Jake Maroc - Shan Part 49

By that time, s.h.i.+ Zilin had gone to Mao, revealing what he had learned regarding the personal use of funds from the nefarious opium smuggling. A full-scale investigation was immediately launched in thecourse of which both Lo Jui-ch'ing and K'ang Sheng were exonerated. Huaishan Han, however, presumed dead, was discovered to have devised and run the scheme.

Kuo had heard of all this, of course, by the time he was in Xiang shan. It was a week after the incident in the park and, after dinner, the weather being mild and comfortable, Kuo had taken his young lady for a stroll in the park.

In truth, he had picked this park, and even this spot, Shuang jing, the Villa with Two Wells, quite deliberately. He had been involved in parts of the investigation and therefore was privy to a great deal of information unavailable to the general public. He had meant to describe in grisly detail the events of the week before and his part in the subsequent inquiry in order to impress his young lady.

As it turned out, he never got the chance. She screamed even before he had begun his carefully prepared recitation. He turned. Moonlight glinted like metal off the two wells. His ladyfriend pointed, her hand over her mouth, and Kuo went to investigate.

What he had at first taken for shards of the ruined iron cap were, on closer inspection, clawlike fingers, the flesh white with tension and a kind of semiparalysis.

Kuo, peering over the wide stone lip of the well, could make out a pair of eyes, brightly burning like those of a nocturnal animal, glaring at him from the fetid murk.

It was Huaishan Han, battered, bruised and swollen almost beyond recognition. His back was broken or at least vertebrae in the spine were cracked. He was like a hunchback when Kuo pulled him out of the private h.e.l.l he had been clinging to for a full week. Kuo was astounded that any human being could live down there for any length of time with only rain water to ingest. Because of this he held Huaishan Han in a kind of awe, as if he were somehow something more than human. It was Huaishan Han's great good fortune to be rescued by Kuo. And Kuo's great good fortune as well.

Virtually any other military man would have informed his superior and Huaishan Han would have been taken to the military hospital where, after he had recovered, he would have stood secret trial for his crimes. His punishment would have been terrible indeed.

But Kuo saw in this situation the seeds for his escape from the military. He recognized in Huaishan Han's scheme a lifetime of power and riches beyond even his wildest dreams. Therefore the preservation of this man became paramount to him. Kuo knew that he not onlyhad to keep Huaishan Han safe but also undiscovered by the government.

With his ladyfriend's a.s.sistance, he took the injured man to a military staff car. He would have to take the girl with him, he knew, in order to keep security at one hundred percent. That was all right with Kuo but he was not so certain of the girl so he lied to her. He was good at that. Part of the strategy in wei qi involved spurious forays into enemy territory in order to s.h.i.+eld one's real strategy until it was too late to counteract.

Kuo drove all night. He needed to get as much distance between him and Peking as he could before first light. In the south, there were people he could trust, and others, he was certain, who would aid Huaishan Han in return for becoming a part of the opium network.

As it turned out, Kuo was right on target. The injured man was admitted to a hospital under an alias. He was one of many war casualties who were streaming in from the Korean War. It was easy to lose his ident.i.ty and no one this far south would recognize Huaishan Han's face.

Now, General Kuo, standing on the front steps of his hut high on the Shan plateau, took in the triple-canopied forest. The purple and white mountains of northern Burma rose into the night sky all around him. He thought of them as part of his army, great natural sentinels which he had learned how to use.

That was the beginning, he thought. A young man's desire to impress his woman; a wild ride south in a cloud of dust. A dream he had turned into reality. For this was the goal. He was ultimate master over thousands of people; his pockets were bulging with rubies, sapphires as big as his knuckle. He could buy the business of any tai pan in Hong Kong should he choose to do so. He knew he never would, however. This was his home. This was where he was emperor. More, he was G.o.d.

The Shan.

Only the mountain knows a Hige Moro's last words echoed in Jake's mind all the way back to Hong Kong. What mountain? Surely the Yakuza oyabun couldn't know about the personal mountain upon which Jake toiled. The mountain of s.h.i.+ Zilin, Jake's father, the mountain of the Jian, of the Zhuan.

What mountain could link a Communist Chinese minister and an overlord of the j.a.panese underworld?

Mikio Komoto had not known and neither did Jake. Mikio had been stunned by Hige Moro's revelations and, he said, if Moro hadn't been on the point of death, he would have been inclined to dismiss them out of hand. Privately, he might believe that Hige Moro had been making fools of them. But Jake was not so sure.

For one thing, the story was just too improbable to be a last macabre joke. For another, Jake had been looking in the oyabun's eyes when he said it. Jake was willing to bet that he had seen the truth there.

The 747 Jumbo hit the tarmac at Kai Tak without his having made any headway with the problem. He had been hoping to get some sleep on the flight but he had been unable to tear his mind from its frenzy of thinking.

Consequently he returned home tired, his body aching over virtually every square inch. He came out of the terminal into a day dark and rumbly with thunderheads. Their bruised purple dominated a fulminating sky. Victoria Peak was wreathed in darkness and every now and again pale lightning flickered like an adder's tongue.

His apartment at the Cloud Levels on the Peak was as dark as night. Without Bliss it seemed desolate and chill. He dropped his bags and went straight into the bathroom. Forty-five minutes later, with a tiny cup of saki in his hands, he felt halfway human for the first time in days.

Staring out the windows at the billowing electrified clouds, he picked up the phone and dialed his uncle. The precipitation that slid down the panes of gla.s.s bore only a pa.s.sing resemblance to rain. The sky seemed to be weeping bitter tears.

Said h.e.l.lo to a young voice, one of his nephews and, in a moment, Three Oaths came on the line.

"I'm back, Uncle," he said. "I know who killed my father."

"Do you know why?"

"Only partially. The full answer was not in j.a.pan."

"Are you well, Nephew?"

"It depends on your definition," Jake said. "Well enough. How is Bliss?"

There was a slight pause. "She is out of the hospital, Nephew. But I think you had better come down to the junk immediately."

Jake felt a return of tension, a knot of worry in his stomach. "Is she all right, Uncle?"

"Someone tried to kill her."

"Who?"

"Someone," Three Oaths said, "you know well. Great Pool of Piddle."

"McKenna? Ian McKenna? Why?" Jake knew that he was shouting; he didn't care.

"My daughter insisted on following up the lead of the opal, Nephew. The trail led to Big Oysters Pok. She was having dinner with him when Great Pool of Piddle shot him dead. And, almost, Bliss."

"Is she injured?"

"Physically, no," Three Oaths said. "I ask you again, Nephew, to come to the junk. There is much more to Nephew? Nephew? Jake, are you there?"

Jake wasn't.

At seven thirty in the evening, Rodger Donovan took the call on the powerful shortwave he had built and installed himself in a corner of the converted attic at Greystoke. He had just come back from a long, exhilarating drive in his *63 Corvette. Donovan loved the car, cherished it, really, as he had longed to cherish Leslie, as he longed to cherish Daniella Vorkuta.

He knew every square grease-coated inch of the *Vette's insides, which was more than he could say for any woman he had ever known. Donovan, who was such a genius with machines and men, could never fathom the arcane workings of the feminine psyche.

This was a deficiency that, had he thought about it, he would have seen Daniella had discovered and used with ruthless proficiency years ago. During their months in Paris she had been able to recruit him as much because he thought he understood her and did not as because she found in him a more general deep and abiding antipathy for the elitist cla.s.s system that had sp.a.w.ned him.

"Three-four-seven-eight," he said, into the opened frequency.

"I'm here."

"Daniella," he said. "Are you still hip-deep in snow?"

She stopped his bantering tone when she said, "What do you know of Apollo?"

"Apollo?" His mind was like a computer and he reviewed the name quickly. "Nothing."

"Are you certain?"

"Absolutely. Are you going to clue me in?"

"What?"

"Give. Who or what is Apollo?"

"A mole," she said, "inside the Kremlin. A Quarry a.s.set."

"Impossible. I"

"He was strictly Henry Wunderman's brainchild."

"Oh, Christ." He stared out the window. The rolling hills were black against the setting sun. "Do you know who he is?"

"Mikhail Carelin."

He blinked. "Genachev's adviser?"

"Just so." There was an unnatural pause. "Listen to me. Apollo was Henry Wunderman's a.s.set. That means he knew Wunderman wasn't Chimera."

"Jesus!" Donovan gritted his teeth. Pus.h.i.+ng his anxiety aside, he began to think furiously. "Do you know who Apollo's new control is?"

"Yes," Daniella said. "Jake Maroc."

"Maroc again." The adrenaline was rus.h.i.+ng through Donovan's veins. The verdant Virginia hills were fired along their tops now. "Somehow I knew I hadn't heard the last of him. I tried to recruit him just after he killed Wunderman. I thought, psychologically, it would be the advantageous time. He wasn't interested in anything to do with the Quarry."

"He's going to be now," Daniella said. "As soon as Apollo tells Maroc that he was wrong about Chimera's ident.i.ty. What do you think Maroc will do to you once he figures out that it was our disinformation that gave him cause to kill Henry Wunderman? Wunderman was Maroc's mentor; Maroc loved him like a father."

"Christ, you don't have to tell me that." Donovan's eyes had gone blank as he thought the problem through. He conjured up, then discarded option after option. "I don't think we have any choice," he said carefully. "We'll just have to take care of Mr. Maroc once and for all."

"Frankly," Daniella said, "I don't think you've got an operative who's up to the job, and this is not an a.s.signment that can be given twice."

Donovan thought about the long afternoon, putting the Corvette flat out for the sheer excitement of it. "Don't worry about that." The mind appreciated being on the precipice of danger. "Even if there was, there isn't anyone here I'd trust with this, anyway. It would give rise to too many awkward questions." The mind liked to be fooled this way every now and again; it gave the thought processes a jolt, set them running full out again.

"Do you know where Maroc is at this moment?"

"At the moment, Hong Kong," Daniella said. "Mitre's people are monitoring his movements closely."

"Good," Donovan said. "Just keep me updated." He brought back the memory of the severe S-curve, how he had taken it at eighty-five. And in front of him the hill, an emerald blur, looming. "I'll take care of Jake Maroc myself."

Ian McKenna lived in a battered, peeling house along Dragon's Back, an area in the southeast of the Island bounded on the north by Mount Collinson and on the south by the D'aguilar Peak peninsula. It was, for the most part, a desolate place, quite unlike the rest of Hong Kong. There was, for instance, more than a touch of Australian topography there. Which was, Jake supposed, why McKenna had chosen it.

Jake pulled the Jaguar over onto the rocky dirt verge and killed the engine. He was still a thousand meters from the house. He had been traveling for the last mile-and-a-half without lights. The road had too many switchbacks that, at night, would send his car's headlights far ahead. He had pa.s.sed no other vehicles and he did not want to give Great Pool of Piddle any warning.

Got out of the car, leaving the door open. Sounds, as well as light, traveled far here. Behind him, the lights of the Peak and to his right, Aberdeen, were awash with rain. Everyone in Hong Kong rejoiced when it rained. Until Kam Sang's desalinization plant came on line, the Crown Colony still had a chronic water shortage.

McKenna's eyes bugged out when Jake came through the door. He was sitting in a corner with his back to the bare walls. All the pictures and paintings had been torn down and now lay, ragged as battle pennants in a welter of broken gla.s.s and shattered frames. Shards of mirror glittered at McKenna's bare feet. No lights were on, and the shutters and blackout curtains were drawn across the windows. McKenna steadfastly faced them as if manning the battlements at Armageddon.

"h.e.l.lo, McKenna."

"Maroc, what the f.u.c.k're you doing here?"

"Came to pay a debt." He was grinning like a hungry wolf.

"Huh?"

Jake looked around. "Got any little boys here, McKenna?"

The big man started. "What d'you know about him?"

"Who?" He saw McKenna's eyes as big around as saucers.

"You're not supposed to know. No one's supposed to know." Therewere beads of sweat trembling on McKenna's face. "But it's too late for that, isn't it? They know, don't they? They know."

This was getting interesting, Jake thought. "Who knows?"

"Don't play games with me, Maroc. You know who. You know. They know." His head whipped around and the sweat flew from him like rain. "I know it because I can hear the chanting."

"The chanting," Jake said, coming closer. "Sure, McKenna, I hear it."

The big man nodded. "The abos think they can break me by keeping me awake at night." He gave a little cackling laugh. "They're underestimating me again."

"Sure they are, McKenna," Jake said, coming on. "What about Big Oysters Pok. Why did you kill him?"

"Kill him? I did? Well, then, he deserved it." Jake could see now that McKenna was naked. He held a blanket over part of him, but his thick pale flesh shone here and there. As Jake watched, McKenna took one hand from beneath the blanket. It was filled with a Magnum .357. "Did him with this, Jake. But then, he deserved it."

"He did, huh?" It was important to be careful now, very careful. "He f.u.c.k with you, McKenna?"

"Nah!" That cackling laugh again, just this side of hysteria. "n.o.body b.l.o.o.d.y f.u.c.ks with me, Jake, you know that. But he was a wog, see, a wog! b.l.o.o.d.y wogs've been after me since, well, you know."

Jake had no idea but he nodded just the same. The thing was to keep McKenna talking. He was obviously as mad as a March hare but somewhere in that confused mind of his Jake suspected there was a sane reason why he had shot Big Oysters Pok. "You killed Pok because he was Chinese, that it?" The thing was to tune in to McKenna's batty level.

"You got it!" McKenna grinned savagely. "I always pegged you for a smart one, Jake." He was waving that gun around. "I'm glad I was right about you." The expression changed with appalling quickness. The gun leveled at Jake's midsection. "But don't come so b.l.o.o.d.y close, mate. You never know."

Jake froze. "Never know what, McKenna?"

The big man stared at him as if he had lost his mind. He pointed the gun at the windows. "About the abos, of course." His tiny eyes got canny. "They could have got to you, you know. They have their ways."

"They certainly do," Jake said, fighting to keep his voice even. He wanted to leap across the several meters still separating them and shakethe truth out of McKenna. "But they haven't contacted me. Yet."

McKenna's eyes filled with fear. "Yet? What do you mean?"

"Well," Jake shrugged, "I've heard the chanting, of course.",, "It never stops. Never," McKenna said. "It used to, you know. But now there're just too many of them. Abos. They can keep the chanting up forever. Forever."

What sin, Jake wondered, did McKenna commit in Australia to have driven him this far over the edge. "Is that why you wanted to kill the girl too?"

"Girl?" McKenna's face was filled with bewilderment. "What girl?"

"The one with Big Oysters Pok when you shot him."

The big man's eyes were far away. "Was there someone with him? I don't remember."

"You must remember the girl, McKenna," Jake said. He described Bliss.