Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 4, April 1980

“The guards?”

Shayne pointed to the lip of the precipice on which the lodge perched and the dark valley below.

Forbes-Robertson whistled softly. “Good show! We’ll talk later about how you managed that, Yank. Now let’s whistle-up the birds and be on our way to Kaosiung. I’m sure all three of you are ready for a sea change.”

“You can say that again,” Shayne sighed. “You driving us there?”

Forbes-Robertson shrugged. “It’s the least I can do, old boy. The Nationalist Intel apparatus wants a low profile for Chung’s attempted coup. They have enough on their plate since you Americans pulled out of their corner. Rather alarming, that, if you’re a Nationalist Chinese. My orders are to get you and the birds aboard ship as soon as possible. Do you mind?”

Before Shayne could answer that question Stephanie joined them in the cool morning darkness. “Who the devil is this?” she asked Shayne.

“Forbes-Robertson is the name he’s given me,” Shayne answered.

Stephanie brushed blonde hair away from her face to peer at the slight Englishman. “Haven’t we met somewhere?” she asked.

Forbes-Robertson grinned. “That we have, dear. At the cocktail party Chung Lee threw when you first arrived here in Taiwan.”

“Oh yes,” Stephanie said in a flat voice. “You were drunk and almost fell into the punchbowl.”

Forbes-Robertson winced. “I’ve been telling Shayne here that Chung Lee is... how do your American gangsters put it?”

“On the lam?” Shayne said.

“That’s it.”

“Why are you here?” Stephanie asked bluntly.

Forbes-Robertson told her what he’d just told Shayne. By that time Mary Su Lin had joined them. She took Shayne’s arm. Drawing him apart she whispered, “I don’t like this.”

Shayne considered, then asked, “Any specific reason, Mary?”

“Not yet.” She hesitated. “Call it my feminine intuition.”

What Mary Su Lin had just said triggered a faint alarm bell at the back of Shayne’s mind, and reminded him of his own questions about Forbes-Robertson, but it was too soon to panic.

“We’ll play along,” he told the Chinese girl in a sotto voice. “Trust me.”

“I do, Mike,” she said.

It was the middle of the morning before they reached the dock in Kaohsiung harbor where the Oriental Trader was moored. The rust-streaked freighter with a slight list to port was Liberian registry, Shayne noticed, but flew the Nationalist flag.

It had been a strange trip the length of the island down the flat east coast plain. There was a main highway, but Forbes-Robertson used back roads.

“Nationalist security forces have their wind up,” he explained to Shayne who rode beside him on the front seat of the black sedan.

“So?”

“Have you ever tried to talk your way through a Chinese roadblock?” Forbes-Robertson asked. “It can be sticky.”

On the dock Forbes-Robertson parked the Mercedes out of sight behind a warehouse. He accompanied Shayne, Mary Su Lin and Stephanie Scott aboard the ship.

No sooner were they aboard than deckhands began to unmoor the tramp steamer, pulling aboard the gangplank.

“Do you swim ashore?” Shayne asked the Englishman.

“Didn’t I mention that I’m coming along with the three of you?”

“You sure as hell didn’t,” Shayne said.

The ship was chugging toward the harbor entrance.

“A last minute decision, old boy,” the Englishman said. “You and the birds have staterooms aft.” Forbes-Robertson beckoned to a deckhand standing nearby and spoke to him in Chinese, then turned back to the trio. “The coolie will show you to your quarters, old man... you and Dr. Su Lin.”

They were finally at sea and the ship paused to drop the pilot down a rope ladder to, the bobbing pilots’ boat that had followed in their wake from Kaohsiung harbor. The South China Sea rose and fell in oily swells.

“I need a word with our captain,” Forbes-Robertson told Shayne and Mary Su Lin. “You’d like to make sure our Golden Buddha is still aboard,” he said to Stephanie Scott. “We’ll have a look-see, as you Americans put it.”

Shayne watched the pair move forward toward the bridge superstructure, speaking to each other as they went.

“I get the feeling those two know each other better than they’ve said,” he told Mary Su Lin.

“Word reached Joseph Seberg in Switzerland that Dr. Scott was on intimate terms with a person on Taiwan involved in art thefts,” the Chinese girl told him. “That was why I was sent out here.”

The coolie seaman, grinning, waited to show them aft to the staterooms.

“Did you catch anything of what our English friend said in Chinese?” Shayne asked Mary Su Lin.

“Just a little,” she answered. “It was in Cantonese dialect and I only speak Mandarin fluently, but I believe he instructed the coolie to lock us into one of the staterooms.”

“We’ll see about that,” Shayne said.

They followed the Chinese into a narrow and drafty passageway leading toward the stem of the freighter. Mary Su Lin guided herself by placing a hand on Shayne’s arm.