Jake Maroc - Shan Part 2

Jake felt the sand beneath him, felt the salt wind on his cheeks. Somewhere he heard the sound of children's laughter, a dog's yelp of joy. Most of all, he felt the weight, cool and curved, of the jade fu. Father, he wanted to say, when I learn your lesson will it make me all-powerful, or just inhuman?

But sitting on the beach at Repulse Bay, next to the Jian, the creator, he made no comment at all. He merely waited for his father to explain to him what had occurred at Kam Sangand to explain how the world was now a different and infinitely more dangerous place.

Jin Kanzhe was in Qianmen, just south of Beijing's Tienanmen Square, in among a warren of tiny side streets filled with food-shops and vendors' stalls. He wore a putty-colored trench coat, belted and epauleted, the hem reaching to the ground. It made him seem even taller and slimmer than he was.

Behind Jin Kanzhe a torrent of bicycles shot along the main streets, the heavy cold damping down almost all sound so that their pa.s.sing was eerily silent. The smell of coal dust turned the air to mola.s.ses.

Jin saw the stocky man outside the carpet shop and approached him. "Good morning, Comrade. And how is our lizi, our deadly little plum?"

Colonel Hu sucked on his teeth. "Our lizi is as well as can be expected," he said.

As always, Colonel Hu was uncomfortable around Jin. His features, rough-hewn, undistinguished, were a far cry from the narrow elegance of Jin Kanzhe's.

"The mission concerning the girl went well?" he asked. They moved slowly through the throngs of shoppers; Jin Kanzhe liked to be in motion.

"There was no undue difficulty," Colonel Hu said. Jin concentrated on a tonal shading he did not recognize. "The strategy you proposed was the correct one. They are used to being sought out near the rivers. It has been the established way for years. We found Cheng and the girl on the mountainside; we caught them asleep." Colonel Hu shrugged. "Still I lost two men; one more is in a coma. These are resourceful people."

Jin Kanzhe wondered whether it was a note of respect he detected in Colonel Hu's voice. "We used every precaution and still they were able to counterattack."

"It was a pity about her escort," Jin Kanzhe said. "I would have preferred to put him under articulated interrogation."

"Cheng?" Colonel Hu shrugged. "He died a soldier's death. He took a bullet through the heart."

Jin Kanzhe snorted. " *A soldier's death.' You give it a romantic ring. There is nothing romantic about death."

Colonel Hu said nothing. They turned right as they came to the end of the block. They were in an area adjacent to the railway station. As they walked, they pa.s.sed a line of traditional apothecaries, their narrow interiors lined with dusty gla.s.s cases stocked with deer antlers, ground tiger's teeth, ginseng root and all manner of fungi.

Jin Kanzhe nodded, dismissing the subject. "It is the girl who concerns us, after all. We have Wu Aiping to thank for detecting her presence among the Steel Tiger Triad. His almost pathological interest in the Shis led him to track down, before his death, her ident.i.ty and whereabouts. This was the legacy left for his friend, Huaishan Han."

"He led us to the girl?"

"Yes," Jin Kanzhe said thoughtfully. "She will soon be the engine of your making."

"There is a good chance," Colonel Hu said slowly, "that what you are asking me to do to her will change her in a very basic manner."

Yes, Jin Kanzhe said to himself; yes. She is like some mythical creature. All men who look upon her face are captivated by her. He stopped, turned to face Colonel Hu. "I must tell you something in no uncertain terms. This is so critical that neither of us can afford to misunderstand the other." He was silent for a moment, allowing his intense gaze to register on the other man.

After a time, Colonel Hu nodded. "Yes, sir." For the first time, he understood the true nature of his discomfort around this man. I am afraid of him, Colonel Hu thought, with some surprise. Jin Kanzhe knows how desirable the lizi is. Has she so profoundly affected me her captor? Is Jin Kanzhe making a shrewd guess? What troubled Hu most was that he himself did not know the answer.

"Good, Comrade Colonel. Zheige lizi hai mei shu ne. This plum is not yet ripe. But that doesn't mean that she is not dangerous. On the contrary. She is exceptionally deadly." Jin Kanzhe abruptly began to walk again and Colonel Hu, taken unawares, was obliged to hurry to catch up.

"You have a point," Colonel Hu said. "However, I must confess that I am unsure whether you are aware of just how deadly I have made her."

Jin Kanzhe turned his head. The oblique light flashed off his eyes, as if energy was pouring out of him. "Tell me, Comrade Colonel," he said, "have you ever been to sea?"

Colonel Hu was puzzled. "No, sir. The truth is, the water makes me seasick."

Jin Kanzhe laughed. "Yes. That seems to be the case for many of our countrymen. However, there is a nautical term that you should take to heart when it comes to our lizi, our unripe fruit. She is like a beautiful sloop. With her one may come to feel that anything is possible. Therefore, beware of sailing too close to the wind, Comrade Colonel. Otherwise you may find yourself drowned." He glanced at his watch. "I am late."

Colonel Hu knew a dismissal when he heard one. He watched Jin Kanzhe stride off. In a moment the tall man was swallowed up in the swirl of pedestrian and bicycle traffic that ran like an endless river through Qianmen.

Ian McKenna was out with his police unit quelling a disturbance in Stanley when he was handed the briefcase. One moment he was directing three of his men in beating back a phalanx of jabbering Chinese so intent on getting through the doors of the closing Hongkong & Bangkok Trust Bank that they had flung aside the sawhorses McKenna's men had erected, the next a nondescript Chinese had placed something in his free hand. At six-foot-three, McKenna was easy to spot.

For a moment McKenna was not even aware of what had happened. He was intent on parting a Chinese from his teeth, swinging his burnished teak walking stick over his head and bringing it down with a crunch he believed to be one of the most satisfying sounds in the world.

Then, as the blood began to flow and he was about to step over the p.r.o.ne Chinese, he became aware of the added weight. He turned his head, saw the briefcase and the nondescript Chinese at the same moment.

"Inspector Ian McKenna, this is for you."

"Hey!" he called. "Hey, you!" But it was already too late, the figure melted into the riot of color and motion that surged all around him.

McKenna was known as Great Pool of Piddle by all the Chinese who came into contact with himand this included those who served under himbut never to his face, only when they were among their own, speaking in their native tongue. McKenna was a fire-haired Australian who spoke Cantonese and a smattering of the Hakka dialect with an atrocious accent. He had served his apprenticeship in police work in the Outback down under before emigrating to Hong Kong ten years before. He was made a corporal in the Crown Colony's police force and by a combination of a rough-hewn guile and an often violent force of will, worked himself up to the rank of captain.

He possessed the animal's innate ability to go for the jugular when confronting his enemies. This trait caused him to be feared by almost as many of his superiors as those who toiled in his command.

But there were others who did not fear Ian McKenna. Among them was Formidable Sung, the 489 of Hong Kong's largest Cantonese Triad, the 14K. It was Formidable Sung who, failing to strike a bargain with McKenna, had discovered the Australian's weakness. Photographs had been obtained of McKenna and an eleven-year-old Chinese boy in poses of such extreme intimacy that the public exposure of same would spell not only instant dismissal for McKenna but more than likely criminal prosecution.

Now twice a week McKenna reported the details of his pending workload directly to Formidable Sung; in a break with tradition, it had been the 489 himself who had handed McKenna the sheaf of photographic prints sealed in a glossy crimson envelope.

The symbolic gesturesuch a red envelope was traditionally given to a defeated business rival along with a token sum of money in order for him to keep some semblance of facehad not been lost on the Australian. He would never forget the moment Formidable Sung placed the thing in his hand. Each sound, each smell, and above all the laughing glitter in the 489's eyes, were indelibly etched into McKenna's brain. He would not forget such an insult, for Formidable Sungby coming himself to the rendezvous, and by staring openly into his face when he slit open the envelopehad left McKenna with no face at all.

Now, as the men in McKenna's command beat back the last of the Would-be rioters, McKenna wondered what new indignity the dragon of the 14K was foisting upon him. His face was red, and not from the exertion of wading through a bunch of hysterical heathens.

McKenna blew his whistle, calling his men back to the wagon that had brought them from the station house. He stared down at the unconscious Chinese and spat heavily into his broken face. What he really wanted to do was spit into Formidable Sung's face.

He turned, stomping back to the police wagon, thinking, One day I'll do just that. Then I'll watch ft is face turn red. A pox on him and all his accursed Triad.

McKenna did not open the briefcase until he had returned to the precinct. Even then he did not trust the operation to his office. Instead, he went down the musty-smelling hall to the evil-smelling men's room. One grimy window was painted shut. The black desiccated bodies of flies lay on the rotting sill. Above, one of their brothers, still alive, beat itself feebly against the painted gla.s.s. There was just enough sunlight filtering in to give it a false sense of hope.

McKenna paused. The tap-tap-tapping of the fly seemed to echo eerily in the enclosed s.p.a.ce, taking on supernormal proportions.

Suddenly, McKenna was back in Australia's Northern Territories outside of Bundooma. The edges of the Simpson Desert where he and his partner had tracked a trio of aborigines accused of stealing six head of steer. McKenna remembered how his partner, Deak Jones, had balked at the sight of the Simpson.

"Not in there, mate," he had said, the eyes in his sunburned face squinting up. "Let the b.u.g.g.e.rs go. They'll fry anyway in there." January in the Simpson was no place for a living thing to be without shade and water in good supply.

"That's their turf," McKenna had replied. "They'll slaughter the animals as they go, drink their blood, eat their flesh. They'll get off scot free if we turn back now."

"They were starving. They stole in order to live."

"They'll see this, "McKenna unholstered his .357 Magnum, "they'll know they've done wrong." He licked his lips, c.o.c.king back the hammer. "It's our job, Deak m'lad. If we don't have that, we don't have a b.l.o.o.d.y thing."

"We're going to bring them back, Ian," Deak said, eying the muzzle of the huge pistol. "Let's remember that."

McKenna grinned savagely. "Push off, mate. Push off."

It took them two days to get the scent and overtake the abos. Near to dusk they topped a rise and found the trio and what was left of the cattle. By then they had been in the desert for close to fifty hours and it had taken its toll. They were dehydrated and without sleep and jumpy enough to be spooked by any sound of unknown origin.

"Let's take them," Deak said through crusted lips, and McKenna had headed down the slope, silent as a dog.

The aborigines looked up at the policemen's approach. As McKenna had predicted, they had slaughtered a steer. Its blood was pooled at its open belly.

Nothing was said. The aborigines made no move; there was no animosity on their faces, no remorse, not even, McKenna had thought later, surprise.

"All right," Deak had begun, beginning a speech McKenna knew well. McKenna drew his Magnum and shot them each once through the center of their foreheads. They pitched forward at once, covering the animal they had so recently slit open.

"Christ Jesus!" Deak swung on his partner. "Have you gone mad? We were meant to take them back. Alive, mate. Ableedinglive!"

McKenna bolstered his weapon. "Now you listen to me. We're more than two days into this stinking h.e.l.lhole. There were three of them and only two of us. How long would we realistically last? D'you think you could stay awake another night? Or get by on four hours sleep? What d'you think would happen if you closed your eyes even for a moment. They'd be all over you and then me, that's what. This was the safest way; the only way."

They camped there for the night, feasting on the carca.s.s of the steer. But the flies had come, scenting the reek of death. It was odd to see them in the desert but they were unstoppable, crawling all over the steer and the abos without a trace of discrimination.

Tap-tap-tap. In the last of the light, McKenna had turned his head. Tap-tap-tap. His gaze followed the sound back to its source. A fly was beating against the open filmed eye of one of the natives as if it was a pane of gla.s.s, as if it were trapped.

Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap, over and over again, without meaning, until the tattoo began to grate on McKenna. He got up and walked over to the corpse. Tap-tap-tap. He looked down, into the opaque orb. Tap-tap-tap.

"G.o.d rot you!" His boot lashed out viciously, crashing into the ashen face. "Shuddup!" Wiped what was left of the fly off his sole. The dead abo wouldn't know or mind.

But that night, McKenna had heard the recurring sound again and this time he could do nothing to stop it. He was staked out on the sere desert floor, sunlight blinding him, and he felt them all over his exposed flesh. The flies crawling.

He awoke from the dream, dripping wet, his heart pounding painfully in his chest. Deak Jones was sitting close to him, his knees drawn up. He was staring into McKenna's face. When he saw him awake, he said, "I was wondering if you could tell me how you're able to sleep."

When they had returned to civilization, Jones had asked for a transfer and McKenna had not seen him again. But as for the tap-tap-tapping, that was another matter entirely.

Now, thousands of miles and thirteen years later, that moment in time rushed back on McKenna with the force of a piledriver. In two quick steps he crossed the small room and, reaching out a spatulate thumb and forefinger, squeezed the bloated black fly against the dirt-encrusted pane.

"Like getting rid of a pimple," he said, and went into one of the two adjacent cubicles. He closed the door and locked it, sat down with the briefcase across his lap.

For a time he did nothing. He shook out a cigarette and lit up, taking the tobacco deep into his lungs. The air hissed in exhalation. It was like a sigh. Of resignation, perhaps?

With a sudden flip, McKenna unsnapped the bra.s.s latches. He opened the lid. Unconsciously he held his breath. The cigarette dangled loosely from his pursed lips, smoke curling past his eye.

"Christ!" It was a reedy whisper. As if of their own accord, his hands began to flip through the stacks of bills. Three thousand dollars U.S. currency. Part of his mind still numb, he did a recount and came to the same total.

Only then did he see the note. It was taped to the inside of the lid. He opened it. "For services rendered," he read. "Should such a weekly stipend be of interest to you please come to Hair Pin Beach at two thirty this morning. At the second light stanchion three kilometers northeast of Stanley, walk straight down the beach to the edge of the water."

The note, typewritten and obviously untraceable, was unsigned.

McKenna's gaze was drawn back as if by magnetic polarity to the contents of the briefcase. He gave a little shiver as if of antic.i.p.ation.

There was a small painting by Georges Seurat that Rodger Donovan had brought with him when he had moved into the office that had been Antony Beridien's, until the then-director of the Quarry had been a.s.sa.s.sinated.

Donovan thought of it as a most extraordinary painting. It had been a gift. Twice dailyat dawn and duskwhen the light from outside was right, the points of seemingly disparate colors swirled through eye and brain to create a unity of tone and, even, quite miraculously, form.

That was, Donovan supposed, why he was drawn so strongly to Seurat's work. It was the miracles the artist could perform. For Donovan was quite certain that no true miracles existed in day-to-day life. Seurat had the ability to take Donovan quite out of himself.

Now, with the heavy gun-metal rain rattling against the windowpanes, he turned away from his contemplation of a miracle. The buzzer sounded again and he said, "Come."

The thick door opened. Between two three-inch mahogany panels, a sheet of steel-alloy an inch thick protected him from the unlikely event of an attack. Unlikely because of the six-level security system he had had installed after the death of Henry Wunderman.

A tall, lanky figure stood in the doorway. He wore a Donegal-tweed sweater, pleated wool trousers the color of burnt b.u.t.terscotch and cordovan ta.s.seled loafers. His long frizzy hair and high forehead made him seem no older than nineteen or twenty, rather than his true age of thirty-one. He was pale-eyed and fair-skinned, with cheeks made ruddy in the winter by skiing, in the summer by windsurfing.

Donovan gestured to a bentwood chair. "Take a pew, Tony."

Tony Simbal's long strides ate up the distance between them. Like Gary Grant's, they were fluid, so effortless they attracted the attention of a majority of the female population in his immediate vicinity. He folded himself into the chair. His long-fingered hands neatly folded over his crossed knees.

"How was New York?" Donovan asked.

Simbal grunted. "Grimy. And there's so much traffic these days you're forced underground in order to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time." He grinned. "Down there you need a .357 Magnum in order to survive."

"Nothing untoward occurred, I take it."

"Not really. I just bared my teeth at the natives. That seemed enough to keep the Zulus at bay."

Zulus. Donovan gave a little laugh, his handsome blond visage breaking its somber facade. That word took him back. Tony Simbal was a relative newcomer to the Quarry. Still, he was one of the closest to Donovan. That was because the new Director had reached out his long arm and s.n.a.t.c.hed Simbal away from the DEA.

Donovan and Simbal had gone through the Stanford mill together. They had been fiercely compet.i.tive roommates, fraternity brothers and the best of friends. They had grown up together, their fathers vying for regional chess t.i.tles all along the Pacific coast.

In rebuilding the Quarry after the twin debacles of Beridien's and Wunderman's deaths, Donovan's aim was absolute trust. His recruitment of Tony Simbal was the essence of that trust. In high school, the two boys had actually gone after the same girl. She, being open-minded and flattered, had dated each one on alternating Sat.u.r.day nights until they had asked her to make a choice. She had told them that she could not because each had qualities she loved and did not want to give up, and that comment had sealed their friendship forever. After that, they continued to compete with one anothermostly in the academic worldbut neither really kept score of the victories and defeats. They seemed to share the elation and the disappointments equally, remembering what that girl in high school had told them. Now, long after both had forgotten her name, they recalled that moment in time as if it had the magical aura of Arthur pulling Excalibur free of the stone.

"No Zulus in Chinatown," Donovan said now. Zulus had been their word for blacks on the wrong side of the law.

"No," Simbal agreed. "Only one very dead white man."

"How bad was it?"

The tall man grimaced. He got up, restless in high-rises of any kind. He crossed to where the Seurat hung. "Looked like a barbecue gotten all out of hand. His face was basically fleshless. Can you believe this, Alan Thune was roasted by a dragon."

"Pardon?"

Simbal was still studying the Seurat. "It was Chinese New Year. Thune was set to pick up payment for three-quarters of a ton of Number Four opium. The tears of the poppy. Instead he met up with a dragon. It opened its mouth and fried Thune."

Donovan looked at him and Simbal smiled.

"The dragon's traditional at New Year's. A papier-mache head. People inside. Only this time there was also an antipersonnel flamethrower. "

"There couldn't've been much left of him," Donovan said.

Simbal grunted. "There wasn't. But our boys did a DNT on him. All the molars were in the right place. It was Alan Thune, all right."

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d." Donovan sat back in his leather swivel chair. "I only wish I had been the one to do it."

Behind him, through the dark-blue latticework of the Bali micro-blinds, Simbal could see the White House, part of the immaculately tended rose garden. Both were partially obscured by the rain. He wondered what it was about Thune that had gotten under Donovan's skin. At Stanford, he remembered, there was nothing that fazed that handsome, placid facade: not the most difficult final, not the breakup with a girlfriend. It wasn't, Simbal had eventually learned, that Donovan did not have emotions, it was that he wasn't fond of putting them on display. As he had now.

"You spent two years in Southeast Asia," Donovan said after a time. "All that time you were monitoring the diqui." Diqui, the Mandarin word for the planet earth, seemed an altogether accurate name for an organization of such vast power and influence. "Any ideas as to what's going on?"

Simbal was still focused on the Seurat. "This the real thing?"

"No," Donovan said, "a copy. I only wish I had the real thing. I'd have to go back to Paris for that."