“The subway problems will keep people from coming into the Central District,” Tang remarked. He assumed that most of the city’s citizens would want to demonstrate against the government, an assumption that Sun didn’t challenge.
“The time has come to be firm,” Sun declared. “We must show the people the steel of our resolve. Show them the might of the state they hold in such contempt.”
Lest there be a misunderstanding, Sun added darkly, “I abhor the useless effusion of blood, but if we do not hold our ground now, that failure will cost more blood.”
“We will give the order to disperse, then enforce it.”
“We must tell the people,” Sun told the general. “Go from here to the television studio. Stand in front of the camera and tell the people to stay home. Tell them the nation is under attack, but we shall prevail because we have the resolve of a tiger.”
“Only one television station is still operating,” the senior aide informed them. “The others have had power outages or equipment failures.”
“All?” Sun demanded.
“Yes, sir. During the night they went off the air, one by one.”
“Sabotage,” said Tang. “Could this be related to the nuclear weapons disaster?”
“Impossible,” the governor opined. “Here in Hong Kong we are dealing with criminal hooligans.”
Had the brain trust in City Hall asked about the situation with the radio stations, they would have been more alarmed. Of Hong Kong’s dozens of stations, only one was still on the air. The morning DJ at this station atop Victoria Peak was a Hong Kong personality named Jimmy Lee, easily the most popular man on the south China coast.
Lee was funny, irreverent, crazy, with it, and cool, a combination that delighted the young people and brought smiles to the faces of everyone else. Listening to Jimmy Lee was always a breath of fresh air.
Jimmy Lee wasn’t himself this morning, though. The man was constitutionally unable to keep a secret—it wasn’t in him. Everything he knew eventually slipped out, usually when he least wanted it to. Normally this trait didn’t do him any harm since his off-kilter personality was his stock-in-trade. For the past two weeks, though, Jimmy Lee had been the possessor of a huge secret, one that had grown heavier with each passing day.
He had joked so much about Wu Tai Kwong, the phantom political criminal, that Wu had concluded Lee could be an ally. So one morning one of Wu’s lieutenants was waiting when Lee finished his morning show.
At first Lee didn’t believe the man knew Wu Tai Kwong, as he said he did, but the man’s serious demeanor and his anti-Communist sentiments assuaged his doubts. The man returned to the station for private conversations week after week for months. Lee finally realized that the man wasn’t a government agent and that he indeed knew Wu Tai Kwong.
Eventually the man enlisted Lee to become a spokesman of the revolution. Two weeks ago he was told about the upcoming battle of Hong Kong, presented with a cell phone, and told about the message that he would receive on the designated day.
Jimmy Lee had not told a soul this fantastic secret, which was a remarkable testament to the supreme effort he was making to control himself. He had thought deeply about it for two weeks, brooded upon it, had nightmares about it. The reality was that the revolutionaries wanted him to commit treason … when the telephone rang.
Treason! If the revolution failed, Jimmy Lee’s life would be forfeit. The government would hunt him down and execute him publicly.
This morning Lee was almost incoherent on the air. He played songs but babbled nonsense when he had to speak. He had never been able to resist food, was almost a hundred pounds overweight, yet this morning he was unable to eat. Sweating profusely, nauseated, able to talk only in monosyllables, he was questioned by his producer … and he told everything.
The producer refused to believe Lee. He was unaware that this was the last radio station on the air in Hong Kong. He knew nothing about the disasters in the stock market, the airport, the subways … none of that had been published by the government, which like all Communist governments was loath to admit or discuss problems.
Lee talked on. He produced the cell phone. He told about meeting a friend of Wu Tai Kwong’s, told about how the army would be confronted today, about the explanations he was to make over the radio … and then he produced the cassette.
The producer put the cassette into a player and listened to a minute or two of it while Jimmy Lee hyperventilated.
The male voice on the cassette was as calm and confident as a human can be, calling for people to rally behind the freedom fighters, obey the revolutionary leaders, and kill PLA soldiers who refused to surrender.
The producer turned off the cassette player and sat chewing his fingernails while he considered what he should do. The first thing, he decided, was to let the New China News Agency censor listen to this tape. The man worked for the government, knew how things worked. He would know what to do about the tape.
Lin Pe was not thinking of resolve, although she had as much as the governor and then some. She was thinking of the strange ways human lives are twisted by chance, or fate, call it what you will.
She dressed in her newest clothes, brushed her hair, made herself look as nice as she could. In her purse she put her notebook—so she could write down any fortunes that crossed her mind in the course of the day—two rice cakes, and a bottle of water. She ensured the house key was already in the purse, then went to find her daughter, who was giving the maids their daily instructions. The television was on—General Tang was telling people to stay home.
When Sue Lin finished with the maids, she told her mother, “Rip wanted us both to stay home today. He said the streets will be dangerous, there may be shooting.” Her mother would respect Rip’s opinion, Sue Lin knew, more than she would her daughter’s, for her mother had not lost her lifetime habit of deference to men.
“I think the rebellion will begin today,” the old lady said calmly. “Today is the beginning of the end for the Communists.”
“Richard Buckingham is paying the money today, Mother. Wu Tai Kwong will probably be home this evening.”
Lin Pe merely nodded. Then she went out the door and along the street toward the tram, which would take her down the mountain to the Central District.
The matter was quite simple, really. Her son thought this struggle was worth his life. That being the case, it was worth hers, too.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At the Victoria ferry landing, people were streaming off the overloaded ferries from Kowloon and patronizing a small army of food vendors, who were selling fish and shark and rice cakes as fast as they could fry it. Not many children, considering. Here and there Jake Grafton saw people reading sheets of The Truth, sometimes three and four people huddled together looking at the same piece of paper. The people looked somber, grim, though perhaps it was just his imagination.
Not many people were interested in going to Kowloon, so there was no line. Jake went right aboard the ferry Star of the East.
As the boat approached Kowloon he could see the sea of humanity waiting to board the ferries to Victoria. With the subways out of service, this crowd was to be expected. The terminal was packed, with a large group of people outside on the street, waiting to get inside.
As soon as the boat tied up, Jake was off and walking at a brisk pace. Outside the terminal the crowd swallowed him. He thought about getting something to eat in McDonald’s, which was about fifty yards away, but it too was packed full, with people waiting to get into the place.
For the first time since he had arrived in Hong Kong the sheer mass of China threatened to overwhelm him. People everywhere, densely packed, all talking, breathing, shouting, pushing …
He made his way along Nathan Road and turned into the street that led by his hotel. Fewer people here, thank God.
The manager was in the lobby trying to calm a crowd of tourists from Germany. The common language was a heavily accented pidgin English.
S
o sorry, the manager explained, but the airlines had canceled all flights; daily bus tours of Hong Kong were canceled; trains to Canton, Shanghai, and Beijing were not running; telephone calls to Europe were not going through; credit cards could not be accepted for payment of bills; money-changing services at front desk temporarily suspended. So sorry. All problems temporary. Not to worry, all fixed soon. So sorry.
Behind Jake he heard an elderly British male voice say with more than a trace of satisfaction, “Bloody place is falling apart. Knew it would! Wasn’t like this in the old days, I can tell you.”
In the corner an American college student was trying to comfort his girlfriend. In the snippet he heard, Jake gathered that the girl was worried that her parents would be worried.
Jake waited until the manager made his escape from the unhappy Germans, then waylaid him. He told him his name, reminded him of the trashed room, wanted to know where his luggage was.
The manager signaled for a bellhop, then spoke to the uniformed man in Chinese.
Jake was escorted to the elevator and taken to the top floor of the building. They had laid out his and Callie’s luggage in a three-room suite, the best in the house, probably. The sitting room and bedroom both had balconies.
The crowd was so dense it intimidated Lin Pe, and she had lived in dense Chinese cities much of her life. There was an intensity, an anticipation, that seemed to energize the people.
She fought against the flow of people and managed to get aboard a ferry to Kowloon, as it turned out the last one, because the authorities demanded that the Star line stop carrying demonstrators to Victoria and forced the crews off the boats.
In Kowloon Lin Pe began walking. On Nathan Road she caught a bus and rode it north for several miles, then transferred to a bus going to Kam Shan, near Tolo Harbor. She got off the bus at Shatin and walked a quarter of a mile through town. Shatin was huge, with more than a half million people living there now. Lin Pe remembered when it was just a small town, not many years ago.
She stopped at a small corner grocery where she knew the proprietor. After the usual polite greetings, she found a seat on an empty orange crate under a sign advertising scribe services. The letter writer would not be here for hours, but people with little to do often passed the time by sitting here, so no one would say anything.
From her perch on the orange crate she could see the entrance to the main PLA base in the New Territories. Nothing much seemed to be happening on the base, which was good.
From her bag Lin Pe extracted her WB telephone. She turned it on, then called in and reported that she was in position. Then she turned the phone off to save the battery.
Jake Grafton took a shower, shaved, and put on clean clothes that fit; Cole’s were too large. He strapped the Smith & Wesson to his right ankle and put on the shoulder holster containing the Model 1911 Colt .45 automatic he had requisitioned from the marines at the consulate. Over this he donned a clean sports jacket. He put a hand grenade in each pocket. Just another happy tourist ready for a day of fun and games in good ol’ Hong Kong.
He checked with the hotel operator to see if he had any messages. Yes, a voice mail. He listened as the senior military adviser on the National Security staff told him that his mission was canceled, he could come home anytime.
He tried to return the call and got as far as the hotel operator. All lines overseas were out of service. So sorry.
So Tiger Cole and the Scarlet Team had isolated the place.
He turned on the television. Only one channel was still on the air—the others were showing test patterns or blank screens.
Oooh boy!
Jake Grafton went out on the bedroom balcony, which also overlooked the police station. Not many troops on the lawn. He could hear a helicopter circling overhead, though he couldn’t see it.
There was a division of troops in Hong Kong, Tiger said, China’s best … with tanks, artillery, and twelve thousand combat-ready soldiers.
Jake’s attention was drawn to the street in front of the hotel, eight stories below him. A convoy of trucks had pulled up alongside the hill and wall of the police station, and people were streaming from every truck.
In thirty seconds the street was a sea of people. A van-type truck was sitting at the main gate, the driver talking to the guard.
On the street the people were removing ladders from the trucks. My God! They were armed. Assault rifles, it looked like.
The ladders went against the wall, people swarmed up them.
As they reached the top of the wall, they got off the ladders, walked along the wall. There must be interior ladders or stairs, Jake thought.
The driver was out of the truck at the gate, holding a pistol on the guard. People ran by the truck into the compound.
Jake had a grandstand seat. In less than a minute, several hundred armed civilians were running through the compound.
Shots! He could hear shots! Some of the soldiers were shooting! And being shot at!
The reports rose into a ragged fusillade, then slowed to sporadic popping.
A dozen or so soldiers wearing green uniforms lay where they had fallen.
Now a convoy of trucks came streaming through the main gate.
In two minutes all the shooting stopped, even the occasional shot from inside the administration building. Several of the trucks were backed up to a loading dock, and a small human chain began passing weapons out of the building. As fast as one truck was loaded, it pulled out and another took its place.
Jake Grafton looked at his watch. The time was 8:33 A.M.
Welcome to the revolution!
He had to get to Victoria while he still could. Cole had said the Scarlet Team intended to confront the People’s Liberation Army with Sergeant Yorks. That would be the acid test. Either the Yorks could stand up to trained troops or the revolution would be over before lunch.
But all those people heading for the Central District—Grafton wondered if he had what it takes to sacrifice innocent people for the greater good. He thought of Callie and concluded that he didn’t.
The New China News Agency censor assigned to Jimmy Lee’s radio station listened to the Wu Tai Kwong cassette tape with a growing sense of horror. Jimmy Lee was sitting on a nearby stool near collapse—the producer had taken his place at the microphone. The tape sounded authentic. Any doubts the censor had were wiped away by the conviction in that taped voice … and the call for people to kill PLA soldiers who refused to surrender their arms.
The censor called his superior officer on the telephone, but no one answered. Too early. His superior wouldn’t come to work for another hour yet, and with the subway out, maybe not then. The man lived way up north in the New Territories.
The censor swallowed hard and telephoned City Hall.
He ended up with an aide to Governor Sun and began telling him of the tape and the upcoming battle in the streets.
Callie Grafton awoke stiff and sore from her beating the previous evening. Places on her face were blue and yellow, and one side of her face was severely swollen. Sometime during the night she stopped shivering … thankfully, but her ordeal had drained her.
Still, she was in better shape than she thought she would be. When those thugs were pounding on her she thought she might die.
She had awakened on and off during the night, waited fearfully for the men to return, to drag her off for another interrogation or session in the meat locker, but it didn’t happen.
Perhaps this morning.
She tried to recall everything she could remember about the Vietnam prisoners of war she had met or read about. The men she had known were ordinary men who had endured torture, starvation, and beatings for years and somehow survived. One looked at them expecting them to be different somehow—and no doubt they were on the inside—but the difference didn’t show in the facade they presented to the world. They looked ordinary in every respect.
Perhaps the lesson was that they were ordinary yet had somehow found extraordinary courage. Or
maybe that courage is in all of us and we just don’t know it. Or need it.
I am as tough as those guys, she told herself, thinking of the POWs. She wanted to believe that even though she didn’t.
“He wants me to implicate Cole in murder,” she told Wu Tai Kwong.
He nodded.
“What does he want from you?”
“A confession that he can give to the Communists, one that he can use to justify a fat reward for my capture.”
“He will turn you over to the government?”
“I’ll be dead by then. He’ll give them my corpse and demand a huge reward. The confession will be the … how do you say it? The sauce upon the cake?”
“Icing on the cake.”
“Knowing Sonny,” Wu continued, “he has demanded money from everyone, Cole, the government, everyone. He keeps me alive so he can prove that I am alive, should that become necessary. Then he will kill me and sell my corpse.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“He cannot set me free. I have many friends. I will find him and kill him, no matter where on earth he goes to hide. He knows that. He will kill me.”
“Are you frightened?”
“Of what? Death?”
“Dying.”
“Yes.”
“But not of death?”
“I have achieved my dream. The revolution has begun. The regime is crumbling and the revolution will speed its collapse. Sonny Wong can do nothing to stop it. The government can fight, delaying the day of its doom, but it cannot prevent the inevitable.”
A terrible smile spread across the face of Wu Tai Kwong. “I have won,” he whispered. “I have undermined the levee—the sea will come in.”
Despite the fact that she was no longer cold, Callie Grafton shivered. “When the regime collapses, what will happen then?” she asked.
“The people will execute the Communists. That is inevitable. And fitting. That is the fate of all dynasties when they fall. The Communists will go like the others.”
Jake Grafton went out the main door of the hotel and turned right, headed for Nathan Road and the ferry landing. Two men who had been lounging against the wall followed him.
Hong Kong Page 23