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“Like I said, Philippine Intelligence thinks there might be a movement in the southern islands, but there are always movements in the southern islands. That’s were al Qaeda, the separatists, and every other violent group in the Philippines does their recruiting.”
“Someone has to know something.”
Mei gazed out over the water reluctantly.
Bolan read her look. “You have an idea.”
“I know a guy who makes it his business to know things. He owes me a favor.” She frowned. “But this may be stretching the mark to the breaking point.”
“Maybe we should go have a talk with this guy.”
“This guy’s a real wild card.” Mei’s frown deepened. “I don’t know if you want to get in bed with him.”
Bolan shrugged. “I usually don’t get in bed with anyone on the first date.”
Mei burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
Mei waggled her eyebrows. “You’ll know when you meet him.”
“I don’t get it.” Bolan finished his beer. “And I’m not sure I want to.”
3
Macao
Bolan stepped off the hydrofoil that had taken them from Hong Kong to the estuary of the Pearl River and onto the waterfront. At first glance, Macao looked like every other economically emerging city in Asia. Construction was everywhere. High-rise apartments and office buildings relentlessly clawed their way into the skyline. The streets were jammed with traffic, and hellish pollution surrounded them in the three dimensions of the air, the water and the streets. Casinos jammed the waterfront, and tourists crowded the casinos to overflowing.
Rickshaw men pounced on disembarkees from the hydrofoil, each working for a casino and affiliated hotel. Marcie Mei ignored them as she curled her thumb and forefinger against her teeth and let out a whistle that could have hailed a cab all the way from Manhattan.
A small man with massive calves and the shoulders of an ox looked up from his lunch. He took up the yoke of his rickshaw and trotted over to the pier. He and Mei spoke in rapid-fire Cantonese for a moment, and the woman gestured at Bolan. “Du, this is Cooper. Cooper, this is Du. There’s hardly anything I don’t owe Du, including my life.”
Du grinned up at Bolan through gold teeth and stuck out a callused hand that seemed too big for his body. His English had strange inflections. He spoke his English more like a Brazilian than Chinese. “How you doin’, hot rod?”
Bolan shook Du’s hand. The rickshaw man squeezed, testing Bolan’s strength. The calluses spread across his knuckles as well as his palms. Bolan suspected he hadn’t developed them from pulling carts. The Executioner smiled and squeezed back. “Nice to meet you, Du.”
Du grinned. He and Bolan silently agreed not crush each other’s hands and relaxed their grips. Du grabbed what little baggage there was and threw it in back as Bolan and Mei climbed aboard. He took up the yoke and swiftly pulled his passengers away from the waterfront and into the sprawl. He chattered back over his shoulder, pointing out the sights.
He jerked his head off toward a tower of glass. “The Hilton?”
Mei sank back against Bolan. “Head for Rua da Felicidade.”
Bolan perked an eyebrow. “The Street of Happiness?”
Mei nodded.
“Awww…man!” Du shook his head as he trotted past cars, bikes and scooters, and swerved around an ox. “Tell me you’re not going to Ming’s.”
“Directly,” Mei confirmed. “We’re expected.”
Du hunched his shoulders fatalistically and turned away from the glass and light of the downtown sprawl.
Macao was unique among Chinese cities in that it had once been a Portuguese possession. Once they pulled onto the Rua da Felicidade, they might as well have been in prewar China. Mediterranean architecture abutted ancient style Chinese houses and shops. The Rua da Felicidade had once been Macao’s red light district. Now the street was lined with shops and street vendors and food stalls. The bright colors of silk were everywhere as were the smells of spices and roasting meat. For all of China’s gustatory glory as one of the world’s great cuisines, the art of barbecue was almost unknown there. Except in Macao. The Portuguese had brought their grills with them, and to this very day smoke filled the air. They passed a bamboo cage filled with a half dozen small, tapir-like animals. A metal trough lined with live coals and multiple spits glowed red hot and ready next to them. Bolan suspected few of the beasts would survive the lunch-time rush.
Bolan crooked two fingers and thrust out a note as the rickshaw passed a stall. Marcie’s eyebrows shot in surprised approval as Bolan took two sheets of au jok khon wrapped in paper. The barbecued strips were a sweet, salty, cholesterol blowing form of pork-jerky sheathed in crispy fat.
Du pulled past the shops and took them deeper into the maze.
Bolan thought about their contact. He had consulted Kurtzman via satellite and was surprised Kurtzman had come up goose eggs. Neither the Farm, US, nor British Intelligence had anything on the man. He was an enigma.
Ming Jinrong was a part of the Chinese underworld.
Mei had been very closemouthed about the man. He was a valuable resource, and she was taking pains to protect him.
Bolan decided to try again. “What can you tell me about Jinrong?”
“I’ve had some dealings with him. He was Red League in Shanghai, but his…proclivities kept getting him in trouble, and he had to flee. He’s been in Macao for twenty years,” she said.
Bolan considered the tidbit of information. He had fought the Chinese triads before. The Red League was a secret society that had begun as a patriotic anti-Manchu organization of martial artists and merchants dedicated to the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty centuries ago. Like most of the other secret societies in China, as the ages passed, they had become runners of opium, heroin and prostitutes. They had taken their place as the heads of Chinese gambling, extortion, assassination and political manipulation.
The Communist revolution had only driven them further underground and made their business dealings even more Byzantine.
“So what does he do now?”
“He’s kind of on the outs, but one of his strengths is that he’s unconventional. Since he got pushed out of normal Chinese crime, he’s specialized in peddling information. He’s also interested in high tech. At this point, I believe the old men of the Red League council consider him a useful embarrassment.”
“What does that mean?”
Mei locked eyes with Bolan. “It means he’s not what you’re expecting to meet, and when you meet him you be respectful.”
“I’m always respectful.” Bolan shrugged. “Until it’s time not to be.”
“Yeah, you just let me do the talking, and if you have to say something, mention the Eight Trigrams Double Broadsword.”
Bolan nodded. “Got it.”
Du pulled them down one side street and then another, each more narrow than the last, until he brought them to a halt before the wooden gate of a Portuguese villa that looked at least three hundred years old. The tile and stucco were faded and cracked, but the stonework was still incredible. It was a picture of lost colonial glory. Men with rifles peered down from the ornamental minarets at the wall corners.
Du set down his yoke and rapped the brass, lion-head knocker on the gate.
A pair of men with AK-47s opened the gate and let them in. Bolan, Mei and Du walked into the courtyard. A Spanish-style fountain with a potted flowering lemon tree in its middle dominated the tiled courtyard. Peacocks strutted freely, pecking among the rose beds.
Bolan locked eyes with their hosts.
The man was huge. He sat artfully draped across a cerulean chair, enthroned beneath a pink silk awning. Ming Jinrong looked like a six-foot-six, 270-pound Chinese version of Oscar Wilde. Right down to the wine-colored crushed velvet suit and the lily he held across his breast. A jaw like a steam shovel and a massive brow belied his soft eyes, cheeks and lips. His hair fell away from his face in languorous black curls.
Ming Jinrong danced the razor’s edge between effeminate and Frankensteinian.
“Marcie.” A half smile lifted one corner of his mouth as he spoke in an Oxford-accented baritone. “Such a pleasure to see you once again, and you have brought me an American.” He looked Bolan up and down through thick lashes and met the Executioner’s gaze without blinking. “And such blue eyes…”
He raised an eyebrow at the third member of their party. “Oh, and I see you’ve brought little Du.”
Du’s knuckles creaked into fists.
“Tell me.” Ming cocked his leonine head at Mei. “Did you ever become proficient with the Southern Butterfly knives I gave you?”
“I’m sorry, Ming. The weapons you gave me hang in a place of honor in my home.” Mei grinned impishly. “But I’m an island girl, and the kris is my life.”
“Ah…the Serpent Waving Blade.” Jinrong gazed off into the distance for a moment. “Well, then, how may I assist you? You know I can deny you nothing.”
“I ask only for your expertise.” Mei held the leaf-shaped throwing weapon that had ended Scott Clellande’s life. The muzzles of automatic rifles along the walls raised slightly as the woman stepped forward with the blade.
Ming raised his eyes heavenward as if in infinite weariness at his guards. “Oh, please.”
The weapons lowered as Mei set the blade on the low table before the gangster. “What do you make of it?”
Jinrong took up the red-tasseled weapon between immaculately manicured fingers and pursed his lips at it. “Why, it’s a piau.” His eyes widened slightly as he examined the slitted blade. “Piau is a loose term for a family of throwing weapons.” He set the weapon back down on the table. “But this piau is not Chinese.”
“Can you identify it?” Mei asked.
“Where did you find it?” Ming countered.
Bolan stepped forward. “In the throat of a friend.”
“Ah.” Jinrong sighed and sniffed at his lily. “Well, I can tell you what I know, which is that this weapon is Javanese and very likely the weapon of a prisai sakti practitioner.”
“Javan?” Bolan and Mei exchanged glances. “Not Philippine? From a Muslim style of Arnis or Kali? Perhaps an esoteric one?”
“Oh, no, no, no. I have a similar weapon in my collection. As I mentioned, this form of piau is a specialty of the prisai sakti style of pentjak-silat. Prisai sakti means Holy Shield, and far from being a Muslim style, prisai sakti is affiliated with the Christian Javanese.”
Bolan decided to be blunt. “You’ve heard of the rash of piracy in the South Seas.”
Ming leaned back in his chair. “Yes, and such a distasteful way of doing business. It is bad for everybody.” He waved a dismissing hand. It was clear he wished to change the subject. “Gau, bring our guests tea.”
Bolan looked into Ming Jinrong’s eyes. The man was an aficionado. Some men obsessively devoted themselves to baseball, blondes or bullfighting. The gangster’s encyclopedic knowledge showed that his all-consuming passion was martial arts, and Bolan suspected it bordered on the fetishistic. “I’ve heard you are a master of the Eight Trigram Double Broadsword set.”
“A master?” Ming raised a condescending eyebrow at Bolan and then looked at Mei disappointedly for clearly having fed the American information.
Bolan smiled. He was a master of no martial art, but he knew men who were. “I have a friend who is proficient in Monkey Kung Fu.”
Ming tossed his hair distractedly. “What form?”
“Lost Monkey.”
Ming reluctantly showed interest as Bolan continued.
“He also has some skill in the Seven Stars Mantis broadsword technique. He once told me that double broadswords are almost impossible to learn. They restrict each other’s movements and endanger the practitioner. Only a master can wield them together effectively.”
Mei stared at Bolan in shock.
Bolan kept his eyes on the man before him and knew he’d hit pay dirt. Ming Jinrong’s eyes had lit up. Gau arrived with the tea, and Ming waved it away as he spoke rapidly, this time in Mandarin. The servant scampered away as Ming rose and removed his velvet jacket. He stood slightly stooped, as if he were embarrassed by his height and size, but he straightened to his full height as Gau returned with a silken pillow upon which he bore a pair of Chinese broadswords.
Gau took a brass-inlayed wooden sheath in each hand and presented the hilts to his master. Ming drew his weapons. The wide, curved blades made a loud rasping sound as they came free. Sharpening steels had been set within the sheaths so that the blades would be honed every time they were drawn or put away.
“This—” the man smiled at Bolan as he stepped into the courtyard with a dragon inlayed blade in either hand “—would interest your friend.”
Ming stamped his foot and began striking the empty air. He held the blades parallel, so that each strike was a double attack as he cut to one side, twisted and cut again. The blades hissed through the air as his double cuts grew wider and he began slicing vertically and on the diagonal. His feet walked an octagon pattern of deep stances and quick leaps. Sweat began to sheen his face as he forced the heavy weapons to his will. With a shout the parallel blades began pinwheeling in the mobster’s hands.
Bolan’s eyes narrowed with appreciation. He was watching a master.
The blades blurred around Ming’s body like counterrotating propellers and smeared into bright flashes. How he did it without clanging the blades or cutting himself was a mystery to Bolan. He whipped the blades so fast they made a noise like tearing cloth as they sliced the air. The grace, speed and control was astounding. The light gleaming in Ming’s unblinking eyes revealed that his consummate skill was wedded with homicidal impulse.
Ming stamped his foot and the quicksilver blades clanged together in a scissoring attack that could only be intended to behead an opponent.
He lowered his swords and bowed to Bolan.
The guards burst into applause. Bolan and Mei joined them. Bolan knew it was a privilege to observe such a performance, particularly for a westerner. Even Du clapped his hands in open appreciation.
Jinrong sheathed his swords. Gau bore them away as the master sagged back into his chair. He was pale and trembling, and sweat dripped from his temples. He waved a shaky hand at another servant who produced a pipe. The man packed the pipe with a black blob and lit the pipe for his master. The black chunk in the bowl glowed red as Ming drew on the pipe. The huge gangster stopped trembling with the first puff of blue-white smoke, and the fragrant, sweet scent of opium drifted across the courtyard.
“Once…upon a time—” Ming sighed as his breathing returned to normal “—I was something to see. But opium, young men and gambling have left me—” he heaved another sigh “—distracted.”
Mei’s eyes were shining. “Your performance was magnificent.”
“Thank you, my dear. I have always marveled at your skill at Kali, and little Du’s Tiger-Crane is feared throughout the waterfront.” He suddenly turned his eyes on Bolan. “But you, Mr. Cooper? Of what are you a master?”
“I am a master of no acknowledged style.” Bolan shrugged.
Jinrong pursed his lips and puffed on his pipe in disappointment.
“But,” Bolan said, smiling in mock shyness and looking down, “I am proficient at the Seven Triple Bursting technique.”
Ming sat up straight. His brow furrowed at the thought of a technique he did no know. “I demand a demonstration.”
Mei simply stared.
Bolan shrugged again. “I’ll need seven plates.”
Ming spoke some words, and servants scampered. He and his small army of guards looked on keenly as seven of the household servants returned each bearing a plate.
Bolan nodded. “Have them stand in a line to my left, fifty paces back.”
Ming gave orders and the servants lined up along the wall to Bolan’s left and eyed him nervously.
“Tell them to throw the plates in the air across the courtyard, as high as they can, when I say go.”
The master leaned forward with keen interest as he translated the instructions. The tension of the servants grew palpable as they obeyed.
