But then without warning she was stopped by the sound of shooting coming from the street.
“What the hell is that?” Lea said.
“I don't know,” Hawke said calmly. “But I don’t like the sound of it.”
He looked outside and saw their SUV under heavy fire. He watched as Cairo, Lexi and Karlsson tried to defend themselves from inside, but they were the definitive fish in a barrel. “Get out of here, you fools!” he shouted instinctively, knowing they couldn’t hear him. Then a loud explosion signaled their attackers had opened a second front on the house and the next thing they knew they were under attack themselves.
Hawke pulled his gun and fired back through the open door. Jenny Tsao staggered back in horror, clamping her hands over her ears to block the tinny report of the pistol, deafening at such a range, but it was too late for her. She was struck in the back and knocked dead in seconds. She collapsed to the floor and Hawke took cover behind her old sofa, while Lea and Han ducked down behind an antique drinks cabinet in the corner.
“How are the others?” Hawke shouted. “I can’t see them from here.”
Lea fired a few shots through the door to keep their attackers at bay for a second while she flicked her head up and looked over the cabinet and scanned quickly outside the window.
“They’re burning rubber, Joe!”
“That’s something, at least.”
“I’m sending Richard an alert!” Lea screamed. “Just in case these bastards get my phone.”
From his position behind the sofa, Hawke could see the now-dead Dr Jenny Tsao sprawled over the floor beneath her desk, and outside in the hall at least three heavily armed men were trying to enter the room.
“They’re here for Han!” Hawke shouted. “And they’ll want Tsao’s computer as well!”
“We can't let them get it.”
Hawke agreed. He aimed his Sig at the laptop and fired two shots at it, totally obliterating it into a thousand tiny pieces.
“Good work!” Lea shouted.
“We have to get Han out of here!”
Hawke and Lea covered the door with a ferocious burst of gunfire to enable Han to get through the window. He watched the monk begin to climb through it, but it was too late. He turned around to see Lea standing in the door with a gun to her head. The weapon was being held by a woman the same size as her, with a shaved head.
“Wrong, Mr Hawke,” the woman said, pushing the gun’s cold steel muzzle hard into Lea’s temple. “It’s time for you to come with us.”
“I told you not to drive away!” Scarlet shouted at Lexi.
“It was either that or get killed, you idiot!” Lexi said.
“You never desert your unit!”
“Ladies, please,” Karlsson drawled.
“Shut up!” They both said to him at once.
Bradley Karlsson sunk into his seat and decided to enjoy the rest of the ride in silence as Lexi cruised the Merc through the backstreets of Beijing.
“It was the right thing to do,” Lexi insisted. “I don’t know about your SAS but I was taught to leave the wounded behind.”
“And the SEALs too,” Karlsson added helpfully with a casual shrug of his broad shoulders.
Scarlet had to fight hard not to punch them both. “The SAS teach the same thing, but they weren’t wounded. They were under attack and we drove away.”
“Same thing,” Lexi said. “Now we live to fight another day, and to rescue your friends.”
“If Sheng’s men don’t kill them first, yes.”
“Your problem is that you’re too negative,” Lexi said. “I think you need more Feng Shui in your life.”
“And your problem is that no one trusts you, including me.”
No one said anything else after that. Scarlet contacted Eden and told him what had happened. Moments later she received instructions to drive to Beijing airport where the private jet was waiting to bring them back to Shanghai. They were to regroup with the others and then meet with Lao. She felt like a total failure, but knew there was one person she could rely on to help her claw things back. She picked up her phone and flicked through the speed dial.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Hawke stared hard at the man in the white suit. His eyes were obscured by a pair of Persol sunglasses but he didn’t need to see behind them to know who he was looking at.
The man grinned. “You are a very difficult man to get hold of, Mr Hawke.”
Hawke never broke eye contact with him. He was older than he had expected, with silver in his temples and an ominous snarl that seemed to be a permanent feature on his lean, clean-shaven face.
“My name is Sheng Fang, perhaps you have heard of me?”
Hawke made no reply. His eyes crawled over the room as he assessed the situation for a potential egress point. That seemed unlikely. The only door was behind him, and guarded by two men wearing shoulder-holsters, and behind Sheng was nothing but an enormous window offering an impressive view of downtown Beijing, but too high to use as an escape route. Beside him, Lea said nothing, and Han stood in silence too, measuring his fate.
“And you are even more elusive, monk. You and your secret.”
Sheng lit a cigarette and blew the smoke at the ceiling. “Where are my manners?” He clicked his fingers and an armed man immediately pushed the silver box of cigarettes to Hawke.
“I’m trying to cut back,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Ah — this I think you already know, and if you do not give me what I want, then I will kill you all, starting with the lady.” He fixed his eyes on Lea. “How nice of you to rejoin us, by the way. I was most disappointed with you in Shanghai. You were supposed to be payment for a portrait I desired.”
“You bastard, Sheng!” Hawke moved forward to attack him — an involuntary impulse caused by the thought of Lea being kidnapped and used as common currency, but a second later he felt a heavy blow in between his shoulder blades and collapsed to the floor in a wheezing heap.
“Please, Mr Hawke, I must ask you to refrain from using bad language in the presence of a lady.”
Hawke got to his feet and saw the person who had struck him was the woman with the shaved head who had held a gun to Lea’s head back in Jenny Tsao’s house. She was dressed from head to toe in black. She was smiling sadistically at him as he tried to get his breath back.
“Meet my personal assistant. She calls herself the Lotus.”
Hawke struggled to get the air in his lungs. “She needs work on her interpersonal skills, Sheng.”
“A joke, how British of you… but I thought you would be more interested in her — she is after all the person who killed Felix Hoffmann.”
Hawke finally got his breath back and looked hard at the woman… so she was where all this had started back in Paris.
“I thought,” continued Sheng smugly, “that framing the traitor Dragonfly was a particularly nice touch of hers, but then that’s the Lotus, always thinking outside of the box. Please don’t underestimate her diminutive stature, Mr Hawke. That was Hoffmann’s mistake. The Lotus is an expert in Jeet Kun Do, Jiu Jitsu and Muy Thai.”
“Thank you, but I’ve already eaten today.”
Sheng was expressionless. “I’m glad you have a sense of humor, Mr Hawke. You will need it a great deal over the next few hours.”
Hawke ignored the threat. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.
“Because I can, is the simple answer. The pursuit of the elixir is a venerable Chinese tradition going all the way back to our very first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, Mr Hawke, as I hope you are aware. I am merely following in a long line of brilliant leaders who desired the ultimate power for themselves.”