Chapter 28
Taipei was in a state of utter chaos. Not a city known for calm, it was off the charts now.
Communication was coming back. And with it came news. Of dead and injured. Of the scale of the calamity.
Emergency crews were rushing to huge office towers in flames. Ambulances blared. It looked like a large passenger plane might have struck the mountain in the center of the city.
It was bedlam.
Alice and Vivien stood for a moment, shocked, while all around them, people jostled, pushing and shoving. Almost knocking Vivien to the ground, but Alice steadied her.
When did her mother become so fragile? Had the colossus always been tiny?
Dazed people tripped over bodies, too shocked, too grief-stricken, too distracted by the cries of the injured to do anything for the dead.
“Come on.” Vivien grasped Alice’s hand.
“No, we have to help.”
“We are helping.” Vivien turned and stared straight at her daughter.
“If we can find Kai-wen, he might know something. Liam seemed to think so. That image on the li bien ball isn’t a fluke.
Maybe we can pick up where Liam left off.
Finish what he started. Look around. The people you see now? If we fail, most of them will die.”
A young man, barely out of his teens, was lying on the ground. Moaning softly. With each shallow breath, blood bubbled at the corners of his mouth. He was dying.
Vivien stepped over him, then turned, knelt, and whispered into his ear. Then she hauled Alice forward. Into the mayhem.
Pushing forward, Vivien made for a private car briefly paralyzed by the crowds. She got in. “Take us to the National Palace Museum.”
“What?” The driver turned, staring at them wild-eyed.
Vivien repeated it.
“Get out. I’m not a taxi. I have to get home to my family. To see…”
“Here.” Vivien held out a fistful of American dollars just as Alice reached for the door handle.
“Sit,” her mother commanded. “Stay.”
Once again, it worked.
“Get out,” he shouted.
“We will not.” Vivien dropped the money onto the passenger’s seat. “The National Palace Museum. Now.”
Alice slid down in her seat. Then sat up again. The car was moving. Though where they’d end up was anyone’s guess. Some muddy ditch probably.
She stared out the window at the bodies. At the grief. At a normally orderly society gone mad.
People wandering the streets, cars on the road, stoplights flashing red. A few store windows were smashed, no doubt by people looking for food, water, while emergency crews rushed to stop fires from engulfing the entire city.
Alice knew her mother was right. Their job, their focus, had to be laser sharp on stopping the next attack. But that seemed less and less likely as they got farther and farther away from the source. From China. They were just bumbling along, playing at being agents.
“Why’re we going to this museum?”
“Because it’s where Kai-wen would’ve gone.
That book our mother had, the one that Kai-wen kept, was published by the National Palace Museum here in Taipei.
The poetry and paintings by the scholars are part of their permanent collection.
That painting on the ornament is in this museum.
If Kai-wen was brought to Taipei, he would’ve gone there.
And so did Liam. This image isn’t a coincidence. It’s a message.”
When Alice shook her head, Vivien said softly, “Where would you go if you were lost, alone, frightened, a long way from home? If you’d just seen friends slaughtered by your own government?
” She gave Alice a moment to think before going on.
“Some people would go to a church, some to a library, some to where they could get a nice cup of tea. Comfort.”
Alice nodded slowly. She was beginning to see her mother’s logic. It wasn’t actually about logic, about facts. It was about feelings. About a frightened young man. Suddenly on the run. Lost and alone in a strange city. Where would he go?
He’d head to someplace, the only place, where he’d feel safe. He’d head for the comfort and company of the recluse scholars.
She herself would go to a noodle bar. Her brother, Kevin, would go to a bookstore. Vivien? Where did she feel safe?
She’d go to brunch at a luxury hotel in DC, that’s where. Where she could eat avocado toast and be fawned over by perfect strangers.
“I understand your thinking,” she said gently, while outside, men and women knelt on the pavement over bodies, keening and howling with grief, and begging for answers from a God who had blinked. “But that would have been almost forty years ago. He wouldn’t still be there.”
“You don’t know. It’s at least a start.” Vivien’s eyes were on the road ahead. Straining to see both the past and the future.
It felt like a forlorn hope. But for one important fact.
If the image on the li bien ball really was copy of a fifteen-hundred-year-old painting by a recluse, then Vivien was right.
Liam must have gone to the museum too. Where else would he get it?
And he’d chosen that particular glass ball and mailed it home.
It could not be a coincidence.
“What did you say to that young man? The one on the sidewalk.”
“There.” The car stopped in front of a magnificent building and the driver pointed. “Now get out.”
“I told him he was loved.”
McAllister stood in the study and reread the note Alice had left for her brother.
Kevin, I’m pretty sure Mom has gone to Xi’an. Am going to find her.
His lips were pressed together so tightly they were drained of blood.
Christ. Xi’an. How much does the Li woman know?
Communications were now extremely difficult between China and the US. He had no idea if one or both women had actually made it there.
This was not good. He’d clearly underestimated Madame Li. A relic, he’d thought. Trading on some dusty old events from her youth. Enjoying some callow celebrity, while making no impact on human rights at all.
A woman of no importance.
And now this.
He looked around the study. It was neat, tidy, almost to the point of obsession.
The door was closed, though he needn’t have worried about anyone interrupting. Paul had slipped Kevin a heavy dose of sleeping pills, and he was passed out in one of the bedrooms.
“I found the note when Kevin and I got here and tried to contact you, but…” Paul held up his unresponsive phone. “And there’s something else. Look.”
He picked up the large book from the desk and gave it to McAllister, who opened it to the bookmark.
“Pangu,” said Paul.
“I can read,” said McAllister, his voice calm. “Thank you.”
He snapped it shut. The sudden noise made Paul jump.
“And the other book?” He nodded to the second one on the desk.
Paul handed it to him. It was fragile. Hand-bound. Inside were sketches. McAllister felt his stomach lurch.
The Terracotta Warriors. Fuck.
Still, she couldn’t know. Suspect, maybe, but she couldn’t know what was down there. Hidden there.
By now, Vivien Li could be anywhere. In Xi’an, with the warriors. She could be dead, with the warriors.
Without the ability to communicate, he was blind. He had no idea what was happening half a world away. He had to stick to the plan. One that was fraying because of some elderly Asian woman and her food blogger daughter. It wasn’t possible …
“We need to search this room,” he said.
“I already did. There’s nothing more.”
“Do it again!”
And sure enough, taped under one of the desk drawers were papers. Some in English, most in Mandarin. McAllister scanned them. They dated from when she’d first come to the United States many years ago.
How could she be so foolish as to keep this? But egocentric people did foolish things.
“I thought you searched her study.”
“I did,” said Paul. “I’m sorry.”
McAllister nodded. “Understandable. Can you hand me those books?”
When Paul turned his back, McAllister grabbed him from behind and twisted. There was that moment, just before the final crack, when Paul’s eyes met his murderer’s. And he understood what was happening.
And then the boy became a body. McAllister let him slip to the floor.
He took a deep breath. The President was expecting Madame Li. What was he supposed to tell him? Not the truth, that was certain.
He stood stock-still in the middle of the room. An idea was forming.
Could this work in their favor? He worked through various scenarios until he landed on one and felt that frisson of excitement when disaster morphed into triumph.
Vivien Li going to China, going to Xi’an, could be the best possible thing for them. And these papers…? He’d have to have the ones in Chinese translated, but that was easily done. She was damning herself. It was perfect.
He put what he’d found into his satchel, then dragged Paul’s body out of the study and tossed it down the basement stairs.
Then he went into the bedroom, where Kevin was passed out. He picked up a pillow and approached the young man. Then, hesitating, he replaced it and instead sprinkled the remained pills around the bed and put the empty bottle in Kevin’s hand.
“The White House, please,” he said to the Secret Service driver. “And hurry.”
Siren wailing, they rushed through the empty streets of Washington, DC.
The main door into the museum was unlocked and unguarded. The treasures abandoned.
For a city that had tumbled into chaos, the bedlam seemed to have missed this place. The beautiful grounds were deserted. Not a soul. Not a guard. No one.
The peace and quiet were absolute, as though a neutron bomb had gone off, killing people but keeping the magnificent buildings intact.
It was deeply unsettling. Eerie. The wail of sirens in the distance was almost comforting.
Even Vivien seemed spooked.
Alice held the door open. “Come on.” She had to coax her mother forward. “We’ve come this far.”
Vivien was no longer the university student. She’d regressed and was now a little girl. Ten, eleven years old. A precocious child suddenly unsure. Afraid of what she might find through the open door. Or not find.
It was dim inside. Cool and calm.