Fire And Ice (27 page)

"Good time last night?"

"I'm in pain, if that is what you're asking. You did your job." He seemed startled that she had answered him and said, only, "Mr. Jack wants you to meet his friend."

The Chinese officers were guarding the door. Moss reached between them and knocked. Mr. Jack called to come in. He and the general were sitting with a mai-tai bottle between them. The room was thick with smoke, and the general was lighting a fresh cigarette as she entered.

"There you are, the docking doctor. Saw you tied her pointed out—ready for a getaway?"

"I thought she'd ride the ship wakes better."

"Sure, sure." He turned to his guest. "General, here's the reason I don't need a hospital. Got my own doctor. What do you think?"

The general was a wizened old man with bright eyes and a quick smile, his skin leathery from a lifetime outdoors. He looked Sarah up and down and muttered something in Chinese. Mr. Jack laughed. "Yeah, she's a looker. My man Moss's tongue is hanging down to his fly."

The general asked Sarah, "Does my friend's health improve?"

"He should be in hospital," Sarah said bluntly.

"Very stubborn man, Mr. Jack," said the general, dismissing her with a smile.

"I've made out pretty good in my life," Mr. Jack said that night, after Ronnie had fallen asleep. "But I'm a piker compared to my pals. Think about it: a handful of old guerrilla fighters have ruled a billion people for fifty years."

Sarah had no way of knowing whether Mr. Jack was exaggerating his friend's power, though the fact that PLA patrol boats and soldiers kept passing the ship on water and land indicated that the general was well connected in Shanghai, if not part of whatever it was that Mr. Jack was planning to do. "How did you meet?" she asked.

"Remember, I told you I crashed m Chekiang Province?"

"Of course." She was drinking tea. He was on a whiskey, watered at her insistence. In the pocket of her white steward's coat, wrapped in handkerchiefs, were two hypodermic needles, which she had practiced palming like a weapon—one for the old man, one for Moss. The question was when to use them. Part of the answer depended on when the fog that blanketed the river most mornings would next roll in.

"Crash-landed in a rice paddy. Bombardier drowned. Hell of a guy. The rest of us got out okay—pilot, copilot, armorer-gunner, and me. We climbed out of the water and there were a hundred Chinese peasants, standing there grinning at us. The whole village turned out. Huge party.

"A couple of them spoke English—the missionaries had been through there—and they told us there were a lot of Japs between us and Chungking. Then the general appeared. Just a kid, then, like me. But a set of eyes that looked right through you. And stature. The man stood proud—a real fighter—like Moss. Only—" he lowered his voice "—only with more to fight for.

"You see, Doc, the peasants here had been beaten down and stomped on for two thousand years. The general was a communist. A rebel. He had a guerrilla unit that had been fighting Chiang Kai-shek and now they were fighting the Japs. `Party's over,' said the general.

"Japs were hunting us. People hid us in their houses and helped us head for Chungking. Soldiers and farmers carried us in sedan chairs, on riverboats, pony carts. Once we were on a bus that burned charcoal. The Japs were on our tail all the way.

"They went crazy, Doc. They raided Chekiang Province with fifty battalions of infantry. Slaughtered civilians, destroyed entire villages, killing the farmers who helped us, killing every Chinese they could get their hands on. Probably killed a quarter of a million peasants and villagers in two months. Quarter million people." He swigged his drink and motioned for her to get him more. She poured a weak one. When she brought it to him, he was staring at his hands.

"It sounds as if the Chinese paid a terrible price for your bombing Tokyo."

"Awful," Mr. Jack agreed. "But we got what we wanted, and then some. A real boost to American morale. Bonus was, we shook up Yamamoto—hurt his pride—spooked him into rushing things at Midway—and tied up half their Air Force protecting the emperor's palace, making sure we didn't pull that stunt again.

"We took them off the offensive. And when he blew it at Midway, it was the beginning of the end. The Rising Sun stopped rising after that." He laughed, bitterly. "At least until the war was over."

"I would think you must feel some guilt, Mr. Jack." "Me? Naw. I paid. I was punished. Bastards caught me,

remember?" He held up his nailless fingers. "And this was just for starters. You seen the scars on my back." "Did you tell them what they wanted to know?" "Didn't matter."

"How so?"

"I told you. They killed everybody, whether they'd helped us or not. Killed everybody in the villages." "Why didn't they kill you?"

Mr. Jack looked away. Then he said, "My old friend the general rescued me. Attacked the goddammed police station the Japs had commandeered."

"Ah. Now I understand."

He jerked his head toward her. "What?"

"The Chinese say, if you save a man's life you're responsible for his life."

"Oh, that. Yeah, but I evened things up. Fought with his unit for two years. Never did get to Chungking. Then we got our mitts on some planes and I started flying for him— We been pals ever since."

Sarah could tell he had been about to say more. She had the curious feeling that he had stayed on after the Japanese were defeated, and kept fighting Chiang Kai-shek until Liberation. That would explain his extraordinary connections to the People's Republic.

"Mummy?"

Ronnie was standing in the doorway, half asleep. "Sweetheart." Sarah embraced her. " Can't sleep?" "Bad dream."

"Curl up with your mom, kid. I was just telling her about flying in China. Do you know how we loaded the airplanes?"

"No."

"Elephants."

"No way, Mr. Jack."

"Think I'm kidding? We were flying gasoline. They

picked up fifty-gallon drums with their tusks. Seen it with my own eyes. Elephants."

"Mr. Jack? When are you going to let us go home to Daddy?"

"Hey. Everybody behaves themself, we'll all be home for Christmas." After breakfast, while fog still blanketed the river, Mr. Jack had another visitor. " Vanishing act, ladies. Run up to the bridge. I'll call you when I'm done. And, Doc, keep your mitts off the phones."

When Moss reported that they were up there, well beyond stethoscope earshot, and that he had secured the phones and radios, Mr. Jack said, "Hold it, Moss."

"Yeah, Mr. Jack?"

"Before you bring in our guest. I hear your British bulldog screwed up again." Moss's jaw dropped. How in hell had he found that out? "I'm real sorry, Mr. Jack. It won'

t happen again." "Goddamn right it won't happen again." Moss didn't know what to make of that. Mr. Jack told him to bring in their "guest" and to stand behind his chair.

Unlike the generals who visited by boat, Mr. Yu had boarded from the pier. He was a tough-looking heavyset guy, like a Chinese mafioso. And he had some attitude, until Mr. Jack broke him down with a mad-dog stare and a string of Chinese that sounded like a firefight in the Lincoln Tunnel.

Chinese were supposed to be a hard read, but this guy's face said a lot. He went from attitude to angry to scared shitless in about thirty seconds.

At that point, Mr. Jack looked up at Moss, ignoring the mafioso in the blue suit. "I've just explained to Mr. Yu—who's got a nice little racket on the docks—that I've been told he's poaching on our territory. Mr. Yu started to mouth off until I informed him who our friends are. Now he's having second thoughts."

Moss took the hint to add his own mad-dog stare to the Chink boy's worries.

"I'm about to explain to him how disappointed our

friends will be if he doesn't do something real soon to undo the mess he's made." When Mr. Jack was done, Mr. Yu ran backward from the room, bowing like a man ducking bullets. Moss said, "Can I ask something?"

"You learn with questions, Moss. What is it?" "What'd the guy do?"

"The son of a bitch gave a goddammed sampan to the doctor's husband so he could look for us."

"How in hell did the husband get here?"

"Hooked up with some two-bit Hong Kong Triad."

"So you told Mr. Yu to take care of him?" He had an awful feeling Mr. Jack was going to pull an end run, and do it himself.

"No, no. Just told him to stay out of the way. Old friends'll handle it." That was worse, thought Moss. With all these old friends, what did Mr. Jack need him for? "Why not let him find us? Bang him when he walks in the door."

"Moss. " Mr. Jack's patience was wearing thin. "Look out the window, Moss. Wha'dya see?"

Moss looked.

Mr. Jack said, "Last thing I need is that son of a bitch drawing attention to my ship." STONE SLIPPED OUT OF THE OLD PEDDLER'S TENEMENT BEfore dawn, into the vanguard of the men and women streaming down the Nanjing Road to practice tai chi by the river. The loudspeakers in the park weren't blaring music yet, but early risers were already warming up. They were joined by numerous western tourists in jogging suits, but, as he had noted the previous mornings, only the Chinese stepped off the paths to talk to the trees. Stone chose his for its view of the embankment steps, pressed his forehead to the soot-caked bark, and watched for an ambush. If he couldn't find the ship today he would have to admit that he had figured wrong, that Kerry was wrong, and that the Dallas Belle/Amy Bodman was elsewhere in the world. One last try. Provided whoever had tipped the Brit last night hadn't laid a trap where he boarded the coal sampan.

He was half surprised to see it chugging out of the dark, and relieved when the captain's sons jumped up on the coal carrier's bow and scanned the embankment, expectantly. He'

d been watching for fifteen minutes. It looked safe. His spine prickling, he hurried through the swelling crowd and down the steps.

The elder son grinned a welcome and handed Stone aboard. The younger helped him down into the waist of the boat. In the wheelhouse, their sister was waiting shyly with a covered mug of tea; her mother parted the curtain to smile a toothless greeting; even the captain offered a

friendly nod as he backed the sampan into the stream. Stone pointed downriver, and the diesel yammered a rapid note.

Mr. Wang watched from the shadows, aloof as a crow in his black suit and chauffeur hat. But William Sit greeted Stone effusively. "Here we have good weather for searching for the yachtmen's marina." As usual, he was dying to practice his English. "Are you pleased with this weather, sir?"

The weather had finally given him a break. Yesterday and the day before, thick fog had blotted out the harbor until ten o'clock. This morning the wind had backed to the northeast. Visibility was the clearest Stone had seen in the city, and he felt a renewed hope that banished the despair of the terrible night.

Mr. Wang was studying him thoughtfully. When he returned the driver's gaze, Wang glanced away.

They passed the piers below the passenger terminals, the Shanghai Shipyard's dry dock—which held the container ship he had mistaken for the LNG carrier—and crossed the river to the Shanghai Shipyard East.

"Ask the captain to slow down to four knots."

The Chinese exchanged questioning looks: surely the American understood that such a busy shipyard had no extra land to lease to yachtsmen, unless, of course, his friends were extraordinarily well connected.

There were ships on ways, ships alongside piers, and ships in slips cut into the riverbank. He scrutinized each with the binoculars, regardless of color. By now they would have had time to camouflage her tan hull with a coat of black paint. But none was the Dallas Belle.

The chemical factory downstream, host to a number of tanker types, received the same careful study. When the sampan had passed it, Stone was confident none of them was the gas carrier. He scrutinized the neighboring factories, though most of their piers were occupied by freight and container vessels instead of tankers.

The refinery lay downriver from the factories—an enormous sprawl of pipelines, fumebelching crackers, and holding tanks. Every vessel alongside was a petroleum ship—

crude carriers arriving with raw material and various

specialized tankers loading up with finished product. The refinery offered ample space and natural camouflage to hide a gas carrier. He had, however, already searched it twice. And yet it drew him again because it was so logical a site. The power plant on Hangchou Bay had exerted the same pull and he had gone back again—to no avail—in a very reluctant Mr. Wang's taxi.

He studied each ship with the binoculars. As the Huangpu was shallow, the crude carriers came in partially laden, riding high, flashing their bottom paint, and scything the river with propeller blades partly out of the water.

The smaller gasoline, diesel, and kerosene vessels that carried off the refinery's output were bound, the sampan driver said, up the Yangtze River to supply the hinterland. Stone focused on each, however, as he didn't completely trust his sense of scale against the immensity of space and structure. Seen from a Pacific atoll so low it was nearly awash, the Dallas Belle had loomed mightily. But in Shanghai, he kept reminding himself, little would distinguish it from a thousand other drab steel edifices in the port. Reaching a marshy bank, he ordered the boat to the other side. The expression on the captain's face seemed to shout: any fool—even a clumsy landsman like the translator of English—could see that this shallow, unused stretch of river would be an ideal site for barbarian yachtsmen; even the gangster-taxi driver in the fancy hat could see that yachts moored here would be happy—close to the mouth of the river and therefore less likely to get in the way of coal sampans whose families had trouble enough trying to earn a living. Stone wanted another look at the big breaker's shed. But halfway across the river, the captain growled a throaty version of his wife's "aiyyeee," and changed course. Stone thought he was afraid of the execution ground hidden somewhere out past the railroad tracks.

"William, tell him to take me closer."