The Last Six Million Seconds

by John Burdett

  Chan grinned. “One night with me and she’ll probably want to stay that way.” In a sudden movement he grabbed her hand. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

  She looked him in the eye. “Let’s leave it till later, shall we? I don’t really understand, but they promised me it was in your interests to come this weekend.” Chan stared until she lowered her head. “I would die rather than let anyone hurt you. You know that.”

  Jenny checked her watch. “I have this checklist of items I have to get ready-things the crew aren’t so good at, like choosing wine and champagne. We can get it all from the club if you want to help.”

  Back on the walkway he helped his sister step down from the boat. They walked together along the floating dock: two Eurasians. People turned as always to look at Jenny. Her long black hair was tied up in a bun; her dark eyes were large and only faintly tilted. With Chan’s high cheekbones and fine lips in a smaller, female mold, her apparent fragility was terrifying, like a Chinese vase.

  “No one would guess that you can fight like a cat. I still have scars where you scratched me down to the bone,” Chan whispered in her ear.

  “You were all I had, and I was jealous.” She looked at him and smiled. “I’m glad you’ve come. I know how you hate social groups, but you can talk to me. And you can dive. Emily likes to dive too; underwater you won’t have to talk to her.”

  He waited in the club’s enormous lobby while she chose the wine and champagne. As they were about to return to the boat, Jenny murmured, “There’s Emily now.”

  A white Rolls-Royce with blue interior slid into the forecourt to stop in front of the entrance. A chauffeur in whites stepped out to open the rear door.

  Chan winced.

  “Sorry,” Jenny said. “She uses it only when she’s entertaining someone important.”

  A Chinese man in his seventies got out of the car. He wore a white jacket and blue slacks, both ill-fitting. The open-neck shirt under the white jacket was black. On his feet, old sneakers had molded around his bony feet. Chan noticed the hands, heavy and gnarled like ginseng roots. Emily followed in white shorts, a blue silk blouse, red shoes with flat heels. The old man walked in front of her, then seemed to remember a local custom and stood aside to let her pass while the doorman opened the door. Chan thought that people stopped because of the Rolls and because Emily’s face was often in the newspapers, but some of the Chinese looked at the old man as if they knew him too. Chan had never seen him before, although he fitted a specific category.

  Jenny was watching Chan. He caught her eye. His twitch was working. She put a hand on his arm.

  “I told you, I’ll explain later. Stay-for me.”

  “Why?”

  “For me. For you. I promised them you’d stay.”

  Chan glanced quickly at her, then nodded. “Okay. For you.” Chan picked up the plastic bag with bottles of champagne and claret, followed Jenny across the marble lobby. Emily gave a big wave. Jenny smiled. Out of the corner of his eye Chan saw a white Toyota draw up behind the Rolls-Royce. Two men got out: Chinese but not Cantonese. They were each over six feet tall with the powerful build of the far north. The two bodyguards took up positions about ten feet away from the old man and never took their eyes off him.

  “My God, I hate you,” Emily said to Jenny. She turned to Chan. “Every time I see her she’s more stunning than ever. Doesn’t it make you mad that this former Miss Hong Kong is your sister?”

  “I believe you two have met,” Jenny said.

  “All my life,” Chan said.

  “This is Mr. Xian, a very close business associate of mine from the PRC,” Emily said.

  She spoke to the old man in Mandarin. Chan followed one or two words that were the same in Cantonese. He caught the word for “detective.”

  The old man held out a horny hand to Jenny, gave a shark’s yellow smile. He spoke in Mandarin. Jenny shook his hand. He turned to Chan. Chan took the hand, pressed it instead of shaking it.

  He spoke softly in Cantonese. “You killed my mother.”

  “What did he say?”

  Emily blinked. “He said, ‘pleased to meet you.’ ” Her Mandarin was perfect.

  On the way back to the boat Chan felt Emily’s eyes on him while she conversed with Mr. Xian. He recognized the word for “dollars” in Mandarin. She used it a lot. The old man had a way of replying with a high-pitched laugh and a forward shake of the head like a horse neighing. Whatever she was saying it was pleasing Mr. Xian. Chan noticed the old man’s Shanghainese accent; he pronounced x sounds with the middle of his tongue. Through the wooden boards Chan could feel the heavy tread of the bodyguards ten feet behind.

  “I guess you had to do that.” Jenny said.

  “Yes,” Chan said.

  She shook her head. “You never change. You’re all balls and no brains.” But she said it with affection and let him see how her eyes were shining. “Bravo anyway.”

  Jenny turned to speak to Emily. “Jonathan phone you?”

  Emily switched from Mandarin to English. “He’s going to be about twenty minutes late. A client.”

  “Anyone else coming?”

  “I invited Milton Cuthbert, the political adviser. D’you know him?”

  “No,” Jenny said.

  “Slightly,” Chan said.

  “Oh,” Emily said.

  With a cigarette Chan attempted to calm the jumping nerves, the increased heartbeat, the cold sweat. He knew that he ought to feign serious illness, disappear until he had time to work out what kind of trap it was, but there was Jenny.

  33

  As soon as he could, Chan left the other guests in the saloon to join the captain and mate on the bridge. On the captain’s hat EMILY was embossed in gold.

  At a signal from the captain the boat boy let go of the two mooring lines at the bows and ran along the side to release two more. He jumped back on board using the swimming platform at the stern. Behind the boat lay a crowded playground of smaller craft maneuvering to escape from the marina to more spacious seas. Leisure made people urgent; everyone seemed to be yelling as sailboats tacked past powerboats chugging in opposite directions. The captain of the Emily sounded the horn three times, and as the stern bore down on them with its threshing screws, the smaller boats took avoiding action.

  Once extricated from her berth, the large boat turned slowly in her own length and the diesels increased to a low throb as she made way slowly ahead. Chan left the wheelhouse to stand at the bows. Looking up at the club terraces, Chan saw that people had crowded to the rails to watch.

  “Stops them in their tracks, doesn’t she?”

  Chan had not heard Cuthbert come up behind. He offered Chan a Turkish cigarette from an old silver case. He was wearing beige shorts with razor creases, a blue designer sailing shirt with an anchor on the single pocket, white socks and blue leather Docksides.

  Chan took the cigarette. “Money does that.”

  Cuthbert smiled. “I believe I’ve not yet proffered you a full apology. I’m afraid everyone was pretty worked up. Radiation sickness scares the best of us, and one or two were looking for a scapegoat. Also, a word of thanks. You’ve no idea how much more manageable Jack Forte has become since you broke his nose.”

  “You knew I would be on board? You arranged it?”

  Cuthbert considered the smoke winding upward from the end of his cigarette.

  “Not exactly. Not in the way you mean. I know Emily very well, and I have a standing invitation for weekends. I just happened to have lunch with her last week. She mentioned you. Naturally I was not going to spoil your weekend. Then, when she told me who else was coming, I thought you might need a little help.”

  “I’m lost,” Chan said. “I’m paid to catch crooks with room temperature IQs. Ninety percent of the homicides I investigate are husbands or wives murdered by their spouses with meat cleavers when the air conditioning fails. If they have air conditioning. I don’t want to prove anything by getting into the big time.”
>
  What was it about Cuthbert that made one want to lie? Chan had never been so intrigued by a case in his life. Somehow it was bad form to tell the truth to a diplomat, like annoying a bat with a bright light.

  Cuthbert gave no sign of incredulity. “I know. That’s exactly why I might be of use to you. At any rate, there’s no need for us to be enemies. Not on a glorious day like this on the best boat in the fleet. Life is short.”

  “It was for three people in Mongkok.”

  Chan took a long draw. An interesting cigarette; it was probably how tobacco was intended to taste.

  Cuthbert leaned over the rail next to Chan, pointed to something near the floating restaurants, spoke in a whisper. “Take it or leave it, my friend, but I wouldn’t let her seduce you. Not this trip.” He raised his voice. “Just there, that’s where the fire was, burned for three days. D’you remember when the floating restaurant caught fire, Emily?”

  Cuthbert’s antennae were better than Chan’s. He hadn’t heard her come on deck. Yet she was not the sort of woman to make a silent entrance.

  “Mmm, I was a kid.” She looked slowly over the marina, then up at the club terraces.

  Cuthbert said: “We have an admiring audience. Charlie and I were just talking about it.”

  Emily’s smile flashed. “Oh, yes, they all stare when we go out. They think it’s the governor’s boat. Of course his is much grander. Isn’t it, Milton?”

  “It’s a lot older. Last time I was on it we were still using a sextant.”

  Emily laughed, turned to Charlie. “Aren’t the British cute? And smart. You can hide anything behind self-mockery.”

  She stood beside him at the rail so that he was caught between them. Through the deck Chan felt an increase in engine revolutions. The view was changing swiftly as they approached the harbor walls.

  Cuthbert offered Emily a cigarette, which she refused. He replaced the silver case in his pocket.

  “Come now, no one has mastered false modesty better than the Chinese. The first time I went to Beijing there were still restaurants calling themselves the Worst Restaurant on Earth. That was before the party purged Confucius, of course.”

  “But that’s the point,” Emily said. “It was too obvious; it didn’t work. But you, you ran the largest empire in history on bluff, paternalism… and phony self-effacement.”

  “And the Maxim gun. We started giving the colonies back when everyone else got one.”

  The harbor walls curved around in two scythes with a gap between them toward which every boat was racing. On either side green hills plunged down to a sea choppy from conflicting bow waves. Once past the harbor walls the boat picked up speed. Chan could hear the beginnings of a turbo whine behind the roar of the diesels.

  “Just out of interest, how far could you travel on a boat like this?” Chan asked. He saw Cuthbert frown.

  “You’d have to ask the captain for an accurate estimate,” Emily said. “Most places on the South China seaboard anyway.”

  “D’you take it to China much?” Chan felt in his shorts for a pack.

  Emily was staring at a large two-masted yacht that was in the process of raising a mainsail. As the crew winched in the sail, the boat heeled and shot forward, a gull racing over the waves.

  She looked up at Chan. “Uh-huh. Now and then. By the way, you left your cigarettes on the bridge. I brought them for you.”

  She took the pack from her pocket, smiled. “You don’t have to worry, we’re not headed for China today. We’re going the other way, about fifty miles due south in the direction of the Philippines. There’s a reef. It’s not Palawan or Phuket, but the diving’s pretty good. Milton dives, so it’ll be the three of us. Jenny won’t be allowed in her condition.”

  34

  Chan stood at the bows when the crew dropped anchor. It was almost night in the middle of nowhere. The galvanized scoop-shaped anchor plunged into the blackening sea, drawing a trail like a falling jet until it disappeared. The captain reversed the engines to ensure that the anchor caught on the seabed, then stilled them. Silence.

  Emily’s voice came over a loudspeaker. “Sorry to do this, but everyone’s all over the place. Rumor has it that we’re all hungry, including me. So I thought we’d eat early. Like in twenty minutes on the upper rear deck?”

  She repeated the sentence in Mandarin.

  The crew folded the awning away from the upper rear deck, unwrapping the first stars. Chan watched Emily light candles along the center of the table. She used a gas cigarette lighter, which illuminated her features from a different angle at each candle. Chan saw the determined jaw, tired eyes, the beginnings of age, flashes of incandescent energy, the pursed lips of regret, raw lust. Before each small explosion of light she paused to make sure he was watching.

  The others drifted up from the berths below to take their places under Emily’s direction. Xian sat at one end next to the stern; Emily sat at the other. Chan found himself sitting opposite Jenny, who avoided his eyes. The Sri Lankan cook arrived with the hors d’oeuvres, climbing silently up the stairs, her face so black it was invisible against the night except for her wide white eyes.

  Xian cleared his throat, said something in Mandarin.

  “Mr. Xian is going to say a few words,” Emily translated.

  “Thanks to the gods China is rising. It is my opinion that with China, the world also will rise. China is the world’s new destiny. I am glad that all of you from different countries are here with me tonight to celebrate this new destiny.”

  “Here, here,” Cuthbert said, before Emily had finished translating.

  “Here, here,” Jonathan repeated loudly, apparently to please Xian and Emily. Jenny also repeated the phrase, without conviction.

  “I’ll drink to that.” Emily let a beat pass to see if Chan was going to speak, then: “To China.”

  Chan nodded. “To China.” From the corner of his eye he saw the old man look at him and smile. He leaned over toward Emily. “Did he really say, ‘Thanks to the gods’?”

  Emily hesitated. “Yes, that’s what he said.” She held up a hand. “I know, that phrase was banned during the Cultural Revolution. Let’s not push the point. He didn’t say, ‘Thanks to the Revolution.’ Can we leave it at that?”

  Xian spoke again. Emily translated into Mandarin.

  “He understood what you said. He says, when he said, ‘Thanks to the gods,’ that’s what he meant.”

  Chan looked at Cuthbert, who sat quietly, smiling.

  Jonathan cleared his throat. “Just think, how international everyone is these days. Any one of us could be in a different country this time tomorrow. Take me, five days ago I was in Beijing.”

  Emily translated into Mandarin, listened to Xian’s reply, then laughed.

  “Mr. Xian says that there may not be national boundaries in the future, but there will always be China. China was there at the beginning and will be at the end. Didn’t you feel so very Chinese when you visited Beijing?”

  “Definitely, it was like a spiritual homecoming.” Catching the sneer on his wife’s face, Jonathan looked down.

  Chan cleared his throat. “The only time I went to Beijing I felt very Chinese.”

  “Oh, yes?” Emily sounded surprised.

  “Yes. It was late autumn. The peasants had brought all the cabbages in from the countryside. Everywhere you looked, all around Tiananmen Square: cabbages. All along Wangfujing you saw barricades and even mountains of what they were calling aiguo cai-‘national vegetable.’ It was that dark ugly green cabbage that they use for bitter soup. All over the city stalls were selling bitter soup. Even the rich were drinking it, as a kind of fashion. The party said it should remind people of the bitter years before communism. But it was nearly fifty years after the Communist Revolution, and almost everyone still had to drink this bitter soup for the vitamin C. Of course I had to have some. It was really the most bitter thing I’ve ever tasted. I’ve never felt so Chinese.”

  He saw that Emily had stopped tran
slating and everyone except Cuthbert was avoiding his eyes. He leaned forward again, this time turning toward Xian and looking him directly in the eye. At each question and answer, Emily translated.

  “You must have been in the Communist party for a long time?”

  “Correct.”

  “And I’m sure you impressed senior cadres with your grasp of Marxist-Leninism and Mao Zedong’s thought?”

  “Certainly, one had to know a lot about such things.”

  “But now China is in the hands of the gods again?”

  “When you were a young cadet in the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, did you take your oath to the queen of England?”

  Chan twitched and ignored the question. “Does it worry you that China is becoming increasingly corrupt?”

  Xian leaned back in his chair. “We’re learning capitalism. Corruption is stage one-personalized profit motive. Does it worry you that England and the United States used to be extremely corrupt and probably still are? Hong Kong owes its origin to the enforced sale of opium to our people. More than one half of the income of the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century came from the sale of opium. Capitalism has won; now the West must pay the price for forcing this system upon us.” Xian leaned forward, smiled. “But don’t quote me.”

  Only Cuthbert laughed.

  ***

  Chan sat on the swimming deck under a sky of black velvet. Water lapped inches below. Between gaps in the planks it reflected the stars and occasionally offered its own green luminescence.

  He knew that Jenny would join him. He heard a soft padding on the deck above, a hesitancy around the steel ladder.

  “Charlie?”

  How well he remembered those whispers in the night.

  “Here.”

  “Gosh, it’s black down here.”

  “Need any help?”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  They almost always spoke in English, not out of deference to their father but in obedience to their mother. In Mai-mai’s day even simple peasants knew you had to learn English to get on. Now everyone was scrambling to learn Mandarin.