Finally the captain announced on the PA that they were at 33,000 feet, doing 500 knots with good weather-predicted between the west coast and Honolulu.
Shayne helped Mary unbuckle her seatbelt and tuck it away.
“Now tell me what it was this Satchel person said about air travel?” she insisted, no longer pale and trembling.
“Oh?” Shayne was wishing she’d forget what he’d started to tell her. “The airlines ain’t goin’ to hurt you” he quoted, “but they may kill you.”
To his surprise Mary laughed, and her laughter was as sweet as a tinkling temple bell. “Your Mr. Satchel could have been Chinese with that sort of philosophy,” she told him. “Fatalism is our defense against fear, but I’m too Americanized to be a good fatalist.”
San Francisco’s famous skyline rode on a pillow of clouds behind them, a toy city, and the blue Pacific below was dimpled and flecked with tiny crests of white foam.
“How do you feel now?” Shayne asked the girl.
“Much better.” She gave him a fleeting smile. “Forgive me for being such a coward.”
“On one condition.”
“And what is that?”
“Tell me two things; why we have a common interest in the Golden Buddha; and how did you know I was booked on this flight?”
A pert stewardess picked that moment to ask, “May I serve you something to drink, Miss Su Lin and Mr. Shayne? Luncheon will be served in half an hour.”
“What will you have?” Shayne asked Mary Su Lin.
“A gimlet please.”
“Make mine a double brandy, Martell’s if you have it aboard,” Shayne ordered. “Just ice.”
“I believe we have your brand,” the stewardess told Shayne, and disappeared into the dim after-reaches of the 747.
“The size of these double-deck birds always amazes me,” Shayne told the girl.
“Me too,” she said. “It’s as if we were a small airborne world.”
“It’s question and answer time,” Shayne reminded Mary.
“Dr. Feldman, when I called him yesterday, referred me to your secretary,” she told him, “so that answers your last question first.”
“You’re with the Seberg Foundation?”
The girl frowned slightly. “In an advisory capacity only. My field is Oriental art and philosophy.”
“My interest in the Hsinkao Shan Buddha is to see it reaches Miami safely,” Shayne said. “But Dr. Feldman must have told you that. Now tell me why you’re flying out to Taiwan?”
Mary laughed. “Don’t you enjoy a good puzzle, Mr. Shayne?”
“I’m Mike to my friends,” Shayne told her.
“Mike it is then.”
“I don’t like puzzles,” Shayne said. “Not when I have a job to do.”
“Perhaps my mission is the same as yours,” Mary Su Lin said in a teasing voice.
The stewardess brought their drinks. Mary sipped her gimlet. “Excellent.”
Shayne ignored the Martell’s on the rocks on the small fold-down tray in front of him. “Stop playing the role of an Inscrutable Chinese, Mary,” he said. “If we’re to deal in perhaps, maybe you’re a mainland Chinese agent.” Shayne said it blandly, but looked for an answer in his companion’s expression.
Mary sobered. “I hate the Communists!”
“And love the Nationalists?”
“No. Love isn’t the right word. Let’s say I respect them for standing up against the Communist terror... and stupidity,” she added.
Shayne finally sipped his drink.
“That isn’t your brand,” Mary said.
“How would you know that?”
“When you can’t see nature compensates by making your hearing, sense of smell and taste more acute than the average person’s,” she told him. “One of my uncles owns a Chinatown bar in San Francisco. While I went to school I worked as one of his bartenders so I could pay my readers. I became quite good at distinguishing brands of whisky by sniffing the corks.”
“I seem to be learning everything about you except why you’re on your way to Taiwan,” Shayne told the girl.
“Do you suppose we could have another drink before lunch?” Mary Su Lin asked.
Shayne rang for the stewardess. “Do you know this Dr. Scott?” he asked.
“No Dr. Scott is the reason I’m flying to Taiwan.”
When the stewardess came she brought with her their fresh drinks.
“Do you read minds?” Shayne asked.
The stewardess smiled. “It comes with the job. By the way, I haven’t served you Martell’s. We’re out of that brand.”
Mary Su Lin’s was a knowing smile.
While they sipped their drinks, the Chinese girl explained, “The Hsinkao Shan Golden Buddha is an important national treasure for the Taiwanese. Dr. Scott isn’t completely trusted by the Nationalist government. They have been in touch with Joseph Seberg and he cabled me to assume her responsibilities. That is as much as I know, Mike.”
“Does Dr. Feldman know about this?” Shayne asked.
“I don’t believe so. Mr. Seberg can be a very capricious man and many times his left hand doesn’t know what his right is doing.”
“This leaves me in a rather odd position,” Shayne said. “I was hired to work with Dr. Scott.”
“We’ll sort things out quickly enough in Tapei,” Mary told him. “I’ll deal with Dr. Scott.”
Their layover at Honolulu International was a brief one. There was a short refueling stop at Midway, then a night flight on to Taiwan. Mary Su Lin, in response to his questions, filled Shayne in about the stormy history of the island, once Formosa, 100 miles off the South China coast.
“The original Formosans,” she told him, “were a brown-skinned people, probably Malays. The Dutch first conquered the island and held it against the Spanish.”
“After them the Japanese?” Shayne asked.
“No. Koxinga or Cheng Ch’eng-kung drove out the Dutch and brought Chinese to Taiwan. It was a refuge back then in 1662 from the Manchu rulers of China. From the island Cheng, like Chiang Kai Shek, tried to drive the Manchus from the Chinese mainland. In 1682 the Manchus seized the island and then the Chinese migration increased.”
“What happened to the original Taiwanese?” Shayne asked.
“As the saying goes, they took to the hills,” Mary Su Lin told him. “Three quarters of the island is mountains you know. On the east they drop a sheer 6000 feet into the sea. The western coastal plain is about twenty miles wide and ninety long. That is where the Chinese live and farm. The Japanese had the island ceded to them in 1904 after the Sino-Japanese war and, as you probably know, held it until 1945 when it was returned to China.”
She went on to mention that the native Formosans in their mountain strongholds were head hunters until shortly before World War II.
“Should history repeat itself, as it has a way of doing,” Mary Su Lin told Shayne, “we can expect the Communists, like the Manchus, to make an all-out effort in the not too distant future to invade Taiwan, especially since the Nationalists can no longer be certain of United States support.”
Flying into the dawn, Shayne first saw the towering mountain spine of the island. As the plane closed the distance the cliffs Mary Su Lin had mentioned came in sight. Minutes later, they landed at the Tapei air terminal.
An official of the government, a young Chinese in a business suit, was waiting for them at customs. He introduced himself as Chung Lee and Shook Shayne’s hand, then bowed to Mary Su Lin.
“Please be welcome to Free China,” Chung Lee said in unaccented English. “I have the honor of being your friend and guide while you are our guests here on Taiwan.”