The Trail to Buddha's Mirror (17 page)

“Whatever you say.”

“So are you ready to go?”

“It’s only six-thirty. We have plenty of time.”

“I want to get there early.”

“Love is a many-splendored thing.”

“I don’t want to be set up again.”

The rush onto the Star Ferry made a New York subway look like a spring cotillion. The same crowd that had been standing patiently and passively on the ramp moments earlier turned into an aggressive mob as soon as the entrance chain was dropped. Splitting into gangs, trios, couples, and the odd loner, the mob spilled onto the double-decked, double-ended old green-and-white vessel, flipping the backs across the benches to face forward.

Neal, a survivor of the Broadway Local, just managed to stay on his feet as the crowd shot off the ramp and pushed him forward. He claimed an apparently scorned seat toward the rear of the boat and wondered how Ben Chin was going to stay with him. The boat filled up quickly and took off quickly. There was no time for lollygagging; the Star Ferry made the nine-minute crossing 455 times a day.

It was some nine minutes. From sea level, Hong Kong’s skyscrapers loomed like castle keeps, their gray steel and glass standing in sharp contrast to the green hills above. A staggering array of boat traffic jammed the waters of the bay. Private water taxis zipped back and forth while old junks lumbered across. Sampan pilots struggled with their sculling oars to maneuver through the chop left by the motorboats. A tugboat guided a gigantic ocean liner into a dock on the Kowloon side.

Lights began to glow in the early dusk, and neon reflections started to appear on the water, casting faint red, blue, and yellow shades on the bay, the boats, and even the ferry passengers. Neal’s arm dangled out the window, and he watched it change color as the neon sign proclaiming Tudor Whiskey flashed.

Most of the passengers seemed unaffected by the scene. Only a handful of scattered tourists were paying any attention at all. The regular commuters talked or read newspapers or loudly spat sunflower seed hulls onto the deck. Ben Chin was just sitting, staring impassively ahead, three rows behind Neal.

Neal leaned out to get a view of the Peak. His chest tightened.
She’ll
be there, he thought. What will she look like? What will she be wearing? What will she say? Will she be holding Pendleton’s hand? A fierce pang of jealousy ripped through him.

Jesus, Neal, he told himself. At least try to remember the job, the gig. The job is about Pendleton, not Li Lan. Yeah, but you took yourself off the job, remember? There is no job. There won’t be any job. There’s only her.

The crowd began to stir in anticipation of the docking. Neal stood up and resisted the impulse to look behind him. Chin would doubtless pick him up. The crew dropped the chains and the mob surged off the boat.

Neal had studied his guidebook and knew where to go. He came off the dock and crossed wide, busy Connaught Road and headed up past City Hall to Des Voeux Road, where he took a left and found the tramway station on the bottom of Garden Road.

He waited about five minutes for the small green-and-white funicular car to arrive, then found a window seat on the right side toward the front. Chin sat down on the left-side aisle toward the rear. Neal didn’t see any of Chin’s crew, and figured that the gang leader had kept his word.

The tram started with a jerk and began to pull up the steep slope of the peak. Most of the commuters got off on the lower two stops at Kennedy Road and Macdonnell Road. Thick vegetation of bamboo and fir trees flanked the narrow tram line on both sides, and sheer rock ledges showed where the line had been blasted through. At times the grade was so steep that the tram car seemed to defy gravity, and Neal felt that it would pitch over backward, tumbling them down on top of the tall commercial buildings that seemed to stand directly beneath and behind. He had an image of the steel cable snapping from the strain and the car hurtling backward through the air, end over end, until it finally crashed into the concrete and steel of the city below. Neal was afraid of heights.

The tram finally pulled into the Upper Peak Station. Neal got off on shaky legs. She had told him to meet her at the observatory. It wasn’t hard to find, being only a few feet to the left of the station. He was forty minutes early for the meet, but he took a quick look around to make sure she wasn’t there. She wasn’t, and he turned his attention to the scene beneath him.

The view stretched out in the distance to the New Territories and the Chinese border, hidden in the brown hills that were going gray in the late dusk. Neal could see the entire Kowloon peninsula laid out in front of the hills, its concrete tenements, rows of docks, hotels, and bars beginning to glow with the lights that were blinking on as night came and people arrived back at their homes. The Star Ferry pier glowed in bright neon, and boats in the bay turned on their navigation lights. Directly beneath him, Neal watched the commercial towers of Hong Kong turn into giant pillars of light in the gathering darkness.

Neal stood on the observation deck watching day turn to night. It was like seeing a bland watercolor landscape change into a garish movie screen filled with electric greens, hot reds, cool blues, and shimmering golds. Hong Kong was a glimmering jewel necklace on a black dress, an invitation to explore a woman’s secrets, a fantasy that tiptoed on the knife edge between a nightmare and a dream.

He forced himself to turn away from the panorama and reconnoiter the area. He took a right on the narrow paved walkway called Lugard Road, which led around the edge of the peak through the thick forests and gardens. A low stone wall bordered the downhill side of the trail, and informal footpaths led off into the woods on the uphill side. There were frequent turnoffs with benches where one could enjoy different perspectives of the stunning view below, but most of the tourists went no farther than the observatory, and the trail was almost deserted save for a few young lovers and a couple of joggers. Neal walked along the trail for about ten minutes and then turned around and went back to the observatory. He hadn’t seen anything suspicious, nothing that looked like a trap or an ambush. He checked his watch: twenty minutes. He walked down to the tram station and waited.

What am I actually going to do? Neal wondered. Just tell her that someone is trying to grease the good doctor? She seems to know that already. Tell her that I think the CIA has a serious grudge against Bobby-baby and may want to waste both of them? Ask her if she tried to kill me back in groovy Mill Valley? Would she tell me if she did? Tell her I’m in love with her, that I’ve dumped my job and my education to follow her, that I can’t live without her? What will she do? Dump Pendleton on the spot and take the tram down with me? Hold my hand? Run away with me? Just what the hell am I doing here, anyway?

He looked around and saw Chin loitering on the hill above him. They exchanged a quick time-to-get-going look, and Neal started himself up toward the observatory. Maybe it’s just another dodge, he thought. Maybe she won’t be here at all.

She was there. Right on time and alone. Neal felt a twinge of guilt as he looked at her. She stood on the observatory deck where it joined Lugard Road. She looked splendid. She was wearing a loose black blouse over jeans and tennis shoes. Her hair hung long and straight, parted in the middle, and her blue comb was fastened to the left of the part. The view behind her turned to mere background. She looked directly at Neal and gestured quickly for him to follow her up Lugard Road.

Pendleton was standing by a bench at the first turnout. He was looking at the view. He wore a white shirt and baggy gray trousers, and he was fidgeting with a key chain in his right hand. Li Lan took him by the elbow and turned him to face Neal.

Neal was twenty feet from them when Pendleton asked, “What do you want?”

“Just to talk.”

“So talk.”

“I’m trying to warn you—”

The look in Li Lan’s eyes cut him off. She was looking over his shoulder, and her face showed fear and anger.

“Bastard,” she hissed at Neal. She grabbed Pendleton by the arm and pushed him up the path in front of her. They started to run.

Neal turned around to look behind him and saw Ben Chin standing there. He didn’t take the time to bitch him out, but started running after Li and Pendleton, who were disappearing around a sharp curve beneath a huge banyan tree. No problem, Neal thought, he could catch them easily. He hit his stride quickly and was gaining on them when he reached the curve. He could hear Ben Chin pounding along behind him.

Li Lan hadn’t come alone. There were three of them, and they stepped between Neal and his quarry. They were ten feet in front of him and they looked like they all had the same favorite movie—each wore a white T-shirt, jeans, and a black leather jacket, and each was carrying a chopper, a Chinese hybrid between a carving knife and a cleaver. Neal could just see Lan and Pendleton fading into the darkness behind their human screen. He looked at the Leather Boy in the middle: a large, solid youth who stood there shaking his head. Neal stopped cold and stood as still as he could. He raised his hands in the universal gesture of surrender and began to back up gently.

“Okay … okay … you win,” he said. “I’ll just go back the way I came.” I’ll go all the way back to Yorkshire, if you want. Walking. Backwards.

He heard movement in the bushes above him. Maybe it was Ben Chin. Maybe he had broken their deal and hidden his whole vicious crew in the woods. Please…. Neal slowly turned his head to see three more armed men come down through the woods to block the path behind him. Wrong crew.

Oh shit, oh dear. Okay, Ben Chin, where are you? Nowhere to be seen. You’re pretty tough with old ladies, Ben, but when it comes to your peer group …

Neal risked a glance to his right. Maybe, just maybe he could make it to the low stone wall and jump over the edge. The problem was that he didn’t know what was over the edge, a nice soft fir tree or a fifty-foot precipice culminating on a rock.

Leather Boy One raised his chopper and made a crisscross motion in front of his chest. Neal heard the fighters behind him close in another couple of feet. Then the line in front of him did the same thing.

The fifty-foot-drop option didn’t seem so bad. Being smashed on a rock seemed preferable to being chopped to pieces. His Eighteenth Century Lit friends would call that a Hobson’s choice.

Leather Boy One raised his chopper.

The Doorman dropped from the limb of the banyan tree right on top of Leather Boy One. They crashed to the ground and the Doorman reached out and grabbed the ankle of another one of the gang and pulled his feet out from under him. The Doorman was no match for Leather Boy One but held him down long enough to look up at Neal and gesture with his eyes to jump over the tangled mass—he had opened the door.

Neal heard a mass of running footsteps from behind and then in front, and Chin’s crew filled the path in both directions. One of them sliced the third Leather Boy across the arm with a chopper while the other reached out and pulled Neal over the top of the Doorman and Leather Boy One, who were still grappling on the ground. Then he pushed Neal along the path.

“Run!” he yelled.

Leather Boy One got a leg behind the Doorman’s ankle and flipped him over. He brought his chopper down on the back of the Doorman’s knee. The Doorman screamed in pain and grabbed Leather Boy One’s ankles and held on. The chopper came down again, on the other knee.

Chin’s assistant was pushing Neal away from the scene.

“Go, go, go!” he yelled.

“We have to help him!”

“He’s dead!”

Neal looked behind him and saw that both gangs were fighting. Screams of rage and the clang of metal on metal hit his ears, and the flashes of steel under the streetlamps dazzled his eyes. He felt more arms pulling on him now, moving him away from the fight, away from where the Doorman lay bleeding and whimpering, away from the danger. He could run now and make it, and Chin’s assistant and the others would protect his back. He felt the cool, clean air of safety.

He tore himself away from the arms and headed back toward the Doorman, who lay in the middle of the fight. Neal grabbed one of the Leather Boys by the back of his jacket and ran him over the side of the wall. Another one was leaning over the Doorman, searching for money. Neal grabbed the back hem of his jacket and pulled it over his head, trapping his arms. He hauled back and hit him in the face four times and the boy dropped. Neal reached under the Doorman’s arms and began to drag him back along the path, where Chin’s assistant and two of the others stood watching in disgust and confusion. They were outnumbered, they had just enough manpower to get Neal out, not fight a pitched battle, and the
kweilo
had fucked it up, and wasted a good doorman in the bargain.

“Help me!” Neal yelled to them.

The rest of Chin’s gang were now backing off in the opposite direction, back toward the observatory, flashing their choppers in front of them to hold off their advancing enemies. Leather Boy One and two of his comrades placed themselves squarely between Neal and Chin’s assistant, who began to back down the trail. Neal was surrounded again.

Fuck it, he thought, and knelt down over the Doorman. He had never seen so much blood. It was all over them. He took off his jacket, ripped off a sleeve, and wrapped it around the Doorman’s leg above the wound, trying to remember how to tie a proper tourniquet. The leg was almost severed, the tendons cut through. The Doorman had lost a lot of blood. His face was gray and his eyes were faint. He looked at Neal with reproach, an expression Neal read to mean, “You have wasted my sacrifice.”

Neal looked up at Leather Boy One.

“Get a doctor.”

Leather Boy One stepped over to them and kicked the Doorman in the leg, right on the wound. The Doorman howled. Neal held him as tightly as he could and stared up at Leather Boy One, memorizing his face. If I ever get out of this, he thought. Leather Boy One smiled broadly at him and raised his big knife over Neal’s face. Neal summoned up every bit of courage and rage he had to stare him in the face. Leather Boy One prepared to bring the chopper down in a smooth backhand stroke into Neal’s throat. Leather Boy One was smiling.