Anne shuddered and the ragged cape whispered against the floor. She was very white, but she held her chin up and looked coldly at Lin Wang.
Her voice was throaty. “Tonight you are leaving China. But I am not going with you. Try what you please, Lin Wang. I have ways of putting myself out of this world. In a necklace about my throat . . .” She clutched it. “I carry a swift poison.” She pried the cover off. “One move and it goes down.”
She had spoken too soon. The soldier beside her whipped it out of her hand. The broken golden chain slinked musically on the floor.
Lin Wang saw Kurt then. He looked up expectantly. “Pardon this, Captain. But a small side play. She is beautiful, don’t you think?” He spoke in Japanese, out of courtesy.
“Kirei na,” said Kurt. “She is beautiful indeed—if you like white women. But this is not the time to speak of women.” He felt a cold sweat starting out against his palms. Anne Carsten looked dazedly at him without a trace of recognition. After that first glance he had not dared to look at Anne.
“You have the money?” said Lin Wang. “Where is the taisho?”
“He is waiting for you. He was afraid to approach you direct. I will lead you to him.”
“Very well, but here, sit down there in that chair and have a glass of sake. I drink sake, now that I am to become wholly Japanese.” He laughed at his joke and his fingers clattered against one another like a skeleton dancing. His hunched back shook.
“There is little time, taisho.”
“Be not so impatient,” replied Lin Wang irritably. “If I go now this woman may kill herself before I return.”
Kurt chose a chair in the shadow and wrapped his cloak more tightly about him. A soldier handed him a glass of the hot red fluid.
Lin Wang was looking at Anne again. He licked his flaky lips. “Come, there’s no need of wasting time. You have been brought here by my men. No one will ever know where you have gone. You might as well . . .” He stood up and came forward, moving one foot heavily along the floor, hitching himself along the edge of the desk, leaning heavily to the right.
Rifles and soldiers. Guards outside. Kurt sat very still. The liquor gagged him. He was looking at Anne again. She was not standing in very good light and he could not clearly see her face. Something was oddly wrong about her, something Kurt could not understand.
Rifles and soldiers. Kurt’s hand slipped casually to his thigh and touched the butt of his .45. It was certain death, but . . . surely he couldn’t do this thing and leave Varinka in the lurch. Once again he was confronted with the two women.
Lin Wang reached out with his queerly lifeless hand and patted Anne’s cheek. She tried to wrench away, but the two soldiers held her securely. The men in the room were grinning.
“And you said I was loathesome. Oh, but you did. And if you didn’t say it, I saw it in your eyes. It’s there now. You think I am ugly, but I can be very pleasant. Very pleasant.”
He pulled down a strand of her hair and stroked it. He hitched himself a little closer, looking up at her, head on one side, chuckling. Kurt remembered Bonner’s fingernails. . . .
Something else was in the room which Kurt thought should not be there. He looked about restively. A black satchel stood beside the door. Lin Wang looked past Anne. He also saw the bag.
“And what did you bring for us there, my pretty?” said Lin Wang. He jerked his finger toward the bag, and a soldier stooped and picked it up. Lin Wang smiled at Anne. “Do not be impatient. We must get everything in order first.”
Kurt froze. He felt dizzy.
Lin Wang forgot about the satchel then. He reached out and took hold of the top of Anne’s cloak. With a quick jerk he ripped it away from her and threw it on the floor. Anne was wearing a blue tunic which was badly torn at the collar.
Lin Wang chuckled again. The soldier opened the bag. “Money! Japanese yen!” cried the soldier.
Lin Wang stared into the satchel and, then, with a roar wheeled about and, glared at Kurt. The money was there—and yet an officer had come to take him to a conference to give him the money. Lin Wang’s wits worked well on one theme—treachery.
Kurt was up, back to the wall. “Duck!” he yelled.
The .45 came level through the slit of his cloak. Flame stabbed from the jerking muzzle. Lead screamed from the walls only half stopped.
Lin Wang took two shots through his stomach. His clawing fingers contracted as he collapsed, twisting to one side. Screaming orders, he fell to the floor, instantly swallowed up by the flame and smoke and turmoil.
Kurt, without waiting for Lin Wang to go down, flung himself to the right. A rifle bullet missed him by fractions. He fired straight into a soldier’s face, blasting out the whole jaw. He caught the man before he could go down, and holding the corpse before him as a shield, turned to meet the others.
He shot another. The room was a hell of deafening thunder and shrieks. The candles flickered serenely. A man rushed Kurt with a bayonet. Kurt dropped him.
Suddenly Kurt saw that only one soldier was on his feet. The Chinese charged, steel glittering, face distorted. Kurt heaved the bullet-torn corpse of his shield onto the point of the bayonet, stepped aside and pistoled the Chinese through the skull.
Anne turned Lin Wang over with her foot. She was smiling bitterly. Kurt snatched at her arm, but she would not go until she had grasped the satchel.
Thunder came from down the corridor where the entrance was chained shut. Men were trying to get in, and the sounds of voices indicated that their number was a dozen at least.
Kurt’s automatic was empty. He pulled Anne up the hall and with a yell, began to work on the chains. Anne crouched in a niche in the wall.
“Come on!” cried Kurt in Chinese. “Your master is dying while you talk. In there, they will escape!”
Through the door surged the excited Chinese. They stopped for an instant to stare at Kurt.
“Traitors! Treason! They are killing him. Don’t let them escape!”
The Chinese bolted down the corridor, wild-eyed at the thought that they might incur Lin Wang’s wrath by flinching at duty—or even seeming to flinch.
When they had gone, Kurt snatched at Anne’s hand and jerked her outside. He stopped, startled. Their car had been driven up before the gate. A truck, now empty, stood beside it. Gas cans were piled high on the chassis, as they always are in North China beyond the range of stations. Kurt snatched a pair of them and threw them into the touring car.
Anne climbed into the seat. Kurt slid under the wheel. Yells were coming from the old structure. The Chinese, realizing how thoroughly they had been duped, were coming back.
Anne hugged the satchel full of money, the price of a general’s treason. Kurt sent the machine hurtling down the dark road. Shots rang sharply behind them, but the darkness was their mask.
“Then you . . .” said Kurt, “then you are both Anne Carsten and Varinka Savischna. But how . . . ?”
“Hollow capsules flatten the nose, pads raise the cheekbones. A yellow wig hides brown hair. Pads broaden shoulders. Heels can be high or low. A voice and accent are nothing to be changed.” She laughed and leaned against him. “I was good. I even had you fooled. You didn’t know what to think when Anne Carsten asked you about Varinka and Varinka asked you about Anne. They are both the same.
“But your piggish answers were balanced tonight. I thought they would know sooner than they did. But they are very dull, those fellows. They saw us come, I suppose, and two soldiers surprised me. A third caught me from behind, and I could do nothing. They took our car and missed the way. In the dark they didn’t see me remove my disguise. If Varinka were caught, that would be terrible. But Anne Carsten wouldn’t be so suddenly deceased.
“How I waited for you to come in there! And you came so beautifully, too. Even I was fooled.” She paused for a little while, watching to see that they were far outdistancing their pursuit. Then she sighed and pressed closer to him. “My job is over. I’ve killed Lin Wang, or seen him kil
led, as I said I would after he murdered my father, but I never could have, had it not been for you.
“I’m free now, I’m not serving the powers of China any more. I advised them three days ago that Lin Wang was a traitor. He knew I would do that. Oh, how he wanted me killed! He knew what I was as Varinka, and he knew the Japanese thought I was a spy. . . . But there, it’s all done and put aside and we never have to say where we got all this money. We’ve earned it. We’re free, and at peace with the world. The Japanese will never know that Varinka is Anne Carsten.”
“Free?” said Kurt. “Free? Good God, I still face a murder charge in Shanghai!”
“Oh, that? Why, forget it, sweetness—just forget it.” She reached into her tunic and pulled out the confession, handing it to him. He glanced at it by the light of the dash and saw that it was real.
“But how . . . ?” said Kurt.
“I took it out of Lin Wang’s jacket while you were busy thinking about target practice in the room. I had to get all of his papers, but—”
She never finished the sentence. In spite of the hurtling speed of their machine, in spite of the bumps in the road, Kurt cut her short with a good, solid, brutal kiss.
Story Preview
NOW that you’ve just ventured through one of the captivating tales in the Stories from the Golden Age collection by L. Ron Hubbard, turn the page and enjoy a preview of Orders Is Orders. Join Marine Gunnery Sergeant James Mitchell and Private First Class Spivits, assigned to brave a 200-mile trek to bring cholera serum to a remote American consulate in Shunkien, China in a treacherous mission set against impossible odds—because they must reach the trapped Americans caught in the crossfire of the invading Japanese forces.
Orders Is Orders
THE doomed city of Shunkien poured flame-torn billows of smoke skyward to hide the sun. Mile after square mile spread the smoldering expanse of crumbling walls and corpse-littered streets.
And still from the Peking area came the bombers of the Rising Sun to further wreck the ruins. Compact squadrons scudding through the pall of greasy smoke turned, dived, zoomed, leaving black mushrooms swiftly growing behind their racing shadows.
Along a high bluff to the north of town, a line of artillery emplacements belched flame and thunder, and mustard-colored men ministered to their plunging guns.
Japan was pounding wreckage into ashes, wiping out a city which had thrived since the time of Genghis Khan, obliterating a railhead to prevent further concentration of Chinese legions.
Down amid the erupting shambles, three regiments of Chinese troops held on, bellies to dust behind barricades of paving stones, sandbags and barbed wire, shoulders wedged into the embrasures of the cracking walls, intent brown eyes to antiaircraft sights in the uprooted railway station.
They fought because they could not retreat. Two hundred miles and two Japanese army corps stood between them and the sea. Somewhere out in the once-fertile plains two Chinese armies groped for the enemy. But the battle lines were everywhere, running parallel to nothing, a huge labyrinth of war engines and marching legions. There was no hope for Shunkien. Once proud signs protruded from the rubble which overlaid the gutters. The thoroughfares were dotted with the unburied dead, men and women and children. Thicker were these ragged bundles near the south gate where lines of refugees had striven to leave the town, only to be blasted down at the very exit.
The cannonading was a deafening monotone. The smoke and dust drifted and entwined. Walls wearily slid outward, slowly at first, then faster to crash with a roar, making an echo to the thunder of artillery along the ridge.
War was here, with Famine on the right and Death upon the left and Pestilence riding rear guard to make the sweep complete.
In the center of the city, close by a boulevard now gutted with shell holes and clogged with wrecked trolleys and automobiles and inert bodies, stood the United States Consulate.
The gates were tightly closed and the walls were still intact and high above, on a tall flagstaff, buffeted by the concussion of shells, Old Glory stood brightly out against the darkness of the smoke.
The building was small and the corridors were jammed with the hundred and sixteen Americans who had taken refuge there. Without baggage, glad enough to be still alive, they sat in groups and nursed their cigarettes and grinned and cracked jokes and made bets on their chances of being missed by all the shells which came shrieking down into the town.
It was hard to talk above the ceaseless roar, but they talked. Talked of Hoboken and Sioux City and Denver and argued the superior merits of their towns. Though their all was invested in and about Shunkien, though most of them had not been home for years, Frisco and Chi and the Big Town furnished the whole of their conversation.
A baby was crying and its white-faced mother tried to sing above the cataract of sound which beat against the walls outside. A machinery salesman tore his linen handkerchief into small bits and stuffed fragments of it into the child’s ears. Thankfully, it stopped whimpering and the mother smiled and the salesman, suddenly finding himself caught, moved hurriedly away before he could be thanked.
Within the consular office, the consul, Thomas Jackson, moved to the side of his radio operator. Jackson was white-haired, small, nervous of face and hands. He looked at the expanse of gleaming dials as though trying to read hope in their metal faces.
The operator, a youth scarcely out of his teens, leaned over a key and rattled it. He threw a switch and pressed the earphones against his head. He lighted a cigarette with nicotine-stained fingers and stuck it in his mouth. He pulled a typewriter to him and began to write.
“I’ve got Shanghai again, sir,” said the operator. “They want to know how we’re holding out.”
“Tell them we’re all right so far, and God knows we’ve been lucky.” Jackson leaned close to the operator and then glanced around to see that no one else in the room could hear. “Tell them for the love of God to get the cholera antitoxin to us if they expect to find any of us alive after this is over. Tell them Asiatic cholera is certain to follow, has already begun. And then tell them that we’ve got to have money—gold. Our checks and paper are no good and the food is running low.”
The young operator precariously perched his cigarette on the already burned edge of his table and began to make the bug click and quiver.
A few minutes later he beckoned to the consul. “They say the USS Miami is already proceeding down the coast with both the serum and the money.”
“Damned little good that will do us,” moaned Jackson. “A cruiser can’t come two hundred miles inland.”
“They said they’d try to get it through to us, sir. They want to know how long we can hold out.”
Jackson ran bony fingers through his awry white hair and looked around him. He singled out a fat little man whose eyes were so deep in his head they could not be seen at all.
“Doctor,” said Jackson, loud enough to be heard above the cannonade but not loud enough for anyone else to overhear, “Doctor, how long do you think we can last without the cholera shots?”
“With corpses strewn from Hell to Halifax?” puffed the doctor. “Now, tomorrow, next week, maybe never.”
“Please,” begged the consul, “you’re not staking your reputation on this. How long will it take?”
“The reports are,” said the doctor, “that it is just now starting to spread. I’ll give it five days to reach here because, in five days, we’ll have to start going out to buy food—if we can find the gold with which to buy it. Otherwise, we stay here bottled up, boil our water and starve to death. We all had cholera shots before we came into this area, but they won’t prove effective unless bolstered with secondary, epidemic shots. If we get that serum here before Saturday, there’s a chance of our living—as far as disease is concerned—through this mess. But mind you, now, you can’t quote me. Anything is liable to happen.”
“Thanks,” said Jackson gratefully.
The consul went back to the youth at the key. “Tell them
it’s got to be here by Saturday, Billy. Not a day later. Though how they’ll get it here, only God himself can tell.”
He looked out through the office door into the outside passageway where a hundred and more Americans tried to take it calmly. The floor of the consulate was shaking as though a procession of huge trucks rumbled deafeningly by.
To find out more about Orders Is Orders and how you can obtain your copy, go to www.goldenagestories.com.
Glossary
STORIES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE reflect the words and expressions used in the 1930s and 1940s, adding unique flavor and authenticity to the tales. While a character’s speech may often reflect regional origins, it also can convey attitudes common in the day. So that readers can better grasp such cultural and historical terms, uncommon words or expressions of the era, the following glossary has been provided.
amah: (in India and the Far East) a female servant; maid.
bead on, drew a: took careful aim at. This term alludes to the bead, a small metal knob on a firearm used as a front sight.
belaying pin: a large wooden or metal pin that fits into a hole in a rail on a ship or boat, and to which a rope can be fastened.
bichloride of mercury: a water-soluble and deadly poisonous crystalline solid used for such things as embalming, to preserve wood, and to kill germs, insects and rodents. It is also a useful but dangerous antiseptic. To help distinguish it as poisonous when being dispensed as a topical antiseptic, it is in the form of blue angular-shaped tablets.
Big Town: nickname for New York City.
Spy Killer (Stories from the Golden Age) Page 7