The Shadow Of Weng-Chiang Part 8

Li sat, trying to understand what had happened. Somehow he was back in the city, even though he'd been several miles outside it when he stood on the brakes. He had never experienced anything quite like it and wondered if it had really happened at all. Perhaps he had been drugged and hallucinated it?

The last time he felt so unsure of the world was when the j.a.panese had briefly occupied the city in 1932. Then, he had been shunted from interrogation to interrogation with increasingly little idea of what they wanted from him.

He had survived that, though, as he had survived everything else life had thrown at him. The trick seemed to be to adapt to new rules, rather than to deny them. Only an unstable personality would try to deny something which had clearly happened.

A car up ahead was doing a three-point turn and then started coming back towards him. At least the pedestrians could see it coming this time. Li glanced at it numbly and saw the Doctor and his accomplice inside.

'All right,' he mumbled to himself. 'Reality is whatever doesn't go away when you stop believing in it, so whatever happened was real.' His ancestors had coped with such sorcery, so he could too. The Doctor might have some knowledge about what had happened, so his capture was even more vital to Li. Starting the car with shaking hands, Li made his own three-point turn and tried to catch sight of the Doctor's car again.

Yan Cheh had opened a couple of the crates that shared the back of the truck with him, and found that they contained more examples of the new gun. Unlike any other submachine gun he had seen, it had no wood anywhere in its construction and had a folding metal stock. He didn't know how its performance would compare, but it certainly seemed lighter and more easily portable than most.

Another crate contained weapons like flare pistols but with grenade-firing attachments. This was new to Yan Cheh. He had heard of rifle grenades, but never ones launched by pistol.

He felt a faint swing to the side and realized the trucks were turning and slowing. There was now a sound of crunching gravel which suggested a driveway. It seemed logical to a.s.sume that they had reached their destination.

Yan Cheh dropped to the ground as the column of trucks turned from a driveway into a gravel parking area. He rolled with the fall and sprinted into the landscaped garden's nearest clump of bushes as the trucks drew to a halt.

The parking area was in front of a large three-storey French-style mansion. The front of the house was graced with a wide patio from which two staircases descended to the gravel. A narrower stretch of gravel led round the side of the house to a courtyard beyond a decorated archway. Floodlights kindly illuminated the gravel parking area as fatigue-clad men swarmed out of the house and started hauling crates out of the backs of the trucks. Other men rolled trolleys out from the courtyard entrance, ready to receive the crates.

Using the crunching of gravel to mask his own footsteps through the bushes, Yan Cheh tried to circle round towards the front of the trucks.

The men suddenly stopped work, however, and looked towards the main entrance to the house. Yan Cheh gently eased an eggplant branch aside to see what had attracted their attention. The culprit was the same as that at the docks: a very beautiful woman with l.u.s.trous long hair tied back in a ponytail and green eyes glinting from her delicate porcelain features.

She now wore Kuomintang fatigues, as did the other men around her.

Still, her presence here proved his own intuition had been correct. The girl was familiar, now that he saw her more clearly. She had unusual jade eyes under delicate brows and her long hair was swept round from a centre parting and tied at the back to drape over her left shoulder. HsienKo was her name, he recalled suddenly; he had seen her on the dance floor at the fashionable Club Do-San with her beau once or twice.

She gestured towards someone out of sight on the other side of the trucks. 'See him back to the nursery,' she told the nearest man. She moved round to inspect the contents of the first truck. Yan Cheh was surprised at the men's deference to her; it was most unusual, and not just for a Tong member.

The diversion would be useful if it allowed him to explore the house. He burrowed deeper into the undergrowth, circling round the verdant border of the driveway. There was no real blind-spot at which to cross to the house, but if he chose his moment right, he should be able to dash over while the Tong members were all facing away from the main door.

He watched them closely, and picked his moment to sprint across the turn in the drive. A pair of headlights speared him immediately and he turned in surprise. A Tsingtao Brewery truck was entering the drive and swinging towards him. Yan Cheh could see that Kwok was in the pa.s.senger seat, wearing a very surprised expression. He now had a field dressing over his right eye, held on with a patch, and the skin on the cheek below still showed some signs of blood.

Yan Cheh hurled himself out of the way and the truck screeched to a halt. The driver sounded his horn to attract attention to the discovery of the intruder, even as Yan Cheh plunged headlong back into the trees. He knew he wouldn't be able to sneak in now, as the guards would be more vigilant for the rest of the night. Instead, he made his way back round towards the perimeter wall of the grounds.

Armed men were already crashing through the bushes ahead of him as well as behind. They weren't being very stealthy, but were undoubtedly trying to flush him out. He turned right, heading away from the house, carefully listening to the sounds closing in from either side. There was one guard just a few yards away and Yan Cheh reached back over his shoulder for the hilt of his katana katana. He froze as a twig snapped quite near on the other side, then drew a Colt instead.

Guessing at the positions of the guards nearest to him and judging his moment carefully, Yan Cheh fired one shot in the air an instant before hurling himself to the ground. Answering volleys immediately erupted from either side, accompanied by yells of pain.

Allowing himself a smile of relief, Yan Cheh slipped quietly through the shrubbery towards the perimeter wall while the guards got on with shooting at each other. The house could wait; right now he was happy to get out in one piece.

HsienKo cursed the inexperience of her servants. 'Cease fire!

You're shooting at each other!' The men could rob the innocent easily enough, but outwitting an experienced warrior seemed beyond their capabilities. She reminded herself to be calm; her green eyes were supposed to be a sign of harmony, after all.

Kwok ran up to her, gun in hand. At least he was safe. 'It was Yan Cheh.'

'I gathered that.' She sighed. 'If we knew who he was, I could send '

'Would he have any more luck?'

'What could Yan Cheh do against him? Shoot him?' She shook her head. There was no point in indulging in such speculation. 'Did you get the relics from the safe house?'

'Yes.' He followed as she led the way towards the house.

There were others there a policeman and the strangers who interfered at the docks.'

That hadn't entirely surprised her; not after what she'd read. 'The Doctor, and the girl must be Leela.'

Kwok's eyebrow tilted. 'You know them?'

'I have my sources, Ah-Kwok. Just as Yan Cheh does. Did they follow you?'

'I had to enter the Dragon Path while they were watching.'

HsienKo nodded. That was unfortunate, but something of the sort was bound to happen eventually. 'It's all right. So long as you lost them, there's no harm done.'

Li scanned the street vigilantly, watching for the car with the Doctor and Romana. He knew they had come this way, but he had lost them all too quickly. He kicked himself mentally as he realized that he was being foolish. He knew where they would probably be going back to the bar. With that in mind, he could find his own route.

Dodging through the banner-hung streets without any care for the pedestrians and rickshaws that filled them, he drew up opposite the bar just as the Doctor's car halted on the other side of the road. Li drew his Browning and sprang from the car. 'Police; you're under '

The Doctor, who had just opened his door, closed it and raced off. Li fired a couple of shots at the back of the car, but this didn't persuade the fugitive to stop. Tossing his gun onto the pa.s.senger seat, Li started up his own car.

This was getting personal, he felt. The Doctor was easily within sight and Li made several blasts on the horn to clear the road ahead. He was determined not to let the Doctor out of his sight again.

People scattered as the cars hurtled down the street and Li was glad to see them show some sense for a change. There was something else on the edge of his consciousness, though; a distressful wailing...

The Doctor had adapted remarkably quickly to their new problem and had so far managed to avoid running anybody down. 'Do you know, I don't think they like us here? I mean, it's not as if we're in Shanghai Surprise Shanghai Surprise...'

'What's that noise?'

'What noi Air-raid siren. The j.a.panese in Manchuria occasionally bomb the city just to prove that they can.'

K9 whirred slightly. 'Danger, master, danger. Two aircraft approaching from north-north-west.'

'I hate to say I told you so, but...'

Romana pointed upwards urgently. 'Doctor, look out!'

The Doctor yanked the wheel hard to the left as a j.a.panese Mitsubishi Ki-15 single-engined plane hurtled along the rooftops like a winged demon, the muzzle of its wingtip-mounted machine gun flashing like a winking eye of fire.

The roar of its engine drowned out everything else as the sparks of exploding lamps sent people scattering across the street. Brick chippings and slivers of wood tore through the air as ferociously as the bullets themselves, burrowing as easily through the street traders' melons and sides of ham as through the people around them.

The roof of the car exploded into fragments as ricochets and splinters tore the windows to shreds. By some miracle neither the Doctor nor Romana were hurt, and K9 didn't even notice the small dents that were knocked in his casing.

Someone in the KMT had set up light machine guns on some sheltered roofs, however, and these returned fire against the oncoming second aircraft in line. The first had already pa.s.sed them and several bombs hurtled down from it, leaping along the street like rutting salmon.

Li was still some distance behind the Doctor's car and he twisted the wheel to get out of the street. Unfortunately, an ox-cart was blocking the road to the right, and Li's car slammed into it. Sacks of rice were hurled from the cart as a series of explosions ripped apart the buildings a few hundred yards on.

Wood and stone billowed outwards like smoke amidst the flame of the blasts. The narrow streets channelled the flying debris like buckshot along the barrel of a shotgun, and a storm of pebbles blew Li's windscreen in. He ducked in time to avoid being blinded by the splinters, but still got a painful set of cuts to his face.

Another aircraft roared overhead, the vibrations rattling his teeth in his head as it approached, but this was the one the KMT were shooting at. He hoped they got it and not just because the bombers were abetting the escape of a suspect.

Sparks flew from the car doors as they sc.r.a.ped along the walls of the narrow sidestreet, the Doctor driving like a maniac. The second j.a.panese aircraft was circling around for a better attack run when a trail of fire suddenly erupted from its engine. The port wingtip parted company with the rest of the wing and the Ki-15 tumbled towards the junction which they themselves were approaching.

Stopping or trying to turn away so close to the impact site would be fatal, K9 calculated, but if they could get through the crash area his trajectory calculations had projected and out the other side, they might have a chance. The Doctor floored the accelerator, sending the car through a series of washing lines.

The Doctor struggled to pull off a nightshirt that had wrapped itself around his head while trying to maintain a straight line. He finally hurled it away, while Romana looked round to see how close the plane was. 'We're not going to get out from under it in time.'

'If we stop or try to turn it'll catch up for sure!'

Smoke began to stream from under the bonnet as the sound of the plane's engines rose deafeningly. Looking far larger than life, the bomber loomed in the empty rear windscreen and clipped a rooftop only a few tens of yards away.

The upper storey of the building crumpled and spread out like a slow-motion film of a cake being squashed. Timber from its perimeter balcony hurtled towards them as the burning plane slewed aside and continued downwards. In an instant, the Ki-15's remaining bombload detonated.

The building swelled up and flew apart, bearing chunks of burning fuselage like driftwood in the surf. The car shook, either hitting or being hit by something, and was quickly enveloped in a roaring cloud of dust and smoke that was blacker than the darkest night.

Rondo, the huge bouncer from the Club Do-San, picked himself up from the debris-strewn cobblestones. Shopping for the herbs and spices the club's catering staff required wasn't usually dangerous for someone of his stature, but this was hardly a usual evening.

Flames were guttering among the charred stones at the far end of the street a couple of hundred yards away, and wailing Chinese were either staggering away from or running towards them. Rondo wished he could do something to help, but there were too many people to know where to start.

Just before the crash, Rondo could have sworn he saw a car pa.s.s him, with two people in it, that rang a bell somehow. He returned to the car he had brought, ashamed to see that it had received a number of minor dents and scratches. He should have prevented that, especially in such a fine new Bugatti.

There was a walnut panel set behind the two seats and Rondo withdrew a radio microphone from it.

He had news to report.

Li had an uncomfortable sensation of deja vu deja vu. It was 1932 all over again, with j.a.panese aircraft having destroyed parts of his city. At least this was only a nuisance raid and there would be no occupation force.

Not yet, anyway, though he had no doubt that Shanghai would fall again one day. Ryuji Matsu, who had interrogated him in 1932, had promised that. He believed Matsu, having been impressed as well as horrified by the j.a.panese efficiency.

At least they understood the need for order and reason, even though they were an enemy nation. People were alike all over, or so it seemed. Li felt cheated as well as that feeling of deja vu deja vu. He needed answers from the Doctor, and a corpse couldn't provide them. He loped around the scattered pools of fire among the wreckage, leaving them to be dealt with by the civilians with their bucket chains. Everyone made way for him, his slight advantage in height intimidating them as much as the scowl above his pointed chin.

The Doctor's car had somehow just about made it clear of the wreckage, but not quite. Its bonnet and roof showed clearly against the greys and browns of the ruined brick and plaster, but it was mostly buried. The Doctor lay under a smouldering beam just beyond it. He must have been thrown through the windscreen as the car came to grief.

Li felt for a pulse at the Doctor's throat. His skin was very cool, but there was a faint pulse to be found. It had a curious sort of echo to it, but Li was no medical expert, and couldn't say that it wasn't caused by a burst blood vessel somewhere.

What mattered was that the Doctor was alive.

Li grinned as he slipped a handcuff around the Doctor's wrist, the other cuff going around his own wrist. Then he allowed himself to relax. Now that he had his prisoner, he could look on the events with a little equanimity; the Doctor had given him a good run for his money. He wasn't so happy about the prospect of carrying him back to the station, but he didn't have much of a choice.

Lifting the Doctor over his shoulder in a fireman's lift, Li started to retrace his steps over the precarious wreckage.

Yan Cheh had no trouble finding Rondo amidst the scurrying rescuers. 'The strangers?'

Rondo pointed across the rubble to where they could see someone carrying the man with the scarf. Yan Cheh doubted he could catch up with them over the ruined terrain. 'All right, what about the girl?' Rondo merely shrugged, but his eyes misted over slightly.

Yan Cheh hurried over to the squashed car. He certainly couldn't risk leaving someone buried alive. A huge slab had fallen forward across the shattered windscreen, but the pa.s.senger door had buckled outward with the pressure on the roof. Yan Cheh grabbed the edge and pulled, not caring how unstable the brick rubble around it might be.

The door screeched open a little more, but not far enough.

Rondo gently moved Yan Cheh aside and heaved at the warped metal. With an ear-splitting squeal, it popped free and the girl from the docks toppled out.

Yan Cheh caught her and felt her wrist for a pulse. There was certainly some movement there. Blood had streamed down her face from a cut high on her forehead, but Yan Cheh could see that she was quite striking: tall even by western standards, with exquisitely sculpted features under cascading dark hair.

He looked back at Rondo. 'Bring the car round.'

Eight.

The moon was swollen and icy over Kanamaruhara airfield, but at least it afforded cadet pilot Wakabayashi sufficient light to check his watch. He still had another three hours of boring sentry duty before he was due to be relieved.

Out on the dispersal fields beyond the shrub-encrusted embankments, the planes he so desired to fly were lined up in silence. Those akatonbos akatonbos, such a vibrant sunny yellow by day, were now a ghostly ashen under the moon. He wondered how long it would be before he got the chance to fly one of them; so far he hadn't even been granted a 'flight' on the glider c.o.c.kpit that ran along thick wires across the parade ground.

The night sounds crickets chirping, the flags fluttering in the breeze and the distant rumble of trains were relaxing; he preferred them to the bustle of the day. A faint metallic squeaking made him straighten up: something was moving on badly oiled wheels.

He returned to the wide road that ran past the repair workshops to the armoury and magazine. The sound seemed to be coming from there. Unshouldering his rifle, he moved onwards a little more slowly and carefully. As he neared the compound where some construction equipment was stored along with various tractor-driven electrical generators, the eerie squeaking slowed. After a few heartbeats, a pram with skeletal wheels rolled out from an alley down the side of the building.

Wakabayashi puzzled over the pram for a moment: the nearest town was Utsonomiya, some thirty-seven miles away; there were no married quarters on this base, so where had it come from? Footsteps followed the pram as he reached it and a woman in a thickly quilted kimono walked slowly out of the alley, keeping her head respectfully lowered.

Wakabayashi decided it must be the mistress of one of the officers; perhaps he had set her up with a small apartment in one of the disused storerooms. It wasn't strictly allowed, but nor was it unusual. He slung his rifle onto his shoulder and held out his hand to her. 'I'll show you where you want to go.'

Perhaps there might be a reward for such kindness when his watch was over...

'That's very kind of you.'

He knew that women liked to be complimented on their offspring or so it seemed to him and leaned in towards the pram with a nervous smile. His hand touched something wet on the edge of the pram and he grimaced, thinking it was just his luck. His hand, however, was red when he looked at it and he noticed a tiny scarlet handprint on the side of the pram. It was as if something had left it there while hauling itself over the side.

Wakabayashi peered in more closely; perhaps something had happened to the child, such as being beaten by its mother's lover. The small bundle in the pram shifted and Wakabayashi reached out to it.

There was a silver flash that didn't even leave him time to scream.

HsienKo caught the sentry's body as it fell so that his rifle wouldn't clatter on the ground, and dragged it back into the pa.s.sageway between buildings. She felt sorry for his family, but war was war, and at least his death was quick. That was more than her people could expect from them.

She dug out the keys she had taken from the duty officer a few minutes earlier he wouldn't ever need them again and unlocked the heavy padlocks on the compound's gate. Once the gate was opened, she went back to the pram and gave it a gentle push. The air beyond it rippled and the pram vanished into the distortion.