by Paul Kenyon
Authority was a magical passport too. The guard slung his gun over his shoulder and took the nurse's elbow.
"Are you feeling better, dear?" Penelope said.
The nurse mumbled thickly. Penelope thought she was trying to say, "Help." She pressed the carotid a shade harder.
"Watch the patient," Penelope said authoritatively. "And pick up those ampules. Take your grimy hands off her, you fool! I've got to get her to a couch."
She marched the nurse past the guards. "Can you walk, dear?" she asked. "There, there, it's only a few steps."
She opened the first door she saw and pushed the nurse inside. Miraculously, she was back in the room where she'd first been taken prisoner. She knew the way out now. She pushed the nurse into Mr. Sim's puffy chair. The nurse opened her mouth to scream.
Penelope clipped her precisely on the point of the jaw. The nurse collapsed into the chair. It swallowed her, leaving her head, arms and legs sprouting bizarrely from the billowing surface.
Penelope swayed then and almost fainted. She sank into a mushroom-shaped hassock and lowered her head between her knees. The rush of blood to her brain revived her. She hyperventilated greedily, getting the oxygen into her bloodstream. The hardest part was still ahead.
The big egg-shaped door was closed for the night. It was padded and upholstered in some rich fabric, but Penelope knew that underneath its bulging surface was a four-inch-thick titanium-steel alloy.
She found the lock — a dimpled navel in the upholstery. She scrabbled with her fingernails, tearing away the fabric.
The keyhole yawned, big as a mouth. Penelope unzipped the throat of her dress and found the broken-off shoe heel she'd tucked down the middle of her bra. She jammed it into the hole.
The book of matches was in her bra, too. She lit one and, holding it at arm's length and shielding her eyes, she touched the flame to the thermite core of the heel.
The thermite fizzed into ignition. Penelope backed away, feeling the fierce heat on her face and bare arms. It was as bright and white as an arc light. It burned for two minutes.
When at last it sputtered out, a great melting puddle of steel was dripping from the lock. The upholstery was smoldering. Penelope pushed the door. It swung ponderously open.
She closed it behind her. She was in the Chinese garden. Crickets chirped and the stars were clear and bright above. The wall and the main gate were across the garden, fifty feet away.
She melted into the shadows, flattened herself down behind some plantings. The aromatic essence of flowering ginseng came to her nostrils. She was lying beside a low border of smooth, perfectly round stones about the size of grapefruits.
She could see the guard standing in front of the pagoda-roofed booth by the gate. He was a squat, chunky man in blue pajamas and cap. He was holding a light SIG automatic rifle by its pistol grip, the barrel dangling negligently next to his leg. There was a silencer on the muzzle; Mr. Sim was considerate of his neighbors.
She'd have to cross fifty feet of open space to get to him. The Swiss-made SIG weighed only ten pounds. He'd have it up and firing, one-handed, before she could cover half that distance.
A light went on above. Penelope looked up. The window had pink bars on it. Somebody had discovered she was missing.
Whatever she was going to do, it had better be fast.
She unzipped the pink dress to her waist, reached behind her and unhooked the bra. Her breasts fell free. She shrugged out of the straps, not bothering to zip up the dress again.
She fastened the ends of the bra to the trunks of a pair of dwarf ornamental trees, growing a yard apart. She hoped they'd hold.
She pried one of the grapefruit-size rocks loose and dropped it into a cup of the bra. She checked the position of the guard for distance and trajectory. She'd never practiced with the polymer catapult; she knew she had only a small chance of hitting her target the first time.
An alarm went off. The guard looked up at the lighted window. How long did she have? A couple of minutes at most.
She hauled back on the bra with all her weight and strength. It stretched reluctantly. It was like drawing a bow with a thousand-pound pull. The ornamental trees creaked.
She let go. The rock arced through the air. It caught the guard squarely in the face. He went backward, his legs flailing, and the back of his head squished against the guard booth. His skull had cracked like a walnut.
She wasted a few seconds undoing the ends of the bra from the tree trunks. It wouldn't do for them to find out about it. Balling the bra in her hand, she dashed across the fifty feet of open space and made the shelter of the booth. She paused to listen. Nobody had seen her.
There was one more obstacle: the outside guard. She passed a weary hand over her eyes. God, she was tired! She'd give anything for an upper, a real one.
She peered through the Judas-hole. The guard was standing, his back to her. facing the roadway. There was no traffic outside at the moment.
The door opened inward. She kicked it open, grasping the ends of the bra in either hand. In a smooth, flowing motion she swung the bra over the guard's neck and jerked it toward her. Her knee was in the small of his back; her shoulder braced against his upper spine. She pulled and pulled with the last dregs of her strength.
He flopped like a landed fish. He was big, strong. He almost got away from her a couple of times. She slid her knee upward and got the sole of her foot against his spine. She tugged sharply on the bra. There was a snapping sound. She stepped aside and the guard toppled backward into the booth.
She stood there exhausted. Fifty feet behind her an egg-shaped door swung open. A dozen armed men boiled out into the garden. Penelope staggered out into the roadway.
When he saw the lights and activity around the entrance to the villa, Skytop drove past without slowing down.
"Something's up," he said.
Wharton's muffled voice came from the rear of the van. "There was a guy lying on the ground. Guard's uniform. He looked dead. Broken neck."
"The Baroness's work?"
"Looks like it."
"That was the outside guard. She must've got out, then."
"Maybe not. Suppose they nailed her at the entrance?"
The winding mountain road curved sharply. Skytop pulled over, around the bend out of sight of the villa below. There was a breathtaking view of the colored lights of Hong Kong below. The two men got out and doubled back through the roadside vegetation. Here, slightly above Mr. Sim's villa, they could see into part of the courtyards and gardens. It looked as if a search was going on. Armed guards were spreading out in a grid.
"It's a beehive," Skytop said. "We can't get in there tonight."
"The hell we can't!"
"Dan, are you out of your mind?"
"The Baroness may be in trouble. She needs us."
A slow grin spread on Skytop's face. "Dan, you may be crazy, but I like you."
An hour later, when the activity at the villa had died down, two black-clad figures slipped along the outside wall until they came to what looked like a blind spot. A ginkgo tree spread its luxurious foliage inside the wall. The two figures drew weapons that looked like flare pistols.
"Me first," Skytop said.
He aimed the Spyder at one of the upper branches of the ginkgo tree. He pulled the trigger. A plastic line spat out of the muzzle, pulled by an explosive piton. The piton hit the branch and anchored itself.
Skytop walked up the wall, the powerful spring reeling him in as he went. At the top he cut the fine with the snicker blade and thumbed another piton into the chamber. Its iris clamped down on the severed end of the line, ready for another shot.
Wharton was next. He shot the thread-thin line into the tree and joined Skytop in the branches. They holstered the Spyders and dropped lightly to the ground.
"One of the upper windows, I think," Wharton said. "Ground floor's too risky. That one over in the corner is dark. Let's go."
They moved, crouching, through the ornamenta
l garden. They made it to the wall of the villa and looked up at the target window.
And every fight in the place went on. They whirled around, blinded by the searchlight beam that was playing on them.
"Don't move!" a tough, competent voice said. "Don't move an inch."
Their eyes adjusted enough to see a blurred ring of guards pointing weapons at them. Slowly, reluctantly, Skytop and Wharton raised their hands.
Mr. Sim sailed grandly into the garden, wearing a yellow silk robe. He looked like a vast animated lemon.
"Nice of you to drop in gentlemen," he said. "Mr. Skytop, isn't it? And Mr. Wharton? You've missed the Baroness, if that's who you're looking for. She abandoned my hospitality more than an hour ago."
"What did you do to her?" Wharton snarled.
"Do to her? I gave her pleasure. I'll give her more pleasure when I get her back."
"You won't get her back!"
"We'll see. My outside agents are working on it now."
"Listen here, you fat tub of blubber…"
"I only listen to pleasant things. And now I'm going to do the two of you a favor. He turned at the approach of a tall cadaverous man in striped pajamas. "Ah, Dr. Jolly, just in time. We've lost the Baroness for the time being. But here are a pair of substitutes for her. You can start on them in the morning."
* * *
Penelope stumbled down the hillside, avoiding the road. Twice she'd seen cars cruise slowly down the road, playing searchlights. Mr. Sim had thrown out his net quickly.
The mountain was dotted with ornate villas and the newer high-risers, but most of the windows were dark at this hour. She stayed away from all of them. Down below, the colored lights of the harbor sparkled like a fairyland. If she got down there, maybe she could lose herself among the crowds.
She needed help. If she could get to a phone, she could call Wharton at the Peninsula.
A rattling, squeaking sound grew in the night air. Penelope dropped to the ground. A hundred yards away, silvery in the moonlight, a cable car rattled up the slope. The Peak tram! She was somewhere near the lower station. The Victoria Peak police station would be nearby.
She got up with difficulty. It was getting hard to think. Great waves of darkness and fatigue swept through her head. The police. They'd help her!
A crossroads was ahead, with a police call box under a light pole. There was a white-uniformed policeman calling in. Penelope squinted. He was a solid-looking man with a red mustache. She stumbled into the circle of light.
She knew how she must look — pale, drawn, muddy from the falls she'd taken. The pink dress was torn and her arms and legs were scratched by branches. She clutched the balled-up bra in one hand; her breasts were loose under the dress. Her hair was tangled.
The policeman caught her before she fell. "Is something wrong, Miss?" he said.
"Help me," she said weakly.
"Of course I will, Miss. Now you just sit 'ere on this bench and tell me about it."
"I'm the Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini. I've got to reach a Mr. Wharton at the Peninsula Hotel. If he isn't there, a Mr. Skytop or Mr. Sumo will do. Could you…" She paused, feeling dizzy."…could you ask one of them to come fetch me?"
His eyes had narrowed while she talked. He said, "Nothing simpler, Miss. Now just wait 'ere a mo' and I'll be back directly."
He stepped over to the call box. His back to her and his hand cradling the mouthpiece, he put through the call. "Patch me through to Major Pickering, and hurry, man!"
Penelope staggered to her feet. She didn't like the way the policeman was behaving.
"Hello, Major Pickering. This is Officer Fewkes at Victoria Substation C. I've found the lady you told us to look for… That's right… Baroness Orsini… Right, sir, I'll hold her till you get here."
He turned around. The bench was empty. The woman in the pink dress was gone.
* * *
Somehow she made it all the way down to the waterfront. Thousands of family sampans bobbed at anchor, an occasional batwing-sailed fishing junk among them.
Penelope staggered along the rotting wooden walkways, toward the bright lights in the distance. The Chinese boat people stared at her silently, curiously.
A teen-age boy was in her path, wearing loose cotton trousers and a wrinkled shirt. "Help me," she said, her words slurred. "Take me to the Peninsula Hotel. Peninsula, understand? I will pay you much money…"
He stood there, his jaw slack. After a moment he turned and ran away.
Penelope took another step and collapsed. She tumbled down a sloping wooden ramp that smelled of dead fish. She lay motionless. The world blinked out for her.
Nobody in the sampans moved to approach her. The few passersby avoided her by a wide margin. She lay there for thirty minutes, an hour.
At last an old man sitting in a flat-bottomed scow stood up. He shuffled gingerly over to her unconscious form, looking over his shoulder. He wore a conical straw hat and a coolie shirt and smelled of fish and salt and oil smoke. He had a thin gray wisp of a goatee.
He squatted by Penelope and looked at her a long time. After a while he prodded her shoulder. She didn't move. He prodded again.
He looked around. He got to his feet and bent over the Baroness. He put his hands under her armpits and dragged her down the ramp. He tumbled her loose body into the bottom of the scow and covered her with a tarpaulin.
None of the water people spoke. The old man shoved off with a pole and, using the single long oar at the stern, paddled out into the harbor toward his waiting sampan.
16
The Baroness sat on her haunches in the stern, stirring a pot of fish and rice over a small charcoal brazier. With her long black hair and the floppy black pajamas that Wang Fu had given her, she might have passed for a Chinese boat girl from a distance.
Her strength had gradually returned under Wang Fu's fussy, grandfatherly care. He'd spoon-fed her warm broth, sponged her fevered body, even combed her hair, during those first few days when she'd been weak and helpless as a kitten. But yesterday the fever had passed. She was eating solid food again. The cloudy mirror in the living quarters under the canvas hutch showed that the hollows had disappeared from her cheeks.
She'd leave tomorrow, she decided, after another night's sleep rocked by the gentle swells of the harbor. But in the meantime she'd surprise the old man by cooking his supper.
She squinted toward shore, past an expanse of thousands of frail craft that bobbed like chips on the surface of the harbor. A tubby wooden scow was heading slowly in her direction, propelled by a frail old man at the stern oar. It was Wang Fu, returning from his shore errand. There was someone with him; a plump woman in a green-and-gold dress that looked too fashionable for this floating slum.
Wang Fu began waving frantically. She waved back. He shook his head impatiently and began sculling faster. He tied up to the stern of the sampan and scrambled over the gunwales. He unleashed an angry stream of Chinese, pushing Penelope toward the hutch.
"Nei pu te!" he scolded. Penelope went inside. Wang Fu had always tried to keep her out of sight. She didn't want to upset the old man.
He helped the plump woman aboard and scurried about making tea. Penelope wasn't offered any. The two of them chattered in Chinese, turning to appraise her from time to time.
At last they seemed to have struck some sort of bargain. The plump woman nodded and extended a wad of paper currency from her handbag. She counted twice, putting the surplus currency back in her bag. Wang Fu reached for the wad.
She shook her head. "Chui sui," she said. She crawled under the low hutch toward Penelope, a bright smile on her face.
"You come now," she said, holding out her hand.
"Where are we going?"
The woman and Wang Fu babbled at one another for a couple of minutes. The woman turned back to Penelope and said, "I Mama Chi," as if that explained everything. When Penelope looked puzzled, she said, "You be number one singsong girl, make lots dollah."
When Pe
nelope understood, she began laughing uncontrollably. Wang Fu had sold her to one of the army of madams in the red-light district. Mama Chi was planning to train her as a prostitute.
Mama Chi was shocked by her laughter. She began caressing Penelope's hips and breasts, saying, "You velly pretty. Businessmen, sailors, pay much money for round-eyed girl. American ship come harbor tomorrow, have 4,565 sailors on board. Velly horny. You come, quick-quick."
It finally dawned on her that Penelope wasn't coming. She stuffed the wad of money angrily in her handbag and gave Wang Fu a fierce dressing down. The old man cowered under the stream of abuse. Mama Chi had one last word for Penelope: "You make lousy singsong girl anyway!" She hailed a passing sampan girl and climbed unsteadily into the leaky hull. She was still bawling out Wang Fu as the girl rowed toward shore.
Now it was Wang Fu's turn. He paced up and down the cramped poop deck, lecturing in Chinese. "Pu chung shih te," he ranted. Penelope didn't understand a word. She imagined he was telling her how ungrateful she was.
The outburst finally subsided. He settled down with a bottle of rice wine, feeling sorry for himself. He refused to touch the fish and rice that Penelope had fixed for him.
At dusk he got unsteadily to his feet and paddled off in the scow. He was heading on an erratic course deeper into the logjam of sampans and junks. Penelope had learned, through gestures and sign language, that the old man had a nephew living out there, his only relative, recently escaped from the People's Republic.
She waited for him a couple of hours, then ate a simple supper of fish and rice by herself. She covered a portion for Wang Fu to keep it warm and left it where he could see it. Then, worn out, she stretched out on the reed mat that was her bed and went to sleep.
* * *
"Why did you not come to me before, Uncle?" Li Ming said. "Now describe the foreign woman again, very carefully."
Wang Fu rambled drunkenly on, complaining of the injustice that had kept him from claiming Mama Chi's money. But he gave a fair description of a tall, lithe Western woman with long black hair and eyes the color of jade. No, he did not find her attractive, with her round white-devil eyes and those grotesquely huge breasts that Western women seemed to have, but he supposed that a European man might find her pretty.
