John D. MacDonald
Blood of the Vixen
Chapter One
Beautiful Pawn
One hundred times during the long dream-like trip across the Pacific she had remembered the slow words of Sakna Kahn, remembered the fanatic brightness of his eyes, the pain of his lean brown fingers bruising the flesh of her arm.
When the freighter rolled heavily in the long blue swells of the Pacific, she spread her robe on the rough canvas of the hatch cover, stretched out in the rude warm touch of the tropic sun, dressed in the brief two-piece sun suit she had bought in the lobby of the Taj in Bombay.
She shut her eyes against the florid sun, and the gentle rise and fall of the vessel rocked her with a soft, almost sensual motion.
She was tall, taut, clean-limbed but in the wideness of her mouth, the limber way she carried herself, there was a hint of something elemental, almost savage.
Twice she had felt a shadow across her face during the early part of the trip, two days out of Bombay, and had looked up to see the square, pasty face of Gibson, the ship’s second officer. He had a habit of speaking out of lips that barely moved and of never looking into her eyes.
But there had been an answer for Gibson. A slim and delicate answer. Six inches of delicately engraved steel blade with mottled jade hilt. Sakna Kahn had given it to her. It was the last thing he had given her, pressed hurriedly into her hand as he helped her down into the little craft that took her out to the ship.
Sakna Kahn had remembered every detail. He was oddly powerful in political circles. There had been no difficulty getting permission — permission for a Burgher girl to visit the states on a temporary visa.
But she was not like other Burgher girls. Not like her Anglo-Indian cousins in Hindustan and Pakistan, the girls with the blue shade in the deep tan of their skin, the purplish look to their fingernails. Those girls fled from the sun.
She, Latmini Perez, her skin the shade of a jigger of coffee in a liter of milk, could doze in the bright sun, the small beads of perspiration gleaming amid the transparent down that covered her rounded arms and legs. She had much Dutch and Portugese blood in her, very little of the blood of Singh, the lion.
That was one of the reasons Sakna Kahn had selected her. There had been no chance of refusal. Refusal would have meant being dragged, some dark night, into a waiting car and taken out through the warm night, past the sleeping villages beyond the Victoria Bridge and left to rot in the jungle...
She remembered Sakna Kahn’s words: “It is a very simple plan — so it won’t fail. But you may have been seen talking with me. Our enemies are many, and they are clever. They will not expect our plan to be this simple. I will keep your passage as secret as possible. And yet they will find out. If you are careless, they will take you, and there will be many ways in which they will encourage you to speak of this plan. Before you leave, I will give you something which will spare you such torment. Strike deep!”
His words had made no sense to her until the knife was slipped into her hand. Already it had been of use. When Gibson walked up to stare at her on the third day, she had plucked the knife from under the edge of the robe and slid the point of it along the steel deck near the hatch cover. It had made a small grating noise.
Gibson had licked his lips. “What’s that for?”
“The knife is for you — if needs be,” she answered in a half-whisper. Gibson left hurriedly.
There was but one other passenger. An American, with face stained and blotched with disease, returning home to die. He seldom left his cabin.
And that was the way Latmini Perez wished the trip to be. Alone. Time to think. Time to remember. Time to grow accustomed to fear.
As she remembered Sakna Kahn’s words, she reached with her right hand and, with gentle fingertips, touched the thin white ridge of scar tissue that marred the clear skin above her knee. She frowned. The scar would always be there. There should be a way to make Sakna Kahn pay for that blemish. Pay in blood, as she had payed.
Yes, the plan was simple. So simple that it should succeed. If she did not become careless.
After customs inspection and verification of her papers in the Port of Los Angeles, she left the ship and went directly to the railroad station Sakna Kahn had mentioned. As he had ordered, she made no attempt at all to see if she was being followed.
She checked her two suitcases at the station, caught a taxi and went to the heart of the shopping section. There she bought with the money he had given her, several new dresses, a light suit, a hat, underthings, nylons, accessories. She bought a bag for them, a lightweight expensive suitcase.
She left the clothes she had purchased in Bombay behind, and wore her new things. Carrying the bag with her, she went to a movie, and left ten minutes later by the side door. She took a taxi out to Wiltshire and had the driver let her off on a corner. When a bus stopped, she waited until the last possible moment before boarding it. She was certain then that she wasn’t followed. With the change of clothes, she had become an American girl, with an excellent tan, and an interesting trace of something foreign in her manner, and particularly in her speech.
Forsaking the bags she had checked, she took a Pacific Electric train to San Bernadino and there transferred to a major railroad headed East. Six hundred miles later she changed from coach to pullman.
She slept, lulled by the clattering and rocking of the pullman car. In her sleep her slim fingers touched the mottled jade hilt of the slim dagger. With the blade sheathed, it was taped to her side, hilt down. Her body warmed the jade.
Latmini Perez shut herself in a telephone booth in the Pennsylvania Station. Sakna Kahn had made her memorize the number. It took her several moments to figure out the alphabetical and numerical combination on the dial.
A woman answered, her voice high and impatient. “Yes? What is it?”
“Badla lena,” she answered, saying the Hindi phrase meaning ‘revenge.’ To have come so many thousand miles through the watchfulness of the enemy in order to say these few words into the black, chipped mouthpiece...
“Oh! I see. Wait a moment, please.” The line was silent. Latmini took a deep, shuddering breath.
A man came on the line. “Listen carefully. You can’t come here. Go to the Hotel Arnot on West Fiftieth. There will be a reservation for you there, made in the name of Janice Walters. Go to your room and stay there. Be careful. Open the door for the man who will say, ‘Are you ready yet, Miss Walters?’ Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
The line clicked, went dead. She stepped out of the booth, picked up the suitcase and walked quickly back into the waiting room, reassured by the dense crowds and yet afraid of who might be in those crowds.
The Arnot was in a dusty brown building, the lobby entrance dim and bleak as compared with a garish door to the left over which sputtering neon announced, The Arnot Grill — Music by Al Denees.
The desk clerk was a blond young man with pointed features. He looked approvingly at her as she said, “You have a reservation for me? Janice Walters.” He placed the registration card in front of her. “Yes, we do, Miss Walters. But we can’t give you a single. Will a suite be okay?”
“Excellent.”
She signed, the clerk tapped the desk bell and gave the key to the hop who hurried over. He picked up her suitcase, led the way to the elevator and stepped aside as she walked in. Eighth floor. Thick rugs, badly worn on the corridor floor. White carved moulding and deep aqua walls. Thick, soft silence and the odor of dust.
“To your right, Miss.”
Eight oh nine and eight eleven at the end of the corridor. He clicked on the overhead lights, and the small sitting room was cheerless, the furniture arranged geometrically, the tapestry upholstery stained with oil from the hair of the countless people who had sat there.