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Tea with the Black Dragon

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Threve answered for Rasmussen. “Wings and a halo, that’s all. Plug him, Floyd, and let’s get out of here. If that bitch gets to the police…”

Rasmussen hesitated, gazing into pale brown eyes under the light of a gold moon.

Douglas Threve was a less complicated man and so less vulnerable to doubt. He cursed and raised his own weapon slightly. Without warning Long struck him in the chest and knocked the small man over the gravel path. Threve’s pretty automatic went sailing into the brush of the hill. Long rolled onto his back and grabbed Threve by the throat.

The small man’s shout of surprise and rage was cut off cleanly. His hands clawed vainly at Long’s face. Threve’s heels kicked against the gravel.

As soon as Long moved, Rasmussen was free of his paralysis. He leaped for the struggling pair and swung the butt of the pistol at Long’s head. The first blow caught his victim on the right shoulder.

Long dropped Threve, and he turned upon Rasmussen a glare of enduring, patient hate. The blond raised his pistol again, and Long’s hand rose toward this other enemy in what seemed to be as much a gesture of malediction as an attempt at defense. His fingers were spread wide, and in the moonlight his hand looked like the talon of some gigantic raptor. Rasmussen remembered the odd grip of Long’s hand on his own and he shuddered, not knowing what it was that he fought. But the pistol in his hand was falling, and it caught Long above the temple.

“See?” hissed the blond at his partner, who lay dazed at the edge of the path, gulping air. “Who’s a fool? I told you about this guy.”

“Shoot him now,” gagged Threve. “Shoot him or I will.”

“With what?” Rasmussen stuffed his pistol in a jacket pocket. “We don’t need more noise.” He straddled Long and tore open the front of his shirt. The hunter examined Long’s bandages. “So that’s where I got him. He was crawling toward me in the dark, like a big lizard. I wonder if he did this himself. I don’t see how.”

Rasmussen brooded. “I don’t like that. He can’t have gone to the police, or they’d never have let him go in a condition like this. But it means he had help, somewhere.”

From his other pocket Rasmussen pulled a short skinning knife and a roll of adhesive tape. He cut away Fred Frisch’s handiwork and bound Long’s two hands together, winding tape from the wrist halfway up to the elbow.

“Shoot him already,” insisted Threve, trying to stand.

“No shooting. I could cut his throat here and now, if I wanted. In fact he may be dead already. Ought to be. But I tell you Doug, this guy’s like a snake. No matter what you do to it, it’ll wriggle till nightfall.”

Threve sneered. “It’s already nightfall. It’s almost dawn,” he answered sourly. “What are we gonna do about it?”

Rasmussen smacked his hands on his thighs and stood.

“We’re going to do what we planned. Dump them both off the Farallons, tied to concrete blocks. Live or dead, this guy can play with the lobsters.”

“Help me carry him,” grunted Rasmussen, bending to lift. “No. Never mind,” he reconsidered, feeling the lightness of the burden. “You get ready to sail.” He started toward the water, plodding awkwardly, the limp form of his prisoner over one shoulder. Clouds of dust rose like smoke with every shuffling footstep.

“I lose my gun and you start giving orders, huh?” rasped Threve. He touched his bruised neck gingerly.

Rasmussen sighed. “You want to tote him?”

Threve spat onto the dry road. “I had to carry the mother.”

“You wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t beat her to death. Or strangled her.” His steps echoed on wood.

Threve swallowed his rage, stalking ahead along the pier.

The Caroline was a beautiful ship, even with all sails tightly furled. She was five tons of teak, trimmed in brass, and though she was primarily a sailing ship, she had the power to drive fifteen knots in calm seas.

The night was failing when Long opened his eyes. The first cries of gulls broke through the deep cough of the engine. His head hurt and his vision was blurry.

He regarded his arms, wound in a tube of white tape. Any attempt to pull them apart sent intolerable pain shooting up his left arm and shoulder. He tried to pull his feet under him and found they were also bound— tied with wire to a large concrete block.

Next to him lay a bundle in a green oilcloth tarp. It was also tied to the block. After a moments confusion he knew what that bundle had to be. He sat up and looked closer at it, forced finally to believe. Thoughts resounded through the hollows of his skull. He listened to them without interest.

So he was like other men in this way too. He believed what he wanted to believe: what he felt he had to believe. Until, of course, time slammed him into the meaningless truth. Martha was dead and he was going to die. Even without these men and their absurd, murderous thievery, he would die soon, for he was old and his search was over.

He’d found what he sought. Truth. He had no questions any more. It was not what he wanted, said a small voice within him, but it was what he’d chased so long.

The little man by the cave in Honan must have been mad, to appear so happy. Knowledge, of the truth led only to despair.

He extended his hands and raucous, lancing pain mixed into the cries of the gulls. He pulled the oilcloth gently away from Martha, Macnamara’s face.

That face was lacerated and bruised purple, and about the nose and mouth were marks like sunburn. Her long hair, grizzled brown and white, lay tangled over her forehead. He brushed the hair away.

“Ah, Martha,” he whispered. “I can’t believe three days was enough.”

He stroked the sad, mottled face. “I had a question to ask. I’d saved it for centuries. When I met you I wasted my time with play, and I did not ask it. No matter.” He swallowed painfully. “The play was more important.”

The Caroline dipped into a wave as it left the shelter of the Bay and cut into the Pacific. Long raised himself up and peered west, into the wind.

So this was the rapprochement with the sea he had avoided for so long. Waves slapped the wood, sullenly. Long still did not understand water.

He’d traded his future for the chance to say good-bye to a woman who was already dead. That farewell had been important. But why?

Was anything important, here on the edge of the irremedial loss? Cold air filled his lungs. His breath steamed. He heard the two men moving about in the bow of the boat, but he did not take his eyes from the sea.

The horizon to the right and behind him was streaked with brilliance. The near side of each wave glistened. He sat in a quiet which was divorced from both pain and joy. Even his curiosity had left him.

Gaunt black rocks broke through the waves in the distance ahead. A few ships dotted the water far from shore.

He took one of Martha’s cold hands in his own and looked again at her face.

Suddenly he started, held his breath, and leaned toward her. Again he saw the small cloud of white fog dissolve against the green tarpaulin. He lifted her head on his hand and whispered, “Martha?”

Blue eyes opened, brighter than the dawn sky. They wandered unfocused. “Who?”

“M-Mayland Long,” he whispered, stumbling over his own name.

Her hands floundered in the tarp, like those of a baby in swaddling. “Oh!” Like a baby, her eyes were blue and vague. “I’ve… I’ve been so worried. About you.”

He stripped away the oilcloth, shaking her gently to keep her awake. “There is something I must ask you,” he began.

With great effort, she raised her head. “About Liz? My daughter. Did you call the police?”

She lifted herself further, grimacing. “What’s wrong with your hands?” Martha blinked and began to look around her.

“Your daughter is safe, I trust.” He spoke eagerly, his voice unsteady. “I left her in a bush. I haven’t called the police, although Fred may have. Must have, by now.

“But hear me, Martha. What I want to say, is that I love you. Is that all right with you?”

Martha Macnamara took in all this without blinking. Her smile was a painful, cracked thing. “Of course, Mayland. I’m delighted to hear it, because I love you.” She tried to laugh and collapsed to the deck in dizziness. “Couldn’t you tell?”

He closed his eyes and gave a sigh that was half a growl. In one fluid motion he got to his feet. The wire around his ankles restrained him, and he suddenly remembered their perilous situation. Carelessly, he reached down and snapped the wire.

Mayland Long smiled, and the red sun broke over the hills to the southeast. His lips drew back from his teeth and he held his bound arms out before him. White tape caught the new light and his bronze skin glowed. He threw back his head and laughed—a laugh neither English nor Chinese, but filled with glad thunder. The tape gleamed ruddy in the sunlight, and as he strained against it it fell away like charred paper.

His injured arm fell to his side. The right hand he extended, impossible fingers spread wide, as though he would grab the sun. All pain and weakness were gone, drowned in a flood of simple joy.

He heard running footsteps and turned. “He sure ain’t dead!” shouted Douglas Threve, who stood before Long holding a heavy steel wrench. “I’ll fix that!”

Long dodged the blow smoothly and struck Threve’s arm. The wrench clattered on the deck.

Long struck again. His fingers closed around Threve’s neck, thumb pressed under the chin. He lifted Threve quickly, and with the motion one makes to flick open a cigarette lighter. Long snapped the man’s neck. He tossed the body aside.