“You’ve been away from the States too long.” It was another ill-advised attempt at humor. “Look,” Stuart said, “you’ll recognize this.” He pointed to the lower right-hand corner of the screen. David had probably seen the symbol a thousand times but had never really noticed it. Just like Da Yu’s map of his empire, the VYRUSCAN logo consisted of five concentric squares. The conclusion was horrifying in its implications.
“Michael Quon is Xiao Da,” David said.
Stuart’s eyes widened as he absorbed this, then whatever color had come back to his face in the last few minutes drained away again. “Catherine—”
“Hulan!”
Then David’s mind froze. He couldn’t think beyond the terrifying knowledge that Hulan was up in Bashan with Michael Quon. David had told her again and again not to worry about the All-Patriotic Society. She was in extreme danger and, because of his insistence that she abandon her investigation of the cult, she didn’t know it.
“David!” Stuart’s voice was sharp and commanding. “Here are my keys. Take my car. Do you have your passport? No? Then stop at your hotel and pick it up. Take my car to the airport. I’ll call ahead for a plane reservation. David, are you listening to me?”
David nodded, but he barely comprehended what Stuart was saying.
“You’ve got to go before the police get here. I’ll take care of things on this end.”
Stuart shoved a huge wad of cash into David’s pocket, then pushed him out of the library and toward the front door. The pain in David’s ribs jolted him back into some semblance of awareness. They were in the foyer. Ma’s body was still on the floor. David looked at the wrapped ruyi in his hand, then at Stuart.
“Just go,” Stuart said.
David jumped into Stuart’s Lexus, careened down the mountain, and skidded under the Mandarin’s porte cochere. He ran through the lobby. The desk clerk called his name, but David didn’t stop. He threw his things in his bags and was back in the lobby in five minutes to check out. There was no line. No one was going anywhere in this storm.
The desk clerk—a professional at one of the world’s greatest hotels—took in the awfulness of David’s face but spoke with deliberate calm. “I tried to get your attention before, Mr. Stark. I have a fax for you. It came in about an hour ago marked very urgent.”
While the clerk printed out the bill, David opened the envelope. The first page was short but to the point:
Phones and electricity out in Sichuan due to flooding. No word from Hulan and can’t reach her. Please give attached information to her if you get to her first. I am on my way to Bashan. Zai.
The next two sheets were in Chinese, but Zai had written short notes at the top of each page. The first was a toxicology report on Lily. The blood on her body was hers but showed traces of mycotoxins, which, Zai explained, derived from fungi. Traces of the same fungus had been found in her mouth. The fungus, howeve
r, was not poisonous and had not contributed to her death. Finally, in examining Lily’s wounds more fully, Pathologist Fong had found slivers of some sort of stone. This was being analyzed for type and source.
At the top of the next page, Zai had written in his uneven hand:
Transcription of document found on McCarthy’s body. These are ancient Chinese characters. Have sent document to Beijing University for translation.
But David already knew what the characters were. He’d read them in Brian’s journal: river, cliff, cave, dragon, below, and door. Below cave, Brian had written the one character that made the whole map make sense. It was the ideogram for good. David now knew where Brian’s secret cave was. He also understood with a kind of deep sadness that the young archaeologist was far smarter than even Stuart had given him credit for.
David folded the papers and put them in his breast pocket. The worst of his worry dissipated to be replaced by deadly focus.
HULAN WAS WRAPPED IN HER SILK ROBE WHEN SHE ANSWERED A soft knock at her door and found Michael Quon asking if she was going to the dining room. She thanked him for stopping by but said no.
“No breakfast?” he asked, stepping inside the room.
“Just tea,” she answered.
Once he noticed how sheer her robe was and that she was wearing nothing underneath, his eyes darted around the room uneasily. “Your room’s very neat,” he said.
“Thank you, Dr. Quon.”
“I guess I’ll be going then.” Then he backed out of the room, his eyes still not meeting hers. “Have a good day.”
She closed the door and climbed back on the bed. She decided she wasn’t even going to think about that encounter, because there was no secret to the fact that women were naked under their clothes all the time and men and women still managed to go on about their business.
Electricity and phone service had been restored during the night, but for how long Hulan had no idea. She got through on her first try to the Mandarin Oriental and learned that David had checked out, then the line went dead and evidently so did the electricity, because the overhead fan slowed and finally stopped. She thought about where David could have gone. Knowing he might not be able to get back to Bashan because of the weather, he’d probably taken an early flight to Beijing. If he’d retrieved the stolen artifacts, then he’d want to get them to Director Ho at the Cultural Relics Bureau as soon as possible. At least that’s what she would have done if the situation were reversed.
She still needed to speak with Vice Minister Zai. She figured that Captain Hom was the only person in Bashan who might have access to a method of reaching the capital, but when she got to his office he didn’t have any great ideas. He had a cell phone, but the mountainous walls that surrounded Bashan prevented it from working within the town’s footprint. He sometimes drove up into the hills to reach a relatively unobstructed spot, but a landslide had closed the road last night and workmen were still trying to clear the mud and debris that kept seeping down the rain-saturated hillside.
“There’s always a way to move around in the countryside,” Hulan pointed out. “A back road, a special trail—”