The boat accelerated as they hit open ocean and waves slapped like jackhammers against the bottom of the boat.
“Have you heard of a village of women?” Andra asked.
Lin Su looked up and the expression on his face was dark. “No one is welcome.”
“Why?” Max asked.
“I know of one man who said he would go there.”
“What happened?” Andra asked.
“He never came back,” Lin Su said shortly. “You are a woman, maybe. But him . . .” He shook his head as he looked at Max.
Max reached out and took her hand. He turned to Lin Su. “I believe it’s near Maling Gorge. Do you know of anyone familiar with that?”
“I will say this only once: when you get off the trawler, you will be where you need to be. Ask for Hsin.”
“Hsin?” Max repeated.
“At the fishing village where you will be dropped, they will know of him. He’s a pilot.”
“And he can fly us to where we want to go?” Max asked.
“Close enough,” Lin Su replied. “I wish you weren’t going.”
“No choice, Su,” Andra replied softly, and there was a tremor in her voice as she looked at Max.
“Then I shall pray for you.”
“I really wish you’d rephrase that,” Max said as he squeezed Andra’s hand and thought of all of the reasons they should get out of China right now.
“This came for you. I picked it up late yesterday evening.” Lin Su handed an envelope to Andra. “I thought you might want me to collect your mail. All things considered.”
“There’s no return address,” Andra whispered. “In fact, there’s no stamp. Where did this come from?” She turned it over and over again.
“You’re not going to open it?” Max asked.
“Not here.”
“You’ll have time on the trawler,” Max agreed as she slipped the envelope into her pocket.
The sea was choppier than it had been within the shelter of the harbor and the small boat lifted and dropped within the swells as it plied its way toward the worn, rust-coated trawler that loomed far bigger than it had appeared from the harbor, not quite the size of the Jumbo Seafood Restaurant. It bobbed gently on waves that threatened to swallow the smaller boat.
A few minutes later they were pushing against the trawler, bumping and scraping wood against the bigger boat’s metal hull as a rope and wood-rung ladder was thrown down and excited voices called to them from above.
Max held the end of approximately forty feet of rope ladder for Andra. “Be careful,” he said and wished he could make the climb for her.
Within minutes Andra was on deck and Max found himself hanging from the same ladder. Below, the small boat bumped back and forth in the waves before Lin Su revved the engine, spun around and headed inland, back to Aberdeen.
“Welcome aboard,” a slim man, dressed in a gray slicker and dark pants, greeted them as Max swung a leg onto the deck.
His English was impeccable and to Max it was surprising that he knew English at all—and as he thought that he chastised himself for being prejudicial. Who said a fisherman couldn’t command more than one language, even two or three?
“I’ll just get you settled and let you know that there’s coffee below. If you want to get some fresh air, this spot on the deck is as good a place as any.” He gestured with a wave of his arm. “Actually, anywhere where there’s not a lot of activity.”
“We’ll stay out of the way,” Max replied.
“I know you will.” He led them down a short set of metal stairs and into a small cabin with a table, fridge and microwave. “You should be comfortable here.”
“Thanks,” Andra said.
“You’re welcome. Look, I’ve got to see to my crew.” He turned and headed back up the stairs.
Andra pulled out the envelope.
“It’s like we’re being fed information. No one person knows it all—they all provide us with a piece,” she said in an undertone as she looked at the envelope. “That is, assuming that this is what it’s all about.”
“Open it.” His tone sounded almost barbed, even to him. He took a breath, dreading what might be in this latest communication. “Please.”
Andra slit the envelope open with one well-groomed fingernail. She had such artistic fingers, fingers that were gentle yet efficient, fingers that . . . He turned away and poured them each a cup of coffee from a carafe that sat in the small galley kitchen. “I don’t think there’s any cream. Powdered creamer if we’re lucky.” He foraged around in the cabinets, pulling open drawers before finally finding the powdered creamer and sugar. He added some to each cup and stirred with a plastic stir stick. “Here you go.”
She smoothed the parchment-colored stationery. He moved in beside her and together they silently read.
Le was a love that lasted a lifetime. While his reputation is one of fright and intimidation, his loyalty is to me. He cannot help you with what you seek, for he knows naught of it. But he will protect you as he did me because I have asked. You will know him because of one thing, a heart.
Fu
“That is incredibly poignant,” Max said gruffly. “Yet it tells us nothing at all. Except . . .” Silence echoed between them for a second then two. “Unbelievable!”
“What, Max?”
“Le. Su mentioned that was the name of the man who took out our attacker at the factory.”
“And the name of the man who attacked Jeff. A common name with an uncommon connection.”
“Is the bastard working quietly in tandem with us?”
Andra shivered. “I don’t like the sound of that and yet it says that whoever he is, his loyalty is to Fu.”
“And we have no idea who Fu is—not really.”
“Here’s the thing.” Andra leaned forward, clutching the note. “Margaret is dead. Why? Was it random?” She shook her head. “I hope so. But I was attacked at home and on the street and then there’s the incident at the factory.”
“Don’t forget the look-alike hit near your apartment,” Max reminded her.
“And this letter clearly says that we will need protection.”
“Someone paid for those diversionary tickets to Singapore,” Max whispered.
She stretched her legs out as she perched on a stool. “I’m going to toy with the names.”
It was fifteen minutes later when she looked up. In the interim, Max had only sat, drank his coffee and contemplated their current situation, which appeared to be more and more circular.
“I’ve made some sense, or better yet, possibilities.”
Max shoved the cold cup of coffee aside.
“The names Le and Fu seem to bracket the note, as if that was a deliberate clue. So I played with the letters and tried something simple—a game of numbers, really. The name Le adds up numerically to eight and Fu transposes to nine. That is, if you take the letters in each of their names and their respective positions in the alphabet, then add the numbers and reduce them to single digits.” Her voice was so soft that he had to lean close to hear what she said. “Numerology is fairly common in China and eight is considered a very powerful number, but then so is nine, just not as much.” She frowned and sat back.
“Leading us where?”
“I don’t know. Quite possibly, nowhere.” She stood up and poured a fresh cup of coffee, blowing on her cup before taking a swallow. Steam rose up and framed a face that was fresh and clear of makeup.
She slid the envelope into her pocket and glanced hesitantly around her. “We need to be careful what we say. You never know who is listening. I mean, we don’t know any of these people. The captain is a friend of Su but who are the rest?” She shrugged delicately and took another sip.
“I see you found the coffee.” It was the captain’s voice that called with an abrupt but moderate friendliness as he came down the steps and joined them in the confined space.
Max glanced to the corner, where a computer monitor was coated with grime fro
m what might well be years at sea. “Would you mind if we used your computer?”
The man shrugged. “The Internet is spotty but feel free.” He reached over and pushed the power button on and a fan loudly whirred, the noise filling the confined space. “We’ll be at sea for slightly over an hour total.” The man looked at a tarnished, old-fashioned watch fob that he pulled out of his pocket. “Another forty minutes.”
Max’s lips tightened and his hand settled on the counter.
“I’ll leave you to it then.” The captain headed for the narrow stairs leading to the deck.
Max sat down at the computer, which showed its age and memory shortage in the amount of time it took to connect to the Internet and pull up the heart of our dream website.
Five minutes later they were at the same spot in the program where they had left off before. The computer suddenly began to whine, the screen froze, and in moments the entire system shut down. “Ominous that again we don’t move past square one,” Max muttered.
Andra stood up. “Shall we go outside?”
As he followed her he kept his eyes focused on her shoulder and away from the gentle curve of her waist and swell of her bottom. He reminded himself of all the reasons they couldn’t be together. Her love of children, his determination to avoid parenthood, and not least of all, her wealth that made any thought of a relationship completely one-sided. He could give her nothing of importance, for her dreams were not his.
Chapter Fifteen
“We’re here, Max,” Andra whispered in an excited voice less than an hour later.
Max stepped out of the small boat that had brought them to shore and onto the dock, where he reached a hand out to help her. They’d no sooner stepped onto the dock then, the small boat that had brought them to shore spun around and headed with a roar and a blast of exhaust out to sea.
The scent of rotting fish rose in a suffocating cloud around them. A hundred feet back, tin-roofed huts crowded against each other and spilled onto the shore. A man with a grubby Blue Jays baseball cap and a grease-streaked, torn white T-shirt sat on a dock a few hundred feet away and stared at them.
“Where do we find Hsin, or for that matter, any pilot who can take us to this village?”
“Easy, Andra. We’re in a small community. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. We’re strangers—Caucasian strangers, if you need me to point out the obvious.” He took her hand and squeezed before dropping it. “They’ll be aware of our intentions before we get past the first house. No need to ask direct questions. Not yet.”
“How do you know this?”
He smiled, rather lopsidedly. “I grew up in a small town. Trust me, there weren’t any secrets and definitely no strangers who weren’t quizzed and stripped of everything they knew in minutes.”
“A small town, I would never have imagined.”
“And there’s no time for those stories. Although one night, if you wish . . .”
She gave him a playful jab before turning her attention to their surroundings. “Delightful,” she said with a note of sarcasm.
The beach stretched for miles, patches of sand cluttered with discarded plastic bottles, rocks, and rotting fishing nets. The ocean frothed in angry caps that brought in discarded remnants of the busy commerce of Hong Kong.
“Let’s get moving. I don’t feel safe here in the open,” Max said.
Tension seemed to shimmer around them as they walked. It was as if there were eyes everywhere, following them. His gaze swept around them in quiet vigilance.
“What do you think? That they’re laying in wait for us. Whoever they are.” Andra elbowed Max gently in the ribs. “Relax.”
“It’s hard to relax, all things considered. Someone wants this old doll and it’s not for its antique value.”
“Thus we have no choice but to push forward or ditch the doll.”
“And, like we discussed, it’s more than likely too late to ditch the doll. The doll is tied to it all.” Max shrugged. “We have no idea who we can trust other than each other.”
Andra shivered, for despite Max’s vigilance, they were alone on a rough-edged beach with only the water behind them and the unknown in front of them.
The man in the ball cap had moved farther down the beach. A woman was tending a fire burning outside her hut and sending a cloud of pungent black smoke into the air.
Andra squinted into the sun and wrinkled her nose. “There’s a stench about this place. And I don’t just mean the smoke from the fire. How do they stand to live here?”
“Not the tourist destination of the year. The sooner we get out of here the better.” He stepped off the dock and onto sand that was more broken gravel and debris than sand to where another man hunched, weathered and sun-beaten, over a tangled mass of corded rope. His gray hair was partially covered by a beaten brown fisherman’s cap. He glanced at them once, muttered something incoherent, spit and went back to working on the rope.
Max strode forward, seemingly undeterred by the man’s lack of attention, and stopped alongside him. Despite her years in Hong Kong, the dialect Max spoke to the man was unfamiliar to her. As she pondered the ease with which he communicated and watched the gestures, she considered their situation.
“His name is Hsin, just as Su said,” Max broke into her thoughts. “He flies goods in and out for a remote village. No one goes there, just Hsin. Those were his specific words.” Max shoved a hand through his hair when it flopped across his right eye, partially obstructing his vision. “I tried to question him further but he wasn’t talking. What I do have are directions to where we can find this Hsin.”
It was a short walk that took them down a path along the shoreline and skirted around the village. Five minutes later on the north side of the village they found a hard-packed field that served as a rough landing strip and where a small Cessna sat.
“Wait here,” Max said as he walked toward the man who seemed to be only biding time as he sat cross-legged on the ground beside what Andra could only assume was his plane.
Max hurried back to her a few minutes later. His face was slightly flushed and there was a spark in his eye that she’d never seen before. “I think we may have hit pay dirt. He’s never been to the village but he flies supplies in and out and leaves them for pickup. For an outrageous sum he’s willing to fly us in today. After that he assured me that we’re on our own.”
“Is it a village of women?”
“He says he knows nothing except that he has never spoken to anyone but a woman.”
“And he hasn’t asked?”
“Apparently it was made quite clear that if he asked questions or tried to locate the village that he would be dealt with. He said the woman was frightening enough but it was the man, Le, who terrified him.” He touched her arm as if to reassure her. “He has the same heart that Jeff Xiu has, only burnt on the inside of his arm.”
“So this could be a failed mission,” Andra said. “And maybe a foolhardy one too. It’s clear the women want no interference.”
“Don’t forget the doll and that Fu contacted us. She wanted us there.”
“And she’s more than likely dead,” Andra replied. “Do the others—the other women, I mean, do they even know who we are or that Fu contacted us?”
“It’s a chance I need to take.” He scowled at her. “I don’t expect that you do. Andra, I’ll wait here with you. Get you on another trawler, a plane, anything, and out of here.” He touched her forearm as if to emphasize his point. “I should have done this before. I’ll wait with you until . . .”
“No.” She held up her hand. “There’s no way in hell I’m not going. Besides, if this is indeed a village of women, it’s not me who will be the odd man out.”
“You do have a way with words, Andra,” Max chuckled. “But I still hate that I got you into this. And I’d feel better if I went alone.”
“Stop it!” she commanded and stepped around him. She saw that the pilot was already prepared for flight and was visible through the
cockpit window as the plane idled. She strode forward, pushing herself beyond doubts and second guesses. She knew Max would follow. He had no choice. In moments they had boarded and were seated as the engine’s roar filled the cabin.
The plane took off into a cloud-studded sky amid thick silence. Andra looked out the window but there was nothing but a cloud bed that obscured everything. Then, even as she thought that the clouds thinned and a mountain range was visible, a rough-hewn gorge appeared as the mountain ranges opened beneath them. And around them the clouds began to darken and lightning knifed through the sky. Everything changed in an instant as the plane’s altitude dropped dramatically and the pilot seemed to be wrestling with the controls. A crack of thunder shuddered around them and the plane knifed into a sudden dip even as it jerked left.
Andra screamed and covered her mouth.
Max gripped her hand. “It’ll be okay.”
The plane seemed to almost tumble in the sky, as if to make a mockery of his words. Max’s grip on her hand became almost painful.
“Max,” she whispered. “Let go.”
He dropped her hand and she flexed it—thankful in a way to have had her attention diverted by his too-tight grip. She knew his fear stemmed only from his fear for her. She could tell by the way he kept glancing her way, as if as long as he could see her she’d be all right. She’d imagined he’d be the same if he had kids—an oversized mother hen. The image took her mind only briefly from the storm before the plane lurched again. This time she couldn’t take her eyes off the window, as if that would ensure their safety. But as quickly as it had begun, it ended. The plane slipped out of the bank of weather and into clearer skies. As Andra collected her jangled nerves, the plane dipped and the wheel mechanism screeched as it dropped.
When the imposing rock beneath them screamed danger and landing appeared impossible, the plane leaned into a turn and a small meadow came into view. The plane bounced to a bumpy stop.
Legacy of Fear Page 10
