Flags of Sin - 05 Read online

  January 13, 1875

  Li Mei, her priceless bundle, and Su Ming, the second-in-command of the Imperial Guard, and her sole protector, stood at the mouth of an alleyway, staring at the fountain gently gurgling not twenty feet away. And beyond that, their sanctuary.

  “Why don’t we go?” she asked quietly.

  “Wait,” was the whispered, abrupt reply.

  Mei chanced a look up at him, and saw his eyes darting back and forth, as if he were examining every corner of the square, every face that occupied it. She looked at the fountain, and realized that she had looked at nothing but since they arrived.

  She decided to help.

  She started on her left, her eyes peering in every window, every doorway, any place a guardsman might hide, and found nobody who appeared to be hiding, simply the residents of this area going about their business.

  Then she turned her attention to those residents. She figured if they were moving, then they were probably not watching the butcher’s shop, they were merely innocent bystanders.

  Instead, she focused on those not moving. Those standing. Sitting. Lying in wait. To her left, a man squatted on the curb, his ratty blue pants all he wore, no shirt in sight to conceal a weapon. She dismissed him. Next candidate. A younger man, standing with a woman, both with their heads held low. The woman fidgeted, her sandaled foot kicking at a stray rock. She looked up.

  And Mei gasped.

  “It’s Xiao!” she hissed.

  “I know. And Zhu, one of my men.”

  She felt butterflies in her stomach as she realized they had been behind them, and had fled away from the butcher shop. If they had been able to make it, then perhaps there was a chance others had as well.

  “Stop smiling.”

  She immediately frowned. Perhaps a little too much. She tried to relax, but she couldn’t. Her heart was pounding harder and harder, and she felt her legs and feet twitching, wanting to make the desperate race across the square and into the safety of the butcher’s shop themselves, her brain be damned. She leant forward, and felt the grip on her arm tighten slightly.

  “They’re moving.”

  “Yes, I ordered them to.”

  “How?”

  “With a nod of my head.”

  Mei was impressed. Zhu’s eyesight must be much better than hers, as she wasn’t certain she would be able to see someone nod their head slightly from that distance, with so little light left. She watched, her mouth agape for a moment before she realized and snapped it shut, as Xiao, led by Zhu, strolled across the square, and into the butcher’s shop, as if with a purpose. No hesitation, no looking about, simply a husband and wife going to the butcher’s.

  And no one followed.

  Her twitching increased ten-fold.

  The grip on her arm only tightened slightly.

  It was as if Su Ming could read her thoughts. His mere hand on her arm was enough for him to read her entire body, to know how desperately she wanted to flee across the square and into the arms of whoever stood on the other side of that door.

  “Look.” She glanced up at Su Ming, then followed his stare to watch a robed figure enter the square opposite them, glance around, then limp to the entrance of the butcher’s shop, and finally disappear inside.

  “Who was that?”

  “Fang Zen, my captain.”

  Her face erupted with a smile that she quickly wiped away by clamping down on her cheek with her teeth.

  “It’s time,” said Su Ming. “Keep control of yourself. Head down, dutiful wife, no talking or looking at anyone, especially once we get inside. We don’t know who we can trust in there.”

  She nodded, her head already down, her chin on her chest.

  He tugged slightly on her arm, and they stepped into the square, crossing it at a reasonable pace. Though her head was lowered, and her teeth clamped shut, her eyes were flitting from side to side, looking for anything out of the ordinary, and she willed her ears to listen harder than they ever had before, and prayed that her little majesty would remain quiet.

  As they approached the door, they heard voices, raised. She immediately recognized Fang Zen’s, and felt her heart leap into her throat as the words “Unhand me!” escaped the darkened entrance. The grip on her arm tightened. More than slightly. But they continued to approach. She felt herself tug away, desperate to go in any direction but the butcher’s shop, but Su Ming kept leading them directly there.

  He’s the traitor!

  It made sense. It would have to be someone high ranking in the guard or among the servants in order for them to have known of the escape route. And now, here they were, among a small group to have survived, and he was leading her, with an iron grip, directly toward their capture.

  She wanted to cry out, to scream for help, but who would help her? Clearly there were soldiers on the other side of that door, and probably hidden throughout the square, concealed far better than her untrained eye could detect.

  They were less than twenty paces from the door. Her heart hammered in her chest, the baby stirred, perhaps detecting her discomfort. A tear rolled down her cheek, the grip tightened further as she pulled away again.

  Then, gradually, to her amazement, they turned to the left, past the door, and into an alleyway to the side of the shop. They continued walking, and her heart began to settle. They stopped, about one hundred paces further on, in another square bustling with activity, it apparently a farmer’s market of some type.

  “Wait here. I’m going back to try and stop anyone else from going inside. I’ll send them this way if I can.”

  She nodded, her head bowed low in the shame of what she had thought he might be. She felt Su Ming’s hand on her shoulder. She looked up. He smiled at her.

  “You thought I was a traitor.”

  It was a statement, not a question.

  She nodded.

  “As I would have,” he said, his voice gentle. He lowered it further. “If I’m not back in one hour, it will be up to you to hide the baby, and raise him. Do you have family?”

  She nodded.

  “Then go to them if I do not return.”

  She nodded again.

  He squeezed her shoulder then turned around, walking casually back to the square, and the danger it contained. She watched him disappear into the shadows, only to reappear as some sliver of sunlight revealed him once more. Then finally, with the turn of a corner, he was gone.

  And she waited.

  Forbidden City, Beijing, China

  Two weeks ago

  Inspector Li Meng absentmindedly scratched behind his ear as he took in the scene in front of him. It was something he would imagine in a war movie, or some Hollywood blockbuster, meant to shock and titillate an American audience long ago desensitized to violence.

  But as a thirty year veteran of what was now called the Public Security Bureau, he had never seen anything like it. To Li it was something out of a horror novel, and he had a hard time looking at it.

  Two bodies, gaping holes in their torsos, as if they had been impaled by a large tree, lay side by side, the male’s hand resting on the cheek of the female.

  Touching.

  But it was the blood pattern that had him shaken. It began with a massive spray at the gates to the Forbidden City, where the initial impact had obviously taken place, an impact that had blown them away from the doors a good ten meters at least.

  What kind of weapon can do this?

  He squatted at the entrance, putting his head at about the height he estimated the victims were hit, then, taking a bead on where their bodies now lay, he tried to determine where the shooter might have been. He found himself looking at the roof of the Gate of Supreme Harmony.

  “Don’t you know squatting is frowned upon in modern Beijing?”

  He looked over his shoulder and up at his partner, Inspector Hu Ping. She smiled and held out a large Starbucks coffee. He pushed himself to his feet and took the steaming brew.

  “Thanks,” he said, taking a sip.
He looked at her. “And I’ll have you know I wasn’t squatting. I was trying to figure out where our shooter may have been.”

  Ping looked at the victims. “Are you sure we’re not looking for a tank?”

  Li chuckled then immediately cut himself off. “We must be serious. There are too many eyes here,” he muttered.

  Ping nodded, sipping her coffee. “Sorry,” she mumbled into the cup.

  Li gave her a half wink, just for her benefit. She was young, only twenty-five, and the first of her cohort to begin taking real jobs in society, and the first cohort to have been corrupted by the modern influences of the Western decadent lifestyle. He was of another generation, a little simpler perhaps, much more conservative, but he had to admit the new freedoms and prosperity that had come to his country over the past decade were welcome.

  And he took a sip of one of those new freedoms.

  Li beckoned one of the officers and he jumped it seemed several centimeters straight up then rushed over.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Have someone look at the top of that roof”—he pointed through the gates—“and see if they find anything. Bullet casings, anything. Be careful not to destroy any evidence—everyone wears gloves.”

  The man bowed, then rushed off to carry out his orders with one of his fellow officers. Li turned back to the blood splatter.

  “So what do we have here?” asked Ping.

  “It looks like two tourists were shot with a very high-powered rifle from—I would guess—the top of that roof.” Again he pointed.

  “Motive?”

  “None of the traditional motives, I would think. Obviously not robbery, I doubt it was jealousy or some love-triangle. Not with a weapon like that.” He rubbed his chin then scratched behind his ear. “No, I’m guessing they were specifically targeted—some sort of assassination—or randomly targeted, perhaps for being tourists, for some political statement.”

  “I think we can operate under the assumption that the latter is not true.”

  Li jumped at the voice behind him and Ping almost spit her coffee. He instantly recognized the voice of Superintendent Hong Zhi-kai, their boss.

  “Practicing your stealth techniques again, sir?” asked Li with a smile as he turned to face the man five years his junior—at least. With good family contacts, Hong had risen up the ladder far faster than Li could ever dream, and would continue rising so long as his family was in favor with the Party apparatchik. Li, on the other hand, came from a poor family, and was lucky to have risen as far as he had.

  That was one difference in Chinese society compared to Western. At least he thought it was if he was to believe the limited Western propaganda he’d been exposed to. In the West, you could advance on merit and hard work, all the way to the top. A black president with a Muslim name was proof of that, or so he had heard. But in China? You only advanced to the upper levels if you were connected.

  Or had something on someone who was.

  But he didn’t care. It was a good life. A life of service, a life he could be proud of, and it afforded him a salary sufficient enough to take care of his beloved Xiao, and their daughter Juan. And if things kept going the way they were going, he could only see things getting better.

  “I hardly think humor is appropriate at a time like this,” scolded Superintendent Hong.

  Li gave a bow. “Of course, sorry, sir. It is just my way of relieving the tension such a gruesome scene inevitably produces.”

  Hong seemed satisfied with the explanation, and pointed to the roof inside the Forbidden City that now had several officers on top.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Looking for shell casings. I believe the shooter may have been on top of that roof.”

  “Based upon what?”

  “Just a guess at the trajectory.”

  “We don’t guess when it comes to homicides.”

  Li bowed, getting a little pissed off. “Of course not, sir. It was simply an hypothesis based upon my nearly thirty years of experience, sir.”

  There was a yell from the roof, and one of the men stood, waving.

  “That appears to have paid off,” interjected Ping, who quickly looked away from the glare Hong gave her.

  “I see your insubordination has rubbed off on your partner.”

  Li wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Relax, both of you, I’m just keeping you on your toes.” He sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m cut out for this type of life.”

  Now Li definitely wasn’t sure what to say. He scratched behind his ear.

  Hong dismissed the statement with a wave of his hand. “Don’t worry yourselves. My mother-in-law is visiting. This is about the only opportunity I get to feel like I’m in control of some part of my life. For two weeks I definitely haven’t been in control at home.” He smiled and slapped Li on the back. “We choose our wives, but not their families!”

  Li smiled politely, and bowed.

  Hong leaned in, lowering his voice.

  “But I was serious about one thing. Keep this quiet. No press, no leaks. We can’t have people finding out that tourists are being killed by some crazed sniper.”

  Li nodded, his alarm bells immediately going off as Hong walked away to glad-hand with an official who had just arrived.

  “Did you hear that?” hissed Ping.

  Li nodded.

  “Do you think he means that these aren’t the first?”

  Li frowned. “I hesitate to guess what he means.”

  But if these aren’t the first, then what we have here is far bigger.

  And far more terrifying.

  Outside the Forbidden City, Beijing, China

  January 13, 1875

  Li Mei stepped deeper into the shadows. It had been far longer than an hour, perhaps two or three. She had lost track of time, and could only guess by how low the sun was on the horizon, the long shadows cast across the now quiet farmers’ market speaking volumes to the hour.

  And a woman, alone, with a baby, standing in the street, was bound to draw the attention of anyone looking for exactly that.

  She knew what Su Ming had said. Go to her family if he wasn’t back in an hour. But she hadn’t lost hope yet. She had edged much of the way back down the alley on several occasions, and peered around the corner where she had lost sight of him, and she was certain she had seen him on at least one of those occasions, though it was hard to tell in his peasant outfit.

  A sandal scraped on stone, and her head whipped around to find two people half walking, half running, down the alley. Her heart leapt. It was Yu and one of the soldiers from the court whose name she did not know.

  “Over here,” she whispered.

  They stopped and looked, then smiled as they walked casually over.

  “Are you okay?” Mei asked.

  Yu nodded, and peeked at the baby. “And you?”

  “Terrified. Have you seen anyone else?”

  Yu shook her head. “Only Su Ming and you. I found Jun just minutes ago near the fountain.”

  Mei looked at Jun and nodded, now that she had a name to go with the face. “We saw Xiao, one of the maids, and Zhu, one of the soldiers, enter the butcher’s shop, then Commander Fang went in. There was a struggle inside when Su Ming and I walked by, so we kept going.”

  “We’ve been betrayed,” said Jun, his face grim, his eyes flaring with anger.

  “What are we to do?” asked Yu, biting her finger.

  “We can’t leave without Su Ming,” said Mei.

  Yu nodded. “I told him I have a brother not far from here. I gave him directions and told him to meet us there. He’s going to pass the word to anyone else who may show up. He didn’t mention you, so I suspect he thinks you’ve already left.”

  Mei nodded. “I was supposed to leave two hours ago, but I just couldn’t bring myself to.”

  Jun put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll come with us.” He looked about. “We’ll go on ahead, you follow us, no closer than twenty paces.” />
  Mei nodded, and Jun took Yu by the arm, and they walked purposefully across the mess of the market. Mei counted to twenty, then followed, praying the little one would remain quiet now that they were moving again.

  Jun and Yu disappeared around a corner, and she found herself wanting to rush forward to regain sight of them, but she resisted, maintaining her pace, despite the hammering of her heart in her ears. She rounded the corner and nearly peed, as four of the Empress Dowager’s personal guard ran toward her. Her eyes darted to the left, then the right, desperate to find a hiding place, but none was to be had. And besides, it was too late. They were only paces from her when she first saw them, and now were almost upon her.

  She dropped to her knees and bowed, dropping one hand to the filthy stone and rubbing it in the mud. She raised the hand and rubbed the dirt on the little one’s face, then she smeared the rest across her own as they came to a halt and surrounded her.

  “Get up!” ordered one of them.

  She stood slowly, keeping her head bowed.

  “What is your business here?” demanded the man directly in front of her.

  Her mouth was dry, her tongue like withered reeds. She mumbled.

  “Speak up, woman!”

  “Do you have any food for a poor woman and her child?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

  The man reached forward and grabbed her by the chin, pushing her head up. She caught a glimpse of Yu further down the street, stopped, but not facing her. The man’s eyes looked at her in disgust, then down at the baby.

  “You’re both filthy! As a mother you should be ashamed!”

  She dropped her head as soon as he let go, and bowed profusely. “Your words are too true, too true,” she repeated, again in the hoarse whisper.

  “You disgust me,” he said, spitting at her feet, then stepping around her. “Let’s go, these aren’t the ones we’re looking for.”

  She began to breathe a sigh of relief when a hand tapped her on the shoulder and she nearly screamed. She spun her head around and saw an outstretched hand. It contained several scarred coins.

  “Take them, you need them more than I do.”