Eric van lustbader chi.., p.53
Eric van Lustbader - China Maroc 02, page 53
“Yes,” Daniella said. “Jake Maroc.”
“Maroc again.” The adrenaline was rushing through Donovan’s veins. The verdant Virginia hills were fired along their tops now. “Somehow I knew I hadn’t heard the last of him. I tried to recruit him just after he killed Wunderman. I thought, psychologically, it would be the advantageous time. He wasn’t interested in anything to do with the Quarry.”
“He’s going to be now,” Daniella said. “As soon as Apollo tells Maroc that he was wrong about Chimera’s identity. What do you think Maroc will do to you once he figures out that it was our disinformation that gave him cause to kill Henry Wunderman? Wunderman was Maroc’s mentor; Maroc loved him like a father.”
“Christ, you don’t have to tell me that.” Donovan’s eyes had gone blank as he thought the problem through. He conjured up, then discarded option after option. “I don’t think we have any choice,” he said carefully. “We’ll just have to take care of Mr. Maroc once and for all.”
“Frankly,” Daniella said, “I don’t think you’ve got an operative who’s up to the job, and this is not an assignment that can be given twice.”
Donovan thought about the long afternoon, putting the Corvette flat out for the sheer excitement of it. “Don’t worry about that.” The mind appreciated being on the precipice of danger. “Even if there was, there isn’t anyone here I’d trust with this, anyway. It would give rise to too many awkward questions.” The mind liked to be fooled this way every now and again; it gave the thought processes a jolt, set them running full out again.
“Do you know where Maroc is at this moment?”
“At the moment, Hong Kong,” Daniella said. “Mitre’s people are monitoring his movements closely.”
“Good,” Donovan said. “Just keep me updated.” He brought back the memory of the severe S-curve, how he had taken it at eighty-five. And in front of him the hill, an emerald blur, looming. “I’ll take care of Jake Maroc myself.”
Ian McKenna lived in a battered, peeling house along Dragon’s Back, an area in the southeast of the Island bounded on the north by Mount Collinson and on the south by the D’aguilar Peak peninsula. It was, for the most part, a desolate place, quite unlike the rest of Hong Kong. There was, for instance, more than a touch of Australian topography there. Which was, Jake supposed, why McKenna had chosen it.
Jake pulled the Jaguar over onto the rocky dirt verge and killed the engine. He was still a thousand meters from the house. He had been traveling for the last mile-and-a-half without lights. The road had too many switchbacks that, at night, would send his car’s headlights far ahead. He had passed no other vehicles and he did not want to give Great Pool of Piddle any warning.
Got out of the car, leaving the door open. Sounds, as well as light, traveled far here. Behind him, the lights of the Peak and to his right, Aberdeen, were awash with rain. Everyone in Hong Kong rejoiced when it rained. Until Kam Sang’s desalinization plant came on line, the Crown Colony still had a chronic water shortage.
McKenna’s eyes bugged out when Jake came through the door. He was sitting in a corner with his back to the bare walls. All the pictures and paintings had been torn down and now lay, ragged as battle pennants in a welter of broken glass and shattered frames. Shards of mirror glittered at McKenna’s bare feet. No lights were on, and the shutters and blackout curtains were drawn across the windows. McKenna steadfastly faced them as if manning the battlements at Armageddon.
“Hello, McKenna.”
“Maroc, what the fuck’re you doing here?”
“Came to pay a debt.” He was grinning like a hungry wolf.
“Huh?”
Jake looked around. “Got any little boys here, McKenna?”
The big man started. “What d’you know about him?”
“Who?” He saw McKenna’s eyes as big around as saucers.
“You’re not supposed to know. No one’s supposed to know.” There were beads of sweat trembling on McKenna’s face. “But it’s too late for that, isn’t it? They know, don’t they? They know.”
This was getting interesting, Jake thought. “Who knows?”
“Don’t play games with me, Maroc. You know who. You know. They know.” His head whipped around and the sweat flew from him like rain. “I know it because I can hear the chanting.”
“The chanting,” Jake said, coming closer. “Sure, McKenna, I hear it.”
The big man nodded. “The abos think they can break me by keeping me awake at night.” He gave a little cackling laugh. “They’re underestimating me again.”
“Sure they are, McKenna,” Jake said, coming on. “What about Big Oysters Pok. Why did you kill him?”
“Kill him? I did? Well, then, he deserved it.” Jake could see now that McKenna was naked. He held a blanket over part of him, but his thick pale flesh shone here and there. As Jake watched, McKenna took one hand from beneath the blanket. It was filled with a Magnum .357. “Did him with this, Jake. But then, he deserved it.”
“He did, huh?” It was important to be careful now, very careful. “He fuck with you, McKenna?”
“Nah!” That cackling laugh again, just this side of hysteria. “Nobody bloody fucks with me, Jake, you know that. But he was a wog, see, a wog! Bloody wogs’ve been after me since, well, you know.”
Jake had no idea but he nodded just the same. The thing was to keep McKenna talking. He was obviously as mad as a March hare but somewhere in that confused mind of his Jake suspected there was a sane reason why he had shot Big Oysters Pok. “You killed Pok because he was Chinese, that it?” The thing was to tune in to McKenna’s batty level.
“You got it!” McKenna grinned savagely. “I always pegged you for a smart one, Jake.” He was waving that gun around. “I’m glad I was right about you.” The expression changed with appalling quickness. The gun leveled at Jake’s midsection. “But don’t come so bloody close, mate. You never know.”
Jake froze. “Never know what, McKenna?”
The big man stared at him as if he had lost his mind. He pointed the gun at the windows. “About the abos, of course.” His tiny eyes got canny. “They could have got to you, you know. They have their ways.”
“They certainly do,” Jake said, fighting to keep his voice even. He wanted to leap across the several meters still separating them and shake the truth out of McKenna. “But they haven’t contacted me. Yet.”
McKenna’s eyes filled with fear. “Yet? What do you mean?”
“Well,” Jake shrugged, “I’ve heard the chanting, of course.”,,
“It never stops. Never,” McKenna said. “It used to, you know. But now there’re just too many of them. Abos. They can keep the chanting up forever. Forever.”
What sin, Jake wondered, did McKenna commit in Australia to have driven him this far over the edge. “Is that why you wanted to kill the girl too?”
“Girl?” McKenna’s face was filled with bewilderment. “What girl?”
“The one with Big Oysters Pok when you shot him.”
The big man’s eyes were far away. “Was there someone with him? I don’t remember.”
“You must remember the girl, McKenna,” Jake said. He described Bliss.
“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? Bloody hell. 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. Bloody 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 trouble—big 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 Japan 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 Japan. 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 hello.”
“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 circumstances—”
“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, went over to the granite-topped sideboard and poured two drinks into wide-mouthed cut-crystal glasses. 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 glass 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 Asser 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.”
