The metal-banded door was opened by a small, ratlike man. His name was Fung, which Liu knew only because the other small, ratlike men who had been Master Su's servants had all been named Fung. Brothers, perhaps, and almost certainly family. This Fung had the bad manners to goggle openly, eyes going back and forth from Liu to Christie.
"Take us to Master Su!" Liu barked. His patience was limited, after all, and the Fungs one and all never failed to raise in him an urge to crush them underfoot like loathsome insects.
"Y-yes, sir!"
Fung glanced back over his shoulder at least three times in amazement as he took them through the rabbit warren of passages, up and down stairs. Was it really that surprising that he'd brought Christie here, Liu thought? Was it Ghost Eyes' appearance, her presence there, or her being in company with Liu that mattered?
"This is a confusing place," Christie said, displaying her Western curiosity. "Why all the twists and turns?"
"Master Su's home," Liu began, thinking as he did that nest was a more appropriate word, "is built out of parts of four buildings. On the other side of these walls, dozens of people live, not knowing what lies right in the middle of all of them. A passage there, a room here, all bits and pieces of a whole."
He hoped she had not missed the quality of the paneling, of the furnishings, so out of line with the rest of the district.
Liu had never been asked to wait when he visited Master Su, and yet always found his host waiting for him. He suspected that Fung had some method of informing his master that guests were coming, and that in the course of the winding passages he led Liu past observation points so Su could see who was visiting and prepare.
This time was the same as all others. Master Su welcomed them in an elaborately furnished reception room, no surprise at all on his thin, hawklike face. He was of middling height, though his thinness made him seem taller; his entire body was like a length of tough, flexible whipcord. He wore loose clothes of midnight blue and gold.
"Greetings, tiger," he hailed Liu. Su always called him that, regardless of Liu's nickname. Liu thought this very perceptive of the snake master, since it was in his heart how he thought of himself. "And what have you brought for me today?"
"I have brought you a pupil."
"Indeed?"
Su's gaze flicked to Christie for a moment and he dismissed her with a snort.
"Bah! I do not teach gwai loh. Do tigers now have a sense of humor?"
This reaction was not unexpected. Master Su did not have the experience with Christie that Liu had. He would not know what Liu did, what he had seen of the girl's spirit. Liu needed to convince the master of this; he would not incur a debt for the girl's sake.
"Of course. It is only prey that cannot laugh."
Master Su ran a finger along his lips in a curious gesture.
"You are in an unusual mood today."
"Success breeds such."
"Ah, the destruction of Lo Whan and his minions." His eyes again touched Christie. "Of course, now I recognize the girl, once placed in proper context. She is your spy, then?"
"I was thinking that she could be yours."
"Is that so." He turned to directly face Christie. "Do you think you could be mine?"
"That would depend on who you are, Master Su," she said with a faint smile. "Liu has only told me that you're someone who can teach me."
"You trust the tiger that much?"
"I trust that he hasn't had me killed with the rest of Lo Whan's people. It makes me...inclined to believe him."
The snake master chuckled.
"Very well, then. I will tell you what he sees. I am a master of She Quan."
"'Snake Fist'? Is that a Chinese martial art?"
"Quite. Your friend the tiger takes his inspiration from that animal, but he does not feel you are a tiger as well. Tell me, if you were going to kill the tiger, how would you do it?"
"I'd shoot him in the head. Preferably from behind," she answered without hesitation. The ease with which she answered startled Liu a bit, even though it was in part why he'd brought her there.
"That is an interesting answer. Why do something so dishonorable? Why shirk honest battle?"
"You asked me how I'd kill him, Master Su, not what I'd do in an honest fight. If I tried anything else, he'd tear me apart." She glanced slyly at Liu and added, "My father had a tiger's-head trophy hanging in his study. It was killed by his grandfather in India. The truth is, he was up in a tree and fired a high-powered rifle, after luring the tiger out with a staked kid. You can't fight a tiger, only kill it."
Master Su laughed.
"Oh, yes, tiger, you have found me a rare one this time. I believe I shall make her my student after all...or are you having second thoughts?"
Liu grinned, though a bit halfheartedly. Master Su's teasing was generally at his expense, and it tended to be of the kind where one really hoped that he was joking. He supposed that was the way with snakes.
"Playing with baby snakes always gives me second thoughts. They may not know how to bite yet, but they're still poisonous."
"That is a very wise answer."
-X X X-
"So there you have it," Liu told the girl. "Master Su will teach you the arts of She Quan."
"What made you think I wanted it?" Christie asked. It wasn't a challenge; she sounded genuinely curious.
"Why would an educated British girl be a runner for Lo Whan, earning little respect and equally little pay?" he answered her with a question of his own.
"I didn't want to be a whore."
"The traditional profession of runaway or abandoned females," he agreed. "And to avoid that, you'd have to fight. Some people won't accept anything else unless you kill them. I watched you pull the gun on Sung. You recognized danger, but there was no fear. I can use that."
"Use it, Liu?"
"Oh, yes. It's easy to teach someone how to kill. But to give them the will to do so...that isn't easy. Most people have to put themselves into it to make themselves kill. Hatred, love, greed, fear. Those crazies who strap bombs to themselves do it for faith. That was me when I was young, a 49. The Red Phoenix was my family and I killed when told for love of them. You, though, Ghost Eyes..."
She folded her arms across her chest, a wry little smile on her lips.
"I do what I have to," she said. "Are you saying that you want to train me up as an assassin? Your assassin?"
The fact that she wasn't insulted by the idea was promising, Liu thought, and a little scary.
"It means power," he said, "and a level of prestige you could never earn any other way. To say nothing of money."
"No, let's talk about money," Christie countered, "because that's what it's about. Your payment for what I know, and you bid high, Liu. Generously, even."
"An offer's generosity is determined by the return on the investment. I do not consider myself a generous man."
The lights of the city sparkled out all around them as they walked, surrounding them in a blaze both garish and brilliant. Some foreigners Liu had met compared it to Tokyo, and others to Las Vegas. He had never seen these cities and did not care if he ever did. Hong Kong was more than enough for him. Besides, it was the gateway to China. The world inevitably came to it.
Christie took a computer disk out of her jacket pocket, a 3.5-inch floppy. The bright orange plastic made it look like a child's toy instead of a carrier of valuable data.
"What is this?" Liu asked, speaking of course of the files it contained and not the disk itself.
"My father's legacy."
"Your father?"
"He was the president of the Trans-Pacific Development Bank before his death three years ago."
The significance of Christie's last name crashed through Liu's mind like a thunderbolt. He identified her father at once, an innovative financier, some said a genius, who had steered his company through the shoals of Hong Kong's constantly changing economy and himself to wealth and privilege. Unfortunately, he had been addicted to risk and his mounting gambling debts had led him to embezzle from the bank. His defalcations had been easily concealed by the bank's success, until its owners had decided to abandon the PacRim and sold the thriving asset to a Japanese keiretsu. Efficient and thorough in matters of business as always, the Japanese's audit had soon revealed the truth, and Christie's father found himself without a job and with staggering personal debts.
The man had murdered his wife and committed suicide, making for a three days' sensation in the Colony. Liu had heard nothing of a daughter, but was aware that the man's entire estate had been seized by creditors. This explained, perhaps, why Christie had taken to the streets, though it amazed Liu that no family member had taken her in. In this area Liu believed the loh faan truly were barbarians.
"I took that from my father's desk," Christie explained, passing it over to Liu. "I knew that it was important, though of course I didn't understand how. I was just a child then."
Implying that she now was not. He could hardly argue the point.
"It turns out that it's his archive of contacts and business connections, who's doing what and why."
"And you say that this was what instilled Lo Whan with the desire to overreach himself? These files are three years old. Three weeks makes something out of date here in Hong Kong."
"That's true about business deals and financial plans," Christie agreed, "but what about blackmail?"
"Blackmail?"
"From a business standpoint, leverage in a deal. There is information on how certain people can be...leveraged...in among the data. Some of those people are gone, washed away in the current of commerce. Others aren't. And still others have moved up in the world, making them even more useful--and vulnerable."
Liu thought about that. In Hong Kong--probably everywhere, but certainly there--business was all interconnected. Customs and police, government officials, organized crime, financiers and corporate concerns, all the way up to the tai pan, all moved together as one, as if many spiders had come together to spin a single web. Lo Whan had been such a spider, who believed the information on the disk could let him control the web, but he had been eaten by a larger spider before he could grow fat on new power.
He tapped the disk against his palm.
"You took all this," he said, "when you were ten years old?"
"Yes."
"And you did it immediately following your father's death, or else it would have been taken by the police, by a creditor, or by whomever supervised the estate."
"He'd showed me where he kept it," Christie said with a shrug. "I was his daughter. Who else deserved it?"
Liu had the sudden image of her pushing a body out of the way, opening a hidden panel in a blood-spattered desk, though of course he had no idea what part of that, if any, matched with reality. Nonetheless, her story certainly confirmed the impressions he'd had of her. The girl certainly had the mind to become a successful assassin. Moreover, she would be bound to the Red Phoenix, indeed to Liu personally, by virtue of her race and sex in an Asian underworld.
Liu tucked the computer disk away in his pocket, wondering which of the two prizes he'd come away with would ultimately prove to be the more valuable.