Hungry Ghost

by Stephen Leather

  He was nearing the end of his tether by the time Howells came on the scene. He was blindfolded so he wasn’t sure who was in the room with him but he’d guessed that one of them was the girl by the way she’d padded across the floor. He heard her walk to the door and pause as she checked the peep-hole. He heard the rattle of the bolt and then he heard the crash of a foot against the wooden door and then a scream and two shots. Edmunds had panicked, rolling off the camp bed on to the floor clawing at the blindfold, scared shitless that at any second he was going to get a bullet in the head. A third shot barked and he heard a simultaneous thud and grunt and he blinked in the light as the middle-aged man slumped to the ground. By the door was the young man, blood pumping from a gaping wound in his chest. The girl was lying at the foot of the bed, her long black hair spreading like a pool of oil behind her head. One of her eye sockets was filling with blood and as he watched he saw red flow among the black tendrils of hair. Her legs twitched as if she was sleeping but the bullet had cauterized most of her brain tissue.

  Only then did Edmunds see the man at the door, the man who had done so much damage in a few scant seconds. Lean and wiry with a long face and deep-set eyes, two or three days’ stubble on his chin, he held a large handgun in both hands, moving the barrel slowly from side to side, covering the three corpses in the room. Cancel that. Two corpses. The older man was still alive, breathing heavily and clasping his hand around his groin where he’d been shot. Howells looked at Edmunds and aimed the gun at him, face totally relaxed, no sign of the tension that he surely must have felt. Edmunds realized that he must have forced the young man to stand in front of the peep-hole and then pushed him into the room, probably shooting him in the back. One against three, crazy odds that no one in his right mind would go up against. The man didn’t look crazy, he looked very, very cool. His voice when it came was cold and hard.

  ‘Who are you?’ The accent was English.

  ‘American,’ said Edmunds, looking into the barrel of the gun and wincing as he saw the man’s finger tighten on the trigger.

  ‘I didn’t ask what you are.’

  ‘Ralph Simmonds. I’m a businessman, I sell computers.’ Edmunds knew instinctively that it would not be a good idea to tell this man that he was with an intelligence agency.

  ‘Good answer. Stay down on the floor.’

  He walked over to the man who was groaning on the floor and stood over him. He fired at the man’s right leg and smiled as the bullet smashed through the kneecap and bit a chunk out of the floor. The man screamed and Howells shot him through the other leg. The man stopped screaming then, probably passed out, and Howells leant down and placed the barrel in the man’s mouth before pulling the trigger for the sixth and final time. He stood up then, stretching like a cat in the sun, his eyes closed. He exhaled deeply and then turned to look at Edmunds. ‘Tell nobody what you saw,’ he said, lifting the barrel of the gun to his lips. ‘Tell them you had your blindfold on all the time.’ Edmunds nodded quickly, acting the part of the frightened businessman.

  Afterwards, when he was being debriefed in Langley he was told that the man who’d been keeping him prisoner had been one of the most dangerous terrorists on the loose in the Lebanon; he’d killed three hostages and had been involved in at least half a dozen bombings. They told Edmunds how lucky he’d been. Two of the hostages had been killed after ransoms had been paid. They’d shown him countless pictures but he hadn’t been able to identify the man who’d freed him, the man who’d taken such pleasure from torturing his captor. And, to be honest, Edmunds wasn’t sure if he would have identified Howells even if he had been shown his photograph. He owed him. And as he looked down at the same deep-set eyes, and read the background information on the man called Geoff Howells, he knew that was as true now as it had been all those years ago.

  Dugan waited until after lunch before calling Bellamy in the hope that he’d be in a better mood than the last time they’d spoken.

  ‘Jeff. It’s Dugan.’

  ‘What the fuck do you want, Dugan?’ Bellamy barked into the phone. Dugan held the receiver away from his ear. So much for his theory that a full stomach would soften his temper.

  ‘Give me a break, Jeff. I just want some information.’

  ‘Dugan, the way I feel at the moment I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.’

  ‘I suppose this means you won’t pass me the ball during the Rugby Sevens.’

  Bellamy snorted and Dugan knew that he was smiling despite himself.

  ‘Business is business, you bastard, but rugby is something else. I’ll tell you what, Dugan, I’ll give you one minute. For no other reason than the fact that you’ve got one of the best pairs of hands in Hong Kong. And the clock’s ticking.’

  ‘Petal?’

  ‘She’s gone. And be careful, Pat. She’s trouble.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Special Branch are on to the case. One of the dead guys is some sort of Chinese intelligence agent, he was expelled from Taiwan a few years back and he’d been photographed a couple of times at Kai Tak. I think you’re going to get a call from them today.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘All right, I’m fucking certain you will.’

  ‘You told them I knew her?’

  ‘It wasn’t a secret, old lad.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. They think she was one of them?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It doesn’t look good, does it?’

  ‘For you? Or for her?’

  Dugan ignored that. ‘The gweilo,’ he said. ‘What’s happening about the gweilo?’

  ‘We’ve got his name and his passport number, and we’re lifting his prints from the room. We’ve got a rough description from the hotel staff but no photograph. We’ve put a stop on him at the airport but if he’s got a false passport we’re buggered.’

  ‘But he’s hurt?’

  ‘Yeah, there was plenty of blood so the chances are that he’s gone to ground. We’re checking all the hospitals and the surgeries, but that takes time. And anyway, there are plenty of underground doctors who’ll treat him.’

  ‘The question is, why did he run? If they were there to kill him, why run?’

  ‘You tell me, Dugan. Maybe he thought they’d try again. Maybe he’s got something to hide. Maybe he went out to buy a pack of cigarettes.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Howells. Geoff Howells.’

  ‘Have you run a check on him?’

  ‘We checked the name and it matches with the passport number and we’re checking with the UK. There’s no record of him in our files. He’s never been to Hong Kong before, not on that passport, anyway. Your minute’s up, Dugan. And we never had this conversation.’

  ‘Understood. I appreciate it, Jeff. Next time I see you I’ll give you a big, sloppy kiss.’

  ‘My arse you will,’ said Bellamy, laughing.

  ‘Wherever you want it,’ Dugan said and put the phone down. So the gweilo was still in Hong Kong, probably in need of medical treatment. His name was Geoff Howells, and for some reason he’d been hired to kill his brother-in-law. He sat staring out of the window, absent-mindedly drumming his fingers on the desk, as he tried to work out what to do next.

  You could tell a lot about a country from the way the taxi system was organized, thought Edmunds, as he walked with Feinberg out of the arrivals area and through the electronically operated doors that led to the taxi rank. In a highly developed country only a fool would pay for a taxi – getting from Gatwick to London or from Narita to Tokyo cost an arm and a leg, and anyway it was quicker by train. If you arrived at some god-awful Third World country like Indonesia then the drivers attacked like jackals, grabbing at you and undercutting each other in an attempt to get you into their cab. The Thais were a bit more polite, but the taxis that waited outside Bangkok’s airport were every bit as ramshackle and the meters, when they had them, never worked and you had to haggle over the fare before getting in. But they were still c
heap. At Kai Tak the cabs queued patiently and the meters worked, but the fares were still affordable. The Jack Edmunds Theory of Economic Development in Relation to Taxis – the poorer a country, the cheaper and less efficient the taxi system. The richer it became, the better the quality of the taxi service until the standard of living of the drivers reached such a point that their cabs became priced out of the reach of most people. London was getting that way. The last time he’d been there he’d had trouble getting his expense sheet through; the accounts department had said he was only supposed to hire cabs, not buy one.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Feinberg as they joined the queue.

  ‘Taxis.’

  ‘Yeah, a bitch, aren’t they? Them and death, the only two things in life that are certain. Who said that?’

  ‘You did, Rick.’

  ‘I meant originally.’ Edmunds knew what Feinberg meant, but he couldn’t be bothered to get into a long conversation about it so he just shrugged.

  ‘Where did you book us into?’ he asked the younger man.

  There were a dozen or so people in front of them, businessmen in dark suits carrying briefcases and overnight bags, a German family sweating in the heat and a couple of turbaned Sikhs. Edmunds was dressed casually, cream linen slacks and a fake black Yves St Laurent shirt and a pair of brown leather moccasins that he’d picked up for next to nothing in Bangkok. Feinberg was wearing a pale blue safari suit and Nike training shoes and his Ray-Ban sunglasses. Edmunds knew that what the younger agent really wanted to do was to parachute in from 10,000 feet with an M-16 between his teeth, but the Ray-Bans would have to do. Christ, where did the CIA get him from? Obviously rode in on the gung-ho tide of Reaganism which gave the intelligence services back most of the kudos and glamour that they’d lost under Nixon, but which had allowed in a lot of men who would have been more at home in large institutions with bars on the windows and jackets with long sleeves.

  ‘The Victoria Hotel, on the island.’

  ‘We’re doing this on the cheap?’

  ‘We’re not here officially,’ said Feinberg quietly.

  ‘What do you mean, we’re not here officially?’ said Edmunds, aware that a taxi queue outside an international airport wasn’t the most secure environment for a conversation like this.

  ‘Don’t panic, for fuck’s sake. When I say it’s not official, I mean we’ve just got to keep away from the local office. They’re not supposed to know we’re here. Nobody is. In and out before anyone realizes we’re even here.’

  ‘But it’s from the Company?’

  ‘Of course it’s from the Company. Do you think I’d take you on a freelance operation without telling you?’

  Too right I do, thought Edmunds. Too fucking right. ‘So?’

  ‘Greg Hamilton is running this show. I was going to tell you when we got to the hotel.’

  ‘It might have been nice if you’d told me before we got here.’

  ‘Fuck it, Jack. Hamilton called me because he couldn’t get hold of you, that’s all. I answered the phone and I got the briefing. I’m just passing on the information, that’s all.’

  They had got to the front of the queue and they walked across to the taxi. They had one bag each; Edmunds’ was a folding job that doubled as a suit-hanger, while Feinberg carried a bright blue nylon holdall. They took them into the back with them rather than using the boot. They were both travelling light. Like Feinberg had said, in and out before anyone knew they were there. Anyone but Greg Hamilton. Feinberg told the driver where they wanted to go but he didn’t seem to understand.

  ‘Huh?’ he grunted and screwed up his eyes.

  ‘Victoria Hotel,’ Feinberg repeated slowly. ‘Hong Kong island.’

  The driver shook his head. ‘Me not know. Me not know.’

  ‘Oh fuck,’ said Feinberg. ‘Now what are we going to do?’

  ‘You could waste him,’ suggested Edmunds dryly.

  Feinberg slapped the headrest of the driver’s seat. ‘Victoria Hotel,’ he said again. ‘Victoria Hotel.’

  Edmunds wound down his window and called over to a well-dressed Chinese businessman, forty years old or thereabouts with horn-rimmed glasses and a crocodile skin briefcase.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you but we’re having a little trouble with the driver. Can you help?’

  The man smiled and walked over, leaning down to get his head level with Edmunds. ‘Sure,’ he said, with a mid-Western drawl. ‘Where do you folks want to go?’

  ‘Victoria Hotel,’ said Edmunds. The man spoke to the driver in Cantonese and he nodded and grunted. ‘Thanks,’ said Edmunds.

  ‘No sweat,’ said the man. ‘Enjoy your stay in Hong Kong.’

  Edmunds wound the window back up and sat back as the airconditioner did its best to cool the cab.

  ‘Hamilton is in London,’ he said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So why is he running an operation in Hong Kong?’

  ‘He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. You can call him if you want to, I suppose.’

  ‘Sure. So what’s the game plan?’

  ‘According to Hamilton this guy Howells is injured, he’s been shot, so it won’t be too long before the police track him down.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that.’ Edmunds was starting to get annoyed. He didn’t like going into an operation without a full briefing, but he hated even more the fact that the information had to come through a shithead like Feinberg. The least Hamilton could have done was to have spoken to him. He had seniority, when all was said and done.

  ‘Like I said, I was going to sit down and discuss it when we got to the Victoria. Look, Jack, don’t worry. This is going to be a piece of cake.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why the police shot him.’

  ‘Not the police. He was attacked in a hotel room. Hamilton says he’s killed an agent of ours and we have to even the score, but without offending our cousins. This is still British territory, even if there are more of us here than them.’

  ‘So it’s a revenge hit?’

  ‘That’s all there is to it. Howells hit one of ours, we hit him.’

  ‘But Howells is a Brit. There’s something not right here.’

  ‘The Brits retired him, you read the file. Howells is a maverick, he’s gone on the rampage. He’s the disease and we’re the cure.’

  ‘You’ve been watching too many Sylvester Stallone movies.’

  ‘Sly’s my hero,’ said Feinberg, grinning like a kid.

  He would be, thought Edmunds.

  ‘Look,’ continued Feinberg. ‘The local police are after Howells. Once they get him we hit him. There’s no way he can leave Hong Kong and it’s not an easy place for a white man to hide. Especially not with a bullet hole. But I think we can speed things up a bit.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s wounded and he’s in an unfamiliar environment. He can’t go to hospital so he’ll need someone to hide him. He’s working alone and as far as Hamilton knows he has no friends here.’

  ‘Cherchez la femme?’

  ‘It’s the obvious, isn’t it. Find a girl to shack up with.’

  Edmunds nodded in agreement. ‘So we check the bars and nightclubs. There must only be a few thousand of them.’

  Feinberg raised his finger and waved it in front of Edmunds’ nose. ‘Hong Kong has changed since the days of the Vietnam War, you know. There are plenty of bars for the Chinese but he wouldn’t go there, he’s more likely to have gone to one of the tourist bars, Wan Chai or Tsim Sha Tsui. There’s a few dozen of them at most. We can check them out in one night, just show his picture around and say we’re looking for an old friend. We might get lucky. And even if we don’t the police will get him eventually. Either way he’s history.’

  Feinberg seemed to relish the idea, and all but licked his lips Edmunds watched him, wondering who really was the psychopath, Geoff Howells or Rick Feinberg.

  Amy was stiff all over when she woke up. There was only one bed in her
tiny flat, and the gweilo was in that. She had no qualms about sharing her single bed but didn’t want to risk hurting him. She came back just after four o’clock in the morning and Howells had been in a deep sleep, snoring soundly. She’d kissed him on the back of the head, and after placing a fresh glass of water by the bed she’d slept curled up on the small rattan couch in her lounge, covered with a woollen blanket.

  Normally she slept until the late afternoon, but Dr Wu had said he would come round sometime after midday, so she set her small travel alarm for eleven o’clock. She made herself a pot of jasmine tea and sat on the couch drinking it as she thought about the night before. She had been lucky, a visiting businessman from Sydney had taken a fancy to her and had sat with her for almost three hours buying her drink after drink as he tried to slip his hand down the back of her dress. After he’d bought her a couple of drinks she’d taken him into one of the booths at the back of the bar where the lights were dimmer and the prices higher. There she’d let him kiss her and touch her breasts, outside her dress, and she’d stroked his thigh and speeded up her drink rate from one every twenty minutes to one every twelve. He’d smelt of stale sweat and tobacco and the whisky on his breath made her want to retch but she’d smiled and laughed at his stupid jokes and hung on his every word as his bill rose higher and higher.