“ ‘For truly great men, look to this age alone,’ ” Chan quoted. “I never learned it in Mandarin, only in the English translation.”
Cuthbert paused with his cigarette twelve inches from his lips. “Correct. And you are indeed a surprising man, as the truly intelligent must always be.” He paused, then sighed. “But when Mao talked about great men, he was talking about Asians.”
Chan let a beat pass. “With regard to the Chinese intrigue, I have some information you might be interested in.”
“Please go on.”
“Xian probably didn’t kill those three in Mongkok. Isn’t that what you’re so afraid of, that I’ll discover he’s the culprit?”
In a tone that showed only mild interest Cuthbert said, “Perhaps. But what has caused you to form this view?”
“Ten minutes ago he offered me an apartment building if I would tell him who did, when I found out. At least I think that’s what he meant.”
“You didn’t accept this substantial offer?”
“No.”
“Why ever not?”
“I’m half Chinese.”
“Meaning?”
“I was waiting for him to offer me two apartment buildings.”
Cuthbert threw his head back. In the dim illumination from the anchor lights Chan saw that he was laughing. Silently, like a good diplomat.
Chan returned to his cabin slightly ashamed. English humor: It was a disease. No matter how you fought against it, you ended by making the same silly jokes as they did.
36
He awoke to an almost gentle knocking on his door. Light streamed through the porthole. He dragged on a pair of shorts.
Emily was already in her dive suit; purple and green neoprene with a band of Day-Glo yellow crossing from right shoulder to left hip was unzipped to an inch above the navel. Flaps covered her breasts. Hanging on to the door, Chan blinked.
Emily smiled.
There was a relationship between confidence and wealth; which came first?
“The tanks are set up on the swimming platform. I’ve found you a buoyancy jacket. There’s coffee in the galley.”
Chan scratched his head, his shoulders, then, defiantly, his testicles. “What about the others?”
She put a hand to his cheek. “They’re all asleep, Chief Inspector; there’s only you and me.”
He yawned, looked back into the cabin where The Travels of Marco Polo lay on a table illuminated by a tunnel of blinding sunshine. As sleep fell away, he allowed his features to harden into dislike. First thing in the morning it was difficult not to bristle.
“Did anyone ever tell you-”
She placed a single hand on her chest and almost succeeded in looking vulnerable. “Stop! I know, I’m being pushy. It’s unforgivable at this time in the morning. I’m sorry, I have a lifelong problem with impatience. Let me try again.” She lowered her head, looked up at him with big eyes and spoke in a little-girl voice. “I’ve been awake for over an hour just dying to get in the water and unable to think of anyone to be my scuba buddy except that gorgeous chief inspector of police in the cabin down the way, and the anticipation seems to have got the better of my manners, but please don’t take it amiss, and if there’s anything I can do to persuade you to please come play with me-”
Chan put up a hand. “Okay, okay.”
“It’s worse when I’m trying to soft-soap, isn’t it?”
He let a grin grow slowly while his eyes locked with hers. “It’s charming to be able to laugh at oneself.”
“I copied it from the English. It’s a lot easier than genuine self-reform.” She fluttered her eyelashes; that really was rather funny.
He closed the door, changed from cotton shorts to swimming shorts, brushed his teeth, omitted to shave, stepped out onto the foredeck.
With the engines off and the anchor line pinning the boat to a deserted spot on the surface of the Pacific Ocean the true identity of the 120-foot luxury cruiser was unmasked: a plastic toy in the hands of Ocean, the monster god. Water stretched in every direction like a lesson in infinity. Acid light poured over the decks, the paint, the fantasies of night. At dawn the sky was too hot to contemplate, the sun a whiteness too powerful to squint at. On a gleaming white life ring in its stainless steel housing Chan read the word EMILY, etched in blue.
The air was certainly cleaner than Mongkok; too clean-he needed a cigarette. He returned to his cabin, took a pack to the galley, where the cook had left a glass jug under a dripping coffee-maker. He filled a mug, added three sugars and milk, took the coffee out to the stern deck. On the swimming platform Emily screwed regulators into air tanks. From above he watched her breasts fall forward almost out of the neoprene as she bent over the steel cylinders. She was big-boned for a Chinese, but there was no extra flesh. Hers was an athlete’s body, full of health and appetites. Don’t let her seduce you, Cuthbert had said.
She gave him a sincere smile when he joined her, touched his forearm.
“I am sorry for waking you like that. It’s just me; I’m one of those people born without any subtlety at all. Up front, no depth, a primal type with the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old, that’s me. I even crack up at knock-knock jokes.”
“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Mustafer.”
“Mustafer who?”
“Mustafer fag before I dive.”
He watched her double up. “You don’t really find that funny?”
She nodded, helpless.
Fuck Cuthbert.
Underwater with a scuba tank on her back Emily was lithe, playful, artistic, funny: a human porpoise. On the coral bed eighty feet under the boat she lay on her back, blew air rings of silver that wobbled lazily to the surface. As soon as Chan floated down to her level, he felt her hand on his thigh. He had not brought a wet suit; he wore only a T-shirt and swimming trunks. She found his testicles under his shorts. He liked her firmness of touch, her hunger, the humor of a submarine seduction.
Emily beckoned to him to follow. She stopped by the boat’s anchor, pulled him toward her. He could see her eyes glittering behind her mask. People died like this.
He felt his heartbeat double as he allowed her to pull open the Velcro fastenings to his buoyancy jacket. Carefully she slid it off him, his life in her hands. He chomped firmly on the mouthpiece. She used the Velcro straps to hitch the jacket and tank to the ring of the anchor chain. He hung in the sea with only the rubber windpipe tying him to his air. Through the water he felt her lust. Don’t let her…, but this was a seduction Cuthbert might have appreciated. For denizens of the edge, there was no greater aphrodisiac than the proximity of death. How had she guessed that eighty feet underwater was the one place where he would find her irresistible?
She pulled off his shorts, taking care to leave him his weight belt, tied them too, gestured for him to remove his T-shirt.
At the same time she pulled off her own buoyancy jacket, tied it next to his, managed to unzip her wet suit and remove it without losing the weight belt. Chan thought it would be funny if they lost the weights now and shot to the surface.
They sucked life from mouthpieces joined to umbilical cords joined to the tanks that had nestled next to the anchor. Between the fins and the masks they both were naked except for the weight belts: two monster frogs in a breeding ritual. Her breasts and thighs, the whole surface of her skin glistened with the liquid silk of the sea.
She clung to the anchor line in front of him, offering him her buttocks. As he reached down in slow motion, he found her hand already there ready to guide him. Without weight, without friction, he had to press her pelvic bone hard with his hand to avoid losing her to the sea. The bubbles from her mouthpiece reached a crescendo, then subsided with her slowing loins.