Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha (18 page)

Robin stopped with his hand on the knob of the door. He said in a strangled voice, “Detwiler and Feng are both supposed to be inside the shop—
inside it
, Marko, waiting for Mrs. Pollifax. If one of them left, somehow—if one of them left without our knowing—” He turned, opened the door and went out, slamming it behind him. A moment later he was racing down the hall
to the freight elevator and presently he was risking a speeding ticket in the Renault, swearing at every traffic light, blowing his horn at every slow car, taking every short cut he could find.

Soon he was in one of the oldest, most crowded sections of Hong Kong, where the narrow streets gave him a dozen new frustrations until, spotting a rare parking space, he inched the car into it, jumped out and began to run. The Ackameter hummed confidently in the palm of his hand and the distance meter set into it clicked quietly, measuring the distance between it and the electronically-attuned mate that had been sewn into the hem of Mrs. Pollifax’s skirt. As he turned the corner and hurried past the old Suzie Wong hotel he saw the red-and-gold façade of the Man Mo Temple beyond it, and the Ackameter’s hum rose to a nearly hysterical pitch. Robin paused in confusion: there were no taxis in sight, and there was no sign of Mrs. Pollifax. As he stood there, an unmarked gray van pulled up to the ornate wall opposite the Temple and when a man in coveralls stepped out Robin crossed over to say quietly, “Special Unit?”

The man gave him a level stare. “Special
what?
”

“Radio One,” he said. “Blue Dragon.”

The man visibly relaxed. “ID?”

Robin pulled out a crumpled ID card from the concealed pocket in his jacket and said dryly, “I would think my Ackameter would be ID enough. Shall we move along before a crowd collects to see why I’m wired for sound?”

The man gave him a brief smile. “We’ve pinned down the location of the homing device to either inside or in back of the temple. I’m Harold Lei, by the way, and that’s Jim Bai, who’ll take the rear. Shall we go?”

They hurried into the temple, where Robin became aware of an ancient and extraordinary beauty—of brasses gleaming against clear bright scarlets, of incense-coils suspended from the ceiling like delicate hooded canopies—that would have pleased and soothed him if he’d not been feverishly looking for Mrs. Pollifax. And she was not here.

“Damn,” he said aloud, eliciting a startled glance from the temple-keeper reading a newspaper in the corner.

They met outside again, the three of them.

“Nothing in the rear,” reported Jim Bai. “What’s happening with that Ackameter of yours?”

Robin glanced down at the distance meter and groaned. “Oh God,” he said, the words wrung from him,
“it registers zero.”

“Then it has to be here,” pointed out Harold Lei, frowning.

“You don’t understand—” began Robin, wanting to shout at him that the Ackameter was being carried by a woman, and the woman should be here. He abandoned his protest when he saw Harold Lei bend down and pick up what looked to be a pebble at their feet.

“This it?” he said.

As it was dropped into the palm of his hand Robin felt an acute sense of despair. “So they’ve got her,” he said bitterly. “Too smart for us again, and my God what an insult to deliberately leave this here for us. Except—” But he didn’t finish his thought; he didn’t want to remember that the disk had been sewn into Mrs. Pollifax’s skirt, which meant there would have been a threat of violence, or violence itself, to separate it from her. “I need a phone,” he told Harold. “I’ve got to call your superior, this changes things.”

“In the van—direct connection,” Lei told him.

Briefly Robin delivered the news of Mrs. Pollifax’s abduction to Duncan, head of the Special Unit, the man to whom the Governor had introduced him with every assurance of his probity.

“Now what did she want to do that for,” the man said calmly. “Damn awkward, this. Blows everything sky high if they apply pressure and she tells them all we know.”

“Which isn’t all that much,” Robin said darkly.

“Enough to alter their plans, and we do know something of those now.”

“Yes—thanks to Mrs. Pollifax,” he reminded him angrily.

“Where are you now?”

“Man Mo Temple, about to head back to the hotel.”

“Good. Tell my men to get back on the job and I’ll talk with you later. And—steady, old chap!”

“Yes,” was all that Robin managed to say, while inside of him he raged at all that was abruptly going wrong, at his fears for Mrs. Pollifax, and at himself for lacking the sureness to have absolutely forbidden her to go. Which, he conceded miserably, would never have succeeded anyway, not with Mrs. Pollifax.

Cutting the connection he exchanged a few words with the two men and then walked to the Renault and drove somberly back to the hotel. This time he didn’t bother to cover his tracks by taking the freight elevator; if anyone was still interested in following him, he thought grimly, he’d welcome the chance to thrust them against a wall, put a gun to their head and demand that he be taken to Mrs. Pollifax. Only direct action could blunt the realization that they’d been outmaneuvered again and Mrs. Pollifax captured, and in his head there lingered
the words
if they apply pressure and she tells them all we know …

Pressure … a tactful word for torture, of course.

As he reached the bank of elevators in the lobby a down elevator opened its doors and Mr. Hitchens and Ruthie walked out.

“Rob—Lars!” cried Mr. Hitchens happily, recovering the name in time. “Oh, do meet Ruthie, this is—
Something’s wrong
,” he said, staring at Robin.

Robin nodded. “They’ve got Mrs. Pollifax.” He saw that Mr. Hitchens was involved enough to look stricken by his words and he felt an odd sense of comfort from this.

“They,”
faltered Mr. Hitchens. “You mean—”

“Yes.”

“Oh dear!”

Ruthie said, “But I saw her only an hour or so ago, what’s happened?”

“Saw her?” Robin said, turning to her in surprise. “Where? When?”

“She was getting into a taxi at the front entrance,” Ruthie told him.

Robin laid a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s try that couch over there,” he said grimly, “I want to hear this.” Once seated he said, “Talk!”

Ruthie nodded. “I was strolling up the curved walk toward the entrance and I saw Mrs. Pollifax walk out through the glass doors. I think the sun must have been in her eyes for she shielded them for a minute, and then she dropped her hand and lifted the other to wave at one of the cabs waiting, and when the cab moved up she climbed inside. It was about a minute before eleven and I didn’t call out to her because I was meeting Hitch at eleven, and I was late.”

“All right, now let me ask you, Ruthie: was it a bonafide taxi that she climbed into?”

Ruthie looked startled. “You mean that’s when she disappeared? Oh dear, let me think … Well—she was standing there, waiting, the sun in her eyes—yes, she was squinting a little, and the cab—” She stopped. “That’s funny. As I walked up the drive there were three taxis waiting for a passenger but it was another one, coming from where I don’t know, that suddenly pulled up to Mrs. Pollifax.”

“What did it look like?”

She frowned. “Well—red. Like the others. A light on top.”

“Was there anyone inside it but the driver?”

Ruthie closed her eyes for a second. “Yes,” she said in a startled voice. “Yes, I could see the silhouette of a person sitting in the rear, and—and then Mrs. Pollifax’s head, too, as she climbed inside and then—yes, I saw her head jerk back, as if she’d just noticed the cab was occupied and was going to back out. But the taxi started up in a hurry and drove away with her in it.” She opened her eyes. “Will she be all right?” she asked anxiously.

“That,” said Robin, “is something only Mr. Hitchens can tell us, but at the moment I’ve got to hurry back upstairs and set a great many things in motion. And thanks, Ruthie—this may be of some help.”

With this he entered the elevator to return to a waiting Marko and tell him the grim news.

Krugg came off duty at 4
P.M.
, and fell into bed to sleep for a few hours.

Witkowski left his bed to replace him until midnight.

A taxi reported stolen in the Causeway Bay area at
ten o’clock that morning was found at three o’clock, abandoned on Hennessy Road.

Even more important, reports began to filter in during the afternoon on Mr. Charles Yuan Feng, the owner of Feng Import Company, 31½ Dragon Alley, and all of them were extremely interesting.

He had a police dossier. According to this dossier he had come to Hong Kong from Shanghai after serving in an unknown capacity under Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek; he had been accompanied by a brother, Weng Feng. At this time—it was in the 1950s—one or both of the brothers was suspected of having connections with the “14-K” triad, which the Nationalist General Koi Sui-heong had brought with him as a legacy from China, resurrecting it in Hong Kong for the purpose of overthrowing Mao and returning the Nationalists to mainland China.

In 1967 the brother Weng Feng had been arrested in Hong Kong as a Nationalist spy and saboteur, the police having found an arsenal of weapons in his apartment. In 1968 Weng had been quietly deported to Taiwan, where he still lived, and it had been assumed that he was the troublemaker of the family.

Following this, interest in Mr. Charles Yuan Feng had lessened, and then had been dropped, although his name remained on a list.

Robin scowled over the report unhappily. “Does it mean anything or doesn’t it? I mean, Hong Kong is
full
of Nationalist refugees. Nationalists’ Day is still celebrated in October—the Double Ten—and amateur conspiracies are still occasionally surfacing.”

“But this is no amateur conspiracy,” pointed out Marko. “It’s difficult to make any connection at all.”

Robin nodded. “It seems inconceivable, and yet Britain
and Peking are meeting right now—again—it’s in today’s newspaper—negotiating the terms under which Hong Kong will be returned to the Chinese in 1997.” He frowned. “And it’s to Red China the colony’s to be returned, not to the Nationalists, as once envisioned.” His frown deepened. “I daresay it could make for a bit of rage, seeing Hong Kong—the capitalist center of the Orient—being turned over to a country of communes and communism.”

“But Eric the Red and the Liberation 80’s group?” said Marko skeptically.

There was no answer to that, but there was one interesting footnote in the dossier that dangled possibilities of a Nationalist connection: Mr. Feng’s brother, the deported Nationalist spy, had been married to a woman by the name of Xian Sutsung, and the list discovered in Mrs. Pollifax’s Buddha had included a Xian Pi.

Nephew?
wondered Robin as he went downstairs for an early dinner in the restaurant, leaving Marko behind to man the radio until his return. It proved nothing except that Chinese could join terrorist movements, too, but still it was interesting. To him personally it seemed an aeon ago that Chiang Kai Shek had been routed out of mainland China to set up his new government on Taiwan. Chiang Kai Shek was long since dead; Mao, too, had gone, yet Robin knew only too well how old conflicts and rivalries could linger and fester; history was full of them as new boundaries were carved out of old wars, with no regard for sects, nationalities or alliances: Tatars against Turks, Sikh against Hindu, Serbs against Croats, Druzeans against Christians … And certainly Taiwan was still insisting—decades later—that it was the only true government of China.

Robin glanced at his watch as he entered the hotel
dining room; it was a few minutes after six and he realized how drained he felt by the events of the day; he couldn’t even remember when he’d last eaten, and he began to understand Marko’s insistence that he leave the radio for an hour. He headed for a table in the corner, fitted neatly against the wall, and seated himself, unfurling the napkin folded at his place.

Three tables away he saw the flutter of a hand: Ruthie and Mr. Hitchens were trying to catch his attention, both of them smiling and waving.

Ruthie leaned forward now and called, “You look exhausted so we won’t join you, but has Mrs. Pollifax been found yet?”

Fortunately there were few diners at this hour to hear her indiscretion. Robin forced his lips into a polite smile and shook his head.

At the table next to him along the wall a man facing Robin glanced from him to Ruthie and rose from his chair: a large man, in a somewhat rumpled suit, with an intelligent face, sleepy eyes and a thatch of white hair. To Robin’s astonishment, he walked over to his table, pulled out a chair and sat down.

“Believe I just heard my wife’s name,” he said, giving Robin a searching and interested scrutiny. “Flew in two hours ago and nobody can find her … Emily Pollifax?”

“Good God,” cried Robin, shocked out of his lethargy, “you’re Cyrus Reed and it’s Thursday!”

“Yes to both,” he said, and added calmly, “Take it Emily’s gone and put herself in the thick of things again. Always does ̣ ̣ Don’t have the slightest idea who you are, but it looks as if I’ve arrived just in the nick of time … Now what are you doing about finding my wife?”

M
rs. Pollifax, finding herself in the taxi with Mr. Feng, decided that discretion was the better part of valor: holding back the dismay that gripped her she forced her lips into a polite and expectant smile, as if Detwiler had very graciously sent a cab for her and had included Mr. Feng as a special treat. Actually she could think of nothing to say anyway, nothing at least that wouldn’t betray or incriminate her, such as how on earth had he managed to leave Feng Imports without Robin and Marko knowing, and where was Mr. Detwiler?

“I do try to be punctual,” she told him, repressing every normal reaction. “I feel it’s a courtesy to others, don’t you?”

This conversational gambit was ignored, as she had supposed it would be. They were leaving Queen’s Road Central now and turning into a narrow street distinctly Chinese in character; as the taxi slowed Mr. Feng leaned
forward, pointed and the car halted in front of a narrow shop with the sign T
AILOR
hung above it.