Then, too, there was that “third party” of Will’s. Neither of us knew anything about that one. I had only Will’s hunch to go on in believing it existed, and all his hunch said was that the present facts didn’t work if there were only two parties. I fell asleep promising myself a long chat with Will about that the next morning, too...
But it didn’t work out that way.
When I woke up, both of them were gone. On the bulletin board next to the galley, next to Tatiana’s shopping list, a pair of notes were pinned to the wall. I took them down and read them.
My dears—
The cargo-lighter crew gets up with the bloody birds around here; I’d better, too, if I’m to get anything out of them. Tatiana: In the meantime please call all the rolling mills, here and on up into the New Territories, and see if any contracts have been let for cutting up any cargo vessels for scrap in the last week or two. Then meet me at the little seafood place in the front of the Ocean Terminal at eleven. Nick: Break into Meyer’s old place again, will you, and finish the job that got interrupted yesterday. We need at least a superficial peek at the whole file cabinet, but we need to go through the files for the letters G and K with a fine-toothed comb. Chronological files for the past two months, too, if Meyer kept things that way. Snitch the whole bundle if you can. Then give me a call at H-643219, around noon. The files ought to keep you busy until then. By God, I’m enjoying myself.
I knew what he meant; I was almost beginning to enjoy this confusing trip for the first time, with a couple of leads at last and a bare outside chance to get somewhere during the next few hours. I read the note again. Yes, they’d either drop the load and junk the boat or they’d put back out to sea and change the flag and registry and name again, depending on whether the General’s confederates had made the transfer yet. If they hadn’t, they’d be playing it smart to hightail it.
And what was this business of the G and K files? “K” could be “Komaroff,” but what about the “G”?
Tatiana’s note was briefer:
Nick darling—
It was so hard leaving you this morning. I can’t wait until the evening. Keep safe...
I looked around. No phone on the boat. She’d have had to go ashore to make her phone calls. I had a sudden thought, and stuck my head out on deck, wondering what that left me to get ashore with, but there was a flat-bottomed rowboat tied up alongside the junk. I dressed, had coffee, and went outside to get things started for the day.
It was a beautiful, clear morning — the kind you always hope you’re going to have when you come steaming into a place like Hong Kong, with its steep mountains plunging into the rich blue of the sea. If there were any problems in the Crown Colony — poverty, crime, the threat of Red China hovering overhead — you didn’t want to know about them as you drank in the sheer beauty of the place.
Sculling slowly through the nest of docks and slips, I had time to look around me and to savor some of the strange and intriguing sights and sounds of the waterfront community and to feel a little sorry that I hadn’t made it with Tatiana beside me, telling me all about it, or with Will spinning rich sailor yams about the Islands and Fiddler’s Green. As it was, it was a fine ambience on a clear morning, and it got me, little by little, into a fine mood well before I docked the little boat and went ashore.
There is, however, one all-purpose rule of thumb in any kind of warfare, be it cold or hot, overt or covert, and it goes like this: keep your ass down.
So as my cab putt-putted through the dense morning traffic on its way to 68–72 Nathan Road, I hauled out Wilhelmina and busted her down and checked her out. She was full of goop where some fool had dropped her and then not cleaned her, and I promised to give her a real Number One scrub-down and oiling, first chance I got. Meanwhile, I scraped her down with the old pocket knife — it would have been a waste of Hugo’s delicate blade to use him — and, by the time I was ready to tuck the old girl away in her holster, she was at least in serviceable condition. She’d shoot. She’d shoot better clean; but now I knew exactly how far I could trust her, and I felt a lot better about that.
This didn’t sit well with the driver at all. The first time he looked back and saw me oiling a 9mm Luger, smiling and whistling, he came unstuck a little. We almost hit a cop, but we finally rounded the corner and shot down Nathan Road, past the Fortuna Hotel, into Tsim Sha Tsui.
I’d cracked that front door once before; I could do it in my sleep. In spite of all the to-and-fro traffic on old Meyer’s floor, I decided just to walk up and let myself in as though I were one of the family. I walked confidently up to the door; I fumbled in my pocket as a secretary from an adjoining office walked past; and, when she’d gone, I shoved that credit card home again, forced the bolt upward, and stepped into the room.
Sometimes you’re not sensitive to vibes, sometimes you are. That day I know I was. The minute I stepped inside I could feel something wrong. Don’t ask me what it was. There was just a tension in that room you could cut with a knife.
There was a noise in the rear, out the window.
I ran to the window and looked out, Wilhelmina held at the ready in my hand.
Down in the alley the big Israeli — Zvy — was racing around the corner. I heard the Jag’s motor fire up, race; Shimon would be driving this time. Why the hell hadn’t I spotted him in the street?
There was a noise down by my feet.
I looked down. There was a man there. His hands were pressed to his throat, but they wouldn’t do much good. As I watched, a gout of blood spurted forth from the gaping wound where somebody had taken a razor-sharp knife to his throat.
He couldn’t talk. The vocal cords had been cut.
He was dying, horribly, in a pool of dark blood. I noticed that his belt and fly were undone — and bloody. His killers had left their mark: a star in deep, red welts.
I knew him.
I bent over him, trying to listen, trying to catch that last desperate message he wanted to give me. My head was reeling. My heart was beating fast. My hand squeezed Wilhelmina’s scored grip as if my object were to tear the dark gun in half.
He couldn’t talk. His hands trembled in panic. He knew he was dying. The panic grew. One hand held his throat, hard. The other traced a single letter in the air, boldly, as if it meant to continue.
Then it fell.
I leaned back and slowly sat down on the stained rug, not really looking at anything. My eye kept lighting on little things. A spot of blood on my pants, from last night. The dead man’s gun, across the room on the floor. His sightless eyes. The gore at his throat. The gore at his crotch... I looked away.
Finally my eyes came back into focus again, and I got up wearily. My ribs ached, and I felt like an old man, beaten and defeated. I leaned against the filing cabinet, trying to get it all together; but I hadn’t got anything together at all when I tried to talk to the dead man. My voice came out a quavery old man’s croak.
“Fred,” I said, “this is going to cost somebody something. I promise you, so help me God I do. Somebody is not only going to get it, and painfully, but he’s going to have to beg me not to do it. And when he’s done with begging, I’m going to give it to him anyway. Just you watch, buddy.”