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“Keep a close watch on him.”
“We shall. But when I tell the world of his discovery, I doubt the danger will be there any longer.”
“You’re really going to do that?”
Ni nodded. “It is the only course. That realization should change the world, to everyone’s advantage.”
“And place China in a different light in everyone’s eyes.”
“We can only hope.”
Which should satisfy Washington. Ivan? Too damn bad. “What about Pau Wen and those four murders?”
“They will not be forgotten.”
He was glad to hear that. “Why did you trust us in Xi’an?”
Ni shrugged. “Something told me that you and Ms. Vitt were people I could rely on.”
Malone thought of Henrik Thorvaldsen and wished his old friend had died thinking the same thing.
“I’m leaving for Kashgar shortly to meet the premier,” Ni said. “He and I are returning to Beijing together. I’ll make sure a helicopter returns for you and Ms. Vitt.”
Ni stood and extended a hand. “I thank you. I owe you my life.”
Malone shook his hand and waved off the gratitude. “Just do what you said you were going to do.” But there was one other thing he wanted to know. “If I had not come along, would you have slit Pau’s throat?”
Ni did not immediately answer, as if seriously considering the inquiry. Finally, he said, “I’m not sure. Thank goodness we didn’t have to find out.”
He smiled.
“Take care, Mr. Malone.”
“You, too.”
Ni disappeared through an open doorway, heading back inside. He understood why he and Cassiopeia weren’t leaving with him.
Time to fade into the background.
As all agents do.
Malone had read about a sky burial. Dicing a corpse into pieces, beating it to a paste with flour, tea, and milk, then allowing carrion to feast on the mixture represented a return to fire, water, earth, and wind, the basic elements of man. A great honor.
He and Cassiopeia stood and watched the ancient ceremony. A couple of hours ago Viktor’s body had been brought outside the walls, to a nearby valley, and prepared.
“Our brothers are trained in the jhator,” Pau said. “It is a ritual we have performed many times.”
“Are you really going to help Ni Yong?” Malone asked.
“Legalism? Confucianism? Communism? Democracy? An emperor? Or an elected president? Our problem for the past sixty years is that no single concept or philosophy has dominated. Instead we have languished in an uncertain middle, bits of each vying for control. Chinese fear chaos. We despise uncertainty. We have many times accepted the wrong system in the name of certainty.” Pau hesitated a moment. “At a minimum, Tang and Ni offered a clear choice. Now it has been made. So the Ba shall be Ni’s ally.”
“Where I was raised,” Malone said, “there’s a saying. Don’t go through your asshole to get to your appetite. Maybe the Chinese can learn from that.”
Pau smiled. “Is that wisdom from one of your great American philosophers?”
“A group of them, yes. They’re called rednecks.”
“What’s to prevent someone else from simply taking Tang’s place?” Cassiopeia asked. “Surely he has followers ready to take up the cause.”
“No doubt,” Pau said. “But this is not America or Europe. Those followers have no access to media, nor to the Party hierarchy. Those privileges have to be earned, over many years of loyal service. Politics here is a personal journey, one that takes an excruciatingly long time. Tang’s own rise required nearly twenty years.” Pau shook his head. “No. Minister Ni is now the only one poised for ultimate power.”
Which Ni well knew, Malone thought. He was disappointed that he would not be around when Pau Wen received a dose of his own medicine.
“You sound confident,” Cassiopeia said.
“Fate has intervened on China’s behalf.”
“You don’t really believe that?” he asked. “Fate? You determined most of this.”
Pau smiled. “How else could all of our involvement be explained? Isn’t it odd that we were each in the precise location, at the precise time, to precisely affect the outcome? If that is not fate, then what is?”
Ni’s assessment of Pau seemed correct. He did overestimate his worth. And you didn’t have to be a genius to understand the ramifications of that mistake. But that wasn’t Malone’s problem. His job was done.
Half a dozen brothers encircled Viktor’s prepared remains, chanting, incense wafting from copper vessels.
Overhead the vultures had arrived. “Can we go?” Cassiopeia asked.
They left before the birds arrived and walked back toward the monastery across rocks and cobbles littered with ribbons of pale green grass. Neither one of them turned to see what happened.
“I was wrong about Viktor,” he quietly said.
“That was an easy mistake to make. He was tough to read.”
“Not in the end.”
“He took himself out with Tang, counting on me to land the kill shot,” she said.
He’d thought the same thing.
“I heard what he said as he turned,” she said.
You take care of her.
He stopped.
So did she.
He said, “We’ve played a lot of games.”
“Too many.”
“What do we do now?”
Her eyes were pools of water. “Strange. You and I having this conversation while Viktor is dead.”
“He made his choice.”
She shook her head. “I’m not so sure I didn’t make it for him. When I tossed that knife down. That’s what really gets me. He played many parts to many different audiences. You have to wonder, were those final words just more of the act?”
Malone knew the answer. He’d seen something she could not have witnessed. At the moment of his death, Viktor Tomas finally conveyed the truth.
You take care of her.
Yes, indeed.
She stared at him, seemingly summoning the courage to reveal something. He sympathized with her. His thoughts were likewise muddled. When he?
??d believed she was dead, a future without her had seemed unimaginable.
“No more games,” she said.
He nodded.
He cupped her hand in his. “Cotton—”
He silenced her lips with two fingers. “Me, too.” And he kissed her.
WRITER’S NOTE
This book took Elizabeth and me to Copenhagen and Antwerp but, unfortunately, not to China. That excursion would have taken far more time than was available. A book a year demands a tight schedule. So, with Antarctica from The Charlemagne Pursuit, China remains at the top of our must-see list.
I did, though, have the characters visit as much of the country as possible. Chongqing, Gansu province, Xi’an, Kashgar, Yecheng, Beijing, Lanzhou, Yunnan province, and the western highlands are all accurately depicted. The statistics relative to China in chapter 2 are accurate, as is all of the other vital information noted about the country throughout the story. It is truly a place of superlatives. The town of Batang and the Hall for the Preservation of Harmony are fictitious. Dian Chi (chapter 47) is real, though its pollution is far worse than I allowed (chapter 48).
Time now to separate more fact from fiction.
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Chinese Communist Party exists and functions as described (chapter 4).
All of the ancient scientific discoveries, innovations, and inventions attributable to the Chinese, detailed in chapters 4 and 7, are factual. Once, China was the technological leader of the world. That dominance changed around the 14th century when a variety of factors—among them the lack of a workable alphabet, the influences of Confucianism and Daoism, and the propensity of each succeeding dynasty to eradicate all traces of the ones that came before it—resulted in not only ideological stagnation but also cultural amnesia. The story noted in chapter 7, about Jesuit missionaries displaying a clock the Chinese did not know they themselves had invented 1,000 years before, is real. A British academic, Joseph Needham, during the 20th century, made it his lifework to document China’s lost technological and scientific past. The research and publications that he began continue today through the Needham Research Institute.
