Marine G SBS

by David Monnery

  It took them most of an hour to reach a point astride the maritime boundary some two miles off the mountainous Shekou peninsula, and from there they slowly followed the Chinese coast eastwards, taking turns with the high-powered binoculars. They passed the Shekou hover-ferry terminal, and then, a mile further on, Shekou itself, with its port capable of handling ocean-going ships. Two short-sea traders were riding at anchor offshore but neither bore the characters Cafell had so painstakingly copied down.

  The coast receded somewhat after that, but never beyond the reach of the binoculars. The two men watched a succession of tiny fishing villages give way, somewhat incongruously, to the distant silhouettes of a roller-coaster and Ferris wheel.

  The coast drew nearer once more as they approached the head of the bay, but there was no sign of any port facility, only flat fields receding towards a raised highway. Finn turned the boat round and headed them back towards Shekou.

  ‘What about the estuary coast?’ he asked.

  ‘Not this time,’ Marker said. ‘If Rob and Ian come up empty then maybe we’ll risk it after dark.’

  ‘You’d think it would be too public,’ Finn observed. ‘The Canton ferry would go straight past it.’

  ‘About five miles offshore,’ Marker corrected him. ‘I checked before we left.’

  ‘Ah. Possible, then. But what are the chances of Whitehall OK’ing another venture into the unknown?’

  ‘They’ll only get the chance to say no if we ask them. As far as I’m concerned we’ve already been given the green light to trespass in Chinese waters.’

  Finn smiled. ‘The politicos might make a distinction between the waters around an uninhabited island and the waters off the mainland.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Marker agreed. ‘They might.’

  From the window of his Shenzhen City office Wang Shao-qu could see across the border into Hong Kong’s New Territories, and he often sat watching the Canton–Kowloon Railway trains disappear into the hills on their way to the centre of the British colony. In a little over two years he hoped to be making the same journey himself, rather in the manner of a conquering general come to claim his prize.

  And there was no reason why Hong Kong should not be his. He had made Shenzhen prosperous enough, and he shared that prosperity with all the right people. The PSB were loyal to a man, as were most of the local Party functionaries. The local PLA commanders were all in his pocket, and with good reason. They knew Mao’s old army had a doubtful future in the new China, and there was no better hedge against uncertainty than money.

  He heard his secretary’s footsteps, listened for the sound of the tea being placed on his desk, but didn’t bother to turn round. In Hong Kong he would have a gweilo secretary, a blonde with long legs and heavy breasts. He would live in a truly cosmopolitan world at last. He could hardly wait.

  Sometimes he was almost tempted not to. The $200 million already on deposit in Zurich would buy a cosmopolitan life anywhere on the planet, and he could indulge his hunger for blondes until the urge – which even he found perverse – finally faded. But opting for a life like that would cut him off from that unrestrained exercise of real power, both in the office and the bedroom, to which he had grown accustomed over the years. And he didn’t want to give that up. He liked the way the women prisoners wept beneath him – that was the way relationships between men and women were supposed to be. No wonder they were so obsessed with sex in the West – there was no satisfaction to be had from a pretence of equality.

  His phone rang, and he turned to pick it up.

  ‘Comrade Hua for you,’ the secretary announced, making him smile. Her use of the word always amused him.

  ‘We caught the woman snooping around,’ Hua said without preamble.

  ‘Good,’ Wang said, taking a Winston from the silver cigarette box and flicking open his Zippo lighter.

  ‘What do you want done with her?’ Hua asked.

  Wang expelled smoke. ‘She made no further contact with Hong Kong?’

  ‘None.’

  That was good, Wang thought. She would be just another mysterious disappearance, just one more victim of the crime wave engulfing the Zone. Deng might trumpet his ‘Four Modernizations’ – agriculture, industry, defence and technology – but in Shenzhen everyone knew there were five, and crime was the one with the highest growth rate. ‘So send her back to the camp with the rest after the night shift. How old is she?’

  ‘About thirty, I should think.’

  ‘And three times as healthy as one of our people,’ Wang said. ‘If one of our illustrious leaders has a sudden need she’ll be very useful.’ There was, after all, nothing quite so gratitude-inducing as an immediately available life-saving organ. There were already four men on the Guangdong politburo, and one on the all-nation body, who had Wang’s prison population to thank for their continued existences.

  ‘She’s attractive too,’ Hua said ingratiatingly. ‘She’s half-English.’

  ‘Is she?’ Wang was interested in spite of himself.

  ‘I can keep her here for you.’

  He had nothing else on that evening. ‘I may come down to the villa later,’ he said.

  Marker and Finn arrived back to find the other two enjoying mugs of tea on the end of the dock. Cafell was looking pleased with himself.

  ‘Any joy?’ Marker yelled out.

  ‘Nope, but I’ve had two brainwaves . . .’

  ‘A year’s supply in one afternoon,’ Finn observed.

  Cafell ignored him. ‘The stuff’s in my room,’ he said, getting up. ‘You didn’t check the estuary coastline?’ he asked Marker, as the four men walked across to the barracks entrance.

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘All will be revealed. First brainwave – since we’re assuming that the Ocean Carousel cargo is going to be re-exported why not check the insurance companies’ register of cargoes?’

  ‘Which would tell us what?’ Finn asked.

  ‘Where our cargo is going to be picked up the second time round,’ Marker told him.

  ‘And the answer is Shekou,’ Cafell said. ‘I phoned the boss in Poole when we got back and asked him to find out. He called back half an hour later. Ships will be calling at Shekou tomorrow and next Monday to load the exact same cargoes which were taken off the Ocean Carousel and Indian Sun.’

  They had reached Cafell’s room.

  ‘Which leaves us with two possibilities,’ he went on, after they had all crammed in. ‘Either they’re using Shekou for everything, which seems unlikely – it’s too visible – or they’re being really cunning, and bringing the stuff overland from its port of re-entry. If they’re doing that then the people at Shekou would assume it was coming straight from the factory.’

  It made sense, Marker thought. ‘And where is the port of re-entry?’ he asked.

  Cafell reached back for the aerial photograph which they had looked at several days earlier. ‘I’d put money on here,’ he said, indicating the river estuary just below Nantou on the Pearl estuary coast.

  ‘Why?’ Marker asked, disappointed.

  ‘Look at the bend in the river,’ Cafell said. ‘It would mask any view from the estuary, and the river looks wide enough to take short-sea traders.’

  Marker shrugged. ‘It may be a good guess, but . . .’

  ‘We’ll soon know,’ Cafell interrupted, a wide grin on his face. ‘This picture was taken in 1978. I asked the boss if there was any chance of getting a more recent photo, and he said he’d try. When he called back he said the Yanks had agreed. Apparently they’re feeling sufficiently pissed off with the Chinese to do us a favour. And a 1993 vintage photo is on its way from the Pentagon, via the US Embassy. It should be here in the next hour or so.’

  Finn was less than impressed. ‘OK, I get all that,’ he said, ‘but what about the brainwaves?’

  Marker gave Cafell a playful pat on the head and went off in search of a phone. Rosalie still wasn’t back, Li told him, and according to the Lo Wu border officials, whom the detect
ive had alerted late that morning, she had not yet re-entered the colony. ‘If she has not appeared by six o’clock,’ Li said, ‘I shall take the matter to our superior. He will ask the Shenzhen police to start an investigation.’

  Marker hung up the phone and stood beside it, his eyes closed. He knew in his bones that something had gone badly wrong, and could only pray that the situation was still retrievable.

  He walked back towards Cafell’s room, wanting to take off for Shenzhen himself, but knowing that for all the good such a gesture would do, he might just as well hit his head against a wall. A messenger arrived at the same time he did, large envelope in hand. Marker took it in and ceremoniously handed it to Cafell, who was already armed with his magnifying lens.

  He took out a large contact sheet and a wad of prints, sorted through for the one he wanted, and applied the lens. A few seconds later he said ‘Bingo’ softly, and invited Marker to look. It was all there: the dock, the dredger in mid-river, the warehouses and the access road.

  ‘This is the adjoining photo,’ Cafell said, putting it alongside the first. The access road continued on beside the river for half a mile, then cut across behind the hilly headland which stood sentry at the river’s mouth, to end among a cluster of buildings on the shore of the wide Pearl estuary. ‘It’s a small naval base,’ Cafell explained. ‘It’s been there since at least ’78. But this’ – he pointed out a single large building on the estuary side of the headland – ‘is new. And so’s the track to it.’

  ‘If it was built at the same time as the port, then maybe it belongs to Mr Big,’ Finn suggested.

  ‘Maybe,’ Marker said. Looking at the photos he felt strangely certain that this was where she was. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘before I make any suggestions there’s something I have to tell you all. You all know that Rosalie Kai is involved in this business, and you’ve probably noticed that she and I have been spending a lot of time together . . .’

  ‘We get the picture, boss,’ Finn said. ‘It was the spring in your step which gave you away.’

  Marker smiled in spite of himself, but only for a second. ‘What you don’t know is that she’s gone missing in Shenzhen, as of yesterday afternoon.’

  There was a silence as that sank in.

  ‘What was she doing there?’ Cafell asked eventually.

  ‘No one knows,’ Marker said. He felt angry with her about that, and wished he didn’t. ‘The reason I’m bringing it up is that I really feel the need to do something, and there’s always the chance it’s warping my judgement.’ He did the rounds of the others’ faces. ‘That said, I’d like to pay this place a visit tonight. We’ve followed the trail of these bastards all the way from Singapore, and I don’t see any point in giving up now.’ He looked at Cafell, who had as much common sense as himself and Finn put together. ‘Rob?’

  ‘What are our objectives?’ Cafell asked in a neutral voice.

  ‘Same as on Chuntao – we gather evidence. Finn can do his Spielberg impersonation. And this may be the place they keep their records – an organization operating on this sort of scale must keep some somewhere, and it’s hard to imagine anywhere safer.’

  ‘What sort of records?’ Finn wanted to know.

  ‘Cargo inventories. Accounts. Lists of pay-outs to all the different groups involved. Receipts from dock handlers and shipping lines. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Cafell agreed.

  ‘And what else are we going to do?’ Finn asked rhetorically. ‘Like the boss says, we’re following a trail. And if all else fails there’s always the grand old SBS tradition of making up objectives as you go along.’

  Cafell didn’t look completely convinced. ‘There’s always the chance that this bunch have got the thing really well sussed, that none of their facilities are vital, and that all of them are replaceable . . .’

  ‘So we don’t bother?’ Finn asked.

  ‘If you’d wait until I finished . . . I was going to say that maybe the best we can do is put a spoke in the bastards’ wheel, and if so we should make it as big a spoke as we can manage, and take some C4 along.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Marker said, smiling. ‘Ian, what do you do think?’

  Dubery looked surprised to be asked. ‘If we use the Kleppers then getting in shouldn’t be a problem,’ he said slowly, ‘but getting out might be. If we run into any trouble at all, and someone alerts the naval base . . .’

  ‘We’ll have a hell of a job getting home in the Kleppers,’ said Cafell, completing his thought for him.

  ‘These guys are usually considerate enough to leave us a speedboat,’ Finn said optimistically.

  ‘And if they don’t?’

  ‘Then we’re up the Pearl estuary without a paddle.’

  Rosalie sat on the floor of the dark, empty cold store, her back against the mould-encrusted wall. The jade-green trouser suit she had been wearing for thirty-six hours was covered in dirt, and the smell of her own waste hung in the trapped air. The luminous dial on her watch told her that she had been here for eight hours, but it felt a lot longer.

  Outside it would soon be getting dark, and in Hong Kong Marker and Li would be beginning to worry in earnest. And also in vain. Only Lin Chun could point them in this direction, and they had no earthly reason to ask him.

  It was greed, she thought. Her father had never known when to stop, and neither had she. He had always wanted a little bit more, had never been satisfied, and when the bridge burnt down behind him there had been no way back across the river. And now she had done the same: kept on pushing and pushing until it was too late. She could have gone back to Hong Kong with her knowledge of the location, or simply satisfied herself with seeing the tell-tale gates and fence. But no, she had needed to climb under it, see for herself, have it all. It was the same greed, and the fact that she and her father had been on different sides of the law seemed almost irrelevant. Neither of them had found the balance, the inner harmony, which the Buddhists knew was central to both happiness and effectiveness in this world.

  She stared into the darkness, thinking that it was probably a little late to be worrying about this world. No doubt the Wangs could arrange to have her tried for espionage if they wished, but there didn’t seem any reason why they should. There was no way they could risk her simple imprisonment – no one in China, no matter how powerful, could guarantee that the political winds would blow their way for ever. The puritan left might one day regain power, and the prisoners of today would become the witnesses of tomorrow. It had happened before, and not so long ago. They could not afford to let her live.

  So why was she still alive?

  She could think of no comforting answer.

  12

  The Rigid Raider dropped off the four men and their two Kleppers near the north-western corner of British waters, some two miles to the south of the mountainous Shekou peninsula. Normally each man would have relished the beauty of the star-strewn sky and moon-washed waters, but the clarity of the night only increased their chances of being seen. The four of them paddled swiftly in towards the sheltering silhouette of the Chinese coast, each engrossed by the needs of the moment.

  When they had drawn to within a few hundred yards of the shore Marker slowed the pace, conserving energy for the night ahead. He was trying not to think about Rosalie, and wondering how anyone could have come to seem so important, so central to his life, in such a short space of time.

  In the seat behind him Finn was pondering the same subject. He had watched as Marker explained the thing about the woman, and he had seen something in the boss’s eyes which he was sure no one had ever seen in his own. That was kind of sad, he thought, and maybe he was being given nights like this so that he could tell his children about them. It was a frightening thought, but maybe his mother had been right about something.

  The coastline floated by, and not much more than half an hour had elapsed when Marker judged it time to steer further out into the estuary, and so draw a wide half-circle around the naval bas
e. There was no activity on the several jetties, but lights shone in several windows and the distant sounds of a TV show carried across the water. A quarter of a mile further up the coast the villa nestling at the foot of the small wooded headland showed no obvious signs of life, but a motor launch lay alongside the small private dock.

  The mouth of the river appeared, but as expected the view was foreshortened by the tight bend, and there was no visible clue to the fact that a port facility had been constructed only half a mile upstream. The SBS men paddled across the river mouth towards the northern shore, pulled the Kleppers up out of the water, and carried them quickly across the rocks and up a short slope into the shelter of the trees. This headland, bordered on three sides by the twisting river, was mostly wooded, around two hundred yards wide, and rose to a fifty-foot ridge. The satellite photos had shown no trace of a human presence.

  Having hidden the Kleppers, the four men pushed their way up through the tropical vegetation, stopping a few yards short of the crest to listen for movement on the other side. Behind them the moon rode high in the southern sky and the gleaming black waters of the wide estuary stretched away towards the pinpricks of light which marked its farther shore. Myriad boats dotted the water, the closest a princely-looking junk with latticed sails that shone pale gold in the moonlight. The four of them were behind enemy lines, a hell of a long way from home, and hopefully on their way to smite the wicked. It was one of those brief moments in which Marker felt blessed, both to be alive and to be a member of the SBS.

  An engine of some sort started to grind in the distance, but the headland seemed locked in silence. Marker moved forward on his stomach to the crest, and looked out through a dense mesh of foliage at the wide river below. A few yards to the left he found a better window on the scene, one which also framed the buildings on the bank beyond.

  The four men hunkered down, draped the anti-reflective gauze veils across their binoculars and started exploring the view. On the far side of the two-hundred-yard-wide river a single concrete jetty had been built out from the bank. It was about twenty yards wide and five times as long, offering room to spare for the three-thousand-ton short-sea trader which was tied up against it. This was in the process of being unloaded, and the grinding noise they had heard was emanating from one of two derricks amidships.