Medusa

With a few strokes, she sent the kayak toward a weathered gray wooden post that stuck out of the water near the edge of a mangrove. It marked a narrow break in the otherwise impenetrable tangle of roots. The kayak’s hull scraped an oyster bed and came to rest on shore.

Lee stepped into warm, knee-deep water. Although she knew that Dooley’s giant alligator was a fable, she quickly hauled the kayak onto the narrow beach.

She grabbed a rucksack that held water and power bars and walked through a tu

A rush of air off the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico cooled Lee’s face as the path ended at a barrier beach. She strolled along the beach for a short distance and plunked down on the sand with her back against a sea-silvered driftwood log.

A blue-hulled fishing boat was anchored offshore just beyond the line of breakers. Otherwise, she had the beach to herself. She had seen the boat several times in the past week or so, but it had stayed a respectful distance away. She examined it through the zoom lens of her camera but saw no one on deck.

When she had first landed on Bonefish Key months before, Dr. Lee had been advised by Dr. Kane to find a distraction to take her mind off her work. Some scientists avoided burnout by fishing, others by playing chess or reading. A few spent too much time at the Dollar Bar. The daily kayak trips into the mangroves had been her salvation. The break she took each afternoon rejuvenated her, allowing her to work late into the night.

With the project nearly at an end, she would miss the remote beauty of the island when she returned to China. She wondered if her government would reward or even acknowledge her labors, or if she would just return to her country practice.

She gave in to her weariness and fell asleep. When she awoke, she glanced at her watch. She looked off along the beach and noticed that the blue-hulled boat had vanished. She frowned. She had regained her privacy, but it was time to go back to work. She got up, brushed the sand from her shorts, and headed across the island to her kayak.

When Lee broke through the tree canopy, she saw that the kayak was no longer where she had left it on the beach. She set her pack aside, waded out into the water, and visually searched the lagoon.

There was no sign of the kayak.

Lee turned back to the island, saw blue plastic gleaming in the grass, and let out a sigh of relief. The kayak had been pulled up into the tall grass on one side of the beach. She wondered why anyone would do such a thing and stepped into the grass to retrieve the kayak. It was a remote spot, and she felt uncomfortable knowing there was someone else on the island.

She was pulling the kayak back toward the water when she felt a prickling sensation that had nothing to do with the heat on the back of her neck. She turned and saw a man on the beach, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses.

He had soundlessly materialized from the scrub and now blocked Lee’s way to the water. He was physically frightening. His hardened Asian features seemed to have been hammered on an anvil. His thin-lipped mouth looked as if it could not be pried into a smile with a crowbar. He wore shorts, and the muscles on his arms and legs appeared capable of driving his knuckles or clublike feet through a brick wall.

Making him even more formidable was the automatic weapon cradled in his arms. The muzzle was pointed at her heart.

Despite her fears, Song Lee managed to croak out a question.

“Who are you?” she said.

“I am the ghost who watches,” he said with no change of expression.

What nonsense, Lee thought. The man was obviously deranged. She tried to assert control over the situation.

“Did you move my kayak?” she asked.

She thought she saw a slight nod of the chin.

“Then I’d appreciate your help in pulling it back to the water.”

He smiled for the first time and lowered the gun. Thinking that maybe her bluff had worked, she turned to grab the kayak.

“Dr. Lee?”

Hearing her name called, she knew this was no random encounter. She saw a quick movement out of the corner of her eye as the man raised his gun above his head and brought it down stock first. She felt an explosion at the back of her skull, and saw a flash of white light before the darkness closed in, and she was unconscious before she crashed facedown into the mud.

CHAPTER 23

THE FBI’S J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING HEADQUARTERS ON Pe

Caitlin Lyons had called ahead, easing Zavala’s entry into the FBI’s i

The guide stopped in front of an unmarked door and knocked softly. A voice on the other side of the door said to come in. Zavala thanked the guide, and opened it.

Inside was an office slightly bigger than the gray metal table and chairs it contained. There was nothing on the walls except a black-and-white photo of the Great Wall of China.

A man sat behind the desk talking on the phone in Chinese. He waved Zavala to a chair, continued chatting a minute, then ended the conversation and set the receiver back in its cradle. Popping up like a jack-in-the-box, he shook Zavala’s hand as if trying to coax water from a reluctant pump, then settled back in his chair.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “I’m Charlie Yoo.” He flashed a friendly smile. “Please, no jokes about the last name. I’ve heard enough ‘Yoo-hoo’ and ‘How’s by Yoo’ around here to last a lifetime.”

Yoo was a pencil-thin man in his mid-thirties. He wore a stylishly cut shiny gray suit with a cobalt blue shirt and blue-and-red striped tie, a sartorial style more in keeping with a cocktail hour at the Willard Hotel than the bowels of the FBI, where conservative navy blue suits were the norm. Yoo spoke English with a New York accent, the sentences coming like bursts of photon energy.

“Nice to meet you, Agent Yoo. I’m Caitlin’s friend, Joe Zavala.”

“The man from NUMA . . . great organization, Joe. Please call me Charlie. Caitlin’s a fantastic woman and a terrific cop. She said you were looking into the Pyramid Triad.”

“That’s right. She thought you might be able to help.”

Yoo sat back in his chair and tented his fingers.

“Excuse me for asking, Joe, but NUMA is an underwater outfit, from what I’ve heard. Why would a guy from NUMA be interested in Chinese organized crime?”

“We wouldn’t be, ordinarily. But someone tried to sabotage a NUMA operation, and we have circumstantial evidence that the seafood subsidiary of Pyramid Trading may have been involved.”

Yoo hiked his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.

“Excuse me for being skeptical, Joe, but that doesn’t seem like Pyramid’s m.o. What’s your evidence?”

“Let me fill in the background. A few days ago, NUMA launched the Bathysphere 3, a replica of a historical diving bell, in waters off Bermuda. The dive was broadcast all over the world . . . You may have seen it on television . . .”

Yoo spread his hands apart, his empty palms signifying no. “I’ve been pretty busy, Joe. Haven’t watched much TV. Is this the op that Pyramid supposedly tried to sabotage?”