"Sure," said Li Chin, calmly. She rummaged in Gonzalez' jacket pockets until she found a pack of cigarettes, offered one to me, and when I declined lit one for herself and took a deep drag. "Where should I begin?"
"At the beginning. With basics. Such as, exactly what are you trying to do and why?"
"Okay. But don't you think the man who's driving should look in front of him more often than he looks in the rearview mirror?"
"Gonzalez," I said warningly.
Gonzalez glanced guiltily back at the road, and continued to drive at a speed of about twenty miles an hour.
"Do you know anything about Chinatown?" asked Li Chin.
"Does anybody know anything about Chinatown if they're not ethnic Chinese?"
"A good point," smiled Li Chin. "Anyway, I'm the daughter of Lung Chin. I'm also his only child. Lung Chin is head of the Chin family, or the Chin clan, if you like. It's a big clan, and I don't mind telling you that it's a very wealthy one. With a lot of different business interests, not only in New York's Chinatown, Hong Kong, and Singapore, but scattered all around the world. Since my father didn't have any other children, specifically, any sons, I was raised and educated to look out for the interests of the Chin clan, wherever they might be and whatever they might be. In any way I might have to."
"Including a judicious use of the mastery of the martial arts?"
"Yes," Li Chin nodded. "And a study of the humanities at Vassar. And a study of technology in general at M.I.T."
"A widely educated young lady," I remarked.
"I have to be. My job at this point is, well, you might call it a troubleshooter for the clan. When something's not running smoothly, or there's a threat against the clan's interests, wherever and whatever, my job is to jump in and straighten things out."
"And what isn't running smoothly, or is threatened, at this point?" I asked, already sure of the answer.
"Oh come on, Carter," she said. "You must have guessed that by now. The clan has heavy interests in Venezuelan oil. And oil in a few other spots off South America, too. And the OAS is threatening to destroy off-shore oil rigs and oil refineries all up and down the coast. Right?"
"Very good," I said grimly. "Very well informed. I don't suppose you'd like to tell me how you're so well informed?"
"Of course not," she said cheerfully. "Any more than I can tell you how I learned you'd met up with Michelle Duroche in Tangier, and learned it in time to tail you from there. Let's just say the Chin clan is a big one, and it has a lot of ears in a lot of places."
"Including electronic ears inserted into cigarettes," I reminded her.
"Yes," she said matter-of-factly. "You were my only clue to the whereabouts of Duroche. I couldn't risk losing you. And we both know damned well that Fernand Duroche is the key to the whole OAS threat. Anyway, now that we both know where our dear Dr. Death was taken after he'd been hidden in the leprosarium…"
"Hold it," I broke in sharply. "Exactly where do you think he was taken?"
"Oh come on, Carter. You're playing games with me again," she said impatiently. "I heard what Jorge said as well as you did. Why do you think I flew down here and volunteered as a nurse as soon as my bug picked up your conversation with Duroche's daughter — just before you smoked it out of commission. By the way, how did it taste?"
"Foul," I said. "But you haven't answered my question."
"Jorge said 'Martinique. Your friend Akhmed's last word was Volcano. Shall I recite the guidebook to you? 'The French Caribbean island of Martinique is the home of the dormant, probably extinct, volcano, Mont Pelee. Conclusion: Duroche, and the OAS, are now headquartered in or near the crater of Mont Pelee, in Martinique."
I cursed silently. This girl was good.
"All right," I said. "Your detective work is thorough. And you don't do too badly in the rough-and-tumble department. But now, little grasshopper, the time has come for you to bow out of the picture. You may represent the interests of the Chin clan, but I represent the interests of the United States, to say nothing of every other oil producing country in this hemisphere. It's a question of priorities. Get the picture?"
"But that's just it," Li Chin said, tossing her cigarette butt out the window. "The interests I serve and the interests you serve aren't in conflict. We both want the same thing — to put the OAS scheme out of commission. And we both know we have to go about it in the same way, by getting hold of Duroche. Conclusion: the time has come for us to team up."
"Forget it," I said. "You'd just complicate things."
"Like I did back at the leprosarium?" Li Chin asked, looking at me archly. "Listen, Carter, I can be a help on this thing and you know it. There's no way you can keep me out of it anyway. I'm more than a match for anyone you could get to try to keep me prisoner, and if you had me arrested it would just implicate you."
I stared out the window for a minute, thinking. What she said was true. There probably wasn't any way I could keep her out of it. She was probably sitting there right now devising some obscure way to bug my toenails, should I decide to try. Then again, it was possible she was working for the opposition, in spite of her fairly plausible story, and had come to my aid at the leprosarium just to get in my good graces. But even so, it might be better to have her where I could keep an eye on her, rather than slithering around somewhere out of sight.
"Come on. Carter," she said. "Stop sitting there trying to look inscrutable. Is it a deal?"
"All right," I said. "Consider yourself temporarily recruited by AXE. But only as long as you pull your own weight."
Li Chin batted her eyelashes and looked at me sideways.
"Consider the old Chinese proverb," she said, in the hokiest accent I'd heard since Charlie Chan.
"What's that?" I said, playing straight man.
"You can't keep a good man down, because when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and I have just begun to fight."
"Hmmm," I said. "Confucius?"
"No. Chinatown High, class of 67."
I nodded approvingly.
"Very profound, in any case. But now that we've had our culture for the day, I'd like to discuss how we're going to travel to Martinique."
Her whole expression changed. She was all business.
"If you read your guidebook well," I told her, "you know that Martinique is an overseas departmente of France, like Hawaii is a state in the United States. Which means that the law and administration are French…"
"Which means," Li Chin finished for me, "that they may be infiltrated by OAS members."
I nodded.
"Which means that we have to enter Martinique without their knowing we've arrived. Which brings up the problem of transportation. Michelle and I are traveling under cover identities, but we can't take the risk that they've been blown, especially after that incident at the leprosarium."
Li Chin stroked one side of her face thoughtfully.
"Not by air, then," she said.
"No," I agreed. "It's a mountainous island. The only place to land is the airport, and we'd have to go through Customs and Immigration. On the other hand, while there's only one place to land a plane, there are hundreds of places a relatively small boat could anchor and remain unobserved for a few days."
"Except that chartering a boat would be a good way to let an awful lot of people on this island know we were planning a trip," said Li Chin absently, lighting up another one of Gonzalez' cigarettes.
"Agreed," I said. "So we think in terms of borrowing a boat, rather than chartering one."
"Without the owner's knowledge, of course."