The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [0]
Don Winslow
To Mark and Marcella
A NOTE ON PROPER NAMES: We have used the Chinese pinyin system of Romanization except in cases in which the older forms are more familiar to Westerners, such as Chiang Kai-shek, Kuomintang, etc.
Formerly I constructed a thatched hut in the mountains, and
passed several summers and winters there, subduing my
passions and destroying desire.
—Sheng Ch’in, A Guidebook to Mount Emei
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE DAD’S KNOCK
PART ONE THE CHINA DOLL
1
2
3
4
5
PART TWO THE UNPREDICTABLE GHOST
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
PART THREE THE BUDDHA’S MIRROR
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
EPILOGUE
A BIOGRAPHY OF DON WINSLOW
PROLOGUE
Dad’s Knock
He never should have opened the door.
Neal Carey knew better, too—when you open a door, you’re never really sure what you’re letting in.
But he had been expecting Hardin, the old shepherd who came every day at teatime to sip whiskey with him. It was raining—had been raining for five solid days—and by all rights Hardin should have arrived for “a bit of wet to take the chill off.”
Neal pulled his wool cardigan tighter around his neck, edged his chair a little closer to the fire, and hunched down lower over the table to read. The fire was waging a brave but losing battle against the cold and damp, which was miserable even for March in the Yorkshire moors. He took another hit of coffee and tried to settle back into Tobias Smollett’s Ferdinand Count Fathom, but his mind just wasn’t on it. He’d been at it all day, and now he was ready for a little conversation and a spot of whiskey. Where the hell was Hardin?
He looked out the small window of the stone cottage and couldn’t see a thing through the mist and driving rain, not even the dirt road that climbed up from the village below. His was the only cottage on this part of the moor, and on this afternoon he felt more isolated than ever. He usually liked that—he only hiked down to the village every three or four days to pick up supplies—but today he wanted some company. The cottage usually felt snug, but today it was suffocating. The one electric lamp didn’t do much to brighten the general gloom. Maybe he just had cabin fever; he had been up there for seven months, alone save for Hardin’s visits, with only his books for company.
So he didn’t stop to think when he heard the knock. He didn’t look out the window, or ease the door open, or even ask who was there. He just got up and opened the door to let Hardin in.
Except it wasn’t Hardin.
“Son!”
“Hello, Dad,” Neal said.
That’s when Neal Carey made his second mistake. He just stood there. He should have slammed the door shut, braced his chair against it, jumped out a back window, and never looked back.
If he had done those things, he never would have ended up in China, and the Li woman would still be alive.
PART ONE
The China Doll
1
Graham looked miserable and ridiculous standing there. Rain sluiced off the hood of his raincoat and down onto his mud-caked shoes. He set his small suitcase down in a puddle, used his artificial right hand to wipe some water off his nose, and still managed to give Neal that grin, that Joe Graham grin, an equal measure of malevolence and glee.
“Aren’t you glad to see me?” he asked.
“Thrilled.”
Neal hadn’t seen him since August at Boston’s Logan Airport, where Graham had given him a one-way ticket, a draft for ten thousand pounds sterling, and instructions to get lost, because there were a lot of people in the States who were real angry at him. Neal had given half the money back, flown to London, put the rest of the money in the bank, and eventually disappeared into his cottage on the moor.
“What’s the matter?” Graham asked. “You got a babe in there, you don’t want me to come in?”
“Come in.”
Graham eased past Neal into the cottage. Joe Graham, five feet four inches of dripping nastiness and guile, had raised Neal Carey from a pup. Taking off his raincoat, he shook it out on the floor. Then he found the