He was licking his lips again, and his throat sounded dry as the bottom of a parrot’s cage that hasn’t been cleaned out recently. He said, his eyes wide with fear: “I don’t know!” But I knew that he did, and I waited. I waited, and then looked at Mai, and she got to her feet and moved towards him slowly, and he said quickly: “No! Please! If I tell you, will you help me?”
“No.”
“Will you at least...try to get me away from here? Away from Ming?”
I said: “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I promise not to let Bettina Harkan get her hands on you. Now, talk.”
His voice was a whisper. “I’m not supposed to know, Ming doesn’t know that I know.”
“That’s all to the good.”
“He’d kill me if he even suspected I know.”
“That’s all to the good too. Where is it?”
Very low: “The island of Siang-chu.” The words were out, and he looked as though the words themselves could kill him, I have never in my life seen a man so scared.
Mai said quietly: “An island off the coast of the mainland, nothing there but ghosts and devils.”
And Wentworth said: “Just a barren rock, really, but there is an old fortress there, mostly in ruins. Part of it has been refurbished, built on, and that’s where Ming stays when he’s in Macao. Three miles off the coast of Red China.”
“Within Red China’s territorial waters?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And the Red Chinese allow the biggest drug supplier in the world to sit on their front doorstep? You’re not making sense, Wentworth.”
“It’s the truth. They leave him alone.”
“The Chinese went to war over the opium trade, to wipe out foreigners who were dealing in it. You never heard of the Opium Wars?”
He said, insisting: “I know all about that, but it’s true none the less. Ming is useful to them. He comes and goes freely, he deals in other things besides drugs. He’s got a hand in every racket there is, and...well, he supplies them with things they need from time to time.”
The lights were shining brightly. I said: “Like patrol boats, for example?”
“Patrol boats?”
“From Korea?”
“Oh, that. Yes, Ming and his men hijacked three boatloads of arms destined for South Korea, en route from Japan. He sold the guns to the Nationalist Chinese in Laos, and the boats...”
“In Laos? Aren’t your facts getting a bit twisted?”
“No, they are not. There are still more than a hundred thousand of the old Nationalist army in Laos. They’ve been there ever since the war, with their own generals, their own supply organization. They’re quite autonomous. Not soldiers any more, of course, but brigands. They protect the drug traffic that comes and goes; they keep the trails open, and they extract a duty, so much a ton of the stuff that passes through their territory. In that part of the world, in the jungles and the mountains, you can’t move without their protection. Anyway, Ming sold them the hijacked arms, and he sold the boats to the Chinese in Canton; they converted them for use with their antipiracy squads. They don’t call them patrol boats, they call them chasers.”
“Well, learn a little something every day. How high are you in Ming’s esteem?”
He stared. “I don’t think I understand you?”
“Are you worth a ransom, that’s what I’m asking.”
The white of his face went whiter still: “Good God, you can’t do that, Cain, not after all I’ve told you. He’d know, he always knows. And he’d...he’d kill me.”
I said nastily: “Not until he’d found out just how much you’d talked. I wonder how long that would take?”
“Please, Cain, please! I’ve played the game with you. I’ve told you all you wanted to know.”
I said: “Not all, not yet. If you’ve been in touch with Sally, how come you don’t know where she is now? Why should she come to Macao and not even get in touch with you? She must have known you were here. And, while we’re on the subject, how long have you been hiding out on board The Blue Orchid, and why?”
He said; “I was in Hong Kong, traveling under another name...”
“What name?”
“I called myself Walter Richardson—a passport I picked up in Singapore. The Hong Kong police want me for...for drug smuggling.”
“Go on.”
“Well, I was in Hong Kong on...on some of Ming’s business, and I was in touch with Sally, and she said she was coming here, and the next thing I knew was that she had disappeared. Nobody ever saw her again, and then this other woman turned up claiming she was Sally, so Ming told me to find out about it.”
“Have you been on Siang-chu?”
“For God’s sake, no! I’m not supposed to know it even exists! Cain, that’s priceless information I’ve given you. Any police force in these waters would give anything to know what I’ve just told you for nothing! You’ve got to let me go, do you hear?” He reached out and grabbed me by the lapels, and tugged at me and said again: “You’ve got to let me get away, Cain! Let me have my suitcase, just one of them, and get me to the airport, secretly. If I can get to Paraguay I’ll be safe, and...I’ve helped you, Cain, you’ve got to help me. It’s only fair!”
A bit of a queen, Bettina had said. He was whimpering now, most unregally.
He said again: “You’ll help me, Cain, won’t you?” He was whimpering like a sick puppy.
I said: “If I promised you that, I’d break my promise the moment I got upstairs and saw Bettina Harkan again, so I won’t promise you anything. I won’t even try to help you. And we’re not finished yet, either. There’s something else I want to know. Give me three names, three men close to Ming, close enough to be in his confidence.”
