The furniture in his room was plain but comfortable. He put away his clothes and slid the suitcase under the bed. He hung up his jacket, kicked his shoes off, and stretched out on the bed to read the Peking newspaper. It seemed that anti-Communist and anti-Mao forces in the southern province of Kwangtung had been using antirevolutionary economism and infiltration into revolutionary committees to alienate relations between the revolutionary masses and members of the committees.
It amazed Nick that the big shots let information like this get to the people. It would seem only natural that they would keep it quiet Did Mao Tse-tung want these different groups to fight among themselves? That's what it seemed like to Nick. It was an old political trick. The different factions were kept weak by fighting among themselves, and Mao Tse-tung stayed on top.
He put away the newspaper and sighed. Well, Hawk had been right. He and the other passengers had been searched after landing at the airport. A grinning Chinese with buck teeth had explained that much gold and silver was being smuggled into China, so it was essential that all visitors be searched. He apologized profusely for the inconvenience.
It was a good thing he had left his weapons behind. He would have been hard put to explain away a stiletto and a Luger.
When it was getting dark he changed to a dark-blue suit and stuffed his pockets with yuan notes that had been given him in exchange for Canadian money. Five fen coins jangled in his pants pocket as he went down to the street. He spied a small restaurant across the street He dined on lamb and rice and drank two cups of hot green tea.
It was dark when he left the restaurant. The moon was a mottled lead color. It hung low over the city.
He lit a Canadian cigarette from his pack, caught a bus, and sat behind a middle-aged couple who discussed the bus strike in Canton.
Nick got off and found himself in a practically deserted part of the city. He walked through winding streets till he came to a small curio shop. He hesitated, looked around, and saw a figure standing in a nearby doorway. It was a girl. She looked at him, then looked away.
Probably a prostitute, he figured. But that didn't make sense. It was a deserted street; business would be bad. He didn't think any more of it and approached the door of the shop. There was a button in the jamb. He knew his contact lived in back of the shop. Nick was about to thumb the button when a sharp crack sounded — a gunshot. And it came from within the store.
He tried the knob and the door opened. As he walked in, another shot was fired.
Chapter 4
Nick hurried through the store toward the back, where he could see a yellowish light seeping through the gaping door. He flung the door open, and a man craned his neck to look at Nick. The man was squatting near the body of a middle-aged Chinese. The man, also a Chinese, was dressed in western-style clothes and held a gun in his right hand. He started to rise, at the same time shifting his gun hand to cover Nick.
Nick dived at the rising figure, and they both toppled over, rolling against an old-fashioned rolltop desk. Nick brought his knee up sharply against the man's groin. There was a cry of pain and outrage. Nick gripped the man's right wrist and twisted it sharply. The gun dropped from paralyzed fingers.
Nick grabbed the gun, rolled the man over, pressed the gun against the man's back, and squeezed off a shot. The bullet shattered the aorta, and Nick got to his feet.
He started for the middle-aged Chinese and stopped, his back as rigid as plaster. A girl had materialized in the doorway — the girl who had been partly hidden in the shadowy doorway outside.
She ignored the gun Nick trained on her and ran to the middle-aged Chinese. She knelt by the man's side and started to weep. If it was an act, it was a good one.
Nick walked to the doorway and peered into the shop. There was no one else in the store. He leaned against the wall, watching the girl.
She finally stood up and faced him. She was young and good-looking. She was wearing a peasant-type pajamalike costume. Nick decided she would have looked good in a cheongsam, the dress that was so tight there had to be slits at both sides to enable the wearer to walk. But the cheongsam was forbidden in Red China because it was an example of bourgeois bad taste.
Nick nodded at the dead man who had been his contact. "You know him?" he asked the girl.
"He… he was my father." Her chin trembled and he was afraid she was going to cry again. "I am a coward. I am so ashamed."
"Why do you brand yourself a coward?"
She twisted her head to stare at the man Nick had killed. "I was outside when I saw Lum Fen enter my father's store. I recognized him. He is a well-known assassin. I couldn't do anything. I was paralyzed with fear. Then you walked by and there were the shots and I knew my father was dead. I almost ran away, but…" She shrugged her slim shoulders.
"You had to find out for sure, is that it?"
She nodded her head slowly.
Nick moved away from the wall, went to where the man he had killed was sprawled and searched his pockets. There were identification cards and a box of cartridges. He slipped the box into his jacket pocket and stood up. There was no sense in searching the man he had come to see, and no sense in going over the small office and living quarters. The man wouldn't have written anything down.
"You're an American, aren't you?" the girl asked.
"Does it matter?" He approached the girl. "Does it really matter? I mean, deep down inside?"
She saw his twisted grin. "You don't believe what I told you?"
"How do I know you re not allied with the man I just killed?"
"Then kill me now," she said defiantly.
"I may just do that. This is a dangerous business."
"I know my father was working for the Americans."
Nick stared at her. "Did he tell you all his secrets?"
She shook her head, no. "My father and I were not… very close. He learned that I — sold my body and he threw me out. Often I came to see him and try to make him understand. I did not like it, our not speaking to each other."
"Do you live far from here?"
"No, not far»
"Let's go to your place and talk."
"Yes. But first-" She went to her father's body, knelt, and took something from his pocket She straightened up and Nick demanded to see what she had. She showed it to him. It was a piece of jade.
Many Chinese carried jade in their pockets for luck. It was a Chinese superstition.
"It was my father's for many years," she said. "He would often put his hand in his pocket just to rub it. See how smooth it is."
"Yes. Now let's get the hell out of here."
They walked through the shop, out the front door. Either no one had heard the shots or people here, like everywhere else, just didn't want to mix in.
Nick put his hand on her shoulder when she wanted to walk faster. "Take your sweet time," he said. "You don't want to attract attention, do you?"
She told him she was called Lotus and she lived alone. Her father had been her only living relative and now he, too, was gone.
Nick only half listened to her. He felt the weight of the gun in his jacket pocket. He felt good, having a weapon. He hoped he wouldn't have to use it on the girl. She was too pretty to kill. He wasn't a hundred percent sure about her. She seemed genuine enough, but —
They reached the house where she lived. A young couple was embracing near the front door. "There is a back way," Lotus informed Nick. They half circled the building and walked through the back door and up one flight of stairs.
It was a nicely furnished apartment with deep inexpensive rugs and water colors on the walls. She quickly rummaged through a chest of drawers and brought out some snapshots and showed them to him. "Here are pictures of my father and me. You will see that I did not lie to you."