The Last Mandarin (6 page)

“You said that outside Tsitsihaerh, and we lost a good handful.”

“And the Japanese lost a power station.”

“True.” The word was spoken grudgingly but was close to praise. “Such an explosion that was! A glorious day. Nevertheless, seeing you here I wish I belonged to a burial society.”

Burnham scoffed and complimented: “You have never thought twice about death.”

“Or once,” said Sea Hammer, “except at Tsitsihaerh. So.” Hai looked him over. “You are three years older, and much sadder.”

“And you are three years older and much fatter. You have put on twenty kilos, you old murderer. You rifleman. No more acrobatics on a stolen horse.”

“Never again,” Hai said sadly. “It comes of peace, and owning a restaurant. You will recall, however, that only the virtuous fatten.”

“True. You are a good man, and deserve fat.”

“Who knows? But in the old days we were all good men.”

“They were good days. Fighting purifies.”

“It does,” said Sea Hammer. “These days it is all politics. A man feels useless and therefore lazy.”

Burnham smiled; his heart was big with memories. “Come and sit. A cruet of yellow wine.”

“Yellow wine! No, no. The white. And hot.” Hai sent the waiter scurrying.

“Good,” Burnham said, “but no competitions. A cup or two only.”

“Oho. You have work to do. What can it be, with no more Japanese to slaughter?”

“Well, there is one more,” Burnham said, “named Kanamori.”

For some seconds Hai did not speak. Then he repeated the name. “Kanamori.”

“Yes. But first we speak of you. Have you married? Are you surrounded by little Hais?”

“It would require more to surround me than could be got in three years,” Hai said ruefully. “No, no wife. But”—he waved carelessly—“a woman or two. And you? You went home a hero, and married and begot?”

“Ha!” Burnham snorted fiercely and made dragon's eyes. “I was sent home with one medal and one rebuke. The medal for doing my job with you and those other cutthroats. The rebuke for maintaining that the wily Chinese should be left to find their own destiny. I told this to a general.”

“To a general!” Hai was frankly shocked. “Then you deserve the reprimand. Courage is commendable; recklessness endangers all. And a wife?”

Burnham shook his head. “I have thought of it, but—”

“But courage is commendable,” Hai repeated dryly, “and recklessness endangers all.”

“I am not yet fully mature,” Burnham explained. “I have not seen all the green willows, nor heard all the lutes.”

“Green willows indeed,” Hai said. “You were always a notable weasel, hankering for the young ones.”

“Ah well, the young ones,” Burnham said. “No more. In my country the young ones go on and on about their parents. Or their young men. They are winsome and cuddly but mistrust the bed and make excuses.”

“Barbarous. No wonder you are sadder! We never told you this, but we called you Upper Fish, because at critical moments you were always to be found—if you were to be found at all—making the fish with two backs.”

Burnham was vastly pleased. “I think ‘superior fish' would have been kinder,” he said reproachfully. “How quickly we come to the subject! Is there nothing else to speak of?”

“There is plenty to speak of,” Hai said glumly. The waiter set down a cruet and two small porcelain cups, and poured. “There is bad money and a useless war, and trade has fallen off.” He raised his cup: “Kan i pei!”

“Dry cup!”

They tossed them off. The liquor was a hundred and fifty proof and almost boiling. Burnham had accustomed himself to thinner potations; when this rammed his belly he swelled like a volcano and erupted immediately. “Woff!” he said, and tears sprang to his eyes.

“Good stuff,” Hai said. “How was your meal, in truth?”

“The best. You were always hungry. Skinny as a snake and ravenous. A restaurant seemed the natural thing. But if anything, the food has improved in three years.”

“I am unworthy.” Hai bowed in place. “Hsü! You are back.”

“And glad of it,” Burnham said. “For Peking men there is no other city.”

“True.” Hai hesitated. “And you have work to do.”

Burnham nodded.

“Then I suppose it must be done quickly.”

“Yes,” Burnham said. “Before—”

“Before the posts crack and the lintel falls. Well, let us see now: who owes who?” Hai replenished the cups; they sipped.

“Memory dims,” Burnham said. “You pulled me out of the freezing river.”

“You held the monkeys off at that monastery.”

“You persuaded Li Tu to trust me.”

Hai shrugged. “You took a bullet meant for me. I owe you a life.”

Burnham too shrugged. “We are surely even.”

“Then let us begin again. How can I help?”

“You know that Kanamori has been seen?”

Again Hai was silent for some seconds. “Yes, I heard that.”

“I am to find him.”

“And?”

“And take him back.”

“Do you know why?”

“Why?” Burnham showed surprise. “He is a famous villain.”

“And that is all?”

Now Burnham set down the cup. “Ah. Then there is more. What are you telling me?”

“That you must not hunt a tiger with bird shot.”

“And what more?” Burnham drank. “Listen, old Hai, this is a serious matter. Do not send a blind man to pluck this tiger's whiskers.”

“I have never seen Kanamori. I have heard that he is here. Also that he has something—or knows something. A villain, yes, but villains are a copper a peck nowadays.”

“And how have you heard this?”

“One hears. A customer here, an old friend there.”

“And what does he know? Or what does he have?”

Hai frowned. “Your own people have not told you?”

“Not a word.”

“Yü! A blind man indeed.”

“Then unseal my eyes.”

“I wish I could,” Hai said. “Listen, there are always rumors, and the years exaggerate them. We had our own Kanamoris, you know; perhaps it is merely that he knows who they were, and has much to tell. I heard also that he had amassed wealth.”

“Wealth? And carries it about in a bag?”

“No. Not money. What, I cannot say. Jewels? A hoard. He is said to have had a Chinese look about him.”

“Yes.”

Hai looked up sharply. “You have seen him.”

“Yes.”

“Ah. And if he passes for Chinese, how will you find him?”

Burnham shrugged. “Do you know a policeman called Yen Chieh-kuo? An inspector.”

Hai made the mouth of a man who would spit. “A turtle egg. An unforgiving man and full of hate. A good policeman nevertheless. How do you know him?”

“He is the local expert on Kanamori.”

Hai's face grew fatter, and he laughed like a goat. “Eh, eh, eh.” His flesh trembled. “He is, is he? But my dear friend, no one will ever tell Yen the truth. He has not that easy way with common people. He is too stiff from bowing to his superiors, too canny from much desiring rank and emoluments.”

“You know much.”

“One hears.”

“Is he to be trusted?”

“No. You should work alone.” Hai was positive. “You move well by instinct. You found Isuzu.”

“That was easy,” Burnham said. “Journeying from town to town, handed along by men of good bones, drawing the countryside tight like a seine. Besides, he was afraid of the Russians. He bolted into my snare like a rabbit.”

“Yet in his time he was a dragon. A scourge.”

“No longer.”

“Times change,” Hai said. “Perhaps the wily Chinese should be left to find their own destiny.”

Burnham did not answer immediately. “Kanamori was an animal,” he said at last.

“So were we all. Dragons. Hares. Wolves and tigers. Weasels.” Hai quaffed his wine and poured again. “Well, I will help all I can. Tell me, old friend, how long have you graced Peking?”

Indignantly Burnham said, “Not two hours. Would I let the sun set on old friends?”

“Old friends,” Hai murmured.

Burnham let the silence hang, and sipped at his firewater. Hai seemed to pout, and went on slowly: “To see you is joy. You must not misunderstand.”

“It is not that I misunderstand, but that I do not understand at all. You cannot want Kanamori to roam free.”

“It is only …” Hai poured more wine.

“I am a mere barbarian,” Burnham said, “and unpracticed in delicacies of speech.”

“We owe the Americans so much. Perhaps too much.”

Burnham said, “Ah.”

“How pleasant,” Hai said, “how just, how inspiring, if we could now doctor our own horses.”

“Yet this horse,” Burnham said, “has not been found, much less doctored.”

“After years of battle, herds of fallen steeds dot the field. Here and there one screams or whickers. To make him well, or to ease him out of life, is for those whose field it is.”

“Then I insult your soup by pouring my own spices into it.”

“You could never insult our soup,” Hai said, “you who saved the pot. And yet. Listen, my friend: if your own life were at stake I would fling away my apron and take up my bow. But the Kanamoris of this world must settle their accounts with us and with no others. Understand, I know nothing, only rumor. But my heart whispers warnings and rebukes. You have slain your thousands by our side; to let you do more would be ungenerous, and would taste of shame.”

“Yen was less sensitive.”

“Yen is perhaps stirring a different soup.”

“Ah.”

“Kanamori is of no importance to the Americans,” Hai said gently. “It is what he knows, or has. And that is more important to us, to us Chinese. It was Chinese, in China, that he killed and raped and robbed. Still”—Hai brightened—“I will do what I can. You will go doctor your horse, and when he is well, or dead, you will return here, and we will eat walnut soup and nutty pheasant, and carouse like warriors.”

“Of course,” Burnham answered, “without fail,” and each man masked the moment with a smile. “Now show me this famous room.”

They crossed a tiny courtyard, ten steps, and entered the rear wing. Sea Hammer opened a wooden door, ushered Burnham into a pleasant room and demonstrated: he jammed the door shut behind them and shot the bolt. Burnham approved, and tossed his duffel bag on the huge bed. “A wooden bed. A stitched mattress. The bridal suite.”

“As in a way it is”—Sea Hammer chuckled—“when I rent it by the hour. And a footlocker, and a chest of drawers, and a dandy little stove and a teapot—you see, ‘The wine cups have been polished, and are impatient.'”

“Why, that is nobly said. You are kind to an old comrade.”

“So. It is yours. I suppose you will be in and out at all hours. And I suppose”—he sighed dolefully—“you will entertain a lovely friend or two.”

“You wrong me,” Burnham protested.

“Ha! A bet?”

“No bet.”

“What is your wish about unexpected visitors?”

Burnham considered briefly. With so little to go on he decided to welcome complications and possibilities. “Let them in. But warn me.”

“As you say. Try to respect the reputation of the house. No dynamite or messy torture.”

“I am a guest in your land,” Burnham said solemnly.

“No, no, you are at home,” Hai said, “you have made yourself one of us,” and added, “as if floods and famine were not enough,” and let himself out, with a last shake of the head and a mournful “Yüü!”

Burnham unpacked. He was not a tidy man but preferred not to live out of a duffel bag. The chest of drawers sufficed; he would reserve the footlocker for corpses and souvenirs. He stripped off the padded gown, tossed it on the bed, and went down the hall to the convenience. An Oriental toilet in a minuscule dungeon. Two little starting blocks for the feet, and you hunkered, and if you were lucky there was a chain somewhere to pull. He returned to his room, made his .38 comfortable in a shoulder holster, donned the gown, and practiced his draw. About five seconds minimum; the pistol was, for practical purposes, in storage. But he was an errand boy and not a cowhand. The knife, however, lodged in his left sleeve, might be useful. He bowed, crossed hands up his sleeves in the Chinese manner, and drew the knife with a flourish.

He stashed his money in an inner pocket and left his new home. No one molested him in the courtyard; he passed through the restaurant, nodded at the slim waiter, and stepped out into Stone Buddha Alley beaming in the cold glow like a village idiot. He drew his fur hat snug; a west wind whistled through the alley. He turned onto Red Head Street and was assailed by rickshas.

Only five pedicabs, really, but they surrounded him and the jabber was fierce. He waited. In time they quieted; it was after all necessary to learns the foreigner's destination before whacking him with a price.

“I would go to the Beggars' Hospital in Rat's Alley near the Eastern Handy Gate.”

The screaming commenced. It was half an hour's ride at most. They were competing for a nickel. Four cents. Shrill cries. Jostling. Three cents.

Only one did not speak or move. He was a tall man, well-timbered and young, and beneath his tattered cloth hat his eyes were steady and even contemptuous.

“And what is your price?” Burnham asked him.

The others fell silent, shocked.

The large man did not answer for some seconds. He wore a short, padded black jacket, and black trousers bound by a legging at the ankle, and tattered cloth shoes bound to his feet by rags. His black hair hung lank.

“One half an American dollar,” he said.

“That is a great deal.”

“It is a long trip on a cold day. Good grazing makes fast horses.”

Burnham nodded. “It will do.” He stepped to the pedicab, a commodious double.