Alex Archer Rogue Angel 14 The Golden Elephant

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Eddie shrugged. They grow a lot of them around here. What can I say?
We re not going to find any room at the inn tonight, Patty said. That s for
sure.
Anxiety jabbed at Annja. That was silly, she knew. She d spent nights in low
dives, half-flooded ditches, tents in howling dust storms, interrogation rooms
and on the run from people eager to kill her. Yet she always felt a little
uneasy when she didn t have some secure, known base to go to ground in. Even
if it were literally that: a hideout under some bush somewhere. She just felt
better knowing it was her bush.
Eddie turned a big toothy grin back over his shoulder. No worries, he said.
I got it all under control.
He turned the car around, almost knocking over a kiosk selling satays on
sticks plucked sizzling from oil. By leaning on the horn and shouting mostly
good-naturedly out the window in what Annja guessed were four different
languages including occasional profane English, he managed to get them out of
the great crush of pedestrians and into less-crowded side streets headed
toward the outskirts.
They found themselves in a tenement of dire tumbledown shacks. Annja kept
looking around nervously, concerned she might be called upon to use her sword
to protect them. As far as she knew, none of the others carried a weapon of
any kind. She was pretty sure Kennedy would scoff at the notion. She was much
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less sure about either Patty or Eddie. But she didn t know.
But they saw scarcely a soul or even a light. It seemed the slum dwellers had
all piled into the joyous, raucous crush of humanity in the middle of town to
celebrate the glorious banana. Meanwhile the shantytown around them tumbled
straight along the riverfront so that the boundary between water and land was
impossible to detect, what with hovels on stilts and sagging makeshift piers
and houseboats with curved roofs all crowded together.
Eddie drove with more confidence than Annja thought could possibly be
justified through alleys so narrow the haphazardly leaning fronts of the
shacks seemed to threaten both sides of the little car at once. The smell of
the river and all that decayed in it was overwhelming. The shacks were
redolent of mildew, stale cooking oil and sewage.
Lights suddenly blazed before them. Rising right out of the midst of the
shantytown was what looked to be almost a medieval Thai fortress, with
swooping dagger-eaved roofs rising above high stone walls topped with
thoroughly, and depressingly, modern razor-tape coils. Eddie pulled out his
cell phone, hit a quick-dial number and spoke quickly.
A heavy gate slid to the side ahead of them. A small but sturdy-looking little
man in a dark uniform gestured them forward. He carried an M-16 slung muzzle
down and wore a turban. As Eddie drove into the compound, more men, similarly
attired, came into view on either side.
Karens, Eddie said. Refugees from Burma. They get used as mercenaries a lot
this close to the border.
Reflexively Patty raised her camera. Then she caught herself and reluctantly
lowered it. I guess I d better get permission from our host first, she said
sheepishly.
It might not be that good an idea to go firing off your flash in the faces of
armed men, either, Phil said.
None of Annja s companions showed any more sign of being disturbed by the
presence of heavily armed men than she felt herself. Then again, none of them
would have strayed so far off Southeast Asia s tourist paths if that sort of
thing got to them. As long as they weren t pointing the things at you, Annja
had long ago learned, it wasn t worth worrying about. If they were pointing
them at you well, you did what you had to do, in the full understanding that
you weren t in very much less danger if they were friendly than if they were
actively hostile.
Who is our host, Eddie? Annja asked.
Ma Shunru, he said, factor of the North Wind Trading Company.
They re they re, ah, based in China.
China, Patty said. That s People s Republic?
That s right. Eddie pulled in beside an outbuilding where a turbaned man
gestured him to go. We do a lot of business with them. They know me.
Kennedy, currently sitting in the front passenger seat, turned to give Annja a
sharp look.
Hey, Patty said, what s with that? You re the one who set us up with him.
I think this is kind of what we hired you for, Annja said. Good job,
Eddie.
The look he gave her as he got out into the muggy night air gratified her. She
only hoped he really had done well by bringing them here. It struck her
uncomfortably as the sort of place you could all too easily come in by the
front gate and leave by the water gate facedown floating on the Ping, waiting
for the local crocodiles to drag you under. If they had big crocodiles around
here. She wasn t sure.
When the double front doors opened, permitting even more light to spill out of
the manor house into the grounds, the master s apparition did little to
reassure Annja. That he was the master she had no doubt. He carried himself
with obvious authority.
Is it just me, Patty whispered to Annja, or does he look just like the bad
guy in Enter the Dragon?
I was just thinking the same thing, Annja said, swallowing hard. Let s just
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try thinking of him as the guy who hosted the original Iron Chef from Japan,
shall we?
I m not sure that s such a huge improvement, Patty said. He was pretty
scary, too. He looked like just the sort to have a basement full of kidnapped
hookers, just like Master Han in the movie.
The man in question, having shaken Eddie Chen s hand, embraced him. The
apparent fervor of the gesture was belied by the extreme stiffness with which
the master held his tunic-clad upper body. Annja later learned he had three
fused vertebrae in his back, the legacy of a car accident two years before.
But out here in the yard, surrounded by high walls and razor tangles and with [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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