The Adventures Of Indiana Jones (24 page)

Willie saw at once this was the guy she’d noticed coming in at the end of her act. Her initial impression of him was even stronger now: good-looking, but so out of place the air was practically shattering around the table. She couldn’t figure his place, though. Archaeologist? That didn’t wash. He had an interesting scar across his chin; she wondered how he’d got it. She was a connoisseur of interesting scars. And he sure had nice eyes, although she couldn’t quite figure out the color. Sort of green-hazel-gray-sky-with-gold-flecks. Clear and hard and finally unreadable. Too bad, really. Any way you sliced it, he looked like seven miles of bad road.

She let her stare drift from his interesting scar to his unhazel eves. “I thought archaeologists were funny little men always looking for their mommies,” she teased.

“Mummies,” he corrected.

They sat down.

Lao interrupted their brief conversation. “Dr. Jones found Nurhachi for me and is about to deliver him . . . now.”

Indy was about to reply when he first felt, and then saw, the small round mouth of Kao Kan’s gun pointing at him, waiting to speak. Indy didn’t want to hear what the pistol had to say, though, so he grabbed a two-pronged carving fork from a nearby trolley as Willie was talking.

“Say, who’s Nurhachi?” she asked innocently, still unaware of the imminent explosion.

In the next moment, she became aware. Indiana pulled her close, and held the fork to her side.

Willie held her breath a moment. To herself she said,
I knew it I knew it I knew it.
To Lao she said softly but urgently, “Lao, he’s got a fork on me.”

Indy spoke in monotone to Kao Kan. “Put the gun away, sonny.” He increased the pressure with his weapon.

Willie felt the prongs dent her skin. She strove to keep the fear out of her voice. “Lao, he’s got a fork in me.” She didn’t think he’d actually use it, but you could never tell with men and their toys.

Lao Che gave his son a look; the boy put the gun down.

Indy pressed. “Now I suggest you give me what you owe me, or . . . anything goes.” Then, to Willie: “Don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” she whispered icily.

“Tell
him”
Indy suggested.

“Pay the man,” she told Lao.

Without saying a word, Lao took a small pouch from his pocket, put it on the turntable, sent it around to Indy and Willie. Indy motioned to her with his head; she picked up the sack and emptied a handful of gold coins out onto the table.

Indy was stone-faced. “The diamond, Lao. The deal was for the diamond.”

Lao smiled, shrugged defeat, took a squat silver box from his vest pocket, put it on the turntable.

In the moment that Indiana’s eyes were focused on the box, Kao Kan tipped a tiny bottle of white powder into the champagne glass beside him. And as the turntable passed him on its way to Indy, Kao Kan set the glass down on it, next to the coins and the silver box.

When the cache arrived before them, Willie opened the box. Inside was a hefty yet delicate diamond. “Oh, Lao,” she breathed.

Diamonds were her delight and howling demon. They were hard, but brilliantly lovely. They were clear; they held every color. They were the magical reflection of her very self. And yet they were eminently practical: a diamond like this could make her rich, and blessedly independent from jerks like the yo-yos at this table.

Indy stabbed the fork into the table and picked up the jewel, pushing Willie away on her chair, back to her original position. She stared at him frostily. “You’re a real snake.” She’d finally placed the color of his eyes.

He ignored her to examine the gemstone. Perfectly cut, each facet representing a different plane of the ancient universe: unflawed, unmarred, unyellow. The university had been hunting a long time for this little bauble.

“Now,” hissed Lao Che. “Bring me Nurhachi.”

Indy waved to Wu Han, the waiter who’d originally met him at the entrance of the club. Wu Han came forward, a linen napkin draped over his left arm, a tray balanced on his right. In the center of the tray stood a small jade casket.

Willie’s sense of intrigue was beginning to overcome her anger. Money, coins, jewels, threats . . . and now this exquisite miniature. “Who on earth
is
this Nurhachi?” she demanded.

Indy removed the small casket from Wu Han’s tray, set it on the turntable, rotated it toward Lao Che. “Here,” he smiled. “Here he is.”

Willie watched it pass her on its way to Lao Che. “Must be kind of a small guy,” she muttered.

Lao pulled the canister before him. His sons leaned close. Lao spoke quietly, reverentially, almost to himself. “Inside this sacred coffin are the remains of Nurhachi, the first Emperor of the Manchu Dynasty.”

Indy picked up the champagne glass beside him and lifted it magnanimously in toast. “Welcome home, old boy.” He drank.

Ashes?
Willie thought.
That’s the big deal? Ashes?
As far as she was concerned, there was no percentage in dwelling over things past. Present and future were the only tenses that mattered. The rest was supremely boring at best. She began to make up her face.

Lao grinned sharply at Indy. “And now, you will give me back the diamond.”

The room felt like it was getting a bit warm to Indy. He pulled his collar away from his throat. “Are you developing a rare sense of humor, or am I going deaf?”

Lao held up a small blue vial.

That caught Willie’s eye.
More treasures
? she wondered. “What’s that?”

“Antidote,” snapped Lao.

“Antidote to what?” Indy asked suspiciously. He suddenly had a premonition.

“To the poison you just drank,” Lao sneered.

Willie got that worried feeling in her gut, that hell-in-a-handbasket feeling. “Poison!” she rasped. “Lao, what are you doing? I
work
in this place.” But not for long, that feeling told her.

Indy put a finger into his champagne and rubbed the glass: a gritty residue coated the bottom.

“The poison works fast, Dr. Jones,” Lao cackled.

Indy put the diamond on the table; held out his hand. “C’mon, Lao.”

Chen picked up the diamond, stared into its glittering depth, smirked with satisfaction, put it back down, rotated the turntable toward his father. On its way past Willie,
she
picked it off the tray to study it. She’d never held a diamond this large before. This perfect. It almost hummed in her hand.

Lao had lost interest in the stone, though; he was still fixated on the casket before him. “At last, I have the ashes of my honored ancestor.”

Indy was getting more than impatient. Yellow spots were starting to dance in his vision. “The antidote, Lao.” Lao ignored him.

This wasn’t going right. Jones felt shaky, felt his options slipping away. In a flash, he grabbed the fork off the table and held it once more to Willie’s ribs. “Lao,” he rumbled.

“Lao,” she echoed.

Lao Che, Kao Kan, and Chen only laughed. “You keep the girl,” said Lao. “I find another one.”

Willie stared at Lao as if she were just now understanding something she’d really known all along. “You miserable little hood,” she said.

Wu Han suddenly stepped forward. “Please,” he smiled at Lao. They all turned to see, under the tray on his arm, concealed from the restaurant at large, a gun. Pointing directly at Lao Che.

“Good service here,” said Indy.

“That’s no waiter,” Willie suddenly realized. The fork was still in her side. Everyone was edgy; she didn’t know which way to jump.

“Wu Han’s an old friend,” murmured Indiana. “The game’s not up yet, Lao. The antidote.”

As Indy reached out his hand, there was a loud POP at the next table. They all turned to look; a sodden American had just opened a bottle of champagne, and the foam was spraying over his two giggling lady companions. Waiters there opened more bottles; more loud reports, more spray, more laughter.

Indy returned his attention to his own table. He was feeling increasingly queasy, while next to him, he noticed, Wu Han was looking positively pale. “Wu Han, what is it—” he began—but before he could finish, Wu Han collapsed to the table.

It was only then that Indy saw the smoking gun in Chen’s hand withdrawing under a napkin.

“Indy!” gasped Wu Han.

As Wu Han fell forward, Indiana stood, grabbed him, and lowered the wounded comrade into his own chair. “Don’t worry, Wu Han,” he whispered. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

“Not this time, Indy,” the dying man choked. “I followed you on many adventures, but now, into the great unknown mystery I go first.”

And so he died.

Indy laid his friend’s head down on the table. He felt flushed, sweaty.

Lao could hardly contain his glee. “Don’t be so sad, Dr. Jones. You will soon join him.”

Indy’s legs suddenly became quite rubbery, and he staggered backwards.

Kao Kan chuckled. “Too much to drink, Dr. Jones?”

Indy stumbled back farther, colliding with the drunk at the next table. Even the deathly gaunt Chen smiled to see their startled faces peering dizzily at each other. In a rage, Jones pushed the drunk away, bumping into another waiter who was serving the adjoining table from a trolley—serving liqueur-soaked flaming pigeons on a skewer. Indy thought:
If nothing else, I’m gonna wipe that smile off Chen’s filthy face.
In a single motion, he grabbed the flaming pigeon skewer, whirled around, hurled it at Chen.

The skewer buried itself to the fiery-pigeon-hilt in Chen’s chest.

There was this long, suspended moment: the crowd’s din hushed, suddenly vaguely aware of its own impending convulsion; the people surrounding Lao’s table froze, like a held breath, poised on the vision of this wraithlike Chinese man in a dinner jacket, impaled on a silver spear, flaming birds casting his startled face in a queer and morbid light.

Then everything happened at once.

Willie screamed reflexively. The woman at the next table, seeing the matched skewer of Pigeon Flambé on the trolley beside her and, perhaps wondering who was next in line to get spiked, likewise shrieked. The rest of the restaurant exploded in chaos. Shouts, breaking glass, running, confusion . . . like the inside of Pandora’s Box before the lid was removed.

Indy dove across the table to grab the small blue tube of antidote, but it skittered over the glassy surface, off onto the floor. Indy found himself face to face with Lao. He grabbed the vile gangster by the lapels and snarled hoarsely at him: “Hoe why geh faan yaan.”
Very-bad-against-law-person.

“Ndioh gwok haat yee,” spat Lao.
Foreign beggar.

Kao Kan grasped Indy around the neck, but Jones cold-cocked him with a left hook. One of Lao’s henchmen pulled Indy up from behind and, in so doing, kicked the vital blue liquid across the floor. Kao Kan’s gun fell under the table.

A number of issues were racing through Willie’s mind at this point: Lao was a scum she was glad to be rid of; she could forget about keeping her job at this place; she’d been right about this Jones character from the beginning; and if she kept a cool head, she might just get away with the diamond.

She stuck her hand into the fray on the table, picked up the diamond. She hardly had time to feel it, though, before Indy and the henchman he was wrestling crashed by her, knocking the jewel out of her hand, onto the dance floor.

“You fool,” she gasped—talking simultaneously to Indy and herself—and dove after her fleeting fortune.

The band began to play, as if they thought the party was just getting rolling.

Indy rolled onto the next table with Lao’s guard. The strong-arm punched him in the jaw, stunning him; Indy swung back blindly, striking the cigarette girl, who’d fallen on top of them. The henchman threw Indy off the table, into a dinner trolley that started wheeling, from his momentum, toward the bandstand.

He careened through the bedlam like a flying apparition. The wind against his face revived him some, cooled the toxic perspiration on his forehead. The people he passed were starting to look a little distorted to him, though. He saw the vial on the floor—or did he imagine it?—but sailed right on by.

His flight was halted abruptly by crashing into the bandstand. He got up in time to see Lao’s guard about to nab him, so he grabbed the big double bass in time to bash the guard into oblivion.

He stood there a moment, getting his bearings, when his eyes fell upon the vial, lying out there in the midst of the melee. He jumped for it.

In that moment, it was kicked away. In the next moment, Indy came up on his hands and knees facing Willie on
her
hands and knees.

“The antidote,” said Indy.

“The diamond,” Willie responded.

Indy noticed the stone near his hand, but it was immediately kicked between a dozen pairs of legs.

“Nuts,” muttered Willie, crawling off after it. Indy plowed on in the opposite direction.

Lao finally made it past the shouting throng to the front door, and shouted. Almost instantly a cadre of his hoodlums ran in, awaiting instruction.

The band played on (minus the bass). Right on cue, the twelve dancing girls shuffled gaily out of the dragon’s mouth and down onto the dance floor. Some party.

Indy chose the same cue to push himself up off the floor, and into the chorus line. He was feeling quite faint now. The sight of Lao’s men pouring through the entrance carrying hatchets gave him a new surge of adrenaline, however; he was able to stumble back over to the bandstand.

Three hatchet men hurled their weapons at him, but he ducked behind one of the statues. Quickly, he grabbed a cymbal and sailed it back at a forth hatchet-bearer, hitting the assassin in the head, knocking him cold. Knocking him very cold, in fact; the thug slumped into a huge ice bucket, scattering ice cubes all over the floor.

All over the diamond. Willie moaned with frustration, scrabbling through hundreds of ice nuggets, searching desperately for the now camouflaged diamond. What she found was the blue vial.

From the stage, Indy saw her pick it up. “Stay there!” he yelled at her. Please.

Their eyes met. It was a moment of decision for Willie. Who was this guy? He’d come into her life ten minutes ago, come on to her, held a fork on her, given her a touch of her first major-league precious stone, cost her her man (no loss) and her job (no sweat), and now she held his life in her hand. And he did have those eyes.