The Code War

by Ciaran Nagle

  Some of the Golden Horse men looked around them at the shining, sweaty faces that outnumbered them ten to one. They quickly looked down at the floor again, eager not to inflame the already hostile gangster shell that encased them.

  Fatty Lo made a gesture to the front with his hand and the room fell silent again. All eyes focused ahead, many standing on tip toe to make sure they missed nothing.

  A slim figure emerged from the side and walked with measured step to the pallet, stood on it and turned to face the assembled throng.

  But if any in the room had expected a meek and mousey administrator type, or an elegant arm-dressing for a rich, fat mobster or even a frightened abashed little girl whose ambition had outstretched her ability and was now shaken to the core, they were to be disappointed.

  Nancy faced her inquisitors with a look that would have stopped a Mongol invasion.

  Her dark hair hung down behind her over a mid-length black dress on top of black tights and open-toe black shoes. Her right arm lay casually at her waist while her left hand was placed on her hip making a v of her elbow. She slowly surveyed the faces in front of her from left to right with an intensity that made men falter. Many said later it felt like she could see inside their minds and they were frightened what she might find there. Such was the piercing quality of her look that many stopped breathing in case the sound of it should draw her attention. Eventually Nancy's eyes found their way to Frenchy, Chopper Kwok and finally Fatty Lo. No judgement or condemnation did she make with her regard. No sound did she utter, she didn't need to. All were fixed on her as if the four horses of the Apocalypse had come among them, for judgement day was surely here and Nancy held the gavel.

  Nancy lowered her gaze and began to look from one to another of the huddled masses in front of her. These too, could not unglue their eyes from her unflinching stare. They had been told to confess their sin but all remained mute, awaiting her order. It was Nancy, not Fatty, who would determine what happened next. Still she was in no hurry. Her eyes probed the gang and dwelt on each man in turn, holding them as if on justice scales. Each one was weighed up, measured out, divided. The silence was absolute. If a beetle had fallen to the floor, everyone would have heard the thump.

  Nancy let her gaze fall on a face in the middle of the group. He was one of Monkey's right hand men, a tough-looking former pimp and drug dealer. He too was transfixed. Nancy jerked her chin a fraction of an inch, summoning him to the front. He moved forward on his hands and knees until he crouched before her. Nancy looked down on him until he raised his head and met her gaze. For half a minute she continued to look into his eyes with unblinking stare. He returned the look, too terrified to move or drop his head. We both know what you did, Nancy's look said. If you thought I was a willing prostitute, know this now, I was not. You violated me.

  There was no rancour or threat in Nancy's eyes. There was no rage or revenge. Just the white hot glare of ferocious fact. The triads behind were as silent as a terracotta army and just as still. Only their wide white eyes showed they were sentient beings, not clay. Slowly, almost imperceptibly Nancy moved her right foot forward a few inches till it rested just underneath the gangster's leaning body. She nodded to it while still keeping her eyes on him.

  After a moment the pimp understood. He lowered his head to the floor and touched her stockinged toe with his forehead through her open shoe. He looked back at Nancy. She held his look until she was satisfied. Then she nodded that he could go. As he crept back to his place, Nancy moved her gaze to the next man. Soundlessly she summoned him too and he shuffled forward and looked up into her eyes. After many seconds of her soul-penetrating gaze he too was allowed to kowtow her foot and then raise his head to look back up at her till he was released.

  So it went on until all of Golden Horse had made their act of atonement. It was not the act that any in the room had expected. But it was an act more powerful and more cleansing than any had thought possible.

  The mood in the room had changed. Duty had been done. Ceremony had been observed. Honour had been restored. Face had been given.

  Nancy looked briefly from Frenchy to Chopper and thence to Fatty Lo. They returned her look with a new respect. All around the room, Brother men beheld her redoubtable features and stern composure with wonder. They knew they were experiencing a very special moment. In return, Nancy lowered her head briefly as token of respect to the Brother men. Then she turned and stepped off the stage and departed the scene as noiselessly as she had arrived. Throughout the entire encounter Nancy had not spoken a single word. People started to move and breathe again. Death had put away his scythe. It was over.

  Golden Horse men stood up and started to look about them. They were still uncertain, but no longer afraid.

  It was Frenchy who now seized the initiative.

  'Golden Horse,' he called. 'You have made your apology and it was seen to be sincere and has been accepted.' He paused for a moment to let his words sink in. 'Your former Dragon Head has told you that you are now part of Brother. This is true. But it is not compulsory. If any of you want to leave, do so now and you may go without trouble. If you stay, you will become part of Brother and will become equals with us. Choose now.'

  It was a bold move. Not only did Frenchy in his immaculately tailored outfit look the part, but in one instant he had both shown himself as a rival for the crown of leadership with Fatty Lo and also gone one up on his rival Chopper Kwok. The Golden Horse men looked at each other, all of them asking the same question with their eyes, 'are you staying or leaving?' The same answer came back, spoken through their body language. None of them made for the door. They were Brother.

  There was general, though unspoken, agreement that Frenchy had made the right call. Nancy's performance and Frenchy's short speech had done what had seemed impossible only an hour before. Brother was healed and was back on track. In fact, Brother was bigger than before with two dozen more willing workers swelling its ranks. There was a mood to lighten the atmosphere and some men went to bring crates of beer.

  But there was one notable absence. Chopper Kwok was no longer in the building. He had left the party early.

  Kodrob's Squadroom, Pentacurse, Inferno

  Kodrob watched Zhivkin leave the room and followed him with his eyes until he was out of sight. Then he listened by the door for another minute until he was sure the Russian devil would not return.

  'Pu,' he shouted without turning his head. The little imp appeared by his side a moment later. 'Take off,' Kodrob growled, 'I'll watch the prisoner.'

  Pu Gash gave a sideways look at his embattled boss and hesitated for a moment. Kodrob raised his voice a notch. 'That's not a request'.

  As the little demon trotted off, casting doubtful glances over his shoulder, Kodrob crossed the squadroom slowly to Pu Gash's petrol station.

  He poured himself a thick tarsand, lit it with a black Lucifer and dropped into a skinbone chair opposite the wheezing Jabez.

  'Thirsty?' asked Kodrob. He expected and got no answer. Jabez watched as Kodrob reached into an inner pocket and removed a bottle. He threw it to the angel who caught it cleanly.

  'Drink it,' ordered Kodrob. 'It's what you think it is.'

  Jabez removed the top with one hand and sniffed it. 'Water?'

  'The purest,' replied the demon captain. 'We keep it for interrogations. It frightens the hell out of defiant demons. Burns them too if we have to go that far.'

  Jabez sipped the fluid suspiciously, swilled it round his mouth and swallowed some. He waited a few moments for ill-effects, searching Kodrob's face while he did so.

  'Why have you given me this? What do you want?'

  'To keep you alive, and, nothing.'

  Jabez drank half the water and tried to sit up straight. 'That is good, really good.'

  'I'm pleased. Just don't give me all that blessing bit. It's a little late for all that around here.'

  'How did you end up here?'

  Kodrob smiled. 'In Inferno?'

  'Yes.
'

  'I killed a few people and took their horses. Burned their tents too. Apparently it's frowned upon by your lot. That's why they wouldn't let me in.'

  'You didn't know that killing people was wrong?'

  'Where I come from in Assyria it was virtuous to kill people. It's what they taught in all the best schools. You passed out top of your class and had your pick of slaves if you mastered the Fifteen Unarmed Ways to Kill and could arrow-split a walnut at 25 paces. And when you brought home your first three enemy heads they gave you land. Killing Assyria's enemies was honourable, noble even. I thought I was heading for Warriors' Paradise.'

  Jabez drank another gulp.

  'What will they do if they know you gave me water?'

  'Husk me.'

  'Huh?'

  'It means kill me a little. I will come back as a diminished demon, a lower rank. Less intelligent, less strong, less able. A step towards the final end.'

  'And you don't mind that?'

  'Of course I mind. I cling on to existence even though here there's not much existence to cling onto. I have to serve deadly directors like Bezejel and Hideki from time to time. So far I've survived. Maybe this time I won't. In the meantime I just do my job. I take my pay. I go to the squawhouse and then I come back the next day and do it all over again.'

  'So if you don't mind me asking again, why did you give me water?'

  'I don't know. Honestly, I don't know.' Kodrob laughed, stirred his burning tarsand with his thumb and sucked it.

  'I heard you and the other demon plan to torture me tomorrow.'

  'He's planning to torture you, yes.'

  'And you?'

  Kodrob was silent and looked down at his drink. 'It wasn't my plan,' he said eventually, 'Zhiv is cruel. That's his way. His need to watch others suffer overrides his common sense, even his own self-preservation. That's why he's dangerous. And he's got me naked against the whipping wall. If I try to stop him, he'll mouth off to Bezejel and the others that I'm soft. Then I'll get husked.'

  Both of them drank. And waited.

  Pearl River Wholesalers, Block 17, Wong Tai Sin Lower Estate, Kowloon

  Inside the sparse plain-fronted building, Nescafé Mao and two of his henchmen, father and son Chen Shou-shan and Chen Wu-zhou were gathered around crates of sugar, flour, noodles, rice, tea and coffee.

  'I shouldn't have to come out and supervise this myself, Ah Shou,' said Nescafé Mao crossly to the older man. 'It's time you did this yourself.'

  'But sir, I was never taught to write. I can hardly read. My Shan Tung parents were very poor and could not afford to send me to school. And my son Ah Wu is too weak in the head to learn. We cannot label the boxes and jars ourselves.'

  'What did Fang say?'

  'Sir, he said his father suffered a heart attack and he had to go to Fanling in the New Territories urgently.'

  'That's what he told me too,' said Nescafé, resignedly. 'I still don't believe him, slippery bastard.'

  'Right, let's set up a production line and get this done quickly,' went on Nescafé. 'Wu, you open the containers with the jemmy and pass one jar from each container to your dad. Shou, you unscrew the jars, empty out some coffee and shove a packet of red chicken heroin into each, making sure the packet is not visible from the outside. I'll write out the 'Special Offer' labels and stick them on the jars and put them back in the containers. We should be done in an hour. Then we'll lock up and clear off and the delivery boys will distribute them in the morning. Got it?'

  'Yes sir. Thank you sir. Sorry sir,' shouted father and son together.

  Outside, in a street around the corner, ten police officers, some of them in uniform, alighted from their vehicles. They split into three groups and approached Block 17 from different directions. The 'tin man toi' look-out that Nescafé had posted outside the metal-shuttered door was smoking a cigarette and looking up and down the street.

  It was the first cold night of the year and his thin jacket was barely keeping him warm. He paced up and down to keep his blood pumping and pulled his collar about him for warmth. The tin man toi straightened up when he saw two uniformed police officers walking towards him. They were chatting in a relaxed fashion and seemed to be out on patrol. Nothing wrong with that. If he rapped on the door now they'd see his alarm and be suspicious. Let them pass. He scrutinised them up and down without trying to look too obvious. Hang on, he thought, looking at their gaiters and long batons, they're Emergency Unit, riot police. They're not local. There's something wrong.

  A hand grabbed his arm from behind and wrenched him away from the steel door. The tin man toi tried to kick the shutter in warning but he had been hauled too far away from it. Another hand clamped over his mouth while a second officer, in plain clothes, stepped in front of him holding a revolver aimed at his chest with a remarkably steady pair of hands.

  'Quiet now,' said Dan in Cantonese. The lookout calculated his chances and realised he had few options. His body sagged in submission and one of the uniforms hauled him off to the Land Rover.

  Dan and his team regrouped and scanned the building's defences. The steel shutter was clearly too strong to bust open. But there was a side door.

  A telephone rang inside.

  'They must have had a second tin man toi somewhere else,' hissed Dan. He looked up at Block 22 opposite. Nothing. If someone had seen them and was making the call, they'd be indoors now anyway. 'Let's go.' Two uniforms struck at the lock of the side door with a six foot crow bar. The door held fast. The forced entry could take minutes and that was too long. Shouts inside. As the uniforms pulled back for another assault, Liu Jai stepped forward, reached for the door handle and pulled it down. It was unlocked and the door flew open. The nine officers almost crushed each other in their efforts to get through the narrow door. As they burst in there were shouts of, 'Don't move or I'll shoot', 'You're under arrest' and 'Stay where you are'. The floor of the building was strewn with spilled coffee jars, coffee granules, jemmies, plastic bags and half-drunk beer bottles. Three men were tearing open plastic bags containing coffee-like granules and rushing in relays to the toilet.

  Within seconds two of them were on the ground with their hands behind their heads, several revolvers pointing down at them. There was still a lot of shouting as adrenalin worked its way through the police officers' fast-pumping bloodstreams. Nescafé Mao held out the longest. Inspector Cheng seized his arm in the dirty one-room toilet closet where he was desperately disposing of heroin granules into the sewer system. Cheng wrenched his fingers from the handle on the cistern then hauled him backwards till Nescafé came unstuck like a limpet off a rock. He span back into the warehouse sending a hail of granules over everyone in the room and knocking over several sacks of rice. Tripping over the edge of a pallet, he lay where he fell, staring up into the barrels of two Colt .38 snub noses. These weapons were not known for their accuracy or firepower. But at four feet they would easily take the back off his head and make the cleaner's job a lot messier. Nescafé shrugged. Brother could afford good lawyers.

  The night was a long one. Detective support teams were called away from their families and beds to gather evidence that would later be produced in court. Photographers positioned tripods that flashed like starshells in a night battle. Uniforms with braid on their caps came out of nowhere to be snapped at the scene and take the credit. Police were sent door to door in the heavily populated neighbourhood to find out who knew what about Pearl River Wholesalers and take statements from anyone foolish enough to admit they knew something. TV journalists were briefed, blocked, escorted away, schmoozed and generally neutralised as far as possible. Evidence bags were stuffed, labelled, inventoried, classified, cross-referenced and taken away to a secure store. Finally, Dan made sure that everyone involved in the raid spent several hours writing complete statements listing every moment, every thought and every action of the night in infinitesimal detail. By the time all of these were translated into English, typed, checked, copied fifteen times on carbon paper and dissem
inated to every senior officer in Kowloon who wanted to be in on a successful swoop, the sun was well into its new arc and restaurants in Yaumati were already opening their doors for early dim summers.

  Dan was exhausted as he left the office and walked down the street to stretch his legs. He would be home soon and able to have a shower, put his gun away and crash out for a few hours in readiness for the follow-up and the fall-out.

  Traffic was already grid-locking in Nathan Road, lorries blocked lanes insouciantly as their human parasites offloaded scaffolding into building sites and taxis were parping horns to show their fares they were doing something about the delays. I love the smell of diesel in the morning, thought Dan.

  Beside the door of a restaurant, a beggar, an old lady with sapphire blue eyes and a shawl over her hunched back, held out her hand to him. 'Sir, can you spare a little change? I'm hungry.'

  Women's Dormitory, Sixth Floor, Golden Luck Casino

  An eye for an eye. Nancy's face was half buried in the pillow as the memory of her sex slavery came back into her head, forcing out sleep. Her mind would play the awful scene again and again just like a horror blockbuster. She opened one eye and looked across to the next bed. Jenny was lying on her side, one eye visible, looking back at her. Both eyes blinked, out of sync. The blinks turned to winks as the game began. Eyelids became shutters on morse lanterns beaming out unintelligible sequences. A sound track was added as giggles accompanied the light show. The winks became grimaces as cheeks pulled sideways and noses turned upwards. The grimace race continued as heads began to move and expressions contorted like children competing at a Hallowe'en party. Peace couldn't last. Physical violence was inevitable and soon the first sock was thrown as the confrontation burst out into open laughter and both women launched ballistic pillow attacks on the other's position. Slipper mortars rained down to devastating concussive effect while paper aeroplanes, rapidly manufactured on a war footing, zoomed across nearly two feet of no man's land taking no prisoners, strafing remorselessly and ending up all too often crashed and buckled under a bed. The women took turns to emulate the dead pilots' heart-rending bravery as they tried to exit their burning craft and perished, half in and half out of their cockpits. The UN made no effort to separate the bitter protagonists and it was only an eleventh hour show of statesmanship and an appeal to decency by Jenny that eventually allowed a shaky truce and cease-fire. 'Nancy, look at the time, let's go down to a stall for breakfast and get some noodles.' The world looked on and saluted this extraordinary and courageous suggestion but it was met with equal wisdom by the other belligerent. 'Race you to the shower,' replied Nancy and World War III was averted while the two friends splashed, scrubbed, washed, brushed, dressed, shoed, ear-ringed, blushed, mascaraed and exited in less time than it takes to say Treaty of Kowloon.