Read The Curse of the Dragon God Online

Authors: Geoffrey Knight

Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense, #Adventure, #Gay

The Curse of the Dragon God (11 page)

BOOK: The Curse of the Dragon God
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Frustrated, Will glanced at the tracking grid on his watch as the nurse left the room. He was sitting on the end of a bed in the emergency ward. He could see Bradley’s eyes staring intently at the wound, concentrating hard, so careful not to release any of the pressure that he was now in fact hurting Will.
“I think you can probably ease off a little.”
“Sorry, I guess I’m just—distracted. I knew something was going to happen. I should have said something. I should have told someone.”
“You told me.”
“I mean my uncle.”
Will lifted his arm and, with some pain, pointed to his watch. “It’ll be okay, we’ll find them, I promise. We have a tracking device on the Professor. Actually, it’s
inside
the Professor. They took him north a short distance, then it looks like they’ve gone airborne, moving west across the Pacific.”
“Heading straight for China,” Bradley said.
“You told me earlier you didn’t know who to trust.” Will leveled his gaze at Bradley, his blue eyes staring deep into the young businessman’s dark brown eyes. “I’m telling you, you can trust us.”
Just then, Bradley’s cell phone rang. He answered it and heard Chad Chambers’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Bradley! Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Oh, thank God! Where are you?”
“I’m at the hospital.” He almost mentioned who he was with, but thought better of it.
“Listen, Bradley, we have to tell the board. We have to instill some confidence in them now, before shares start dropping and the industry panics. We have to let them know the corporation is unsinkable. I’ll call a meeting, straight away. I’m leaving for Hong Kong now.”
“I can be on a plane in an hour.”
“There’s no need, Bradley. You should stay here, assist the police with their investigation as much as you can. Sen needs your help. He’s your only family. Mya and I can take care of the company.”
“No, Chad. I’ll be in Hong Kong by morning.” With that, he hung up the phone.
Will looked at him. “Need a friend to tag along for the ride?”

 

Luca’s eyes darted from face to face as he raced through the hospital corridor leading to the intensive care unit, searching for a face he knew, until—
“Shane!” Luca rushed to greet him with a hug, his worried eyes taking in the bandage wrapped tightly around Shane’s head. “What happened?”
“The diamond’s gone. So is the Professor.”
“What!?”
“It gets worse.” He put a hand on Luca’s shoulder, bracing him for the news that was to come. “It’s Eden.”
He turned and pointed. Jake was standing alone at the end of the corridor, looking through a window into the intensive care unit, one hand pressed flat against the glass.
Luca raced toward the window, Shane close behind.
Inside the ward was Eden. A doctor was thumbing the unconscious Brazilian’s eyelids open and shining a small flashlight into his unseeing, unknowing pupils. Two nurses checked instruments and gauges, and secured the many tubes running in and out of Eden’s mouth and nose with strips of tape. An elevated bag fed clear fluid into his veins, while a second bag replenished his blood supply. The only indication there was any life left in him at all was the beep of a heart monitor and the thin green line that raced across the screen, jumping with each faint beat.
Jake blinked as a tear streaked down his cheek. He rested his forehead against the glass. “It was supposed to be me,” he whispered, his breath fogging up the glass. “The curse was meant for me.”
Gently, a hand pressed down on his shoulder and squeezed. Only then did Jake notice Luca standing beside him.
“He pushed me out of the way,” Jake’s voice croaked, trying to explain. “He was trying to tell me something, and then—”
He couldn’t finish his sentence. He turned quickly back to look at Eden, not wanting to take his eyes off him for more than a minute.
The doctor inside the intensive care room looked up, saw the three worried men standing at the window, and exited the room. Once out in the corridor, he took off his mask and gloves and introduced himself to Jake, Shane, and Luca.
“My name is Doctor Angelo Dante.”
“You’re Italian?” Luca asked, picking up on the name and the accent.
“Yes, I’m a specialist from Rome, currently doing some research and field work here in San Francisco. There’s a shortage of doctors on tonight. I happened to be working late when you’re friend was brought in.”
“
Mi chiamo Luca
,” Luca said with a handshake. “These are my friends Jake and Shane. And that’s Eden,” he added quietly.
Jake swallowed hard before asking, “Is he—is he gonna live?”
Doctor Dante took a moment, then sighed. He was a handsome man, in his late thirties, olive skin, distinctly Roman nose, jet-black hair peppered with streaks of distinguished gray. Despite his natural good looks, he had that heavy-hearted sigh of a surgeon who had broken bad news too many times.
“It’s not good. We’ve put him in an induced coma. Your friend has lost a lot of blood, and there’s internal hemorrhaging, some of which we’ve managed to slow with the surgery, although we may need to open him up again. There’s no guarantee we can save him. I’m sorry, but you should prepare yourself for the worst.” Doctor Dante returned to the intensive care unit.
Suddenly the corridor was filled with a distraught yet familiar voice.
“Oh,
Gott in Himmel!
”
Luca, Shane, and Jake turned to see Elsa blubbering and barreling down the corridor toward them. Beside her was Sam, a suitcase in each hand.
Luca and Shane hurried to embrace the weeping Elsa while Jake rushed toward Sam.
For a moment, Sam braced himself for Jake’s wrath, but what he received instead was a bear hug of an embrace. He felt Jake kiss him ceaselessly, on the forehead, on the face, on his scruffy black hair.
“You’re not pissed at me?” the kid asked, squinting back the kisses.
“Yeah, I’m pissed. And you shouldn’t be here. But hell, I’m so happy to see you. I needed to see you.”
As Jake released Sam, Elsa sobbed, “Where is he? Where’s Eden?”
In silent response, Luca, Shane, and Jake all glanced at once toward the intensive care unit. Elsa fixed her tear-filled gaze on the window, then slowly walked toward it as though in a trance.
The moment she peered through the window and saw Eden’s motionless body lying on the bed, her face became still and silent. The sniffing stopped. The tears seemed to freeze in the wells of her eyes. For now that she could see Eden, Elsa Strauss’s defense mechanisms finally kicked in and she began to do what she did best: organize things.
“Sammy, the suitcase. There’s a box of strudels. Get them out, everyone eat, you must be starving! And clean clothes, there are clean clothes for all you boys. Pajamas for Eden too. Look at him, he must be frozen in there. Where’s the doctor? I want to see his doctor. We need to put his pajamas on him.” She was on her knees now, rummaging desperately through the suitcase.
Sam took her by the hand. “Elsa, it’s okay. There’s no hurry. He’ll be okay.”
At that moment, Will and Bradley came rushing down the corridor. Will’s shoulder was bandaged now, and he was already easing his arm out of a sling. “How’s he doing?” Will asked anxiously.
Shane lied in front of Elsa. “He’s fine. He’s gonna be just fine. But right now we need to figure out how to get Sen and the Professor back.”
“No prizes for guessing China’s where they’re headed.” Will said, trading the sling for a T-shirt from Elsa’s suitcase. “Bradley’s got a meeting with the board in Hong Kong tomorrow. I’m gonna ride shotgun to see if there’s anything suspicious going down at Zhang HQ.”
Shane checked his own watch and turned to Luca. “You feel like chasing the little red dot?”
“The company’s headquarters are in Hong Kong,” Bradley offered, “but the mines themselves are in Shandong, south of Beijing.”
“If you two cover Hong Kong, we’ll head for Beijing,” Luca said.
Jake turned to Bradley. “Any other leads you can think of? Anyone else with a major interest in the business? Partners, suppliers, anyone with a stake in the company’s dealings?”
Bradley shook his head. “The only other person I can think of is Richard. Richard Conrad.”
“Conrad Constructions,” Jake nodded. “Sen said he was in Dubai, right?”
“I’m coming with you,” Sam piped up, jumping to his feet.
“You’re staying right here. Elsa needs you. And
he
needs you.” Jake glanced once more at the window to the intensive care unit. He put a hand on the kid’s shoulder and said, “Sammy, you got the most important job of all. Make sure nothing happens to Eden.”
Elsa took Sam’s hand then, patted it firmly, and assured Jake and the others, “We’ll keep him strong. Don’t worry. Just find the Professor. Bring him home safely.”
One by one the boys hugged Elsa and Sam and raced for the elevator.
Before he left, Jake stopped at the window one last time. “Don’t you die on me,” he said softly. “We’ll be back. I’ll bring everyone back, I promise. Just don’t you die.”
Then, without looking back, he raced from the hospital.
VI
Beijing, China
BEIJING BETTY’S WAS A RAMSHACKLE, FOUR-STORY deathtrap. It was also the raucous, polluted heart of the city’s slum district, thrashing and thumping to the beat of neo-Asian electro-pop strip music, illegal booze, experimental drugs, and lawless gay lust. There were no rules at Betty’s apart from every man for himself when the police came, which was often. Yet Betty had enough friends and incriminating photos to keep the place open and her many customers happy—from the highest-ranking officials to the lowest dregs of modern China. Everyone here had an addiction—opium, crack, sex, or simply a need to watch, and this was the place to set your demons free.
Demons like the small, skeletal Chinese man with the tattered black patch over his left eye, the man known only as Doctor Cyclops. He was not a visitor to Betty’s. He was a resident who lived on the third floor above the nightclub, calling this place of debauchery home. His entire world. He only left the building to buy noodles, cigarettes, and alcohol from the cluttered little corner store down the street. Sometimes he’d venture into the private back room known as the Den to score some opium from Betty, but that depended on who she was entertaining at the time. Sometimes the cigarettes and the gin just had to do.
Occasionally Doctor Cyclops parted with a little cash to feel up some young man’s crotch. More often than not, though, he simply enjoyed watching the show, intently observing the men for sale, studying the contours of their bodies, their flesh, fantasizing about what their muscles looked like
under
the skin. He wished the striptease would keep going, even after the clothes were gone. He wished they could peel away the flesh on their bodies. Yes, the thought of it intoxicated him. Desperately he wanted to see what they looked like on the inside. He wanted to open their chests and see their hearts pounding. If he could see their hearts beat, then surely it meant they loved him.
This was his nightly ritual.
Tonight, however, the pattern would be broken. Doctor Cyclops had been contracted for a job.
“This way,” he called over the dance music that thundered through the walls.
“I can’t hear you,” shouted the white-haired Chinese man behind him.
“This way. Through the garbage room.”
They were in the back of Betty’s, pushing their way through bags of overflowing garbage. The tall, young, white-haired man pushed two smaller, frailer men in front of him, both wearing black hoods over their heads.
Behind him, a small, slender woman in a red evening gown followed, stepping precariously across the slippery floor in her expensive heels. Mya Chan glared past the white-haired henchman and her two captives and shot Doctor Cyclops an unimpressed sneer. “This had better be worth it!”
“No questions asked, no face remembered, no health care card required.” Doctor Cyclops started snickering and spluttering at his own joke, then almost tripped on the first step of the backstage staircase.
Mya noticed. “Are you drunk?”
Doctor Cyclops rubbed at his eye patch, grinning a little uneasily, showing his jagged yellow teeth. “You’re two days early. This job is very short notice.”
Mya took a small item from her pocket and handed it to him. “Here’s your down payment. You’ll get the cash when everything’s over.”
Doctor Cyclops took the wrapped object. Unfolding the paper, he beamed at the sight of a large glass bead with a diamond embedded in the face of it. Like the pupil of an eye. “Oh, it’s beautiful,” he breathed, then quickly shoved the bead into his pocket. “Don’t worry, I won’t let him die on the table. Not unless you ask me to.”
BOOK: The Curse of the Dragon God
2.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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