Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [209]
Using the Mandarin’s own brushes she wrote her name in the exquisite Chinese characters he himself had taught her. The seal was applied and the deed was done.
Replacing the seal carefully in its box, she stared fiercely at the waiting Japanese. She pushed back her chair and stood up. “Tell your general he now has what he wants and these offices are his; we shall leave.” Her glance collected Philip and the heads of all the departments as she led them from the Mandarin’s office without another word.
The general stared after her as she strode past him, her blond head held high. Her black patent Mary Janes and white ankle socks peeked from beneath the richly embroidered silk robe and she clutched the box with the seal of the House of Lai Tsin firmly in her small hands.
For once in his career he had nothing to say and the interpreter looked nervously away, unwilling to witness such a deep loss of face lest the general take his anger out on him.
“She will not get away with this,” the general muttered, shuffling the documents she had left on the desk, and his voice shook with anger as he repeated ominously, “She will not get away with this.”
A short while later Philip Chen and each of the managers were arrested by the Kempeitei and taken to the Supreme Court building to be brutally interrogated and tortured, and a few weeks later they were imprisoned and put to work as laborers, rebuilding the runways at Kai Tak. Lysandra Lai Tsin was taken into custody and sent to Manchuria, where she was kept in confinement with other important prisoners. A few months later, she was spirited away by Chinese patriots, and after a long and hazardous journey through Russia, arrived in neutral Finland. The first person she saw as she stepped off the flimsy little aircraft was Buck and she fell into his arms, tears raining down her taut, tired little face. “Oh, Buck,” was all she could say between the choking sobs as he held her close, his own tears falling onto her tangled, unkempt hair.
“It’s okay, little one,” he’d murmured. “You’re safe now! Soon you’ll be home with Mommy.” And he thanked God he’d been able to keep his promise to Francie.
They flew secretly to London and from there to New York and a rapturous reunion with Francie. But Lysandra’s adventures were kept secret for fear of reprisals on Philip Chen, until after the war when he was released and reunited with his family.
Outwardly, Lysandra’s life returned to that of a normal schoolgirl, but the experience had left a permanent stain on her soul that made her feel different from her young friends. Francie tried to get her to talk about it, but somehow she just couldn’t tell her mother and she kept the savage images of fear locked away in some secret compartment of her mind, never to be looked at again.
It was Annie who finally broke the barrier. Lysandra had gone after school to have tea with her in the penthouse, an event which she loved both for the feeling it gave her of floating above the city and the fabulous cakes made by Aysgarth’s Swiss pastry chef—of which she was allowed to choose exactly two.
“Two cakes are enough for any growing girl who doesn’t want to get fat,” Annie said briskly, though she herself had grown substantially plumper. Pouring tea into wide blue china cups, she passed one to Lysandra and said, “Your mother’s worried stiff about you, you know that, don’t you?”
Lysandra stared blankly at her. “Mom’s worried? About what? What have I done?”
“It’s what you haven’t done. You’ve scarcely mentioned the prison camp and what happened to you.”
“I don’t want to think about it,” Lysandra exclaimed, staring at the chocolate eclair on her plate. It suddenly didn’t look as appetizing as it had just minutes before.
Annie said gently, “You know, love, sometimes the only way to get rid of a bad memory is to talk about it, confront it. Then you can say ‘The hell with it, I’m rid of you forever!’”
Lysandra stared doubtfully at her. Annie was her godmother, but she was also her friend. She talked straight and never pulled her punches, she wasn