by Paul Malmont
He clambered up the rope ladder and reached the dock. He carried with him the sensation of the boat, bobbing on the waves. He looked toward the warehouse that the man had emerged from; its door was closed once more. He had to pass it to reach the alley which led to the street that ran in the direction of the train station. He put his hands in his pockets and kept his head down, to try to give the appearance of someone who was just taking a nighttime waterfront stroll on the boardwalk, should anyone happen to notice him. He stopped near the door and tried to keep his head from turning. He couldn’t resist a look. There, under a buzzer, was a small brass sign which read Providence Medical Laboratory. Found it, he thought. He listened at the door but heard no sound from within. He put his hand on the doorknob. The train whistle blew again. He pulled his hand from the knob and began walking briskly up the alley.
The blow to his head knocked him to his knees. As the red stars cleared from his eyes he saw two pairs of scuffed work boots through the blur.
“Hey, Shorty! I warned you to keep a weather eye open for trouble, din’t I?” he heard the wharf rat growl.
One of the pairs of boots disappeared. A moment later a strong hand gripped his wrist, twisted his arm up behind his back. His head was yanked back. There was a cold knife at his throat. He could feel hands rifling through his jacket, looking for his wallet. They would do well, he thought; he had over a hundred dollars on him. The worth of his life. If only he had seen it coming, he thought. If only he had had a fighting chance.
“Got it!” he heard the wharf rat tell his pal, excitedly.
“The picture,” Gibson gasped.
“What?”
“The picture of my son! Give it to me. It’s all I have!”
“You want this?”
Gibson’s head was yanked back and he could see the picture of Robert, taken when he was six.
“You ain’t gonna need it where you’re goin’,” was the reply. “Cut his throat and drop him in the bay.”
He felt the pressure of the blade on his throat suddenly grow. He wanted to see the picture one more time but it had been removed from his view.
He heard a sharp but distinct crack behind him. The pressure on his neck suddenly disappeared but some tremendous force threw him, prostrate, to the wood boardwalk. He tried to move away and ended up rolling across the boards.
The big man fell to the ground with a thud where Gibson had been a moment before. Gibson looked up. The wharf rat was held by his neck in the grip of the black-clad man Gibson had mistaken for The Shadow. His companion was groggily drawing himself to his knees. Then he took off, running toward the lights of Providence.
Gibson’s wallet dropped from the wharf rat’s hand and fell to the boardwalk. The Chinese man’s speed and power were incredible. Gibson watched, astonished, as an instant later he had lifted the wharf rat into the air and thrown him neatly into the bay. Gibson could hear him splashing and coughing in the cold water. The mysterious man reached down and picked up Robert’s photograph, which lay near Gibson’s wallet. He looked at the picture for a long time and his hard, dark eyes grew even more narrow. Gibson pulled himself up to a sitting position, rubbing his head as the man approached. Suddenly his hand flicked out; Robert’s photo pinched between two fingers. Gibson took it from him.
“Thanks,” he said. His voice was raw and hoarse.
The man nodded back at him. He seemed on the verge of saying something—Gibson wondered if he even spoke English—but instead he drew his coat tightly about him and in a moment he had disappeared into the night. Gibson could hear the man’s footsteps fading away as he staggered to his feet. Then he was alone on the boardwalk. The splashing of the wharf rat had stopped. He had either found his way to shore or drowned. Gibson didn’t really care either way. The side of his head was throbbing. He slipped the photo into his wallet and tucked it back into his pocket. Not that it mattered to him now, but the money was still in the wallet as well.
The door to the Providence Medical Lab was open. A wedge of light broke through the fog. Gibson felt the warm flow of blood against his face and on his throat. He needed to appraise his wounds, and a medical lab could provide any first aid supplies he might need.
“So you had to go inside?” Driftwood said.
“I didn’t really have a choice,” Gibson said. He polished off the sandwich. “For all I knew I was bleeding to death. There was no way I was going to make it back to the train. No way at all. At the least I could find a phone to call for help.”
The train’s rhythm was soothing and he put his feet up on the footstool. Of course he hadn’t told them about his thoughts of Litzka, or his doubts. It was his story and he told it the way he wanted to.
“How did you know he wasn’t going to do you in?” Driftwood wanted to know.
He massaged his sore shoulder. He couldn’t describe what he had seen in the man’s eyes. “I just knew.”
“So you went inside?”
“Yes, I did. Though now I wish to God that I hadn’t.”
Episode Twenty-Two
ZHANG MEI mixed the powdered herbs thoroughly into the soup. The soup and the powders needed each other to work properly. Eaten by itself, the soup would only nourish. Taken by themselves, the herbs would only cause diarrhea. But the powder, combined with the right amount of dog meat and a certain type of bean, would create distress in the eater’s belly and soon after, death. It was a technique he had learned from a monk who had been brought to Shenyang Palace when they were young to teach them these secret arts. Xueling had had no stomach for it. Zhang Mei had turned out to be an excellent student in this, as he was in all the ways of death. It had been the monk who explained that one who had complete mastery over an art was known as a dragon and that Zhang Mei was the Dragon of Terror and Peril. Zhang Mei took no pleasure in his talent or his title; he was only pleased that he was able to serve his adopted father to the best of his abilities.
He wished that this soup would be fed to Chiang Kai-shek, the general of Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Kuomintang troops. The little general was brusque and dismissive to his adopted father’s face. But the general had ridden out that very morning to join his troops in an expedition against a small force deep in the western lands who called themselves Communists but were in reality colonial tools of their Russian masters. It was just as well that he had left. Dr. Sun Yat-sen was a popular man in Beijing. If both he and his general were to die on the same night, it would be apparent to all that their deaths were assassinations. Zhang Zuolin was playing a dangerous game. The battles had not ended. They had only become much, much smaller.
The secret meeting with Dr. Sun Yat-sen was at Zuolin’s invitation. The doctor’s Army of the South had grown powerful and fearsome, driven by officers, including Chiang Kai-shek, created at his own unique military academy. It had recently become apparent that he only had to give the word and the army could crush the combined forces of Zhang and his old allies.
And yet, the word was never given. Dr. Sun Yat-sen perceived greater threats from abroad: Russians, through the Communist insurgents, and the antagonistic militarization of the Japanese. He claimed to hold his army back to defend only against these predicted conflicts. However, the threat of his war machinery was enough to cause the members of Beijing’s ruling council to consider offering the doctor the opportunity to rule over them all—before he killed them in battle—and by extension over China. This new position would see him elevated over even Zuolin. This point was what Zuolin had offered to discuss with the doctor in the secret meeting.
Mei instructed the servant on the position of the soup bowls before the guests. The man said he understood and he shuffled out of the room. He would taste each of the soups in front of the men to vouch for their purity. It would only make him ill much later in the evening, out of the sight of the true targets.
Mei paced the quiet halls. Few in the building knew of the meeting. Mei felt anxious, and not about whether the poison would work or whether his adopted father
’s plan would unfurl properly. Something else was gnawing at him.
He heard voices from a waiting room and walked silently toward it. On the other side was Mi-Ying, the diplomat. He was discussing shipping permission with one of the diplomats from the Japanese consulate. It seemed as if there were more Japanese in the palace some days than Chinese. Their tone was warm, nearly brotherly in nature. Mi-Ying was offering promises of influence, most beyond his grasp.
Zhang Mei swept the curtain aside, startling both men. Mi-Ying stood without even a formal greeting and looked at him levelly. Zhang Mei glared back. “This is not the night for diplomatic fornication,” he said.
“My lord! We are only conducting the business of state,” Mi-Ying protested. “My only interests are China’s interests.”
Zhang Mei had no rejoinder. He had not actually interrupted anything duplicitous and all the men knew it. He had only succeeded in embarrassing himself, and perhaps clarifying the enmity of Mi-Ying.
Zhang Mei let the curtain fall and strode away. He chewed his upper lip while the nagging feeling grew into a solid thought. He had heard the rumors: that were Dr. Sun Yat-sen to bring his army to bear in a new civil war, Zuolin would draw on Japanese clout. He couldn’t imagine that Zuolin would call on such a devil for power, but at the same time he knew that there was no force in China that could stand up to Dr. Sun Yat-sen and his general, the little Chiang Kai-shek. What deals had Zuolin made with the Japanese?
Perhaps Dr. Sun Yat-sen was right. Perhaps the greatest threat to China lay within and without at the same time. Perhaps he was right. He would like to speak with the well-educated old man and perhaps discuss such matters with him. But it would never happen.
By now, the soup Zhang Mei prepared had been set before him.
Episode Twenty-Three
“THE DOOR to the lab was hanging open,” Gibson continued his story. “It squeaked quietly on rusty hinges as it swung to and fro in the soft breeze. The slight sound carried up and down the lonely boardwalk. Other than the lapping waves of the rising tide against the pilings, everything was still. I took a deep breath and went in.
“Turns out I should have held that breath. The stink of the lab hit me first. It was thick and oily, like the garbage in the alley behind a fishmonger’s. The smell of fish makes me retch anyway, so this was infinitely worse. I fumbled for one of my silks and put it over my nose and mouth, which helped a little bit. At least I could breathe.”
“Silks?” Driftwood looked curious.
“I’m always carrying a couple of magic tricks on me just in case.”
“In case what?”
“In case I need to perform a magic trick.”
“Oh.”
“I looked around. There were a few lights on. Mostly in the back. This place is long and low, like a warehouse. Most of the space is open, but starting about two-thirds of the way back, there are stairs up to the second floor, where all the offices are.
“I took a few steps in. It was a wide aisle. On either side were long rows and rows of metal shelves which held jars and bottles of all different shapes and sizes and full of a variety of powders and liquids. Then there were medical cabinets full of specimens. One shelf was just full of jars, the size of the jar of olives that the White Horse keeps under its bar, and each jar was filled with eyeballs suspended in a solution, all just staring at me. One jar had all brown eyeballs. One had all hazel eyeballs. One was full of blue eyeballs.
“I don’t know how long the place has been in business, but it seems like quite a while. Maybe twenty or thirty years. Lot of old military surplus chemicals in old containers on those shelves. Pretty clear that they buy old stuff from Uncle Sam and sell it along.
“Through the shelves I could see a lab space in the middle of the building. As I walked toward it my shoes started crunching through glass. There were broken jars everywhere. Several shelves had been knocked over and their contents had spilled all over the floor. These are heavy, heavy shelves and cabinets and when they were stocked up they must have been very difficult to budge. As I drew closer to the lab I could see that even more of them were knocked back from the core. It reminded me of a daisy which had opened, with the lab as its hub of florets and the rows and rows of fallen cabinets flung out from that as its rays. It was like coming upon the scene of a bomb blast. But there was no crater.
“Once I got to the center of my strange blossom I realized that, in fact, my instincts had been right. There had been some kind of detonation in the building. At the epicenter of the flower lay a rusty hundred-gallon drum, probably about four feet high and two feet in diameter. I know the type. The army uses them to transport everything liquid, from gasoline to chicken soup. When I was stuck in the mud of St. Mihiel at the end of the Great War, we used empty ones just like it for latrines and campfires sometimes. Like all the others, this had once been a military-issue drab olive color. But it was so old that much of the paint had stripped off, exposing its rusted skin. It rested on its side; a rupture along its seam had violently flayed the metal open so it looked like the curled-back lips of an open mouth. This was the source of the energy which had thrown the lab into disarray.
“You know how smells can bring back stronger memories than almost anything else? I had lowered my silk for a moment and another smell hit me which brought back more military memories from my days in France. None of those memories, or smells, are particularly pleasant, but this was one smell I hoped I would never remember again as long as I lived. It was the smell you discover coming upon a battlefield a day or so after the fight at the height of summer. It meant there were dead bodies there.
“There were seven dead men on the floor. They wore white lab coats and were stacked neatly against one another in a line. Their bodies were frozen in contortion; their backs were arched and their arms were curled up. In one man’s twisted hand was an unlit cigarette, clenched between his fingers. Death must have come suddenly. Their faces were hollow, leathery, desiccated. They looked for all the world like dead roaches left in a nest after an exterminator’s visit. It took me right back to the battlefields.
“Aunt Annie was right that something bad had happened here. I slowly approached the canister. It was empty and bone-dry. The area around it was covered with a fine, gray powder, about the granularity of flash powder. Do you know that stuff? No? I have some in that cabinet I can show you later. Just imagine gray flour. It was light enough to puff out from under my shoes as I took steps. I wanted to see if I could find out this drum’s story. There was probably a stencil on it somewhere, so I looked. Believe me, I was careful not to touch it. I found what was left of the stencil just below the ruptured seam. I recognized the typeset: Property of the U.S. Army. Sealed on March 4, 1917. Over twenty years old.
“I have seen some horrible ways to kill people in war, but the gases were by far the most horrible. By the end of the war there were some pretty strange chemicals being used on the field. It was as if the French, the Krauts, and the Americans all knew that the war was ending and they wanted to try out all their different toys before the grown-ups took them away. On the other hand, each side was so desperate to score decisively that they were willing to throw everything they had at each other. You see atrocities toward the end of a war that you could never see at any other point. The smell of rotten lemons, the withered and dried-out postures of these scientists, brought memories back to me I wish I’d never acquired. I have seen this horrible gas used before.
“I’ve seen it with my own eyes before. My division was supposed to rendezvous with a supply truck hauling some, but the truck must have hit a ditch or trench because it went off the road. I drew patrol with some buddies and we had to go after it. What we found was a scene remarkably similar to the one I found in the lab. Three men were dead. Two poor sons of bitches who lived we brought back to base, but they died on the way. The other—Private Woods from Oklahoma—well. We brought him back, but what the gas did to him was worse. The MPs took him away. We heard stories about wh
at happened to him, but I always thought they were pulp.”
He paused and finished his drink. The swaying of the car was relaxing him, finally. “Hard to believe, I know. But bear with me because it gets stranger. I heard someone crying. Crying in the lab.
“The sobs were soft and broke my heart. Like the sound of a child crying at its mother’s funeral. They came from near the staircase which led from the first floor to the second. I called out, ‘Who’s there?’ And, ‘Is anyone there?’ After I spoke, the sound stopped completely, though I thought I heard the scrape of hasty footfalls. My heart was pounding again. But I went toward the direction the sounds had come from instead of away.
“There was another dead man on the staircase. Unlike the scientists, this man wore a suit. He had obviously been dying from exposure, and slowly. His skin was hollowed out and thin, but his tie had been knotted this morning. But it wasn’t the gas which had killed him. His blood, which was everywhere, was still wet. It was the long, thin blade plunged deep into his chest which seemed to have done him in. The hilt of the blade was carved wood with jade inlays. Chinese craftsmanship.”
“Jeffords?” Driftwood asked.
“Yeah,” Gibson nodded. “He was ugly and bald.”
“But why would the Chinaman kill him?” Hubbard questioned.
“I don’t know. Maybe he expected to find more than just a bunch of dead men there.”
“Like what?”
“More gas.”
Driftwood chewed his lip as Gibson continued. “There was someone behind me. You only need to be attacked from behind once in a night to be a little sensitive about a sneaking presence. I spun around.