by Paul Kenyon
"Very well, Nigel," she said, "you can pick me up for dinner tonight. I'll expect you to give me a personal tour of Hong Kong."
"I shall give you a very personal tour, Baroness."
She stared, sphinxlike, at him for a long moment. Then, without warning, she leaned over and planted a kiss full on his lips.
He looked startled. She felt him stiffen with surprise. Then he returned the kiss. His breath smelled of sherry and pipe tobacco. The kiss grew long, intimate. His hands were on her shoulders. They slid down to come to rest on the undersides of her breasts. Her hands went lightly around his body, moved. They both were breathing hard.
She broke away. "That's enough for now," she said. "We'll talk about the British surrender later. Pick me up at seven for cocktails."
She was out of the Rolls before the chauffeur could come around and open the door. She ran up the steps, past the stone lions, through the glass doors. Reflected in them she could see the other three green Rolls Royces pull up behind the one she'd just quitted. Uniformed bellboys were already swarming around them, unloading the luggage. She touched her hair, a signal to Sumo. She entered the lobby and waited for him to catch up.
She'd found out what she wanted to know. Pickering had given her a very expert frisking while they kissed. His hand had rested on the Bernadelli VB in her bra just long enough to trace its outlines. She'd be willing to lay odds that he could tell the caliber and make from that brief caress.
Her hands had been busy too. She'd felt the thin wire running parallel to his spine, one end connected to something about the size and shape of a transistor radio at his wrist. There hadn't been time to trace the other wire, but it obviously led to a microphone. Pickering was wired for sound. He'd been bugging her.
Sumo was beside her, waiting for his orders. There was nobody else within ten feet of them. Her lips unmoving, she said, "Tommy, how long will it take you to contact an NSA communications satellite?"
He consulted the orbital computer in his head. "Not more than fifteen minutes after we're checked in."
"Good. I want you to run a check on Major Nigel Pickering. I need an answer by seven tonight."
Sumo nodded. He pushed his way through the cavernous, multistory lobby with its boutiques and cafes, heading for the reservation desk. Penelope sat down at one of the low tables to wait for Wharton to get her checked into her suite. A piano, violin, and cello combo was playing a Burt Bacharach tune. A Chinese waiter in black cloth slippers shuffled up and asked her what she'd have.
"Nothing," she said. "I'll only be a few minutes." Wharton had been explicit when he made the reservations. The Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini mustn't be kept waiting.
She was in the Marco Polo Suite five minutes later. Two minutes after that a maid and uniformed manservant served tea.
Sumo had an answer for her before five. He came beaming into the suite, declined an offer of a crumpet, and said: "A piece of cake! The ERTS environmental monitoring satellite was over the South China Sea a half hour ago. NASA doesn't know it, but Fort Meade bugged the infrared scanner. I hit the cloud layer over Hong Kong with a coded laser pulse. Key ran your question through the big computer. The computer took about eight nanoseconds to riffle through the files of MIfive, MIsix, the British Colonial Office, Scotland Yard — the works."
The Baroness put down her teacup. "And what did the computer find, Tommy?"
"It's what the computer didn't find. There's no record of a Major Nigel Pickering, either as a member of the Hong Kong police force or as a Foreign Office official."
"So Major Nigel Pickering doesn't exist?"
"He doesn't check out at all. If the guy really was a career policeman, he'd be in someone's files. Scotland Yard's or the Provincial Forces Registry's. Major Nigel Pickering never existed."
"That's very interesting." The Baroness sipped her tea. "When I called the resident aide a few minutes ago to thank him for Major Pickering's services, he confirmed that the Major had been assigned by his office."
Sumo looked startled. "But he can't be legit!"
"He isn't. Nothing easier than to take in a political administrator with forged credentials. Or even a security force. After all, we managed to get one of our men a top position with the Red Chinese secret police with false papers a few years ago. An Annapolis graduate, I believe. By the time it occurs to anyone to check, the agent's job is done."
"Are you going to blow the whistle on him?"
"No, I'd rather find out who he is and who he's working for."
"Who do you think he's working for?"
She laughed. "Nigel is a very attractive man. Tonight he's working for me."
* * *
Mr. Sim took the phone from his servant. It was soft and yielding, made of rubber covered in felt. Mr. Sim never allowed anything as unpleasant as cold hard plastic to touch his skin.
"Yes?" he said, "I am waiting for your report."
He listened for two minutes, wallowing luxuriantly in the warm mudpack that filled the motorized tub. He played absentmindedly with the controls, wheeling the tub around to face the window looking out on his flower garden, blooming with scarlet opium poppies.
"So," he said finally, "she is an American and very beautiful and there is reason to be suspicious of her purpose in Hong Kong. I shall have to arrange to meet her, shan't I?"
He listened again.
"Yes," he said, "you have done well. You shall have your reward. You have a transformer with you? Very well, dial the following numbers and you will get your trickle of current. Ten minutes this time, for pleasing me." He dictated the day's code and handed the phone back to the servant.
"Just think," Mr. Sim murmured, half to himself. "Only a month ago he was a highly educated man with a future ahead of him. Now he's a juicehead. He'd sell his soul for a few milliamperes of electrical current in his hypothalamus."
The servant grinned, anxious as a dog to please Mr. Sim. He was a juicehead too.
10
Pickering's jaw dropped when he saw what she was wearing: a sleeveless silk cheongsam so tight that it might almost have been spray-painted on her naked torso. It was shorter than the ones worn by the local girls — mini length with a slit that traveled all the way up to the hip. And Penelope's figure was a good deal fuller than those of the Chinese dolls the cheongsam was invented for.
There was no question of wearing a bra under it; the sculpted bodice gave her precarious support. The Bernadelli VB automatic was tucked away in her shoulder bag.
"Baroness!" he said at last. "We'll be visiting some rough districts tonight. That dress is dangerous, indecent, and probably illegal."
"I feel perfectly safe, Nigel darling. I have a police escort." Her jade eyes, the color of the cheongsam, gave him a mocking challenge. "You are a policeman? Aren't you?"
"Hmm, well. Perhaps you'd better take a wrap. We'll be on the water. It may be chilly."
She laughed and took his arm. His eyes traveled to the twin protuberances swaying dangerously in front of her. Whatever he was thinking, it wasn't about the Bernadelli VB whose outline he had traced earlier.
"I don't feel at all chilly, Nigel. Do you?"
Dinner was at a floating restaurant, a triple-decked craft with a gold and scarlet pagoda superstructure, as gaudy with lights as a Christmas tree. They ate fried prawn and stuffed crab claws, Szechuan cabbage and meat dumplings, steamed pigeon hearts and rice, finishing with ice cream flamed in brandy. They were sitting over cigarettes and Cognac, when Pickering said, "Would you like to have a look at the water people?"
"That sounds fun."
He gestured at the lights that covered the harbor in an endless floating carpet. "More than a hundred thousand people live out there on junks, sampans, scows — anything that'll float. They live, work, raise families, and die there, on craft that aren't much more than floating baskets. Very squalid. A breeding place for crime, drugs, and prostitution." He gave her an odd look. "Are you sure you want to see it?"
"You p
romised me a personal tour, Nigel. Let's get started."
She rose from the table. Every male on deck turned his head as she passed, the cheongsam outlining her spine down to the cleft in her buttocks. Pickering threw some money on the table and followed.
The sampan girl who'd brought them out was waiting at the gangway. They climbed aboard the tiny bobbing craft and settled themselves under the wicker canopy. The girl was tiny and fragile, dressed in black pajama pants and a tattered overblouse. "Chiang k'ou," Pickering ordered. "Lu hsing."
She nodded vigorously and pushed off with a long bamboo pole. The ancient motor sputtered into life.
"The police can't do much about keeping track of what goes on in this floating rabbit warren," Pickering said. "They leave them pretty much alone."
He didn't appear to have noticed his slip — The police. They. A policeman would have said, "we."
They were skinning by a matchstick craft that couldn't have been more than sixteen feet long. A withered crone in a conical hat crouched aft, cooking rice over a charcoal brazier. There were six small naked children clambering about the gunwales. A chubby black puppy was tethered in the stern.
"Rather crowded," Penelope observed. "Six children and a dog."
"Oh, the dog isn't a pet. It's a great delicacy. They're fattening it up. It'll end up in the cooking pot. The Chinese believe that dog meat insulates you against the cold."
The floating slum was getting thicker, a solid jam of barrel-topped hulks. Their sampan moved through a cleared traffic channel no more than ten feet wide. Penelope was close enough to touch the ramshackle hutches on either side. It smelled like any slum: rancid cooking oil, sweat, human excrement. A toothless old man waited politely until they passed before urinating over the side. A little girl, barely five years old, held out her hand and chirped, "You give me tip, Missy?" Penelope dug into her handbag and dropped a Hong Kong dollar into the outstretched hand.
Now they were chugging through an alley that was gay with paper lanterns. Young girls, some of them as exquisitely beautiful as porcelain dolls, leaned over the gunwales and called to the passing traffic.
"The brothel boats," Pickering said. "A floating red-light district. They're called singsong girls."
Pickering's presence caused a flurry of excitement. He was European, therefore rich. Penelope's presence didn't seem to discourage the singsong girls. They shouted in his direction: "You likee good time, mister?" "I do what you like. French you, bead job, anything." The girl making the offer was stark naked. She demonstrated graphically, making an O of thumb and forefinger and jerking a finger of her other hand back and forth through it.
"What's a bead job?"
"Local custom," Pickering said. "Beads are inserted in the anus, one at a time during foreplay. The whole string is pulled out quickly at the moment of climax. Supposed to intensify the enjoyment." He gave her a wolfish look.
A pretty child of eleven or twelve gave them a sunny smile and waved as they approached. She turned and called excitedly to someone inside the bamboo hutch. An old woman appeared. She patted the child on the head, then called to Pickering, "Very nice! Virgin! Only ten Hong Kong dollah." Pickering shook his head. The old woman, undeterred, lifted the girl's blouse to show the swelling young buds. When Pickering didn't respond, she pulled down the girl's pants to display the hairless pubes. The girl continued to smile cheerfully. When it became apparent that Pickering wasn't going to buy, the old woman spat over the side and screamed, "Ch'ang chi! Shou ts ai nu!"
"What did she say?"
"She called me a miser and you a whore. Not in that order."
"What will happen to the little girl?"
"Nothing that hasn't already happened to her a thousand times. She'll end up diseased or drug addicted. Or she'll be sold to one of the mama-sans on shore and trained as a professional whore. Or if she's lucky, some rich and foolish old man who believes she's really a virgin will buy her."
"Is vice organized in Hong Kong?"
"Not really. The local mob — they call it the Golden Dragon Gang — controls a few brothels and operates a protection racket for the mamas. But there's too much competition from free-lance talent — refugee women who'll sell themselves for a bowl of rice. They're still coming in by the hundreds every day from Red China. We've got two million of them. They eke out a miserable existence. Prostitution, petty crime, drugs…"
"The drugs are controlled, aren't they?"
He gave her a quick, searching look. "Yes. Highly profitable. The Golden Dragon's been getting some competition in recent years, though. A European's responsible. The Communists decided to make him their conduit for the opium and heroin they're trying to peddle to us decadent Westerners. Hard for the Golden Dragon to compete with that kind of thing."
Penelope leaned a breast against his arm. "What's this European's name?" she asked ingenuously.
He gave her another sharp look. "I'm not allowed to tell you that, Penny. It wouldn't do now, would it?"
"Nigel, darling, take me to an opium den."
"You're not serious?"
"I'm quite serious, darling. I'd love to see one."
He leaned around the canopy and said something to the sampan girl. The boat made a tight U and began to chug back across the harbor, toward the mainland side. Pickering pointed to a relatively unlit patch beyond the riotous display of neon.
"We're going to the Walled City. It's not ordinarily a good idea for Westerners to go there."
"Is that one of the 'rough districts' you warned me about?"
"Quite."
"Too bad one of us doesn't have a gun," she teased him.
She was rewarded by a slight stiffening of his body. After a while he said, "I wish I could fathom you, Baroness."
"Perhaps I'm unfathomable, darling. What about you?"
He gave a short laugh. "Nothing mysterious about me. Just a hardworking member of the Hong Kong police force."
"But you haven't been working very hard tonight, have you, darling?"
For an answer he leaned over to kiss her. She met him halfway. She parted her lips and his tongue reached deep inside. A large competent hand closed around a breast, molded by the tight silk of the cheongsam. He explored its contours, then shifted, to the other breast. His thumb found the protuberant cone of the nipple and began to stroke it. The sensation was exquisite through the silk. Penelope locked her tongue with his, and felt between his legs. He was satisfactorily big and hard.
"Penelope," he whispered, "let's just move a little farther in under the canopy…" His hard leathery hands were pushing her backward.
She twisted to a sitting position. "Not just yet, Nigel darling. You were going to take me to an opium den first."
He took it in good humor. "Very well, my dear. An opium den it is."
The first thing that struck Penelope about the Walled City was its silence. Everywhere else in Hong Kong there had been noise: traffic and strident Chinese voices. But here, the inhabitants seemed to be intimidated, watchful. It was an area no larger than three city blocks, crammed with fifty thousand miserable lives. Penelope caught glimpses of the misery down the dark, dank alleys they passed: haggard prostitutes, silent ragged children squatting in the gutters, a blind leper.
"Actually," Pickering told her, "our right to be in the Walled City at all is a bit cloudy, legally speaking. The Chinese were reluctant to part with this district when they originally leased Hong Kong to Britain. We police it rather lightly, with due regard for Peking's sensibilities. As a result it's a sinkhole."
He steered her into a garbage-strewn alley, past a trio of lurking toughs — young Chinese in sharp clothing, with slicked-back hair. There was a shuttered door at the end of the alley. Pickering kicked it with a booted foot. A slot opened at eye level. "K'ai," Pickering ordered. The door creaked open.
The proprietor seemed to know Pickering. He smiled and bowed, and said, "Huan ying, huan ying," over and over. Pickering looked coldly at the shriveled little man and shouldered
his way inside.
He pushed aside a beaded curtain, and Penelope looked through into hell. It was a room about thirty feet square, rank and steamy as a jungle. Tiers of long wooden shelves jutted, three deep, from floor to ceiling. The shelves were stocked with people — pipestem people with gaunt yellow faces and sunken eyes. A few of the eyes swung incuriously in their direction, then returned to contemplation of an inner landscape.
Pickering pointed at a skeletonlike Chinese in tattered shorts. He was puffing on a long-stemmed day pipe, his limbs giving an occasional twitch. "Some of the older patrons still smoke opium. But most of them are hooked on newer drugs like heroin." His voice was dry, impersonal.
"More profitable drugs?" she suggested.
"Quite. Possibly worth fifty million dollars a year to — whoever sells them." He pointed to a cross-legged woman who was heating a folded piece of foil over a candle. Heavy fumes circled her head. She followed the fumes with a straw, inhaling the long white streamers until they dissipated. "Heroin," he said. "They breathe it instead of shooting it. It's called 'chasing the dragon.' "
"I've seen enough, Nigel."
"Have you, Baroness?" His voice had an odd edge to it. "I thought you were interested in the drug problem in Hong Kong."
She surveyed him blandly. "I'm fascinated, darling. Who's responsible for it?"
His hand on her arm tightened. "We both know that, don't we, Penny?"
"Whatever do you mean, darling?"
"I am." He squeezed her arm again. "And you are. We Westerners hooked the Chinese on opium a century and a half ago. Good business. Marvelous for trade, and all that. Now it's come back to haunt us — in the form of heroin and morphine."
"And make some of us rich."
He gave her an amused glance. "Yes, that too."
Penelope thought they'd gone far enough in that direction. She put on a spoiled pout. "Nigel, darling, this isn't amusing any more. Take me back to the hotel."
