Hong Kong

by Stephen Coonts

  Sue Lin brought the beer, then left them. She paused at the door of the greenhouse and looked back, catching Rip’s eye. She raked her windblown hair from her eyes, then went in, closing the door behind her.

  “ … owned a building just below here some years back,” Sonny was saying. He pointed. “That one right there, with the little garden on the roof. The value of that building went up to four times what I paid for it. I was collecting fabulous rents every month, then it all just … just melted away, like ice cream in the noonday sun.”

  “Yeah.”

  “One day, the whole thing …” He sighed.

  Rip sipped a beer. Sue Lin had brought one for each of them. Yuri was looking at the ships in the harbor to the west.

  “I always liked this view,” Sonny said. “Always.”

  “Yeah.”

  ‘These are the last days of Hong Kong, Rip. It’s coming to an end.”

  Rip didn’t say anything to that. What was there to say?

  “Got your message that you wanted me to drop by. So what can Wong and Associates do for the scion of the Buckingham clan?”

  “China Bob Chan.”

  “Too bad, huh?”

  “Got any ideas on who might have done it?”

  “It wasn’t me, Rip.”

  “Hey, Sonny. If I thought there was the slightest possibility, I would have respected your privacy. What I’m after is any background or insight you might be able to provide, not for attribution, of course. What was China Bob into?”

  “You’ve been following the American thing … ?” Sonny began. “The PLA was giving him money to contribute to American political campaigns. Don’t ask me why. The generals think the American politicos are as crooked as Chinese politicians. And they may be right—there was a guy in the American embassy in Beijing who was handing out visas to the United States to anyone who said he would go over there and contribute to the president’s reelection campaign.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Chan was into the usual stuff here. And he was big into smuggling people, which I won’t touch. It’s too dirty for me, Rip, but not for China Bob.”

  “Where to?”

  “Anywhere. Malaysia, Australia, America, anywhere people wanted to go, China Bob would do the deal. Course he didn’t always deliver—it’s a smelly business.”

  “Did he do passports?”

  “S.A.R. passports, but no one wanted those,” Wong said. Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of China in 1997 when the British turned over the colony. “I heard that for the right price—and the right price was very high—China Bob could produce genuine passports. That’s not generally known around, I believe.”

  “Was he doing that a lot, do you think?”

  “No country I know about is granting visas to people holding S.A.R. passports, so there isn’t a lot of demand for those. The refugee problem has these other countries scared silly. The old British colonial passports are a dreg on the market—you can’t get into America or Australia or Singapore or Indonesia or anyplace I know with one of those. Even Britain is worried about tens of thousands of Chinese refugees flooding in. No one is granting entry visas.”

  Rip sipped some more on his beer and waited.

  “Guy like China Bob had a lot of deals going,” Sonny said, thinking aloud. “The guy who sold China Bob blank American passports will deal with me, if you want. Faking an Australian visa on an American passport shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “You and China Bob were sorta competitors, weren’t you?”

  Sonny bristled slightly at that remark. “Our businesses paralleled each other at times,” he admitted. “There was room for both of us.”

  “You’re talking a forged passport?”

  “Genuine. The real thing, right out of the lock box at the consulate. The source is very reliable.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He’s not honest, you understand, but he is reliable. That’s a critical distinction in business, one so few people appreciate.”

  “I think I see it,” Rip told Sonny, who nodded as if he were pleased.

  “I put the passport with Australian entry visa in your hands,” Sonny explained. “You take your Chinese relative to the airport, put her on Qantas to Sydney. She breezes through immigration at both ends. Guaranteed.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty grand American. Cash. Half in advance, half on delivery of the documents.”

  Rip whistled. “Is that what China Bob was into?”

  “He did a little of that. And he brought stuff in. He could get import permits for darn near anything; anything he couldn’t get a permit for he could smuggle in. Money, import, smuggling—those were his main businesses, but he did some people, too. For fifty grand he could put your cousin on a freighter going to the United States. The Philippines were a real bargain, though, only about four thousand. Your cousin would be in a locked container with some other passengers. He’d have to take his own food and water with him, but he wouldn’t get a sunburn. About eight days at sea, five hundred a day. Hell, Rip, it would cost more money than that to send him on a cruise ship.”

  “The passengers didn’t always get there, though,” Rip pointed out.

  “Rip, I just couldn’t say. Dumping the cargo at sea—something like that the people involved don’t talk about. Oh, you hear whispers, but people like to whisper. Gives them something to do.”

  Rip waved away that possibility. He knew those kinds of things were happening, but he really didn’t believe China Bob had gotten his hands that filthy for the paltry dollars involved.

  Rip glanced at the Russian. On the other hand, Yuri looked like he would cheerfully cut your throat for cigarette money.

  “Was Bob into Chinese politics, do you think?”

  “Hey, Rip, I don’t think the guy intentionally set out to die young.”

  “Well, he figured wrong somewhere, that’s for sure.”

  “Everyone makes mistakes occasionally. Even China Bob.”

  “Think someone double-crossed him, one of his associates maybe?”

  “I doubt if somebody shot him to get his wife. Wives being what they are, not too many people kill to get one. To get rid of one, yes.” Wong snorted at his own wit. When the noises stopped, he said, “A double cross is likely. Though if I were a betting man, I would put my money on the PLA. Rumor had it Bob might go to America, embarrass a lot of important people.” He shrugged.

  “Thanks for coming by tonight, Sonny.”

  “Okay. Now tell me the real reason you called.”

  “I enjoy seeing your smiling face.”

  “I didn’t shoot him, Rip. Bob and I did a lot of business together. His death leaves me scrambling, trying to salvage some things we had going. I’m not saying his death will be a net loss to me—I figure over time everything will balance out. You gotta be philosophical. These things happen.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Sonny Wong gave up. “Great view you got here, Rip.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You ever want a passport for your mother-in-law, call me.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Come on, Yuri. Let’s go find some beds.”

  With her husband’s help, Callie Grafton got the small tape reels properly installed on the player and pushed the play button. She was wearing the headset Carmellini had brought. Before her was a legal pad and pen on which she made notes and summarized the conversations as she listened. She made no attempt at a word-by-word translation. Occasionally she had to rewind the tape and listen to portions of conversations several times to make sure she had the meaning right.

  Midnight came and went as she listened intently, occasionally jotting notes.

  Finally she took a break, stopped the tape, and took off the headset. After she had helped herself to water, she muttered to her husband, who was out on the balcony watching the lights of the city; “What are you going to do with the tape after I finish with it?”

  “I don�
��t know. Depends on what’s on it.”

  “I’m about halfway, I think. I don’t understand everything I’ve heard, but Chan was apparently laundering money.”

  “For whom?”

  “For the PLA. The money was going to America.”

  “Okay.”

  “The congressional investigators might be able to put voices and facts together to make something of all this.”

  “Perhaps.”

  She stood silently, stretching. Finally she lowered her arms and massaged his neck muscles. “Do you think Tiger killed him?”

  “Hon, I don’t know. I’m waiting for you to tell me what you think.”

  “What are you going to do if he did?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  She went back inside and put on the headset.

  It was three in the morning when Callie Grafton removed the headset and turned off the tape player. Jake was curled up on the bed, asleep.

  She went out on the balcony and saw that rain had fallen during the night. Just now the air was almost a sea mist, which made the lights of the city glow wondrously.

  She had listened to the ten minutes prior to the gunshot, which the tape captured, three times.

  China Bob Chan had been a human, and presumably somewhere there was someone who cared for him, perhaps even loved him. Try as she might, Callie could work up no sympathy for the murdered man. He was gone and that was that.

  She turned off the lights and lay down on the bed. She was so exhausted she wondered if she could relax enough to sleep. Then her eyes closed and she was out.

  The sound of morning traffic coming through the open sliding-glass door woke Jake. Callie was asleep on the bed beside him.

  Being as quiet as possible, he got up and put on running shorts, shirt, and shoes, made sure he had a key to the room, then slipped out and made sure the door locked behind him.

  Down on the street the day was in full swing. People filled the sidewalk, all in a hurry, all rushing somewhere. Jake tried to stay out of their way until he got to Kowloon Park, with its semi-empty sidewalks. As he jogged through the park he passed morning exercise classes engaged in slow, stylized calisthenics that reminded him of ballet.

  He ran the entire length of the park and out onto the sidewalks of Austin Road, where he headed for the docks on the western side of the peninsula.

  He had gone only a few dozen yards along Austin Road when he realized that he was being followed. Someone was jogging behind him, huffing loudly. And there was a car on the street, creeping along.

  Jake Grafton glanced back over his shoulder, taking in the car and the man in casual pants who was running behind. He was a couple hundred feet back, and running was obviously not a sport with him. The guy was wearing the wrong shoes and carrying too much weight, for starters.

  The thought of Callie asleep in a hotel room with the tape of China Bob’s last hours on the bed beside her flashed through Jake’s mind.

  When he reached the street that ran beside the dock area, Canton Road, he turned left, south, to head back toward Tsim Sha Tsui on the southern tip of the peninsula. He kept his pace steady and tried not to look over his shoulder, though he did glance back once to make sure his tail had not collapsed on the sidewalk.

  He veered left onto Kowloon Park Drive, just loping along.

  Ahead was a ramp up to an overpass that went across the street and into the lobby of a major hotel. Looking neither right nor left, Jake took the ramp, made the turn at the top, and slowed just enough to go through the glass doors, which reflected the early morning glare.

  His tail came thudding up the ramp, made the turn, charged for the door with his head down, inhaling deeply as he tried to get enough air to ease the pain in his chest. On the street below the car that had been keeping pace with the runner accelerated away.

  Jake Grafton caught the tail by the throat as he came through the door and slammed him into a marble pillar, where the man collapsed, too stunned to move.

  Glancing around to be sure no one was paying too much attention, Jake picked the man up by his pants and shirt and shoved him back out the door onto the ramp. There he slammed the man’s head into the ramp railing, and the man passed out.

  After he eased the heavy man to the concrete, Jake patted him down. He had a small automatic in a holster in his sock, so Jake relieved him of that and pushed it down inside his own athletic sock. A wallet … he didn’t need that anymore, either. A few keys, matches, an open pack of Marlboros …

  Grafton spent no more than ten seconds searching the man, then he straightened and went on into the hotel, leaving one middle-aged Western woman staring open-mouthed at him. No one else seemed interested.

  Callie was still asleep when Jake let himself into the hotel room. The tape was still in the player.

  Jake examined the pistol, a Chinese-made automatic, loaded. He put it in his luggage.

  The wallet he had taken from the tail contained Hong Kong dollars and a variety of cards, all displaying Chinese characters.

  He was toweling off after his shower when Callie awoke.

  “Hey, beautiful woman, did you sleep okay?”

  She sat up in bed, looked around at the bright room and the daylight streaming through the gauzy drapes.

  “I don’t know who killed that man, Jake.”

  “Couldn’t tell from the tape?”

  “Impossible to say. But China Bob was into everything. Everything! He smuggled people, money, dope … he was even bringing in computers and guns.”

  “Computers?”

  “I couldn’t make much sense of it.”

  “Was Cole on the tape?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know his voice.”

  “You’ll meet him again tonight.”

  “I don’t know that I want to.”

  “Hey, kiddo. We’re the first team, okay? What say we have breakfast and see some sights?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The governor of Hong Kong, Sun Siu Ki, sat at his desk in City Hall puffing a cigarette as he listened to an interpreter translate Rip’s story of the fatal riot in front of the Bank of the Orient from the China Post. A copy of the offending paper lay on the corner of the desk in front of him, out of his way. Spread out where he could read them were the front pages of three Chinese-language newspapers.

  Sun couldn’t believe his eyes or ears: Every editor in Hong Kong had apparently decided today was the day to tell the most outrageous lies about the government.

  The copy of the leading Chinese-language paper had been hand-delivered to the governor’s office by one of the newspaper’s censors, who was horrified when he saw the paper rolling off the press. The lead headline and story on the Bank of the Orient failure was certainly not the one he had approved, and he wrote a note to the governor stating that fact.

  The headline and story reported that Beijing had ordered the Bank of the Orient to close its doors since it had refused to lend money at super-low rates to customers designated by Beijing. The unspoken inference was that bribes in Beijing were the price of access to easy credit.

  The censor had the presses stopped, but not before a truckload of the libelous papers had already left to be installed in vending machines in the northern area of Kowloon.

  The other two papers carried slightly different versions of the same story. According to them the bank failure was the direct result of lending to unnamed politically connected entities who were unable to repay the loans, which had been made at ridiculously low rates. The morning editions of these papers had been distributed. The governor’s aide bought these copies from vendors at the Star Ferry terminal on his way to work.

  Everyone in Hong Kong was reading these lies.

  The aide was in the next room, talking to the censors involved. Apparently both of them swore the stories were not the ones they approved for publication.

  If the newspapers weren’t enough, already this morning the governor had received a call from army headquarters: Several thousa
nd people were sitting in the plaza outside the closed Bank of the Orient. They were peaceful enough, but they were there, a visible, tangible, unspoken challenge to the Communist government. As he listened to the interpreter, Sun Siu Ki was thinking about those people.

  Behind his desk was a large window. Through that window, when he bothered to look, the governor could see a breathtaking assortment of huge glass-and-steel skyscrapers—one of which was the Bank of the Orient—designed by some of the world’s premier architects. These buildings were the heart of one of the most vibrant, energetic cities on earth, a city as different from the old, decaying Chinese cities of the interior as one could possibly imagine. This difference had never impressed Sun Siu Ki.

  A career bureaucrat, he was governor of Hong Kong because of his family’s political connections in Beijing. He knew little about capitalism, banking, or the way Western manufacturing, shipping, and airline companies operated, and nothing at all about stock markets or the international monetary system. The wealth and dynamic energy of Hong Kong struck him as foreign … and dangerous.

  A wise person once observed that Hong Kong was China the way it would be without the Communists. Nothing resembling that thought had ever crossed Sun Siu Ki’s mind or caused him a moment’s angst.

  Baldly, he was in over his head. He didn’t see it that way, however.

  Sun believed that he knew what he needed to know, which was how to surf the political riptides of the Communist upper echelons in Canton Province and Beijing.

  The problem du jour was the defiance of the government’s authority by the people in the streets … and the newspapers. As bad as the uncensored stories were in the Chinese press, the headline in the China Post was the most outrageous: 15 MASSACRED AT BANK OF ORIENT.

  Sun Siu Ki had replaced a governor who didn’t attack pernicious foreign ideas with sufficient vigor. If people saw that the Communists were too soft to defend themselves, they were doomed: They would be swept away, eradicated as thoroughly as the Manchus. Being human, the party cadres were doing their damnedest to prevent just such a disaster.

  Many of the readers of the China Post were not Chinese. The newspaper’s reactionary stories inflamed the foreign devils, and they wrote outrageous, incendiary letters to the editor, which that fool published. All this caused faraway officials of the foreign banks to fear the loss of their money. Foreigners thought only of money. The culpability of the China Post was plain as day to Sun Siu Ki.