The Call of the Thunder Dragon (11 page)

Going slowly, using the wall for
support, he ventured down the corridor in the direction he guessed
he’d been taken for the bath earlier. Outside the room it was cold.
His breath curling in a haze as he shuffled along. He shivered in
his make shift gown. The faint odour of damp wood mixed with soap
filled his nostrils. The aroma, mixed with pine smoke led him
towards the bathrooms.

Sliding the first door open, he
found the tiled washing area. Beyond that the large wooden bathtub,
sunk into the floor was still steaming in the cold morning air. He
shut the door and moved on. The next room was the same. Taking a
deep breath, he shuffled onward. Rounding the corner, he found
another door. As he opened it, outcome a great cloud of steam;
tainted with wood smoke. He glimpsed stairs leading down into a
dark black hole and rows and rows of pine logs. He guessed was this
was the boiler room.

Shutting the door, he moved on
further down the corridor, pausing to tighten his robe.

Okura woke with a banging head.
He and his fellow agents were sharing the room. It was normally
intended for two. However, a third mattress had been added on the
floor to accommodate them.

Okura rolled over and reached for
his pocket watch. He checked the time. His first concern was that
he and his fellows managed to rise at the correct time to impress
Haga-Jin. The Colonel would not mind that they drank many bottles
of wine or that they had eaten late into the night. But Haga-Jin
was strict. Quick to punish any sign of weakness should they be
late or their duties be affected. The Colonel cared little for the
financial costs incurred; only the mission. Yet, a Japanese
soldier, a commander or emissary should never have to compromise
his comforts.

They’d been careful not to make
too much of it. They had requested whores be sent for, but the
hotel declined due to the lateness of the request and instead
provided more wine. After so much to drink, they had to be certain
to rise on time. Okura checked the alarm on the watch was set.

Okura slipped on his overcoat,
over his vest and western style Jockey shorts, tucking the watch
away in his coat pocket. He stumbled out of the room, taking care,
not to stand or slip on the bottles and plates left from their
binging. A glance showed that his fellow agents were fast
asleep.

Takechi lay with his head hanging
over the side of the bed as if looking for something and the fat
Marihito lay on his back snoring like a pig.

The wooden floor creaked as he
walked. He quickly passed the bathrooms then took the corridor to
the back of the hotel where the latrine were.

On his way back to his room, as
Falstaff turned the corner, he bumped into a man coming the
opposite direction.

“Excuse me,” He winced
painfully.

“Gomennesai
¹⁰
,” The man exclaimed
with a frightened squawk.

Falstaff stood swaying a moment
reflecting that the man was probably like him hung-over and in dire
need of relieving himself. It then registered in his brain that the
apology from the man had been in Japanese.

Okura spoke Chinese fluently; he
could do so from morning until dusk. He frowned rubbing his head.
He did not speak much English.

He looked up, seeing the bandaged
foreigner, the big ugly white face and bandages, then he realised
he’d found the pilot they were all looking for.

He shouted out. “Ah-so-ka!”

The urge to impress Haga-Jin by
catching the pilot conflicted with the urge to relieve himself.

Falstaff was similarly dumbstruck
for a moment. The pain in his ribs reasserted itself, he found it
difficult to breathe. He wanted to explode into action, but the
idea of the pain at that moment overrode any movement.

The man could just be an innocent
traveller, nothing wrong with that, accept that China was fighting
hard against Japanese expansion. In fact, Japanese civilians were
rarely seen outside the big cities of the east coast.

“Pilot! Garcia-San!” Okura
shouted.

“Oh, blast it!” Falstaff sobbed,
clutching at his ribs.

Okura went to grab Falstaff by
the hair. Falstaff pushed himself bodily forward, so he crashed
into the Japanese agent. Pausing, they looked at each other again.
Okura’s eyes focused for a second on the corridor behind Falstaff,
who recognised the longing look towards the toilet. He stepped back
and swung his foot up so hard his knee followed through, smashing
into Okura’s chin.

Okura staggered, one hand
grasping the door to his left. He fought to control the pain in his
groin so he wouldn’t fall. He tried despondently to raise his head
as he fought to control the flood of urine only thankful that
Colonel Haga-Jin wasn’t there to see his dishonourable
disgrace.

Seeing Okura’s hand on the edge
of the door, Falstaff yanked open the sliding door and kicked
again. Okura tumbled into the darkness. Falstaff stood gasping for
breath, only to have pain rip through chest.

Stifling the sharp pain, he
squinted into the gloom beyond the door. There was no sign of the
Japanese man. A swirling mass of smoke and steam circled, folding
into itself where Okura had passed through the cloud. Abruptly
there was a horrible scream; and the sound of someone thrashing in
agony. As abruptly as it started, silence fell. Falstaff stood with
one foot placed on the door sill, wondering whether to investigate
or not.

He turned at the sound of running
feet. Zam joined him by the door.

“I woke and you’d gone,” She said
breathlessly “Then I heard a scream?” She stepped forward wrapping
one arm around his shoulder.

“What’s this?” She hissed looking
down at the wet floor. “That’s not the latrine?”

Falstaff held up his hand
defensively.

“No, no, there was a Japanese man
there...” he grimaced.

“So why didn’t he use the
toilet?” Zam raised her eye brows; she always heard what pigs the
Japanese made of themselves when abroad.

“No, we were fighting. He must
have been as desperate as I was before he bumped into me. We should
get away from here, someone else might of heard?”

Back in their room, Zam helped
him slide back into bed. From under the bed, she pulled out a
bottle of wine wrapped in a towel. Tentatively, juggling the hot
bottle from hand to hand she unwrapped the hot towel, - which she
first placed over Falstaff’s wound.

“This has been keeping warm
between the fire pots.” Zam poured two cups of rice wine. “Drink
and rest a moment.” She whispered.

Carefully Zam put the cups aside
trying not to make a sound. Listening there was no sound other than
the gentle creaking of the old hotel.

“He recognised me, or he thought
he did?” Falstaff whispered. “He called me Garcia!”

“What happened? Did you kill
him?” Zam leaned close, her chin on his shoulder, her breast
against his arm. She whispered huskily into his ear. “Are you
alright, John-di-di, my love? You slept all night, leaving me cold
and alone?”

“I’m fine, at least no worse.
That scream when he fell down that hole was horrible, I suppose he
knocked himself out?” Falstaff speculated.

“We best stay here. You are not
to move. The Doctor Tian said you should not move for at least
three days.” Zam kissed his forehead. After a pause she kissed his
lips, then rolled on to her side, shuffling close, so her head
rested on his shoulder.

“It is a shame to leave a girl
cold and alone on a winter’s night?”

“I’m sure I can make it up to
you!” Falstaff grinned. “We must keep a low profile tomorrow. If
there’s any fuss, we should keep out of it! Hopefully, he was
working alone. Whoever he was?” Falstaff stared up to murky ceiling
above, he watched the shafts of light softly piercing the smoke and
imagined the Caproni looping through the clouds. Slowly he drifted
off to sleep.

Colonel Haga-Jin stamped up and
down the foyer of the hotel. It was bad enough that his agents had
slept in, but discovering one of them was missing while the other
two slept made his temper boil. When the two remaining agents,
bleary eyed, with wine and garlic on their breaths appeared late,
Haga-Jin wrath was barely contained. He had gritted his teeth,
snarling he ranted in a hiss until this triggered a nose bleed.

He snapped at them sending them
away to wash and clean up before commencing their search for Okura.
Okura had been a good agent. His language skills were good. He had
the ability to blend in. Haga-Jin supposed that Okura had gone off
in search of a brothel and was late returning, that had happened
before.

Haga-Jin’s feet were tapping with
impatience when Takechi returned, rushing with comb in one hand and
hat in the other. Marihito followed breathing hard, neither took
the time for breakfast and were puffing like pair of pigs as they
came running down the stairs.

Furious Haga-Jin sent Marihito to
the shoreline to find Captain Soujiro. Takechi, he sent to make
enquiries around the brothels in the town.

Mid-morning the staff tried to
improve Haga-Jin’s temper by bringing him tea and cake. He sat
watching the hotel door while drinking the tea, expecting Okura to
return at any moment. Eventually he became even more angry. No one
came to take away the tea pots. Remains of the cakes that he
detested sat there crushed on the plate.

“You!” He shouted to a passing
chamber maid. “Take this away!”

The girl bowed as she passed,
startled by his voice, rushing intent on her current errand, only
to double back to take the tray.

“Insolence!” Haga-Jin shouted.
“Lazy insolence! Don’t you dare leave dirty pots in my sight!”

The girl bowed away apologising.
She took the tray into the back rooms. Behind a large desk on a
raised platform sat the hotel Manageress.

“Ji!” Shouted the woman. Niece,
her mother’s sister’s daughter. ‘Ji,’ she shouted or ‘Sang’, she
called out directing the nieces and nephews who were either
chambermaids or porters. ‘Jai’ and ‘Neui’, she called to the
kitchen, where her sons were the chiefs or to the bathhouse where
her daughters were attendant amah or waitresses. From behind the
desk she ran the hotel. The desk acted as a front to the room,
where a bed and stove completed her living space. From here she
reigned over all. The mama-San was called Song.

She sucked on a cigarette,
flicking away the ash. “Ji, where’s those tea things from?” She
demanded, pushing a loose hair back into her curlers.

Her niece ducked her head.
“Please from the strange business man, the one who said he was from
Shanghai! He’s still out there waiting! I’m sure he’s waiting for
someone?” She begged.

Pun Song slid out from the behind
the desk taking a long drag on the cigarette before she mashed it
into the full ashtray. She pulled on a housecoat and swept her hair
behind the ears.

“Ji, get Wei, - he was the one
working last night,” Song called out urgently. “Go, go take away
the pots, hurry!”

The back rooms of the hotel were
already in an uproar, they had found a body in the fire pits under
the water boiler that supplied the big wooden bath tubs. How he’d
stumbled there, they didn’t know. Only the remains of his tattered
over coat was left to be pulled out of the fire. The coat pocket
contained an unusual pocket watch. A square Seiko pocket watch.

Song was used to strange
occurrences at the hotel. People were strange she deduced.
Travellers coming hundreds of miles to have tragedies, calamities
or misfortunes in her hotel. For instance the pilot and girl from
Bhutan. Their trouble, bed and board more-than paid for in advance
with gold.

Song would have been tempted to
take the pilot in herself; he was a big strong looking Englishman.
The girl from Bhutan was lucky to find him, she thought jealously.
However, Song also was idealistic at heart, perhaps because she’d
seen so many couples coming together, or coming apart, at her
hotel. Zam was a good strong girl and showed how much she thought
of the pilot. Song hoped they would be happy at her hotel, after
all, that was her aim.

Wei, the hotel clerk, appeared.
“Yes, gu-ma? The police have arrived and gone straight around the
back to the boilers.”

Song rolled her eyes. How many
strange stories today? A wounded pilot and then a murder.

“Let’s go talk to your
businessman from Shanghai? He is getting impatient for something,
mmm? His speech is far too rude! Show me his signature?” She asked
the boy Wei. “No, that is not right, - it is wrong. Chan and Wu,
hmmm?”

Song prided herself on being able
to deduce what sort individual lay behind each signature. She lit a
cigarette. “Follow me!”

Together they asked ‘Mr. Moy
Chan’ for more details.

Haga-Jin stared at the manageress
and the office clerk. “What? How dare you? I certainly can pay if
that’s what you wish!” He jumped to his feet and deliberately
diverted their questions away from his business.

Song wasn’t put off, she’d had
guests who hadn’t paid before. This one was going to throw money at
her she was sure.

“Mr Moy Chan, my clerk, noticed
that you were waiting. We just wanted to verify the business
address – should we send the bill there?”

Haga-Jin immediately felt he was
being manipulated by the shrewd woman. “I will settle the bill for
myself and my staff. Now, if you wish? I would rather I had your
assistance finding one of my men? He appears to have
disappeared?”

Song didn’t miss the opportunity.
“I’ll have the bill prepared? How will you pay? Mexican dollar?
There’s 15 percent charge for Singapore or Hong Kong dollar?”

Having got Haga-Jin to the desk,
they took his money and gave him a receipt. The Mexican dollars
were preferred as larger coins instead of the Tael coin due to the
instability of China after years of civil war and now the Japanese
invasion. For the traveller, the Mexican dollar and a ‘string of
cash’ was the best currency to carry. The Chinese copper coins were
handy on houseboat excursions or to buy native produce. Haga-Jin
offered Mexican coin. Song smiled as she slipped the coins into her
purse smile. That was one matter settled.