"Sure," Durell said. The door had shut silently. He heard no bolts shoot home. "But if you're looking for anything really good, you ought to have a feng shut specialist."
"We need no magician to find our way between the mountain and the wind," the giant growled. "But maybe you be our feng shut man, anyway."
"I'll only consult with your dragon spirit."
"Who that?"
"Madame Himg," Durell said.
"You talk so of my lady?"
"The dragon—or the witch—^who emasculated you, yes."
The whip whistled. It curled with loving ferocity across Durell's shoulders, shook him, and threw him sideways against the stone wall of the cell. He felt blood on his skin.
"You speak with respect," the bannerman said. "You tell where Miss Pan hides and the plans of your masters for to get the treasure my lady-master desires."
"And if I don't?"
"You get the whip, for first."
"To hell with you monkeys," Durell said.
He feinted to the left, and both men cracked their whips in the wrong place. Durell wasn't quite fast enough to escape a lick of fire along one thigh. Spinning to the right, he found his reflexes not quite as accurate as he'd hoped, either. But he caught the first behemoth's wrist, and twisted hard and used the leverage of his weight to try to break the bones. He might just as well have tried to uproot a utility pole. The Chinese grunted and swung about, carrying him in a wild, lashing semicircle. Durell had no time to look for the second man. His bare foot struck the wall with an explosion of pain, and he thought he'd broken his toes. But his left arm swung around and down the other's waist and his fingers closed on the hilt of the antique broadsword. He hoped the weapon wasn't merely ornamental. He got the blade halfway out of its scabbard, reaching behind his opponent's back, before the other reaUzed what was happening. The Chmese bellowed and flung himself backward against the waU, crushing Durell against the stone. But the broadsword came free. Durell shpped down and out from beneath the enormous pressure, backed three steps, saw the second Chinese jump ahead, yelling gibberish
The lights suddenly dimmed. The thought crossed his mind that Madame Hung was still monitoring him. Then, as the first man came at him with a wide-armed rush, Durell gripped the headsman's sword in both hands and swung the massive blade with all his strength.
He felt only a small jolt as the steel sliced through skin and muscle and bone in the man's neck. The Chinese lost his head. The face in the lowering light still glared its hatred, and then blood fountained from the headless trunk before it began to topple.
The lights went out completely.
He heard the head strike the floor like a leather ball.
He held his breath. He didn't move. The darkness was absolute again. He tried to estimate the distance to the cell door. There was a scraping sound to his left, the clink of steel on stone. The other bannerman had drawn his sword. Durell extended his left foot cautiously, felt his victim's head with his toe. He moved without sound, on naked feet. His opponent was not as careful. The hiss and suck of frightened breathing sounded like a distant broken steam outlet.
He wondered how much time he had. The infrared monitor eye watched his every movement in the dark. He guessed he had thirty seconds to get out.
The darkness blinded him and his opponent. But the Hung woman could see everything in the tiny arena of the cell. He heard her whispering begin, as she started to tell the swordsman how to move—and without warning, he kicked the severed head toward the sound of the other man's sibilant breathing.
There was a grunt, a scream, the chunk of a sword blow. From the monitor came Hung's shriek of rage. She alone, from her remote command post, could see what was going on. But she spoke too late to save the other man. Durell thrust with his sword, felt the jolt of impact up to his shoulder, pulled back, and slashed again. The second thrust did the job. The other man fell, almost tripping him as he leaped immediately for the area where he had spotted the door.
For a frantic moment, he couldn't find it.
Then the panel yielded with a faint creak to the pressure of his hands. He stumbled through, into blinding light again. He jumped sideways, saw a corridor curve narrowly to right and left, and went to the right. There were no features in the hallway except its steady curve leftward. His breath whistled in his throat. His legs trembled. He was naked except for the gory sword. Then he saw the moon-gate and he jumped in, out of the corridor.
He found himself in what was obviously the middle of a pornographic movie set. Three men and two women were contorted into an incredible jumble of arms, legs and torsos among heaped-up pillows on the floor. The room was small. There were peepholes around the paneled walls, each holding an inflamed lascivious eye. Voyeurs. It seemed to Durell there were dozens of the eyes watching his abrupt entrance on the screen.
No one stopped doing what they were doing. There was another door across the room. He ran to it, opened it, found another room, a bedroom with a huge Chinese platform bed in the center of it, a pot of incense smoking slowly. He went through that, too, and found the familiar stone staircase that went up the central core of the pagoda. There were shouts and voices from below. He did not know what level of the pagoda he was on. He turned and ran up the steps three at a time.
Music struck his ears with a loud blast of rhythm. He was back in the gallery. At the far end of it, Linda still danced, a go-go girl lost in a hypnotic dream of death. He felt as if he were running through the episodes of a nightmare. He felt as if he were losing his mind.
He checked himself in the center of the teak floor.
The music roared. The girl danced.
"Linda!" he shouted.
She couldn't hear him. She danced. The music filled the big hexagonal room. He looked all about, saw nothing, and then he saw Jasmine Jones.
There was an area of shadow directly under the huge shadow box frame where Linda Riddle moved in slow exhaustion, eyes closed, lithe young body swaying and sagging in time to the melody's beat. Within the shadow, on the floor, lay Jasmine Jones. She lay on her back, knees flexed, clothed in a loose robe embroidered in emerald, and it was folded so that for a moment he thought a dragon sat upon her body, and then he saw it was just part of the robe's embroidery.
He moved forward slowly, then sank to his knees beside the Chinese girl.
Her face looked as if it were encased in a fine steel cage.
Then he saw that her lips and tongue had been skewered together by a dozen long, fine, stainless steel skewers.
It was an old Chinese custom for those who talked too much.
Her eyes were open and he saw that she was conscious, but he did not know if she recognized him.
"Jasmine?" he whispered.
The music drowned him out. She did not move. He touched one of her flexed knees and bent over her masked face. He shuddered. He wanted to throw up. She had been beautiful, but she would never be beautiful again. If she lived. He did not think she would live. He began to curse in a low monotone, cursing Madame Hung and himself and the work he had to do that so often made such things happen, to this girl and to Linda Riddle, who danced without thought above him, dancing to her death.
The music stopped.
The silence seemed to thunder in its place. Durell stood up slowly beside Jasmine and looked at the girl in the shadow box. Linda had stopped dancing. Her arms were still extended, her head was thrown back, her long pale hair streamed down behind her back, almost to her hips. Her eyes opened. She looked dazed and confused. She brought her head forward and turned slightly, and her gaze met Durell's on the wide, empty floor below. He did not know if she could see him or not. But she took a single step toward him, as if to move out of the giant picture frame
The bolts of electricity sparked and crackled, making a barrier between them. Durell called out her name, and felt blinded by the blue-white glare. He saw Linda slump, as if boneless, to the tiny platform where she had been dancing, and then more light made a curtain that s
hut her from sight. He stepped back and looked around the wide, empty floor of the pagoda. With his back to the electric display, he could see that he was alone. He moved a Uttle, to the right and left, remembering the dart that had paralyzed him the last time he stood here. He did not want to be a standing target again. But Madame Hung was not an ordinary master of stagecraft. The bolts of electric arcs stopped as suddenly as they had begun. When he turned, he saw that Linda had vanished from the picture frame.
In her place was Madame Hung.
He felt as if he had watched a magician's trick—a puff of smoke, and presto! the scene had changed. He felt sUghtly encouraged by his enemy's need for such theatricality.
"You wished to see me face to face, Mr. Durell," the woman said. "And so I have arranged it."
"It's a bit too much," Durell said.
The woman's voice was normal now, without the electronic hum of transmitters. It was low, clear in diction, with a self-satisfied sound that matched the smile on her thin mouth. She sat in a tall-backed chair, facing him, her tall body held erect in a mandarin robe of peach and gold. The color of the robe did not become her long, sallow face. Her brows were winged upward, her eyes, slanting slightly, were pools of intense darkness as she leaned forward now, holding the arms of her carved, throne-like chair with thin hands that ended in enormous silver fingernails.
"Did you really think," she said softly, "that you were escaping me, Mr. Durell?" She laughed in her throat. "To watch you was like watching an old Chinese gentleman performing fai chi, our formal shadowboxing. Ludicrous, indeed. As for the two men you killed, I hope you do not think it troubles me. As we say, one must sacrifice a finger to save an arm. Between you and me, there will be a death tonight. As the revered Mao has said, 'There cannot be two suns in the same sky.' "
"Don't class me with your crimes," Durell said. "Why did you torture your girl Jasmine?"
The woman laughed. "Is she not beautiful? Ah, but you cannot kiss her behind her mask. Who will ever kiss the poor creature again? On the other hand, to whom will she whisper things she should not speak about?"
"She told me nothing," Durell said.
"Am I to believe you? She was with you too long. That was enough to warrant her punishment. How sad it is to be a woman, as we say. Nothing on earth is held so cheap." Madame Hung laughed again. "Do you know our sage, Hsiian Tzu, Mr. Durell?"
"He believed that all men were naturally evil. But his two pupils, especially Han Fei, rejected his teachings." Durell paused. He looked down at Jasmine. "For one cup of tea, Madame Hung, you have given away the game." He paused again and looked at the woman seated above him. "You have no //, to use Confucius' word. You do not know how to do right. When you lose, Peking will renounce you. Heaven will withdraw its mandate. You try to intimidate and frighten me; now you seek to put me at ease with philosophy. Why?"
The woman did not smile now. "Between you and me there is much to settle, Durell. Today in Peking we repeat a phrase to our allies from the Sung dynasty, seven hundred years old. 'We are as close to you as the lips to the teeth. If the lips are gone, our teeth must chatter with cold.' So, Mr. Durell, am I to you. We are bound together. But when you are gone, I shall laugh, and I shall drink much Pei-Kan wine, and when the cups are empty, I shall shout 'Kan pei!' and ask for more. For you shall not win. You stand naked and helpless before me."
"Then why don't you kill me now?" he asked. "It's because you're still afraid. I have something you want."
There was a moment's hesitation. One long silver fingernail flyicked up and down. "Yes."
"And what's that?"
"I think you are an honest man, in some respects, with clean wind in your sleeves. I will not offer you the lives of these two girls, Jasmine and Miss Riddle, as squeeze or tea money. Nor am I afraid of the friends you must be depending upon. True, with friends, even water is sweeter than wine. But no one will help you here. When will you realize it? Do you know how I can punish you for trou-bUng me? I could have both your kneecaps and elbows broken, your nose cut off, your feet and hands removed. I could smoke your head in a bronze cylinder, or slowly burn off your skin; I could have you flogged, tortured with bamboo rods, or subject you to the death of a thousand cuts."
"Go ahead," Durell said.
"You are not afraid?"
"Sure, I'm afraid."
There was puzzlement in Madame Hung's bottomless black eyes, and she leaned forward sUghtly in her high-backed chair, gripping the arms with her thin hands. Under the elaborate robe she wore, her breasts lifted and fell, just once; otherwise, she did not seem to be breathing. Durell had told the truth. He knew fear, when he looked at her. She was the epitome of all the monomania-cal, power-mad, intransigent rulers in the world who sought to dominate for the end result of a drab, subdued slave world, subject to themselves only. Nothing could stop them, nothing could eventually persuade them; no accommodation was acceptable, in human terms. And so you could not surrender to them.
In the brief pause, Durell had to stifle the urge to leap up into the picture frame at the Chinese woman; but the lethal barrier of lightning bolts dissuaded him. He heard a faint moan from Jasmine Jones, at his feet. The steel skewers gleamed in an unnatural, monstrous mask before her face. The girl's eyes were fluttering, and she moved a little, rolling on her back. If she came to, he thought, she would pass right out again as the tragic pain engulfed her. He looked up again.
"What do you want to know?" he asked Madame Hung. "You must want something from me, or you'd have killed me by now."
"Precisely. I wish to know how you found out about my private shipping route to Singapore."
"Oh, that." He hoped he sounded casual.
"Yes. It is only a nuisance, but I do not like to be disturbed by it."
"Can we make a deal?" he bluffed.
"Possibly."
"That's a switch, for you."
"I am a pragmatist, Mr. Durell. Tell me how you sidetracked the painting, where it is now, and perhaps I may even let you go free."
"And the girls," he said promptly. His pulse thudded. He did not know if Madame Hung was toying with him or not. She had given away, almost casually, information he hadn't hoped to get. On the other hand, if the painting were missing, she had nothing much to lose, either, by being frank about it. If she thought he knew where it might be Madame Hung waved a negligent, sliver-taloned claw. "You may have the girls. They are worthless to me."
"It will be difficult to arrange," he said cautiously.
The woman leaned forward in her chair. "But it can be done? Promptly?"
"In twenty-four hours."
"Very well."
"As an earnest token," he said glibly, "I'd like my clothing back."
"Of course." She rang a little silver bell, and he turned and watched the wide pagoda floor, and presently a door opened and another of Madame Hung's pig-tailed giants placed a packet containing Durell's trousers, shirt, and tennis shoes on the floor. He went to it and dressed after the man vanished. He noticed his hands were shaking slightly, and he hoped the woman couldn't see it. When he walked back to the picture frame, she still leaned forward in an attitude of intense interest.
"My gun," he said. "I want that back, too."
"No. Tell me where to get the painting."
"It's not as easy as that. I'll have to think of what I can do. It's tantamount to my defection, turning the Deakin formula over to you. I'll have to arrange to cover myself on it."
"You're a clever man," the woman said. Her breath hissed with impatience. "I will not tolerate delay."
"Just what do you think I know?" he parried.
"You have interfered with me. I will not tolerate it. I have—there has been some confusion, some mix-up. You are at the bottom of it, of course. You stand there much too confidently to fool me. So you will tell me where to find my plane and its cargo. You will tell me at once, without further delay. After all, I have the means to clarify the matter without you."
"Why don't you, then?"
"Peking is impatient," she admitted.
"Old potato-face Mao putting the heat under you?"
"You will speak of him with respect," she hissed.
Durell said, "I don't think I'm going to talk at all." He had been watching the painted backdrop behind her, the one that was only a crude, daubed copy of the original painting that had been stolen in faraway Key West. There was a door in the paneling, the one by which she had entered the picture frame, of course. He watched it open now.
He still held the bloodied broadsword. It was not much of a weapon against Madame Hung's devices here. But it would have to do.
Without change of expression or warning, he suddenly threw the heavy steel blade at the seated woman.
At the same moment, Madame Hung was aware of someone having entered the picture frame behind her.
She got to her feet out of her thronelike chair just as Durell's blade arced through the shadow box frame.
She saw what was behind her, and screamed, and stepped backward—toward the frame, too.
The sword triggered the electric bolts. There was a hissing crackle, and ribbons of furious blue sparks engulfed the steel blade, making it seem incandescent.
Durell's throw missed its target.
But Madame Hung fell through the opening and, for an instant, seemed to be suspended in a webbing of lightning bolts. Her hair caught on fire, and her face looked inhuman as she fell to the floor, a little to the right of Jasmine Jones.
She looked dead.
Durell spoke wryly to the apparition in a frogman's UDT outfit who had come, dripping, through the back door of the shadow box.
"Hello, Denis," he said. "What took you so long?"
16
Deakin was a dripping apparition from the bottom of the sea, wearing a black underwater suit, with fins dangling from a wrist strap, his goggles and face mask pushed up on top of his head. The young man grinned shyly.
"Li Yon told me you came here," he said. "When Linda disappeared and then Anna-Lise came back and said you were at this place, I thought I'd better check. I wasn't worried about you, but Linda—well . . ." He paused, his voice trailing off as he looked over the edge of the shadow box and saw the steel-masked face of Jasmine Jones. Denis gulped visibly. "What "
Assignment Nuclear Nude Page 13
