Ragyapa spoke again. "What is this about Herman?"
"Earlier this evening, he broke into our office on the compound. Through trickery, he managed to obtain the combination to our safe."
"And the jade skull?"
"It is gone. He took it with him."
The thug didn't seem to understand, but his body tensed and he stood up straighter, glancing back and forth between me and Ragyapa, waiting for instructions.
Ragyapa's voice lowered, sounding now like a cobra in an ancient tale. "Where is Herman now?"
"I don't know," I replied. "He has disappeared."
He barked a sharp invective. That was all the thug needed. With no further order from Ragyapa, he charged up the walkway leading to the bridge.
I reached under my coat for my pistol.
Just before the thug hit the bridge, Ernie stepped from the shadows and smacked him on the temple with the butt of his. 45. Somehow the man spun away from the blow and kept spinning until he grabbed Ernie by the neck.
A shot rang out. Red flame rocketed into the air.
Ragyapa shouted out more orders. The boat emptied. Like a swarm of locusts, his men clambered onto shore.
Ernie and the thug were still struggling. I propped my outstretched elbows on the railing of the bridge and pointed the business end of my. 38 revolver directly at Ragyapa's forehead.
"Call them off," I shouted. "Now!"
Ragyapa stared at me for a second. Then he barked another series of orders. His men stood still. Ernie and the first thug were locked in an embrace, Ernie pressing his. 45 to the man's head, the thug with a tight grip on Ernie's neck. They were frozen. Like two wrestlers in midbattle.
"We can stand here and slaughter one another," I told Ragyapa, "or we can try to find a way to work this out."
Ragyapa breathed in sharply. "What do you suggest?" he asked.
"First, I need your assurance that Lady Ahn and Mi-ja are still alive and that they will stay alive."
He shrugged. "We have not killed them."
"What proof do you have?"
"I will give you proof when the time comes."
'You don't need both of them," I said. "Let one of them go"
Like a teacher studying a student, Ragyapa stared at me patiently for a moment, trying to decide if I was precocious or just noisy. "The child has already been freed."
"Where can we find her?"
"You will find her in good time. Enough of that. Now what of the jade?"
"I'm the only one who can catch Herman," I said. "You need to deal with me if you want the jade skull."
Slowly, Ragyapa nodded.
"Remember," I told him. "You will get nothing if Lady Ahn is killed."
"I will give you forty-eight hours," Ragyapa said. "By then, if you haven't found Herman, if you haven't recovered the jade skull, I will take it as a sign of bad faith and you will never see your fine lady again."
Forty-eight hours, I thought. Not much time. But he said that Mi-ja had been freed. That was progress. And I still had forty-eight hours to save Lady Ahn. If we were ever going to catch Herman, odds were that we would catch him early, in his first few frantic hours of trying to escape. If we didn't capture him early, we probably wouldn't capture him at all. The nightmare wasn't over yet but we'd passed the threshold of the full moon and still had hope.
"Done," I said. "Where will I meet you?"
He raised his forefinger into the night air. "That will remain my secret for the moment. I will notify you shortly before the meeting."
He didn't want to give us a chance to set up a police reception.
Ragyapa barked orders in his native tongue. The men on the shore hopped back into the boat. All except for the big thug still wrapped in an armlock with Ernie.
"Call your friend off," Ragyapa said. "He has a gun to my man's head. Tell him to point the gun at the sky, my man will let him go, and we will be gone."
Ernie tilted the barrel of the. 45 skyward. The thug snorted, stepped back, loosening his grip. He lowered his body and, like a leopard flipping an antelope, he swiveled and tossed Ernie head over heels into the air.
Ernie screamed and soared for a moment, flailing. He splashed into the rancid water below the Bridge of the Golden Tribute.
I pointed my. 38 at the thug but didn't pull the trigger as he scampered down the edge of the canal and leapt onto the boat. Someone had already started up the engine and they were swinging in an arc, heading back up the canal the way they had come.
At the last moment, Ragyapa shouted up at me. 'You wanted proof that she is alive. Here it is!"
At first my eyes couldn't focus and then I saw it. He was clutching hair in his fist, a head dangling below it.
Lady Ahn.
I almost squeezed off a round but then I realized that there was a neck below the head and her body was attached below that. Her arms bound. Her face bruised, lips puffed and bloody.
The outboard motor roared and Ragyapa and his boys sped off down the canal.
If I shot now they would kill her. Instead, I reholstered the. 38. The engine noise faded.
I ran down to the edge of the canal, lay on the ground, and reached out my hand to the sputtering Ernie.
"Son of a bitch!" he shouted, as he splashed and kicked his way toward the shore. I grabbed his hand and hoisted him over the rock ledge.
He still held on to the. 45. I grabbed the barrel and pulled it gently out of his grip.
Frantically, Ernie slapped at his face and his jacket and his trousers.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!" he said. "I'm swimming in shit."
He smelled like a sewer.
"We'll get you cleaned up, pal. Sorry that happened."
"Next time I see those assholes," he groused. "I'm gonna jack me some Mongolian dude up. I'm gonna jack me up a whole lot of Mongolian dudes!"
28
Drops of water from the leaking faucet splashed onto Mi-ja's swollen tongue. It reeked of rust, but it had been a long time since she cared. All she knew was that her throat was burning dry.
Bound wrists throbbed beneath thick knots of hemp rope. Her left ear still ached, as if some evil beast had chewed it oft" just moments ago. Her sliced finger shot globules of pain up the length of her arm.
She hadn't eaten in three days. She was still alert enough to know she should be hungry, but the muscles enveloping her stomach were clenched in a tight ball that refused to relax or complain.
She heard footsteps.
As the wooden door of the bathroom creaked open, she pulled as far away from the sound as she could. The chains around her ankles rattled.
The door popped open. Mi-ja clenched her eyes tightly shut.
The man squatted in front of her.
She relaxed somewhat. He was the oiler, the man who had prepared her before taking her to the leader. At least he wasn't the cutter. At least she wouldn't lose another ear or a finger or a toe.
She noticed he didn't have the bottle of oil in his hand. Why was he here?
The man checked her chains and the hemp ropes binding her wrists. When he was satisfied that they were secure, he smiled.
To Mi-ja, the smile was nothing more than the grimace of a skeleton. A death's head.
The man reached into his tunic and pulled out a handful of straw. The smell of it was strangely comforting to Mi-ja. She remembered the animals on her father's farm. The small black goats that were raised for meat. The large ox of which her father was so proud. And she remembered the tears that welled up in his eyes the day he had taken the ox to the market to be sold.
Had he cried like that the day she had been sold? Mi-ja didn't remember. So many things were fading from memory now. She tried to remember her mother's smiling face. It wouldn't appear.
The man squatting in front of her slid a long straw out of his fist. He held it in front of Mi-ja and smiled again. He opened his mouth, mimicking what he wanted Mi-ja to do.