The Stone Monkey (Lincoln Rhyme 4)

"In Brooklyn."

"Oh very good," he said. "They're safe?"

"So far."

"May I come? I can help translate. Chang and I speak the same dialect."

"Sure." Sachs said into the phone, "John Sung's coming with me and Coe. He's going to translate. We're on our way, Rhyme. Call me when you have an address."

They hung up and Sung stepped into the bedroom. A moment later he came out, wearing a bulky windbreaker.

"It's not cold out," Sachs said.

"Always keep warm--important for the qi and blood," he said.

Then Sung looked at her and took her by the shoulders, Sachs responding with a smile of curiosity. With sincerity in his voice he said, "You have done a very good thing, finding those people, Yindao."

She paused and looked at him with a faint frown of curiosity. "Yindao?"

He said, "It's my pet name for you in Chinese. 'Yindao.' It means 'close friend.'"

Sachs was very moved by this. She squeezed his hand. Then stepped back. "Let's go find the Changs."

*

On the street in front of his safehouse the man of many names--Ang Kwan, Gui, the Ghost, John Sung--reached his hand out and shook that of Alan Coe, who was, it seemed, an INS agent.

This gave him some concern, for Coe, he believed, had been part of a group of Chinese and American law enforcers pursuing him overseas. The task force had gotten close to him, troublingly close, but the Ghost's bangshou had done some investigating himself and learned that a young woman who'd worked in a company that the Ghost did business with had been giving the INS and the police information about his snakehead operations. The bangshou had kidnapped the woman, tortured her to find out what she'd told the INS and then buried her body on a construction site.

But apparently Coe had no idea what the Ghost looked like. The snakehead recalled that he'd been wearing the ski mask when they'd tried to kill the Wus on Canal Street; no one would have gotten a look at his face.

Yindao explained what Rhyme had learned and the three of them got into the police station wagon--Coe climbing into the back before the Ghost could take that strategically better seat, as if the agent didn't trust an illegal alien to be sitting behind him. They pulled away from the curb.

From what Yindao was telling Coe, the Ghost understood that there would be other cops and INS agents present at the Changs' apartment. But he'd already made plans to get a few minutes alone with the Changs. When Yindao had come to his apartment a few moments ago, Yusuf and another Uighur had been there. The Turks had slipped into the bedroom before the Ghost had opened the outer door and, later, when he'd gone to get his gun and windbreaker he'd told them to follow Yindao's police car. In Brooklyn the Turks and the Ghost together would kill the Changs.

Glancing back, he noticed that Yusuf's Windstar was close behind them, several cars away.

And what about Yindao? He might have to wait until tomorrow for their intimate liaison.

Naixin, he reflected.

All in good time.

Images of fucking her now filled his thoughts: he quickly lost himself in his continuing fantasies about Yindao, which had grown ever more powerful since he'd first seen her on the beach--swimming out to save him. Last night he'd given her only a chaste acupressure treatment, accompanied by some mumbo jumbo about it helping fertility. Their next get-together would be very different. He would take her to a place where he could play out all the fantasies that had been reeling through his thoughts.

Yindao, pinned beneath him, writhing, whimpering.

In pain.

Screaming.

He was now powerfully aroused and used the excuse of turning around to speak to Coe to hide the evidence of his desire. He began a conversation about the INS's guidelines for political asylum. The agent was blunt and rude and clearly disdainful, even of the man he thought the Ghost to be: a poor widower doctor, a dissident who loved freedom, seeking a better home for his family, harmless and willing to work hard.

Keep the piglets out of the country at all costs, the agent was saying. The message beneath his words was that they weren't fit to be Americans. The politics and morality of illegal immigration meant nothing to the Ghost but he wondered if Coe knew that there were proportionally fewer Chinese-Americans on welfare than any other nationality, including native-born whites. Did he know that the level of education was higher, the incidence of bankruptcy and tax evasion far lower?

It would give him pleasure to kill this man and he was sorry that he couldn't take the time to make it a long death.

The Ghost glanced at Yindao's legs and felt the churning low in his belly again. He recalled their sitting together in the restaurant yesterday, sharing his honest assessment of himself.