The Last Six Million Seconds

by John Burdett

  She sat next to him, took his hand, waited before she spoke.

  He badly needed to smoke. He wriggled to free the pack from the pocket under his buttock.

  “I need one too.”

  He lit two, passed her one.

  She sucked deeply, then blew the smoke out in a thick stream. “This is definitely the only one I’m going to have for the next eight months. Being on a boat with you, though, under the stars-” She dropped her voice, as if she expected him to silence her. “Remember when we took up smoking?”

  “Of course. The night after Aunt told us they’d killed her. I haven’t missed a day since.”

  “Charlie, no man is ever going to replace you in my heart, even though I’m going to have Jonathan’s baby-”

  “Don’t start that again. I’m your brother, a dumb, hard-bitten cop. He’s a fine man, rich, successful, fantastic with people-all that.”

  She giggled. “You’re so unconvincing when you lie. Lawyers are such creeps, aren’t they? The way he sucks up to Xian and Emily really gets on my nerves.”

  In the dark he smiled. Nothing would cure her of loose talk apparently. He tried to make his voice stern. “We shouldn’t be talking like this. It’s disloyal of you.”

  “You’re the one I’m loyal to. Don’t shush me; it’s an accident of history. When I was a skinless bundle of hurt, you held me tight and saved me with love. When I remember that summer, it’s like you were holding me tight all the time. I didn’t have your strength. I was borderline psychotic. I know that now; I’ve been reading about trauma, victims of violence-”

  “Stop! Please.”

  She was silent for a moment, started on another tack. “Jonathan put a lot of pressure on me to persuade you to come on this trip.”

  “That I guessed.”

  “I don’t know exactly why, but it has to do with Xian. Jonathan says it’s in your interests to get to know him. He’s going to be running Hong Kong after June, they say. If you make him happy, you could be commissioner of police.” She held up a hand to stop Chan from interrupting. “I said you didn’t give a damn about that sort of thing, but Jonathan said there was something else. The old man wants your help. He’ll give you anything you want, but if you won’t take gifts, at least have the sense not to make an enemy of him. He’s going to approach you in his own way. I don’t know what he wants, something to do with that mincer case, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  “That’s all I know. Jonathan said that it was important for you to meet Xian in cordial surroundings. He made it sound like things could get pretty unpleasant if you didn’t play ball.” He felt her squeeze his hand. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?”

  He squeezed back. “Don’t worry.”

  She was silent for a long moment. “Charlie, after I have the baby, I’m going to be well and truly swept up in Jonathan’s world, his people, his money, his servants, you know? I just want you to tell me I’m not crazy, that something very special welded us together that summer all those years ago. I need to know that because well, the rich are so insincere. You may be the only person in my whole life I ever really trust.”

  How could he deny it? The intensity of that summer lay embedded in the soul like a burning ember around which the rest of his life congealed.

  He lit two more cigarettes, passed her one. She accepted it despite her resolve of a few minutes before.

  He inhaled, then exhaled slowly. “After Aunt told us, I dreamed of Mum every night. Except they weren’t dreams, they were crossings into another world. She belonged there; she was happy. Even in broad daylight I was dreaming. It was like Mum was with us.”

  “Ah! So it was the same for you!”

  He felt her body relax. They sat together smoking. Orion, which had been at the rim of the horizon when he’d sat down, had climbed under the inside of the black dome and was hanging there, a sketch of brilliant dots waiting to be joined. She was sitting close enough for the whole of one side of their bodies to be connected. Kids sat like that. She touched his biceps in the area of the faded tattoos.

  “If that old man tried to harm you, I’d kill him.”

  Chan laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I really think you would. It would be kind of ironic, not the end he’s expecting, I’m sure.”

  Her hand kneaded the tattoos. “Only you and I know what they used to say.”

  Chan inhaled. “Your name in Chinese characters.” He tapped the cigarette to drop the ash between the planks. “And the tattooist. He must know too.”

  She punched him on the arm as she stood, whispered, “Thank you,” blew him a kiss and was gone.

  35

  Chan finally rose from the swimming platform. He’d been there so long his buttocks were numb and there was no feeling in his feet. He had to hold on to a stanchion to wait for the circulation to return. Orion was directly overhead now. It was after midnight. The intensity of the stars had steadily increased until they cast dim shadows. Thinking of Moira, he pulled down his shorts, dived naked into the black sea.

  When he climbed out, he was wide-awake. He showered using the hose on the swimming deck, returned wet to his cabin, where he dried himself with a fresh towel, dug out the only book he’d brought with him. He lay on his bunk. Idly he read the blurb.

  “His travels began in 1271 when he accompanied his father and uncle on their second visit to China. There he worked as a diplomat, undertaking numerous missions in the service of Kublai Khan. Despite piracy, shipwreck, brigandage and wild beasts, Polo moved in a world of highly organized commerce. He loved describing precious gems, spices and silks…”

  The book had an elusive relevance, like the Bible. Still, apart from Moira’s testimony it was all he had.

  Clare’s American nationality was a problem. Whenever he’d looked at it on a map, America seemed so distant. New York especially seemed in the middle of nowhere stuck on the North Atlantic seaboard as far away from Asia as it was possible to be yet with an ocean between it and Europe. He hadn’t known many Americans, except in the movies. They could be the opposite of Chinese people. There was no respect for age or elders; they were promiscuous; they believed firmly in self-gratification; they were individualists and in that they possessed great courage. There was something called the American Dream: two young men on Harley-Davidson motorbikes with girls riding pillion and drugs hidden in the batteries. A film.

  The more he thought about it, the more elusive America became. There was a wealth of conflicting images with no center: over-muscled GIs humping weapons up jungle trails in the Vietnam War; the assassination of President Kennedy. There were alligators in the sewers; homosexual movie stars did strange things with gerbils.

  There was a principle Americans talked about the way the British talked about fairness. Anyone, no matter how humble his origins, could become president. Imagine: Charlie Chan, president of the United States.

  A wonderful principle, magical. Consider how it must affect fools and villains. You were brought up to believe you could be anyone you liked: Clark Gable, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington. Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde. Just wear the right hat and buy a gun. Marco Polo? He flicked casually through the text.

  “When the Sheikh desired the death of some great Lord, he would first try an experiment to find out which of his assassins were the best. He would send some off on a mission in the neighbourhood at no great distance with orders to kill such and such a man. They went without demur and did the bidding of their lord. Then, when they had killed the man, they returned to court-those of them that escaped, for some were caught and put to death… Thus it happened that no one ever escaped when the Sheikh of the Mountain desired his death.”

  It was a famous passage, Chan had heard it quoted in a film with Mick Jagger. But what did it mean?

  He was disturbed in his thinking by sounds from Jenny and Jonathan’s cabin next door. Someone moved, groaned lightly. People didn’t realize: Boats were not like houses; the
walls were often millimeter-thick fiberglass moldings that amplified sound.

  More groans, the sounds of bodies turning.

  “Can’t sleep?” It was Jenny’s voice.

  “No, I nodded off, but now I’m wide-awake.”

  “Something bothering you?”

  “No.”

  A pause.

  “Yes.”

  “Want to tell me?”

  “Well, you disappeared tonight. Everyone wondered where you went. It was kind of rude, you know.”

  “I was with Charlie. He disappeared too, didn’t he?”

  “He’s just a cop, and he’s got a personality problem. You’re my wife; things are expected of you.”

  “Personality problem? Because he doesn’t suck up to people?”

  “I don’t like the way you look at him. It’s weird.”

  “You want to start a fight, is that it? What’s wrong with you? You’re jealous of my brother?”

  “Why d’you look at him like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like he’s a god or something.”

  “We were very close as kids. We went through trauma together. He saved my mind. Some of those people you suck up to, like Xian, they killed our mother.”

  A pause.

  “Isn’t this just a little too blue-collar?”

  “Huh?”

  “All this vendetta stuff. I mean, okay, you had a traumatic adolescence, but life goes on. It was over twenty years ago.”

  “You don’t understand. You have no depth of feeling.”

  “Depth? Is that what he has?”

  “Okay, you want it straight, this is it. After they told us Red Guards had killed Mai-mai, I lost my mind. He was all I had. He dedicated his whole time to me, never went to school, never left me alone, not for a single minute. Something happens when you get that close. When I look at him, I remember. What I remember is love winning over hate. Not something a lawyer would understand.”

  A long pause, then Wong’s voice, meaner and more dogged than when he was putting on the charm. “I guess I need you to tell me if he raped you or not.”

  Jenny’s outraged voice: “What did you say?”

  “If it happened and you were under sixteen, that’s rape. Even if you consented. It happens a lot in-well, the poorer Chinese families. It’s the great unreported crime of Southeast Asia. I did a lot of family law when I was starting out, I know about these things.”

  “You’re one sick lawyer. I tell you what, Charlie would rather have died than taken advantage of me. But if he’d asked me, I would have done anything. Anything at all. And I probably would have loved it. Happy now?”

  “Calm down, relax. It was a natural question.”

  “No, it wasn’t. It was a dirty lawyer’s question. You have all these artistic pretensions, but you’re just another money snob, like everyone else in Hong Kong.”

  “Don’t raise your voice. Let’s just forget it, okay?”

  “I won’t forget it. Rape? Maybe you’re the one with the problem.”

  Chan grinned at the wall. She always did have a way of turning things around. She wouldn’t stop until she’d extorted an unconditional surrender.

  “Look, I don’t want an atmosphere all day tomorrow. I know how good you are at doing that. I’m very sorry I cast an aspersion on your bighearted, macho, crime-busting brother, okay? Can we drop it now?”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you with peasant emotions in front of your friends-or are they clients? I can never tell the difference somehow.”

  Chan shook his head and got up. The argument next door had stirred his thoughts, and there was no way he was going to sleep now. He pulled on some shorts and wandered up to the top deck, where he sat on the electric windlass and tried to make out the anchor line as it disappeared into the sea. It was a night of perfect calm. The line slid cleanly into the water as if set in marble. Likewise the hands that came from behind slid cleanly under his arms and lifted him up high in the air. The second bodyguard appeared also from behind and held Chan’s legs just as he started to struggle.

  “Be calm,” a voice said in English. There was no doubt about the Beijing accent, but the owner had certainly spent time in England.

  The hands set him down again after carrying him two yards toward the wheelhouse. From the shadows a gruff peasant voice spoke in Mandarin.

  “We apologize,” the first voice said. “We saw you leave your cabin. We’ve been waiting for you. We wanted you to come into the shadow so that we would not be seen talking to you.” Chan assumed that this was a translation of the old man’s words.

  Chan shook himself, waited. The old man cleared his throat.

  “You like this boat?” This time there was no translation. The old man himself had spoken. The effect of the stunted, near-unintelligible English was of brutish stupidity. It could have been the opening gambit in an argument about pig feed.

  “Yes,” Chan said.

  “You want it?”

  “No.”

  “How about an apartment block?”

  “No.”

  There was a grunt. “When you find out, you tell me, okay?”

  “Find out what?”

  Another grunt. “What you think?”

  Chan stood still. His Mandarin was good enough to understand the old man telling his bodyguards to follow him belowdecks. No more than a craggy shadow, the old man turned at the last minute.

  “By the way, I don’t kill your mother. Red Guards, not army. Okay?”

  “No,” Chan said, but he spoke into a void.

  He shook himself again, only half believing. It took minutes for the mind to catch up: I have been mugged by China. He walked around the cabin toward the stern of the boat.

  ***

  On the rear deck where they had eaten dinner he saw a single red glow move in an arc toward the deck, flicker, then rise again. Cuthbert didn’t get up from the chair next to the rails or turn his head, even though Chan exaggerated the noise of his bare feet on the deck. He stood by the rail, not far from the diplomat.

  “Welcome,” Cuthbert finally said. “Won’t you sit down?”

  Chan drew up a white plastic chair. It occurred to him that voices from the swimming deck would carry this far without serious diminution in volume.

  “Have you been here long?” Chan said.

  “Only just arrived. Couldn’t sleep.”

  But when the Englishman lowered his cigarette again to knock it out on an ashtray, Chan saw a small mountain of stubs. He knew that some kind of small talk was in order, but there was no point in pretending to a skill so alien to his personality.

  “Why did you say that earlier? About not letting her seduce me?”

  Cuthbert drew slowly on his cigarette, then took out the case and offered one to Chan without looking at him. Chan took it, lit up and waited. The extreme languor of the diplomat’s movements was unusual, even for an upper-class Englishman.

  “She hasn’t slept with you yet. She’s intrigued by most men under forty with whom she hasn’t slept-not that there are too many left in Hong Kong. If I were you, I’d keep her intrigued-follow?”

  Diplomats were worse than lawyers in their effortless capacity to irritate. “What do you care? What are you doing here anyway?”

  Cuthbert paused on an exhalation, nodded slowly, then continued to breathe out smoke. “Emily’s an interesting girl.”

  “You know a lot about her?”

  Cuthbert seemed on the point of saying something about their hostess, then changed his mind. He sighed, then stretched out a hand in a gesture that could only be described as theatrical. “Tell me, my friend, isn’t it just incredibly wonderful?”

  “What?”

  “To be here, at this moment, in this tropical night, ensnared by this Chinese intrigue that will outlive both of us?”

  “Is that why Englishmen like you come to Southeast Asia-for Chinese intrigue?”

  “I can’t speak for anyone else. After my year
in China perfecting the language, I took up an appointment at Magdalen. I didn’t last very long. China had bitten me. I wanted the feeling of being at that point on the earth’s crust where the tectonic plates are crashing together. I was in love. I even wanted more of Mao’s poems, would you believe? In 1964 he published something called ‘Snow,’ which I learned by heart, in Mandarin, of course. I still remember the last line-”

  “ ‘For truly great men, look to this age alone,’ ” Chan quoted. “I never learned it in Mandarin, only in the English translation.”

  Cuthbert paused with his cigarette twelve inches from his lips. “Correct. And you are indeed a surprising man, as the truly intelligent must always be.” He paused, then sighed. “But when Mao talked about great men, he was talking about Asians.”

  Chan let a beat pass. “With regard to the Chinese intrigue, I have some information you might be interested in.”

  “Please go on.”

  “Xian probably didn’t kill those three in Mongkok. Isn’t that what you’re so afraid of, that I’ll discover he’s the culprit?”

  In a tone that showed only mild interest Cuthbert said, “Perhaps. But what has caused you to form this view?”

  “Ten minutes ago he offered me an apartment building if I would tell him who did, when I found out. At least I think that’s what he meant.”

  “You didn’t accept this substantial offer?”

  “No.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “I’m half Chinese.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I was waiting for him to offer me two apartment buildings.”

  Cuthbert threw his head back. In the dim illumination from the anchor lights Chan saw that he was laughing. Silently, like a good diplomat.

  Chan returned to his cabin slightly ashamed. English humor: It was a disease. No matter how you fought against it, you ended by making the same silly jokes as they did.