“You’ve lost a finger,” she said in Chinese.
“They cut it off.”
She sat back down on her own bunk, put her aching head in her hands. It was coming back: the knock on the hotel room door, the voice—she thought it was the maid or bellman. When she opened the door, several men rushed in. They grabbed her mouth to keep her from screaming and threw her on the bed and one of them produced a hypodermic.
That was all she remembered. That and the fear.
Now she was sitting in a stateroom … she could feel the boat rocking in the waves. It must be a small ship to rock like this. There was a round porthole with the glass painted over; a bit of light leaked through the scratches in the paint. That light was all that illuminated the tiny room.
When she turned her head she could see that the man on the bunk had rolled over. Now he was looking at her.
“Does your hand hurt?”
“Not too much,” he said.
“Who are you?”
“You wouldn’t know me.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Wu.”
“I’m Callie.”
“Callie.” He said it experimentally.
“Where are we?”
“I think we have been kidnapped. They knocked me out, so I don’t know.”
“Me, too.”
She still had her watch, which was unexpected. Almost three o’clock. The men had burst into the hotel room about ten A.M.
She wondered if it were the same day.
She lay down and thought about her husband.
“Commander Tarkington?”
“That’s right.” Tommy Carmellini pressed the telephone to his ear to help himself concentrate. The voice that sounded in his ear from the other side of the Pacific was certainly clear enough.
“My name is Tommy Carmellini. We met last year in Cuba. Do you remember?”
“Yes.” Tarkington sounded sleepy. The telephone call had awakened him.
“Admiral Grafton asked me to call you. He needs your help.” Tarkington was Jake Grafton’s aide.
“I got a pencil. Shoot.” Now Toad was alert.
“His wife has been kidnapped,” Carmellini said.
“Callie Grafton? Gawd damn!” The Toad-man whistled through his teeth.
Carmellini glanced around the office. Kerry Kent and the three CIA dudes were all staring at him, listening to his every word.
“We believe the man behind it is a Hong Kong citizen named Sonny Wong,” Carmellini continued. “I don’t know his real name. He is associated with a Russian national named Yuri Daniel. The admiral asked me to call you. He wants the CIA to run those two through the computers and see what they can come up with. Wong may have some bank accounts in Switzerland or some other bank haven. Look for passports, visas, travel records, wire transfers, anything.”
“Okay.” Toad’s voice was crisp and businesslike.
“Have the National Security Agency set up a study of telecommunications traffic in the Hong Kong area. Obviously we are interested in the Graftons, Sonny Wong, Yuri Daniel, kidnapping, ransom, anything along those lines.”
“I’ll talk to them in a few hours. Tell the admiral I’ll go through the agency director’s office. Shouldn’t be a problem. Anything else?”
“That will do it for now.”
“Heard anything about Callie? Is she okay?”
“We don’t know.”
“Does this Wong dude want money or what?”
“Money.”
“Wow!” said Toad Tarkington. “That Wong must have really bad karma—I can smell it from here. Jake Grafton is the last man on the planet I’d want blood-crazy mad at me. You tell the admiral I’m on my way to the office as soon as I get my pants on.”
Jake Grafton sat at the conference table in Cole’s office and tried to clear his thoughts. There was stationery in the trays under the computer printer, so he helped himself to a couple of sheets. He took a U.S. government black ballpoint from his shirt pocket and clicked the point in and out while he collected his thoughts.
The National Security Adviser had sent Jake to Hong Kong to find out what was going on; the man was entitled to know.
Jake wrote quickly in a clear, legible longhand detailing what he had learned. The consul general was involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the Chinese government and had resigned. Cole had been in the building when China Bob Chan was killed, may have talked to him, and may have been somehow involved in his death. The enclosed tape was made in Chan’s library by the recorder planted by Harold Barnes and should be listened to by Chinese-language experts.
He wrote two pages total, then put the handwritten sheets and the audiotape in a large padded envelope, which he sealed. He wrote the National Security Adviser’s name on it and handed it to Cole.
“I want you to send this to Washington in the next diplomatic pouch. The Chan tape is in there.”
“Okay.”
“I’m relying on your honor, Cole.”
“I am well aware of that fact, Jacob Lee, and will try not to take offense at the fact you felt the need to point it out.”
“I’m all out of apologies,” Grafton replied coolly.
“I’ll put the envelope in the pouch,” Cole said. “The problem is the airlines—nothing is coming in or going out of Lantau since the air traffic control computers crapped out.”
“Did you have anything to do with that?”
“I certainly hope so.”
Jake scratched his head, trying to make up his mind. “I want the tape in the bag and on its way,” Jake said finally, “so I won’t be tempted to trade the damned thing to this Wong asshole for Callie.”
“Okay.”
“And the time has come for you to resign.” Jake took Cole’s letter of resignation from his pocket and tossed it on the desk. “Fax that thing to Washington.”
“Now?”,
“Right now.”
Cole took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said.
The intercom buzzed. “Mr. Cole. There’s a small package here for you. The sergeant at the gate brought it up. He says you should see it.”
“Is he still there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have him bring it in.”
The marine was square as a fire plug and togged out in a khaki shirt and blue trousers with a red stripe up each seam. He looked pale.
“Did you X-ray the package, Sergeant?” Cole asked.
“Yes, sir. There’s no bomb. Looked like a bone.”
“A bone?”
“Well, three little bones. Jesus, sir, it looks like a finger.”
Cole cut the brown wrapping paper away from the box with a letter opener, then cut the tape that held the top on.
Jake Grafton was looking over Cole’s shoulder when he opened the box. It was a finger, all right, freshly severed, if the still-soft blood was any indication.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Cole said softly and sent the marine on his way.
Jake Grafton stood still as a statue, staring at the finger.
“It isn’t Callie’s,” he said.
“Probably Wu’s,” Cole muttered and used the intercom to ask the secretary to have Kerry Kent come up to the office.
While they were waiting Jake walked around the office looking at Cole’s memorabilia. He was thinking of Callie, wondering how he was going to get her back, when he realized he was looking at an old photo of himself and Tiger Cole. The thing was in black and white, framed, sitting on an out-of-the-way shelf behind the conference table. He and Cole were standing in front of a bomb-laden A-6 in their flight gear, obviously on a flight deck. Neither man was grinning.
Those were simpler days.
Kerry Kent knocked, then came charging into the office. She looked into the box, and clapped her hand over her mouth.
“Those bastards,” she said between clenched teeth. “Those fucking bastards.”
Victoria Peak and the tops of the buildings were wreathed in fog when Jake Gr
afton walked out the front entrance of the American consulate. The rain had stopped, leaving the air tangibly wet, thick, warm, and heavy.
He walked slowly, taking his time, watching for people who might be paying attention to him.
He had to will himself to walk slowly, to analyze and think logically about the situation and what he could do to affect it.
The tension in everyone he met was visible—all the pedestrians were on edge, regardless of age, sex, race, or how they were dressed. Without smiles or nods, the people walked briskly with their heads down, avoiding eye contact, avoiding each other, hurrying toward the great unknown.
He stood in line and bought a ticket on the tram, then waited a minute or two with the crowd for the tram to descend the mountain. He let other people board the car in front of him, arranging it so he was one of the very last aboard, and told the motorman where he wanted off.
The car got underway almost noiselessly as the cable pulled it up the tracks. The only sound Jake could hear was the faintest rumble from the wheels, or perhaps he was only feeling the vibration of the steel wheels on the steel rails. The grade was about thirty percent, he estimated. A series of stairs ran alongside the cable car’s track for those in the mood for a serious climb.
No one in the car spoke. All studiously avoided looking at each other as the car silently climbed the steep grade. The buildings slid past and the fog thickened.
The car stopped at a tiny platform about three-quarters of the way up the side of the mountain. Jake got off, then the car resumed its journey and disappeared into the fog.
He walked along the street, found the right house, rang the bell.
A man opened the door, a man in his late thirties, perhaps even forty.
“Rip Buckingham?”
“Come in, please.”
When the door closed behind him, Jake said, “I suppose Wong called you.”
“Yes. My wife is upstairs. Wu is her brother.”
They sat at a table in the kitchen, with a window beside them that gave a view of some nearby housetops amid the gloom.
“Cole said they took your wife.”
“Yes.”
“Sonny won’t be able to stay in Hong Kong after this.”
“If he gets fifty million from Cole, he won’t want to.”
“He also wants ten million from me. From my dad, actually, Richard Buckingham.”
“Buckingham News?”
“Yeah.”
Jake considered the situation in silence as he sized up Rip Buckingham and tried to figure out how much steel was in him. Finally he said, “Wong won’t be able to live comfortably anywhere if he releases Callie and Wu alive to testify against him. Switzerland isn’t an extradition haven.”
“After Wong gets his money, he’ll kill everybody who might cause him trouble,” Rip said heavily. “A man once told me that four hundred Chinese each paid Sonny fifty grand American to go to America. The ship sailed away and was never seen again.”
“Twenty million dollars,” Jake muttered after doing the math in his head.
“I don’t know if the story is true,” Rip continued, “but I know Sonny. He doesn’t take unnecessary chances.”
Tommy Carmellini had his equipment set up in the attic of the consulate. He had worked for three nights bugging and wiring selected offices, one of which was the CIA office. Another was the consul general’s. Grafton wanted to know what was going on—Carmellini intended to find out.
Just now he settled into the folding chair he had stolen from the immigration office and donned a headset, which was plugged into the amplifier. The tape recorder was recording all the microphone inputs simultaneously for later study. Without interfering with the recording, he flipped through the channels, listening to various bugs in turn, sampling the audio.
The CIA office was his main concern. He listened to them chat, matched up voices with the faces in his memory. They were still squeezing the juice from the kidnapping. Well, an admiral’s wife doesn’t get snatched every day.
Kent also knew that Sonny Wong claimed he had Wu. She wasn’t sharing that tidbit with the others, Carmellini noticed. In fact, she was sharing very little.
A remark of Bubba Lee’s set the tone. “Man, calling Washington and telling NSA to get on the case—that Grafton is somebody.”
“Yeah, but who?” That was Eisenberg.
“An admiral in the navy. Don’t they sometimes get posted to the intel community?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, that sailor has some stroke, or thinks he has.”
“Thinks he has, yeah.”
“Do you buy it about Sonny Wong? Does a snatch sound like something he would do?”
“Never can tell, man. Things are getting twangy tight around this town. Riots, people shot in the streets, power off half the night …”
“Did you hear about the airport?” Was that Bubba Lee? “The computers out there rolled over and died. People trapped on the concourses, no water in the fountains or toilets, flights canceled. I heard someone went crazy and threw a chair though a plate-glass window.”
“Whole goddamn town is falling apart.”
“Hey, the whole goddamn country is falling apart, if you ask me.”
There was more of it, thirty minutes or so. At some point Carmellini realized that there were only two men talking. Eisenberg had been silent a long time, as had Kerry Kent. Maybe they were no longer in the room.
Didn’t Cole say Eisenberg knew the woman in the passport office?
Carmellini flipped to that microphone. A loud conversation in Chinese drowned out everything else in the room.
Disgusted, Tommy Carmellini turned the selector to listen to the mike in the consul general’s office.
Yep, there was Kent.
“—might kill him. I’ve been saying for months that he should have an armed bodyguard around the clock. Does anyone pay any attention to the fears of a woman? What does she know? What could she possibly contribute to this—”
“He didn’t want a bodyguard! You know that. Stop this goddamn whining.”
“Whining? They may kill him!”
“Indeed. He’s been a fugitive for a dozen years, with his life hanging by a thread. The revolution continues regardless. The world keeps turning, the tide is coming in … at last!”
“What are you doing to get him back alive?”
“I’m paying the damned ransom.”
“What else?”
“What else do you think I should do?”
“I don’t know!” she moaned. “I only know that I want him alive! I need him, China needs him—everything depends on him. Everything!”
“Tell me some more about Sonny Wong,” Jake Grafton said to Rip Buckingham, “everything you can remember.” They were still in Rip’s kitchen, seated in front of the window. The rain had stopped and the fog was lifting, revealing the skyscrapers of the Central District.
“Sonny’s the head of the last of the old-line Hong Kong criminal gangs, or tongs,” Rip told the American. “He’s sort of an anachronism, a fossil from the wilder days.”
“Kidnapping isn’t anything new,” Jake said sourly.
“No,” Rip admitted. “I thought Sonny was above poopy little capers like this, but apparently not.”
“I want to know everything, who his associates are, what he does for money, where he lives, what he eats, his habits—vices, women, kids, everything.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“I want my wife back.”
“That may be impossible.”
Jake Grafton gripped the edge of the table and squeezed as hard as he could. All these years, ups and downs and ins and outs, good times and hard times, the tiny triumphs and disasters and little victories that fill our days … to have her life end here, now, snuffed out by a criminal psychopath who wants money?
When his muscles began quivering from the exertion, Jake Grafton released the table. He rubbed his hands together, thought about Callie, about
their adopted daughter, Amy. “Let’s hope not,” he said to Rip, so softly that the Australian almost missed the response.
CHAPTER TEN
British consul general Sir Robert MacDonald spent a long afternoon with his staff writing a situation report for the Foreign Office. While so engaged he received a telephone call from the foreign minister in London, who was worried.
‘The PM wants to know what in the world is going on out there,” the foreign minister said after the usual pleasantries.
“The authorities are having some public relations difficulties,” replied Sir Robert, never one to overlook the obvious. He had gone to school with the PM, who loathed him. Forced to accept Sir Robert into the government, the PM had sent him as far from London as he possibly could. “A few technical problems too, I’m afraid,” the consul general continued. “Rather inconvenient when the power goes off at odd hours.”
“The Buckingham newspapers published a provocative piece in today’s U.K. and American editions,” the foreign minister informed Her Majesty’s Hong Kong representative. “I wonder if you’ve seen it?”
“Afraid not. The locals shut down the China Post, which was Buckingham’s little rag hereabouts. Of course, they shut down all the newspapers—I’m sure my staff sent you that information in the morning report.”
“Richard Buckingham signed this piece himself. He says that a revolution is about to sweep China, one that will overthrow the Communists.”
“His son was the editor of the China Post,” Sir Robert replied. Rip had been a thorn in MacDonald’s side since the day the man arrived from London. “Governor Sun tossed him in jail,” he said, unable to keep the satisfaction completely out of his voice. “He’s out now, of course. Perhaps he had something to do with the article.”
“I see,” the FM said slowly.
“It’s always a mistake to quarrel with a man who buys ink by the barrel,” Sir Robert continued, repeating a comment his wife had made to him on several occasions when he took offense at China Post editorials. “Richard Buckingham can say anything he wants in his newspapers and there’s jolly little the Chinks can do about it. But talk of revolution is rot, pure rot. The Communists are firmly in control. They have a division of troops in the colony.”
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