The Last Six Million Seconds

by John Burdett

  Cuthbert sipped his gin and tonic, stared at the stem of his rubber tree. “Damn, fungus. I just don’t know how we manage it, Hill. It never bothered the planters in Malaysia, I know because I once asked one. We must be doing something wrong.”

  Chan watched Hill cross the room with the same smile on his face. With a tolerant “yes, sir,” like a batman to an officer, he placed a small earthenware hot plate filled with glowing charcoals on the table and left the room.

  Chan replaced his glass on the table. “What kind of transaction?”

  Cuthbert stood up, bent over another of the trees for a moment, then sat down again. “We’ll have to back up a little. Emily’s family, the Pings, they’ve been helping us for decades. Her father fled Shanghai in ’49 but kept his connections there. During the sixties Beijing wasn’t officially talking to us at all. To do business, we had to use go-betweens. Nothing unusual about that, the Chinese invented the go-between system-like everything else. Emily’s an only child. Old Man Ping coached her to take over from him. When I was posted here twelve years ago, I gave her her first job: Xian. I knew I had to get in with him on the ground floor or the whole process of handover would be in jeopardy, and Emily seemed like a good choice. She knew Shanghainese, Xian’s mother tongue, was well connected in southern China and already respected in Hong Kong.” Cuthbert sipped his gin and tonic reflectively. “Women. Doesn’t matter if it’s business or bed, there’s always a complication. Where’s Hill?”

  The Englishman’s mind, Chan realized, raced at the same dangerous speed as his Jag. The diplomat left the room while he tried to catch up. Chan acknowledged that Cuthbert was answering a question: Chan’s. Back in Cuthbert’s office Chan had asked generally about the availability of top secret information for his inquiry; Cuthbert had commenced providing that information, using his own “need to know” criterion. Emily, it seemed, was a part of the answer.

  Chan stood up to look for a bathroom. In the hall he glimpsed Cuthbert’s library. Not for him a few dozen paperbacks rotting in a cupboard. Not even the cultivated man’s set of bookshelves. It was a real library with shelves from floor to ceiling, a small oak stepladder, an oak lectern in front of a window for a man who liked to read standing up. Next to the lectern an ashtray on a pedestal. At another window a cigar-colored leather chesterfield awaited a reader’s pleasure.

  Cuthbert was back when Chan returned to the table. He resumed before Chan had sat down. Hill appeared at the same time with a wok of stewed lamb with dry bean curd, which he placed on the hot plate.

  “The complication was her greed. She saw an opportunity. She’d bought the lease to a two-story Chinese house in Central out of her own money, but she didn’t have the funds to redevelop. Banks weren’t going to lend a twenty-six-year-old girl twenty million to build a high-rise, and her old man, being Chinese, wasn’t either unless he owned a majority of the shares in the company. Spirited girl, can’t deny it. Xian was only too pleased to help. He loaned her the money; she built her office block, made her four million profit-and discovered with a jolt that Xian owned her. The old devil had found the ideal way of laundering his ill-gotten gains; Hong Kong real estate. And Emily was the perfect front. Xian’s not the kind of chap you say no to, not if you want to live in this part of the world. The next time he needed to find a home for a few hundred million, he used Emily. Gave her all the status, all the face, all the profit she wanted. But she wasn’t free. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to talk her out of a suicidal depression. Lamb?”

  “Emily depressed?”

  Cuthbert used a large wooden spoon to serve the lamb. “Mmm. Wouldn’t believe it, would you? But you see, Xian is a life sentence. Even when he dies, she’ll never be free; there’s a whole army standing in line behind him. It’s not that easy to live with, if you’re the independent type. Of course, I couldn’t use her again for anything delicate. It’s part of my job to keep the lines open with Xian, though. It didn’t much matter. Xian and I reached a kind of modus vivendi. We talk almost every day. There’s a lot to do when you’re delivering six million people to someone else for safekeeping.” The Englishman studied Chan for a moment. “I believe you know quite a lot about laogai?”

  “I have a friend who does.”

  “I know, that tiresome old man in Wanchai.”

  “Who spent most of his life as a slave in the laogaidui.”

  “Quite. Then you’ll understand Emily’s self-disgust. She launders money for an organization that derives much of its profit from the use of slaves. Slaves to grow the opium, hump the guns, cook the morphine. Chinese slaves, just like in the Middle Ages. Poor girl, there is absolutely no way out for her. She really is a divided soul. Tough as nails on the outside, riddled with self-loathing on the inside. Difficult to live with.”

  Sometimes Chan couldn’t believe how stupid he was. He should have seen it on the boat, should have caught the subtle clues in tones and eye contact, should have guessed, at least, when Cuthbert had warned him not to sleep with Emily. It was his job, after all, to detect.

  He’d been misled, largely, by the Englishman’s personality. One pictured him so much more easily with a cricket bat or a rifle or a leather-bound tome than a woman. The phrase “talk her out of a suicidal depression” echoed in his mind. An ex-lover’s phrase; the sort of duty a gentleman acknowledges toward a woman he’s dropped. Chan saw Emily, ten years younger, less promiscuous, more of a prudish Chinese girl perhaps, wandering through this bachelor’s flat, trying to follow Cuthbert’s encyclopedic conversation. Their arguments would have been worth listening to.

  Cuthbert’s revelations about Emily were fascinating but, on reflection, failed to carry the investigation any further.

  “Mr. Cuthbert, I don’t understand.”

  “Oh?”

  Under the diplomat’s raised eyebrows, Chan flustered. He sensed that he was being manipulated with a finesse that produced a twinge of nostalgia for the rough killers of Mongkok. He felt his chin jutting, along with other symptoms of a vulgar belligerence.

  “Perhaps you’re trying to help me by supplying this information about Emily Ping. But I don’t see how it fits.”

  Cuthbert leaned back in his chair, smiled. “But surely that’s your job, old chap?”

  Chan felt his tongue start to trip on a stutter. “I-I-I thought, in fact I’m sure, there’s information somewhere, secret, in a computer… You know? All these people, Xian, Emily Ping, Clare Coletti-they must be known to M16. I thought you would persuade the committee to give me access. I thought that’s why I was invited here to lunch, to discuss it further.”

  Too late, Chan realized he’d used a fatal word.

  “Committee? You mean some sort of hypersecret little group of gray men who know everything? Come on, Charlie, I thought back in my office we’d agreed that such a notion was fantastic, absurd?”

  “I thought you were being ironic when you denied it.”

  Cuthbert wrinkled his brow, rubbed the side of his cheek. “You know, it’s a hard thing for a man like me to admit, but I do believe you’re just a tad too subtle for me.”

  Chan felt hairs prickle at the back of his neck. Cuthbert’s mastery of diplomatic humility or sarcasm-with the English there was hardly a distinction-was effortless. Chan couldn’t decide if it would have been worse if the political adviser were Chinese. As a Eurasian one did not always know which race one preferred to be screwed by.

  “I’ve been told that I’m to be given every facility.” Stubbornness was the last resort of the outclassed.

  Cuthbert opened his arms. “Which is exactly why I invited you to lunch. Treat me like the horse’s mouth. Ask away, anything you like, anything. I promise I’ll do my best to answer. Haven’t I just divulged half a file full of top secret information?”

  “With zero risk,” Chan muttered, looking away. “And I daresay nothing Emily Ping won’t tell me herself when I question her. Which I suppose is why you told me at all.”

  That evening at
his desk in Mongkok Police Station Chan wrote on a piece of scrap paper: What do General Xian, Emily Ping, Moira Coletti, Mario Coletti, Clare Coletti have in common? Were they all invented in China? Does Cuthbert know?

  To clear his mind, he walked to the warehouse to check the cameras. To his surprise, some of the film had been exposed. Someone had been in the warehouse and stood close enough to the fluorescent light fixture to interrupt the infrared beam. When he called forensic the next morning, a technician told him there was a queue for the lab; development of the film would take a few days.

  39

  On the underground to Arsenal Street Chan watched a gweilo go into stress. Despite efficient air conditioning, sweat pods exploded over his red face, he started to shake and enlarged pupils indicated mounting panic. Chan wondered if he would have to be a good policeman and take the foreigner off the train, but at the next station the middle-aged white man found the control to squeeze himself out of the compartment onto the platform. Through the window Chan watched him lean against a wall and breathe deeply. Not a danger to society, apparently, just another Westerner who didn’t know how to be a sardine. None of the Chinese in the vicinity had noticed that a psychological event had taken place; they remained in a compacted upright state, minding their own business like good sardines.

  At police headquarters a message at reception asked him to go straight to Riley’s office on the fourth floor. Riley stood up when Chan entered. So did Aston and a tall American in his fifties.

  “Ah! Charlie.” Riley beamed and turned to the American. “This is the best goddamn detective on the Pacific Rim.” From somewhere he had acquired a cigar and an American accent. “Charlie, allow me to introduce our colleague from the other side of the world, Captain Frank Delaney of the New York Police Department.”

  Delaney stood up, held out a hand. He was a little over six feet, balding elegantly from the brow, a handsome man. Chan noticed the soft brown eyes, a woman’s eyes, except that they fixed on him for a moment longer than was polite, performing a judgmental scan. A cop’s eyes after all. He wore a cop’s suit too: police blue in creaseless artificial fiber. Under it he wore a cream shirt, no tie.

  “Charlie, I was just saying how grateful I am to you guys for seeing me at such short notice-”

  “Not at all.” Riley waved his cigar. Chan waited.

  “I saw the fax that Inspector Aston here sent off and figured the simplest thing was just to get on a damned plane. Expensive maybe, but if I can tie this one up on a twenty-four-hour trip, it frees me for more important things.” Delaney grinned. “Like the World Series maybe.”

  Riley laughed loudly. “World Series, love it. You guys play the best kind of football.”

  Aston exchanged glances with Chan; both looked at Delaney, who smiled.

  Riley spoke around the cigar that he had clamped between his teeth. “I’ve booked a conference room on the second floor; we could mosey on down.” He led the way downstairs. The brass plate on the door read INTERVIEW ROOM, SENIOR OFFICERS ONLY.

  They sat at a long brown table with a view over the street.

  “Sure is an interesting place,” Delaney said. “Never been here before. Heard a lot about it, though.”

  He bypassed Riley, looked to Chan for a signal.

  “How can we help?” Chan said.

  Delaney reached down to a slim plastic briefcase, placed it on the table. He unzipped it, took out a plain file, began leafing through.

  “This is the fax Inspector Aston-”

  “Dick, please,” Aston said.

  “Right. This is the fax you sent, Dick. Now, I understand you’ve positively identified the girl, right?”

  “Right,” Aston said. “One PI, two unidentified.”

  “We obtained dental records,” Riley said.

  Delaney nodded. “Can’t argue with that. And the girl is Clare Coletti, right?”

  Riley nodded vigorously. “Sure is.”

  “Well, we have a short file on Clare Coletti. It’s short because she was only ever busted for one thing, possession of marijuana. But it’s the kind of file that ties up with an awful lot of other files. Mob files. She was associated with the Corleone family in Brooklyn for about half her life. And toward the end she was associated with another kind of mob too. I guess you guys know all about the 14K Triad Society?”

  Riley and Aston nodded.

  “Right. Well, they have a branch in New York. All the big triads do. Most of the time they only do business within the Chinese community. They import heroin, run prostitution, run rackets, all the usual mob things. We don’t have an awfully good track record in nailing them for the usual reasons. First, as a social menace they just don’t compete with the local mob, or the Colombians, or the Sicilians-or the Russians these days. Second, they’re real hard to penetrate. We don’t have many Chinese cops who speak Cantonese or Mandarin or Chiu Chow, and we can’t afford to set them up as sleepers for years on end. A lot of the time we need them for interpretation and other work with the Chinese community. And then, frankly, and don’t quote me on this, there’s a feeling in the NYPD that comes down from the mayor himself that if all they’re doing is muscling their own people, well, let’s say that’s a containable problem.” Delaney looked at Chan. “I don’t want to cause offense here, but I guess most jurisdictions take a pragmatic view of resource allocation?”

  “You betcha,” Riley answered for Chan.

  Chan lit a cigarette, waved a hand. Delaney gave him a second look. Chan half closed his eyes as if listening to another voice.

  “But just recently there have been some disturbing-very disturbing-developments. It’s like all the world’s major mobs have been seeing the sense of living in peace so they can exploit the rest of us. We know there’s been a number of deals between the American Mafia and the Colombians and a separate one between the Mafia and some Russian gangs. Then it became pretty obvious that our local boys were helping the 14K to shift heroin. The only way they can supply outside the Chinese community is by using the Italian mob; nobody else has the network, and the Chinese community is so insular that even the most desperate smack or crack addict doesn’t think about crossing from Mott Street to Mulberry Street to get a hit. Mott Street is Little Italy; Mulberry Street is Chinatown-they’re side by side in Lower Manhattan.”

  “Sure,” Riley said.

  Delaney paused. “You guys mind if I take off my jacket?”

  Under the jacket Chan saw an American muscle pack starting to melt, a man who had once looked after himself. His facial skin too was better than many Americans of his age; at least it was less lined, but there was a grayness underneath. Chan noticed a gold signet ring, the odd glimpse of a thin gold chain through the open neck of his shirt. Every now and then those soft brown eyes clouded and half closed in a wince. Chan wondered if the big American was fighting some kind of pain.

  Aston sat on the edge of his seat.

  “I can take you down the long route or the short route-I don’t mind,” Delaney said. “I guess what’s coming is sort of obvious.”

  Riley looked at Chan. Noncommittal, Chan took a long draw on his cigarette. Aston seemed embarrassed.

  “Maybe the short route. Or even the long one,” Riley said. “What d’you say, Charlie?”

  Chan smiled at Riley. “I’ll let you decide, John.”

  Delaney watched Riley hesitate. “Right. Well, the short route is just this. It seems that after her one and only drug bust Clare Coletti was cut off from the mob. Particularly, she was dumped by the middle-ranking mobster she’d been having an affair with since she was in her mid-teens. We have reason to think she had a heroin habit too. She was bright, though; got a B.A. from New York University under mob patronage. That’s what threw us. Why educate her, then dump her? After all, a mob isn’t so different from a corporation: You make an investment in a person or a machine, you want performance, right? In retrospect we wonder if the year or so Clare spent out in the cold was a ploy to shake our interest in her. We k
now that during that year she got interested in China-not a natural topic for a Bronx girl like her. Then about two and a half months ago she was seen getting on a plane bound for Hong Kong. On the same plane were two members of the New York chapter of the 14K Triad Society.”

  Delaney pulled out two sheets of paper from his file, passed them to Chan. At the top of each sheet was a mug shot of a Chinese male. The sheet gave details of dates of birth, Social Security numbers. Both men were in their mid-thirties. Chan read that they were suspected White Paper Fans, finance officers. The first man’s name was Yu Ningkun; the second Mao Zingfu. Both were romanizations of Mandarin names. The two men were mainlanders and Mandarin speakers. He studied what seemed to be an extract from an NYPD file. Each was suspected to be an expert money launderer and part of the narcotics side of the business. Neither had a criminal record in the United States. Farther down the page he saw that they had emigrated from Shanghai in the late 1970s, probably through triad connections using the snakehead route down the Pearl River from Guangzhou.

  While Chan was reading, Delaney said: “The fingerprints you sent us-ones you found on a plastic bag containing heroin?-they belong to these two guys.” Delaney coughed.

  “The next thing I have to tell you is kind of, ah, delicate.” He coughed again. “As you probably know, when it comes to mob matters, we work pretty closely with the FBI. And the bureau has, ah, resources and powers we don’t have. I’d be obliged to you if you’d keep this confidential. Contrary to certain guarantees of privacy that American citizens enjoy, we were able to persuade the bureau to procure dental records, the dental records of Yu and Mao. I’ve brought copies for you to use.”