The Last Six Million Seconds

by John Burdett

  “We’ll do double and treble checks, of course, but on the first count I have two hundred million American dollars in various currencies.”

  Wong nodded. “Two more trucks.”

  “You’ll have to sign-unless of course you want to check it yourself?”

  He held out a form on a clipboard. Wong signed, on behalf of his firm, for the receipt and onward delivery to the bank of two hundred million dollars, broken down into various currencies. In his turn Sowcross gave Wong a receipt. With nothing further to say to each other, they went outside to wait for the next truck. On Queen’s Road Central Wong finally recognized the sound that had been accumulating under the ground all his life. Too low to be detectable by the human ear, it nevertheless worked subliminally, exerting a remorseless power. The thunder of money.

  By two forty-five Henderson had finished the last of his Stilton and was sipping his second glass of Dow’s. It was usually over the cigar, Cuthbert remembered, that the fat man’s booming voice turned quiet, discreet and serious. Sure enough, as soon as the waiter had clipped the Romeo y Julieta and lit it, Henderson leaned back slightly, looked around him in an unexpectedly quick movement and said: “So?”

  “It’s Xian.”

  “It usually is, Milton. Almost for as long as I can remember.”

  “This time it may be difficult to contain him. In the past he was merely teasing us with his infantile need to test our patience. Now I really do think he’s angry about something.”

  “Something we’ve done?”

  “Strangely enough, I don’t think so.”

  “You’d better begin at the beginning, Milton. I have the greatest respect for your economy of speech. In any event we have all afternoon.”

  The diners at other tables in the Jackson Room had dwindled to a hard core of five or six. With the discretion of Edwardian butlers the Chinese waiters avoided Cuthbert’s table; they would be left alone until six if necessary.

  “Very well. I shall go right back to the beginning, if you don’t mind. Point one, Xian and his sixteen cronies run southern China. Two, the major blunder of the Foreign Office when negotiating the return of Hong Kong to China was in failing to include Xian in the discussions. Three, as soon as the Joint Declaration between London and Beijing was made public, Xian threatened to open the borders and allow Hong Kong to be flooded by ten million or more immigrants unless we negotiated some kind of secret protocol with him. I went to you, you went to the foreign secretary, the FS went to the PM and the PM had the most godawful tantrum-”

  Henderson nodded, tapped his cigar on the heavy bronze ashtray. “She was about to bring us to a state of war with the PRC. They wheeled me in to speak to her myself. It took me damn near all day, and I had to lunch with her on those deeply pathetic sandwiches they eat at Number Ten these days to prove they are busy, politically correct neurotics just like everyone else. The indigestion, Milton, nearly cost me a full night’s sleep.”

  Cuthbert refused to smile. “With your usual consummate skill you eventually persuaded Mrs. Thatcher that China was indeed not comparable to the Falklands, that even if it were possible to win a war against the People’s Liberation Army using superior technology-a premise doubtful in itself-the political implications of mowing down a million or more Chinese soldiers to protect a little piece of rock we should never have stolen in the first place was too daunting for even the prime minister to contemplate. I don’t know quite what she said to you, but I remember vividly how you put it to me.” Henderson raised his eyebrows. “You said that throughout history empires had moved through similar stages. Stage one, pioneers from the fatherland make contact with less developed peoples in far-off lands. Stage two, the pioneers are followed by commercial adventurers eager to make profits. Stage three, the aboriginal peoples lose much of their innocence and start to demand more in return for being exploited. Stage four, the fatherland sends in the army. Stage five, the exotic foreign lands are colonized and administered by second-rate expatriates from the fatherland. Stage six, the military and political will of the fatherland begins to decline-time to get out. Stage seven, the twilight period between the decision to leave and the final exit is marked, in the case of the fatherland, by a schizophrenic need to grovel in private whilst posturing in public.”

  “Did I say all that? It must have been after lunch.”

  “I took you to mean, Michael, that I was to grovel. And that is what I’ve been doing. Every time that barbarian wants something, which is more or less every week, I-metaphorically speaking-go down on my knees in the name of the queen and lick his arse.”

  Henderson coughed on his cigar. “Good Lord.”

  “Only yesterday-and this is no more than an example-I had to allow five hundred million dollars to cross the border. Half a billion! Of course the lout’s just provoking us. The only time I refused him outright was when he asked for military assistance to move his morphine from the border to his warehouses in Kowloon.”

  “Morphine?”

  “It’s in one of my minutes to you-“for your eyes only,” of course. He has a number of factories in Yunnan; he buys the opium from Burma or Thailand or, more and more frequently, grows it himself on his farms. The whole operation is overseen by the People’s Liberation Army using a workforce of slaves. He sells to various Mafia groups throughout the world. It’s his most lucrative operation, but of course not the only money spinner. Arms sales to the Middle East also bring in a fair profit, I daresay.”

  Henderson rested his eyes on Cuthbert for a long moment while he pulled on the cigar. “I daresay. In any event, you managed to avoid participating in the heroin trade without precipitating an invasion-congratulations.”

  “He said he didn’t need us anyway; he would use the local triads instead. And so he did. We’ve had to watch helplessly while local organized crime, especially the 14K and Sun Yee On triad societies, has been allowed to grow and prosper under the protection of the People’s Liberation Army.”

  Cuthbert paused. He had excluded any tone of outrage from his narrative; there was nothing Henderson loathed more in his people than an assumption of high moral ground, a vulgar exercise properly reserved for politicians.

  Henderson looked at the cigar that was darkening at the end with delicious tar. He rolled it appreciatively between thumb and forefinger, smiled.

  “You know, I don’t think there’s anything in my life that I’ve ever regretted, but what I congratulate myself on most of all is having read history at Oxford. It not only gives one a sense of perspective, it provides, to the connoisseur of human blunders, a fine nose for the basic predilections of place. When I retire, I shall write a short treatise to bear out my theory. It’s not people, Milton, it’s something that comes out of the ground in certain parts of the world that has an effect on the human psyche, causing man to react in exactly the same way generation after generation. South China, it seems, is the corner of the world the gods ordained to be the center for piracy and, most of all, drug running. The Chinese are merely doing to us what we did to them a hundred years ago. And in exactly the same spot, down to the half inch: warehouses in Kowloon. Fascinating.”

  “I’ll look forward to reading your treatise. However, you may find that recent events were not adumbrated by anything in history.”

  Henderson nodded slowly, like a rocking horse. “Pray continue.”

  “I’ve had to piece things together as best I can. My tentative conclusion is that our latter-day Genghis Khan got it into his head that he’d like an atom bomb for Christmas, and one of the local triads, the 14K, I suspect, used international criminal contacts to find a supplier of enriched uranium of warhead quality.”

  If Cuthbert had been hoping for a glimmer of concern, he was disappointed. Henderson merely nodded again, although Cuthbert was aware of the fat man’s full attention.

  “Ah!” Henderson said eventually.

  “Something, I know not what, went badly wrong in the deal, because the uranium was dumped along with some sm
all arms and other criminal artifacts that need not concern us. Apparently related to the importation of uranium into this colony was the discovery some weeks ago of a vat full of human remains-minced human remains. I’m afraid that before I was able to do anything about it, the district commander at Mongkok Police Station put his best man on to it-”

  “Why afraid?”

  “Because Chief Inspector Chan is a fanatic who never gives up. If it were not for him, the uranium would never have been discovered. I tried to intimidate him yesterday by implying to the ICAC that he had something to do with the importation itself-it’s a long story-but he had a watertight alibi. A pity. I’d hoped both to get him off the case and to save his life.”

  Henderson drew on his cigar, exhaled appreciatively, stared affectionately at the stub, knocked it on the ashtray and cleared his throat.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I do seem to recall reading a memo from one of our chaps to the effect that this Chan was not to be removed from the case?”

  Cuthbert coughed. “Yes, well, I’m afraid that the writer of that memo was not gifted with a towering intellect. Anyway, that was before the discovery of the uranium. I hardly need to emphasize how cosmically inconvenient it would be if that was made public before midnight on thirtieth June.” On the verge of making a moral point, Cuthbert retreated into the third person. “You know, there are those who might consider the present scenario the realization of mankind’s worst nightmare.”

  “You mean an atom bomb in the hands of an Asian warlord? I suppose the melodramatic would see it that way. I’m not a liberal, Milton, nor do I look with particular favor upon the contributions certain ethnic minorities have brought to our country, but there are forms of racism that to me lack any objective justification. The day of Asian Man is upon us. Can we really look upon our own day as having been so terribly successful? Two world wars, irreparable environmental damage, inner cities torn apart by social unrest, AIDS, collapse of family life, Eurosclerosis et cetera? If our friend waves his bomb under everyone’s nose, Uncle Sam will take him out, I daresay. And if Uncle Sam won’t do it, the Japanese will probably wake up to their regional responsibilities, given their phobia about this sort of thing.”

  Cuthbert frowned. For the first time in his career it occurred to him that the fat man might not be on his side in an important Whitehall struggle. He waited while Henderson rolled smoke around his mouth.

  “The connection between the human remains in the vat and the uranium?” Henderson said.

  “Is Xian himself. Ever since that vat was discovered, he’s been plaguing me. Hardly a day passes when he does not demand a progress report on Chan’s investigation, although he never explains the reason for his interest. I think he’s got it into his head that at least two of his own most senior people were the victims. I happen to know that two senior cadres were kidnapped at about the time that the murders must have taken place, although why Xian should see a connection is beyond me. Everything in Chan’s investigation indicates that the victims were the importers themselves-Mafia or triad members.”

  Henderson seemed to concentrate for a few seconds.

  “Allow me to summarize, Milton, and please don’t hesitate to interrupt if I’ve got anything wrong. Now, Chan appears to have stumbled on, or be about to stumble on, a criminal conspiracy of fairly serious dimensions. You have been doing your damndest to deflect him, even to the point of intimidation, because as political adviser to the governor of Hong Kong your perspective transcends the mere detection of crime. Your objectives are twofold: Firstly, you must give Xian everything he wants in order to avoid any fuss before handover in less than nine weeks; secondly, you must avoid any public scandal likely to incense opinion in England and indeed worldwide that might oblige the British government to do something about Xian’s activities. Correct so far?”

  “Correct.”

  “Chief Inspector Chan is sufficiently gifted to be able to penetrate the depths of the case in hand, which will inevitably sooner or later result in just the revelations one wishes most to avoid?”

  “Correct.”

  “You have therefore conscientiously tried to deflect, sideline or eliminate the chief inspector from the inquiry?”

  “Correct.”

  “Now, there I lose the logic. It is right, is it not, that our friend Xian very much wants Chan to continue with the investigation-doubtless because Xian wants to be sure one way or the other if some other agency has had the mind-boggling audacity to bump off his own chaps?”

  “That would appear to be it.”

  “Therefore, by having Chan removed from the case, you risk incurring the wrath of our master?”

  “But-”

  Henderson held up a fat forefinger. “The flaw in your reasoning, Milton, is to assume that a scandal will inevitably follow from Chan’s solving of the mystery.”

  “Oh, perhaps I should have mentioned, it’s in one of my minutes, Chief Inspector Chan-”

  Henderson held up the same finger. “I know, has a lifelong grudge against the Commies and is unlikely to keep his mouth shut. I do sometimes read your faxes, Milton. Et alors?”

  There followed a long silence during which Cuthbert sat dumbfounded. “I don’t-” he began, then lapsed back into silence. “So your instructions are that I allow him to conclude the investigation and then take steps to ensure his silence?”

  “Milton, there’s an old Chinese proverb, isn’t there, ‘When rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it’? Since we have opened our legs as wide as physiologically possible, it were churlish now to complain about the size of the aggressor’s member. Xian believes he’s entitled to exploit the situation for historical reasons. Rape is a dangerous hobby. People get hurt, quite apart from the victim. But that, as they say, is on the rapist’s account, not ours. Let’s just enjoy it, shall we?”

  Cuthbert watched in silence while Henderson gestured to the sommelier and ordered a bas Armagnac. Cuthbert refused, finding himself without appetite. At the end of the meal he said: “I’m afraid I’ve rather stuck my neck out in my campaign to get rid of Chan. Perhaps some written countermand would be in order?”

  Henderson smiled. “Milton, your wit has not deserted you. I’ll have one of the team send a stiffly worded reprimand for you to show around.”

  In the car after the meal Cuthbert said, “Xian got to you, didn’t he?”

  Henderson looked straight ahead at the crowds flowing like molasses through the heat. “Let’s say that delighted though he is with the way you’ve conducted yourself over the past decade, there are certain matters he feels require an overview from headquarters. Nothing personal, I’m sure.”

  Cuthbert crunched on a molar. “But it’s just a squalid murder inquiry, for God’s sake!”

  Henderson seemed genuinely surprised by Cuthbert’s tone. “Milton, you are no mean student of colonial history yourself. Can you think of a single occasion when we’ve handed back a colony to someone who did not appear to be clinically insane?”

  During the ride through the harbor tunnel Cuthbert subsided into depression. When the time came for Henderson to get out at the Peninsula Hotel, he asked quietly: “So when the time comes, will we silence Chan or will they?”

  Henderson popped his head back inside the car. “Undecided as yet.”

  Before he could pull away, Cuthbert reached out with a quick, catlike movement to hold his shoulder. He leaned across the seat, closer to the fat man.

  “Michael, before you go, let me share just one last thought. If Xian’s suspicions are correct and two of his favorite cronies were minced up by someone or other, have you thought how very spectacular, how telegenic indeed his revenge is going to be?”

  Henderson patted Cuthbert’s hand. “Of course, my dear. Why d’you think we pay you all this money and lavish upon you a lifestyle that would be the envy of the president of the United States if not to deal with unpleasant little incidents attractive to the verminous media? Thanks for lunch, by the way. Enjoyed i
t enormously.”

  Cuthbert watched him stride through the high brass doors held open by Chinese in white uniforms. On the way back to Central he found himself wondering what Chief Inspector Chan was doing now that he had so much time to himself.

  26

  Chan commuted from bed to sofa to kitchen-and back. Every two hours or so he took a vertical voyage up to the filthy roof or down to the swarming street.

  Staying home was a study in domestic clichés. In the flat above a Chinese couple nurtured an eight-year-old daughter. At seven forty-five exactly the husband took the lift to go to work. Half an hour later the wife took the daughter to school. In the lift he heard her talking to a friend about money and emigrating to New Zealand. Below a French couple had fights over breakfast. The man went to work at eight-thirty while his wife stayed home. From his travels in the lift Chan knew that around ten o’clock a tall Chinese man visited her. French culture was based on adultery. He had read that somewhere.

  He held out stoically against the temptation to telephone Moira in New York. Instead, he conjured those welcoming breasts in a variety of fantasies, not all of them erotic. The most tantalizing was a dream in which they appeared beside him on the bed. In the dream he dreamed he slept between them. He believed it was the closest he came to full-fledged unconsciousness. Insomnia was at its worst now that there was nothing to do during the day. At night his mind raged like a tiger on amphetamines, though he used nothing stronger than beer and nicotine.

  He found that television was intended for minds exhausted by a full day’s work. Now that he was cursed with an attention span, its messages had the substance of cotton candy; did anyone over the age of twelve actually watch MTV?

  Outside, Hong Kong buzzed like a high-voltage cable. When he went out to buy cigarettes or beer, he saw the people of Mongkok as through glass, saw the frenetic energy, the tunnel obsession with the task of the moment, the exhilaration of work, the invisible joy of being free from all choices, of having one’s mind harnessed by the simple, all-consuming obligation to make money. He envied them their liberation from wayward thoughts, self-obsession, doubts about the meaning of life.