Gideon’s Sword

This time, a nod. It seemed the aide was no more eager to stay in here than Gideon was. “Five minutes?”

“Um, how about ten?” Another sob, this one better.

A grunt of approval. “I’ll wait in the hall.”

“Thank you.”

The man went out and the door swung shut behind him. The fluorescent lights buzzed faintly; the forced-air system hissed; the smell in the room was so strong, Gideon felt like it was coating him.

Ten minutes. He’d better get his ass moving. Pulling out the X-rays, he rechecked the location of the wire. It was on the inside of the left thigh, where Wu could have gotten to it readily. For the same reason, it wouldn’t be deep. With luck, the mark or scab of its insertion would still show—​assuming the skin hadn’t deteriorated that badly over the last five days. He took a deep breath, then reached over and grabbed the zipper. It felt like a little cold worm between his thumb and finger. He hesitated, took another breath. And then he drew down the zipper, exposing the face, the naked hairless chest, its Y-incision crudely sewn back together after the autopsy. The body had been sponged off badly, leaving behind streaks and bits of clotted blood, various strings of one thing or another. There were numerous cuts and lacerations that had been sewn up more carefully, obviously during the time Wu was still alive.

The smell was overpowering.

With his left hand he pulled the box cutter from his pocket, wiped it dry, thumbed open the blade. It was time. With a final jerk he pulled the zipper all the way down — and stared. Shocked. Speechless.

“The legs!” he cried. “What the hell? What happened to the legs?”

55

A few blocks north of the Port Authority Bus Terminal and hard by the Hudson River stood a massive, nearly windowless ten-story structure of brown limestone, covering an entire city block. It had originally been the mill and headquarters of the New Amsterdam Blanket and Woolen Goods Corporation. Later, when the company went out of business, an enterprising firm purchased the building and retrofitted it into self-storage facilities. When this failed and was seized for nonpayment of taxes, the city converted the storage units, with few modifications, into “temporary” shelters for homeless persons. Known officially as the Abram S. Hewitt Transitional Housing Facility, unofficially as the Ant Farm, it was a vast cliff dwelling for thousands of the disillusioned and disenfranchised.

Nodding Crane’s own storage-unit-cum-studio was on the seventh floor of the Ant Farm. It suited him perfectly. In his grimy coat and hat, head hanging low, he was almost indistinguishable from the other inmates, the battered guitar case being the only thing that gave him a certain distinction in this shabby and miserable environment.

At two forty-five AM, he walked along the narrow corridor of the seventh floor, past unit after unit, each just a closed roll-down door with a stenciled number, his guitar case knocking gently against his legs. From behind the metal doors, he could hear coughing; snores; other, less identifiable noises. Reaching his own at last, he opened its padlock with a key, raised the curtain wall, ducked in, lowered it again, and barred it shut with a police brace. He reached up, pulled the cord to turn on the bare bulb, then glanced around. The slit of a window peeped into the blackness of an airshaft.

He knew the tiny room had not been burgled: he had replaced the supplied padlock with a much better one he’d purchased, with a five-pin tumbler and a stainless-steel shackle, and it had not been disturbed. And yet with him such an examination was as instinctive as breathing. There was little to take in: a futon, neatly made; a battered leather suitcase; a rice-paper mat; a case of liter-size bottles of springwater; a few rolls of paper towels. In one corner was a portable music player and a stack of well-used Blues CDs; in another, a small neat row of popular paperback books. Nodding Crane favored Hemingway, Twain, and the martial arts literature of the Tang dynasty: Fengshen Yanyi; Outlaws of the Marsh.

There was only one item in the little space that could be considered decorative: a photograph, badly creased and faded, of a brown and desolate-looking mountain range — the Pamir Plateau in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Putting his guitar carefully aside and hanging his coat and hat on a metal hook, Nodding Crane sat on the rice-paper mat and gazed at the photograph with an intense concentration, for five minutes exactly.

He had been born on that plateau, in the shadow of those mountains, far from any village. His father had been a poor herder and smallhold farmer who died when Nodding Crane was less than a year old. His mother had tried to carry on with the farm. One day, when Nodding Crane was six, a man stopped by. He looked very different from any man Nodding Crane had ever seen, and he spoke Mongolian haltingly, with a strange accent. The man said he was from America—​Nodding Crane had vaguely heard of that place. He said he was a missionary, traveling from village to village, but to Nodding Crane he looked more like a beggar than a holy man. In exchange for a meal, he would pray with them and teach the word of God.

His mother invited the man in to share their supper. The man accepted. While they ate, he talked of faraway places, of his strange religion. He was a little clumsy with chopsticks and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and he kept taking quick drinks from a flask. Nodding Crane did not like the way he kept staring at his mother with wet eyes. Now and again he broke into song: a dolorous, mournful kind of music that was new to Nodding Crane. After di

A few days later, Shaolin monks took him away to live in their temple. Other than the kung fu training, however, monastic life ultimately proved not to his liking, and when he had mastered all they could teach he ran away, traveling first to Hohhot and then to Changchun, where he lived on the street and became a master thief. That was before the state police picked him up and, seeing his talent, sent him to the 810 Office for special training.

Every day, without fail, Nodding Crane performed this bitter reflection while gazing upon the faded photograph of his distant home. It was his meditation. He stood up, went through a lengthy series of breathing exercises and limbering drills. Then — in perfect silence — he performed the twenty-nine ritual steps of the “flying guillotine” kata. Breathing a little harder, he sat down again on the rice-paper mat.

Gideon Crew had almost reached his goal. Nodding Crane was now certain he would lead him to what he sought. As Crew closed in on his goal, he would be excited, rushed. It was the correct time for the feint, the unexpected jab at the flank. The girl would serve that purpose well.

Give your enemy no rest, Sun Tzu had written. Attack where he is unprepared, appear where you are unexpected.

Since that night on the Pamir Plateau many years ago, Nodding Crane had never smiled. Nevertheless he felt a warm glow inside himself now: a satisfied glow of violence performed, an expectant glow of more violence to follow.

Slipping his hand into a tear in the seam of the futon, he pulled out a small carrying case made of hard, ballistic plastic, hidden in a cavity excavated from the stuffing. He disarmed the explosive device protecting the case, then unlatched it. Inside were six cell phones; Chinese, Swiss, British, and American passports; many thousands of dollars in a variety of currencies; a Glock 19 with a silencer; and a single handkerchief, pale silk with complex embroidery.