Rhyme continued, "I sent the Fuzhou police an email with Ling's name and address and told them that I thought he was one of the Ghost's partners. But they sent back a message saying I must be mistaken. His address was a government building in Fuzhou. Ling is the Fujian governor's assistant in charge of trade development."

"What's that mean?" Peabody asked.

"That he's a corrupt warlord," Rhyme snapped. "Isn't it obvious? He and his people're getting millions in kickbacks from businesses all along the southeastern coast of China. He's probably working with the governor, but I don't have any evidence about that. Not yet, anyway."

"Impossible," offered Webley though with much less bluster than he'd displayed earlier.

Rhyme said, "Not at all. Sonny Li told me about Fujian Province. It's always been more independent than the central government likes. It has the most connections with the West and Taiwan – more money too. And the most active dissidents. Beijing is always threatening to crack down on the province, nationalize businesses again and put its own people in power. If that happens, Ling and his boys lose their income stream. So, how to keep Beijing happy? Kill the most vocal dissidents. And what better way to do it than by hiring a snakehead? If they die en route to another country it's their own fault, not the government's."

"And more likely than not," Sachs said, "nobody'd even know that they died. They'd be just one more shipload of the vanished." Nodding at Webley from State, she reminded, "Rhyme?"

"Oh, right. The last piece of the puzzle. Why's the Ghost going free?"

He said to Webley, "You're sending him back to keep Ling and his people in Fujian happy. To make sure our business interests aren't affected. Southeast China is the biggest site for U.S. investment in the world."

"That's bullshit," the man snapped in reply.

The Ghost said, "This is ridiculous. It's the lie of a desperate man." Nodding toward Rhyme. "Where's the proof?"

"Proof? Well, we have the letter from Ling. But if you want more… Remember, Harold? You told me that other shiploads of the Ghost's immigrants disappeared in the past year or so. I checked the statements from their relatives in the Interpol database. Most of those victims were dissidents from Fujian too."

"That's not true," the Ghost said quickly.

"Then there's the money," Rhyme said, ignoring the snakehead.

"Money?"

"The smuggling fee. When Sachs went for her little paddle in the Atlantic she found 120,000 U.S. dollars and maybe 20,000 worth of old yuan. I invited a friend of mine from the INS over to my place to help me look at the evidence. He -"

"Who?" Peabody asked sharply. Then he understood. "Alan Coe? It was him, wasn't it?"

"A friend. Let's leave it at that." In fact, the friend was Agent Coe, who'd also spent the day stealing classified INS files, which would probably cost him his job, if not earn him a jail sentence. This was the risk that Rhyme had referred to earlier – and that Coe had been only too happy to assume.

"The first thing he noticed was the money. He told me that when immigrants contract with snakeheads they can't pay the down payment in dollars – because there are no dollars in China, not enough to pay for transit to the U.S. anyway. They always pay in yuan. With a shipload of twenty-five or so immigrants, that means Sachs should've found at least a half million in yuan – just for the down payment. So why was there so little Chinese money on board? Because the Ghost charged next to nothing – to make sure that the dissidents on the hit list could afford to make the trip. The Ghost was making his profit from the fee to kill them. The 120,000? Well, that was the down payment from Ling. I checked the serial numbers on some of the bills and, according to the Federal Reserve, that cash was last seen going into the Bank of South China in Singapore. Which happens to be used regularly by Fujianese government ministries."

More rows were boarding. The Ghost was truly desperate now.

Peabody had fallen silent and was considering all this. He seemed to be wavering. But the State Department official was resolute. "He's getting on that plane and that's all there is to it."

Rhyme squinted and cocked his head. "How high are we now on the ladder of evidence, Sachs?"

"How about the C4?"

"Right, the explosive used to blow up the ship. The FBI traced it to a North Korean arms dealer, who regularly sells to – guess who? People's Liberation Army bases in Fujian. The government gave the Ghost the C4." Rhyme closed his eyes for a brief moment. They sprang open. "Then there's the cell phone that Sachs found at the beach… It was a government-issue satellite phone. The network he used was based in Fuzhou."

"The trucks, Rhyme," Sachs reminded. "Tell them about the trucks."

Rhyme nodded, never able to resist delivering a lesson in his craft. "Interesting thing about crime scene work – sometimes what you don't find at a scene is as important as what you do find. I was looking at our evidence board and I realized that something was missing: Where was the evidence of the trucks for the immigrants? My INS friend told me that ground transport is part of the smuggling contract. But there weren't any trucks. The only vehicle at the beach was Jerry Tang's – to pick up the Ghost and his bangshou. Well, why no trucks. Because the Ghost knew the immigrants would never get to shore alive."

The line of boarding passengers was shrinking.

Webley from State leaned down and whispered viciously into Rhyme's face, "You're in way over your head here, mister. You don't know what you're doing."

Rhyme gazed back at him in mock contrition. "Nope, I don't know a thing. Not about world politics, not about les affaires d'etat… I'm just a simple scientist. My knowledge is woefully limited. To things like, say, fake dynamite."

Which shut up Webley from State instantly.

"This's where I come in," Dellray said. "Unfortunately for you folks."

Peabody cleared his throat uneasily. "What are you talking about?" he asked – but only because the script called for him to pose the question, the answer to which was the last thing in the world he wanted to hear.

"The bomb in Fred's car? Well, the results came back from the lab about the dynamite. Interesting – it wasn't dynamite at all. It was sawdust mixed with resin. Fake. Used for training. My INS friend told me that Immigration has its own bomb squad and bomb training facility in Manhattan and he stopped by the place this morning. They have dummy explosives on hand to teach rookies recognition and handling. The sticks in Fred's car match the samples from there. And the numbers on the detonator are similar to some he found in an INS evidence locker – they were confiscated last year when some agents arrested a dozen illegal Russian nationals in Coney Island."

Rhyme enjoyed the flicker of horror in Peabody 's eyes. The criminalist was surprised that Webley from State could still manage to look so indignant. "If you're suggesting that anyone in the federal government would hurt a fellow agent -"

"Hurt? How could a small detonator hurt anyone? It was just a firecracker, really. No, the important criminal charge I'd think of would be felonious interference with an investigation – because it would seem to me that you might've wanted Fred off the case temporarily."

"And why?"

" 'Cause," white-suited Dellray took over, stepping forward, driving Webley from State against the wall, "I was makin' waves. Gettin' together the SPEC-TAC team. Who woulda taken the Ghost out no nonsense, not pissin' around like the INS folk were doing. Hell, I think that's why I was on the case in the first place. I din't know beans 'bout human smugglin'. An' when I arranged for an expert – Dan Wong – to take over the case, next thing we know his butt's on a plane headin' west."