Crown 2, page 17
part #2 of Crown Series
Tiroa became silent again, running through his mind ways to broach the subject which had been nagging at him for so long. Initially, Gold’s excuse that the job had been sprung at the last moment had seemed a satisfactory reason for not consulting the Portuguese. But, in view of what had happened at Kai Tak, it seemed not so much an excuse as a downright lie. For it must have taken time to arrange for the duplicate car and the helicopter; to get press credentials for two men and infiltrate a third on to the maintenance staff of an airline. And, what’s more, the entire operation had taken place—was still taking place—in Hong Kong. Tiroa lived in the Colony rather than Macao, for the purpose of taking care of such details as this.
‘Johnnie,’ he said at length, as the powerful sports car crested the rise and the buildings of Shing Wong shimmered in the heat haze.
‘Yes, Tony?’ Gold answered quietly, moving his dark eyed gaze from the village to the cobalt blue sky.
‘I thought I was more than just a chauffeur,’ the Portuguese said.
Gold’s smile was as quiet as his tone, and both became tinged with a note of sadness. ‘You are, Tony. You’re absolutely essential to me in this operation.’
Tiroa slowed the car and then cut the engine to free wheel to a halt in front of the large house. ‘When are you going to tell me how?’ he said.
He turned in the seat to look at Gold and caught his breath. He cowered back against the door and stared in horror at the small Walther PPK automatic the Australian was pointing at him.
‘Johnnie, I—’
‘You don’t look enough like him,’ Gold said, and squeezed the trigger. Once, twice, three, four times. The first shot took Tiroa in the stomach and his voice became a scream of alarm. The second entered his mouth, smashing the bridge-work and angling up through the roof to tear through tissue and lodge in the brain. The third and fourth went into his right and left eye. Blood poured out fast in vast quantities and Gold reached out with the gun. He prodded the muzzle into the centre of the dead man’s chest to prevent Tiroa toppling forward. Then, his face impassive, he reached behind him with his free hand and sprang open the door. He had to struggle to ease his bulky frame from the cramped sports car.
‘Sui . . . Mo!’ he yelled angrily, his pit black eyes raking the buildings and failing to detect the slightest movement. ‘Come out here. Hurry it up.’
Although he was shouting, the emptiness and silence of the high country diminished the sound of his words. Anxiety made inroads into his irritation and he did a full three-hundred-and-sixty degree turn, his eyes darting and the gun coming up. There was something pathetically helpless in his manner: suddenly like a frightened child who has realized he is lost in unfamiliar surroundings. Then sound intruded over the edge of the plateau: the dull, regular beat of a whirling rotor and roar of the engine which drove it. Gold shaded his eyes with his free hand and saw sunlight bounce on the cabin windows of the helicopter, approaching low from the south west. So low that the spinning blades whirled dust from the ground as they stirred the hot air into a vortex. Racing across the plateau no higher than twenty feet from the ground, the whirlybird looked like an angry, giant sized insect. It was a West German MBB BO 105, painted white with a red stripe in the livery of a local charter company.
It changed from forward flight to hover twenty yards from where Gold waited by the parked car. The Australian cracked his eyes and lowered his head as the helicopter started down, the draught from its whirling blades hurling stinging dust at him. The dust continued to fly as the throttled back engine ticked over, turning the blades in slow motion. The door slid open and figures loomed black in the grey dust.
The sick-looking Callaghan first, pushed ahead by Yeh and Tsim. Peter held back to slam closed the aircraft’s door. He crashed the palm of his hand against the panel and his young, fresh-faced namesake, who had helped Willie and Ju with the murder of Mu Li, lifted the helicopter clear of the ground. The roar of power was deafening and more gritty, flesh-stinging dust was showered over the men left crouching on the ground. Then the dust settled and the roar of the engine developed into a diminishing buzz.
Gold patted his suit and smiled at the State Department man as Yeh and Tsim urged the American upright. ‘Remarkable, Mr. Callaghan,’ the Australian said happily. ‘Like two peas in a pod, as the saying goes.’
‘What the hell’s this all about?’ Callaghan demanded, his voice stronger than his appearance. He looked ready to keel over.
‘Bring him here,’ Gold instructed, then swung open the passenger’s door of the Espada and reached inside. He took hold of Tiroa’s short-clipped hair and raised the blood-run head.
Callaghan stared into the car and gasped in horror at the sight of the bullet-ravaged face. Gold grinned and closed the door on the grisly exhibit.
‘As far as the authorities are concerned, you have become the victim of a group of political fanatics, Mr. Callaghan,’ Gold said. ‘Same hair colour and build. The bullets have taken care of the eyes and teeth. This car will be driven to Tolo Harbour and dropped into the sea. It will not be found until we are ready for it to be found. After enough time has passed for the water and the fish to obliterate other dissimilarities.’
‘And me?’ Callaghan asked.
‘You will spend a week here, in as much comfort as we are able to provide under the circumstances. You play chess a great deal, I understand?’
Callaghan remained tight-lipped.
Gold sighed. ‘Then you will be taken north.’
‘China?’
‘A man as much travelled as you should have a good knowledge of geography,’ Gold said. ‘Shall we go inside?’
He pointed towards the small house with the single well-furnished room. The guns of Yeh and Tsim urged the American to comply with the instruction.
‘Where are the women?’ Peter asked.
They must be inside,’ Gold replied, his anxiety beginning to show again as he looked at the dusty, dilapidated buildings. ‘You know what to do.’
Peter nodded and moved around the front of the Espada. He opened the driver’s door and leaned inside to manhandle Tiroa into the passenger seat. Flies buzzed in to feed on the dried blood. Then he slid behind the wheel and started the engine with a powerful roar. ‘I’ll call you, Mr. Gold,’ he said, ‘when it’s done.’
The Australian nodded. ‘Do that, Peter. And say a few words over Tony. We go back a long way.’ The worry continued to cloud his gaze as he eyed the silent houses of Shing Wong. And the silence was emphasized after the Espada’s drumming engine had faded into the distance. The lack of sound to hear seemed to key up Gold’s other senses. And suddenly he caught the scent of petrol, pungent in the hot air. Abruptly, the gun which had been held loosely at his side was raised and levelled: covering Callaghan and his two captives. ‘Hold it!’ he snapped.
A car’s engine sounded. Far off and in low gear. Not the Espada. Gold glanced to the right and saw the car crest the rise of the plateau, sunlight bouncing on its windscreen. Callaghan and the two gunmen were looking over their shoulders at Gold. Expectantly.
‘All right, get him inside. And remember he’s no good to us dead.’ He broke into a run himself to stress the urgency of the situation.
From the bedroom of the large house, Crown continued to direct the operation designed to secure the release of the State Department man. He was crouched by the window positioned to see outside without being seen. The telephone handset was pressed tight to the side of his head and he had been talking into the mouthpiece ever since the Espada had first come into sight. On the other end of the connection, Eric James received his orders and passed them on to the dispatcher in radio touch with the CID car and emergency units. There had not been time to inform Special Branch and the American security men, which worried James. Crown cursed him into silence whenever the Britisher raised the subject.
Initially, when the Espada came into sight, Crown had ordered the pursuit cars to hold back. The gunshot had phased him for a few moments. Then, when the chopper buzzed into sight, he had ordered all the marked emergency units to either sheer away or get under cover. During the exchange of conversation after the helicopter had taken off, crown had limited himself to rasped urgings for James to curb his impatience. Then he had seen the anxiety-inspired suspicion on Gold’s tanned face.
‘Get the unmarked car up here fast, Eric,’ he said urgently into the handset. ‘Nothing fancy. Just a drive past. No interest in what’s happening, unless the shit hits the fan.’
Now the car with the four CID men in it was speeding towards Shing Wong. A dusty blue Morris 1100. An innocent enough car if a man had nothing to fear. But Johnnie Gold did not have a clear conscience. He was inside the prepared room of the house only moments after Yeh and Tsim had hustled Callaghan through the doorway. The car swept by Shing Wong in a cloud of dust, its four occupants too pointedly not looking at the buildings.
‘I’m keeping the line open,’ Crown rapped into the telephone mouthpiece. ‘Hold everyone back until you hear from me.’
Crown was making a habit of not listening to James’s questions. The inspector’s voice was just an angry squawk from the handset as the Australian dropped it to the floor. The floor vibrated as Crown ran across the room, out into the hallway and then through the kitchen to the back door of the house.
‘Let’s go son!’ he yelled.
The Beetle’s engine roared into life and the car rocketed out of the cowshed. Crown started to run towards the house. Inside, in the plushly furnished room, Gold whirled around from the cracked open door through which he had watched the CID car flash past. He saw that Callaghan was hunched in one of the armchairs. Yeh and Tsim were holding their guns pressed against each side of the American’s head. Callaghan was sitting stiffly erect, his eyes tight shut and his pores open, pouring sweat. The two Chinese asked frantic questions with their eyes.
‘Don’t kill him!’ Gold screamed, and raced across the room to jerk open the door to the kitchen.
Outside, Chang sent the VW into a tight turn, streaking across the rear of the house. In his right hand, between the index and middle fingers, were three half-smoked cigarettes. As the car raced along the rear of the house, he threw all the cigarettes out of the window. The glowing butts landed on hay feed stacked against the wall. Soaked in petrol from the ancient tractor, the tinder-dry hay whooshed into high-leaping flames.
Chang swung the wheel again, to send the car skidding around the side of the house. Crown was on the other side. Emaciated pigs and scrawny cattle began to snort and lash out in panic. Trapped in the cramped kitchen, with smoke curling in under the back door, they charged for the escape offered when Gold opened the room’s other door.
Gold fired in a reflex action as the animals came at him, fighting each other to be first through the narrow gap. A cow dropped in her tracks and writhed in the death throes. The other animals reared over her.
‘Out!’ Gold snarled, whirling to race for the door, the panicked animals hard on his heels. The place is burning.’
Snorting pigs and lowing cows zigzagged through the room, crashing over furniture and thudding against the walls. The two Chinese caught Callaghan under the armpits and dragged him up out of the chair. Gold jerked open the front door. He ran through, eyes and gun swinging from left to right, searching for a target. But he found that he was a target, as Chang drove the VW straight at him. With a scream of fear, he angled to the side and powered himself into a faster run. Crown stepped out from the cover of the corner of the house and very deliberately raised the Colt and aimed it.
‘You bastard, Crown!’ Gold shrieked. ‘You lousy, rotten—’
As deliberately as he had aimed the gun, Crown fired it. With his arm at full stretch, squinting along its length and aligning the gun sights, he squeezed the trigger. He saw the hole appear at the bridge of Gold’s nose, then the spray of bright crimson as the dead man pitched to the ground.
Chang was unable to bring the car to a halt before the front offside wheel had bumped over the unfeeling flesh.
Tsim and Yeh were out of the house by then, holding Callaghan flat against the wall as the frightened animals streamed through the doorway and raced for the wide open spaces. Black smoke rose in a vertical column through the unmoving, over-heated air of the afternoon. The Mauser and the S. & W. were pressed against Callaghan’s temples again. Crown ducked out of sight at the side of the house. Chang leaned across the passenger seat of the VW and looked earnestly through the wound down window.
‘We will kill him,’ Yeh said in his refined accents.
‘What will that gain you?’ Chang asked. ‘Dead, he’s valueless. And have you killed anybody yet?’
‘We will exchange him for the car,’ Yeh offered, looking a lot more scared than he sounded.
Tsim was shaking so much, Chang was worried his trigger finger might slip. The Chinese detective acted quickly in getting out of the car, leaving the engine still running.
‘Drop your gun!’ Yeh ordered.
Chang complied, his movements smooth and easy. Dust puffed from where the Colt hit the ground.
In the big house, Crown finished talking to James and cradled the handset. He put his hands high into the air as he emerged into the sunlight. Because his gun fell from a greater height, it disturbed a larger pall of dust.
‘That’s very wise of you!’ Yeh called. ‘Now, both of you move away from the guns.’
Crown and Chang side-stepped to comply. Yeh smiled, and a moment later, so did Tsim. Callaghan looked on the point of collapse. His legs moved like they were made of rubber as he was urged towards the car. He sat down hard when Yeh released him to go around to the driver’s side of the car. Absently, Tsim helped to break the American’s fall. Then he straightened up and pointed the revolver at Callaghan until Yeh sprang open the passenger door. The VW lurched forward before Tsim had closed the door after getting in.
‘They’re getting away!’ Callaghan rasped weakly as the car accelerated and the two detectives made no move to pick up their guns.
‘We’re big game fishermen,’ Crown said as he moved towards the front of the blazing house. ‘We got the one we wanted.’
He looked down at Gold’s crushed body, hearing the buzz of hungry flies. Then the volume of noise on the plateau was abruptly much higher. The clatter of the VW’s engine was joined by the sound of other speeding cars. In response to Crown’s final order to James, the CID car, the emergency units and the vehicle carrying the marksmen roared into sight. Callaghan stared at the Beetle and did not struggle to his feet until he saw the car halt and the two Chinese climb out, hands atop their heads in surrender. The CID car was the first to reach them. The emergency units screamed in from the other direction. Two of the liveried police cars kept on going to support the arrest. The other four, with the unmarked vehicle carrying the marksmen close behind, screeched to a halt beside the buildings of Shing Wong. Callaghan sank gratefully on to the front seat of one of the cars and mopped his brow.
Uniformed policemen gazed around in bewilderment. At the blazing house, the activity around the halted VW, the roaming pigs and cattle, Crown standing over the blood-soaked corpse and Chang leading the two women from the pigsty, their gags removed and ankles freed.
Take them in,’ Chang said to the nearest uniformed man. ‘And any other people from here you can round up.’
The sight of so many policemen frightened the women and they both began to talk at once. They were innocent. Everyone who lived at Shing Wong was innocent. They rented their village to men sometimes. They were not paid much. They did not know they were doing wrong.
Chang left them to the bewildered uniformed men and went to join Crown beside the body. ‘You think he was dead before I ran him down, Mr. Crown?’ he asked.
The Australian lit a cigarette. ‘Let’s share the credit, Po,’ he said. ‘He wanted us dead. He had his boys try hard enough.’
‘I guess we’ll never know now why,’ Chang said as more cars crested the rise and roared across the plateau towards the tiny village.
Crown looked towards them and guessed they would contain Special Branch men and the American secret service agents. James had had plenty of time to get things moving through proper channels. Crown nodded towards the American, who was regaining his composure by degrees but still looking shaken. ‘How much would the Reds pay for him, Po?’ he asked.
‘Lot of money,’ Chang answered.
Crown nodded. ‘And did we ever fail on a case yet?’
‘Dangerous being successful, uh?’
‘Ain’t a way to win friends,’ Crown replied as the new convoy of cars sent up dust from skidding tires.
Men, some strangers to Crown and others wearing familiar faces, piled out of the vehicles. They all looked hot and angry. While the Americans clustered around the police car in which Callaghan sat, the SB detectives fixed Crown and Chang with malevolent stares.
‘The Lone Ranger and Tonto,’ a senior Superintendent rasped bitterly. ‘Some day, one of these go it alone stunts is going to blow up in your faces.’
Chang’s subordinate rank did not allow him to defend himself. But Crown had the pull.
‘We got your missing property back for you, mate,’ he pointed out.
‘You were lucky. He could have been killed.’
‘Could have been,’ Crown allowed. ‘But it wasn’t him I was worried about. So long as I got him.’ He pointed down at Gold.
‘And that’s all you give a damn about, isn’t it?’ the SB man accused. ‘Any means to the end you want.’
‘It keeps the opposition on their toes,’ Crown answered.
Chang eyed the dead Gold ruefully. ‘Some of them even turn up their toes,’ he muttered.
‘Isn’t he a funny Chink?’ Crown asked.
‘Hilarious,’ the SB man replied caustically. ‘Did you have to kill him?’
Crown spat into the dust beside the dead head of Johnnie Gold. ‘I think it may have been girl trouble,’ he said. ‘We both liked the same one, maybe.’
