During their meal, they remembered Freddie, the limo driver.
They wondered what had happened to him. They hoped he was all right. They couldn’t believe that he was comp licit in their kidnapping, but then again, in Hong Kong everything had its price.
“Talking about Freddie reminds me,” Tristan said.
“If we’re going to persist in this, I think we should hire another car and get a driver who could double as a bodyguard.”
“And who speaks Cantonese,” Marissa added.
“There’ve alreaay been several times when that would have been helpful.”
“Maybe if we’re lucky he’ll let us ride in the trunk,” Tristan teased.
Marissa smiled. How Tristan could keep his sense of humor through all this was beyond her.
After they finished their meal, they pushed the table aside and returned to the chairs by the window. Marissa sipped the remains of her wine while Tristan enjoyed another can of Foster’s Lager the hotel had managed to find for him.
Marissa’s thoughts had drifted back to the incident in the lobby.
“If that Chinese man downstairs was the same one who threw the chum in the water back in Australia, then he must be in the employ of Female Care Australia.”
“That’s what I assumed,” Tristan said.
“They must really want us out of the way. They must be desperate, especially to try to shoot us in public like that. With Wendy they went to great pains to make it look like an accident.”
“The irony is they must think we know more than we do,” Tristan said. “if I were they and I knew how little we know, I wouldn’t bother with us.”
“Maybe they’re not as afraid of what we know as what we could find out,” Marissa sighed.
“I wonder how he tracked us down.”
“That’s another good question,” Tristan said.
“Maybe we should change hotels.”
“I don’t think it would make much difference,” Tristan said.
“This city seems to have an information underground. Take the proprietor of that tea sho , for instance; obviously he let the Wing Sin know we were there. I bet that if we change hotels, it wouldn’t remain a secret, not for long. At least here the security people are on the alert and will recognize the fellow who tried to attack us if he tries to come back.”
“And we’ll have to be very careful,” Marissa said, “especially tomorrow morning when we rendezvous with the man in the white suit.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Tristan said.
“I think we can assume that his loyalty will lie with whoever pays him the most squeeze.
We might have to take more than the agreed-upon ten thousand Hong Kong.”
“Can you afford this, Tris?” Marissa asked.
Tristan laughed.
“It’s only money,” he said.
April 19,1990 8:47 Am.
Dressed in his Sunday best and carrying a bouquet off flowers, Ned Kelly walked along Salisbury Road taking in the sights. He’d been to Hong Kong on a number of occasions. As always, he enjoyed the colorful scenery. He’d gotten in late the night before and had stayed at the Regent Hotel, thanks to Charles Lester. Ned had never stayed in such luxurious accommodations.
His only regret was that he’d arrived so late, he’d not been able to take advantage of any of the sizzling nightlife the Tsim Sha Tsui had to offer, As he approached the Peninsula Hotel, he began to look in the parked cars for Willy Tong. That had been the instructions. He found him sitting in a green Nissan Stanza parked in front of the Space Museum directly across from the hotel. Ned opened the passenger door and slid in on the front seat.
“You look smashing, mate,” Willy said.
“The flowers for me?”
“I do look good, don’t IT’ Ned said, pleased with his Harris tweed jacket, gabardine slacks, and brown loafers. He laid the flowers on the backseat.
“What’s the lay of the land?”
“It’s been quiet since the uproar I caused,” Willy said.
“I don’t know what could have happened. It was a perfect setup. The lobby was crowded just the way you told me was best. I was no more than two or three paces away from Williams when he whirled and attacked me!”
“Bad luck!” Ned said.
“Was the woman there?”
“Of course,” Willy said.
“She was standing right next to him.
In another ten seconds I’d have shot both of them.”
“Maybe she recognized you from the boat,” Ned said.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. They still in the hotel?”
“Yes,” Willy said.
“I’ve been here most of the night. I tried calling again and was immediately put through. They haven’t moved.”
“That’s nice,” Ned said.
“What about the gun?”
“I got it,” Willy said. He leaned in front of Ned and snapped open the glove compartment. He took a handgun out and handed it butt first to Ned.
Ned whistled.
“A Heckler and Koch!” he said.
“My, my, this is first class. What about the silencer?”
Willy reached back into the glove compartment and handed Ned a small rectangular box. Ned opened the box and unwrapped the silencer.
“There’s something nice about using new equipment,” Ned said.
“One thing about FCA. They go first class on everything.”
Ned screwed the silencer into the pistol. It lengthened the barrel by a third. Then he snapped out the magazine and checked the shells. After making sure the chamber was empty, Ned cocked the gun and pulled the trigger. It had a nice, full-bodied click.
“Perfect,” he said.
Replacing the clip and ramming it home, Ned cocked the pistol. It was ready for action.
Twisting in his seat, he eyed Willy.
“This is not going to take long. I want you to pull the car over there in front of the hotel and have the engine running. Give me about five minutes before you come over, understand?”
“Righto,” Willy said eagerly.
“I’m off,” Ned said. He moved forward on the seat and slipped the gun into his belt at the small of his back. Reaching into the backseat, he lifted the bouquet. Then he got out of the car.
Hesitating before he crossed the road, he leaned into the car through the open window.
“I haven’t seen this Williams fellow for several years,” Ned said.
“Will I recognize him?”
“I think so,” Willy said.
“He’s about your height, sandy blond hair, angular features. Looks more like a stockman than an MD. “Got it,” Ned said. He was about to leave when Willy caught his attention.
“You won’t have any trouble recognizing the woman, will you?” Willy asked.
“Especially not if she’s in her bathers,” Ned said with a wink.
Ned dodged the traffic on Salisbury Road, mindful of the gun tucked in his belt. He didn’t want to dislodge it.
At the Peninsula, the doorman opened the door for him, and he entered the lobby.
At that time of the morning, the lobby was relatively busy with international travelers checking in or checking out. Luggage was piled in heaps near the bellman’s desk, where the bell captain was struggling to keep order. It was to the bellman’s desk that Ned walked.
Ned singled out one of the younger bellboys and approached him as he was piling bags onto a bellman’s trolley. Kelly had learned a smattering of Cantonese through his dealings with the Chinese over the years. In Cantonese he asked the young man for a favor. The boy seemed surprised to be addressed by a gwedo in his native tongue.
Ned slipped the boy a thousand dollars Hong Kong, more than many months’ wages. The boy’s eyes widened.
“Some friends are staying here,” Ned said.
“I want to know their room so that I can surprise them. But I don’t want them to know. Understand?”
The boy nodded, then flashed a broad smile.
“The names are Williams and Blumenthal. I don’t know if they have separate rooms or a single.”
The bellboy nodded again and dashed over to the bell captain’s desk. Peering past the captain, who was busy on the phone, the bellboy perused the master guest list. In a flash he returned. Ned had lighted up a cigarette in the interim.
“Pleased to say that it is 604 and 606,” the bellboy said with another smile and multiple bows. Ned reached out and stopped him from making a scene. Ned thanked him and walked over to the newsstand. While he leafed through the latest Time magazine with the flowers tucked under his arm, he kept his eye on the bell desk to make sure his dealings with the bellboy didn’t arouse any suspicions. But they hadn’t. The ecstatic bellboy had gone back to loading his cart as if nothing had happened.
Ned replaced the magazine. He switched the flowers to his right hand. With an expert eye, he picked out the hotel security people in the lobby. There were two, but neither one had particularly noticed him.
Walking directly to the elevators, Ned pushed the Up button.
Things were going smoothly. So far he was pleased. He anticiated giving Lester a call in about fifteen minutes. He was lookp ing forward to the substantial bonus Lester had promised him for a job well done.
By the time the elevator doors opened on the sixth floor, Ned’s pulse was racing. Despite his conscious attempts to keep himself calm, when he got this close to action, he got tense.
Familiar with the customs of Hong Kong luxury hotels, Ned waited by the elevator once he was on the sixth floor. He gave the hall porter a chance to approach from his cubicle. Ned smiled broadly.
“Hello, friend,” he said in Cantonese.
The hall porter was an elderly Chinese. He smiled weakly, confused as to who this man could be. He wasn’t expecting any new guests that morning.
“I have a present for you,” Ned said. He handed the man a thousand dollars Hong Kong.
The man’s toothless jaw dropped.
Ned smiled again.
“I need you to help me for a moment,” he said.
“I want you to open my sister’s door. 604. It’s her birthday.”
Slipping the bills into his pocket, the hall porter led Ned down the corridor to 604 with a shuffling gait. He was about to knock, but Ned grabbed his arm before his fist hit the door.
“No,” Ned said.
“It’s a surprise.”
The porter nodded, then fished in his pocket for his keys.
Selecting the proper one, he slipped it into the lock.
As the porter pushed in the key, Ned glanced up and down the corridor. Then he reached behind his back and extracted the long barreled gun.
The door opened a crack. The porter started to step aside, but Ned put his hands on the man’s back and shoved him forward with as much force as he could muster. The porter’s body collided with the partially open door, pushing it open with a bang. The porter sprawled head first on the carpet inside the room.
Instantly, Ned leaped into the room. He dropped the flowers and held the Heckler and Koch in both hands, elbows locked. His quarry was sitting on the bed with light from the window back lighting his sandy blond hair.
From Ned’s position, looking down the sights of his automatic pistol, Tristan Williams looked confused as he sprang to his feet.
Ned shot him twice in the forehead, just above the eyes. The gun made only a spitting noise. Tristan went backward over the bed.
It was easy as pie.
Wheeling around, Ned looked for the Blumenthal woman. She wasn’t in the room. Then he noticed the open connecting door.
From within, he could hear the sound of water running.
Ned turned and silently closed the door to the hall. Then he pointed the gun at the hall porter, who was frozen with fear on the middle of the carpet. Ned motioned with the gun for the man to move toward the closet.
Ned opened the closet door, then roughly shoved the porter inside. He softly closed the door behind him, then locked it.
Moving back to the connecting door, Ned listened. The water was still running. Slowly, he leaned into the room. It was empty, and the bed was stripped of its linens. But the bathroom door was ajar about four inches. Now he could hear the running water more clearly. The Blumenthal woman was filling the tub.
Without a sound, Ned moved across the room to the bathroom door. Sucking in a deep breath, he raised a foot and kicked it open. In an instant, he was inside.
The Blumenthal woman was kneeling by the tub. Her back was to the door. He had surprised her completely. She was beginning to rise to her feet when Ned pumped two bullets into the back of her head. She pitched forward into the tub, overturning a bucketful of soapy water in the process.