Chapter 54

To Katie’s considerable relief, Drake Hackett saw nothing odd in Shang Li-Sung’s request that he accompany the panda once more.

‘Sure thing, mate.” he said.”What’s up, then?”

“I’m going back to the number two storage shed,” Shang explained, “ to examine the drawer where the messages were exchanged.  You were most valuable in the inspection of Brian Lu’s flat, and I could use your help once again.”

What he needed Drake’s help FOR, he did not say -- and the Queensland Heeler thankfully did not ask; his reporter’s curiosity was now running at full throttle.  In any event, it would never have occurred to him that Shang had made the request simply to get him out of the guardhouse for a while.

When they exited, darkness had fallen in the Iso Valley; the air punctuated with the amber dots of paraffin lamps and here and there, the brighter glow of electric bulbs..  Far away, towards the main compound, they could hear clank and grind of the night shift beginning their tasks.  By now gist, if not the details, of what Shang had said to Le when he’d been brought outside the guardhouse had spread to every shack and work area in the valley.

And that was just how the red panda wanted it.  

Upon reaching the bottom step, Shang produced his whistle again.  He did not blow it right away, but instead turned and looked at the dog standing beside him.

“What is about to happen Drake, is as much for show as anything else, a pantomime for the benefit of our Mr. Big.  Do you understand?”

“Yeah, mate.” said the red heeler, nodding, “I getcha...play along.”

Shang Li-Sung nodded back and then blew on the whistle twice.  Immediately a quintet of guards came hurrying at a trot-march, with Fan Wong, the Amur leopard in the lead.

This time however, Shang did not give his second-in-command enough time to snap to attention.

“I need two guards with myself and Drake. “ He pointed to a bull and a wolf, each one built like a juggernaut, and carrying a rifle and a shotgun respectively, “You...and you.  Fan?  You are to proceed at the double with the others to storage shed number two, and seal it off.  Anyone who tries to approach is to be warned one time only, after that they get one shot over their heads; if they still attempt to proceed, your orders are to shoot to maim.”

“Yes, commander!” bawled the Amur leopard, and then in a patently ridiculous gesture, drew what looked like a costume sword, a gigantic thing with...RINGS mounted along the top of the blade.  He yowled once, and then led the guards away in what looked like a bad burlesque of a cavalry charge.  Drake watched him go, and almost made an observation...but then stopped himself when he remembered the two guards Fan had left behind.  It would cost the big cat a great deal of face if he made any comments in their presence, and so he opted to say nothing. 

Shang, meanwhile, was addressing the bull and the wolf.

“You and you, fall in behind us.  You may shoulder your weapons for the moment, but bear in mind that you may need them later and on very short notice.  The two guards went rigid, bowed slightly, and then the four of them were off at steady walk towards storage shed number two.

Almost immediately, Shang fell in beside Drake Hackett.

“Amazing isn’t it?” he said, “I would never have expected Le Ho-Chang to talk so freely...and without even the slightest need for persuasion.”

“Not me.” said the heeler, who now realized that the guards the red panda had selected to accompany them had been chosen not for their size, but for the fact that both of them had at least a rudimentary understanding of English. “Scared as that little bastard was, I’d ‘ave been surprised if he didn’t sing,” He lowered his voice, perhaps for Shang’s benefit alone, or perhaps not.

“Though if y’ really want the truth sport, I’m bloody glad y’didn’t have to use any of those errrr...tools to make Le talk.  Don’t get me wrong, you do what you have to do when a bloke like that’s got info that y’ need...just please don’t make me watch it, ‘kay?”

“Yes, of course.” said Shang...and if there was any trace of irony in his voice, Drake Hackett missed it completely.


While this was going on, Striper MacKenna was extracting a bottle of Koka-Kola from the ice-bucket, thumbing away the top and giving it to Katie, who responded with something like a small curtsy.  He then did the same for Drigo, and then had one for himself.

Before drinking, Katie spent a moment contemplating the bottle as though it were a fine vintage of champagne.  Soda pop was a rare treat in Iso, usually reserved only for special occasions, such as the arrival of the Republic.  Even Katie, who could have enjoyed one any time she pleased, strictly rationed herself to no more than one bottle per day, to be enjoyed at the end of her work shift.  She took a long, deep swig and let out a blissful, rippling sigh.  Shang was right, this was thirsty work.

Then out of the corner of her brown eye, she noticed Le Ho-Chang watching her, his tongue practically lolling from his mouth as he gazed at the bottle with piteous desire.  It wasn’t surprising; he probably hadn’t had a drop to drink since he’d been caught.

She took another swig and then held out the bottle in the rat’s direction.

“Would you like a soda, Le?”

“Oh yes, please.” said the rodent, in a high, quivering voice, extending a paw in her direction as though reaching for the face of an angel. “Might I have one?”

Katie’s voice became sweet, almost honeyed.

“Why certainly, Le.” she said, “In fact, you can have more than one...lots more.”

Le was about to ask what she meant by that when his arms were grabbed from behind by the Striper and pulled over the chair-back, while Drigo Chavez tightly pawcuffed him..  Then the Tasmanian tiger began to tilt the chair back...way, way back.

“What are you doing?!” Le screamed, “You said you wouldn’t hurt me if I talked!  YOU PROMISED YOU WOULDN’T HURT ME IF I...Mmm-MMmnnnpphhhh!”

His words were muffled as Drigo Chavez stuffed a paw-towel halfway down his throat.   While this was going on, Katie, always as good as her word, had selected a bottle of Koke for him, not a chilled bottle from the ice-bucket, but a warm one, from the case.

Then she strolled, casually, in the direction of the hapless rat.

“No, Le.” she said, petting her hoof over the rodent’s head as she might have done while soothing a frightened child, “We only said that none of THOSE would be used on you if you cooperated.” She was pointing to the ‘tools’, still laying stacked against the wall, “and that you would die without a mark upon you...and so you shall.”

She opened the bottle, then quickly capped it with a thumb.

“But not before you I extract a little payment for what happened to me because of you.”

She began to shake the bottle vigorously.  “Hold his head tight.” said Drigo, and the Striper’s hold on Le became a vise-grip.

And Katie’s face became the visage of a harpy, ears laid back, nose wrinkled and teeth bared in a rictus of unbridled rage.  She was shaking the bottle so furiously now it was a wonder that it didn’t fly apart.

Then she stopped...

....placed the end of the bottle against Le’s left nostril...

....and pulled her thumb away, letting the carbonated contents shoot straight up into his sinuses.

The result was...startling.  Even with a towel jammed into his mouth, the rat managed somehow a scream, then convulsed backwards so violently, he almost knocked Striper MacKenna flat on his backside.

“Jesus.” said Katie, shaking her head in disbelief, “From plain old soda-pop.”

“Yeah,” concurred the Striper, repositioning himself once more, “Who’d have guessed it, eh?”

“Toldja.” said Drigo with a grin and a shrug. “Just like a volcano goin’ off in your brain.”

But Katie had already grabbed and uncapped another Koke.

“This,” she said, holding it in front Le’s eyes as she shook it into a frenzy, “is for sabotaging the autogyro.”

Then she gave him a shot up his other nostril.  Le tried to scream again and his feet kicked out in a fast jitterbug.

Katie dropped the bottle and grabbed TWO more, different ones this time.

“Awwww, what’s the matter, rat-boy?” she said, popping the caps and shaking the bottles, one in each hoof, “You don’t like Koke any more?  How about a root-beer instead?  How about a double root-beer float, hold the ice-cream, hold the straw?”  She stepped forward once again.

“THIS is for almost getting me eaten by a crocodile!”

No one outside the guardhouse heard a thing, not the sentries, not the miners, and certainly not Drake Hackett, who at the moment was inside the number two storage shed with Shang Li-Sung, while the two guards stood watch by the door.  By now, he WAS beginning to wonder why Shang had brought him along...until the red panda turned to him and said, “This isn’t a particularly familiar place to me, Drake.  Which drawer contains the small hose clamps?”

“Ah, the big one, third row from the left, second one down.” said the heeler.  As the Iso Mining and Extraction Company’s quasi-official aircraft mechanic, he had also partaken of the small hose-clamps on various and sundry occasions.

Shang pulled the drawer out and reached inside, his arm disappearing almost to the shoulder.  Drake watched the red panda’s arm moving, saw his face change expressions several times.  And then his dark eyes seemed to come alight, and he pulled his arm from the drawer.  In his paw, was a bright, almost incandescently white piece of paper, creased down the center and folded in two.

“Just as I had hoped!” he said, holding it aloft with a flourish, then slipped it into the folds of his tunic and jabbed a rapid finger at the guards.

“You and you!  Unsling your weapons and fall in, one in front and one behind Drake and myself.  We are returning to the guard house.”  He patted his tunic, where he had stashed the paper. “and if anything should happen on the way, you are to see to the delivery of this message to Her Grace...at all costs.  Is that understood?”

“Yes sir!”

They set off for the guardhouse at a brisk pace, Shang leaving instructions behind that the shed was to remain off limits until he instructed otherwise.

When Shang and Drake arrived back at the guardhouse, they found a freshly hosed down Le Ho-Chang laying on the floor, and curled into a fetal position.  His teeth were chattering and his body shivering, his eyes glazed over and looking at nothing.  When Drake saw him, his jaw went into an immediate crash dive.

“Jaysus bloody...” he said turning rapidly to face the others, “What the yiff did you DO to him?”

Katie’s response was one of only mild annoyance; her wrath was now fully slaked.

“Christmas, Drake...does it LOOK like we did anything?   You see a mark on Le...anywhere?  Have any of the ‘tools’ even been moved?”

Drake looked over the wall.  No, the acid, blowtorch, and other items were still where they’d been when he left, except for the shards of bamboo, which were gone...but none of them had been ‘inserted’ in Le.  In fact, except for his nearly insensible state, the rat looked in better condition than when Drake had departed with Shang for the storage shed, having apparently been freshly cleaned.  Other than that, the only apparent change in the room was the large number of soda bottles missing from the case...but nothing odd about that.  In fact,  he could use one himself, just at the moment.

As if reading the heeler’s mind, Striper McKenna plucked a Koke from the ice bucket, flipped the top and handed it to him.  Drake took it and commenced to guzzle greedily...unaware that directly behind him, Le Ho-Chang was convulsing like an epileptic, and his eyes were rolling in terror.

“So what’s up with Le anyway?” he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve and still not looking over his shoulder.

“Bloody hell if I know, mate.” said the Striper with an exaggerated shrug.

“Well I got an idea,” chimed in Drigo, moving quickly into the dog’s line of sight, “Probably it’s just hit home to the yiffer...now that he’s told us everything, we got no more use for him an’ no more reason to keep him alive.” 

Drake lifted an ear, pulled at it.

“Aye, that’ll do it to a bloke all right.  Me an’ me old mate Keith once did a story about a bloke what was sentenced to hang at Coober for killin’ his partner’s wife.”  He finally turned around, but by now, Le had returned to his near catatonic state. “He was like that the whole time he was waitin’ to take ‘is last walk.”

At this news, both of Striper McKenna’s ears went up.

“Cor, mate.  ‘Ow d’y hang a bloke at Coober Pedy?  The whole yiffin’ place is built underground; ain’t a tree about for hundreds of miles.”

Drake Hackett let out a small yip of amusement..  

“They just dug a pit, strung a pole across the top, then tied a rope to it.  Found $3000 worth of opals while they was diggin’ the bloody thing, too.”

That got a big laugh from the Striper and Drigo, and a smaller one from Katie, but then Drake looked at Shang Li-Sung.

“So, what’s on that paper y’ found anyways?”

For just a hint of a second, the red panda appeared to grimace.

“Not here,” he said, nodding at Le, who was busily sucking his thumb like an infant, “We should discuss this somewhere else.”

“I agree.” said Katie, “My house, I think.”

“Yes, absolutely.” said her security chief, “But first...” he produced his whistle and blew it again.  At once, a pair of guards appeared at the cell door.

“Yes, sir?”

Shang pointed to the unused instruments still stacked against the wall, “Get those out of here; we will not be needing them.  But first, I want Le Ho-Chang gagged and put in shackles again.”  He nodded towards the prostrate rat, adding, “This might just be a sham -- I have seen it before.  And when you are done, I want you to find Tu Wa-Fong and tell him we need speaking platform erected on the landing pad...and also a gallows.  The second loading platform on Clarinet Rock will do for that, I think.  But I want both of them completed by dawn tomorrow.  Understood?”

“Understood, sir.” said the guards, snapping to attention and bowing slightly.

Leaving the pair to their work, Katie and the others retired to the front room of her house, where the pinto mare insisted upon cleaning up a little and changing before starting the discussion.  No one faulted her.  ALL their clothing was soaked in perspiration by now.

When she returned to the front room, Hsing was there and pouring tea.  Next to her cup, Katie noticed a small, red envelope, the size of a business card.  She winced.  Were it not for the growing throb in her ribs and backside she might well have declined this time.

She sighed, sat down gingerly, and unfolded the flap, pouring a fine, amber powder into her teacup.

“You are not going to measure it out, mistress?” asked her housemaid, looking confused..

Katie nickered and turned the envelope upside down.

“Don’t need to Hsing; that’s the last of it...which reminds me, I need you to go to Ji Su-King, first thing in the morning and tell him that I need some more.”

“As you wish, Mistress.” said the Chinese pony, bowing and then bowing out

“That the stuff for the pain?” said Drigo, averting his eyes and speaking with slightly forced composure....as the pinto mare took a more than slightly forced sip.

“Yeah,” said Katie, speaking through gritted teeth as she set the cup down, “Does the job all right, but Christmas -- how it tastes.”

“So what WAS on that paper, anyways, Shang?” asked Drake Hackett, blurting it out.  To Katie, he looked like a non-anthro dog being teased with a steak-bone.

The red panda smiled, reached into the top pocket of his tunic, and produced the sparkling, white  paper he had removed from the dead drop, holding it aloft for all to see.

It was completely blank.

“Nothing!” he said, waving it in the air with a flourish, “And there was nothing in the dead drop, either.  I concealed this in my sleeve and removed it when I reached behind the drawer.”

Only a day before, this would have been the perfect cue for a chorus of bewildered protestations.  Now, the others just leaned forward, listening intently. 

“Go on,” said Katie, nodding.

“Well,” Shang responded, a look of profound disappointment at their reaction spreading over his face, “As Drake could tell you, I made certain that there were two guards present when I ‘found’ this, neither of whom is particularly noted for his discretion.  By tomorrow morning, every miner in Iso will also know of it...including the spymaster, and he will also know that the message was written on white, rather than red paper.  That will mean it had to come from someone other than himself.”  He smiled, “And who were the only two furs who knew of the dead-drop location?”

“Le Ho-Chang and Brian Lu.” said Drigo, stating the obvious, and then adding. “But it wouldn’t a’ been Le.  Otherwise the yiffer woulda let us know where it was BEFORE he vamoosed.”

“Ohhhh,” said Drake, closing one eye halfway, “Lemme see if I got it, sport.  First, Brian Lu gets poisoned, coz Mr. Big Boss is afraid he’s gonna grass on ‘im...then Le Ho-Chang gets caught, an’ starts singin’ his little head off, no coercion required, an’ tells us where the dead drop is, then you go there an’ pull out a paper that’s got to ‘ave been left there by Brian Lu.  An’ when Mr. Big hears about it...”

Katie finished for the red Queensland Heeler,

“He’ll have no choice but to assume that Brian told us who he is, or at least left some clue as to his identity.  And that will leave him only one other option.”

“Right-o” said Striper McKenna, cracking his knuckles with obvious relish, “Run for it.”

Shang Li-Sung turned quickly in the Tasmanian tiger’s direction.

“Not quite, Striper.  This cell leader of ours is built of much cleverer stuff than his underlings; do not underestimate him.  He will have to understand that we will be waiting for him if he attempts to flee.  Yes, he will run, but first he will make certain to cover his escape.”

The Tasmanian tiger’s ears went up.

“He will?  How?”

It was Drake Hackett who told him.

“Simple, mate.  Remember what me and Shang said’ll happen if word gets round that it’s the Snakehead Gang we’re dealing with?  How’re we s’posed to find our Mr. Big if he’s one of DOZENS makin’ a run for it, eh?”

The Striper grimaced and his eyes compressed into asterisks, then he looked at Shang Li-Sung again.

“Might I presume you’ve anticipated this...an’ that you’re ready for it?”

“I have,” the red panda responded, leaning back slightly in his chair, and steepling his fingers, “Do you know the best way to counter a rumour, Striper?  With more rumours, many rumours, conflicting rumours, so many conflicting rumours that the mob has no idea which one to believe...and so ends up believing none of them.  And that is what will happen the instant the rumour of the Snakeheads begins to spread throughout the camp.  At that instant, my guards will begin to spread some gossip of their own; they will pass the word that the air pirates were working at the behest of the Japanese, Lord Casterley, The Communists, and The Sultan of Sarawak...just for starters.  They will also let it be known that the Republic has been destroyed on the one paw, but on the other that’s she’s speeding our way with a contingent of heavily armed mercenaries aboard.  In the end, the rumour that the Snakeheads were behind the attack on Her Grace will be but one small tributary of a mighty river...and when we trace that tributary back to it’s source, we will have our spymaster.”  He raised a finger. “That, you see, is his greatest liability; he is the only one outside of this room who knows the true identity of our enemy.”

“Hmmm, I see.” said the Striper, but he did not nod in deference or salute, only frowned.

“So what do we do in the meantime?”  It was Drake Hackett.

“We turn in for the night,” said Katie rising to her hooves and stretching her arms over her head.  It had been a long day and her pain medication was starting to take effect.  “There’s nothing more we can do until tomorrow...and it’s going to be a busy morning.”


That morning dawned bright but misty, a low layer of haze dusting the floor of the valley and transforming the miners assembled on the landing pad into an army of phantoms.  Ascending the bamboo platform which Tu Wa-Fong and his crew had erected the night before, Katie was three feet from the top when she broke from the layer of ground-fog and into a dazzling blue day.  And there, waiting up above for her, were Shang and Fan Wong, standing at rigid attention, as were the pair of guards behind them.  The pathetic figure held between the sentries was standing not quite so ramrod straight, however.  Even so, the absence of cuts, bruises, or any other blemishes upon his furson was plain for all to see, even through the cloak of mist.  

And it was generating not a little commentary in the crowd ten feet below.   After all the rat had done...

“All miners, attention!” Fan bellowed, speaking through an outsized paper megaphone, “Her Grace will address you now.”

The hubbub below dropped to a quick silence, and the Amur leopard turned and offered the megaphone to Katie.  She immediately waved him off; she wanted the miners to be able to see her face while she spoke.

Besides, the way she was feeling at the moment, any amplification of her voice would merely be gilding the lily.

“Since I arrived here,” she said, speaking in Mandarin and dispensing with any sort of preamble, “I have never failed to treat you fairly; you have always been paid in full and on time, injuries are always attended to immediately, the food is good, and NO one who wishes to leave the Iso mine has ever been held here against their will.”  She paused for a second, then added, “The Iso Mine is NOT the Millner mine!”  At the invocation of this name a ripple of murmurs went washing through the crowd.  The Millner mine had been a gold mine in South Africa where Chinese miners had been brought in on work contracts and then kept as virtual slaves; half starved, worked nearly to death, and flogged for the slightest infraction.  It had been one of the major scandals of the Edwardian era -- and there wasn’t a miner in Iso who didn’t know the story.

“Yes, the work here has been hard,” Katie continued, “But you know that I have never required anyone here to perform a task I have been unwilling to perform myself, you know that I have never been a harder taskmaster with any of you than I have been with myself.  And in return, you have been both good and loyal workers for the Iso Mine.  You have made this place, which was once a little more than a run down rubbish tip, into a successful operation...and you have accomplished that task with greater speed and efficiency than even I would have dared to suppose.  For that, you will always have my profound gratitude.”

She stopped again.  There was no applause...but the tone of the murmuring below indicated that her address was being well received.  She let this go on for a moment, then laid her ears back.

And when she spoke again, her voice cut through the air like a razor through a paper screen.

“But every rule has it’s exceptions!  There are some here who have not only been disloyal, but STUPID enough to think that they could betray my trust and get away with it!  One of these, the bear known as Brian Lu has already forfeited his life.  Yet another is the rat known as Le Ho-Chang, who betrayed not only myself, but all of you when he sabotaged my airplane and set me up to be attacked by a gang of airborne brigands.”

She turned and called over her shoulder to the guards.

“Bring him forward!”

Stumbling at every step, Le was pushed to the front of the platform.  At once the voices of the crowd below swelled into a howling torrent and a rain of shoes and other objects was pitched upwards at the helpless rat.  Most of these fell well short of their target -- except for one empty soda bottle, which caught the rodent right between the eyes, and nearly knocked him unconscious.  Katie was unable to make out who had hurled the missile; whoever it was, he had several other miners surrounding him, slapping him heartily on the back.  She wanted to commend the thrower as well; his gesture had been the perfect, ironic touch.

She picked up the bottle and raised it.

“Whoever threw this, you just earned yourself double this week’s pay.” she said, and now there WERE some cheers.

Then she dropped the bottle and returned her attention to Le.

“Le Ho-Chang...by your own admission, you have committed both sabotage and treason, by which actions I lost not only the autogyro, but nearly my life.  Because of you, I suffered a most  brutal abuse and...” she gritted her teeth, “was nearly violated.  But because you have chosen to be cooperative with us, we have chosen to reciprocate by going easy on you.”

Le said nothing to this...he couldn’t; he’d been gagged with bamboo again.

“Nonetheless,” Katie went on, “for such a gross violation as you have committed there can be only one fitting punishment.  And so I order you to be taken immediately from this place and hung by the neck until dead.  May God, or whichever gods you choose to worship, have mercy upon your soul.”

Le Ho-Chang’s denouement came almost as an anti-climax.  The guards simply hustled him to the platform erected on Clarinet rock, threw a rope around his neck, and pitched him over the edge with no fanfare.  As the rope snapped taut, Le’s body jerked once, twice, a third time, then quivered for a moment and was still.

Katie watched, stone-faced, until the rat’s body ceased it’s twitching, then turned to address the crowd once again.

“Let that be a lesson to all of you.  Traitors will not be tolerated here; they will be ferreted out and dealt with, both swiftly and surely.  Le Ho-Chang and Brian Lu’s bodies will be burned, then whatever is left will be dissolved in muriatic acid, and scattered.  There will be no trace left of either of them.  Think about THAT before you act, any others of you who are considering betraying my trust..  And bear in mind that the next offender will not go out so quickly as did Le.”

Katie turned to leave the platform but then stopped, as if suddenly remembering something.

She turned towards the throng one more time.

“And one other thing.  It is almost certain that there will be authorities from the League of Nations Mandate coming here to make enquiries about my encounter with the air-pirates...perhaps not for a while, but they will come.  And when they do, it would be very wise of you not to speak to them of what you have seen here today.”

Katie paused for effect, then added, speaking slowly, “VERY...wise.  Now, everyone...to your work.”

She exited the platform without a word or a backward glance.


next