“Now, now.” Close as Basil ever comes to a joke... “but wherever you go we find bodies — always have. You’re a problem, Nicholas. You were telling me, though. Keeping in mind that this line isn’t secure.”
“Okay. I came here on one job and seem to have stumbled on another. About an hour ago — no, make that two — I bumped off a certain South Vietnamese ex-general who seems to have been moving his heroin business to Hong Kong. I left him in his car, moving slowly but purposefully down Queens Road, over in Victoria.”
“Ah, yes. We just got a call from our man in the police station. The car ran into a police vehicle at the foot of Ice House Street, causing something of a flap. We might have known it was you. Go on.”
“The rest... well, you’d better come over here. I went through his pockets. I have all his junk spread out on the bed right now. I have a few other leads, too. Maybe you’ll want to have a look at it and tell me just what sort of mess I’ve wandered into.”
“What do you mean?”
“If I were to bring a whole shipload of hijacked American guns, virgin stuff still stinking of cosmoline, into the Colony, now, where would I hide it?”
“Say that again.”
I did, with flourishes.
“That explains... there was something our informant couldn’t talk about. Yes, yes. That’d be... Look, Carter. Don’t you move so much as a muscle. I’ll be there three minutes ago. Don’t do anything to attract attention. Just sit tight. Don’t let anyone in.”
I started to say something, but he’d already hung up.
Chapter Eight
So I waited.
Basil Morse wasn’t exactly my type of guy: a little too much Eastern private school and Ivy League accent and most of the attitudes that come with that kind of upbringing. But I was determined to give Basil the time of day when he arrived, no matter how mad he made me. I’d even offer him a drink, if he’d take it. I’d put up with his patronizing attitude — after all, he probably couldn’t help it — and I’d try not to needle him. Well, not too much, anyhow. There are things I can’t help, either.
He wasn’t quite as good as his word. It took him thirty-two minutes to get there, and he must have really poured on the steam. Imperturbable Basil Morse, a splendid physical specimen who put in an hour of handball every morning and an hour of tennis every evening and hadn’t gained an ounce in years, was actually puffing when he came in the door, and there were beads of sweat dripping down that long patrician nose.
“Hello, Basil,” I said. “Sit down. Scotch?”
“Where’s the material?” he said. “Oh, I see.” He headed for the bed, all business. He sat down and started picking through the General’s papers. Then he spotted the funny Oriental weapon on the bedside table. “Where did you get this?” he said. He didn’t touch it.
“Took it off his bodyguard after I’d slit his gullet. What the hell is it? I’ve never seen one before.”
“It’s a weapon of Okinawan origin called the sai. You don’t see much of them down here. Sort of replacement-species version of the Chinese butterfly knife, and I suppose it’s making a comeback the same way. You’d better hope you don’t run into one of those. This was mainly developed as a self-defense weapon at a period when the Okinawan warlords prohibited the ownership of swords or spears. You could also use it as a kind of small plow. Most of the weapons used in Okinawan karate were made to look like harmless farm implements. The kama, for instance, was shaped like a sickle. You can imagine how it was used.”
He picked it up. “This is a little more lethal than most. It’s the fashion to blunt the point these days, and to do away with the sharp blade. This is the weapon of a grand master of the art. They won’t even sell you one for practice unless you’re a brown belt.” He looked up at me, a bland noncommittal look in his eyes. “Oh, by the way. Tamura — the man you killed carrying this thing — was fifth dan black belt. He was also a renegade in the art, a professional assassin. My compliments.” He wasn’t saying it in any complimentary fashion. That was Basil. But I could read a new respect behind his words. He knew better than to sell me short, either.
He looked back at the pile on the bed now. “Damn,” he said at last. “This isn’t much of a haul. Of course we’re going through his rooms and well be having a look at that H. and S. bank account, too. There may be some leads there. Not much here, though.”
“Hey,” I said, pouring myself another stiff one and sitting down carefully. “Maybe you might tell me what this is all about?” He stared at me, the corners of his mouth turned delicately downward. “All right,” I said. “I understand. Your turf. Me first.” I gave it to him in capsule form, not leaving out very much. There were a couple of little facts I did withhold, matters of unfinished business I wanted to deal with before I left Hong Kong. At the end I said, “That’s it. I’m still in the dark on most of it. I know a few whats and whens and no whys and wherefores at all. Your turn.”
He rolled the General’s effects up in an oilskin pouch and stuffed it in his coat pocket. As he did, something dropped out of the pile and fluttered to the floor. I didn’t call it to his attention. “Well,” he said. “It is something rather big — the part we know about, anyhow. You see, the South Vietnamese Government claims that President Nixon sold them out, that he’d promised a shipload of arms and then failed to deliver at a crucial time in the last days of the defense of Saigon.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I heard about that.”
“Well, the official version we give out on that is that the vessel never left port — that it was held up by an order from Congress. This will have been what you read in the papers. Well, we know better than to believe what we read in the papers. The vessel went to sea, but it never got to Saigon. Until just now we didn’t have the faintest clue as to what happened to it. Now it appears the matter was fixed as far back as the Port of San Francisco. On the basis of what you’ve been telling me, the ship’s registry and papers must have been changed en route, and the ship itself diverted to a new destination, all at the behest of our friend the General. We’d guessed some of this, but had no evidence to support what was only a wild theory until now. Now we know the port to which it was diverted was very likely Hong Kong, and we know that the cargo has been unloaded and the ship sent on its merry way. Obviously the case of rifles came from the shipment. Precisely which warehouse contains it now, in a city full of warehouses, is the problematic matter of the moment.”
“It wasn’t the warehouse they took me to,” I said. “It was empty.” I thought about that over a sip of scotch. “Besides, the General wouldn’t meet them at the site. He’d pick neutral ground for making the deal. He was just bringing samples. He’d be afraid of being ripped off.”
“Precisely,” Basil said and stood up. His shoe rested on the vagrant piece of paper. I hoped, somehow, that it wouldn’t stick to his sole. “Another factor: who are these mysterious Israelis? Frankly, we have no idea. They seem to be some sort of link between your original mission — whatever it was — and the matter of the ship.”
“Hey,” I said, sitting up. “That reminds me. What do you know about AXE? What the hell’s happening back there? Where’s Hawk?”
“Mum’s the word on most of it,” he said. His face was cold and distant-looking. “All I know is that all agents are on frozen status as of now. You’re to report in to... ah, to ‘us,’ as it were” — his fingers made quotation marks around the word — “and, ah, make yourselves available as you are needed.”