“Been there, done that, señor. Tell you what, Joe, if Pyramid is involved in anything, it’s part of something very big. Pyramid doesn’t do things in half measures.”

“Would the government crackdown have anything to do with what we’ve talked about?”

“Possibly. Pyramid has reacted like a wounded snake since the purge began. They’ve killed cops, judges, and top officials as a warning to the government to keep its hands off, but I don’t see the connection with your Dr. Kane.”

“Neither do I. Can you help?”

“I’ll put you in touch with Charlie Yoo. He’s an agent that the Chinese security agency sent over to work with the FBI. He’s a specialist in gangs. Pyramid made a mistake underestimating you and Kurt. But a few words of advice . . .”

“We always listen to advice from a pro, Cate.”

Caitlin put her hand on her holster, a reflexive gesture, as if she sensed danger.

“That’s good, Joe, because if I know Pyramid, you and Kurt are in their sights. And they won’t miss a second time.”

THOUSANDS OF MILES FROM Virginia, Pyramid Trading was also on the lips of Colonel Ming. The slender, soft-spoken man with the thick head of silver hair stood outside a dilapidated building in the slums of Shanghai. There had apparently been an attempt to burn the building, but the firefighters called in to keep the blaze from spreading to the nearby slums had nipped the fire in the bud.

The smoke still burned the colonel’s eyes, even though he stood several hundred feet from the building. He didn’t want the ash floating in the air to settle on his razor-creased Army uniform. Even if he had wished to get closer, he would have been prevented by the cordon of decontamination trucks and ring of armed police.

He turned to the Ministry of Health official, who had called him.

“I’m not sure why you asked me to come here,” Ming said. “It appears that the city has the situation well in hand. There seems little need for crowd control by the military.”

“This was no ordinary building and this was no ordinary fire,” said the minister, whose name was Fong. “There were medical tests of some sort going on here.”

“This seems an unlikely place for that sort of thing. Are you sure?”

Fong nodded.

“We found a number of people locked in cells,” he said. “They had been left there to burn, but, fortunately, even though they were in poor condition, they were able to talk. They said they had been kidnapped, and that many people had been taken from their cells, never to return. We believe they were moved to labs, and, from the equipment we found, it seems they were the subjects of experiments.”

“What kind of experiments, Fong?”