S . . .
The sound, though still feeble, was louder here.
O . . .
She continued down the shaft to the very bottom of the dumbwaiter and, pushing aside the panic as she neared the exit, she forced herself to move calmly through the doorway into what was the galley of the Dragon.
S . . .
The black water here was filled with trash and flecks of food--and several bodies.
Clank.
Whoever was signaling couldn't even make an entire letter now.
Above, she saw the shimmering surface of a large air pocket and a man's legs in the water, dangling downward. The feet, in socks, moved slightly, almost a twitch. She swam quickly toward them and burst to the surface. A bald man with a mustache was clinging to a rack of shelves that were bolted to the wall--now the ceiling of the kitchen--turned away with a cry of shock and undoubtedly from the pain of the blinding light shooting into his eyes.
Sachs squinted. She recognized him--why? Then realized that she'd seen his picture on the evidence board in Rhyme's town house--and the one she'd seen in the cabin just a few minutes before. This was Captain Sen of the Fuzhou Dragon.
He was muttering incoherently and shivering. He was so blue he looked cyanotic--the color of an asphyxia victim. She spit the regulator out of her mouth to breathe the air that was trapped in the pocket and save her own store of oxygen but the atmosphere was so foul and depleted that she felt faint. She grabbed the mouthpiece again and began to suck the air from her own supply.
Pulling the secondary regulator off her vest, she stuck it into Sen's mouth. He breathed deeply and began to revive somewhat. Sachs pointed downward into the water. He nodded.
A fast glance at the pressure gauge: 700 pounds. And two of them were using her supply now.
She released air from the BCD and, with her arm around the limp man, they sank to the bottom of the galley, pushing aside the bodies and cartons of food that floated in their way. At first she wasn't able to locate the doorway to the dumbwaiter shaft. She felt weak with panic for a moment, afraid that the moaning she'd heard meant the ship was settling and buckling and the doorway was now sealed off. But then she saw that the body of a young woman had floated in front of it. She gently pulled the corpse aside and opened the dumbwaiter doorway wide.
They couldn't both fit into the shaft side by side so she eased the captain in before her, feet first. Eyes squeezed shut, still shivering violently, he gripped the black hose of his regulator desperately with both hands. Sachs followed him, imagining all too clearly what might happen if he panicked and ripped the regulator from her mouth or tore her mask or the light off: trapped in this horrible narrow place, thrashing in panic as she breathed the foul water into her lungs . . .
No, no, stop thinking about it! Keep going. She kicked hard, moving as quickly as she could. Twice the captain, floating backward, became jammed and she had to free him.
A glance at the gauge: 400 pounds of pressure.
We leave the bottom with five hundred. No less than that. That's an iron-clad rule. No exceptions.
Finally they got to the top deck--where the cabins were located and the corridor that led to the bridge and, beyond that, precious Outside, with its orange rope that would take them to the surface and a boundless supply of sweet air. But the captain was still dazed and it took a long minute to maneuver him through the opening while making certain that he kept the regulator in his mouth.
Then they were out of the dumbwaiter and floating into the main corridor. She swam beside the captain and grabbed him by his leather belt. But as she started to kick forward she braked suddenly to a stop. The knob on her air tank was snared. She reached back and found it was caught by the jacket on the body that'd been in the Ghost's stateroom.
The gauge: 300 pounds of pressure.
Goddamn, she thought, pulling fiercely at the snag, kicking. But the body was jammed in a doorway and the tail of his jacket had wound tightly around the tank knob. The harder she pulled the more snugly she was held.
The needle of the pressure gauge was now below the redline: 200 pounds remained.
She couldn't reach the snag behind her.
Okay, nothing to do . . .
She ripped open the Velcro of the BCD vest and slipped out of it. But as she turned to focus on the tangle the captain went into seizure. He kicked out hard, struck her in the face with his foot. The spotlight went out and the regulator popped from her mouth. The blow pushed her backward.
Darkness, no air . . .
No, no . . .
Rhyme . . .
She made a grab for the regulator but it floated somewhere behind her, out of reach.
Don't hold your breath.
Well, I fucking have to . . .
Blackness all around her, spinning in circles, groping desperately for her regulator.
Where were the Coast Guard baby-sitters?
Outside. Because I told them I wanted to search alone. How could she let them know she was in trouble?
Fast, girl, fast . . .
She patted the evidence bag and reached in desperately. Pulled out the Beretta 9mm. She pulled the slide to chamber a round and pressed the muzzle close to the wooden wall, where she knew she wouldn't hit Sen, and pulled the trigger. A flash and loud explosion. The blowback and recoil nearly broke her wrist and she dropped the weapon through the cloud of debris and gunpowder residue.
Please, she thought . . . Please . . .
No air . . .
No . . .
Then lights burst on silently as the dive chief and his assistant kicked fast into the corridor. Another regulator mouthpiece was thrust between her lips and Sachs began to breathe again. The dive chief got his secondary regulator into the captain's mouth. The stream of bubbles was faint but at least he was breathing.
Okay signs were exchanged.
Then the foursome made its way out of the bridge and to the orange rope. Thumbs-up. Calmer now that the risk of confinement was gone, Sachs concentrated on ascending leisurely, no faster than her bubbles, and breathing, deep in, deep out, as they left behind the ship of corpses.
*
Sachs lay in the cutter's sickbay, breathing deeply; she'd opted for nature's air, turning down the green oxygen mask the corpsman offered her--it would, she was afraid, only increase her sense of confinement, having something else pressed close against her body.
As soon as she'd climbed onto the bobbing deck she'd stripped off the wetsuit--the tight outfit itself had become another carrier of the pernicious claustrophobia--and wrapped the thick government-issue blanket around her. Two sailors escorted her to the sickbay to check out her wrist, which turned out not to be badly injured at all.
Finally, she felt well enough to venture up top. She popped two Dramamine and climbed the stairs to the bridge, observing that the helicopter was back, hovering over the cutter.
This ride wasn't for Sachs, however, but to evacuate unconscious Captain Sen to a Long Island medical center.
Ransom explained how they'd probably missed the captain during their search for victims. "Our divers did a long search, banging on the hull, and didn't get any response. We did a sound scan later and that came back negative too. Sen must've wedged himself in the air pocket, passed out, then come to later."
"Where's he going?" she asked.
"Marine station in Huntington, part of the hospital. They have a hyperbaric chamber there."
"Is he going to make it?"
Ransom said, "Doesn't look good. But if he survived twenty-four hours under these conditions then I guess anything's possible."
Slowly the chill subsided. She dried off and dressed once more in her jeans, T-shirt and sweatshirt and then hurried to the bridge to call Rhyme. Neglecting to share some of her underwater adventures, she told him that she'd found some evidence. "And maybe a wit."
"A witness?"
"Found somebody still alive in the ship. The captain. Looks like he got some of the people trapped in the hold in
to the galley after the ship went down. But he was the only one who survived. If we're lucky he'll be able to give us some leads to the Ghost's operation in New York."
"Did he say anything?"
"He's unconscious. They're not even sure he's going to make it--hypothermia and decompression sickness. The hospital'll call as soon as they know something. Better have Lon send baby-sitters for him too. The Ghost'll come after him if he finds out he's still alive."
"Hurry back, Sachs. We miss you."
The royal we, she knew, coming from Lincoln Rhyme, really meant "I."
She assembled the evidence she'd found underwater, drying the letter she'd found in the Ghost's jacket with paper towels from the cutter's galley. This would contaminate it some but she was worried that more exposure to seawater would deteriorate the paper so much it couldn't be read. Crime scene work, Rhyme had often told her, was always a compromise.
Captain Ransom walked onto the bridge. "There's another chopper on the way here for you, Officer." He carried two large Styrofoam coffee cups, covered with lids. He handed her one.
"Thanks."
They peeled the lids off. His contained steaming black coffee.
She laughed. In her cup was fruit juice that was mixed, she could smell, with a generous slug of rum.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Feng shui, which literally means wind and water, is the art of trapping good energy and luck and repelling bad.
It's widely practiced around the world but because of the astonishing number of rules and the rarity of the ability to assess the dynamics of good and evil there are very few truly talented feng shui practitioners. It entails far more than just arranging furniture, as Loaban's assistant had suggested, and the Ghost's apartment had clearly been done by a master. Sonny Li knew plenty of feng shui practitioners in China but he had no idea who here in New York could have prepared the Ghost's apartment so expertly.
But rather than race around like Hongse in her yellow car to track down someone who could help him, Li remained true to his Taoist way.
The way to use life is to do nothing through acting, the way to use life is to do everything through being . . . .
And so Detective Sonny Li went into the fanciest bubble tea shop he could find in Chinatown, sat down at a table and slouched back in the chair. He ordered a cup of the odd beverage: tea sweetened with sugar and lightened with milk. In the bottom of the tall cup were large chewy black pearls of tapioca that you sucked up through a wide straw and ate. Like the famous (and equally expensive) foaming iced tea popular in Fuzhou, this was a Taiwanese creation.
Sonny didn't much care for the tea but he kept it in front of him to buy the right to sit here for what might be a long time. He studied the chic room, which had been planned by some too-clever designer. The chairs were metal and purple leather, the lighting was subdued and the wall-paper fake Zen. Tourists would breeze into the place, drink down their tea and then hurry off to see more Chinatown sights, leaving behind huge tips, which Sonny Li at first thought was their forgotten change; tipping is rare in China.
Sitting, sipping . . . Thirty minutes passed. Forty-five.
Do everything through being . . .
His patience was finally rewarded. An attractive Chinese woman in her early forties walked into the tea shop, found a seat near him and ordered a tea.
The woman wore a beautiful red dress and high, narrow heels. She read the New York Times through stylish reading glasses with narrow rectangular lenses and blue frames no thicker than a pencil line. Most of the Chinese women shopping here in Chinatown carried cheap plastic bags wrinkled from many uses. But this woman carried one made of flawless white paper. Inside was a box tied with a gold cord. He deciphered the name on the side of the bag: SAKS FIFTH AVENUE.
She was exactly the sort of woman Sonny Li wanted yet knew he would forever be denied. Sleek, stylish, beautiful, hair shiny and dense as a crow's black pelt, a lean face with some Vietnamese features beautifully sharpening the Han Chinese, keen eyes, bright red lips and Dowager Empress nails to match.
He looked over her dress again, her jewelry, her sprayed hair and decided, Yes, she's the one. Li picked up his tea, walked to her table and introduced himself. Li sat, though the chair he chose was near but not actually at her table, so that she wouldn't be threatened by his presence. He casually struck up a conversation with her and they talked about the Beautiful Country, about New York, about bubble tea and about Taiwan, where she'd been born. He said casually, "The reason I troubled you--forgive me--but perhaps you can help. The man I work for? He has bad luck. I believe it is because of how his apartment is arranged. You obviously have a good feng shui man."
He nodded at the emblems that had told him that she indeed followed feng shui diligently: an ostentatious bracelet of nine Chinese coins, a pin in the likeness of the homely goddess Guan Yin and a scarf with black fish on it. This was why he had selected her--on this evidence, and because she was obviously rich, which meant that she would go to only the best practitioners of the art, men of the sort that the Ghost too would hire.
He continued, "If I could give my boss the name of someone good to arrange his home and office he might think more of me. It might help me keep my job and raise myself in his view." With these words Li lowered his head but kept his eyes on her face and was pierced by what he saw: pity generated by his shame. What was so wrenching to him about that look, though, was that the phony shame emanating from Sonny Li the undercover cop was virtually identical to the true shame that Sonny Li the man felt daily from his father's cascade of criticism. Perhaps, he reflected, this is why she believed him.
The beautiful woman smiled and dug into her purse. She wrote out a name and address--on a slip of paper not bearing her own name or phone number, of course. She slipped it to him and withdrew her hand quickly before he could touch her palm and grasp it in desperation and hunger, which in fact he was close to doing.
"Mr. Wang," she said, nodding at the card. "He is one of the best in the city. If your employer has money he will help him. He is most expensive. But he will do a good job. He helped me marry well, as you can see."
"Yes, my boss has money."
"Then he too can change his fortune. Goodbye." She stood, gathered her glossy bag and purse and strode out of the shop on her immaculate heels, leaving her check sitting prominently on the table for Sonny Li to pay.
*
"Sachs!" Rhyme looked up from the computer screen. "Guess what the Ghost blew the ship up with?"
"Give up," she called, amused to see the look of pleasure accompanying this gruesome question.
Mel Cooper answered, "Grade A, brand-new Composition 4."
"Congratulations."
This had put Rhyme in a good mood because C4--despite being a movie terrorist's staple for bombs--was actually quite rare. The substance was available only to the military and a few select law enforcement agencies; it wasn't used in commercial demolition. This meant that there were relatively few sources for high-quality C4, which in turn meant that the odds of finding a connection between that source and the Ghost were far better than if he'd used common TNT, Tovex, Gelenex or any of the other commercially available explosives.
More significantly, though, C4 is so dangerous that by law it must contain markers--each manufacturer of the material adds inert but distinctive chemicals to its version of the explosive. Analysis of the trace at the scene of an explosion will reveal which marker was present and this tells investigators who manufactured it. The company, in turn, must keep detailed records of whom its products were sold to, and the purchasers must keep detailed files on where the explosive was stored or used.
If they could find the person who sold the Ghost this batch of C4, he might know where the snakehead had other safehouses in New York, or other bases of operation.
Cooper had sent the trace results to Quantico. "Should hear back in the next few hours."
"Where's Coe?" Sachs asked, looking around the town house.
; "Down at INS," Rhyme said then added acerbically, "Don't jinx it by mentioning his name. Let's hope he stays there."
Eddie Deng arrived from downtown. "Got here as soon as you called, Lincoln."
"Excellent, Eddie. Put your reading specs on. You've got to translate for us. Amelia found a letter in the Ghost's sports coat."
"No shit," Deng said. "Where?"
"A hundred feet underwater. But that's another story."
Deng's eyes were fine--no reading glasses were required--but Mel Cooper did have to set him up with an ultraviolet reading hood to image the ink on the letter; the characters had been bleached out by the seawater and were barely visible.
Deng hunched over the letter and examined it.
"It's hard to read," Deng murmured, squinting. "Okay, okay . . .It's to the Ghost. The man who wrote it is named Ling Shui-bian. He's telling the Ghost when the charter flight will be leaving Fuzhou and when and where to expect it at the Nagorev military base outside of St. Petersburg. Then he says he's wiring the money into an account in Hong Kong--no number or bank. Then it describes the cost of the airplane charter. It then says part of the money is enclosed--in dollars. Finally, there's a list of the victims--the passengers on the Dragon."
"That's all?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Have some of our people in China check out that guy--Ling," Rhyme told Sellitto. Then the criminalist asked Mel Cooper: "Trace in the paper?"
"Just what you'd expect," the lab man said. "Salt water, sea-life excrement, pollution, plant particles, motor oil, diesel fuel."
"How much money was there, Sachs?" Rhyme asked.
"A lot. Maybe a thousand. But it's hard to tell when you're swimming around in it."
The U.S. bills she'd collected were all in hundred-dollar denominations, freshly printed.
"Forged?" Rhyme asked.
Cooper examined one. "Nope."
The yuan she'd found--the Chinese paper currency--were faded and crumpled. "There were about thirty packs this size," she explained. Eddie Deng totaled the amount in this packet. "Thirty stacks, given the exchange rate," the young detective estimated, "equals about twenty thousand dollars U.S."
Sachs continued, "I also found an Uzi and a Beretta but he'd taken the serial number off the Uzi and I lost the Beretta on the ship."