LITMIR.BIZ

       1 Macao 1953

      When Hagen emerged from the gambling casino at the back of Charlie Beale’s café he was drunk. He heard the door click into place behind him and for a moment he stood swaying as the cold night air cut into his lungs.

      For several minutes he leaned against the wall, his forehead on the cool brickwork. After a while he pushed himself away and stood squarely, his feet braced firmly apart. He moved along the alley, taking slow, careful steps, and stood at the front of the café breathing deeply to clear his head. He fumbled in his pocket and found a crumpled packet of cigarettes. He lit one slowly and carefully and drew the smoke down into his lungs.

      A thin sea-fog rolled in from the harbour, pushed by a cold finger of wind, and he coughed as it caught at the back of his throat. Except for the lapping of the water against the wharf pilings silence reigned. He wondered what time it was and instinctively lifted his right wrist and then remembered that his watch had followed the last of his money across the green baize top of one of Charlie Beale’s tables. He decided it must be about three o’clock because he had that sort of feeling, or perhaps it was just that he was getting old. Too old for the kind of life he’d been living for the past four years. Too old to be making fortune depend on the turn of a card or the throw of the dice. He laughed suddenly as he considered his present position. His boat impounded by the Customs, his only means of livelihood cut off, and now the last of his money gone. You’ve really done it this time, he told himself. You’ve really excelled yourself. Somewhere a woman screamed.

      He pushed himself from the wall and stood listening, head slightly forward. Again a scream sounded, curiously flat, and muffled by the fog. Even as he told himself to mind his own business he was running. The liquor rolled heavily in his stomach and he cursed the poverty that forced him to drink cheap beer. He turned a corner, running silently on rope-soled feet, and took them by surprise. Two men were holding a struggling woman on the ground in the sickly yellow light of a street lamp.

      As the nearest man turned in alarm, Hagen lifted a foot into his face and sent him spinning backwards over the edge of the wharf. The other leapt towards him, steel flickering in his right hand. In the brief moment of quiet as they circled each other Hagen saw that the man was Chinese and that murder shone from his eyes. He backed away as if frightened and the man grinned and rushed him. Hagen lifted an arm to ward off the knife-thrust and felt the sudden sharpness of pain even as he lifted his knee into his opponent’s groin. The man writhed on the ground, an agony of twisting limbs, and Hagen coolly measured the distance and kicked him in the head.

      There was quiet. He stood breathing deeply and looking down at the still form, wondering if he had killed him and not caring, and then he turned and searched for the woman. She was standing in the shadow of a warehouse door. He moved towards her and said, ‘Are you all right?’

      There was a faint movement of the white-clad figure and a soft voice said, ‘Please stay where you are for a moment!’ The voice surprised him and he wondered what an Englishwoman was doing on the waterfront of Macao at that time in the morning. There was more movement and then she stepped out of the shadows and came towards him. ‘My dress was torn and I had to fix it,’ she said.

      He hardly heard what she was saying. She was only a girl, not more than seventeen or eighteen, and she was not English, although from the purity of her speech one of her parents must have been. Her skin had that creamy look peculiar to Eurasian women, and her lips an extra fullness that gave her a faintly sensual air. She had a breath-taking beauty of the kind that is always associated with simplicity. She stood before him looking gravely and steadily into his face and Hagen suddenly shivered for no accountable reason, as if somewhere someone had walked over his grave. He moistened dry lips and managed to speak. ‘Where do you live?’

      She mentioned the best hotel in Macao and he cursed silently, thinking of the walk that lay ahead of him. ‘Can I get a taxi?’ she asked in her clear, bell-like voice.

      He laughed shortly. ‘In this part of Macao, at this hour? You don’t know this town, angel.’

      She frowned and then her eyes widened and she reached forward and grabbed his arm. ‘But you’re hurt. There’s blood on your sleeve!’

      He smothered an oath as the sudden wrench caused a stab of pain to run through him. ‘Take it easy,’ he said and moved away to examine the wound under the light of the street lamp. His jacket had an ugly, bloodstained slit in it and when he wiped away the blood with a handkerchief he saw that he had sustained a superficial slash, more painful than anything else.

      ‘How bad is it?’ she asked him anxiously.

      He shrugged. ‘Not too bad. Hurts like hell,

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