“Thanks again, Stoke,” Hawke said, raising his brandy.
“De nada,” Stoke said.
“One does not expect to get one’s arse shot at by the French navy.”
“No. One’s arse definitely does not. Not after Normandy and all that other conveniently forgotten history we got going back. You know, Omaha Beach, Ste.-Mere-Eglise, distant, foggy memories like that. Makes me nuts, boss. You really think that’s who it was fired at us? A French navy boat?”
“That’s what Brick thinks. He’s pretty good at this stuff.”
“France ain’t exactly my idea of a perfect ally, but shooting at us is taking the game to a whole new level.”
Hawke nodded in agreement, sipping his brandy, watching a shooting star blaze and die overhead. He said, “Sky look strange to you, Stoke?”
“Nope. Same old, same old.”
“Really? Look at the constellation Orion. See how it’s tilted? See that? Like our planet’s shifted a few degrees on its axis. Christ. I’m beginning to think it has.”
“You okay?”
“No, I don’t think I am, quite.”
“You want me to stick around with you, buddy? When you go meet with the director in London? I got nothing on my dance card but a trip to Miami to see the next Mrs. Stokely Jones, Jr.”
“The lovely Fancha from Cape Verde.”
“Girl got a legitimate shot at the title, boss.”
Hawke nodded. “I think we all ought to stay in close touch. You, me, Sutherland, Ambrose. Something tells me we are embarking on a long and dangerous journey, Stoke. Here. Your first assignment.”
“Every dangerous journey begins with a single step,” Stoke said, looking at the small envelope.
“An invitation to a dinner party tomorrow night. Aboard a very fancy yacht moored off the Hotel du Cap. I’d like you to go. See what you can find out about a Chinese movie star named Jet. She lives aboard. Ever hear of her?”
“Nope. Don’t see many Chinese movies.”
“She’s very cozy with some character named von Draxis. German chap who owns Valkyrie. Some kind of industrialist. Shipbuilder. Owns a lot of newspapers and television stations in Eastern Europe as well. I read an SIS document about him some years ago. A Saddam stooge in those days, getting oil vouchers for political favors. I think he’s dirty. She may be, too.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I was with her just before I boarded the Star. She may have tipped them—I don’t know. They seemed to be expecting me. Anyway, I’d like you to check it out. Have a good look round. See what you can get by being your sociable self.”
“You mean you want me to go over to that fancy yacht and just sort of ‘blend in.’”
“Right, Stoke, just blend in,” Hawke said. “Disappear into the crowd. Lose yourself…”
After a beat, the two of them eyed each other and burst out laughing. The only place on earth Stokely Jones might be able to blend in would be the Olympic wrestlers’ locker room.
Stoke was well over six-foot-six and weighed nearly two-sixty, not an ounce of it fat. He’d started life in the projects and on the streets selling product and muscle. A wise old judge gave him the navy as an alternative to Riker’s Island. He did his SEAL training at Coronado and ended up as a river rat in the Mekong Delta in ’68. Coming home, the New York Jets signed him as a walk-on running back. He got hurt in his first game and spent an unhappy year on the injured reserve bench. Then he joined the New York City Police Department.
“Yeah. I like this part,” Stoke said. “Spy stuff. Hey, boss, I never got to tell you about Ambrose.”
“What about him?”
“Somebody trying to kill him.”
“Any idea who?”
“Nope. But he’s taking it personally.”
Hawke laughed. “I would, too.”
“I mean he’s on the case himself.”
“He’s got the right man for the job.”
Chapter Twelve
Hong Kong
THE VERY BEST PART OF HIS DAY WAS NIGHT. THE SMELLS OF the harbor coming through the small window to his left included salt brine, dead plankton, marine fuel, the flotsam and jetsam of centuries, rotting sea organisms, human waste, and much, much more. He closed his black eyes and inhaled, sucking these particulate fumes into the very cellars of his lungs. After a seeming eternity, the small black eyes embedded in the twin hollows above his razor-thin nose reopened.
He took a deep breath, creating a wet sucking noise through the narrow vertical slits that constituted his nose. He opened the wide horizontal gash of his mouth. And, through that hole like an open grave, he exhaled. What did they say? In with the good air, out with the bad.
His name was Hu Xu. He was nearly sixty years old and a death artist by trade. He called himself the “diener,” pronounced DEE-ner, the old German name for autopsy attendant. It can also mean “responsible manservant” or even “slave,” but he was neither of those. It was a private joke. As a young man, living with his parents in America, he had for some years been an autopsy assistant in Tempe, Arizona.
Traditonally, any man (or, rarely, woman) who works in this capacity is called by the German word. To be the diener means pushing the gurneys around and hosing down the table. It means unzipping the body bags. It means sawing open bodies and learning their secrets, the tales of the dead. Hu Xu loved those secrets. It was in his blood.
In Tempe, when the sheriff and his men had discovered his secrets and were chasing him, they called him simply “the Chinaman.” A Chinaman on the run in Arizona has a hard time hiding. Here, in his homeland, he was invisible once more.
Standing now before a pedestal containing a tin basin full of hot soapy water, Hu Xu stared deeply into the steam-misted mirror and regarded the perfect beauty reflected there. Just the sight of his own wondrous face brought shudders of pleasure rippling up his short and slightly deformed spine.
Yesssss, he hissed through his small, evenly spaced, and very sharp teeth.
I am the beautiful diener.
Indeed, in his natural state, as now, he was a wonder to behold. His body, from the neck down, was decorated in a brilliant tableau of interwoven and intricate tattoos. On his chest, descending beneath the black Tao cross, a two-headed Chinese dragon etched in shades of yellow, crimson, and emerald green. The dragon on his belly spouted twin licks of orange fire that divided to encircle Hu Xu’s small and malformed penis. Despite, or perhaps because of, the warped shape of the organ, his sexual appetites were varied and enormous. His sense of touch was inhumanly acute. As were all the others, taste, hearing, vision.
He grinned, baring his teeth, and murmured his approval at the rewarding sight. Perfect white dentures hid his own stubby points. As to hair, there was a wispy black goatee at the chin and a fringe of stringy black locks at the base of his skull. Normally, he plaited the sparse tresses adorning his tonsure with seven sterling silver skulls that clinked softly whenever he moved his head.
Now, he shaved off the goatee and stretched a latex skullcap over his hair and the tresses disappeared.
Tonight, the perfectly sculpted skulls were in a small silk pouch secreted upon his person. The tinny sound of tinkling skulls: the last sound countless victims heard before they stepped off. Hu Xu smiled, flipping at will through vivid memories of past glories engraved in his diener’s memory bank; no, stop, back up, there, that one.
He passed his hand over his bony skull, slick with perspiration, licking his thin dry lips. He must hurry. It wouldn’t do to be late for his appointment with General Moon, and he’d much to do before he could leave his
