This information the Chinese had given so carelessly narrowed Shayne’s options.
He would have to figure some way to escape their captors, and quickly, then manage to get down the rugged mountain and back to Tapei. The blind girl would be a burden when they got free — and Shayne didn’t consider if they managed to elude the four guards — but she was game. If he had to, Shayne would carry her down the rugged slopes piggyback!
Shayne set a forty-eight-hour deadline for them to make their escape. He had a strong hunch Chung Lee wouldn’t dare keep them alive any longer than that. It would be too risky.
“I suppose this is your place,” Shayne said, gesturing at the mountain lodge.
Chung Lee nodded. “My duties are rigorous. I need somewhere I can relax.”
Shifting gears, Chung Lee drove away and one of the guards gestured Shayne and Mary Su Lin to enter the bamboo lodge.
Shayne smiled at the man. “You’re a yellowskinned son of a bitch,” he told the guard in a pleasant voice. “Which doesn’t reflect much credit on the maternal side of your family tree.”
The man blinked but the expression on his sullen face didn’t change.
The other three guards showed no indication that they understood English either.
“Would you say they don’t understand what I just said?” Shayne asked Mary Su Lin.
“I’d have to see their faces to be sure,” she told him, “but insulting that man’s ancestral mother should have earned you a cracked head.”
The four men were talking among themselves so Shayne asked, “Do you understand them?”
“They speak a Mongol dialect,” she told him. “I can only catch a familiar word here and there. I’d say they come from the Gobi Desert of Outer or Inner Mongolia.”
“That’s great!” Shayne said. “Cousins of Ghengis Kahn.”
Shayne and Mary Su Lin were on the porch of the lodge. One of the guards opened the door for them. Inside, they found themselves in a room that ran across the front of the small bamboo building. It was sparsely but tastefully furnished. At one end were sleeping mats for the guards, and stacked against the wall were AK47s with clips of ammunition.
There was a brazier set up on the floor where the guards cooked their meals.
The stolid guards herded Shayne and Mary Su Lin down a narrow hall to a room at the back of the lodge. As soon as they’d stepped inside the room the door behind them was bolted.
“Hello.” The calm, husky voice belonged to the woman sitting in a dark corner, hugging her knees. “Nice to finally have some company. I was getting lonely.”
Mary Su Lin’s head swiveled in the direction of the voice, as Shayne’s eyes adjusted to the darkness after bright sunshine outside he discovered the owner of the voice had honey-gold hair and, as she rose, a ripe, shapely body.
“Who the devil are you?” Shayne asked in a blunt voice.
“Dr. Stephanie Scott.”
With a blink Shayne absorbed this information. “Meet Dr. Mary Su Lin of the University of San Francisco,” he said, nodding toward the Chinese girl. “I’m...”
“Mike Shayne,” Dr. Stephanie Scott finished for him. “If he fooled you two, I don’t feel too badly about falling into Chung Lee’s trap. Clever people, these Chinese. Begging your pardon, Dr. Su Lin.”
“If no offense given, none is taken,” Mary Su Lin said. “You two fell for his plot with your eyes open. In my case the seeing led the unsighted, to garble a biblical passage.”
Shayne detected a sharp edge to the Chinese girl’s voice he hadn’t heard before.
“You’re blind?” Dr. Stephanie Scott asked.
“Unsighted,” Mary Su Lin corrected. “We like that term for our handicap better.”
The small room was Spartan, with only sleeping mats and, in a far corner, screened sanitary facilities. There was a single window. Shayne prowled to it and tugged at the cord that raised the bamboo blind. It was glazed with oiled paper. Shayne slid the window Open.
The lodge was poised on the brink of a steep cliff and provided a breath-taking panorama of the Taiwan mountain spine with its snowy peaks. The lodge was only a foot or two from the edge of the precipice.
Shayne could see down into a deep, rocky valley more than 2000 feet below.
Dr. Stephanie Scott joined Shayne at the window and her shoulder rubbed his.
“That one is Hsinkao Shan,” she told Shayne, pointing to a peak glistening with white snow in the middle distance. “A sacred mountain to the ignorant and superstitious Buddhists. From it they believe one can commune with the Lord Buddha, wherever he may be these days.”
Shayne craned his neck from the window to study the precipice on which they were poised. An expert mountaineer, he decided, could probably go down that cliff, given the proper equipment. With a woman and a girl, and no equipment, it was an impossible task.
And if it was possible, the guards could easily pick them off as they tried to make the descent. So that avenue of escape was closed.
Shayne moved away from Dr. Stephanie Scott. Mary Su Lin had calmly seated herself on one of the sleeping mats, naturally assuming the Lotus position
“Penny for your thoughts, Michael Shayne,” the woman said.
“Chung Lee doesn’t plan for us to leave this place alive,” Shayne told her. “My thoughts start with that premise. He’ll keep us among the living until and if he can strike some sort of deal, but after that,” Shayne said with a grim smile, “we become very poor life insurance risks.”
Dr. Stephanie Scott extended a slender hand. “Nice to meet another pragmatist,” she said, her blue eyes studying Shayne’s craggy face. “What do you suggest we should do? Prayer to an almighty but unseen God isn’t exactly one of my fortes.”
“There’s only one thing to do,” Shayne said.
“And what would that be?”
“Break out of here and get back down the mountain to Tapei, what else?”
“So we can blow the whistle on Mr. Chung Lee, honorable gentleman that he is,” Dr. Stephanie Scott said in a sarcastic voice. “You’ve come half way around the world at some expense to Dr. Feldman’s department to state the obvious. Congratulations, Mike Shayne, but I wish Feldman had sent a contingent of U.S. Marines instead.”
Shayne ignored the woman’s sarcasm. “Chung Lee has my Colt .45,” he said. “Did he happen to leave you any sort of weapon?”
Dr. Stephanie Scott was wearing a rather tight slit skirt, in the Chinese fashion, with a loose silk blouse. She turned her back and raised the blouse. Tucked into the top of the skirt was a dagger.
The handle nestled in the small of Dr. Stephanie Scott’s back and Shayne mentally complimented her on knowing the best way to conceal a weapon, but at the same time wondered where she had learned. When he reached to draw the dagger from its soft leather sheath his fingers brushed the woman’s warm skin, and she shuddered slightly.
Shayne found himself looking at a needle-sharp double edged dagger. He carefully returned it to its sheath and Dr. Stephanie Scott let her loose blouse tail fall back in place.
“Why did they leave you with that?” Shayne asked.
“Three of our Mongol friends planned to conduct a most complete body search,” she told him with a slight flush. “The fourth saved me from being stripped and raped. He repeated the name Chung Lee several times during his tirade, so I assume my eventual ravishment will be carried out by that son of a bitch... before he kills me.”
Shayne was thoughtful. “When will we be brought something to eat?” he asked the woman.
“Like an animal in a zoo I’m fed boiled fish and rice once a day in the evening. The priggish Mongol I’ve mentioned seems to be the chief cook and bottle washer around this lovely mountain retreat. At any rate he serves my food. I’d assume they won’t vary the routine for two additional guests. Why do you ask? You getting hungry? I hope you like fish and rice. I don’t.”