by Sam Powers
‘Try again,’ she said, raising her chin to the thug defiantly.
Jerome looked at his empty gun hand, then back at Daisy. He sneered angrily and threw a straight right hand at her head. She stepped aside adroitly, then spun three-quarters of the way around, as if gliding down the back of his arm, until she was back-to -back with him. Her heel came up hard between his legs, catching Jerome as violently as his partner. His hands shot down to his balls to protect them from another kick. She took another quarter-turn to his side and her elbow flashed out, catching him in the temple and stunning the much larger man.
He collapsed to his knees, groggy and concussed, trying to remain conscious. A few feet away, Harold continued to writhe and cup his damaged groin.
Chu hadn’t moved but he looked worried. ‘That was particularly vicious,’ he said.
‘Thank you. That was actually the ‘no permanent damage’ version. Unless you count having kids.’
‘I rather suspect from the ease with which you accomplished it that you could have beaten both men without reducing their chances at producing offspring.’
She shrugged. ‘True. But this way, the next time they see me, they’ll think twice before trying to hit me. And the world will be better off without them as parents, anyway.’
‘Are you going to do that to me, as well?’ Chu asked.
‘Are you going to accept your good fortune and leave quietly?’
‘I’m beginning to think there might be more to you than your public persona suggests, Ms. Lee,’ he said. ‘I shall take my leave while my family jewels remain intact, thank you.’
‘And will I be hearing from you again about this, or shall we both go about our respective business as if the other does not exist?’
‘I am practically a ghost and this conversation never happened,’ he said. He rose carefully, keeping his eyes on her throughout. ‘Come, Harold. Jerome....’ He gave Jerome a gentle kick with the toe of his Italian leather boot. ‘Shake it off, Jerome, we need to make haste.’
Jerome shook his head vigorously, trying to clear the cobwebs from the elbow stunner to his temple. He rose uncertainly, shaky. He shook his head again and looked at the diminutive woman. ‘You hit harder than you look.’
‘Thanks... I think,’ she said. ‘Now, everyone out. I’ve had a long day and fairly soon, I’m going to lose my temper.’
‘We shall doubtless meet again, Ms. Lee,’ Chu said. ‘Perhaps next time...’
‘Perhaps next time I will be less charitable, Mr. Chu, and afford you the same treatment as your underlings. As things stand, I assume my charity affords me good standing with the Black Cranes?’
Chu studied her with hawkish intensity. ‘You most certainly are full of surprises, Ms. Lee. I wonder how far that goes.’
Lee said nothing; better to let him wonder. As they closed the hotel room behind them, Daisy walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed, irritated. The Black Crane Triad was a major operator in Macau, with ties to a vast Black Society in Harbin. The last thing she needed was to get on the gang’s bad side and be constantly looking behind her.
She rose and walked over to the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. Her bullfighter’s jacket and blouse with jeans wasn’t going to do for a party. She still had nearly two hours and there were some nice clothing stores in the adjoining shopping center. What did one wear to a debriefing and assassination? Maybe something black, off the shoulder?
9/
DAY 6
MACAU
The going-away party was an hour along and Stanley Lawson was beginning to feel his age. While most of the university staff either danced or chatted at one of the large round dinner tables, Lawson found himself a quiet spot at the bar and nursed a fourth gin-and-tonic. He felt slightly drunk and slightly left out; it wasn’t as if people had ignored him completely, it was just that he didn’t often take part in staff get-togethers, and he was at least twenty years older than the next oldest man there.
Still, he told himself, it beat another night with his book or watching television alone. The bar was done up in bamboo, reeds and tikki torches, as if attacked by a Polynesian decorator. The school was picking up the booze tab; and there were free cab rides home.
He turned on his stool and looked at the room. Although there were a dozen or more from the school there for the going away, the bar was still open to other customers and fairly busy. He caught the eye briefly of a fifty-something blonde and wondered if someone her age could still find him attractive. He’d been told he looked like the late English horror actor, Christopher Lee. That had to count for something. He’d expected his urges to diminish as he aged and they had, to an extent. But he still spent time wondering if he’d ever actually manage to pick up a woman again just for the night.
He turned back to the bar, his impaired vision blurring slightly as it tried to keep track. When he’d worked for British Intelligence, years earlier, there had been lots of women. Probably too many. His ‘lifestyle’ had been cited during his dismissal, a ‘compromising feature’. That, and the unfounded suspicion that he was serving more than one paymaster, a political maneuver in a field replete with them.
‘You like this woman?’ a man’s voice said from the next stool over.
Lawson gave the man his attention. He was Chinese, dressed immaculately in a white linen suit and black shirt.
‘She’s pretty,’ Lawson admitted. It was someone to talk to.
‘I can get you a girl much prettier and younger,’ the man said. ‘All you have to do is tell me.’
Wonderful. A pimp. ‘No, thank you,’ Lawson said. ‘I’m actually here with the group...’
‘Ohhh,’ the man intoned. ‘You think I’m selling girls. No, not at all! Not at all, Mr. Englishman. I just know a very pretty girl who has a thing for older guys, that’s all.’
If he’d still been with MI6, Lawson would’ve assumed he was being honey trapped. As it was, he suspected, it was probably just a shakedown. ‘So, I go with you to meet this girl and then when we’re alone somewhere, I get robbed. Maybe I should call the manager...’
The man appeared taken aback. ‘Not at all! I thought you look sad that’s all, so I try something nice for you.’ Then he looked irritated. ‘What? You think I’m a pimp? That’s pretty racist, man.’
Stanley took a sip of his drink, then said in perfect Cantonese ‘Whatever it is that you’re after, I can’t help you.’ Just to be safe, he repeated it in Mandarin and Hakka.
The man looked impressed and held out a hand to shake. ‘Tommy. I don’t think I’ve heard a westerner speak that fluently before’ he replied in Mandarin. ‘Your Cantonese is better than mine.’
‘Stanley. And like I said, I’m just here for a quiet drink while my work colleagues get drunk.’
The man looked surprised. ‘Stanley? Stanley Lawson? The language professor at Macau Polytechnic?’
‘Yes. I presume we’ve met?’
‘I saw your lecture last year on the development of Standard Chinese. You didn’t have a beard then.’
It was true, Stanley recalled. The school put a picture of it in the monthly alumni newsletter online and he’d heard nothing but jokes about his unshorn mug for a week.
‘True,’ Lawson said. ‘Then… you’re a student.’
Tommy shrugged. ‘My English is still not so good. But I’m working at it.’
‘Better than many,’ Stanley said diplomatically. ‘This young female friend of yours: is she here tonight?’
‘No, but she’s staying in the hotel. And she isn’t pricey; she’ll just want a gratuity of some sort, a little cab fare.... you know. She’s only nineteen.’
Lawson’s alarm bells were still ringing but it had been so long since he’d had sex. The offer was enticing, even if it was probably incredibly stupid. Really, really stupid, especially now that he was back in the game. Sort of. She was practically a child, and he was old enough to be her grandfather – or great grandfather, even.
Still...it h
ad been so long.
‘The hotel here, connected to this building?’
Tommy smiled. ‘This hotel.’
It was beyond foolish, Stanley knew. Even if the offer was real, he didn’t have any sort of protection. Of either sort. And he was drunk, never the condition in which to make important decisions.
The bathroom. The bar had a condom machine in the bathroom. ‘Well then, perhaps I should like to meet your friend. Would you excuse me for a moment while I visit the loo?’
He rose and crossed the room, skirting the busy dance floor. The DJ was playing a remixed version of ‘Dance Hall Days’ by Wang Chung, an old pop song he actually remembered. The bathroom door swung open heavily. It was gloomy inside, the walls painted a dirty yellow/tan shade. Lawson walked up to the urinal and unzipped.
‘Hello Stanley,’ a man said -- in a familiar tone, but just barely. ‘It’s been a long time.’
‘I know that voice.’ Lawson looked over at the man who’d taken the stall next to his. ‘Joe? You must be joking. They actually dug you up just for me?’
‘They did. You owe my wife an explanation, assuming either of us lives that long.’
Stanley zipped up. ‘All they wanted was a name. It can’t be that serious. I just thought I could tighten the screws a bit. It’s expensive living here.’
Brennan joined him and both men walked over to the line of sinks to wash their hands. ‘Let me put it this way: when I say ‘if we live that long’, I’m not talking about a trip to the U.S., I’m talking about getting out of this building.’
Stanley’s face sank. He stood there with a pair of soaking wet hands. ‘What?’
Brennan leaned over to turn off Stanley’s sink tap.
‘Your friend Tommy out there is a renowned professional killer. If you’d left the bar with him, you’d have been dead in under an hour.’ He turned off his own tap and then hit the large button for the automated hot air blower.
‘What do we do?’ It had been decades since Stanley’s last serious involvement in gathering intelligence. His nerve, his training, had long abandoned him.
‘I thought you were a full-time agent, once upon a time.’
‘Decades before you were born. When you hit your ninth decade, my lad, memories from that long ago begin to run together somewhat.’
‘Tommy’s going to have eyes on the door. Either he’ll be casually leaning on the bar and half-turned this way, or he’ll be watching it in the reflection of the mirror. So I can’t walk out with you. You came in before me, so you have to leave first, head on back over to him, and then draw him outside.’
‘Where?’
‘There’s a staff parking lot around the front right corner of the building and down the small alley. Tell him your car is there. You need to take a pill before you meet his lady friend.’
Stanley kept the lamentations from his prideful side silent. ‘All right.’
‘He may try to steer you back onto his course by telling you she has all sorts of erectile dysfunction medication, or something like that. Tell him you need yours because it’s a prescription, due to your heart condition.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then I’ll probably have to kill him. He’s smart, so he’ll be wary. When I come at him, I’ll come hard and try to finish it quickly. Get down or better yet out of the way completely. But if you try disappearing on me, Stanley, I’ll find you. We still need to have words about your gangster friends.’
‘All right. I shall endeavour to remain as cordial as possible.’
‘He may also suggest you finish your drink before you go. Don’t.’
‘What harm...?’
‘He’s probably dosed it six ways to Sunday by now. It’ll either knock you out or kill you where you stand. Tommy Wong isn’t known as an intelligence asset; he’s strictly here to end your life.’
Brennan gave it a twenty-count before he walked out of the bathroom and back into the stifling volume of the nightclub. The party goers were getting down to ‘Uptown Funk’, the bass speakers making the floor vibrate slightly.
He scanned the bar area quickly. Stanley was heading for the exit with Tommy Wong a half step behind him and to his left. If he was anticipating trouble, he clearly thought it would come from out in front of them, likely as they walked outside.
He waited until they’d cleared the doors before following. At the double doors he gave it a five-count, knowing Wong’s second move would be to check their six, given that no one had made a try as they left. Brennan caught some luck; a young couple walked in from outside, and he ducked out behind them as the doors swung closed.
On the street, he turned right until he reached the building’s corner, then toward the laneway. Shadows from the nearby streetlights clung to the base of the wall and Brennan sought concealment there, moving cautiously so that he could be motionless and difficult to spot if Wong looked back once more.
Twenty yards up, the laneway opened into the parking lot proper. Stanley was almost there, his new friend checking back occasionally, Brennan holding tight to the wall, out of sight. The professor took a half-step into the lot and Wong pivoted quickly, the pistol drawn from the speed holster clipped to the back of his belt. The suppressor reduced the usually loud retort to a series of dull cracks as he peppered the alley behind them with bullets. Brennan was almost caught flat-footed, but he threw himself back up against the wall.
Behind Wong, Stanley began to run -- and was acquitting himself well for a man of his age. Wong turned back his way and let loose two shots that missed their mark; Brennan used the respite to sprint forward, closing the gap between them. Wong heard the steps before he could get Stanley properly sighted and turned again, firing blindly in Brennan’s direction.
Brennan slapped the pistol down with an open-palm right hand and attacked Wong’s knee with a short kick. The pistol clattered to the ground but the assassin managed to turn just enough to protect the joint, taking the strike to his calf.
He countered with a swinging backhand followed by a rapid strike to Brennan’s solar plexus. Brennan covered up, crossing his forearms to block Wong’s rapid advance, catching the killer with a quick elbow strike when he came in too close, then a quick shot to the face.
Wong took the impact of the blow and used its force to drop low, rolling his right shoulder forward so that he could swing his right leg around, striking hard for Brennan’s ankles. Brennan anticipated the move and leaped straight up, coming down on the ball of his right foot so that he could quickly execute a spinning jump, out of the other man’s range. Wong strode forward and executed a string of snapping high kicks before surprising Brennan with a low reverse scissor, sliding in with both feet and using them to catch the agent’s ankles. He went down hard and Wong was on top of him in instant, his thumbs on Brennan’s windpipe, about to crush it.
The standing outdoor ashtray crashed into Wong’s skull, swung with surprising force by a woman in a black evening dress. He crashed to the cement, stunned.
Before Brennan could thank her, he was rolling sideways, ducking another forceful shot from the oversized ashtray. When he was a few feet out of range she flung it toward him with all her force and Brennan timed a side kick perfectly, deflecting the object away. She slammed a front kick into his chest while he was still perched on one leg, sending him careening backwards. Brennan reacted instinctively, tucking up and taking the momentum, rolling over backwards and coming up perched on his feet just as she followed up the initial kick with a string of punches. He blocked each methodically, his hands a blur of positions.
From the corner of his eye, Brennan saw Wong stumble back to his feet and down the alley. He blocked a slapping back hand and saw Wong reach back, the gun extended to fire wildly in their direction even as he sprinted after the professor.
‘Down!’ Brennan said, slipping Lee’s punch to free up his right hand so that he could push down on the woman’s head and duck simultaneously. The bullet whizzed over head and thudded into something solid.
‘Thank you,’ she said as they both rose.
‘You’re wel...’ Before he could finish, she unloaded a right cross, staggering him to one knee, then turned to sprint after the assassin and his target.
Brennan shook off the impact of the punch and took pursuit.
A few dozen yards ahead, Stanley Lawson was terrified and running for his life.
But age made it difficult. After nearly nine decades of battling to get the most out of his time on Earth, he was fitter than most octogenarians, but still plagued by pains, aches, weak joints and creaky bones. He exited the alley to the bright light and bumper-to-bumper traffic of Estrada do Istmo, idling and low gears creating a dull background rumble, pierced only by horns and stereo systems that could raise the dead.
Stanley stumbled between the cars and across the road. There was a busy restaurant on the other side of the street. Perhaps the man would not pursue him into there...
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. He looked back and could make out Wong, nearing the alley’s end. Why? Stanley asked himself. Why couldn’t I have just been content with a professor’s salary? It occurred to him that he might never see his grandchildren again. He reached the front stairs and climbed them hurriedly.
At the front door, he pushed past the maitre’d, eliciting calls for him to stop. Shocked diners and those waiting at the bar for tables watched him stagger through the room toward the kitchen opening. He gestured at a waiter. ‘Please... a phone? I need the police...’ His past be damned, Stanley had decided. If they wanted information, he’d sing like a canary if it meant protection. If Brennan failed...
And it appeared he had. As he reached the back of the vast dining room and the corridor to the rear exit, Wong burst through the main doors. Diners instinctively retreated from the front of the room at the sight of the man with the silenced pistol. Wong raised it and Stanley realized just in time that his assailant didn’t give a damn about their surroundings; the former spy ducked and ran down the hallway toward the exit sign as the slugs thudded through the drywall behind him.
