The building and the garage beneath it were virtually impregnable but the parking garage annex in an underground structure across the street was far less so.
Concern about terrorist bombs had prompted the Government Services Administration to limit access to the garage under Manhattan Federal Plaza. There were so many federal employees that it would create huge bottlenecks to check every vehicle that entered the garage under the building itself, so that facility was closed to all but the most senior government officials and the one next door constructed for other employees. There was still security in the annex, of course, but since the garage sat beneath a small park, even the worst bomb damage would be limited.
In fact, tonight at 9 P.M. the security was not at its best because the one guard on duty
at the entrance booth was watching some excitement: a car fire on Broadway. An old van was burning down to its tires--a conflagration observed by hundreds of happy passersby.
The chunky guard had stepped out of his booth, watching the black smoke and orange flames dancing through the windows of the van.
So he didn't notice the slight man dressed in a suit and carrying an attache case step quickly into the "autos only" entrance and hurry down the ramp into the half-deserted garage.
The man had memorized the license plate number of the car he sought and it took him only five minutes to find it. The navy blue government-issue vehicle was very close to the main exit door; the driver had this choice spot because he'd arrived only a half hour ago--long after the offices had closed and most of the federal employees had left for the day.
Like nearly all federal cars--the man had been assured--there was no alarm. After a fast glance around the garage he pulled on cloth gloves, quickly drove a wedge between the window and the side of the door, slipped a slim-jim tool inside the space and popped the lock. He opened his attache case and took out a heavy paper bag, glanced inside for one final check. He saw the cluster of foot-long yellow sticks on whose side were the words: EXPLOSIVE. DANGER. SEE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE USE. Wires ran from a detonator in one of the sticks to a battery box and from there to a simple pressure switch. He placed the bag under the driver's seat, unwound a length of wire, then slipped the pressure switch between the springs of the seat. Anyone who weighed more than ninety pounds would complete the circuit and set off the detonator simply by sitting down.
The man clicked the power switch on the battery box from OFF to ON and locked the door of the car, closed it as quietly as he could and left the garage, walking matter-of-factly past the still-oblivious security guard, raptly watching the NYFD douse the flames of the burning van though with a little disappointment in his face--as if he was sorry that the gas tank hadn't blown up spectacularly, as they always did in action flicks and TV shows.
Chapter Twenty-six
They sat in silence, watching the small television set, William translating those words that his parents didn't understand.
The special news report didn't give the names of the people who'd nearly been killed on Canal Street but there was no doubt that it was Wu Qichen and his family; the story said they'd been passengers on the Fuzhou Dragon that morning. One of the Ghost's confederates had been killed but the snakehead himself had escaped with one or two others.
The story ended and commercials came on the television screen. William rose and walked to the window, looked out at the dark street.
"Get back," Chang snapped to his son. But the boy remained where he was for a defiant moment.
Children . . . Chang thought.
"William!"
The boy finally stepped away and walked into the bedroom. Ronald flipped through channels on the television.
"No," Sam Chang told his younger son. "Read. Get a book and practice your English."
The boy dutifully stood. He went to the shelf and found a volume and returned to the couch to read.
Mei-Mei finished stitching together a small stuffed animal for Po-Yee--a cat, it seemed. The woman made the toy pounce onto the arm of her chair and the girl took it in both hands, studying it with happy eyes. Together they played with the cat, laughing.
Chang heard a moan on the couch, where his own father rested, curled in a blanket that was virtually the same gray shade as his skin.
"Baba," Chang whispered and rose immediately. He found the man's medicine, opened it and gave him a tablet of morphine. He held the cup of cold tea so that the man could take the pill. When he'd first gotten sick--the heat and dampness spreading quickly through the yang organs of his body, the stomach and intestines--they'd gone to their local doctor, who'd given them herbs and tonics. Soon, though, that hadn't been enough for the pain and another doctor had diagnosed cancer. But Chang's dissident status had kept his father waiting on the bottom of the list at the hospitals' huge queues for treatment. Medical care in China was changing. The state hospitals were giving way to private clinics but they were extremely expensive--a single visit could cost two months' salary and treating cancer would have been out of the question for a family struggling to survive. The best Chang had been able to find was a "barefoot doctor" in the countryside north of Fuzhou, one of those individuals simply proclaimed by the government to be paramedics and practicing with minimal training. The man had prescribed morphine to ease Chang Jiechi's pain but there was little else he could do.
The bottle of the drug was large but it wouldn't last more than a month and his father was quickly worsening. On the Internet Chang had done a lot of research on the United States. There was a famous hospital in New York that did nothing but treat cancer patients. He knew that his father's condition was advanced but the man wasn't old--not by American standards--only sixty-nine, and he was strong from daily walks and exercise. Surgeons could operate and remove those portions of his body destroyed by the cancerous dampness and give him radiation and medicine to keep the disease at bay. He could live for many more years.
As he gazed at his father the old man suddenly opened his eyes. "The Ghost is angry now that they've killed one of his own people. And that he's failed to kill the Wus. He'll come after us. I know his sort. He won't stop until he finds us."
This was his father's way. To sit and to absorb then give his assessments, which were invariably right. For instance, he'd always considered Mao Zedong a psychopath and had predicted some cataclysm would descend upon the country under his reign. And he'd been right: the near annihilation of the Chinese economy in the fifties thanks to Mao's Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution a decade later, of which his father--like all open-minded artists and thinkers--was a victim.
But Chang Jiechi had survived the disasters. He'd said to his family in the 1960s, "This will pass. The madness cannot be sustained. We have only to stay alive and wait. That is our goal."
Within ten years, Mao was dead, the Gang of Four was imprisoned, and Chang Jiechi had been proven right.
And he was right now too, Sam Chang thought in despair. The Ghost would come after them.
The very name "snakehead" comes from the image of the smugglers crawling furtively through borders to deliver their human cargo to their final destination. Chang sensed the Ghost was doing this now--prowling, calling in favors, wielding his guanxi, threatening, perhaps even torturing people to find the Changs' whereabouts. He might--
Outside, a screech of brakes.