He sighed. “That’s what I feared. But not tonight, I beg of you. If anything should happen to you tonight, really, it’s a most infelicitous time for me.”

“The lottery?”

“Yes. Any time after tomorrow at four o’clock. If you insist on getting killed off, I beg of you, do it tomorrow after four o’clock.”

I said: “Get Theophilo up here for me, will you? Can you do that for me?”

He drifted across the room, clicking his tongue, and I went to find Mai. I was getting rather fond of Mai in a puzzling, inexplicable sort of way, and I thought she might like to visit the museum, that we might go there together, almost, but not quite, like tourists who are determined to see everything there is to see in a strange and exciting town.

◆◆◆

We broke into the museum with not the slightest bit of trouble. It was comforting to know that even if we were caught, some kindly judge would lecture us and fine us a few thousand patacas, but we were quite careful none the less. I picked the lock on the door that led to the cellars, and we crept through the corridors silently enough not to disturb the somnolent guards we saw dozing over their little teak tables; one of them had an alarm clock to wake him when it was time to make his rounds again; I pushed the alarm button home to stop it from ringing at its appointed time, and we crept silently on like thieves in the night, which is what we were for the moment. A patrolling guard, ill-shaven and half-asleep, passed us by as we took cover behind a twelfth-century chest of ivory-inlaid ebony that was supposed to be by Lu Sing-chu but looked to me like a fake; it lacked the great master’s emphasis on the fine incised line as a transpository device; it was probably by his lesser known pupil Su Ling. We found the map room, put a chair under the door handle, just in case, drew the heavy drapes and switched on the lights.

I found the map I wanted in ten minutes: it was somewhat stylized in the fashion of the day, but well detailed and marvelously intricate. And knowing Robert Hart’s passion for precision, I was sure that it was accurate as well. I rolled it up carefully, and we went out together the way we had entered.

And an hour after we had left it, we were back in Bonelli’s office. Theophilo was there, waiting for me, his scarred old face wreathed in smiles and his voice a little thick with too much whisky. I told him what we had to do, and watched the smile grow broader as he listened.

◆◆◆

There was a sharp, cold wind whipping up the tops of the waves as the junk sailed slowly west in the darkness. There were no lights showing, and the only sound was the abominable creaking of the masts and the occasional flap of the brown sails: it was cold enough to wear heavy sweaters, and the blown spray was like ice-drops on our faces, refreshing and stimulating and somehow cleaner than I thought the job ahead of us might be.

In the darkness. Theo spoke quietly, his voice almost a whisper. I had told him very little of my thinking, because I wasn’t able to explain it even to myself; all he knew was that he was going to put me ashore on Siang-chu and stand by to come running if I yelled loud enough; and from the expression on his face, I knew that he hoped I would yell at the top of my voice before he got bored sitting around as backup man. He said now:

“You go to kill Ming? Is good.”

I shook my head. I said: “Ming is not the objective, though he’ll probably try to run interference.”

He said nothing, but stood there staring ahead into the darkness, looking up at the clouds once in a while to bless the hidden moon.

I smelled perfume, and Mai was silently beside me, turning to look up at me with a somber look in her eyes.

Another thing I could not explain to myself: a woman along on a job like this?

But Mai, somehow, was not just another woman. I thought that I might need her skills, her knowledge, her extraordinary capacity for quick and silent action. In spite of her unfeminine expertise in aggressive matters, the softness of her skin over those tight muscles, the oriental delicacy which was a counterpoint to the unexpected savagery that I knew to be there, had caused a very considerable impression on me, an impression of quite the wrong sort that had no place at all in the present circumstances. It wasn’t love, or anything even remotely like it; it was a cruel and animal urge that made me want to feel her body beside me more than anything in the world. Bed had nothing to do with it either; and it wasn’t platonic: I wanted to share danger, not with just any woman, but with Mai.

So there she was. When I’d told her what I was going to do, she had merely nodded, not asking me if she was supposed to come along too but just taking it for granted. It was as though her allegiance to Bettina had unaccountably been switched to me, that she was there, expectant and receptive for anything that I might want. I had the feeling that she understood my twisted desires more than I understood them myself; it’s far easier for the Orientals to think in terms of nonlogic than it is for us, even though, inexplicably, we sometimes act as if we hadn’t a brain in our heads. And for me, when emotion fights with intellect, I’ll take the side that seems the better one at the moment, heart or head.

Bonelli had merely raised an expressive eyebrow when it became apparent that she was expecting to be a sort of bodyguard for me. He looked at me a little quizzically, and thought for a while, and had said at last: “A watery grave together, is that what you want?”

I’d answered him: “Together, but no grave.”

“You’re a romantic, Cain, did you know that?” He sounded surprised.

I said: “Well, of course I am. Not many of us left, are there?”

“And can you justify putting her life in danger for what, after all, is merely a matter, for you, of making money?”

“No.” I couldn’t help being short with him. “No, I can’t justify it. But she’s coming along anyway. She wants to.”

I was quite sure that she did. I wasn’t exactly quarreling with Bonelli, but we were on the edge of a fight because I knew—as he did—that what I was doing was wrong. And Mai herself had said nothing, but as we talked, she just sat there on the edge of Bettina’s bed with a hand on her mistress’s forehead, as if assuring herself that it was safe to leave her for a while. Seeing Bettina’s eyes on both of us, Mai had told her gently: “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be back to take care of you.” Bettina looked at me and snorted with a faintly amused contempt, as though signifying her disgust that her friend might have found a new interest.

I let it ride; I was in too weak a position to fight if Bettina had said: “First me, now her, is that it?”

Now, the scent of the fragile Chinese girl was on the night air, and she was looking at me as though waiting for me to tell her something very important, her dark eyes solemn and reflective. I bent down and kissed her, and put an arm round her narrow waist, and Theophilo laughed quietly and said in a whisper:

“Maybe we all get killed in a little while. Better you make love now, while you got the chance.”

Mai broke away from me and said, her voice very low: “Have you decided how to do this thing?”

I shook my head. “We go in there and see what there is to see. It might be just a wild goose chase with nothing but crumbling ruins at the end of it.” I thought of the geese in the warehouse, of how well we had worked together there, I said: “When I spoke to Ming, he said he had not seen Sally Hyde, that he didn’t know where she was. And I was pretty damn sure that at that moment he was lying. We sat and talked our heads off, and each of us was playing o jeito, the game, for all it was worth. He told me some truths, and he told me some lies, and I came away convinced that he knows precisely where she is. And if he’s got her tucked away somewhere, Siang-chu is where she’ll be.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“No. But it’s a likelihood.”

“She might be dead.”

“If she were, Ming would not be able to resist the temptation to tell her father just how she died. That’s where the real fight is, between those two. Everything else hinges on that. Come below with me for a while.”

Not questioning, she nodded. I saw Theo’s grin in the half-light, and I turned back to him and asked: “How long have we got?”

He shrugged. “Maybe twenty minutes we be in close enough, then ten minutes more while I find where to hide this pork-barrel. We take down sails, no?”

“No. Keep her mobile.”

“Then better maybe stand further offshore. I don’t like them rocks there too much.” We could already hear the waves pounding on them.

I took Mai’s arm and said roughly: “Let’s take another look at the map.”

We went below to the tiny cabin; there was just five feet of headroom, so even Mai had to stoop slightly; and we spread the stolen museum map out on the table under the pale light of the kerosene lamp. One arm around her, I stubbed a finger on the delicate tracery and said: “There, through the vents, if they haven’t been closed up in the last hundred years or so, that’s where we go in.”

Sir Robert had done a fine, meticulously precise job. His own pen had scratched the words in Chinese ink: Escape route used by Sumanu Fu during Manchu raid. February third, 1801. There was another comment: Northeast face of cliff cannot be scaled without ropes.

Well, I’d brought ropes along with me, and half a dozen pitons as well. (Have you ever tried to find climbing equipment, in the middle of the night, in a place where there’s scarcely a cliff in sight? But the junks carried all kinds of stuff, and Theo had found it for me.) We had no grappling hooks, but I hoped that the small anchor from the dinghy would serve as well as anything else.

And the good skipper had also armed the junk with a medley of the oddest looking, most ill-assorted weapons I had ever seen. There were modern Mauser rifles, and there was a homemade breech-loader that looked like a culverin and took any kind of shot that could be crammed into its barrel; there were new Luger automatics, and there was a huge and stubby cannon made of bronze and inscribed in Turkish with the legend: Face to face with my enemies; its carved breech-block was inscribed: Constantinople, 1796.

Mai said, her fingers tracing a pattern along my spine: “And when we are inside?”

My hand was on her hip, and I could feel cool flesh under the rough cord of her denim slacks. I said: “Inside, we play it off the cuff.” It was hard to concentrate on the map. I indicated the place where the air vent on the northeast face led into the main store. In the days of the Boxers, the dynamite which had created such havoc in Canton’s streets had been stored there.

I said: “Here, we follow the line of the service corridors to the lower level, keep moving down till we see lights, or hear sounds, or even smell food cooking. If there’s anyone there at all, that’s where they’ll be, on the lower levels. Fix this chart in your mind, indelibly, because once we’re inside we work in absolute darkness.” She nodded, but her eyes were on me, not on the map. I said: “Keep close behind me, all the time. Anything comes to your attention, anything doesn’t seem right, touch me on the shoulder.”

She nodded again, not taking her eyes off me. My hand was at her waist, then moving up the small breasts, and she was pressing herself into me and trembling, and the next minute we were rolling on the hard teak floor together, clasped in each other’s arms, and the tight-muscled legs were wrapping themselves around me.

And all the time I was asking myself: is this what I really want of Mai?

We went back on deck a little later, holding hands like young lovers and not talking very much, and Theo was there in the prow, pointing ahead to the black-and-white line of the surf. The stars were coming out from behind the clouds, and the moon was clearing, and I didn’t like the light at all, but he whispered, seeing me glance up at the sky: “We hide under the headland there. Nobody see us at all.” He turned to scowl at a sound from further down the deck where the dinghy was being lowered, and whispered an angry order. The small latten mast forward was flapping in the wind, and he scowled at that too.