Necropolis

arms behind his back and he felt cold steel against his wrists as a pair of handcuffs were locked into place. One of the policemen grabbed him by the hair and twisted him round so that he was in a kneeling position.
    Another man appeared at the door.
    "So this is Matthew Freeman," he said.
    The chairman of the Nightrise Corporation had wanted to make sure that everything was safe before he came in. Now he strutted forward and stood over Matt, looking down at him with a smile on his face.
    Although he had been hastily summoned out of bed, he was as impeccably dressed as always, in a new suit and polished shoes. "What a great pleasure to meet you," he added.
    Matt ignored him. He twisted round so that he was facing Paul Adams. His eyes were filled with anger.
    "What have you done?" he yelled.
    "I called them while you were in the shower." Adams went over to the chairman. It was clear he was afraid of him. He stood there, wringing his hands together as if trying to wash them clean. "This is the boy, Mr. Chairman," he muttered. "He came to the flat in the middle of the night. I called you the moment I could."
    "You've done very well," the chairman muttered. He was still gazing at Matt. "I never thought it would be this easy," he said.
    Matt swore at him.
    "I knew you were looking for him, Mr. Chairman," Paul Adams went on. "And now you have him. So you don't need Scarly. Tell me you'll let Scarly go."
    The chairman turned his head slowly and examined Scarlett's father as if he were a doctor about to break bad news. "I will not let Scarly go," he said. "I will never let Scarly go."
    "Then at least let me see her. I've given you the boy. Don't I deserve a reward?"
    'You most certainly do," the chairman said.
    He nodded at one of the policemen, who shot Paul Adams in the head. Matt saw the spray of blood as the back of his skull was blown off. He was dead instantly. His knees buckled underneath him, and he fell to one side.
    "A quick death," the chairman remarked. He nodded at Matt. "Soon you'll be wishing you could have had one too."
    He turned and walked out of the room. Two of the policemen reached forward and jerked Matt to his feet. Then they dragged him out, along the corridor and down to the city below.
    TWENTY-EIGHT
    Tai Fung
    T
    SIGNAL ONE
    The dragon was moving toward Hong Kong, closing in with deadly precision, gaining strength as it crossed the water. Scarlett had summoned it, and it had heard. Even she couldn't turn it back now.
    It had begun its life as nothing more than a front of warm air, rising into the sky. But then, very quickly, a swirl of cloud had formed, spinning faster and faster with a dark, unblinking eye at the center. By the time the weather satellites had transmitted the first pictures from the Strait of Luzon, it was already too late. The dragon was awake. Its appetite was as big as the ocean where it had been born, and it would destroy anything that stood in its path.
    The dragon was a typhoon.
    Tai fung.
    The words meant "big wind," but they went nowhere near describing the most powerful force of nature

    — a storm that contained a hundred storms within it. The typhoon would travel at over two hundred miles an hour.
    Its eye might be thirty miles wide. The hurricane winds around it would generate as much energy in one second as ten nuclear bombs. To the Chinese, typhoons were also known as "the dragon's breath," as if they came from some terrible monster living deep in the sea.
    Since 1884, the Hong Kong Observatory had put out a series of warnings whenever a typhoon had come within five hundred miles of the city, and each warning had come with a beacon, or a signal, attached.
    Signal One was shaped like a letter T and warned the local populace to stand by. Signal Three, an upside-down T, was more serious. Now people were told to stay at home, not to travel unless absolutely necessary. Later on came Signal Eight, a triangle, Signal Nine, an hourglass, and finally, most terrifyingly, Signal Ten. Perhaps appropriately, this took the shape of a cross. Signal Ten meant devastation. It would almost certainly bring wholesale loss of life.
    And that was what was on its way now.
    But there were no warnings. Nobody had been prepared for a typhoon in November, which was months after the storm season should have ended. And anyway, no typhoon could possibly have formed so quickly. It would normally take at least a week. This one had reached its full power in less than a day.
    The whole thing was