Twelve Hours To Destiny (6 page)

Tugging the Luger from his belt, he threw a quick look over his shoulder, steadied himself and loosed off a couple of snap shots. The first shattered the windscreen into a thousand glittering fragments, but went wide of the driver. The second broke the offside headlight. Still the truck came on relentlessly. There was not even the slightest check in its speed.

Carradine continued to run, knowing, however, that his unspeakable end would come inevitably. There was no way for him to escape. He stumbled, picked himself up, ran towards one side of the street, wondering vaguely if he might be able to squeeze himself against the wall. There was a narrow doorway just ahead of him, but the closed door seemed too solid for him to be able to break it in.

God, why had he been so insane to come down here when it had been so damnably obvious that it might be a trap? Why hadn’t he gone back to Kellaway’s place right away? He set his teeth in a vicious grin, drew level with the door. All right, damn you, he thought savagely, get it over and done with!

The truck, bouncing and swaying a little was less than twenty feet away. He turned, lifted the gun, knowing that even if he did succeed in killing the driver with his next shot, nothing on God’s earth would stop that juggernaut now.

Then, almost before he was aware that anything had happened, the door opened abruptly, an arm came out, grabbed him by the wrist and almost pulled him off his feet as he was pulled through the door. He heard it slam shut behind him, blinked his eyes against the dimness. Abruptly, he stiffened, felt his heart skip a beat as a girl’s voice said softly: “Those men seem determined to kill you, don’t they?”

Carradine had been in the act of thrusting the heavy Luger back into its holster. Now he tightened his grip on the weapon. He was looking into the face of the girl he had noticed in the market, the same girl, he felt sure, he had seen earlier that morning outside Kellaway’s residence.

“All right,” he said shortly. “There are some questions I want to ask you. I’ve been—”

“Later,” she said urgently, cutting him short. “First we must get away from here.” She pulled him away from the door. “Those men out there aren’t going to wait long before they surround this house and come in for us. Follow me. Quickly!”

In spite of his suspicions about her, Carradine recognised the logic of what she said. The squeal of brakes outside told him that the track had come to a halt. He fancied he heard the sound of raised voices in the alley. Keeping the gun in his right hand, he allowed the girl to lead him through the empty rooms of the house. There was a flight of stairs at the end of one of the rooms and without pausing, the girl ran lightly up them, motioning him to follow. When he hesitated for a second, she hissed: “We can’t go out of the back door. It’s boarded up tight and they’ll be expecting us to do that. We must do this my way.”

“All right. But the first wrong move you make and I won’t hesitate to hit you over the head with this.” He nodded menacingly at the gun in his hand. For a second, she smiled as though secretly amused, then nodded.

Less than three minutes later, they came out on the top floor. Carradine looked about him. Without saying a word, the girl went over to the grimy window, opened it and looked out, then motioned him forward. “This is the only way out without them seeing us,” she said softly. She looked at him appraisingly. “It isn’t going to be easy.”

Carradine looked over her shoulder. There was a narrow balcony just beyond the window, jutting out over the alley below but no way down that he could see.

“I presume we’re not going to jump,” he said, a faint note of sarcasm in his tone.

“We shall make our way across to the building opposite.” She pointed.

Looking up, he noticed the steel bar, which stretched across the alley to the roof of the opposite house.

In answer to the unspoken question on his face, she said: “We must swing ourselves over. It’s the only chance. Do you think you can do it?”

For a second he stared down at her upturned face in amazement. “Over that?” He thrust the gun into his belt. “I think I could probably manage it, but you—”

“Don’t worry on my account,” she murmured. “I’m used to heights. I work with an acrobatic troupe. Just do as I do and you’ll be all right.”

Carradine tried to keep the surprise from his face as she climbed easily onto the narrow balcony, paused for a moment, then jumped for the pole, hooked her fingers around it and began to swing herself, hand over hand, across the alley, thirty feet or so below. There was no doubt, he was forced to admit to himself, that she was as good as she had claimed. Reaching up, he grasped the pole, swung himself out into space. The ground below him seemed a very long way and he forced himself not to look down, but to concentrate on swinging himself over. Before he was three-quarters of the way across the strain on his arms was like fire in his shoulders and wrist muscles. The girl had crossed with an effortless ease which made it apparent that she was quite used to this sort of thing. Determined not to be shown up by a mere girl, he gritted his teeth and kept on going.

After what seemed an eternity, he reached the end of the pole, swung his legs over the top of the balcony and released his hold. His heart was pumping in his chest.

“You’re out of training,” said the girl laughing.

Carradine felt himself flushing. “Perhaps.” He forced the grin in return. “But at least we’re here. What now?”

“Those fools will search the other place for us, but by the time they realise we have slipped through their fingers, we will be a long way from here and they will never find us.”

Carradine waited until they were on the ground floor before catching the girl’s arm, halting her roughly. “Before we go any further,” he said grimly. “There are some questions I want answered. Just who are you? How do I know I can trust you?”

“If I had been working for the Red Dragon, would I have got you out of there?” she said contemptuously. “I would simply have left you in that alley where they would have crushed you to a pulp.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“Perhaps I should introduce myself. My name is Ts’ai Luan. Chao Lin is my uncle.”

“I think I understand.”

“Do you? I wonder.” A pause, then she went on hurriedly: “I was working in Canton when I heard that he had been kidnapped. I came here as quickly as I could to try to discover what had happened and where they had taken him. I knew that it was the work of the Red Dragon.”

“Just a minute.” Carradine’s tone was shocked. “You say that you were in Canton? Then how on earth—?”

“Did I get to Hong Kong?” She smiled. For a moment there was an answering sparkle in the dark eyes beneath the long, black lashes. For the first time, he saw how beautiful she really was. Before, her face had been merely a half-glimpsed thing seen in the shadows. She went on: “That was easy. There are ways of getting in and out of China if you know them.”

“And how did you find out about me?”

“That was not so easy. I knew the sort of work my uncle did for British Intelligence. He told me little, of course. But he always used to say that there might come a time when the Communists would become suspicious of him, would discover what he was doing and then they would try to kill him. He said that if anything did happen to him, the British would send another agent here to try to find out what had happened, maybe to take his place.”

Carradine nodded slowly. This was an added complication he had not allowed for. Yet in a way he was grateful for it. Without the girl’s help, he would almost certainly not be alive now.

“I knew that when anyone did arrive from London, they would meet with Mr. Kellaway so I decided to keep a close watch on his house for any visitors.”

“Then it was you I noticed this morning.”

She nodded slowly. “The Red Dragon have many spies everywhere. I had to be very careful. It was why I followed you to my uncle’s offices. I guess that they might try to kill you.”

Carradine was forced to admit that her story was plausible. Yet could he believe it, even now? The enemy was devilishly clever. There was just possible they had decided to have a second string to their bow in the shape of this beautiful girl.

“You make it all seem very logical,” he said at length. “There is only one thing I don’t understand. Someone in Hong Kong is feeding information back to the Red Dragon. It’s obvious that they know most of my moves beforehand.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed slightly. “It is something my uncle told me which may explain this. It concerns Mr. Kellaway.”

“The man who worked with your uncle?”

“He was suspicious of Kellaway. He had the feeling that he could not be trusted. That is why he did not take him into his confidence as he might normally have done. Perhaps he is the man who is giving this information to the Red Dragon.”

“That seems hardly likely.” Carradine did not add that the Chief, back in London, trusted Kellaway implicitly.

Ts’ai Luan shrugged her shoulders disdainfully. “All I know is what my uncle told me.” She eyed him shrewdly. “What are your plans now? I can take you somewhere where you will be safe until you want to get into China. I can also get you there without any trouble. I have friends in Canton. The other members of the troupe are all against the Communist regime there, but it is dangerous to even whisper against Mao Tse Tung while inside China. The Red Dragon have ears and eyes everywhere. No one can be trusted.” She looked at him calmly.

Carradine could see no guile in her face but that did not ease the uneasiness in his mind. True she had just saved his life at the risk of her own, but that was not conclusive proof of her genuine desire to help him further.

“Now listen.” He put nonchalance into his voice, placed one hand under her chin, tilting her head up. “I have a job to do. You seem to know far more about me than I do about you. In fact I know nothing at all about you. For all I know, you too could be a Red Dragon agent sent here to lure me into China where a dozen of your fellow countrymen would be waiting to pop up and finish me. We’ve got to stop fooling ourselves and be quite serious. You’ve made an accusation against Kellaway. Yet you have no proof to back it up.”

“That is perfectly true. You must, of course, make up your own mind which course you are going to take. Clearly nothing I can do or say is going to change your mind about Kellaway. I can’t even prove that Chao Lin is my uncle. Yet all I know is that, whatever you do, I intend to find him, wherever they have taken him. When I find him, I shall kill those responsible.” There was a note of fierce determination her voice which told Carradine that she was quite capable of doing exactly as she threatened. The sharp tingle of suspicion faded just a little. In spite of himself, he suddenly found that he wanted to believe her.

“I intend to enter China tonight by—” He remembered security and went on quickly. “No matter how I get there. If you do go through with your crazy plan of trying to find Chao Lin yourself, perhaps we may meet again, somewhere.”

She caught at his arm, her fingers digging into his flesh with a steely strength. “Just one thing. Whatever you do, don’t trust Kellaway too far. Whether you believe me or not it doesn’t matter. Just be very careful. And if you do change your mind, go down to the quayside at nine o’clock tonight. I have a small boat waiting there. It has a yellow dragon on the sail, the only one of its kind. I’ll wait until half-past nine. If you come, we’ll go together. If not, then I shall go without you.”

“I’ll remember that.” He gently disengaged his arm. “Now I’d better get back to Kellaway or he’ll think something has happened.”

It was not until he was approaching the other’s house on the side of Victoria Peak that the irony of that statement struck him.

*

Seated in front of the mirror, Carradine stared intently back at the face which peered out at him from the crystal glass. It was not the face he had known for more years than he cared to remember. He felt certain that none of his friends back in London would ever recognise the slant-eyed, Oriental features as those of Steve Carradine.

The face surgeon had certainly known his job. Carradine only hoped that it would pass muster once he was inside Communist China. His whole life would depend on it. He checked the watch which he had taken from his wrist. It was a quarter to nine. Apart from the general background noise of the city, it was quiet. Kellaway had left half an hour earlier to check the preparations he had made for the boat to take him over to the Chinese mainland.

In spite of the troubles in his mind, Carradine felt his thoughts turning more and more to the fascinating girl he had encountered that morning. Just how much truth was there in her story? Could Kellaway possibly be a double agent? One part of the girl’s story seemed to ring true. If she was a Chinese Red Dragon agent, then why had she gone to so much trouble to save his life when those killers in the truck had him at their mercy?

He reached a sudden decision. There was one way of checking on Ts’ai Luan’s story. If Kellaway was working with the enemy, then he had to have some means of getting in touch with them. Even after he himself had arrived in Hong Kong, someone had been passing information about him to the Chinese. Sending word by means of a messenger was far too risky. Kellaway would never have dared to use a go-between. It would have been much too conspicuous. That meant only one thing. There had to be a radio transmitter somewhere in the house if what the girl had said was true.