Hawke heard Lea struggling against her chains. “This doesn’t sound too good, Joe. I hope you have a plan.”
Luk set the leather strop down and turned to face Hawke, the freshly sharpened razor now glinting in the low light of the boatshed.
“Are you ready?”
“That’s very kind but I already shaved today. Perhaps just a wash and blow dry instead?”
Luk stared at Hawke with dead, emotionless eyes.
“I think it’s a little more serious than that, Mr Hawke.”
“Please, don’t tell me you’re talking about full hair systems! Anything but that.”
Luk looked confused.
“Yeah, maybe you are going a little thin on top,” Lea said, straining her head up to see. “You only get away with it because you’re so tall no one can see up there.”
“I am not going thin on top!”
“Ah, save it you vain bastard.”
Luk scraped the razor along the edge of the chains which held Hawke to the bench. “You see, tradition demands that first I must remove your eyes, Mr Hawke, followed by the tiniest of cuts until your ears and nose are removed, then the same method will be applied to your fingers, toes and even your manhood, if I can put it like that. You will of course be kept alive for the entire process.” Luk erupted into a terrifying, hollow laughter and moved even closer to Hawke.
“Get away from him you animal!” Lea shouted.
“Ah, your turn will come, Miss Donovan. Mr Sheng wants you both to enjoy this treatment. You will be delighted to know,” he licked his lips, “that I can make this last for three days, and my record number of cuts before losing a victim to bleed-out is just under four thousand.”
Then a large man with his hair tied back in a pony tail entered the room and spoke rapid Cantonese with Luk, who sighed and put the razor back down on the bench.
“Unfortunately, I have been summoned, Mr Hawke. The agony of delay will be much prolonged for you, but there is no alternative. Please accept my sincere apologies.”
Luk and the man left the room, shutting off the lights. Only a small beam of light came in through a thin crack at the bottom of the door.
Hawke heard Lea rustling her chains in the semi-darkness. “We have to get out of here, Joe!”
“No shit! I’m the one he wants to turn into a Christmas turkey!”
“And I guess I’m the dessert… and thanks very much by the way.”
“For what?”
“For another amazing Joe Hawke rescue attempt. You bust me out of Johnny Chan’s frigging clutches and drag me all over arsing Mongolia of all places only to bring me down here to Mr Slice n’ Dice and his House of Horrors.”
“Well… there’s gratitude for you.”
“I’m just saying is all.”
“No, you’re just annoyed you’ve had to be rescued not once, but twice by me now and your ego can’t handle it.”
“My ego? You have got to be joking! You’re the one with the ego, Joe Hawke! Your ego is so damned big I’m surprised the frigging SAS don’t use it to teach mountain climbing.”
“SBS.”
“Whatever.”
“Listen, I hate to stop you in mid-flow, but don't you think our time would be better spent trying to get out of here while we still have the chance?”
“Oh — you just worked that out did you? I was wondering how long before that penny dropped.”
“I bet you were…”
“I was, you pig! If you hate me that much then you’re not going to want to know how I picked Luk’s padlock.”
“You what?” Hawke said, stunned as Lea began to free herself from the chains. They slipped to the floor with a metallic clunk. “How did you do that?”
“Hairpin, boyo. We Irish girls are very resourceful, you know.”
She rushed to Hawke and clicked open his padlock. He stopped to pick up a knife from Luk’s impressive collection of torture instruments and moments later they were fleeing the boatshed.
“I’m going to climb up on the roof for a better look at this hellhole,” Hawke said. “We need to find Han before they kill him and then sabotage the place as much as possible for Lao’s assault.”
“Good plan.”
He paused while he was climbing and turned to Lea. “It’s not true, is it?”
Lea looked at his concerned expression. “What?”
“About me going thin on top?”
Lea said nothing for a second, then laughed and slapped him playfully on the back. “You are just such a fool.”
From the roof Hawke was able to see just how much wealth Sheng Fang had accumulated over the years to build such an immense fortress on a private island as large as this. The main building itself was constructed to resemble a medieval Chinese palace the kind Hawke knew only from all the old martial arts films he’d watched.
A long balcony ran around each floor giving an impressive view over Hangzhou Bay. The island itself was a lovingly landscaped jumble of Zen gardens and tiny wooden bridges leading from one shade-dappled enclosure to the next. Hawke had a nasty feeling much of it had been constructed with slave labor.
“Just goes to show,” Lea said, climbing up to join him. “If hard work isn’t working out for you there’s always people trafficking.”
“Is that something your grandmother told you?”
“Hey now! My grandmother was a fine old Irishwoman and never once did any human trafficking.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Although there was that time she tried to flood the village with her homemade poitín, but we don’t like to talk about that.”
“Funny.”
Lea frowned. “Hey! That wasn’t a joke!”
“We need to get forward to the house,” Hawke said, and they climbed back down off the roof and made their way silently to the main compound.
Closer now, Lea nudged him and pointed to the main house. “Look!”
Two men with submachine guns casually slung over their shoulders walked slowly towards each other and took a moment out to light cigarettes. One of them told a joke and the other laughed loudly for a second or two.
Hawke scanned the area, keeping low and out of sight. “It looks like it’s just these two guarding the outside, but then how many more are inside it’s impossible to tell.”
“When they find out we’re AWOL all hell’s going to break loose anyway,” Lea said. “We’ll count them up then.”
“Hey — what have we here?” Hawke pointed out to the northwest where an enormous super yacht was moving into view from behind a cliff covered in trees.
“What the hell!” Lea exclaimed. “Tell me it’s not the frigging ghost of Hugo Zaugg, please!”
“It’s not — look carefully and you’ll see it’s got two helipads. Poor old Hugo only had one.”
They watched as the yacht powered through the water and slowed its engines a few hundred yards offshore. A few minutes later a smaller tender craft sailed noisily from an opening at the back of the yacht and brought several unsmiling men to the jetty where they were met by the Lotus. They shook hands and then the Lotus led the men up to the main house.
“I think it’s time we joined the party.”
“Always with the bright ideas…”
They crab walked below the line of a magnolia hedge until they were right next to the main wall of Sheng’s house.
“What now?” Lea said.
“Now, we climb that tree and get our arses inside.”
They silently clambered up the gnarled trunk of the tree, looking around them as they went to make sure no one was about. There was the possibility of one of Sheng’s guards seeing them from the courtyard, or even one of the men on the roof, but it was easy to time the operation to get inside the building before any of the men came back into their view.