Sad Wind from the Sea

Light suddenly dawned on Hagen. ‘It was Tewak who rang you last night?’

She nodded. ‘That’s right. He asked me to get a taxi at once and meet him where you found me. When I got there he wasn’t to be seen. After the taxi had left those two men appeared.’

Hagen said, ‘It looks as though the Reds don’t intend to let that gold slip through their fingers.’

‘Not if I can help it,’ she said, and for a moment her face was cold and hard.

‘You know the position where the boat sank?’ Hagen asked, casually.

‘Oh, yes,’ she told him. ‘I memorized it. One could search for ever in those marshes without it.’

Hagen stood up and leaned on the parapet, and stared out over the water into the far distance. His eyes didn’t see the ships in the bay or the ferry from Kowloon as it ploughed its way towards Macao. They saw a quiet lagoon surrounded by giant marsh reeds and a thirty-foot launch lying in clear water, and the boxes in the cabin that contained the discoloured gold bars. A quarter of a million dollars. His palms were sweating slightly and his mouth had gone dry. It could be the one stroke a man dreamed of. The big deal. No more waterfront hotels in stinking, godforsaken ports. No more smuggling and gun-running, being betrayed and twisted and double-crossed at every turn. If he could lay hands on that gold he could be set for life. He turned back to the table and she looked at him sadly. ‘Cheer up, angel,’ he said. ‘Things have been pretty rough but they’ll get better. Just wait until you’ve got your hands on all that loot. You’ll be able to live like a princess.’

She looked puzzled for a moment and then understanding came and she hastened to correct him. ‘The money for the sale of the gold is not for me.’ Hagen sat bolt upright in his chair. ‘I’ll only get a little for expenses. The rest goes to the relief organization in Saigon just as the monks and my father wanted.’

She was absolutely sincere in what she had just said. She really meant to give all that money to some crackpot relief organization. For a moment Hagen was tempted to tell her the facts of life, but that could wait until later. ‘How deep was that lagoon, angel?’ he said.

She looked surprised. ‘I couldn’t be sure but not very deep. Perhaps twenty or twenty-five feet. Why do you ask?’

He shrugged and lit a cigarette carefully. ‘I have a boat. I’ve done some pearling. I’ve also been to the Kwai Marshes.’

She gazed at him searchingly for a moment. ‘You mean you would be willing to take me to the Kwai?’ She frowned. ‘But why?’ He gazed at her steadily, hating himself, and suddenly she gave a little, breathless laugh. ‘I see, I…’ She was lost in her confusion and colour flooded her face.

Hagen squeezed her hand and firmly pushed every other consideration from his mind. He must think only of the gold. After all, it wouldn’t be too hard to pretend that he loved her. ‘I’d better be honest with you from the beginning,’ he said. ‘And then there won’t be misunderstandings or hurt. I’m known pretty well round these parts and not for the best of reasons. I’m a smuggler, gunrunner, illegal pearler. In fact, anything that pays.’ She nodded slowly and he went on: ‘At the moment my boat is in the hands of the Portuguese Customs. The funny thing is that for once I was genuinely innocent.’ For a moment he thought about ‘Inter-Island Trading Incorporated’ and his sleeping partner, Mr Papoudopulous. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. Still, it was all in the game. He smiled sardonically at the girl and went on: ‘They found gold under the cabin floor. I was fined rather heavily. In fact, I didn’t have the money, so—they impounded the boat.’

‘Can you get the money?’ she said.

He nodded. ‘Yes, I can borrow it from a friend, but you’ll have to agree to the payment of my expenses and the loan from the proceeds of the sale of the gold.’

She nodded eagerly. ‘Oh, yes. That will be fine. It will be well worth it.’ A puzzled frown creased her brow and she leaned across the table. ‘Mark, all those things you did. Why? I don’t understand. You don’t seem to be that kind of a man.’

He realized dispassionately that she had used his Christian name and that it had never sounded quite so well before. He grinned. ‘It’s a long and sordid story, angel. One of these days I might tell it to you, but for the moment there are more important things to consider. Tewak, for instance. I’d like to know what happened to him last night. Are you sure it was his voice on the telephone?’

She nodded emphatically. ‘He had a lisp. No one could have simulated it in quite the same way.’

Hagen decided that it didn’t look so good for Tewak. The story was beginning to take shape. The Commies had traced the girl all the way from the Kwai to Macao. They had agents in every Eastern city and it must have been pretty simple. It was natural they should go to so much trouble. After all, the gold was actually in their own territory. He decided that either Tewak had been forced to make that telephone call or, alternatively, had been known to make it and had been dealt with afterwards.

‘What’s the next move?’ Rose said.

Hagen snapped a finger at the waiter and put most of his remaining money on the table. ‘The next move, angel, will be a quick call at my hotel. From now on I don’t intend to take a step without that Colt automatic’

They left the hotel and took a taxi down to the waterfront. Hagen left Rose in the cab and ran up to his room for the automatic. As they completed the journey to the address she had given the driver Hagen checked the automatic and reloaded the clip. Rose shuddered. ‘I hate guns,’ she said. ‘I hate them.’

He patted her hand. ‘Next to the dog they’re a man’s most faithful friend.’ The cab stopped with a jolt in a deserted street and he handed her out and paid the man off.

He recognized the building. It was a seedy tenement used as a hotel by coloured seamen. It wasn’t the sort of establishment that kept a receptionist. They entered a dark and gloomy hall and before them stretched a flight of dangerous-looking wooden stairs. Hagen groped his way upwards and Rose followed behind, gripping his belt. The smell was appalling and a brooding quiet hung over the place. Hagen held the automatic in his right hand against his thigh and, with his left, held a flickering match, by which light he attempted to read the numbers on the room doors. Number eighteen was the last door in the corridor on the left-hand side and it swung open to his touch.

The room was in darkness. He paused for a moment and listened. There was utter silence everywhere. He decided to risk it and struck a match. There was a man sitting in a chair in the centre of the room. His hands were bound behind him and he was completely naked. Hagen gazed in fascinated horror at the scores of cuts and slashes that covered the body, and then his gaze travelled lower down and he shuddered with disgust as he saw what had been done. He heard Rose move into the room behind him and even as he turned to warn her to stay out she cried, ‘Tewak!’, and then she screamed. At that moment the match burned Hagen’s fingertips and he hurriedly dropped it, plunging the room into darkness again.

The girl sagged against him, half-fainting, and he quickly walked her from the room. He stood in the hall holding her close to him for a minute and then said, ‘Are you all right?’

She straightened up. ‘Yes, I’ll be fine. Really I will. It was just the shock.’

‘Good girl.’ He handed her the automatic. ‘You know how this thing works, I suppose. The safety is off. If anyone comes near you just pull the trigger. I’ll only be a short while, I promise.’

He went back into the room and closed the door behind him. He struck another match and the light was reflected in gruesome fashion from the eyes of the dead man which had turned up so that only the whites were visible. Hagen moved to the window and tore down the blanket that had been improvised as a curtain. He began to examine the room. It was not pleasant moving around with that macabre horror sitting in the centre, but he had to see if anything of interest had been left.

The room was devoid of furniture except for an old iron bedstead and the chair. There was a cupboard but it contained only a few odds and ends of clothes left there by previous occupants. Hagen finally steeled himself to examine the body closely. In any Western country the murder would have been considered the work of a lunatic, but Hagen, familiar with the Oriental mind and its refinements in cruelty and contempt for human life, drew no such conclusion. The men who had done this thing had wanted information badly. Torture was to them the obvious key to a stubborn tongue. The final mutilation looked as though it had been committed in a fit of rage after death. Hagen decided that Tewak had probably refused to talk. Sweat stung his eyes and as he wiped it away he realized why the building was so unnaturally quiet. With their usual sixth sense for trouble he knew there wouldn’t be a single seaman left in the place. He opened the door with a final glance round and stepped outside.

The girl tried to smile but only succeeded in looking sick. Hagen took the gun from her and slipped it into his pocket. ‘You need a drink,’ he said and, taking her by the arm, he hurried her from the building.

He took her to a little bar he knew nearby and they sat in the privacy of a booth cut off from the noisy world by a bead curtain. He lit a cigarette and put it into her mouth. She inhaled two or three times and seemed to be a little better. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.’ She shuddered.

The drinks came at that moment and Hagen pushed hers across. ‘Drink up,’ he said. ‘It’ll do you good. I’m not exactly soft myself but it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.’

She smiled tightly. ‘You seem to have done nothing but rush me into quiet bars while I cry,’ she said. He smiled and gripped her hand tightly. ‘What am I going to do?’ she moaned.

‘Do you still want to go after that gold?’ he demanded. She nodded. ‘Then that’s settled. Now, the best thing for you this afternoon would be to go back to your hotel and lie down.’ She started to protest. ‘No buts,’ Hagen added. ‘I’m in command. Anyway, I’ve got a lot to arrange and you’d only be in the way.’

They left the bar and he hailed a taxi. When he paid it off at the hotel he was left almost penniless. He was going to leave her at the entrance but she begged him to come up for just a moment. The lift took them to the third floor. Her room was at the end of the corridor and she gave him the key. When he opened the door the room was a shambles. Clothing and personal effects were strewn about the place and most of the drawers had been taken out completely. ‘But why?’ she said. ‘What did they expect to find?’

Hagen pushed his hat back from his forehead. ‘The directions for finding the launch, angel. They were hoping you might be stupid enough to leave them lying around.’

‘The fools,’ she exploded. ‘What do they take me for? I know the position by heart.’

Hagen said in a satisfied tone: ‘One thing it proves. Tewak didn’t talk.’ Suddenly Rose began to curse in the same fluent manner in which she had blasted the Russian clerk. ‘Heh, hold on,’ Hagen said.

‘Oh, damn them!’ she said. ‘I’m beginning to get annoyed.’

‘No tears?’ he said.

‘They’re all used up.’

He grinned and took off his jacket. ‘Let’s get started packing your things.’

‘Why the hurry?’ she said in surprise.

‘You can’t stay here. I think I’d better take you to visit a friend of mine.’

She shrugged her shoulders and started to pack the things in her cases as he handed them to her. Within twenty minutes they were leaving the room preceded by a couple of boys carrying the luggage. The Russian was scrupulously polite and remote when making out the bill. As they turned away from the desk Hagen suddenly shouted, ‘Here, boy!’ and tossed a coin which the man instinctively caught. He stood glaring after them in fury and several people laughed. Hagen decided that the coin had been worth it.

As the taxi headed up into the residential part of Macao on the hill, Rose said curiously, ‘What is this friend of yours like?’

Hagen said casually, ‘All right, I think you’ll like her.’

‘Oh, a woman.’ There was a faint edge to her words. ‘An old friend?’

He laughed. ‘Yes, in both senses of the phrase.’ He patted her hand. ‘Don’t worry. She’s very well known. All the best people go to her house. All the best men do, anyway.’