Doc Ford 19 - Chasing Midnight (17 page)

I turned away without responding. In my head, I was counting the compressions—
thirteen, fourteen, fifteen
—then I filled Bohai’s lungs with another long breath.

“Was he shot?” I asked again. The man was shirtless, as thin and pale as a withered mushroom. There was a swollen knot on his head but no sign of blood on his chest or white linen slacks.

The woman shook her head in reply, then glanced at the pistol next to her feet as if calculating how quickly she could get to it. “Are you armed? Tell me the truth.”

I said, “No.”

“You weren’t in the lodge when the power went out?”

“I was at the marina.”

“There was a gunshot. Are you sure you don’t have a gun?”

I replied, “Now I think your compressions are too fast. I don’t see any bullet wound.”

“No, there’s not. Someone said it was Viktor Kazlov. But I’m not certain.”

I asked, “Nobody else? When the lights first went out, I mean.”

The woman’s reply was punctuated by her metronome compressions to Lien Bohai’s chest. “I don’t know because there was so much noise and confusion. Everything happened so fast. People panicked when we heard the shot. It was dark, just a few candles. People started pushing, a table was knocked over.” She paused, brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes, then resumed her work.

“Somehow, we were separated. A tall American in a white tuxedo
helped me. He was very kind. I don’t know why, but I stayed calm thanks to him. But… but then the wind blew out most of the candles, and we were separated, too.”

“Tomlinson,” I said. “That’s his name. He’s a friend of mine.” In my mind, the compressions were ticking away—
thirteen, fourteen, fifteen
—and I breathed for Bohai once more.

The woman appeared unconvinced that the kind man in the tuxedo would befriend someone like me. It was in her expression. Even so, she nodded at Bohai and explained, “He’s so frail, I think he was possibly trampled. I found him lying inside the door of the lodge. He was groggy, confused. Then, as I was helping him here, back to our cottage, I think he had a heart attack. He grabbed his chest and said he had terrible pain in his left arm. I received first-aid training when I was in the army. It had to be a heart attack, I think.”

The People’s Liberation Army of China—the world’s largest standing army. For Chinese males, service is compulsory. Women who volunteer are usually commissioned as officers—often into the medical corps, but the very smartest are snapped up by the Chinese intelligence agencies. It would explain the woman’s familiarity with night vision. Semiautomatic pistols, too.

If true, she was the perfect employee for an international predator like Lien Bohai. And she might also be the first to learn, through intelligence sources, that she was on an island where an IED would soon be detonated.

I
couldn’t keep my eyes off my watch as we continued CPR. It was like a magnet. I checked it for the third time since I’d entered the room—11:30 p.m.—and asked her if she’d heard anything about hidden explosives or gas, and told her what Kazlov had said.

She didn’t respond, just looked at Bohai, straightened for a moment, her expression weary, then resumed the chest compressions but with less intensity. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

I sidestepped the question by asking, “Do you work for Mr. Bohai? Or related—his granddaughter?”

“Both. I’m his daughter and I’m on his staff. I have a degree in aquaculture, but I also do all of my father’s”—the woman caught herself, hesitated, then became more cautious—“I’m like a personal assistant. Private matters that he trusts to no one else. At least”—she stared down into the man’s face—“that’s what I did before we came to this bloody island.”

I exhaled another long breath into Bohai’s lungs before saying, “He’s your father.”

“I just said so.”

“Okay, then we can’t give up yet. There’s one more thing I can try to bring him back. Keep doing the compressions. I’ll tell you when to stop.” I wanted to delay an emotional meltdown for as long as possible, but the enormity of the daughter’s loss was bound to hit her soon.

On the other hand, maybe I was worried for no reason. Judging from what the woman said next, I had overestimated the paternal bond. As I was rummaging through the first-aid kit, she spoke to herself, not to me, saying, “I knew he was dead. But I couldn’t let myself give up. He despised a quitter—weakness of any kind, and… and he was not a patient man. Quite the opposite. Nor very kind.”

She paused before saying the next words, as if testing her own courage. “Dead. My father’s
dead
. How strange to stand so close to him, to actually say it out loud, and not feel terrified.”

Terrified of her own father? The articulate, evasive man I had spoken with that afternoon hadn’t struck me as terrifying, only selfish,
manipulative and sinister. But who would know better than Bohai’s own daughter?

I felt the woman’s eyes on me when she asked again, “He
is
dead, isn’t he?”

I replied, “There’s still a chance. I need you to stay strong, understand? Your father’s not the only one who needs help tonight.” Then, noticing the mess that coated my fingers, I said, “Take this little bottle of Betadine. Squirt it on my hands, your father’s chest, then get back to your compressions. Hurry. I’ll give him another couple of breaths while you do it.”

In the kit were needles, syringes and an ampule of epinephrine, which is usually used to treat allergic reactions. Bee stings and ant bites are common in Florida, and people die every year from the shock of the acidic venom. I always keep a few EpiPens on the boat because one quick injection can save the life of an otherwise healthy person. But epinephrine is also sometimes used to jump-start a dead heart.

I found the longest needle in the kit, loaded it with the drug and was tapping air bubbles to the top of the syringe as I positioned myself over the man. “You can stop the compressions now. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

The woman’s reaction was unexpected. “I’m not a child. Is that adrenaline?”

I nodded. “Same thing.”

“Then he’ll need air immediately, if it works. If it does, I’ll do the breathing while you monitor his heartbeat.” An instant later, she surprised me by ordering, “And please stop looking at your watch. There is no bomb, Dr. Ford!”

I had my fingers on the man’s chest, feeling for a rib slot near the left nipple. I looked up long enough to say,
“What?”
but then refocused
and speared the needle deep into what I hoped was the right ventricle of Bohai’s heart.

“There is no bomb,” the woman repeated as I pressed the plunger with my thumb. “No canisters of poisonous gas. If people on this island die tonight, it will be from gunshot wounds.”

“How do you know this?”

“You have to trust me. My father was very demanding when it came to security—and to investigating his business associates.”

“That’s not good enough.”

The woman was six inches shorter than me, but the look in her eyes was solid, imperturbable. “There are dangerous men on this island who despise one another. And they’ve panicked because they all assume they’re under attack. Nobody’s safe tonight. But if someone had planned mass murder such as you describe—my father’s staff would have found out enough beforehand to make them suspicious. And we would have canceled the trip.”

Bohai’s security staff, I guessed, was a large, well-organized group—and unless I missed my bet, they took orders from his daughter. The probability gave the woman some credibility but also made it more likely that she was the one who had intercepted the threatening e-mail. In fact, it suggested that she had hacked the e-mail accounts of Bohai’s enemies prior to their arrival as well as the accounts of
everyone
on the island, mine included. A big job, but doable for someone like her.

Because China restricts Internet access to its population, its surveillance agencies have to stay a step ahead of new Internet technology. If I was right about the woman’s service in the Chinese military, there were obvious implications about her own role in tonight’s events.

Not that I expected Bohai’s daughter to admit anything. People in the intelligence community don’t share information without receiving
something in return. It becomes habit. Like diplomats, they send vague messages. They hide truth between the lines.

I withdrew the needle, capped it and swabbed a pinprick of blood with an alcohol pad. I started to say, “You’re leaving something out—” but then stopped as Bohai’s body spasmed beneath my hands. I leaned my ear to his chest. “We’ve got a pulse. Give him some air.”

The startled expression on the woman’s face was a mix of disappointment and hope as she spun to resume mouth-to-mouth. Whatever emotion dominated, the hope didn’t last long.

As I listened, the old man’s heart thumped a few times… stopped… spasmed again, then vanished into the silence of Bohai’s final exhalation. I tried a few rib-cracking compressions, but it was pointless.

I put my hand on the woman’s shoulder and gently pulled her mouth away from her father’s lips. “You can stop now. You did everything you could.” I turned Bohai’s daughter so that she faced me. “I know it’s hard—no matter how you felt about him. Look at me.
Look
at me. Tell me your name.”

“Are you sure he’s gone?” She sounded dazed. “I want to be absolutely certain before we give up.”

“I should know your name. You knew mine from the start, didn’t you?”

“Yes… Dr. Marion Ford. A man with an unusual past.”

I let that go. “And yours?”

“Umeko. In China, the surname is always given first, so it would be Lien Umeko, if I’d stuck with the old ways.”

“Nice name. Is that what your friends call you?” I was looking at the pistol on the floor, wondering how she would react if picked it up.

“In Chinese, it means ‘plum blossom,’ which doesn’t translate well. So, legally, I’m Umeko Tao-Lien. Back in Singapore where I live, anyway. In Beijing, it’s different because Lien is about as common as Smith in the U.S.”

I gave her a reassuring pat and stepped away, looking around the room for the Betadine and a towel. I wanted to rinse my mouth out, too. The stink of death was on my lips. But my attention never wandered far from the pistol. When the woman stepped away from her father’s body, I would slip the thing into my pocket like it was no big deal, then sprint straight to the fishing lodge.

I said, “Umeko, I need your help. Someone activated a jamming device—there’s no outside communication. Are you aware of that? These people know what they’re doing and they’re serious. Kazlov’s bodyguard was shot tonight. And at least two people tried to kill me. How can you be so sure someone didn’t plant an IED?”

“If such a device existed—or if there was even a possibility—I would have been notified,” she replied, some spirit returning to her voice.

“By whom? Kazlov didn’t hear about it until a few hours ago.”

“A company that doesn’t have its own intelligence branch is a company run by fools. Our people in Beijing would have contacted me or my father or… or one of us.”

I nodded at the dead man. “Maybe they did warn him.”

The woman’s head tilted toward the floor, thinking about it before she looked up at me. “Who told Viktor about an intercepted e-mail?”

I was picturing the stunning beauty I’d seen at Bohai’s table earlier, then replaying Armanie’s venomous reference about seeing Kazlov with her and the woman’s price. “I don’t know. Kazlov’s bodyguard wouldn’t tell me. I figured there was a reason. Wouldn’t you?”

Once again, her chin dipped as she considered the possibilities, but then she settled it with a firm shake of her head. “No. I was in the lodge with my father all evening. Our sources would have sent a message to his cell phone or they would have contacted me. I’m sure of it.”

“Where’s his cell phone? Let’s check and make sure.”

“He must have lost his phone in the lodge when he fell. It wasn’t in his jacket or pants. But it doesn’t matter because—”

“It matters to me. My best friend’s probably in the lodge and three women I know. And probably the restaurant staff, too.”

Umeko waited patiently for me to finish before saying, “Because you’ve helped me, I’ll help put you at ease by telling you something I shouldn’t. No one is monitoring the communications on this island more closely than my father’s”—Umeko caught herself as she turned to look at the man’s corpse—“more closely than our people in Beijing and Singapore. If they contacted my father with information, they would have sent the same message to me, too. And they didn’t.”

“They could have messaged your father just as the jammer was being activated. It’s possible.”

“Dr. Ford, you are worrying needlessly. But if you feel so strongly, go to the fishing lodge. I’m not stopping you.”

No, she wasn’t. But I needed that damn pistol. I could feel the seconds ticking away, which is why I found the woman’s certainty so irritating. To shake her, I said, “Then you already know about the five activists who showed up without an invitation?”

Instead, I was the one taken aback. “Yes, of course. Your information is wrong, though. There are seven members here, not five.”

Seven? Tomlinson made six—who was the other member? But I didn’t doubt the woman. She’d known that Third Planet had planned to crash the party, which connoted their prior e-mails had been reviewed and dismissed as harmless.

Impressive. The information diluted some of my anxiety about an IED, yet I wasn’t fully convinced. Vladimir had been so damn sure! Then Umeko caused me to wince when, almost as an afterthought, she knelt and picked up the handgun. From the way she carried it—index finger along the barrel—it was obvious she knew how to use it.

I tried another approach. “What about the woman at your table tonight? Is she your sister? If you’re wrong, she and a lot of others are in danger. Maybe she knows if your father was contacted.”

Umeko’s sarcastic laughter was unexpected. “That’s
exactly
what I should do. Go and find her. You’re talking about one of the richest woman in all of China. Possibly the entire world. Do you realize that? As of tonight, it’s true.”