Inside, she pulled the curtain aside, then stopped. The White Mantis had been an opulent, bustling place—a gambling and drinking club the Hand had bought as a cover—but now it was silent. All the fittings had been ripped out, the carpets removed, the silk hangings torn down. All was bare now—eerily so.
She walked across and stood in front of the door to the main gaming hall, hearing the murmur of voices from within. She pushed through, then stopped, astonished. She had expected Pasek to be there with a few of his men; instead she found herself looking into a room packed with a hundred or more people. She looked about her, recognizing faces—some she'd not thought to see again—and understood at once. He'd summoned them all—all of the Hand's surviving cell leaders. Never, in the history of the Black Hand, had they met like this—all of them in one place at one time—and something told her it would not happen again.
She walked through, making for the tiny dais on the far side of the low-ceilinged room, conscious that every eye was on her. Many smiled, clearly pleased—reassured, it seemed—to see her there, and reached out to touch her arm as she passed, but one or two of them scowled, as if her very presence was a betrayal.
Coming out by the dais she found herself facing a line of Pasek's men—his four henchmen, Ashman, Grant, Blaskic, and Eyre. For the past few years they had been Pasek's constant shadows. They were big, well-built men, a good ten or fifteen years younger than Pasek, with strong Nordic features and short, ash-blond hair.
Security types, she thought, meeting their eyes unflinchingly. Just the kind of empty, soulless type the man attracts.
"Where's Pasek?" she asked, looking to Blaskic. "He'll be here," Blaskic answered, the slightest suggestion of a smile playing on his lips. Yesterday he had been outranked by her—a lowly minion in the Hand's hierarchy—but today . . .
She turned, looking about her, making a swift calculation. There were roughly a hundred and fifty people in the room. Of those she knew fifty, perhaps sixty at most. The majority of the rest were sure to be Pasek's. All in all, then, it was finely balanced. Pasek had enough support to guarantee the success of his initial coup, yet not enough to make it absolutely safe.
She smiled inwardly, understanding suddenly just why she was there. It wasn't just that Pasek "respected" her, he needed her, to hold things together while he consolidated his rule. But only for a time. Things would change—she understood that instinctively—and Pasek would slowly increase his stranglehold, until . . . Until he no longer needs me.
Emily turned back, knowing now what she had to do; knowing ex-actly how to play her hand.
She didn't have long to wait. A gong sounded from the next room and then a door opened at the back of the dais. Pasek stepped out.
He stood there a moment, looking about him as if noting who was there, then nodded.
"Friends," he said, lifting a hand, palm out, to greet them. "You know what has happened, and some of you are . . . uncomfortable with it. In the circumstances I felt we should meet. To clear the air."
His voice was warm, yet his eyes, when they met Emily's, were cold, uncompromising.
"Rachel . . ." he said, acknowledging her. "Would you like to start?"
She stared back at him belligerently. "Start?"
"I mean, is there anything you want to say?"
She smiled. There was plenty she'd like to say—like what a callous shit he'd been to have Chou Te-hsing murdered—but that wasn't what he meant.
"I'm here," she said, as if that said it all.
"And?"
She almost laughed. And what? That she was his loyal supporter? That she condoned what he'd done and was happy with the way things had turned out? No. The truth was, the more she thought about it, the less happy she was. She had joined the Hand because it had seemed to her to be the best way of changing things—of achieving some limited form of justice and directly affecting the lives of the common people— but in practice it hadn't worked that way, and now, under Pasek, there was even less chance of that.
She thought back to their meeting the day before. Pasek had been wrong when he'd spoken of them wanting similar things. Wrong, or simply lying. For while she saw the Hand as a vehicle for social justice—as a corrective rod to beat corrupt officials and counterbalance the grosser abuses of power—what he wanted was to transform it into a society of religious zealots like himself.
Which was fine, only she wasn't going to go along with that. Not without a struggle.
Brushing aside Grant and Blaskic, she stepped up onto the dais, facing Pasek.
"I'll join you," she said, eyeing him defiantly. "But there's one condition."
He stared back at her, confident, it seemed, now that he had her vocal support. "Name it."
"That you let me take out Lehmann."
There was an audible gasp from the body of the room; a look of shock on every face. All, that is, except Pasek's. He just smiled—a pale, ghostly smile—and nodded.
AFTERWARD HE SPOKE TO HER ALONE.
"How did you find out?"
"Find out?" She laughed. "What are you talking about?"
"The tape. 1 only got it an hour back. How did you hear about it?"
She stared at him. Clearly there was something she didn't know. "Lehmann . . . We're talking about Lehmann, right?"
He nodded, then. "Look, you'd best come through. You'd best see this before we talk any further."
He had cleared one of the bedrooms at the back of the Mantis and made it into a makeshift office. There was a desk, two simple ice-cast chairs, and—on the wall behind the desk—a larger version of the pendant he always wore, the cross within the circle.
"Sit down," he said, pointing to the nearest chair, then went around the desk and took a hand-held from the top drawer.
"Here," he said, handing the viewer to her. "But I warn you. It isn't pleasant."
Pleasant? What was pleasant about Lehmann? She stared at Pasek a moment, then looked down at the tiny screen of the hand-held, activating it.
Ten minutes later she understood.
"Who was she?"
"One of our southeastern operatives. Jane Vierheller, her name was."
"And the man?"
Pasek laughed coldly. "That's your man. That's Lehmann."
"Lehmann?" Emily brought the screen closer to her face, rewinding until his face came clearly into view. So that was what he looked like. She felt a shiver of pure aversion pass through her.
"You still want to take him out?"
She looked up, glaring at him. "And you don't?"
"Sure. But not just yet. Not until we're strong enough."
"Strong? Look, I don't want to depose him, I just want to kill him."
"I understand. But that won't be easy. To get to him at all we'd need quite a force. They say he's better defended than Li Yuan."
"You forget. I almost got to Soucek."
"Sure, but Soucek's a different matter. He's meant to be seen. Lehmann . . . well, no one sees Lehmann, not unless he wants them to."
She considered that. Then, with a jolt, she realized something.
"The tape! How did he get it to you? How did he know where to find us?"
Pasek leaned toward her. "He didn't. We found the tape. He meant us to find it."
"I don't understand. How?"
The woman . . . Vierheller . . . was part of a cell of five. Later in that sequence—toward the end of it—she gives Lehmann a name and a location. The name she gives is that of her cell leader, Wilhelm Dieter, the location is his apartment. Two hours back, when Dieter didn't show for the meeting here, I sent Ashman to bring him. Ashman brought him, all right, but Dieter was dead. Lehmann had killed him."
"And the tape was in his apartment, right?"