Zero Minus Ten

by Raymond Benson

  At precisely 4:00 p.m., Guy Thackeray entered the square followed by two other men, who were obviously bodyguards. They stood to either side of him as he approached the microphone.

  Thackeray looked even more haggard than he had in Macau. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept for days. He was dressed in a sharp Armani business suit, though, and managed to exude an air of authority.

  “Hello and welcome,” he began. Bond again noted the lack of humour. There was no trace of a smile. “I have called this press conference to make an important announcement about EurAsia Enterprises. As you know, our entire Board of Directors was killed recently. There have been a couple of recent attempts on my life as well. I have no idea why we became targets. Unfortunately, it’s all had an effect on the company. Our privately held stock is at an all-time low. The future is uncertain, and I have no reason to believe that things will improve. Therefore, I am selling my family’s 59 per cent holding to the People’s Republic of China, effective July the first, 1997.”

  There was a gasp from the crowd. Bond was surprised as well. The EurAsia executives had turned white and seemed dumbstruck.

  “The remaining 41 per cent is owned by the families of the deceased members of the Board. Those shares will remain with the families who will be joint owners of Eurasia Enterprises with China. If they choose to sell their interests, that is up to them. I highly recommend that they do so. I plan to retire. I will leave Hong Kong and find a nice quiet place to live out the rest of my life.

  “EurAsia Enterprises was begun a century and a half ago by my great-great-grandfather. It started out modestly, but grew into an international trade organization. I have been proud to lead the company since I took it over from my own father twenty years ago. But, like Hong Kong itself, all good things must come to an end. That is all. Thank you.”

  He started to leave the platform, but the mass of reporters raised their arms. “Mr. Thackeray! One question!” they called. Thackeray hesitated and said, “All right, I’ll take a couple of questions. You, in the front row.”

  A woman stood up and asked, “What made you decide to sell your company to the Chinese? Despite the troubles EurAsia has experienced recently, it’s still a multi-billion dollar company!”

  Murmurs from the crowd indicated that they all had the same question.

  “Yes, you’re right, it is still a multi-billion dollar company. The only comment I can make at this time is that I have no choice but to sell. One more question. The gentleman in the green jacket.”

  A man asked, “Where are you planning to go?”

  “I haven’t decided. Certainly not England. I’ve never lived there nor do I wish to. That’s all. Thank you for coming.”

  He left the platform abruptly, and pandemonium broke out. The EurAsia people jumped up and ran towards Thackeray. The two bodyguards protected him but Bond could feel their anger and dismay. This was all news to them. Very bad news.

  “Mr. Thackeray! What is the meaning of this? How long have you known?”

  Thackeray turned to them and said, “I’m sorry. You must make other arrangements with your lives. Most of you hold foreign passports. I suggest you use them. It’s been a pleasure working with you all. Now I must leave.”

  It was a cold and cruel response. Despite the terseness of the announcement, Bond perceived that it had been very painful for Thackeray to make it. He was doing his best to remain stoic, though. Even the Englishman who hated Britain was keeping a stiff upper lip. He turned and walked out of Statue Square and got into the back seat of a black Mercedes waiting on Des Voeux Road. His window remained down as he looked out at the crowd and gave a little wave. He wasn’t smiling.

  Bond watched as the Mercedes pulled away and stopped at a red light. A lorry moved into the lane between the car and the spectators, blocking their view for a moment. The light turned green, and the lorry moved forward. The car moved into the intersection slowly. Thackeray’s window was still down but he had retreated into the darkness of the vehicle and couldn’t be seen.

  Suddenly, a young Chinese man dressed in black ran out into the intersection from the other side of the street. He passed by the open window of the Mercedes and threw something into it. Then he started running north across the square for all he was worth.

  The car exploded into flames with such force that many of the people closest to it were injured. Bond felt the heat from the blast, and he was a hundred metres away. He quickly surveyed the scene—at least three pedestrians were lying on the ground, clutching their eyes. Everyone was screaming and running around in a panic. The Mercedes was totally destroyed. Only the smoking, charred chassis remained. Pieces of debris, possibly mixed with human body parts, lay in black, burning heaps on the street. Along with everyone else, Bond was shocked. The CEO of EurAsia Enterprises had been assassinated while the whole world watched.

  Bond turned to locate the running man and saw him leave the square and run into the plaza underneath the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank building. Bond took off after him; no one else had been alert enough to follow him. Thackeray’s bodyguards must have been blown to bits as well.

  Access to the bank from the plaza was by way of what were claimed to be the longest free-standing escalators in the world. The entrance was set into a double glass ceiling above the plaza, and let visitors out on level three, the public banking business area. The assassin had disappeared up the escalator and was now inside the bank, probably hoping he could lose himself in the crowd and eventually sneak out. Determined to find him, Bond scrambled up the escalator.

  Bond stepped out on to the third level and was struck by the spectacular atrium rising 170 feet through eleven levels of the building. The tellers’ area was situated on the north and south sides of the atrium. Other escalators went up to a fifth level, where more public banking services were available. Bond quickly scanned the place from the east end of the building.

  Black was not an easy colour to spot in a crowd. The bank was fairly busy, as it was near closing time. There was no sign of the assassin. Bond looked up to the fifth level and thought he saw a man in black moving along the right side of the atrium towards the west side of the building. He quickly ran up the next escalator to the fifth level.

  Attempting to look inconspicuous, Bond stepped up to a long counter where bank customers filled out forms and deposit slips. He surveyed the large room and found his prey. The assassin was moving towards a bank of lifts on the west side of the building. He was looking around, trying to determine if he was being followed. Bond kept moving towards him, picking up his pace.

  By now, police cars and a fire engine had arrived outside. Many of the bank’s employees were looking out of the south-side windows at the chaos in the street below. A security guard who usually blocked access to the lifts was also curious and had wandered over to the windows. The assassin reached the lift lobby and pressed a button. Then he saw Bond moving towards him, and a look of panic crossed his face.

  Bond started to run. There was a good eighty metres between them. The lift door opened and the assassin stepped inside quickly. Damn! Now Bond didn’t care who saw him. He ran full speed to the bank of lifts and pressed the “UP” button. He watched the numbers on the assassin’s lift, noting that it stopped on twelve. Bond’s lift came and he got inside, just as he heard the security guard shout at him to stop.

  Level twelve was the top of the atrium. One could look out and survey all the public areas from this impressive vantage point. Access to the higher floors was restricted to bank personnel only. A security guard stood by the lifts to prevent people from wandering up. Bond’s lift door opened just in time for him to see the assassin club the guard on the back of his head. The guard fell and the assassin ran to the left towards a stairwell enclosed in glass.

  “Stop!” Bond shouted. He hesitated to draw his Walther PPK—he didn’t want to start a panic inside the bank. But then the assassin opened the door to the stairwell and an alarm sounded, al
erting everyone in the building to their presence.

  The assassin began to run up the zigzagging flights of stairs. Bond followed him into the stairwell, and took the steps two at a time. Three guards had joined the chase, and the police were most likely on their way. They entered the stairwell after Bond had climbed two flights and shouted “Stop!” in Cantonese. One of the men then shouted the word in English.

  Bond called down to them. “The man who blew up the car outside is running up the stairs! He’s dressed in black!” Then he continued the chase.

  Who could the assassin be? Was he Triad? Was he part of the Dragon Wing? Why was Guy Thackeray killed? Had he been the target of the floating restaurant disaster after all, and was this a second attempt on his life? Was this some kind of vendetta? Perhaps someone in the organization knew of his intention to sell the company’s stock to China and wanted to stop him. It was possible that the Triad wasn’t involved at all. The puzzle was certainly becoming more convoluted. Bond wondered how he would get to the bottom of any of this now that Thackeray was dead.

  He heard a door slam above him. The assassin had left the stairwell. Thanks to Bond’s acute sense of hearing, he estimated that the sound couldn’t have been more than fifty metres above him. Bond stepped on to the next landing and was met by the rattle of gunfire. The assassin had shot a security guard in the doorway of the twentieth floor. Normally there was no exit from the stairwell without a card key. The guard must have opened the door from the inside, hoping to intercept the killer. Now his body was lying in the doorway, jamming it open. Bond leaped over the body and bolted through the door in pursuit.

  He saw the killer running towards an open-plan area full of desks and office staff. The employees were cowering against the windows. The assassin leaped on to a desk, turned, and fired an automatic pistol at Bond, who dived for the floor just in time. Then, throwing caution to the wind, he drew his Walther, but the man had already leaped to another desk and was no longer a good target.

  “Everyone get down!” Bond shouted. People did as they were told, some of them translating Bond’s orders into Cantonese for those who needed it.

  The assassin jumped from desk to desk, flinging files and papers into the air, until he reached the other end of the floor. He ran through a door and into another office space leading back in the direction of the lifts and stairwell. Bond decided not to follow him through there, but instead to go back the way he had come in the hope of meeting him in the stairwell. The three security guards in pursuit burst into the room with their guns drawn. They shouted at Bond to halt.

  “I’m a British policeman!” he shouted. “I’m not the man you’re after, he’s coming round through the room next-door!” The guards looked confused, unsure whether to believe him or not. Suddenly, the assassin ran into the lift area. He had a frightened Chinese woman with him, a bank employee, and his gun was to her head.

  He shouted in Cantonese. Bond didn’t have to translate his words. The guards froze, as did Bond. Bond said in his best Cantonese, “You won’t get away with this.”

  An empty lift opened behind the assassin, and he took the opportunity to step inside, taking the woman with him. The door closed and the lift started moving up towards the top of the building. Bond immediately pressed the “UP” button and waited for another lift. One guard was speaking in Cantonese into a walkie-talkie, informing other men where the assassin was headed. They had obviously decided to believe that Bond was on their side.

  Just as another lift arrived, Bond noted that the assassin’s lift had stopped on level forty-two. Bond and the guards took the lift up to the same level and stepped out. It was a large executive conference room with a bar along one side.

  “Oh, no,” a guard muttered. He pointed towards an exit leading outside.

  They could see the assassin on a catwalk on the other side of the window. He was inching his way along with the woman in tow. He looked as frightened as she did.

  “What the hell does he think he’s doing?” Bond asked. “He can’t escape now!”

  A guard said, “He could get on one of our hydraulic lifts on the extension. There is a ladder there he can use to climb down to another floor.”

  Bond could see what the guard meant. Extended on an aluminium-clad structure was a box-like “cherry picker” which apparently could move up and down the building and was used to clean the windows. Sure enough, the assassin began to force the woman towards the box. She was too terrified to move. The man pointed his gun at her, shouting at her, but this only made her terror worse.

  “I’m going out there,” Bond said, and moved towards the emergency exit. The killer, meanwhile, had abandoned the woman and was making his way towards the box alone. Bond stepped on to the catwalk and was surprised by the force of the wind. He didn’t want to look down, for he would surely have difficulty maintaining his balance. All of Hong Kong lay before him. If it had not been from such a precarious perch, it would have been a spectacular view.

  The woman was clutching a round beam that formed part of the extension, holding on for dear life. Bond reached out to her. “Give me your hand!” he shouted. The woman cried, but wouldn’t move. “Please! He’s gone!” Bond said. “The man is gone! Give me your hand and I’ll help you get back inside!”

  The woman looked at him through her tears. She was about forty, and very, very frightened. She said something in Cantonese that Bond didn’t understand, but he kept his hand outstretched. He smiled at her and nodded encouragingly. Finally, she nervously extended her arm and clutched Bond’s hand. She was trembling furiously.

  “All right, I’m going to count to three, then you let go of the beam! Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “One … two … three!” She let go of the beam and Bond tugged on her arm. Luckily, she was very lightweight. She flew at Bond and he grabbed her around the waist with his other arm. She clutched him, hugging him in a vice-like grip. He held her, stroking her head, muttering soothing words in her ear. She looked up at him and kissed him several times on the cheek. He laughed, and she managed to smile, too.

  Bond got her back inside, but by then the assassin had made his way down the ladder to another floor. There was no telling where he was now. He was probably already back in the building, trying to find a way out.

  “Ever seen that man before?” he asked one of the guards as they ran back to the lifts. The guard shook his head.

  They heard the sound of distant gunfire. “We should take the stairs,” said the guard. Bond nodded. That way they could evaluate the situation on every floor as they went down. They entered the stairwell and flew down the steps, taking them two at a time. The guard’s intercom chirped when they reached the thirty-fourth floor. The assassin had been spotted near the twelfth floor again.

  “The lift!” Bond said. One of the guards used his card key to leave the stairwell, and punched the “DOWN” button by the lifts. It came quickly, and the four men piled in.

  Back on the twelfth floor, Bond found utter chaos. Civilians were lying on the floor, and one security guard was dead on the carpet. Two more guards were crouched against a low railed wall and aiming off into the distance. The killer had another hostage, a man, and was moving around the perimeter of the atrium on the east side. Bond looked down the atrium and saw that several Royal Hong Kong Police officers had arrived and were making their way into the building and towards the lifts. He thought that perhaps he should let them handle this. He had got himself too involved already. He wasn’t sure what the status of his mission was anymore, now that Thackeray was dead. He needed to get back to the safe house and report to London. Yet somehow he felt a responsibility to the hostage and to the people of the bank. If he hadn’t chased the man inside, there might not have been any casualties. There might be even more before this was finished. On the other hand, if he hadn’t chased the assassin into the bank, he would have got away.

  Bond decided that he wouldn’t let that happen. The man was going down. Now. H
e quickly calculated the distance to the assassin. He needed to be no further away than 180 feet away for the Walther to be effective.

  “Talk to him. Distract him,” Bond said to the guard who was now his ally. The man shouted towards the assassin in Cantonese. Bond crouched down below the rail and moved around the side of the atrium, closer to the killer and his hostage. He used a desk for cover and was ultimately able to take a position behind them. The killer was oblivious to Bond’s approach for the guard was successfully distracting him. Bond wouldn’t need the gun after all. He tackled the man hard, causing him to release the hostage. Bond leaned him back over the railing, holding on to his gun-arm. A shot went off into the air and people screamed.

  The two men struggled for the pistol as 007 attempted to keep the assassin’s arm high so that no one would be endangered. Face to face, they glared venomously at each other. Bond had never seen the other man before. As a fighter, he wasn’t much of a match, obviously exhausted from all the running and the stress of the chase. Bond used his right fist to hit him in the face. The assassin dropped the gun, and it fell the nine levels to the double-glass floor of the atrium. The man attempted to fight back but quickly realized it was no use. Bond hit him again. This time the man shoved Bond away from him, then performed a daredevil leap over the railing. Bond tried to grab his legs to stop him, but it was too late. He fell 170 feet to his death, slamming into the double-glass floor below. Surprisingly, the glass didn’t break.

  The man had killed himself rather than let himself be caught. Who had hired him? Where did he come from?

  The guards all started down, and Bond followed them. They seemed to have forgotten all about him as the employees got up and began milling about. Bond couldn’t afford to be questioned by the police. He needed to get away quickly and quietly. On his way towards the lift, he took a tan sports jacket and dark sunglasses from someone’s desk and put them on. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but it might work if he hurried. He rode the crowded lift down to the third level, where everyone was watching the police climb on to the glass floor to retrieve the killer’s body. Bond surreptitiously moved through the crowd towards the escalator down to the plaza, and managed to get out without being seen.