“Go away,” he said.
“There,” she pointed again.
He had seen her earlier, coming down the line of boats, using the same word and gesture. He hadn’t heard her speak another word and wondered if there was the only word she knew. Her meaning was clear enough. She wanted a ride across the water to Macao. She had been turned away by all of the boats. His was the last in the line. He was a poor man and his boat was also the smallest and least seaworthy of the sampans and junks along the waterfront.
He went into the sampan’s tiny hut formed by mats and put on a slicker.
Like all the fishing people, his whole being was in tune with the weather, especially in the bay during August, when sudden storms could erupt with the mindless fury of a rabid dog. When that happened, his poor boat was the least likely to survive. He had been swamped before and nearly drowned. Now he could taste rain. He had to get back to Macao with his catch or it would rot on him, but he feared the crossing.
When he came out, she hadn’t moved. She stood on the dock and looked up at him with liquid almond eyes. Her eyes were unusual, he thought; large and round, intense, as if she saw things that others didn’t.
He squinted at the clouds. The sky was darkening. He had to hurry. On impulse he said, “Come.”
She scrambled aboard and sat in the V formed by the bow as he rolled with a scull from the stern, working the oar from side to side to move the boat forward. Into open water, he raised the sampan’s small sail and went back to rowing. Other boats, some even with small outboard motors, passed him as he rowed and kept an eye out on the darkening sky and freshening wind.
The little girl took well to the action of the boat, hardly moving when waves burst over the bow as the boat rode the choppy water. He wondered if her parents had been fishermen, drowned in a sudden storm or struck down by an epidemic. She didn’t fear the sea—children often don’t—but she seemed to embrace it as did the children of fishermen.
The storm came like a crouching tiger, suddenly springing. An angry wind roiled off the hills and blew across the top of the water, carrying rain and sea. The fisherman quickly took down his sail and got back behind the helm, rowing faster.
“Come here, come back here,” he yelled to the little girl.
She gave no indication that she heard him. Standing at the bow, she laughed as wind and water lashed the boat. He was a good man and he would have crawled forward to grab her but it was all he could do to hold onto the helm.
The storm tore at the small boat, ripping the sail loose and tearing the roof off the small hut. Other boats around him were also in trouble, keeling over from the force of the storm. A larger and sturdier boat near him keeled over until water swamped it and it sank. No one could help the people who were thrown into the water; the storm had command of the sea.
Gripped by fear, the fisherman held onto the helm with all his might and prayed. The rain and sea lashed the boat. He could barely see the bow of his boat, but the little girl was still there, as if glued to the bow, a dark silhouette in the storm. He was sure he could hear her laughter over the fury of the storm.
The storm died almost as suddenly as it had risen. Rowing toward the wharf at Macao, he heard from the other boatmen that in its fury, eight boats had been lost, the most at one time in anyone’s memory. Other fishermen shook their head with amazement that his boat had survived the storm when so many more seaworthy boats had been torn asunder.
He yelled back to them that A-Ma had protected him and he pointed to the little girl, still riding the bow. A-Ma, the goddess of the sea, protector of sailors. Macao’s name was derived from that of the goddess.
When they reached the shore the little girl disappeared as he was unloading his catch. He paused for a moment, looking around for her. He had little but he would have shared it with the child, who he was sure had brought him luck.
Wu-hou was a procurer. As a girl of ten, she had been sold by her parents to a man who trained young girls and boys for roles as “jewels” to wealthy men who could afford such trinkets. The man carefully chose children who would grow up to be pleasing to the eye and who had the intelligence to master music and poetry, which their culture esteemed.
Wu-hou had been an orphan and he gave her the name of a famous Chinese empress, a woman of intrigue and utter ruthlessness. He had sold her to a man who admired more practical qualities in a woman than the liberal arts.
Wu-hou’s own benefactor died when she was thirty. Only modestly attractive and far beyond the desirable age for jewels, she avoided life in a house of prostitution by her business acumen, eventually entering the “jewel” trade herself. Success had awarded her many luxuries and she found life pleasing.
Walking with a servant along a Macao wharf, selecting fish for her table, she saw the little girl. A nine- or ten-year-old in a ragged dress rummaging for food in a trash can would not have caught the eye of most people but Wu-hou had an eye for high art. She saw in the little girl’s dirty face valuable grace and rare beauty.
When she asked the girl’s name, she said, “A-Ma.”
“Take her home and wash her,” she told her servant, “and delouse her good. Take her to my doctor for shots. Who knows what she picked up in garbage cans.”
Three years of training polished the jewel to a fine sheen.
“Please play a song for me,” Wu-hou told A-Ma. She lay on her bed in a silk robe. The room was heavy with the poppy incense that Wu-hou preferred and cloaked in darkness except for candles. Hearing the soft melody played by A-Ma on the lute until Wu-hou closed her eyes had become a bedtime ritual for the older woman.
The girl sat on a stool next to the bed and began to play. A-Ma had been on her mind for some time. She was the quintessential jewel; the quietest of her trainees but the one that glistened the most. She rarely talked yet when she did her voice was musical. She studied in silence and absorbed everything. At thirteen she was proficient in English, French, and three Chinese dialects, including Hakka, which Wu-hou believed to be her native tongue.
Like all of her students, A-Ma was taught to walk and talk with grace and poise, learning business and scientific terms besides the arts, and even more important to listen to a man’s woes, rubbing the man’s neck and murmuring condolences when he had troubles, clapping with enthusiasm at his victories. It was the way of the Chinese concubines of an earlier age. In the days when concubines were common, her feet would have been bound from childhood to create the tiny crippled feet Chinese men found so sensuous.
A-Ma was the first jewel that Wu-hou had wanted to keep for herself, the first that she was willing to give up a fat commission to keep. But the client who asked for her was not someone she could refuse.
She held up her hand to signal A-Ma to stop playing. The time for her had come.
“You are the best of my students, little one. Now it is time for you to learn the most important things that a man desires. In a moment I will have Kao come in,” she said, referring to a young male servant. “You will learn with him the places a man is to be touched to please him and the places he will want to touch you. But before you learn to please a man, you must know all about a woman’s body.”
Wu-hou slipped out of her robe and lay back, naked. She was forty years old and although her face showed her years and more, her body was still firm and lush.
“Come here, my child.”
A-Ma sat beside her. She took the girl’s hand and placed it on her breast. “A body is like the lute. You must learn how to play it.”
Deception and deceit are the tools of a wise general.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
48
HONG KONG, 1982
When Windell’s plane landed at Hong Kong, he took his time getting off so he could follow two flight attendants. The two women tried to ignore the character leering behind them, but Windell was hard to ignore.
“Can I buy you girls a drink?”
They both shook their heads at the same time and gave him a pro
fessional smile. Anyone watching them would easily have realized that the only thing the two women wanted was to get rid of the creep trying to pick them up.
Windell’s ticket, courtesy of Zack, had been in coach, but Windell bumped himself up to first class by hacking into the airline’s computer system. During the long flight, he had made himself the caliber of jerk to the flight attendants that only he was capable of achieving. He identified himself as the CEO of a major, but unnamed, Silicon Valley computer company. Had he shut his mouth after that he might gotten a half-blind, developmentally challenged flight attendant to give him the time of day, but after several hours of hearing him trip over his own boasts, the general consensus of the flight crew was that he had won his first-class seat in a McDonald’s fast-food contest.
“Windell?”
Windell turned to the only two attractive women who had voluntarily initiated public contact with him in his life.
“I’m Zack’s friend, Chenza. And this is Maria.”
“Hey, is Maria for me?”
“Do chickens have lips?”
“Hey, you do know Zack. I don’t know about chickens, but I’ve got the hottest lips in town.”
A limousine awaited them outside. The two women sat on either side of him and smiled. Other than Janelle’s purposeful seduction, this was more attention than Windell had gotten from women since he had had his diapers changed. The limo took them into the heart of the teeming city to a down-at-the-heels hotel in a narrow alley crowded with butcher shops with naked chickens and ducks hanging from hooks in the windows.
“I thought we were taking a boat to Macao?”
“Later,” Chenza said. “You need to relax before making the trip.”
“Relax?”
Chenza put her hand on his thigh and squeezed. “I think you could do with a nice hot shower and a massage.”
Windell was speechless for the first time in his life.
The inside of the hotel smelled like sweaty feet, but Windell was too mesmerized to notice the smell or the undesirables hanging around the lobby. Chenza entered the room on the fifth floor first. When Windell stepped inside, he found Luis Kang and two other men waiting for him.
“What the fuck—”
Kang punched him in the stomach. Before he could catch his breath, they grabbed his arms and taped his mouth. They dragged him to a window and shoved him halfway out. Windell stared wide-eyed at the street five stories below. He couldn’t scream but the terror came through in his frantic eyes. They pulled him back in by his belt and let him lie on the floor as he tried to get air through his nose.
“Take off the tape,” Luis said.
Chenza and Maria sat on the bed and sniffed in a line of coke while Luis stood over Windell who was still gasping for breath. He threw a computer disk in Windell’s lap.
“There are instructions on the disk. When you work on Wan’s computer, you will follow those instructions. Understand?”
Windell nodded.
Luis knelt beside him. “You see those ducks and pigs dripping fat in the shops below? You fail to obey my instructions and I’m going to have you skinned alive and hung by the hooks over a slow fire. Understand?”
Windell nodded again. He couldn’t control his trembling. As soon as Luis and the two thugs left the room, Chenza and Maria helped him to the bed. They peeled off his jacket and lay him back on the pillow. While Maria took off his shoes and rubbed his feet, Chenza sat down on the bed beside him and unbuttoned his shirt and pants. Her hand slipped inside his underwear and began to massage the limp penis.
“Poor baby,” Chenza said. Her cool lips caressed his. “We’re going to make it up to you.”
49
I got Windell working on Wan’s computer system. The British had their own nerd, a guy as geeky as Windell. I informed him that Windell was there to test the system’s defenses against outside hackers. That story settled well with him because the British nerd had heard of Windell, or at least the handle he used in the world of hacking—The Stud.
Meanwhile, I studied the casino operation and worked out ways to attract more business. Wan’s story that he wanted me to introduce Vegas-type player comps and contests at his casino had another big flaw besides my suspicious nature—the place was packed every night. He couldn’t have handled any more business. I figured I was the pawn in some intrigue between him and Luís. That gave me two choices: turn tail and run or ride it out and see what I could make of it. It was a tough town, tougher than Vegas, but I didn’t have it in me to return to Vegas with my tail between my legs.
To honor Windell’s arrival, Wan threw a dinner party for his British and American crews. Chenza said she had “other plans” and I didn’t bother asking what they were—we hadn’t drifted, we raced apart since arriving in Macao. At the party, Wan had the girlie crew that services the casino’s high rollers. One of them had even been told to be nice to Windell. I hoped she got a bonus.
The women didn’t do anything for me. They reminded me of Chinese dolls—very pretty but pure porcelain underneath.
A-Ma was not at the party and I hadn’t seen her since spotting her at the casino. Nobody at the casino seemed to know much about her. I couldn’t find anyone that had actually spoken to her. “She’s a jinni,” a croupier from Malaysia told me. “A ghost-spirit who can take human form.”
After the meal I slipped out the patio door to get some air. A full moon lit Wan’s incredible garden. With dozens of bushes in the shape of people and animals, he must have spent a fortune keeping the place trimmed. I had nothing else to do, so I tried to find a method in the madness, looking for a common theme in his design. Some of the bushstatues struck me as warriors in battle. I was looking over a warrior slaying a two-headed monster when a voice behind me said, “Gesar of Ling.”
I had never heard her speak, but I was sure that the voice belonged to the enigmatic A-Ma.
“Good evening,” I said, turning to the young woman. She wore a pale pink silk robe that glowed in the moonlight. It was hard to believe that she was sixteen. There was a timeless quality to her features. “What did you say?”
“Gesar of Ling, that is the theme of Mr. Wan’s garden,” she said, as if she had read my mind.
“Some kind of Chinese myth?”
“Somewhat Chinese, but mostly central Asian. Gesar is a hero to Tibetans, Mongolians, Manchu, and the Khams in Szechwan. In the West you have the Iliad and the Odyssey. In central Asia, Gesar was a warrior-hero much like Odysseus and other Greek heroes.”
“Really.” I couldn’t come up with anything more brilliant. I never heard of this guy Odysseus.
“As a young shepherd boy, Gesar won the right to a kingdom and a beautiful princess in a horse race, but he had to go on a journey to find treasures to finally claim the kingdom. He had to defeat terrifying monsters to claim the treasures of Magyalpumra. Those are the treasures there.” She pointed at a row of carved bushes. “The knots of life that protect the wearer: a magic helmet, a thunderbolt scepter, arrows tipped with iron from the gods, a whip with a magic charm inset in its handle, and a spear called ‘the conqueror of three worlds.’”
I followed her as she pointed out the shapes. No question about it, I was sexually attracted to her. But I kept a lid on it, not only because she was Wan’s property, but I figured she’d had enough older men on her tail.
“That’s King Lutzen.” She pointed at the tallest of the carved bushes, one three times my height. “He was an evil giant whose tongue was a bolt of lightning. His subjects were all demons, except for his wife, who was beautiful. Gesar seduced the giant’s wife and persuaded her to reveal his vital spot, a round white mark on his forehead. Gesar slew him by shooting an arrow into the spot. It was his Achilles’ heel, you see.”
“Clever,” I said.
“Yes, but Gesar didn’t understand the wiles of women. After he slew her husband, the giant’s wife drugged Gesar to keep him in her bed and her in control.”
She fascinated me. I followed
her around as she explained other shapes—his horse Karkar, a terrible monster named Machig, the three demon kings in the land of Hor.
She finally stopped and looked at me appraisingly. “I am boring you.”
“Conversations with beautiful women never bore me. I was just thinking how unlikely it was that a man like Wan would have a fantasy garden.” Actually what I was thinking was that if it truly was Wan’s garden, he would have beasts coupling with humans.
“You’ve guessed a secret. Yes, the garden is mine. Gesar is an all-but-forgotten hero and I wanted to bring him back to life.”
“Does Wan give you everything you want?”
“Mr. Wan is very generous.”
She looked meaningfully at one of the leafy statues. I took a closer look and saw the wire to a sound bug. That was no surprise to me. Wan trusted no one. People who were untrustworthy themselves tended to be overly suspicious of everyone else.
“Would you like to see more of the garden?”
“Sure. Give me the whole tour.”
She led me down the hillside of the garden to a waterfall and pond with large iridescent fish.
“There are no ears here.”
I leaned against a rock wall and watched her as she knelt by the pond. She murmured something in Chinese as she put her hand in the water and a fish swam to her hand. It didn’t surprise me that she could call a fish. I wouldn’t doubt this bewitching young woman could call birds from the sky.
“What do you think of Macao, Mr. Riordan?”
“It reminds me of a wet towel that’s been used too often at a school gym. Damp, moldy and smelly.”
She laughed, a musical sound. “Macao is a Portuguese city of Chinese run by gangsters. We live under the shadow of the Red Dragon and know that someday the Reds will march in. Like the people in the movie Casablanca, Macao is a city of refugees. When the Reds come, men like Mr. Wan expect to be shot.”
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