A Dick Harden Adventure
By Vince Grayson
This is a work in progress. It's an incomplete first draft. It requires editing and polishing.
Chapter 1: Lady of the Sable Fur
The muffled chime of Big Ben invades the cozy atmosphere of this study as it announces three-quarters past eleven. Light from a Tiffany lamp, softened and enriched by its mosaic shade, gives an added opulence to the already handsome appointments of this room. The soft light dances playfully upon bookshelves filled with rare and costly editions. It purifies vellum, highlights gold gilding on those choice bindings, and twinkles upon the thinning crown of Dorian Blake.
He's a rather odd figure of a man and more fitting to a musty old attic than to this luxurious Westminster flat. With disheveled hair and that ragged dressing gown, he presents a neglected and unpicturesque image.
Consumed by inspiration, the novelist writes furiously as he chronicles another thrilling adventure. His pen scratches and sputters across the page. While lesser authors tap away at keyboards, he remains nostalgically inclined and prefers to scribe his work.
At five minutes to midnight, a doorbell shatters the silence. Blake, heedless of external matters, pursues his work. The doorbell rings with a beckoning urgency, but Blake writes steadily on. A vigorous beating upon the door now accompanies that insistent ringing. This additional clamor rouses the writer's preoccupied attention.
Blake calls out, never ceasing his persistent scribbling.
"Carlton! Where the devil are you? Can't you hear someone's at the door?"
Carlton does not reveal himself. That damnable buzzing and intermittent banging combine with an unmistakable rattling of the mail slot.
Blake shouts louder.
"Carlton!"
Blake dashes his pen upon the table.
"Damn it, he's out! I must be losing my memory."
Blake stands, cinches that threadbare dressing gown, and exits the study. As the incessant buzzing fades, he moves swiftly across an adjoining parlor and throws open the door.
From the darkness staggers a young woman. Her eyes are wide with terror. Her pale face exhibits rather unusual beauty. A magnificent cloak of sable fur wraps tightly about her. As Blake opens the door, she staggers past him into the room and glances back over her shoulder.
Straightening his disorganized hair, Blake turns and studies this intruder. As if blind, she oddly gropes her way to the study where he'd been working. Unsteadily, she tumbles into the large leather chesterfield and melts from utter exhaustion.
Blake, rubbing his chin perplexedly, begins to follow her. He's scarcely taken a single step when the woman convulses forward. A trembling and bare arm catapults from the enveloping fur. A solitary pointing finger quivers as it directs Blake to the threshold.
With labored breath, she struggles to speak.
"Close... the door!... He has... followed me!"
As if in a dream, the disturbed novelist turns and secures the entrance, throwing the deadbolt for good measure. Rubbing his chin more vigorously, he enters the study, whose scholarly calm has been so mysteriously violated.
Two minutes to midnight. The most respectable residential building in dignified Westminster, a lonely and very distracted novelist. This beautiful pale-faced woman, wrapped in sumptuous fur, sits and stares with fearful eyes. It's a scene that his sense of propriety and probability could never have permitted Blake to create.
Standing at a discreet distance from her, Blake speaks nervously.
"Madame..."
She waves her hand. Signaling him to silence and simultaneously intimating that she will explain herself as soon as speech is possible. While she struggles to regain composure, Blake gradually emerges from that dreamlike state and scrutinizes her with anxious curiosity.
Apparently, his visitor is no more than twenty-five years of age, but illness or trouble, or both, mar her beauty. Amid the auburn hair gleam streaks, not of grey, but of purest white. The corners of her eyes are faintly wrinkled and those wide eyes are purple-shadowed. Most curious are those bloodless lips.
Her pallor seems more strange and interesting the longer he studies it. An odd yellow shade underlies the skin. Intuitively, he links this with the contracted pupils and seeks vainly for a common cause.
That sable coat falls partially open and Blake perceives that his visitor is most inadequately clothed beneath those furs. He catches the swell of full breasts barely contained by a whisper of champagne-colored silk. A negligee and nothing more, he realizes with a start. The garment clings to her body like a lover's caress, leaving precious little to imagination.
Seeking further confirmation of her scandalous state, his gaze strays downward to where one little slippered foot emerges from the sable fur. He notes a bare ankle. His gaze blazes a trail up an exposed calf, shapely and smooth as porcelain, to a creamy thigh where the negligee rides scandalously high. The silk gathers at her hip, revealing the shadowed junction of her thighs, barely concealed by a scrap of satin.
Blake feels heat rise to his face and quickly averts his eyes. He steps to his writing table and seats himself, glancing only sideways at this living mystery. Suddenly, she speaks in a voice tremulous and scarcely audible.
"Mr. Blake... at very great... personal risk... I have come tonight... What I must tell you will... will..."
Two bare arms leap from the fur. She clutches at her throat and chest as though choking, dying. The motion causes that sable to fall completely open, exposing the full majesty of her figure beneath gossamer silk. Her breasts heave with labored breath. Nipples strain against the delicate fabric. Blake leaps up and would have run to her, but forcing a ghastly smile, she waves him away again.
"It's all right."
She sputters as frightful spasms of pain convulse through her, contorting that beautiful and pale face.
"Should I call for help? An ambulance?"
"No... no hospitals. They would find me. A drink... Brandy... if you please."
Her arms drop and she collapses, insensible, upon the chesterfield. The sable slides from her shoulders, falling to her waist, leaving her upper body covered only by that transparent wisp of silk. In the lamplight, her skin glows like alabaster. Her chest rises and falls with each shallow breath.
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Chapter 2: Murder at Midnight
Blake clutches a corner of his writing table to steady himself. He stares at the deathly face, and, God help him, at the lush curves so shamelessly displayed before him.
Under the most favorable circumstances, he is no man of action. However, he prides himself upon possessing a presence of mind, which now abandons him entirely. It's a situation that would not have alarmed any of his famous fictional protagonists, but it alarms their creator. In fact, it strikes him inert with confusion, horror, and unwanted arousal.
Upon Blake's mental turmoil, a sensible idea intrudes.
"Dr. Phillips! I hope to God he's still awake!"
Without touching the recumbent form upon the chesterfield, without allowing himself to dwell upon the way the lamplight plays across her exposed flesh, Blake rushes across the room and, throwing the door wide, leaps the stairs two at a time to the flat above. The patter of his slippered feet fades upon the stair. As Blake reaches the landing above, the sound is altogether inaudible from his flat below.
In Blake's study, an antique clock ticks merrily on, seeming to hasten that ticking as its hand creeps closer to midnight. The Tiffany shade mingles reds, blues, and greens upon the white ceiling above. It pours golden light upon the pages of manuscript strewn about beneath it and indiscreetly illuminates the woman's half-nude form.
She lies as Blake left her, sable pooled at her waist, the champagne silk negligee concealing nothing of importance. The fabric is nearly transparent where perspiration dampens it, clinging to the generous swell of her breasts, to the flat plane of her stomach, to the womanly flare of her hips. One strap slips from her shoulder, threatening to expose her completely.
This room is a typical study of any successful literary man. It's typical in every respect. Except for that half-nude woman sprawling upon the leather chesterfield sofa.
At thirty seconds to midnight, one of those listless hands, thrown across the back of the chesterfield, clenches spasmodically. That spectacular bosom rises and falls rapidly. With a choking cry, the woman struggles upright. Her hair bursts free of its bindings and pours in a gleaming cascade about her bare shoulders, tumbling across her breasts in waves of auburn and white.
She stands with one hand clutching the sable to keep it wrapped about her trembling body. Holding the other blindly before her and with that same odd groping movement, she staggers to the writing table. Her pupils are mere pinpoints. She shudders convulsively and her skin, so much skin, is moist with perspiration. Her breath pulses in agonized spasms that do wonderful things to those barely contained curves.
"Oh, God!... I'm dying... and I cannot... tell him!"
Her whole body shakes and shudders. Hunched over, with one trembling hand upon the table to steady herself, feverishly, weakly, she grips a pen. On a page half-filled with Blake's writing, the woman scrawls a message.
Several wavering lines she scrawls as Big Ben's chime echoes through Blake's flat. This startles the woman and a great blot of ink drops upon the paper. Realizing the cause of her disturbance, she forces herself to continue.
Each chime rings out. ONE, booms the distant clock. TWO... THREE... FOUR...
A solitary lamp in the sitting room goes out. The black of night swallows that room.
FIVE, booms Big Ben. SIX... SEVEN...
A hand, the hue of old ivory, creeps in from the shadow-filled parlor. It's a long and clawish hand. Through the doorway, it reaches for the electric switch.
EIGHT... The room plunges into darkness.
With a cry of agony and horror, the woman bolts upright and turns to face the door. She clutches that sheet of paper in one rigid hand. The sable falls forgotten to the floor, leaving her clad only in that wisp of silk, her body a pale ghost in the darkness.
A silver beam of moonlight streams from the glass panes of a window above that writing table. It pours upon that scantily-clad figure. Cuts through the darkness like a scimitar. Illuminating every trembling curve, to end in a pallid pool about the woman's shadow on the Persian carpet.
NINE, booms Big Ben. TEN...
Two hands, with outstretched talon-like fingers, materialize from the darkness into the light of that moonbeam.
A frenzied and rasping shriek ensues.
"Oh, God! MR. KING!"
At her bare throat are those awful hands. A gurgling cry suffocates and fades away.
Gently, noiselessly, the lady of the sable fur sinks to the carpet. Her body settles in an attitude of terrible beauty, limbs sprawled, silk riding high upon her thighs. One breast escapes its silken prison.
A dark and mysterious figure hovers over that lifeless body. Tearing paper tells of the note being snatched from a frozen grip, but never for a moment does the face or form of that assassin encroach upon the moonlight.
This abhorrent deed occupies but a single note of the great bell.
TWELVE, rings the final stroke from the clock-tower. As some sort of demon, this second and terrible visitor avoids the light and vanishes. In darkness and stillness, only the moon remains as a solitary witness to this ghastly crime.
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Chapter 3: Death on a Persian Carpet
Three minutes past midnight, and Dorian Blake descends the stairway with Dr. Phillips close behind. The physician is a portly gentleman of middle years, wire-rimmed spectacles perched upon a bulbous nose, his leather medical bag clutched in one pudgy hand. His silk robe is hastily donned and improperly tied.
"Really, Blake, I do hope this isn't another case of theatrical vapors. Last month, Mrs. Pemberton from the third floor had me rushing down at two in the morning, only to discover she'd mistaken a panic attack for cardiac arrest."
Blake pushes open the door to his flat.
"I assure you, Doctor, this is no case of..."
Words die in his throat.
The study lies in darkness save for that single shaft of moonlight, which now illuminates a scene of unspeakable horror. Upon the Persian carpet, sprawled in frozen terror and shocking indecency, lies the woman. That sumptuous sable coat puddles beneath her like a bed of dark fur. That champagne negligee has ridden up almost to her waist, exposing the full length of her legs, legs that seem designed for wrapping around a lover, and a glimpse of satin between her thighs. One breast has escaped its silken confine entirely, the nipple dark against her deathly pale skin.
But Blake's eyes are not drawn to the shameless exposure of her womanly charms. They're fixed upon her throat.
Scarlett marks ring that slender neck like a grotesque necklace. Her eyes, those wide and purple-shadowed eyes, stare sightlessly at the ceiling. Her bloodless lips are parted in a final, silent scream.
Dr. Phillips pushes past Blake, kneeling beside the body with professional urgency, ignoring her state of undress. His fingers seek a pulse that will never again beat. He examines those marks on her throat, studies the contracted pupils, petechiae on the face and in the eyes.
Phillips reaches down. With surprising delicacy, he draws the negligee over an exposed breast and tugs the hem down to preserve what dignity remains.
"When you left her, she was alive?"
"Unconscious, but alive. Collapsed on the sofa."
"The killer was here. In your flat. We must ring the police at once."
Phillips notices something clutched in the dead woman's fingers. He gently pries open her stiff grip, revealing a torn scrap of paper. He lifts it carefully.
"Blake, look at this."
Blake steps closer. Phillips offers the scrap. Blake seizes it with trembling fingers.
The handwriting is thin and spidery, the scrawl of a dying woman. Much of the message is torn away. Portions of fresh ink are smeared and smudged. However, three fragments remain legible.
"Mr. King... your wife... Golden Dragon."
Two men stand in this luxurious study, a murdered and scandalously undressed woman between them. While somewhere in the London night, a killer makes his escape. In his possession, the remainder of a dire message, a warning that Veronica Ashcroft desperately attempted to deliver.
A message concerning Mira Blake.
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Chapter 4: The American
The grey light of a London morning seeps through windows at New Scotland Yard. This modern building rises on the Victoria Embankment. All glass and steel, it's a far cry from the Victorian pile that once housed the Metropolitan Police.
Within the Serious and Organised Crime Command offices, their work remains as grim as ever.
Detective Chief Inspector Dunbar, a grizzled veteran, sits behind a desk cluttered with case files, forensic reports, and the accumulated detritus of a dozen active investigations. A computer monitor glows beside him, emails unread, while he studies a paper file with old-fashioned intensity. His face bears the weathered look of a man who has seen too much of humanity's capacity for evil, yet soldiers on regardless.
A knock upon his door.
"Come."
The man who enters is as different from the typical Scotland Yard visitor as a tiger differs from a tabby cat. He stands over six feet, with shoulders that strain the seams of a black linen suit. His face is hard-planed, bronzed by foreign suns, with eyes the color of gunmetal. Eyes that have looked upon death and dealt it in return. He moves with the controlled grace of a predator, each pace deliberate and dangerous.
This is Dick Harden.
"Inspector Dunbar?"
Harden's voice is low, controlled, with the flat vowels of the American Midwest.
"That's right. And you'd be the Yank that Interpol flagged for us. The one DGSE in Paris was so keen to assist. They said you'd be coming."
Harden gives a slight nod. He wouldn't be here otherwise. DGSE had been clear: one man at the Yard they'd been working with on the trafficking angle, and considered uncompromised. Dunbar.
Dunbar gestures to a chair.
"I've read the file concerning that trafficking ring in Montmartre. Impressive work."
Harden takes the offered seat, but there is nothing relaxed in his posture. He sits like a coiled spring, ready to explode into action at a moment's notice.
"I'm not here seeking compliments, Inspector. Documents recovered from that Paris operation mentioned a man called 'Mr. King'. The paper bore a certain identifiable watermark. Following that trail has brought me to London."
Dunbar's eyes narrow.
"Mr. King... Interesting, you should mention that name. We had a murder last night at Palace Mansions in Westminster. A socialite, named Veronica Ashcroft, was strangled in a novelist's flat."
Harden's jaw tightens almost imperceptibly.
"Strangled?"
"With bare hands. See for yourself."
Dunbar slides the file across his desk. Harden snatches it. Opens it and examines the contents.
For a moment, Harden is silent. When he speaks, his voice carries the weight of bitter memory.
"I've seen similar marks on the throat of a woman in Paris. She was a fearless investigative journalist. She uncovered secrets of an organization calling itself 'The Black Poppy Society'. They found her body in an alley off the Rue de la Gaîté, a solitary black poppy clutched in her dead hand."
He pauses. Grief and rage flicker in those gunmetal eyes.
"She was beautiful. Hair like midnight, skin like cream. She had a laugh that could light up a room and a mind sharp enough to cut glass."
His voice drops to barely a whisper.
"And a body that could make a man forget his own name."
"A friend of yours?"
Harden's eyes grow cold and distant.
"More than a friend. Marie was going to be my wife. I'd proposed the night before they killed her. I could still feel her in my arms, still smell her perfume on my skin, when I discovered she was nothing but a corpse in an alley."
Dunbar absorbs this information with the practiced calm of a veteran interrogator.
"I'm sorry for your loss. But what does a murder in Paris have to do with Veronica Ashcroft?"
Harden leans forward.
"Everything! She discovered an international narcotics empire, trafficking opium, heroin, and synthetic opioids. Its tentacles reach from Shanghai to Paris, New York, and San Francisco.
At its head is a man called Fu Hong Wu. No Western agent has ever seen his face. He operates through a network of lieutenants.
Each one uses the alias 'Mr. King'. I destroyed the Paris branch, neutralized their Mr. King, but the larger organization survives."
Dunbar opens a folder on his desk.
"Miss Ashcroft was a known addict. Wealthy family, society connections. In recent months, she'd been frequenting an establishment known as the Cave of the Golden Dragon. An exclusive club catering to the affluent smart set. High-end product, higher-end clientele."
"And the novelist? How is he connected?"
"Dorian Blake. Respectable fellow, writes crime novels, the literary kind, not the pulpy stuff. But here's a twist that might interest you."
Dunbar slides a photograph across the desk. Harden scoops it up.
The woman in the photograph is stunning. Dark hair tumbles in waves past her shoulders. Her eyes are large and luminous, holding secrets and sorrows. Full lips curve in a smile that promises both innocence and sin. The photograph captures her in an evening gown, the neckline plunging to reveal the generous swell of her breasts, diamonds glittering at her throat.
"Blake's wife, Mira. She's been missing more than a month. Blake thought she was visiting health spas, taking cures for melancholy. But Veronica Ashcroft's note mentioned 'your wife'. We suspect Mrs. Blake may be captive at this Cave of the Golden Dragon."
Harden studies the photograph. His thumb unconsciously traces the curve of Mira Blake's cheek. Another beautiful woman lost to the empire that took Marie. Another victim of the Black Poppy Society.
Dunbar leans back, his face hard.
"Opium has made a comeback in London. Especially smoking it. We're seeing increases overdoses, disappearances, marriages shattered. A few high-profile deaths have been hushed up. This Cave of the Golden Dragon is the only establishment I've managed to put a name to. Unfortunately, I've been unable to locate the damned place. I've been trying for more than a year. I suspect finding it is the key to understanding this resurgence and ending it."
Dunbar's jaw tightens.
"I've been stonewalled. Resources, priorities, other agencies with their fingers in the pie. An outside asset with fresh intel and a reason to move. That's what I need."
Harden's gaze lifts from the photograph. The cold certainty in his eyes is answer enough.
"I need to speak with Dorian Blake."
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Chapter 5: The Novelist
That same grey London morning light filters through the windows of Palace Mansions, but it does nothing to soften the atmosphere within Dorian Blake's flat. Forensic teams have come and gone. The body has been removed. Yet this study still holds the charge of violent death.
The novelist sits in his writing chair. He stares at the Persian carpet as though he can still see Veronica Ashcroft's body sprawled there. That image, the salacious beauty of her half-nude corpse, is seared indelibly into his memory.
Harden sees a man shattered by guilt and terror. Blake's eyes are bloodshot from sleeplessness, his face pale and haggard from exhaustion. That threadbare dressing gown hangs loosely on a frame that appears to have deteriorated overnight.
Blake remains seated as Harden enters. His voice is thin and frayed.
"Mr. Harden, Inspector Dunbar said you'd come."
Blake gestures vaguely at a chair.
Harden sits but does not relax. His gaze sweeps the study, the Tiffany lamp, the writing table strewn with manuscript pages, the bookshelves filled with costly editions. The room where a woman died trying to deliver a warning about this man's wife.
"I need to understand what happened here. I need to know more about Veronica Ashcroft and your wife."
Blake flinches at the words "your wife" but gives a brittle nod.
"I didn't know Miss Ashcroft. I'd never set eyes on the woman before she staggered through my door."
He passes a hand over his face.
"But Mira had mentioned her, once or twice. They moved in similar circles. Charity galas, gallery openings, those sorts of things."
"Your wife has been absent for more than a month? You believed she was visiting a health resort, seeking a cure for melancholy?"
Blake's laugh is a dry, broken sound. He stares at the carpet again.
"I didn't notice it at the time, but she'd been slowly slipping away, withdrawing, for months. Not all at once. She'd go out for late dinners with girlfriends, or so she claimed.
She'd return later each time, glassy-eyed, dazed, lethargic, evasive. Her clothes and hair would possess a very sweet floral aroma. It was quite pleasant, really. I simply assumed she switched to a new perfume. She'd smile and kiss my cheek. Then disappear into the bedroom."
He breaks off.
"She wasn't herself. I blamed myself. My inability to provide the excitement she desired.
Frequently, when I'm writing, I become obsessed and lost in work to the neglect of all else. That has never been an issue in the past. Mira is rather independent and perfectly content to find other amusements at such times."
"But something changed?"
"Yes. Mira began staying out all night. Then she'd be gone for two or three days. That's when I became suspicious. Considered she might be having some sordid affair. That maybe she was seeking comfort in the arms of another man."
"Did you confront Mira? Question her?"
"Not at first. I decided to play detective. The next time she went out, a car was waiting for her in front of the building.
I attempted to follow, but the driver must have noticed..."
Blake glances up. The raw despair in his expression is unmistakable.
"Mira returned days later. I inquired about where she'd been. What she'd been doing.
She spoke of exhaustion and melancholy, of exclusive health spas, private retreats, and boutique resorts."
"What do you make of that partial note found in Miss Ashcroft's hand?
"The note mentioned 'Mr. King', 'your wife', and a 'golden dragon'. That's all I know. That, and a woman was murdered because she tried to tell me more."
Harden studies Blake. The guilt is real. The ignorance is genuine. The desperation is authentic. This is not a man who's pretending to be something that he's not. He is a man who's been blind and who's woken too late.
"I want to help."
Blake's hands clench into fists on his knees.
"She's my wife. I have to do something. I can't sit here and wait, do nothing."
Harden's voice is flat.
"You'd be killed in five minutes. These people murder without hesitation. You're not equipped to deal with such things."
"Then what use am I? What can I do? How can I help?"
"You're a famous author. Your name opens doors. You can move in social circles among London's smart set.
Listen to conversations. Pay attention to details. You might see and hear things, gossip, whispers.
Who's been traveling abroad? Who's nervous? Who's vanished for days or weeks and come back changed.
Work with Dunbar. Report what you learn. I'll go where neither of you can."
Blake is silent for a long moment. Then he nods, slowly.
"I can do that. I will."
Blake's eyes are bright with something between hope and desperation.
"Find her, Mr. Harden! Whatever she's done, whatever she's become, she's still my wife. Bring her home."
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Chapter 6: Our Lady of the Poppies
Two nights pass. Two evenings of careful preparation, of establishing a cover identity, of insinuating himself into the private gambling clubs and exclusive parties where wealthy men seek forbidden pleasures.
Dick Harden has become James Marlowe.
Marlowe is everything Harden is not, at least on the surface. He embodies the indifference of old money, wears expensive suits, and loses at high-stakes poker with the careless abandon of a man to whom money means nothing. He drinks vintage champagne at Claridge's, dines at Nobu, and makes no secret of his appetite for exotic diversions.
Word spreads, as Harden knew it would. There's a new American in town. Rich, reckless, and looking for thrills that respectable London cannot provide.
On the fourth night, an invitation arrives. A private viewing at a Mayfair gallery. The featured artist, Klaas Van Hoorn, is an eccentric Dutch painter whose latest work has set tongues wagging and respectable society clutching their pearls.
Harden, or rather Marlowe, arrives fashionably late. He slips from a silver BMW Roadster convertible into the cool London evening.
The gallery is ablaze with carefully designed lighting. Walls display canvases that pulse with vivid color and Oriental fantasy. Wealthy patrons cluster before the paintings, champagne flutes in hand. Murmured appreciations fill the air. Designer gowns and Savile Row suits mingle with the artwork, creating a tableau of wealth and taste.
However, one painting draws all eyes. One particular canvas that dominates the exhibition like a dark sun around which all else orbits. A work titled "Our Lady of the Poppies".
Harden approaches slowly. Affecting the casual interest of a dilettante, his meticulous eyes drink in every detail.
The perspective is unusual, looking down into a cavernous chamber from an elevated position, as though the viewer floats above the floor. The walls are of black rock, polished like obsidian. Slender gilded pillars support a fretwork arch of carved wood. The floor gleams jet-black, strewn with tiger-skin rugs and scattered with silk cushions in jewel tones.
The central figure, however, arrests an observer's attention and refuses to release it.
A Chinese woman stands before a golden dragon of exquisite workmanship, which crouches upon an ivory pedestal. She is slight and supple, possessing what the exhibition catalog calls "a devilish and forbidding grace". Long black hair cascades down her back, parting like a curtain to frame her face, a face of porcelain beauty, with great dark eyes that seem to follow the viewer, filled with knowing evil and darker promises.
She is nude to the waist. Her breasts are small but perfectly formed. Nipples, rendered in strokes of rose madder, glow against ivory skin. The artist captured them with loving precision, the gentle swell, the delicate upward tilt, the shadowed undersides.
A jeweled girdle encircles her hips, riding low on the feminine curve of her belly, from which diaphanous draperies sweep downward. The fabric is rendered so skillfully that it appears transparent, hinting at the shadowed mystery between her thighs without quite revealing it.
Her left hand holds a bunch of poppies seemingly torn from the massive Chinese vase nearby, a riot of color from deepest purple to virgin white. Her right hand points tauntingly at the viewer, one finger extended in unmistakable invitation.
Her smile is rendered in two strokes of brilliant vermilion and one splash of dead white. It is the smile of a woman who knows secrets that could damn empires and pleasures that could damn souls.
Harden feels an unwanted stirring as he studies the canvas. The artist captured something primal, something that bypasses thought and speaks directly to baser instincts. This painted woman promises ecstasies beyond imagination, delivered in silk-draped chambers far from the censorious light of day.
He forces himself to focus, to see past the erotic spell. The composition glows with life, with uncanny accuracy. This is no imagined scene. The artist must have been to this place. He must have seen it with his own eyes and captured far more than any camera could.
Then he notices it.
Hidden among the colorful poppies in that massive vase, barely visible, so cunningly concealed that most viewers would never spot it.
A single black poppy.
Fu Hong Wu's signature.
Harden's blood runs cold despite the heat in his veins. This painting doesn't just depict an opium den. It depicts the Cave of the Golden Dragon.
"Remarkable work, isn't it?"
The voice emanates from behind, cultured, patrician, dripping with aristocratic condescension. Harden turns to find himself face-to-face with Sir Lionel Blackwood.
This Member of Parliament is a distinguished figure in his early sixties, silver-haired, impeccably dressed in a costly and well-tailored suit. His face wears the benevolent expression of a man accustomed to public admiration. He is, after all, the most vocal crusader against the drug trade in all of England. His speeches in Parliament have thundered against the scourge of opioids. His charitable foundations fund treatment centers. His name appears on every anti-trafficking petition.
"Though I find Van Hoorn's romanticization of the drug plague rather distasteful. These dens are a cancer upon our society. A cancer that must be excised."
His eyes, Harden notes, have lingered on the painted breasts a moment too long.
Harden nods politely, playing his role.
"Strong words."
"Strong words for a strong evil."
The MP's eyes gleam with righteous fervor.
"I've made it my life's work to stamp out this scourge. When I see paintings like this one, glorifying the degradation of our finest citizens..."
He pauses and shakes his head.
"It sickens me."
A waiter passes. Sir Lionel deposits his empty glass and takes a fresh one.
"Enjoy the exhibition, Mister..."
"Marlowe. James Marlowe."
"Mr. Marlowe."
With a cordial nod, Sir Lionel drifts away to work the crowd.
Harden watches him go.
"You studied that painting rather carefully, Mr. Marlowe."
This voice is different, oily, insinuating, with a faint Greek accent. Harden turns to find a small, round man at his elbow. The man's suit is expensive but slightly ill-fitting, straining across a belly that hints of too many rich meals. His smile reveals too many teeth, and his eyes glitter with reptilian calculation.
The Greek continues.
"Most people see only the exotic beauty. They see a beautiful woman with beautiful breasts. They think it's artistic and daring. But you... You were looking for something specific. Yes?"
"And you are?"
"Dimitri Nikos Gianapolis."
He performs a slight bow.
"A fellow admirer of Van Hoorn's genius. I make it my business to identify men of... discerning taste."
A lazy grin claims Harden's face.
"Discerning taste in art?"
"In all things, Mr. Marlowe, all things."
Gianapolis's eyes glitter with calculation.
"A man who appreciates such details... Perhaps, you are not the naive tourist you pretend to be. Perhaps you have visited such establishments before? In Paris, maybe?"
"Paris? No, I've not had that pleasure."
His gaze drifts to the painting, to those exquisitely rendered breasts, that taunting smile.
"However, I've made pilgrimages to establishments in Shanghai and Hong Kong that provide for devotees seeking communion with the goddess... the goddess who can only be reached through tears of the poppy."
His voice drops to a conspiratorial murmur.
"But never have I worshipped at a temple such as this."
Gianapolis's smile widens, showing even more teeth.
"Then perhaps, Mr. Marlowe, your pilgrimage is not yet complete."
Before Harden can respond, a ripple passes through the crowd. Heads turn. Conversations falter. Even the waiting staff pause in their rounds.
She glides through the gallery like a vision from the canvas itself. The woman from the painting, impossibly brought to life.
She wears a gown of imperial yellow brocade silk that clings to every curve of her supple form as though painted on by a master's brush. The fabric is cut scandalously low in front, revealing the inner curves of small, perfect breasts. A slit runs from hem to hip, offering glimpses of a long leg with every step. A red poppy blazes in her raven hair, which falls in a gleaming curtain to the small of her back.
Her face is a porcelain mask of exotic beauty. Those dark eyes sweep the room with predatory intelligence. Her lips, painted the color of fresh blood, curve in that same knowing smile from the painting.
She approaches without haste. Every step a study in feline grace. Her hips sway with hypnotic rhythm.
The crowd parts before her like water before a shark. Even Sir Lionel inclines his head in respectful greeting as she passes. Although, his eyes drop quite obviously to her décolletage.
She stops before them. Close enough that Harden can smell her perfume, jasmine and something darker, more primal. Her gaze meets his, and he feels it like a physical touch, like cool fingers trailing down his spine.
Gianapolis steps forward with a flourish. His small eyes alight with satisfaction.
"Mr. Marlowe, allow me to present Madame Lin Wei."
Lin Wei's dark eyes never leave Harden's face as Gianapolis makes the introduction. Her lips, painted the color of fresh blood, curve in that knowing smile from the painting.
"Mister Marlowe..."
She purrs. The name sounds like honey dripping from a poisoned blade.
A hand touches his, cool as jade, soft as the silk that barely contains her. Fingers trail across his palm, an unmistakably intimate caress. Electric current passes between them. Harden's body responds despite himself. He feels the heat rise, the blood rush.
Her gaze drifts to the painting.
"Tell me, Marlowe, do you appreciate fine art?"
"I appreciate beauty... wherever I find it. Embrace it while I may. Possess it when I can."
Her dark eyes search his face with new intensity.
"Do you desire to embrace our lady of the poppies?"
"The painting or the woman?"
"The goddess, Mr. Marlowe, have you ever known such an embrace?"
He holds her gaze steadily, refusing to look at the charming weapons she so obviously wields to effectively disarm men.
"I've known many embraces, madame. Some more perilous than others."
Lin Wei's smile deepens. Her lips part, revealing small white teeth. She steps closer still. So close that her breasts brush against his chest through the thin silk.
She whispers. Her breath warm against his ear.
"Peril merely heightens pleasure, amplifies it to a more concentrated form. And I know pleasures, Mr. Marlowe, ecstasies that would make pleasure itself weep with jealousy."
Then she steps back, breaking the spell, or perhaps tightening it. Her tongue darts out, pink and quick, tracing the curve of her blood-red lips. Her dark eyes hold his for one heartbeat longer, promising everything, revealing nothing.
Gianapolis watches the exchange with barely concealed satisfaction. His small eyes glitter with the anticipation of a spider who has felt the first vibrations on his web.
Lin Wei gracefully glides away. That enchantress vanishes into the crowd as silently as she appeared, trailing jasmine and sin.
Gianapolis interrupts Harden's lingering reverie.
"A remarkable woman. She has a certain effect on men. Even strong men. Even careful men."
Harden says nothing. His gaze drifts back to the painting, to that hidden black poppy among the riot of color. His body still thrums with the electricity of Lin Wei's touch, the promise in her dark eyes. Part of him, the part that is still human, still capable of desire, wants very much to see her again.
But another part remembers Marie. Remembers her body in that Paris alley, her beautiful throat marked by crushing hands. Remembers the black poppy clutched in her cold fingers.
Around him, London society chatters and drinks and admires the exotic art, oblivious to the evil that lurks among them. Sir Lionel Blackwood holds court near the champagne, thundering against the very scourge barely veiled in this painting. Lin Wei seductively sways across the gallery. Surrounded by admirers, her yellow silk gleams under the lights. While Gianapolis lingers, watching, waiting.
The hook is baited. Now Harden must allow them to reel him in.
⚜️⚜️⚜️
Chapter 7: Invitation
Two nights pass. Two evenings of calculated excess.
James Marlowe, for Dick Harden has completely immersed himself in the role, visits London's most exclusive establishments. The Clermont Club on Berkeley Square. Aspinall's in Mayfair. Private games in Belgravia townhouses where the buy-in exceeds most men's monthly salary.
He gambles with careless abandon. He tips extravagantly. He orders vintage champagne and leaves bottles half-finished. He makes a spectacle of himself in all the ways that matter, reckless, wealthy, bored, and searching for something that money alone cannot buy.
Word spreads through certain circles. The new American. Marlowe. Pockets deeper than the Atlantic. Looking for thrills.
At a private poker game in a Knightsbridge mews house, Harden finds himself seated across from Klaas Van Hoorn.
The Dutch painter is cadaverous in the flesh, pale as bleached bone, with the glazed eyes of a man who's spent too many hours in narcotic dreams. His fingers, stained with pigment, tremble as they hold cards. He plays badly, recklessly, and loses a small fortune without seeming to notice or care.
During a break in play, Harden nonchalantly lights a cigarette.
"Your painting... Our Lady of the Poppies... is a fascinating work."
Van Hoorn's eyes flicker before settling into their customary glaze.
"You attended the exhibition?"
"I did. The detail was... extraordinary. One might suspect you'd seen such a place with your own eyes."
The painter's laugh is thin, unconvincing.
"The muse of dreams. She shows me visions. I merely transfer them to canvas."
He's lying. Harden reads it in every tremor, every averted glance. Van Hoorn has been there, but he's terrified of saying so. Whatever hold the organization has on him, it runs deeper than addiction.
Before Harden can press further, a familiar oily voice intrudes.
"Mr. Marlowe! What a pleasant surprise."
Gianapolis materializes. His smile shows too many teeth. A dinner jacket strains across his belly. His small eyes glitter with calculation.
Harden affects bored surprise.
"Mr. Gianapolis, you frequent these tables?"
"I am a man of many interests. And I make it my business to know men of interesting appetites."
The Greek's gaze flicks to Van Hoorn. Suddenly, the artist finds urgent business elsewhere and excuses himself with mumbled apologies.
Gianapolis settles into the painter's vacated chair, uninvited, and signals for a drink.
"You've been making quite an impression these past few nights, Mr. Marlowe. Losing money as though it grows on trees. One might think you're trying to attract attention."
"Perhaps I am."
Harden meets the Greek's gaze steadily.
"Perhaps I've grown bored with ordinary diversions."
Gianapolis's smile widens.
"Ah... A man after my own heart. London offers many pleasures, but for a man of your... sophistication... the usual entertainments must seem terribly pedestrian."
He leans closer. Conspiratorially lowers his voice.
"Do you remember our conversation, Mr. Marlowe, from the other night at the gallery?"
"I remember."
"What if I told you that such a paradise truly exists? Not in imagination. Not in dreams. But here, in London, hidden from the ordinary world."
"I'd say that I've heard such promises before... in Singapore... in Bangkok... in Saigon. Often, they lead to disappointment."
"This is no Bangkok brothel, Mr. Marlowe."
A flicker of offense crosses the Greek's face.
"This is... something else entirely. A temple. A sanctuary. A place where the most refined pleasures are offered to those who can appreciate them and afford them."
He produces a card from his breast pocket and slides it across the green felt. Glossy black stock, expensive, it bears no name, only a gold embossed phone number.
Gianapolis whispers.
"When you wish to continue your pilgrimage, call this number. Speak the words 'golden dragon'. An appointment will be arranged."
Harden takes the card. Turns it over in his fingers. Feigns nonchalant indifference.
"And the price of admission?"
The Greek's smile turns knowing.
"For a man of your means? Trivial. Merely a token gesture of good faith, nothing more. I assure you. What awaits within is beyond price."
He rises, straightening his straining jacket.
"But I should warn you, Marlowe. Once you taste the pleasures this particular establishment offers, you may find that ordinary life loses its savor. Many men have discovered this. Many beautiful women, too."
His eyes glitter with amusement.
"Perhaps you saw some of them at the gallery. Society ladies. Wives of important men. They come seeking escape from their dull, respectable lives. And they find it. Oh yes! They find it."
Gianapolis turns, shuffles away, melts into the crowd, leaving Harden alone with that card.
Crushing out that cigarette, Harden studies those gold numbers. A trivial token gesture of good faith for admission. The price of a life, in some countries. The price of a soul, in this one.
He thinks of Mira Blake, beautiful and desperate. Her body ravaged by months of addiction. He thinks of Veronica Ashcroft, strangled on a novelist's Persian carpet. Her negligee exposing everything she'd once tried to hide. He thinks of the reporter murdered in Paris.
⚜️⚜️⚜️
Chapter 8: Velvet and Darkness
That glossy black card sits on a nightstand beside the bed. Embossed gold numbers gleam in the lamplight. A phone call is made. The words "golden dragon" spoken. Arrangements are made with clinical efficiency.
Fifteen minutes later, Harden moves with the unhurried pace of a man who has all the time in the world. He exits the Imperial Ryokan, London's most exclusive traditional Japanese inn, like a ghost, unseen, unremarkable, just another wealthy guest seeking an evening's entertainment.
Night air is cool and damp with the threat of rain. Piccadilly stretches before him, alive with traffic and light. However, his attention is fixed on what waits at the curb.
A Rolls-Royce limousine, black as midnight, the color so deep and perfect that it drinks light. This vehicle is a statement. An announcement of wealth and power. The kind of car that opens doors and silences questions.
A uniformed chauffeur stands beside it. Ramrod straight, his face is expressionless. His eyes scan the street with the alertness of a bodyguard. As Harden approaches, that chauffeur opens the rear door.
Gianapolis sits within, his bulk filling one side of the spacious cabin. He wears evening dress, a dinner jacket, a silk tie the color of blood. His smile is wide, predatory, the expression of a man who has successfully baited his trap.
"Mr. Marlowe. So good of you to join us."
Harden slides in. The leather is soft as butter. The scent of expensive polish and something else, something darker, fills his lungs. The door closes behind him with a sound like a vault sealing, solid, final, absolute.
The windows are shrouded. Heavy black velvet curtains, drawn tight, transform the cabin into a sealed chamber and prevent any view of the world outside. This claustrophobic darkness, this sense of being sealed away from the world, raises hairs on the back of Harden's neck.
The car begins to move, smooth and silent. Harden perceives subtle shifts in acceleration, stops and starts. He detects many turns, differences in pavement condition and quality beneath the wheels.
Gianapolis watches him, those small eyes glittering in the dim light of the cabin's interior lamps.
"Comfortable, Mr. Marlowe?"
There's mockery in his tone. He knows this experience is purposely engineered to be disorienting.
Harden maintains a wealthy playboy's typical air of boredom.
"Quite comfortable, indeed."
"Attempting to memorize the route is pointless, I assure you. We take different paths each time, drive in circles. The location must remain a secret to all guests, even to our staff."
"Surely, you understand that certain security precautions are necessary. Our establishment caters to clientele who value privacy. Politicians, businessmen, celebrities, socialites, men and women whose reputations must be protected."
Harden reaches into his jacket, withdraws a gold cigarette case. He extracts a cigarette, lights it with a vintage gold Dupont lighter. He draws smoke deep into his lungs, holds it, then exhales.
"I would expect nothing less."
The car continues its journey. Harden loses track of time, of direction. The darkness presses in, the velvet curtains absorbing sound as well as light, creating an eerie sense of isolation. He can hear his own breathing, the faint rustle of Gianapolis's clothing, the whisper of the engine, but nothing else.
Gianapolis speaks, his voice oily, conversational,
"So, what brings you to our fair city of London, Mr. Marlowe? Business or pleasure?"
"Boredom, mostly. The usual diversions have lost their appeal. I've been traveling the world, seeking something more... transcendent."
Gianapolis's smile widens.
"Transcendence. Yes. That's what we offer. Not the crude pleasures of common vice. Something elevated. Something that speaks to the soul as well as the body."
The car slows. The engine dies. Silence is absolute, broken only by the chauffeur's door opening, closing, footsteps on concrete.
The door opens. Behind it, the chauffeur stands motionless. His face expressionless.
Harden stubs out his cigarette. Exits the limousine into a garage. Empty, echoing, its rusticated stone block walls suggest age and permanence. The air is cool, damp, carrying the scent of concrete and stone.
Gianapolis emerges behind him.
"This way, if you please."
He leads Harden across the garage floor. Footsteps echo with disturbing amplitude in this space. Ahead, the wall appears solid but otherwise ordinary and unremarkable.
As they approach, Harden's eyes dissect minute details. There are slight irregularities in the stonework. Nearly imperceptible seams where certain blocks meet.
Gianapolis presses his hand against a specific stone, applying pressure in a precise sequence. There's a subtle click, mechanical, well-oiled. A section of the wall swings open, revealing a passage that should not exist.
Descending into darkness, a narrow stairway cascades through a tunnel of rough-hewn limestone.
"After you, Mr. Marlowe."
Gianapolis's voice holds a note of ceremony, as though this is a ritual, an initiation. Harden steps forward, into the passage, and begins to descend.
This stairway extends deeper than Harden would have expected. The temperature drops with each step. The air grows cool, thin, light, easier to breathe. From above and behind, that covert door swings shut. The lock engages with a soft click, sealing them within.
⚜️⚜️⚜️
Chapter 9: Cave of the Golden Dragon
The chamber stretches before him like something from a fever dream.
Vast, impossibly vast for an underground space, with walls of black rock polished to a mirror shine. Slender gilded pillars spiral upward at regular intervals, supporting a fretwork arch of carved wood that curves to a point high above. Paper lanterns hang from silken cords, casting warm amber light that dances with every breath of air. The floor gleams jet-black, strewn with tiger-skin rugs and cushions in jewel tones, ruby, emerald, sapphire, gold.
Dominating everything, rising twelve feet at the chamber's heart, crouches that majestic golden dragon.
It is exquisite! A masterwork of expert craftsmanship, every scale picked out in precious metal, blazing emerald eyes shimmer and glow with mystical light. Its mouth gapes wide, frozen in an eternal roar. Within that ferocious maw, golden fangs curl and the wisp of a serpentine forked tongue darts forth.
Around this chamber, scattered across those cushions and rugs, lie a surprising number of bodies.
Men in fine silk or satin nightwear, their eyes glazed. Women similarly undressed in sleepwear, gowns that have ridden up, fallen open, slipped from shoulders, revealing more flesh than modesty would permit, if modesty existed in this place. Some lie alone, lost in private dreams. Others are intertwined, limbs entangled, boundaries dissolved by the sweet smoke.
Harden recognizes faces. A minor royal, third in line to some European throne. A hedge fund manager whose face graces the financial pages. A famous actress, her body stunning. Her negligee conceals nothing of those generous curves as she lies sprawled across a tiger skin, one breast exposed to crimson and gold light.
Beautiful women move among them. Hostesses attired in clinging silk and diaphanous gossamer fabric that leaves nothing to imagination. They offer refreshments, pipes, their own bodies.
"Mr. Marlowe."
The voice comes from behind him, soft silk and seduction. He turns to behold Lin Wei. A vision that strikes him with the force of a physical blow.
She wears less than she did at the gallery. The yellow silk replaced by something more delicate, more revealing. A robe of pale pink clings to her slight figure like a second skin. It parts in the front, reveals the inner curves of her small breasts, the flat plane of her stomach, a glimpse of bare flesh below the jeweled girdle at her hips. Her black hair cascades loose over her shoulders, gleaming in lantern light.
She is beautiful. She is deadly. And she knows exactly what effect she's having.
"Welcome to the Cave of the Golden Dragon."
She stops before him, close enough to touch, close enough that her perfume, jasmine and something darker, captures his attention.
"I trust your journey was... comfortable?"
"Disorienting."
Harden admits, playing his role.
"Discretion is everything in our business."
Her lips curve in that blood-red smile.
"This place is a sanctuary. Our clients come here to escape the world. We ensure the world cannot follow."
She reaches up, her cool fingers brushing his jaw in a caress that is both intimate and proprietary.
"You're tense, Mr. Marlowe. You carry weight of the outside world upon your shoulders."
Her dark eyes search his.
"Let us relieve you of that burden. Let us show you pleasures of which you have only dreamed."
Her hand drifts down, across his chest, his stomach, lower. Harden catches her wrist before fingers can reach their destination. Her smile sharpens.
He keeps his voice level with effort.
"Not so fast. I prefer to take things a bit more slowly... to enjoy the anticipation."
She withdraws her hand without offense.
"Ah... a man of patience. One who understands the value of allowing time for desire to cultivate, to fully blossom. I had hoped as much."
She gestures toward the chamber, playing hostess now rather than temptress.
"The main hall offers simple pleasures. Smoke. Dreams. Company. Should you desire it. Our hostesses are adept in the arts of relaxation."
Both her smile and words carry layers of meaning. She leads him to a passage branching from the main chamber.
"Private rooms are available for those who seek more... personal attention. Whatever your preference, Mr. Marlowe, whatever your fantasy, here, in the embrace of the Golden Dragon, all desires can be satisfied."
They pass a doorway covered by a silk curtain. Through a gap, Harden glimpses a tableau that sears itself into his memory. A woman arches backward across a divan. Her gown fallen to her waist. Her splendid breasts bare and heaving. A hostess kneels beside her, lifts a jade pipe the woman's lips. Her face is slack with narcotic bliss. Her body writhes rhythmically with drugged sensuality.
Lin Wei notes his glance.
"Lady Clayton, wife of the Home Secretary. She discovered our establishment six months ago. Now she visits twice weekly. Her husband believes she attends charity functions."
Lin Wei leads Harden down a passage to a door of heavy oak, reinforced with bronze fittings that might have graced a Japanese temple one thousand years ago.
"For a man of your evident refinement, and in honor of your first visit, we have something special."
She produces a key, brass and ornate, clearly unique. The lock yields with a whisper of well-oiled precision.
"For our most discerning guests... The Kyoto Suite... I suspect you will find everything to your satisfaction."
⚜️⚜️⚜️
Chapter 10: Little Lotus
Harden steps inside and allows himself a moment of genuine appreciation.
The room is a masterwork of traditional Japanese design. Shoji screens of rice paper and dark cedar divide the space into intimate alcoves. Their surfaces cast soft shadows from concealed lanterns. The floor is covered in tatami mats, immaculate, their woven reeds releasing a faint scent of summer fields. A tokonoma alcove displays a single scroll of calligraphy and a ceramic vase holding one perfect camellia.
But the room's true centerpiece lies at its heart, a sunken bath of black granite, steam rising from water that gleams in the low light. An onsen, here beneath the streets of London, its edges flush with the floor in the traditional manner. The air above it shimmers with heat.
Against the far wall, a low platform futon bed awaits, dressed in silk the color of midnight. Beside it, the accoutrements of pleasure, a lacquered tray, a jade pipe, a small brass lamp whose flame burns steady and blue.
"Beautiful,"
Harden says, and means it. The attention to detail is extraordinary, obsessive. Whoever designed this room understood the aesthetics of seduction.
"The bath is yours, the pipe is yours, the night is yours. If you desire company..."
A smile plays at her crimson lips.
"Ring the bell. Someone will attend to your needs. In the meantime..."
A girl enters, strikingly youthful in appearance, with the delicate features and porcelain skin of northern China. She wears a pastel pink silk robe that clings to her petite figure. Her onyx black hair is secured with jade hairpins of the purest white. Her shimmering eyes, dark as temple pools, proclaim sacred innocence.
Lin Wei withdraws. The door closes with a soft click.
The silence is absolute. Soundproof, he realizes. No sound escapes these walls. Any cries of pleasure or pain die before reaching the passage beyond.
"Good evening, sir."
Her English is accented but precise. Her voice soft and musical as temple bells.
"I am Little Lotus. I will prepare your dreams... tend to the pipe... but first..."
She slips from her robe. With one smooth little shrug, the silk whispers down her body, pools upon the floor. Harden's breath catches despite himself.
She is exquisite with small breasts, perfectly formed. Her body a study in delicate curves, the gentle swell of narrow and boyish hips, the flat plane of her belly, skin like warm ivory in the lantern light. She stands before him without shame or coyness, inviting his adoration. Those dark eyes cast toward the floor, to the space between them. Projecting a shyness that seems impossible given her nakedness.
She steps closer. Small hands unfasten the buttons of his shirt with practiced ease. She undresses him slowly, deliberately.
Slender fingers brush his chest, his stomach, lower. Each touch light as a butterfly wing but electrifying nonetheless. Harden feels the heat rise in his blood, the involuntary response of flesh to flesh, and forces himself to remain still, to play the eager client.
She folds his clothes with ritualistic care. Places them on a cedar bench. Her movements fluid as mercury.
Her tiny hand slides into his, warm and soft. She leads him to the onsen. Steam rises from water strewn with flower petals. He descends into tropical heat. She follows, kneeling beside him on a submerged ledge. Her small breasts just break the surface, nipples stiffened by the sultry water.
The sponge moves across his shoulders, his chest, his arms. Her touch is slow, soft, tender. Each stroke a promise. Each caress an invitation.
She leans close. Her hair brushes his shoulder. Her breath warm against his ear as she works the sponge lower, across his stomach, along his thighs. He's acutely aware of her body beside his in the water, the brush of her hip against his, the impossible softness of her skin.
When she finishes, she rises from the bath first, water cascading down her slight figure, tracing paths over her breasts, her belly, between her thighs. She holds a silk robe open for him, deep crimson, embroidered with golden dragons. As he steps from the water, she wraps it around him.
Her body presses against his back for one electric moment. Her hands smooth the fabric across his chest. The silk whispers against his skin like a lover's touch. Reaching around from behind, she gently ties the strip of silk at his waist.
He settles onto the futon cushions. Reclines against satin sheathed pillows. Then examines the opium tray with unashamed interest. Though his pulse still thrums from her ministrations.
Still completely nude, she kneels beside the futon in one fluid motion, arranging the tray with ritualistic care. Harden watches her small hands extract a bead of sticky substance from the lacquered box. Watches her expertly twist it around the needle's end and place it in the lamp's blue flame. The opium bubbles, darkens, acquires a spirituous flame of its own.
She drops the prepared pellet into the bowl of the pipe and places the mouthpiece between his lips with practiced delicacy. Her fingers brush his jaw. Intentionally or not, he cannot tell.
Harden draws the smoke into his mouth and exhales rapturously, never allowing it to enter his lungs.
This is a skill he learned in the dens of Shanghai, where an American operative either learned to fake the dragon's kiss or became its victim. The smoke curls from his lips, fragrant and deadly. He allows his body relax into those luxurious satin pillows.
Little Lotus watches without expression.
He takes another false draw, allowing his eyelids to droop, his breathing to slow. An intoxicating sweetness fills the air, thick and heavy. The pipe's weight drags his hand downward. The mouthpiece slips from his lips as though it's become too heavy to hold.
Another breath. Another. His head lolls to one side. The pipe slides from his fingers.
Through the veil of his lashes, he watches Little Lotus observe him for a long moment. Then she rises, retrieves the pipe, replaces it on the tray, and withdraws as silently as she came. The door whispers shut.
⚜️⚜️⚜️
Chapter 11: Visitor in the Night
Harden remains motionless.
He's played this game before, in Shanghai, in Marseilles, in a dozen smoke-filled rooms where death waited for the unwary. He knows the test that comes next. He knows they will not simply accept his performance.
Time passes. Ten minutes, perhaps twenty. The opium fumes swirl around him, and he keeps his breathing shallow, his body slack.
The door opens again.
Even before he sees her, he knows. The faint whisper of silk against silk. The subtle fragrance of jasmine mingled with something dark, animal, and ancient. The particular quality of attention that fills the air when a predator enters the room.
Lin Wei has transformed since leaving him at the door. Hair loose from its elaborate coils, cascade over her shoulders like a black waterfall. A red poppy, huge, almost obscene in its lushness, is pinned above her left ear. Her pale pink robe exchanged for something thinner, diaphanous, a mere suggestion of fabric that conceals nothing and reveals everything, the curve of her small breasts, the narrow waist, those succulent thighs.
She moves toward him. Her beauty is magnificently evil, terrible, ancient. The beauty of temple demons and hungry ghosts. The type of beauty that launches ships and burns cities.
Harden does not move. Does not twitch. He's a dead man, a breathing corpse, lost in opium dreams.
She bends over him.
He feels her fingers on his face, cool and precise. She seizes his eyelid and rolls it back over her forefinger, exposing the eyeball. Harden anticipated this. At her approach, he rolled his eyes back, showing only white. His trained nerves do not betray him. He does not flinch.
Lin Wei holds his eyelid open for a long moment, studying the blank sclerotic with clinical interest. Then she releases it and murmurs something in Cantonese, satisfaction or suspicion, before turning her attention elsewhere.
Through his lowered lashes, Harden watches her search his belongings with methodical precision. She examines his discarded clothes, checks the maker's marks, scrutinizes the buttons. She counts the contents of his wallet, inspects the labels, explores the lining of his jacket with fingers that miss nothing. His watch, his cigarette case, all subjected to careful study.
She approaches the bed again. Harden becomes stone.
Her fingers, beetle-like, creep beneath his pillow. They trace along his silk robe, checking for hidden pockets, concealed weapons. They pause at his chest, feeling his heartbeat.
Satisfied, she withdraws her hand. But she does not leave.
She sits on the edge of the bed. Her weight barely dimples the silk. Her hand reaches out, touches him lightly upon the lips with her fingers, traces along his jaw, down his throat, across the opening of his robe where his chest lies exposed.
"My beautiful sleeper."
She whispers. Her voice is low, throaty, touched with something that might be genuine desire or might be the most perfect performance he's ever witnessed.
"My new guest. My dead baby."
She laughs, low and musical, and the sound trickles down his spine like ice water.
She bends lower. Lower. Lower, yet. With every nerve in his body, he senses her nearing presence. He feels her breath on his face, warm and sweet. The enticing scent of her envelops him. Lower still... her lips brush his cheek, his jaw, the corner of his mouth.
She kisses him. Full on the lips. Long... and slow... and devastating.
Every nerve in Harden's body screams at him to respond. To seize her, this deadly beautiful woman, and answer passion with passion. It is a maddening impulse, one of the supreme moments of his life.
He knows that survival depends upon absolute immobility. Yet something in his brain is demanding that he gather this witch to his breast, return that poisonous vampiric kiss. Then crush life from the small, lithe, elegant body of this hypnotic creature hovering over him.
He does neither. He lies inert, a dead man, a corpse dreaming opium dreams.
She breaks the kiss and laughs again, that eerie, wicked sound.
"Oh, my beautiful dead baby."
Her voice is low and weirdly sweet.
"Oh, my new baby, how I love you, my dead one!"
Again, she laughs, a musical peal.
"I will creep to you in the poppyland where you go... and you shall twine your fingers in my hair and pull my mouth down to you, kissing me... kissing me, until you stifle and you die of my love.... Oh! my beautiful mummy baby... my baby."
Her hand slides beneath his robe, tracing patterns on his chest, his stomach, lower...
He does not react. Cannot react. To react is to die.
"Sleep, my darling. Sleep and dream of poppies."
One final kiss, pressed to his forehead like a benediction or a curse.
And then she is gone, withdrawn from the room as silently as smoke, leaving nothing behind but the ghost of her perfume and the hammering of his heart.
Harden lies motionless for five full minutes.
Then, slowly, he opens his eyes.
The room is empty. The door is closed. Whatever surveillance watches him, it has seen only an opium dreamer lost in drugged oblivion.
He allows himself a breath. Another. His hands are trembling, not from fear, but from the effort of suppressing every human response during Lin Wei's assault.
Now, he thinks. Now the real work begins.
He rises from the bed in one fluid motion, every sense alert. The Kyoto Suite is beautiful, but it is also a trap, and somewhere in this labyrinth, secrets wait to be stolen.
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