She dared not lose control.
Their VIP room lay at the end of the hall. A pair of large men with bulges under their jackets flanked its door, bodyguards supplied by the company who had booked this space.
Reaching them, she showed her false I.D.
Gray and Kowalski did the same.
Only then did one of the guards knock on the door and open it for them. Seichan stepped through first and quickly sized up the space. The walls had been painted gold, and the carpet was woven in a pattern of crimson and black. A lone green baize baccarat table stood to her left, a nest of red-silk chairs and lounges to her right. The room was empty, except for a single occupant.
Dr. Hwan Pak.
His presence was the reason for so much precaution and subterfuge. He served as the lead scientist at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center in North Korea—a facility known for enriching uranium used by the country’s atomic program. He also had a severe gambling addiction, though that was known only to a few intelligence agencies.
Stubbing out a cigarette, Hwan Pak rose from a couch, standing only a few inches over five feet and thin as a cane. He bowed slightly in greeting, his eyes on Gray, as if sensing the one in charge, already dismissing her, a mere woman.
“You are late,” he said politely but firmly, his accent barely evident. He reached to a pocket and removed a cell phone. “You have purchased one hour of my time. For eight hundred thousand as agreed.”
Seichan folded her arms, letting Gray type in the transfer code arranged by the junket organizer.
“Four hundred thousand now,” Gray said. “The rest only if I’m satisfied with your information.”
The price was in Hong Kong dollars, which exchanged to about eighty thousand in U.S. currency. Seichan would have gladly paid ten times that amount if the man truly had any knowledge of her mother. And from the tinge of desperation in Pak’s eyes, the scientist would likely have settled for far less than they’d offered. He had large debts to settle with unsavory sorts, debts that even this transaction would not settle completely.
“You will not be disappointed,” Pak said.
1:14 A.M.
From his offices halfway across Macau, Ju-long Delgado smiled as he watched Hwan Pak wave his new guests to the nest of red-silk lounges. The brutish one hung back, moving instead to the baccarat table, leaning his rear against it, absently picking at the felt surface.
The two high-value targets—the assassin and the former soldier—followed Pak and sat down.
Ju-long wished he could have eavesdropped on their conversation, but the security feed from the Lisboa was video only.
A shame.
But it was a minor quibble compared to the rewards to come.
And as he well knew: All good things come to those who wait.
1:17 A.M.
Seichan let Gray take the lead on the interrogation of Hwan Pak, sensing the North Korean scientist would respond more fully to another man.
Chauvinist bastard . . .
“So you know the woman we seek?” Gray started.
“Ye,” Pak answered with a swift nod. He had lit a fresh cigarette and puffed out a stream of smoke, plainly nervous. “Her name is Guan-yin. Though I doubt that is her real name.”
It isn’t, Seichan thought. Or at least it wasn’t.
Her mother’s real name had been Mai Phuong Ly.
A flash of memory suddenly struck her, unbidden, unwelcome at the moment. As a girl, Seichan had been on her belly beside a small garden pond, tracing a finger in the water, trying to lure up a golden carp—then her mother’s face reflected next to her, wavering in the rippled surface, surrounded by a floating scatter of fallen cherry blossoms.
They were her mother’s namesake.
Cherry blossoms.
Seichan blinked, drawing herself fully back to the moment at hand. She was not surprised that her mother had adopted a new name. She had been on the run, needing to keep hidden. And a new name allowed a new life.
Utilizing all of Sigma’s resources, Seichan had discovered the identity of the armed men who had taken her mother. They had been members of the Vietnamese secret police, euphemistically called the Ministry of Public Security. They had learned of her mother’s dalliance with an American diplomat, her father, and of the love that grew from there. They had sought to pry U.S. secrets out of her.
Her mother had been held at a prison outside Ho Chi Minh City—until she escaped during a prison riot a year later. For a short period of time, due to a clerical error, she had been declared dead, killed during that uprising. It was that lucky mistake that gave her enough of a head start to flee Vietnam and vanish into the world.
Had she looked for me? Seichan wondered. Or did she think I was already dead?
Seichan had a thousand unanswered questions.
“Guan-yin,” Pak continued. A faint smile traced his lips, mocking and bitter. “Such a beautiful name certainly did not fit her . . . certainly not when I met her eight years ago.”
“What do you mean?” Gray asked.
“Guan-yin means goddess of mercy.” Pak lifted his left hand, revealing only four fingers. “This is the quality of her mercy.”
Seichan shifted closer, speaking for the first time. “How did you know her?” she asked coldly.
Pak initially looked ready to ignore her, but then his eyes slightly crinkled. He stared harder at Seichan, possibly truly seeing her for the first time. Suspicion trickled into his gaze.
“You sound . . .” he stammered. “Just then . . . but that’s not possible.”
Gray leaned forward, catching the man’s eye. “This is an expensive hour, Dr. Pak. Like the lady asked . . . how did you know Guan-yin? In what capacity?”
He flattened the lapels of his suit coat, visibly collecting himself. Only then did he speak. “She once ran this very room,” he said with a small nod to indicate the VIP lounge. “As the dragonhead of a gang out of Kowloon, the Duàn zhī Triad.”
Seichan flinched at that name, unable to stop herself.
Gray made a scoffing noise. “So you’re saying Guan-yin was a boss of this Chinese Triad?”
“Ye,” he said sharply. “She is the only woman to ever become a dragonhead. To accomplish this, she had to be extremely ruthless. I should have known better than to take a loan from her.”
Pak rubbed the stump of his missing finger.
Gray noted the motion. “She had your finger cut off?”
“Aniyo,” he disagreed. “She did it herself. She came from Kowloon with a hammer and a chisel. The name of her Triad means Broken Twig. It is also her signature means of encouraging the prompt payment of a debt.”