Sea of Troubles Box Set

by Peter Tonkin

  But there was already a kind of infection spreading outwards as the pre-unification publicity made the millions in the province look Westwards more acutely than ever. Charles had been here a month. He had needed no time to settle in — he knew this city well; or Lee Cha-ho did. He had spent all too much of his childhood running contraband up through the Tiger Gate and along forty secret kilometres of the Pearl River into the hungry markets here. Xiang’s men had put Charles in the old colonial White Swan Hotel on Samian Island, but Cha-ho would have been comfortable anywhere. Even more than London or New York, this was his home from home. Which was why he noticed at once how much it had changed. From the beginning he had been aware that there was a powerful slide towards Westernism here.

  Like Xiang Lo-wu Charles wore simple shirts and plain denim suits. His Saville Row tailoring had soon felt out of place in sand-swept Beijing and he was content to wear clothing which was light and comfortable, especially now, in this sub-tropical climate. But the first local official he had met here sported a Lacoste sport shirt, a Sergio Tacchini leisure suit and Nike Air trainers — even to a business meeting.

  Xiang seeing Cha-ho’s expression, had said gently, after the interview was finished, ‘You should not be shocked, younger brother. After all, was it not you, in the days of your misspent youth, who smuggled the first rock and roll record into the floating market here?’

  Charles had laughed wryly. Xiang had become used to this Western way of expressing surprise, and he lowered his eyelids accommodatingly, seeming to overlook the loss of face. ‘Indeed,’ admitted the Hong Kong shipping merchant. ‘Bat Out of Hell by Meatloaf. An icon of its time. A gleaming tower of Western culture.’ Charles had been so amused by the weary acceptance in Xiang’s voice that he came dangerously close to adding that he had not been alone in the enterprise. He almost revealed that he had enjoyed an extremely active contact with a local entrepreneur called Huw Pei-chun — Paul Huw as he had preferred to be known.

  ‘You were the vanguard of an invasion,’ stated the government official.

  ‘I think not, elder brother,’ Charles answered warily. ‘There were others before me and they brought the Beatles, Levi 501s and Coca-Cola.’

  ‘So that now the Memorial of the Martyrs of the Shaji Massacre is overlooked by a McDonald’s and there is a Taco Bell on Sun Yatsen Street. Guangzhou is becoming like any town in America, alas.’

  ‘It is the price of opening the Tiger Gate to that market, elder brother. These things make the tourists feel more comfortable as they pass their hard currency into your purse. But McDonald’s is not the only player in that game, you must admit. In Tsimshatsui, Hong Kong, near where I was brought up, there is a McDonald’s on Nathan Road a block down from the Chinese People’s store Chung Kiu. On Hankow Road, McDonald’s is right next door to Chung Kiu. They are just two competitors on the same economic stage. There’s a McDonald’s across the road from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in England. William Shakespeare and Ronald McDonald — again two more competitors, one stage. If you want the dollars, you carry the freight. There is no alternative, elder brother.’

  There was a brief silence then, at the end of that first meeting, as Xiang seemed to be considering Charles’s enthusiastic words.

  Here in Guangzhou, little more than a week before Hong Kong became Xianggang and reverted to Chinese control, the elder brother from Beijing was out of his depth. There was a rising tide of Westernisation sweeping in from Hong Kong. In the old days, it would have been rigorously suppressed and those who spread the infection, like Charles himself and his friend Paul Huw, would have been torn down root and branch. But this infection which was so threatening to the past was in fact the germ of the future, and Xiang Lo-wu recognised this. Regretted it, but recognised it. And the gentle, quiet, infinitely devious elder brother was looking for a way to get along with it. No, to go further — to turn it to the Middle Kingdom’s advantage. For, to take the analogy to its logical conclusion, if a part of China could catch the germ of Westernism and survive, then its experience could be used as a kind of vaccine to protect the health of China as a whole. And the final elegance of this proposition arose from the fact that Westernism had made the West itself relatively weak.

  In terms of global economics, China was surrounded by greedy self-indulgent societies with flabby economies dependent on restrictive practices and trade protectionism to protect their lazy, greedy work forces. In a world like this, a lean and hungry China, ready, willing and able to produce anything for which there was an appreciable demand, proof against the excesses which had torn the USSR apart, with a work force of mathematically infinite size and illimitable potential, would be a tiger in a chicken run. And, Charles was beginning to realise, there was a strong possibility that Elder Brother Xiang Lo-wu wanted him to be the medical consultant in all of this;the consultant who would deliver a controlled dose of Westernism to the body of Sechuan through the hypodermic of Hong Kong. But where did that put him with regard to Heritage Mariner? And where did the current court case place Heritage Mariner with regard to China?

  Such were the thoughts which occupied the business executive’s mind as he looked southwards towards Hong Kong on the early evening of Thursday, 20 June, with the Yangsheng Wanabo idly between his fingers.

  The square figure of Xiang loomed darkly across his view, blocking out the prospect of Hong Kong suddenly. ‘What brings you here, elder brother?’

  Xiang looked down at him with an absolutely expressionless countenance. ‘We noticed that in your stay here, your lengthy stay here, you have not ventured into the Quingpinglu.’

  ‘I have had no need of the market, elder brother, nor desire to explore.’

  ‘Oh, but surely, for old times’ sake. So much of your merchandise used to turn up here, almost as much as used to arrive in Cat Street, Xianggang.’

  ‘No, really …’ Charles suddenly felt ill at ease. The man he saw before him now was subtly different from the Xiang Lo-wu with whom he had been dealing this last six weeks; someone more decisive, more dangerous. But perhaps that was just a misapprehension arising from his earlier thoughts. ‘Well, why not …’

  Side by side Charles and Xiang walked across the bustle of the afternoon city rush hour towards the market area. The rush hour in Guangzhou was a matter of pedestrians and cyclists, buses and the occasional tram. There were few, if any, cars involved. And, as the hour of departure from work was upon them, this was the most popular time for business at the market. As the two businessmen walked in silence along Renmin Road, they became subsumed in a bustling tide of humanity, all intent upon leaving work, buying something tasty to take home and getting home to prepare, share and eat it. Some, who did not harbour the parochial desire to cook for themselves, lingered at the roadside snack stalls, dipping pieces of lightly stir-fried, ginger-stuffed carp into little bowls of light soy sauce and then slipping them down their throats. No matter what was done, it was done with a busy intensity which Charles had seen in few places beyond downtown New York.

  ‘Are we going anywhere in particular, elder brother?’ Charles asked eventually as Xiang turned purposefully into Nurenjie.

  ‘Yes, we are. I wish to show you some local industry. The attitude is, I believe, instructive.’ Even as he said this, Xiang arrived at a tall wooden door which stood behind a row of stalls. The stalls themselves specialised in the sale of framed prints. On paper, plastic and silk, pictures of lotus blossoms and humming birds were reproduced in a range of inks. Mountains, islands, dragons and tigers stood beside them, with the occasional monkey for good effect. And the premises into which Xiang led Charles Lee were all too obviously the origin of these wares. Row upon row of illustrators sat, each one specialising in the creation and recreation of exactly the same picture. Lotus after lotus and lily upon lily. Each one perfect. Each one identical to the one before. Each one the result of a few minutes’ work, repeated and repeated. ‘This is most commendable,’ said Charles, feeling a little out of his
depth. ‘Are you suggesting, elder brother, that there is a ready market for these artefacts in the West?’

  ‘Unfortunately not,’ answered Xiang, abruptly, almost roughly. ‘But there seems to be a ready market for this!’ As he spoke, he pushed open an inner door to reveal another room, almost as big as the first and every bit as busy. Here, however, the pictures were not representations of flowers, animals, birds or natural scenes. Here, time after time, were perfect representations of Chanel check, the Givenchy logo, Burberry check, the Gucci colours, Harrods gold and green.

  ‘There is more,’ said Xiang, his voice heavy with disapproval. He proceeded, pushing through to a deeper, darker area. Here, men and women were concentrating absolutely on the reproduction of product identification tags — Rolex, Hi-Tech, Reebok, Cartier, Alfred Dunhill. Like Virgil leading Dante downwards, Xiang led Charles to a deeper circle of this industrious little Hades. Here they were reproducing company-guaranteed part-identification stamps: Rolls-Royce, Pratt and Whitney, British Aerospace, Westland, Bell, Sikorsky, Harland and Wolff, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ford, Rover, General Motors, Ferrari, Lamborghini. In the face of this, Charles remained silent; he knew what damage could be done by a part of an engine identified as being genuine but actually a fake.

  There was more yet. In a dingy little back room saved for last on moral as well as economic grounds, a team of illustrators were producing pictures for the pornography market. From a basic series of pictures of naked forms in various revealing poses, the artists were reproducing drawing after drawing of women and a few men undergoing a mind-numbing range of trials and tribulations, most of which would have resulted in an agonising death had a real person been required to experience them.

  ‘Where there is a market, you see, we can supply the demand more cheaply than anywhere else. Any market. Any demand.’

  Charles was beginning to feel badly wrong-footed now. He had articulated part of his economic credo and this was the result. Or, as he began to realise, the first part of the result. For Xiang swept him back out into the market. With his eyes attuned to what they were looking for now, he began to see it all around him. On the stalls which lined the narrow roadway were piles of contraband. Yves St Laurent shirts, Reebok footwear, leisurewear by Tacchini and Lacoste. Perfumes by Chanel and Kalvin Klein. CDs and videodiscs by Paramount and Philips. Computer software by IBM and Apple. Games by Sega and Nintendo. Videos by Amblin, Virgin and Disney. The two men walked through the bustling black market as though unaware of the increasing tension in the air around them. It was not until they reached the end of the narrow roadway that Charles realised the reason for this atmosphere. Drawn up across the street was a line of uniformed men.

  ‘It is the job of the Excise officers to control such activities,’ said Xiang. ‘And this contingent is just about to close down every stall in the market which deals in illegal merchandise, and the factories which supply them. We will not, you see, Comrade Lee, deal in such stuff. Now or ever. But first, perhaps you will allow me to introduce you to the officer commanding these Excise officers. He is with the Navy of the People’s Republic and acting coastguard commander for this province. His name is Huw Pei-chun.’

  And so the two old friends, Charles Lee and Paul Huw, stood face to face at the end of Renmin Road, within arm’s reach of one another for the first time in more than twenty years. And if they recognised each other, neither of them showed it.

  Charles Lee realised that he had perhaps underestimated everyone and everything around him, even if this climactic meeting with his childhood partner in crime was a coincidence. Most especially, Charles had underestimated Xiang Lo-wu and the mortal danger he was in.

  *

  Robin woke up with a crippling headache and the fleshcrawling feeling that she had been intimately interfered with. She sat bolt upright in a strange bunk on the Seram Queen, even as Charles Lee stood riven in Renmin Road, Guangzhou, away to the north of her; and Richard, despairingly, began to tear up her photographs in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital on Wylie Road, Hong Kong, not quite so far north but a little further to the east. And, far to the south and west, Edgar Tan was heading impatiently towards the offices of Beautiful Views Ltd, on Rizal Avenue, Manila. Robin’s first action was to clasp her hands to her head, which throbbed with a piercingly intense pain. She was wearing a rough skullcap of padded gauze through which her hair seemed to be poking in an uncontrolled riot, like briars through a wicker fence. The next thing she did, prompted by the strange feeling on her burning skin, was to bring her hands down to her shirt. The buttons were largely undone. Her shorts seemed to be awry. When she looked down, she was confronted with a gape of crumpled cotton, a couple of generously exposed lace cups and a great deal more cleavage than she had shown at any time since her wedding night.

  ‘Where in hell’s name …’ she said aloud, looking around at last. There was some relief here at least. As acting medical officer, one of the first facilities she had checked out was the ship’s medical room. And that was where she found herself to be, in the one bunk which comprised the rudimentary isolation ward.

  She sat for a moment, a sailor before she was a woman, turning her bandaged head from side to side. The slight movement she felt revealed that the ship was still drifting slowly through a near calm. The silence spoke eloquently of continued failure down below by the chief engineer and his team. Narrowed eyes judged the time of day by the fact that the whole room seemed to have been washed down in blood a day or so ago. The surgery itself, with windows out onto the weather deck, looked as though it had been washed with blood a moment or so ago. It was sunset and the shadows of the north-facing bridgehouse dictated the colours reflected in here by the ruby sky, the red and grey deck cargo and the green-brown deck itself. Please God it was sunset Thursday, she thought. Even sunset Thursday would mean that she had been out for more than eight hours. She did not care to think what her insensible body might have gone through in a longer time than that, especially as the alternative would seem to be more than thirty hours.

  Robin swung her legs over the side of the bunk and stood up. The action required some fortitude, for her head swam and her legs shook while her knees threatened to buckle and all sorts of internal bits of her threatened to revolt — each in its own revolting way. She took several deep breaths, an action which served to remind her of the state of her clothes. But she did nothing to put it right, for she found herself crossing to the door as though in a dream. As though in a nightmare, she discovered that the door was locked. She shook it and battered on it but there was no response. Her head continued to swim and her ears to ring.

  The sensation of woozy almost inebriated disorientation was so strong that Robin drunkenly checked her arms for signs of needle marks, half believing that she had been drugged. Certainly her current state put her forcefully in mind of experiments with a strange-smelling cigarette during her days at the London School of Economics and with an odd little pill at Johns Hopkins. She wiped her forehead and found herself looking dully at the back of her hand, wondering whether the liquid there was so vividly red because of its natural colour or because of reflection. Looking at the floor down a body which seemed to have grown dizzyingly tall, she watched her feet place themselves one after another, increasingly heavily on the linoleum flooring as she walked back to her bunk. Here she stood for a while, catching her breath and collecting her thoughts. Then she set herself in motion again and managed to cross as far as the doorway into the surgery. Here again she paused, hanging crucified between the uprights, gasping for breath and feeling the perspiration running down the outside of her ribs and the inside of her thighs. The surgery was not a large room. There was a basic operating table in the middle of it and glass-fronted cases of medicines on two walls. There was a secure cabinet for sharp instruments and a safe for drugs. On the wall opposite the open doorway were square windows which currently looked out onto the variegated wall of the containers on the deck.

  Robin crossed to the operating table and pa
used again with her hands spread over the smooth plastic surface, her wrists close together, leaning her short ribs against her elbows. Eventually she summoned up the strength to swim across the thick red air towards the window and look out across the deck. When she reached the window, she found she had to lean against it with her hands spread and her arms straight in order to remain erect. For this reason, she remained at arm’s length from the thick glass, and the extra element of drug-enhanced distance gave the scene which met her eyes then the quality of utter unreality which she for ever afterwards associated with it. All but insensible with fatigue, stress, painkillers and concussion, she saw the first of the natives come up over the side. He was tall, dark-skinned and stark naked apart from a necklace of shells and a headdress.

  All the books Robin had read during her youth and teens had been to do with high adventure in far-flung places. She knew, therefore, exactly what was going on when orang laut came stealthily aboard a powerless freighter drifting helplessly through the South China Sea. Given strength by a sudden, giddying, surge of adrenaline, she turned and prepared to stumble back to the door. She must give the alarm, no matter what. The phrase ‘play up and play the game’ fled through her mind like a blazing bonfire rag borne aloft by a November wind. But a further movement caught the corner of her eye and swung her head back again before she moved her feet. Behind the naked man came an invasion of further figures. All equally naked, all very obviously female. Not even the most xenophobic of the late-Empire adventures had ever suggested that a stark native, up to all sorts of unsportsmanlike skulduggery, would be accompanied by the contents of a seraglio, stripped and ready for action. But that was probably because such works were usually sexist as well as racist. Only the Greeks had ever come up with the idea of a race of warrior women and, according to the Victorian cannon, the Greeks had been deeply suspect to a man.