There was a long slip of paper lying atop the money. It looked like a laundry slip, except that it was lined and marked for types and amounts of currency. Nick studied it for a moment. There was one signature — N7. The amount was half a million in lire. Nick tossed it back and closed the safe. The slip had been dated a week before.
Killmaster was N3, a coding he rarely used since he had been working so close to Hawk. The N code was just another designation for the rank of Killmaster and he knew, and kept to himself, that N1 and N2 were dead. He went into the fully stocked kitchen, thinking that it would make N7 now N5 — if the man was still alive. The chit had been signed a week ago.
He gazed around the immaculate little kitchen without much interest, wondering if Fan Su knew how to cook. She'd be a very odd Chinese girl if she didn't. There was a dialless phone on the sink with a card that read: For Service and Valet.
Nick went back into the living room and mixed himself a heavy Scotch from the console bar in one corner. He heard the shower still running and a soft smile quirked the corners of his mouth. He was content for now. This was a safe house and he could let down — a thing every agent must do now and then, or go mad — and in the immediate future there was only rest, and planning, and Fan Su. Tender Fan Su. Passionate Fan Su. Wanton Fan Su. Fan Su of the thirty-six celestial tricks!
Drink in hand, now frowning slightly, he wandered to a low table near the picture window. There were two phones on the table, one red and one blue. The red phone was marked W, the blue was marked L. Nick reached for the red instrument, then drew back his hand. To hell with it! He'd earned a brief respite of security and relaxation. Yellow Venus was not so urgent as all that. China had been there a long time. China would still be there when he, and Hawk, and Fan Su — and Mao and his clique and all others who now lived and breathed and killed and sexed — when they were all bone dust seeped into the earth.
The treadmill of time.
Nick went into the bedroom and started to undress, after taking a robe from the male closet. He was seated on the bed, smoking a cigarette and finishing his drink, when Fan Su came into the room. Her wet dark hair, which was shorter than it had been in Hong Kong, gave her a glistening, phocine look. She had taken a robe with her, but she was not wearing it. She had a large towel twisted around her slim middle. She was, he thought, too thin.
She fell across his lap and stared up at him, her eyes half closed. "Nick. Oh, Nick! Woti shinkan!" The soft dialect of south China. My heart!
Nick gazed down at her, feeling at the moment only tenderness. He could detect on her heart-shaped face the ravages of her work, of the dangers she lived with day and night, and for a moment he felt sadness instead of desire. Not a common mood with him, and one that would soon pass.
He kissed her lightly. "And my heart also, Fan Su." He brushed his lips across her straight little nose and smiled.
She shivered against him. She whispered, "We are really safe here?"
"We are really safe." The security on this floor, and around the building, would be heavy. You would never see them unless there was trouble.
"And we will have a little time — for each other?"
"A little. Not too much, but a little. For us — and for talking, planning. There is much to decide."
Fan Su shrugged, her smooth pelt moving like velvet against his own flesh. "That can all wait." She pulled a little away so she could look into his face. He saw the glint of mischief in the dark eyes. "If we are going to have this time together, then I am sorry I lost my things. I brought along the Jade Box of a Thousand Joys — just because I thought I might be seeing you."
Nick went along with the gag. He frowned. "That is bad. But maybe we can find another one." He made as if to rise. "I'll call Bullocks right now — immediate delivery, please, of one Jade Box of a Thousand Joys! Coming right up, sir."
She laughed and pushed him away. "Fool! Go and bathe then, and hurry back. We shall have to do without the jade box."
At the bedroom door he looked back. She was naked on the bed, the towel fallen away. Her eyes were closed.
"I never needed the box anyway, Fan Su. You know that."
She nodded without opening her eyes, but her voice had a curious low note of strain in it. "I know indeed! You are, as the old ones say, like a thousand demented goats. But nevertheless I wish I had it — the way I am feeling right now I am going to make you need it. Go. Hurry!"
As Nick soaped his big, lean, sinewy body — never mind his jest with Hawk: he was in prime condition with no ounce of lard on him — he thought of the jade box and laughed aloud. He had known all about the jade box — but had never used, or needed one — long before he met Fan Su. You could not knock about the Orient for long and not know.
Fan Su, despite her high degree of Westernization, had odd moments of truly Oriental wantonness. She had insisted that he use the jade box at least once. To please her he had. Had used the silver clasp, the red powder and the sulphur ring, the single opium pill and, at times, the studded silken sheath. The girl used the single vial of powder the jade box contained. She would never tell him what it contained, would only say that the recipe was many thousands of years old and that it increased her pleasure.
Nick toweled, considered shaving and forgot it, and went back into the bedroom. She was waiting for him, her knees drawn up. She raised her arms to him. In Cantonese she said: "I was nearly asleep and dreaming — I was afraid that the jade stick would not come to see the lotus. And then, that if it did come it would be for the last time. I grew very afraid. My tongue was cold!"
Nick kissed her. He had been with a great many Oriental women and he. realized immediately that she did not want tenderness at the moment. Nor did he.
He had never known her so frenetic, so absolutely wanton. Or insatiable. She would not stop, or even slow, her motion. After a time the sweat was pouring from both of them, their bodies slippery and glistening and contorting. Fan Su convulsed again and again, her mouth glued to his, each time muttering soft little Cantonese obscenities which he could not always understand. There was something about the giant bamboo pole, and the jade stick and, at the very end, something about mounting the dragon.
The last meant Death.
Chapter 6
They remained in their luxurious hole for three days. During this time they ate when they pleased, slept when they pleased, made love when they pleased — and got a lot of work done. Killmaster had the feeling that if more of the world's movers and shakers, the planners of what passed for civilization, would only conduct their work in like manner they would all be much happier — and the plans better and more realistic.
When he told Fan Su of the first, very tentative AXE plan — he and Hawk had worked out no details — she had laughed in disbelief. They were in bed, even she was spent at last, and the bed was littered with paper, pencils, clip boards and maps.
"Mei yu fa tzu," she said scornfully. "It can't be done." "No Westerner, no round-eye, can walk around China for long without being arrested. It would be especially impossible for you, Nick. You are too big, your beard is wrong, you do not speak the right dialects — a hundred things would give you away."
Nick admitted that she was right. He had known it in any case. Chinese security was very tight, a built-in security that was centuries old. It had been originated by the old Emperors, by the landlords and taxgatherers, and it still worked. It was called pao-chia. The phrase meant something like "guaranteed armor" and the general idea was that for every ten families there was a headman who was in turn responsible to the local officials. It made every man his brother's keeper — and a potential informer. No man wanted his head chopped off, or a firing squad, because of what his brother did. The Mongols and Manchus had had great success with the system, and the ChiComs had not changed it.
"Not only is there the pao-chia," Fan Su said, "but things are especially dangerous now because of the Red Guards. They are everywhere, pushing their noses into everything. Everyone is terrified o
f them. Another thing, darling, is the sheer physical impossibility of the thing. Look again." She put a small finger on the map that lay on the bed.
"Getting you safely into Shanghai and hiding you for a few days might be done. I think I can do it. That will be dangerous enough. But to go from Shanghai by land, across country, across the whole of South China to the Chumbi Valley in Tibet — that is sheer madness. Why, that's about two thousand miles — six thousand Chinese li! Bad roads or none at all, no trains to speak of, bandits perhaps, and certainly the Red Guards! Rough country, too, and with winter coming on." She leaned to kiss him and lapsed, as she did at times, into French. "Impossible, mon petit! They would have us before we got fifty miles from Shanghai."
"We?"
Her eyes widened. "You certainly do not think you can do it alone? You must have someone with you at all times, because you are going to have to be a deaf-mute, at least a mute, and that someone is going to be me! You came to my aid when I called, you are going to help me build Undertong — so what did you expect?"
Hawk had given Nick Carter carte blanche, as he always did, but Nick had not yet told the girl the entire scheme of things. He had explained, being purposely vague, something of the deal that AXE had made with CIA. He had told her that he must get to the Chumbi Valley to do a job, in return for which CIA would supply massive aid to Undertong. If, and a big if it was, Nick's report convinced CIA that the underground existed in fact, and that it was worth supporting.
He reminded her again of the bargain. "I've got to do the Chumbi job first. If I succeed, and file a favorable report on Undertong, then you'll have all the help you need."
Her eyes hardened a bit as she studied him. "Then why go about it the hard way, darling? Why Shanghai and this crazy cross-China notion?" She poked at the map again. "I happen to know that you people have an airbase in Sikkim. They could drop you in and pick you up the same day."
Nick decided to tell her a little more. He had trusted her with his life before. It was not that. It was simply policy — what she didn't know she couldn't tell under torture.
He said, "We know that, of course. The CIA knows it. I think they do expect me to go in that way, then work out of China to the northeast, in reverse direction. They're not really concerned with how I do the job — just that I do it."
The girl nodded glumly. "I know. CIA does not really think that Undertong is worth saving, or building. But it is, Nick, it is! And now is the time. All China is having a nervous breakdown, things are changing, and if we can infiltrate the Red Guards deeply enough we can start a revolution overnight."
Nick was cool. He had always been suspicious of enthusiasm, of zeal. It usually got a lot of people dead.
"There's still the Army," he told her, "which Mao can use to check the Red Guards any time he feels like it. Until you have the Army with you, all you can start is a civil war. One that you wouldn't have much chance of winning."
"That would be a beginning," she said. "Of course there will have to be a civil war. We in Undertong know that."
She went to the bathroom. She was naked, as was Nick. When she came back he said, "Bring me a scotch and soda, eh? Lots of ice."
He noted, with slight surprise, that she also made a tall drink for herself. She was drinking more than he had ever known her to. But he said nothing. It was all part of a pattern which he had not figured out yet — her desperate lovemaking, her tears at night when she thought he was asleep, the drinking — this latter very slight, but still more than before — and her sullen moods and talk of death. Ordinarily it would have been all her own affair. Now it was his affair. They were going into China together.
He grinned at her. "Okay. For now let's forget about the revolution, and maybe a civil war, and concentrate on getting me from Shanghai across China to Tibet. With my head still on. First things first. You say you can get me into Shanghai and hide me for a few days?" That in itself, if Undertong could really do it, would be an indication that the underground was not all on paper or in Fan Su's mind.
She patted his cheek and smiled, but said fiercely: "I do not mean to be difficult, but you must understand. I can think only of the underground, of the brave people I work with. I do not care too much about the CIA."
"Or about AXE?"
Her eyes met his steadily. "Or about AXE." She smiled. "Except for one AXE agent I know of."
"Always flattery. Now, about the Shanghai bit?"
Fan Su smoothed the map between their naked bodies. She pointed to the southern tip of Korea. "It is only about five hundred miles down from Pusan to Shanghai. We have many supporters in Korea, Chinese who have gone there to escape the Reds. Sometimes they send us money and supplies. It is not too hard for junks to run the blockade in the east China Sea — the Reds are short of patrol boats there. There are beaches north of Shanghai where you could land safely at night. By morning I can have you into Shanghai and safely hidden. But not for long, you understand. Right now the city is in a turmoil — the Red Guards are still rioting and marching. There has been some shooting and torturing, too, and just before I left Hong Kong I heard of some public beheadings. I do not know whether to believe this or not, but I do know that my brother, my half-brother, Po-Choy, is in or near Shanghai now. He cannot do much recruiting in the Red Guards there — they are still too militant — but he is trying to organize the peasants around the city to go in and right them."
"There has been fighting in Shanghai," said Nick. He had talked at length with Hawk that morning.
She smiled. "Then perhaps Po-Choy is doing a good job." She finished her drink and put the glass by the side of the bed. She looked at Nick. "For a little while, darling, I am tired of planning. Shall we do something else?"
"Such as what?"
Fan Su pouted. "You see. You are tired of me. Either that or you are worn out. I knew I should have saved my Jade Box."
Nick kicked the map out of the way and reached for her. "I'll show you who's tired!"
Later, while she slept, he put on a robe and prowled around the apartment, smoking and thinking hard.
He had never really considered crossing southern China by land. The odds were too great for a white man. You were up against the same thing that a Chinese was in any Western country — you stood out like a gorilla in Times Square. It might just be possible if he had all the time in the world to make ornate preparations, and traveled only at night. But he didn't have that kind of time. Winter was on the verge of blowing in and soon the Tibetan passes would be snow blocked. He had survived one winter march in Tibet and that was enough.
Still he was determined to go to Shanghai first, then on to the Chumbi. He must see, with his own eyes, just what this Undertong was capable of accomplishing. He would have liked to have done it on his own and over a large section of the country. He glanced at the bed where Fan Su was sleeping: she was a sweet kid, a fine lover, a brave fighter — but when it came to Undertong Le put nothing past her. She was quite capable of taking him on a Potemkin tour, of lying about the strength of Undertong. It was her baby and she was dedicated. He was going to have to watch her on that. His report on the Chinese underground had to be as true and factual as he could make it. AXE, unlike many of the services, had no fine-sounding Latin motto, but the implication and the obligation was always there: Duty First.
Fan Su said that his mere presence in Shanghai, the presence of a top American agent, would be a great lift for the underground. Very likely. There was also to be a first token shipment of money, arms, printing presses, some of the new small transceivers, maps and codes, electronic equipment, ammo, radar-jamming dipoles — a million and one things that an underground needed. This he knew, and Hawk and CIA knew, would be in the nature of risk capital. CIA could afford it. Hawk would have been glad enough to make the first investment, had he been forced to. Hawk was as hot on the underground as the girl was, but for different reasons. Hawk was a realist and knew that the Chinese were not going to come up with a real democracy for years yet, if eve
r. He didn't give a damn. Hawk wanted to use Undertong for his own ends — namely to lop off some of the more important heads. A Hydra, he had called it.
Nick went to the. picture window and stood gazing out. It was dark now. The northern hemisphere of greater Los Angeles lay glittering like an intricate map of neon, crystal and shadow. Far off in the Hollywood sector a sign winked off and on: Funerals — $250 Up.
Nick wondered how in hell they could bury you that cheaply today?
He noted that the building was not overlooked from any direction for six blocks at least. No snipers. He ran a finger down one of the thin silver strips that ran around the window, somewhat akin to a burglar alarm, but this was a baffle against listening devices that might be beamed into the apartment. Nick drew the heavy drapes and turned away. AXE security was good, but never good enough. Never quite good enough. Perfect security was an ideal, not a fact.
He had his hand on the red phone when the sleeping girl cried out. "Hai p'a!"
Nick went into the bedroom and stood looking down at her. Her delicate, lemon-tinted features were glistening with sweat. A sheet half-covered her. She writhed, twisting the sheet about her like a shroud, and she cried out again: "Hai p'a… hai p'a…"
I am afraid!
Nick touched her wet brow lightly with his big hand. It seemed to calm her. She did not cry out again. He went back into the living room, drew up a chair near the phones, lit a cigarette, but did not immediately pick up the red phone. He wondered just how much of a problem he was going to have with the girl. She was as taut as a violin string now, stretched nearly to the breaking point. Even love did not relax her as it should, no matter how frantic she became. Nor had good food, drink, plenty of rest, and the knowledge that she was absolutely safe. Nick ran a hand through his thick, semicropped hair and frowned at his cigarette. There was something else. Had to be. The hell of it was that he'd almost had it a couple of times. Something she had said, done — or not done — since they had been in the apartment.
The Red Guard Page 8