We were under one of the wharfs at the edge of the harbor. Across the bay I could see the island of Taipa and, beyond it and a little to one side, the hills of the island of Coloane. The whole colony consists of a mere six square miles, and it is hard to believe that there are over three million people living there; from coast to coast, Macao itself is only a mile across and three miles long.

Away to the northeast, the bright lights in the harbor of Lantao, Hong Kong’s “outer island,” were just coming on in the dusk. I could hear the shouts of the sampan men close by as they guided their fragile craft over the smooth waters, their women standing straight and slim in the stern with their long, shining, wet poles. I noticed that Bonelli was looking around carefully, peering into the shadows, a slight frown on his handsome, effeminate face.

I said: “Anything?”

He shook his head and then said gravely: “No, but don’t take my warnings too lightly, Mr. Cain. You should know that this is a terribly dangerous place for you just now. You are showing an interest in an operation that brings its organizers literally millions of dollars every month. It’s a continuing and highly efficient organization that has some of the best executive brains anywhere in the world. Their intelligence setup would put the CIA to shame, though perhaps that wouldn’t be very difficult; if you know what I mean. And their terror squads are as well drilled and competent as a Marine Commando. But with one difference: they have no one to answer to for their methods. In the last three months there’ve been eighteen murders in this little area alone, and God knows how many there were across on the mainland. Not all of them were caused by Ming’s outfit, of course; but many of them were, without a doubt. We’re back in a seventeenth-century jungle here, and it behooves you to remember that. All of the time.”

I said: “I wasn’t very impressed with their first attempt. If I’d carried a gun, I could have gotten that would-be assassin before he’d even picked up his rifle.”

He said easily: “And doesn’t that presuppose that they know you don’t carry one? I wonder how much they know about you?”

“You’ve got a point there.”

A small motorboat was approaching, a blue and white beauty, with a big outboard motor. A small, wiry Chinese was at the tiller, and he expertly brought the boat close by. He was a small, wiry man. Bonelli looked at him and smiled and said: “You know you have to watch out for the big men, don’t you? Yes, of course you do.” I wondered what the hell he was talking about.

A few moments later, we were stepping ashore at the tiny airstrip half a mile along the green coastline; and half an hour after that, Bonelli’s red and white, single-engine, six-cylinder, fuel-injection Bellanca was touching down at the brightly lit airport of Hong Kong.

Before Bonelli left me to my own devices, we arranged to meet again at midnight, and I went off to see my old friend, Superintendent Mann-Crawford, Special Detail, Her Majesty’s Hong Kong Police.

CHAPTER 3

Harry Mann-Crawford was British, of course, and the kind of empire-officer on whom the sun never sets. But he’d been an exchange student at Stanford when, for a short while, I was detoured from my studies of theoretical mathematics to teach physics there. And later, when I was attending the International Conference of Teachers of Oriental Languages in Calcutta, I’d run into him again. I’d told him, back in the old Stanford days: “Forget about physics, Harry, you haven’t got the brain for it. Stick to languages, or politics; there’s an aptitude there that shows through the veneer of empire...” He was a bright and cheerful young man with a restless sort of reise-fever in his blood. He’d taken a job with the Hong Kong police, at first to teach Mandarin and Cantonese, which he spoke marvelously well; and then, after a few years, he’d taken on the semisecret Political Department, and Harry had found his niche at last.

We’d corresponded once in a while over the years, and he was always insistent that he was in my debt because I’d changed his tracks for him.

We sat on the open balcony of the Knoc Chai restaurant and watched the bustle of the hopelessly crowded streets below. Harry said happily:

“It’s good, good to see you, Cain. How long is it, five years?”

“Damn nearly. I hear you’re a very successful policeman now.”

He grinned. “Well, at least I head the department.”

“And you know everybody within a hundred miles of here. I need some help, Harry.”

He said promptly: “Anything, Cain. Just don’t ask me to break too many laws too fast. I don’t mind bending them a bit for you.”

“I need a woman.”

“My God!”

I said patiently: “An English, American, French, German woman—doesn’t matter a damn as long as she’s not an Oriental. Preferably about thirty years old, preferably skinny and blonde, and preferably intelligent. Essentially, she must he prepared to risk her life in return for a handsome payment, and she must know which side is up. An off-duty policewoman would be ideal. She’ll be in great danger for a few days, and then she can go home and spend her tax-free money.”

Harry said: “The policewomen here are all Orientals, or I’d have just the gal for you. What sort of danger? That’s the first question, isn’t it?”

“Mortal.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll be sticking close to her myself, and she’ll have an unobtrusive bodyguard as well, but—well, the danger’s acute. It needs a woman who has learned the hard way how to take care of herself, who won’t panic, and who’s been trained at least in some of the arts of survival. Is that too difficult?”

He grumbled: “Bloody impossible.”

He stretched out his long legs, and sunk his boyish chin onto his chest, and frowned darkly for a while, and then said: “A Eurasian, would she do?”

“No, she’s got to look like an American, even if only superficially.”

“There’s a tough bitch of a woman who runs a sleazy bar down the road. I’d trust her with my life, but she’s fifty years old and looks ninety.”

“Won’t do, Barry. Thirty, thirty-five. Preferably attractive, preferably sophisticated, and essentially...very tough.”

“Does she have to, well, look like anyone in particular? I mean, she’s obviously supposed to take someone’s place, isn’t she? And doesn’t that mean she’s got to look like a specific person?”

“Don’t guess too hard, Harry. As long as she looks as if she might be an American, might possibly be thirty-five or 50, might perhaps be this other person—but I want it found out pretty damn quickly that she’s not, if you get what I mean.”

“Before she gets killed off?”

“Something like that.”

“Sounds a little unappetizing, old boy. For her, I mean.”

“That’s why toughness is the prime quality I need.”

“Y-e-e-s...” He thought for a while and said at last, perhaps more to break the silence than anything else: “And the fee would be fairly generous, you suggest?”

“She can name her own. There’s a hell of a lot of money behind this operation.”

“That’s going to make it a bit easier, of course. Suppose you tell me what she’d have to do, or is that too indiscreet?”

Harry was never quite sure what I was up to, ever. He had a vague idea that I was in some sort of obscure government service, and my denials didn’t help a bit.

I said: “First she’ll have to be given a passport in the name of Sally Hyde. You can take care of that, can’t you? Yes, of course. Then, she’d have to take the ferry over to Macao, register in a hotel, take in a few nightspots, be seen around, ask a few dangerous questions, and then...Then she has to wait for someone to kidnap her. And that’s the someone I’m interested in.”

He pulled out a long, curved pipe, a Charatan straight-grain, and began thumbing tobacco into it. He said: “A woman who gets kidnapped always seems to get either raped or shot. Or both.”

“Yes, there’s always that danger. Probably, the shooting is more likely; sex is cheap enough in these parts. But the likelihood—and likelihoods are the things I deal in—is that this someone will want to find out what the hell she’s up to. And, while he’s finding that out, I’m finding him. Simple.”

“Simple, and dicey as all get-out.” I waited for him to translate, but he didn’t. He sighed. “I’m going to have to ask it, Cain, Who’s the someone?”

I said: “Alexander Ming.”

He sat up straight and stared at me and said at last: “Good Lord!” I told him that wasn’t a very apt comment, and he said: “Yes, but...Good God, that means the drug business. Or one of his other rackets?”

“Just Ming, personally.”

“Good God. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Yes, I do. Two things. First of all, with a phony Sally Hyde wandering around, the real one, who’s in hiding somewhere is going to surface.”