The Black Dragon (11 page)

Danny and Zamora wander deeper into its heart, blinking in the gloom, feeling like visitors from another planet.

People scuttle in the shadows. There are voices raised everywhere talking in a babble of Cantonese, Hindi, Thai, English, Japanese. Again the exotic surroundings bewitch Danny's senses—and yet, behind that, there's a familiar note to the sounds and smells. The basic greetings and sing-song politenesses of Cantonese coming vaguely back to him from his infancy. He himself may not look that Chinese, but he can imagine Mum gliding through a place like this. In her element. She would have done it with the same grace that guided her along the highwire every night. The still point in the storm, oblivious to the punked-up antics of the Khaos Klowns as they filled the arena below with flame and smoke and the snarl of chainsaws.

In the glancing view of strangers who turn to look at them now he sees here a nose, there a cheek, there the same slim shoulders—and recognizes Mum piece by piece. The emotion rises, a tight knot of grief that wants to do its thing—but he knows he has to keep his head clear now.

Zamora tugs his arm.

“There it is, Danny: Heart and Sole.”

“Let me try something. You keep watch.”

Danny walks into the kiosk, trying to look confident—his heartbeat quickstepping all the same—and raps on the counter.

A man with a hangdog face looks up from the workbench, eyeing Danny with idle curiosity.

“
Jou sahn
. A friend of mine left shoes. He told me to pick them up.”

The man raises his eyebrows. “Receipt?”

“He lost it. But he's got a long ponytail. Broken nose. About your height.”

The man frowns.

“You're a friend of Tony's!?”

“Yes,” Danny says firmly. “Tony. He said be quick. Chop chop.”

The man frowns again, then turns to rummage through a stack of re-soled shoes. He finds the ones he's looking for and plops a pair of garish snakeskin slip-on shoes on the counter. There's a ticket attached to them.

The man looks at Danny and narrows his eyes now, as if not sure whether he's doing the right thing. He holds up his right hand. “Five dollars. Five.”

He keeps one hand on the shoes, hesitating.

“You can call him if you need,” Danny says, dropping a ten-dollar bill onto the counter. “But he said to hurry. Keep the change.”

The man picks it up, considers, then slips the shoes quickly into a bag and waves him away like a bad smell.

Back outside, Danny pulls the shoes from the bag and scans the receipt stub. But where there might have been a full name and address there's just one indecipherable character scrawled in pen along with the fee. Dejectedly he goes to join Zamora.

“We're close. But we've only got half a name. And we can't search the whole building. That would take days.”

“Let's watch from across the street,” Zamora says. “Maybe something'll turn up.”

They drift back into the rush of the morning, their spirits sinking.

But sometimes it only takes a second for your luck to change. A quick shift in the shape of the world and there's an opportunity to be seized. If you're paying attention—if you don't hesitate—you can seize it.

As Danny and Zamora push back out onto the pavement, Ponytail almost slips by them in the crowd. There's a bandage around his forehead and he's moving with a slight limp, but there's no mistaking the lean face, the hair.

Before he has time to think, Danny is pushing quickly toward the man. Zamora's close behind, straining to see what Danny has seen—and when he does he bellows out, “You! We want a word, Mister Hair!”

Ponytail looks up, turns, and darts away through the muddle of hawkers and shoppers on the pavement. He has a good head start, and for a moment Danny thinks they will lose him in the chaos. But then Ponytail trips over a suitcase and goes sprawling across the ground.

Danny's blocked by a group of confused backpackers, but the major moves surprisingly fast and is quickly alongside the prostrate figure. For all the world it looks as if he's helping the man up.

“There you go,
amigo
. Easy now.”

But as Danny joins them, he's shocked see the little pistol snug in Zamora's grip. He's showing just enough for Ponytail to see, urging him to his feet, using his body to shield the gun from view.

“Get up slowly and then down this passageway,” Zamora hisses, shoving the man toward a narrow passage cut between the Mansions and the building next door. “Not a peep,
comprende
?”

The man nods and allows himself to be guided down the alleyway. It's dark in there, choked with rubbish and the stench of urine. The buildings rise up like the sides of a well, a mess of pipes and hanging wires silhouetted against a slice of sky above.

“Not a word,” Zamora says again, gun hard against the man's back. “You savvy?”

The man nods again, ponytail twitching, taken aback by the ferocity in Zamora's eyes. There's no doubting he means business.

“No problem.”

“That's right,” Zamora says. He shoves the man farther into the shadows, with Danny following, glancing back at the street to see if they have been spotted. No—the world goes on as if nothing untoward is happening.

“Now, tell us, my friend, nice and quickly, where is Miss White? Where is the lady you pea-brains kidnapped yesterday?”

Ponytail shakes his head. “Not understand.”

“It's Wuchung Mansions, isn't it?
Isn't it
? But which floor? Which room?”

“No say.”

“
Ay caramba!
We haven't got time to mess about.”

The gangster looks genuinely scared, Danny realizes. Pupils massively dilated, muscles around them tightening. Jaw rigid.

“You've got three seconds,” Zamora says. “
Uno, dos
. . .”

“He won't say,” Danny whispers. “He's more scared of them than us. Probably swore an oath to the gang, death by a thousand cuts or something like that if he tells us. Much worse than you shooting him.”

He's thinking fast. How to make the most of this situation? Maybe this is the moment to put training into practice. After all, the mirror force on the stewardess went well—even if Lo didn't succumb to the technique.
Perhaps I need to go for something quicker and more direct.

“I've got a better idea. Let's talk . . . much . . . more . . . calmly. Relaxed.”

Almost as if he can hear Dad whispering instructions:
That's it, Danny, keep the eye contact, drop your voice, use your hand to work their vision . . . keep using their name and you relax and they relax and you relax and . . .

He takes the pick set from around his neck. It flashes in the shadowy alleyway, catching Ponytail's attention. Danny locks his gaze with the gangster.

“Tony. I want you to listen very carefully. We can sort this out. Just have a look at this!” He holds the pick at eye level and then brings it rapidly toward the man's eyes, crowding his vision.

“Watch my hand, watch my hand. There you go.”

Pressing the cold steel to the man's forehead, he reaches around and holds the back of Tony's head with his other hand, pushing it forward and down, taking control.

“Sleep, Tony.
Wan an
.”

The Chinese words pop into his mouth. Mum used to say that every night when he was small: good night, sleep peacefully.

And the man does just that!

It's a perfect “snap induction,” textbook stuff. You've got the right subject up out of the crowd and they're looking around sheepishly—or grinning at a friend—and you get their attention, invade their space, confuse them, give them the command . . . and down they go. Out cold sometimes, if you're lucky.

And maybe it's helped by the fact that Zamora has knocked a concussion into the man not twelve hours before; maybe it's the fear in the man's mind. Conflicting interests . . . who knows? Maybe it's just beginner's luck, like the young Houdini fiddling the lock of the cuffs and surprising himself as much as the convict as they sprang open, and a legend was born . . . As soon as Danny touches the lockpick to the forehead, Ponytail's under, eyes glazed, out for the count.

“You sleep now,” Danny says, very quietly, suppressing the mixture of elation and surprise surging through him. “
On min
. Eyes closed, Tony. Deeeper. Just listening to my voice. Breathing in and oooouuut.”

Ponytail's breath is shifting into a slower gear. Head heavy in Danny's hands. Danny feels his confidence growing, his voice calming himself as much as the man.

Zamora is struggling to fight back a grin.

“OK,” Danny says. “Eyes open, but still verrryyy relaxed. And then you can just start thinking about where Laura is. Where is she? No matter how hard you try you can't help thinking about the room, the building. There she is now in your mind. You try not to, but it's as clear as day.”

He nods to the major, who now slips the gun into his jacket pocket. The barrel juts against the fabric, keeping Ponytail covered, just in case.

“It's all fine, Major,” Danny says. “We can relax. Like Tony here. He doesn't have to tell us anything.”

As long as Ponytail doesn't think he's betraying the gang it should be possible to get him to reveal what they need by slight movements from his body, subconscious signals. Danny shakes his fingers loose and then places both hands lightly on the man's shoulders.

“Just keep thinking—really seeing in your mind—how you would go to find your friends . . . forward or back. Left or right. How would you start?”

And then, as if sleepwalking, the man twitches. Danny reads the impulse and guides Ponytail back out of the alley, slow step by slow step, toward the pavement.

“That's it,” Danny says. “Just keep that picture in your head . . . We'll go this way, shall we? Left, isn't it?”

Ponytail's muscles move under Danny's fingers. Yes.

Zamora whistles under his breath. “No way, Mister Danny. Hellstromism!”

Danny doesn't answer—he's focusing carefully, keeping the lightest touch he can on the man's shoulders, sensing every resistance, every slight change of body angle. Dad used to play it with him as a kind of game—and it used to be a big part of Harry's routine. But this is going better than any of those tries he had at muscle reading—hellstromism—at the Mysterium. Maybe Ponytail's so jumpy that the movements are easy to read? Who cares? It's working.

They're out of the stinking alleyway and passing unnoticed in the hustle and bustle. Danny tries not to second-guess any movement of his mesmerized subject. But Ponytail transmits each change of direction as clearly as if he's telling them which way to go.

They turn left, back in through the doorway of the Mansions. Back into the labyrinth, past the little shops on the ground floor, past Heart and Sole, past the bedlam of the elevators with their blinking security cameras, the mobile phone shops, the tailors . . . All the while Ponytail's movements are talking to Danny's fingertips as if saying, “Yes, this way, over here, no, not that way, to the back here.”

They come to a fire door at the back of the ground floor. Danny nods to Zamora, who darts forward, holding it open, and they edge through. The door springs shut behind them, and cuts the noise of the Mansions to a distant hum.

In this sudden silence there's just the sound of their footsteps on the bare concrete and Danny's voice reassuring Ponytail. “Just keep seeing it in your head. Up the stairs? OK.”

They climb two flights of stairs and find themselves in a grubby but empty corridor. A handwritten sign on a door says DELUXE DELIGHTFUL ROOMS. It looks as far from deluxe as you could get. Ponytail is moving more quickly now, urgency transmitting up through Danny's fingers, into his arms. They pass a takeaway curry place, pans bubbling on dodgy-looking gas burners, and, beyond that, a room crammed with women bent over chattering sewing machines. Then down a long, echoing service corridor back into silence.

Ponytail's feet stutter and he comes to a stop in front of the door of an ancient elevator. A sign taped to it: OUT OF ORDER.

“Try it anyway,” Danny says. “He wants to use it, I'm sure.”

Zamora punches the call button and, somewhere far overhead, a grinding starts to shake the elevator shaft. The major wrinkles his moustache.

“Needs some oil, wouldn't you say? Is Old Ugly here still under?”

“Really deep.”

The lift door judders open. As they step in, the whole thing swings perceptibly, and Zamora casts wary eyes at the floor.

Danny looks at the control panel. Twenty-four numbered buttons as well as G for ground floor and B for basement. The alarm button is plastered over with red insulation tape. Not very reassuring.

Careful not to break all contact with Ponytail, Danny moves his fingertips to the back of the gangster's right hand.

“OK, just think about the floor number. The floor where you want to go. You don't have to move your arm, just say it over and over in your head.”

Ponytail's hand jerks up like an automaton, his finger extending, hovering near the 17.

Zamora presses it and the elevator jerks skyward. Grinding metallic sounds reverberate from overhead, as the compartment groans and bumps against its shaft. The major starts to whistle softly under his breath, eyes glued to the display ticking up the numbers.

“
No hay problema, no hay problema
,” he mutters to himself.

“
No problema
,” Ponytail parrots from deep in his hypnotic state.

And then the elevator comes to a stop at 17. Zamora grips the pistol tighter.

The doors open to reveal a dingy corridor, its walls running with damp. Deathly silence and no air. From somewhere a long way off comes the sound of hysterical laughter. It stops abruptly as they step out of the lift.