes and spotted a gun in a shoulder holster. She freed the weapon and checked the magazine.
Fully loaded.
Time to leave.
NINE.
COPENHAGEN.
Malone stared at his kidnapper. They"d abandoned the street just as the police arrived, rounding a corner and plunging back into the Strget.
"You have a name?" he asked.
"Call me Ivan."
The English laced with a Russian accent made the label appropriate, as did the man"s appearance-short, heavy-chested, with grayish black hair. A splotchy, reddened skink of a face was dominated by a broad Slavic nose and shadowed by a day-old beard that shone with perspiration. He wore an ill-fitting suit. The gun had been tucked away and they now stood in a small plaza, within the shadow of the Round Tower, a 17th-century structure that offered commanding views from its hundred-foot summit. The dull roar of traffic was not audible this deep into the Strget, only the clack of heels to cobbles and the laughter of children. They stood beneath a covered walk that faced the tower, a brick wall to their backs.
"Your people kill those two back there?" Malone asked.
"They think we come to whisk them away."
"Care to tell me how you know about Ca.s.siopeia Vitt?"