The White Vixen (8 page)

“I just happened to be in the right place at the right time,” he said with false modesty. In the past week, Jo had heard plenty of stories about this particular Royal Marines officer. Which ones were true, well, that she’d have to find
out.

Their first course was served. The lettuce with quail was excellent, and the main course arrived in due time. “Now, there’s no real delicate way to eat squab,” she said.

“And so the indelicate way prevails?”

“Yes, just dig in,” she said, and demonstrated by picking up the bird and taking a bite. The succulent juices started running down her chin, and she quickly lapped at it with her napkin. Ian followed suit, leaning forward quickly to keep a squirt of juice from reaching his sport jacket. “Nicely done, Major,” she said.

“Rather like a Cornish game hen,” he said. “Tastier, though. Quite delicious, in fact.”

They weren’t able to talk much as they finished the squab, washing it down with tea. But there was plenty of laughter as they negotiated the birds and managed to finish them off without spotting their clothing. Their waiter appeared within seconds after they completed the main course.
“Dessert, please?”

Jo had an idea, and ordered in Chinese again. “What is it this time?” Ian asked.

“A surprise,” she said as the waiter bowed and hustled toward the kitchen with their plates and the remains of the squab.

Ian leaned forward on the table and fixed his lustrous blue eyes on Jo. “This entire evening has been a very pleasant surprise,” he said.

She leaned forward on her elbows also, bringing her face within a foot or so of his. “It has?”

“Yes,” he said. “I didn’t quite know what to expect when I accepted your invitation.” His voice lowered a tone, and his face came another inch toward hers.
“Americans are fairly unpredictable, you see.”

“Oh, really?
But do I seem like a typical American to you?” Subconsciously, she had lowered her voice and leaned forward, too.

“Indeed not,” he said. The table wasn’t really that wide, and if they both leaned forward a little bit more, their lips would touch…

“Dessert!”

The waiter was back, with two bowls of vanilla ice cream, topped with chocolate syrup, a dab of whipped cream and a cherry. Jo and Ian sat back in their chairs as the waiter set the
bowls in front of them. Jo was disappointed that their moment had been lost, but felt fairly sure they’d have another chance.

“Well, what’s this, now?” Ian said, mock sternness in his voice.

“Don’t tell me you don’t have ice cream sundaes where you come from,” Jo teased. She dipped into her sundae with a spoon and took a succulent bite.

“Of course,” he said. He shoveled in a large spoonful.
“Oh, my”, he said, barely able to get the words out. Another spoonful followed. He looked at her, eyes twinkling, and winked.

The hike to Sok Kwo Wan dock was as scenic as had been promised. The sunset was spectacular, silhouetting Lantau Island to their west, across the West Lamma Channel. Their ferry ride back to Hong Kong would be longer, but it was a pleasant evening and seas were light.

Jo Ann’s hand found Ian’s as they negotiated the twisting path through the rocks and trees. She feigned stumbling and grabbed hold of him, and he didn’t let go. “Good thing we’re not trying this in full darkness,” he said. The path was not lighted, and the moon wouldn’t be up for another couple hours.

“Normally I’m fairly agile,” she said. “That one got me, though.”

“Well, we’ll do our best to keep from a repetition.” He squeezed her hand.

She’d learned a little bit more about him over dinner. He was from Cornwall, in the extreme southwest of England, middle-class family, his father a World War II Army officer who’d survived the beaches of Normandy. Ian went off to join the Royal Marines at eighteen, made officer within two years, and by twenty-five had worked his way into Special Boat Squadron. He was thirty-three now, just two years older than Jo.

“You’ve never married?” she asked.

“Came close once or twice,” he said. “Ultimately, neither of them wanted a husband who’d rarely be around. They wanted home and hearth, children, all that.”

“Not a bad life,” she said.

“True, but not what I was looking for at the time. Perhaps later.” She could certainly understand why a woman would want to marry him. Not particularly tall, maybe about six feet, but strikingly good-looking, resembling an actor she’d seen recently, a British actor in a movie…what was it?

They passed another couple sitting on a bench, watching the sunset. Ian nodded to the man, a Caucasian, while his Asian companion pointed out something to the west. An airliner, lights flashing, was coming in to land at Hong Kong Airport, on the other side of Lantau Island.

“He’s an officer aboard
Cumberland
,” Ian told Jo when they’d passed out of earshot of the couple. “We’ve worked together once or twice.”

A few minutes later, they came to another bench, this one unoccupied. “Do we have some time for a break?” he asked.

Jo checked her wristwatch. The ferry was due an hour from now, and they were about halfway there, so she figured they could spare about fifteen minutes. “Yes,” she said, leading him to the bench.

“You’re quite the one for precision, aren’t you?” he asked after they’d sat down. The evening was beginning to get a bit chilly, and she sat closely against him; his arm found its way around her shoulders.

“I have to be, in my line of work,” she said.

“Ah, yes, now what is it, commando,
secret agent?”

She looked up at him, and the dying sunlight twinkled in his eyes. “Maybe a little bit of both,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve already had a look at my jacket.” Her USAF personnel file had surely found its way to Ian’s commanding officer, who put together the rescue mission.

“Well, I am the ranking Royal Marine aboard,” he said. “Let’s see…a rather interesting childhood and adolescence, going hither and yon with your parents, then college at Stanford, graduate school at your Air Force Academy. When did you join the military, exactly?”

“I was an Air Force ROTC cadet at Stanford,” she said. “I went on active duty as a second lieutenant after graduation.
Got my master’s in international relations at Colorado Springs.”

“International relations.
Based on the course of our evening so far, you know your stuff.” Jo gave him a playful elbow in the ribs. “Ow,” he said, feigning pain. “I must be more careful, since I read you are also somewhat of a martial arts expert.”

She laughed. “I’ve studied tae kwon do for several years. That’s a Korean martial art, and when we lived in Japan I also studied naginata. Since then I’ve picked up some things from other arts—a little judo,
kung fu
.”

“Really?
Kung fu, as in the movies?”

“Kung fu as in the ancient Chinese martial art, developed by the Shaolin monks,” she said. “But during my college days I did study it under Bruce Lee in Oakland.”

“
The
Bruce Lee?”

“Yes,” she said, remembering the incredibly-fit, incredibly-intense yet kind and patient man who had instructed her at his
jeet kune do
academy for nearly a year. Like anyone who visited Hong Kong, Masters must have seen Lee’s picture on magazine covers at every newsstand; even now, eight years after his death, Lee was an icon in his native city. “It was quite an experience.”

“I’m sure it was.”

They watched the sunset for a few minutes. It was brilliant this evening, and even though Jo had seen many memorable ones in the States, somehow seeing one in the Orient made it all the more exotic. She sighed.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Masters asked.

“Oh, I was just thinking about my mother. She always likes the sunsets, but only if they’re here, in the East. She never really enjoyed them in America.”

“Your family, they emigrated to the States?”

“No,” she said. “My father is an American, my mother is Korean.”

“Well, that explains your looks,” he said. He turned to her, and she looked up at him. “I’ve never really met anyone like you, Jo Ann Geary. I’d like to get to know you better.”

“I think that’s entirely possible,” she answered, and their lips met.

CHAPTER FIVE

Hong Kong

November 1981

Sunlight was just starting to seep underneath the drawn curtains of the bedroom. The bedside clock radio glowed 5:53, and Jo Ann, fully awake now, slipped silently out of bed. After using the bathroom, she found her panties on the bedroom floor and stepped into them.

Ian stirred and turned over, facing the still-warm spot where she’d lain, but he didn’t awaken. Smiling, Jo went into the living room of the hotel suite, carefully closing the bedroom door behind her.

She went to a window and drew the curtains back just enough to see the cityscape beyond the glass. The great city was waking up, many of its millions already hard at work in the streets below. A few blocks away, the Union Jack fluttered over the Government Building. Jo thought sixteen years ahead, when the red banner of the People’s Republic would replace it. How would the city change then? Well, she would have to come back and find out.

For now, this was the last morning of her first visit to Hong Kong; her flight to Tokyo departed at noon, and she had packing and last-minute shopping to do. To business, then.

Wearing only the white panties, she sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor and assumed the lotus position. It was time to begin her daily
dan ki gong
meditation. She half-closed her eyes and started clearing her mind of unimportant details: the faint noises of the city from outside, the dim shadows of the furniture, the whisper of the air conditioning. Soon, even important things would be set aside as she focused ever more deeply on bringing in energy, the force she had come to know as ki, , from around her and merging it with her inner ki.

She visualized the ki, imagining it to be an amorphous cloud of white light above her head. Inhaling through her nose, she drew the energy into her lungs, pushing it downward with the muscles of her chest and abdomen, into her
dan jeon
, the central point of her body just below the navel. As the ki traveled further downward into her groin, an image from last night intruded: Ian’s tongue, gently teasing her there, and then his hardness inside her. Allowing herself a slight smile, she banished the memory, pleasant as it was.

Still inhaling slowly, she felt the ki continue its journey, upward now along her spine, along the back of her neck—she felt the tingling—and over the top of her head. She held her breath for twenty seconds, then exhaled through her slightly parted lips and felt the ki move down the front of her face, into her nose, and then out. Taking another deep breath through the nose, she continued.

After about ten minutes, she held her breath for a full sixty seconds and exhaled for the final time of the exercise. Opening her eyes fully, she returned her breathing to normal and began moving into a series of yoga stretches. As always, she felt invigorated by the dan ki gong. Her instructor had told her that mastering it would give her greater control over stress and contribute greatly to her body’s physical and mental wellness. It had to be true, since she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been ill.

Midway through her yoga routine, she sensed, rather than heard, the bedroom door opening behind her. She knew it was Ian, and so she didn’t automatically go into self-defense mode, but she did pay closer attention to that part of the room she couldn’t see, the sounds coming from there, even the smells: a whiff of musky air from the bedroom mixing with the faintly stale air of the living room. She attuned her hearing and caught Ian’s breathing, the scratch of his fingernails three times through his chest hair, the slight movement of his feet as he shifted his weight from one to the other, the even slighter sound of his shoulder coming into contact with the doorway as he leaned against it.

“Good morning,” she said without turning. She was finishing the first part of the routine, a series of three poses: the child’s pose, on her knees with haunches resting on her heels, arms stretching forward and palms on the floor, head bowed between her upper arms; the cobra, stretching forward with legs fully extended and then pushing her upper body upward until she was supported on her fully extended arms; and the downward-facing dog, with hands and feet flat on the floor and bending over sharply at the waist, her body forming a perfect inverted V.

From the doorway, Ian had a nice view of her posterior. “Good morning back,” he said. “This is yoga?”

“Yes,” Jo said, as she moved into the second half of her routine. She assumed the mountain pose, standing straight up with arms at her side. Jo told Ian the Sanskrit name, then its English equivalent, and proceeded to the next pose. “The chair pose.” She squatted slightly as if sitting in an invisible chair. “The extended triangle.” Stretching her legs out, she reached down to the floor with her right hand, bending at the waist, while reaching high with her left. “The warrior pose.” Left leg bent at the knee nearly at a right angle, left foot pointing left, right leg stretched out, trunk facing forward, arms held straight out over the legs, head facing left. “The tree pose.” Controlling her breathing, she reached both hands high overhead and brought her right foot off the floor, tucking it under her hip with the knee extending outward at a forty-five-degree angle from the left leg. She repeated the routine, this time switching sides for the last three poses.