Hanging the Devil, page 19
What they were doing would truly put Dafen on the map. Mogwai stood on the roof of the art factory and looked through the custom lenses of the mask at the village below. People strolled along the sidewalks, greeting their neighbors as they passed. Every person going about their business, serving a purpose visible only to the Devil.
Brushstrokes on a canvas.
It was a nice little town. All it needed was a bit more fear.
42
“I fear I haven’t been much help.”
“You haven’t been any help.” Maria smiled at Cape. “So get on your knees and make yourself useful.”
Cape had returned to the car impound to find Maria on her hands and knees, soot covering her fingers and face as she meticulously sifted through the helicopter fragments. Her face was partially obscured by unkempt hair until she blew a strand away from her eyes.
“That’s better,” said Cape. “I couldn’t tell if you were looking at me or the wreckage.”
Maria laughed. “Art restoration is sweaty work, my friend.”
“What are we looking at?”
“While you were gone, I went out and got a set of these.” Maria handed Cape a paintbrush with a half-inch-wide tip. “Not ideal but good enough.” She twisted her mouth and blew another stray bit of hair. “I also got coffee but didn’t get any for you, perdóname.”
“I’m not much of a coffee drinker.”
“No wonder,” said Maria. “The coffee in this city is asqueroso.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s disgusting.”
“You need to know where to go,” said Cape. “Most places that make coffee to your taste are in North Beach or the Mission. Everywhere else it’s—”
“—Starbucks,” said Maria. “On every corner, that green siren with her smug smile.”
Cape laughed. “She’s smug because she knows you don’t have a choice.”
“Tell me, why do Americans burn their coffee?”
“We didn’t vote on it,” said Cape. “Not everything here is a democracy. There must be something in Spain you don’t like.”
“Criadillas,” said Maria without hesitation. “They served them at school every Thursday when I was little.”
“What are they?”
“Bull’s balls.” Maria held up her hands and made two ovals with her fingers. “Bull testicles are about the size of meatballs, but chewier.”
“Sounds worse than a bad cup of coffee,” said Cape. “Let me guess…asqueroso?”
“Very,” said Maria. “Your pronunciation isn’t half bad, by the way.”
“I’m learning,” said Cape. “Now teach me about this.” He gestured at the carbonized debris on the tarp. “You’ve been busy.”
Using her brush as a pointer, Maria walked Cape through her excavations. Still on their knees, they shuffled sideways from the front of the cockpit to the tail of the helicopter.
“To begin, we have two lumps.” Maria indicated a blob twelve inches in diameter, gray with black edges. “That was plaster mixed with putty and wire mesh.” She pointed at another misshapen mass glinting under the fluorescent lights. “This was bronze, or more likely a cheaper metal tarnished to look like bronze. You said Grace saw the thieves take something?”
“She’s not sure if they kept it or put it back when they started to chase her.”
“There could be others.” Maria ran her fingers through her hair, adding more charcoal streaks to her temples. “I’ll go through a catalog of the museum’s exhibits and cross-check that against the Interpol list.” She sighed. “Look at this mess.”
The remaining rubble was indecipherable. Considering the conflagration warped the metal of the cockpit, Cape was amazed she’d found any clues at all.
“The paintings must have been at the rear of the cabin,” said Cape. “How many?”
“There are four,” said Maria. “That corresponds with the number on loan from Paris.” She jabbed her brush at the first mosaic she assembled. Faint green lines and splotches of red broke through the ash, enough to reveal a pattern. “I’m pretty sure this is Nine Continents Clear and Calm, a view of the emperor’s private residence.” Maria took her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and scrolled through her photos, then handed it to Cape. “See the curve of the shoreline, here?”
Cape returned her phone. “You’re connecting a lot of dots to get there.”
“It gets worse.” Maria waved her brush like a conductor’s baton at the second jigsaw, a mere fraction of a painting. “I think this is The Magnanimous World…but it doesn’t look very magnanimous.” Maria pointed at the next arrangement. “That should be Harmony with the Past and Present.” She nudged Cape a couple of feet to the right. “And here we’ve got A Diligent and Talented Government.”
“Is that a painting or propaganda?”
“That’s what art is,” said Maria, “a trick of the eye to make us see the world differently.”
“Never took you for a cynic,” said Cape. “Can’t the museum tell you which paintings they have?”
“I’m going there later,” said Maria. “Want to come?”
“Absolutely,” said Cape. “What about the Paris museum? They must know which paintings they shipped.”
Maria shook her head. “I called a colleague in France to verify which of the forty paintings were on tour. Ten in total—four sent here and six to the Met in New York.”
“Which paintings went where?”
“A courier was supposed to accompany the paintings to New York and deliver six to the Met while a second courier took the remaining four to San Francisco from JFK.” Maria picked up a rag and wiped some of the grime off her hands. “But something went wrong.”
Cape sat back on his haunches to rest his knees but didn’t say anything.
“The courier from Paris arrived incoherent,” said Maria. “They thought he was drunk, but the stewardess claimed he never touched a drink. The Met sent a team to meet the plane, they unloaded six of the paintings and brought them to Manhattan. They’re still in boxes, scheduled for display next month.”
“What about the flight to San Francisco?”
“The second courier missed his flight.” Maria rubbed her hands together, more in satisfaction than to remove grit from her hands. “Passed out in an airport lounge.”
“Drunk?”
“Maybe.” Maria wobbled a hand from side to side. “He was seen drinking with a woman in the first class lounge. So had the courier in Paris. Neither woman boarded either flight.”
“You think the couriers were drugged.”
“Yes…maybe…it’s a working theory.”
“If I were going to steal priceless art, I’d try to take it in transit.” Cape drummed his fingers against his palm, trying to find a rhythm to the riddle. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Stealing is one thing,” said Maria, “swapping it for a forgery is another. The cargo holds on planes are freezing, too risky. But if you knock out a courier and meet the plane before anyone else, then there’s—”
“—no one to stop you,” said Cape. “Tell me why art thieves don’t do this all the time.”
“Because museums take precautions.”
“Such as?” asked Cape. “What happened when the plane got to San Francisco?”
“The Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris had called the French Embassy and requested a guard meet the plane and bring the paintings to the museum,” said Maria. “Nobody knew he was coming.”
“So the artwork made it, despite the hiccups.” Cape almost tripped over his own train of thought. “But the thieves…our thieves…have tried to steal it before.”
“Twice before,” said Maria. “Remember the foiled attempt in Paris.”
“They must really, really, really want these paintings.”
“So it would seem,” said Maria. “And for the last hour, all I could think about was that call with my French colleague. The French take art very seriously, and if the paintings got stolen on their watch, it would be an international incident.”
Cape connected some dots of his own. “You said nobody knew the guard was coming.”
The corners of Maria’s mouth turned up. “You should work for Interpol.”
“Thanks, but I have problems with authority,” said Cape. “Or maybe the authorities have problems with me. That’s it, though, isn’t it? The real precaution museums take is—”
“—they don’t tell anyone when the art is being transported,” said Maria. “The timing is the most closely guarded secret, as precious as the art itself, but somehow our crooks knew the couriers, and they knew the flights.”
“Somebody told them.”
“Sí, it’s the only explanation,” said Maria.
“Who knew the itinerary?” asked Cape. “The people packing the artwork would only know the artwork was being transported. The couriers would find out, but they might only be told the details at the last minute. Flights could be booked, then changed…you could even send multiple crates, some of them empty, on different flights.” Cape rubbed his temples. “So the only people with operational oversight, with real inside information are—”
“—the museum directors.” Maria stood and brushed off her pants. “And didn’t Inspector Jones—”
“—Beau.” Cape rolled back on his heels and stood. “He said the museum director wasn’t there when they checked the security footage and wouldn’t come to the phone.”
“Where was he?”
“Napa,” said Cape. “Wine country.”
“I’ve never been,” said Maria. “And I like wine.”
“Two good reasons to go for a drive,” said Cape. “I’ll give you the grand tour.”
43
The macaque named Junjie insisted on giving Bohai the grand tour of the underground tunnels. Bohai implored Junjie to find an exit, but the monkey wasn’t interested in leaving.
Bohai was speaking softly, conscious that male macaques can become combative quickly and with little warning. Junjie didn’t seem agitated, he simply chattered incessantly in a combination of chirps, barks, and grimaces that were indecipherable to his human companion.
Bohai wished Doctor Dolittle was waiting around the next corner, but no such luck.
A tunnel branched away from the laboratory where Bohai had skewered Doctor Loh with his pliers, but as the corridor narrowed, it detoured into cul-de-sacs and small chambers carved from the bedrock. Most of these were storerooms for cleaning supplies or unused lab equipment.
“This is all very interesting,” said Bohai, “but it can’t help us escape.”
Junjie hopped up and down, then pointed in two different directions.
“You’re lost?” asked Bohai. “Are you trying to remember which room you’re looking for in this maze?”
Junjie tugged on Bohai’s hand and pulled him forward.
“I really hope you’re not lost.” Bohai didn’t want to go back to the laboratory. There was only one exit from that room, and he was sure the guard still waited outside. He wondered how much time would elapse before the guard got curious, or if guards ever came inside to watch. And how often Doctor Loh took his meals. Bohai didn’t have a watch but guessed it had been less than an hour since he decided to risk his neck to save a monkey’s head.
The next room contained a small worktable and pegboard mounted on the walls to hold a variety of tools. On the table was a soldering iron and magnifying glass mounted to a small vise. Wires and circuit boards were scattered across the table. On the back wall hung several hand tools. Bohai mulled these over before choosing a pair of long-nosed pliers to replace the ones he’d left in Doctor Loh’s eye socket. He slipped them into his pocket and turned to leave.
Bohai spotted a fireman’s axe on the wall. Junjie chattered excitedly as Bohai pulled it free. The handle was slightly shorter than his arm, the head as broad as the length of his hand and very sharp. Bohai hefted the axe and nodded in approval.
“Okay, that was a good stop. Now can we get out of here?”
He didn’t have to ask. Junjie pulled him along with a renewed sense of purpose. The tunnel narrowed, the caged lights overhead close enough that Bohai had to duck.
Sparse lighting and mottled shadows gave the stone an organic energy, as if the walls were pulsing and flexing as they passed. Bohai hunched his shoulders and followed his feral friend toward a bright light at the end of the tunnel. He felt like he was being reborn.
The tunnel opened into a vast chamber filled with white light.
The floor was circular and twenty meters in diameter, the ceiling incredibly high and conical in shape. They were standing at the bottom of an inverted funnel, the top barely visible. Rectangular LED lights were spaced evenly in a ring that encircled the wall three meters off the ground. The singular shape of the room and elevated lighting compelled an upward glance, and Bohai craned his neck to see what hid in the shadows above.
He was distracted by a chattering chorus, and for an instant he thought it was Junjie’s voice echoing around the chamber. He looked to his left and discovered the underground prison of Doctor Loh.
Above ground was the labor camp where humans were watched by guards and followed by genetically engineered simian spies. That had been Bohai’s world, but now he realized there was a second prison hidden below the camp. He stood before a wall of cages, each one holding a male macaque that had gone under the knife but had yet to complete its training. Bohai checked the rows of cages, only one of which was empty.
He pointed at the last cage, its door ajar, and turned to Junjie. “Was that one yours?”
Junjie grimaced and blinked rapidly. He was vibrating with tension and squeezed Bohai’s hand as he walked the length of the cages, chattering excitedly at each macaque they passed.
The captives howled, gnashed their teeth, and chirped in reply. Their gazes varied from excited and hopeful to suspicious and scared. Some monkeys grabbed the bars to pull themselves back and forth, but the cages were securely mounted and didn’t budge.
One of the monkeys at the end of the row began masturbating. The monkey next to him concluded that was the perfect response to a stressful situation. The monkey on his left took notice and followed suit.
Junjie leapt forward and banged on the bars. The onanistic offenders bowed their heads sheepishly and sat on the straw, contrite and attentive. Junjie screeched like a parrot. Bohai started to panic over the noise, until he realized the squawk silenced all the other macaques.
Bohai watched as Junjie walked the length of the cages, guttural sounds coming from deep in his throat. The other monkeys tracked him, their yellow eyes glowing in the shadows of their cages.
He’s making a speech.
Bohai marveled at his own cluelessness. Everything he had done since coming to the lab was based on instinct. Only the monkeys seemed to have a plan.
Junjie finished his address and approached Bohai but kept his eyes on his fellow macaques. With a closing series of chirps and clicks, Junjie reached up and patted Bohai on his belly.
I might be shaped like the Buddha, but I feel like a monkey’s pet.
Bohai realized he had just been blessed by his animal ally. Whatever happened next, he was under the macaque’s protection.
Bohai stepped to the center of the room and looked up.
The room was not a perfect funnel. A notch had been cut into the rear wall, where a metal ladder was bolted into the granite. Bohai followed the rungs past the lights to the narrowing peak of the cone. A hatch with a wheeled handle was mounted in the ceiling.
Bohai estimated the distance and knew it led to the surface. He wondered if this was how freshly trained monkeys were released back into the camp, or if it was a service entrance for something else. Maybe both. He turned to the right and smiled at his good fortune, wondering if his nightmare was turning into a dream.
The wall opposite the cages was divided into two sections. The section nearest the tunnel held more pegboard and shelves. Bohai saw a tranquilizer gun, a jar full of darts, and a holster. There was also a flashlight, and next to that, a ring of keys.
Nearer the ladder, the wall was completely obscured by a massive generator. Dials, circuit breakers, and levers protruded from an array of gray boxes half-a-meter square, each stacked on top of the other to form a power station big enough to run the entire camp.
Bohai finally had a plan.
He turned to Junjie, who did a backflip and gibbered excitedly as he gestured at the keys.
Bohai walked back to the shelves, strapped the holster around his waist and loaded the tranquilizer gun. He heard chattering behind him and called over his shoulder. “This isn’t for them, it’s for the guards.” Bohai wondered if the darts were potent enough to topple a grown man, but at least they would sting. He slid the flashlight into his pocket, then took the keys from the ring and approached the first cage.
The caged monkey was big for a macaque. He was crouched and ready to spring, muscles taut and eyes unblinking. Bohai took a deep breath as he spun the key ring to find the right fit.
Macaques were remarkably strong. Bohai had seen a monkey rip a man’s ear off with no more effort than plucking a leaf from a tree. Their teeth could chew through flesh and bone as easily as chomping a piece of fruit, and their reflexes were twice as fast as a human’s.
Bohai could never resist a big macaque attack.
He glanced at Junjie and said, “We could just leave, you and I.”
Junjie wobbled from side to side and blinked. Bohai sighed.
This is your second life, make it count.
Bohai unlocked the cage.
One by one, he unlocked the cages, holding his breath with every turn of the key. The monkeys eyed him warily. Some focused on the gun at his waist, others on his hands or eyes. None attacked. When he was done, Bohai tossed the keys onto the worktable and stood in the middle of the room, arms extended, wondering if he was about to be ripped apart.
The macaques came out of their cages, some jumping down to the floor, others climbing, a few limping. They all moved closer. Junjie took the lead, and the monkeys pressed inward.
