by Neil Russell
I try not to second-guess drivers in other countries. They know the local traffic rhythms. But as I mentally gauged my reaction time to the blind corners we were flying around and the slower traffic we were dodging, I knew it would be impossible to adjust to anything unexpected. But not wanting Mr. Big Mac to go even faster, I mentally crossed myself and concentrated on searching the turn-ins for Cheyenne’s butterfly.
The road bent back and forth in tight hairpins as it terraced its way up the mountain. From time to time, the tram to the summit flashed into view then disappeared again in the trees. Eventually, we left the shops and small neighborhoods behind; and then we left the haze as well and broke into sunlight. The landscape changed too. Here, the vegetation was allowed to grow unchecked, creating an additional layer of security for the residents of hidden estates. Unlike lower down the mountain, no cars were parked along the roadway either, and few passed going in the other direction.
Then, suddenly, that unexpected happened.
An old man stepped out of a blind driveway directly into our path. Swerving right wasn’t an option. That was straight down. So my driver jerked the wheel left. A massive bougainvillea offered little resistance, but the thick hedge behind it pushed us sideways so we hit the approaching wall at a glancing angle. After scraping along ivy-covered concrete fifty feet or so, we finally jolted to a stop.
Other than being angry, I was okay. In the front seat, though, my driver was groaning and holding his head. As I got out to see what I could do for him, part of me was rooting for the pain. He probably had a concussion, and he’d lost some teeth against the steering wheel, which he was clumsily feeling for while blood ran down his chin.
Regina had given me a local cell phone, but it might as well have been a ham sandwich. I couldn’t even get the satisfaction of static. I heard another car coming up the mountain. It was an old Rolls Phantom IV, like the ones the queen uses on state occasions—only this one was white.
The chauffeur in the right-hand-drive vehicle was wearing a man’s uniform with the hat brim pulled down, but there wasn’t any question it was a woman. Asian, and without makeup, which is unusual in Hong Kong. She also had on a pair of black driving gloves and a man’s watch.
I walked to the car and saw another Asian woman seated behind her in the cavernous backseat. Beautiful wasn’t a strong enough word, but it was the kind of beautiful that was almost too perfect. The kind where anything could be hiding beneath. Swathed in red silk and a black, wide-brimmed hat over saucer-sized sunglasses, she’d gone to a lot of trouble to look like a wealthy wife out for lunch. My gut, though, told me she and her pal had been following us. I’d checked several times, but the twisting road could easily have hidden the big Rolls.
I went around to her side, and she lowered her window. “Is anyone hurt?” Her voice was slightly husky with a hint of Chinese and a vague European inflection, perhaps Portuguese. A constructed voice. One you didn’t so much hear as have slip around you. And that could lure the unsuspecting to promised pleasures and unpromised fates.
“My driver probably has a concussion, but I don’t mind.” I held up my phone. “Unfortunately, no habla.”
She smiled like a woman who had also enjoyed the suffering of others. “We saw you ahead of us. I assumed it would end badly. There’s very little cell availability up here. If you wish, you may use the phone at my home.”
I walked to the taxi to tell Asshole I’d send someone for him, and the Rolls pulled alongside. I got in back on the left side, and my seatmate’s perfume enveloped me as had her voice. I’d never smelled anything like it. Whatever nameless fool decided we needed to replace the descriptive “Oriental” with “Asian” needs to get out more. This fragrance was pure Orient. A coalescence of flowers, spices, history, superstition and intrigue that wouldn’t have been the same on Park Avenue or the Champs-Elysees. In the Far East, the first touch of lovemaking is scent. I had to remind myself it wasn’t why I was here.
Now that I could see all of her, the woman was Oriental too, a modern version of another era. Chalk white skin, highlighted by deep red lips, upswept hair pinned under her hat with ivory combs and a six-inch-wide gold cuff pushed halfway up her left forearm. She wore a couture copy of an ancient Chinese dress pinched at her narrow waist with a wide red and gold sash. And instead of white stockings and wooden sandals, her red silk Jimmy Choos, also embroidered in gold, had been given an extra inch of heel. Her single nod to the twenty-first century was a thin gold anklet accented by an ivory teardrop charm.
I gave her Beijing masters points for the name. Crimson was perfect.
Our driver, who wasn’t introduced, was a very careful lady. Part was the road, part the car. Straight eight, 1950s Rolls-Royces weighing two tons aren’t geared for steep grades or hairpin turns. But even accounting for the less-than-responsive behemoth, I could have walked faster. After what seemed an interminable climb, we turned into a steep, tree-lined drive. The deciduous oaks reached far to the sky, shutting out most of the sun and all noise. We could have been in a woods in Pennsylvania instead of on a mountain-top in China.
The gray-green gates were a dense steel weave decorated with an elaborate butterfly, gracefully executed by a sculptor of exceptional skill. The driver pressed a button on the dash, and the butterfly broke in half as the gates swung inward.
As the drive rose, I could see through the trees the partial outline of a spacious home. I was about to comment on the architecture when everything went to shit.
The chauffeur suddenly accelerated and jerked the wheel left, right, then left again. The soft shocks and low center of gravity turned the heavy Phantom into a drunken whale, and I grabbed the hanging strap with my left hand. To my right, I saw a flash of red and gold as Crimson raised her left arm. I lunged for it, but the car wallowed again, and I slid toward her and missed. I grabbed again and got the gold cuff, which slid down to her wrist. The mouth-sized wound on her forearm with sutures still in it wasn’t autographed by Chuck Brando, but it should have been.
I didn’t feel the hypodermic go into my thigh, but I saw it there, and a split second later, my leg turned white-hot, followed by ice-cold.
“You were lucky once, Mr. Black. We were waiting outside the Red Roof Inn. We’ll try to get it right this time.”
I elbowed Crimson in the jaw, and she flew against her door. I tried to think, but my head was filled with bees. I grabbed for the door handle with a rubber arm that seemed to be a mile long and getting longer. I wrenched it open and threw myself out. I was lucky. The car was just swinging to the right, so my jump took me away from it. I hit the edge of the cobblestone drive and rolled into the soft ground cover.
I pulled the syringe out of my flesh, staggered to my feet and broke for the closing gates. It was downhill, and I was running as fast as I could, but the entrance seemed to be receding. I shook my head and tried to focus. Just as the two halves came together, I threw myself at them, banged my temple on one, my shoulder on the other and went through.
My vision had begun to tunnel, and my arms and legs were blocks of granite, but I willed myself forward. I looked over my shoulder and saw the gates reopening. The main road was only a dozen yards ahead, but it took me a week to reach it. By then, the Rolls’s grille was so close I could feel its heat.
I stumbled across the blacktop, and when I heard gravel under my feet, I leaped. The harbor looked far, far away, but I remember thinking it was beautiful. Then I was falling ... and falling . . . For a brief moment, I thought I saw a great grinning shark tumbling above me, but, as I tried to reach into my memory for why it looked familiar, everything began to fade, and I rushed into the welcoming darkness.
* * * *
41
High Places and Silk Houses
I awakened to the sound of a jet. A big one, climbing out toward some faraway place. I think it was day, but I dropped back to sleep before I could be sure. The second time, I managed to force my eyes open, but the effort wore me out. I don’t know ho
w long it was before I came to again, but it was dark and raining. I was lying on my back and so thirsty I couldn’t get past it to think about anything else.
I tried opening my mouth, but that didn’t work. While I pondered the problem in the heavy web that had replaced my brain, I felt something wet hitting me in the head and running over my ears. I gathered my strength, heaved myself over and pressed my face into it. It tasted like earth, but I didn’t care. One of the things you learn in survival school is just how much crap your body will allow you to insult it with. Considering some of the scrounged feasts I’d choked down over the years—clotted camel blood being one you never forget—this particular mud tasted pretty good.
When I pulled myself away, I was still maddeningly cotton-mouthed, but I had taken in enough to keep my kidneys from failing. The residual thirst was the result of whatever had been in the hypodermic. Animal tranquilizer, probably, which meant my liver wasn’t going to be very happy. To make up, I promised to send it a few beers as soon as I could.
My head was beginning to clear, and I took stock. I was on a steep grade, 70 percent, at least. The good news was that I was head up, which might have saved my life. More than one mountaineer has died from nothing more than being trapped upside down. My hands and feet worked—though one of my shoes was gone—and other than what felt like a severely skinned back and a knot behind my left ear, I was intact. My legs were jammed solidly into a sweet-smelling bush with ropelike branches, and when I reached up, there was another like it.
When I finally got a look down, my elation disappeared. The bush was growing out of a narrow ledge of rock beyond which was a black abyss. I listened, and through the rain, I heard distant surf—too distant. Victoria Peak is eighteen hundred feet, and I’d been near the top. Whatever portion was below me fell into a category of information I didn’t want to know.
My cell phone had apparently joined my shoe, and in another move of divine brilliance, Bert’s watch was right where it would do me the most good—on the dresser at Black House. I had obviously been lying there for hours, but how many?
I had two choices. Wait for daylight and try to signal for help, or climb. Inaction hadn’t brought the Marines thus far, so hanging around didn’t seem smart. I’d also get weaker. I try not to ask God for personal favors. He’s never been much of a listener when I asked him to help the Cowboys. I took a shot anyway. Who knew, it might just be an issue with Jerry Jones.
Normally, you don’t invite a guy my size to go climbing. Long muscles, wrong center of gravity, and too much weight. But during the first six years of my life, I lived on Clarissima, my family’s Caribbean island where there were no other kids, and I had to make my own fun. Mostly that meant tagging along with Magé, our Brazilian foreman.
Magé taught me the rain forest like it had been taught to him by his grandfather, including how to hunt boar with a spear and a knife. You started in a tree, but you had to drop next to the boar to finish the job. If it went bad, you had to be able to get back up—in a hurry. I learned to climb everything, even palms. And later, when I went to England for school, I led my classmates on some of the wildest excursions ever chronicled by the Derbyshire constable—-a hapless chap who spent a lot of his time driving under us.
In Delta, you train hard in all disciplines: scuba, desert, jungle, arctic, alpine and a host of others. I try not to talk about my worst, but building an igloo at forty below figures in. Fortunately, one of my best was alpine.
The first ten feet were a breeze. They only took me an hour. Then, a little while later, I stumbled onto a half-pipe concrete drainage ditch where I was able to get a cleaner drink and use it to scale the rest of the way.
I crested the ridgeline just as the sun broke over the horizon. The rain was gone, and it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. After a thorough assessment, I discovered there was considerable blood seeping through my shirt. Torn, bleeding and wearing one shoe, I wasn’t much of a candidate for hitchhiking, so I began walking.
A couple of miles later, I arrived at the spot where my taxi had gone into the wall. It was another thirty yards from where I’d left it and deeply entangled in a creeper vine. Apparently, my genius driver hadn’t been any better off-road. I checked for keys, found them in the glove box, and the engine turned over after a couple of tries. I spent the next hour collecting pieces of stone to put under the wheels and tearing away the vine—which in keeping with my current run of luck was thorned.
By the time I had the taxi back on the road, my sock was almost as bloody as my shirt. I took it easy heading back to the city, but I couldn’t help thinking about Birdy.
* * * *
I had to expect someone would be watching both Black buildings, so I parked up the street where I could observe pedestrian and traffic patterns in my mirror. Half an hour later, all I knew was that if somebody was there, they were either inside a building or so good I was never going to see them. I took a deep breath, got out and headed for the door of the residence, half-expecting to feel a bullet.
I tried to let a long shower do its magic, but several soapings later, there was still blood running down the drain. I wrapped my back in towels, put on a white terry bathrobe and made myself two sandwiches. After inhaling one and washing it down with Evian and a tall Tsingtao, I picked up the private line and dialed Regina’s extension.
She answered on the first ring, her voice not hiding her alarm. “Mr. Black. Is everything all right?”
“Everything but your cell phone. I must have left it somewhere.”
“I’ll bring you another. Are you back at the residence?”
“I am.”
“You certainly don’t have to check in with me, but someone’s been calling for you. Twice yesterday and three times the day before.”
Two days. No wonder my head felt like a bag of broken glass. Quite probably, my substantial body mass had saved me. “Did they leave a name or number?”
“No number, just a name. A funny one. Birdy. Could that be right?”
My muscles tensed. “Yes, it’s right. How did she sound?”
Regina seemed surprised. “Other than arrogant, I’d say she was fine. From her accent, I think she’s from the northwest. Manchuria, would be my guess, but when I asked, she ignored me.”
Not Birdy, Crimson. “Did she leave a message?”
“Not until her last call about an hour ago. She said if you showed up to tell you she’s sorry she didn’t get to entertain you.”
Of that I was certain. “That’s it?”
“No, she wanted you to know she and her friends have left Hong Kong, and they won’t be back for some time. Maybe a year, maybe longer.”
I didn’t buy it. Nobody needed to run as long as I stayed dead. “If she calls again, you still haven’t seen me. And put some alarm in your voice. Think you can do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Regina, when I came in, there was a battered taxi parked up the street. In view of the kidnapping threat, maybe it’s wise to have the authorities check it out.”
“Absolutely.”
“I’m also going to need a couple of things. Can I count on your discretion?”
“Of course, Mr. Black.”
She was fast and surreptitious with the doctor. They came through the Black Group offices and entered the residence via a side door that wasn’t visible from the street. He was a young Chinese who’d studied at the University of Texas, and while he dressed my wounds he kept up a running commentary on Lone Star women. He was a fan, as was I. What he didn’t do was ask questions, and I skipped mention of the tranquilizer. Regina watched him work without comment.
“You’ll be fine after a few days rest,” he said. “The scrapes on your back are mostly superficial, but there’s one nasty gash that probably could stand a few sutures. I can butterfly it, but if you do anything strenuous, it’ll open up again.”
I’ve always been a fast healer, so I skipped the needle. “How about my foot?”
�
��It looks worse than it is. I’ll leave some antibiotics. Just avoid sandals until there’s no longer a danger of infection.”
When he left, Regina handed me a piece of paper. “This part was difficult. Most of the air tours here are done by helicopter. Since the handover, fixed-wing aircraft are limited to government and approved businesses. Being British, we don’t qualify.”
“I’ll see to it you’re rewarded.”
She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. I can’t vouch for the pilot. At the very least, he’ll be an informant.”
I wasn’t about to tell her I was prepared to risk beheading rather than ride in another helicopter. “I’m sure he’ll be ideal.”