accomplished with dialogue. Escape was the only thing he could think about now. Concentrate on it, he thought. There will be a way. There will be a way. He looked down at his foot. It was lashed tightly to the foot of the bunk. His jacket was stained with The Nosh’s blood. The fire roared inside him again.
Let me take one of them out. Let me watch his eyes when he goes, the way I watched Larry’s eyes.
‘Hai, Liung,’ the voice in the shadows called oat and the door opened. Three men entered. They were Orientals, short and lean, their faces wide and hard, their noses broad, their eyes beads under hooded lids. They wore white tee- shirts, the cotton moulded around hard muscles and taut, flat stomachs. One of the three had a scorched hole in the shoulder of his shirt and a bloodstain down one side. Sharky could see the bulge of a bandage under the shirt.
Sorry it wasn’t a couple of inches lower and an inch to the left, you sorry son of a bitch.
Another one had a splint on his forearm.
Sorry, Nosh, sorry I didn’t do better.
The one with the splint on his arm stood near the door, his arms at his sides as the other two approached the bunk, untying his foot and dragging him to his feet. His knees buckled and they pulled him upright. His vision wobbled. The room went in and out of focus.
From the shadows, smoke curled like a snake, twisting into the heat from the lantern. Sharky concentrated on the corner, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness.
‘If you’re trying to build a mental image of me, forget it,’ the voice said. ‘It’s much too dark. And there’s no need to say anything to my three friends. They don’t speak English. In fact they rarely speak at all.’
Sharky said nothing. He continued to stare into the dark corner of the room.
‘You can save yourself a lot of time and pain if you will simply answer one question for me,’ the voice said. ‘That’s all we’re here for. A simple sentence will do it, Mr. Sharky. ‘Where is the girl?’
Sharky said nothing.
‘Where is she? Where is Domino?’
Sharky continued to stare at the glowing tip of the cigarette.
‘All I want is the address.’
Sharky moved slightly towards one of the Orientals and then quickly twisted the other way, snapping his arms down towards his sides. As he did, the two Chinese exerted the slightest pressure on the nerves just above each of his elbows. Pain fired down Sharky’s arms to his fingertips and both arms were almost immediately paralysed.
‘Don’t he foolish,’ the voice said. ‘They can paralyse you with one finger — and they will. That was a simple exercise. The feeling will return to your arms in a minute or so. The next time they will be more persuasive.’
Sharky felt the numbness begin to subside. His arms felt I as though they had fallen asleep. They tingled as the feeling1 returned. He shook his hands from the wrists and flexed his fingers.
‘You see what 1 mean? Now can we make it simple, Mr. Sharky? Or will you require more complicated tricks?’
Sharky still did not talk. He peered hard into the shadows. Was it Scardi? The tobacco was brash and smelled rancid. Sharky concentrated on that for a few minutes. English cigarettes, he thought. But his accent is American. Sweat beads rolled down his face and collected on his chin, stubbornly refusing to drop oil.
Gerald Kershman, the man in the shadows, was becoming annoyed.
‘Stop staring over here,’ he said. ‘I find it irritating.’
Sharky stared stubbornly at the corner.
Kershman said something in Chinese and one of the men holding Sharky reached up with a forefinger and pressed a nerve beside Sharky’s right eye. The pain was literally blinding. The vision in the eye vanished. Kershman chuckled. He felt a surge in his testicles, a sensual thrill. He was growing hard watching Sharky’s ordeal. Secretly he hoped Sharky would prove difficult, that the torture would get more intense, and he began to tremble with excitement at the thought. He dropped his Players cigarette on the floor and, turning his back on Sharky, lit another. Then he said:
‘Time is of the essence. You will give up the information. It’s really just a matter of time.’ Then, sharply: ‘Pa t’a k’un tao chuo tze.’
The two Orientals jerked Sharky to the chair and forced him down into it. There were two straps attached to each arm and two others mounted on the table. They strapped his arms to the chair, leaving his wrists and hands free, and shoved the chair against the table and fastened the straps on the table over the back of each hand, tightening them until he could hardly curl his fingers.
‘Before we proceed any further, perhaps I should explain a little about the three Chins. They arc members of one of the oldest Triads in Hong Kong, Chi Sou Han. Since the twelfth century the oldest male of each of the three families of Chi Son Han has been taken from his mother at birth and trained to be the ultimate warrior. Their discipline is beyond the western mind. I have seen one of these men stand in a crouch for ten hours without a falter. They endure the most excruciating pain in silence.
‘They are experts in tai chi ch’uan, karate, and judo.
They communicate through the use of body movements:
and they use only two weapons — their hands and the yinza. Are you familiar with the yinza, Mr. Sharky? Da yu’an p’an!’
The man near the door with the splint on his arm moved with fluid grace, twisting to his right from the waist up while his right hand swept past his belt and swung up shoulder high. Immediately, without breaking the continuity of the move he shifted his body in the opposite direction, flicking his wrist sharply as he did. There was a flash at his fingertips, a glint in the air, and a steel disc the size of a silver dollar ripped into the table so close to Sharky’s hand that he could feel the cold metal. It had twelve steel barbs an inch long around its perimeter.
‘An ancient weapon, Mr. Sharky, and far more accurate than a bullet. Chi Sou Han are also famous throughout
