Fire And Ice (14 page)

The bar itself was typical yacht club, shabbier than most but steeped in history: on a wall of burgees from clubs around the world hung a life preserver with the legend, THIS CLUB REOPENED BY HMS VENGEANCE SEPTEMBER 8,

1945, commemorating the end of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in World War II. He and Sarah cherished the honorary membership they had been given when word got around about their floating clinic.

The cocktail hour was winding down as members headed off to dinner. Among the serious drinkers left was a powerfully built Australian foredeckman known, Stone recalled, as The Beast.

As Stone approached him, The Beast looked up with a glimmer of recognition. "Right! I know that face. Doctor Mike." He enveloped Stone's hand. "Bob Simmons. Just get in?"

"Flew in, actually. From Manila."

Simmons winked. "Left the boat with the missus and come to Hong Kong for a bit of unauthorized nooky?" He signaled the dour Chinese barman to bring Stone a drink. When the Aussie wasn't sailing, Stone recalled, he worked as a stockbroker. He might know people.

"Cheers." Simmons drained his gin and tonic and motioned for a refill. "You look a little shipwrecked, mate."

"We got beat up off Tobi."

Simmons laughed. "God bless you blokes who own your own yachts. I'll crew any day. Did you lose the stick?"

"Only half," said Stone, milking the lie. "Snapped at the first spreader." The Beast laughed louder. "Only half. I like that, mate. Only half—say, which half?" He turned red with mirth and pounded the bar. "Which half . . . well, it's an ill wind . . . Now'

s your chance to upgrade electronics and replace that old wire rigging with rod."

"I don't like gear I can't fix offshore."

The Beast trumpeted the advantages of steel rod stays over wire.

"Did you hear about the hijacking?" Stone asked when he paused to bang his empty glass on the bar. "Everybody says the Chinese Navy did it."

"What? Big gas carrier? American captain?"

The Beast frowned quizzically as Stone gripped his arm. "No," he said. "I thought you meant the Japanese gin palace they took off Tai Pang. Tossed the boatboys to the sharks and ran for the San-Men Islands."

"I mean a ship. The Filipinos were talking about it in the yard. Nobody knew anything. Apparently she just disappeared."

"Sunk?"

"No distress signal. Word was she'd been taken."

The Beast shrugged. "Chinese gunboats are our biggest headache. People's Liberation Army navy patrols. They've turned into bloody pirates. . . . Colony went to hell in ninetyseven. Triads running amok—oh, I know what you're thinking," he said, cutting off Stone's next question. "You thought that the communists would drive out the secret societies like they did in forty-nine. No way, mate. Beijing announced the Triads are '

patriotic' organizations, and now the bloody thugs and the People's bloody Liberation Army are working hand in glove. Before turnover, it suited the mainland to make the Brits look like they were losing it—so now that the Brits are out, we've got Triads in the Hong Kong police and Triad-PLA combos kidnapping movie stars, smuggling body parts, stealing Benzes to ship to the mainland. It's the ruddy Wild West— Mate, your's pint's getting old."

"I'm beat," said Stone. "Long day." He felt old and tired and helpless and utterly alone. A porter plodded through the bar, holding up a dirty piece of cardboard with DR. MICHAEL scrawled on it.

Stone ran to the telephone.

Lydia Chin said, "Michael, how good to hear from you. How is Sarah?"

"Not good. I need your help."

"Have you eaten?"

Lydia lived above Central. He asked the porter to call him a taxi and went outside to wait. Sampans darted about in the typhoon shelter. The east wind carried a cool fog and the sound of the televisions from the moored junks. In the distance, he could just make out the blurry top lights of a huge luxury yacht nosing gingerly through the breakwater. A horn beeped as a cab swung into the driveway. "Taxi, sir?" Behind him, he heard, "Hold on, mate."

The Beast, swaying on the top step.

Stone said, "I'm going to Central if you want a ride." The Beast beckoned with one finger, which he then placed theatrically over his lips as he said sotto voce, "A word, Doctor."

Tight moorings, dirty water, and drunks were three reasons to avoid yacht clubs. "I'm kind of in a rush." "That's not your taxi, mate."

"I just called him— Oh, is he yours?"

"Unless I'm mistaken," said the Beast, "he'll produce a gun and take your wallet as soon as he gets around the corner."

Stone looked at the car. The driver wore a white shirt and plastic eyeglasses. Jesus Christ, had they found him here?

"I thought they only do that in Manila."

"It's catching on here. So much for the honest workers' state." He lurched to the car, leaned his head in, and said, "Piss off or I'll call the coppers." The taxi screeched away.

"Are you sure?" Stone said.

"The bloke ran, didn't he?"

Stone looked at the aptly named Beast looming like a belligerent cliff and thought, Let's not panic. The driver could have run in wholly innocent fear of the giant Australian.

"Here's your car now," said the Beast.

"Yeah, maybe you're right," said Stone. "I thought he came pretty fast."

"And, thank you, a lift to Central would be brilliant." The man's bulk was reassuring on the ride to Central,

but after Stone dropped the Beast at the Mandarin Hotel

and continued up the peak alone, he braced himself at every dark patch in the road. Lydia's apartment tower had a garden in front, with a curved cobblestone drive and fountains splashing musically. It was partway up Victoria Peak in a section that, when Stone first visited Hong Kong, had been private homes on terraced grounds. Security was tight. Two doormen checked his name against a list. An assistant accompanied him through an Italian marble lobby to Lydia's private elevator and pressed the single button.

The car rose thirty floors and opened into a foyer where an elderly Chinese servant greeted Stone and led him to a two-story living room with a view of city lights spreading north toward the darkness of China. Lydia Chin was Hong Kong Chinese. She had been educated locally and thrust unexpectedly into the family business when her brother proved to be less a businessman than a tennis player; her father, a practical man who had built a shipping fortune out of the Korean War, had preferred to have his daughter in charge rather than a stranger. Her husband worked for one of the old British trading hongs that the PRC had bought, and he lived every other month in Tokyo.

She was a small, precisely-made woman, and spoke with an English Oxbridge accent. " Robert will be so sorry he missed you. Welcome, Michael. Welcome." She greeted him warmly with both hands outstretched, but when he came closer her face fell. "Michael, you look—Are you all right?"

He told her what had happened to Sarah and Ronnie, and when he was done, Lydia said,

"That doesn't sound possible."

"It happened," said Stone, grateful that she, at least, didn't start pumping him about his past. "Have you heard anything about a hijacked gas ship?"

"No."

"Nothing? Are you sure? No rumor, no—"

"Nothing, Michael. I've heard of boardings in the Malacca Strait—you know, the usual. They cut loose a container or two. A number of ships around Hong Kong have been raided for their spare change and cigarettes. We had a captain shot in the Pearl River. And the occasional gin palace is stolen to order for mainland customers, but nothing on the scale of what you're suggesting."

"I'm not 'suggesting.' I saw it with my own eyes."

"Yes, of course . . . We had a Honduran car carrier snatched—at anchor, no less—from Hong Kong waters, but that was Chinese Navy. They got the ship back, eventually, minus a few Mercedes, of course." She shook her head. "But I've heard nothing about any gas carrier. Are you quite sure?"

"I saw it with my own eyes. And then, like I told you, she left that message."

"So you said. . . . Well, if the ship was headed for Shanghai, she's there, now."

"Do you have any old friends in Shanghai?" "Rivals," Lydia answered with a smile. "We'

re Cantonese."

"I know that. I just wondered. . . ." Most of the great Hong Kong shipowners had come as refugees from Shanghai after the revolution of 1949. Lydia's family was not quite in their class.

"And you're quite sure she didn't radio the authorities?"

"What authorities?"

"U.S. Navy, I would have thought," Lydia replied, watching him intently.

"No."

"Why not?"

He wanted to make up lies—he didn't trust the Navy to believe him, he didn't trust the Navy to initiate a search quickly, he had already asked and they wouldn't help—but Lydia was far too intelligent and savvy and he found himself right back where he had been with Marcus Salinis, afraid that anything he told her now would come back to haunt their future. He said, "You've known us a long time. I have to ask you to believe me when I say that there is something in our past—my past—that won't allow me to ask for official help. Can you accept that?"

"Well," she said doubtfully, "I will ask around, but . . ." A maid entered and addressed Lydia in Chinese. Lydia rose. "Excuse me, Michael. I'll be right back. Do nosh on that."

Stone picked at the array of dumplings. He hadn't eaten since breakfast with Marcus and Joanna, but he had no appetite. Not with his mind beginning to flash memories of the close call in Mong Kok. Lydia returned, looking grave. When she spoke, there was challenge in her manner.

"Michael, are you sure you've told me everything?"

"Everything I know."

"Do you know you were followed to my flat?" "What?"

"My doorman informs me that two Chiu Chau gangsters followed your taxi and are now parked across the street watching the lobby."

WHOEVER THEY WERE, THE PEOPLE WHO CONTROLLED THE ship and held

Sarah and Ronnie were tracking him like an animal. Chiu Chau? Were they Triads?

Stone almost wished he were back in the old man's canoe.

He should throw himself on the mercy of the American consul. He wouldn't be any help to Sarah dead. But plead what? "A mysterious ship took my family and boat. And now hired killers and Triads are attacking me." If they didn't arrest him, they'd commit him.

"I ask you again, Michael. As your friend. Have you told me everything?" Stone went to the windows, but the street was too far below to see. If he told Lydia about the wet-suited attacker at Koror, the phony cops at the airport, the phony cab driver, she would think worse than she was thinking already.

"Of course I have. I'm begging for your help."

"Then why are the Chiu Chau following you?"

"Chiu Chau? Christ, Lydia! How the hell would I know? Listen, everybody's Triadhappy in this town. Guy at the club just told me they've gone partners with the PLA."

"He may well be right."

"Yeah, well, those guys across the street are probably a couple of guys waiting for a date." Lydia stared.

"Are you sure your doorman isn't fantasizing? I mean,

how does he know they're Chiu Chau? Are you a Triad?" The secret societies had infiltrated all walks of Chinese life. Stone recalled a photograph of Lydia in Asia Week magazine and remembered remarking to Sarah the odd way she had crossed her fingers, wondering if it was a secret Triad sign.

"Don't be naïve, Michael. We own this building. We employ sensible protection."

"You mean your doorman belongs to a different gang?"

"I mean the doorman knows Chiu Chau when he sees them," Lydia answered coldly.

"Lydia, I swear I don't know anything about it." "What about this 'thing' in your past?"

"It has nothing to do with what's happening now. Absolutely nothing. It was way too long ago."

"Then what are you up to now?"

"Come on, you know what we do. We sail the hospital."

"I also know you're not above repairing the occasional knife wound without informing the police. You do recall when I persuaded the Jockey Club to give you some funding, it was with the understanding you would not have to do that sort of thing in order to pay your bills."

"We do what we have to, but I don't know anything about any Chiu Chau. Listen, I'm wasting your time. I'll see you around."

"Where are you going?"

"I've got to find Sarah and Ronnie."

"Michael. They followed you here. They'll hurt you. Now just sit down a minute and let me think."

Stone sat and tried to think, too.

"Would President Salinis have told anyone you'd come here?"

"No. He's on my side."

"Then how would anyone know?"

"I'm guessing they tapped Salinis's phones and .. ." His voice trailed off: Lydia was looking at him as oddly as he had feared.

"They?" she asked.

"No. This makes no sense," he said. "I'm so confused." She took his broad, scarred hand in both of hers, which were fine as alabaster, and shook her head sadly. "Oh, Michael, you're such a fish out of water."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You do wonderful work out there." A nod east encompassed the vast Pacific. "You doctor people no one else would—"

"I'm not a good doctor," he interrupted, "not like Sarah."

"You sail Sarah where she's needed. Veronica is the first to bring help after a typhoon, the first to deliver a child to hospital, the last to run before the next storm strikes. Nothing fazes you at sea. But you're. 'Jack ashore,' as the Brits say. Lost on land and lost among landsmen."

Her words troubled Stone. They rang truer than he cared to admit. He was all right if it was physical—"Corporal Fong" would be combing his hair over heel prints for a long time—but he never should have let the Brit trick him into the police car in the first place. And if it weren't for the Beast he'd have blundered into the phony taxi. Sarah herself said that he was losing the knack of functioning ashore, and Ronnie teased that Daddy was like a sea turtle on the beach. It wasn't an uncommon failing among offshore sailors. But if he was going to get his wife and child back, he would have to become as observant on land as he was at sea. As quick, as clever, and as ballsy.