The old man fingered the fraying protection cord around his neck one final time before tucking it beneath the thick woolen balaclava. The night had been particularly cold and brought on the ache in his left shoulder more sharply than usual. Twelve years in a Chinese prison had left the ache along with other scars, visible and invisible. Each time he was asked to denounce the Dalai Lama he would refuse and mutter "Om Mani Padme Hum". This was always followed by the butt of a rifle driven into his shoulder and another beating. In twelve years they managed to break his shoulder seven times without once breaking his spirit.

Garma Taring had roamed the mountains and high plains of Tibet for more than fifty years. If not for his time as a guest of the Chinese government, it would have been more than sixty. The campsite he had chosen was nestled in the end of a narrow valley and sheltered from the wind.

He was immersed in a landscape of pure white. The rounded hills, like enormous lumps of vanilla pudding dropped from the sky and frozen on impact, then coated with drizzles of crystalline snow. The snow fields crept skyward, painting the jagged mountain peaks white, before they disappeared into the ivory heavens. It was often impossible to tell where the snow ended and the sky began.

Garma poured yak-buttered tea into a bowl and added a small handful of roasted barley. He mixed this into a paste and then rolled it into three mouth-sized balls. The tsampa balls and remaining buttered tea were the old man’s breakfast. When he finished eating, he put his cup and bowl into his pack and set about breaking down his brazier. The tiny stove, on tripod legs, cooled quickly without the yak-dung fuel to keep the belly of its small furnace alive.

It took only a few minutes to ready his pack horses and their cargo. Garma was anxious to be moving. He would reach his village in less than two hours.

There would be a fine welcoming for the old man and his tired animals. The packs they carried were laden with meat for the entire village. Although devoted Buddhists, the diet of Garma’s people relied heavily on meat. The reason was one of practicality. They were herders and wool producers with little land suitable for farming.

The Tibetans found ways to compromise the reality of their existence with the tenets of their faith -- a faith that in theory prohibits the taking of any life, no matter how insignificant.

The butchers of Tibet are called porus and they are generally Muslims. Garma was returning from a village large enough to have its own poru. Tibetans frown on the killing of small animals for food. Killing large animals minimizes the number of deaths needed to feed the nation. A fine but practical theological point, and Garma Taring was a very practical man.

The wind slapped at his face as he topped the hill. One of the horses whinnied a long complaint. The old man didn’t feel the cold wind or hear the horse protest. He was wrapped in the warmth of what his eyes had searched for and found -- twenty mud-brick buildings tucked in the side of a jagged mountain -- home.

As he approached the village, he could hear the restless bleating of sheep and the responding grunt from several of the village yaks. The mud huts consisted of two or three small rooms with a shed or stable attached, and each was surrounded by high walls from whose courtyards dogs growled and barked. With the noise the dogs were making, Garma was surprised that no one had come out to meet him.

There was something missing. It was the lack of human sounds. There was no laughter, no conversation, no shriek of children wafting over the tall mud walls.

Garma approached a house still under construction on the hillside. By local terms it was a mansion. It was made of concrete, not mud. The main gate was black wrought iron and bore the owner’s name in its design. Inside the gate Garma could see the owner of the property bent over one of the unfinished walls.

Darje was the wealthiest man in the village and too proud of his new home. It wasn’t surprising to find him already at work in the cold morning air. Garma called out Darje’s name three times, only to be ignored. The wealthiest man in the village was a squat man with ragged whiskers and, like Garma, complected with a deep, leathery tan from a lifetime spent working in the mountains.

Garma had known the shorter man since childhood and was well aware that the last few years had brought a dullness to Darje’s ears. He nudged his friend’s boot to make his presence known. Darje’s body shifted and rolled away from the wall to rest at Garma’s feet. Darje’s hearing problem would plague him no more. Someone had removed his deaf ears. Someone had removed his entire head.

The old man wandered and stumbled his way through the village as though he were staggering drunk. It might have been better if he had been. He found the body of his wife of forty years laying in the street outside their mud-brick house. His wife, his family and relatives, the friends he had grown up and grown old with -- dead. Most had died in their beds, and every body had been beheaded.

As the shock of what his eyes showed him faded into terror and the terror into rage, the old man realized there were no young women or girls among the dead. Only the men, the boys, and the old women had been embraced by death. There was one other thing missing -- the heads -- with the exception of Garma’s own, not a single human head remained in the village.

The old man stood for hours in the center of the mud brick houses, in the center of the village, in the center of his world. He stood and stared and muttered Om Mani Padme Hum (Bless the jewel in the lotus) over and over again. Om Mani Padme Hum.

*****

Additional excerpt from THE DEVIL'S CROSS . . .

The high-powered machines raced across the sand at breakneck speed. The dune buggies came one behind the other, spaced ten yards apart. As they approached the nominal range for the RPGs, the first vehicle veered to the left, the second to the right, the third followed the first off to the left. They began circling the dune occupied by Rhodes and the others in ever shrinking circles.

"Looks like Custer’s last stand," shouted Burns as he fired off the first RPG. The round blew a dusty crater in the sand five yards behind and short of his intended target.

"Hold your fire, Sergeant," said Rhodes. "They know exactly what our arsenal consists of . . . after all they’re the ones we stole it from."

Fear and the adrenaline rush of battle flamed in Burns eyes and cracked his voice at a near tenor. "We’ve got a truckload of these babies," he yelled, patting the still smoking RPG tube.

Rhodes grinned lazily and nestled his butt a little deeper in the hot sand. "First time in combat, Sergeant?"

Burns fought to conquer the adrenalin shutters that rippled through his body. He ducked behind the hastily constructed berm of sand and empty RPG crates. The first rounds from the men in the dune buggies whistled harmlessly over his head.

"Yes, sir," he said with a sheepish grin, "does it show that much?"

"Only around the edges," Rhodes responded in a reassuring tone.

Burns mimicked Rhodes posture in the sand and snuck a quick peek over the protective berm. "We don’t get a lot of what you might call action in our unit. Interpreting local protocols and linguistics doesn’t put us very high on the priority training list."

Rhodes shrugged and chambered the Chinese Type-56 rifle that was cradled in his lap. "Don’t worry about it. You’ll get all the combat training you want before the day is over."

Another burst of automatic weapons fire ripped the air. This time several rounds slammed into the wood facings of their crude bunker. Grains of sand mixed with splinters of wood danced momentarily in the super heated air of the Taklimakan. Burns grabbed the other Type-56 and assumed a firing stance over the top of the berm. The dune buggy was already racing away on its circular course. The Sergeant slid back down next to Rhodes without firing.

"They’re just fucking with us," Burns grumbled.

Rhodes laughed in a manner so calm and relaxed that Burns could feel himself relax with him. "This is just foreplay," Rhodes said. "The fucking will come later. Right now they’re just feeling us out. They know we’ve got five crates of RPGs with ten rounds in each crate . . . fifty rounds . . . minus one. Plus a ton of ammo, with only two rifles to fire it through. They probably figure we’ve got some other small arms of our own. They’re not worried about the small stuff. It’s the rocket propelled grenades that’s got their attention."

Burns picked up the thought. ". . . and they’d like us to burn them up, while they run circles in the sand. Like the round I wasted."

"Don’t feel too bad about that. At least, you showed them that we can fire the weapons, even if we can’t actually hit anything with them."

Tarik interrupted the conversation with a sudden burst of chatter. Burns translated. "He says the people in the vehicles are moving in closer."

Rhodes stole a quick look over the edge of the shallow bunker. "He’s right. They’re tightening the noose. Pick your shots . . . and take your time. Forty-nine rounds can disappear in a hurry. We have to run out of dune buggies before we run out of RPGs, or we’re toast."

"Got it!" Burns yelled.

Tarik opened the melee in earnest. He slid the long barrel of his .30 caliber Enfield between two pieces of wooden crating. When the next dune buggy reached the closest point in its run, directly in front of their position, the Kazakh deftly squeezed off one shot and sent a piece of searing hot lead ripping through the neck muscles of the buggy driver. The man lurched and twisted in his seat at the impact of the bullet.

The driver was dying and he knew it. Blood filled his mouth and burst out from his lips as he tried to inhale. With his last conscience thought, one of courage, the soldier in the dune buggy locked up the vehicle’s brakes and cranked the wheel in the direction of the skid.

The buggy spun sideways without turning over and bogged down in the sand. Rhodes swung an RPG over the berm and lined it up on the stranded vehicle.

The two surviving passengers quickly shoved the dead man from the dune buggy. One of the men dropped into the driver’s seat, gunned the engine and ground the gears in a desperate effort to extricate the machine from the desert’s embrace.

The rugged little jalopy struggled and then slowly, with a mulish determination, began to crawl free from the powdery silt that had held it fast. Rooster tails of sand, shot high in the air, announcing its escape.

Rhodes first round landed to the left. The concussion and shrapnel rattled the two soldiers fighting to escape their plight, but did no serious damage to men or machine. Rhodes cursed, readied his next grenade, and shouted to Burns. "Don’t worry about missing that first shot. I just missed one with the damn target sitting dead still."

The Sergeant turned with a broad grin covering his features and repeated Rhodes earlier words. "Pick your shots. And take your time. Forty-nine . . . sorry, forty-eight rounds can disappear in a hurry."

"Ha, Ha," retorted Rhodes, "very funny!"

The big man took his own advice. He mumbled the words as he drew a bead on the dune buggy.

"Pick your shot . . . take your time." Rhodes second round slammed into the sand less than one yard in front of the surging vehicle. The explosion lifted a cloud of dust and smoke into the air that engulfed the machine and hid it from view momentarily. When the cloud cleared, the tough little dune buggy was lying on its back, one wheel had been blown away from the chassis, the other three still spun furiously in dry desert air as the engine choked out its final gasp in a hiss of oil laden steam.

The two passengers had survived the ordeal. They scurried for the dubious cover of the trench the dune buggy had carved in the desert floor during its attempted escape only moments before.

Tarik fired his second shot. He was not a man to waste his resources. The near antique quality of his ammunition deprived him of a certain kill. The bullet lacked its original velocity and dropped slightly in trajectory, striking one of the running men in the knee.

Burns had been concentrating his efforts on the two remaining vehicles as they continued to circle the dune. He had fired three grenades without success. "I can’t hit the bastards!"

Rhodes launched two more grenades at the speeding machines. His harvest was no less barren than the Sergeant’s.

"It’s hard to lead them," he yelled over the din of gunfire, explosions, and howling engines. "They seem to be staggering their speed to screw up our aim . . . and its working."

Burns prepared to fire yet another grenade. "Considering this is the first time I’ve ever fired this type of ordinance I guess we’re doing okay."

The RPG belched flame, smoke, and destruction as the grenade hurtled over the sand to explode only four yards behind a racing dune buggy. Burns flashed a broad smile. "That’s my best shot yet. Next time I’ll nail him."

True to his word on the next pass Burns laid a grenade dead center in the passenger’s area of the dune buggy. The thunderous explosion and secondary blast from an erupting fuel tank coated the white sand in a grisly blanket of body parts and burning debris.

The soldiers in the third machine took advantage of the momentary shock created by the death of their comrades. They raced directly toward Rhodes and the others in a full frontal assault, firing an RPG of their own to punctuate their charge. The grenade screamed past Rhodes and arched out into the dunes before exploding harmlessly over the open desert.

Rhodes and Burns fired simultaneously at the hard charging dune buggy. The soldier’s doomed attack seemed to border on suicide to Rhodes. The men in the speeding buggy were following their orders -- straight into the cold face of death. The big man realized only an instant before the third dune buggy and its occupant’s fire balled into eternity that the entire battle up to that point had been a diversion.

That’s when one of the trucks that carried Rhodes and his companions safely through the desert disintegrated in a horrific explosion. Hand grenades thrown by Three Po from a forth dune buggy detonated in the truck bed and included the energy of the extra fuel canisters and unused RPGs in the blast.

Burns was caught by the concussive force of the explosion and knocked into the air before being slammed into the berm of sand and wooden crates which had shielded them until now. Rhodes lost sight of both Tarik and Burns in the ensuing wall of smoke that roiled over the bunker. He could hear the roar of the dune buggy in the smoke and cursed himself for not seeing through the ruse. The prolonged revving of engines before the attack had been to disguise the sounds of the fourth vehicle. The entire battle had been designed to allow the additional machine time to move undetected through the dunes to attack from the rear when all attention was focused on what appeared to be a desperate frontal assault.

Before Rhodes could chastise himself further, the attacking machine burst through the smoke. It had struck the raised lip of the berm at top speed and been catapulted six feet into the air. Air that was alive with bullets as Three Po and the third man on board raked the smoke and dust with automatic weapons fire. Amid the hail of bullets Rhodes tried to dodge the flying vehicle but was struck hard in the shoulder as the buggy hurtled past him.

Fighting through the pain that seared his mind, Rhodes rolled on his back and emptied a full clip into the undercarriage of the airborne vehicle. Some of his rounds found their mark. The fourth and final dune buggy burst into flames. Still airborne, it disappeared over the edge of the dune in a death plunge destined to add its own smoking carcass to the carnage of the day.

The machine came down hard. It occupants were thrown clear on impact. The empty dune buggy careened down the sloping sand, belching smoke and flame, until it rammed into the three wheeled machine lying belly-up at the base of the dune. A sea of fire danced on an ocean of sand as gasoline from both crippled machines blended into one final dissonant symphony of violent explosions. The dune buggies were twisted and charred by the inferno, melded as if by the hand of a drunken welder, into a macabre mass of smoldering steel.

As the machines died in the sand, Three Po and the two soldiers crept cautiously toward the fortified crest of the dune. Rhodes knelt in the sand behind the demolished berm struggling to reload his rifle. His right arm hung at his side, the shoulder shattered and useless. A few feet away Burns lay crumpled in the desert silt that was growing ever redder with his blood.

The two soldiers appeared over the edge of the dune, their rifles readied and leveled at Rhodes. The big man ignored them and continued to fumble with the ammo clip. The soldier nearest Rhodes took careful aim at the injured man’s head and squeezed. . . .

That’s when Tarik fired his faithful Enfield for the third time that day. The tough little Kazakh had crouched, concealed amid the debris, waiting patiently for his opportunity. At point blank range the old rifle and its aging ammo had plenty of punch left. The man preparing to kill Rhodes died instantly as a bullet shattered the left side of his skull and exploded through the right side, showering his companion with blood and bits of bone.

Tarik’s fingers worked the bolt of the old rifle like a maestro playing his favorite Stradivarius. Despite the advantages of modern weapon’s technology the remaining soldier felt Tarik’s bullet bite into his chest before he could fire his own rifle. A reflex spasm jerked the trigger of the Type-56 and twenty rounds stitched a line in the sand.

As the soldier fell, the barrel elevated, and the last of the rounds caught Tarik. Two tore into his right thigh and one slammed into his abdomen. The little Kazakh’s beloved Enfield fell from his hands as he collapsed into the sands of the Taklimakan.

Like a prairie dog checking for hawks, Three Po’s head popped up from the opposite side of the berm for only an instant before darting out of sight, and back into his hole. Then slowly, with his courage growing, Po emerged from hiding and stepped into the devastated bunker.

Rhodes had finally abandoned his futile efforts to reload the Type-56 rifle. The identical model clasped in Three Po’s hands, however, was chambered, off safety, and carrying a full clip. Rhodes sat with his one good arm around a semiconscious Tarik in an effort to comfort the little man who had saved his life.

Three Po’s caution was being rapidly replaced by impudence. If he had followed the plan he laid out to the Chinese Army Captain, he would’ve attacked sooner. Following the plan would have undoubtedly saved the lives of men in the last two buggies, but that would have required more risk to Po’s own safety. Three Po had a nasty way of looking at things like that. He shoved the barrel of his rifle into Tarik’s chest and elicited a weak groan.

"Still alive, I see," Three Po said in English. He carefully withdrew Tarik’s long knife from the sheath hanging at the Kazakh’s side. "Is this what you used to murder my poor, useless brother?"

Rhodes glared at Po. The big man’s mind considered and discarded a truckload of ideas on how to kill the man standing in front him. But they were all futile. He could do nothing with the barrel of the rifle pinning both him and Tarik in the sand. Time was his only hope. Time for the bastard with the gun to make just one little mistake.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about," Rhodes said.

"One of the men you killed when you stole my trucks was my brother, Four Po. I am Three Po. I want you to remember my name as you die. I want it on your black lips as you enter the gates of hell!"

"Three Po . . . Four Po . . . what were your parents trying to prove? That they could raise idiot children or that they could count to four?"

Three Po struck like a coiled snake -- in and out -- spit quick and fang ugly. He buried the blade of Tarik’s knife deep into Rhodes already mangled shoulder. The pain moved over the big man like a flame over spilled gas. A scream drowned in the vomit that surged from his gut and choked the air from his lungs.

Po watched the effects of his handiwork with obvious satisfaction. He leaned his rifle against the berm and began turning the knife from side to side in his hands to study the blade more carefully.

"A fine piece of steel. Too fine, to grace the hands of a nomad barbarian like this." With those words, Po delivered a savage kick to the side of Tarik’s head. The blow knocked the Kazakh clear of Rhodes. Despite the pain that flooded his mind, Rhodes lashed out at Po with his good arm.

Po was too fast for the injured Rhodes. He stepped clear of the big man’s desperate lunge and drove Rhodes back with a vicious boot to the face. Rhodes fought off a black sea of unconsciousness. Instead he focused all the pain, the taste of the bile and the blood in his mouth, and the rage in his heart into one fine, venomous point. He pinned that point on Three Po with the intensity of a man driving a stake through a vampire’s heart.

Rhodes invoked all of his remaining strength with a bellowing scream of pure defiance. The sound that escaped Rhodes was borne of fury and forged in the fires of primal rage. It startled Three Po, unnerved and frightened him. He had never heard the sound of death before.

Killers like Three Po know when they’re close to death. They feel the Reaper’s breath against their flesh. Po could smell that foul, hot breath. He instinctively knew that to meet Rhodes challenge would mean his own destruction. He chose the course he had followed all his life and attacked the weak, rather than the strong. Po quickly grabbed the limp body of Tarik and pressed the razor edge of the long knife against the unconscious man’s throat.

Rhodes turned, rising on his knees, to face Po in one final clash only to find Tarik’s throat resting against the blade. A small trickle of blood already seeped from where the steel caressed the skin.

Po laughed nervously. Still fearing the wrath in Rhodes eyes. "Here I am, you black animal. You want me? Try me! Make one move and you can watch the Kazakh pig die."

Three Po edged toward the loaded rifle he had set against the berm. "I’m going to kill you slowly, big man, very slowly."

Po’s fingers closed around the barrel of the rifle.

The look on Three Po’s face was one of total disbelief as the thin metal strip tightened around his throat. Sergeant Burns rose from the sand behind him like Lazarus from the grave. He had regained consciousness in time to see Po standing with the barrel of his gun pressed into Tarik’s chest. He bided his time, sprawled among the debris of the shattered berm. His fingers, cautiously searching through the rubble he awoke in could find only the steel strapping used to bind the scavenged RPG crates. With that as his only weapon, he had played the part of a corpse until Three Po stepped back into range.

Po still held Tarik and the knife. Rhodes saw the gleam in Po’s eyes even before the blade started across Tarik’s throat. Running on pure grit, Rhodes lashed out from his kneeling position and grasped the blade, pulling it clear of the stocky Kazakh’s exposed neck. Rhodes slid his fingers along the gory blade, adding his blood to Tarik’s. The big man willingly accepted the pain in exchange for one last chance at Po.

Reaching the hilt of the knife, Rhodes massive hand closed around Po’s wrist. Three Po would have screamed as the shattering pain in his wrist set his mind on fire, but the ever tightening packing strap had already crushed his larynx and silenced his vocal cords. Burns put all his strength into tightening the steel necklace around Po’s throat. The edges of the strapping dug deep into his flesh as Po was dragged over backwards. Tarik slipped from Po’s grasp and slowly, inexorably, with Rhodes pulling from the front and Burns from the rear, the life was strangled from Three Po in that tiny, bloodied hole in the sand.

Additional excerpt from THE DEVIL'S CROSS . . .

Every beast is possessed of bowels, and the inner city contained the viscera of greater Hong Kong. This was not the facade of neon and chrome presented for businessmen and tourists. It was a world within a world. A tumor hidden beneath apparently healthy flesh. A city of brick and concrete, painted deep gray by decades of soot haze and countless generations of grime. The alleys between the buildings were clogged with decades of refuse. They were dark and narrow.

Large pipes and conduits, anchored to the permanent mounds of trash, belched fumes and gas into the stagnant air. Cables of endless description braided together with electrical lines to weave a bizarre latticework amid the pipes. These lines sagged downward where they crossed the narrow passageways to form a ceiling of black coils. Electric serpents without heads or tails, without beginning or end.

A thin black canal of sludge oozed through the center of each alley. It was less than a child’s step in width and reeked of the excrement that channeled through its crooked course. Each alley was very much like the next. Each was traveled by people all very much like the next. People who went in and came out at every hour of the day. Each making the same sounds upon the concrete and each stepping over the same spots along the black canals. In the inner city each new day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow. Each month was a copy of the last and a blueprint of the next. Each year -- a mirror of what their life had been and would be.

Anything that stood out from the routine was a topic of great interest to the souls that dwelled here. There were no secrets in a place where the weight of humankind often outweighed the buildings in which they were housed. The current chatter concerned a man who had come from the mainland, from China. The man was said to carry a large bucket with a lid pressed down tight on its top. A woman who had pleasured the stranger for a price whispered that the bucket held the head of another man.

Such gossip would seem interesting enough, but the man’s purpose in coming to the city was of even greater concern to the residents. The stranger was hiding until he could sell the contents of the bucket. It was the buyer for whom he waited that caused the concern. The stranger who carried death in a pail, had made his own personal appointment with the Grim Reaper. The stranger was waiting for Nathan Sin and, to every soul condemned by fate to dwell in the bowels of the city, Nathan Sin was death.

*****

Inspector Lee felt the engines on the Harbor Patrol craft slow as they approached the large yacht. He took one last sip of green tea from the lid of his thermos before replacing the cork and screwing the lid back on.

Whether the Nightwind fit the modern concept of a yacht with the connotation of luxury in the pursuit of pleasure was questionable. The vessel did, however, meet the origins of the word admirably, jacht – a shortened form of jachtschiff – hunting ship. She dwarfed the tiny police boat with the hundred and eighty-nine-foot length of her hull. The Nightwind was a converted ‘Bulldog’ class coastal survey ship. She displaced eight hundred tons and was powered by four Lisser-Blackstone 8-cylinder, 4-stoke diesels coupled to twin shafts. Cruising at fourteen knots, she could cover more than forty-five hundred miles without refueling.

Inspector Lee saw the precision ranging radar array was operating as always on their approach. He could also just glimpse the blades of the Wasp helicopter on the custom designed aft deck and noted that the twenty-eight-foot motor launch was moored at the landing platform and not stowed on board. He had been on the ship several times and while he appreciated her air-conditioned interior and the forced politeness of the forty-man crew he knew the Nightwind was designed for anything but pleasure.

The police boat eased alongside the boarding platform. Lee wedged his battered aluminum thermos in between some log books as he left the bridge. Before he could speak with the owner of the Nightwind, he would have to face the dragon that watched over both the ship and its master. As he placed his foot on the steel stairway leading up to the deck, the dragon peered over the ship’s railing.

The man watching him from above was well over six feet in height. A long braided pony tail trailed downward from the center of his otherwise bald scalp. He was completely naked, except for a pair of tattered green shorts. Despite the man’s lack of clothing Inspector Lee could see very little of what could be called skin. The man watching him was tattooed from the top of his shaved head to the bottom of his bare feet. The tattooed giant was a Nung, a tribe of montagnards known for their work as mercenaries on the American side of the Vietnam War. Their savage approach to life had already given them a fearful reputation in the highlands of Vietnam and in southern China for many centuries.

Lee had dealt with the Nung on more than one occasion. During the day and evening hours, the cream of Hong Kong’s social and business communities frequented the decks of the yacht. While in the small quiet hours, between the darkness and the daylight, the scum of the criminal world, the dregs of that same society, paid their respects to the master of the Nightwind.

A large tattooed hand opened the gate in the deck railing as Lee approached the top of the steel stairs. "We are always pleased to receive a visit from the Hong Kong police, Inspector Lee," said the painted man. "Even if it is unannounced."

Lee could never prepare himself for the perfect quality of the Nung’s educated voice and its airy French accent. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine himself hearing an attaché to the French ambassador or a headwaiter in a fine restaurant. But when he opened them again, the sound would still be coming from a painted savage.

"Good evening, Cho. I would like to speak with your boss,"

Lee said. The Nung was always very polite, always very courteous, and always made the Inspector very nervous.

Cho swept one arm toward an open door on the main deck. "If you will follow me."

Lee did as the Nung beckoned and dropped in behind the taller man. Nervous or not, he always found himself drawn to the incredible art that colored Cho’s flesh in more than fifty different hues and shades.

The head of a white dragon rested on the man’s right shoulder joint and the head of a black dragon rested on the left. The forearms of the beasts extended down Cho’s long arms ending where ivory claws fanned out over the backs of his hands and fingers.

The serpentine bodies of the dragons lay across the flat of his shoulder and intertwined with one another at the back of his neck. They curled about his torso as a single woven cord of black and white strands. Somewhere beneath the buttocks of his worn green shorts they separated and the individual dragon tails continued their circular journey around his legs down to his feet.

Both dragons stared through red eyes and flicked brilliant blue tongues toward the center of Cho’s chest. The rest of his flesh was a living mural of finely frocked travelers. Privileged men and women riding in elegant palanquins led processions of gift bearing servants. Ornately armored warriors, flying long streaming banners of many colors from the shafts of their spears, sat astride powerful steeds. Peasants walked among the affluent and the ferocious carrying baskets of food and samples of their crafts.

All followed the paths leading to the jaws of the dragons. The paths began on the backs of the Nung’s legs and curved upward to his groin where they merged into one common trail.

Near the center of his chest, where the blue tongues searched for his heart, the trail split apart with a separate path leading to each of the dragon heads.

The travelers, rich and poor, chose the path they wished to follow and the dragon they wished to pay homage to -- or do battle with. There was a profusion of tiny demons and wispy spirits dancing among the travelers. Some of these creatures were impaled on the spears of the warriors, while others rode on the rumps of the great horses, and an unfortunate few struggled in the grasp of the many clawed feet protruding from the coils of both the white and the black dragons.

Lee had seen the Nung on more than a dozen occasions and knew even if he saw him on a hundred more, he could never catch all the intricate detail of the tattoos. The Inspector was a patient man, however, and firmly believed he would have his opportunity to study Cho’s body at his leisure. Considering whom Cho worked for it was only a matter of time until the big Nung found his way to a cold slab in one of Hong Kong’s many morgues.

Cho led the Inspector through a corridor, passing the main salon. Lee could hear the sounds of conversation muffled by the steel walls of the ship. On Lee’s previous visits he had always been restricted to the area of the main salon. It was apparent that his current visit was something of an inconvenience. That pleased the Inspector to some considerable degree. The Nung escorted him to a small private office and left him alone after closing the door behind him.

The walls of the office were covered with knives. Knives of every conceivable description were mounted in display cases or fixed by brackets to the walls. Fairbairn-Sykes and Case sticking knives surrounded machetes, Mayan daggers, and North African fighting knives, with their distinctive cutting edge on the concave side of the blade. From the savage Senegalese machetes to the tiny push daggers and Morseth boot knives, these blades all had one thing in common. They were all fighting knives. Each designed to kill in its own unique way.

Several ebony racks were secured to one corner of a massive mahogany desk occupying the center of the room. Three knives had been selected for display against the rich black wood. The Cinquecento Italian cinquedea, a Cossack kindal, and an Arkansas toothpick seemed to carry some special reverence for the owner of the collection.

The centerpiece of the collection, however, was not a blade of steel, but a chest of wood situated in the center of the desk. The teakwood case was about the size of a large shoe box. Its entire surface was elaborately carved and inlaid with ebony, ivory and jade. Lilliputian figures dressed in oriental robes and surrounded by tiny gods and demons played out an ancient legend on the wooden tabloid.

Lee was about to open the small chest when his eyes locked onto a simple brass plaque mounted on the wall amid the daggers and dirks. It wasn’t merely the words that caught the Inspectors gaze and held it captive -- it was the way the very last of those words was spelled.

He jotted down the script verbatim in his notebook. Lee couldn’t believe his luck. Sin had finally made a wrong move and with a little effort on the Inspector’s part it could prove to be a fatal one. As he wrote the words, he knew his pen moved more from habit than from necessity. These were words one only had to read once to remember:

KILL ME FOR BOTH AND YOU’RE NATHAN SINGH.

*****

Sin stood on the bow of the Hong Kong Harbor Patrol boat as it sliced through the water of one of the greatest sea ports on earth. Junks and sampans, numbering in the thousands, crowded together in small floating communes. Linked by planks and walkways, many of the floating vessels were more akin to buoyed tenements than boats. The communist armies of China had legally take possession of the port, the city, and the souls of the millions left to bear the brunt of Beijing’s restructuring program. But so far little had changed under the two systems - one country structure.

Inspector Lee watched the enigmatic man in the bow of the boat, with an occasional glance over his shoulder at the same man’s immutable tattooed shadow standing near the stern of the small craft. The Nightwind had sailed into Hong Kong harbor nearly twelve months ago and plagued the Inspector of Police ever since. Every effort, every attempt to learn more about the ship and its dark master had met with failure. The Nightwind was registered out of Turkey, but its ownership and history were buried beneath a seemingly endless stream of corporations and holding companies.

Nathan Sin himself posed even more of a dilemma. Prior to his arrival in Hong Kong the man apparently did not exist, as though he, like the Nightwind, had been buried in some dark hole until the day they dropped anchor in the Inspector’s backyard.

But the reports of Sin’s influence in the corridors of the cities financial centers, as well as, the back alleys of the criminal world continued. Sin was everywhere and Sin was nowhere, all at the same time.

It was always whispers and innuendo. There were never any witnesses, never any proof. The man was a shadow, a specter. The rich courted his favor and outlaws curried his approval, and Inspector Lee couldn’t prove any of it.

Tonight was a perfect example of Sin’s inconstant nature. Lee had been assigned to a particularly strange homicide on the outskirts of the triangle. That part of Hong Kong ruled by poverty and violence. The whispers were all around the hotel where the killing had occurred . . . Sin . . . Sin . . . Sin.

Since all of the Inspector’s previous attempts to connect Nathan Sin to the whispers and the rumors had failed he elected to try the direct approach. His journey out to the Nightwind had been to invite Sin to visit the scene of the murder, to hear the whispers with his own ears. At first the response had been aloof and uninterested, Lee felt a little foolish for allowing his frustration to carry him into such a thin confrontation with the man responsible for it. But as Lee described the body of the victim, Sin became more attentive. A few moments later they were descending the boarding ladder with Sin almost dragging the Inspector behind him.

Lee thoughtfully patted the pocket holding his notebook. Perhaps he had finally found a crack in the armor surrounding Nathan Sin. Could something so small as two letters added to his name -- from Sin to Singh -- be the key?

*****

On a remodeled junk less than one hundred yards from the passing Harbor Patrol craft, a woman was changing her clothes and her persona. The mesh nylons and miniskirt fell away and were replaced by a pair of loose fitting black cotton slacks. The gaudy halter top and its bright sequins were tossed into a corner as she stretched her now naked torso, reaching her lightly muscled arms out to their full length. Her shoulders revealed a denser musculature than the sinewy arms. Well-defined deltoids blended into powerful pectoral muscles to support supple, if not slightly too prominent breasts for such a light frame. A rippled six-pack of abdominal muscles disappeared beneath the elastic waist band of her pants as she rotated her upper body in a continuing stretching regimen.

A knock at the door of her cabin broke her concentration. She pulled a lavender sweatshirt over her head and adjusted it around her hips as she opened the door.

The man who had knocked gave a short bow. "Doctor Po’s son, Five Po, is here. He says Sin and the Nung have left the ship. It appears they were taken away by the police."

The women smiled and brushed back several strands of black hair from her shoulder. "That would be Inspector Lee. Let me know when they return to the Nightwind."

"Madame Tu, perhaps it would be wise to maintain our surveillance. . . ."

"No!" The sharp edge of her voice caused an involuntary twitch around the man’s eyes. "You do not follow Sin. Only a fool would try."

"But our instructions . . . "

"Chang!"

Fear replaced the twitch in his eyes as the tone of her voice changed from authoritarian to something very different. Something very deadly.

"Yes, Madame Tu," he said from a bow far more exaggerated than the first.

She started to close the cabin door when Chang spoke from his bowed position. "What should I do with that?" He pointed at a large white bucket resting at the base of a stairway leading up to the deck.

Tu leaned out from the doorway to look at the object of his query. The lid of the bucket was pressed down tightly, a thick fluid oozed from several small cracks near its base. The heavy smell of formaldehyde in the hallway caused Tu to wrinkle her nose and step back into her cabin.

"Weight it down and throw it over the side."

The bowing man moved to obey. Tu stepped into the hallway and watched as he approached the oversized pail. "Wait," she said, "take it to the hold and wrap it in plastic or something to contain the smell. Then send Five Po to my cabin . . . I have a job for him tonight."

Chang scrunched up his facial muscles as the stench from the bucket strengthened with its proximity. "Dr. Po has no need of it. Why must we keep the terrible thing? The odor . . ."

Madame Tu completed his sentence with her own interpretation. ". . . the odor is perfect, Chang. When you put out bait to catch a predator, you want to be certain it will attract his interest."

*****

The milling throng Lee had seen earlier had vanished from the streets around the hotel. It was the type of crowd drawn by blinding police lights and ambulance flashers. The Inspector had wanted Sin to face just such a crowd, to watch his reactions to their stares and whispers. An investigator Lee had left in charge said that word of Sin’s imminent arrival rippled through the crowd just before it vaporized into the shadows.

Nathan Sin walked once around the room and stopped at an open window. He stared out at the empty streets.

"What are you looking at, Sin?" demanded Lee. "The body is over here?"

Sin glanced at the body on the floor. "He’s dead, Inspector. I don’t need to look him to know that"

"But how many dead men look like that?" Lee insisted as he jerked a thumb in the direction of the corpse.

The body was lying with its feet just under a small table. A folding chair appeared to have been pushed back and collapsed a few feet behind the body. The arms pointed straight out from the shoulders and the legs were fully extended and pressed tightly together. The dead man had lost all control of his bladder and bowels at some point; saliva still dribbled from his mouth.

The Inspector had heard the whispers from the street say that the dead man had been carrying a covered white bucket. The shadows said he had been bringing it to Nathan Sin. Lee raised one arm of the torso at the wrist and the entire body remained absolutely rigid.

"All that’s missing are the nails and wood," observed Lee. "It’s as though he were crucified, which he hasn’t been . . . and frozen, which he isn’t."

Sin had satisfied himself that what he was searching for was gone. He had known it would be, but had to look anyway. Just as he had known how the victim died and who had killed him when Lee had described the murder scene to him in the main salon of the Nightwind.

"The devil’s cross, Inspector," Sin said with a sigh.

At the sound of Sin’s words, Cho turned from where he stood watching the hotel hallway. The big Nung seemed to pale, a strange pallor colored his face. Lee observed the reaction. Could it be that for the first time since he had known the tattooed giant he was witnessing fear on the face of the savage?

Lee spoke to Sin while keeping his eyes on the visibly upset Nung. "What are you talking about?"

"The devil’s cross," Sin repeated, "that’s what your man here died of."

"I still don’t . . . " Lee began.

"Look under his chin, Lee. You’ll find the imprint of a small spider."

The stiffness of the corpse forced the Inspector to get down on his knees and crane his neck this way and that until the beam of his flashlight found the trademark of the killer. It was a small red oval with eight lines, four on each side of the oval, radiating outward. It could only be described as a spider.

Lee got to his feet quickly, glaring at Sin.

"Only the murderer could have known . . ." he didn’t finish the thought.

A recent report from Interpol flashed into the Inspector’s mind. An assassin had committed several murders in mainland China over the past few months. The killer, dubbed the Spider because of the trademark imprint on every victim, had been operating in Europe and the West for more than ten years. Only in the past twelve months had victims of the Spider started showing up in Asia which prompted the Interpol bulletin.

"You’re saying this is an assassination by the Spider?"

"Yes," responded Sin, "tell your Coroner to check for strychnine. He’ll find the victim died of asphyxia due to strychnine or, at least, something similar."

Lee picked up his thermos from where he had set it on a small table earlier and poured himself a cup of green tea. The street voices had said Sin was involved in the death of this stranger in the hotel room. Sin seemed to know how the man died and had fixed the blame on some character called the Spider. Nice dramatic effect. But add to that the fact the Spider had reportedly begun to operate in Asia only one year ago -- just about the time that the Nightwind and Nathan Sin showed up in the middle of Hong Kong harbor.

Lee took a slow sip of tea.

*****

Five Po gathered up what little courage he possessed before knocking on Madame Tu’s door. He hated dealing with this vicious little slut. He was a scientist, a hereditary geneticist, he belonged in a laboratory among his instruments and notes, not on a filthy junk in the middle of Hong Kong harbor among murderers and thieves. His father must be mad to . . .

The door opened before his knuckles reached the wood or his mind finished the thought. "Come in, Five. I have something I want you to do."

Po shuddered and entered Madame Tu’s parlor.

*****

Inspector Lee ordered the forensics people back to photograph the image of the spider on the victim’s throat.

Sin and Cho opted to wait in the street while Lee finished upstairs. Cho had regained his composure, but there was still a slight quaver in his voice.

"What will you do, my lord?" The Nung spoke the question in his native dialect.

Sin replied in the same tongue. "Nothing. The next move is up to her."

Cho scanned the empty street as he spoke. "You have always told me that it would mean your death to confront her."

"Then we must make every effort to see that doesn’t happen, my friend," Sin smiled. The smile seemed to reassure the big Nung that all was well with the man he was sworn to serve.

Cho suddenly stepped in front of Sin. "Someone watches from the alley across the street, my lord."

Sin gently placed his hand on the bigger man’s shoulder.

"Relax, Cho, she wouldn’t do anything as public as this. She wants it to be one on one. Just her and me."

The man watching from the alley stepped into the light of the street and began walking toward them. He was trying to look in every direction at the same time and quite obviously would have preferred to be somewhere else.

The stranger held out his hand as the distance between them narrowed down to a few feet and said, in English, "I have a note for Sin."

Cho moved to block the smaller man’s path. "It’s all right," Sin said calmly, "let him deliver his message."

The nervous man froze on the same spot he had been when Cho first moved toward him. He was terrified of the Nung. "Keep him away from me!" he shouted as his voice rose in tenor.

Sin stepped between Cho and the panicking messenger. "No one will harm you. Give me the note."

The folded piece of paper was handed over quickly and, almost as quickly, its anxious bearer bid a hasty retreat back to the soothing darkness of the alley.

*****

Five Po tried for several minutes to catch his breath before realizing he was hyperventilating. Slowly, steadily he brought his breathing under control. He began to feel better. He had stood toe to toe with Nathan Sin. From his earliest memories, Sin had been the monster of his childhood. He was the youngest son and his brothers would bring him back the nightmare tales of Nathan Sin that they had heard from their father. As he grew older, he heard these stories from his father’s own lips. The invective tirades about the devil Sin were for Five Po what the tales of Mother Goose were to other children. And now he had faced the very devil himself -- let any of his loud mouth siblings top that!

*****

Cho watched Five Po fade back into the shadows of the alley. "A strange little man. What message did he bring?"

Nathan Sin finished reading the words scrawled on the paper and looked at Cho with a smile different from the last. A smile laced with a heavy sadness. "Tu wants a meeting."

The previous pallor blanched the Nung’s face once more. "We will not go! We can be back on the Nightwind within the hour and clear of Hong Kong harbor before dawn."

Sin’s tone was a mixture of determination softened with resignation. "No, my friend, we must meet with her. The note confirms that she has what the dead man in the hotel had brought for us from China. We have no choice."

Cho bowed his head in acceptance. "When and where, my lord?"

Sin glanced at the note again. "At a monastery in Peng Canyon in just under four hours from now. Find Lee and tell him we’ve been patient enough. Tell him we want to go back now!"

"We return to the Nightwind, my lord?"

"Yes, I want to pick up some equipment and send off a message before we meet with Tu."

"And then, lord?"

The sadness was gone from Nathan Sin’s smile. There was something else in its place, something cold . . . dead cold.

"And then, Cho, we keep a long overdue appointment with the Spider."

*****

From a darkened window on the second floor of the hotel, Inspector Lee sipped his tea and listened carefully. He could just hear the words emanating up from the deserted, silent street.

It was all going to drop into his lap in one marvelous night. The tattooed Nung and his dark master, Nathan Sin, in some kind of smuggling scheme with Interpol’s deadly Spider and the murder of the man upstairs all wrapped up in one neat package.

Lee gingerly screwed the cap back on his thermos and hurried to the stairway to let Cho find him.

*****

Inspector Lee fumbled with the cap of his thermos while waiting for the printout to finish. The green tea was cold. He hated that. He pulled the paper free of the machine and read it carefully. Now his theory about Sin and the coincidental timing of the arrival of the Spider began to take on real probability in the Inspector’s mind.

The plaque on board the Nightwind had been the key. The file in his hand was from the Interpol archives. It documented the known history of one Nathan Singh. It was a very thick file and told a very sordid tale.

Near the close of the Vietnam War a series of grisly murders occurred on both sides of the DMZ (De-Militarized Zone). The imprint of a rose on the face of the victims characterized the murders. The imprints were made with the victim’s own blood and known as the blood rose murders. One man emerged as the prime suspect, Nathan Singh, and was christened by investigators at the time as the Blood Rose Assassin.

The file contained the description of several murders and the autopsy results. Cause of death was attributed in most cases to knife wounds. The killer was apparently quite skilled at ending life’s conflicts very quickly or very slowly and with inordinate amounts of pain. Much of the information contained in the file had been censored and labeled simply restricted access. The last page contained a list of additional suspects, most of whom had been systematically eliminated and a few who were listed as possibilities secondary to Singh.

Lee was disappointed to some degree. He had hoped to find some mention of the use of poisons in the murderer’s M.O. Even without such corroboration the Inspector was confident that his first impression had been correct. The file indicated that most of the warrants issued by authorities in China and Vietnam named Singh as the killer. About one year ago the warrants had been withdrawn.

Shortly after that Nathan Sin had sailed his yacht past the outer buoys of Hong Kong harbor and within weeks of the ship’s arrival the Spider had begun to operate over the border, in mainland China.

Lee studied the names and descriptions of the most recent victims of the Spider. Almost every victim had worked for the Beijing government.

It was all too convenient, all too coincidental for Lee to swallow. The timing, the marking of the murder victims to feed some sick vanity. It was all too coincidental. He glanced over the last sheet of paper with the list of other suspects on it. None of the names sounded familiar. Lee tore the last sheet free and stuffed it into his coat pocket. He would run the names later to see if there might be other strings he could tie to Nathan Sin’s tail.

There was no doubt in the Inspector’s mind who was behind Sin and his high-tech yacht. There was also no doubt in Lee’s mind that Nathan Singh, Sin, and the Spider were all one in the same.

A quick look at his watch told him he would have to hurry. A stop at the Coroner’s office where the victim of the devil’s cross had been taken. A refill of green tea. Then on to a very important appointment at the Theravada Temple on the cliffs of Peng Canyon.

*****

Cho spread the topographical maps of Peng Canyon out on the table in Sin’s private quarters on the Nightwind.

Sin was on the other side of the room. He was slowly stretching his body, arching his back to a near impossible angle. The walls were covered with an array of wood carvings, stone statues, and brass castings. Gods. Gods of every shape and description were presented in one form or another throughout the cabin. Gods of fertility from China, gods of war from Japan, Indonesian idols and Buddhists statuary peered out from every corner and cranny.

A large stone figure rested against one wall with its massive arms crossed over its chest, its oversized ruby eyes watching Sin. The monolith had been cut from stone centuries ago to guard a temple long since crumbled to ruin. The ominous sculpture seemed content to watch the lithe mortal gliding methodically over the hard wood floor at its feet.

Sin was not particularly large as mortals go. Lightly built, almost thin in appearance, he was lost in the rhythmic motions of an ancient kata. The motions were so smooth, so subtle that he seemed something more than a creature of brittle bone and flesh. Sin was a sculpture, a fluid sculpture . . . liquid in the shape of a man. But if he was indeed liquid, it was liquid steel.

Every muscle in his body was visible and defined, the arms and legs, long and sinewy. Glistening black eyes suggested the stare of the cobra and reinforced the overall impression of a viper’s velocity of movement and suddenness.

Waves of long, deep auburn hair fell to his shoulders, flowing in unison with the movements of the ancient exercise to which he’d surrendered himself. His hair was moist with perspiration where it brushed against the taut bronze skin. Beneath the abundant locks a smooth hawk shaped face framed the dark eyes and sharp jaw line of the Blood Rose Assassin.

*****

The Coroner was waiting when Lee arrived at the morgue. He had confirmed Sin’s diagnosis of what actually killed the man in the hotel room.

"Strychnine, Inspector!" he said. "How did you know?"

"The devil told me," Lee responded solemnly.

"Real nasty shit, Lee." The coroner was bent over the open body cavity of the corpse, lost in that morbid, private world that fascinates pathologists and makes the rest of us just a little too uncomfortable. "Yes, sir . . . real nasty. I would have missed it if you hadn’t given me a heads up."

"The strychnine?" inquired Lee.

"Oh, this is much more than your over-the-counter stuff, Inspector. It’s got to be some kind of home brew . . . private stock. We’re talking curare . . . ignatia . . . West African poison dart stuff. Nasty, very nasty."

Lee was feeling a little left out of the loop. "You want to clarify that for me?"

"Sorry, I haven’t had time to break it down, that’ll take weeks . . . if it’s even possible. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to put together a very lethal compound. I saw some similar physiological symptoms when I did two years volunteer work in Africa. Bottom line is this stuff gives the victim a rush. Hyper acuities of hearing, vision, most of the olfactory senses go into overdrive. The victim begins to perspire profusely when the drug reaches a certain concentration in the body. At that point any loud noise can activate the synaptic response and throw the victim into a violent muscular-skeletal spasm. You get a massive tonic clonic contraction of the anti-gravity muscles. The paralysis results in respiratory failure and death by asphyxia. Yes sir . . . nasty, very nasty!"

*****

The temple at Peng Canyon is relatively new as Buddhist temples go, only three-hundred and twelve year’s old. It is devoted to the poor and the homeless. Visitors bring food and clothing for the ever changing faces of the lost, who frequent the temple grounds.

It’s a squarish complex on the edge of a stone cliff. At the wall nearest the cliffs, matching sets of steps, twenty feet across descended from either corner of the main walls. The steps bordered one side or the other of a one-hundred yard long, fifty yard wide shelf in the face of the cliff, an area slightly larger than an American football field. Two enormous brass gongs stand at the opposite head of each step way and at the center of the cliff shelf the temple’s main attraction squats amid carefully maintained floral gardens.

A bronze Buddha more than sixty feet tall rests in its eternal lotus position, gazing peacefully over the expanse of Peng canyon. A white graveled pathway winds through manicured rows of mangrove and nipa palms. The foliage forms a complicated green maze thickened by tropical evergreens and dense stands of bamboo that eventually lead to the Buddha. There are endless varieties of flowers blooming along the low walls of the maze. Braided in among the flowers, thick vines of brambles, bristling with sharp tapered thorns, wait for the inattentive visitor. The faithful who visit the shrine walk the path to Buddha and deal with life’s blossoms and thorns during the course of their circuitous journey.

When Inspector Lee arrived, he selected a spot near the brass gong on the East side of the temple. The west end gong was directly across the length of the maze from him. From his position near the gong he could look down into the patterns of the maze. On his second pan of the area with his binoculars, Lee spotted it. A white bucket, like the one described at the murder scene earlier in the evening, sitting at the feet of the Buddha.

This had to be what the victim of the devil’s cross had smuggled out of China. It had to be what he was killed for and what Nathan Sin was coming here to reclaim. The Inspector ruled out drugs. The bucket could not hold a sufficient quantity of narcotics to interest Sin. Lee’s musing about the contents of the bucket was interrupted by a rustling sound behind him.

He spun quickly around, gun in hand, ready to deal with whichever Singh, Sin, Spider or other killer might be trying to sneak up on him. The killer sneaking up on him turned out to be an old woman dressed in rags. She was picking through the backpack of sandwiches Lee had hidden in the bushes. The temple wretch was clasping the Inspector’s beloved thermos in the tattered gloves that covered her hands.

Lee pulled the bag gently away from the ancient face that stared at him through layers of wrinkles and dirt. He fished a sandwich and two cans of Pepsi out of the bag and offered them to the leathery old woman. When she reached for them, he pulled back and pointed at the thermos in her hands. The woman in rags considered his proposal for a moment then, grinning through a mass of tobacco blacked teeth, accepted the trade and scurried away with her treasures. Lee tucked the thermos under his arm, grabbed the last remaining sandwich and crawled carefully back to his vantage point near the gong.

He had worked his way through the food and the last of his tea without seeing anyone enter the maze. He was beginning to sense a heaviness in his eye lids. Deciding his position was too comfortable he shifted from lying on the ground to more of a crouch. His next binocular scan of the Buddha almost brought him to his feet. Nathan Sin was standing only inches from the white bucket.

Impossible! No one could have crossed so much space directly under Lee’s constant surveillance without being spotted. Nevertheless, there he was.

Two people stepped from behind the brass gong across the maze from Lee’s own. One man and a woman. The woman was dressed in a very similar manner to Nathan Sin. Lee’s 10x50 field glasses could make out the face of the woman quite clearly. She was Oriental and very easy on the eyes. He thought it unfortunate that beautiful women always seemed drawn to such men as these.

The woman broke the silence by calling out to Sin where he stood near at the center of the garden maze. "You will find what you have been seeking -- in the bucket."

The design of the garden and the cliff’s acoustics made it possible to hear the woman’s words clearly anywhere in the natural amphitheater.

Sin didn’t doubt the woman. The lid remained sealed. Lee had hoped for a glimpse into the container before making his move. Nathan Sin had already started toward the steps leading up to the woman and her companion.

When Sin exited the maze and approached the first step, the woman and her companion started down from the top. Inspector Lee now had them all out in the open. Lee could feel the perspiration running down his face. His heart was pounding, the palms of his hands sweating with anticipation. He stood up in front of the huge brass gong with his revolver in one hand and a portable radio in the other.

"Sin! I have three carloads of Hong Kong police only a heartbeat and a radio call from where you stand. You are all under arrest!"

Lee felt he was on a roll. He had Nathan Sin! He had them all. He could hear every word they said from across the huge amphitheater with crystal clarity. They were in the sights of his pistol. He couldn’t have had a clearer sight picture if he’d brought along a rifle with a telescopic scope. The perspiration was running freely down his face and mixing with small bits of spittle that oozed from the corners of his mouth.

Sin turned to look at Lee and the Inspector experienced a rush of adrenalin that left him almost dizzy with the euphoria of this moment he had waited so long for. It was the reaction of the woman that surprised the Inspector of Police. She produced a large semiautomatic pistol from behind her back and began to laugh, almost hysterically.

"Excellent timing, Inspector Lee," she said. "I knew I could depend on you to choose just the right moment."

Lee drew a careful bead on the woman. But before he could fire she threw something on the steps below where she stood. Lee couldn’t make out what she had thrown at first, although it was pliable and soft, it tumbled clumsily down two or three steps until it came to rest on the stone. It was a mask. A mask of latex and rubber designed to simulate wrinkles and dirt.

Lee began to perspire profusely about his entire body. He remembered the soiled folds of flesh on the face of the old woman who had held his thermos in her hands. He remembered the words of the Coroner and the rigid body in the morgue. He could no longer feel the gun or the radio in his hands. The tips of his fingers felt as through they were drifting away, free of his hands.

There was a voice speaking to him from even farther away than the tips of his fingers. The voice was coming nearer. It was a familiar voice. The voice Sin.

"Don’t fire your weapon," the voice said, "try to sit, try to breathe."

Lee couldn’t feel the gun in his hand, but he could see it. It was like watching someone else’s hand. He ordered the hand not to pull the trigger. He screamed at the hand within the silence of his own mind. Slowly, grudgingly the hand obeyed, it opened and the revolver fell away. It seemed to drift downward through the air as though it were falling through warm honey.

The woman at the head of the steps laughed again. She raised the barrel of her weapon and pointed it in Lee’s direction. The barrel of the pistol flashed red and brilliant white. An instant later the 10mm bullet slammed into the gong behind Lee.

*

*