Assignment Nuclear Nude Page 8

  As Durell followed his tall Mongol guide down a bleak corridor, he noted a censer over his head which was still inscribed with the Chinese characters reading, "Overthrow the Ch'ing. Restore the Ming." Although the avowed enemy of the original lodges was the old Manchu dynasty, Durell doubted that few members of the Five Rubies gave a thought to or understood their once-honorable, historic origins. Today, the lodges of Hong Kong and Singapore had degenerated into armed gangsterism devoted to murder, shakedown rackets, kidnapping, bunco and badger games, gambling, vice, prostitution, and general petty terrorism.

  "This way. Honorable Tiger General," murmured his tall guide.

  "I haven't sat in the sacred chair for many years," Durell replied. "And then it was only an honorary courtesy to me, for a little something I did long ago."

  "But you are remembered with some awe and much respect, honored sir."

  The doorway he stepped through was shaped in a triangle to represent the harmonious blend of Heaven, Earth and Man. The smell of incense tickled his nostrils. Once through the gateway into the "City of Willows," Durell stepped back into a world of old Taoism, ancient China, as remote from modern Singapore as the moon. The lodge meeting had just begun. Durell was led across a dimly lighted floor toward the Headman. No sound from the movie house below penetrated the thick floors of the warehouse. In a way, the ceremonies were childish, Durell thought, rather hke the simplistic rituals of a Midwestern fraternal order back home. Yet they were deadly serious, too, in a way no lowan could understand; and he knew he was stepping forward into ultimate danger, aware of the many faces that watched him, some masked, some not, but all silent and shadowed and closed.

  A chanting began that had nothing to do with Durell's arrival. The Headman, behind his grotesque dragon mask, wore a red headband tied with five loops to represent the five mystic elements of Chinese cosmology—Wood, Fire, Metal, Earth and Water. His red costume was derived from the ancient order of the Red Eyebrows. Devoted to mystical numerology, the Five Ruby lodge also had five high-backed chairs for the Five Tiger Generals who executed the fraternity's operations. One of the chairs was empty.

  "Be seated," said the Headman, speaking in Cantonese. "Your honorable post has been empty for too long. You will swear the oath, please."

  Durell spoke as rapidly as he could in the Cantonese he had once learned. "I swear to keep all the secrets of the order, under the penalty of being utterly destroyed by five thunderbolts and perforated by ten thousand daggers. I swear to choose the virtues of the Ming over the iniquities of the Ch'ing. I am most humble in this circle of Heaven and Earth."

  "You may be seated."

  The other Tiger Generals wore elaborate robes, long daggers and ceremonial swords. He didn't know them behind their jeweled masks. Durell bowed low and took his seat in the high, ornately carved chair. When he sat down, he was reassured by the pressure of his revolver stuck in his belt.

  It was evident that an initiation was about to begin and that he would have to wait through it. The candidate was a scrawny little Chinese who breathed with quick, short gasps of apprehension. The ritual consisted of a symbolic journey through the "City of Willows." There was the Brook of Daggers, the Lotus House, a bamboo hoop representing the circle of Heaven and Earth, the burning of joss paper to symbolize the Flaming Furnace, and finally the arrival at the altar. Durell sat in quiet patience. His presence here was mutely accepted, thanks to the mystic Tao passwords he had recited.. He knew he would be summoned when the proper time came.

  He thought of Madame Hung and shuddered inwardly.

  "Worthless one!" The Headman approached the altar slowly and solemnly, his left fist clenched at his heart, two fingers extended to indicate his rank. He wore one Western shoe and one straw sandal, as a memento to the great Zen, and his left trouser leg was rolled up to symbolize his kneeling like a simple monk in the fields of the old fighting monasteries. On the altar was a mirror, a brass scale, a ruler to symbolically measure the land won back from the Manchus, and an abacus to total the Ch'ing crimes. It was all archaic and meaningless to this band of gangsters today, Durell reflected, all exiles from the new tyranny in Peking and uncaring now about the fate of China in this modem world. He recalled suddenly that the Five Rubies made a specialty of piracy and smuggUng among the adjacent islands about Singapore. Which might, he decided, prove to be useful.

  The initiation was almost over. The candidate, still shivering, drank his blood mixed with that of a cock, was instructed in the slogans and secret signs of his rank, the recognition signals that covered ways of holding a teacup or chopsticks or a cigarette in public places.

  "Man," intoned the Headman, "is no more than a louse in the fold of Heaven's robe. Heaven no more attends to you than you would listen to a flea's prayer. You have learned the Way, and you will not walk against it. You will obey without thought or struggle. All things change; all things remain. There is no left without right, no good without bad, no Heaven without Earth."

  The ceremony was over. In the dimly lighted hall, men stretched, coughed, spit, lit cigarettes, and talked. Out of the shadows loomed the Headman's violent dragon mask.

  "Come," he said to Durell.

  He walked on without waiting to see if Durell would follow. Durell got up, nodded to the four other Tiger Generals—each man was in charge of some criminal specialty that brought revenue into the lodge's treasury—and walked behind the costumed leader. A small door opened in the papered wall behind the altar. It was a dressing room, garishly hghted like a makeup booth backstage off Broadway. The Headman laughed softly and removed his papier-mache mask and blew out a breath of air from thinned, hard lips. He was a Chinese of about forty, with thick hair shot through with gray, clean-shaven, with eyes as hard and cold as the cutting edge of a Malay kris. Without his robe, he looked like an ordinary and affluent Chinese businessman in an expensive gray sharkskin suit, a white button-down shirt, and a knitted black necktie.

  He lit a cigarette and spoke quietly to Durell.

  "You carry yourself well, for a man who may soon die."

  "Am I your enemy?" Durell asked.

  "Not an enemy of mine, or of your brothers here. But there are some in the city "

  "Some among the Five Rubies?"

  "Perhaps. We do not know. And it is important to learn the truth of it. We hope you will help us."

  "So I am to be a tethered sheep for a black tiger?"

  "It could be so. Please come with me."

  "I want to see Mr. Han."

  "Ah. You know the true master?"

  "I want to see him alone," Durell said.

  "That may not be possible. But you shall see the respected and honorable Mr. Han. This way."

  Durell looked at his watch. It was past one o'clock in the morning. The Cathay Cinema had emptied and was silent now, but the air was redolent of fish and the indefinable scent of many close-packed Oriental bodies, as distinct as the smell of Westerners to a Chinese. The Headman descended spiral iron stairs with a curious, jogging bounce to his big shoulders, then moved back into the building through a fire exit, crossed the dark and gloomy auditorium of the movie house, climbed the stage, and trudged behind the wide, blank, silent movie screen. Durell stayed close on the man's heels.

  Another door, a short corridor, and then they crossed a narrow, foul-smelling alley where the stinks were strong enough to build another tenement upon. The Headman halted and Durell almost stepped on him.

  "I can go no further. They wait for you inside."

  "Mr. Han is in there?"

  "And others."

  They faced a brick wall with a single door in it that told Durell nothing. The door handle turned easily. Durell stepped inside, aware of the Headman fading away.

  They were waiting for him. Indeed, in the darkness, he could have prevented it by taking routine security measures such as the IPE technique—illegal perilous entry. But he knew he would learn nothing that way. You paid your money and took your choice. There was no other way to get
anywhere in his business.

  A gun muzzle raked against his head—not too hard to be painful, but hard enough to let him know that the holder was a little nervous. A hand whipped his own weapon out from his waistband. A man's breath, smelling of rancid soy oil, spoke in his ear. "Very good. Oh, excellent. You may now proceed, sir."

  Durell saw nothing but total darkness ahead. He had a momentary vision of trapdoors, deep snake pits, iron spikes. He dismissed them as romantic. "Which way?"

  "Ahead, five steps. Take them naturally. Then there is another door. Go through it."

  He did as he was told. And stepped into a room that could have been the conference board-room of a Manhattan corporation. There was a long oval table, reflecting a soft light that made him blink after stepping out of the darkness. There were a dozen leather chairs in a dark sand color, blotters and pens, memo pads and glasses ranged mathematically below a larger chair obviously intended for the president, no less. The light came from subdued glass wall-lamps. There were dark brown couches that complemented the sand chairs, a hi-fi stereo set, a bar set with an array of glittering glassware and cutglass decanters, and two tall funerary urns from the Ming dynasty, each filled with sprays of orchids. On one wall was a large painting of the Emperor Wu's pilgrimage, all dun colors and misty mountains, gnarly trees, and tiny, insignificant figures.

  Mr. Han was alone, after all. The door clicked shut behind Durell, and locked itself. The elderly Chinese smiled over his old, folded hands; he looked benign and scholarly, his face wrinkled like a sand flat eroded by the tide. The face looked dead, Durell thought, except for the dark flame of vitality in the black, hooded eyes. Mr. Han's exquisite English came gently.

  "Be at ease, Mr. Durell. You expect danger, of course, and threats of violence. I will not delude you. Such things are all here. We all live intimately with death, after all, and all of life is but a slow dying. But for the moment, neither of us shall die. We will simply talk."

  "I was told you were not alone, Mr. Han."

  'The others were deliberately misguided. Deceit is not a happy weapon to use, but often necessary. No, you and I shall talk in private, between ourselves."

  "Of cabbages and kings?"

  Mr. Han gave him a wisp of a smile. "I know the Western allusion. But this is not a fable, out of Alice, unless you think of yourself as existing in a wonderland. But we live in a world of hard and sometimes unhappy fact, even if sometimes reality seems an illusion, and illusion the truth. But I am a businessman, sir, and a highly successful one—perhaps the wealthiest man in all of Southeast Asia. Surely this should convince you of my attitude toward those bandits in Peking. And of my sympathy toward the capitalistic United States, for whom you work. And I am alarmed at the thought of competing with your masters."

  "No one owns me," said Durell.

  "Can you leave your job—and work for me? I promise the pay will be exorbitant. Beyond your most avaricious dreams."

  "No."

  "You never left your job to work for Riddle, did you? Not really."

  "No."

  "Precisely. I know, too, that you did not wish to undertake this assignment. I also know that you were willing to resign your post with K Section. And it was not permitted."

  Durell wondered if Han was guessing or if, incredibly, he knew about McFee and the poisoned cane and the talk in the Washington park. He did not reply. Han looked small and fragile in his chair, gripping the carved arms with transparent parchment fingers. The grip told Durell something. The old gentleman now looked benign and scholarly in his voluminous-sleeved, embroidered mandarin's robe. It was an affectation that Durell did not think was quite valid. The gray hairs of Han's thin beard trembled slightly, as if with a Ufe of their own.

  "I will admit at once, Mr. Durell, that you have sorely disrupted my arrangements. The amicable agreement reached with my friends has been severely tried. Mr. Fazil now wishes to withdraw from our compact and return at once to his home in Turkey, disowning all future interest in the Deakin formula. Only your promise to find his daughter's murderer keeps him here."

  "Do you need him?" Durell asked.

  "Not really. But we are all concerned about our beloved children, sir. They are misguided, as youth so often is, but so are many of your generation and mine. Your few words succeeded in turning us against each other, you might be pleased to know, exactly as you planned."

  "Tell me, did you arrange for Harry's death?"

  "No, sir."

  "Was Ryana Fazil's murder incidental, only because she had the bad luck to slip away to warn Harry I was hunting him, and so was present when the killer took Harry and the really important canvas?"

  "I should think it was so. Incidental, accidental. But the poor child is no less dead. She was charming." The thin mandarin's beard was slightly more agitated. "Most unhappy and unfortunate. Because of the Ruby men I command, von Golz and Riddle think I planned to betray them and that I am trying to keep the painting for myself. This is not true."

  "I believe you," Durell said.

  "Good. That is a step forward."

  "But do you know who subverted your man and who took the original painting and Deakin's data?"

  "Not yet," said the Chinese.

  "The original was taken—-or sold, and I think the latter, judging from the brief time I knew Harry— probably early on the day of the murder," Durell said. "Harry had only time to fake a phony painting; the oil was still wet when I saw it. So somebody stepped in, somebody who knew what was going on, of course, and shot for the bull's-eye on his own. It had to be one of you four men, or one of your daughters. Who do you think it was?"

  "You run too fast along a dark and dangerous road, sir," said Han. His manner changed very slightly; his hands no longer gripped the arms of his ornately carved chair. Durell felt the danger like a sudden shout of warning. "First I must tell you," Han went on, "that we mean no harm to the world with our monopoly of the Deakin papers, whatever your government—or our daughters— think of us. We are, to put it simply, businessmen, operating in an atmosphere of free enterprise. We intended to develop Deakin's information as an investment that might not pay off for many many years, after an expenditure for further research that none of us, individually, could afford. Indeed, we even hoped the world might find peace and tranquility through our private efforts."

  "You're all a little mad," Durell said quietly. "What you really plan is a peaceful world, yes—but one of the dead, of zombies, obedient through terror and ruled by you or those who inherited your power."

  "You exaggerate, sir."

  "I think not."

  "You exaggerate and speak so loosely as to endanger yourself." Han spoke in a gently paternal voice. "I would be your friend and ally. Indeed, I would be your employer."

  "I've had such an offer before. It's no sale. Where is Madame Hung? I want to find her."

  Durell threw the question at the old man without warning, and Han's reaction was quick, like the striking fangs of a snake. A small shake of his right arm sent a sleeve knife flickering down out of the broad sleeve. Durell was i quicker. He was around the broad, polished table before the point of the knife settled delicately into the old man's parchment fingers, ready to throw. His hand closed with force on the thin, bony wrist; he twisted, and forced the knife to the floor. Durell picked the weapon up with his left hand, holding the other's wrist with his right, and then; he held the knife blade at Han's withered throat.

  "Call for help, and you are a dead man," he whispered.

  Han's eyes rolled. His beard trembled. "You swore as a member of the Five Rubies and as a Tiger General that you would obey me."

  "I won't stand still for a knife in the gut. No oath can make me do that. We were talking peacefully, to our mutual advantage. Then I mentioned Madame Hung, and you try to kill me. Why?"

  Han made no sound except a sibilant intake of breath.

  "I know you have some connection with her," Durell said. "Is she truly your wife?"

  "No."
<
br />   "But she's the real boss of the Five Rubies?"

  "I cannot say. I do not know."

  Durell drew a thin trickle of blood with the knife edge on Han's throat. His face was hard and cruel. His blue eyes had darkened almost to black.

  "You're in a sling, Mr. Han. All of you, as a matter of fact. Each of you is playing his own game with the Deakin papers. Each of you is ready and waiting to double-cross your alleged partners. Von Golz probably dreams of power for a new Reich in the old Nazi image—I've seen his war crimes trial record. Riddle has a secret, perhaps unconscious, hatred for all society, bred in him with his poverty-stricken youth. Money and power mean only a means to revenge, for him. Fazil? I don't know about him. He's the most innocent of the lot, I'd guess—if the corruption for power and more and more money could be called innocent. But you, Mr. Han, are the classic Oriental enigma. Do you take orders from Madame Hung? And through her, from Papa Mao, in Peking?"

  "No . . . no . . ."

  "But you're afraid of her."

  "One has wisdom to admit fear of that woman."

  "Is she here in Singapore?"

  "Yes."

  "Where can I find her?"

  "Please. I am an old man. Almost as old as your own grandfather, who raised you. I know much about you, Durell. You love and respect your grandfather. Do likewise with me."

  "There's a world of difference between you. Just answer me. Does Madame Hung really run the Five Rubies, through you?"

  Han wet his gray lips and nodded. "Yes."

  "Once more, then. Where can I find her?"

  "I will tell you. Please release me. Remove the knife. The older one grows, the more precious life becomes. Only the young believe in immortality."

  Durell stepped back. It was quiet in the room. Han seemed to shake his small body, much like a wet terrier, and settled into his disheveled embroidered robes again. He looked frail, but Durell never thought for a moment that Han was helpless. His glance flickered around the room, touched on an elaborately carved, ornate Chinese wardrobe, a fretted plaque on the wall, the two doors. He had no doubt that the place was bugged, and that everything said and done here was monitored at Han's discretion. It couldn't be helped. It didn't matter.