Dragon Breath

by Valerie Goldsilk

  “Sure why not?” Sawyers said laconically.

  “You screw up and I’ll fire you faster than you can blink.”

  “That’s harsh, Jim.”

  “I’m trying to convey a sense of seriousness. I’ll read all my emails out there and can handle most of it by remote but for the rest I’ll have to rely on you.”

  “Hey, no problem, old boy. Relax. Go out there and do your thing. Boff some little Chinkie girls. Hope you have more luck than with Vanishing Doris. No big deal, okay?”

  “Okay. But remember what I said. This is a test.” He frowned. “Now, I still need to get the Old Man’s okay.”

  Mr. Ferguson, ensconced in his office had no objection.

  “A fine idea. I was going to suggest it myself. You are the ideal man for the job. It wasn’t easy what we had to do last night but it comes with the territory. But as McHardy says, go down there, get a grip of the office, tidy up the files and shipments and then start interviewing a successor. When you find one, send him up here for confirmation. We can’t let this kind of incident allow us to stumble in our duties to our clients.”

  Jim nodded gravely. He’d never seen Ferguson with so much paper on his desk and his respect for the man rose a few notches. So far he’d always been a distant figure-head drifting in and out of the office and making speeches at dinners. They could probably work well together.

  “I might be able to find out what has been causing all these nightmare quality problems we’ve been having.”

  “Bad management is the answer, my boy,” Ferguson said. “Bob Chen was a politically correct choice but his departure is no great loss to the company.” He regarded Jim for an instant and then winked. “If I hear you repeating what I just said outside this room, I’ll have your balls for garters. Call me daily once you get down there.”

  Before booking his ticket Jim had to check one more thing. He managed to track down DS Porter after an hour and explained his dilemma.

  “You need to go to Hong Kong for two weeks, sir?” the policeman echoed.

  “Any problem with that? I’m not a suspect, am I?”

  “You could have been.”

  “Well, I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Jim protested aggressively.

  “Probably not, sir. In fact our latest investigations lead us to believe that this Wah-jai fellow was a nasty piece of work and an active member of the Wo On Lok Triad who are fighting a bit of a turf war with another group of Chinkie gangsters called the 14K over control in the docks. We believe it most likely that this is what caused his untimely departure from this fine earth.” There was a chuckle from the other end of the line and Jim felt a chilly frisson run down his back. Everywhere he turned there was the word Triad and he debated—though only for an instant—mentioning this to the policeman.

  “So I’m okay to leave the country?”

  “It’s nice of you to ask, Mr. Beauregard but since we haven’t charged you with AOABH and the victim is no longer in a position to pursue the matter, I’d be grateful if I was you, and get on a plane and try and forget all about this excitement. What’s down in Hong Kong anyway that’s so urgent?”

  “Oh, just routine, we’re having some management changes.”

  “Good luck then. Don’t fall foul of the coppers down there. Don’t be getting into any fights with our yellow brethren down there. The law isn’t as lenient as here. They’d bang you up for a week if you give them any lip. Still the old colonial laws I heard but different masters.”

  “That’s kind advice, Sergeant.”

  “Detective Sergeant.”

  * * * *

  For once Scrimple was pleased to get home to an empty flat. No chattering Canto-crap on television and no pouting girlfriend. Just the relative silence of his living-room. Occasionally he could still hear the braying of children and the clatter of mahjong tiles but once he turned on the stereo it felt as if he was truly alone.

  He’d bought a loaf of bread from the 7-11 and dug out a can of tuna fish from the back of the kitchen cupboard. He lavished mayonnaise on the fish and mashed it until he could spread it over two pieces of toast. Then he got a San Miguel from the fridge and sat back to enjoy his feast.

  He was exhausted but oddly contented. Unofficially he’d gotten involved in the investigation and it made him feel like a real policeman, although he knew it couldn’t last for long. Gwailo Pete had been good about it but sooner or later a senior officer would demand why Scrimple was hanging around when he was actually interdicted from his real post.

  He hadn’t much liked the smug American but he had to admire him. There was something going on, he felt sure of it and had said as much to Gwailo Pete. He couldn’t quite see the connection: what would the American have to do with a Triad attack on Bob Chen? But stranger things had happened and there was a possibility that both men had been the intended targets of the murderous attack. Perhaps it was company politics and not gambling debts? It was just a feeling. There was something not right about John McHardy and his answers had been cleverly evasive.

  It could be, of course that he didn’t want to wash the company’s dirty linen in public and that’s why he’d appeared from Bangkok so rapidly. Damage Limitation. No company could feel good about having two senior men butchered in the street by chopper-wielding gangsters.

  Police work was like playing with a jigsaw puzzle. You had bits and pieces of information, facts and speculation, and you had to fit them together until some kind of plausible picture emerged. All too often it came out upside down and you’d go charging off on a wild-goose chase. Then you’d come back and look at the pieces again and move them around some more. How the facts fitted together remained a mystery to Scrimple and he was grateful that at the end of the day it wasn’t his case and he didn’t have to crunch his brain cells to figure out what really had been going on. Other smarter blokes would have that pleasure. But somehow he still wanted to be part of it.

  He swigged from his can and rolled the amber fluid around his tongue, lost in thought. Suddenly he heard a noise from his bedroom that disconcerted him.

  Was the girl back? He used the remote to turn down the CD player and listened.

  He put down the can of beer and wiped his hands on his trousers. He walked across the living room and pushed open the bedroom door. It was dark and as he flicked the light switch a shadow moved in front of him and he felt a hard blow against the side of his head.

  Scrimple staggered back, falling against the bathroom door. In front of him stood a tall Sikh wearing a pink turban and holding a truncheon. The man’s eyes were bright with an unfounded anger and he advanced on Scrimple with murderous intent.

  “Who the fuck…” Scrimple gasped and the truncheon swished at him again. He managed to duck, grabbing for his opponent’s arm. The Sikh swung again and Scrimple noticed something in his other hand that looked like a scarf.

  He had to get out of the corridor and back to the living room where he could use the furniture to protect himself but the truncheon caught him on the side of the head again and dazed him. Scrimple stumbled, as if drunk, but he regained his footing, his back to his attacker and scrambled forward.

  The kitchen. If he could reach a knife, a frying pan or anything. He slipped on the carpet and tumbled to his knees. He heard himself panting and had an idea that he should roll out of the way because the Sikh was directly behind him.

  Before he could respond, something came over his face and Scrimple realised in his daze that the Sikh had managed to get the silk scarf over his head and around his neck.

  He gasped for air and felt a knee in the small of his back. The tall man was strangling him. It had all happened so fast.

  * * * *

  “Do you have any idea who killed Bob Chen?” John McHardy asked Henry Chan as they met in a spacious apartment on Magazine Gap Road.

  “Why would I know?”

  “You have a lot of contacts and some of them might have been involved in this. It’s a reasonable question isn’t i
t?”

  “I’m a businessman, John, if I know some men like that I won’t ask them about what they are doing.”

  McHardy pursed his lips and decided not to pursue the matter. If Henry Chan wanted to play the innocent this evening, there was nothing to be gained in riling him.

  The Chinese tycoon was sitting by the window and enjoying the view. It was always spectacular despite what had happened to the economy and the morale of the city in the last two years. Hong Kong still sparkled at night. The Cheung Kong building stood close to the Bank of China, both equally imposing and Henry Chan suppressed his jealousy every time he saw his rival’s sparkling edifice. Chan’s building was in Western and nowhere near as impressive. It reminded him painfully that he was only one of the minor millionaires the city had spawned in its burst of prosperity.

  “How many more shipments will there be, Henry?” the American wanted to know. He was standing and sipping from a glass of Jameson Irish whisky on the rocks. He didn’t really want to be here but when he’d called the tycoon, Chan had asked him to come up to his mistress’ apartment so they could discuss some small changes to the plan.

  “Five more than we originally planned because the money isn’t enough. How did you manage the last shipment?”

  “Transistor radios from Vietnam. It wasn’t so easy because the agent handling it became too nosy and wanted a bigger commission.”

  “Did you pay him, John?” Henry Chan looked slightly alarmed.

  “Oh, yes, we paid him. Not sure what he did with his money. He seemed a careless dude.”

  “A Vietnamese?”

  “No. A Westerner.”

  “Could he be a problem?”

  “I doubt it. He’s no longer in a position to cause any problems.”

  “Are you still comfortable with our arrangements, John?”

  “Not entirely, the quantities are too big and the frequency is too regular. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Statistics are against you. Sooner or later something will go wrong. You’ve got to stop being so greedy.”

  “But you’re also greedy, John?”

  “I can stop anytime I want. Or anytime you agree.”

  “My client can’t stop. Not at this moment. Don’t worry, it will all go well.”

  “It’s my job to worry. Only the paranoid survive, you may have heard people say,” John McHardy stated, turning to face the Chinese man who returned his stare with an inscrutable expression.

  “Another American proverb.”

  “Yeah, well, call it anything you want. It makes me nervous when two men working for the same outfit as me are killed in the middle of the street. You’d make me feel a lot more comfortable if you could explain to me what happened there.”

  “I see your concern, I’ll look into it. These things happen.”

  “Not every day. I wouldn’t want them to happen to me or anyone close to me.”

  “Are you worried?”

  “Paranoid, just paranoid, Henry.”

  “You don’t like it.”

  “Want to freshen up my drink before I leave you and get back to my hotel?” the American asked.

  * * * *

  It takes a while to get used to the small apartments of Hong Kong. Land is at a premium and even though property prices tumbled seventy per cent since 1997 the city remains one of the most expensive in the world.

  Louise Walker had seven hundred square feet in the Mid-Levels and counted herself lucky because she had a bit of a sea-view. Between two high-rise office buildings she could make out a silver sliver of the Harbour.

  She slipped out of her shoes and put on the kettle. It had been quite a day but she’d learnt nothing of value. Her desk was still as littered with work as it had been in the morning and the one saving grace was that the weekend had come and she wanted to relax over a nice meal and a few glasses of wine. She didn’t have many friends but she enjoyed the company of Madeleine Fong who’d agreed to come up to Lan Kwai Fong once she finished work between eight and nine. This gave Louise enough time to send out a quick report.

  Times had changed and it was so much easier now for a person in her part-time profession to communicate with her masters or in this case her mistress. No need for a concealed short-wave radio or incriminating one-time pads. Ian Fleming would have been disappointed by the mundaneness of her tools. Louise Walker had a Compaq laptop which was fitted with a high-speed modem and a software that encrypted algorithms with amazing complexity. All she had to do was type an email, cut and paste the message into her encryption software, dial up a non-descript local number that changed regularly and which she memorised, then hit the send button. Within seconds her communication was just one of a trillion email messages circulating around the Internet and if intercepted by a random quirk of fate would yield pure gibberish. She could even take it one step further and send digital images which had been broken down into their lowest denominator and could be re-constituted at the other end at the London offices of MI6, Asia Desk. Everybody benefited from the electronic revolution.

  Louise didn’t think of herself as a secret agent. She was a small operative recruited on the basis of her job which allowed her to travel all over Asia. She was paid an attractive stipend into a London bank account for her intelligence gathering activity which merely supplemented the official work of her full-time colleagues who were located in a mundane office in Wanchai.

  At first Louise had thought it a practical joke when someone she vaguely knew approached her about working for the Secret Service. But after an interview with Margaret Rose it began to make sense. Data was important and it didn’t matter where it came from. In the olden days a ruddy-faced aristocrat could cheerfully disguise himself as a Beduin and travel across the Sahara on secret missions but in this day and age it was the amateur’s intelligence gathered in bulk and analysed by sophisticated programs that created probability modules which provided the world’s decision makers with their raw material.

  Her job was a perfect cover because nobody would suspect a fun-loving, fashion coordinator in her early thirties to be madly scribbling down information on the industrial capabilities of China which would be fed into a great big computerised melting pot. She enjoyed the cloak and dagger image of her job although in reality she was only a curious reporter. Probably one of many dotted around Asia in a wide variety of jobs and with diverse backgrounds, sharing only their willingness to help their country for a broad range of reasons and some pocket-money.

  Events in McPherson Ferguson had certainly been out of the ordinary lately and it gave her plenty of stuff to write about. Drawing any conclusions was harder. But she’d been told not to worry about that. Things often didn’t make sense until they became part of the big picture. She’d been specifically detailed to keep an eye on the activities of Bob Chen because some of his contacts were political and her boss had received intelligence regarding the man. Louise had tried a few times to get into his office and access more confidential papers but nothing of value had emerged.

  Now that Bob Chen was dead, her position in the company had taken on greater significance but her value gathering intelligence was diminished since he was no longer a person to be watched. She wondered where things would go from here.

  When she’d finished the thousand odd words she plugged in the telephone jack and waited patiently as the modem swished and twittered trying to shake hands with its counter-part somewhere in the city. She hit the send button and the email vanished, destroying itself in the process.

  After a quick shower, she slipped into a comfortable pair of Calvin Klein jeans and a Dorothy Perkins blouse, then made her way down the hill to Insomnia, a trendy place with a popular live band.

  Chapter 12

  The silk scarf around Scrimple’s neck was getting tighter and he was starting to black out.

  There was panic within him but not nearly as much as he would have thought.

  Was this how it all would end? A strange Indian, jumping him and choking the life out of hi
m with each vigorous tug.

  His assassin was muttering to himself, words that could have been some prayer or incantation. Scrimple was on his knees and scrabbling at the ligature around his neck. His eyes couldn’t focus, the room was a blur, getting worse as the oxygen became less. He registered somehow the bad breath of the man whose mouth was close to his cheek.

  Then he remembered. He had a government issue ballpoint pen in his top left pocket. He’d used it earlier when writing the statements.

  It was just a thought, not something truly worthwhile to his addled, oxygen-starved brain. But it was worth a try.

  He reached for it, his fingers found the plastic pen and he plunged it, with a last hard thrust of desperation into the side of his assailant’s throat.

  There was a gasp and a cry of terror and the silk scarf that was killing Scrimple was released. He registered with disbelief what had happened and kicked backwards to take advantage of the respite, dragged the piece of silk off his neck and rolled forward and away.

  The Sikh was braying loud with pain. The biro had penetrated inches into his throat and he was attempting to remove it while the blood gushed from the wound.

  Scrimple took four deep long, beautiful breaths of air and then kicked his opponent—with all the brutality he could muster—between the legs.

  The Sikh howled and clutched at his balls while Scrimple struggled to his feet and ploughed a furious fist between the eyes of his enemy.

  But then Scrimple slipped on his own polished, wooden floor and fell crashing backwards, banging his head on the edge of the occasional table. He was dazed for an instant. Watching as if in a movie and from a distance Scrimple was powerless as the Sikh managed to pull the pen from his neck, reach up to staunch the wound and stagger to the front door.

  Within seconds the swarthy man was gone and Scrimple, panting, exhausted, terrified but relieved lay on his living room floor wondering what it had all been about.

  * * * *

  Three hours later a shaved and showered Scrimple was making his way laboriously up from Central MTR station to Lan Kwai Fong.