Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha

by Dorothy Gilman

  Two minutes and twenty seconds—please, please, she whispered; two minutes and twenty-five seconds . . . twenty-six . . . twenty-nine . . . thirty seconds.

  Two minutes and a half!

  She felt a rush of joy and longed to call out to Detwiler that he'd done it, that the radio had remained on for two and a half minutes.

  The switch was still on, the time was reaching two minutes and fifty-eight seconds . . . fifty-nine ... almost three minutes.

  A sudden shout interrupted her vigil and she lifted her eyes from her watch. "Oh no, " she gasped, crying the words out loud as she saw the man standing over Detwiler and staring down at him in disbelief; she saw comprehension dawn on the man's face, saw the switch furiously snapped off and others come to stand over Detwiler, and then the gun drawn out of the gun belt.

  She closed her eyes as they shot him. When she opened them Detwiler was dead, sprawled lifeless on the floor beside the crate, his eyes open and staring sightlessly down the aisle toward her.

  17

  Staring at detwiler's body sprawled across the floor Mrs. Pollifax thought dazedly, He knew this could happen, it's what he was trying to tell me, that he couldn't find a future for himself, there was no going back . . .

  Poor Mrs. O'Malley, she thought.

  And then she remembered that it was an incredible act of gallantry on Detwiler's part, because it was she who had been going to crawl to the radio but he'd insisted on doing it instead, and at this she lifted her bound wrists to clumsily wipe away her tears.

  Beside her Alec Hao suddenly sat up, jarred out of his sleep. "What is it?" he said sharply. "What's happened?"

  She nodded toward Detwiler. "They've shot him."

  He glanced down the aisle and then he turned to stare at her. "Is he dead? It's you I thought they'd killed, I didn't expect—"

  "I know," she said.

  Alec was shivering. "Are we next? Doesn't this ever end?"

  She had watched the window being replaced and now she braced herself as Eric the Red strode down the aisle to the two of them and said curtly, "Up—on your feet, we're leaving."

  She thought, Well, Emily, this is when you find out what all those years of orange juice and vitamin pills can do for you . . , What you may want is a soft bed, hot food and a great deal of nurturing, but what you 're stuck with is leaving this blessed wonderful floor and walking downstairs.

  It was Alec who helped her to her feet, which was generous of him, she thought, not realizing that as she'd leaned forward he'd seen her bloody back. Stumbling a little, she found that if she concentrated on Detwiler's final act of courage she could ignore the pain of her shirt tugging at her tender back. Step by step she followed Eric the Red down the stairs, and when she faltered Alec steadied her from behind.

  The blue wooden door was open and she saw the van waiting in this other alley, the alley to which she'd been delivered by Mr. Feng an eternity ago. It was a surprisingly innocent-looking van, a shabby Volkswagen camper with what looked like baggage strapped on its roof and covered with a tarpaulin, and—Oh what a clever touch, she thought bitterly—two bicycles mounted at the back. Only the two rear windows were curtained, the others open to the world as if to emphasize there being nothing to hide, except that as she entered the van Mrs. Pollifax noticed what was hidden in the curtained rear: piles of machine guns, net bags through which could be seen tins of food, and crates marked AMMO.

  But where was the radio-detection van?

  She reminded herself that she was still alive and was apparently to be a hostage and to go on living a little longer—if no one grew nervous, if all went well—and now she applied herself to sitting down next to the uncurtained front window without her back touching the rear of the seat. But where was the radio-detection van?

  Beside her Alec said softly, "Sunshine ... I didn't think I'd ever see it again."

  "No," she said, remembering that for him it had been three days. She looked carefully down at her wristwatch and saw that it was six fifty-five, or roughly twenty-three minutes since Detwiler's signal had been cut off, and she thought, Surely this was time enough ? And then in a sudden panic she wondered if the men in the radio-detection van had stopped cruising the streets, had given up, or had perhaps taken a ten-minute break at half-past six. Detwiler had given his life for those two and a half minutes and she was appalled as she wondered if she had counted the seconds properly, if Marko had erred, if new equipment had been developed that protected these men against such a long radio signal.

  She was shaken by these doubts and weakened from her walk down the stairs; the reserves of energy that she'd summoned were slipping away from her, and this too appalled her.

  Others entered the van now, six men in all, and while Carl took the wheel the others arranged themselves out of sight in the rear. The van backed out of the alley and Mrs. Pollifax stared into narrow streets filled with people going to work, at barrows being wheeled along the crowded sidewalks, and two ancient men defying the streams of people by playing mah jong at a table under an awning: it was the beginning of Friday.

  But she could see nothing on the street that resembled a radio-detection van, or for that matter any van at all.

  Something had gone wrong, then—horribly and terribly wrong—and she felt the weight of it crush her spirit. She wondered if she could bear it. She had already exacted her last reserves of strength in walking down the stairs to the alley, and now her body was exacting its own price by supplanting hope with hopelessness; she realized that she had an overwhelming desire to cry.

  From the back of the van came the sputtering of a radio and Eric the Red speaking in a low voice; she caught the words coffee shop third floor, and take them to the top and then, about eight minutes now. She realized that an advance party of terrorists must have already seized the tower and have found hostages. Hopeless, all of it—too late, too late . . . She closed her eyes to escape the unfeeling world outside and dreamily thought of home, of Mr. Lupalak, who might or might not have installed the bay window off-center, and then of Mr. Hitchens and his Learning Experiences; would he call this a Learning Experience?

  When she opened her eyes they were on Peak Road, climbing now and moving at a moderate speed, a shabby camper with a woman at one window, bicycles mounted on the rear, luggage on the roof ... the "luggage" that would be the multiple rocket launcher Robin had mentioned and that Mr. Hitchens had described, and for just a moment she gazed down at the harbor below and wondered what Robin and Marko were doing. Sleeping, of course, she thought, since it was scarcely 7 a.m., at which she felt acutely lonely and bereft.

  The tower could be glimpsed now above the trees with its circular restaurant at the top that looked so much like a space capsule; the radio had gone silent and there was a feeling of mounting tension in the van. Her own tension was mounting, too, because once they reached the peak she would have to walk again, and she was remembering how casually these people killed.

  Beside her Alec said weakly, "I can't stand it, this going on and on, not knowing—I don't think I can stand much more of it."

  She realized that she could still be useful and comfort him, that there was sanity in doing this. With her bound hands she reached over and touched his arm. "I think," she whispered, and faltered. "I think," she said more resolutely, "that one has to go on—and on—and on."

  Her words seemed to come to her from a great distance, echoing through caverns and valleys. Deep down she could feel the oppression of her own defeat, her own giving-upness, which was—she knew—compounded of the abuse her body had taken as well as sleeplessness, shock, hunger, the horror of Mr. Detwiler's death but worst of all his radio signal gone unheard. There was no longer anything she could do and now she was becoming incapable of feeling and even of thinking.

  Something's happening to my mind, she thought, and found that she didn't care; if this were madness it at least promised a comfort that removed her from the reality she was meeting now. The van had drawn into the parking lot of the t
ower and its engine died. There were other cars parked there, the occupants hostage now, she supposed, and the grounds were deserted except for a solitary gardener, a young Chinese, patiently pruning rosebushes at a distance. She could hear the terrorists murmuring over the weapons they were collecting from the rear and then, "Out," said Carl, and she looked up to see him with a machine gun slung over one shoulder, grenades hanging from his belt and a pistol leveled at the two of them.

  Drearily she arose, back in nightmare again, and she and Alec stumbled down from the van to begin the walk to the tower, the men behind them relaxed and chattering. An abrupt movement off to her left startled Mrs. Pollifax into lifting her head but it was only the gardener moving to another rosebush and dragging his sack behind him. She wanted to scream at him, Fool—can't you see the guns, don't you realize all of Hong Kong 'g about to be taken hostage ? But she remembered the world had its own way of going on and on, and there would always be gardeners trimming shrubbery and blind to catastrophe.

  Except . . . except it was strange, she thought, how very closely the gardener had resembled Sheng Ti.

  I'm hallucinating now, of course, she thought, because Sheng Ti is down in the city and Sheng Ti is not a gardener . . . Horrified at what was happening to her increasingly blurred mind, she looked away before the young gardener could turn into Robin or Marko, or even Cyrus.

  They entered the tower, walking into a cheerless concrete hall, damp and cold from the night, with several shallow puddles of water lying on the floor. Dully she thought, Abandon hope all ye who enter here . . . The bank of elevators lay to their right and she stoically turned to the right, following the man in the lead. Ahead of them a man was standing in the hall waiting patiently for an elevator to arrive, and it did not surprise her at all that he looked exactly like Cyrus because this had to be what madness was like, this peopling the world with familiar faces.

  This man-who-looked-like Cyrus regarded them all with interest, his gaze coming to rest at last on Mrs. Pollifax. "Good morning," this person said cheerfully. "Elevator's rather slow today."

  "Oh?" said Eric the Red curtly.

  His eyes were so kind, she thought—just like Cyrus's eyes—and his voice sounded so much like Cyrus's that tears came to her eyes. But Cyrus was a world away, he wasn't even in Hong Kong yet, was he? and she stared at him suspiciously, hating him for reminding her of Cyrus.

  "Ah—coming down now," said this man who was impersonating Cyrus so deftly. "Some sort of army maneuvers?" he asked in a kindly voice, with a nod toward their weapons.

  "Mmmm," grunted Carl.

  Heads turned toward the arriving elevator but Mrs. Pollifax was stealing a second hungry glance at this man who looked like Cyrus. He had managed to move closer until he stood beside her, and she looked up at him wonderingly, turning away only when she heard the cage of the elevator jar to a halt at their floor.

  She had assumed that she had gone beyond shock; she had assumed the elevator would be empty, she had assumed—

  The doors opened and she screamed, confronted by an elevator crammed full of men and guns—Liberation 80's men cradling submachine guns pointed directly at them ... it was to be a massacre after all, and this was the end . . . And then with a beautiful rush of sanity she saw the faces of Marko and Robin and Krugg and Upshot among the men in the elevator and understood at last: she had not been hallucinating, it had really been Sheng Ti outside, and it was truly Cyrus standing beside her now.

  "Down, Emily!" shouted Cyrus, and, hurling himself at Mrs. Pollifax and Alec, he carried them both to the floor as the machine guns began spewing out their deadly fire.

  EPILOGUE

  "Outwitted by a bunch of amateurs," Marko was saying with a smile and a shake of his head. "Interpol is incredulous and the Governor still somewhat in shock, amateurs having come to be regarded lately as relics from the Stone Age."

  "Not in fashion at all," agreed Robin, and turning to Mrs. Pollifax he said, "It was Cyrus—entirely Cyrus, you know. If it hadn't been for him—"

  They were seated around a table in the Golden Lotus restaurant—where it had all begun, remembered Mrs. Pollifax, thinking back to Monday's breakfast with Mr. Hitchens, when he had pointed out the appearance of Lars Petterson to her; and now it was Friday evening and she was astonished at all that had happened in five days, and even more astonished at being alive and here at all.

  Yet only partially here, she conceded, aware that she still hovered between two worlds, the darker violent world holding her back from this one, whose language she had misplaced for the moment. Nevertheless she had insisted on being here, because at midnight Robin and Marko would be flying off to Rome, and as she had explained to Cyrus, the only alternative to sitting on a chair was to lie flat on her stomach, which was not only tiresome but boring.

  "From what we've learned," said Marko quietly, "it would have been a terrible bloodbath. That position on the Peak is nearly impregnable: the government could have brought in helicopters, police, Army, Navy—" He shook his head. "At the slightest sign of activity the terrorists would have launched their rockets into the city below and killed crowds of innocent people. The terrorists could have held out for days, leveling whole sections of Hong Kong and leaving thousands homeless and dead."

  Yes, that would have happened, she thought, nodding; she had no doubts about this because she had experienced—however briefly—the minds and the psyches of the men involved. As Marko knew, she thought, her eyes resting for a moment on his scarred face, and as Cyrus guessed, with his sensitivity so attuned to possibilities lurking behind the criminal mind.

  For herself there had been X rays but she had refused to be hospitalized, wanting to stay with Cyrus. Instead she had placed herself in the capable hands of Dr. Chiang, who had biblically anointed her back with herbal and antibiotic salves, given her antitetanus injections, chicken broth and tea and a sedative, following which she had slept all afternoon. Her back would retain the scars of the beating for the rest of her life, he'd told her, but it was plain to him that, with her U.S. connections, she'd had value to them as a hostage or matters would have been much worse. He had then calmly described to her how much worse it could have been, naming the more sophisticated torture devices invented in this modern civilized world.

  To this Mrs. Pollifax had listened attentively, wanting to learn what she would eventually be thankful for when the fires stopped raging up and down her back, and ultimately she had decided that yes, she had been very fortunate indeed.

  The fires had now been reduced to smoldering embers, and six hours of sleep had restored her spirit so that she could say now, "Tell me—I want to hear all about it."

  And waited, feeling rather like a child about to hear a wonderful story that might place her more firmly in this world she must reenter.

  Robin smiled at her. "Yes ... all right . . . but first you have to picture us sitting around in frustration in the small hours before dawn, napping and waiting for news of you, waiting for all the red tape to be cut before the Army could send in its men, except there was no news of you and it looked endless hours before the Army would be available, with this huge gap yawning between then and Friday afternoon when they'd take over.

  "It was Cyrus who very suddenly stood up and announced around 4 a.m. that we were behaving like bloody fools, that we had five able-bodied men present in the room at that moment, plus Witkowski asleep in the bedroom, and Krugg and Upshot at their Dragon Alley posts, and there were Duncan's seven men from the special unit if Duncan could be sold on the idea of enthusiastic volunteers—"

  "He refused the word volunteers," put in Mr. Hitchens.

  "All right, amateurs," conceded Robin with a flash of a smile. "Amateurs like Cyrus and Mr. Hitchens and Sheng Ti and Ruthie who could help fill in those hours before the Army would arrive to do the job."

  This is very real to them, thought Mrs. Pollifax, listening carefully and watching their faces, but realness still eluded her and the words came to her from a great
distance.

  Ruthie said cheerfully, "If I remember correctly, Cyrus pointed out that at least we'd feel we were doing something, and there was always the remote possibility that the Liberation 80's group might act sooner than anyone expected."

  "As they certainly did," said Mr. Hitchens with feeling. "My God, when I think what would have happened if we'd not been there—" He received a warning glance from Ruthie and tactfully subsided.

  "Mercifully, Duncan embraced the idea," continued Marko, "He didn't appreciate that twelve-hour gap, it worried him, too. In fact Duncan was ready to risk his job to contribute his seven men, but only if we agreed to go about it in a most professional manner, as if the Liberation 80's group might really strike."

  Robin grinned. "Which none of us thought possible, of course. Except Cyrus."

  Marko smiled back at him. "Yes, is that not startling? We gravely assured Duncan that we were most seriously intentioned and he gave us carte blanche and pledged himself and seven men. We conferred and decided we must concentrate our small group on the tower at the Peak, due to those two words command post inside Mrs. Pollifax's Buddha, so out into the cold, dark predawn we went."

  Robin nodded. "We had Duncan's seven men posted in the top off the tower, fully armed—"

  "The restaurant at the top doesn't open until noon, you see," put in Ruthie. "Only the coffee shop on the third floor was open."

  "Yes," said Marko, smiling at her, "and Ruthie and Mr. Hitchens were given walkie-talkies and concealed beside the road behind shrubbery—"

  "—with blankets and coffee," added Mr. Hitchens eagerly.

  "—and with orders to report every vehicle that passed. Sheng Ti became a gardener outside, with a gun inside his sack—"