“That’s it!” I wafted some more toward my nose. “That’s the one.”
“Your young lady has exquisite taste,” Dragon Lady confirmed. “That’s an exclusive mix from a small Zurich perfumery. You wouldn’t normally find it in the U.S. Is your young lady European?”
“I suppose so.” That did seem likely. She had a vague hint of an accent.
Despite confirming I was looking at the smallest possible quantity of the perfume they could sell, I was not happy with the outrageous price tag.
“Catch you later,” Amit was saying.
I hoped Heather – and getting a sample of Perky Girl’s perfume – would be worth the cost and hassle.
“You found the right perfume?” Amit seemed surprised his scheme had actually worked. “Let me sample that.” He took a good whiff so he’d recognize it too. “Nice stuff. She must be a classy babe.”
“So how’d the pick-up with this Heather go?”
“I am so going to score,” Amit said confidently. “I can sense it.”
“Awful expensive way to land a date,” I pointed out.
He smiled. “I’m on expense account. The Civic Circle is picking up the tab for the whole evening. Dinner and hotel room. Thought I’d take advantage by playing some ‘Alpha Provider’ game.”
He saw the puzzled look in my eyes and answered my unasked question. “I’m the exotic foreigner, moving in elite circles, dating supermodels, but unwilling to be tied down to any particular girl,” he explained. “That’s like chick crack. I’m so far beyond her boring boyfriend or any other guy she’s ever met, she can’t help but try to make a play for me.”
He seemed confident.
“I have a dinner of my own in a couple hours with the Tong. You’ll be OK?”
“Just fine,” Amit confirmed. “I can practice picking up numbers from girls on the other side of the mall until Heather gets off shift in three hours. I need to get my play card filled so I’m ready when we’re back in school this fall. Let me get my bag from your car, though.”
* * *
I returned to the Chinese restaurant where Professor Chen had introduced me to the Red Flower Tong just over a week ago. They were expecting me. The manager himself stood behind the servers’ podium. He bowed deeply. I returned a curt nod. “Please follow me, sir,” he said respectfully. The black eye I’d received as a result of his screw-up on my previous visit had mostly faded. The Tong seemed a ruthless bunch, but they had a certain sense of honor. They were in my debt for having saved Professor Chen, and the manager compounded their debt by his mistreatment of Professor Chen and me. I had a feeling he’d be facing some kind of brutal retribution if only I insisted on it, so I didn’t. In retrospect, that was a smart move, because it meant his bosses in the Tong felt all the more obliged to even the scales in their dealings with me. I was confident they’d extracted whatever toll from the manager they thought appropriate in the week since my last visit.
The manager held open the door, saying something in Chinese, and bowing deeply. I noticed no one returned his bow. One of the men replied, a hint of anger in his voice.
“Our guest has arrived,” the manager said in a fearful tone. Good help must be hard to find.
“You are dismissed.” My eyes adjusted to the dim lighting as the manager beat a quick retreat, and I saw the speaker was Mr. Hung. Professor Chen had referred to Mr. Hung as his “uncle,” but I had the impression the relationship was a figurative description of relative rank within the Tong. I saw Professor Chen was there, too, along with a couple of the bodyguards I’d met last time. There were a few new faces, including another distinguished-looking older gentleman. “Mr. Burdell,” Mr. Hung continued, “Welcome back to the Red Flower Pavilion. I have the honor to introduce my own uncle, Honorable Shan Zhu.”
Mr. Hung was some kind of local big shot, and this new Shan Zhu must be his boss. I returned the bows and shook hands. “An honor to meet you, Mr. Zhu,” I acknowledged. He said something in Chinese.
“You may call him, ‘Honorable Shan Zhu,’” Mr. Hung corrected me. “Please be seated.” He showed me to a place at the table. A stunningly beautiful girl in a long form-fitting silk dress served tea. She must have been new, because I certainly would have remembered her if I’d seen her before.
I took the offered tea. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure, sir,” she answered demurely, but with an inviting smile before shuffling away with small steps constrained by the tight dress.
“You like her?” Mr. Hung must have noted my lingering gaze.
“She is very beautiful,” I replied, neutrally.
“Her name is Ding Li. Much can be arranged for our friends.”
Was he suggesting…? It was a good thing I’d left Amit behind. He’d be angling for them to throw the girl into the deal. The morality of accepting such an offer aside, I had a feeling that although the immediate experience might be quite pleasant, there would be undesired consequences.
“You are most generous,” I played for time while I thought how to politely decline, “but such a lovely flower would leave me too deeply in your debt.”
Professor Chen was talking softly in Chinese to Shan Zhu. Translating? Shan Zhu replied and looked at me.
“Honorable Shan Zhu is pleased to meet the ‘youxia’ who outwitted our enemies and saved Professor Chen,” Mr. Hung explained.
“Youxia?”
“It means an adventurer… a knight who roams the countryside doing good deeds,” Professor Chen clarified. “Were you able to save Marlena?”
“Professor Graf is fine,” I assured him, then immediately realized that it might not have been a good idea to let the Tong know that. “She sends her regards and her thanks for your letter.”
“I’m delighted,” Professor Chen smiled, “to see you were as effective in your rescue of my colleague as you were in your rescue of me.”
“You believe the Circle is convinced she is lost in the mountains and dead?” I was curious what their sources were saying.
He glanced at Mr. Hung who gave him a subtle nod and then turned back to me. “They believe she has died of a poison of some kind,” he assured me. “While they would like to find her body for confirmation, they are convinced she must be dead.
That was good news, but it more or less confirmed what Amit had been able to pick up.
“They continue to monitor her apartment, her credit cards, her online accounts, just in case, however,” Professor Chen continued. “It will be difficult for her to remain safe forever. You must caution her to remain vigilant and careful.”
“We can help,” Mr. Hung offered. “We have ways of keeping lost those who the Circle seeks to find. Her talents would be useful in our own work. We can offer her sanctuary.”
I began to see why they were being so nice to me.
“I thank you and Honorable Shan Zhu for that generous offer,” I acknowledged. “I will pass it on, when the opportunity presents itself.”
“Excellent.” Mr. Hung replied, while Professor Chen translated my words to Shan Zhu. “Your deeds have marked you as a worthy ally,” Mr. Hung continued. “Professor Chen speculated that you might be Albertian.”
“What?” I pretended to look puzzled.
“Albertian,” Mr. Hung explained. “A member or agent of the Ordo Alberti.”
I took that in a moment before replying. “Who are they?” I was glad I’d just been practicing how to pass a lie detector exam. I willed myself to remain calm and relax.
“They are… fellow enemies of the Civic Circle,” Mr. Hung continued. “Sometimes allies, sometimes rivals of ours in the Shadow War we fight against the Civic Circle. We both usually focus our efforts against the greater enemy biding our time until the Civic Circle is defeated. The Albertians seek to unite the world in a religious dictatorship under the control of their Pope. They are few, but they have a power and an influence beyond their number, thanks to ancient teachings stolen from us by a man named Angus MacGuffin.”
&
nbsp; He paused and stared into my eyes. I took the bait. “Who is Angus MacGuffin?”
Mr. Hung continued looking at me. “We were hoping you might be familiar with him,” Professor Chen interjected. “You showed me how the duality of the taijitu, the yin-yang symbol, follows from the duality of the electromagnetic field. That insight explains much about how to interpret our ancient writings.”
“When the Civic Circle closed in on Mr. Burleson and your parents,” Mr. Hung picked up the questioning, “They were concerned about the Heaviside research, but what they found truly alarming was a book by Angus MacGuffin, and a few other forbidden texts that had been overlooked in the Tolliver Library. Did Mr. Burleson ever speak of this MacGuffin?”
“No,” I answered honestly. We’d been focused on researching the lost work of Oliver Heaviside, and we’d never have found the MacGuffin manuscript if Amit hadn’t intercepted the Civic Circle’s urgent instructions to their field agents to confiscate MacGuffin’s work and other suppressed texts. “If there were any other sensitive books in the Tolliver Library,” I offered, “the Civic Circle’s agents probably took them when they burned the place down.”
Of course, Uncle Rob was responsible for burning the library, once we collected all the books the Civic Circle was after. I was beginning to realize it would be a very bad idea to let Mr. Hung and his Brotherhood know how much we knew and what we had.
“The Civic Circle did not burn the Library,” Mr. Hung declared.
I raised an eyebrow and tried my best to look surprised and puzzled. “But I know they burned down my house. I assumed… If they didn’t burn the library,” I said slowly, “then who…”
“The Albertians burned the Tolliver Library,” Mr. Hung explained, “so you see they are not to be trusted. They stole our secrets, and they burned your library to the ground to make sure their stolen secrets remained out of others’ hands.”
“This MacGuffin, he was an Albertian?” I asked.
I saw Professor Chen look at Mr. Hung, and Mr. Hung gave him a subtle nod. “He was a missionary in China. Some of the Brotherhood trusted him with our most sacred scrolls and artifacts. He was supposed to deliver them to our friends in San Francisco. He vanished, perhaps with the aid of the Albertians, because he disclosed many of our secrets to them. He re-emerged in Atlanta in 1940, trying to disclose our secrets to the world. The Civic Circle silenced him. They took every copy of his writings, or so we thought. The last known copy was in the Tolliver Library, and the Albertians apparently took it or burned it.”
Mr. Hung finished his sidebar conversation in Chinese with Shan Zhu. “That is why we find it curious that you are so knowledgeable about our ancient teachings,” Mr. Hung’s eyes bored into mine, a hint of accusation in his voice.
“I have you to thank for that,” I turned to Professor Chen, startling him. “I saw your tattoo when I first met you. You were evasive about it, so I figured it was a secret of some kind. When I took microwave theory, I realized that your version of the taijitu looked like a Smith Chart. I was playing around with the Schelkunoff formulas for the impedance of a dipole, and thought I’d plot them on a Smith Chart. The result was the symbol you have tattooed on your arm.”
“But how did you know that it came from our own ancient teachings?” Chen asked.
“My father, or perhaps it was Mr. Burleson, figured out that there was a tie-in to Xueshu Quan. I researched Chinese history, culture, and philosophy. Once I figured out the Taijitu symbol, I reviewed what the Tao had to say about it. It was clear to me that the talk of the balance of yin and yang and their mutual transformations was really describing the behavior of the electromagnetic field. Do you have some related teachings that are not publically available? Is there anything that goes beyond the conventional Maxwell theory in your ancient writings?”
This time it was Chen who translated for Shan Zhu. I was so going to have to learn Chinese to keep up with their sidebar conversations. The delay gave me a welcome moment to collect my thoughts. I couldn’t let them know how much I already knew about MacGuffin. I had to keep my secrets to myself while pushing them to disclose their secrets to me.
“We have some portion of the material stolen by MacGuffin,” Chen acknowledged. “The material is in Chinese, so it would be difficult for you to contribute to our work.”
“I see.” An excellent excuse for them to keep their own secrets to themselves. “This is all new to me. First, I learn that the Civic Circle is a conspiracy bent on taking over the world. Then I learn that the Brotherhood opposes them in secret. Now I learn that there’s yet another side in the Shadow War. Are there any other players in this great game?” I might as well fish for more information.
“To the outside world, we are the ‘Red Flower Tong,’” Mr. Hung confirmed. We and the Albertians are the principal opposition to Xueshu Quan and the Civic Circle,” Mr. Hung confirmed. “There have been ‘other players,’ as you put it. Your country was profoundly influenced by Adam Weishaupt and the Bavarian Illuminati working through the Freemasons. They sought to develop your nation as a counterweight to Xueshu Quan. In the late 1820s and 1830s, however, Xueshu Quan’s agents prompted a purge of key Masons in your country, eliminating their leaders and subverting their society. They swept up most of the useful remnants into their own organization which became the precursor to the Civic Circle, and they cut off ties to the remainder.”
I took that in. “So the current Freemasons have forgotten their founding principles?”
“Either forgotten, or they are not acting on what knowledge they have,” Mr. Hung clarified. “There are certain small cells who have preserved or recovered the ancient wisdom. They are rarely a factor.
“The Dark Ocean – the Genyōsha – of Japan. They remain powerful, but have not acted directly against Xueshu Quan and the Civic Circle in decades.
“It is the same with the royal houses of Europe. They had some knowledge of Xueshu Quan and the threat he posed. For a time, they acted in concert to cripple the power of my homeland in an effort to thwart Xueshu Quan. With the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, decades of war and lawlessness, and the rise of the Communists, they thought the threat was finished.
“Queen Elizabeth II is the last of their line to retain any significant power. Perhaps her uncle, Edward VIII, failed to pass on the secrets to her father, George VI, when Edward abdicated. We do not know. Even if she does know the hidden truth, she has failed to act upon it.
“Of course the last royal houses to make a serious move against Xueshu Quan were the Romanovs of Russia, the Hapsburgs, and the House of Hohenzollern. The result was World War I, the loss of their power, and the dismemberment of their respective empires.
“Perhaps Elizabeth is merely prudent and biding her time, but Britain lost the empire her house conquered. Now her nation is being conquered in turn by immigrants from the lands she once ruled. By her inaction, for whatever reason, she is no longer a factor.”
How much of history could be explained by this Shadow War against Xueshu Quan and the Civic Circle? How many curious and counterintuitive events were their doing, side effects of their ancient struggle?
“Now, the Brotherhood is all that stands between Xueshu Quan and world domination,” Mr. Hung continued. “We do not often work with outsiders, however, you have proven yourself. You saved my nephew, Professor Chen. We can help you avenge your parents killed by the Xueshu Quan and the agents of the Civic Circle. Working with us is your only option, because we are the only viable opposition to Xueshu Quan.”
He paused and took a sip of tea to punctuate that point.
“You have a plan to discredit your professor. I told you we can do this. Honorable Shan Zhu is here to decide if we will do what we can do. Explain what you have in mind.”
“Honorable Shan Zhu,” I nodded at him and saw him tilt his head in reply. “Professor Gomulka… he is an operative of the Civic Circle, and he led the campaign against Professor Chen. He is my enemy and yours.” I paused for Professor Chen
to catch up in his translation. “I am in a position of trust and can read his emails. Professor Gomulka has certain… weaknesses. I believe he can be led into a compromising situation that would not only remove him but bring ridicule and contempt for the Civic Circle.”
Professor Chen finished translating my words for Shan Zhu. Shan Zhu looked me in the eye as he replied.
“Honorable Shan Zhu says that a source of information is not so lightly discarded,” Professor Chen translated. “If you can read your professor’s emails, it would be wise to watch patiently and learn what you can from his indiscretions. ‘Know the enemy and know yourself, and you will never fear the result of a hundred battles.’”
Was that from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War? “Thanks to the professor’s indiscretions, I now have other sources of information,” I explained. “I also have access to his superior’s email and that of others in the Civic Circle. I will continue to know the enemy, even if Gomulka is removed. I offer an opportunity to subdue the Civic Circle, to break the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” That sounded like something Sun Tzu might say.
I saw Shan Zhu nod as Chen translated my words and listened to Shan Zhu’s reply. “Honorable Shan Zhu asks, ‘What is this weakness you would exploit?””
“Professor Gomulka has an addiction of sorts to online sex sites: he watches and downloads pornographic videos, and he participates in sex chats online. On many occasions he hits on the women with whom he’s interacting. Of course, he only ends up paying more in exchange for longer chats or webcam sessions. He also has accounts on online dating and hookup sites where he frequently approaches young attractive women who invariably reject him.”
“He is… thirsty,” said Mr. Hung while Professor Chen translated in the background. “We can work with this – a honey trap.” I must have shown my confusion on my face because he continued. “A beautiful woman can tempt a thirsty man, wrap him around her finger, and lead him where she wants. You have a word for this: a ‘honey trap.’” Then he paused to listen respectfully to Shan Zhu’s reply.
The Brave and the Bold Page 4
