Chapter 43
Jack woke quickly, feeling more rested than he had in months. He was alone in his bed, so maybe his visitor had been a dream. He smelled the pillow next to him. The pillow smelled sweetly of his Lee. The stretching exercises he did every morning of his life for the last sixteen years were a habit so engrained he didn’t think he could have stopped them if he wanted to. This morning the pain and tightness seemed…less painful and tight. He continued to stretch, his back more supple than he could ever remember it being. He had a pain-free range of motion better than he’d had since… He stopped at since. He couldn’t remember when he had been in this little pain.
There was an envelope on the counter in the bathroom, and on top of that a small glass bottle with a rubber stopper. The note was addressed to him.
The doctor said to give you this. She said your back shouldn’t bother you much now. She said to tell you to get laid. A lot. Soon!
LU3,
Lee
Jack pulled the rubber stopper from the top of the glass bottle and tapped seven pieces of metal onto his palm. Three looked like pieces of melted solder, two or three millimeters in diameter. Three looked like Christmas tinsel, or foil ribbon, but not as shiny as they would be for Christmas, about the same size as the melted solder ones. The biggest one, half again as big as the others, looked like the head of a medieval morning star. He carefully poured the pieces back into the bottle.
Jack had seen pieces of metal like these before. The doc handed them to him when he came to after his first and second back surgeries. The third surgery had come up empty. He turned his back to the mirror, opening the medicine cabinet door and changing position until he could see the small of his back. All he could see were seven little butterfly bandages. There was some bruising, a little swelling, but not much of either-yet. He held the bottle up to the light.
He sat on the commode, staring at the bottle, until the phone rang. It was Lee telling him he’d be late for his meeting with Kalashnikov if he didn’t hurry. He had a thousand questions. He didn’t ask any of them. Instead, he hurried to make the meeting.
The whole trip in the cab, he didn’t notice that he reached up to the left breast pocket of his sports coat to touch the bottle. He was enough of a cynic not to believe, but he wanted it to be true so badly. He could get an X-ray. Or, he could wait until the next time he went through an airport metal detector. If it didn’t go off, he would know. Still…
KALASHNIKOV was in a foul mood. The government of Hong Kong had quietly, but firmly, asked him to leave. They’d given him until seven that evening. They too knew of his reputation with the Russian Mafia and weren’t buying his tourist story at all. Jack asked him why they’d let him in at all and Kalashnikov talked about the satchel of cash he had delivered to the bank in Kowloon. He answered Jack’s questions about insider trading with more questions.
“What makes you think I might know of this, Jack?”
Michael watched Jack watching him. Jack didn’t answer him, but instead, blandly and calmly returned the look and occasionally glanced out the window to watch the ships in the harbor below.
Michael cursed, “Yob tvoiu mat!” and then translated for Jack: “Fuck your mother.” Jack was surprised that Michael didn’t know that he knew a little Russian. You had to know Russian history to know why “Yob tvoiu mat” had a different, deeper and more powerful meaning for the Russians. The Russians had been invaded. A lot. The Tatars had a habit of killing all the men and raping all the women. The old curses worked best for them.
“Jack, I have heard there is perhaps a kind of group; rumors say they are connected politically. I saw no way of making money so I have not pursued it. Pay me. Pay me enough, with half of it now, and I will find out.”
They haggled. Kalashnikov wanted information and Jack wanted to spend cash. They finally agreed on a quarter million in Michael’s personal account in the Grand Caymans, half up-front and the remainder when he agreed the information supplied had value. Jack called his broker and had him wire the $125K. Kalashnikov called his bank.
“I should have asked for more,” he said. Jack smiled.
Kalashnikov responded with another string of Russian curses.
LEE WAITED in the bar of the restaurant where he and Kalashnikov met. She’d amused herself by verbally flaying a French tourist who’d tried to hit on her.
“You flew fourteen hours to have a meeting with a Russian criminal that lasted twenty minutes?” she asked as she sat upright in the chair, her knees and feet held tightly together, the black Hermes purse clutched in both hands.
Jack smiled. She wouldn’t make eye contact, wanting to stay mad. Finally she met his gaze, her eyes reminding him of someone else’s. He couldn’t remember whose. Lee’s eyes were a deep clear brown, with little flecks of gold that caught the sunlight coming through the wispy clouds. The shape of her eyes was Chinese, from one of the southern provinces, and at the same time, it wasn’t. When she smiled at him her eyes didn’t narrow but, instead, seemed to open wider. Her eyes seemed to grow and then he felt himself pulled into them, as if the law of gravity had been temporarily suspended.
Lee’s eyes had been seductive searchlights on the night of the party, when the vision of her backlit against the harbor became permanently etched into his brain. At the airport terminal her eyes had been swords to cut through the red tape. After the meeting with Kalashnikov they were darts slamming into him. As he stared into them, they changed.
She looked away, shaking her head, trying to deny what was happening. Her posture softened and she let her hands fall open, palms up on the table, her shoulders dropped and, when she did look up, her eyes filled with invitation again.
“The twenty minutes with Kalashnikov were important. I had another much more important reason for coming.”
She smiled, a sweet smile of promise, completely understanding the second reason. She pulled his hands up to her face and kissed the knuckles of both of hands. He felt momentarily free. The worries about his sister, about insider trading, and about the deal in Siberia were all far away for a little while.
They decided to walk and shop. The prices were a lot higher than he remembered. It had been more than three years since he’d given himself the time to walk these streets and enjoy this vibrant city. He and Lee laughed and walked and teased, buying things they didn’t need and not haggling enough over price.
They invented a game called speed present-buying. After they’d passed an area where one of them saw something they thought the other would like, they would say, “present.” From that point they had five minutes to go buy it and get it wrapped or shipped or disguised in some way.
He bought her a set of jade chopsticks to use as an ornament when she put her hair up. He later found a beautifully carved ironwood box. They turned a corner onto the street called Man Street because this was where you buy men’s clothes and accessories. It felt like someone had dropped a curtain on his mood. In another few steps his danger radar started pinging away.
She held a shirt up to his chest, asking the stall keeper if they had it in a larger size.
“What’s wrong?” She asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I asked if you’d like this in pink with little yellow stars to match the cape and you said that would be fine.”
The danger signal had begun as a minor nagging feeling of discomfort. Now he felt as if he had a target painted on his back. He pulled Lee into an alley and scanned the surging mass of people. The crowd looked like all crowds in Hong Kong. Here everyone moved with a sense of urgency. Maybe it was the presence of the Chinese master’s armies a few miles away. Maybe it was that the best and brightest had come here to improve their lives, knowing they didn’t have forever. Maybe it was habit. He saw nothing in the crowd he hadn’t seen fifty times before.
“My intuition is yelling danger. I don’t know why, but stay alert, okay?”
They walked on, his mood souring their love-buzz for a few minutes. Soon their enjoyment of what was to come submerged the dread.
“You’re going to have to start taking vitamins, you know. I have to catch up on all the time I haven’t had you. Vitamins and ginseng and naps and my herbalist will make a special potion so you will have energy for me,” Lee said.
“What makes you think I’ll need help?”
He placed his right hand on the back of Lee’s head and stroked the back of her neck with thumb and fingers. He rubbed gently up, then with more pressure, pressing his fingers into her soft skin where it disappeared into the downy hair on the top of her neck. She sagged against him.
He bent down to kiss her, hearing a commotion in the crowd, ignored it, looking down at her lips, the brilliant white of her teeth caressed briefly by her tongue. The roar of the crowd grew louder. The mental scream of danger from the crowd pierced his brain along with a mechanical roar.
He looked up in time to see the minivan only feet away, aimed right at them. The driver stared straight at Lee. Jack grabbed her slim hips, picked her up and threw her into the alley, seeing her head snap back, hoping he hadn’t hurt her trying to save her.
The minivan was too close to miss. The back of his left shoulder was facing the van as he used the curb to push off with both feet. He threw himself away as loose as he knew how, hoping that whatever he hit would hurt less than the bumper. The driver swerved, jerking the wheel, trying to hit Lee. He felt the bang of the fender and flew backwards, tumbling, rolling as his body remembered the thousands of hours on the mat. He heard metal tear. The van scraped against the building. He watched the van carom back onto the street with motor roaring as it disappeared around the next corner.
He tried to roll to his feet. Finally he moved to his knees, barely able to breathe, wondering if his left arm was broken. He pushed himself to his feet, trying to remember when he’d gained the weight that made it so hard to stand. He weaved and lurched, dragging a thankfully numb, right leg across the cobblestones into the alley, checking his parts as he went.
Two large men kneeled over Lee, keeping the crowd away. One held her neck and the other glared at the crowd as he shouted instructions into a cell phone. She lay more than ten feet into the ally, flat on her back, eyes closed. He knew he couldn’t have thrown her that far. The van must have hit her. There was blood at the corner of her mouth and her neck looked too loose, her head at an angle to the side.
He pushed through the crowd, shaking off questions and prying hands and knelt by her bodyguards. She opened her eyes, saw his face and smiled.
She lifted her head, stopped and cried out. The bodyguard who had held her head let Jack take over. He no longer had to shrug off the crowd. The bodyguards did that for him. He ignored the chatter; ignored everything as he held her head in place.
“Can you move your arms and legs, your fingers and toes?”
In answer she wiggled both feet and put her hands on his, gently stroking them as they waited for the ambulance.
A policeman arrived, much too young, a sergeant, confident and well trained. He asked the bodyguards what happened. The men answered with respect, one at a time, too fast for Jack to follow. Then the policeman asked individuals in the crowd for their versions. Their respect was impressive. One person at a time answered his questions and waited for him to take notes. The cop held his hand up, stopping his questioning and walked over to where Jack held Lee’s head.
“Excuse please, English not good. People say, driver of van try hit you?”
Lee answered in Cantonese, stretched out on the ground, flat on her back. Her voice seemed to take shape in the air, curling around the sergeant, holding him, at the same time keeping the crowd at bay. He could see the reaction of members of the crowd close enough to hear. They turned and chatted to those around them who in turn passed the news to those further out like a wave. As she spoke the young police sergeant stood straighter and set his jaw as if determined to do the right thing.
She quietly explained. “I told them who I was, my family heritage, and my position in the family business. I told him the people in the crowd were certainly mistaken. Of course it was an accident. Obviously the person driving the van panicked and drove off because he was afraid he had hurt someone.”
The cop moved to open the crowd for the ambulance. The bodyguards looked like they were ready to cry. The blessed numbness from the van’s impact was gone so quickly it felt like he’d flipped a switch. He hurt in places he didn’t even know he had. The first aid team from the ambulance gently took over his job of holding Lee’s head.
LEE HONG lay on the ground, certain Jack had saved her life, just as she had saved his. When she saw him react, she tried to move, but couldn’t move with the force she needed. She made a split second decision to focus all her energy on one very small thing. She reached out with her mental touch and tried to squeeze the ignition coil in the van. Her touch was growing stronger with practice, but she still was not adept enough to turn off such electrical power at a distance. She did manage to interrupt the current for a small part of a second, slowing the van slightly.
Chang and Chan looked like they were going to cry. They had been her bodyguards for twenty years now. They had never come close to letting something happen to her before. She knew them well enough to know that they were more concerned with having let her down than the wrath they would face from grandfather.
She motioned Chan to come and he did. “Do not worry. I will be fine. Did you get a picture of the van, and its driver?”
Chan said, “Yes, of course. I am so sorry. We had done as you had asked and kept our distance. Perhaps if we would have kept closer I…”
“Nonsense. If you would have been closer, then you might have been hit.”
Chan said, “I am very glad your gwai lo was with you. He threw you out of the way. He is a most fierce tiger.”
“Yes he is, and although Grandfather hasn’t told you this I want you to try to protect him as well. He has very few faults for a gwai lo, but he does let his heart guide him to quick action. Now, once again understand I am not worried and I shall tell grandfather that no one could have done better. You know he will bluster and splutter as he does, but I will make sure he understands you are not at fault. Now, please, send Chang over.”
She reassured Chang as well, and then concentrated on staying as relaxed as she could and watching Jack.
IT TOOK Jack two tries to stand. After he was sure he wasn’t going to fall, he checked for damage again. Somehow he’d lost his right shoe. The left leg of his trousers was torn from hip to knee and the skin on his left hip was already turning purple. He slipped his jacket off to check his left arm. He’d managed to land in the only oil patch he could see on the street. He pulled his wallet and passport out of the jacket, along with the glass bottle, unbroken, and tossed the jacket into one of the trash cans that had almost broken his fall. His shoe had landed over twenty feet away, perched on a ledge higher than his head.
He didn’t check his left shoulder until last. He’d separated the shoulder in his teens and kept putting off the surgery. He swung his left arm around in small circles, then bigger and bigger as it started to loosen up.
The doctor, who’d arrived minutes after the ambulance, finished checking Lee. The doctor gently strapped a cervical collar around Lee’s neck and helped as they transferred her to a gurney. Jack walked toward the ambulance.
The young sergeant stepped in front of him and stopped, firmly standing his ground. The cop smiled politely up at him and said, “Passport please.”
Jack waited as patiently as he could while the cop leafed through his passport, taking notes in a tiny hand in his official notebook. While the cop was still taking notes, the doctor walked over and asked him in very clear Indian accented English, “How are you feeling?”
He nearly laughed as he said, “Like I’ve been hit by a minivan and bounced off a street onto an oil slick. How is Hong Lee?”
“She almost certainly has a sprain of her neck. It is possible that she has a slight fracture of one of the vertebrae in her neck, but I do not think so. We will X-ray to make sure. Now let’s have a look at you.”
The doctor examined him quickly and thoroughly, with all the emotional attachment of a building inspector checking wiring. She made him stand on one leg and then the other. He expected to hear her ask him to pat his head and rub his belly, or was it rub his head and pat his belly?
He knew he would be okay with tons of ice and a twice-a-day regimen of eight hundred milligrams of Naproxen Sodium. In a week or so he might feel human. Tomorrow, the day he was due to travel, would be very bad, and the next day even worse.
Two men on motorcycles pulled up in front of the ambulance. Two more men pulled up on motorcycles and parked behind the ambulance. The bodyguards who had shadowed Lee and Jack took the last two men’s helmets and gloves and climbed on their still-running bikes.
Jack climbed into the ambulance with Lee. The vehicle was a lot smaller than the American version would have been. It did the job and fit through smaller streets.
He bent down and kissed his woman gently on her lips, nuzzled her hair, and whispered the question, “Why did you lie to the policeman?” He lowered his ear to her mouth to hear the answer.
“You have to leave tomorrow. Once you are safely back in the States I can change my memory. Was the driver aiming at me or you?”
He looked down at Lee strapped to the gurney. She had become so important so quickly.
“Both of us. When he had to make a choice, you.”
It took only ten minutes to get to the hospital and once there, they were checked and released within the hour. Uncle Chin sent the Rolls to pick them up.
UNCLE Chin screamed in anger. This was more than his weakened lungs could take. His scream ended in a coughing fit. Sir Ian stood over his old friend, one hand on his back, patting gently as the nurse tried to calm Uncle Chin enough to take oxygen. Sir Ian looked down at the old Chinese man as if he were surprised to see how old and sick he was. It was as if he stared hard enough he could shave away the effects of the years and reveal the young man he thought he should see.
Jack was grateful to both of them. He had sought them out years ago. They rebuffed his first attempts to do business. When they finally did agree to an initial small venture they set numerous traps. They gave him opportunities to take the knowledge they had given him and use it to his advantage. They hid important information, and set meetings at times that guaranteed he would be tired or hungry or both. He had fallen for none of the traps. He had never taken advantage. He treated them as he wished to be treated and insisted on the information he needed. They finally let him in. His businesses flourished with their help as theirs had with his. Now, because of them, he was with the woman he loved.
Uncle Chin finally calmed enough to talk, speaking in English, stopping often to take oxygen. “You are certain the driver was aiming for both of you? You feel this is because of your attempts to gain information on these companies?”
He waited until Uncle Chin had the oxygen mask covering his mouth before he answered. “I am certain of my answers to the first question, but not certain to the last. I firmly believe the cause of the attack is our investigation into insider trading. Are you involved in anything else that would produce this kind of reaction?”
Uncle Chin sat for half a minute before he answered with a shake of his head. He looked at Lee. She barely shook her head before she winced in pain and from the constriction of the collar.
She said, “No, not to our knowledge. People overreact. Should postal workers shoot their superiors over an imagined slight? Should men walk into office buildings and shoot lawyers?” She smiled after she said that. “Perhaps that is not such a good example. We have done nothing that should generate this kind of response, but how can we know how others might react?”
He thought about her answer as he replayed the mental motion picture of the minivan attack over in his mind and then said:
“The eyes of the driver were not those of a madman. He targeted us. When presented with two targets, he made a mistake as to which one to choose. His targeting error is the only reason one of us was not seriously injured or killed.”
She moved to stand near Uncle Chin, holding his withered left hand in both of hers. Chin flapped his hand at Jack, motioning him over and pulling off the oxygen mask.
“I am so mad I forget. Thank you for saving my granddaughter’s life. I can never repay that.”
Uncle Chin looked a thousand years old. Everything about him was old except his eyes. He had the eyes of a teenage boy, a “spit in your eye, I can beat you at anything,” look in his eyes, full of piss and vinegar. Jack saw him clearly for the first time that night. He was more alive in his old age than most in their youth. His tremendous will, the energy that used to surround him like a moat, was still there in those searchlight eyes. One day those too would be still and dark.
“Uncle Chin,” he said, “I don’t know whether I’ve saved Lee’s life or not, but if my hunch is correct, we have to do something. As I see it, we have three choices. We can do nothing and hope this goes away. We can find out who’s in charge and promise to stay out. Or, once we find who is doing this, we kick their fucking ass. My group has already decided on option three.”
Uncle Chin hawked and spat after the first two. He smiled and nodded to the last.
“When we counter these short sellers, these painters of black pictures, we stop the harm they do. And, we take their money. When we find out who tried to kill my favorite granddaughter, I want them. I have not swung an ax in anger in many years, but I am still strong enough to bury one in the skull of the man who tried to take my favorite child’s favorite daughter.”
Jack helped them put their part of the plan in place. His bruises throbbed. His joints stiffened, and in the end he had to talk standing up, trying to stay loose, twisting, swinging, and stretching. They decided to use Chin and Sir Ian’s companies to originate the stock trades the cabal needed. Chin and Sir Ian’s companies had holdings scattered throughout the world. Their most important holdings for this operation were pieces of six banks. They held majority interests in two in Hong Kong, and one in Ho Chi Minh City as well as minority interests in two banks in Shanghai and a fractional interest in one in Zurich. Jack was most impressed by the last. The Swiss didn’t let anyone play their reindeer games.
Uncle Chin and Sir Ian looked smug.
Lee laughed and said, “Don’t let them convince you they are geniuses. A burgher was here on a shopping trip. His daughter ran up a tab and would have gotten into serious trouble at our casino in Macao. We protected her. He needed to hush the whole thing up so he let them buy a piece of the bank.”
It was agreed that his team would handle the counter-disinformation campaign in the States and Sir Ian would coordinate the campaign in Europe and Asia.
“Because we all stand to share equally in the profits, we should all share equally in the risks,” Lee said.
Jack said, “This is my fight. It’s not right to ask you to risk your capital too. I’m not going into this thinking it’s a great investment. I’m doing this to stop bad people from doing bad things and to protect my sister. Even if all of the trades we suspect are bad, total capitalization needed to stop them should only be $15 million,” he said.
The argument didn’t stop there. If it wasn’t for the pain medication he finally had to take, he might have won the argument.
LEE RODE with him in the back of the limo on his journey to the airport. She lowered the shade on the barrier between the driver’s and passenger compartment, unbuckled her seat belt and moved to the seat next to his and buckled back in.
“This damned neck sprain. I’d like to do more than snuggle,” she said.
He put his arm around her and sniffed her hair. Her scent was a better painkiller than the Vicodin he’d finally had to take. It felt right to be important to someone, to look forward to spending time with someone. He had always enjoyed the hunt more than the relationship. For now at least, it felt good not be on the hunt. She smelled so damned good, despite the ointments and salves. Maybe the theory that love was mostly pheromones was right. Her special perfume seemed to go with anything.
“Did you design your perfume?”
Her scent smelled of flowers, faintly of roses, but was musky too. The perfume promised and teased, at the same time. He inhaled her, not knowing when he’d see her again, and knowing it had to be soon.
“No, silly man. I gave my input and experimented with many scents. Something as important as a woman’s scent must be designed by experts. When do you want me to come back?” she asked.
“How about now? Get on the plane with me.”
It wasn’t a nice thing to do. He knew she had to stay with Uncle Chin and Sir Ian, to coordinate the counter trades and help run their business, at least initially.
“I’d pinch you if you weren’t already so beat up. I’ll get back over in a week or two. Once we set up the process, running the system to counter the insider trading won’t be too be hard,”
They held each other, not saying much of anything, until they got to the airport, when he turned to her and said, “Be careful…”
“I am already being more than careful,” she said. “If you could see out of this tank, you’d know we are being followed by a panel truck and right in front of us is a group on scooters. Grandfather has been in wars before. He would not let anything happen to his favorite granddaughter. Especially now I’ve caught you.”
He smiled. He had to ask. “How did the doctor get the little pieces of metal out of my back?”
Lee said, “I am not a doctor so I do not know the ins and outs, the details. You can somehow tell, with your special gift, that people intend harm to people you care about. And you can cause others to tell you things they should not. Since you can do these things, doesn’t it stand to reason that someone else could have a special gift? Why shouldn’t someone be able to find and grab tiny metal objects and help them leave your body with her hands and mind?”
He was certain that this was a very good answer and the only one he would get.