He was approaching a small rise when he first heard the voices. He stopped, crouched down, and listened. Then he saw it, a sweeping, a faint yellow glow in the fog, moving left to right. He waited, began to count, and saw it again. It repeated on the number seven. It was the searchlight on E-7. Quan's men had it operating again.
Bogner stayed low to the ground and worked his way to the top of the rise. Even in the dense fog he could make out the figures of three men. From the way they were dressed, two of them appeared to be villagers. The third was wearing a uniform and carrying a rifle. While the laborers shoveled dirt into the backfill against the base of the fence, the guard watched two men working on the light in the tower.
Bogner backed down the hill. The tower was the landmark he was looking for. Now he knew how far he had to go. Straight north and fifty yards or so beyond the security tower was the narrow footpath, all but concealed by rice grass, leading down to where they had seen the first of the Komiskos fly over earlier that night.
He backed down, circled around, and used the tower for reference until the voices of Quan's workers faded and the light was no longer visible. Then he worked his way back to the north again and found the trail. Bordered on both sides by terraced rice paddies, the trail would eventually lead him to the rutted road. At that point, he would be less than two miles from Zebo. All that he needed now was for the fog to hold for another hour or so.
The raft undulated on the slow heave and swell of the waters lapping at the outcropping as Harry Driver opened his eyes to a half-world of uncertainty. It was a red sky, streaked with occasional slate-gray remnants of stratus clouds, diffused by the rays of the morning sun and dappled with patches of elevated fog. He was wet and chilled, and his body ached. His arm was no longer bleeding; the pain had subsided and the arm was numb. It took considerable effort to move it.
Shivering, he rolled over and peered over the edge of the raft. It had washed up against the rocks jutting out of the shallows of the atoll some two or three hundred feet from the shoreline.
The water, clear and briny, was no more than three or four feet deep, and the floor of the atoll was dotted with plant life and mollusks. The shoreline was laced with patches of shallow ground fog where the cold rains had collided with the warm earth, and although he could hear voices and see the tops of what he knew had to be stunted shiatzo trees, he could not be certain where he was. He knew it was one of the Anxi atolls, but which one? There were three in all, two of which were designated Anxi One and Anxi Two; the third did not have a number. All three were surrounded by a series of tiny, uninhabited, combination coral and rock satellites. Was he on one of the atolls or one of the satellites? At the moment there was no way to tell.
He rolled over and turned back to the east where he could still see the V stabilizer of the Covert jutting out of the water. It was difficult to judge the distance, but he estimated it to be several hundred yards.
From all appearances, he had crashed in water no more than thirty feet deepdeep enough to inundate the cockpit, but not deep enough to conceal the stabilizer. If Quan sent out his search planes or patrol boats, and Driver was sure he would, the black fuselage of the Covert would be highly visible against the crag-dotted shallows like some kind of sea monster.
The voices grew louder, and Driver turned his attention back to the shoreline. Gradually he realized they were the voices of children playing at the water's edge. Because of the patchy fog, they had obviously not spotted either his raft or the remains of the Covert.
While he waited, he rifled through the contents of the raft's survival kit. There were flares, a flare pistol, food rations, rain gear, some tools, including a shovel, a small battery-driven two-way radio along with a primitive hand-crank generator, and a booklet containing survival instructions. The instructions were printed in Russian. At the bottom of the pack was a 9mm Makarov. It was sealed in a watertight envelope along with a carton of cartridges. He slipped the Makarov inside the waistband of his flight suit, opened one of the cans of rations, and ran his finger through a brown paste that he supposed was intended to taste like a meat product. It was bland and unappetizing, but he was hungry, and in no time at all he had emptied the small tin.
Not long after that, the voices of the children faded, and Harry Driver slipped over the edge of the raft into water up to his thighs and waded to shore.
Onshore, Driver hid the raft in the rocks and worked his way inland. From the nearest rise, looking west he could see the north side of the horseshoe-shaped basin. The rocks ended abruptly in a drop-off. To the south, the landmass became a series of small rises dotted with boulders, tall grass, and small shiatzo trees. The water's edge traced its way inland, creating a series of tiny inlets before giving way to a cleared area with three ramshackle structures and a Quonset hut. Harry Driver was in luck; the raft had washed ashore on the Anxi atoll where Le Win Fo had indicated he flew the political refuges from Danjia. If this was the atoll where arrangements were made for the boats to pick up the refuges, he knew that eventually he would be able to find a way off the island.
He carefully hid the rest of his survival gear, slapped the clip into the Makarov, and headed for the cluster of buildings.
Shu Li had lost track of time. Tang had forced her to drive to the run-down Ghengdi section of Haikou. There, on the second level of tenements over a series of open-stalled market stands, he had prodded her down a darkened, narrow hallway to the cluttered back rooms of a doctor Tang referred to as ''the Dutchman."
Hans Gosling was a dirty little man wearing a soiled linen suit. He had a broad piglike nose and a crooked smile, and despite the hour, he already smelled of whiskey. Gosling examined Tang's arm, rapped on the wall, and an old woman seemed to appear from nowhere. There was a brief exchange between the woman and Gosling before she took Shu Li by the arm and guided her into an adjacent room with only a bed and chair.
"Sit there," she ordered. Then she left and locked the door behind her.
Twice Shu Li heard Tang cry out in pain when Gosling set the shattered bone in his arm. Then there was a long period of silence. Finally the woman returned with a slender young man who would, she said, arrange for passports for Shu Li and her husband.
"He's not my husband," Shu Li protested.
The old woman paid no attention to her until Gosling came back into the room. "I trust my wife has made you comfortable during your wait," he said with a heavy Dutch accent. "The morphine will temporarily ease your husband's discomfort."
"Dammit," Shu Li said. "We're not married. Other than his name, I don't even know him. The man is holding me hostage."
Gosling ignored her, lit a cigarette, sat down, and turned his attention to the young man. "My client wishes for you to arrange tickets to Kowloon. He will need papers, a passport, and clearance documents for him and his wife." Then he looked at the clock. "An evening flight will be preferable. That will give me time to ensure there is no further bleeding."
The young man stood up, Gosling handed him an envelope, and he left. When the door closed, the Dutchman again turned his attention to Shu Li.
"And now, my child, something to help you relax…"
Shu Li looked at the old woman. She was holding a hypodermic needle.
"Without it," Gosling said, "it will be a long and difficult day."
Bogner continued sipping his tea while Le Win Fo, sitting across the table from him, updated him on the long night.