Dragonfire

by Ted Bell

  “Flora,” he said, making the statement sound like a question.

  She looked at him, smiled, then returned her gaze to the imposing facade of Sevenoaks. “Hey, Tiger, swell place you’ve got here.”

  He smiled. “Small, but it works for a single gentleman living alone.” He took her hat, black lambswool overcoat, and small red overnight suitcase. “Let’s get out of this cold. Follow me,” he said, and led the way up the stone pathway to the front entrance. Two massive double oaken doors were flanked by a formidable array of Doric pillars.

  “Oh, Flora?” Tiger said.

  She paused in the double-height foyer filled with massive gilt-framed English sporting paintings amid the odd suit of armor. She took it all in and whistled like a sailor. “Yes?” she said.

  “I do hope you remembered our agreement. That you would not breathe a word of this invitation or me or my whereabouts to another living soul?”

  “Of course. You have to be good at keeping secrets if you want to work for Speaker Sam Rayburn. Secrets are our currency, our stock-in-trade My pretty red lips are forever sealed.”

  “Of course. It’s just that this is my only sanctuary. My escape hatch. My privacy here must remain inviolate.”

  She kissed his cheek and said, “Relax, boy. I’m the living soul of discretion.”

  “Good girl. Now, what do you think of my little country house?”

  “I applaud the catholicity of your art collection, Mr. Ambassador!”

  “Why, thank you. Catholicity, huh? Spoken like a true Bryn Mawr graduate. Been a collector ever since I first went to England. I love horses and—dogs. As you can see. Like that fine four-legged gentleman running down the staircase . . . Captain! Come meet this fancy woman!” The gorgeous black-and-white purebred spaniel raced over to her with his usual grace and stood at her feet, looking up at Flora, clearly longing for love or, at least, affection. Captain, for all his exceptional field skills, was, at heart, a Romeo.

  “Sit!” she said with authority. And he did. “He’s very handsome. What breed is he?”

  “An English springer spaniel. A national champion actually. I found him at a breeder up in Sharon, Connecticut. Let’s have a look around, shall we?”

  He gave his guest a quick tour, a summary survey of the ground floor, visiting the notable parts of the house: the main dining room, breakfast room, billiard room, solarium, living room, all culminating in the library.

  “Drinks here at six, Flora. What kind of wine do you like?”

  “Expensive will do nicely.”

  “I’ll check the cellar. I think we’ve got a few bottles of that vintage.”

  “Tiger?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks for inviting me out. It’s lovely here. I thought I’d never hear from you again. And anyway, Agnes told me you were a cad who’d break my heart.”

  “Never, my sweet. Never. See you at six.”

  “I believe there might be a nice hot bath somewhere up that very grand staircase. And if not, I shall draw one. I hope we’re still dressing for dinner. I brought a lovely Dior evening dress that I’m positively dying to show off. . . . Tell me the name of my beau for the evening again?”

  “Tony Chow. Our two families were quasifriendly back home in Foochow. When I went to Eton, he went to St. Paul’s in America, and then to Dartmouth whilst I went to Cambridge. We lost track after that, until he invited me to the George Town Club the other day. Apparently, he’s a member there.”

  “Very posh. Is Tony a fancy boy?”

  “I’ll let you be the judge of that, Flora. So, see you back here by the fire at six on the dot.”

  She smiled, then turned and tiptoed quickly up the broad marble staircase. Light as a feather, that one. And hotter than a Guadalajara jalapeño on a withering July afternoon. He regretted now not calling her after she’d given him her phone number. He’d figured her for a hot potato, just another D.C. secretary who’d pulled herself up by her bra straps.

  He watched her all the way up the staircase, bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by the fetching sight of Flora’s fetching derrière and seamed black silk stockings as viewed from the rear.

  CHAPTER 13

  Sevenoaks Plantation, Virginia

  December 1941

  When Tony Chow strode into the pine-paneled, book-stuffed room at twenty past six that evening, Tiger and Flora were sipping champagne, seated in the two facing leather chairs in front of the blazing hearth. Tiger was resplendent in his starched white shirt with wing collar and black tie, a Savile Row green velvet smoking jacket, striped trousers, and black velvet evening pumps on his feet. Flora was dazzling in a floor-length Alice blue gown gleaming with sequins. The fire was crackling; the air smelled of woodsmoke, probably maple. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, snow was swirling about in the wintry sky.

  It was all quite pleasant aside from the fact that Flora, nervous about meeting her date for the evening, had already knocked back four glasses of champers.

  “Ah, here’s our hero right on time, Tony!” Tiger said as the man made his way over to them.

  “Hello, old sport!” Tony said to Tiger, staring at Flora with a rather lascivious grin. Tiger winced at the sound of his voice. He sounded like someone trying to pry open a manhole cover with a crowbar.

  Tiger looked up at the man standing beside him, and a shadow clouded his face. He didn’t show it, but he was shocked by the man’s appearance and not quite sure what to say. He essayed, “Tony, come have a drink, won’t you? Say hello to Flora here.”

  Tony had not dressed for dinner as instructed. He was still unwashed and filthy in his mud-caked riding clothes and boots. He gave the pretty girl a wink and said, “Know what you call a female detective?”

  Tiger winced. The old joke had been floating around the capital for weeks now, and it was plainly shopworn and no longer funny.

  “No, what?” She giggled.

  “A Dickless Tracy, that’s what, sweetheart.”

  “Oh, my!” she said, trying not to laugh at his dirty joke. In Washington, such quips were common currency, and it wasn’t like she’d not heard this one before. Countless times.

  Tiger managed a thin smile and said to Tony, “Listen up, old sport. I believe I told you we dress for dinner here at Sevenoaks.”

  “I’m dressed. What’s the problem?”

  Tony ignored Tiger and went straight for Flora, grabbing her pale white hand from her lap and giving it a sloppy kiss. Tiger observed that while he’d been napping, Tony had been nipping and not at the cooking sherry. He reeked of Gordon’s Gin. Tiger’s father had long warned him of the dangers of too much “loudmouth soup” as he’d called the stuff. The British antimalarial had brought sorrows to many of his friends and professors at Cambridge. Tiger had once considered writing a short story about those years entitled “The Sorrows of Gin.”

  “How about a glass of champagne, Tony?” Tiger said, getting up from his seat and going over to the drinks table. There was a bottle of vintage Pol Roger Brut nesting in crushed ice in a silver bucket. He poured himself a glass and stood listening to Tony already trying to sweet-talk his way into Flora’s knickers. She was giggling a little too much, betraying her nervousness at the sheer size of the unkempt man.

  The former enforcer had put on a lot of weight in the intervening years, muscle gone to fat. Lost most of his hair, too. The gleaming bald pate atop the thick neck and shoulders, the squinty black eyes, all gave the dim-witted gangster the alarming presence of a giant gnome, which was, of course, an oxymoron of the first rank.

  Tiger drained his crystal flute and poured himself another, thinking that this thing could turn ugly before the night was over.

  He faced his two guests and with a slight bow said, quoting Bette Davis, “Fasten your seat belts, ladies and gents, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

  So saying
, he withdrew from the room and went out to the kitchen to check on the roast leg of lamb and have a word with Cook. He wanted dinner moved up an hour to seven instead of eight, which was his wont. Early side, seven, but at least his two guests might still be capable of rational table talk. He also ordered that dinner be served at the small table by the bay window at the far end of the dining room. The main table sat eighteen and would have been pretentious, and rather silly, for three people.

  In any event, dinner was served. The lamb pink, the mint sauce divine.

  Wine was poured, a good claret, and glasses were raised.

  Tony Chow, still muddy and clearly soused to the gills, had his chin on his chest, snoring loudly.

  Tiger, looking only at Flora, said, “Here’s to us, our noble selves. None finer, and many a damn sight worse! Like our friend Tony over there.”

  And so it came to pass that Tiger and Flora had devoured the tasty roasted lamb and mint sauce, pommes soufflé fromage, and petits pois with pearl onions, polished off two bottles of Château Mouton Rothschild, and were deep into a large bottle of 1921 Château d’Yquem when Tony Chow suddenly lifted his chin off his sternum and blurted out, “What? Oh, hey. Sorry. I must have dozed off.”

  “Yes,” Tiger said, feeling the wine a bit now. “Your dinner has gone cold. If you like, I can have it reheated.”

  “No, no, forget about the food. I’ll have a glass of whatever you’re having.”

  Tiger poured Tony a glass, and Flora, her cheeks burning bright red, said, slurring her words, “Is there any more of that red wine? I could drink that all night long.”

  Tiger looked at her closely.

  “Are you quite sure you’re all right? Perhaps you should just go to bed, darling,” the ambassador told her. “Yes. That might be best.”

  “No, no! I want to see the horsies!”

  Tiger kissed the Trampoline on the cheek and bade her good night. The woman had her own set of troubles; of that, he was sure.

  Tony gave her shoulder a good squeeze and said, “Yeah, good idea, kid. We’ll go down to the barn and see the horsies.”

  Tiger rose from the table and went over to the mahogany sideboard, plucked a fresh bottle from the tray, and opened it. He was suddenly feeling extraordinarily tired. Especially tired of this Tony Chow and his unbelievable rudeness. He put a glass and the opened wine bottle in front of Flora and said, “Well, I’m off to bed. You two help yourselves to dessert or anything else your little heart’s desire. Good night, sleep tight, and I’ll see you at breakfast at eight. Tony, I’ll only say this once. If you come down in the morning in those filthy clothes, I’ll show you the door. I bid you both good night.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Sevenoaks Plantation, Virginia

  January 1942

  Having previously given the entire staff, save the cook, the day off, the host went through the butler’s pantry and out into the kitchen and said to the cook, “Delicious dinner, Armand. The lamb was superb. C’est très délicieux! Don’t you worry about clearing the table tonight. Just go home and get some rest. Breakfast at eight tomorrow?”

  “Mais oui, monsieur!”

  Armand took off his toque blanche and bolted straight for the back door. He was always in a great hurry, every night, to get home to that plump little poulet he’d married in Paris, Gigi, who was the very love of his life. She’d served at the table a few nights, and Tiger had clearly seen what his chef saw in the woman. She had an aura about her. She was a garden of earthly delights in human form.

  Tiger, ever so glad of his escape from the nightmare dinner party, took the servants’ back stairs up to the third floor and leapt into his four-poster bed. The sheets were crisply ironed and cool to the touch. He liked to leave a few windows open, even on a cold night like this, and snuggled down under the duvet covers with Mr. Hemingway’s wonderful latest novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.

  And soon, he had drifted off to dreamland. In his dreams, Spanish women, stripped to the waist, protected a wounded man from the Fascist soldiers. . . .

  Sometime later, his dreams were disturbed by the faint sound of screams drifting in through the open windows on the frigid night air.

  What the hell?

  He rolled out of bed, grabbed his woolen robe from an armchair, and went over to the half-opened windows on the southern side of the house.

  There was screaming all right; he hadn’t been dreaming.

  He dressed quickly in cords and a sweater and put on his heavy Royal Navy peacoat, another gift from Hawke and one that he treasured. Leaving his room, he ran down the main staircase, over to the double doors at the entrance, and out into the frigid white night. The screams were louder out here in the cold night air. He could tell where they were coming from. . . .

  The stables. Of course.

  Tony had likely dragged Flora down the hill to the barn. And not to say good night to the horses. Tiger ran all the way to the bottom.

  The screaming was indeed coming from inside the hay barn. It was Flora, of course. Furious with himself for being so stupid as to leave her in the company of that disgusting animal, Tony, he sprinted across the paddocks and raced to the barn’s double doors. Locked. What the hell? He ran around to the back and tried that door. Locked as well, but he had an idea. Above the entrance to the barn was the hayloft. From it hung a pulley on a rope for the lifting the bales that drooped down almost to the ground. He grabbed hold of the bitter end and started climbing, hoisting himself up hand over hand. In less than a minute, he was scrambling inside.

  The screaming was much louder up here. Tiger walked softly, trying not to make a sound on the squeaky floor boards.

  There was a hole in the floor where the ladder emerged.

  He got down on his belly and slid forward so he could get a good look below. . . . There they were! Tony and Flora in the light of the flickering gas lantern.

  Jesus Christ.

  He had her down on the hay-strewn wooden floor beneath him. Most of her dress had been torn away. Her lacy underwear and silk stockings had been ripped off as well and cast aside. Her face was red as if he’d been slapping her repeatedly and very hard. He was still beating her, first one cheek, then the other, yelling at her to shut up, to stop her crying, or he was going to hurt her badly. . . .

  Tiger was in luck.

  Tony was facing away from the ladder. Flora could see him descending, yes, but he thought she was too far gone to call out his name and reveal him to her attacker.

  He started down swiftly, one rung at a time, spun around, and dropped lightly to the wooden floor.

  Made it! And without being seen by either of them. He crept across the floor toward them, the hay making his footsteps almost silent. . . .

  “Get off her, Tony,” he said to the man’s back when he was ten feet and closing. “Leave the poor girl alone!”

  “Wha—?” Tony seemed disoriented.

  “Leave her alone, I said. Get on your feet, you bastard. Now. You heard me. Now turn around.”

  Tony turned and stared at him, his face a mask of purple rage. Once again, a Tang kid was ruining his party.

  Tiger treated him to the gently clouded, almost beatific smile that other men had recalled only in retrospect when the battle had been lost. During the period of warming up for any fight, there were the angry words before a barroom brawl, the bowing and shuffling of kung fu. Although the kung fu master didn’t need any weapons besides himself, Tiger always looked around for whatever was handy.

  He could remember an incident in Taipei in which his assailant had ended up with a Ticonderoga No. 3 lead pencil driven in four inches between his ribs. He’d been taught the rule of thumb by the ancients: that no fight needed to last more than five seconds and that the man who landed the first two blows always emerged victorious.

  He saw Tony’s grin of derision, believing he was watching his oppon
ent search in vain for some kind of weapon. Tiger, in return, grinned sheepishly at Chow’s sneering smile, all the while lulling him deeper into a false sense of security.

  Tiger, who had the true warrior’s keen perception of an enemy’s base emotions at a time like this, could see the combination of hatred and jealous rage in the eyes of his brother’s killer and his frustration that he had been interrupted in the midst of consummating his savage attack. After all, Tony was probably thinking the girl was a tramp, a trampoline, but still a little slut and she deserved to be treated like one, didn’t she?

  Tony straightened, reached inside his jacket, and pulled out a nasty little automatic, holding it in front of himself a bit unsteadily. He was having a boozy go of it staying on his pins. He muttered to Tiger, barely audibly, “You got fifteen seconds to get the hell out of here and leave us alone. Now go—”

  “You’re not going to shoot me, Tony. You don’t have the guts.”

  “Oh, yeah? You don’t think I’ve ever killed anybody?”

  “On the contrary. I’m quite sure you have. My father told me about you, Tony.”

  “You know what gets me? Here I am, an old friend of your father and your brother, Jackie, and here you treat me like dirt, like garbage. You’ve always looked down on me. I never could figure it out, but now I have. You’re a snob, Tiger. You think you’re better than everyone. Well, news flash: You’re not, pal. Nothing worse than a nobody who thinks he’s a somebody because he went to some fancy university. News flash number two: You’re a nobody in this town. Me, I’ve got more pull and more contacts than you’ll ever have and—”

  “Oh, shut up,” Tiger said, slowly edging a little bit closer, his incremental movements nearly invisible, his eyes on the gun pointed at his belly.

  “You were never a friend of Jackie’s,” Tiger said. “Maybe you thought so, but he never did. Father always said Jackie never had one good word to say about you. Never.”

  “Bull crap. He looked up to me. Jackie, that kid, he loved me. And I loved him.”