Stealing the Dragon (7 page)

Chapter Twelve

Hong Kong, 21 years ago

Sally was on her own.

Li Mei left her with the fierce-looking man, telling Sally she would visit her often. The old woman’s voice caught as she said it, and Sally thought Li Mei’s eyes looked wet, but Li Mei had already turned and walked through the front gate before Sally could think of anything to say.

As soon as Li Mei was gone, a young girl appeared at Sally’s side. She was tall and lean, her black hair cropped short, almond eyes set wide in a pretty face. Sally guessed she was at least eight or nine, but it was hard to tell. Sparing only a cursory glance at Sally, the girl stood before the scarred man and bowed.

“This is Sally,” he said, at which point the young woman turned toward Sally and repeated the bow. A smile flashed across the girl’s face, disappearing so quickly Sally thought she might have imagined it.

“I am Jun.”

Sally nodded in return but didn’t say anything.

“Show Sally around,” said the man. “Then bring her to me.”

“Yes, Master Xan,” said Jun, bowing again. Xan turned and walked across the packed earth of the open courtyard. When he was out of sight, the smile reappeared on Jun’s face, but only for an instant, as if she feared someone would catch her having fun.

“How old are you?” asked Jun, looking down at Sally.

“Five,” said Sally, adding quickly, “and eight months.”

Jun nodded, then reached out and took Sally’s hand. “Come and see your new home.”

Your new home.

The phrase struck Sally with a sudden finality, as if the last few weeks had been a game, just a field trip with Li Mei. Now she was alone, standing with this girl she’d just met, who was reminding Sally that her parents were gone and never coming back.

***

“Sally…Sally?” Jun was leaning over her. Jun’s face appeared upside down, her inverted frown looking like a crooked smile.

“You fainted.”

Sally blinked, wondering how long she’d been out. They were in the infirmary, Sally laying on a padded bench with a cold towel on her forehead. A stern-looking older woman dressed as a nurse gave Jun a warning look before leaving the room. Jun reached over and gave Sally’s hand a gentle squeeze.

“Rest,” she said, “and then we’ll go for a walk. I’ll show you the classrooms, the gardens, the pool—”

“A pool?” asked Sally, rising up on one elbow.

“Oh, yes,” replied Jun, her eyes bright with mischief. “We have three pools.”

The school grounds were enormous. Beyond the main courtyard, the rest of the block was revealed, a vast compound of wooden buildings, open courtyards, and gardens. Jun started the tour by leading Sally through a long one-story building that served as the school cafeteria. As they passed through the kitchen, Jun greeted three older women, who were obviously the cooks. Sally noticed all the young girls working with them, cutting vegetables, straining rice, and cleaning pots and pans. Some of the girls looked almost twelve, but many were barely older than Sally. They nodded as she and Jun passed, some flashing a quick smile before turning back to their chores.

Jun then led Sally across another small courtyard into a two-story square building.

“This is our theater,” she said proudly, pointing across the room toward a low wooden stage. “We wear costumes and put on shows. We even wear makeup…look!”

Behind the stage was a massive dressing room, the walls lined with dresses, capes, hats, even wigs and beards. Sally had gone into her mother’s closet to try on her shoes, and she played dress-up with her dolls, but she’d never seen anything like this.

“We pretend,” said Jun, taking a ragged shawl from one of the hangers. Wrapping it around her shoulders, she bent over and clasped her hands behind her back. “See? I’m an old woman!” She walked around in a tight circle, her lower lip extended in a mock frown, her tiny shoulders hunched forward in a pantomime of age.

Sally laughed, a sound more like an excited cough than a real belly laugh, but it managed to bring a smile to her anxious face. She walked to the wall and took a broad brimmed hat off one of the hooks. Jun came over and draped a coat over her small shoulders, laughing as the arms brushed the floor.

Sally turned to the older girl and smiled again, tentatively.

“Do you live here, too?” she asked.

Jun nodded. “Of course,” she said. “We all live here….all the girls.”

Sally looked at her but remained silent.

“My father died when I was four,” said Jun, her voice suddenly quiet, making her sound as young as Sally. “Momma died the next year. I think she missed him.”

“You came here, then?” asked Sally.

Jun shook her head. “Not right away, no. Me and my younger sister went to live with my aunt and uncle, here in Hong Kong. My uncle…” Jun hesitated, her eyes suddenly unfocused and very far away. “He did things to me…that weren’t very nice.”

Sally didn’t understand but felt bad just the same. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s OK,” said Jun, “I’m fine now.” Her smile reappeared for an instant, but her eyes still held that faraway look. “One night, when I was playing with my colored pencils, my uncle came to my room and tried to hurt me.”

Sally wanted to ask a question but was afraid to interrupt.

“But I hurt him first,” said Jun simply.

“How?”

“I took my pink pencil and put it here,” said Jun, raising her small fist to her own throat. “I pushed it in…deep…and I…” her voice trailed off for a moment. “Just kept pushing.”

Sally gasped, her eyes wide.

“Pink was always my favorite color,” said Jun. “But not anymore.”

Sally watched the older girl’s eyes come back into focus.

Jun shrugged. “Anyway, my aunt sent me and my sister here.” She took off the shawl and placed it back on the hook, then turned and walked across the stage. Sally stood alone for a few seconds, trying to grasp what Jun had just told her.

Sally was quiet the rest of the day as they toured the school, but Jun either didn’t mind or didn’t notice, never straying far from her narrative. And true to her word, there were three pools, but they looked more like ponds where you’d find koi fish than places for swimming. They were irregularly shaped and lined with plants and rocks, the largest of them almost twenty meters long and fifteen meters wide.

“They’re connected by tunnels,” said Jun, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. “So we can learn to swim underwater between the pools.”

They passed through a series a connected buildings that Jun called classrooms, but which looked more like playrooms or gymnasiums. In one, a series of ropes hung from the ceiling, and Sally watched as girls of all ages climbed across the rafters like squirrels, then slid down the ropes like two-legged spiders. It looked fun to Sally, not what she thought school would be like.

In another room, girls Jun’s age and slightly older practiced kendo, the Japanese martial art using wooden swords. Sally had been to an exhibition once with her father in Tokyo. The long wooden swords looked awkward in the little girls’ hands, but they handled them gracefully, striking figures made of straw with surprising power.

Every room had at least one teacher, usually a woman but sometimes a man. They walked among the girls, giving instruction and encouragement, their voices low but firm. At other times they stood off to the side, observing as some of the older girls took on the role of instructor. Sally felt their eyes on her at every turn, even as she nodded or returned a smile from one of the other girls.

“The teachers are always watching,” said Jun, as if reading Sally’s mind. “By the end of the first week you’ll feel like a koi fish in a bowl, someone looking no matter where you swim.” She smiled, adding, “But by the second week you won’t even notice.”

The last part of the tour took them to actual classrooms, rows of wooden desks facing an old-fashioned chalkboard. Girls sat dutifully behind the desks, books open, eyes front. Jun led Sally to the doorway, but they stayed outside so as not to disturb the class.

“Language classes,” said Jun.

They had been speaking Cantonese all morning. It never occurred to Sally to try to speak anything else.

“We can learn Japanese, Mandarin, even Russian when we get older,” said Jun. “And English, of course.”

“I speak English,” said Sally proudly, thinking of her father.

Jun smiled mischievously. “Do you know any bad words?”

Sally shook her head.

Jun looked back through the door of the classroom before answering.

“You will.”

Chapter Thirteen

Hong Kong, present day

“The scorpions are quite deadly.”

The Dragon Head stood looking down into the sunken room, a perfect cube twelve feet on a side. It was, in actuality, a room within a room, set in the floor of a much larger loft space like a racquetball court dropped into someone’s living room, the ceiling removed so guests gathered around the square hole in the floor could look down and watch the game. The Dragon Head stood on the lip of the sunken chamber, his black eyes expressionless as he watched the fat man start to sweat.

The fat man’s name was Lim, and if he heard the man standing fifteen feet above him, he was too preoccupied to answer. At the base of the wall on each side of the room was a gap maybe four inches wide, a thin line that looked like a drain. Scorpions were flowing into the room, small and incredibly fast, their legs clicking across the tile floor like castanets.

“A single bite is not typically fatal,” continued the Dragon Head, his voice acquiring the cadence of a school teacher. “But this many, in combination, is sure to do the trick.”

A wave of scorpions washed across the floor, their brown bodies clumping together and forming eddies in the deadly current that threatened to wash over Lim. As he scuttled toward the center of the room like a nervous crab, a heavy rope swung lazily back and forth above him, a promise of rescue just out of reach.

The lecture resumed.

“There are 1,300 species of scorpions worldwide, all easily identified by their elongated bodies, segmented tails, and, of course, stingers.”

Lim shuffled his feet together and jumped, his fingertips brushing the end of the rope and knocking it away. He fell to his knees. A lone scorpion ran up his arm and he screamed, slapping it across the room before it could bite.

“They are technically arthropods of the class
Arachnida
, related to spiders. You’ll notice they all have eight legs.”

Lim shouted, a frenzied combination of anger and fear, as he hopped and kicked his way around the center of the room. The flow of scorpions through the drain had stopped, the vast army of legs, pincers, and tails seething back and forth less than three feet from where Lim stood. In reality they were as cautious of Lim as he was terrified of them, but in the close confines of the cell they seemed to lean forward, as if sizing up their prey.

Or awaiting instructions.

“Most people think of scorpions as desert creatures,” said the Dragon Head, his voice almost soothing now. “But they have been found in grasslands, savannahs, caves, and even rainforests. Like any strong creature, they adapt to survive.”

This last phrase got Lim’s attention. Reluctantly, he tore his eyes away from the floor and looked up at his captor, his lower lip trembling, his face covered in sweat.

“I told you,” said Lim, gasping. “I haven’t heard anything, I haven’t seen anything. No one has tried to sell it—no one has even heard of it. And if it was being moved in Hong Kong,
I would know
.”

The Dragon Head frowned, as if he resented having his lecture interrupted.

“That’s why I asked you,” he said simply.

“I can’t help you,
lung tau
,” cried Lim, tears welling up in his eyes.

“No,” came the reply, the man’s eyes cold and black. “You can’t.” Almost casually, he slid his right foot over a button set in the floor. A barely audible click was followed by a dull roar as the flood of scorpions resumed, the clicking and scraping sounds of the pincers and barbed tails filling the room.

The second wave flowed over the first batch of scorpions, pushing them forward, Lim hopping frantically around the room. He crushed several dozen in the first few minutes, but he was barefoot, and after another halting skip cried out as a four-inch-long tail whipped forward and found its mark.

“The venom is a complex neurotoxin.” The voice from above droned on. “It causes rapid breathing—”

Lim fell to one knee as four scorpions scuttled up his right leg, stabbing as they climbed.

“—followed by shortness of breath—”

Lim’s scream was cut short as a lone scorpion clambered up his back, the pincers opening and closing in anticipation, until it reached the exposed part of Lim’s neck just above the collar.

“—then foaming at the mouth—”

Lim tried to stand but slipped, falling forward onto his hands and knees.

“—until, in the end, there is—”

The tail snapped forward, its stinger lodging in the thick flesh just below the skull.

“—total respiratory failure.”

Lim’s scream turned into a cough and he fell forward onto his chest, his arms waving spasmodically as the scorpions scuttled and jumped toward him. The Dragon Head watched dispassionately as the scorpions moved across Lim’s body like water until he disappeared altogether.

Shaking his head, the Dragon Head turned his back on the spectacle and sat down heavily on a couch. Switching to English, he said:

“I feel like the nefarious Doctor Fu Manchu.”

A voice across the room answered him.

“Traditions are important.”

Sitting on another couch, set back from the edge of the sunken room, the man with the jagged scar smiled. His right eye seemed to disappear and then flash back into existence as the raised flesh of his cheek rose and fell with his expression. “And besides, I think it was the
fiendish
Fu Manchu.”

“Whatever you say, Xan,” said the Dragon Head, now in Cantonese. “But where did you get the scorpions?”

“Central market,” replied Xan. “They have everything.”

“So many?”

“They’re prolific,” said Xan. “The female scorpion can give birth to more than thirty-five young at a time.”

“Really?” said the Dragon Head, raising his eyebrows. “I’ll have to build that into the narrative.”

Xan nodded. “Better than the snakes, I think.”

The Dragon Head shrugged, then changed his tone. “Lim said it was no longer in Hong Kong.”

“He said no one tried to sell it,” replied Xan in a guarded tone. “We can’t know for sure—”

“It’s not in Hong Kong,” said the Dragon Head definitively, their casual banter suddenly forgotten.

Xan nodded briefly, an understated bow. “Yes,
shan chu
. As you say.”

“Don’t patronize me.” His father had preferred the more formal title,
shan chu
. Man of the mountain. He preferred Dragon Head. The older name might suggest wisdom, but the latter clearly said
power
. The power over life and death. And in the end, that was all that mattered.

“I mean no disrespect,” said Xan evenly.

The Dragon Head said nothing, his black eyes staring at the pit. The scraping and clicking of thousands of feet and claws ricocheted off the walls as the scorpions finished their meal. Slowly he turned back toward Xan, his eyes blacker than the shadows behind him.

“Only those trained in the arts could have stolen from me,” he said deliberately.

Xan narrowed his eyes but remained silent.

“And they would not be foolish enough to stay in Hong Kong.”

Xan stood mute, his face expressionless.

“There is one who left,” said the Dragon Head. “A long time ago.”

“Yes, she did,” said Xan, shifting in his chair.

“Go ask her what she knows,” came the command. “The thief is someone who left the path.”

“She is in America,” Xan protested.

“Then bring a passport.”

Xan breathed deeply before responding. “But your father—”

“
Don’t
speak of my father,” came the curt reply. “I am
not
my father.”

And that is the problem
, thought Xan, who merely said, “Yes,
lung tao
. I will leave tomorrow.”