“Let’s do it! Let’s get even with these bastards.”
Marissa’s head was spinning. She couldn’t even look at Tristan.
Sometimes she thought he was crazy.
“Come on, Marissa!” Tristan urged.
“Let’s not let them get away with this.”
Finally she looked up at him. She could feel his determination.
She didn’t have the strength to argue or even resist.
“All right,” she said.
“At this moment I feel as if I have nothing to lose.”
“Good show!” Tristan cried. He gave her a forceful hug, then leaped to his feet. He looked at his watch.
“We don’t have a lot of time!” Rushing over to the phone, he called room service and ordered a number of boxed lunches as well as bottled water.
As soon as their order came, Marissa and Tristan descended to the lobby and exited through the service entrance as they had that morning. Bentley had moved the Mercedes to the alley. He was reading a newspaper while he waited. Tristan opened the rear door for Marissa, then ran around and jumped in the other side.
“Aberdeen!” Tristan told Bentley.
“We’re going smuggling.”
They drove out of the alley and over to East Tsim Sha Tsui, then into the Cross Harbor Tunnel. Almost immediately they slowed to a crawl in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Tristan eyed his watch nervously in the dim tunnel light.
“Damn!” he said.
“It’s going to be close if Captain FaHuang weighs anchor at six sharp.”
Marissa closed her eyes. She felt numb, as if nothing that was happening were real.
The enforcer looked over his desk at the hit man. The tension between them was natural for two experts in the same small field.
They each knew that the other did similar things, just in different worlds. Mr. Yip thought that Ned was a crude barbarian. Ned thought Mr. Yip was a hoon poofter in a white suit.
They were sitting in the same office where Mr. Yip had Marissa, and Tristan brought on their first meeting. Willy was outside with some of Mr. Yip’s men.
“I trust that Mr. Pang rang you,” Ned said.
“He did indeed,” Mr. Yip said.
“But he only said that we were to do business. He said that it involved dealing with a couple, for which you were to pay the Wing Sin one hundred and fifty thousand Hong Kong dollars. He did not provide further details.”
“It is a man and a woman,” Ned said.
“One Australian, the other American. Late thirties for the man, early thirties for the woman. Their names are Tristan Williams and Marissa Blumenthal.
They’re staying at the Peninsula Hotel, but that may soon change.”
Mr. Yip smiled to himself, realizing immediately that the Wing Sin was about to profit from both sides of a conflict.
“This is a coincidence,” he said.
“I’m sure that the couple that you are describing have been here to see me in this very office.”
“For what reason?” Ned asked.
“They paid me for information,” Mr. Yip said.
“They were interested in the people we have been smuggling out of the PRC for Fertility Limited.”
Ned shifted nervously in his seat.
“And what were they told?”
“Very little, I can assure you,” Mr. Yip said.
“The Wing Sin has never bothered to interfere in Fertility, Limited, business.
So,” continued Mr. Yip, “how much is in this for me?”
Accustomed to doing business in Hong Kong and with the Wing Sin in particular, Ned was not surprised by this direct request for squeeze.
“The usual ten percent,” he said.
“The usual is fifteen,” Mr. Yip said with a smile.
“Done,” Ned said.
“It is a delight to do business with someone accustomed to our ways,” Mr. Yip said.
“And we are in luck. The couple in question is scheduled to leave this afternoon on a Tanka junk to make one of the Fertility, Limited, pickups. That will make the deed extremely easy and efficient. The bodies can be dropped into the sea. Very neat.”
Ned pulled his sleeve back to look at his watch.
“What time are they leaving?” he asked.
“Around six,” Mr. Yip said. He got up from his chair.
“I think we’d better leave immediately.”
A few minutes later they found themselves stuck in traffic.
“Isn’t there a faster way?” Ned asked with frustration.
“You must relax,” Mr. Yip said.
“Consider the job done.”
Even the Aberdeen Tunnel was crowded at that time of day. As they got out of the tunnel, the south shore proved equally congested.
It was stop-and-go traffic all the way to Aberdeen.
Tristan was frantic. He could hardly sit still, looking at his watch every few minutes. In contrast, Marissa sat immobile, staring blankly ahead. Her mind was in a turmoil as her emotional numbness was beginning to wear thin. She was thinking of Robert and the better times they’d had. Not only did she feel responsible for his death, to a large degree she felt responsible for the rough months before it. Tears began to well in her eyes. She averted her head to keep Tristan from seeing. Except for a powerful apathy that overwhelmed her, she would have asked if they could turn around.
On top of her emotional pain, Marissa also began to fear going out on the open sea, worrying that she might get seasick to add to her problems. During the ride out to the junk in the motorized sampan, Marissa again considered demanding they go back. The sound of the water and the thought of the ocean not only made “FA her queasy but also brought back the memory of Wendy’s death with stark vividness.
“Good show!” Tristan exclaimed as they rounded the row of junks and saw that Captain FaHuang had not yet departed. The sampan pulled alongside the receiving port.
Marissa saw that the captain had company. A couple of fierce looking
Chinese men were standing at the railing on the poop deck, watching their arrival with interest.
Grabbing Tristan’s arm, Marissa pointed.
“Who are those men?” she asked.
“They look like bandits.”
“Dunno,” Tristan said.
“Must be the crew.” e Bentley scrambled up into the opening, then turned to lend a hand. Tristan handed up the boxed lunches and the bottled water.
“Okay, luv,” Tristan said taking Marissa’s arm.
With a boost from Tristan and a pull from Bentley, Marissa found herself aboard the junk.
Once on the boat, they went forward and climbed the ladder to the main deck. The captain bellowed a greeting and introduced them to Liu and Maa, the two deckhands. Everyone bowed. Then the captain yelled a command and the men fell back to work.
The junk was in the final stages of preparation. Even the two women that Marissa had seen earlier were occupied. They were busy lashing down a cage containing four live chickens.
Within fifteen minutes of their arrival, the mooring lines were cast off the junk. With much straining the boat was eased out of its berth by sheer muscle power. Once in the channel, the captain fired up his twin diesels. Soon the boat was pulsating with the deep, throaty vibration of its engines, and slowly the ponderous craft chugged out of the congested harbor.
They headed due west toward the setting sun. In other circumstances,
Marissa might have found the experience exhilarating.
The scenery was magnificent, especially once they cleared the tip of Ap Lei Chou Island. It was then that they had a view of the wooded Lamma Island to port and the much larger mountainous island of Lantau directly ahead.
But the beauty was lost on Marissa. She sat by the railing with her eyes closed and held tight. She was glad for the strong sea breeze; it dried the tears from her cheeks before anyone could see them. And on top of everything else, she was beginning to feel a little seasick as the boat began to pitch.
Ned Kelly swore as only an Australian can swear when he found himself looking at the empty space where he’d hoped FaHuang’s junk would be moored.
“Couldn’t we have gotten here faster?” he steamed. Coming from Australia, he had trouble understanding how people could conduct their lives with so much traffic.
“Ask the neighbors if Williams and Blumenthal were on the boat!”
“I am not your servant,” Mr. Yip said. Ned was irritating him more than usual.
“Stone the crows!” Ned exclaimed, peering heavenward to muster some patience. He well knew Yip was a character to be reckoned with, particularly on his home turf.
“Please ask them,” he said.
“I’m sorry if I insulted you.”
Mr. Yip spoke to the family on one of the junks that had been next to FaHuang’s. He spoke to them in Tanka, a language Ned did not understand.
Turning back to Ned, Mr. Yip said: “There were two white devils on board. That is a literal translation.”
“It must be them,” Ned said.
“Can we go after them?”
“Of course,” Mr. Yip said.
Ordering the sampan operator back to the quay, Mr. Yip had one of his henchmen bring around a sleek speedboat. Ned climbed in the front seat with Willy and the driver. Mr. Yip and two of his men got in the back. Both the men were armed with machine pistols.
With a roar, they left the quay and raced down the length of the harbor. Ned was encouraged by the boat’s speed. But when they reached open water, his mood soured. The ocean was dotted with junks. They all looked alike. After cruising by a handful with no luck, they gave up.
This American is living a charmed life,” Ned complained.
He twisted in his seat and yelled to Mr. Yip over the sound of the powerful engine: “What should we do? Wait for them to come back, or what?”
“It’s not necessary to wait,” Mr. Yip called out, “Enjoy the boat ride. We will talk when we get to the restaurant.”
“What restaurant?” Ned asked.
Mr. Yip pointed. Ahead was one of Aberdeen’s enormous floating restaurants with gold dragons and crimson banners.
Among the throng of dilapidated junks, it was an improbable oasis.
Fifteen minutes later Ned found himself dining in style. The OWL-sun had set and the lights of Aberdeen were blinking across the harbor. Mr. Yip took it on himself to order a lavish feast. It was enough for Ned to forget his anger.
In the middle of the meal, one of Mr. Yip’s men brought in a nautical chart. Mr. Yip spread it out on the table.
“This is the ZhuJiang Kou estuary,” Mr. Yip explained.
“Most foreigners call it the Pearl River. Here is Guangzhou.” He pointed with his chopstick.
“And here, above Zhuhai, just north of the special economic zone that the PRC has set up above Macao, are a group of small offshore islands. It is there that Captain FaHuang picks up your people. If you go tonight with some of my men you can meet them. You don’t have to wait for them to get back.”
“How do I get there?” Ned asked, looking at the map. He could tell it wasn’t that far: maybe fifty miles.
“We have a special boat coming for you,” Mr. Yip said.
“It is what they call a cigarette boat.”
“Wonderful,” Ned said. He knew that cigarette boats were capable of speed in excess of fifty miles per hour.
“There is only one problem,” Mr. Yip said.
“What’s that?” Ned asked.
“I’ll need a bit more squeeze.”
April 19, 1990 10:51P.M.
“Marissa!” Tristan called excitedly.
“We’ve made contact.
Why don’t you come on deck?”
Marissa sat up in the darkness. She had been lying on a bamboo mat in the storeroom.
It had not been a good evening. An hour and a half out of Aberdeen, after rounding the southern tip of Lantau Island, they had run into a sudden squall. Within a few minutes, the rosy sky was transformed into a black swirling mass of clouds. The slight chop gave way to five-foot swells.
The queasiness Marissa had felt at the start quickly blossomed to full-blown seasickness. Since there were no facilities on board, she could only cling to the poop deck railing and vomit off the back of the boat. When the rain came, she was forced down into the filthy hold.
Tristan had been solicitous, but there was little he could do.
He’d stayed with her, but after he’d opened one of the box lunches and started to eat, the sight and smell of the food had made Marissa feel worse. She’d sent him away.