That they knew each other proved the Doctor had lied, but then this visit could be a trap, since Li was now a man alone against all these guards.

'Oh, very comfortable. Nice place you have here one of Sa.s.soon's?'

'Thank you, and no.' She rifled through the oddments of sweets and technological junk on the platter, finally retrieving the Tong a.s.sa.s.sin's locket the Doctor had kept. She smiled sweetly after opening it to glance at the geomantic compa.s.s within. 'My father had it built based upon a house he once stayed at in France: Vaux-leVicomte. The original was built by Louis Quatorze's finance minister, and legend has it that when Louis saw how impressive it was he immediately had the man jailed for embezzling his funds.'

'Louis always was headstrong; I did try to warn him that the minister's brother was head of the Compagnie du Saint Sacrement, but he wouldn't listen. Had to do things the hard way, did old Louis. That was just the way things were three hundred years ago, of course.' Li wondered if he could reach his keys on the platter to separate himself from this lunatic without the guards getting jumpy. 'Aren't you going to ask us who we are, who we're working for and what we're doing snooping around your house?'

'I could if you really want me to, but since I already know, there wouldn't be much point to it. You're the Doctor, you detected the influence of the Dragon Paths though I'm not sure how and you saw me at the docks.' She let the locket spin gently on the end of the chain. 'You also stole some of my property.'

'You had an odd choice of people to entrust it to.'

'Call it a reminder of loyalty.'

'Ah.' The Doctor grinned hopefully. 'In that case, now that you've answered my questions, I release you then?'

'Not quite.'

'I thought not. You don't seem very surprised that I talk about meeting someone three hundred years ago.'

'If you found your way here, you must know that we are members of the Tong of the Black Scorpion. You did cross our path in 1889, and we do have a pa.s.sing acquaintance with the theoretical possibility of time travel, thanks to our late lamented G.o.d, Weng-Chiang.'

'Magnus Greel was no G.o.d.'

'Of course not!' She came round the table to sit by the Doctor. She lowered her voice to a more conversational tone.

'What is a G.o.d, eh? Theology was never my strong suit. As I see it, Doctor, those like you and I are G.o.ds, so to speak. A G.o.d is someone who can truly shape their own destiny; no more, no less. Your interference now is a nuisance, and in shaping my destiny, I like to be free of nuisances.'

'Ah, you want rid of me. I wondered when you'd get round to that. So, what did you have in mind?' He snapped his fingers. 'I've got it! Bored to death by revolutionary speeches.'

HsienKo shook her head, and Li could have sworn there was real admiration in her look. 'I should have you shot, but...Two things. Firstly, only your interference now is a nuisance. All your knowledge, and wisdom oh yes, I know you have a great deal of common sense that's all raw ore.

It's waiting to be refined.' She looked at him with a canted eyebrow. 'We will be friends, later, but not yet. Treason, said Cardinal Richelieu, is a matter of dates; well, so is enmity.

Secondly, I owe you one favour, Doctor. You probably don't even know why, but if I'm to honour my ancestors and myself, I must repay the family debt. Once a car is ready, we will take you through the Dragon Path to the Orkney Isles. By the time you travel normally from there back to Shanghai, my work will be finished and so you will not be able to interfere.

Afterwards, you may return and we will talk further. Then you'll see that I am not so terrible after all, and we shall become friends.'

'Orkney is not really my preferred climate; couldn't I go to Hawaii instead? Sun, sea, sand and surf; that sort of thing?'

'Or I could kill both yourself and the inspector here.' She shook her head. 'I have no quarrel with you, Doctor; not really.'

'Then the men you sent to kill me didn't really mean it?'

HsienKo laughed; a delightfully musical sound, Li thought, despite the circ.u.mstances. 'I see you have a sense of humour. Those men were merely a formality arranged by Kwok here. It was purely business think nothing of them. To have ignored the threat posed by your abilities would have been an insult to you.'

'Well, I always thought I was man enough to take a few insults. I mean, I know Romana says I can be terribly childish, but '

'What's wrong with being childish now and again? The more developed the mind, the greater the need for the relaxation of play. What I have to arrange will occur soon, and then I will be gone. Peace will return to the country.'

'Obviously you haven't read the papers lately.'

'The j.a.panese expansion? That can be nipped in the bud.'

She fell silent, looking away quickly. Li had seen that look before, in the eyes of prisoners who had just incriminated themselves.

'Aren't you going to explain your plans first?'

'Ah, then you escape and stop me? You've been watching too many Republic serials. I am not Gale Sondergaard.'

Li agreed silently. She and Kwok seemed more like some evil version of William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles.

'Can I ask a question?' the Doctor said, more quietly.

'If you must.'

'How are you generating the chronon energy that propels you between telluric interstices?'

'Generate what?' HsienKo hastily covered a frown with a demure look. 'A lady must keep some secrets.' She stood and turned to the guards. 'Give them refreshments, but keep them here until their car is ready.' Beckoning Kwok to follow, she left.

The Doctor stared off into s.p.a.ce. 'So, she doesn't have the segment...And isn't generating chronon energy herself.' He nodded absently. 'Or at least not consciously...'

Outside, HsienKo mulled over the conversation as she and Kwok walked round the base of the main staircase. That last question had meant more than it had at first seemed. The Doctor was after something, but what?

Kwok caught her hand, and they stopped. 'Those two could be dangerous and this house is compromised. Let me kill them for you, beloved; I promise no one will trouble you again.'

'That is the Tong way and not following it could lose me face, but neglecting a debt to my ancestors would be even more damaging.' Why, she wondered, wasn't the Doctor embracing her offer of safe pa.s.sage. Killing demeaned her most uncomfortably, but she would do it if absolutely necessary. She sighed, resolving not to kill the Doctor. Going by both her father's notes and the Doctor's careful hiding of his true thoughts here, he was too intelligent to waste. When Weng-Chiang had been returned to her, she would need the Doctor. He would make an excellent adviser. First, however, he had to be kept separate from her work, so that he would not misunderstand and side against her. 'Think of it as returning to our roots the Tongs were originally founded as rebel bands combating oppressive governments. No one ever said they had to be our our oppressive governments.' oppressive governments.'

Kwok nodded. 'I know you do what you think best, but you are inexperienced in dealing with troublemakers. The first thing I learned at the Canton Club was that the only sure way to prevent trouble recurring was to knock the troublemaker down so hard he could not get up again.'

'Isn't that why I'm going to Hsinking? The Doctor isn't a troublemaker; more a stroke of ill luck. Let him jinx someone else until the circ.u.mstances are different then this ill luck becomes good fortune. The Doctor has great ch'i ch'i. I would like to exploit that.'

'After what happened to your father?'

'My father's destiny was set from the moment he left.' She wished that her belief in that view of events could damp the pain.

'I just don't want to see you hurt.'

Concern again; it had always been Kwok's main feature.

How many other men could she say that about? She squeezed his hand gently. 'It's all right. Guard them personally if you like. You can drive them through the Dragon Path to Orkney, to be on the safe side.'

'Why drive? The nearest path large enough to accommodate a car is at the quarry.'

'Would you trust the Doctor with a compa.s.s of his own?

He would reset it to go somewhere else, and we'd never find him. No, one compa.s.s in a car will carry both of them as well as a driver and guard. We've few enough compa.s.ses anyway, so I don't want to spare any more.'

He nodded. 'All right. I'll see to it.'

Li tried to think of a way out of this. The Doctor and the woman seemed connected, but opposites, so that threatening the Doctor probably wouldn't persuade her to release himself and his handcuffed companion. The armed guards were too alert to try anything more direct.

The Doctor leaned back, tilting his hat down over his eyes.

Li looked out of the nearest bay window onto the wide patio.

HsienKo was there with her back to them, now wearing her white overcoat. A little boy in a sailor-type uniform was with her. Li had seen such outfits before, worn by j.a.panese children in their Concession. It was their school uniform apparently.

Did this mean that the Black Scorpion were resorting to hostage-holding? It was certainly a long tradition.

HsienKo and the child walked down the steps towards a waiting car that flew the rising sun emblem. Once they had got in, the car drove off out of view. Li was so frustrated he could feel his blood boiling. He ran his free hand over his widow's peak. 'Aren't we going to escape?' At least then he could lock up the Doctor and throw away the key.

'What is the first thing you would do if two intruders who had compromised your security got away from you?' the Doctor murmured.

'Move.'

'Exactly. What we want is to escape in such a way that they don't know we've escaped until after we've been back here for a proper look round.'

Li considered this. 'In the car?'

'Who's going to miss a prisoner who has already been taken away?'

The Kwantung Army Intelligence headquarters at Hsinking was a large three-winged edifice five storeys high. The roof had been modified at some time to give it more the appearance of a j.a.panese castle, with a peaked red double roof.

HsienKo parked the staff car near the kitchen entrance and led her diminutive pa.s.senger over to the door, from which steam scented with cooking spices emerged. A short hallway littered with sc.r.a.ps led to the actual kitchen; HsienKo was gratified to see a small grating set into the wall. She handed a satchel to the uniformed schoolboy, then opened the grating.

'You know where to go.'

He slithered into the vent behind the grating and she sealed it up again before stepping back outside. Two guards were looking at her car. 'Can I help you?'

The guards looked at each other. She wondered if they were admiring her; Kwok said anyone would. 'Papers.'

HsienKo handed over a sheaf of doc.u.ments permitting her to be here as an officer's personal geisha. The papers were legitimate, oddly enough, though it had taken many lies to acquire them. The guards were obviously curious about HsienKo's presence, but not overly concerned; many families and camp followers had joined the forces in Manchukuo, especially those from the Kuril islands. The presence of a personal geisha was rare, but not unheard of. 'These look fine,' the guard said finally. 'You're here for lunch?'

'Some men seem to like their home comforts. Also, my son wished to see where I worked when he found out it was with the army. He wants to be a samurai but doesn't realize there aren't such things any longer. I hope he doesn't get lost in such a large kitchen.'

'Don't worry; a boy in school uniform is conspicuous enough not to get lost.'

A young boy in a school uniform would indeed be conspicuous, but also able to hide in smaller nooks and crannies. In this case the ventilator shafts, too narrow for an adult to pa.s.s through, provided a fine means of transit throughout the building.

Cold eyes peeked out from under the uniform cap, noting what was going on through each grille he pa.s.sed. Mostly there were just corridors, though he had walked through a radio room on the floor below and a bathroom on this level. If his calculations were correct, the next vent should be at his destination.

He was right. The next grille looked out onto a drab office covered in maps. A man in shirtsleeves was working at a desk.

He was heavyset with bushy eyebrows. The intruder felt a thrill of antic.i.p.ation, like a gourmand sitting down in a restaurant. 'Head of Counterintelligence,' a voice said in his head.

The telephone rang and the man turned his back to answer it. The intruder pushed open the grille swiftly and silently, then slithered out. The man was chattering away about some trivial subject, not hearing the tiny footfalls. He turned round to check some reference and saw the intruder. 'Who are you?'

His voice switched to a strangulated gargle as the knife slid up, then twisted, under his breastbone. He made quite a thud when he hit the floor. The voice that was barely audible on the other end of the phone sounded puzzled, then became agitated.

The knife slid through the telephone cable as easily as through flesh and the voice was silenced.

The intruder lifted his school satchel onto the desk and, reaching inside, pulled the metal pin that his fingers found in there. Understanding that there was now a need for urgency, he squeezed back into the air vent and started retracing his route. There was no time to waste replacing the grille so he ignored it in favour of rapid movement.

He reached the vertical shaft down to the next floor and allowed himself to fall down it. Behind him, there was a sharp crack and deep whooshing sound.

HsienKo and the guards glanced up as a pair of third-floor windows blew out in a fireball. Alarm bells started ringing and immediately, the guards looked round for an attacker. One of them pushed HsienKo down behind the car just in case. She tried to resist a tight smile, but was glad that the guard was behind her and couldn't see her face.

Soldiers dashed around frantically while men and women, both civilian and military, poured from the building. 'My baby,' HsienKo wailed, recalling her role. 'What about my baby?' Like so many men, she noted, the two guards were eager to please a woman; they ran back to the kitchen door and disappeared inside.

Two men from a third-floor guard post, fearing for both their careers and their lives, held wet cloths against their faces as they tried to enter the burning office. The flames were far too intense, however, and the occupant of the office was clearly dead. No living man would have been so immobile.

One of them pointed into a barely visible corner of the inferno. 'Look; the air vent! Spread the word.'

HsienKo had been counting silently in her head, trying to match the time between putting the schoolboy into the air vents and the explosion, in order to judge when he would emerge again. She decided to err on the conservative side and went to the kitchen a few seconds early. It was just as well she did; the schoolboy was already emerging.

The two guards emerged from the inner door. 'The cooks say they haven't seen a boy go in here...' They stopped when they realized what they were seeing. 'He's the one in the air vent!' Before they could ready their rifles, HsienKo produced a pistol and shot each unlucky man between the eyes. She felt a stab of pain in her heart, knowing she should have found some other way of covering her tracks. Unfortunately, no such ideas had presented themselves quickly enough.

Not stopping for anything, she pulled the schoolboy fully free from the vent and scooped him up. She wasn't concerned about being stopped: no one would challenge a woman carrying a child from a burning building, even if their presence there was obviously out of place.

She reached the car in a few steps and took a deep breath.

This was the most difficult and dangerous part, but to win everything one had to risk everything; that was something she had learned in a hundred gambling dens over the years.

Holding the schoolboy in one arm, she reached in through the car window as if reaching for the door handle. She started to step forward even as she tugged the pin from the bundle of explosives that was wired under the dashboard just in front of the door.

The car vanished in a billowing flash of fire and shrapnel.

Eleven.

wok had opened the door to let the Doctor and Li out of Kthe dining-room. The guards followed watchfully. The Doctor rubbed at the side of his nose. 'You know, chronon radiation can produce the oddest side-effects. If you send me away, you might regret it.'

Kwok had expected some sort of last-minute con trick like this. 'Begging doesn't become you.' He showed them out to where a four-door sedan waited on the drive. 'Get in.'

'Well, it's been nice visiting.'