Joe fagan 04 the jade mo.., p.33
Joe Fagan 04 The Jade Mountain Queen, page 33
part #4 of Joe Fagan Series
“Does it matter? The end result will be the same.”
“Then we had better leave,”
Fagan had told Su Li about his experience in the custody of the Hong Kong Police. He didn’t tell her why Yiang wanted Nancy. He just said he needed her blood.
“Where will we go? The Bamboo Tiger has ears and eyes on every street corner in Kowloon and over on the island.”
“I know a place,” Fagan said. “Will that scooter of yours carry the two of us?”
Su Li smiled. “Shall we find out?”
They made their way out through the back of the building. Fagan let his eyes adjust before stepping out into the darkened alley. He held the SIG with the sound suppressor attached down by his side. Su Li’s scooter was parked under a streetlight. It seemed they were alone.
“Put this on.” Su Li handed him a motorcycle helmet and climbed on to the scooter.
“I’m not sure it’s my style.”
“Do you want the police to stop us because you are not wearing a helmet?”
“Point taken.” Fagan pulled on the helmet and climbed on the back behind her.
She started the engine, then turned her head back to him. “Do you mind telling me where we are going?”
Fagan smiled. “Lantau Island.”
The trip from Kowloon was uneventful, and the traffic was light. It gave Fagan some time to think. He had to find Nancy, and he was running out of time. A single thought sat in his mind as they crossed the Tsing Ma Bridge. The consequences of failure on his part were too horrific to contemplate, but the thought that bothered him most sat like ice in his gut.
Was he already too late?
Fagan gave Su Li directions, and they emerged onto a narrow road running by the water. He told her where to stop. The house was quiet. He hoped Chen’s cousin was still out of town. Fagan found the key where he had left it and let them in.
“You should try to get some sleep,” Fagan said. “There’s a bed through there.” He pointed towards the bedroom door.
“What are you going to do?”
“I need to make some calls.”
“What will happen now?”
“You can stay here for a few days until things quieten down. Hopefully, when this is all over, you can go back to your life.”
“I don’t have a life anymore.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who gives up easily. Look what you have achieved so far. You’ll find a way.”
Su Li shrugged, then disappeared into the bedroom.
Fagan went through into the kitchen. Chen’s cousin had a drip coffee machine. Fagan retrieved the ground coffee beans from a can in the fridge. He heaped three spoons into the filter, then switched it on and let it drip.
He had bought a charger for his phone when he had bought his new wardrobe. He plugged it in and connected his phone, then called Chen. They were still out at Tommy’s friend’s place, trying to rebuild the Cessna.
“Have you found her?” Tommy came on the line.
“Listen to me. We have to stay calm. We have to make a plan, and we have to follow it. Because if we don’t, Nancy will be dead.”
“What if she’s already dead. What if he has already butchered her.”
Fagan had already told him what he believed Henry Yiang had planned for Nancy. It had been a hard conversation.
“Maybe. But we can do nothing about that. We have to believe she is still alive, that we can still save her.”
“Is that all we’ve got, blind faith?”
“A wise man once told me, sometimes faith is all we have.”
“Amen to that,” Walter chimed in.
“Chen, we need to find out where Henry Yiang is. We’re assuming wherever he is, Nancy is too.”
“I’ve been looking into that.” Chen came on the line. “Tommy has a friend in Air Traffic Control in Hong Kong. His private jet filed a flight plan to Beijing earlier this morning.”
“That confirms what Su Li told me,” Fagan said. “Has he left yet?”
“He took off thirty minutes ago.”
“Do we know where in Beijing he is going?”
“The flight plan says Beijing Capital, that’s the main airport, but that doesn’t mean he will land there. I’ll try to track it.”
“Tommy?” Fagan said. “How’s the Cessna?”
“I’m waiting for a part. It could be another week before I get it.”
“So it’s going nowhere.”
“Not until I get that part.”
“I need you to find me a plane and a pilot who will take me to Beijing. I need to be there by this evening.”
“Will that be in time?”
“We have to hope so.”
Tommy was silent on the other end.
“You have to trust me. Can you do that? Can you get me what I need?”
Tommy’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “I can do it.”
“Chen, I need you to find out where Yiang is going.”
“I’m sure I can track down where he lands? But where he goes then is going to be very difficult.”
“Let’s try to get ahead of him. I need you to find the best heart-lung transplant surgeon in China. Yiang would only use the best. Then do the same for the best liver transplant surgeon. Su Li said he needed all three organs.” He realized what he had just said and had to mentally push aside the vision that appeared in his mind. He quickly moved on. “If we find them, maybe we can track them to Yiang.”
Fagan hung up the phone. He looked at his watch. The soldier in him told him now was the time to sleep. The smell of fresh coffee drifted in from the kitchen. He wandered through and switched it off. He kicked off his shoes and lay down on the sofa in the living room. He mentally set his internal alarm clock for four hours, cleared his mind, and was asleep in moments.
81
Lantau Island
The smell of fresh coffee tugged him out of sleep before his internal alarm clock kicked in. Fagan opened his eyes. The sun was streaming in through the window and he could hear movement in the kitchen.
Su Li turned around and smiled as he appeared at the door. “I hope you slept well.”
“I can’t complain.”
“Coffee?”
Fagan nodded.
“There is no milk or sugar, black is all you can have.”
“Black is fine.”
She handed him a steaming mug and Fagan sipped it gratefully.
“There is no food in this place, we will have to go out and get some.”
“That’s okay, there’s a little place further along the beach.”
“Was your friend able to help you?”
“He’s still working on it.”
The swelling on her eye had receded a little, but the whole area had gone black and purple.
“How are you?”
Su Li gave a gentle shrug. “I have been worse.” She allowed herself a smile. “I have also been better.”
“There you go, a balanced view on life. I told you life would get better for you.”
Su Li shook her head. “Hong Kong is a place of the haves and the have nots. And if you have not, it pulls you down and sucks away all your energy.”
“What if you had an apartment to live in, say in the mid-levels, at a very reasonable rent? A lady with your experience and qualifications could get a decent job quite easily.”
“What is the catch?”
“There is no catch. We just need to find Nancy and get her to safety. You already saved her once. If we can do it again, I’m sure she would be very grateful.”
“And how do we do that?”
“I’m not sure.” Fagan finished his coffee and put down the mug. “I’m going to take a run, then we can go and eat. I’ll call my friends from there. See if we have some good news.”
Ninety minutes later they were sitting in the noodle place that Fagan had eaten in when he had stayed there before. Su Li had suggested the Peking Duck and Fagan had agreed. The meal had come in two courses, the first had been the crispy skin wrapped in pancakes with cucumber, spring onions, and hoisin sauce. The second had been the sliced duck meat mixed in with fried rice. Fagan realized he was starving and wolfed down both courses, barely saying a word. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Excellent choice.”
Su Li smiled. “I choose, you pay.”
“I can go with that.”
He took out his phone and called Chen, then put it on speaker and set it on the table. He took a sip from a chilled bottle of Tsingtao as he waited for Chen to answer.
“Joseph?”
Fagan recognized the voice. “Walter, how are you? What are you up to?”
“I’ve been trying to organize things around here. Someone has to.”
“Is Chen there?”
“He and Tommy have gone out. They’re trying to sort out your trip to Beijing, but I’ve been pulling together what we’ve got so far.”
“So what have you got?”
“We tracked Henry Yiang’s jet to Daxing airport, that’s south of the city. But as expected, we lost him from there.”
“Any luck with the transplant surgeons?”
“That’s where it gets interesting. Chen found the two most prominent surgeons in this area and hacked into their hospital diaries. Would you believe they both have external appointments tomorrow. No details about what or where this appointment is, but they are booked out for the next five days after that. Which means —”
“Nancy is still alive.” Fagan felt the relief course through his body but at the same time, the reason for that was grim. The medical team would want to keep the organs as fresh as possible.
“Exactly, we just need to work out where.”
Walter promised to call him back when he had news from Tommy and Chen. Fagan told him to take care, then hung up.
Where would Henry Yiang go for this operation? A hospital would be very risky with a less than cooperative donor, even for someone with Henry Yiang’s clout. Maybe a private clinic? Still very risky.
Fagan looked across at Su Li. “Do you know if Henry Yiang has a house in or around Beijing? Somewhere he might go,” he paused, “to hide away.”
Su Li sat back as if she was thinking back into a past that was painful.
“I remember Mistress Li Na, she tell me long time ago, she and her husband had a very special house there. I think it belong to her father. I have never been, but Mistress Li Na used to talk about this house outside of Beijing that she used to go to as a little girl. She said she always loved it there. Then when her mother died, she did not go there for long time, but when she and Mister Yiang were first married they start to go again. She always say it was a very beautiful place.” Su Li looked out across the water. “She say it was a palace.”
“Do you think he might be there?”
“If he want to hide away. Beijing is big city, but when you married to daughter of Government Minister, the place is just a village.” She smiled. “A gossip village. If he not want to be seen he must get out of town. Palace would be perfect place. But there is a way to find out if he is there.”
Fagan gave her a quizzical look.
Su Li managed a smile. “Mistress Li Na gave me her husband’s mobile phone number. For emergency. I think this is emergency. There are people who can work out where someone is from their phone number. I could ask around.”
Fagan grinned. “I know someone who could do that.”
82
Outside Beijing, The People’s Republic of China.
The water lily pads bobbed gently close to the bank as the breeze wafted across the surface of the lake. Some said they were sacred and had magical healing properties. The lady who cleaned for him back in Hong Kong assured him it was true, and insisted on making him tea from the leaves she gathered from the lily pond at the house on the Peak.
Henry Yiang stood at the rail of the Chinese Pagoda, the sweet scent of its cedar wood timbers hung in the air. It reflected the architecture of the magnificent main house that dominated the property from the top of the hill.
It was a faithful reproduction of the ancient emperor’s palace from the original Forbidden City. It had been built by a former member of Chairman Mao Zedong’s inner circle, more than fifty years ago, as a homage to the great leader. But when the man in question had failed to meet up to the demanding standards of his illustrious leader, he was stood up against a wall and shot. Shortly after, Mao had died, and the project was abandoned and fell into disrepair.
Henry’s father-in-law had acquired it ten years later and began restoring it to his former glory. It became a favorite home of his wife and his young daughter. But after his wife had died, while Li Na was still a teenager, her father had lost interest in the place.
Henry had taken over the restoration soon after they were married, at his wife’s insistence. But after her accident, that had brought its own problems. He could see how she struggled to find the tranquility and the solace, the happiness she had once found here. And she began coming less and less, perhaps finding the glimpses of the old memories, too painful.
But Henry had become hooked on the place and began coming alone. He had taken on the restoration and the grand expansion, had hired the architects, the builders, and the landscape designers. It became his vision, his dream. The restoration of the property to the former glory of the great palace it was modeled on, became a symbol of all he needed to do, a homage to the restoration of Mother China to its rightful place in the world.
Above his head, delicate brass wind chimes tinkled a haunting melody. The development was now finished, but he did not come here as often as he would like. He looked down at his bean pole legs, somewhat hidden by the silk pajama trousers and the dressing gown he wore, and at the gold topped walking stick by his side, gripped rigor mortis like, in his boney hand. Walking stick? — that was a joke. He could barely manage ten steps on his own. Traveling these days, even with the luxury of a private jet, was a problem. His business with his father-in-law in Beijing was usually conducted by phone or by videoconference, and when they needed to meet face to face, Zhang Fan Wei came to him in Hong Kong.
He gazed out at the remnants of the day as the sun slipped away behind the blue-grey mountains in the west. It was a long time since he had stood here. He had forgotten how beautiful it was. Well tended flowerbeds and elegantly shaped bushes were spread across the clipped green grass that surrounded the house. Flat blue water ran away into the distance, extending across the entire southern part of the property. Huangshan pines and giant ash trees lined the lakeshore, and at the far end, just about visible as a dark green line, a thick forest of rare trees and bushes extended another mile before reaching the border of the property. The trees had been sourced from all over China. The entire property, under his direction, was now a monument to his beloved country, to her heritage, and all that she could become.
This was his favorite time of the year. The red, green, and deep blue colors of the forest around the lake were stunning. More majestic than he ever remembered. As if this year it was special, as if they heralded the birth of the new China.
Would he be there to see it?
He allowed himself a slight smile. Whether he survived that long or not was of little consequence, all that mattered was the plan and getting it approved.
But before that could happen, he needed to take full control. This would be his resurrection, in more ways than just the simple rebuilding of this failing, withered body. This would be his time to step out of the shadows and truly take control, to show those self serving scum on the Central Committee, that he was going nowhere. That he was here to stay. And they would pay. Some would be sacrificed so that the others would know his resolve.
A gentle breeze wafted in across the lake, rippling his fine Chinese silk pajamas and delicately embroidered robe in black and gold, as if even that could blow him over. The sides of the pagoda were glassed in to keep out the wind, and a powerful electric heater hung from the wooden ceiling to keep him warm. But the front was open today so that he could feel the wind on his face. So he knew that he was still alive.
He held a fragile but delicately manicured hand to his ear, holding a modern smartphone, listening to the man speaking on the other end, but only partly paying attention.
“The transplant surgeons will be there at noon.” His father-in-law, Zhang Fan Wei, said on the other end of the phone. “The nursing staff and a consulting physician will be there this evening to begin the preparation. Are you prepared?”
Yiang’s attention came back to the conversation. “Yes, I have all I need. The team just has to make it happen.”
“Li Na called me yesterday and told me the girl was still alive. But she was skeptical that you would find her.”
“What would you expect her to say? As it turns out I have the girl here, in the palace, now. But I am afraid I also have some bad news. Although I have to say it is not unexpected.” Yiang paused. “Li Na took her own life last night.”
The phone went silent. The wind chimes continued to sing on the breeze. This was the moment. He had built a life, and the legend of the Silent Mandarin, based upon his unemotional control of any given situation, including the control of his father-in-law. He had controlled him for over twenty years, now was no different.
“I lost my daughter a long time ago,” Zhang Fan Wei eventually spoke. “That bitter opium addicted wreck that lived in the house on Lantau Island was not my daughter. Not the person who would play the piano for me when she was a little girl, in that house you are standing in now. Not the dancer who had so entranced her audiences. She is with her mother now. Maybe she will be at peace at last.”
“I hope so.” He paused, but Zhang said no more. “When can I expect you?”
“I will be there in the morning, bright and early.”
Henry Yiang hung up the phone and looked out across the lake, letting any thoughts of his wife float out of his mind and out over the blue water. He wondered about his father-in-law. He had kept his focus all these years on the Central Committee. He could not let him lose it now. He had acted all these years, almost as if his daughter did not exist. A man too busy for anything except what was in front of him. Now she was truly gone. How would he react?
