His back was to the door connecting the room next door. As he spoke, the door swung open and Earp stepped quickly into the room. Sen heard the sound and then, in the dresser mirror, saw Earp behind him. He reached for the gun in his belt and twisted around at the same time, dropping to his knees.
Earp, ten feet away, was standing with his feet slightly apart and his gun at arm’s length He fired his first shot. The pistol made a flat sound like someone slamming a door. As Sen pulled his own gun Earp’s bullet hit Sen just above the left eye, snapping his head back. He fell against the bed.
A blinding pain seared through Sen’s head. His hands and feet went numb, and the salty taste of blood flooded his mouth. The room swirled crazily. He saw his gun tumble from his hand and, looking up into the end of the silencer and behind it, saw the tall man with the white mustache standing over him. The gun thunked again and he saw the room explode into hundreds of blinding colors and then it turned black.
As Sen’s body seemed to collapse into itself and sagged forward, Riker rushed into the bathroom, grabbed several washcloths and some towels and, dashing back, slammed the washcloths against Sen’s bleeding wounds. It was all over in twenty seconds.
Earp turned the steamer trunk on its back and opened
‘It’s gonna be a tight fit,’ Earp said.
‘This guy’s got to weigh two hundred pounds,’ Riker said as with great effort he and Earp lifted the dead man’s body and forced it into the trunk. Sen lay on his side with his knees jammed against his chest and his head down on his chest. They forced the door shut, locked it and lifted the trunk by one end and set it upright.
‘We’ll send over four messengers for it,’ Earp answered. Mrs. Giu took the elevator to the lobby, walked out of the hotel empty-handed and got in a
Two minutes later Earp and Riker left the hotel by the rear door after having checked both rooms. They walked down the fire stairs and threw the suitcases in the truck.
‘How much?’ Early asked.
As they drove off into the night, Earp settled down, smiling, and said, ‘Thirty-seven keys.’
HONG KONG
Hatcher loved the Orient. He had spent years there before Sloan sent him to Central America, years on the back rivers, rubbing elbows with the Ts’e K’am Men Ti, the river pirates who operated south from Shanghai and east from Thailand into the Macao Runs of Hong Kong. He knew them all. Joe Cockroach, half Chinese, half Malaysian, who had a flawless British accent and wore tailored raw-silk suits when he did business in the backwaters of the Jungsian River. Harry Tsin who had a degree from UCLA and a peg leg from a Japanese prison camp. Sam-Sam Sam, a psychopath who controlled the river, demanded tribute from all who did business on it, and skinned anyone who double-crossed him and hung the skin on the side of his boat as an example.
And Cohen, the white Tsu Fi.
As the 747 swept over the bay and banked into Kai Tak airport he felt a surge of excitement. Not that Hong Kong was a particular favorite — it was too crowded, too noisy, too full of itself. But this was where everything in the Orient began, where the money changers squatted on the doorstep of China, and riches flowed back and forth like the tides. The first red glow of dawn streaked the horizon as they swept in low from the south. Shaukiwan, the floating city of junks, sampans and snakeboats, slid silently below them, then Hong Kong island and the bay, and finally Kowloon peninsula, facing a harbor fat with cargo ships from all over the world. Junks and sampans surrounded them like pups nuzzling a bitch hound.
Hatcher had old friends here — and old enemies, too, but he never thought about them. Don’t ever look back, Sloan had told him in the beginning. Bad for the old clicks. Clicks, that’s what Sloan called instinct.
It was 5 A.M., only two hours before his nonstop left for Bangkok, hardly time to get into trouble. He would eat at a small restaurant he liked a few miles from the airport and be off again.
As he left the plane his plans were suddenly changed. The first thing he heard when he entered the terminal was the page.
‘Attention, arriving passenger Hatcher, please contact Pan American information as soon as possible. . .
He went to the Pan Am counter near the gate.
‘I’m Hatcher,’ he told a handsome, very erect Asian woman. ‘You paged me.’
‘Take the phone right there,’ she said pleasantly, pointing to a house phone on the end of the counter. The operator was just as pleasant. ‘You have a message to call this number collect in Washington, D.C., and ask for Sergeant Flitcraft,’ she said, and dictated the number. Hatcher repeated the number, then found a pay phone and made the call.
‘OSI, Sergeant Flitcraft,’ a crisp voice on the other end answered. He quickly accepted the call. ‘Mr. Hatcher?’
‘Yes,’ Hatcher whispered.
‘Would you mind giving me your old Navy serial number, sir?’
‘Not at all,’ Hatcher’s voice rasped. ‘N3146021.’
‘Very good, sir. You also cleared the voice print. Colonel Sloan says to wait in Hong Kong for him. He’s a few hours behind you. You have adjoining rooms at the Peninsula Hotel, he’ll meet you there at about ten hundred hours, give or take.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it, sir.’
‘Thanks, Sergeant,’ Hatcher said arid hung up. Damn, he thought, Sloan was really riding tight herd on this one.
