The remaining ten, namely, the Chang and Wu families, who were dissidents and supporters of the 1989 riots in China, run into Chinatown of New York using a stolen van.

Amelia Sachs, upon racing to the scene, finds a man with a gun-shot wound clinging to the rocks near the shore, and helps to rescue him.

At Lincoln Rhyme's apartment, where the interagency operation to intercept the ship was being coordinated, the team is approached by Sonny Li, one of the immigrants who fell off the raft, who is really an undercover police officer from Fuzhou, and who wishes to kill Ghost for personal reasons.

As it happens, the mother of Wu was sick with a disease common to China, and was intercepted at the hospital by Rhyme, who proceeded to arranged the ambush.

He confronts Ghost in the street, discovering that he had shot himself, clung to a rock near the shore, and assumed the identity of Dr John Sung.

The two of them fight, and Li is ultimately killed, but not before rubbing talcum-powder from Ghost's amulet under his nails, so that Rhyme can trace the material to Dr John Sung.

However, Ghost, using his connections within the INS, is able to secure deportation to China despite his numerous murders and other crimes on American soil.