“I will be angry if you are not truthful,” Bentley said.
“I wouldn’t want you to get angry,” Tristan assured him.
The ride up in the red tram, which was really a funicular railway, turned out to be a delight. Quickly they left behind the concrete of Central and rose up into wooded slopes filled with bowers of jasmine, wild indigo, daphne, and rhododendrons.
Even from the confines of the tram, they could hear magpies singing.
The peak itself turned out to be a disappointment. The morning mist still shrouded the mountaintop, and Marissa and Tristan could see nothing of the reputed view. The foliage, however, was quite beautiful, particularly the exotic trees still beaded with dew.
Trying to make their presence apparent, Marissa and Tristan circled the Peak Tower a number of times. The tower was a three-story shopping mall with restaurants, an ice cream stand, a drugstore, and evena supermarket. Marissa was intrigued by the stalls that sold Chinese handicrafts.
As they wandered, they kept an eye out for the three men who’d abducted them the day before. But they saw no one they recognized except Bentley. He’d arrived as directed. As agreed, he remained unobtrusively in the background. Neither he nor Tristan and Marissa exchanged so much as a nod.
By quarter after eleven, Tristan and Marissa were ready to give up.
“I suppose word of the to-do at the Peninsbla got to them,” Marissa said.
“Damn,” Tristan said.
“Now I don’t know what to do. We’re back to the beginning.”
Slowly they ambled back toward the upper tram station, feeling depressed. After such high anticipation, this was quite a letdown.
“Excuse me,” an elderly woman said, approaching them. She was wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat with black fringe. She’d been sitting on a bench near the tram entrance.
“Are you Mr.
Williams?” she asked.
“I am,” Tristan said.
“I am to extend apologies from Mr. Yip,” she said.
“He was unable to make your morning meeting. But if you would please go to the old Stanley Restaurant, he will be happy to see you.”
“When?” Tristan asked.
“That is all I know,” the woman said. She bowed and hurried off with a shuffling gait.
Tristan looked at Marissa.
“What does that mean?”
“I guess the man in the white suit is Mr. Yip.”
“But when are we to go to the Stanley Restaurant?” Tristan asked.
“And where is it?”
“I would assume we should go directly,” Marissa said.
“As for where, let’s ask Bentley.”
They descended in the peak tram. Bentley was waiting in the armored Mercedes by the time they got down. Marissa and Tristan piled into the backseat. Tristan asked Bentley if he’d ever heard of a restaurant called Stanley’s.
“I have indeed, sir,” Bentley said.
“Where is it?” Tristan asked.
“Why, it’s in Stanley, sir,” Bentley said.
Tristan slid back in the seat.
“Okay, Bentley,” Tristan said, Let go to Stanley.”
To Marissa’s chagrin, the first leg of the trip was through another tunnel that was over two miles long. Until the experience of riding in the trunk of the car, she’d never known she’d disliked tunnels.
Thankfully the traffic moved relatively swiftly; although this Aberdeen Tunnel was longer than the Cross Harbor, the car went through it significantly quicker. When they emerged, the landscape had transformed from the urban sprawl of Kowloon and Central to an almost rural beauty. The beaches were rimmed with bright sand and the water was the emerald green Marissa had seen from the jet on their arrival from Brisbane.
As they motored along the attractive coastline toward Stanley, Tristan slid forward again.
“Bentley,” he asked, “have you ever heard of a man by the name of Mr. Yip?”
“That is a common Chinese name,” Bentley said.
“When we met this Mr. Yip he was wearing a rather distinctive suit,” Tristan said.
“It was white silk.”
Bentley turned to look at Tristan. The car did a little fishtail as he quickly redirected his attention to the road.
“You met a Mr. Yip in a white suit?” Bentley asked.
“Yes,” Tristan said.
“Is that surprising?”
“There is only one Mr. Yip that I know who wears white suits,” Bentley said, “and he is an enforcer.”