Snakehead by Peter May Page A

‘No one’s going to hurt you. No one’s going to make you do or say anything you don’t want to. Okay?’
    She nodded, reassured by his tone and his manner. ‘Okay.’
    ‘Have you known Yu Lin for long?’
    ‘Couple of months,’ she said.
    ‘And you don’t speak any English.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘How long have you been in America?’ Li asked. She cast him a look of concern. ‘It’s alright,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell them . It doesn’t matter a damn to me if you’re illegal or not.’
    ‘Eight months,’ she said. ‘I came with my brother. My uncle is with one of the tongs here in Houston. He paid our shetou , and now we work for him. Already my brother is a dai lo , you know, a gang leader.’
    Li nodded. ‘And Yu Lin?’
    ‘I met him at the club where I work. But my brother doesn’t like me seeing him. We are Fujian. He is Taiwanese. My brother says he is not a real Chinese.’
    Li flicked his head toward the bedroom. He said, ‘Do you think your brother did this?’
    Her bottom lip quivered for a moment, like jelly on a spoon, and then her face crumpled and she burst into tears. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Take it easy.’ And he put both his arms around her and she pressed her face into his chest, and he felt the sobs shake her fragile frame. There was nothing, he knew, that he could do for her. Her lover had been hacked to death. Her brother was shaping up as a suspect. It would not be long before the authorities discovered that she was an illegal alien, and she would be hauled up before the immigration court and threatened with repatriation. Her American Dream was very quickly turning into a nightmare.
    He nodded to the female officer who came to offer comfort in his place as he gently disentangled himself. He found Hrycyk outside on the balcony, leaning on the rail smoking a cigarette. Hrycyk turned a pensive gaze on him. ‘Well?’
    ‘Looks like Yu got himself into conflict with the girl’s brother,’ Li said. ‘Could be that simple.’
    ‘Or it could be that he’d been rumbled and they decided that he knew too much.’
    ‘That’s possible, too,’ Li said. ‘In which case you’ve got a leak in the agency.’
    Hrycyk straightened up, bridling. ‘What the hell d’you mean?’
    ‘It’s a bit of a coincidence that they should decide to take him out the very day he’s scheduled to break cover and meet up with you. I mean, how would they know that?’
    Hrycyk glared at him, but the implications of what Li was saying were not lost on him. Hrycyk’s cellphone rang again. He threw his cigarette butt down into the street and answered it. He listened in silence, flicked Li a glance, then said, simply, ‘Sure,’ and hung up. He thought for a moment, then looked at Li again. ‘We got fifty minutes to get across town to Hobby and catch the next flight to Washington.’
    III
    The rain was driving horizontally across the tarmac at Dulles. The temperature had tumbled to just a few degrees above freezing. Their airport security vehicle ploughed through the darkness on the apron, the lights of the main terminal receding behind them, the rain caught in their headlights like stars at warp speed. Li peered through the windshield trying to see where they were going. Hrycyk had been less than illuminating, and Li suspected that was because he had no idea where they were going, or why.
    There were lights up ahead now, and the roar of an engine. As they drew close, an army-camouflaged helicopter took shape in the dark, buffeted by the wind, lights blazing, rotors turning. It was waiting for them. Their driver drew up alongside it, and Hrycyk cursed when he realised he was going to have to get out in the wet. He pulled up his collar, hunching himself against the downdraught and the rain, and slipped out into the night. Li ran across the tarmac in his wake. Uniformed arms extended from an open doorway and drew them up into the belly of the chopper. In the