by Peter Tonkin
Richard went quietly, responding in kind to the courtesy of his honour guard leader, the crane driver he now knew as First Officer Wan. ‘How is your hand, Mr Wan?’ he asked quietly.
‘Much improved, thank you, Captain.’
‘May one inquire as to Detective Captain Ho?’
‘Lawkeeper is safe and well.’
‘Has a message been sent to our families? Do they know that you rescued us?’
‘That is for Captain Song to tell you if he wishes.’
‘Of course. I understand.’
The conversation took them down the corridor to the lift and up to the navigating bridge. Silence returned as the lift doors hissed open and Richard really began to concentrate. He had not thought that they would bring him up here. As a law-abiding citizen on a ship smuggling contraband he had expected to be kept in the dark. If anything, the fact that he was to be interviewed here was full of sinister implications. Even so, he set about wringing every drop of information he could from everything he could see.
As the lift doors hissed closed behind him, he walked forward across a short corridor which ran laterally to two big doors leading past the stairwells to the port and starboard exterior companionways. Straight ahead was a half-class wall with two doors opposite the stairwells, which opened on to the after section of the bridge. Here, behind a wall of instruments whose dials all faced forwards, there was a chart table with a perspex top under which lay a chart of the South China Sea. There were course markings drawn in Chinagraph pencil across the chart on the perspex but from this angle it was impossible to see anything with any precision. And as they came through the door on to the bridge proper, First Officer Wan positioned himself so as to obscure the chart altogether.
Richard’s attention immediately switched to the instrumentation all around him on the bridge. The ship’s chronometer revealed that it was a little past noon local time. The navigation instrumentation revealed that they were heading due south at thirteen knots. The engine room telegraph showed that they were set on economic cruising speed. The collision alarm radar was set to maximum and there was nothing big enough close enough to give anyone any concern. Apart from Wan and the honour guard, there was a man at the helm — perhaps for effect since the ship seemed to be on automatic — and a navigating officer who seemed to be even younger than Mr Wan. Everything else of importance, from the Decca navigating equipment to the satellite weather predictor, like the chart, was obscured by an apparently casual display of slight untidiness.
Captain Song was holding an elegant-looking sextant and had obviously been taking a noon reading for his own enjoyment. There was no other reason to do so on a ship as well-fitted as this. But his first words betrayed the fact that he had been watching Richard take stock of his surroundings. ‘Ah, Captain Mariner. Busy taking a look around my humble bridge. Your reputation fails to do you credit.’
‘Do I have a reputation?’
‘Both yourself and Sergeant Alabaster are well known to my employer.’
‘Sally? Why Sally? She’s only been in Xianggang for two days. Never made it to Macau.’
‘Her reputation, I understand, was made further south. On the borders of Prathet Thai and Kampuchea. If I don’t get the opportunity of a chat with her, you might mention that there are scores to be settled with her among others of my master’s profession.’
‘The White Powder Triad?’
‘And you are surprised that you have a reputation?’
‘But she is safe here?’
‘As safe as any of us, I believe.’ There was something in Song’s tone that Richard did not quite like. He filed it for consideration later and continued to concentrate on his immediate impressions. The day looked blue and clear. Visibility was excellent and he estimated that pressure was high. There was not a cloud in the dark cerulean of the sky and the royal blue of the sea was so massive all around that one could almost see the curve of the earth. There were no familiar landmarks — no land at all. They could have been anywhere between Sapporo and Surabaya.
With nothing on the bridge and nothing within the wider view, Richard turned to the man. ‘Captain Song, may I ask whether you have contacted our families?’
‘Contacts have been made.’
This was hardly a fully satisfactory reply. But even so, a weight seemed to lift from Richard’s heart. He had never been fully convinced that Robin might believe him dead — now he was content to assume she knew he was alive. She had only just stopped having nightmares about the Sulu Queen business. He hoped his nightmares would stop soon too.
‘That is a great relief. Thank you. Can I ask where we might expect to be put ashore?’
‘That is more problematic. We are bound on a long journey. We are not in fact due to touch land for several weeks.’ Richard’s mouth opened. Song held up his free hand. ‘I am in negotiation with the owner to see whether something might be worked out. I’m afraid I cannot be more specific at this moment. I do not have permission to tell a man such as yourself anything which might give you too much knowledge too soon. It is a dangerous situation for all concerned, you understand.’
If the Virtuality equipment was a representative sample of what was in the hold, that was an understatement, thought Richard. Everybody from the Chinese coastguards to the US Navy was likely to be after them. Not to mention rival Triads with all sorts of scores to settle. The White Powder Triad, for instance, who had scores to settle with Twelvetoes, with himself and also, apparently, with Sally Alabaster. No wonder Captain Song was being cautious.
‘You have been our welcome guests for three days now,’ the captain said gently. ‘If you can contain yourself — and Sergeant Alabaster — for another three then I am certain that the situation will be satisfactorily resolved. You each have a lot more scars to discuss, after all, and a great many more disks to plug into the toy we left to entertain you.’
Captain Song was a careful man who treated the gods and all spirits with respect. The first man aboard his ship in any port of call was the fung shui man and the last man off was the priest. He was not given to arrogant self-congratulation or thoughtless predictions of happy futures. And this was perhaps as well, for in that one smug sentence he made several miscalculations. First, he undervalued what it was possible to do with the Virtuality equipment. Secondly, he underestimated what Richard and Sally could do together with the information he had just passed on to them. Thirdly, he had disregarded what fate and the South China Sea could do when they also combined their forces. Already, away to the north of him, his nemesis was coming south, blind, deaf and dumb, increasingly out of control. Already, behind his back, the automatic barometer registered a one millibar drop in pressure. Already the man at the wheel, a secret soldier for the White Powder Triad, had begun to draw his plans — though that possibility at least was something Captain Song had taken into account.
And so, at ten minutes past noon on Wednesday, 15 September 1999, the chain of circumstance was now complete and the path of fate laid out which would lead the third great captain to the shores of Tiger Island: the captain from Hong Kong, Richard Mariner.
12
Robin greeted the news of Richard’s survival with overwhelming fury. It was a rage which pulled her up and wiped all the weakness she had just been feeling clean out of her. It was a burning, cauterising, white-hot feeling which went far beyond reason and control. And all of it was aimed at Richard.
‘The bastard!’ she snarled.
Daniel Huuk took a step back into the yellow shadows of the security lighting.
‘Why in God’s name didn’t he let me know?’
First Officer Li came running down the deck of the Sulu Queen, with Captain So puffing along behind him. They joined John Shaw at the head of the companionway.
‘Just what the hell has he been thinking about? I could kill him. I could … ’
Robin turned and saw the senior officers she had just berated so roundly standing looking dazedly down at her, the word ‘madness�
�� writ clear in their expressions.
She took a deep, trembling breath. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ she said with a shaking voice, ‘it seems we have been a little previous in writing my husband off.’
They looked down at her. Their expressions did not change.
‘Mr Huuk here now informs me that he’s alive.’ She turned, gesturing, and found herself alone. The blazing fire in her body became ice in an instant. Perhaps the officers were right. Perhaps she was mad. But no, she still had Twelvetoes’ message in her fist. She opened it and looked down at the crushed rice paper. No one would ever read its cryptic message again but at least it was there. She hadn’t imagined it. She wasn’t going mad after all.
‘We need to talk,’ she told the officers. ‘But not now. I’ve got to think things through. Make some plans. I’m going home now. I’ll be back in the morning.’
She turned and began to stride back across the ill-lit wasteland of the container terminal.
‘Missy!’ It was Li. She turned. He was leaning over the deck rail beside the head of the gangplank. ‘You arright, missy? You want I came and see you home? Or Mr Shaw here?’
‘Thank you, Mr Li,’ she said. ‘That won’t be necessary. Thank you, Mr Shaw.’ She looked around the shadowed emptiness with its glistening yellow surfaces and its Stygian, sulphurous depths, its oily sea smell and its whispering night wind. ‘I have a guardian angel with me.’
He fell in beside her as she passed the inland wall of the first pile of containers. ‘That was unexpected,’ he said, his voice calculatedly bland.
‘How could he not let me know he was still alive?’
‘Perhaps he was unable to,’ said Huuk. ‘And anyway, he has just done so.’
‘That was Twelvetoes,’ she snapped. ‘You know what I mean. Don’t be so goddamned cryptic.’
‘It’s nice to see you again, too.’
‘I’ve been going out of my mind. You have no idea.’
‘Certainly, it was no trouble for me to find you and deliver the message.’
‘I’ve dropped everything, dumped the poor twins in school and come back here.’
‘There is no need for thanks.’
‘Running around like a headless chicken and all for no reason. Christ! I could cheerfully slaughter him!’ Robin paused. The main gate appeared in the distance. Then she continued, her tone modified as the import of Huuk’s gently ironic words sank in. ‘What, no snippet of Shakespearean wisdom? Nothing about the courtesy of kings?’
‘That’s punctuality, not gratitude.’
‘Well, something about people being rude to the messenger. Isn’t there something in Antony and Cleopatra?’
He looked at her. ‘Cleopatra couldn’t be further from my mind.’
They were back to the old game. That was quick.
‘I was Titania just now.’
‘For some time longer than that, I think.’
Her mind went back to a strange night two years ago and more at the MTR station at Lai Kok, when he had quoted another piece from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and she had realised … What, precisely, had she realised? She swung on him. They were under the lighting of the gate now. The gatekeeper was inside his office.
‘If I am Titania, then who are you? Oberon her husband?’ He gave her the strangest look. Naked. Defenceless. Utterly without guile. ‘Bottom the fool, perhaps.’
‘Yet even Bottom had a dream.’
‘And I shall call it Bottom’s dream,’ he half quoted. ‘And no man shall know what manner of dream it was.’
‘Ah, but I need to know what manner of dream it is,’ she said, ‘because I’m taking you home with me now and I’m keeping you beside me until I find out what is going on.’
‘A dream is only a dream,’ he said.
‘Bottom’s dream wasn’t,’ she said in a voice that was almost silence. ‘And you know it.’
He answered her near silence with absolute silence. After four heavy heartbeats she said, ‘I don’t want to wake up and find myself getting a little touch of Harry in the night.’
He gave a bark of laughter. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I swear. I won’t even strip my sleeve and show my scar and say — ’
‘This scar I got on Crispin’s Day,’ she finished for him. ‘All right. A bargain’s a bargain. Come on.’
*
The MTR was quieter, and as they sped down beneath the Kowloon peninsula she began to find out what he actually knew. What he was certain of seemed little enough, but he was willing to speculate.
‘Consider,’ he was saying, his eyes alive with intelligence and intensity, as they came shuddering round the comer from Sham Sui Po into Prince Edward. ‘The storm warnings were up in Macau. Number Four, I think. Only the fact that they thought the jetcat would get there within ninety minutes, before Numbers Five and Six went up, allowed them to send it out in the first place. They knew something bad was coming in.’
‘Yes, I see that.’
‘So all the other shipping would have been heading for the storm shelter as well. Even the big ships.’
‘I grant you that. I would take even Prometheus somewhere safe if they warned me that the Number Eight flag was a serious possibility.’
‘But Richard must have been picked up by a ship. That’s the only way he can still be alive.’
‘And if he hasn’t been dropped off in Macau or Guangzhou, then the ship must have been outbound.’
‘Outbound in spite of the storm warnings. Yes.’
‘Or even,’ she ventured, ‘outbound because of the storm warnings. Because she didn’t want to be followed. Because she wanted an empty sea.’
‘She’d have to be up to no good to run such a risk.’
‘And incredibly confident.’
‘Not to mention more than a little devious,’ he said.
‘Which brings us back to Twelvetoes Ho,’ she said.
‘Full circle,’ he agreed.
The MTR heaved up out of the tunnel and sped into Admiralty.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Richard survives the cataclysmic destruction of the jetcat only to be picked up by one of Twelvetoes’ ships outbound through the storm. Their mission is so secret that there is radio silence and no question of admitting they’ve got survivors aboard. But they tell Twelvetoes. The owner must be notified. And what does Twelvetoes do? He goes to Daniel Huuk. Now that is interesting, isn’t it? The Dragon Head of a major Triad and the coastguard captain, late of the Hong Kong naval contingent. Why did he do that? And where did he find you?’
‘Thereby,’ said Daniel, ‘hangs a tale.’
The MTR pulled into Central and Robin was on her feet at once. ‘I can’t wait to hear it,’ she said. ‘You hungry?’
She took him to Man Wah. She needed the security of familiar surroundings and, although the legendary concierge Giuseppe Borelli had departed with the handback, the atmosphere and the associations of the People’s Mandarin Hotel where the restaurant was located provided it. In the old days she would have been welcomed as an old and valued client, but the anonymity which came with new management was quite welcome, considering that she was entertaining at lavish expense a tramp from the streets. She would have turned heads in that place anyway, but that such a stunning, golden-headed gweilo should be seen with the sweepings of the Kowloon gutter caused an audible stir of speculation. Only the fact that the great hotel was fighting to maintain its world-class reputation for supportive discretion and that Robin herself was determined to carry this off, no matter what, stopped the pair of them being thrown out at once.
Daniel Huuk was as gaunt as any opium smoker. His face was papered with yellow skin which, in the absence of any flesh, folded into deep, black-floored valleys. The sockets of his long dark eyes were as hollow as his temples. The bridge of his nose was as thin as a knife blade. The square jaw beneath the hollow cheeks was disguised with the black stubble of a beard of unusual thickness for an Oriental — but, Robin remembered, he was of mixed-race parentage. He wore a black cott
on suit with a simple mandarin collar buttoned up to his scrawny neck. The cloth was so thin as to give the impression of being transparent. It hung off his frame and yet as it did so, it fell into folds and creases which spoke of careful pressing. It was patched, but neatly and carefully so. There was none of the old naval swagger to him, but still a military precision of bearing which the care for his clothing emphasised. His hands as they rested on the tablecloth were as gaunt as the rest of him, the thinness of his long fingerbones emphasising the thickness of his scarred knuckles. His nails were square cut and carefully tended. But they were flecked with spots of white telling a tale of inadequate diet over a long period.
Robin suddenly saw that most of the food on offer here, in this temple of Cantonese gourmet cooking, was likely to make the under-used malnourished organ of his stomach revolt. When a solicitous waiter came for their order, therefore, Robin said, ‘I would like something plain and simple, fish or chicken perhaps. What about you, Daniel?’
‘Merely some mai. I will need to re-educate my stomach for anything richer.’
They were not, in fact, in the best place for rice — Cantonese meals were more usually accompanied by noodles or pancakes — but Robin’s quiet request was quickly met. The sight of him picking at a little bowl of lemon rice almost put her off her own lemon chicken, but her food consumption over the last few days had been so irregular that she made herself eat, knowing she would need to fuel both her body and her mind.
And, while they ate, they talked. Daniel would tell her nothing of his life since handback, and once she saw that it was useless to persist with questions, she changed the topic and began to try and plan tomorrow. Her own agenda was simple. If Richard was alive, she wanted to find out where he was and how he was. Her anger at him had hardly abated, but she knew her rage was in direct proportion to her love for him. It was the anger of a mother with a child who has just survived some silly scrape. And yet it was real anger and it was doing strange things to her. The moment the light had shown her what a wan, thin figure Daniel had become, an errant and unsettling thought had slipped into her head — that she should take him home and shower him, shave him and screw his brains out. That would serve Richard right.