by Fritz Galt
“What do we do now?” Brad asked.
“I will sing a song,” Liang said, “and let each player make one guess at the name of a creature on my team. If you guess correctly, you get that creature on your team.”
“Wave your hand, then stop— Oops.” He suddenly stopped. “Sorry, your hands are tied.”
Everyone laughed.
May turned her head to follow Liang’s movements as he walked up and down the deck singing, “Wave your hand, then stop. Tonight I will send you a soup of what?” He waited for responses.
Each player on Brad’s team got to guess one kind of land creature. May heard a “dog” and a “dragon.” She also heard a “monkey,” a “worm” and a “tiger.”
“No. Sorry,” Liang said. This time his voice came from the back of the barge. “All wrong.”
So the dancer began singing. “Wave your hand, then stop. Tonight I will send you a soup of what?”
May thought of Brad baring his teeth. “Shark,” she called out. Others tried “squid,” “seaweed,” “whale” and “eel.”
All were wrong.
May might have been imagining this, but the lanterns on the other side of her scarf were burning brighter. Maybe it was just lights dancing in her head from all the laughter.
Liang sang out, this time from the front of the barge, “Wave your hand, then stop. Tonight I will burn you up.”
Some people laughed slightly. But it wasn’t funny.
The sea creatures began to guess names of land creatures. “Ant,” “cat,” “panda,” “crane” and “mouse” were all wrong, although they were getting closer.
She heard a crinkling noise behind her. Was a breeze fluttering the tablecloth?
The dancer taunted them, and soon her team was guessing. “Sea slug,” “amoeba,” “duck,” “tuna” and her guess, which was “dolphin.”
All were wrong.
Liang called out his song. And, while the other team guessed, May felt decidedly hot. Had she eaten something bad? She felt close to fainting. Maybe she should remove her scarf. But they were in the midst of a game, and she couldn’t reveal that her hands were tied.
Liang taunted her team with the song. “Wave your hand, then stop. Tonight I will send you into the soup.”
May heard a few muffled laughs from the sea creature team. But there was a roar in her ears and light flickered all around her. Her back prickled with heat, and there was little air to breathe.
It was her birthday party, and she wasn’t having fun.
“Let’s stop,” she called out.
The President of the United States agreed. “I’ve had enough. Take this blindfold off me.”
Why didn’t he take it off himself? She was the one with her hands tied behind her back.
Then she heard the sound of wood scraping across the deck.
“What’s going on?” Brad said, a touch of gameness still in his voice.
“It’s good riddance, Mr. West,” Liang called from the back of the barge. His voice was barely audible in the confusion.
Then Brad let out a startled yelp. His cry disappeared as his chair and body splashed into the lake.
“Master,” May screamed.
She struggled to free her hands, but the rope cut deeper into her skin and the knot only pulled tighter.
“Free yourselves,” she cried out. “He’s killing us.”
“I can’t,” the British Prime Minister said. “My hands are bound.”
“Same here,” came several other voices.
“He’s going to burn us alive,” she shouted.
“It’s time to say good-bye,” Liang called from the stern. There was the sound of two people diving into the water.
“Stop! You’ve got to save my lord!” May cried.
But she could barely hear her own words above the cries of others. Chairs scraped across the deck, retreating from flames that licked at them from all sides.
“Baba?” she called.
“Liang has done this on purpose,” Yu said, as if finally comprehending the elaborate scheme.
“We must move away from the fire. Can you move your chair?”
The two lurched blindly toward the stern of the barge, but within seconds, others bumped into her and turned her around. If she could only see.
“My lord!” She began to cough from the fumes and smoke.
She listened for a response. But there was only pandemonium.
The young woman was weeping beside her. “This is how I lost my parents.”
“Don’t worry,” May said. “We will get out of this alive.”
But how?
“Help!” she joined the others in crying out.
Flames were so close, May was afraid that her dress would catch fire.
“Move your chair with me,” she told the young woman. She resumed rocking and inched toward the rear of the barge. The chairs were heavy and difficult to move. She was not going to free her hands before the flames caught up with her.
Chapter 68
Once the last bat left the cave, Earl decided to give it another try. Half an hour later, he emerged on the other side with a slightly disheveled, but relieved Jade Wang. Or should he call her Jade Skitowsky? They still had to work out the details.
Warm air with a trace of jasmine wafted past. He and Jade had come to the right place. And what a honeymoon spot.
“Look here.” Jade shined the flashlight on a pile of white clothes that lay in the grass.
“Holy naked virgins. I’d recognize them anywhere.”
May had worn that outfit on their last day in Paris and on the flight by way of Baghdad to China.
“Our buddies have been here.”
She directed the beam straight in his eyes. “Our buddies?”
He colored slightly. “Well, now that we’re married…” He thought better of it. “You’re right. Brad’s my buddy, she’s…”
She watched him closely.
“She’s a distant friend. Hardly know her. If you wouldn’t have pointed them out, I never would have recognized them in a million years. In fact, those don’t even look like clothes.”
At last she swung the flashlight away from him.
Jeez, she was keeping him on a tight leash. Maybe she’d heard rumors about Shangri-la. But her firm approach also had its merits. It was kind of a turn-on.
How would Brad cope with married life?
Brad and May had been under a strict deadline to get married by her birthday, which was today. Exactly where had they tied the knot? Probably somewhere in the hinterland. Too bad they couldn’t have held joint nuptials and cut down on costs.
Jade kicked her boots off. Soon she was romping around in the grass.
He should take his shoes off, too. After all, he’d worn the same pair for several days. On second thought, he would hate to overpower the fragrant smells around them.
“Is that a river?” she said.
He followed her as she took off into some trees. He arrived at a stream and looked up. Her leather jumpsuit was hanging from a limb.
He sucked in his breath. Jade was wading across a spring-fed pool toward a waterfall. Her form moved gracefully in the moonlight.
“Okay, that does it.”
It was time to show his true colors. He got hung up on a lace, but managed to pry the shoe off anyway. He stripped off every last stitch of clothing and plunged into the water like a hyena in a watering hole. He felt like an Alka-Seltzer tablet dissolving all his dirt and fatigue.
When he reached his bride, she was soaking up the spray and drinking from her cupped hands. “Have some, too,” she offered.
He sucked from her hands and lapped up every drop. So sweet. It seemed to scour his insides, eliminate a gnawing hunger, and cool off the raging passion he had felt just seconds before. Instead came clean purity that he had never experienced before, and the clarity of true love.
Forget that rubber stamp ceremony back in Beijing. This was their real wedding, forged in paradise. Wate
r speckled his glasses, but he had been given new sight. The creature standing expectantly, even impatiently, before him had an inner beauty to match her outward charms.
So they embraced with nothing but their wildly beating hearts between them. He had found his soul mate.
“Will you look at that?” she said, suddenly turning away.
“Huh?”
He turned to see what she was pointing at. A hairy orange ball reflected in a puddle.
He wiped his lenses dry.
On a large black lake below them, a barge burned like a paper lantern. Cries rose from the scene.
“That sounds like May,” Jade said.
He tuned his ear to the high pitch. Unfortunately, he didn’t know May well enough to recognize her scream.
“Follow me,” Jade said, and picked her bare limbs out of the water.
“Er, shouldn’t we dress for the occasion?”
Chapter 69
May was at her wits’ end. The heat on her shoulders was blistering. Maybe she could turn her chair back to back with the girl’s and they could untie each other’s hands.
“Anastasia,” she called. “Turn your back to me. I can unfasten the rope.”
“I don’t want to go into the fire,” Anastasia said.
May squirmed to rotate her chair away from the girl. But there was no more room.
“I’ll have to jump into the water,” Anastasia cried.
“Don’t,” May said. “The chair will weigh you down.”
The politicians in the party seemed ill adapted for such a situation. “I demand that someone put this fire out,” the Brit said.
“Order! Order!” another cried.
No solution was at hand. The group just squeezed closer.
“Baba,” May cried. She hadn’t heard his voice for some time.
“I’m here, my little Apple Blossom.”
He was behind her, shielding her from the flames.
Then a man’s voice, one she hadn’t heard earlier, rose from the water beyond the pandemonium. “Nobody panic.”
She stopped coughing long enough to focus on the voice. It wasn’t her master, but it sounded familiar.
A splash of oars came from the water, and the passengers quieted down. Next, two people climbed on board.
From behind her blindfold, she listened for more clues.
Someone scooped a knife off the serving table. She tensed. Then a blade began slicing through someone’s silk bindings.
“Jump in the rowboat.” This time it was a woman’s voice.
May recognized her friend. “Jade!”
“I see you, May. Let me get your father first.”
Moments later, she felt Jade reaching for her wrists. With one slice of the knife, her hands were free.
May jumped to her feet and threw the blindfold off.
Two silhouettes worked quickly against the yellow wall of fire. It had consumed the entire front half of the barge and was sweeping along both sides to the stern. Seated victims waited patiently to be freed while the figures sprang from guest to guest, liberating them.
President Webster placed one foot in the rowboat and helped passengers off the barge.
May grabbed her father with one hand and Anastasia with the other. She pulled them past a naked, Hobbit-like figure that danced nimbly from chair to chair. “Earl?”
“Yo.”
It was Earl. “Liang threw my master overboard.”
“Who?”
“Brad.”
“Where?”
May pointed to where she had heard the splash. It was off the portside, near the back of the barge.
Earl handed her a knife. An instant later, all she saw was his backside and the soles of his feet as he dove headfirst into the inky water.
The man named Khan still needed help. So May sent her father and Anastasia off to the rowboat without her and paused to sever the man’s knot. Once freed, he jumped to his feet, turned, and removed his blindfold. His narrow eyes settled on her. Fierce and piercing at first, they soften in recognition. She had saved his life.
“Ladies first,” he said.
She straddled the stern and got into the rowboat. Deng Xiaoping was waiting with a helping hand.
Then Khan jumped in, the last victim to get off the fast-disintegrating barge.
Where was Jade?
Just as flames licked across the final floorboards, Jade launched into the water where Earl had dived. Flames arched from one side of the barge to the other and engulfed all that was left inside.
President Chuck Webster shoved off, and several people grabbed oars. There were far too many people for one rowboat, and the oars had no room to operate.
Some leaned over the hull and paddled with their hands. For her part, May stood upright and stared at the spot where Earl and Jade had disappeared.
Brad must have been underwater for more than four minutes. Every second made it less likely that he had survived. Then Earl emerged gasping for air.
“I found him!” he cried.
Jade popped to the surface. “Where is he?”
“Follow me.” Earl barely took another breath, then flipped over and vanished into the blackness.
A carving knife clenched in her teeth, Jade took a huge gulp of air and disappeared. All May could see was the reflection of the burning barge.
A hand tugged at her.
“Sit down.”
She couldn’t wrench her eyes from the spot where her friends had dived.
“Daughter, please.”
She swallowed hard and sank into her father’s lap.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “Brad can’t die.”
How did he know? How could Brad swim while tied to a chair?
It was hopeless.
The boat was silent as people waited. May counted the passing seconds. Each second further sealed her lover’s fate. Even if Earl and Jade found him down there, how could they float him to the surface?
“Patience, daughter.”
Patience? That was the last thing they needed. Time helped no one. It was the killer.
Earl and Jade had flown all the way from Beijing to help them. And they were nearly in time. What good was saving her if they lost Brad?
How could she thank her friends for bringing his lifeless body to the surface?
The barge sparked and roared in a final inferno, but she wasn’t listening. All she heard was the silence of the spreading ripples.
Then a hand broke the surface. A head. It was Earl, dragging something upward.
Next came another head. Light-colored hair caught the reflection of the flames. A blindfold still covered the eyes. He wasn’t moving.
May gasped in horror.
Then Jade emerged, having pushed from below. She bobbed to the surface and sucked in some air.
May stared aghast at the blindfolded figure.
“My lord!” she shouted. Tears blotted out her vision.
She wiped them away.
“Talk to me!”
Earl and Jade clawed the water to keep afloat and hold up the victim. Spluttering, they needed May to reach out and help.
She leaned over the edge while others prevented her from falling overboard. At last she felt the sides of his neck. She grabbed his collar and pulled him closer.
He didn’t move or speak. All she saw was a pink scarf conforming to the contours of his face.
“Speak to me,” she said, sobbing. “I love you, my lord.”
The silk moved inward slightly. It formed a mouth.
Brad was breathing.
Those around May reached out for him and she grabbed at the scarf. She worked it off his head. His mouth was open. And so were his eyes.
Brad was alive and looking at her!
“Good evening, my fine lady.” He acted like he was seeing her for the first time and appreciating what he saw.
He wasn’t even breathing hard. What a miracle.
“Welcome back, son,” Dr. Yu was saying.
Earl came swimming up and grabbed the side of the craft. “Buddo, you made it.”
“Thanks, Skeeter. You’re a swell frogman.”
Earl grumbled, then said, “Let’s get everyone to shore.”
There wasn’t enough room for the soggy threesome onboard, so they paddled alongside the ship, May holding Brad by the arm.
The party stepped ashore grateful to Earl and Jade for their timely heroics. Several people had gathered at the water’s edge to welcome them. There was neither anxiety nor relief on their faces. Instead, it seemed more like an extension of her birthday party.
Earl and Jade were greeted with cheers all around.
But May knelt in the warm sand beside her lord, who needed more time to recover.
“How did you survive underwater for so long?” she whispered.
He smiled weakly. “It’s a little trick I learned in Dali.” But he wouldn’t elaborate further.
Footsteps padded up behind. She turned around.
Earl came to a stop and looked them over in the torchlight. “I can’t leave you two alone without your getting into trouble.”
“Yeah,” Brad said. “We’re helpless without you.”
“You hear about Jade and me?”
“Yes, we did,” May said. “Did it already happen?”
Earl beamed. “You bet. We’re legal now. And may I extend my hardiest congratulations to the both of you as well?”
His eyes shot down to May’s hand. Then Brad’s.
Her finger had never felt so naked.
“Oh, sorry.”
She burst into tears. “This is my birthday. I already turned twenty-five.”
“Er, Happy Birthday.”
Blindfold still around his neck, Dr. Yu joined the three of them. “We must stop Liang before he seizes control.”
They helped Brad to his feet.
May looked him over carefully. “Are you sure you can walk, my lord?”
He nodded. He was weak, but could carry his own weight.
Earl was staring at May. “Did I just hear her call you ‘my lord’?”
Brad slapped him on the shoulder. “Welcome to paradise.”
Chapter 70
With May in tow, Brad plowed through thick foliage and tall grass on his way to the royal palace. His lungs hurt and he still felt dizzy. But he had to stop Liang and prevent any more mischief in the otherwise tranquil valley.
