Chapter Fifty-Four

Hurrying along the barren street, I tell myself that I’m walking toward the nearest subway station. It gives me a sense of purpose. I find that if I bounce on the balls of my feet, I can be just another guy on the street going about his truly unpleasant day. No intention at all of lurching to the Temple of Heaven Park with a glazed expression and a secret password that I don’t know that I know.

That Bi Yu Nu interview was creepy. I did, though, like the touch about Lil and myself being galactically coveted on the basis of mutual amity. I’d say the world is getting stranger by the moment. Finally there’s only the next step, the next breath, the next alarming oddity.

No sooner does this thought register than I see something no man should ever live to see: a red-bearded East Texan walking toward me with a sawed-off shotgun.

“Get down,” says Ralpho, raising the barrel to the level of my chest.

I oblige, actually grabbing my head with both hands and collapsing onto the sidewalk with a sputtering wail. Immediately comes a horrendous BOOM! followed by the clatter of a spent shotgun shell falling quite near my head. Ralpho’s scuffed boots stride past me.

Turning to look, I discover the crumpled and bloodied remains of a matronly Chinese woman gasping for breath. Beside her on the sidewalk is a pair of powder-blue cat’s-eye glasses. Ralph O’Malley takes a decisive step back and fires another blast into the woman’s body, which spasms violently then falls still.

“What in the name—?” I cry, crawling away from the bloody corpse.

Looking left and right, Ralpho slides two more shells into the magazine and says, “Who else is following you?”

“What?” I reply, dazed. “You want the whole list? Why did you kill Madam Wu?”

Ralpho’s boot kicks something toward me. It’s a stiletto.

“You were just about to receive a kidney donation,” he says.

I grab both kidneys protectively. “Why would—” I begin. “Why should—”

Ralpho says, “I told you, Julian. There’s a lot of people interested in you. Now that you’re officially off the reservation, it’s simpler all around to have you dead. Watch this.”

Bending with a groan, Ralpho pulls at the woman’s thick head of hair. It comes away in his hand, revealing a buzz cut over a scalp roughly as pale as my own. I’m looking at the head of a man, a Westerner and someone I have personally met. With a start, I recognize Barry Scribner, the Latter Day Charlestown attorney—or someone, it now occurs, who pretended to be.

Ralpho tosses the wig. “It’s steady work keeping you alive, dude,” he says, turning to stride away.

“Wait!” I cry. “No, never mind. Don’t wait.”

Stumbling to my feet, I hurry in the opposite direction. The next thing I know with any clarity, I’ve entered a subway station, passed through a dysfunctional infra-red temperature scanner, trotted down three flights of stairs, and huddled against the least conspicuous wall available. As I try to sort through my thoughts, a gathering rumble becomes a clattering burst of sound. A train slows to a stop. Mechanically I step onboard and claim a seat. The other passengers, most of them wearing surgical masks, eye me suspiciously. The current round of gossip seems to have Westerners once more at the head of the bad list.

Only gradually do I understand that this train is northbound, meaning I need to change trains only once to reach the northernmost end of the line. That would put me reasonably near Lillian’s place of detainment. I guess that’s my next move.

Now I’m walking dazedly through another near-empty station plastered with notices, most of them bearing the characters for “disinfected.” I pass through one then another abandoned infra-red temperature scanner, their displays showing nothing but a throbbing string of nines. Every face I see stares accusingly, and I examine my hands and clothing to see whether I’m carrying any bits or pieces of Madam Wu. Or whoever that unfortunate cross-dresser was. I find no trace of her/him and for a moment I wonder whether I might have imagined the entire episode. And hopefully Bi Yu Nu’s apartment before that. I have to dismiss the question. Were that the case, I’m imagining this train station, as well, which leaves me no place at all to stand.

The second northbound train dumps me, or fully appears to, at a small above-ground station where a lone attendant sits inside a glass booth. I hover near that booth, trying to formulate a means of asking directions—when I hear something arresting.

Arresting doesn’t even say it. I turn a complete circle, trying to establish where a certain voice is issuing from. I’m reasonably certain that someone is speaking Mandarin with a West Tennessee accent and a strong dose of Lower Midtown attitude. I begin to walk, peering one way and another, increasingly aware of a voice that at some moments is an emphatic purr, sweet yet gritty like the honey at the mouth of the jar.

I approach a city bus stop, and the string of syrupy Mandarin words gives way to a spirited bar of “I Loves You, Porgy.” I’m looking at the backside of Tree Carter, who is verbally engaged with a bus driver blocking the entrance to his bus. Still a bit dazed, I watch the driver secure the door then give Tree an imperious stare through the glass while wiping his hands on a cloth from his pocket. A moment later, the near-empty bus has whooshed away down the street.

Tree, alone at the bus stop, sighs loudly and says, “Leave unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” She takes hold of the handle of her rolling suitcase. Turning, she finds herself looking straight at me.

“Did you say please?” I inquire.

Tree’s mouth falls open.

“No hugs,” I tell her.

“Oh my God!” exults Tree, abandoning the suitcase.

“I said no hggghhhh—”

Tree’s embrace forces all the air out of me and damages a few additional ribs.

“My Julian, my Julian! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! I knew we’d be put together somehow, and here you are.”

Gasping, I say, “I don’t suppose you can guarantee that I’m not imagining this?”

“Did you see that bus driver?” asks Tree. “Did you see that? Come on, let’s find us a taxi.”

“What exactly is the plan?” I ask, more or less knowing the answer.

Grabbing the handle of her suitcase, Tree sings, “We are committing our foot to the path, and the road shall appear beneath our feet.”

“I was afraid that would be the plan.”

As we scout for a taxi, I learn that Tree was picked up at her apartment by Shenzhen detectives shortly after our last meeting. “Didn’t bother me,” she says. “I knew that the forces of darkness would appear, and I knew that they would not prevail. Sure enough, two men came from the Consulate and told the po-lice they couldn’t hold me one minute longer. Those kind-hearted men refused to leave without me, praise be to God. They even escorted me to the airport and put me on the plane, and I haven’t had a single problem since.”

Of course you haven’t, comes the thought. They’re using you to find me. “You’re sure you aren’t being followed?”

“Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,” trumpets Tree.

“Actually, I wasn’t thinking about goodness and mercy.”

As we circle the station in search of the inevitable line of taxis, I give Tree the short version of my story. I got a lift to Beijing from a friend whose organized-crime connections didn’t quite connect.

“You were going to talk to the Triad?” asks Tree, trying not to laugh.

“I had planned,” I reply irritably, “to consult with the Triad.”

“You had planned to consult with the Triad,” she repeats before surrendering to an extended sputter.

“I’m glad it makes you so happy,” I say.

“Don’t you get it? You knew, Jules. You knew all along that the answer is in the triadic. You just took it a little too literally, baby.”

“Tree, not now.”

She looks at me in surprise. “What do you mean, not now?”

“I mean, not now that whole wad of goo, okay? There is no triadic. All there is, is a very bad case of the nines, and I certainly hope you aren’t going to gild that particular lily.”

“You can still doubt it?” says Tree, amazed. “You can doubt that Spirit is at work here? After we just walked straight to each other in a city of thirteen million people?”

I look away.

“Mighty armies are arrayed around us, Julian Mancer!” thunders Tree in her radio voice.

“Got it,” I say, noting a nearby policeman now turning to stare.

“Mighty forces of light and darkness are being brought to bear all around us!” shouts Tree. “It’s coming to a head right here and right now, and you had better prepare your weapons. Are you hearing me, Julian Mancer? Are we communicating?”

“Wall to wall, dearest,” I say, pulling Tree along.

“You need to understand something,” she adds. “We are about to reunite with Lillian, and you need to be ready for that. You have no idea what the three of us can do when our intentions are aligned. All we have been waiting for all along, baby, is you. Waiting for Julian Mancer to finally come onboard, and I’m feeling that now. All this mess, all this trouble, is just what was required to finally get your attention. Are you seeing that?”

I don’t reply. I’m not up to any more of Tree’s saccharine and brimstone just now. We’re just about to go confrontational with more or less every bad guy west of Spokane, and I seem to be the only one around here who gets that. One thing Tree does seem to have right, though. Mighty armies are arrayed around us.

Turning a corner, we find a long line of red taxis. We approach the first in line, but before we can touch the door handle the driver waves us off. The second and third drivers do the same. The fourth cabbie allows us inside until Tree declares our destination. We are ordered out of the cab. As we exit, I see him aerosol-spraying the interior.

A horde of starving taxi drivers now swarms around us, grabbing, shouting, jostling, their dirty gauze masks slipping down their faces. Tree shouts our intended destination, and all but one of them walks away. The remaining driver, who looks all of sixteen, goes a bit pale but he’s still standing here. He and Tree negotiate at length in Mandarin.

“He’ll take us nearby,” Tree tells me at last. “We’ll have to walk the last half a kilometer or so. We’re paying triple the meter.”

I nod agreeably, knowing that the meter won’t work.

Tree takes the rear of the taxi and I the front. The taxi zips along suburban Beijing’s broad, empty thoroughfares, the driver all the while slapping his useless meter. The driver exits the main road just before we reach a roadblock where, I note with pleasure, the bus that just refused Tree is mired in a long, unmoving line. The cabbie, grimly silent, turns onto a succession of ever-more-lonely two-lanes. My eyes take in shop after shuttered shop, many of them plastered with humorless black-on-white notices. Finally I submit to the urge to turn and check the road behind us. A taxi seems to be following at a distance.

“Is your past catching up?” asks Tree.

I ignore her and she laughs.

“Listen, Jules, I need to tell you something,” says Tree. “Your past is tracking you. It’s tracked you all the way here, and the last thing we need is to have your past in our present. Understand?”

“No, I don’t. Who is tracking me?”

“It’s someone who used to work for you. He was your right-hand man. You sent him away just when you needed him the most. I think he ain’t over it.”

“Are you talking about Truman?”

“Truman was a mask, Julian. I’m talking about the spirit behind the mask. I’m talking about where that energy is coming from, and it’s coming from your past. Be careful. He may have plans to mess with your big finale.”

“I have a big finale?” I say.

“You better have.”

I feel Tree’s hand on my shoulder. “I took a chance on you. Don’t make me out wrong.”

“This isn’t helping,” I say irritably.

“And one more little thing,” says Tree, and her hand disappears. “All that stuff I said happened on Cetus? It didn’t happen on Cetus.”

I turn to look at her. “You mean the civilization I destroyed?”

Tree says, “I didn’t think you were ready to hear it. Maybe you’re still not ready, but all that stuff happened right here on Earth.”

“Why did I know you were going to say that?”

“You’re returning to the scene of the crime, Jules. Your day of redemption has come at last.”

The driver brakes in the precise middle of nowhere, slams off the dysfunctional meter, and points straight ahead. I look straight ahead. There’s nothing to see except an empty two-lane, a few abandoned buildings, a weedy lot, and a tailless cat. Tree questions the driver, but he just keeps jabbing his forefinger straight ahead.

Moments later, the taxi is turning and speeding away, and Tree and I stand gazing around ourselves at a ramshackle industrial area, evidently idle for quite some time. I take one look at the pitted pavement and pull out the shoulder-straps of Tree’s suitcase.

“Help me with this,” I say, squatting while Tree helps me into the straps. I turn to check the road behind us. There’s a taxi parked some two hundred yards back. That’s nice.

“Let’s go,” I say.

Beneath the haze-filtered sun, we walk within an eerie silence that makes every footfall seem slightly absurd. I offer my water bottle, and Tree shakes her head.

“You’re dehydrated,” I tell her.

“You tend to yours. I’ll tend to mine.”

I point to a wooden sign just ahead of us. It’s covered with strident red Chinese characters. “Can you read that?” I ask.

“You know my eyes are bad,” replies Tree.

Just as well, I decide. I just checked behind us again, and there are two taxis creeping along a hundred meters behind us.

“Where’s the traffic?” I ask irritably. “A ten-thousand-bed hospital has to generate more traffic than this.”

“Many paths to the mountaintop,” says Tree, beginning to wheeze, rivulets of sweat starting down her face.

She could actually be right. The taxi driver may have chosen a seldom-used route, a back-door approach that the various welcoming committees may not anticipate.

A moment later, Tree is squinting at the sign. “It’s the characters for SARS. The last character means ‘warning.’ I’d say we’re getting close.”

She turns to me. “Julian, I have to say something—”

“I’m not listening.”

“What happens today will—”

“I’m not listening,” I say testily. “I am what I am, and I do what I do.” I extend the water bottle. “Put this in your mouth.”

Tree smiles as she accepts the water bottle. “That’s all I needed to hear, baby. You’re standing in your power. Halleluiah and praise God.”

As Tree takes a modest sip, three equally-spaced gunshots erupt behind us. I turn to see one of the two taxis squeal a one-eighty and make haste back toward Beijing.

“Fireworks,” I say.