Hong Kong

by Stephen Coonts

  Three senior noncommissioned officers walked in. They were carrying assault rifles in the ready position.

  The CO gestured toward the rear of the room. “Major Ma and those junior officers. Lock them up until we can interrogate them and find how far the rot has spread.”

  The NCOs pointed their rifles at Ma.

  This was it! Now or never. Use your best judgment, Wu had said.

  Ma steadied the front sight of his automatic and pulled the trigger. The bullet knocked the CO down.

  “Anyone else?” Ma said, looking around.

  The senior NCO grinned at Ma, then pointed his rifle at the department heads. “Your pistols, please. You are under arrest.”

  The lieutenant beside Ma couldn’t contain himself. “I thought the sergeant was going to shoot you!”

  Ma Chao thought the sergeant was on his side. He said he was last week, yet every week the earth turns seven times. Ma breathed a sigh of relief and walked toward the front of the room to see how badly the CO was hurt and to take charge.

  When the trucks filled with troops left the PLA base, Lin Pe telephoned a number she had memorized. She recognized the voice that answered, a nice young girl who attended Hong Kong University. “Seven trucks have left the base.”

  Five minutes later Lin Pe called again. “Ten trucks filled with troops. They drove away through Shatin.”

  “Very good. Thank you for the report. We would like you to go back to Nathan Road and walk along it. Report any strong points that you see under construction.”

  Lin Pe said good-bye to the grocer, who had let her use his restroom, and walked through Shatin toward the bus stop. Her bag was heavy and she was tired, so she made slow progress.

  Her son, Wu, had told her of the dangers of spying on the PLA. “They will shoot you if they catch you talking about them on the cell phone. They may arrest you because they are worried. They will be frightened, fearful men, and very dangerous.”

  “I understand,” she replied.

  “They may beat you to death trying to make you talk. They may kill you regardless of what you say.”

  “I understand,” she had repeated.

  “You do not have to do this,” Wu told her.

  “Someone has to.”

  “Ah …” he said, and dropped the subject.

  Where in the world could Kerry Kent hide the information about her stock portfolio? Tommy Carmellini stood in the middle of Kent’s kitchen thinking about that problem. He could have sworn he had searched everything there was to search, peered in every cubbyhole and cranny, pried loose every baseboard, looked in all the vents …

  The pots and pans were piled carefully against one wall. He had even peeled up the paper she had used to line her shelves.

  Her attaché case wasn’t here. Must be at the consulate.

  The notebook … a spiral notebook had lain on her bedroom table. He had flipped through it, but …

  He found it again, sat down in the middle of the bathroom floor in the only open space and went through it carefully. Halfway through the notebook, there it was. A page of multiplication problems, seven in all, and a column where she added the seven answers together. She hid it in plain sight.

  He compared the numbers in the problems to the stock listings in The Financial Times. Okay, this stock closed at 74½, and here was the problem, 74.5 × 5400. Answer, 402,300.

  He checked every problem. The correlation with the six stocks highlighted with a tiny spot of ink was perfect. One stock he couldn’t find; only six were marked.

  The total … £1,632,430.

  A pound was worth what, about a buck fifty?

  Wheee! She wasn’t filthy rich, but Kerry Kent was certainly a modestly well-off secret agent, which was, as any self-respecting gentleman would tell you, the very best kind.

  Almost two and a half million dollars.

  On a civil servant’s salary.

  Perhaps her grandparents were loaded and left her a bundle. Perhaps she had a rich first husband. Then again, perhaps she was the world’s finest stock picker and had done more than all right with her lunch money.

  Or perhaps, Tommy Carmellini thought as he pocketed the worksheet and financial page, just perhaps, Kerry Kent was crooked.

  Elizabeth Yeager’s apartment was a walk-up in a small village setting on the south side of the island. As the taxi driver settled in to wait, Jake Grafton made his way past the craft shops that catered to the tourist trade, only some of which were open today, to the stairs of Yeager’s building. Ivy and creeping vines covered the walls.

  There were four mailboxes. Yeager’s was Apartment Three. He pushed the button.

  “Yes.” An American woman’s voice, tired and angry.

  “Elizabeth Yeager, I have a message for you.”

  “What?”

  “For you personally.”

  “Come on up.” She buzzed the lock open.

  The former consular employee opened her door just a crack. Jake Grafton slammed the door with his shoulder, and it flew open, nearly bowling her over. There was another woman sitting by the couch, a dumpy, middle-aged woman with graying hair.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  Yeager’s eyes were red from crying.

  “You’re Yeager?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some questions for you.” He looked at the other woman. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  Yeager nodded at the woman, who glared at Jake as she swept past.

  “It’s a crime to break into people’s apartments,” Yeager said as she perched on the edge of a chair. “Don’t forget, my neighbor, Mrs. O’Reilly, can identify you.”

  “That was the woman who was just here?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Ms. Yeager, I wouldn’t be talking about crimes if I were you. Stealing passports, forgery, treason, kidnapping … If you ever go back to the states you may wind up spending the rest of your life in a cell.”

  “You’re Grafton, aren’t you?”

  Jake nodded.

  “I’ve nothing to say, so get out.”

  “Or what? You’ll call the police?”

  She merely glared at him.

  “Perhaps you’ll call Sonny Wong and he’ll send someone over to run me off. There’s the phone—call anyone you like.”

  He sat in the chair facing her.

  “Bastard.”

  “Where’s my wife?”

  “I don’t know.” Yeager hitched her bottom back in the chair and looked obstinately away.

  Jake Grafton tried to hold his temper, which was getting more and more difficult. If Yeager only knew. “My wife has been kidnapped,” he explained patiently. “Her life is at stake. I think you know a great deal about Sonny Wong, where he can be found, where he stays, where his men operate from. I want to know all that. I’m not going to tell anyone what you tell me. I won’t report it to the United States government. It’ll be strictly between us, absolutely confidential.”

  She turned to face him again. “You’re an officer in the United States navy. You can’t touch me. I know my rights! I have nothing to say!”

  He pulled the Colt .45 from under his sports jacket, pointed it at her head, and thumbed off the safety. As she blanched, he turned the muzzle a few inches and pulled the trigger. The report was like an explosion, overpowering in that enclosed space. The bullet smacked into the wall behind her.

  He leaped for her, grabbed a handful of hair, put the muzzle against her nose.

  “Your rights don’t mean shit! Where is my wife, goddamn it?”

  She swallowed hard. “I don’t know.” That came out a squeak.

  “We’re having a revolution in Hong Kong, Ms. Yeager. The police have crawled into holes and the army has its hands full. No one cares about you. I can break every bone in your miserable body. I can shoot you full of holes and leave you here to bleed to death and nobody on this green earth will give a good goddamn. Now I’m going to ask you one more time, and if you give the wrong a
nswer, we’re going to find out how many bullets it takes to kill you. Where is my wife?”

  Elizabeth Yeager’s eyes got big as half-dollars and the color drained from her face. She tried to speak; the words came out a croak. Then she passed out cold. At first Jake thought she was faking it, but she went limp as linguine.

  “Shit!” said Jake Grafton, more than a little disgusted with himself. Scaring a woman half to death.

  “Shit,” he said again, and released his hold on Yeager. She slid off the chair onto the floor like a bundle of old rags.

  He kicked the coffee table. It skittered away.

  He had his chance last night. He should have stuck that revolver up Wong’s nose and told him he was going to blow his fucking head off if he didn’t produce Callie in a quarter of an hour.

  Yeah.

  He slammed the door to the apartment on his way out.

  He had the taxi take him back to the consulate so he could watch the revolution on television. Since Cole had submitted his resignation and was technically no longer an employee of the United States government, Grafton probably shouldn’t be in his office. In any event, no one had suggested he leave. He turned on the television and settled behind Cole’s desk.

  The thought that he should be doing something to find Callie gnawed at him. Just what that something was he didn’t know.

  When the time came, Sonny would produce Wu and Callie to collect his money, but once he got it, he had to kill them all. Wu, Callie, Jake, Cole, everyone who had firsthand knowledge of the kidnapping. If he didn’t he was a dead man.

  Sonny Wong would have enough shooters in the area to ensure no one escaped. You could bet your life on that.

  Jake’s thoughts wandered. Callie had a brother in Chicago, married with two kids in college. Her mother was in an independent living facility near her brother, and her father was dead.

  Her father had spent his career on the faculty at the University of Chicago. Professor McKenzie. What a piece of work he was! It wasn’t that the old man believed in Marxism, with its dubious theories of social change and mind-numbing economic twaddle—the feature he liked was the dictatorship of the elite. The professor was an intellectual snob. The great failing of the common man, in McKenzie’s opinion, was that he was common.

  Jake wondered just what the prof would have thought of the collapse of communism all over the world.

  He snapped off the television and sat down behind the consul general’s desk in the padded leather executive chair that usually held Tiger Cole’s skinny rump. There was a yellow legal pad on the desk, so he helped himself to a pen and began writing a report to the National Security staff on the situation in Hong Kong. Fortunately the consulate had radio communications with the State Department, so the staff could encrypt the report and put it on the air as soon as Jake finished it.

  He was scrawling away when the secretary stuck his head in. “Ahh … Admiral.” He frowned, perhaps offended that Jake was using Cole’s office.

  “Yes,” Jake replied, and kept going on the sentence he was writing.

  “There’s a telephone call, sir. Mr. Carmellini.”

  Jake picked up the instrument. “Grafton.”

  “Carmellini, Admiral. I’m over here at Kerry Kent’s apartment checking her cupboard. It seems she has a sizable stock portfolio somewhere.”

  Jake stopped writing. He had the telephone in a death grip. “Tell me about it.”

  Carmellini did. He gave Jake the names of the companies he thought she owned shares in, the number of shares, and the values. He also gave Jake the information on the seventh stock, though he didn’t know the name of the company.

  “Anything else?” Jake asked.

  “That’s about it, unless you are interested in the brands of her clothes.”

  “Should I be?”

  “Well, they strike me as expensive duds, better than I am used to seeing on government employees, but she’s British and a hell of a lot richer than me …”

  “Better come on back to the consulate.”

  “Is the ferry still running? I know the subway is dead and the tunnel is closed.”

  “Hire or steal a boat,” Jake said, and hung up.

  He pushed the intercom button to summon the secretary. When he appeared, Jake told him, “I want to call the Pentagon on the satellite phone.”

  “Those circuits are all in use by the staff, sir, for official business. They are giving the National Security Council and State real-time feeds on the situation here.”

  “Terrific. I want to use a line.”

  “Who are you, sir? Really? I mean, I know you are an admiral on active duty in the navy, but using the consul general’s office and—”

  “I don’t have time for this,” Jake snapped. “Get me a line, and now. After you do that you call the Secretary of State’s office and complain to them.”

  The secretary was offended. “I’ll have the call put through. You can use the phone on the desk. Wait until it rings.”

  Okay: China Bob Chan was smuggling money and high-tech war equipment into Hong Kong. And he was a conduit for Communist money being given or donated to American politicians in the hopes of getting favorable export licenses. Sonny Wong was a professional criminal with ties to criminal gangs all over China. Cole was an American agent supplying money and highly classified weapons systems to the rebels.

  And Kerry Kent? A British SIS agent, either covertly assigned or playing hooky. Cole’s weapons system operator, WSO, wizzo in U.S. Air Force terminology. Screwing the head rebel. With money in the bank …

  Cole didn’t trust China Bob, so a CIA agent bugged his office and was killed before he could retrieve the tape. Then somebody shot China Bob Chan, and the whole tangled skein became a mare’s nest.

  Callie listened to the tape and heard … nothing.

  She heard hours of conversation, much of it one-sided because Chan was on the phone, and probably all of it relevant if one knew more about Chan’s business … but not otherwise. For Callie it was just noise.

  Then she was kidnapped.

  Money?

  Wong threatened Cole. Callie could convict him with her testimony, he said.

  How would he know? He didn’t hear the tape.

  What if he were assuming the tape contained something it didn’t?

  Ahhh …!

  The phone rang.

  Jake picked it up and found himself talking to the Pentagon war room duty officer. He identified himself and asked for Commander Tarkington.

  Twenty seconds later Toad was on the line.

  “Are you sleeping there?”

  “Up in the office. I was down here loafing, hoping you’d call.”

  “Got a job for you.”

  “Yes, sir. Fire away.”

  Jake gave Toad all the information he had on Kent’s stock portfolio. “This is a straw we are trying to build with,” he told Toad. “See what the NSA computer sleuths can come up with. The account probably won’t be under her name. I would think it’s probably with a London brokerage or the Hong Kong office of a London brokerage. This woman may have had access to stolen American passports from this consulate. If she has contacts in the Hong Kong underworld, she may have passports from anywhere, genuine or faked.” Jake gave Toad a physical description of Kent.

  When Toad had finished writing down the description, he told his boss, “I’ve been talking to the CIA. They say SIS is well aware of Kent’s status with the rebels, though they refuse to admit anything. Officially the Brits say they never even heard of her.”

  “Forget that. Find the money. Find where it came from. An inheritance, divorce settlement, whatever.”

  “Heard anything from Callie?”

  “No.”

  “I asked for permission to come over there to help you, but the President nixed it. Said he doesn’t want any military personnel going in-country for any reason.”

  “I figured he’d say that.”

  “I’ve talked to the chairman.” The chai
rman of the Joint Chiefs, Toad meant. “We shouldn’t have a problem getting cooperation. When I find out anything, I’ll call you.”

  “I’ll be sitting right here,” Jake Grafton said.

  At that moment Callie Grafton was telling Wu Tai Kwong, “We need an escape plan.” She had inspected every inch of the small stateroom where they were being held, as well as the tiny bathroom. She had looked at the door hinges, the window, the air vent, the beds, and didn’t have a glimmer of an idea.

  “Yes,” Wu agreed after a moment’s reflection, “a plan would be good.”

  “Do you have any ideas?”

  “No.” Wu raised his hands, then lowered them. The sheet strips around his arm were blood-soaked, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped.

  She found the situation infuriating. She balled up her fists and shook them. “I don’t understand you. You say they will kill you, yet you don’t seem to be worried. You aren’t figuring out how to get out of here. You’re just sitting there.”

  “What else is there to do?”

  She made an exasperated noise. She had been married so long she judged all men by her husband. Jake Grafton wouldn’t be sitting calmly, waiting for the inevitable. Not Jake. He would be scheming and planning until he drew his very last breath.

  She missed him terribly.

  “Figure a way to get us out of here,” Callie told her fellow prisoner. “There must be a way. We’re on a ship, a small one I think, docked I believe, maybe anchored. When they come for me again—or you—we’ll both jump them. Fight, claw, do whatever we have to. Get out. Get free. Stay alive. Let’s find something we can use as a weapon. Anything.”

  Wu waited a while before he spoke. He had that habit, she noticed, and she didn’t much care for it. He said, “You would like my mother, I think. She is much like you. She struggles with life, seeks to conquer it.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “We all do to some degree. My mother more than me. You are more like her, I think.”

  “You are supposed to be a revolutionary. By definition, revolution is struggle.”

  “Quite so. I struggle to change the world as man has made it. But life? When the rain comes, it does not matter whether you welcome it or hate it—the rain falls upon your head regardless.”