The Eye of God (Sigma Force 9)

Gray had no doubt this was their man, the mysterious Borjigin.

“And why this continuing fascination with wolves?” Seichan asked, clearly noting the same. She stirred and stretched a long leg, baring her ankle.

“They are a good luck symbol here, especially for males.” He had to clearly pull his gaze from her leg. “Wolves also represent a lusty overabundant appetite.”

“How so?” Seichan asked, crossing her other leg, keeping the guy distracted.

“A wolf kills more than he can eat. According to our stories, God told the wolf that he could eat one out of every thousand sheep. The wolf misheard him. He ate one out of every thousand sheep he killed.”

Gray heard a hint of envy in his words, also maybe threat.

Batukhan made a show of checking his watch. “Perhaps we should finish our business, as the day grows late. And I have other matters needing my attention.”

I’m sure you do.

Gray quickly concluded their business and made their good-byes. Once out of sight of the office door, he slipped a small earpiece into place.

Seichan mumbled next to him, “Do you think we got him suspicious enough with all that talk of wolves?”

Gray had his answer quickly enough. He heard Batukhan speaking to his secretary, canceling the rest of his day. Then he was on the phone again, his voice taking a harsher edge of command.

“I’m heading out of the city,” he said. “While I’m gone, keep the packages under guard at the warehouse at all times. Around the clock.”

He gave Seichan a thumbs-up.

Gray had thought they could unsettle the man enough to get him to lead them to the stolen relics, but this was good enough. From Kat’s review of the Mongolian minister’s holdings, he had only one warehouse in the city.

Back out on the street, Gray hailed a cab. They quickly crossed a city that was an odd mix of ornate Mongol palaces, blockish Soviet-era buildings, and serene Buddhist monasteries. Over it all hung a shadowy pall, courtesy of the city’s pollution and smog.

He leaned next to Seichan, slipping his hand into hers, and whispered like a lover in her ear, “Feel like climbing through some sewers?”

She smiled. “You always know how to make a girl feel special.”

4:28 P.M.

With the sun low on the horizon, Seichan stood next to Gray as he pried open a manhole cover, exposing the steam tunnels that crisscrossed beneath the world’s coldest capital city. A waft of hot air blew up from the city’s bowels.

Along with it came faint singing, like a distant children’s choir.

It was disconcertingly sweet coming from this steamy netherworld.

“People make their homes down there,” Gray said.

Seichan had spent her fair share of time in such hiding places, fleeing the cold, finding company with other children of the street. With the city’s high level of unemployment, coupled with its struggle to make the transition from communism to democracy, people fell through the cracks, including lots of homeless children.

Gray headed down first. Their actions were hidden by the shadow of a neighboring apartment complex. It lay only a couple of blocks from their goal. Back in D.C., Kat had pulled blueprints for the warehouse from city records. They discovered this set of steam tunnels led directly under the building and offered access to it via heating ducts.

Seichan descended the ladder, quickly abandoning the bright, cold day for the warm, dark tunnels. With each rung, it got hotter, quickly becoming nearly unbearable. And then there was the overbearing stink of refuse and waste, some of it human.

Gray clicked on a flashlight and dropped to the tunnel floor below.

She joined him, hunched down, coming close to burning herself on a pipe overhead. She switched on her own flashlight and swept its beam down the tunnels that branched in four directions. Down one, she spotted a scurry of motion, a flash of a small, scared face.

Then nothing.

Even the singing had stopped.

She expected the tunnels were regularly raided, the children rounded up and likely sent to detention centers that were little better than the North Korean prison.

No wonder they ran.

“This way,” Gray said and headed in the direction of the warehouse.

The path was not straight and required checking their map twice. Finally, Gray waved her low.

“That next ladder should lead up to the main warehouse floor. We’ll only have the element of surprise for a short time, and we don’t know how many guards we’ll find up there.”

“Got it.”

In other words, move fast.

She adjusted the night-vision goggles atop her head. Gray wore a matching set, looking like he had the disarticulated eyes of an insect.

She waved him forward, having to go on hands and knees from here. As Gray departed, Seichan felt something grab her ankle.

She twisted around, a pistol in her hand, elongated with a silencer.

She found herself facing a small girl of nine or ten, with almond eyes and wide cheekbones, as if looking in a mirror of her own past. The child cowered from the weapon.

Seichan pulled the pistol away, freeing her leg from the girl’s fingers.

“What do you want?” she whispered in Vietnamese, knowing it was close to Mongolian.

The girl looked after Gray, or at least in the direction he was headed. She shook her head and tugged the edge of her pant leg as if to pull her back.

It was a warning of danger.

The children living here must have surmised she and Gray were not with the police. Then, tracking the two of them, they must have realized their goal. Clearly the children down here must have had encounters with the warehouse guards—and not pleasant ones. The effort to warn them was likely less about concern for her and Gray than it was for themselves. Whatever transpired, it was likely to have dire repercussions for the street kids down here.

And they were probably right.

Retribution might be exacted upon those living down here after they left. But there was little Seichan could do about that. She couldn’t change the harsh and unfair ways of the world. She’d had that beaten into her enough times to know.

I’m sorry, little one. Get as far from here as possible.

She tried to communicate that.

“Ði,” she said in Vietnamese. Go.

With a final scared flash of her eyes, the child vanished into the darkness, a shadow of her former self.

Gray hissed for her from the foot of the ladder, oblivious to what had transpired. She hurried over to him. He silently climbed the rungs and secured tiny charges to the locked grate up top.

Dropping back down, they both ducked to the side as he hit the detonator.