Jake Maroc - Shan Part 50

"Did I kill her too?"

"I don't think so, no."

"Pok's always with one," McKenna said sorrowfully. "His oysters aren't so big now, huh? b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. He liked to talk big, like he wasn't a wog. He didn't know his place, what with his beautiful women, his high living. He's not living so high now. b.l.o.o.d.y right he's not."

So it wasn't just that Pok was Chinese, Jake thought. There was some personal connection. "You showed him," he said. "You had the last laugh."

"Laugh," McKenna said. His voice was eerie, skittish, swinging through the emotions. "He laughed at me. He looked down on me. But he got me the information, didn't he?"

"He sure did," Jake said, knowing that he was close now. "What information?"

"Oh, you know," McKenna said, "confirmation of the rumor that there was troublebig trouble, huh, Jake?at Southasia Bancorp."

"Where'd you hear that one, McKenna? That was top secret. No one was supposed to know but the directors of InterAsia."

"Don't I know," McKenna said happily. "I"

But the front door was swinging open and McKenna, his head whipping around, had returned with frightening swiftness to his hysterical state. The muzzle of the Magnum swung in a blurred arc and he screamed, "They're coming! They're coming!"

Jake saw Bliss in the brilliant illumination of her car's headlights, coming through the half-open front door, and he leapt at McKenna. The first shot went high as Jake crashed into his outstretched arm.

McKenna grunted and rolled, freeing one hand. He lifted a ham fist, slammed it down on the back of Jake's head. The blow made Jake's head swim but he had no time to stop it and the successive ones that landed in the same spot. His main concern was the Magnum. With that caliber size, one shot was all it would take to put him down permanently.

But McKenna was not letting go, He had the strength of madness about him and it was impossible to wrest the weapon from him. Then Jake knew why. He had been gripping it before Jake even arrived. He saw it as something magical, his only protection from the abos.

Jake used his foot, pressing down on McKenna's wrist to keep the Magnum at bay. At the same time he used a liver kite, a purely percussion blow, an atemi. The big man grunted and jerked his knee up. It smashed into the back of Jake's head, making him see stars. He wavered and McKenna, with superhuman strength, pulled his wrist free. Pointed the Magnum into Jake's face. "Bye-bye, baby," he said thickly. And Bliss kicked him hard in the side of his head. He began to gag and Jake, recovering, used his elbow in a series of atemi that would have put any normal man out. Not McKenna. He came on, flailing with the gun and his balled-up free hand so that Jake had no choice. The Magnum was very close and impossible to control. Used the jut-hara, the killing blow, the heel of the hand striking the fifth and sixth ribs at such an angle that the shards of bone pierced the heart.

McKenna screamed, his eyes bugged and he arched upward like a speared fish. The corpse, already dead, juddered reflexively.

Jake, still groggy, lurched to his feet, took Bliss by the hand and went out on the patio. The waves far below crashed and hissed against the black crags, the last of the rain beat softly against them, the night wind sought to cleanse them.

He tried to catch his breath, couldn't and stood, bent over, while Bliss held his thundering head. After a long time, he heard her whispering, "Jake, Jake, Jake."

"Stupid of you to come here," he said. "Just plain stupid." "I could say the same for you," she told him, close beside him. "I begged my father not to tell you anything until you got to the junk. I knew you'd do something like this. Oh, Buddha, I was so frightened for you!" She shouted this into the night, then fell against him, sobbing. "Where were you?" she whispered. "Why didn't you call? I was so worried."

Jake put his arms around her at last. He wanted to tell her everything: what he had found out in j.a.pan and why, finally, he had gone. But he could not. He felt as if he were in a dream where one cannot find one's voice. Why did he remain mute?

Instead he kissed her, thinking of them as a movie poster, he the all-powerful hero embracing the softly vulnerable leading lady. It gave him a measure of solace and briefly he wondered why.

He felt her heart beating hard against him, her warmth seeping into him and he realized just how much he missed her, and how worried about her he had been. He had wanted to call her many different times, when he was in j.a.pan. Each time he had stopped short. Why? It wasn't for lack of caring. Perhaps, then, he cared too much. The situation had been dire enough in Tokyo and then in Kyoto without his being distracted by his emotions. During that compressed time it had been far better to keep her at arm's length.

But he realized now how cruel he had been to her. "I'm sorry, Bliss," he said. "It was a bad time for Mikio. There was death all around and I didn't want to share that with you." He kissed her neck. "And I know you. You would have picked it up the minute I said h.e.l.lo."

"It's all right, Jake," she whispered. "As long as you're back, safe."

She kissed him. "I found out about the woman with the opal," she went on quickly. "She was Big Oysters Pok's mistress. She was also a Communist spy."

"Then I was right," Jake said. "She was tailing me to keep me away from the boat. So I couldn't interfere with the dantai's work."

"But"

But he put a hand over her mouth, made a silent ssh-ing sound with his lips. Their faces were very close and he saw the puzzlement in her eyes.

Car, he mouthed silently to her, then, in her ear, whispered, "Go to your car and move it from out front. Don't forget to turn off the lights. Then come right back here."

"But, Jake"

"Hurry, now!" he said urgently, and watched her disappear into the shadows wreathing the side of the house. She made no noise and in a moment he was straining to discern where she had gone.

When she returned, she seemed almost to materialize out of those same inky shadows. She came toward him in a scuttling half crouch.

"Did you see anything?" Jake whispered.

She nodded. "Car coming. I could see its headlights."

"Right," he said. "Let's find out who's visiting Great Pool of Piddle at this time of the night."

It meant going back in there. The stench was already overpowering and Jake knew they would have to be quick, so he set them up just inside the front door. They waited uncomfortably. Even breathing through their mouths didn't help enough.

In time they heard the throaty rumble of exhaust. The rain had ceased completely by then and it had grown very still. They could hear the crunch of the gravel and the noise of someone walking up the steps.

There was a knock on the door and Bliss opened it while Jake lunged forward, pulling the figure on the doorstep over the threshold inside. Bliss kicked the door shut and turned on the light.

The Chinese looked at them from his one good eye. The other, milky white and unseeing, glowered like an angry winter's sun.

"I don't want to see him," Sawyer told Sei An. "Under no circ.u.mstances"

"But I'm already in," Sir John Bluestone said, opening the door into Sawyer's office.

"I'm terribly sorry, tai pan," an apologetic Sei An said, peeking in around the tall gwai loh. "He took me by surprise."

"That's all right, Sei An," Sawyer said.

"I've sent for Security."

Sawyer saw the wide smirk on Bluestone's face and knew that he couldn't live with that. "No, no, Sei An. You tell them everything's all right." Ignoring the loss of face it caused him.

Sei An looked at her tai pan, saw his predicament and, not wanting to lose him more face, nodded wordlessly, pulling the door shut behind her.

"Sit down, tai pan," Sawyer said with a forced smile. "To what do I owe this honor?"

It was late in the day. The sun hung in the sky like a swollen bruise, washing the city in dusty, russet light. Victoria Harbor was filled with vessels of every description from old, seemingly decrepit junks, their faded orange sails spread wide, to sleek, modern cruisers, their diesel exhausts bubbling; from stained cargo vessels registered in lands halfway around the world, to crisp naval-gray aircraft carriers in for R & R.

"The view from these windows," Bluestone said, ignoring Sawyer, "is quite extraordinary. It makes one feel as if one owns all of Hong Kong." He turned with a grin on his face and, without asking, wentover to the granite-topped sideboard and poured two drinks into wide-mouthed cut-crystal gla.s.ses. He put one on the desktop in front of Andrew Sawyer and sipped at his own. "Ummm, single malt. Excellent."

Sawyer did not touch the gla.s.s of Scotch. He kept his hands folded together, the fingers laced, in order to conceal their trembling. He did not know whether it was in rage or in fear.

"Not thirsty, tai pan?" Bluestone gave another wide grin. He was wearing an impeccably cut tropical-weight chalk-stripe suit, pure white Turnbull and a.s.ser shirt with a regimental tie, gold nugget cuff links and tie tack, polished oxblood wingtip shoes.

"Is this a social visit?" Sawyer said finally, exasperated.

Bluestone smiled at another tiny victory. He knew that they added up. He looked down at the Scotch, swirling the amber liquid. "Social? Ah, no, tai pan. I don't believe I could spare the time for that."

"Of course not," Sawyer said archly. "You've been busy lately, haven't you?"

"And you'd like nothing better than to swat me down, tai pan," Bluestone's head rose until he was looking directly at Sawyer. "But you'd better beware."

"Is that a threat? Do you think you can frighten me?"

"It would be an awfully stupid man," Bluestone said with some edge, "who was not frightened at the prospect of losing his entire empire."

"I see why you've come here," Sawyer said. He stood, conceding another minor victory to Bluestone. He could no longer bear being physically looked down upon from Bluestone's regal height. "It's to gloat. You think that you've already won, that all of InterAsia belongs to you."

"Doesn't it?"

"Not by a fair margin," Sawyer said firmly.

Bluestone came over to the desk, leaned over it. "We own thirty-eight percent of InterAsia now. Today alone we picked up another eight percent. The stock is plummeting and our brokers are flooded with offers to sell shares at the price we are offering, which remains a full ten dollars over current value on the Hang Seng. Do you really think you can stop the takeover at this late date."

"Get out of my office!" Sawyer shouted, losing more face now but not caring, his cheeks flushed with anger and resentment.

Bluestone looked leisurely around the great room. "I always coveted this office, this building. Its location is superb."

"It's mine!" Sawyer thundered. "And as long as it is, you're barred from the premises!" He picked up the phone and asked for Security to come up on the double.

"As long as it's yours, that's your privilege." Bluestone thumped his gla.s.s onto the center of a pile of papers. "But realistically we both know that won't be very long." He tapped his forefinger against his lips and said meditatively, "You know, I think I have just the right decorating scheme to maximize the drama of this view." Two armed uniformed men came into the room and he said, "Well, I see that you're busy, tai pan. And I have a great deal to do." He lifted his arms. "All of this has to be replaced, of course, and that's rather a tall order, so I know you'll excuse me." And went quickly out the door.

The senior of the uniformed guards said, "Sir?"

"Nothing," Andrew Sawyer said, his head in his hands. "There's nothing you can do."

When Oleg Maluta summoned her to his office, she went willingly. Now that she was well into the game, now that she had slipped the knife between the plates of his armor and found the soft spots, she no longer feared him.

Oleg Maluta no longer seemed seven feet tall, filled with an inexhaustible power, possessed of an endlessly clever mind that could trap her at every turn.

She remembered the gun he had with her unsmudged prints embossed by her own oils into the grip. The photographs he had of her weeping in the winter night when he had happily trapped her into murdering Alexei. The s.m.u.tty photographs he had paraded before her that reduced the love she and Mikhail Carelin felt for each other to grasping, a fluid-filled animal coupling.

Photographs like that should not be allowed to exist, she thought. They were an affront to G.o.d as well as to the sanct.i.ty of emotion. Wh.o.r.es and screen actors could be caught thus in the intimacy of a celluloid moment since no real emotion pa.s.sed from person to person in the reality of the scene. The viewerthe voyeurwas required to partic.i.p.ate by adding elements from his or her own imagination in order for it to take life. But here, the nakedness of Daniella and Carelin was appalling. It was the capturing of what they felt for each other that was the true obscenity.

The Ring Road was filled with traffic and Daniella was obliged to roll up her windows against the cement dust which rose so high it turned the watery sunlight into a pointillist's brush.

She didn't mind any of it. She was, by this time, thoroughly fed up with a day crammed to overflowing with meetings concerning budgets, personnel, ongoing project evaluation, central staff evaluation, expense record overviews and, of course, the chronic maintenance problems plaguing the new offices.

The weariness of inertia coated her like grime. It was endemic to the Soviet bureaucratic structure but that, somehow, today, made it even harder to take. Her departmentthe entire sluzhba, it seemed was mired in inefficiency, boredom and stupidity. The humdrum had claimed them all, making of them nothing more than dull-witted slugs squirming blindly through rock-strewn soil.

After more than a decade and G.o.d alone knew how much money, Africa was turning further and further away from Communism. The coordinated protests throughout Western Europe were now no more than an insignificant trickle, and Russia's hold over Eastern Europe, though steadfast, only served to make clear to her her own country's lack of vision and global inspiration.

Only the Soviet-backed terrorist training centers were an unqualified success, but while many of Daniella's colleagues applauded their work and clamored for even more recruits from the Middle East, she saw what they did not: that arming the Arabs was one thing, training them in this way was quite another.

The absolute danger of fanaticism had faded in Russia as the government rewrote the histories of Stalin and Trotsky. Ideological fanaticism is bad enough, Daniella thought. But religious fanaticism was a lethal bomb of quite terrifying proportions. She wondered now, as her Chaika rolled through the Borovitsky Gate, if any of them within the sluzhba knew just what it was they were helping to sp.a.w.n.

Oleg Maluta's office was actually a suite of three rooms inside the Kremlin. It was on the fourth floor of an unremarkable building near the theater, its ancient windows affording an excellent view across tourist-laden Cathedral Square to Tainitskaya Bashnya, the Tower of Silence, built in 1485 and the oldest of the Kremlin's outstructures.

Velvet drapes hung on either side of the cas.e.m.e.nts and a ma.s.sive desk of solid mahogany was set just in front of this. In this way the light was always behind Maluta and in the eyes of his visitors.

Daniella closed the oak door behind her and went across the Isfahan carpet, threading her way between the two velvet-covered highbacked chairs. Portraits of Lenin and Stalin, oversized, definitely not standard issue, hung on either side wall. The end of a leather sofa peeked out from behind a partly open door.

Maluta was on the telephone, half-turned away as she delivered the two manila envelopes onto his desktop: her latest report on Carelin and Genachev. She looked out the window. Beyond the Italian-inspired crenellated wall, beyond the Tower of Silence, boats upon the Moskva moved with the alacrity of snails crawling up a hill. From this distance, the water appeared as dense as lead. It was the color of zinc. The windows were closed against the stink of diesel fumes and the noise of constant construction. Still, she noticed the seepage of grit along the sills.

Maluta motioned her to a chair but she ignored him. She went around the side of the desk and put one booted foot up on his chair. With a shove, she swiveled his leather chair around and flexed her knee. The thick brown fabric of her uniform skirt drew back as if by accident, revealing the flesh of her thigh.

Startled and angry, Maluta lifted a hand to strike her but Daniella caught it by the wrist in her two hands. He opened his mouth but she put her face very close to his and slowly, slowly drew his hand downward. Their eyes locked and this time Daniella saw the vulnerability behind the carefully groomed facade. He was a child just as all men were children deep down in their souls. That was the essential difference in the s.e.xes, Daniella thought: men, at their cores, are children; women are mothers.

Daniella cursed into his face while she brought his reluctant hand within the hem of her skirt, into the darkness.

"This is what you want, b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she hissed at him. "This is what you're afraid Oreanda will punish you for having. Isn't that right, Oleg."

"Don't call me that here." His face was flushed and the hand holding the receiver was white.

"Put the phone down, Oleg."

"I told you a"

She gripped his hand hard, guided his fingertips until they grazed the humid bush of her pubic hair. As soon as she felt the tremors begin she pushed his hand away along her thigh.

Maluta's brain was on fire. Through the conflagration he saw the visage of Oreanda. Her full sensual lips opened and she spoke to him. He felt rather than heard her words. They fell like drops of dew onto his imprisoned fingertips.

His tongue came out, swiped at his dry lips; he began to tremble in earnest.

"It is what you want, Oleg." Her voice was silken whisper.

"Not here," he rasped thickly. "Not now."

"Oh, yes," she said, her lips against his ear. "Here. Now."

"No!" he shouted, beginning to rise up out of the chair. But Daniella drew his palm forward until it cupped her. She pushed the fingertips inside her and she said, "There," as she would to an infant whose constant crying she wished to end.

Oh, G.o.d, G.o.d, G.o.d, Maluta thought, shivering. He felt the sweat trickle from under his arms. With a stifled groan, he hung up without ending the conversation. There was an odd, sweet taste in his mouth.

"Are you crazy?" he said but he knew it was likely not she but he who was crazy; knew that if he had to take his hand away now he could not. "Why are you doing this?" he whispered. He could not take his eyes off her hips as they made sharp little circles. "Is it to humiliate me further? To tell me how much you despise me, how you hate making love to me, how it disgusts you?"

"I'm going to come," Daniella said, arching herself into his probing fingers. The gaze from her gray eyes seemed to caress him. "Right now." And reached down to twist the bulge inside his trousers.

Felt him lurch, then spurt heavily and said, "There. Oh, there."

The phone began to ring. He was panting, his face slick with running sweat that trickled down into the starched collar of his shirt. He jerked a little, as if with tiny electric shocks, as she continued to rub him through his sopping trousers. In a moment, the ringing ceased.

"I hope you have a change of clothes here," she said, laughing as she took his hand from her and put her leg down.