Prologue
PrologueAugust 1868, Grass Valley, California
Comprador Chung Ting Hon sprawled across the capacious bed, patrician profile smooth and unlined against the white linen of the down pillow, his right arm flung protectively across his young wife, Beautiful Jade, who snuggled against him. The only sound the man in the doorway heard as he paused, a dark shadow backlit momentarily in the ambient light from the Gold House hallway, was his own breathing, rhythmic and deep.
The new moon was hidden below the Sierra Nevadas, magnifying the Milky Way’s white light dazzle that could be seen through the upstairs windows, leaving the naked honeymooners barely visible in the dim lunar gloom. They had thrown off their bedclothes, their bodies and the heat of the night all the warmth they needed, legs entwined like the new lovers they were.
The smell of orange-blossom oil lingered, reminding the man, who loitered on the threshold, of earliest memories of his father’s house. He stepped lightly in and closed the door with a barely audible click. He leaned back against it as he steadied his breathing, stroking his leather-gloved fingers from tip to base as he savoured the peaceful scene. He’d become hardened to the idea of necessary death. Kill a chicken to frighten the monkeys. Or as the gweilo say, the end justifies the means. He’d told himself that many times in the past months, never more so than on this night. But this one would be different from all the others.
He moved with purpose, balanced and light on the balls of his feet, going to the man’s side of the bed first. Macau’s one-time merchant prince has no idea he is going to end here, in the home of a man he regards as a son. With calm deliberation he drew a long thin blade from the sleeve of his tunic and leaned over the sleeping form. One hand tightly clasping the knife’s leather handle, he placed the other on the top of the man’s head and pushed the lethal tip down hard into the slight depression at the base of his neck. With a wrenching s***h upwards, he severed the lower brain stem and cut off all involuntary functioning like breathing and heart beat. The compradore’s face was thrust with suffocating pressure into the pillow, and he died before he could even draw a last breath. His attacker was already moving to the other side of the bed, the sharpened blade red with his father’s blood. His hand closed over the woman’s mouth, and in one smooth movement he wrenched her head sideways and slid the ten-inch stiletto across her throat.
A few seconds more and he was back at the door. He paused and took in the room with a sweeping glance. Blood from the woman’s ugly neck wound spilled onto the hand that had caressed her lovingly minutes before. Her killer stood in the doorway, his head tipped back, exultant, face washed in an affirming starlight. Then he struck a match, cupping the flickering flame in his hands until it caught hold. It was the work of seconds to set alight the discarded sheet that lay on the floor. He allowed himself a final triumphant glance and turned and left the smouldering room.
