Deadly Memory (Living Memory Book 2), page 11
Kit followed him. Zhanwei wore civilian clothes, a simple black suit that any of a million Bangkok businessmen would be wearing in the streets at this time of day, though he wore a fresh peony in his lapel. The colonel walked confidently down the tree-lined Ratchadamnoen Nok avenue, past flowered shrines with Mai’s face on them, heading south by the ministry buildings. He turned left onto Chakkraphat, past rows of homes and shops with dozens of tangled electrical wires crisscrossing each other overhead.
Kit thought he might be heading for a rice shop or for some coffee, but he kept going, crossing the Phanfa Bridge. He passed several elevated train platforms, but didn’t even look at them. The weather was pleasant, the heat dissipating as the sun grew low in the sky, so perhaps he was just enjoying the walk. Finally, his destination became clear: Sampeng Lane market in Chinatown. At this time of day, the narrow, winding paths were choked with people jostling each other to squeeze between stalls overflowing with hot cooked food.
As Zhanwei made his way through the tight-packed market, however, the crowd parted to let him pass. No one looked at him or paid him any attention, but they nevertheless scrambled to let him through. Kit wondered if he was telling them to move out of the way, or if the smell from the peony was enough to make them step aside. With cotton stuffed up his nose, Kit couldn’t smell anything, not the domination drug or the spicy food sizzling in carts and folding tables on every side.
Zhanwei sampled the food as he walked, and no one objected or asked him to pay. At one point, a pretty young woman walked past, holding hands with a young man. Zhanwei said something to the girl, and she put her arms around Zhanwei’s neck and kissed him gently on the mouth. Her boyfriend said nothing. Zhanwei smiled, patted her backside, and walked on.
Kit wanted to throw up. If he behaved like this on the street, what was he doing to Mai and Arinya? Kit picked up his pace, closing in on the colonel while he perused a selection of dishes from a smiling vendor. Zhanwei chose a seafood dish and took it without paying. Kit growled. The man had the whole treasury of Thailand at his disposal, could get any food he wanted prepared expertly for him by palace chefs, but he couldn’t pay a poor street vendor a few lousy baht?
Zhanwei sidled into a nook where a noodle shop owner had squeezed a few chairs and a table under a metal awning. A family had been there eating guay diow, but they cleared out when Zhanwei waved them away. He settled into one of the chairs and dug chopsticks into his fish.
Kit couldn’t stand it anymore. He didn’t have a plan; he just acted. While Zhanwei was focused on his meal, Kit charged up behind him and attacked. With one hand, he snatched the peony from the colonel’s lapel, and with the other he pulled the plug out of Zhanwei’s nose. Before he could react, Kit kicked him away hard enough that the plastic chair buckled and collapsed, sending him sprawling into the street.
Kit tucked the peony into his own shirt pocket and threw the man’s noseplug aside. The cotton in his own nose prevented him from smelling the flower, but he didn’t need to smell it to know what it was. Zhanwei, realizing immediately what was happening, scrambled to his feet and took off through the crowd.
Kit ran after him, plowing through the people so they would smell the scent flooding from his peony and know it came from him. “That man stole my wallet!” he shouted. “Stop him!”
The market crowd reacted, cutting off Zhanwei’s escape and holding him fast. Kit felt the exhilaration of commanding the obedience of others. This was power. He could do anything he wanted.
But no. He could do anything he wanted until he ran out of chemical, and then he would have to face the consequences. Besides, there was only one thing he wanted.
The crowd parted as he walked toward Zhanwei, who cowered and held his nose tightly shut.
“Pull his hands away from his face,” Kit said.
Two men on either side of the colonel did.
“Keep your airways clear,” Kit said. “Don’t touch me or take anything from me. Come with me.”
Zhanwei stood up and followed him.
The next problem was where to go. First, he found the seafood vendor and told Zhanwei to pay for the meal. When Zhanwei pulled out a sheaf of bills, Kit told him to give him triple what the meal was worth. He spotted a leather goods shop stuffed with knockoff Gucci and Prada wallets and purses. The shop was just a concrete room with a metal garage door that rolled down from above. Kit told the shopkeeper to leave and had Zhanwei pay him handsomely for the trouble. Then Kit rolled down the door with only the two of them inside.
Two dim electric bulbs lit the tiny space. The air turned hot and stale.
“Where is the princess? What are you doing to her?” Kit demanded.
The man cringed, his bald head beading with sweat. “She is safe, I swear it. She is treated well.”
“And you force her to make the decisions you want?”
“Yes. We control the whole government now. There will be no more petty feuding. All will be united under China, as is only right and good.” The man spoke with the fervor of a zealot.
“What about Arinya Tavaranan? Is she safe as well?”
“She serves the princess. She does as we tell her.”
“What is your plan? What comes next?”
“Next? All of the world, of course. All the people of Earth will finally live in peace. We will no longer squander our resources on wars no one can win. Only when humanity is united will we be free to build our future, explore the stars, conquer our own genomes. This is the beginning of everything.”
“You idiot,” Kit said. “This drug will cause the biggest war in history. Everyone will fight to control it. Your glorious future is only wonderful for the ones pulling the strings. No one wants peace at the cost of their own slavery. How do you like it now that I’m in charge?”
“You used the drug to rule Thailand before we ever came,” Zhanwei pointed out.
Kit winced, because of course he was right. Mai insisted they were using it for good, and Kit still thought they had been. But Zhanwei thought the same thing.
“I wish you to let me go,” Zhanwei said.
“Of course you do. But not until you answer my questions. How many Chinese agents
are using the drug in Thailand?”
“Twenty here in Bangkok.”
The way he said it gave Kit pause. “And elsewhere in Thailand?”
“My men are all here. But the Ministry of State Security has their own agents who do not answer to me. It was they who supplied the Red Wa, and at one point had a presence in Chiang Mai. Princess Sirindhorn destroyed much of their influence in that region, though, so I don’t know if any remain.”
“You think you can unify the world, but you already have factions even in your own country,” Kit said. “The more knowledge of the drug spreads, the worse it will get. People will never stop fighting for it.”
“China is the greatest nation on Earth,” Zhanwei said. “We have unified our vast region with its many languages and cultures, and we can bring that same peace to the world.”
“I saw the news about Taiwan. Are you taking over other countries as well?”
“Taiwan has always been ours,” the colonel snapped. “But yes, we have men with the drug in Hanoi, Tokyo, Seoul, Pyongyang, Jakarta, Manila. None in New Delhi yet, but that will come soon.” He spoke with pride. “And of course, we have a few men in the halls of power of Washington, D.C.”
“How can you possibly supply so many agents with the drug?” Kit asked. He and Arinya had confiscated all of the Red Wa’s supply—which had also come from China—but they had run through it quickly. Only tiny amounts had come from the fossil site. “How much do you have? How many fossils have you found?”
Zhanwei chuckled. “If you were not forcing my truthfulness, you would not believe me.”
“Tell me.”
“It is not from the dead dinosaurs. It is from a living one.”
Kit stared, uncertain how to take this. “No riddles,” he said. “Tell me what you mean.”
“I mean what I said. A living dinosaur, with scent glands from which this marvelous and miraculous substance is extracted.”
“A dinosaur. You mean a modern bird? Speak plainly!”
The colonel cringed, the scent making him docile, eager to please. “I am speaking plainly; you do not believe me. A genuine dinosaur, a maniraptor, one who lived during the Cretaceous period and was preserved through means I do not understand, resides now, very much alive, in a special protected facility made from a large cave in Yunnan province.”
“Impossible. You’ve seen it?”
“With my own eyes.”
Kit narrowed his eyes at the man, but he seemed sincere. “Describe it.”
“It does look rather like a bird. Talons, feathers, a tail. The feathers are vanes with little tufts, not like flying feathers, and it has a jaw filled with teeth instead of a beak. And hands. Hands like a chameleon’s, with two thumbs, that can grasp and throw and manipulate objects as easily as any human.”
“How big is it?”
“Big. Two meters tall at least, and twice the weight of a man.”
A female, then. Zhanwei’s description matched the maniraptors Kit had seen in the chemical-induced visions. “You’re sure what you saw wasn’t a hallucination? The drug—”
“I know what the drug does. This creature bit a soldier’s hand off. Does that sound like a hallucination to you?”
“No.”
“The soldier didn’t think so either, at least judging by how he was screaming. Besides, hallucinations aren’t a source of chemicals. This dinosaur is.”
Amazing. It seemed impossible, but Kit remembered the hibernation chamber from the vision Arinya had told him. He remembered scrambling into a nest on the platform as earthquakes from the asteroid strike shook the ravine. Had a maniraptor really survived in stasis all this time? It certainly would explain where the Chinese were getting such a continuous supply of the drug.
He made Zhanwei give him all the details of Mai’s schedule and where she was being held. Now he just had to figure out how to use Zhanwei to get in and get Mai and Arinya out.
“How long will it be until you’re missed at the palace and someone comes looking for you?”
“They already are looking,” Zhanwei said. “We have training for this kind of situation. When I ran away from you into the crowd, I signaled them that I was under duress. They will be here any moment.”
Kit jumped to his feet. The leather goods shop was a trap, with only one way out. He should have known it was too easy. “Follow me,” he said.
He rolled up the door and raced out. There were soldiers everywhere. They wore gas masks and probed into every corner of the market. Much of the foot traffic was gone. Shouts rang out as soon as he was seen. He zigged and zagged his way around stalls, the colonel right behind him. Zhanwei was older, though, and not accustomed to running. He fell quickly behind, and Kit couldn’t afford to slow down. Compelled to follow, Zhanwei pushed his body to keep up, but his legs betrayed him, and he fell.
Kit lost himself in the twisted roads of Bangkok, changing direction as often as possible. When he spotted the orange vest of a motorbike taxi driver, he hopped aboard, and soon they were darting in and out between cars and buses, even veering onto the sidewalk when necessary to avoid gridlock. He had the driver drop him off well away from his apartment and walked the rest of the way.
As he walked, his cell phone rang. He looked at the screen and saw, to his surprise, a picture of Samira Shannon. He almost canceled the call. After everything she had done, why would she contact him? He had once liked and respected her. Then she’d proved herself to be just like all the Americans who came to his country, willing to use their power and wealth to take whatever they wanted.
But Colonel Zhanwei had said she was CIA. If that was true, she would know how to reach people who mattered in the US government. Kit hated the idea of American control of Thailand just as much as Chinese control. But right now, China was the bigger threat. And if China really did have a living maniraptor hidden in a cave somewhere that was the source of their domination chemical, then maybe he needed Samira and the United States after all.
He answered the phone. “Samira?”
“Kit! I saw the news. Congratulations!”
For a moment he was stunned. “For what?”
“Science minister? That’s incredible. What an honor, and a chance to do some real good.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said. “Things have changed, I’m afraid. It’s been a little crazy here since we last met.”
She laughed. “Crazy is right. You’d never believe what I’ve been doing. I can hardly believe it myself.”
“Is it harder to believe than a Cretaceous dinosaur somehow hibernating for sixty-six million years and then coming to life again?” Kit asked.
There was a long pause.
“No,” Samira said. “It’s exactly that hard to believe.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Samira could hardly breathe as Kit described to her what he had learned from the colonel. The Chinese had a maniraptor too! That explained how they seemed to have taken control of Taiwan with such ease. She wondered if it would stop there, or if China would keep expanding their control into neighboring countries.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He sounded stressed and afraid. “They have Mai and Arinya, and I can’t do anything about it. I don’t have an army. I don’t even have any of the chemical. All I can do is lie low and hope they don’t find my apartment.”
“Isn’t there anyone else who can help you?”
“Maybe? There have to be people still loyal to Mai. Thousands cheered her march to the palace, and many more around the country still love her. But I don’t know how to contact any of them safely. I could try to reach out to leaders in her organization, but I have no way to tell if they’re compromised. Any one of them could be under the control of the Chinese.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s terrible.”
“Is there any way,” he began, then tried again. “You have contacts there, right? Is there any way you could help me?”
Samira thought about that. She could hardly believe Everson or any of his superiors would want to help Kit. Though, the more she thought about it, why wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t they be glad to destabilize China’s influence on Thailand? She would be delivering them a real-life foreign intelligence asset, someone high up in the revolutionary government.
“If you had some chemical, what would you do with it?” she asked.
“I would rescue Mai and Arinya,” he said immediately. “If I had enough, I would give it to Mai, and she would rule again.”
“Let me see what I can do,” she said. “To be honest, I’m pretty sure I can’t do anything. But let me see.”
Everson didn’t look pleased to see her. She supposed she had earned that.
“I have a gift for you,” she said. “For the CIA, I mean.”
She told him about her phone call with Kit, the information he had shared about the Chinese maniraptor, and his request for help to rescue the newly-crowned queen. Everson grew increasingly alert, and by the time she finished, he was pacing the room like a jungle cat.
“What are his resources? Can he contact the rest of the resistance?”
“I think he can, but he’s afraid to. He doesn’t know who’s been compromised.”
“That’s wise.” Everson paused. “How do we know he hasn’t been compromised?”
The thought took her aback. Of course, that was possible. “Would he tell me about the Chinese maniraptor if he was being controlled by the Chinese?”
“He might. If his story is bogus, it would have us chasing our tails. And if it’s true, it could buy him trust.”
“It’s got to be true. It’s not a story you would just make up. No one would believe you.”
“Unless they know about ours and want us to think they have one too. Did he tell you where it’s being held?”
“A facility in a cave in Yunnan Province,” she said. “Probably doesn’t narrow it down much, though. Yunnan’s a big place.”
“But we could look for unusual traffic. If they’re distributing the chemical, there would be frequent shipments out of the facility. A cave showing a lot of new traffic on reconnaissance satellite imagery might point us in the right direction.”
His pacing was getting on Samira’s nerves. “What about Kit, though?” she asked. “Could we get some chemical to him?”
Everson stopped and gave her a look like she was dangerous. “There’s no ‘we’,” he said. “Thanks for the tip, but don’t call him again, not unless we manage the call. We have an agent in country who can be his handler; we’ll find your friend and make the connection. Where does he live?”
She shrugged. “An apartment. In Bangkok, I would guess.”
“Okay, we might need you to call again and get that information, but not until we can do it in a controlled environment, all right?”
“Why can’t I be his handler? I already know him; we have a relationship. He’ll talk to me.”
“Miss Shannon, I’m sure you’re very good at what you do, but please. This is what I do. Trust me on this.”
She nodded. “All right.”
She didn’t, though. It had been a mistake to tell Everson. He cared more about Kit’s usefulness than his safety. Everson would pass Kit’s information on to an intelligence bureaucracy that would see Kit as just a tool they could use. The CIA was going to mismanage the approach somehow and get Kit killed.
Everson had told her not to contact Kit again, but he wasn’t in charge of her. She didn’t have to listen to him. She had no intention of leaving Kit in the dark until some agent he didn’t know tracked him down and expected him to play along with their schemes. The CIA should be helping him, not trying to control him. And if they wouldn’t help him, she’d do it herself. But first, she had to talk to Charlie.
