The Last Six Million Seconds

by John Burdett

  Grant raised his eyebrows to let Cuthbert know he was genuinely puzzled by the diplomat’s concern.

  “Not difficult operationally. While they’re thought to be well armed-automatic pistols of some kind and possibly heavier weapons-they’re not professional soldiers. Diplomatically, though, it’s just a little tricky.” Grant shrugged: not his problem. “I mean, the nature of what was found in the trunk is still top secret.”

  “And shall remain so if I have anything to do with it.”

  “Quite.” Grant gave Cuthbert an impatient soldierly stare. “Which is why I didn’t want the police involved.” Cuthbert continued. “There would be a trial of course. Defense lawyers et cetera. Probably impossible to keep out the China dimension. London will be furious. I mean, you can imagine what the press will say: atomic threat by unreconstructed renegade Communist cadres against six million people to whom we still owe protection. Military protection.”

  Grant nodded. “Thought of that. Can’t see how the hell it can be avoided except through an Official Secrets Act sort of trial-in camera, as they do with spies.”

  “Not so easy, I’m afraid. Nobody involved has signed the Official Secrets Act. The three suspects are American citizens according to the New York Police Department. You know how the Americans can be about anyone else’s breach of democratic principles. The CIA can literally get away with murder, but Singapore can’t cane a young American yob’s backside without an international uproar.”

  Grant toyed with his hors d’oeuvres. He seemed to be concentrating hard, riding a train of thought. Finally he raised his head to look Cuthbert full in the face.

  “I won’t stand in your way, but it’s not the sort of order I can give.”

  “Of course not, General.”

  “I’ll let you talk to the men. But I warn you, they’ll want a lot of reassurance that it won’t be another Gibraltar. And you’ll have to convince them that it’s necessary.”

  Cuthbert smiled. “I’m most grateful, General.” On seeing the sommelier approach again, he added, “White or red?”

  “I’m having fish this time.”

  “Chablis then?”

  Grant nodded, returned to the last of his hors d’oeuvres. One thing you had to give diplomats credit for: You never had to be explicit. God only knew how they ever managed to do something simple and direct, though. While Cuthbert tasted the Chablis, the commander in chief thought up a joke to tell the governor later: How many diplomats does it take to change a lightbulb? Twenty. One to change the bulb, nineteen to record the international implications. Chris would like that.

  ***

  Cuthbert found out when the military flight was due to land and sent two cars to pick the men up. Of the five, four would be dropped at their quarters in Stanley, and the last, the most senior, was to be brought direct to Cuthbert’s office. The political adviser was still debating what tack to use when his secretary showed Major Fairgood in. Cuthbert shook hands with a stereotype: fit as an athlete with something lethal around the eyes; square jaws with lean cheeks in which a single furrow had been plowed from cheekbone to just behind the mouth. Cuthbert saw the suspicion that soldiers habitually feel toward diplomats. In Fairgood’s case it took the form of an almost theatrical squinting combined with a disdainful twitch of the nose.

  Cuthbert invited the soldier to sit at the long table in his anteroom.

  “Good of you to see me. I do apologize for taking up your time when you must want to be settling in.”

  “No problem. Not a complex job as far as I can see. Not a lot of settling in to do. We’ll be done this time tomorrow, I expect.”

  “Quite. That’s rather what I wanted to discuss. I don’t know if the commander in chief has spoken to you?”

  “No, how could he?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Something came over the radio, though, while we were in the air. It doesn’t take much to guess what you want.”

  “Ah!”

  “But it can’t be done. You must have heard about Gibraltar?”

  “Yes indeed.”

  “That was orders. Between you and me.”

  “If I remember correctly, some known Irish Republican Army assassins were, er, killed by SAS men. The IRA had a car full of explosives but were themselves unarmed.”

  “Someone very senior thought it would be nice if those particular IRA terrorists never had to stand trial. They never reckoned for the media frenzy. A bloody trial for manslaughter in Gib-SAS men! We’re never supposed to see the light of day. Bloody fiasco. Some of the blokes nearly resigned. Men like you are supposed to keep us out of politics-and the newspapers. And the courts, especially the courts.”

  “I absolutely agree.”

  “Now there’s an appeal to the European Court at Strasbourg by families of the IRA bastards we shot. It never ends, that sort of thing.”

  “Quite.”

  Cuthbert took out his silver cigarette case, which he offered to Fairgood, whose fuse seemed to have burned itself out. To his surprise the superfit major accepted it gratefully.

  “Of course, if circumstances were different,” Cuthbert said, “and if there were good reason…”

  “It would take more than a ten-minute chat with a diplomat to convince me to risk putting my men through that, I can tell you.”

  Cuthbert smiled through the tobacco smoke. “Well, let me confess, Major, I don’t blame you. I’m deeply grateful that you came to see me, and I shan’t attempt to persuade you further. You realize that it was my duty to try-in the interests of national security, of course.”

  Suprised at being let off the hook so easily, Fairgood coughed on an inhalation. He stared at Cuthbert for a moment, then inhaled deeply. “You’re doing your job, I can see that. And I’m doing mine.”

  The diplomat noticed a change in posture. Fairgood stretched his legs under the table, leaned back in the chair. For the first time since entering the room he seemed relaxed.

  “Right then,” Fairgood said. His eyes flicked over the room before settling on the window. “Good view.”

  “One of the best. Let me show you.”

  Fairgood stood up with Cuthbert and went to the window. “There’s the airport runway; that’s a Cathay flight taking off. Just behind, d’you see? the hills of Kowloon. And behind them, China.”

  Fairgood took it all in as if studying a battlefield. “Yes, that must be right. One knows how close it is, but one doesn’t quite take it in until one arrives on the ground. They say that all the really big disasters of the next hundred years will probably be caused by China.”

  He smiled without warmth, finished his cigarette slowly, went back to the table to find an ashtray, drummed thoughtfully on the top.

  “Just out of interest, why?”

  “Partly because if there’s a trial, there’ll be a huge bloody public row, partly because it will jeopardize relations between China and Hong Kong and partly, I confess, a measure of personal sentiment.”

  “Really?”

  “Radiation sickness is horrifying. There’s no other word for it.”

  “Yes, I heard something about that. No danger for my chaps, I hope?”

  “None at all as far as I can gather. The damnable part, though, is that these three will probably get off. There’s only circumstantial evidence to link them to the uranium.”

  “Get off?”

  “Murder. Look, just as background, let me show you something.”

  Cuthbert went to his office and returned with some photographs. He began with the two divers in the hospital. Higgins he saved to last. He watched Fairgood dwell on that one: an Englishman, a white man, fair-skinned, about his age, his body bloated and distorted like some monstrous sea creature. Fairgood nodded slowly, whistled.

  “I see.” He raised his eyes. Cuthbert’s stratagem was pretty crude after all. “Well, I’d better be going.”

  “Of course,” Cuthbert said. “Take the pictures if you like. Your men might want to know the kind of peop
le they’re dealing with.”

  Fairgood nodded again. “Just the one will do.” He picked up the picture of Higgins, slid it into a pocket.

  On his way out Fairgood said: “Even if the men were sympathetic, which is by no means certain, there would have to be a cast-iron guarantee of no publicity and no repercussions-especially not legal ones. Cast-iron.”

  Cuthbert smiled again. “This isn’t Gibraltar, Major. On important issues the media do as we tell them over here. And these three are supposed to be dead already.” Fairgood raised his eyebrows. “You have my word,” Cuthbert said.

  They shook hands at the door.

  50

  They. In Chan’s dream they can change shape, race, sex; they can even manifest as animals or spirits. He has seen them pass through walls; no matter how fast he runs, they are by his side, one step to the left and half a step behind. In some legends from ancient Chinese sorcery, death approaches from the left too. Are they fundamentally Chinese? At first he thought so. Little by little, though, they acquired some British attributes; one of them even appeared with a red face and a monocle. They stalk him. When he can stand it no longer, he turns to face them, daring them to kill him. They seem baffled by such behavior. He turns away; they resume their positions by his side, half a step behind. It’s not exactly a nightmare, not even a dream, because when he wakes, they are still there. The explanation is simple. He is going insane.

  He knows why. He saw it on the face of Chief Inspector Jack Siu. Brushing past other senior officers in the corridors of Mongkok Police Station and even more so at Arsenal Street, he notices a change in manner, a subtle distaste that they try to hide. Little by little it has filtered down to the lower levels. When the rumor, whatever it is, reaches inspector level, they will pounce. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you. Two days after Emily’s body was found he felt the atmosphere like a glass wall between him and the other officers. As he entered the police station, faces averted, then stole glances after him. In his office Aston wouldn’t look up when he entered.

  “Any messages?”

  Aston, red-faced and embarrassed, raised his eyes. “Just something from Siu at Arsenal Street. They’ve made an appointment for you to go over there at eleven this morning.”

  Aston lowered his eyes. In the canteen Chan saw that the rumor had descended to the tea lady. For traditional Chinese, bad luck is a social disease. She would not look in his eyes and disappeared into the pantry as soon as she had given him his tea. He heard her whispers to the other staff: bad joss. From the canteen he walked downstairs to the front doors and out into the street. In the crowds he found a way to bury his disgrace. He sat at a café smoking until ten-thirty, then took the underground to Arsenal Street.

  At reception it was obvious that he was expected. He was shown into a large conference room where Commissioner Tsui headed a small group of senior officers, including Riley. Jack Siu was the least senior. He sat in the middle of the table with a thick file on his left. On his right lay a transparent plastic evidence bag containing a woman’s black patent leather Chanel belt. Chan was told to sit at the far end of the table, opposite Tsui. Tsui said something about asking Riley to begin. A shorthand reporter whom Chan had not noticed in a corner of the room began writing with pencil in a notebook; she also used a tape recorder, which she switched on while Riley was saying something about deep regret and embarrassment. After a long, rambling speech he turned to Jack Siu.

  “Your prints were on the belt that was around her neck,” Siu said, looking Chan in the eye. “There may be an innocent explanation. If not, we’re going to charge you with murder.”

  “Normally I would suspend you from duty until conclusion of this matter,” Tsui said, avoiding Chan’s eyes. “However, in view of the pressure on the mincer case, you will proceed with that and that alone-until further notice. You’ll need a lawyer. Don’t try to leave Hong Kong; you’re on the stop list. You can go.”

  51

  From Western spoors strange cultures grew. As a kid Chan had visited the west of the New Territories often, mostly to go clamming. He remembered paddy and duck ponds with fish. The symbiosis of the ponds fascinated his Chinese side: All day ducks sat on the still water and shit. Their droppings fertilized the ponds, causing algae and other vegetation to burgeon, which in turn were eaten by the fish. Either you fed the fish to the ducks or you sold the fish and the ducks at the end of the season. It was an example of money growing from nothing, Oriental magic at its best.

  The ducks, though, didn’t pay half so well as the container companies. Coming over a low hill, he saw it now, a horizontal city floating in the heat; closer, it was a necropolis of steel tombs, stacked two high, that came in two sizes: twenty feet by eight feet by eight feet or forty feet by eight feet by eight feet. “Roll on, roll off,” abbreviated to roro, had entered the Cantonese language. It was a mantra that conjured money from nowhere. Nothing defecated, nothing grew, but the rent came rolling in. In twenty years Hong Kong had become the second-busiest container port in the world, after Rotterdam, and those outsize trunks had to be put somewhere. Southern China, the destination of most of the goods, had no facilities for moving containers around, so the contents were emptied onto trucks in the container yards, and the containers left to wait in the parks until a ship needed them again. Roro, ho ho: it had happened so quickly the government hadn’t any legislation in place for regulating this particular use of land.

  Photographed from the air, it could look eerily regular in layout; on the ground a certain Chinese chaos intervened. Paths between the rectangular boxes lurched, some of the steel was rusted; in the older, discarded containers families had begun to keep pigs and chickens; some of the newer containers were raised on jacks to provide shelter for domestic pets and, occasionally, ducks. Old cars, stolen cars, disemboweled cars crouched in the shadows. The narrow corridors that were created, lengthened or closed off each time a container was parked remained uncharted and changeable; only local children were reliable guides.

  Good place to hide, Chan, murder suspect, had to concede. Driving an unmarked car with Saliver Kan beside him in the passenger seat, he had no plan how to proceed. He slowed down as they came alongside the first huge double-stacked boxes, which carried the EVERGREEN logo. It was like being a child again, unable to see over the furniture.

  “Shit,” Saliver said, lowered the window, spit.

  On the top of the car an antenna sent signals from a transmitter installed in the dashboard instead of a radio. Chan wore a smaller antenna and transmitter that he was under orders to turn on as soon as they left the car.

  Chan was more than ever mystified. The Hong Kong Police Force had its own unit of highly trained men to attack, disarm and, if necessary, kill dangerous fugitives or terrorists, and Chan had heard that Commissioner Tsui had wanted to use them for this operation. Cuthbert had persuaded the governor to overrule him: the uranium again. The men receiving Chan’s radio signals were all British Special Air Services officers, hard, white, fine-tuned killers with the personalities of anvils. The investigator had turned bird dog. Well, ever since his last meeting with Jack Siu and the commissioner, Chan was just thankful for any excuse to get away from the office.

  His early intuition after the standoff with the Communist coastguards that day on the police launch had been that Beijing would exert pressure and the investigation would be aborted. As with so much in this case, he had been completely wrong. All of a sudden the Raj had woken up and was in a rage; at least Cuthbert was. Chan was forced to carry a machine pistol strapped to a harness around his chest. It was heavier than it looked and under pressure from the seat belt began to chafe. When they were strapping it on, Cuthbert had whispered in his ear: “Don’t be afraid to use it, Charlie. There won’t be any inquiries; you have my word.” There was a hunter’s eagerness in his tone.

  Chan shifted the harness with one hand. “I thought you knew where it was?” he said to Kan.

  “Here. It
’s here,” Kan waved at the containers. “I didn’t know there were this many.” He hoicked thoughtfully. “Imagine what you could hide here.”

  Chan slowed to fifteen miles per hour, tried to guess what Kan was thinking.

  “We’ll have to ask someone,” Kan finally said.

  “Ask them what?”

  “There’s a pattern made by the containers where they’re hiding. Distinctive. I’m not telling you what. I know what you’d do. You’d cut me out.”

  Chan stopped the car for Kan. He watched while the killer crossed the pavement to talk to a young girl about twelve years old. She had large oval eyes, a fringe of hair like a black velvet curtain, a smile to melt meat cleavers. Saliver returned cursing.

  “Can you believe that little bitch?” He shook his head in philosophical disbelief.

  “What?”

  “She wants a thousand dollars.”

  “So what are you waiting for?”

  Saliver stared at Chan as if he were stupid. “For her to come down, of course.”

  Kan stood by the car with his back to the girl. Chan watched as she ambled closer, hit the murderer softly on his forearm.

  “Okay, nine hundred,” she said.

  “It comes out of your reward,” Chan said to Kan, and smiled at the child. Getting out of the car, he remembered to switch on his radio.

  ***

  More abandoned cars and motorbikes. Chan’s practiced eye picked out used condoms, the sites of large, small and medium-size fires, dog and cat corpses, abandoned underwear both male and female, broken Walkmans, the remains of ducks roasted in the fires, aluminum saucepans used to cook rice: East meets West.

  He and Kan followed the child as she picked her nonchalant way down paths strewn with criminal rubble. Once they came upon two old mattresses, a collection of rubber bands, disposable syringes, cotton balls and wine bottle caps. American cops called them shooting galleries: rubber bands to make a vein bulge; caps to cook up the heroin; cotton balls to soak up the last drop. Chan felt they were getting closer.