Undercover - In China - Book 7

Part 80 - Jài Jen

'Are you still eating Christmas pudding?' I asked Emma.

She laughed. 'Your Grandma bought six of them on sale after the holidays. We've got lots. Do you want some? I warm it up for you.'

Triple Oh finished a mouthful of pudding. 'Master Ziff,' he said jovially, 'well met.' 

 'Triple Oh!' I exclaimed. 'Did you find my parents yet?'

'The scoundrel Murga evades us still,' Onderdonk grumbled at a spoonful of pudding. 'He has a thousand tricks. But I have good news. With help from Yonnie and Treeka, our Time agents have located him in Berlin, Germany in 1944. Your parents are with him. They will restrict his movements until we zoom in on his exact position. Unfortunately, there were no satellite navigation systems at that time and the second world war was in progress.'

Triple Oh's cell phone buzzed. 'Ha!' He shouted as he jumped to his feet almost upsetting the table. Emma recoiled in shock and Dunc almost fell off his chair. 

 Onderdonk lowered his voice. 'Your pardon, good lady. I did not wish to cause alarum.'

'Ziff, lad,' he continued in a whisper that was probably audible in the street. 'Murga has confounded us with masterful guile. His Toktakunov showed us fourteen time-phase destinations, but my colleagues found each one of them false. But he cannot move easily from where he is hiding your parents. Verily, we will have him soon.'

He put his face close to the cell phone and spoke rapidly. 'Theo, thou wert right. That weak response tail was Murga's exit. Pick me up. Make haste.'

Emma stared at Onderdonk as if he were a lunatic.

'It's okay, Emma,' I reassured her. 'Mr Onderdonk was talking to a colleague.' 

 Onderdonk glanced longingly at the pudding remaining in his bowl and waved his Tim Horton's coffee cup in a dramatic gesture. 'I must perforce leave in haste, Emma. Prithee save your delicious pudding until I return, anon.'

'Wait,' I said, as he headed for the door. 'So Murga escaped from China?'

'Aye lad. From thence he returned to Berlin in 1944,' he said as we clattered down the stairs and out onto the porch. Theo was already waiting in the street. The motor of his big Harley Davidson was throbbing slowly as if it were about to stop. Onderdonk picked up his helmet and swung a leg over the pillion seat.

'You forgot Dunc,' I shouted over the noise of the engine. 

 'Keep him,' Onderdonk shouted. 'He is your personal bodyguard . . . God be wi' ye,' he added before Theo squeezed the clutch and revved the motor. They thundered away down the street and presumably out of my time phase. 

 Beryl jogged down the street swinging her shopping bag. 'Ziff! I didn't recognize you under all that black hair. I forgot you dyed it . . . Who's the big hunk on the Harley, eh?'

 'Onderdonk. He's probably one of your Global Economy Biker friends,' I joked as she followed me back upstairs.

'Theo, Theo, Theo,' I said to Dunc. 'This is Ziff. Are you receiving me? Over.'

Dunc looked at me with disgust. 'Ah'm no a messenger pigeon. If yeh need to talk to Theo, use a phone.'

We were interrupted as Beryl came into the kitchen shaking snow off her coat. 'Good Grief!' she exclaimed. 'What is that?'

 'Well,' Emma said thoughtfully, 'it looks like a Canada goose.' 

 'Perfect,' Beryl exclaimed. 'We're just out of turkey. I'll get my handgun.'

'Gloyk!' Dunc exclaimed in alarm. 'Yeh canna kill a genetically enhanced goose!'

Beryl stared at him. 'But I love genetically enhanced food. It is so delicious.'

'You are not going to kill our new pet,' Emma exclaimed. 'It's so cuddly.'

'Cuddly!' Beryl said abruptly. 'It'll poop all over the place.'

 'Slow down, Beryl,' I laughed. 'Dunc thinks you are being serious. You already met Dunc, Triple Oh's undercover goose. I don't think he will poop on the floor, and he probably wouldn't taste too good anyway.'

'And,' Dunc said, 'Ah'm no cuddly.' 

 Beryl sighed. 'Oh well, I supposed we're eating bangers and mash again, tonight.'

Dunc rolled his eyes, 'Well! Ah'll just hafta fold up mah undercarriage and sit down on mah genetically enhanced bum and wait for some nourishment. 

 I sighed and pushed Triple Oh's left-over dish of pudding toward him.

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 Licia and Miguel met up with me on Sumac Street the next morning. 'What's up?' Miguel asked.

I didn't tell them why, but I took them into a Chinese grocery store. The window was filled with old election posters and barbecued ducks and the name was entirely in Chinese characters. The store was a tiny place filled with packages, jars and cans of things I had never seen before and a strange smell of spices. An elderly man was trimming vegetables and stacking them into a cardboard box. On a shelf above the cash register was a porcelain statute of a man in a long green gown. He wore an oriental moustache and beard that flowed over his shoulders and his eyebrows swept up in a frown, but his mouth was fixed in a grim smile. His left hand was thrust out in a kind of salute but behind his back he held a crescent-shaped halberd. 

 'That is Lord Guan Yu,' Licia exclaimed. 

 'It does look a bit like him,' Miguel agreed. 'The ratty old green surcoat looks about right and the halberd is bigger . . . And he's smiling at us, isn't he, eh?'

'Then we can say goodbye to him. Jài Jen.' On an impulse, I held up my left hand, with the palm outward, the first two fingers raised, as I solemnly returned Lord Guan's salute. 

'There is another question,' I said. 'I was wondering how long this black dye job lasts.'

Licia laughed. 'You have to wait until it grows out. Which means you will be blond with black tips until you cut off all the black bits.' 

I grimaced, so Licia added, 'But you can keep dying the blond roots and stay with black hair, if you like.' 

 Miguel laughed. 'Why don't you shave it all off! You'd look cool bald.'

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 Author's note. 'Goodbye' translates into 'Zàijiàn' in Mandarin Chinese Pinying (the standard Chinese phonetic script) but 'Jài Jen' is closer to the English sound.