Chapter 1
"You have a talent for stumbling on to things, but listen to somebody who's been in this business since you were born. No matter how honorable your intentions, you're not immortal," Chad Barker grunted, rocking back in his chair and touching his fingertips together, squinting out the window at the congested Hong Kong streets below where the perpetual shuffle of feet and high voiced chatter sifted up to his third floor office. Deliberately, he kept his Australian blue eyes off of the magnificent body sitting across the room from him; those sleek stockinged legs had a definite clouding effect on his brain.
"You were saying . . ?" Shirlee Canan prompted, her pale amber eyes riveted on her superior. "Yes . . . I want you to stay on an imposter basis until you get used to the hazards of investigation. It's a cruel, dirty world out there and with your enthusiasm, you're likely to land yourself in some abominably bloody situation and get yourself killed," he said sternly. "You're a bright girl, inquisitive and strong, but you've got one drawback."
"Yes. . . ?" Shirlee cocked her pretty head and held her breath for a minute, frightened Chad Barker would take her off the investigation team and send her back behind the secretary's desk.
"You're too dramatic. You have to see the world as it is-you can't fluff facts out of imagination." He sucked in his breath. "However, you have one very definite asset . . . your appearance. You look innocent . . . few smugglers would take you seriously."
"But I am serious! I'm dead serious!" Chad winced at that word, cursing himself for sending this brown-eyed twenty-two year old child out on the bawdy streets of Hong Kong. Christ, she'd be eaten alive by the opium dealers, the white slave market . . . anybody with an eye for innocence. But she'd begged for a chance to prove her assets to the Hong Kong-based Border Investigation. It was only fair.
He wagged a finger at her. "You're to play model for Bu Manchu and that's all! No messing around for facts . . . just keep those brown eyes open to see who frequents his jewelry showing. Remember, you're not a policeman."
"That doesn't mean I don't have eyes and ears!"
"Listen . . . you're a model and that's it . . . or you'll end up in the Aberdeen Harbor with a hunk of cement around those gorg-. . . those ankles." Chad swallowed dryly. How could he play boss to this supple bodied beauty when he couldn't keep from mentally seducing her? "That's what the police are for."
"Look, Mr. Barker," she said snippily. "If I'm not mistaken, I am a woman and who could be a better investigator than somebody who works with him?" She threw up her delicate hands in frustration. "All I'm asking for is the file on Bu Manchu to get a feeling for the man. If Manchu's been smuggling jade for the past twenty-three years, certainly you must have some facts on him."
"Okay, okay . . . you win." Out of the corner of his eye, Chad Barker looked at the secretary turned police informant. "One more thing . . . I don't want you sleeping around to get facts," he snapped back at her. An awkward silence hushed between them while Chad Barker asked himself how he could have made a snide remark like that. Just because Shirlee Canan was well blessed, didn't mean she had an overactive libido. Damn it, though, he just wanted to protect this naive girl, and with thirty-seven years of investigatory experience to his credit, he was certain Shirlee was better off at the typewriter. How female liberation had hit China's white population, he'd never figure out.
Still, his remark was inexcusable. Shirlee Canan, with her baby soft blonde curls and luscious pale amber eyes looked every bit the model role, but once she came face to face with a sultry womanizer like Bu Manchu, there had to be trouble.
Shirlee sucked in her breath and her red-lipped mouth puckered angrily. "Mr. Barker, I would never sleep with a man for the measly purpose of getting facts!" She sat up stiffly, her soft whispery voice turned hard as jadeite rock.
The investigator spun around in his swivel chair, facing the offended girl. "I . . . guess you wouldn't, would you?" He recalled the numerous times she'd declined his luncheon invitations. "At least it's out in the open now, Shirlee," he said, struggling to gain control. "But when you interview for the modeling job for his next jade jewelry opening, you must be aware of these possibilities. He's only human, you know . . . and part satyr."
"If he thinks he's going to force me to sleep with him for a crumby job, so what? At least I'll get next to him. But that doesn't mean I will!" she blasted coldly, then blushed at her own audacity.
Chad Barker had the unmistakable feeling that he was losing on the defensive lines with this headstrong girl. "I guess you're right." For a silent moment he appraised her, trying to decide what her chances for surviving Bu Manchu might be. She was sharp as a tack, a tall leggy blonde with full womanly hips, a deliciously narrow waist and a heavy high-set pair of breasts . . . a real show stopper on the dark streets of Hong Kong. Barker scratched his balding head and asked himself if his decision was a wise one. Perhaps unconsciously he was sending Shirlee out into the crime-infested streets of Hong Kong for the sake of his mental well being. Working around Shirlee was like trying to diet at a smorgasbord.
"Bu Manchu employs an army of Chinese thugs who use one karate chop to slice you in half, you know," the investigator informed her. "He's been known to amputate woman's breasts with machetes."
Shirlee didn't flinch . . . outwardly.
"And his assistant is a raving lesbian who picks out the models and tests them out in her own nasty way first.. ."
"That's so, huh?" She didn't blink an eye. "I've been a model, Mr. Barker . . . but they said I wasn't very symmetrical . . ." Shirlee looked askance for a moment while Chad wondered what could be wrong with this girl's symmetry. She was all bumps and curves to his eyes.
To his surprise, she was blushing. "Horizontally, that is . . . I'm a little top heavy," she put in meekly, her amber eyes glancing down over her full breasts that ballooned out a full thirty-eight inches from her twenty-two inch waist.
Somehow, seeing this girl blush with modesty, rekindled Chad Barker's confidence in his decision and he sat up erect and cleared his throat in a judicial manner. "Okay, Shirlee, I'll give you permission to pursue the Bu Manchu file . . . if only to let you know what you're getting into. But no getting dramatic if he . . . if he comes on to you. All you have to do is quit. We'll understand."
"That's fair," Shirley agreed sincerely. "All I want is to get out behind the secretary's desk and get into investigation. I think I have a talent for it. Now back to Bu Manchu . . . If he's a jade smuggler, why does he bother with owning a shop? Is it a hobby with him?"
Barker lumbered to his feet and pulled open a metal file drawer from which he withdrew a dossier fat as the New York telephone directory, puppy-eared and ink marked.
"No . . . I have the idea that he's an egomaniac who has to be in the limelight. That's why the extravagant showings aboard his yacht."
"And that's where I'll be modeling his jewelry?"
Barker looked serious. "Yes . . . and I'd be cautious, if I were you . . . I'd give it some thought before I committed myself to this job. There'll be other assignments coming up. Take this out into the outer office and scan it . . . then decide."
Shirlee's heart pounded triple time as she gathered up the file and tripped in her high heels out of Chad Barker's office and settled at her desk. Finally, she'd got her break! Secretarial work was nowhere. The darned telephones were always ringing and nobody took you seriously unless you missed a day of work. What she craved was the real world of adventure, the underworld of shady characters who sparked the imagination like Chinese firecrackers. What better place to fulfill that fantasy than in Hong Kong, the trade center of the Orient. When her parents had first moved there from Blackpool, England she'd found it a strangely intriguing place and now that she felt comfortable here, her ambition to know it grew hotter. For years she'd read Bu Manchu's name in the paper. Ever since jade smuggling had replaced opium as the prize contraband of the Golden Triangle of Burma, Laos, and Thailand, Bu Manchu was the most colorful criminal in Hong Kong.
Thumbing through the file, she gazed at his photograph before her and scanned his life history. Born in Bangkok, the son of an artisan, he worked for an exporter and started designing jewelry. From there, reported connections with the chieftains of eastern Burma's independent Shan state, in particular, the Chinese warlords left over from Kuomintang forces now in control of jade smuggling in the Orient.
Shirlee studied the photograph of Bu Manchu, appraising it as only a woman can, while Chad's comment on his man's sexual habits rattled in her brain.
He was posed on a beach in Bali with a gorgeous, tawny, leggy woman sitting on his lap. The girl . . . one of his models, perhaps . . . was wearing a fashionable string bikini, but it was the male's body Shirlee was looking at. He had a strong muscle-bound Bruce Lee body, despite his fifty years and his cheek bones were high and his nose less broad than most Mongolians. He appeared demonically smug and arrogant, and Shirlee wondered if that lithe brown body sitting on his lap counted amongst his murder victims. Or had she lost a breast in a temper tantrum?
Instantly, Shirlee found herself shuddering, and she drew in a few deep breaths to cool the hot flash which had swept over her body without warning. This half-giddy sensation had been overcoming her often of late, and she knew what it meant. She was a normal adult female who had been driving herself too hard for the past two years, thinking about her career and leaving no time to satisfy her physical desires. Somehow, the photograph of a lustful character like Bu Manchu had sparked an automatic physical reaction, that dark animal need within her.
She stood up, nervous and trembling, wishing she could turn off that portion of herself that was female and deprived, at least long enough to advance in the investigation business. Why her sexual desires were so strong and demanding, baffled her. Women with no self respect were supposed to run around looking for cheap thrills, but she was a career woman, the cold-blooded investigator who should not have these distracting, irritating passions! She sucked in her breath, remembering what Chad Barker had said about her sleeping around for facts. Had he seen something in her, a certain suppressed weakness she wasn't aware of? The picture of tawny bodied Bu Manchu flicked in her mind. Suppose Barker was right . . . suppose she'd have to sleep with him to get the modeling job. Would she succumb to it? Maybe the Mata Hari story was nothing unusual; maybe all female spies got their information in bed!
Manchu would laugh you right out of bed, she thought, so sack that thought. What you don't know about sex would fill a book and Manchu looks like a demanding man who wouldn't settle for a whimper and a whine.
Shirlee's lack of sexual experience was no exaggeration, despite her baby-doll looks that drove every man in Hong Kong wild. Her parents were staunch English Episcopalians who didn't take kindly to late night dates and pimply faced teenage boys knocking at their door. Of course, she had gone parking a few times with her boyfriend Larry, back in Blackpool, but it was the thing to do and everybody thought you a bit weird if you didn't try it. Still, it bothered her when Larry got too enthusiastic, necking with her, sticking his tongue in her mouth and running his hungry hands all over her fully mature teenage breasts. The touch of his fluttery hands had never failed to arouse her, no matter how she tried to ignore it, and each parking spree brought her a bit closer to doing it. Sometimes she'd gone so far as to let him slide his fingers beneath her blouse and undo her brassiere and massage the nakedness of her succulent young breasts. Most of the time Larry would bring a bottle along, and Shirlee had begun to associate the stinging taste of alcohol with backseat grope sessions in the dark. Drinking helped, dulling her overactive conscience and making her not responsible for what they were doing. The memory of their last date together, before she moved to Hong Kong, floated into her mind and refused to be driven away. How many times had she remembered every humiliating moment of that last date?
They had killed half a bottle of cheap whiskey together before they fluffed up the pillows in the backseat and started to neck, and she had not even made her usual objection when his inching hand roamed into the forbidden territory up between her legs, caressing the sensitive inner flesh of her thighs. But Larry was not satisfied with stroking her legs, and she had tried to resist when he began jabbing his outstretched middle finger lewdly beneath the tight leg band of her panties and into the softly curling pubic hair surrounding her pussy. His fluttery touch had sent that strange tingling sensation charging throughout her entire body, the first time she had ever felt it, and the young girl had found it difficult to sit still in ladylike fashion as Larry probed deeper into her moist secret flesh.
"No, Larry," she had whispered into his ear, thinking he would stop short the way he had always stopped in the past when she had screamed a halt. But this time he hadn't listened to her, none at all, and the next thing she heard was the metallic whine of a zipper opening. With a shock, she had realized that his pants were open and in the dim light of the streetlight, she had been able to see his long hard penis fully erected and throbbing with lustful energy. Before she could react, he had seized her shaking fist and wrapped her fingers around his hot, solid flesh. She would have let go immediately, but at that same instant, Larry had pushed his fingers boldly into the tight warmth of her quivering young cunt. This sudden invasion sent an electric shock of rippling, almost unbearable pleasure up her backbone, pinning her, gasping, back against the seat. Then she was squeezing his warmly pulsating cock, her feminine instincts taking over and telling her what to do next. Within seconds the two of them were manipulating each other's genitals in unison with their lewd groans of delight.
Shirlee hadn't realized that her sixteen year old boyfriend's penis could swell that big, and without thinking, she began to stroke his long hard cock in wonderment, moving the leathery foreskin up and down over the bulging tip of his glans, feeling all woman as she heard her boyfriend's moaning pleasure.
And all the pleasure was not all Larry's. A part of her brain was screaming that this was sinful, but her over-stimulated young body was answering back, telling her that nothing else in her entire life, not birthday cake or reading a good book, had ever felt so good. Instinctively, she had opened her inner thighs, giving her boyfriend even greater access to the moist playground of her virginal cunt, squeezing his wildly throbbing cock as hard as she could as their arms criss-crossed and they worked at each other. Suddenly, Larry gasped, trying to roll on top of her, and she had fought him with all her strength she had left in her whiskey-weakened body, despairing as she realized he was ten times stronger than she. In seconds he had flattened her on the seat, one hand ripping her panties off her loins and leaving them dangling from one slender ankle. She begged him to stop.
Too late . . . with a snarl, he had flicked his hips forward powerfully, stabbing blindly with his blood-fed cock and trying to penetrate the defenselessly open slit of her vagina while she wiggled desperately to off-set his aim.
"No, Larry, Lar-ry, we can't!" she had begged, thrashing wildly back and forth and clamping her hot thighs together as tightly as she could with his pulsating manhood trapped wildly between them. Then, without warning, his penis exploded with hot juices and Shirlee had groaned as she felt his warm hardness begin to jerk out of control against her naked legs. Larry gasped and sent a thick hot stream spurting powerfully from his jerking, ejaculating penis, drenching her blonde pubic hair and dripping wetly down her cuntal furrow and the insides of her thighs . . .
That was the last she saw of Larry. Her father's promotion sent him to the Orient and perhaps just as well. The last Shirlee heard of her Blackpool friends, included the news that Larry had married another girl. In Hong Kong, too, there were other necking sessions and more dark corners, but Shirlee had remained frightened of her own sexuality, scared of the power this feeling possessed. Any minute it could strike without warning, precisely the way it had when she had glanced at the photograph of Bu Manchu.
What about Manchu set her off? He was just a Chinese thug, a smuggler, a murderer.