“He didn’t tell me.”
“Could he have got it from Number One Son Chen?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know. I wasn’t here when they killed him. I’m innocent on my mother’s head!”
With a sudden movement Goodweather Poon ripped the necklace off. “Take him to the car,” he said to two of his fighters. “Watch him very carefully. We’ll take him back with us. Yes, we’ll take him back. The rest of you fill up the grave and camouflage it carefully.” Then he ordered the last two of his men to pick up the blanket containing John Chen and to follow him. They did so awkwardly in the darkness.
He trudged off toward the Sha Tin Road, skirting the puddles. Nearby was a broken-down bus shelter. When the road was clear he motioned to his men and they quickly unwrapped the blanket and propped the body in a corner. Then he took out the sign that the Werewolves had made previously and stuck it carefully on the body.
“Why’re you doing that, Goodweather Poon, heya? Why’re you do—”
“Because Four Fingers told me to! How do I know? Keep your fornicating mouth sh—”
Headlights from an approaching car rounding the bend washed them suddenly. They froze and turned their faces away, pretending to be waiting passengers. Once the car was safely past they took to their heels. Dawn was streaking the sky, the rain lessening.
The phone jangled and Armstrong came out of sleep heavily. In the half-darkness he groped for the receiver and picked it up. His wife stirred uneasily and awoke.
“Divisional Sergeant Major Tang-po, sir, sorry to wake you, sir, but we’ve found John Chen. The Were—”
Armstrong was instantly awake. “Alive?”
“Dew neh loh moh no sir, his body was found near Sha Tin at a bus stop, a bus shelter, sir, and those fornicating Werewolves’ve left a note on his chest, sir: ‘This Number One Son Chen had the stupidity to try to escape us. No one can escape the Werewolves! Let all Hong Kong beware. Our eyes are everywhere!’ He w—”
Armstrong listened, appalled, while the excited man told how police at Sha Tin had been summoned by an early-morning bus passenger. At once they had cordoned off the area and phoned CID Kowloon. “What should we do, sir?”
“Send a car for me at once.”
Armstrong hung up and rubbed the tiredness out of his eyes. He wore a sarong and it looked well on his muscular body.
“Trouble?” Mary stifled a yawn and stretched. She was just forty, two years younger than he, brown-haired, taut, her face friendly though lined.
He told her, watching her.
“Oh.” The color had left her face. “How terrible. Oh, how terrible. Poor John!”
“I’ll make the tea,” Armstrong said.
“No, no I’ll do that.” She got out of bed, her body firm. “Will you have time?”
“Just a cuppa. Listen to the rain … about bloody time!” Thoughtfully Armstrong went off to the bathroom and shaved and dressed quickly as only a policeman or doctor can. Two gulps of the hot sweet tea and just before the toast the doorbell rang. “I’ll call you later. How about curry tonight? We can go to Singh’s.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, if you’d like.”
The door closed behind him.
Mary Armstrong stared at the door. Tomorrow is our fifteenth anniversary, she thought. I wonder if he’ll remember. Probably not. In fourteen times, he’s been out on a case eight, once I was in hospital and the rest … the rest, were all right, I suppose.
She went to the window and pulled the curtains back. Torrents of rain streaked the windows in the half-light, but now it was cool and pleasant. The apartment had two bedrooms and it was their furniture though the apartment belonged to the government and went with the job.
Christ, what a job!
Rotten for a policeman’s wife. You spend your life waiting for him to come home, waiting for some rotten villain to knife him, or shoot him or hurt him—most nights you sleep alone or you’re being woken up at all rotten hours with some more rotten disasters and off he goes again. Overworked and underpaid. Or you go to the Police Club and sit around with other wives while the men get smashed and you swap lies with the wives and drink too many pink gins. At least they have children.
Children! Oh God … I wish we had children.
But then, most of the wives complain about how tired they are, how exhausting children are, and about amahs and school and the expense … and everything. What the hell does this life mean? What a rotten waste! What a perfectly rotten—
The phone rang. “Shut up!” she shrieked at it, then laughed nervously. “Mary Mary quite contrary where did your temper go?” she chided herself and picked the phone up. “Hello?”
“Mary, Brian Kwok, sorry to wake you but is Rob—”
“Oh hello, dear. No, sorry, he’s just left. Something about the Werewolves.”
“Yes, I just heard, that’s what I was calling about. He’s gone to Sha Tin?”
“Yes. Are you going too?”
“No. I’m with the Old Man.”
“Poor you.” She heard him laugh. They chatted for a moment then he rang off.
She sighed and poured herself another cup of tea, added milk and sugar and thought about John Chen. Once upon a time she had been madly in love with him. They had been lovers for more than two years and he had been her first. This was in the Japanese Internment Camp in Stanley Prison on the south part of the island.
In 1940 she had passed the Civil Service exam in England with honors and after a few months had been sent out to Hong Kong, around the Cape. She had arrived late in ’41, just nineteen, and just in time to be interned with all European civilians, there to stay until 1945.
I was twenty-two when I got out and the last two years, we were lovers, John and I. Poor John, nagged constantly by his rotten father, and his sick mother, with no way to escape them and almost no privacy in the camp, cooped up with families, children, babes, husbands, wives, hatred hunger envy and little laughter all those years. Loving him made the camp bearable.…
I don’t want to think about those rotten times.
Or the rotten time after the camp when he married his father’s choice, a rotten little harpy but someone with money and influence and Hong Kong family connections. I had none. I should have gone home but I didn’t want home—what was there to go home to? So I stayed and worked in the Colonial Office and had a good time, good enough. And then I met Robert.
Ah, Robert. You were a good man and good to me and we had fun and I was a good wife to you, still try to be. But I can’t have children and you … we both want children and one day a few years ago, you found out about John Chen. You never asked me about him but I know you know and ever since then you’ve hated him. It all happened long before I met you and you knew about the camp but not about my lover. Remember how before we got married I said, Do you want to know about the past, my darling? And you said, No, old girl.
You used to call me old girl all the time. Now you don’t call me anything. Just Mary sometimes.
Poor Robert! How I must have disappointed you!
Poor John! How you disappointed me, once upon a time so fine, now so very dead.
I wish I was dead too.
She began to cry.
CHAPTER FORTY
7:15 A.M.:
“It’s going to continue to rain, Alexi,” Dunross said, the track already sodden, heavy overcast and the day gloomy.
“I agree, tai-pan. If it rains even part of tomorrow too, the going will be foul on Saturday.”
“Jacques? What do you think?”
“I agree,” deVille said. “Thank God for the rain but merde it would be a pity if the races were canceled.”
Dunross nodded.
They were standing on the grass near the winner’s circle at the Happy Valley Racecourse, the three men dressed in raincoats and hats. There was a bad weal across Dunross’s face, and bruises, but his eyes were steady and clear and he stood with his easy confidence, watching the cloud cover, the rain still f
alling but not as strongly as in the night, other trainers and owners and bystanders scattered about the paddock and stands, equally pensive. A few horses were exercising, among them Noble Star, Buccaneer Lass with a stable jockey up and Gornt’s Pilot Fish. All of the horses were being exercised gingerly with very tight reins: the track and the approach to the track were very slippery. But Pilot Fish was prancing, enjoying the rain.
“This morning’s weather report said the storm was huge.” Travkin’s sloe eyes were red-rimmed with tiredness and he watched Dunross. “If the rain stops tomorrow, the going’ll still be soft on Saturday.”
“Does that help or hurt Noble Star’s chances, Alexi?” Jacques asked.
“As God wills, Jacques. She’s never run in the wet.” It was hard for Travkin to concentrate. Last evening the phone had rung and it was the KGB stranger again and the man had rudely cut through his questions of why he had vanished so suddenly. “It’s not your privilege to question, Prince Kurgan. Just tell me everything you know about Dunross. Now. Everything. His habits, rumors about him, everything.”
Travkin had obeyed. He knew that he was in a vise, knew that the stranger who must be KGB would be taping what he said to check the truth of what he related, the slightest variation of the truth perhaps a death knell for his wife or son or his son’s wife or son’s children—if they truly existed.
Do they? he asked himself again, agonized.
“What’s the matter, Alexi?”
“Nothing, tai-pan,” Travkin replied, feeling unclean. “I was thinking of what you went through last night.” The news of the fire at Aberdeen had flooded the airwaves, particularly Venus Poon’s harrowing eyewitness account which had been the focus of the reports. “Terrible about the others, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” So far the known death count was fifteen burned and drowned, including two children. “It’ll take days to find out really how many were lost.”
“Terrible,” Jacques said. “When I heard about it … if Susanne had been here we would have been caught in it. She … Curious how life is sometimes.”
“Bloody firetrap! Never occurred to me before,” Dunross said. “We’ve all eaten there dozens of times—I’m going to talk to the governor this morning about all those floating restaurants.”
“But you’re all right, you yourself?” Travkin asked.
“Oh yes. No problem.” Dunross smiled grimly. “Not unless we all get the croup from swimming in that cesspit.”
When the Floating Dragon had suddenly capsized, Dunross, Gornt and Peter Marlowe had been in the water right below. The megaphone on the police launch had shouted a frantic warning and they had all kicked out desperately. Dunross was a strong swimmer and he and Gornt had just got clear though the surge of water sucked them backward. As his head went under he saw the half-full cutter pulled into the maelstrom and capsized and Marlowe in trouble. He let himself go with the boiling torrent as the ship settled onto her side and lunged for Marlowe. His fingers found his shirt and held on and they swirled together for a moment, drawn a few fathoms down, smashing against the deck. The blow almost stunned him but he held onto Marlowe and when the drag lessened he kicked for the surface. Their heads came out of the water together. Marlowe gasped his thanks and struck out for Fleur who was hanging onto the side of the overturned cutter with others. Around them was chaos, people gasping and drowning and being rescued by sailors and by the strong. Dunross saw Casey diving for someone. Gornt was nowhere to be seen. Bartlett came up with Christian Toxe and kicked for a life belt. He made sure that Toxe had hold of the life ring securely before he shouted to Dunross, “I think Gornt got sucked down and there was a woman …” and at once dived again.
Dunross looked around. The Floating Dragon was almost on her side now. He felt a slight underwater explosion and water boiled around him for a moment. Casey came up for air, filled her lungs and slid under the surface again. Dunross dived too. It was almost impossible to see but he groped his way down along the top deck that was now almost vertical in the water. He swam around the wreck, searching, and stayed below as long as he could, then surfaced carefully for there were many swimmers still thrashing around. Toxe was choking out seawater, precariously hanging onto the life ring. Dunross swam over and paddled him toward a sailor, knowing Toxe could not swim.
“Hang on, Christian … you’re okay now.”
Desperately Toxe tried to talk through his retching. “My … my wife’s … she’s down th … down there … down …”
The sailor swam over. “I’ve got him, sir, you all right?”
“Yes … yes … he says his wife was sucked down.”
“Christ! I didn’t see anyone … I’ll get some help!” The sailor turned and shouted at the police launch for assistance. At once several sailors dived overboard and began the search. Dunross looked for Gornt and could not see him. Casey came up panting and held onto the upturned cutter to catch her breath.
“You all right?”
“Yes … yes … thank God you’re okay …” she gasped, her chest heaving. “There’s a woman down there, Chinese I think, I saw her sucked down.”
“Have you seen Gornt?”
“No.… Maybe he’s …” She motioned at the launch. People were clambering up the gangway, others huddling on the deck. Bartlett surfaced for an instant and dived again. Casey took another great breath and slid into the depths. Dunross went after her slightly to her right.
They searched, the three of them, until everyone else was safe on the launch or in sampans. They never found the woman.
When Dunross had got home Penelope was deep asleep. She awoke momentarily. “Ian?”
“Yes. Go back to sleep, darling.”
“Did you have a nice time?” she asked, not really awake.
“Yes, go back to sleep.”
This morning, an hour ago, he had not awakened her when he left the Great House.
“You heard that Gornt made it, Alexi?” he said.
“Yes, yes I did, tai-pan. As God wills.”
“Meaning?”
“After yesterday’s stock market it would have been very convenient if he hadn’t made it.”
Dunross grinned and eased an ache in his back. “Ah, but then I would have been very put out, very put out indeed, for I’d not have had the pleasure of smashing Rothwell-Gornt myself, eh?”
After a pause deVille said, “It’s astonishing more didn’t die.” They watched Pilot Fish as the stallion cantered past looking very good. DeVille’s eyes ranged the course.
“Is it true that Bartlett saved Peter Marlowe’s wife?” Travkin asked.
“He jumped with her. Yes. Both Linc and Casey did a great job. Wonderful.”
“Will you excuse me, tai-pan?” Jacques deVille nodded at the stands. “There’s Jason Plumm—I’m supposed to be playing bridge with him tonight.”
“See you at Prayers, Jacques.” Dunross smiled at him and deVille walked off. He sighed, sad for his friend. “I’m off to the office, Alexi. Call me at six.”
“Tai-pan …”
“What?”
Travkin hesitated. Then he said simply, “I just want you to know I … I admire you greatly.”
Dunross was nonplussed at the suddenness and at the open, curious melancholy that emanated from the other man. “Thanks,” he said warmly and clapped him on the shoulder. He had never touched him as a friend before. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
Travkin watched him walk off, his chest hurting him, tears of shame adding to the rain. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and went back to watching Noble Star, trying to concentrate.
In the periphery of his vision he saw someone and he turned, startled. The KGB man was in a corner of the stands, another man joining him now. The man was old and gnarled and well known as a punter in Hong Kong. Travkin searched his mind for the name. Clinker. That’s it! Clinker!
He watched them blankly for a moment. Jason Plumm was in the stands just behind the KGB man and he saw Plumm get up to return
Jacques deVille’s wave and walk down the steps to meet him. Just then the KGB man glanced in his direction and he turned carefully, trying not to be sudden again. The KGB man had lifted binoculars to his eyes and Travkin did not know if he had been noticed or not. His skin crawled at the thought of those high-powered binoculars focused on him. Perhaps the man can lip-read, he thought, aghast. Christ Jesus and Mother of God, thank God I didn’t blurt out the truth to the tai-pan.
His heart was grinding nastily and he felt sick. A flicker of lightning went across the eastern sky. Rain was puddling the concrete and the open, lower section of the stands. He tried to calm himself and looked around helplessly not knowing what to do, wanting very much to find out who the KGB man was. Absently he noticed Pilot Fish was finishing his workout in fine form. Beyond him Richard Kwang was talking intently to a group of other Chinese he did not know. Linbar Struan and Andrew Gavallan were leaning on the rails with the American Rosemont and others from the consulate he knew by sight. They were watching the horses, oblivious of the rain. Near the changing rooms, under cover, Donald McBride was talking to other stewards, Sir Shi-teh TChung, Pugmire and Roger Crosse among them. He saw McBride glance over to Dunross, wave and beckon him to join them. Brian Kwok was waiting for Roger Crosse on the outskirts of the stewards. Travkin knew both of them but not that they were in SI.
Involuntarily his feet began to move toward them. The foul taste of bile rose into his mouth. He dominated his urge to rush up to them and blurt out the truth. Instead he called over his chief ma-foo. “Send our string home. All of them. Make sure they’re dry before they’re fed.”
“Yes sir.”
Unhappily Travkin trudged for the changing rooms. From the corner of his eye he saw that the KGB man had his binoculars trained on him. Rain trickled down his neck and mixed with the fear-sweat.
“Ah, Ian, we were thinking that if it rains tomorrow, we’d better cancel the meet. Say at 6:00 P.M. tomorrow,” McBride said. “Don’t you agree?”
“No, actually I don’t. I suggest we make a final decision at ten Saturday morning.”
“Isn’t that a little late, old boy?” Pugmire asked.