Dr. Death (10 page)

"Of course," said Li Chin calmly. "But what about our clothes?"

Both of our surgeons gowns had been ripped. The clothes underneath were contaminated. It was pretty obvious what had to be done.

"Strip," I ordered, suiting my actions to my words.

"Everything?" asked Li Chin, looking a little suspicious.

"Everything," I said. "Unless you'd like to wake up one day to find your fingers falling off."

"But where will we go? Without clothes…"

"There's somebody waiting for me in a car. Just a few blocks away," I reassured her.

Li Chin looked up from unstrapping her bra.

"A few blocks!" she said. "You don't mean we're going to…"

I nodded, stepping out of my shorts and moving toward the front door.

"Ready?"

Li Chin, tossing aside a wisp of panties, looked dubious, but she nodded. I grabbed her by the hand and flung open the front door.

"Go!"

I like to think we were San Juan's first streakers.

Gonzalez had been dozing. When he woke, at my rapping on the window, to find a naked Nick Carter standing hand-in-hand with a beautiful and extremely naked Chinese girl, his jaw dropped to his shoes. For a moment he did nothing but stare. And not at me. I couldn't really blame him. Li Chin was small, almost tiny, but every inch of her body was in perfect proportion. Jet black hair fell down to her small, firm breasts, with the large aureole and erect nipples. Her thighs and legs were sleek, the belly lean and curving. Her face was punctuated by a perfect little doll's nose, and when she drew aside finely defined lips, her teeth dazzled. It was hard to believe this girl was a Kung Fu master — or should I say mistress — who could take on any number of men in unarmed combat. Not that I had any intention of forgetting it.

I rapped on the window again, startling Gonzalez out of his trancelike stare.

"Gonzalez," I said, "if you don't mind interrupting your study of physical culture, I'd appreciate your unlocking the door. And I think the lady would appreciate your jacket."

Gonzalez scrambled for the door handle.

"Door," he said. "Yes. Of course. Door. Jacket. Of course. I'd be most happy to give the lady my door. I mean my jacket."

It took a few seconds of confusion, but finally the door did get opened, and Li Chin was covered from shoulders to knees by Gonzalez' jacket. I got a raincoat which, Gonzalez not being particularly tall, put up a courageous struggle to reach my thighs.

"All right," I said, settling into the back seat with Li Chin, settling Wilhelmina and Hugo temporarily into the pockets of Gonzalez' raincoat and ignoring his unspoken but obviously desperate desire to find out what had happened. "Let's get the hell out of here. But not back to the hotel yet. Just drive around for awhile. This little lady has a few things to tell me."

"Sure," said Li Chin, calmly. She rummaged in Gonzalez' jacket pockets until she found a pack of cigarettes, offered one to me, and when I declined lit one for herself and took a deep drag. "Where should I begin?"

"At the beginning. With basics. Such as, exactly what are you trying to do and why?"

"Okay. But don't you think the man who's driving should look in front of him more often than he looks in the rearview mirror?"

"Gonzalez," I said warningly.

Gonzalez glanced guiltily back at the road, and continued to drive at a speed of about twenty miles an hour.

"Do you know anything about Chinatown?" asked Li Chin.

"Does anybody know anything about Chinatown if they're not ethnic Chinese?"

"A good point," smiled Li Chin. "Anyway, I'm the daughter of Lung Chin. I'm also his only child. Lung Chin is head of the Chin family, or the Chin clan, if you like. It's a big clan, and I don't mind telling you that it's a very wealthy one. With a lot of different business interests, not only in New York's Chinatown, Hong Kong, and Singapore, but scattered all around the world. Since my father didn't have any other children, specifically, any sons, I was raised and educated to look out for the interests of the Chin clan, wherever they might be and whatever they might be. In any way I might have to."

"Including a judicious use of the mastery of the martial arts?"

"Yes," Li Chin nodded. "And a study of the humanities at Vassar. And a study of technology in general at M.I.T."

"A widely educated young lady," I remarked.

"I have to be. My job at this point is, well, you might call it a troubleshooter for the clan. When something's not running smoothly, or there's a threat against the clan's interests, wherever and whatever, my job is to jump in and straighten things out."

"And what isn't running smoothly, or is threatened, at this point?" I asked, already sure of the answer.

"Oh come on, Carter," she said. "You must have guessed that by now. The clan has heavy interests in Venezuelan oil. And oil in a few other spots off South America, too. And the OAS is threatening to destroy off-shore oil rigs and oil refineries all up and down the coast. Right?"

"Very good," I said grimly. "Very well informed. I don't suppose you'd like to tell me
how
you're so well informed?"

"Of course not," she said cheerfully. "Any more than I can tell you how I learned you'd met up with Michelle Duroche in Tangier, and learned it in time to tail you from there. Let's just say the Chin clan is a big one, and it has a lot of ears in a lot of places."

"Including electronic ears inserted into cigarettes," I reminded her.

"Yes," she said matter-of-factly. "You were my only clue to the whereabouts of Duroche. I couldn't risk losing you. And we both know damned well that Fernand Duroche is the key to the whole OAS threat. Anyway, now that we both know where our dear Dr. Death was taken after he'd been hidden in the leprosarium…"

"Hold it," I broke in sharply. "Exactly where do
you
think he was taken?"

"Oh come on, Carter. You're playing games with me again," she said impatiently. "I heard what Jorge said as well as you did. Why do you think I flew down here and volunteered as a nurse as soon as my bug picked up your conversation with Duroche's daughter — just before you smoked it out of commission. By the way, how did it taste?"

"Foul," I said. "But you haven't answered my question."

"Jorge said 'Martinique. Your friend Akhmed's last word was Volcano. Shall I recite the guidebook to you? 'The French Caribbean island of Martinique is the home of the dormant, probably extinct, volcano, Mont Pelee. Conclusion: Duroche, and the OAS, are now headquartered in or near the crater of Mont Pelee, in Martinique."

I cursed silently. This girl was good.

"All right," I said. "Your detective work is thorough. And you don't do too badly in the rough-and-tumble department. But now, little grasshopper, the time has come for you to bow out of the picture. You may represent the interests of the Chin clan, but I represent the interests of the United States, to say nothing of every other oil producing country in this hemisphere. It's a question of priorities. Get the picture?"

"But that's just it," Li Chin said, tossing her cigarette butt out the window. "The interests I serve and the interests you serve aren't in conflict. We both want the same thing — to put the OAS scheme out of commission. And we both know we have to go about it in the same way, by getting hold of Duroche. Conclusion: the time has come for us to team up."

"Forget it," I said. "You'd just complicate things."

"Like I did back at the leprosarium?" Li Chin asked, looking at me archly. "Listen, Carter, I can be a help on this thing and you know it. There's no way you can keep me out of it anyway. I'm more than a match for anyone you could get to try to keep me prisoner, and if you had me arrested it would just implicate you."

I stared out the window for a minute, thinking. What she said was true. There probably
wasn't
any way I could keep her out of it. She was probably sitting there right now devising some obscure way to bug my toenails, should I decide to try. Then again, it was possible she was working for the opposition, in spite of her fairly plausible story, and had come to my aid at the leprosarium just to get in my good graces. But even so, it might be better to have her where I could keep an eye on her, rather than slithering around somewhere out of sight.

"Come on. Carter," she said. "Stop sitting there trying to look inscrutable. Is it a deal?"

"All right," I said. "Consider yourself temporarily recruited by AXE. But only as long as you pull your own weight."

Li Chin batted her eyelashes and looked at me sideways.

"Consider the old Chinese proverb," she said, in the hokiest accent I'd heard since Charlie Chan.

"What's that?" I said, playing straight man.

"You can't keep a good man down, because when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and I have just begun to fight."

"Hmmm," I said. "Confucius?"

"No. Chinatown High, class of 67."

I nodded approvingly.

"Very profound, in any case. But now that we've had our culture for the day, I'd like to discuss how we're going to travel to Martinique."

Her whole expression changed. She was all business.

"If you read your guidebook well," I told her, "you know that Martinique is an overseas
departmente
of France, like Hawaii is a state in the United States. Which means that the law and administration are French…"

"Which means," Li Chin finished for me, "that they may be infiltrated by OAS members."

I nodded.

"Which means that we have to enter Martinique without their knowing we've arrived. Which brings up the problem of transportation. Michelle and I are traveling under cover identities, but we can't take the risk that they've been blown, especially after that incident at the leprosarium."

Li Chin stroked one side of her face thoughtfully.

"Not by air, then," she said.

"No," I agreed. "It's a mountainous island. The only place to land is the airport, and we'd have to go through Customs and Immigration. On the other hand, while there's only one place to land a plane, there are hundreds of places a relatively small boat could anchor and remain unobserved for a few days."

"Except that chartering a boat would be a good way to let an awful lot of people on this island know we were planning a trip," said Li Chin absently, lighting up another one of Gonzalez' cigarettes.

"Agreed," I said. "So we think in terms of borrowing a boat, rather than chartering one."

"Without the owner's knowledge, of course."

"Not until we've returned it, with a fee for its use."

Li Chin flipped cigarette ash out the window and looked businesslike.

"We'll have to discuss that fee thing, Carter," she said. "I've been going a little overboard on my expense account lately."

"I'll take it up with my accountant," I promised her. "Meanwhile, we both need some sleep. Tonight. Do you know where the yacht basin is?"

She nodded.

"At the eastern tip, there's a cafe called the Puerto Real. I'll meet you there tomorrow at midnight. Do you have a place to stay until then?"

"Of course," she said. "The Chin clan…"

"I know, I know. The Chin clan is a very big clan. All right, Gonzalez can drop me near my hotel, then buy you some clothes, and drive you to where you want to go."

"Okay," she said, flipping the cigarette butt out the window. "But. Carter, about those clothes…"

"They'll go on
my
expense account," I assured her.

She smiled.

Well, what the hell. It was worth buying some clothes, to have seen her take the others off.

It was daybreak by the time I let myself into the San Geronimo suite again, and Michelle was still soundly asleep. She wasn't exactly overdressed, either, even for sleeping. All she was wearing, in fact, was the corner of the sheet, which modestly covered about four inches of her thigh. I showered quietly, but thoroughly, using some carbolic soap I'd brought along for just that purpose, and slid into bed beside her. I was tired. I was sleepy. All I wanted was to close my eyes and snore heartily. At least, that's what I thought until Michelle stirred, opened one eye, saw me, and immediately rolled over to press her lush breasts — so different from Li Chin's small, firm, up-tilting ones — against my bare chest.

"How did it go?" she murmured, one hand beginning to stroke my back, up toward the base of my neck.

"Aside from battling a regiment of contagious lepers, armed with knives and clubs, there was nothing to it," I responded, my own hands beginning an exploration of some interesting terrain.

"You must tell me about it," Michelle said huskily, her entire body now pressing to mine, molding itself against me.

"I will," I said. And then didn't say anything more for a while, my lips being occupied in a different fashion.

"When will you tell me?" Michelle murmured, in a minute.

"Later," I said. "Much later."

And it was much later. That afternoon, in fact, as we once again lay on the white sand beach, soaking up some more of the hot Caribbean sun.

"But do you really trust this Chinese girl?" Michelle asked, spreading warm suntan oil over my back, kneading the muscles of my shoulders.

"Of course not," T said. "Which is one of the reasons I'd rather have her where I can keep an eye on her."

"I don't like it," Michelle said. "She sounds dangerous."

"She is," I said.

Michelle was silent for a moment.

"And you say she stripped naked in front of you?" she demanded suddenly.

"Strictly in the line of duty," I reassured her.

"Hunh!" she snorted. "It sounds to me like she's an expert in a few things besides Kung Fu."

I grinned. "It might be interesting to find out."