by Mark Burnell
Savic couldn't have cared less. Here was a man who could be standing over the body, the smoking gun in his hand, the police coming through the door, and he still wouldn't have a worry in the world. No wonder he'd been in his element in the Balkans. He was never going to amble into a stray bullet. Stephanie had come across his breed before; rare, certainly, but never destined for extinction.
'Do you know how much human trafficking is worth, annually?'
She took a wild guess. 'Three billion dollars?'
'Add ten. And that's just the official estimate. I would say it's between fifteen and twenty billion a year. And it's not just the money that makes it attractive.'
'No?'
'The penalties are nothing compared to narcotics. Even better, the product works for you. A kilo of heroin incriminates you. An immigrant defends you.'
'Why?'
'Because they have a family back home.' Said without so much as a blink. 'There's one other thing. These people, it's what they want. In the West – in the media, especially – all you hear about is the exploitation. Well, sure, we like to make a profit. Just like General Motors or Airbus. But we're also providing a service. These people dream of making it to the States, or to Europe.'
'Please – I'm getting misty.'
'It's true. Nobody forces an immigrant to come to us. They come because they want to. Why? Because they know that if they stay they'll be condemned to poverty permanently. All they want is a chance.'
When Savic had finished eating he lit a cigarette. Stephanie drained her glass. 'Where do I fit into this?'
He was gazing out of the window. 'We're talking about a fifteen billion dollar industry where the most important qualification for success is not a certificate from Harvard. It's the will to do whatever is necessary. Making new markets, protecting established markets – it's never easy, it's often painful. You and I understand something that nobody else in this restaurant understands. That when you want something you have to take it. I didn't have the luxury of growing up in a society where you could ask politely and get something back. Or even where you could work for an eventual reward. Strip away the thin veneer of civilization and we all look after our own interests first. Call me a bastard, if you like, but at least I'm not a hypocrite.'
'I'm not like that.'
She could see he didn't believe it. 'Well, you may have had the privilege of being raised in Germany, but look at you now. What happened to make you who you are today?'
The main courses arrived: Stephanie's sautéed sea scallops on wasabi potatoes in a Singaporean black bean vinaigrette and Savic's double cut French veal chop.
'What, exactly, are you proposing?'
'Between here and Europe, we deal with Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Azeris, Chechens, Kurds, Afghans, Croats, Bosnians and Italians. But in Europe itself, at the end of all the routes, we find ourselves in competition with two major groups. The Turks and the Albanians. The Albanians, in particular, are a problem for us.'
'Just like they were in Kosovo?'
He managed to restrain himself. Just. 'Do you have any idea what it was like for Serbs living in Kosovo before the conflict? Do you know what it is to be part of a persecuted minority?'
Five in the morning and I can't sleep. I've been tossing and turning for an hour. Now I get out of bed and draw the curtains. It's dark and raining.
I've got a headache. It was after one when I got back here. I drank too much with Savic. I feel a little confused. I'm satisfying Gilbert Lai to buy my way in to Savic but I suspect there's a more direct route available.
I switch on my Siemens phone. There's a text message from Mark. He misses me, he hopes it's going well, he hopes I'll be home soon, he loves me. That's it. No spoken message. I don't want to read it. I want to hear it.
I run a hot bath and soak for half an hour, drinking as much mineral water as I can. Then I call room service and get them to send me some coffee. I watch BBC World for a bit but I'm too agitated to concentrate.
At six I call him.
'Hello?'
He hasn't recognized the number. Then again, why should he?
'Mark?'
'Hello? Who's this?'
He's struggling against a noisy background: clinking glasses, laughter.
'It's me.'
'Steph?'
'Yes.'
'Hey – where are you?'
'In Hong Kong. Where else?'
A crass thing to say. I ask him where he is. In a restaurant, celebrating Julian Cunningham's promotion.
'He's been made a director.'
'Great,' I say, even though I can't remember what he does. Karen's told me many times but it never registers. Something in the City, I guess. Still, a bigger salary means better holidays and a new four-wheel-drive vehicle to clog up London's congested streets. Which is nice.
'Hang on, let me see if I can go somewhere less noisy.'
This was a mistake. I listen to Mark extracting himself from the table. He tells them it's me. Two or three people shout hello. Like me last night, they've had too much to drink. They're having a good time, which only reinforces the fact that I'm not.
'That's better.'
'Where are you?' I ask.
'Outside. It's raining but I'm under a canopy.'
'It's raining here too.'
'Small world.'
'Very funny.'
'You okay?'
'I'm fine. You?'
'Of course.'
I can't believe we're going through the motions like this. I ask him who's at dinner They're all couples. Except him. And the girl Karen invited to balance the numbers. Justine Morgan.
'Justine …'
'Rob's in Paris this week, so she was on her own.'
Which is perfectly reasonable. Except that Mark once slept with Justine. Long before she married Rob. Long before he met me. Mark told me about Justine the first time I was due to meet her. It wasn't a problem. It never has been.
Until now.
I know it's completely ridiculous but I feel jealous. Actually it's worse than that. I feel suspicious. Which is unfair because I know there's no reason for it. But there it is. I can't deny it, and it stains the rest of my conversation with Mark. I barely hear what he's saying. At best, the questions I ask him are a waste of breath.
Eventually I say, 'You haven't asked me what I'm doing.'
Even as I say it I know it's reckless. I can almost hear Mark thinking.
'If I do, will you tell me?'
I'm standing at my window, my face pressed to the glass, sixty-one floors falling away below me. I gaze into the lit apartment windows in other skyscrapers. Other people, other lives, other secrets.
'No,' I whisper.
'Stephanie?'
'What?'
'It's okay.'
'Is it?'
'You know it is.'
Cathay Pacific CX715 left at eight in the evening, landing in Singapore at twenty to midnight. Stephanie checked into the Dragon Inn on Mosque Street in Chinatown. She had two days in Singapore. Both mornings, she tailed Waxman from his home in the grassy enclave of Alexandra Park to the skyscraper on Raffles Place where his law firm was located. Waxman's offices were on the ninth floor. Stephanie didn't bother going up. Both days, he went for lunch at Jade, the extortionate Chinese restaurant in the nearby Fullerton hotel. On her first day he spent the afternoon at Oceantech Container Services, a storage facility for ship containers on Tuas South Street. That evening he went for dinner with a group of six at Au Jardin les Amis, a French restaurant in a colonial house by the Botanic Gardens.
The second afternoon was spent at a large house on the Mount Pleasant Estate. Shortly before dusk Waxman went for a walk with two men through the nearby Chinese cemetery. Stephanie followed at a distance discreet enough to render their conversation inaudible. It was a creepy place, almost empty, with paths curling through thick vegetation. Among rain trees, rampant undergrowth and dripping tendrils were Buddhist tombs; surrounded by incense sticks, made
from stone or brick, most had a small portrait of the dead at their heart, either a photo or a painting.
She arrived back in Hong Kong on Friday evening. On Saturday morning, monstrous grey clouds rolled in from China, threatening rain. Stephanie headed for MacDonnell Road in the mid-levels, where she made several passes of the apartment block where Cheung kept his mistress, Daisy Yiu. Over the course of the following week Stephanie would witness Cheung entering and leaving the apartment four times.
On Sunday, around midday, she tracked Viktor Sabin to the Metropol Restaurant in the United Centre. A vast, brightly lit place with a low ceiling, it was packed, everyone eating dim sum and talking at full volume, the uproar as penetrative as a drill. Sabin was at a table with three Chinese and one of the Russians she'd seen at Gilbert Lai's house. They hadn't been introduced but she'd overheard him talking to the sanitation engineer from Krasnoyarsk.
Sabin looked annoyed, then smiled, the grease shining on all his chins. 'I'd forgotten I'd invited you.'
Stephanie played to his sarcasm. 'That's okay. I'm not staying.'
She pulled up a chair from the next table. The Chinese looked at each other while the Russian looked at her, making no attempt to conceal his hostility. He was whey-faced with thinning, mousey hair, pale blue eyes and bad teeth, in tracksuit bottoms and a black leather coat; Stephanie wondered if he resented the intrusion or whether they had, in fact, met in the past.
'Can you get me this?'
She handed Sabin the note. He took a few seconds to absorb the request. An old woman walked past pushing a dim sum cart. The Russian took two bamboo baskets from the top and opened them: steamed pork and shrimp dumplings and steamed mince beef balls. He extinguished his cigarette in the remains of a barbecued pork bun rather than use an ashtray, then picked up some chopsticks. Another woman appeared and four bottles of Tsingtao replaced the four empties. Also on the table there was tea, a plate of half-eaten crispy beancurd rolls and some vegetables, which had been largely ignored.
'The second item, easy. The first … I'll need to know the type of phone.'
'Motorola.'
'The exact type.'
'I'll have the precise specification for you in a day or two. But is it possible?'
Sabin nodded. 'I know someone who can do this. But it's work I have to contract out, you understand?'
'When can I have it?'
'When do you need it?'
'Come on, Viktor. You know the answer to that.'
'As soon as possible?'
Chapter 8
Ten to ten on a soggy Tuesday morning in Mong Kok. Stephanie, Savic and Vojislav Brankovic were sitting at the bar in Kiss Kiss on Fife Street. By day the interior of the club was no less dismal than the exterior. A stained carpet on the floor, stale cigarette smoke for air, the hum of a diesel generator powering a pump to clear an overflowing toilet. There was a runway protruding into the room, four dancing poles along its length, an old barefoot man cleaning each of them with a wet rag.
'Girls come here all the time. They want to dance, to earn good money. We only take the good-looking ones. The best ones get sent down to Club 151 in East Tsim Sha Tsui. We'll go there later. Some of the ones who make it here are pimped under the protection of a Red Pole. Most of them want to go to America. If they can raise the money, we start the process. First, though, they have to buy out their contract from the Red Pole. Normally it's not a problem. But we have to check. The last thing we need is anything that draws attention.'
Brankovic was slouched over the bar, playing with a book of matches, turning them over and over, his eyes never straying from his fingertips.
'When you say you start the process, you mean here?'
Savic nodded. 'This place has a reputation. If you want to catch the wind that will blow you to the West, you come here. Or to Gold Cat. If they're going to fly, or travel overland, they need documents. They provide the photos, we provide the passports. We have specialist centres. At Chungking Mansions, for instance. There are others. When they pick up the document they're given a location, a date and a time for collection. Sometimes it's here, sometimes at one of the shops we operate on Flower Market Road, sometimes somewhere else.'
Stephanie remembered following Asim Maliqi. 'Flower shops?'
'For those going overland to Europe. The trucks that bring the flowers into the city early in the morning take the girls out. They get delivered to farms we own in the New Territories and across the border in China. We use them as holding centres. They wait there until it's time to leave. When they depart they go as a group. Through China, to the north and west. Up into Russia. There are gangs along the way. We have arrangements with all of them.'
Savic excused himself and headed for the cloak-room.
'So you and Milan go back a few years, then?'
Brankovic looked at her and nodded.
'You're from Serbia?'
A shake of the head.
'Bosnia?'
A shrug of the shoulders; maybe.
'A Bosnian Serb?'
A nod.
He was heavier than Mark and Stephanie reckoned he was a couple of inches taller, which made him six foot six. Everything about him was placid: his expression, the way he shuffled, or slouched, the glazed eyes.
'Do you like Hong Kong?'
Another shake of the head.
Savic was on his way back.
'Well, it's been nice chatting.'
Still nothing.
She asked Savic what route they used.
'We have several. From Kazakhstan or Russia, through the Ukraine, down into eastern Europe. Or across central Asia, through Turkey and the Balkans. It's the same when they fly. A document to get them to Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok, then something to take them on to Moscow, Istanbul, Karachi. Then a connection to Prague or Budapest. Or even Sofia. From there, anywhere …'
'What about America?'
'They tend to travel by boat. These days we aim for Mexico, for two reasons. One: the United States coast guard is more proactive than it used to be. Two: once they're in Mexico they're not our problem any more. The Mexican gangs don't bother with any kinds of documentation. They prefer to try to run them across the Rio Grande and get them to a large metropolitan area, where they can disappear.'
An hour later they were at Club 151 in East Tsim Sha Tsui, a far larger establishment, almost completely deserted. Stephanie imagined the lacquer effect – predominantly black and red – looked good at night, under lights carefully dimmed and directed, but by day it was no less depressing than Kiss Kiss.
In one room there was a karaoke stage. The girl with the microphone looked bored and beautiful: a mini-skirt, rhinestone cowboy boots, a pale powder blue shirt, one tiny hand on a jutting hip, lips pouting. She didn't appear to have an audience. The backing track started and she began to sing. Hopelessly out of time and tune, she was half way through the song before Stephanie recognized it: 'A Little Less Conversation'.
'A little less singing wouldn't go amiss.'
Savic guided her towards the VIP lounge, placing a hand at the centre of her back. He left it there longer than necessary. When he withdrew it he ran a finger down a short stretch of spine. She didn't react at all. Somebody brought them cappuccinos in black cups with red rims. 151 had been sprinkled onto the foam in chocolate powder.
Stephanie said, 'There were a lot of Russians at Lai's place.'
'We work well with them. Everybody makes money. I've always had Russian contacts. Even before I came here for the first time. These days there is a noticeable Russian presence in Hong Kong. Mostly, the money is legitimate. Where it came from originally – who can say?'
Stephanie was thinking of Komarov when she nodded. 'You don't run the Russian routes yourself, then?'
'No. They wouldn't permit it. We'd be crushed if we tried. Everyone has their territory. There were some Russians from Vladivostok who tried to establish themselves in Macao a few years ago. They were running white Russian girls through the casinos, who turne
d out to be very popular with the customers. But not so popular with the local Triads. In the end it all turned to shit. There was a New Zealand lawyer who was living here – Gary Alderdice – and he fell in love with one of these girls. Natalia Samosalova. They went up to Vladivostok to try to buy her out of her contract for US$150,000. Both of them were murdered. After that the Russians were kicked out of Macao. Too much heat. The Triads made sure of that.'
'How?'
'They colluded with the police. At least that's the rumour.'
'Where do the local girls come from?'
'The poorer estates in Sham Shui Po, Cheung Sha Wan or Shek Kip Mei. Or from the mainland.'
'What percentage of your business do they represent?'
'The majority of those heading West are male. For us, females represent ten to fifteen per cent. For most groups, five to ten. I would say.'
'What do they pay?'
'It depends on where you want to go and how you're going to get there. Roughly speaking, between thirty and sixty thousand dollars.'
Stephanie raised an eyebrow. 'Not a bad return for a journey that would normally cost a few hundred dollars on an airline.'
Savic was annoyed. 'A few hundred dollars is a waste of money if an immigration official sends you home on the next flight. They're not buying an air ticket. They're buying a life.'
Over ten days, when she wasn't preparing for Waxman and Cheung, Stephanie spent more time with Savic than she'd expected. Since her agreement with Lai, Savic had relaxed and seemed happy to show her elements of the business. He took her to the site for the proposed Cyberport development beneath the village of Pok Fu Lam on the south-west of the island. Lai, he told her, would have a piece of it. Which meant he would too; the trickle-down effect.
They visited farms in the New Territories: chickens, pigs, beansprouts, flowers, all on an industrial scale. The chicken sheds were huge, the birds crammed into cages, fluorescent overheads ensuring it was light twenty-four hours a day. He took her to haulage depots in northern Shek Kip Mei and So Uk: cavernous warehouses filled with the sweet stench of diesel, echoing to the wheeze of sickly engines, lorries shunting in and out around the dock.