Medan
Sumatra, Dutch East Indies
Tuesday, August 12th 1940
‘I can’t believe his home address was in the bloody phone book!’ Fah Lo Suee hissed, crouching with Bond among the moon-cast shadows and the foliage of the vast tropic garden of the Dutch Police Commissioner of Medan. ‘What were these fools thinking!?’
The garden, surrounded by a brick wall, covered almost an acre of ground, and was densely planted with exotic flowers, bushes and trees. There was even a pond with lotus flowers. The Commissioners large house was a typical early century colonial villa, basically a two story European house with a Javanese-style roof.
‘I’m not that surprised’, Bond whispered back. ‘The Netherlands is a very neat and orderly place. Crooks are expected to run from the Police, not seek them out. That would simply not be cricket. It’s much the same with us, actually. Our Police don’t carry guns, and as a consequence, neither do the criminals, well most of them anyway.’
‘The idiocy of the Europeans never ceases to amaze me.’ Fah shook her head slowly, as if disbelief. ‘And you think of us as inferiors? I might oppose my father - mainly because, thanks to you and Nayland Smith, he wants to kill me – but I can’t find any great fault with his intention to drive your Empires out of Asia and rule it himself instead. It would probably benefit the Asians as much as him.’
Bond shrugged, uncomfortable with the subject. ‘Be that as it may, the Empress will speak in a few hours and we have no time to loose – but do you suppose we can just waltz in there?’
Fah made a face. ‘The local Si-Fan must know that we would have no trouble finding the Commissioner, and interrogating him is our most logical move. The instant they realised we escaped they must have sent people to either kill or protect him.’
‘And I suppose we’re going in regardless?’ Bond said, checking his tiny Beretta. The policeman Fah had hypnotized into releasing them had been most helpful.
The daughter of Fu Manchu smiled, which reminded Bond of a tigress baring her fangs. ‘Of course.’ She drew her Kris, the same black blade that had killed Black Naga and which was now her weapon of choice.
They moved silently as shadows through the lush garden. There were no dogs, which was a bad sign. It would seem the Si-Fan did not want to scare away their quarry before the jaws of the trap closed around them. But as Doctor Jones, renowned tomb raider that he was, used to say, the first and most important part of avoiding a trap was to know it was there in the first place. Of course, the second part was not walking into it.
Fah used her knife, muffled by a handful of her dress, to break one small window pane at ground level, allowing her to reach in an arm and open the latch from the inside.
‘Wait a second’, Fah whispered, putting a hand on Bond’s arm as he was about to climb in through the open window. He handed him a masked electric torch. ‘Shine it into your eyes before you go in.’
‘It’ll destroy my night vision!’ he objected.
‘Precisely. Just do it!’ she snapped. ‘If they’re not waiting for us it won’t hurt and if they are…’
Bond shrugged and briefly stared into the bright light. Just as he’d expected, the world went more or less pitch black, with a brief localised flash of light in front of him as Fah Lo Suee repeated the procedure. Then suddenly the darkness was filled with the soft scent of Fah Lo Suee’s perfume, which as usual made his head spin. Before he knew it, her soft lips were pressing against his in a kiss that had nothing sisterly about it. He responded with a vengeance.
‘Just for luck, lover-boy!’ she whispered, panting slightly, and softly slapped his bottom. ‘In you go!’
Once the two agents had climbed inside, they sensed, more than saw, that they were in a large room, probably the living room. Almost at once, electric lights lit up as the Si-Fan sprung their trap.
‘SI-FAN!’
There were six of them shouting, tall dark men in loose, flowing silk pantaloons, embroidered vests and silk turbans, all brandishing Kris knifes – Malay roughnecks, the rank and file of the Si-Fan in these parts of the world. As soon as the lights went on, they charged Fah and Bond shouting terrible war cries. Unfortunately, their victims were not initially blinded by the bright lights and reacted with ruthless counter-attack. Bond’s little silenced pistol plopped twice, and two of the knife-fighters rolled on the thick carpet with small holes in their forehead before a third managed to close with the Englishman. Fah surprised the first comer with a vicious kick to his groin, followed up by a slash of her black blade across his throat as he bent forward in pain. Now sparks flew as blades clashed – Bond drew a combat dagger from a holster hidden under his jacket and parried a slash that would otherwise have disembowelled him. In addition to the flashing blades, kicks and punches cut the air with blinding speed. Fah Lo Suee had trained Shaolin Kung Fu since childhood, and Bond had picked up a lot during the time in Hong Kong. Their opponents, on the other hand, knew more than a little of the Sumatran fighting art of Silek. The explosive shouts and grunts of the combatants mixed with the crash of toppling furniture as the fight swirled through the living room of Lucius Van der Gelden.
****
The lights went out in the living room windows.
‘Is it over? What happened?’ Lucius van der Gelden asked eagerly, leaning towards the windshield of his car, which stood parked at the gate in the wall.
Zhao Han, lieutenant of the Si-Fan and one of the few remaining diehards that had fought with Fu Manchu in the Boxer uprising, frowned, stroking his long but thin grey beard with long-nailed fingers.
‘It’s not easy to say, Honourable Commissioner. We shall soon see, however.’
A minute or two went by in mounting tension, until the front door of the villa opened and a single man clad in wide silk trousers, vest and turban walked out on the porch. Although half hidden in the moon-cast shadows, Van der Gelden and Zhao Han could see he carried a lifeless body, to judge from the dress belonging to a woman, over one shoulder. The man lifted her arms, showing them to be tied together with a piece of cloth.
‘I can’t believe it!’ Zhao shouted. ‘They’ve captured Fah Lo Suee alive! Fu Manchu will shower me with gold for this!’
‘Where are the others? There were six of them!’
‘Dead or wounded, probably. Between us, I didn’t expect them to defeat the fearsome Fah Lo Suee, but they must have taken her by surprise. Oh, what a catch!’
‘So it’s safe?’ Van der Gelden asked, frowning. ‘I can go back?’
‘Yes, yes, you fool! Quickly, drive us there now!’ Zhao shouted excitedly, rummaging through a leather suitcase placed between his feet in front of the passenger seat for a bottle of chloroform. ‘We must not let her wake up; she’s incredibly dangerous!’
The Dutchman snorted dismissively but engaged first gear and pressed down on the accelerator. His silver Mercedes 500K, pride and joy of the Police Commissioner, rolled slowly over the gravel path leading up to the main entrance.
Zhao Han jumped out of the car with a speed belying his age and ascended the porch stairs two at a time. When he looked up, he found himself staring straight into twin pools of true cat green which sucked in his very soul and left him paralysed and shivering – Fah Lo Suee’s head no longer hung limply, and Bond, clad in the clothes of one of the defeated Malays was gently putting her down on her feet. In his free hand, the Beretta was pointed straight at the flabbergasted Policeman, who was halfway to the house before he understood what had happened.
‘Come inside, Commissioner, please. And don’t worry, just do as you’re told and I promise you’ll live to see tomorrow.’
‘I’m not saying anything!’ the Dutchman said, nostrils flaring wide with fear. ‘They’d kill me!’
‘Ah, but you will, Lucius’, Fah promised in her most sultry voice. ‘And you’ll be delighted to do it. Come in now, let’s chat as old friends, the three of us.’
