02:11 a.m.
Wind waned to a tired hush, and the storm had lost all potency against the bruised sky. The raft strobes winked like a dying heartbeat, orange onto black. Manning counted the flashes-twelve, thirteen-until a yellow searchlight breached through the drizzle and pinned them down.
Lung Yu was the name of the trawler, looming over them from the waters, with patches of rust streaked across her sides like dry blood, her nets furled, and the smell of diesel unhealthy among the waters. A boom was swung out; a rope ladder slapped against the raft's pontoon. Xu Xiao caught it first, then steadied it for her. The rungs of the ladder were slippery with fish scales and brine, each step down still serving as a reminder-something in this night would not remain clean.
On the deck, the crew flowed in choreographed silence. Three men in PVC slickers, hooded against the drizzle, eyes glimmering under the work lights like animals. Nobody said a word until the captain showed up—no taller than Manning's shoulder, hair clippers short, a jagged scar that cleaved from her left ear to her collarbone. She acknowledged Xu Xiao with a terse nod, then appraised Manning like weighing her by the kilo.
"Zhou Lei," said the captain to Xu Xiao, smokes hunched and gritty. "We head to south-southwest. Eighteen hours to Matsu. There, your people take over."
"And payment?" Xu Xiao asked.
Zhou lifted her chin toward the ladder. A deckhand tossed a heavy canvas bag into the raft—it clinked. The raft drifted away, already sinking. Evidence swallowed by the sea.
Below decks, the smell was older: diesel, squid guts, mildew, men. The galley was small and contained a scarred table and two bunks fixed to the bulkhead. Zhou poured tea as thick as coffee into tin cups. Steam fogged Manning's glasses-no prescription, just plain glass picked from a drawer on Cirrus for camouflage.
"The package, you are," she said to Manning, not without some kindness. "We ask no questions and follow our own rules. You stay in here. Head is two steps aft. If the radio squawks, you go to ground in the fish hold. If compulsory boarding, then breathe this." She produced a mouthpiece of a rebreather hooked up to a canister marked for crushed ice. "Five minutes. After that, it is up to the ocean."
Manning's stomach heaved. "Boarded by who?"
"The coast guard. Navy. Pirates—nomenclature blurs out here." Zhou smiled all scar. "Try to sleep. Tomorrow we thread needles."
Xu Xiao stayed topside the first hour, watching the trawler's wake erase their footprints. When at last he did, rainwater slid from his hair to the tabletop. He was holding a plastically wrapped bundle: dry clothing, protein bars, two bottles of water, and a satellite phone the size of a cigarette pack.
"Zhou's ex-PLA Navy," he said, answering the question Manning had never asked. "Discharged for sinking a customs cutter that belonged to the wrong general. She owes me a favor older than you."
Manning peeled the wet sweater off her. Salt had crusted white on the collar. "And after Matsu?"
"Helicopter to Kinmen, then private charter to Taoyuan. From there, a medical jet under shell companies to Zurich. Total transit: thirty-one hours. Unless someone's monitoring the flight manifests."
"Someone always is." She slipped on a dry T-shirt—Xu Xiao's size, sleeves swallowing her arms. "What about the freighter that chased us?"
"Still circling the debris field. They'll wait for daytime divers. By the time they realize the locket is not with the yacht, we will already be over international airspace."
Manning touched the hollow where the locket once lay against her throat. Now it felt colder than the ocean. "Do you trust Zhou with your life?"
"I trust her with her profit margin. Close enough."
• Dawn came gray and greasy through the porthole. The trawler rolled in a languorous rhythm, engines throbbing like a heartbeat. Manning woke to the shriek of metal winches and the aroma of boiling rice. Xu Xiao sat on the opposite bunk, speaking softly into a satellite phone.
"...confirmed. The Lugano clinic is under surveillance. Two teams—local contractors and Triad enforcers. Retinal scanner's offline since yesterday. Admin's shredding paper." He listened, his expression souring. "Understood. We'll extract tonight."
He hung up, catching her gaze. "Change of plans. The clinic will be burning files at noon. We are proceeding to Plan B—a field hospital in the Alps run by a disgraced surgeon who owes Shen Tian his life."
"Might my mother make it through the transfer?" She spoke dryly now.
"She's in sedation, stable. The surgeon wants payment in the locket. He considers it opens a safety deposit box in Geneva containing bearer bonds."
"Does it?"
"No idea. But by the time he figures it out, we'll be long gone."
• The heat of midday turned the cabin into an oven. Manning dozed fitfully, dreams heavy with cracked glass and copper keys. She woke to shrill urgent voices. Zhou's boots rang down the ladder; Xu Xiao was up like a shot, hand sliding toward the small of his back where the Glock now resided.
Zhou ducked in, all business. "Radar contact-fast mover bearing zero-nine-zero. Range six miles, closing. Could be Coast Guard, could be worse."
"Time to intercept?"
"Ten minutes. We're dumping nets, simulating mechanical failure."
Manning's heart wouldn't stop banging. Zhou threw her a grease-stained coverall. "Put that on. You're crew now."
As she dragged it over her clothes, rolling up sleeves, it smelled of fish, of diesel. Xu Xiao handed the girl a fillet knife, with a blunt tip and serrated edge. "If we are boarded, you are my cousin from Fuzhou. You speak only Minnan."
"I don't—"
"Then keep your mouth shut."
On deck, the crew moved like a disturbed anthill. Nets splashed overboard, intentionally entangled. Smoke belched from the exhaust stack-engine trouble; plausible and theatrical. Manning knelt beside a coiled hawser, knife hidden in her sleeve. Then the rain started again, tiny needles against her scalp.
Fast mover first appeared as a white slash on the horizon, then resolved into a patrol craft-Chinese flag, heavy machine gun on the bow. Loudspeaker crackled across the water: lung yu, heave to for inspection.
Zhou spat over the rail and muttered, "Here we go." The patrol boat sidled alongside, fenders squealing. Officers uniformed in orange life vests leapt across with studied aggression. Manning kept her head down, fingers tight on the knife handle.
"Manifest," an officer-young with acne scars grabbed his shoulder.
Zhou brought out a tablet with a cracked screen and sparse entries. "Routine haul. Six crew. Engine trouble."
The lieutenant thoroughly scanned the deck, eyes lingering on Manning. "You. Face up."
She obeyed, letting the hood shadow her features. The officer frowned, pulled out a photograph-grainy, taken from CCTV at Cloud Crest. Manning's heart stopped.
Xu Xiao stepped forward, speaking rapid Mandarin, voice pitched high in apology. He slipped something into the lieutenant's pocket-a roll of US hundreds thick as a finger. The officer's expression softened. He glanced again at the photograph, then at Manning. A long moment.
Finally he nodded, turned away. "Carry on. Fix your engine. Next time we won't be so polite." Lines were cast off. The patrol boat peeled away into the rain. Manning realized she had been holding her breath so long her vision sparkled at the edges.
Zhou exhaled, wiped rain from her scar. "Close shave. They're getting better pictures." Xu Xiao's smiled thin. "Price of doing business."
The curtain came down with darkness. The trawler switched off running lights, leaving only the compass glowing faint red. At 21:07, Matsu's silhouette darkly outlined in pitch black water. One flashing three times-a signal received, one lantern atop the breakwater.
Zhou cut engines. Indeed, trawlers were adrift. The dark gave birth to a rubber Zodiac, outboard coughing. There were two figures aboard-one could not see faces. Xu Xiao handed the last envelope to Zhou, this one thicker than the last. "Debt cleared," he said.
Zhou stashed it under her slicker. "Tell your ghosts I said hello." Manning climbed down the rope ladder first, legs rubbery. The Zodiac bobbed threatening to tip. She dropped into the bow and was instantly soaked. Xu Xiao followed a moment later, landing cat-light.
The outboard roared, and the Zodiac swung off. Behind them, Lung Yu melted into night, a rusting phantom returning to the anonymity of the sea. Manning leaned into the wind and felt the salt spray sting on her cheeks. Above, the stars were lost behind cloud, somewhere out ahead-beyond the horizon-her mother breathed in a drugged sleep, the locket's copper weight waiting in a vault older than either of them.
She tightened her grip on the gunwale. The next leg has begun.