The Vulcan Disaster

I bent over as he had done and wiped Hugo clean. “I’m lucky to be alive. But you... I’ve never seen anything quite like that before.”

“Oh,” he said, shrugging it off. “I am a man blessed by fortune. I have had much good luck in my life.”

Inside the circle of his arm the girl sobbed. She clung even more closely to him. Her weeping was loud and unashamed; disconsolate. I could understand nothing of it all. “That wasn’t luck,” I said. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”

“Ah,” he said. “Every form of contest has its own rules. A logical contest, as in choy li fut, has logical rules. It only remains to learn them. They will apply, to the extent that we learn them well.” The smile was calm, happy, forgiving. He turned to the girl in his arms. “But come, my dear. Time to take you home. There, there. It’s all right now. You’ve no reason to be frightened. No more. Now, now — come along. Mr. Carter and I will just go turn off the lights, and lock up, and we’ll be home in two shakes. There. There’s my good girl...” His wrinkled old hand patted her short cap of hair gently. He looked at me; winked. “Here, my dear, let Mr. Carter hold you. He can comfort you quite as well as I. I’ll just finish closing up; I’ll be done in a jiffy.” And he handed her to me. And I held her while he skipped nimbly down the block to that single light we’d seen burning; held her while her sobs grew lighter, softer; held her while she got control over her emotions. Finally, as his light went off and I saw him come out of the distant building and head our way again, she nestled her tear-stained cheek against my shirt and nodded up to me that everything was okay.

Okay? Everything was crazy. Who were these hired killers, with their medieval weapons? What were they up to? What was the girl up to? Who was the old man?

And how did he know my name?

Chapter Eleven

On the Western shore of the Kowloon Peninsula a sturdy breakwater juts far out into the bay to give protection to as odd an assortment of boats as you’re likely ever to see, anchored inside the mole and sheltered against the typhoons that sweep in from the Pacific every late summer or early autumn.

These include motor launches, fishing boats, sampans, junks, houseboats, cargo lighters, commercial vehicles — the more far-ranging among them bearing a curious double registry and even, often as not, flying double flags of both the Crown Colony itself and of Red China. The Yaumati people, the guide books will tell you, live most of their lives over the water, supporting themselves by fishing or other seagoing pursuits and raising their families in the houseboats that lie permanently moored in the nest of slips that acted as the backbone of the water community.

I was wondering, as we negotiated the short brisk walk from Temple Street to the water town, just why she chose to live there.

I was wondering a few other things as we hustled along, trying to keep up with the old man, Tatiana’s short choppy steps matching my own longer ones. The hurried pace made I good sense, I was thinking. Before long somebody’d happen upon that street full of corpses back there and call the cops, and they’d fan out through the neighborhood, asking questions. And I had blood on my pants.

Up ahead, though, the old man must have been reading my mind. “By the way, Mr. Carter. In case you were wondering, the police will be unlikely to trace us in this direction.” He looked familiar; where else had I seen that face before?

“What do you mean?” I said, trying not to puff and blow, considering my ribs.

“I took the precaution of leaving some misleading graffiti behind,” he said with that pixie smile. “In Cantonese. My scribbles said something rather like ‘Death to the Butterfly Gang’ and carried the identifying ideogram of the Three Tiger organization, from Kowloon City.”

“Good,” I said. Quick thinking there. The old walled village, now grown into a sprawling, tough slum, was way up by Kai Tak airport; the phony clue would lead the cops away from us. The old boy impressed me more and more. “Say,” I added. “You better lead the way. I don’t know my way around here.”

“A wise decision,” he said, not slowing down a bit “The admission of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. Ah, but there I go again, Tatiana my dear, talking like a fortune cookie.” His laugh was merry and gently self-mocking. “I have been in the Orient too long, I think. My neighbors in the market say I no longer speak their tongue like a gwai lo.”

“Foreign devil,” translated Tatiana in a low whisper.

“They do not know what to make of me,” he finished.

Fine, I thought. Neither did I. When we came to roost at last, I had some pointed questions to ask. Sensing my doubt, Tatiana squeezed my hand; the smile that accompanied the squeeze was meant to reassure.