The White Tigress

by Todd Merer

The old man had been a singularly strange bird, a weirdly cunning bastard, yet he’d been beloved. By Stella, because he had protected and raised her. By Derek, because Duke had been his grandfather’s partner and friend, as well as his lover’s grandfather.

  Even I felt a tinge of melancholy, thinking of Duke as happy-go-lucky Archie.

  We were in the doldrums, the sea dead calm. We crossed from The White Rose—the death ship that wasn’t—to Kitty, opened a bottle of Duke’s best, and toasted all those who had once been and all things that never were.

  CHAPTER 70

  Kitty cruised eastward beneath a crescent moon. No other shipping lights were visible. Dolores and I were alone on the flying bridge. Below us, on the deck, Stella leaned into Derek’s arms. We could hear her, faintly sobbing.

  “Poor kid,” I said.

  “Like me, she’s had a parent who was murdered. Sadness, anger, all of it. Maybe that’s why we bonded,” said Dolores. “But poor she’s not. My guess is she inherits Duke’s estate. There’s tons of gold that’s now hers.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Richard told me. When he got wasted, he talked too much. Master spy that he wasn’t, he even gave all the players code names. His was Brutalist.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “Yours was Franklin.”

  “Well, I liked money.”

  “Missy Soo was Flower.”

  “Venus flytrap would be more like it.”

  “Mine was Sangfroid.”

  “I don’t get that one.”

  She tilted her head and smiled slyly. “I’ll take that as a compliment. You know, there was another code name, one I couldn’t figure at first. But when I realized Madame Soo was a ruthless woman who achieved her goal at the expense of her granddaughter’s life, I understood why he’d coded her as the White Tigress.”

  “No, my love. You see so much, but you’re off here,” I said. “Madame Soo wasn’t ruthless. She was a kind woman who chose the greater good over her personal loss. Can’t you guess who Richard was really referring to?”

  Dolores got it in a flash.

  “Oh . . . Stella’s the White Tigress. She provoked Duke into reigniting the war by offering Lucky to the Reds. She knew it would stir up trouble, and just maybe she’d get a chance to kill Missy.”

  “Doesn’t really matter anymore,” I said. “It’s all over.”

  “According to The Man Who Thinks He Knows All.”

  Despite what we’d concluded, Stella acted extremely friendly and gracious toward Dolores and me now. She insisted Dolores and I stay in Duke’s master cabin. We did. After we made love, Dolores fell asleep. I couldn’t. Unfinished business. I roused Javier and told him what I wanted.

  “No problem,” he said, reaching for his camera.

  We watched the replay of Lucky’s last moments. When Richard reached from the sea for me to help him, I said, “Freeze that frame.”

  Javier did.

  “Zoom in.”

  Richard’s arm, rising from the sea for my help, filled the screen.

  “Stop,” I said. “Zoom in closer.”

  Javier did, and there on Richard’s arm, clear as bold typeface, were the last seven numbers of the account. I stared at them until they were burned into my memory via an old trick: thinking in terms of telephone numbers. These were 888 6660. Chinese lucky numbers. The first seven numbers I’d seen on Albert Woo’s cheek were 0666 888. Two peas on opposite ends of the same pod, palindrome-style.

  I knocked on Derek’s cabin door softly. When he opened it, I glimpsed Stella’s shape, asleep in the darkness.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” said Derek. “Too much to process.”

  “Good,” I said. “Because I need your help.”

  The $10 million Richard had stolen from the Chinese was in a numbered account on the far side of the world from us. It was daylight there. Derek hooked up a satellite connection and when the bank operator answered, her voice was as clear as if she were across the street. I told her I wanted to speak to an officer regarding a numbered account.

  When the officer came on, I said, “I want to transfer funds from my numbered account to my account in another bank.”

  “Yes, sir. The number, please.”

  I enunciated the fourteen digits.

  “Security question: The name?”

  I hesitated. Richard had made his feelings for Missy obvious. Yet at the moment before death, he’d uttered the name of his deceased wife.

  “Jeannie,” I said.

  “To what account do you wish the money be wired to?”

  I gave him my bank Swift Code and routing number and my personal account number. I’d sworn to myself not to take dirty money, but now I had another idea.

  “Consider it done, sir,” the officer said.

  PART EIGHT:

  ANAWANDA

  CHAPTER 71

  Carefully, I raised Dolores’s arm so as not to disturb her intravenous tube and brushed my lips across the back of her hand. I said, “Happily ever after.”

  Dolores said, “No such thing. There’s only right now.”

  “Whatever. But right now all is well.”

  This was true. There had been minimal fallout concerning the incident in the South China Sea. The Reds had issued a press release to the effect that they’d discovered—and filmed—Lucky on an atoll where he’d been buried by the Ming Dynasty, thereby proving their claim that the Ming Dynasty had long ago established Chinese sovereignty over the disputed islands. To buttress this, they’d released Javier’s close-ups of Lucky. Predictably, the other nations with claims to the same area challenged the Chinese to produce Lucky.

  Of course, that didn’t happen, and the issue became just another talking point. All sides proclaimed their commitment to a peaceful solution, but all sides continued to strengthen their military postures.

  So nothing had changed at all.

  Except maybe my future.

  I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance that someday a Freedom of Information freak or Snowden-type would expose the clandestine deal I’d negotiated. Pretending to be a government employee, obstruction of justice, blah, blah, blah. Sure, I’d received a grant of immunity, but that was worthless if those who’d bestowed it were themselves coconspirators.

  Bottom line?

  If the saga had been a trial, although I’d walked from the courtroom a free man, in legal speak, the case was deemed dismissed without prejudice. Meaning if the spores of the conspiracy to conduct illegal diplomacy still existed, and if they were ever made public—

  “Will you please stop thinking?” said Dolores.

  “I wasn’t . . . sorry, I guess bad habits die hard.”

  She said, “Get some good habits. Hold her.”

  She passed me our baby girl, and as if by magic, love welled in me. My tiny beauty was so small, I was afraid I’d drop her. Our eyes touched and she gurgled, and I—literally—felt my heart warm. The best feeling of my life. One I’d never let be taken from me.

  Even if the dirt surfaced, the feds would never find me, here in the Lost City, which was forbidden to even the hardiest nature lovers who hiked the Sierra Nevada World Heritage Site.

  Here, I’d start my new life.

  Later, while Dolores and our girl—we’d named her Li-ang—slept, I sat outside the stone house watching the sun set behind Anawanda, letting my cares and worries drain. From somewhere a monkey howled, and I thought I heard the monk’s chant . . .

  Om Mani Padme Hmm . . .

  My palm began to itch.

  Strange that I felt the symptom of a new case coming my way, for I was no longer money hungry. I’d burned the deed to the Phuket hotel. Of the $10 million from the numbered account, I’d put four in a trust account bearing Li-ang’s name. Another four I’d given to the Logui nation. I split the last $2 million with Javi. The one mil I kept would last me ten monk-size lifetimes, the cost of living in the Sierra Nevada being approximately zero.

  My prioriti
es had done a one-eighty. Derek’s as well. The Yellow Submarine had undergone a massive expansion—adding Silicon techies to Derek’s Green Dragons—a combination that had given birth to a new and legal brand of drone-killing software. Last I heard, they were planning a big IPO. I wished all the luck in the world to Derek and Stella, who had announced plans to marry.

  The itch really was bothering me now, like a phantom feeling in an amputated limb.

  I ate a mushroom and strolled in the last light, my dog at my side. Lucky was a rare silver Lab Derek had gifted me in anticipation of his impending IPO. Along with the pooch had come an invitation to Derek’s marriage to Stella. All things considered, we chose not to attend, but sent a gift:

  Lucky’s hat.

  A courier from the new Chinese mine site had brought it to me. I’d forwarded it to Derek and Stella, along with the note tucked inside it:

  Your grandmother wanted you to have it.

  It was signed: Godfather Ming.

  I told the courier to express my thanks to the sender, but his expression became downcast. “I regret to inform you General Ming Chan is dead.”

  Now, as Lucky and I walked the forest, the mushroom enhanced my senses. I realized how beautiful the Sierra was. Felt how good it was to be alive. How majestic was Anawanda.

  Lucky trotted ahead of me and began barking. I soon saw why.

  A lone hiker was on the trail ahead. A stooped old man.

  The monk?

  No. The old man was Caucasian. He wore worn hiking boots and a battered old cap . . . which, to my surprise, bore the logo of the original Brooklyn Dodgers, before the Boys of Summer went to LA.

  “Nice evening,” said the old man, pleasantly.

  “Yes, it is,” I said, thinking it weird an old codger was playing tourist all the way up here by his lonesome, with night coming on, no less. There was something about him that seemed vaguely familiar. Apparently, the feeling was mutual.

  “You remind me of a departed friend,” he said.

  Lucky had a nose for good people. He sat at the old timer’s side and nuzzled for a stroke. The old man obliged.

  I had a question I was afraid to ask, but did:

  “Your friend? What was his name?”

  “Our gang called him Kid Louie.”

  Pa? Was the old man an illusion?

  He continued walking, uphill.

  “Wrong way,” I called out.

  But he kept on walking.

  “Take the down path.”

  “My path leads up.”

  “Nothing up there.”

  “Oh, but there is.”

  Before I could ponder his words, much less respond, the old man was gone in the gloaming. My palm still itched, and for a moment I was tempted to follow him, but I didn’t.

  My family was awaiting me.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To those readers who liked The Extraditionist but had reservations about Benn Bluestone: Thank you for allowing the guy to redeem himself. Once again, my thanks to the astute Gracie Doyle at Thomas & Mercer, who from the beginning knew Benn was a good guy. And to the crew at Thomas & Mercer: Sarah Shaw, Dennelle Catlett, Gabrielle Guarnero, Laura Constantino, Laura Barrett, Oisin O’Malley, Sarah Burningham, Claire McLaughlin, and Jae Song.

  I am infinitely grateful to my steadfast agents, David Hale Smith and Liz Parker at Inkwell.

  And last, but far from least, to the patient, brilliant Ed Stackler, editor and friend extraordinaire.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2017 Luis Alicea Caldes

  Todd Merer worked for thirty years as a criminal attorney, specializing in the defense of high-ranking cartel chiefs extradited to the United States. He successfully argued acquittals in more than 150 trials. His high-profile cases have been featured in the New York Times and Time magazine and on 60 Minutes. A “proud son of Brooklyn,” Merer divides his time between New York City and ports of call along the old Spanish Main.