Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha

by Dorothy Gilman

  Cutting the connection he exchanged a few words with the two men and then walked to the Renault and drove somberly back to the hotel. This time he didn't bother to cover his tracks by taking the freight elevator; if anyone was still interested in following him, he thought grimly, he'd welcome the chance to thrust them against a wall, put a gun to their head and demand that he be taken to Mrs. Pollifax. Only direct action could blunt the realization that they'd been outmaneuvered again and Mrs. Pollifax captured, and in his head there lingered the words if they apply pressure and she tells them all we know . . .

  Pressure . . . a tactful word for torture, of course.

  As he reached the bank of elevators in the lobby a down elevator opened its doors and Mr. Hitchens and Ruthie walked out.

  "Rob—Lars!" cried Mr. Hitchens happily, recovering the name in time. "Oh, do meet Ruthie, this is— Something's wrong, " he said, staring at Robin.

  Robin nodded. "They've got Mrs. Pollifax." He saw that Mr. Hitchens was involved enough to look stricken by his words and he felt an odd sense of comfort from this.

  "They, " faltered Mr. Hitchens. "You mean—"

  "Yes."

  "Oh dear!"

  Ruthie said, "But I saw her only an hour or so ago, what's happened?"

  "Saw her?" Robin said, turning to her in surprise. "Where? When?"

  "She was getting into a taxi at the front entrance," Ruthie told him.

  Robin laid a hand on her shoulder. "Let's try that couch over there," he said grimly, "I want to hear this." Once seated he said, "Talk!"

  Ruthie nodded. "I was strolling up the curved walk toward the entrance and I saw Mrs. Pollifax walk out through the glass doors. I think the sun must have been in her eyes for she shielded them for a minute, and then she dropped her hand and lifted the other to wave at one of the cabs waiting, and when the cab moved up she climbed inside. It was about a minute before eleven and I didn't call out to her because I was meeting Hitch at eleven, and I was late."

  "All right, now let me ask you, Ruthie: was it a bonafide taxi that she climbed into?"

  Ruthie looked startled. "You mean that's when she disappeared? Oh dear, let me think . . . Well—she was standing there, waiting, the sun in her eyes—yes, she was squinting a little, and the cab—" She stopped. "That's funny. As I walked up the drive there were three taxis waiting for a passenger but it was another one, coming from where I don't know, that suddenly pulled up to Mrs. Pollifax."

  "What did it look like?"

  She frowned. "Well—red. Like the others. A light on top."

  "Was there anyone inside it but the driver?"

  Ruthie closed her eyes for a second. "Yes," she said in a startled voice. "Yes, I could see the silhouette of a person sitting in the rear, and—and then Mrs. Pollifax's head, too, as she climbed inside and then—yes, I saw her head jerk back, as if she'd just noticed the cab was occupied and was going to back out. But the taxi started up in a hurry and drove away with her in it." She opened her eyes. "Will she be all right?" she asked anxiously.

  "That," said Robin, "is something only Mr. Hitchens can tell us, but at the moment I've got to hurry back upstairs and set a great many things in motion. And thanks, Ruthie—this may be of some help."

  With this he entered the elevator to return to a waiting Marko and tell him the grim news.

  Krugg came off duty at 4 p.m, and fell into bed to sleep for a few hours.

  Witkowski left his bed to replace him until midnight. A taxi reported stolen in the Causeway Bay area at ten o'clock that morning was found at three o'clock, abandoned on Hennessy Road.

  Even more important, reports began to filter in during the afternoon on Mr. Charles Yuan Feng, the owner of Feng Import Company, 31 1/2 Dragon Alley, and all of them were extremely interesting.

  He had a police dossier. According to this dossier he had come to Hong Kong from Shanghai after serving in an unknown capacity under Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek; he had been accompanied by a brother, Weng Feng. At this time—it was in the 1950s—one or both of the brothers was suspected of having connections with the "14-K" triad, which the Nationalist General Koi Sui-heong had brought with him as a legacy from China, resurrecting it in Hong Kong for the purpose of overthrowing Mao and returning the Nationalists to mainland China.

  In 1967 the brother Weng Feng had been arrested in Hong Kong as a Nationalist spy and saboteur, the police having found an arsenal of weapons in his apartment. In 1968 Weng had been quietly deported to Taiwan, where he still lived, and it had been assumed that he was the troublemaker of the family.

  Following this, interest in Mr. Charles Yuan Feng had lessened, and then had been dropped, although his name remained on a list.

  Robin scowled over the report unhappily. "Does it mean anything or doesn't it? I mean, Hong Kong is full of Nationalist refugees. Nationalists' Day is still celebrated in October—the Double Ten—and amateur conspiracies are still occasionally surfacing."

  "But this is no amateur conspiracy," pointed out Marko. "It's difficult to make any connection at all."

  Robin nodded. "It seems inconceivable, and yet Britain and Peking are meeting right now—again—it's in today's newspaper—negotiating the terms under which Hong Kong will be returned to the Chinese in 1997." He frowned. "And it's to Red China the colony's to be returned, not to the Nationalists, as once envisioned." His frown deepened. "I daresay it could make for a bit of rage, seeing Hong Kong—the capitalist center of the Orient—being turned over to a country of communes and communism."

  "But Eric the Red and the Liberation 80's group?" said Marko skeptically.

  There was no answer to that, but there was one interesting footnote in the dossier that dangled possibilities of a Nationalist connection: Mr. Feng's brother, the deported Nationalist spy, had been married to a woman by the name of Xian Sutsung, and the list discovered in Mrs. Pollifax's Buddha had included a Xian Pi.

  Nephew? wondered Robin as he went downstairs for an early dinner in the restaurant, leaving Marko behind to man the radio until his return. It proved nothing except that Chinese could join terrorist movements, too, but still it was interesting. To him personally it seemed an aeon ago that Chiang Kai Shek had been routed out of mainland China to set up his new government on Taiwan. Chiang Kai Shek was long since dead; Mao, too, had gone, yet Robin knew only too well how old conflicts and rivalries could linger and fester; history was full of them as new boundaries were carved out of old wars, with no regard for sects, nationalities or alliances: Tatars against Turks, Sikh against Hindu, Serbs against Croats, Druzeans against Christians . . . And certainly Taiwan was still insisting—decades later—that it was the only true government of China.

  Robin glanced at his watch as he entered the hotel dining room; it was a few minutes after six and he realized how drained he felt by the events of the day; he couldn't even remember when he'd last eaten, and he began to understand Marko's insistence that he leave the radio for an hour. He headed for a table in the comer, fitted neatly against the wall, and seated himself, unfurling the napkin folded at his place.

  Three tables away he saw the flutter of a hand: Ruthie and Mr. Hitchens were trying to catch his attention, both of them smiling and waving.

  Ruthie leaned forward now and called, "You look exhausted so we won't join you, but has Mrs. Pollifax been found yet?"

  Fortunately there were few diners at this hour to hear her indiscretion. Robin forced his lips into a polite smile and shook his head.

  At the table next to him along the wall a man facing Robin glanced from him to Ruthie and rose from his chair: a large man, in a somewhat rumpled suit, with an intelligent face, sleepy eyes and a thatch of white hair. To Robin's astonishment, he walked over to his table, pulled out a chair and sat down.

  "Believe I just heard my wife's name," he said, giving Robin a searching and interested scrutiny. "Flew in two hours ago and nobody can find her . . . Emily Pollifax?"

  "Good God," cried Robin, shocked out of his lethargy, "you're Cyrus R
eed and it's Thursday!"

  "Yes to both," he said, and added calmly, "Take it Emily's gone and put herself in the thick of things again. Always does . . Don't have the slightest idea who you are, but it looks as if I've arrived just in the nick of time . . . Now what are you doing about finding my wife?"

  14

  Mrs. Pollifax, finding herself in the taxi with Mr. Feng, decided that discretion was the better part of valor: holding back the dismay that gripped her she forced her lips into a polite and expectant smile, as if Detwiler had very graciously sent a cab for her and had included Mr. Feng as a special treat. Actually she could think of nothing to say anyway, nothing at least that wouldn't betray or incriminate her, such as how on earth had he managed to leave Feng Imports without Robin and Marko knowing, and where was Mr. Detwiler?

  "I do try to be punctual," she told him, repressing every normal reaction. "I feel it's a courtesy to others, don't you?"

  This conversational gambit was ignored, as she had supposed it would be. They were leaving Queen's Road Central now and turning into a narrow street distinctly Chinese in character; as the taxi slowed Mr. Feng leaned forward, pointed and the car halted in front of a narrow shop with the sign Tailor hung above it.

  It was now that Mr. Feng chose to remove a small gun from his sleeve, and at sight of it Mrs. Pollifax gave him a reproachful glance. She would have much preferred to go on avoiding reality for a little longer, she simply wasn't ready yet to confront the fact that she'd walked into a trap—one needed time to adjust to such matters, she thought—but of course the gun made this impossible.

  "Out—quickly," he told her in his quiet voice. "Leave the Buddha on the seat, we have five minutes, no more."

  Five minutes for what, Mrs. Pollifax wondered, but since no opportunity was presenting itself to flee she placed the package on the seat and allowed herself to be prodded through the open door of the tailor shop, considerably confused as to what Feng had in mind. It was a small shop; there was a man at a steam iron, four women seated at sewing machines basting sleeves into silk jackets, and two curtained dressing rooms. No one seemed surprised to see either Mr. Feng or Mrs. Pollifax; without so much as a word or a smile one of the women rose from her bench and went to stand beside one of the dressing rooms. She had a sullen, hard face and regarded Mrs. Pollifax without curiosity.

  "You will strip," said the woman.

  "I will what?" said Mrs. Pollifax incredulously.

  "Quickly," she said. "Everything."

  Obviously she had been expected, and if she demurred there was Mr. Feng's gun pressing into her back. Mrs. Pollifax went into the stall and stripped, handing out her clothing piece by piece; when this had been done the woman entered the cubicle and subjected Mrs. Pollifax to an aggressive and not too gentle body search.

  Well, thought Mrs. Pollifax bleakly, this is happening in obscure corners of the world every day and probably every hour, and it's only right that I experience it to know how it feels. And how it feels, she thought with rising anger, is humiliating. When it was over her clothes were handed back to her piece by piece, and without surprise Mrs. Pollifax found the homing device in the hem of her skirt gone. It was for this, then, that they'd made their stop, and as she was herded back into the car she thought of Krugg still waiting in Dragon Alley for her arrival, and of Robin and Marko presumably still listening for the sound of her Ackameter, which would now be sending out signals from a tailor shop.

  But in this she was wrong, as she discovered when the taxi came to a stop in sight of the Man Mo Temple and Mr. Feng drew out the tiny electronic device and placed it in the palm of the driver's hand. The man he called Carl left the taxi and she had to sit and watch him deposit the Ackameter at the entrance to the temple while she thought over and over. Damn, they've thought of everything—everything!

  It was at this moment that Mrs. Pollifax opened herself up to the reality of her situation and let it sweep over her with all of its monstrous implications: she had walked into a trap, but not the cozy little trap that she'd envisioned at Feng Imports, with Sheng Ti and Lotus nearby, and Krugg across the lane and Upshot watching in the rear. She was now in the hands of the terrorists, with all earthly help in the guise of Robin, Marko, Car-stairs and the police denied her. She was completely on her own, destination unknown, outcome so uncertain that she did not feel any insurance company would consider her life expectancy a safe risk against such odds.

  And Cyrus was on his way ... but she mustn't think of Cyrus because under duress she was going to have to be very careful not to expose what she knew, and in this area Cyrus would be a distraction, representing all the delightful normalities of life that she loved and wanted very much to continue. She must, for instance, keep Mr. Feng and his friends from discovering that Interpol was involved, that Eric the Red had been seen in Hong Kong and identified, and above all that radio detection vans cruised the street now, listening for a signal from their transmitter.

  / have to stay aware, she thought, / have to keep my wits about me.

  They had been negotiating narrow congested streets, sometimes forced to halt for crowds of pedestrians, street stalls and hawkers and trucks. Once in these labyrinthian lanes she thought they might be very close to Dragon Alley, but they were certainly in a very old section of Hong Kong where only Chinese lived, and a great many of them.

  Abruptly Carl turned to the right into a lane scarcely wide enough for the taxi; he stopped, reached over and opened Mr. Feng's door and a minute later Mr. Feng, still with gun, opened the opposite door to Mrs. Pollifax. She glanced once at his face, at the creped parchment of his skin, the benign and hooded eyes set too close together and she thought, Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look, he thinks too much ... but of what? What passion behind those inscrutable eyes had led him to this?

  She climbed out of the car to face a battered, faded-blue wooden door. The taxi backed out of the lane, Mr. Feng held open the wooden door for her to enter, and even as she moved toward him she was calculating distance and strike possibilities, but he was too clever for her, moving adroitly out of reach as she passed him. Faced with steps and a gun behind her Mrs. Pollifax began to climb dark, narrow, tilting stairs that continued endlessly. No voice or sounds could be heard behind the few narrow doors she passed on the three minuscule landings; when she reached the top of the building a door opened and light spilled over the shabby floor and into her face, nearly blinding her after the dim halls.

  "Take her," Mr. Feng told the man who opened the door, and turned and went back down the stairs.

  Blinking, Mrs. Pollifax stared into the face of the man confronting her and decided, quite reasonably, that she didn't like it, resenting especially his look of Nordic wholesomeness. He was blond, clean-shaven and tanned and she thought he looked like any Hong Kong vacationer in his cotton turtleneck shirt, jeans and sandals except that he was wearing a gun-belt and levelling a gun at her, his eyes like cold hard blue marbles. She was pulled inside to enter a room crammed full of people and objects illuminated by brilliant fluorescent lighting overhead. The scene was chaotic: windows had been covered over with yellowing newspapers, sleeping bags lay everywhere, some of them occupied, and piles of cable lay on the floor like coiled snakes. Along one wall she saw rows of bottles and jars, a metal drum, a barrel, an assortment of wooden crates. At the far end of the room two men were using a blowtorch, their goggles turning them into Martians, the sparks flying to the ceiling. Three others were mixing and stirring something in a metal drum while two men leaned over what looked to be a radio, scowling and pointing and arguing. The heat in the room was stifling; her nose wrinkled at the smells of hot grease, rotting garbage, sweat and something pungent that she thought might be gasoline and fervently hoped not.

  The gun prodded her toward the left wall; she moved past a wooden crate and abruptly stopped, seeing with a mixture of dismay and relief that she was not to be alone. Two other guests had preceded her and were sitting on the floor, their wrists tightly bound together i
n front of them: Detwiler, and a young man whose face she recognized at once from the newspapers: it was Alec Hao.

  As she rounded the corner Detwiler lifted his head and gave her a wan smile, half apologetic, half rueful.

  "Good morning—or afternoon," she said politely, and while she suffered her wrists to be bound with ropes—so tightly that unwilling tears came to her eyes-she kept her gaze resolutely on Alec Hao.

  Once she was bound, the blond young man shoved her to the floor and she fell between Alec Hao and Detwiler, hitting her head against the wall in the plunge. Turning away with contempt the man strode off to another section of the room where she could see his head over the tops of the crates until he disappeared from view.

  Detwiler turned his head to look at her. She said nothing—her head hurt and she wanted very much to rub it but of course she couldn't—and it was not until she noticed the tears in his eyes that she spoke. "I'm sorry," she told him softly.

  "I can't think why," he said, struggling for dignity. "After all, I'm the one who—made the phone call. It was—" His voice trailed away shakily. "You brought the Buddha? Feng has it now?"

  Mrs. Pollifax hesitated and then temporized by saying, "A Buddha, yes."

  He groaned. "They'll kill me now they have it. You couldn't know—didn't—but it has a compartment inside—with plans—papers—as much as I knew, and— and-"

  The ache where she'd struck her head was subsiding. She said in a neutral voice, "Just why did you want me to have the Buddha with its compartment and the papers inside, Mr. Detwiler?"

  He shook his head. "I thought—I really thought that— at the right moment, you understand, I would telephone you—at your hotel—and tell you about it. Tell you what I'd hidden inside. I thought—" His nose was running and tears were returning to his eyes; with his tied wrists he dabbed ineffectually at his wet face.

  Beside her Alec Hao said in a tired voice, "He's running out of dope, they gave him more last night to keep him quiet—he was screaming his head off—but that's a long time ago now. He needs a fix."