“Let me talk to Wu.”
“You’re going to have to take my word on this, Rip. Wu is sleeping right now; I don’t want to wake him.”
“How do I know you’ve got him?”
“If you’re really worried about that point, I’ll have someone drop by with a finger. What the hell, he’s got ten. He’ll never miss a few.”
“Okay, okay.”
“You talk to Richard. I’ll call you back in a few hours, give you the particulars on a Swiss bank account that I’m trying to fatten up. You can plan on transferring the money there.”
With that Sonny hung up.
Rip went inside looking for Sue Lin. He found her in the kitchen. “Where’s the maid?”
“The new one?”
Rip nodded.
“After she gave you the phone, she went downstairs, got her umbrella, and left. Didn’t say a word to me. I happened to look out the window and saw her walking toward the tram.”
“Wu’s been kidnapped.”
“What?”
“Sonny Wong has him. He wants ten million American dollars or he’ll turn him over to the government and collect the reward.”
She sat and put her face in her hands. Rip put his arms around her shoulders and found she was shaking.
“Hey.” He knelt in front of her, opened her hands. Tears streamed along her cheeks. “Hey.”
“I’ve seen this Sonny Wong,” she whispered. “He is evil.”
“Sue Lin, I’ve known him for years. Yeah, he’s a crook, but he’s always been straight with me. He’s just wants money. Unfortunately we looked like an easy mark.”
“He’ll kill Wu.”
“We’ll pay the money. I’ll bet he’ll let him go.”
“With the city full of people who worship Wu?” she protested, shaking her head. “Sonny Wong will kill him and take the first plane out before anyone finds out the truth.”
The sound of a man groaning woke Callie Grafton. She opened her eyes and looked around. It took several seconds before she realized what she was looking at. She was in a small stateroom, perhaps on a ship, lying on a narrow bed, a lower bunk. Across the aisle, almost within reach, lay a man with his back to her. He was the one groaning.
Blood stained his shirt and the sheet on which he lay.
She extended her arm… and felt a sharp pain roar through her skull. Slowly she put her hands to her head and pressed. She had the mother of all headaches.
Her head throbbed with every heartbeat. Gradually the pain seemed to ease somewhat, and once again she extended her hand to the groaning man.
His back was warm.
Callie moved, painfully, until she could touch the man.
She swung her feet over the edge of the bunk and sat up, which almost split her head with pain. In a minute or so the pain lessened and she could see and function.
Ever so slowly, she stood, turned the man over, and examined him.
His left hand was bloody. She looked. His little finger was missing, leaving only an oozing, partially scabbed wound.
She tore at the sheet, finally got a strip off it, and wrapped the strip around the man’s hand as a crude bandage.
He had stopped groaning. When she finished she realized his eyes were open and he was looking at her with intelligent brown eyes. He was Chinese, in his mid-thirties perhaps.
“You’ve lost a finger,” she said in Chinese.
“They cut it off.”
She sat back down on her own bunk, put her aching head in her hands. It was coming back: the knock on the hotel room door, the voice — she thought it was the maid or bellman. When she opened the door, several men rushed in. They grabbed her mouth to keep her from screaming and threw her on the bed and one of them produced a hypodermic.
That was all she remembered. That and the fear.
Now she was sitting in a stateroom… she could feel the boat rocking in the waves. It must be a small ship to rock like this. There was a round porthole with the glass painted over; a bit of light leaked through the scratches in the paint. That light was all that illuminated the tiny room.
When she turned her head she could see that the man on the bunk had rolled over. Now he was looking at her.
“Does your hand hurt?”
“Not too much,” he said.
“Who are you?”
“You wouldn’t know me.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Wu.”
“I’m Callie.”
“Callie.” He said it experimentally.
“Where are we?”
“I think we have been kidnapped. They knocked me out, so I don’t know.”
“Me, too.”
She still had her watch, which was unexpected. Almost three o’clock. The men had burst into the hotel room about ten A.M.
She wondered if it were the same day.
She lay down and thought about her husband.
“Commander Tarkington?”
“That’s right.” Tommy Carmellini pressed the telephone to his ear to help himself concentrate. The voice that sounded in his ear from the other side of the Pacific was certainly clear enough.
“My name is Tommy Carmellini. We met last year in Cuba. Do you remember?”
“Yes.” Tarkington sounded sleepy. The telephone call had awakened him.
“Admiral Grafton asked me to call you. He needs your help.” Tarkington was Jake Grafton’s aide.
“I got a pencil. Shoot.” Now Toad was alert.
“His wife has been kidnapped,” Carmellini said.
“Callie Grafton? Gawd damn!” The Toad-man whistled through his teeth.
Carmellini glanced around the office. Kerry Kent and the three CIA dudes were all staring at him, listening to his every word.
“We believe the man behind it is a Hong Kong citizen named Sonny Wong,” Carmellini continued. “I don’t know his real name. He is associated with a Russian national named Yuri Daniel. The admiral asked me to call you. He wants the CIA to run those two through the computers and see what they can come up with. Wong may have some bank accounts in Switzerland or some other bank haven. Look for passports, visas, travel records, wire transfers, anything.”
“Okay.” Toad’s voice was crisp and businesslike.
“Have the National Security Agency set up a study of telecommunications traffic in the Hong Kong area. Obviously we are interested in the Graftons, Sonny Wong, Yuri Daniel, kidnapping, ransom, anything along those lines.”
“I’ll talk to them in a few hours. Tell the admiral I’ll go through the agency director’s office. Shouldn’t be a problem. Anything else?”
“That will do it for now.”
“Heard anything about Callie? Is she okay?”
“We don’t know.”
“Does this Wong dude want money or what?”
“Money.”
“Wow!” said Toad Tarkington. “That Wong must have really bad karma — I can smell it from here. Jake Grafton is the last man on the planet I’d want blood-crazy mad at me. You tell the admiral I’m on my way to the office as soon as I get my pants on.”
Jake Grafton sat at the conference table in Cole’s office and tried to clear his thoughts. There was stationery in the trays under the computer printer, so he helped himself to a couple of sheets. He took a U.S. government black ballpoint from his shirt pocket and clicked the point in and out while he collected his thoughts.
The National Security Adviser had sent Jake to Hong Kong to find out what was going on; the man was entitled to know.
Jake wrote quickly in a clear, legible longhand detailing what he had learned. The consul general was involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the Chinese government and had resigned. Cole had been in the building when China Bob Chan was killed, may have talked to him, and may have been somehow involved in his death. The enclosed tape was made in Chan’s library by the recorder planted by Harold Barnes and should be listened to by Chinese-language experts.