Reign of Coins

by Aiden James

  “But, now you have screwed up The Company’s plans, and the Spooks here now have been instructed to take you out,” Roderick advised.

  “I take it these guys aren’t using tranquillizers or rubber bullets,” Alistair deadpanned. “So, do we wait here, or what?”

  My sentiments, exactly.

  “If we wait here, you’ll both soon be dead…. Well, at least you will be, Alistair,” he said, the mirth immediately siphoned from his tone. “I will assist you as much as I can in retrieving the mantle and your coin before our adversaries find them both. But, you must play dead for much of the next hour. There is a gurney for each of you, and I will cover you up with the lightest sheets they have on hand here. Be sure to breathe through your mouth, Ali.”

  He retrieved a pair of gurneys from the other side of the bed and motioned for my son to get on one while I climbed onto the other. Meanwhile, more and more footsteps were moving outside in the hallway. Roderick gathered our clothes into a brown duffle bag bearing the hospital’s trademark insignia. Then he carefully covered us up.

  “Remember to lie as still as possible…either play dead or be dead.”

  He gently unlocked the door and opened it. Almost immediately, my truest friend was greeted by hostile male voices speaking in hurried Cantonese. Unlike me, Roderick is a true citizen of the world. He effectively met their negativity with words that sounded loving, even though I understood very little of what he said. The commotion quieted, and he was allowed to pull us out into the hallway.

  Shame on me for not updating my knowledge of the common man’s Chinese! I vowed right then that if Alistair and I made it out of this ordeal alive and in one piece, I’d adapt Roderick’s unbiased outlook on life, liberty, and what it means to serve a government while maintaining one’s neutral status.

  I hoped somewhere the Lord was smiling.

  Chapter 20

  One hour turned out to be almost three. Three hours spent inside what I assumed was a storage room, quite cramped and where Alistair and I quietly conversed after Roderick deposited our gurneys there. At least our hideout from the hospital’s hustle and bustle was safely removed from the ongoing manhunt for our whereabouts.

  Since it remained possible that someone could enter the room at any time, we obeyed Roderick’s advisement to stay under the sheets. Finally, he returned, slipping inside the room while keeping the overhead light off. He stated we’d leave the hospital shortly, one pretend dead body at a time. I insisted on Alistair going first, since apparently the reprieve in the intense search wouldn’t last long.

  “I have secured a vehicle outside, and it will suffice to get you back to the pier,” he said, keeping his voice to a low whisper. “Your friend, Cheung Sulyn, has already left the hospital under police escort to her apartment on the west side of the city. I took the liberty to slip her a note telling her to meet us at the pier at midnight.”

  “We were planning to take care of everything ourselves,” I said, pulling my sheet down far enough to be heard clearly. “I assume we’re taking her grandfather’s yacht again, correct? I’m pretty sure she can’t drive it, and though you and I can pick things up fairly quickly, we haven’t got all night to learn how to drive the damned thing.”

  “Judas, you need to trust me,” he said. “My note instructed her to contact her crew and urge them to join us. I’ve offered to double their normal fees in making this trip.”

  “Why midnight?” Alistair asked, his voice slightly muffled from under his sheet. “Why not get there as soon as possible?”

  “Because druids turn into frogs if they come out too early when the moon is half full,” I said, drawing a hiss from both Roderick and my kid, who pulled down his sheet from his face. “Sorry…I’m sure there’s a good reason for it.”

  “You’ll need time to get ready, and it is almost nine-thirty,” said Roderick. “I can tell your progeny needs sustenance.”

  Neither Alistair nor I had eaten since that afternoon, and I had heard several rumbles from his stomach while we waited in the room’s darkness for what was to come next. Taking care of that need and planning our next venture to Wong Chuk Kok Tsui could easily bring us to a Tolo Harbour rendezvous at midnight.

  “We could use your skills to study the map, Roderick,” I said, since this was an area of his expertise. “Otherwise, we could easily spin our wheels again if we can’t locate the cave entrance.”

  “I’ll gladly look over the map, but in light of what we have to work with, I may not fare any better than you in deciphering hidden messages embedded in the text. I’ll know more when I can speak face to face with Ms. Cheung,” he said. “But, we can discuss this later. Cover your face once more, Alistair.”

  Alistair complied after offering one final protest about Sulyn waiting for his call. Roderick nipped it in the bud by advising him that he disposed of my boy’s phone and mine in two separate hazardous waste receptacles, since the agency had likely used the devices to track our presence in the hospital. I assumed this was also true for Roderick’s phone, which meant we’d have to reconnect in new ways once this ordeal was over.

  He pulled the gurney carrying my son out of the room and quickly shut the door behind him. I worried about Alistair’s welfare in the event he and Roderick were somehow detained, as any parent is prone to do. However, when Roderick returned for me in the next ten minutes, I felt much better about our chances of leaving the hospital undiscovered. With my face cloaked by a thin blue sheet, I said a silent prayer to remain unnoticed as he pulled the gurney out into the hallway.

  Listening to hospital employees, patients, and the police officers’ conversations during my journey from the storage room to our waiting vehicle outside the hospital was mildly entertaining. Very little English or any other European language was spoken. I silently repeated my vow to never again let my language skills deteriorate as they had.

  Before long, we exited the hospital. The humid night air crept in under the sheet. I could tell from the engine idling nearby that our getaway ‘car’ was in fact a truck. But, once I was lifted inside and allowed to see my surroundings unencumbered, I was quite surprised to find we’d be traveling to Tolo Harbour in an ambulance.

  “Have you lost your frigging mind?”

  “It’s not as crazy as you might think,” replied Roderick, climbing into the driver seat. “This is no more conspicuous than the Mazda you ditched earlier. Cedric’s automobile was located via satellite by the time you and I passed each other upstairs.”

  “So, in response to that development you decided to steal an ambulance?”

  “I prefer to think of it as an extended form of leasing,” he replied, and shot me a pained look that begged me to shut up about it.

  “Does this mean we still have to act like corpses in transit until you get us to the pier?” asked Alistair, from under his sheet.

  “No…once we get a few blocks away from the hospital it should be safe enough for both of you to sit up. Although, it would be wisest to remain in the back of the vehicle, in case we are stopped for any reason.”

  I almost expected a police detail to race after us before we made it through the first intersection beyond the hospital. But, we moved through two traffic lights without any sign of pursuit through the back windows. I began to relax for the first time that evening.

  “All right, so let’s talk about what needs to happen so we come away from this next trip to Wong Chuk Kok Tsui with the mantle, and if possible, my coin,” I said, edging closer to the front of the ambulance. “If my gut feeling is correct, we don’t have long before Morrow and Kaslow figure out enough of the puzzle to determine where their prize lays hidden.”

  Roderick nodded thoughtfully and offered a cursory glance in response.

  “You could very well be right about them deducing the location from what they’ve gathered so far,” he said, his focus on the road ahead. “I sense they’ll actually find it sooner than you think.”

  Well that sucks. I figured we had until da
wn.

  “When do you think they’ll show up?”

  He frowned and shook his head. “If you haven’t located the cave in the next few hours, it will be too late,” he said. “And, you might not have that long to locate everything and be able to get the hell out of there before they show up.”

  “You make it sound like we’re going solo. Aren’t you coming along? I thought you agreed to look over the map.”

  “I still plan to look at it. But then it’s up to you to heed my advice and lead the next expedition by yourself.”

  “When is this examination of the document supposed to take place?”

  Alistair had crept up to join me, and looked fairly worried as he posed this question. Apparently, he had held the same assumptions as me about Roderick actually coming along to help us locate the cave and the long lost chest holding both prizes.

  “If Cheung Sulyn shows up on time, it should give us ample opportunity to review the map,” he said. “In the meantime, your clothes are inside the duffle bag behind the driver seat. Go ahead and get dressed, and I’ll stop at the McDonald’s ahead of us. William, I suggest you eat something as well.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “It’s going on ten o’clock, and your meal options are dwindling rapidly to nothing.”

  “Pops, one meal at a fast food joint won’t hurt you.”

  “Well, maybe…. Better not be any damned weddings going on tonight.”

  They both looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “Seriously, I saw it on a cable program last week before we left the States,” I said, pausing to look through the windshield. I scanned both sides of the restaurant’s parking lot as Roderick pulled the ambulance up to the drive-thru. No sign of any cops or bad guys yet. “Micky D’s actually does weddings in Hong Kong. It’s pretty frigging popular, too.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit, son.”

  By the time Roderick placed an order for a sack of cheeseburgers, fries, and a couple of milk shakes, we had dressed in our clothes from earlier that day. Once we had the food inside the vehicle, Roderick drove back onto the main thoroughfare while Alistair and I ate.

  “So, are you planning to board Cheung’s yacht to meet with Sulyn and examine the map? Or, did you have some other arrangement in mind?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.” A wan smile tugged at the corners of Roderick’s mouth. “It might be better to meet with her away from the ship.”

  “You’re making this more complicated than it needs to be, my friend,” I said, which erased his fragile smile. “Just come with us and you can examine the damned thing at your leisure while the ship travels to the cape.”

  “I can’t commit to any arrangement yet,” he said, and I could almost feel his torn emotions…regret, anger, and disillusionment. Something had changed since we left the hospital, and in truth, it seemed whatever it was had gotten worse since we picked up our dinner. “Let’s see what develops once I get a view and feel for the area tonight.”

  Other than Jesus, Roderick is the most intuitive person I’ve ever known during my extended life. Physical obstacles don’t usually bring him down like this, but issues of the spirit and things that can have a major impact on the human condition weigh heavily upon his heart, mind, and soul. I’ve always thought he would’ve been better suited as a disciple of Christ than yours truly.

  Surely, a looming confrontation with a crazy egomaniac and an immortal henchman bent on harming thousands—if not millions—of innocent people would count as a potential global catastrophe for him. Add in the strong possibility of deadly violence directed at all three of us, and voila! It’s certainly a recipe for debilitating worry for our druid companion. I’m sure I’d feel just as queasy if I allowed myself to think about it for long. My only worry with Roderick was he might not tell me what he foresees in the stream of consciousness going on around us.

  This would be the night to not cling tightly to secrets, good buddy.

  We took a longer route to reach the pier, and by the time we pulled up close enough to enjoy a clear view of the deck on Cheung Yung-ching’s yacht it was almost 11:00 p.m. We were early…but there were lights on inside the salon, indicating someone was already there.

  “It looks like the crew from earlier…they’re moving to their stations,” said Alistair, borrowing a micro set of binoculars Roderick had brought with him. Roderick’s natural vision leaves much to be desired, despite the fact his eyes’ preternatural appearance. “They couldn’t be getting ready to leave this early…or could they?”

  He held out the glasses to me, but even without them I saw the men moving about. It did look like they were preparing the ship to depart. I scanned the area, and at first saw no other vehicles. Then I noticed a pair of dark BMWs parked near the limousine that Sulyn’s people had picked us up in two days ago.

  “She’s already here, Pops.”

  “So it appears,” I agreed, frowning. “But, if they’re getting ready to leave this early, then something’s likely wrong.”

  Roderick nodded in the dimness. He had already cut the lights to the ambulance while we approached the pier. As soon as we stopped he cut the inside lights, as well.

  “We might require outside help,” he observed, lightly stroking his beard that had returned to its naturally white shade.

  “Only if Sulyn is in trouble. If we find out she is, then we should….”

  Alistair didn’t finish his statement, and his mouth dropped open as he watched Roderick’s Asian disguise continue to fall away. The gold flecks in his lavender eyes were aglow… Roderick was deeply worried.

  “It’s okay, Ali,” I said, patting his shoulder. Without listening to either one’s admonitions to stay put, I stepped out of the vehicle. “Let me find out what’s going on before we jump to conclusions. Don’t follow after me, until I send the signal that everything’s clear.”

  I ignored Alistair’s hissed rebuke, and prayed silently Roderick would prevent him from following me. Despite scurrying cat-like and low to the ground, it would be tough to remain invisible since I hadn’t worn dark clothing.

  The yacht’s engine suddenly sprang to life, and I feared it would move away from the pier in the next minute. I stood and sprinted for the ramp not yet disengaged from the ship. The kid who had been our driver that afternoon appeared atop the ramp. He called to the crewmember closest to him, motioning for the captain to hold off leaving the pier. He turned his attention back to me.

  “Come and join us, Mr. Barrow!” he said excitedly. “We are about to take another trip to Wong Chuk Kok Tsui!” He looked beyond me and waved for someone else to join us.

  Ah, damn it to hell!...

  Alistair had disobeyed my orders and soon joined me at the foot of the ramp.

  “I told you to stay put!”

  “And, you need my help, so let’s get moving!”

  “Where’s Roderick?”

  “He said something about contacting ‘The Company’, and said you’d understand what that meant.”

  True. But, I certainly didn’t agree with the ‘why’ behind Roderick’s decision to contact the agency’s bigger bosses in D.C.

  “Come quickly, Mr. Barrow and his father!” urged the kid, who preferred the name Stephen to his birth name, ‘Jeong Chan Lee’. “The ship is ready to leave!”

  I almost grabbed my son’s arm to keep him from climbing the ramp. My gut said it would be the smart thing. Not only did I fail to listen, I ignored the nervous smile on little Stephen’s face. In the glow emanating from the salon, along with the deck lights just turned on, several streams of sweat coursed down both sides of his face. The temperature had become much cooler since sunset, so unless the kid had recently finished a fairly intense workout, his sweat came from acute terror.

  “Where is Sulyn?” asked Alistair, as soon as we stepped onto the deck. “Are you okay? Stephen’s your name right?”

  No, he didn’t look okay. And, my kid should’ve stayed with Roderick. Th
e heaviness in my gut worsened by the second.

  Stephen’s hand shook as he disengaged the ramp. Then something whizzed by my head, followed by a sharp ‘thunk’. Alistair and I both turned in time to see Stephen’s lifeless form fall backward into the harbor as the ship pulled away from the pier. He probably never knew what hit him, as his glassy stare was more relaxed than his expression had been before the bullet penetrated his forehead.

  “Well, isn’t this nice. The two assholes I’ve looked forward to killing the most have saved me the extra trip to track them down,” said a familiar frigid voice. “But first, how about a little treasure hunt, William and Alistair? Hmmmm? After all, you’re just in time.”

  A small curl of smoke rose from the silencer attached to the same Steyr pistol I saw the other night. His luminescent blue eyes made him look even more predatory, or perhaps it was something else beyond the mere physical presence of this fiend. Whatever, my loathing of such profound evil—as well as Alistair’s abhorred expression—seemed to especially please him.

  Viktor Kaslow smiled.

  Chapter 21

  “This is beyond delightful!”

  Christian Morrow threw back his head as if giving in to an uproarious fit of laughter. But, he caught himself and angled over to the bar to refill his Scotch on the rocks. My favorite drink, as it has been for more than a century. And, yet, realizing I now shared my preferred beverage with such a loathsome character stripped the luster.

  At present, our prospects seemed grim at best. Facing the threat of ending up like little Stephen was enough to ensure Alistair’s and my full cooperation. Kaslow had brought us inside the salon, and I banked our immediate survival on the fact this monster had gone to some trouble as far as keeping things relatively clean. Most of the crew that had accompanied our journey earlier was absent, except for those whose seafaring knowledge was indispensable. I doubted Cheong Sulyn had skimped on that arrangement—especially when traveling at night, as superior navigation and security skills were necessary. Thinking of the terrible fear on Jeong Chan Lee’s youthful face less than twenty minutes ago, the poor kid had likely seen other employees of Sulyn disappear into the harbor in similar fashion to what would happen to him.