Warriors (18 page)

“Did she really say all that? What is your name again?” She was standing with her hand on her cocked left hip, a small very expensive black purse dangling from her wrist, clearly impatient.

“Well? Answer me.”

“Tommy’s me name, ma’am. Tom.”

“Ah, yes. Tommy, how quickly one forgets. Well, Tommy, why don’t you run inside and get whatever she left inside for the pretty boss lady before she slaps you silly for incompetence and impertinence? Hmmm?”

The boy bolted like a scalded cat, and she laughed at the sight.

Foolish little towheaded creature. But he was a pretty blond and she liked pretty boys around. Lorelei, the most brilliant of her graduate students, still didn’t appreciate their youthful charms. But she was learning. Not only was Lorelei a very fast learner, she was deathly afraid of her older friend and mentor. Which was smart.

Chyna Moon, on the other hand, knew exactly who and what she was. She wasn’t a monster. But perhaps there was a monster living inside of her.

She spied a sealed folder on top of the stack of mail piled on the sideboard beside the front doors. She grabbed a sterling stiletto, sliced open the manila envelope, and fished out an envelope. She knew who it was from without even thinking. Her father.

It was marked RAVEN: EYES ONLY! In the bold red letters favored by the man she worked for.

Raven. Her MSS secret police code name. She’d rather fancied it and her father had given it to her. It fit. Perfectly. Ravens had been a hobby of hers since her days at the Te-Wu Academy in China. She adored them.

She carried the envelope into the paneled library and collapsed into her favorite chair. There, beyond the soaring leaded-glass windows, wintry afternoon light was fleeing the skies. Solid grey shafts of light filtered down upon the faded Aubusson rugs and the priceless Queen Anne desk that dominated the library. It was her favorite room. It was where she did her reading, her thinking, and her frightful dreaming.

Still, there was light sufficient to read by without turning on one of the gas lamps used for illumination throughout the house. There was electricity, of course, but Chyna Moon detested artificial lighting. She detested artificial anything.

Glad to be home again after an exhausting day of conferences and advising doctoral thesis candidates at her private office at Cambridge, she sighed and got down to the real business at hand.

Her other life. Her
secret
life.

There were several typed sheets stapled together and a small vellum envelope addressed to her, which she opened first. It was, after all, from her father. General Sun-Yat Moon. The letterhead was from his office as Headmaster, Te-Wu Academy, on Xinbu Island, China.

As head of the Chinese secret police, her father, General Moon, was considered the second most powerful man in China. General Moon knew where the bodies were buried, primarily because he’d personally put most of them there. There were in Beijing those who thought he held more power than even his bitter rival, President Xi Jinping. The two men had been classmates at Tsinghua University, and both began their ascent to power there.

There was indeed a power struggle going on inside China, she knew, only her father’s enemies didn’t know it yet.

The letter was headed “From the Office of the Directorate, Chinese Ministry of State Security.” The MSS. And, below, “Attention: Colonel Chyna Moon. Memorize the contents of the material in the enclosed report and destroy it. Be prepared to discuss it with the director on your CODEX phone at 0200 hours, GMT.”

Her father’s infamous one letter “M” signature was scrawled in bright red ink below.

Her eyes skimmed rapidly over the flash communication text, impatiently searching for the gist.

“Shit,” she said aloud. Flinging the documents to the floor, she then pressed a hidden call button that would bring her manservant running. The button rang in the butler’s pantry. Still bone cold from her motorcycle journey, she needed a scotch badly. She’d really have to rethink the Chanel skirt in this kind of bitter weather, especially riding her bike. Too often she found fashion dictating terms to reality.

In less than two minutes, Optimus would appear with the desired potion. Optimus Prime was a passable butler but an extraordinary personal bodyguard. He was, she had to admit, better on offense than on defense and he was superb on defense.

The fact that he was an ex-convict, TV wrestler, and psychopathic sadist hadn’t appeared on his CV, but she’d seen it in his stone-dead eyes. She liked his dark, brooding aspect. He’d been hired on the spot.

“Trouble, Madame?” he said as she plucked the heavy Baccarat tumbler from the silver tray. He instantly dropped to one knee and gathered the scattered pages of the document she’d flung across the floor.

“Yes, dear Optimus, trouble. A love letter from my father. The fucking Japanese again. Everywhere I look.”

“What has transpired, Madame?”

“It would seem that our aged Japanese friend, Professor Watanabe, is a double. An MI6 field agent, so my father tells me. For the last ten years! How could I have been so stupid! I treated him as a colleague. As a friend. He’s dined under this roof! He has betrayed me, the old bastard. He will pay for his own stupidity. And his treachery.”

“May I be of service, Madame?”

“Yes. Find Watanabe and bring him to me. Not now. This weekend. He’s got a small cottage down on the Fens. He usually spends his weekends out there. Alone. Go get him, Optimus. Next Saturday night. Get him and bring him here. I think we’ll introduce him to a few of our fine-feathered friends. That usually gets them chattering like monkeys. He’ll talk. He’ll give me names. And then he’ll die from something worse than the Death of a Thousand Cuts. My father has just ordered his execution. You are invited, of course. I intend to use the Shining Basket.”

“Yes, Madame.”

“These Japanese are playing a very dangerous game, Optimus. In addition to spying on my father through me, now it seems the Japanese admiral Yamato has elected to send a small naval vessel to one of the disputed Diaoyu Islands in the South China Sea. Despite numerous warnings not to undermine China’s territorial sovereignty by the foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang. Fourteen Chinese pioneers were arrested. Tokyo plans to parade them before the CNN cameras sometime in the next twenty-four hours.”

“Outrageous.”

“Yes. But, like Watanabe-san, Japan will pay, Optimus. Dearly.”

“I’ve no doubt, Madame.”

“Indeed. We’ll soon see what their much-vaunted National Defense Force is capable of, shall we not?”

Optimus bowed deferentially.

She drained her whiskey and put the empty glass back on the tray. She gazed out the window before turning to her manservant.

“Optimus, I understand from kitchen staff the little bitch has been out riding on horseback with her trainer.”

“Indeed she has.”

“What time did she go out?”

“I’m not exactly sure. But sometime in the forenoon, Madame.”

“How long is it, horseback over to St. Ives?”

“I’ve not done it myself, of course, but I would hazard a guess of . . . over there and back in roughly two hours.”

“You’ve not seen her since?”

“I have not, Madame.”

“Where the hell is she, then?”

“It is my understanding that she remained down at the stables. With one of the groomsmen. Rodney, I believe his name is.”

“Did she now? Fascinating. Whatever do you suppose they’re doing down there? Mucking out the stalls? Mucking or fucking would be my guess. Or maybe both.”

“Shall I send someone down to retrieve her?”

Chyna got to her feet. “No. I shall do that myself. But first another whiskey. Make it a double.”

“Indeed, Madame. Will that be all?”

“No, Optimus,” she said, smiling at the bomb-scarred face of her butler. “It will never be all.”

He smiled as he walked back to his pantry.

The old dragon was a piece of work, all right.

THEY DIDN’T HEAR HER
.

But they heard the oily click of her gun.

And then the low cold of her voice.

“What the f—?” Lorelei said, eyes wide. The stableboy was on top of her, thrusting himself into her like he had a stallion fixation. Lorelei stared over his glistening shoulder at her friend. “How dare you! Get out of here now!”

“Shut up, slut. This . . . this . . .? You decide this peasant is worthy of stealing your virtue?”

Lorelei Li laughed and pushed the boy’s face away.

“My virtue?” she said. “You stole that long ago.”

“You, stableboy. Get your venereal dick out of my little friend before I blow your pathetic brains out.”

The strapping youth withdrew from the naked girl lying spread-eagled in the straw and turned to face his employer. Chyna saw fear, her favorite emotion, in his face, but her eyes were drawn to his formidable erection. For an instant she thought she just might fuck the boy herself. She was tempted, but she realized that it would send distinctly the wrong signal to her protégée, not to mention the only son of her head groomsman.

“I am so s-sorry, Madame Moon,” the boy stammered. “She told me that if I didn’t . . . uh . . . didn’t comply—”

“Liar!” Lorelei hissed, raking his flushed cheek with her nails. “How dare you?” she screamed.

“Silence! You! Pull the little slut to her feet. Good. Now, lover boy, put your jeans on and get the hell out of my sight. Now!”

The boy didn’t need to be told twice.

“All right, Lorelei, get dressed. We’re going home now. Try to act like a lady. On the way up to the house I want you to think about something. You ever do anything like this again? Embarrass me in this way in front of staff? You’re house-hunting. But. You play by the rules? My house, my rules. We’ll see.”

“My, my, aren’t we strict?”

“You’ve no idea, honey.”

C
H A P T E R
  2 3

T
he old man knew what was coming next.

The birds.

Earlier, down in the dungeon, he’d been beaten and battered about the head so much it was easy to feign unconsciousness now and then. He’d heard the two women whispering to each other, pausing in their torture when they thought he’d passed out on the stone floor. They’d used a phrase that was wholly alien to him then; the words had no meaning. But there was no mistaking its meaning now:

The hunger birds.

The first bird missed; the second plucked his right eye out. It landed on his cheek, the organ dangling only by a viscous thread of tissue and muscle.

A bolt of red pain seared the interior of the now empty socket. A gelatinous substance ran down his cheek. The old man whirled about. He could no longer see the hazy pale moon high above the thin and drifting clouds.

No, the hunger birds filled his vision: a great mass of beating black wings that filled the air now. Terror-struck, in shock and disoriented, the man stumbled through the tangled undergrowth that covered the frozen ground inside the cage of the ornate black wrought-iron aviary.

The shrieking black monsters were everywhere, all beaks and talons, fueled with bloodlust now, diving straight down and stabbing at their carrion feast viciously, striking with long serrating blows using their razor-sharp beaks, raking his bald head with their steel-encased talons until his blood flowed down in sheets.

He shouted, half blind, flailing at the screeching ravens with his balled fists, tripping over his own feet as he ran. He couldn’t beat the swarming birds away, could not tear the masses of them from his body.

They alit upon both his shoulders, three stubborn blackbirds to each side. He slammed through the trees, trying to shake them off. He could not.

The birds’ steel claw spurs were embedded in the soft flesh of his naked shoulders and they could not be flung or pried away. They began fighting one another over his ears, stabbing at each one with their sharp little beaks, tearing away small morsels of tender tissue before retreating a moment to let the others feast.

His knees weak, he clung to a tree and cried out, insane with pain.

“Stop them! Please! What more do you want to know? I’ve told you everything! For God’s sake, have mercy upon me! Let me out! I beg you!”

He paused, threw back his head, and roared at his shrieking tormentors. The cruelest of all birds.

The hunger birds.

“The ravens,” he cried to the heavens.

These demonic creatures would surely peck him to death within minutes. His would be the slowest of deaths. It was a hideous end to a life spent in the service of the mind, a quiet life, working in the shadows of the library stacks, sometimes in light, sometimes, yes, even in secrecy. Like every man, he was not quite what he appeared.

It could all have ended so differently. He could have died in bed, in his beloved cottage upon the Fens, surrounded by his books, his pictures, the warmth of his sleeping dog wrapping him in comfort.

But he’d been caught out. Oh, yes. He’d slipped up somewhere along the way. And his silent enemies had come for him. He’d always known it all might end this way. He’d been playing the great game for many, many long years. Since the war in the Pacific had ended. He was very old for a spy. Many did not live nearly so long. But he didn’t want to die, not yet, not like this.

This was hell.

And that was not even the worst of it.

He knew what lay in wait for him if he survived this terrible trial. He’d seen it with his own eyes; they’d shown the dungeon to him before they began the interrogation. Shown him the ancient death device. And a death more horrible than any conceivable. Worse, yes, worse even than the birds.

Better to die here? Die now? End it?

Yes.

Surrender.

Let the loathsome feathered fiends have their way, then. Let it end here. Now.

He considered the end of his life. It was time.

Come, ravens, flock all to me, and satisfy your hunger.

IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF
the night. The wind was up, rattling the bare branches. A change in the weather. The nearest farm was six miles distant. No one could hear the victim’s cries for mercy. No one had ever heard anything. It was a place of secrets. A place where the secrets had secrets. Where secrets flourished like hothouse orchids.