The Curse of the Dragon God (22 page)

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Authors: Geoffrey Knight

Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense, #Adventure, #Gay

BOOK: The Curse of the Dragon God
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Just then, the cruiser sped up alongside them. It scraped along the sampan, but not with the intention to sink it—that fate seemed already at hand. No, the cruiser was there out of reluctant necessity.
Chad glared over the side of the cruiser, his face fuming. “Xi, pull them aboard! I can’t afford to have their bodies floating in the fucking harbor, not when they were supposed to burn alive.”
“What are we going to do with them?” Mya appeared beside Chad.
“We’ll just have to make them disappear altogether. Let’s see them outsmart the zidium. Until then, get them out—”
Everyone on the sampan and the cruiser turned as the powerful
chomp-chomp-chomp
of the liner’s submerged propellers approached.
“—
Now!
” Chad screamed.
XI
The Zhang Diamond Express, Central Beijing, China
“MAX, WAKE UP! MAX! WAKE UP—
NOW!
”
The desperate voice in his ear was the first thing the Professor registered. The second thing was the immense pain. In his stomach, in his sides, in his pounding head. His eyelids fluttered open, although his blind eyes could see nothing. “Sen?” was all his parched, cracked lips could utter.
“I’m here, Max. Are you all right?”
The Professor nodded, although he wasn’t all right at all. The slightest move sent a wave of agony through his body. He realized quickly he was sitting up, in a chair—no,
tied
to a chair, his wrists fastened to its wooden arms. His torso was sticky and wet. He felt the constriction of bandages wrapped around his waist, adding severe discomfort to the pain. He was bound so tight he was certain the bandages had broken several ribs. Then he remembered.
“They cut me open, didn’t they.”
“Oh, Max, I tried to stop them. There was so much blood I was certain you would die. But they kept you alive. They were determined to keep you alive. And just as determined to find that thing inside you and get it out.”
“The tracking device. It’s gone?”
“Yes. The doctor pulled it out of you with his bare fingers and crushed it on the floor of that filthy apartment.” Sen paused a moment, then said defeatedly, “Nobody will ever be able to find us now, will they.”
The Professor didn’t answer. Instead he took a deep breath for courage, then winced at the pain. “Sen, are you blindfolded? Are we alone?”
“No, I’m not blindfolded, and yes, we’re alone. But not for long. That crazy doctor is supposed to be guarding us, but he left to get some alcohol. He’s already drunk everything in here.”
“Here? Where’s here?”
“We’re on board the Zhang Diamond Express.”
The Professor looked puzzled. “We’re on a train? We’re not moving though, are we?”
“No. At least not yet. Max, I think they’re planning something terrible.”
“Why?”
“There’s something else in here with us. Two open crates. There’s something round and silver inside each one.” Sen swallowed nervously and his dry throat clicked. “Max, I think they’re bombs.”
The Professor remained calm. He said nothing for a moment, thinking carefully about their situation, about what had happened. Eventually he said, “Sen, breathe deep. I need you to start describing where we are. Tell me everything you can see.”
Sen chuckled a moment, feeling a hint of comfort through his fear. “You were always so good at that, Max. Back at Oxford. I remember how good you were at calming friends down the night before an exam, how logical you were about making people feel relaxed when they were as nervous as hell. You’ve always had such clarity, such purity of mind. I loved that about you.”
“Sen, concentrate. Where are we?”
Sen blinked back his fear and nodded at the instruction. “Okay. We’re in the master carriage.”
“You know this place?”
“Very well. The Express has been in my family since 1947. This car is in the third position on the train, behind the engine and the coal car. It was made for comfort and business—that was my grandfather’s instruction to the engineers who refurbished the train. My family conducted all their dealings in this car, as well as entertained. It’s about thirty feet long, carpet from Persia, red velvet curtains, all drawn. Two meeting tables and my desk. There’s a cell phone sitting on it now. There are several lounges from Paris, footstools from Italy. Two chandeliers with diamond-tipped crystals. You and I are tied to two original Louis the Sixteenth parlor chairs—”
“And the crates?”
“They’re at the other end of the car. Next to—” Sen stopped. He failed to mention that the crates were beside a life-sized bronze statue of himself shaking hands with one of his employees, a miner. A symbol of equality, respect, opportunity. Right now, it seemed inappropriately self-righteous.
“Next to what?” the Professor asked.
“Next to the door that leads to the car behind us.”
“And the train. Tell me about the train. Where does it go?”
“From here, straight up to the mines in Shandong. Like I said, it’s an express. It’s a showpiece, built for business, to take investors on a scenic tour up to the mines and back. It runs on a private railroad line my grandfather purchased.”
“How many cars?”
“Six cars in total. The engine and the coal car, then this, the master carriage. That’s followed by the exhibition carriage, where diamonds are displayed, followed by the sleeping carriage, then finally a flatbed freight car which I added a few years ago to transport the company helicopter up and down from the mountains. We don’t use the train very often anymore. It’s a symbol of days gone by, a museum piece, although it still runs.”
“And the others. Did they say where they were going?”
“I have no idea. Mya was stressed, that’s all I know. She left us in the care of that crazy doctor back in his apartment. Her plans, whatever they are, seemed to be going wrong, I can guess that much.” He paused another moment. “They’re going to kill us, aren’t they, Max.” It wasn’t a question.
The Professor didn’t respond. Instead he asked another question. “How long ago did the doctor bring us here?”
“It’s hard to say. Hours? Maybe a day? Maybe more. I don’t even think I’ve been conscious the entire time. Everything’s a blur. Max, I’m afraid.”
“It’s all right,” the Professor said in a quiet voice. “I’ll get us out of here.”
“How?”
Again, the Professor didn’t answer.
Sen sighed. “I’ve never told you this before, but I suppose if there was ever a time to say it, it’s now. I loved you all those years ago. Back at Oxford. Before your accident. But I realized it was all for nothing.”
“Why?” the Professor asked, his blind eyes fixed on Sen now, as though he was looking deeply into him. “Why was it all for nothing?”
“Because you were in love with
him
.”
The Professor shook his head. “I was never in love with him. He fascinated me.”
“He was no good, he never was. You were blind to that, you were blind to how much I loved you, even before you lost your sight.”
The Professor said nothing for a long time, then quietly, genuinely, uttered, “I’m sorry Sen. It seems that foolish young man has grown into a foolish old man.”
“You’re not a fool. You’re the smartest, kindest person I know, you always were. But I had to move on, I had to let you go. I threw myself into the family business. I became obsessed with diamonds. It was easier than being obsessed with you. Diamonds don’t break hearts.”
The Professor took a deep breath, clearly uncomfortable both physically and emotionally, then said, “Sen, there’s something I need to ask you—”
Suddenly the door to the car burst open. The Professor could smell Doctor Cyclops before his heavy, drunk footsteps even staggered into the car. Unsteadily he stomped up to the Professor and through a pungent cloud of anger shouted, “Stop talking! Shut up! Both of you! You’re not here to talk, you’re here to
diiiiiiieeee!
” he cackled. He gave the Professor a backhanded slap across the face, sending him back down into a black, dizzy spin. He tried to fight against unconsciousness, but it was sucking him down into a whirlpool of darkness too fast.
“Sen,” he slurred, “I have to know—”
But his head rolled.
And his eyes slid shut.
And once again the Professor passed out.
XII
Beijing, China
THEY FOLLOWED THE SIGNAL, BEING WHISKED THROUGH the
hutongs
—the tight, labyrinthine lanes of Old Beijing—in a cramped and dilapidated pedicab. Their driver was a tiny, toothless man who appeared to be as old as the neighborhood through which he recklessly steered them. He giggled at every chicken he narrowly missed and shouted friendly abuse at the children in the street.
“Are you sure this is the fastest way?” Shane shouted to the chuckling driver.
Emphatically the driver nodded and smiled and chatted back in Mandarin as though Shane knew exactly what he was saying. He tapped Luca’s watch, which he had clipped to the steering wheel, and every now and then said in midsentence, “Beijing Betty!”
“That’s a sweet name,” Shane remarked.
The driver cackled even more.
It was midafternoon, but time meant nothing at Beijing Betty’s. As the pedicab rounded a tight corner, Luca and Shane peered out the window, their eyes catching sight of the rickety, run-down, four-story building before them.
“That’s Beijing Betty’s?” Shane asked, adjusting the cowboy hat on his head.
The thumping, frenzied beat of Asian electronica escaped from several broken windows, along with a pulsating strobed light. Drunk Chinese businessmen with their knotted ties at half mast and their shirts untucked lingered in the doorway, cigarettes bobbing up and down between their lips as they shouted jokes at one another and laughed raucously. A young male hooker, lean and pale and dizzy, staggered through the doorway and received a good hard slap on the ass from one of the drunk businessmen.
“Not so sweet!” said the driver of the pedicab, laughing through his toothless grin as he turned back to Shane and Luca.
“Come on,” Luca said, paying the driver, who gave him back his watch. Luca and Shane hurried to the door of Beijing Betty’s, pushing past the drunk businessmen and into the bowels of the dark, decrepit building.
Inside, the smell of scotch and sweat mingled with the pungent scent of opium. The music thudded while the drunk and stoned men barked drink orders at the topless male waiters. A young male stripper danced on the badly lit stage, swaying slowly, completely out of time with the fastpounding music, while several men sitting on stools at the foot of the stage leered and rubbed their own laps.
Suddenly the crowd began to whoop and hoot. From behind the stage, pushing past the dirty, cigarette-singed curtains, the only woman in the room came strutting out, shouting like a crazed banshee and screaming with laughter. She was short and thickset, her stout frame strapped snugly into a pink-satin-and-lace corset, her hair a shiny black bob and her round face caked in too much makeup.
As a barrage of abuse and laughter poured from her loud pink lips, she stopped at the edge of the stage and pulled out a leather whip that was hitched to the side of her corset.
She turned to the male stripper and cracked her whip.
“Dance!” she ordered in English before shoving her hand down his crotch and taking the fistful of money nesting there. She rammed it down her corset and continued snapping her whip.
Luca and Shane turned to stare at each other, then looked back at the scene on the stage.
Shane muttered, “I’m guessing that’s Betty.”
“You distract her,” Luca said. “I’ll go look for the Professor.”
“What?! Are you crazy! How the hell do you expect me to distract that?”
Luca didn’t say a word. Instead he simply snatched the cowboy hat off Shane’s head and hurled it across the room. It whirled through the air like a flying saucer, cutting through the smoke and haze to make a perfect landing right in the middle of the stage.
Betty stopped whipping.
The music stopped thumping.
The crowd stopped hooting.
Every head in the room turned to see who had thrown the hat.
“Luca!” Shane gasped, horrified.
But Luca had already vanished, leaving Shane standing in the middle of the room, stunned, all eyes on him. He smiled nervously and waved. “Ah, hi everyone.”
“Who are you?!” Betty demanded from high on the stage, her piercing voice as cutting as her whip.
“Ah, my name’s Shane. Shane Houston. I’m ah, new in town. Nice place you have here—”
“Shut your filthy mouth, Shane Houston, and get your dirty, sexy ass up here now!”
Shane gulped and stood doe-eyed, terrified, hesitating a moment.

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