Dragonfire

by Ted Bell

“Come on,” he’d said on the phone. “Don’t be such a damn wallflower. It’ll be fun. Besides, you’ll get to meet old Woolworth. She’s my girl, brother, and what a girl she is. You’ll see!”

  Tang folded the paper she’d given him carefully, placed it in his waistcoat pocket, and headed for the bar. All being fair in love and war and all that. And besides, he could use a drink.

  * * *

  —

  On the weekends, Ambassador Tang would frequently find himself up at Hyde Park, the president’s spectacular country estate, two hundred eleven acres on the banks of the Hudson River. His practice, weather permitting, was to take long strolls along the riverbank, Tiger and his pungent Cuban companion, happy as a lark, as they said these days.

  In these early days, the president was keen to extract every scintilla of inside information on the innermost workings of the very highest level of the Chinese government in Beijing. When they weren’t talking by the fire, the two allies were sitting in the president’s private study up on the second floor. The tall windows overlooked the broad Hudson and the Catskill Mountains beyond. The river was dotted with sparse maritime traffic due to winter weather and freezing conditions.

  The president would sit beside these windows with the winter sun streaming down and work tirelessly on his precious stamp collection. Tang was content to relax in a deep, well-worn leather club chair pulled close to the hearth. There, he would read random books from the president’s library quietly for hours, his peace periodically interrupted by Roosevelt suddenly holding up a specimen to the sunlight and exclaiming, “Say, will you look at that! A Ben Franklin one-center! I’ll be darned!” Or some such thing. Tiger was many things, but a philatelist he was not.

  Should Tiger stumble upon some literary gem while reading, he would pause and share it, reciting the passage aloud to the great man. For instance, just this morning, he’d said:

  “Here’s one, Mr. President. Some American writer chap named Hemingway, recalling the saddest short story ever written . . . only six words long.”

  “Yes?”

  “‘For sale,’” Tiger read aloud. “‘Baby shoes, never worn.’”

  “Good Lord,” FDR said, and the ambassador saw his eyes shining with tears. “I think it’s high time we poured ourselves an evening restorative. Don’t you agree? A rejuvenating libation? Maybe squeeze in a second before the dinner bell. . . .”

  “Superb idea, Mr. President,” Tiger said, getting up and going to the drinks table, where he poured two generous beakers of Cutty Sark.

  “You’ve met Dr. Ross McIntire, I believe. No? My personal physician up here at Hyde Park. Has the nerve to say I’m drinking too much! Asked me for a daily cocktail accounting. Know what I told him?”

  “I do not.”

  “I said, ‘Doc, at Hyde Park, dinner is served promptly at seven. So, between five thirty and seven, I drink as much as I possibly can!’”

  “Ha!” the ambassador exclaimed. “Good one, sir! That’s showing him who’s boss!”

  He looked at the beaming president returning to his stamps, fully at ease here in his splendid manor house high above the river. Ah, the life of the country squire in America was a fine thing to behold. And then it came to him, a flash out of the blue.

  He bloody well needed a country place of his own!

  Somewhere outside of the frantically whirling orbit that was the Washington universe. And so, in his free time, he would go for long drives in his convertible, searching out his refuge. Wheeling his brand-spanking-new lemon-colored Rolls-Royce Phantom III up into Maryland, through the rolling cornfields and all the way out to the charming little seaport of Annapolis on Chesapeake Bay.

  His new sidekick, or wingman, as he now called himself, Commander Hawke, had arranged for him to join him for luncheon at the Annapolis Yacht Club. They walked the docks afterward, puffing cigars while admiring the gorgeous yachts, especially the yawls, always his favorite rig. Someday, he said to himself, a smile suddenly appearing. “What do you think of the big white yawl at the end of the pier, Your Lordship?” Tiger said.

  “She’s mine,” Hawke said with a wry smile. “Glad you like her. We’ll take her out on the Chesapeake some weekend if you’d like. Woolworth has me teaching her how to sail.”

  * * *

  —

  And sometimes he headed south, across the Key Bridge and bound for parts unknown down in Virginia horse country.

  The more he saw of the rolling Virginia countryside, the more he came to love it. Yes. Virginia. That was the place for him. Perhaps he’d find a little hideaway, a cabin where he could go for solace, to escape the mad state the war-torn town was in at the moment. A place where he could escape, far from the madding crowd.

  A weekend getaway. Somewhere to relax in privacy such as Roosevelt enjoyed on the Hudson. Where he could entertain his friends. Or his women, away from the prying eyes of the nosy gossip columnists and radio political pundits who hounded the handsome young bachelor and man-about-town relentlessly.

  A place where the old Tiger could just be himself. Stride around naked and growl out loud if he felt like it. Scratch his private parts to his heart’s content while admiring his leather album filled to bursting with bawdy French postcards purchased from Paris newsstands down by the Seine. Listening to Crosby and Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey on the wireless all the while. Hell, you know. Smoke his bloody opium pipe in peace, for once!

  A week later, he found himself driving around in the Virginia horse country outside the little village of Warrenton. This was the land of the long driveways, he’d noticed. Great manicured estates and Old South plantations waited at the other end of those winding drives, great white Georgian mansions standing amid the magnolias and azaleas and camellias! And famous stud farms . . . It was all so very beautiful. He was charmed by the serenity of it, the palpable peace that pervaded, the pristine beauty unmarred by foreign wars.

  And then, one fine day, there was the house he’d been searching for.

  Sevenoaks, it was called.

  He had found his dream cottage, all right; it just happened to be a sprawling plantation. Sight unseen, he sensed it, just from the beauty and gravitas of the great black wrought iron gates swung wide at the entrance. There was a discreet Realtor’s sign, faded. Appleton Farm Realty. He made a mental note of the telephone number, passed through those exquisite gates, and started up the steep and gracefully winding drive. When he breasted the last hill, he paused to catch his breath. But what was revealed took his breath away all over again.

  A slightly larger version of Tara, the name of the plantation where Miss Scarlett had wooed Captain Butler in that fabulous movie he’d seen at the London premier back in 1939, Gone With the Wind. Sevenoaks was all white marble columns splayed across the front with acres of slate roof, massive ivy-strewn brick chimneys popping up here and there. The rambling covered porches all overlooked the gardens and the beautiful horse country of Virginia. There were winding paths everywhere. Paths leading down to the barn and stables, to the tennis courts, to the Olympic-sized pool. . . .

  Sevenoaks was nestled in a wooded area of some fifty acres. It presided atop a hilltop beside a large blue lake. That lake, he would later learn, was called Botts Lake, after the family who built the estate in the 1920s. And that the locals all called it “Bottomless Lake,” as it had resisted the attempts of decades’ worth of divers trying to plumb its depths.

  All green, he could see spring in his mind’s eye even now, rolling emerald grass crisscrossed by infinite miles of whitewashed fences winding their ways hither and thither across the majestic countryside as if some giant had just flung out handfuls of them to bind up the earth.

  In a fever, he rushed back across the Potomac. Speeding as usual because no one had ever enjoyed diplomatic immunity quite as much as Tiger Tang when behind the wheel of his yellow Rolls-Royce. He’d call Appleton Farm Realty and make an
offer on Sevenoaks. He wanted to be fully installed, staffed up, and comfortably ensconced by springtime. He would buy a great big mahogany four-poster in which he could lie in state of a morning and listen to birdsong rising up from his gardens on warmer days when every new day brought colorful floral explosions into view.

  CHAPTER 12

  Sevenoaks Plantation, Virginia

  January 1942

  Not very long after he’d bought Sevenoaks lock, stock, and barrel, Ambassador Tang got a call in his office—one that caught him a tad off guard. His secretary, Kimberly Li, strode in with his coffee and the morning mail and said, “An old friend of yours rang up earlier, Mr. Ambassador. Left his private number and asked you to please call him at the Chinese Trade Mission.”

  “I don’t have any friends at the Chinese Trade Mission. What’s his name?”

  “Tony Chow, sir.”

  “Tony Chow?” he said, rising from his desk and turning to stare out the window, gathering himself for the coming storm of emotions that would surely be heading his way.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you mind leaving me alone for a little while, Kimberly? Please do not put any more calls through.”

  “Of course, sir,” she said, pulling the heavy door closed behind her.

  He stared down at the flow of traffic slowly moving up Pennsylvania Avenue. Slow because of all the snow they’d had the night before.

  Tony Chow. It was a name he’d not heard in years. It was a name he’d heard a lot about from his father. This was about a time during the bad years. The time of the great war between the Tangs and the Chows. Going to the mattresses, the Mafia called it in America. In China, the mob called it going to ground, but it was the same thing. Moving out of your homes and taking up residence somewhere else with little or no furniture. All done in preparation for war.

  Soon, all-out war between two powerful crime families raged throughout the country, mainly in Shanghai, but also engulfing Beijing, and extending even to Quangzhou and Hong Kong and Singapore. Archrivals in narcotics, prostitution, extortion, kidnapping, et cetera, each side had everything to gain and everything to lose.

  Still, the war dragged on for far too long, with neither side willing to retreat from the field of battle. It wasn’t until Tiger’s father ordered the murder of the scion of the Chow family that the killing on both sides escalated exponentially. There was much suffering to be endured. Especially the murder that finally ended the conflict, at least for a time.

  And then a Tang soldier who had ignored the call to go to ground was murdered in his bed at his palatial estate outside Shanghai. Decapitated. His head was placed on a lamppost in the street below. His wife was sleeping in a different wing of the house. His child as well. No one was ever sure who it was who severed the head of the most powerful young Tang in the family’s long and storied history, dating back four hundred years. But Tiger’s father, Deng Tang, always believed he knew who’d done it. To avoid rekindling the epic battles, it was a name that could never leave the confines of the dinner table.

  The victim of the assassination was Deng’s son, Jackie Tang.

  Jackie’s younger brother, little Tiger, had been born on the very night of his brother’s murder. Tiger never got to meet his much-revered older sibling, though the stories of his valor were legend throughout the land.

  The killer, his blessed father had always believed, was a young thug, a nasty piece of business named Tony Chow.

  “Mr. Chow’s office,” the woman on the other end of the line said. “How may I direct your call?”

  “This is Ambassador Tang. I’m returning his call.”

  “He’s expecting you. I’ll put you right through.”

  “Hello,” said a voice.

  “Hello?” said Tiger.

  “Tiger! It’s really you? Good to hear your voice. Where the hell did you disappear to? I heard you left Foochow for good and went off to be educated in England. And here you are, our new ambassador. Moving up in the world, I’d say.”

  “Time does fly,” Tiger said, not signing up for this happy-horseshit mob patter these damn Chow boys were known for. “What can I do for you, Tony? I’m a little busy around here. . . .”

  “A lot. It’s about time I had friends in high places. You and I can work miracles. I help you. You help me.”

  “Help you what?”

  “You know. Grease the skids a little. Press the flesh. My bagman days are over, buddy. Big shot now. Quit the rackets. But this American bureaucracy moves at the speed of fucking lava. You make a phone call here and drop a note there. . . . You know how it works.”

  “Not really. I’ve not been here all that long.”

  “Long enough to call your old friend, let him buy you a drink, right. I’m calling to invite you to join me for a welcome dinner Saturday night at the George Town Club. I’m a member, if you can believe that. It would be good for you. Meet some of the inner-circle boys, shake a few hands—you get the picture.”

  “Yeah, well, I dunno. . . .”

  “You still got a beef with me? Is that it? Still not good enough company for you?”

  “No, no, not at all. Sounds swell, Tony, but look here. I’ve bought a little weekend place out in the country. I go out Friday nights and come back to town Sunday nights . . . but listen. I’ve got an idea. You give me a rain check on the George Town Club, and instead, you come out here for the weekend. Come out Saturday morning, spend Saturday night. We’ll grab a couple of horses down at the stables and go for a nice long ride in the countryside. I’ll have Cook do a roast leg of lamb tarragon. Oh, and by the way, we dress for dinner at Sevenoaks, Tony.”

  “What? You mean you don’t eat naked?”

  “That expression means black tie and dinner jacket.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Just kidding around. Not a total idiot.”

  “Well, uh . . . listen. If you’ve somehow managed to remain single, I can provide a little female companionship. American friend of mine. Her name is Flora the Human Trampoline.”

  “Human Trampoline, huh?”

  “That’s an understatement, Tony. I have firsthand experience. For a high-society dame from the Main Line, she’s got—how shall I say it?—appetites.”

  “You got yourself a deal, old friend,” Tony Chow said, the eagerness in his voice palpable.

  * * *

  —

  So it was that Tiger and his old pal Tony found themselves riding horseback and hell-bent for leather on that drizzly Saturday afternoon, making bets and having match races from pillar to post, hither and thither across the muddy meadows, snowy hills and valleys of some of the finest horse country in the world. Tiger’s new purebred stallion, the cleverly named Teabiscuit, was more than a match for the gimpy mare he’d ordered up for his guest. The funny thing was that Tony, who’d clearly not spent a whole lot of time in the saddle, didn’t even know he’d been had.

  “How much do I owe you?” Tony said as the horses were led away by the grooms.

  “Let’s see, Tony. Fifty dollars a race? Four races? Two hundred dollars will do nicely, old chap.”

  “It wasn’t a fair race. After all, you know the territory like the back of your hand and—”

  “Fork it over.”

  If Tiger had worried about spending too much time with Chow that weekend, he needn’t have. The big bald man, whom everyone at home had long considered little more than a thug, was making a supreme effort to look and sound very much like a proper gentleman. Telling off-color jokes, mixing the martinis, playing gin rummy, all with a lot of hail-fellow backslapping and general levity.

  It was decided that the two of them would reconvene in the library for cocktails at six. When Tiger gave him the hour, Tony said brightly, given a chance to show off his newly acquired status, “Oh, yeah. You mean like when the sun is over the yardstick, right?”

 
“Wrong. It’s an old Royal Navy expression, Tony. Eighteenth century. ‘When the sun is over the yardarm.’ The yardarm is a horizontal spar mounted up on the masts of the old square riggers from which the square sails were hung.”

  “Oh. That’s fascinating, Mr. College Boy. See you at six. What’s the trampoline’s name again?”

  “Flora. She’ll be here. Don’t worry. I lied and told her you were the greatest swordsman this side of Chinatown.”

  “That’s no lie.”

  “Well, then, I’ll leave you to it. Time for my beauty rest.”

  Tiger retreated to his quarters, stripped off his muddy clothes and riding boots, and tossed them into a hamper. After an invigorating piping-hot shower, he climbed up onto the big mahogany four-poster. Spying the splayed novel on the bedside table, he reached for it.

  His new friend Commander Hawke had given him the book as a house present when he came for a weekend. He had been anxious to return to it all day. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by this American writer named Ernest Hemingway who was new to Tang, told the tale of an American chap fighting in the Spanish Civil War, and Tiger found the unadorned, stripped-down prose so very modern and a wonder to read.

  He dove in, reaching for a Lucky Strike cigarette from the silver box embossed in gold with his intertwined initials, TT. Hearing tires crunching on gravel in the courtyard below, he lit up, rose, and went to the window. A yellow D.C. taxi was just pulling up at the front entrance. Since he’d dispatched all the servants save the cook, he hurried downstairs to meet his new guest.

  She was climbing out of the rear when he opened the front door. He went to the driver’s window and said, in his best imitation of an American gangster, “What do I owe ya, bub?”

  He paid the driver and turned to see a woman he hardly recognized. She was dressed beautifully in a navy crepe de chine skirt, falling just below the knee, with a red bolero jacket over a frothy white blouse. Her ginger-red hair was up in the Gibson girl fashion, and her makeup was sheer perfection.