Strong Darkness (19 page)

The goombah with the wine bottle realized he was in no-man's-land too late to do anything about it, a wannabe tough guy used to bullying, dominating others by intimidation to the point where he figured this part was cake. It was anything but, though, something Cort Wesley knew all too well, just like he knew guys like this. He didn't wait, seizing the advantage by punching the second man square in the face, feeling his nose mash under the blow. The man didn't so much go down as melt into the floor.

Cort Wesley swung toward Dimitrios, who was cowering in his chair, frozen between motions. Around him the rest of the dining room had grown eerily quiet, those nearest the table having jumped up to put as much distance between them and the melee as possible.

Cort Wesley leaned over, close enough to the Greek to not have to raise his voice much. “I figure we've got two minutes before the cops show up, say ninety seconds to be on the safe side. That's ninety seconds before you're in the worst pain you've ever felt in your life. You follow me so far?”

Dimitrios nodded, eyes sweeping about the dining room as if in search of someone closing in to help. But Cort Wesley's ears had already told him what Nikki D's eyes were about to.

No one was coming.

“Where can I find the Chinese girl, Nic, the one my son called Kai?”

Dimitrios looked as if he was thinking about stalling, then quickly changed his mind. “All that happened, I had nothing to do with it!”

“I know. That's why you're still talking through your teeth. Seventy-five seconds, Nic.”

“The syndicate.”

“The what?”

Dimitrios seemed like he didn't know how to say what he needed to, his thoughts chopped up as a result. “Like a subscription service. We get girls. From all over the country. Rotated in and out.”

“Who runs the show?”

“I don't know.”

“Under a minute now, Nikki.”

“I don't!”

“Tell me something you do.”

“New York. The city.”

Sirens wailed in the distance.

“I'm listening, Nikki,” Cort Wesley told the man who looked so scared it seemed his eyeballs were pulling back into his skull. “What am I gonna find there?”

“Dealers.”

“Drug?”

Dimitrios shook his head. “Something else,” he said, Cort Wesley's mouth dropping when Nikki D told him what.

 

50

S
AN
A
NTONIO,
T
EXAS

“Wait a minute,” Caitlin said, her eyes having adjusted to the lower level of light in Tepper's office, “you're working with Li Zhen
directly
?”

“We're working with Yuyuan, yes.”

“We as in Homeland Security.”

“That a statement or a question?”

“It doesn't require an answer.”

Jones sat back down and leaned forward, into the light spilled downward by the room's single overhead fixture. The fixture was dusty, the result being to turn his face into a patchwork quilt.

“You own a cell phone, Ranger?”

“You've used my number.”

“So I have. It was a figure of speech. The third generation wireless network became the fourth generation wireless network, and already people were clamoring for the fifth. If you weren't too busy shooting people, you'd be aware that the fifth generation wireless network went active this week.”

“The subject came up during my last stretch at Quantico. The government had just awarded the contract to build the five G to Yuyuan. The instructor, someone with experience comparable to yours I imagine, called that the dumbest thing he'd ever seen in his life.”

She could feel Jones stiffen, something in the cadence of his breathing changing, however imperceptibly. “Because someone with experience like mine wasn't there to tell him we had no choice.”

“What's that mean?”

“There isn't an American company with the wherewithal to handle the job. Sad but true. Cisco failed to get past even the preliminary round, leaving us with Alcatel, Siemens, or Yuyuan. All three of those are foreign, last time I checked.”

“I believe the point the instructor was making was that doing business with the French or Germans has its advantages over the Chinese.”

“Curtly spoken, Ranger, but it also has its disadvantages. On merit, technological capacity, and the ability to build a network capable of delivering the goods made Yuyuan far and away the best choice. And they delivered under budget and ahead of schedule. By almost six months, meaning the network beat the new phones and software to the market.”

“Which means you're effectively giving the Chinese access to every bit of data and information that travels over the Internet.”

“They've already got it,” Jones told her. “Who do you think built the four G network? Not Yuyuan, but another Chinese company named Shenzen was responsible for maybe three quarters of the work after everybody else involved dropped the ball. Why do you think it took so long to get the network up and running countrywide? We're talking a cluster fuck of biblical proportions. Trust me. I know because I was front and center, and determined not to repeat that fiasco with the five G.”

“Ah, the fox guarding the henhouse…”

Jones canted his head to the side like a confused dog. “Am I missing something here?”

“I was just about to ask you the same question, Jones. You'd never make a call like this, approving a Chinese corporation to build a five G network, unless there was something in it for you. So why don't you just come clean and tell me what you, what Homeland, is getting out of this?”

Jones rose, back into the light now. “Back off, Ranger.”

“You or Li Zhen?”

“One and the same as far as you are concerned.”

“Even if he's behind those gunmen both here and up in Rhode Island yesterday?”

“You let us take care of things.” Now it was Jones doing the staring. “Just like I took care of your boyfriend.”

“You want to be more specific?”

“How'd you think he got released from police custody, Ranger? He's a free man thanks to some well-placed calls from yours truly. Don't bother to thank me.”

“So, what, I'm supposed to see this as a trade-off?”

Jones started for the door and then stopped. “I don't give a shit. I'm telling you this is under control. We took care of your boyfriend and now we're going to take care of Li Zhen. Enough said on the subject.”

That left Caitlin shaking her head. “Not in my mind. The Chinese are where they are today because everyone who thinks they're playing them ends up getting played themselves. Guess that's you now, Jones.”

“Cut me some slack, Ranger. My department is up to the task.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“You mind telling me what it was Li Zhen did that crawled this deep up your ass?”

“Are you capable of being objective? Because all this started after Cort Wesley's oldest got involved with a Chinese girl mixed up in the porn industry and turning tricks. The boy gets his head bashed in and two days later, Chinese hit teams come gunning for Cort Wesley and me carrying flower petals from Yuyuan's garden.”

“You don't know that.”

“I will once I get a search warrant to have a real close look-see. In the meantime why don't you tell me why Yuyuan and your friend Li Zhen would go to guns over a prostitute in Providence, Rhode Island?”

He ignored her again. “This isn't some rogue creature that crawled out from under a rock near your boot. This is an operation with major significance to Homeland Security. I can only insulate you so long and so deep.”

“When have you ever?”

He shook his head again. “You have no idea.”

“So enlighten me, Jones.”

“Go back to that serial killer you're chasing, Ranger. It's a lot safer.”

“How'd you know about that?”

But Jones moved into the hallway instead of responding, his expression more sad than angry. “Same way I heard about that stunt you pulled at the cemetery.”

“I didn't see it as a stunt at all.”

“Oh no? When was the last time a law enforcement official bulldozed a couple dozen people into a drainage trench?”

“That Beacon of Light Church has been terrorizing innocent people all across the whole country and no one's done a damn thing about it that stuck. Guess I'm a prisoner of my own convictions.”

“That's not the problem. The problem is you're beginning to buy into your own bullshit. You think that because of who you are, shit like plowing into people with a John Deere is going to wash right off you without leaving a stink. But even Wild Bill Hickok met his match, Ranger.”

“As I recall he was shot in the back.”

“Right,” Jones nodded, his expression turning to what, for him, was somber. “That was my point.”

 

51

F
IESTA,
T
EXAS

They were shooting a girl-on-girl scene, Li Zhen's favorite years ago, when making films like this was his profession.

Especially when the performers really were girls, as opposed to women. Not kiddie porn here in America, of course, but skirting as close as possible to that without drawing the wrath of the FBI and a myriad of other agencies.

The studio was located in Fiesta, a few miles outside of San Antonio, in a nest of office buildings not far from the Six Flags Amusement Park. The office park had been turned empty and dark by the recession, but was absolute state of the art. Enough to make Hollywood itself proud. The shell company Li had formed to finance the studio's creation spared no expense when it came to equipment, especially cameras and lighting. And right now that lighting revealed two sultry young women not even out of their teens pleasuring each other in ways even Zhen's grandest imaginings could not conjure. Instead he imagined himself with them, between them, inside them. He noticed they'd shed their schoolgirl uniforms off to the side: plaid skirts and white blouses, just like the group that had stood at the rear of the ribbon-cutting ceremony the other day.

As per his request.

Zhen felt the familiar stirring, eyes beginning to close to surrender to the darkness of his thoughts when he heard heavy footsteps approaching through the quiet.

“So it's true,” came the voice of General Mengyao Chang, and Zhen turned to find him standing in semi-darkness, outside the reach of the camera lights.

The director yelled “Cut!,” Chang having spoken just loud enough to ruin the shot. Zhen held a hand up before the director could protest further.

“You have returned to your former ways,” the general continued. “Tell me, did Chinese government money pay for all this?”

“We both have our jobs to do, General,” Li Zhen managed, trying to appear unperturbed. “What we do outside of fulfilling our duties is our own business. Or would you prefer that I remind you of some of your own proclivities?”

Chang forced a smile. “That will not be necessary, so long as we understand each other.”

“We do, General,” Zhen agreed, steering Chang further back into the darkness so the shoot could continue, “but learning of my inability to leave my former life entirely behind could not be what brought you halfway across the world without advance notice of your coming.”

“Power is a curse as well as a blessing,” General Chang told him, his voice quieter now. “A mentor once told me those with power are like pillars holding up the rest of humanity. As such, distance must exist between them.”

“Wise counsel,” Zhen nodded. “Perhaps you should take note of it yourself, considering I am responsible for much of the power you now possess. You were only a colonel that night I came before the Triad.”

“Should I remain thankful you chose Governor Chen to demonstrate your capabilities?”

“Not at all. I chose Chen because I knew he'd be the hardest to convince. I knew you, on the other hand, were a pragmatist then as you are now. Which tells me your visit is anything but random. Or pleasant.”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“If our nation's interests remain paramount in your heart.”

Chang clasped his hands tightly behind his back and Zhen realized the color of his suit was the same greenish color as the uniform that fit him better. It could not be a good thing that the general had showed up in Texas unannounced, catching Li Zhen unprepared. Of all the affronts in Chinese manners, surprise was considered one of the worst since it precluded much valued preparation. Li Zhen knew that was a sign, a message in itself, especially with Chang coming here since he could've just as easily have waited for Zhen to return to Yuyuan, the company's entire workings supervised by the general's department in the Chinese government.

Chang continued to maintain an active presence inside the Triad as well, overseeing the organization's tremendously profitable move into Russia's lawless far east, covering such areas as illegal logging and fishing in addition to control of the region's many casinos. Yuyuan was now the sole supplier of slot machines and all electronic gaming for Vladivostok and beyond, thanks to that relationship. An unholy alliance perhaps, but an alliance to be treasured all the same.

“Concerns have been expressed,” Chang continued. “Serious concerns raised about your judgment and behavior.”

“Our contact in Homeland Security, Brooks, summoned you, didn't he?” Zhen asked, noticing four members of Chang's private security force dressed in plainclothes just inside the lone entrance to the studio.

“How I learned of your indiscretions is not of concern. What is of concern is how you may have placed at risk an operation crucial to the future of our nation.”

Zhen remained silent, waiting for the general to continue.

“You know of the pleasure I take from riding roller coasters,
Xi
ā
nsh
ē
ng
Zhen?”