by Mark Ellis
“I am actually two minutes early, grandmother,” Bai Suzhen said in Mandarin.
Lady Hu nodded, gesturing with one trembling hand that she should seat herself at the opposite end of the table.
Zhou Zhi snorted. The middle-aged Asian’s flabby pectorals and enormous belly strained at the buttons of a yellow silk shirt that barely contained his girth. His crew-cut dark hair was as stiff and grizzled as the bristles on an old hog’s back. Barely visible within the creases and folds of the man’s triple chins wealed the trace of a cicatrix scar, the memento of a long-ago throat cutting.
“No woman is ever late,” he said in a voice barely above a slurred whisper. Bai Suzhen knew that Zhou Zhi had suffered a minor stroke a few years before due to his obesity. He had never fully regained his faculty for speech, although his appetite remained unaffected.
“Late or early, let’s get down to business.” Jimmy Cao said impatiently, consulting his gold Rolex wristwatch. “I’ve got a date.”
A young man in his mid-twenties, Cao wore a tailored black business suit and snakeskin cowboy boots with thick soles and high heels to make him feel five feet six instead of five feet four. To Bai Suzhen, he looked ridiculous with his thick black hair slicked up and combed back in a high pompadour, which added another inch to his height. Long wispy sideburns barely covered a scattering of acne on his cheeks.
“And I have an appointment with a masseuse,” said Zhou Zhi.
“Oh, please,” Bai Suzhen murmured wearily.
“No, really,” he said defensively, slipping off the Italian loafer from his right foot. He probed the instep with careful fingers and grimaced. “I’ve got a condition.”
“Let’s do this thing,” said Jimmy Cao impatiently. “Condition, my ass.”
Lady Hu’s seamed face turned toward the young man. “Business such as this cannot be rushed.”
Jimmy Cao uttered a snicker of derision and placed the filtered tip of a cigarette between his lips.
“Please do not smoke,” said Lady Hu.
Cao ignored her, setting fire to the cigarette with a gold-plated lighter engraved with the ideograph of the Ghost Shadows.
Reverting to English, Bai Suzhen asked coldly, “You like the bling, don’t you?”
Cao didn’t answer. He drew in a mouthful of smoke, then exhaled slowly, defiantly in her direction.
Zhou Zhi said bluntly, “Our investments in Cryptozoica Enterprises haven’t made a penny’s worth of a return. The two year time limit has expired.”
Bai Suzhen turned her attention to the heavy-set man. “I am well aware.”
“Then maybe you’re aware that we’re calling the note due. One hundred and forty million dollars...with interest.”
“My triad doesn’t have that kind of available cash.”
“There are some assets. We want them liquidated and all of the interests sold off. We’ve already found you a buyer. Or he found us.”
“What’s his offer?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Jimmy Cao.
“You expect me to sell off everything without knowing how much he’s willing to pay?” Bai Suzhen asked, arching her eyebrows.
“A small return is better than none,” Lady Hu said quietly. “Our holdings in this part of the world are already imperiled by political unrest and the vicissitudes of the weather.”
“United Bamboo ain’t a philanthropic organization, babe,” Jimmy Cao stated, lapsing into English again. “The motive is profit and profit is the motive. The white serpent of good fortune ought to know that.”
Zhou Zhi slid a slab of a hand into his jacket and brought out a tri-folded brochure. “The Blue Lotus invested in Cryptozoica Enterprises because you presented what seemed to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a large piece of a legitimate and self-perpetuating tourist and pharmaceutical venue. We were fools to expand our base in such a way.”
He slapped the full-color Cryptozoica brochure down on the table in front of Bai Suzhen. She did not so much as glance at it. She knew it by heart—she had actually designed the logo and had final approval over the copy. She had even chosen the color scheme.
Although she understood Zhou Zhi’s issues, she had little sympathy for them. Over the last five years, the White Snake triad had drawn the majority of its profits from legitimate businesses in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Sydney. The Blue Lotus and Ghost Shadow triads still employed the old ruthless Tong tactics of murder-for-hire, extortion, houses of prostitution, gambling dens and drug trafficking.
“The nightclub makes no money,” Lady Hu stated almost sorrowfully. “Nor does the brothel. The housing development produces no rent revenue. Obviously there are no tourists. You hold the mortgage on a very expensive aircraft that does not make flights. We have been patient, but now it’s time to sell everything and get on with our normal business practices.”
Jimmy Cao blew another stream of smoke and said in English, “Cryptozoica, my ass…like we’re the goddamn Disney Corporation or some stupid shit like that. We invest in casinos and whorehouses, not tourist destinations.”
Although it wasn’t easy, Bai Suzhen managed to maintain her composure. “People still live on Little Tamtung. They have no other means of making a living or anywhere else to go. Most of them are refugees from countries devastated by the tsunami. They came to Tamtung to make new lives, working for Cryptozoica Enterprises.”
Zhou Zhi chuckled. “Like the American pilot who got you into this shit in the first place…what do they call him? Tombstone Jack? He sure as hell buried your reputation with United Bamboo.”
For a moment, the world seemed to fall utterly still and silent. To Bai Suzhen, it was as if all the air had been pumped out of the room, leaving only a vacuum.
Voice steady, head held high, her face not betraying the rage that filled her, she said softly, “I will not tolerate disrespect from you, Zhou Zhi.”
“I have my sources of information,” Zhi retorted. “Maybe I don’t know how reliable they are about you and the American, but I know he’s more to you than a business associate.”
“Your sources of information are not only unreliable,” stated Bai, “they are liars. I met Kavanaugh when he flew relief missions after the tsunami. I met many Americans then…many Australians, many Englishmen engaged in the same work. They all came to the White Snake club to see me dance.”
“But you set only one of them up in business,” Lady Hu pointed out.
“Not just me—Howard Flitcroft, too. Kavanaugh showed respect for our triad’s influence in the area by coming to me. He dealt with us honorably and so we entered into an arrangement. It was not personal.”
“Not personal?” echoed Jimmy Cao incredulously. “The man brought you a crazy story about finding an island full of mud that cured diseases and you fucking bought into it! The fountain of youth, my dick.”
“ShÎo luō suō!” Lady Hu hissed venomously. “Watch your language!”
Jimmy Cao brayed out a scornful laugh.
“He brought me a story,” replied Bai Suzhen. “And he brought me proof. I saw the material, I read the scientific analysis from accredited universities and scientists.”
“He also told you about dinosaurs on the goddamn place—did he show you proof of them?
Without hesitation, Bai said, “Yes.”
“Be that as it may,” Zhou Zhi said snidely. “All of us must answer to United Bamboo when they ask questions, even Madame White Snake.”
“I answered everyone’s questions over two years ago,” Bai Suzhen retorted, sweeping the three people with a challenging stare. “The notion of owning a piece of a luxury resort and spa on a private island awakened a kind of greed in you that surprised even me. You didn’t care whether the spa delivered what it promised. When you were offered the chance to exploit it in return for start-up capital, none of you hesitated. Particularly you, Zhou Zhi. You wanted to be the first to take the mud bath and put the stick back in your old carrot.”
Zhou Zhi fidgeted,
averting his gaze. Bai repressed a smile at even so small a victory.
“Our plans were not realized,” she continued. “The death of the other investors, the legal and political fallout that resulted, the civil lawsuits, the manner in which Flitcroft kept the undertaking a secret…all of that contributed to, in corporate jargon, ‘a lack of alignment.’ ”
Brusquely, Zhou Zhi said, “You’re wrong.”
Bai lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “No one is to blame.”
“Kavanaugh is to blame,” Cao said. “He escorted the investors into the place without proper security. They all died.”
“He nearly did, too,” Bai countered. “It’s a waste of time to go over this again. If you want to sell off our remaining assets of Cryptozoica Enterprises, you don’t need me as your go-between.”
“Yes, we do,” said Lady Hu. “You are the senior shareholder.”
“Flitcroft is the senior shareholder,” Bai Suzhen replied.
“He controls all of the intellectual property and ancillary rights,” the old woman said. “The tangible assets are ours. You will sell them and divide up the proceeds to reduce the White Snake triad’s debt.”
Bai Suzhen did not even try to repress her outrage. “Reduce the debt? It was a risky venture. All of you knew that. Now you react like members of an investment club from Fresno when you didn’t get the big payday you were hoping for?”
“We were not playing the stock market,” Zhou Zhi growled. “This was a loan to build a business. The business did not materialize but the debt remains…with accrued interest.”
Struggling to tamp down her rising fury, Bai demanded, “How much interest are you talking about?”
Jimmy Cao smirked around the cigarette in his mouth. “We haven’t decided yet. But you could start paying it down right now, babe.”
He touched his fly suggestively.
Zhou Zhi chuckled. “I like that idea. You’re older than my usual masseuses, but you could probably be trained.”
Grunting, he pulled off his sock, exposing a tiny foot. The arch was crisscrossed with a livid blue and red network of blood vessels broken by trying to support his ponderous weight. The nails on the nubbins of his toes were thick and brown. Bai was put in mind of a pig’s hoof. The disgust surging within her did not show on her face.
Grinning, Zhou Zhi said, “I suffer from certain decrepitudes, from bad feet to other parts of my body that don’t work as well as they used to. You could help me with that and I could help you with your money problems. It’s only fair.”
Bai Suzhen glanced from the leering face of Zhi to the grin creasing Jimmy Cao’s lips. The cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. Lady Hu’s expression was impassive, all emotions locked away behind a seamed and wrinkled mask.
With a sigh, Bai Suzhen ran a hand over her forehead and whispered, “All right, Jimmy.”
Leaning toward him, she plucked the cigarette from between Cao’s lips and shoved the red, glowing tip up the man’s left nostril.
He howled, clawing at his face, falling over backward.
Bai bounded to her feet with a dancer’s grace, uncoiling from the floor, right hand slipping inside her jacket and withdrawing the CZ75 from the holster in the same smooth motion. She leveled it at Zhou Zhi’s shock-slackened face, then adjusted her aim a trifle and squeezed off a single round.
The sound of the shot was lackluster, like a distant handclap. She doubted the report penetrated out into the foyer where the bodyguards waited. There was nothing lackluster about Zhou Zhi’s reaction when the bullet trimmed off the top of his big toe, taking the horny nail with it in a spray of blood.
Squalling in fear and agony Zhi toppled over sideways, plucking at his foot. Bai Suzhen whirled back toward Jimmy Cao, who dislodged the cigarette from his nostril and groped beneath his suit jacket. She jammed the barrel of the CZ75 hard against the side of his neck.
“You’d better be grabbing for something to blow your nose with,” she said flatly. “Babe.”
Cao raised his hands and she reached in under his coat, found the butt of a Glock 9mm and pulled it out the holster. She tossed it across the room, into the shrubbery.
“You have a buyer?” she demanded, digging the bore of her pistol against the underside of his jaw.
Swallowing hard, Cao said hoarsely, “An Englishman.”
“His name?”
Cao’s lips peeled back over his teeth. “I don’t remember. Something French.”
Bai Suzhen pressed harder with the automatic. “You said he was British.”
“He lives in London, but he has a French name.”
“Send him to me and I’ll deal with him on my own terms. If you and Zhi want your cut, you’ll stay out of my way.”
Bending close, she switched to English and whispered into his ear, “Or I’ll have your balls cut off, pickled and sent to me in a Ming vase. Do we understand each other, you little Taiwanese piece of shit?”
Jimmy Cao couldn’t nod because of the painful position of the gun barrel, but he said hoarsely, “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes—Madame White Snake.”
Bai Suzhen whipped the gun away from Cao’s neck and he sagged over the table, gagging and coughing. Returning her pistol to the shoulder holster, she glanced contemptuously at the whimpering Zhou Zhi, still vainly groping for his bleeding foot.
Turning toward Lady Hu, she inclined her head and upper body in a deferential bow. “I regret you had to see this, grandmother.”
The old woman’s lips twitched. “Do not. I found the display very entertaining. I wondered when you would lose your tempers with these two pigs.”
Bai Suzhen smiled fleetingly and asked, “Do you know the name of the buyer?”
“Aubrey Belleau,” Lady Hu answered. “I shall report to him that our business meeting concluded satisfactorily and he may contact you on Little Tamtung. You are truly the white serpent of good fortune. May you prosper and enjoy a safe passage, granddaughter.”
CHAPTER FOUR
May 9, Chubut Province, Patagonia
Honoré Roxton pushed up the brim of her dusty white Stetson and returned the hollow-eyed stare of the Troodon skull, half buried in the loose dust and dirt. She said, “This is just one of an amazing treasure trove of fossils that have been unearthed in Patagonia, giving paleontologists our first view of the whole range of life in the mysterious middle Jurassic period.”
She spoke with the crisp and ear-pleasing enunciation of a well-educated Britisher. “The Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary deposits here have revealed a most interesting vertebrate fauna. This, together with the discovery of the perfect cranium of a chelonian of the genus Myolania, which may be said to be almost identical with Myolania oweni of the Pleistocene age in Queensland.
“The Patagonian Myolania belongs to the Upper Chalk, having been found associated with remains of Dinosauria, like this sample of the Troodon. Aaron, what can you tell us about this species?”
Aaron Edwards carefully brushed dust away from the fangs of the skull with a whisk broom, but the incessant breeze blew it right back, filling the crevices between them. In a quavering, nervous voice, the young blonde man said, “Well, it’s generally believed that predatory theropods like the Troodon had developed fully functional binocular vision that controlled the coordination between running, hand movement and visual information about moving objects.”
The twenty-one year old graduate student from Muncie, Indiana glanced up at Honoré.
He blew grit away from a partially exposed vertebra, then sneezed explosively. Honoré managed to keep from laughing, although she wasn’t able to repress a grin. Turning toward the cameraman, she said dryly, “I believe that calls for a cut.”
Byerson, the director stepped forward, his bearded face locked in a frown. “I believe that's my call, Doc.”
“And that’s my student,” Honoré replied, nodding toward the young man. “I’d prefer his respiratory distress not be televised.”
> Aaron smiled up at her gratefully, then sneezed again.
“Go blow your nose,” Honoré directed.
As the young man climbed out of the shallow, square-cut pit, Honoré brushed dirt particles from the long red-blond hair that spilled in a wind-tangled cascade from beneath her hat. Thin to the point of being gaunt, with lean muscles curving down from her shoulders to her forearms, Dr. Honoré Roxton fought back a sneeze herself. Wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, old jeans and scuffed hiking boots, she knew she presented a decidedly unglamorous image of a female paleontologist.
She wore wire-rimmed glasses over her leaf-green eyes, even though Byerson had begged her to wear contacts instead, claiming that the intense color of her eyes was her best feature. However, she knew her eyes would quickly become wet and red when particles of grit worked themselves beneath the lenses. Already she felt chafed and sticky from the sand that had crept through her shirt, into her bra and clung to her skin.
Byerson glanced at the sky lowering over the snow-capped Andes. “We might have time for one more setup before we call it a day.”
“For example?” Honoré inquired.
“How about you holding up a leg bone or something and talking about it?” the cameraman asked. Like Byerson, he was an American, but he seemed to be the product of a distinctly lower-end education.
“Like I’m the host of a Home Shopping Network program?” Honoré demanded. “You do understand that fossils are imitations of the bones, not the real thing?
Various minerals form a mold around the original material, but it’s not always perfect. For example, pterosaur bones are very thin and rarely escape crushing during fossilization.”
“Great,” replied the man, peering through the viewfinder of his shoulder-mounted camera. “Grab a bone out of the ground and say the same thing while I’m rolling.”