Warriors

CHAPTER 22

There was a small hamlet in the rather flat countryside situated about thirty miles from Cambridge Town called Haversham. It was not a picture postcard village by any stretch, just a rather drear little place, forlorn, really, with a couple of dingy pubs, a sad, ill-lit curry house, fish and chips, and a petrol station.

One of its few notable distinctions was that the Greenwich prime meridian line passed directly beneath the eighteenth-century Anglican church at the heart of town.

The only other thing of any real note could be found in a heavily wooded forest at the end of a long dirt cart path, a seldom used road winding between fenced sheep pastures and farmland. Hidden deeply from sight within the folds of a vast stand of great birch was an epic structure dating to the fifteenth century.

That’s when it was known as the Palace of the Bishop of Ely.

The palace, now a less holy structure, had definitely seen better days. The mere fact that the towers, domes, and crenellated walls were still standing defied physics, but the new owner had no misgivings about her purchase of it. Decay was one of her private fetishes.

The palace was remote, private, and removed from the public eye, the fact that it was overgrown with climbing Hedera helix, or ivy, vines, had more than a few windows missing, and was in a fairly advanced state of decomposition did not trouble her in the slightest.

Tiny veins of moss had grown into the cavities of the stones until, viewed near at hand, the entire edifice seemed shaggy with vegetation. The slender and corroded mullions of the windows had old panes, the glass flecked with oblong bubbles and tinged with lavender. The foreboding entrance in the forecourt boasted two massive stone ravens to either side of the doorway.

“Well, then, what do you think of my find?” Professor Moon said, hands on her hips, leaning back to admire her newly acquired dream house.

“My God, Chyna, it looks like something out of a 1930s horror film,” her young friend Lorelei Li had said as they’d gotten out of the backseat of Moon’s silver 1930s vintage Rolls-Royce.

“I knew you’d like it, Lorelei,” Chyna Moon said with a smile that couldn’t mask her condescension. “It’s perfect, right? Look, it’s even got a moat!”

“You mean an algae pond. And, please, look at those old walls,” Lorelei said. “Even those are covered with slime! Sorry, but it’s gross.”

“It is not slime, darling,” Chyna said, “it is moss. Barbula unguiculata. Bird’s claw, look it up. C’mon, girl, let’s have a look inside.”

“Tell me it doesn’t have a dungeon.”

“Oh, no, darling, I think it actually does. And acres of gardens full of poisonous plants once used for, as they say, medicinal purposes.”

Lorelei had wandered off into the overgrown gardens, stumbling upon a bizarre edifice.

“A poison garden? Oh my God, you’ve really lost it. Hello, look here. What is this, pray tell?”

Chyna peered around a bush.

“Why, it’s a Victorian aviary! How absolutely divine. Imagine the birds!”

“An aviary? Whatever on earth are we to do with an aviary?”

“Oh, I’ll think of something, darling, don’t worry your pretty head about that.”

She’d written a cashier’s check for the property that very day.

Chyna Moon grinned as her vintage Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle skidded to a stop near the secret entrance to her drive. The roads were sheer black ice in this part of the countryside, but she was a crack rider and had barely reduced her speed on the way home.

She checked her rearview mirrors quickly before reaching for the toggle switch mounted on the shiny black fuel tank. The radio signal would part the overgrown hedgerow and admit entrance to her property. The clouds of snow had settled, and the path behind her was clear. She thought she’d seen a car, a black Audi A7, pick her up on the M14 roundabout just outside of Cambridge. But she was fairly certain she’d lost the bugger on the narrow and twisty roads leading to Haversham.

There was a normal gated entrance to the estate, of course, but she seldom used it. The massive wrought-iron gates were guarded round the clock and Chyna liked to come and go as she pleased. And she came and went at all hours, being one of those ultra-beings whose need for sleep seemed nonexistent.

She depressed her left boot, geared down, and accelerated rapidly and noisily up the gravel drive. The road to the palace wound through the dense, dark wood, and she arrived at the back entrance of her home five minutes later.

A houseman, a young kitchen boy she was rather keen on, was waiting to take her helmet, goggles, and briefcase full of papers. She’d given an important university lecture that morning on the deteriorating state of Asian political affairs. The BBC had been there with a film crew, hence the tight black Chanel skirt riding dangerously high on her thighs despite the cold.

She gave the kid a deliberate flash of palest pink panties while dismounting the bike and was happy to see him blush scarlet as he took her things with shaky hands.

“Welcome back, Dr. Moon,” he said, waiting for her to shrug her way out of her tight-fitting vintage leather racing jacket.

“Is Miss Lorelei at home?”

“No, Madame. She’s out riding with the new trainer. Over to Huntingdon or St. Ives, they went. She said to tell you she left something important for you with the mail on the front hall table. Courier brought it up from London, midday. Important, she said.”

“Did she really say all that? What is your name again?” She was standing with her hand on her cocked left hip, a small very expensive black purse dangling from her wrist, clearly impatient.

“Well? Answer me.”

“Tommy’s me name, ma’am. Tom.”

“Ah, yes. Tommy, how quickly one forgets. Well, Tommy, why don’t you run inside and get whatever she left inside for the pretty boss lady before she slaps you silly for incompetence and impertinence? Hmmm?”

The boy bolted like a scalded cat, and she laughed at the sight.

Foolish little towheaded creature. But he was a pretty blond and she liked pretty boys around. Lorelei, the most brilliant of her graduate students, still didn’t appreciate their youthful charms. But she was learning. Not only was Lorelei a very fast learner, she was deathly afraid of her older friend and mentor. Which was smart.

Chyna Moon, on the other hand, knew exactly who and what she was. She wasn’t a monster. But perhaps there was a monster living inside of her.

She spied a sealed folder on top of the stack of mail piled on the sideboard beside the front doors. She grabbed a sterling stiletto, sliced open the manila envelope, and fished out an envelope. She knew who it was from without even thinking. Her father.

It was marked RAVEN: EYES ONLY! In the bold red letters favored by the man she worked for.

Raven. Her MSS secret police code name. She’d rather fancied it and her father had given it to her. It fit. Perfectly. Ravens had been a hobby of hers since her days at the Te-Wu Academy in China. She adored them.

She carried the envelope into the paneled library and collapsed into her favorite chair. There, beyond the soaring leaded-glass windows, wintry afternoon light was fleeing the skies. Solid grey shafts of light filtered down upon the faded Aubusson rugs and the priceless Queen Anne desk that dominated the library. It was her favorite room. It was where she did her reading, her thinking, and her frightful dreaming.

Still, there was light sufficient to read by without turning on one of the gas lamps used for illumination throughout the house. There was electricity, of course, but Chyna Moon detested artificial lighting. She detested artificial anything.

Glad to be home again after an exhausting day of conferences and advising doctoral thesis candidates at her private office at Cambridge, she sighed and got down to the real business at hand.

Her other life. Her secret life.

There were several typed sheets stapled together and a small vellum envelope addressed to her, which she opened first. It was, after all, from her father. General Sun-Yat Moon. The letterhead was from his office as Headmaster, Te-Wu Academy, on Xinbu Island, China.

As head of the Chinese secret police, her father, General Moon, was considered the second most powerful man in China. General Moon knew where the bodies were buried, primarily because he’d personally put most of them there. There were in Beijing those who thought he held more power than even his bitter rival, President Xi Jinping. The two men had been classmates at Tsinghua University, and both began their ascent to power there.

There was indeed a power struggle going on inside China, she knew, only her father’s enemies didn’t know it yet.

The letter was headed “From the Office of the Directorate, Chinese Ministry of State Security.” The MSS. And, below, “Attention: Colonel Chyna Moon. Memorize the contents of the material in the enclosed report and destroy it. Be prepared to discuss it with the director on your CODEX phone at 0200 hours, GMT.”

Her father’s infamous one letter “M” signature was scrawled in bright red ink below.

Her eyes skimmed rapidly over the flash communication text, impatiently searching for the gist.

“Shit,” she said aloud. Flinging the documents to the floor, she then pressed a hidden call button that would bring her manservant running. The button rang in the butler’s pantry. Still bone cold from her motorcycle journey, she needed a scotch badly. She’d really have to rethink the Chanel skirt in this kind of bitter weather, especially riding her bike. Too often she found fashion dictating terms to reality.

In less than two minutes, Optimus would appear with the desired potion. Optimus Prime was a passable butler but an extraordinary personal bodyguard. He was, she had to admit, better on offense than on defense and he was superb on defense.

The fact that he was an ex-convict, TV wrestler, and psychopathic sadist hadn’t appeared on his CV, but she’d seen it in his stone-dead eyes. She liked his dark, brooding aspect. He’d been hired on the spot.

“Trouble, Madame?” he said as she plucked the heavy Baccarat tumbler from the silver tray. He instantly dropped to one knee and gathered the scattered pages of the document she’d flung across the floor.

“Yes, dear Optimus, trouble. A love letter from my father. The fucking Japanese again. Everywhere I look.”

“What has transpired, Madame?”

“It would seem that our aged Japanese friend, Professor Watanabe, is a double. An MI6 field agent, so my father tells me. For the last ten years! How could I have been so stupid! I treated him as a colleague. As a friend. He’s dined under this roof! He has betrayed me, the old bastard. He will pay for his own stupidity. And his treachery.”

“May I be of service, Madame?”

“Yes. Find Watanabe and bring him to me. Not now. This weekend. He’s got a small cottage down on the Fens. He usually spends his weekends out there. Alone. Go get him, Optimus. Next Saturday night. Get him and bring him here. I think we’ll introduce him to a few of our fine-feathered friends. That usually gets them chattering like monkeys. He’ll talk. He’ll give me names. And then he’ll die from something worse than the Death of a Thousand Cuts. My father has just ordered his execution. You are invited, of course. I intend to use the Shining Basket.”

“Yes, Madame.”

“These Japanese are playing a very dangerous game, Optimus. In addition to spying on my father through me, now it seems the Japanese admiral Yamato has elected to send a small naval vessel to one of the disputed Diaoyu Islands in the South China Sea. Despite numerous warnings not to undermine China’s territorial sovereignty by the foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang. Fourteen Chinese pioneers were arrested. Tokyo plans to parade them before the CNN cameras sometime in the next twenty-four hours.”

“Outrageous.”

“Yes. But, like Watanabe-san, Japan will pay, Optimus. Dearly.”

“I’ve no doubt, Madame.”

“Indeed. We’ll soon see what their much-vaunted National Defense Force is capable of, shall we not?”

Optimus bowed deferentially.

She drained her whiskey and put the empty glass back on the tray. She gazed out the window before turning to her manservant.

“Optimus, I understand from kitchen staff the little bitch has been out riding on horseback with her trainer.”

“Indeed she has.”

“What time did she go out?”

“I’m not exactly sure. But sometime in the forenoon, Madame.”

“How long is it, horseback over to St. Ives?”

“I’ve not done it myself, of course, but I would hazard a guess of… over there and back in roughly two hours.”

“You’ve not seen her since?”

“I have not, Madame.”

“Where the hell is she, then?”

“It is my understanding that she remained down at the stables. With one of the groomsmen. Rodney, I believe his name is.”

“Did she now? Fascinating. Whatever do you suppose they’re doing down there? Mucking out the stalls? Mucking or fucking would be my guess. Or maybe both.”

“Shall I send someone down to retrieve her?”

Chyna got to her feet. “No. I shall do that myself. But first another whiskey. Make it a double.”

“Indeed, Madame. Will that be all?”

“No, Optimus,” she said, smiling at the bomb-scarred face of her butler. “It will never be all.”

He smiled as he walked back to his pantry.

The old dragon was a piece of work, all right.

They didn’t hear her.

But they heard the oily click of her gun.

And then the low cold of her voice.

“What the f—?” Lorelei said, eyes wide. The stableboy was on top of her, thrusting himself into her like he had a stallion fixation. Lorelei stared over his glistening shoulder at her friend. “How dare you! Get out of here now!”

“Shut up, slut. This… this…? You decide this peasant is worthy of stealing your virtue?”

Lorelei Li laughed and pushed the boy’s face away.

“My virtue?” she said. “You stole that long ago.”

“You, stableboy. Get your venereal dick out of my little friend before I blow your pathetic brains out.”

The strapping youth withdrew from the naked girl lying spread-eagled in the straw and turned to face his employer. Chyna saw fear, her favorite emotion, in his face, but her eyes were drawn to his formidable erection. For an instant she thought she just might fuck the boy herself. She was tempted, but she realized that it would send distinctly the wrong signal to her protégée, not to mention the only son of her head groomsman.

“I am so s-sorry, Madame Moon,” the boy stammered. “She told me that if I didn’t… uh… didn’t comply—”

“Liar!” Lorelei hissed, raking his flushed cheek with her nails. “How dare you?” she screamed.

“Silence! You! Pull the little slut to her feet. Good. Now, lover boy, put your jeans on and get the hell out of my sight. Now!”

The boy didn’t need to be told twice.

“All right, Lorelei, get dressed. We’re going home now. Try to act like a lady. On the way up to the house I want you to think about something. You ever do anything like this again? Embarrass me in this way in front of staff? You’re house-hunting. But. You play by the rules? My house, my rules. We’ll see.”

“My, my, aren’t we strict?”

“You’ve no idea, honey.”