Tea with the Black Dragon (v1.4)

by R. A. MacAvoy

  “Shoot him already,” insisted Threve, trying to stand.

  “No shooting. I could cut his throat here and now, if I wanted. In fact he may be dead already. Ought to be. But I tell you Doug, this guy’s like a snake. No matter what you do to it, it’ll wriggle till nightfall.”

  Threve sneered. “It’s already nightfall. It’s almost dawn,” he answered sourly. “What are we gonna do about it?”

  Rasmussen smacked his hands on his thighs and stood.

  “We’re going to do what we planned. Dump them both off the Farallons, tied to concrete blocks. Live or dead, this guy can play with the lobsters.”

  “Help me carry him,” grunted Rasmussen, bending to lift. “No. Never mind,” he reconsidered, feeling the lightness of the burden. “You get ready to sail.” He started toward the water, plodding awkwardly, the limp form of his prisoner over one shoulder. Clouds of dust rose like smoke with every shuffling footstep.

  “I lose my gun and you start giving orders, huh?” rasped Threve. He touched his bruised neck gingerly.

  Rasmussen sighed. “You want to tote him?”

  Threve spat onto the dry road. “I had to carry the mother.”

  “You wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t beat her to death. Or strangled her.” His steps echoed on wood.

  Threve swallowed his rage, stalking ahead along the pier.

  The Caroline was a beautiful ship, even with all sails tightly furled. She was five tons of teak, trimmed in brass, and though she was primarily a sailing ship, she had the power to drive fifteen knots in calm seas.

  The night was failing when Long opened his eyes. The first cries of gulls broke through the deep cough of the engine. His head hurt and his vision was blurry.

  He regarded his arms, wound in a tube of white tape. Any attempt to pull them apart sent intolerable pain shooting up his left arm and shoulder. He tried to pull his feet under him and found they were also bound— tied with wire to a large concrete block.

  Next to him lay a bundle in a green oilcloth tarp. It was also tied to the block. After a moments confusion he knew what that bundle had to be. He sat up and looked closer at it, forced finally to believe. Thoughts resounded through the hollows of his skull. He listened to them without interest.

  So he was like other men in this way too. He believed what he wanted to believe: what he felt he had to believe. Until, of course, time slammed him into the meaningless truth. Martha was dead and he was going to die. Even without these men and their absurd, murderous thievery, he would die soon, for he was old and his search was over,

  He’d found what he sought. Truth. He had no questions any more. It was not what he wanted, said a small voice within him, but it was what he’d chased so long.

  The little man by the cave in Honan must have been mad, to appear so happy. Knowledge, of the truth led only to despair.

  He extended his hands and raucous, lancing pain mixed into the cries of the gulls. He pulled the oilcloth gently away from Martha, Macnamara’s face.

  That face was lacerated and bruised purple, and about the nose and mouth were marks like sunburn. Her long hair, grizzled brown and white, lay tangled over her forehead. He brushed the hair away.

  “Ah, Martha,” he whispered. “I can’t believe three days was enough.”

  He stroked the sad, mottled face. “I had a question to ask. I’d saved it for centuries. When I met you I wasted my time with play, and I did not ask it. No matter.” He swallowed painfully. “The play was more important.”

  The Caroline dipped into a wave as it left the shelter of the Bay and cut into the Pacific. Long raised himself up and peered west, into the wind.

  So this was the rapprochement with the sea he had avoided for so long. Waves slapped the wood, sullenly. Long still did not understand water.

  He’d traded his future for the chance to say good-bye to a woman who was already dead. That farewell had been important. But why?

  Was anything important, here on the edge of the irremedial loss? Cold air filled his lungs. His breath steamed. He heard the two men moving about in the bow of the boat, but he did not take his eyes from the sea.

  The horizon to the right and behind him was streaked with brilliance. The near side of each wave glistened. He sat in a quiet which was divorced from both pain and joy. Even his curiosity had left him.

  Gaunt black rocks broke through the waves in the distance ahead. A few ships dotted the water far from shore.

  He took one of Martha’s cold hands in his own and looked again at her face.

  Suddenly he started, held his breath, and leaned toward her. Again he saw the small cloud of white fog dissolve against the green tarpaulin. He lifted her head on his hand and whispered, “Martha?”

  Blue eyes opened, brighter than the dawn sky. They wandered unfocused. “Who?”

  “M-Mayland Long,” he whispered, stumbling over his own name.

  Her hands floundered in the tarp, like those of a baby in swaddling. “Oh!” Like a baby, her eyes were blue and vague. “I’ve… I’ve been so worried. About you.”

  He stripped away the oilcloth, shaking her gently to keep her awake. “There is something I must ask you,” he began.

  With great effort, she raised her head. “About Liz? My daughter. Did you call the police?”

  She lifted herself further, grimacing. “What’s wrong with your hands?” Martha blinked and began to look around her.

  “Your daughter is safe, I trust.” He spoke eagerly, his voice unsteady. “I left her in a bush. I haven’t called the police, although Fred may have. Must have, by now.

  “But hear me, Martha. What I want to say, is that I love you. Is that all right with you?”

  Martha Macnamara took in all this without blinking. Her smile was a painful, cracked thing. “Of course, Mayland. I’m delighted to hear it, because I love you.” She tried to laugh and collapsed to the deck in dizziness. “Couldn’t you tell?”

  He closed his eyes and gave a sigh that was half a growl. In one fluid motion he got to his feet. The wire around his ankles restrained him, and he suddenly remembered their perilous situation. Carelessly, he reached down and snapped the wire.

  Mayland Long smiled, and the red sun broke over the hills to the southeast. His lips drew back from his teeth and he held his bound arms out before him. White tape caught the new light and his bronze skin glowed. He threw back his head and laughed—a laugh neither English nor Chinese, but filled with glad thunder. The tape gleamed ruddy in the sunlight, and as he strained against it it fell away like charred paper.

  His injured arm fell to his side. The right hand he extended, impossible fingers spread wide, as though he would grab the sun. All pain and weakness were gone, drowned in a flood of simple joy.

  He heard running footsteps and turned. “He sure ain’t dead!” shouted Douglas Threve, who stood before Long holding a heavy steel wrench. “I’ll fix that!”

  Long dodged the blow smoothly and struck Threve’s arm. The wrench clattered on the deck.

  Long struck again. His fingers closed around Threve’s neck, thumb pressed under the chin. He lifted Threve quickly, and with the motion one makes to flick open a cigarette lighter. Long snapped the man’s neck. He tossed the body aside.

  Floyd Rasmussen stood before him, braced against the cabin wall. The barrel of the pistol that he held was shaking.

  Long caught his eye. “You know better than that.” He spoke gently, chiding. He heard behind him Martha crawl out of her rutch of oilcloth.

  Rasmussen licked his lips and slid down against the wall. “God! Can’t you be killed?”

  “Oh yes,” answered Long. “But not disposed of. If you kill me you will have me with you forever.”

  “Hypnosis,” stated Rasmussen without conviction.

  “No one has been killed, here, except this man. Who is my responsibility.” Long’s voice was measured and reasonable. It held the blond man pinned against the wall. “Now you have the opportunity you thought was lost forever. No
past murder forces you to shoot. If you do, it will be a fresh decision, and will seal your future once again.”

  Waves slapped against the pilotless craft, turning it out of its course. Wind whistled in the rigging.

  “No one is dead? The mother…” Rasmussen looked wildly about. Long stepped aside to reveal the empty wrappings. “She is risen. She is not here,” he whispered.

  Rasmussen dropped the gun and put both hands to his head. Instantly Long dived for the cabin wall and brought Rasmussen down. The big man clawed ineffectually against the single lean brown hand which closed upon his throat. He gasped and choked. Long’s face was set and deliberate. He reached his thumb under Rasmussen’s jaw.

  “Oolong. No.” Martha Macnamara spoke with authority. “All you said to him is true. I don’t want you to carry him as a burden for the rest of your life.”

  He raised his face to hers. His eyes flared yellow: feral, merciless. Her own eyes were half closed in a puffy face.

  “It’ll be nothing new to me.”

  “No!” she repeated, unwavering. Blue eyes and gold eyes met: two colors of flame. “Everything is new, forever,” she stated. “It is always the first time.”

  The gold eyes dropped and the black head bowed. Martha’s hands went gingerly to her head. She winced, groaning.

  Mayland Long cleared his throat. “Then, Martha, I suggest you search Mr. Rasmussen’s pockets for the adhesive tape he carries… And there will be a small hunting knife by it. Be careful.”

  She bound Rasmussen while Long held him down by the neck, feeling panic pulse beneath his hand. When Martha was done they both stood and walked to the stem.

  “Can you handle a boat?” inquired Martha.

  “Not at all,” was the prompt answer.

  Her broken lips tried to smile. “I can’t believe there is something you can’t do.” Her hands sought out a tangled, fallen braid and began to work it free.

  “I have avoided travel by water,” answered Long, as a swell pitched the Caroline sideways.

  “Because of another prophecy?”

  “Because I get sick,” he replied. Only a narrow band of dark iris was visible as a smile spread from his eyes to his mouth. “And because I’m afraid of water. Can you, Martha? Handle a boat? The question is of more than academic interest.”

  She shrugged. Her blue dress was creased and stained. It had lost half its buttons. “I can turn the wheel.”

  Liz Macnamara sat at the sergeants desk as the officers of the day patrol came on duty. She was acutely aware of her dishabille. The sergeant himself sat in another room, behind a glass door, talking on the phone. He had been in there for the last ten minutes.

  She heard that door open. “Miss Macnamara,” he began. “That’s M-a-c-n-a-m-a-r-a?”

  “Yes, yes! You have all that.”

  “Don’t get excited. Miss.” He picked up a pencil and bounced the eraser end a few times against the desk blotter.

  “What do you mean?” Liz wailed. “They’ve killed my mother! They’re going to kill…”

  “Mr. Long. Mayland Long, M-a-y-1-a-n-d,” interjected the sergeant. His eyes were sleepy, his girth considerable.

  “Yes, that’s his name.”

  “And your mother’s first name is Martha?”

  “Oh God, yes, what of it? Do something.”

  “We have,” the policeman said. “Two days ago a Mr. Mayland Long reported your mother missing. He didn’t have anything more for us to go on, so there wasn’t much we could do, but an hour ago a kid walked in on the Palo Alto police with a crazy story about this man Long. And a tape. Since then all the departments on the Peninsula have been on the alert. ‘Course, we hadn’t thought to check the Bay until you came to us with your information. Miss Macnamara.

  “Thrown into a tree?” He dropped the pencil.

  The young woman before him wriggled in her seat. There was a leaf sticking out of her hair, a long slender leaf like a donkey’s ear. Her arms were scratched and that bathrobe deserved an R rating.

  The sergeant was a fan of old movies. He couldn’t decide whether Liz Macnamara looked more like Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo, but despite her tangled hair and grease smears she sure looked like something.

  “Tree or bush. A laurel. In Golden Gate Park. What does it matter?” Liz folded her arms tightly, hugging herself.

  “I’m sorry about your mother,” the sergeant said.

  Liz nodded miserably.

  “And considering what you’ve said about your relationship with these two kidnappers I think you need a lawyer.”

  “Hell with that,” moaned the young woman. The sergeant’s mouth twitched sympathetically.

  “Still, there’s not much more I can say to you until you’re represented by counsel…”

  At that moment the outer door opened and Fred Frisch walked in, carrying his tape recorder and tugging on his moustache. Seeing Liz, he escaped the guiding hand of the officer who had brought him in, and he picked his way among the desks to her.

  “I’m sorry, Liz,” he began. “I tried… I mean, do you remember me at all?”

  She stood, examining him closely. Loose jointed, with limp blond hair, and eyes like a Bassett Hound: was this the fellow who had saved Long’s life? “Of course, Fred. Mr. Long talked about you tonight. He said you… kept him going.”

  “You’ve seen him since? Is he…”

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid they’ve killed him by now. They killed my mother.” She sagged back into the chair. “And it’s all my fault.”

  Fred swallowed. “Hey. It’s not that way. I know all about it. I found your disk file at RasTech and printed it.”

  She glanced up in amazement and Fred shifted from foot to foot. “He wanted me to. Mr. Long—the Black Dragon.”

  “The what?”

  Ignoring the sergeant behind his desk, Fred dragged a chair across the floor and sat. “His name is really Black Dragon, in Chinese. I really admire the guy, you know?”

  “He liked you,” responded Elizabeth, blinking away tears.

  “Did he say that?”

  “Yes, and that he loved my mother. But they’re going to kill him. Even he thought so, when he threw me out of the car.”

  “I don’t know,” said Fred, frowning and blowing out his moustache. “He’s a hard man to kill.”

  Liz turned to him with the dawning of real curiosity. “Have you always had that moustache?” she asked.

  “Hummm,” snorted the sergeant behind his desk.

  Martha held the glossy, many-spoked wheel, leaning against it. The fat red sun had climbed a few degrees into the sky, and she had turned the nose of the Caroline toward it. Daylight touched the cold water, making the air milky with fog.

  Mayland Long stood beside her with a glass of water in his hand. She started, for she had not heard him approach. Gratefully, she took the glass and drank from it.

  “Oh yes, that’s better,” she said. He stood behind her and said nothing.

  “Talk to me, Mayland. My head hurts.”

  His answer came slowly. “I can’t think of anything to say.” With great care he ran his finger through her loose hair, combing it. Martha’s battered features eased into a smile. “I can’t braid it for you without my other hand.”

  “That feels wonderful,” she murmured, peering into the pale obscurity at small dark shapes that had not been there a minute ago. Were they rocks?

  She shivered. “I think I’ve been cold forever.”

  “There I can help,” chuckled Mayland Long, and he put his arm around her waist as he pressed her body against his.

  “Oh my!” she exclaimed. “You’re a furnace!” She touched his bare arm wonderingly. It was smooth, with no trace of the sticky tape. It radiated heat. He bent his face over hers. It, too, was very warm.

  “So hot! You’ve used yourself up,” she said.

  He raised his head and stared out. “No, I’m not quite used up. But I thought I was, early this morning.” Frowning, he a
dded, “My understanding was… imperfect.” A movement on the water distracted him.

  “Look.” She did so. One of the dark shapes in the fog had become a boat, a Coast Guard cutter. It veered by the bow of the Caroline, which bobbed in the faster boat’s wake.

  Mr. Long strode to the stem to turn off the engine, that being the only action in their power to assist the boarders, while Mrs. Macnamara smoothed her dress. With old-fashioned courtesy and a certain degree of self-satisfaction, they welcomed their rescuers aboard.