It started even sooner than he had expected.
A sudden pool of brightness splashed upon the stone floor yards ahead and angled sharply toward him, as if a man with a flashlight had turned a corner from one passage into this. Nick could hear the dull clunk of heavy feet approaching as the pool of light advanced.
He brushed Paula back with one hand and spread out his arms along the wall in the faint hope of finding a doorway. There wasn’t one within reach; not even a niche. That left him with only one thing to do. Attack.
He went on walking toward the flashlight’s beam, one hand raised to shade his eyes and face against its light and the other hand half-clenched at his side in readiness for Hugo. He peered at the shadowy shape beyond the light and made himself grunt with irritation. A startled exclamation echoed him and the flashlight’s ray played over his body.
“Lower that light, you fool!” he hissed in Chinese, hoping he’d picked the right language to hiss in. “And the noise back there with the digging! It would waken the dead.” As he spoke he let Hugo trickle down his sleeve, and he kept moving, with his eyes still shaded from the light, until he was within inches of the other. “Where is your commanding officer? I have a message of importance.”
“Commanding off—?”
Nick struck. His right hand swung sideways and down against the throat with the Chinese voice-box. Hugo, razor-edged and icepick slender, sliced through the voice and cut it in mid-syllable, then moved on easily as if through butter and slashed the jugular. Nick grabbed the falling flashlight and struck again at the gargling sound of death in the man’s throat, thrusting Hugo’s slim length clean through the neck and out again. The body toppled in slow motion; he caught, its weight and eased it to the floor.
He listened for a moment, hearing nothing but Paula’s faint breathing and the sounds of hammering and digging from beyond the passage walls. No disturbance. But now he would have to find some place to put the body. He swung the beam of the flashlight down the hall and saw a recess several feet ahead. Wordlessly, he handed the light to Paula and heaved the limp form over his shoulders. They would have to take a chance on the light for a moment, and another chance that there was no one in that dark recess in the wall.
She held the beam down low, away from Nick and his burden, and played the light upon the opening. It led into an empty room whose rotting shelves had been ripped from the walls and piled on the floor, as if someone had been trying to wrest a secret from them. Nick dragged his burden into a corner and let it drop with a soft thud.
“Turn the light on his face,” he whispered. “One quick look, then douse it.”
She swung the beam over the body and let it linger on the head. Blood encircled the neck like a crimson hangman’s noose and the features were horribly contorted. But even in its death agony the face was unmistakably Chinese. So was the work uniform with the small, faded insignia sewn into the fabric. Nick’s face was grim as Paula flicked the switch and left them in darkness with the corpse. He knew the tiny badge for what it was, the symbol of a highly specialized company of Chinese scavengers and infiltrators whose main task was to strip a country of its spoils and prepare the way for the propagandists and military tacticians. It usually meant, as it had meant in Tibet, that the Chinese were planning to move in for a takeover, either openly or behind the scenes with a puppet fronting for them. But here, right under the noses of the OAS and Uncle Sam?
Nick frowned and padded back into the passage. Paula the Silent glided along behind him. Again they headed for the light.
It was almost too easy. The passage branched off to left and right. To the left was darkness, to the right, the light. It streamed through an open doorway and close to the door was a low, barred window. Nick ducked to peer through it. Four men, all Chinese, were methodically tearing apart a huge stone room. Propped against one of the walls was a device he recognized as a metal detector. No one was using it at the moment; it had a waiting look about it as though its operator might be temporarily absent. Where? he wondered. But he had seen enough to confirm Paula’s story of a Chinese hunt for treasure and some underlying motive much bigger than a simple lust for loot.
Now for the girl. Once again he pinpointed their position on his mental map. The passageway to the right must lead directly to the section of the dungeons open to the tourists. They would hardly keep her there. To the left, then. He prodded Paula and they glided into the dark left corridor.
Tsing-fu sat down on a folding chair in the room he called his office. He had eaten well from his little private supply and he was feeling very much better. Things had not gone well for the last few days, but now he was convinced that he would get something more out of the girl and perhaps even out of his balky confederates, the Fidelistas. The Fidelistas…. He pondered. Had the girl been lying again when she had croaked out the name? Or could they be playing a double game with him? His thin mouth tightened at the thought.
He glanced at his Peking-made watch. He would give her another hour to think her thoughts and then he would tear her apart… her mind first, then her body. Shang was waiting for her.
Shang was waiting. He was asleep, but his animal senses lay close to his thick surface and he would awaken at the doctor’s footfall. A lantern glowed beside his huge recumbent form. Even he sometimes wanted light in his cage. Shang growled in his sleep, dreaming animal dreams of passions to be satisfied and beings who kept on saying to him No! Not yet, Shang, not yet. Shang, you devil’s bastard! Wait! He was waiting, even as he slept. But he would not wait much longer.
“Paula. This is hopeless,” Nick whispered to the blob of darkness beside him. “We can’t wander around this maze all night. I’ll have to find someway to flush them out and then come back—”
“No, please! Please let us keep looking.” For the first time she sounded like a woman, pleading. “If we leave and they find that man’s body, what do you think they’ll do to her? We must keep looking!”
Nick was silent. She had a point, about the body. But he also knew that their luck could not hold out for ever. They had flattened themselves against the walls countless numbers of times as men tramped past them down a cross-corridor, and they had pussy-footed into endless dark cellars to risk the flashlight and a challenge. It was a fool’s errand. His brain urged him to stop this nonsense and get out.
“All right, one more college try,” he said. “Thataway. I don’t think we’ve been down there. I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.” They padded down yet another of the corridors. Nick put his brain to work on reconstructing the map. He hadn’t an idea in hell where they were. No, wait — they’d done that bit before. He recognized the curve and the rough stone. Now they were entering unexplored territory. But at least he knew where they were in relation to the conduit.
The passage branched again. Nick groaned to himself and Paula sighed beside him.
“You take one and I the other,” she whispered.
“No! We stay together. I don’t want to have to hunt for you as well. Shall we try for straight ahead?”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said: “You’re right. It’s useless. We need more help. I told you—”
“Oh, for Chrissake, cut that out,” Nick said wearily. “Let’s get out of here and…” He stopped. His senses tingled and his body went taut. Paula stiffened beside him.
“What is it?”
“Listen!”
They both listened.
The sound came again. It was a long, low, snuffling snore. A growl. Silence. And again a snore.