Medusa

Zavala’s face was caked with dried blood, but he still managed to smile when he saw Austin.

“Hi, Kurt, nice of you to crash the party. Time to leave?”

“You’ll have to ask Mr. Phelps. Are you okay?”

“Charlie Yoo set me up, and some of these guys used my face for a punching bag, but nothing broken that I know of.”

“We’ll have to remember to pay them back for their hospitality.” Zavala smiled through bloodied lips.

“That’s what I like about you, Kurt. The glass is always half full. Whoops-”

The warehouse went dark just then, and the two men were enveloped in almost total blackness. After a moment, a spotlight directly overhead blinked on, and they found themselves at the center of a circle of bright white light. A second overhead spot came on about twenty-five feet to the front of where they sat.

The screen was gone, revealing a table covered in green baize. Behind the table sat a woman who seemed to be scrutinizing the two men from NUMA. She was dressed in a dark purple, two-piece outfit, and a cloak the same color was draped around her shoulders. Her dark hair was parted down the middle, and high, arched brows framed a Eurasian face.

Austin stared at the woman in disbelief.

“This is crazy,” he whispered, “but I know her. She’s the Dragon Lady.”

“I’ve seen worse-looking dragons. Why don’t you introduce me?”

“Not sure I can, Joe. The Dragon Lady wasn’t a real person.”

Zavala turned and looked at Austin as if his friend had lost his marbles.

“I’m the one who got his brain bashed around,” Zavala said. “She looks pretty real to me.”

“Me too, Joe, but the Dragon Lady was a character in a comic strip. Terry and the Pirates . . . Stereotypical femme fatale. My father used to read it to me when I was a kid. She was always causing trouble. Damn. What was her name?”

The woman’s lips parted in a smile.

“My name is Lai Choi San,” she said in a voice that would have been seductive it if hadn’t been drained of all emotion. “Bravo, Mr. Austin. Few people know I even have another name. I have been looking forward to this meeting.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Austin said. “Now that we’re good friends, maybe you’d like to tell us why you invited us here.”

He could hardly believe he was talking to a comic-strip character. Next, he’d be chatting with Roger Rabbit.

“For a start, I want you to tell me the whereabouts of Dr. Kane,” she said.

Austin shrugged.

“Kane is under government protective custody. I can’t tell you where they are holding him. Apparently, someone is trying to kill him.”

“Really?” she purred. “Who would want to do that to the brilliant doctor?”

“The same people who hijacked the lab that was developing a vaccine from the medusa toxin.”

The woman gave him a slow-burn stare, and her face actually seemed to glow with anger. Austin passed it off as a manipulation.

“What you don’t know,” she said, “is that Pyramid created the new virus. Our pharmaceutical company was experimenting with an influenza vaccine for the world market and inadvertently produced the more virulent and adaptable strain. They wanted to destroy it, but wiser heads prevailed.”

“Why didn’t wiser heads prevent the virus from breaking out?”

“That was an accident, something we would have avoided until we had developed the antidote, which would have gone to members of my organization first. You see, the virus fit in with our larger plan of destabilizing the government. The outbreak of SARS almost toppled China’s leaders. Just think how the public would react to their impotence in dealing with an even more lethal virus. They would see Pyramid step in and cure the masses. In return, we would acquire power and fortune. We would replace the Chinese government.”

“Do you know that the virus is going to hit your big cities in a couple of days?”

“It was only a matter of time, no matter what the government did. The more, the merrier.”

Austin stared at the apparition.

“You’re willing to wipe out scores of your countrymen to stir up trouble with your government?” he asked.

“You know a great deal and very little,” she said. “What if we killed a few hundred, or even a few million, Chinese? We have a billion people. An epidemic would be far more effective for population control than the one-child-per-couple rule.”

“You’ll never be able to keep that virus contained, even with the vaccine the lab has been working on. It will move too fast. It will be in every country in a week or so.”

“Wouldn’t you say that the deaths of millions will be the most convincing reason for people to buy our vaccine?” she said. “Think of it as marketing and promotion.”

“You’re insane to think a scheme like that will work,” he said.

“It is our government leadership that is insane. Pyramid has been in our family for generations. Past governments that have tried to destroy our organization have paid the price. We were here long before those so-called leaders were even born. We won’t be thrown into history’s dustbin.”

The figure at the table seemed to glow incandescently as she launched into a diatribe against the Chinese Communist government for having the audacity to take on an organization that goes back hundreds of years.

Zavala had been staring spellbound at the woman.

“Kurt,” he whispered, “I can see through her. Look at her right arm, the one she’s waving around.”

Austin focused on the moving right arm. Through the material of her loose-fitting silk sleeve, he caught faint glimpses of the brick wall behind her.

“You’re right,” he said. “She’s nothing but a projection, like Max,” referring to the name Hiram Yeager gave to the holographic personification generated by his interactive computer.

The Dragon Lady noticed Austin’s grin and stopped her tirade.

“You are a strange man, Mr. Austin. Don’t you fear the prospect of death?”

“Not from someone who’s no more real than a comic strip.”

“Enough!” she snarled. “I will show you how real I am. My brother Chang awaits your arrival. He will make sure your death is long and painful.”

She issued an order in Chinese, and the guards moved in. “Wait a minute,” Austin called out. “What if I can produce Dr. Kane?”

She barked a second order, and the guards froze in their tracks.

“You said that Kane was in protective custody,” she said, “and couldn’t be reached.”

“I was lying . . . I do that a lot.”

“That’s true,” Zavala threw in. “Kurt is one of the biggest liars I know.”

Austin gave Zavala a sidelong glance that told him he was laying it on a bit too thick.

“Let me make a phone call,” Austin said, looking back at the Dragon Lady, “and I’ll set him up.”

Austin was trying to buy time, hoping to talk his captors into freeing him from his chair. His immediate plan was to grab a gun. It was a throw of the dice, but was all that he had.

“A futile effort, Mr. Austin,” she said. “I no longer care whether Kane lives or dies. His project is near completion and his services are not needed . . . Good-bye.”

Austin expected the Ghost Devils to move in again, but they had hoisted their weapons high on their chests and were staring toward the rear of the warehouse.

The hologram shimmered.

“What is that?” she asked.

In answer, an amplified voice came from outside.

“This is the FBI. Throw your weapons aside and come out with your hands up.”

It was a woman’s voice, speaking through a bullhorn.

Gordon Phelps had been off to the side, watching the exchange between Austin and the hologram. He stepped out of the shadows and into the spotlight. He yelled a command in Chinese to the Ghost Devils, then in English said to Austin and Zavala, “Don’t go away, boys.”

Then he and the guards ran back toward the loading-dock door.