The China Dogs (28 page)

The words jigsaw together in his mind. Things that previously made no sense now fall into place.

He'd missed something.

In all of his experimental revisions he'd overlooked one obvious factor.

“Jihai. I want all three dogs immediately for postmortem. Tāo, come with me. I want you to get an unchipped dog from the bunker pound and inject it with a chip I give you.”

The two men set about their work, and Hao heads back to his lab.

If his hunch is right, then he finally knows what's wrong.

But it may not all be good news.

Especially for Péng.

100

Miami

G
host is struggling. Resources were scarce to start with, now they are spread way too thinly. He sits in his car and calls Cummings. “We need extra support, sir, and we need it fast.”

“No can do, Lieutenant. I've got a bank raid going off downtown and a hostage situation breaking from a bungled drug bust in the east of the county. You need to do what you've got to do with what you've got. There ain't no more coming.”

Ghost resists the temptation to correct his boss's bad English. “That's just not possible, sir. We need at least one more tactical unit, maybe two. Perhaps the Sheriff 's Office—”

“Don't even think of finishing that sentence. We manage our own affairs. You're a Miami cop, act like one.”

“Sit—”

“And what the hell were you doing missing a conference call with representatives of the President of the United States? I've just had my ass chewed by the chief—”

“With all respect, sir, I'm too busy saving lives to talk to anyone, even if it is the damned President.”

“Oh, are you, Mr. Superfreakinghero?” The captain's rage boils down the line. “Tell me, Lieutenant, were you born with no brains or did years of self-induced stupid practices simply make them disappear.”

“Sir—”

“Don't sir me. I told you before, I don't give a flying fuck about these dogs.”

“I need a copter, extra men, and more weapons on the ground.”

“Jeez, you never give up do you?”

“I try not to. We're getting fresh incidents every couple of hours—”

“Then get off the phone. I'll see what I can do. You try my patience, Ghost, you really do. And when you've wrapped up out there, get your ass into my office so I can show you how mad I really am at you missing that presidential call.”

101

Charles Hadley Park, Miami

T
he address Zoe has been given for Li Chen is less than three miles from the animal shelter where he works.

She pulls the Nissan to a halt in a secluded back street beneath the cover of overhanging pines. After a final check of the number, she walks up to a neat detached house in the corner, with a short driveway and a patch of lawn that's not been cut for a week or two.

Zoe rings the bell and listens for movements inside. The fact that there's no car on the driveway has already given her the feeling that no one is at home. She rings again. This time she leaves her finger on the buzzer so it would drive anyone inside crazy and have them running to the door within seconds.

Nothing.

She turns and looks at the street. There are a lot of cars in driveways; someone is bound to have seen her. She goes next door and rings the bell.

A white-haired old lady with big black glasses cracks the door open with a chain still on. “Yes!” she shouts. “What do you want?” She touches her ear to adjust her hearing aid.

“I'm looking for Li Chen.”

“Don't shout. Goodness.” She adjusts the aid again.

“I've rung his bell,” continues Zoe, “but there's no answer.”

“They've gone away. Been away more than a week now.”

“They?”

“He and his wife. They've gone on vacation.”

“Any idea when they'll return?”

“Eh?” She touches her ear again. “Damned batteries.”

“When will the Chens be back?”

“What did you say?”

Zoe shakes her head. “Never mind. Thank you.” She smiles and walks away. Goes straight back to the Chens' house, down the side and around the back. The drapes are closed even though the yard is shaded. That strikes her as odd, maybe the act of someone wanting to hide something.

A misspent youth with her brother Danny and years of martial arts suddenly becomes useful. Nothing subtle. No picking locks. No jimmying window frames, just a well-placed dropkick near the door handle. At first the wood holds. Enough to tell Zoe it's bolted top and bottom as well as locked in the middle. The second and third kicks are more forceful. The locks still hold but the wood doesn't and the door bangs open with the timbers in splinters.

As she steps over the mess, she knows she's crossing a line. Breaking and entering is probably a step too far for even Ghost to be able to smooth over. But this isn't about him or pursuing a line of inquiry that he's plainly too busy to pursue. It's about Astrid, Heidi, and what caused a pet so obedient it won countless awards to turn on them. She's sure the answer lies somewhere down the link from the dog to the breeders to the shelter to Chen.

Zoe shuts what's left of the door and slides a wooden kitchen table back against it. If someone comes, she wants at least a warning. The kitchen is bare. She flips open the cupboards.

Cans. Packets. Jars. Sauces.

Nothing untoward but she takes pictures anyway.

She pulls open drawers.

Dish cloths. Cutlery. Fast food menus. Leaflets of local attractions. Again pretty uninteresting, but she still snaps them before heading upstairs.

At the top she sees four doors. A quick look reveals a small bathroom and what she assumes are three bedrooms. The first one she tries is completely empty. No bed, desk, carpets, or drapes. The second has a single bed in it. The cover is back. It's unmade. The mattress is memory foam like hers at Jude's. She can just make out where the occupant slept. She runs her hand over the impression. He—she assumes—was medium-sized. No taller than her. The pillow has a dent in it. She lifts it to eye level. Sees several short black head hairs. Where the pillow was, there's another indent in the mattress. Shallower than the body shape. Barely there. Her fingers trace it. It's less than a foot long. Thin at one end, fatter at the other.

A gun?

She takes photographs and wonders if her imagination is getting the better of her. Too many episodes of
NCIS, CSI,
and
Criminal Minds.
She opens the closets. Male clothes. Three shirts, a couple pairs of black jeans. Beneath the rail she sees a pair of black boots. Not fashionable. Thick-soled, metal-toe-capped. Maybe for work in the animal shelter. Maybe not. There's a chest of drawers with virtually nothing in it. A pack of unopened, plain briefs, socks, a rolled-up belt. And an ordnance map of Miami. She's peaked in guys' sock drawers before and found hidden literature, but never a map. She opens it up, sees it's dated this year but seems much older because it's so worn at the folds. There are no marks on it, no messages, no easy answers to any of her questions.

Zoe's mind is swimming with thoughts as she goes into the next room. It's the biggest. A large double bed dominates the floor. It's been neatly made. There's no obvious sign of life in here. She pulls back the cover, lifts the pillow. A nightdress. Lemon. Long and cotton. Plain not sexy. She moves it.

Another indentation.

Remarkably similar to the one in the other room.

Did Mr. and Mrs. Chen sleep in separate bedrooms with guns under their pillows? That doesn't sound like too good a marriage to her.

She checks the closets. They're almost as bare as the other ones. Two dresses. Two blouses. Three pairs of shoes. Two flats. One high heels.

And a pair of black boots. Nice. So far as she can see, that's the only thing the couple have in common. There are no photographs in here. No makeup. Nothing personal. The rooms feel like a hostel rather than a home. There is no hint of a relationship, let alone a marriage.

Zoe drops to her knees and looks under the bed. The wooden floor is dusty and there's nothing there. People stack stuff in closets and under beds, but not the Chens. Maybe they put it all in a suitcase and left for a long holiday. Perhaps she's grasping at straws. The boots seem sinister, but then again, many people buy hiking or hobby stuff together. There's probably an innocent explanation for everything.

She walks back downstairs, discounting the ordnance map as just Chen's desire to get to know the area. To do his job better. Maybe there wasn't a satellite navigator in his vehicle.

She tidies up in the kitchen before she leaves. Shuts the cupboard doors. Closes the drawers. Puts away the leaflets. As she does, she looks more closely at them. Now she sees more than just a random selection of local attractions:

Disney World

Flamingo Park

Aqualand

Crandon Golf Course

Universal Studios

Key Biscayne

The Everglades

Bill Baggs Park

Cape Florida Park

Her heart jumps when she sees another leaflet. One that might explain why the Chens are not at home.

102

Weaponization Bunkers, North Korea

T
he remains of the three dead dogs are laid out on the cold gray steel of the draining gurney in the bunker's makeshift mortuary.

Dressed in full protective suit, Hao carries out rough autopsies while Jihai runs postmortem DNA analysis and toxicology tests.

Rough autopsies because Hao has a very good idea of exactly what he's after. He drains what's left of the body fluids, then excises, photographs, and weighs the remaining organs.

He cuts through fur and flesh and retrieves each of the three microchips, the tiny technological and biological bombs that when activated made the animals uncontrollably aggressive.

He cleans and opens them, then carefully siphons off each of the minuscule chambers, putting sample droplets of the aggressor serum on slides.

When he's done, he calls Tāo to clear the waste away and send it to the surface for immediate incineration.

He washes, changes, and takes the slides back to his laboratory for inspection and toxicology testing.

In the cool, white surroundings of his laboratory, he puts a tired eye to the magnifying glass and expects to see a familiar picture; a chemical painting that has hung in the gallery of his mind since he first started work on the Nian project some three years ago.

He's shocked.

The canvas is the same. Many of the colors and brush strokes are familiar.

But there are differences.

Huge differences.

Hao sits back from the scope and takes in the enormity of what he's just seen.

The reason for his failure.

It's clear now that he hasn't been able to formulate a pacifier because partway through his experiments the microchips and the chemicals within them were changed.

Without his knowledge.

He thinks through the process of deception. Handlers in the dog pens would have been unaware of any differences when they shot the chips under the animals' skins. From the outside, the chip canisters looked identical. It is only what was inside that has changed. They'd been filled with a serum dramatically altered from the one he'd been working with.

The new one, probably only introduced in the last few months, doesn't only enrage the dogs, it makes them poisonous.

He understands now why the North Korean scientist who invented the basic aggressor hadn't been involved in developing the pacifier. Zhang had already set him to work on creating a second strain.

The poisonous one.

He goes to the tox machine and waits impatiently for the results. Eventually there's a beep and they come through. He reads it on the screen and then prints out a hard copy to study in detail. As though only having a physical copy will truly confirm what he's just read.

The dog had excreted a modified form of TTX—tetrodotoxin, a lethal poison that can cause paralysis and death.

He can't believe it. It's there in black and white but he can't believe it.

Hao sets the machine to repeat the testing.

But the nagging doubts that Jihai had raised in his mind are now screamingly obvious and he feels foolish. Foolish and used in the way that only experts of his age and reputation can.

Shameful and angry.

Twice short-listed for Nobel prizes, he had an international reputation as a brilliant and peaceful man.

Zhang has made a mockery of that.

The general no doubt set him to work on finding an antidote to the aggressor solely so he could stay ahead of the West and develop even more powerful and poisonous strains.

He'd been played.

The question now was, what should he do about it?

103

Bicentennial Park, Miami

D
owntown residents are used to hearing screams from the massive Big Top that dominates the giant park.

Only they're usually ones of joy.

They're nothing like this.

Ten seconds ago more than two thousand animal lovers were excitedly caught up in the annual Dog Breeder's Fair, a hugely popular event for both members of the public and professional breeders.

Now there's bedlam.

Dozens of show dogs have gone crazy. They are attacking each other and anyone who's not been fast or lucky enough to escape from the forty thousand square feet of tent.

Ghost and his team are already there, getting a verbal brief on what the venue is like. There's a tunneled entrance into a tented circle that contains more than fifty stalls. There are merchandising concessions running around two-thirds of the enclosure and a “backstage” area behind large black drapes where the animals' cages and organizers' desks are located.

The lieutenant takes a call from Tarney. “Go ahead, John.”

“Just got a heads-up from Control. They've managed to call in a police helicopter from the Everglades to help track any strays that break from the site.”