Remo let her sleep. He hoped he'd remember to bring it up again. It was bothering him.
Then, as if sonic invisible genie had decided to grant his wish, Remo saw the black limousine scoot up the road that ran parallel to the railroad bed.
Remo started. It came up from behind like a silent ghost. It looked exactly like the Tiananmen Square limousine, and the one he'd encountered back in the US-right down to its snoutlike grille and double set of headlights.
Remo looked down, but the train's height prevented him from seeing directly into the car interior. No telling who was behind the wheel.
Remo nudged Fang Yu awake. She resisted his prodding.
"Fang Yu!" he hissed urgently.
"Mmmmm?"
"Fang Yu," he repeated, shaking her.
"What?" She blinked, looking around drowsily.
"Take a look and tell me if this is a Chinese limousine."
Fang Yu peered past Remo, sending fragrant rose-petal billows into Remo's nose.
"What you talking about?" she asked poutingly. "I see nothing."
Remo's head snapped around. The limo was gone.
"It was just there," he said doubtfully. Craning his neck, he spotted its rear deck about a hundred yards ahead. It was picking up speed.
"Look," Remo said, pulling her close to the window.
Fang Yu put her hands and cheek to the glass and tried to see past the curving forward cars of the train.
"I do not see car," she said unhappily.
"It's gone now," Remo said. "It was a long black limousine. I saw it go into the Great Hall of the People last night."
Fang Yu resumed her seat. "So what? Official limousine go in and out of Great Hall all the time. They are called Hong Qi-Red Flag limousines."
"I saw one of these in America just a few days ago," Remo told her.
Fang Yu's eyebrows shot up. "Oh?"
"Yeah. It looked nothing like anything I'd ever seen. The chauffeur was Chinese."
"Red Flag limousine," Fang Yu said simply. "Big shot drive them in China. High cadres. People like that."
"What was one doing in America?"
"I do not know," Fang Yu said in a voice that implied bored disinterest.
"Do Red Flag limos have a square grille?" Remo asked intently.
"What is a grille?"
"The front part."
"I suppose so," Fang Yu said vaguely. She was rapidly losing interest in the conversation. "I am going to nap again. Do not wake me again just to look at Chinese limousine, okay?"
She drifted off almost instantly.
Remo put his chin in his hand and looked unhappy. The sudden appearance of the limousine bothered him, but it must have been what Fang Yu had said-an official vehicle. Probably lots of them in China. It didn't explain the one prowling the streets of New Rochelle, but it made more sense than the theory that it was the same one. No way it could be following him, he thought. Only he and Fang Yu knew where they were. Not even Smith had that information.
Chapter 18
Boldbator the Mongol galloped across the barren steppe.
He bounced in his padded trousers on the high wooden saddle, feeling the magnificent muscles of his short-legged horse surge and release with every lunging step and the wind flapping his long brown del caught at the waist with an orange sash.
The blazing sky overheard was like a brilliant blue dome protecting the world. The steppes were an endless plate of dun and old snow extending to every point on the compass.
"Ai yah!" cried Boldbator, the cold air hot in his lungs. He loved the steppe, its vastness and wild freedom. To ride from horizon to horizon was to live.
The trouble was, there were no adventures beyond either horizon for Boldbator the horse Mongol, descended from a long line of free-riding nomads. Once, his kind had ranged from south China to the far lands of Europe, conqueror-kings in the saddle.
No more. Not even Mongolia lay united under the Mongols. Here, in Inner Mongolia, Boldbator was a Chinese serf. And his brothers to the north in Outer Mongolia held firm in an oval of land, allied to Russia, but warily friendly with China, like a lump of cold mutton caught in the mouths of two ravening wolves.
The thought made Boldbator whip his fine cream horse harder. The steed responded, as is the way with a good Mongol horse. Nostrils flaring, he pounded the steppe like the drumming beats of a thousand demons.
Boldbator rode with ghosts this day-the spirits of his mighty ancestors. He wished they were with him now. They would be khans of both Mongolias, as well as the Russias and the soulless Chinese to the south.
One day, he thought, huddled in his bouncing saddle. One day the Next Khan will come . . .
The red dreams of Boldbator the horse Mongol were cast from his active mind by the sight of a long object against the horizon.
His keen eyes, sitting sharp in the crinkles that wind and sun had cut around them, grew steely with interest.
Here was the Great Mongol Road. No vehicle would attempt to pass it in the dead of winter, for there were few villages and no sanctuary to be found on the way.
Boldbator lashed his responsive pony around and veered toward that dim shape.
As he galloped toward it, his eyes saw it for what it was. A bus.
He trotted up to it slowly, for the windows were shattered and its painted sides were riddled with the shiny pits of bullet strikes.
The north wind carried the metallic taste of blood to Boldbator's broad nose.
Boldbator came to a halt only a few yards from the bus. It lay askew the road. There were bodies around it. Green bodies. Soldiers of Beijing.
Boldbator dismounted, and reassured his snorting pony with a firm slap.
Clutching his reins tightly, ready at an instant to remount or, if the worst happened, to slap his pony to safety, he padded forward.
The soldiers were all dead, but one. They lay in sprawled positions. No visible wounds on them. But they were dead nonetheless.
The one who groaned did have a bullet wound, Boldbator discovered. It let the blood bubble up from his heaving chest like a pot coming to a slow boil. With each exhaled breath, more bubbles appeared. A lung wound. Such wounds were invariably fatal.
Boldbator knelt beside the dying soldier.
"What did this to you, dog of Beijing?" he asked quietly.
The soldier turned glazed eyes to Boldbator and said simply, "A guaihu in the form of a man."
"By what name is this devil known?"
The soldier inhaled. His chest wound swallowed the newly formed bubbles. He gasped two words, "Finish me."
Boldbator nodded. He unsheathed his knife and with a soft caressing glance of its edge across the soldier's exposed throat, sent him into eternity.
Then Boldbator led his nervous pony around the bus. There were no other living ones-no hint off what had befallen the soldiers.
Boldbator did find tracks. Jeep tracks. They led north.
Boldbator remounted and rode after them. He did not ride hard. Who knew but that he rode toward his death, and why should a man hurry toward his appointed hour-even a brave Mongol?
Many li along, Boldbator came to an abandoned jeep. A soldier sat at the wheel, back stiff, eyes staring ahead as if waiting for the world to end.
He did not stir as Boldbator approached, and the Mongol realized he was frozen. Dismounting, he passed a hand over the man's sightless eyes. Dead. The wolves would get him. Good for the wolves, thought Boldbator.
He saw that the jeep's gas gauge was on empty, and two sets of footprints, one heavy, one very light, led north.
Boldbator stared north a very long time. What manner of men could lay waste to Chinese soldiers?
"Mongol men!" he cried in answer. Grinning fiercely, he leapt atop his mount and charged in the direction the footprints led him.
He knew not how many li he would have to ride, but it mattered not. He was a man among men. So, too, would these two be.