Riding the Snake (1998) (33 page)

Wheeler was amazed that Julian was still alive. His color was ghastly. They had done their best to stop the external bleeding with towels, but God only knew what was leaking inside him. He had slipped into a coma and it was now impossible to awake him. Tanisha was sluggish, as well. He had to get them both medical help immediately. Wheeler and Chauncy decided on a plausible story to explain the gunshot injuries. They knew Tanisha would be questioned, and they had to make sure she was straight on the basic points. They ran it past her while she lay on the bunk in the forward stateroom. She seemed strangely uninvolved. Wheeler knew that shock could be fatal and that you had to keep the patient warm with the feet elevated, but he wasn't sure how else to treat it.

They got the Avon rubber boat in the water and Wheeler made the trip alone across the bay to the inner harbor. Off to his right were tugboats pushing barges laden with dredging sludge. Near the shore he saw floating homes on rafts tied up against the concrete pillars of the dock. The intense sun beat down, burning him, sticking his shirt to his back.

He got ashore, found a phone, and called the police.

Willy made the trip back to the City of Willows riding on a golf cart through the tunnel he had ordered dug ten years before. The tunnel had allowed his enemies to short-circuit his defenses. For the sake of his own personal convenience, he had weakened his perimeter. It had been a stupid mistake. He had said very little since being informed that the Temple safe had been breached, instructing only that the contents of the safe not be reviewed until he got there. If, miraculously, the Agreement he had negotiated with Chen Boda had been left behind, he didn't want it to be read by anyone.

He moved with quickening strides across the park. Triad assassins from the Red-Pole fighting section flanked him on both sides. He had been told of the raid by phone at five A
. M
. by Henry Liu. Willy had listened in silence as the acne-scarred, limping Shan Chu explained the disaster. Anger seethed. Willy intended to personally administer the Living Death to Henry as payment for his horrendous failure.

When Willy got inside the Red Flower Pavilion, he moved to the building where the Triad safe was located. It was then that he got his first big surprise. The body of Henry Liu was sprawled before the altar. He had shot himself in the mouth, the back of his head disintegrated by a 9mm slug, saving him from a more torturous end.

Willy had known Henry for most of his adult life, but in the end, Henry had failed him. Without so much as a moment's sadness, he moved around the body to the back of the altar and looked down at the plundered safe. When he saw the stacks of money and jewelry that had been thrown aside and left behind, he feared the worst. Quickly, he sorted through the contents of the safe. In less than a minute, he knew that the document outlining his arrangement with Chen Boda and Mother China was missing.

The meeting was in the Shan Chu's quarters on the top floor of the Temple. From the windows they could look out over the park. Willy had run the Chin Lo from this space for almost thirty years, before relinquishing it a few months before, to Henry Liu. Now he sat, his hands folded impassively in front of him, and looked at the Triad's section leaders, who sat on mats before him.

The White Fan and the most powerful Incense Master sat in the front row. Behind them was the Red-Pole vanguard who was head of Triad Military Operations and leader of the most feared of the two fighting sections. He had his eyes cast down in shame; he had also humiliated himself in failure.

Arranged behind him were the three old men who had accompanied the Incense Master at Fu Hai's oath-taking two days before: One was the head of the Recruiting Section, one was head of Liaisons, the last was head of the Education Section. Behind them, seated on the floor, was the organizational leader of the Triad. The two remaining fighting section leaders were seated behind him. All of the men wore the red robes except for Willy, who was in a double-breasted blue English worsted.

"In 1580, the Five Tiger Generals were outrageously accused of crimes they did not commit, and were forced by the Siu Lam Monastery to become outlaws," Willy began, his voice soft but clear in the still room. "One day, in their travels, they met with Chan Kan Nam, who was also wanted by the evil monks of the Siu Lam Monastery for killing a man who had molested Chan Kan's wife and child. Owing to his high moral character and magical powers, Chan Kan Nam was made leader and the First Shan Chu of the Secret Society of Six, which they had just formed. The new Brotherhood traveled the countryside until they came to a Red Flower Pavilion." Willy was speaking softly, in perfect Mandarin. His captive audience leaned forward to catch every word. "While they rested in the Pavilion from their travels, a red flame suddenly burst from the floor in the center of the room. The flame had great heat but made no smoke. It burned clean, leaving no ash or residue. The Five Tiger Generals and their new Shan Chu knew that this was a sign from Heaven. They believed that the Deity wanted them to devote their lives to avenging the kind of treachery and cowardice they had experienced at the hands of the evil monks of the Siu Lam Monastery, but they could not be certain. They had no divining block, no Oracle of Wisdom, to guide them.

"They drank tea during this evening and continued to ask Heaven if they should go forth and avenge the wrongs of the Siu Lam Monastery, which was, after all, a house of Heaven, but had lied wrongfully, persecuted them, outlawed them, and caused them to be fugitives. There was no sign. No answer from God. In anger, they all threw their empty teacups against the wall, but when the fragile clay cups hit the stone wall, they did not break. This they immediately accepted as a sign of Divine approval."

The men in the room nodded. They all knew the story, but it grew in importance for them as Willy retold the historic fable.

"Then the Five Tiger Generals and their Shan Chu all pricked their fingers, and mixing one drop of blood from each with a chalice of wine, they drank it and swore an oath of brotherhood, pledging themselves to undertake revenge against treachery. They also swore to give everything they had to their secret society, including their lives.

"We must take that oath again, all of us," Willy said. "For now, just as then, our Society is at stake." Willy clapped his hands and the doors opened, and men carrying silver trays with silver wine goblets entered the room. Another man carried an ornate chalice. As they passed the chalice to the section leaders, a third man stepped in front of it with a ceremonial dragon-head dagger wrapped in a red silk cloth. Each man pricked his finger and let a single drop of blood fall into the chalice. After each man had finished, they poured in a bottle of sacred wine. Willy stood and retrieved the chalice. He pricked his own finger and let a sole drop of his blood fall into the blood-tinged wine. Then he led them in a prayer of fidelity as he poured wine into each man's goblet. They all drank the mixture until the silver goblets were empty.

"Three men and one woman broke into this sacred palace and stole something of great value to our Society," he said. "They must not be allowed to survive. They must not be allowed to leave mainland China. We must return this document to the sacred safe beneath the altar and punish them with death. We must use all of our Guan-Xi. Check every airplane leaving Hong Kong, every hotel and hospital. The brother who brings me the stolen document will achieve a great lasting gift from this Society." The men were frozen before Wo Lap Ling, waiting for him to explain, wondering what the gift would be.

"The one who is successful will become the new Shan Chu," Willy said. "He will join the line of honored leaders that stretches down to us from Chan Kan Nam and the Five Tiger Generals. But if any of you work against your brothers to secure this victory, to him will go the Death by a Myriad of Swords. We have just taken an oath of solidarity. Like the first Shan Chu and the Five Generals, we must all work together to prevail."

The ambulance took Tanisha and Julian to the Sao Paulo Catholic Hospital. Wheeler and Chauncy were held behind to tell their story to the English-speaking Constable who had been called in specially to interview them.

"I don't really know too much," Wheeler said. "They were in the water, almost dead, when we rescued them. They told us they were out on a fishing excursion and their boat was boarded and stolen. Both had been shot. We pulled them out of the ocean and brought them here. That's all we know."

The Constable furiously wrote it all down in his book. "Pirates," he said, giving the word no emphasis one way or the other. Since they had no more information to give, he concluded that his interrogation with them was over and closed his book.

The Constable drove them slowly across the cobblestone streets of Macao, being forced several times to stop because of the parade. He said it was the Festival of Our Lord of Passos. He explained that a likeness of Christ on the crucifix was carried all around the city. It was a two-day festival participated in by everyone--Catholics and Buddhists alike. The festival had little religious significance to the mostly Chinese population, but it had been going on since the Portuguese founded Macao in 1549, and now was just a good party.

They arrived at the Sao Paulo Hospital at eleven, and Julian had been in surgery for almost an hour when they got there. The Constable took Tanisha's rehearsed statement in a separate room. Her wound had been cleaned and dressed, and she had been given antibiotics for infection and adrenaline for shock. She told them she had been a passenger on Julian's boat and was wounded by the pirates when she jumped into the water.

Wheeler and Chauncy sat in the sterile waiting room, turning pages in Portuguese magazines they couldn't read.

Finally, Chauncy said, "You have to leave soon. It is important that you get this document out of Macao and back to the United States. Here it will get buried and never be seen."

Wheeler nodded. He took the paper out of his pocket and looked at it again. The intricate Chinese calligraphy, on delicate, transparent rice paper, whispered evil. It was artistic and filled up two pages. He closely reexamined the signature of Chen Boda.

Tanisha joined them around noon. She walked with exaggerated stiffness. They went to the hospital cafeteria and used some of their S
. A. R
. money to buy a Portuguese lunch, which consisted of a steak roll called a prego and batatas fritas, which turned out to be soggy French fries.

While they ate, they decided that once they knew Julian's condition, Tanisha and Wheeler would go directly to the airport in Macao and book the first flight out to L
. A
. They had not yet had interviews with Customs or Immigration, because of the unusual circumstances surrounding their arrival. Wheeler hoped that wouldn't cause them a problem at the airport when they left.

At two in the afternoon, a Chinese doctor found them in the waiting room. Wheeler knew when he looked into the surgeon's face that the news wasn't going to be good.

"The Englishman has died," he told Chauncy in Cantonese. "I'm sorry, he lost too much blood. We could not save him."

After the doctor left, Chauncy told them the news.

They sat there in the cold waiting room, each with their own thoughts of the cherubic Inspector. Wheeler wondered when and how it would end. First Prescott had died, then Angela, then Tanisha's partner, Ray Fong, and the three men in Prescott's house, two of which he'd killed himself . . . then Chauncy's wife and Johnny Kwong, and now Julian. Who knew how many others had been killed in the shootout at the Triad headquarters? All had died in one way or another because of the paper he now held in his hand.

Wheeler and Tanisha had no trouble booking the flight out, but they had to show their passports and therefore reserve seats under their own names. They got on American flight 821 in seats 10-A and 10-B in first class. Wheeler knew it was stupid to relax, but just being on the American L-1011 was like being on U
. S
. soil. They waited in tense silence, expecting that at any moment, a regiment of Macao police would come aboard, arrest them, and turn them over to the Chinese Embassy.

At five in the evening, the plane's door was finally closed and they pushed back from the ramp.

Wheeler and Tanisha held hands for luck as the plane thundered down the runway and took off into the evening sky.

After the gunfight in the City of Willows, Fu Hai's loyalty to the Triad was never questioned. The bullet wound was dressed and heavily taped. He was initiated into the Chin Lo a day later. He had stood at the east gate of the Pavilion in his new red robe, and tried very hard not to show pain as they hung his Blue Lantern-- the symbol of his acceptance into the Triad.

He then had to undergo a symbolic death before being reborn as a Chin Lo hero.

The Incense Master waved the Sword of Loyalty and Righteousness over his head, and Fu Hai fell to his knees. The Incense Master then stepped in front of the altar, and while the elders in the Triad listened, he told the Brethren of Fu Hai's many virtues. The White Fan described Fu Hai's heroic fighting and described the injury he had sustained in his valiant attempt to protect the Red Flower Pavilion. When Fu Hai rose, he was offered a bowl of water and the Face Washing Ceremony began, symbolizing his purity.

Then Fu Hai was told to remove his shoes and walk across the path of red-hot stones. He was so filled with the glory of the moment that miraculously, his feet were not burned. He had chosen the path of righteousness and his unblistered feet had proven him worthy. He then read aloud the tablets that were placed before the two-planked bridge. One tablet said: Having a beginning and an end makes a true gentleman. Another said: The confluence of three rivers flows for a myriad of years. Then the Incense Master retrieved and read aloud the allegorical poem found in the precious censer dish, next to the symbolic blood-stained robes that commemorated the loyal monks who were murdered at Siu Lam Monastery in 1580. The poem was beautiful in its simplicity: