“Pull up a pew, Neil,” said McNeil. “And close the door, would you?”
Coleman pushed the door to and sat down. He envied McNeil his privacy and his plush office with its view of the bustling harbour, and the fact that he worked for the one area of the police where expats were still top dogs; with the family connections which all local Chinese had on the mainland, there was no way they could be trusted to handle the sensitive intelligence information which passed across the desks of Special Branch every day.
“Anthony Chung took some tracing, I can tell you,” said McNeil. He took a sip of hot tea and Coleman got the feeling that he was being strung along, that McNeil was taking a perverse pleasure in making him wait. “Do you want tea? Or a Coke or something?”
“I’m fine, Terry. I had a coffee just before you called.”
McNeil put the lid back on his mug.
“It’s unusual for a Chinese not to have a Hong King identity card,” said McNeil. “Even the ones who emigrate must have had a card, and the ones who come back usually get one once they arrive. It makes travel in and out much easier, both here and in China. That and the French passport gave me the clue.”
“Clue?” said Coleman.
“Yeah. You said you thought Chung was part of a car ring?”
Coleman had decided not to tell McNeil the truth, not the whole truth anyway. “I saw him driving a Ferrari, an F40. I thought it was worth checking him out.”
“But the F40 was leased, right?”
“Yeah. But then I found he had a French passport and thought maybe there was a European link.”
“You thought he was smuggling cars from Hong Kong to France? Give me a break, Neil.”
“I’m not sure what I thought. I just wanted to check him out, that’s all.”
McNeil looked thoughtfully at Coleman and chewed the inside of his lip. Coleman cursed Donaldson for suggesting he try Special Branch for information on Anthony Chung, and for recommending Terry McNeil. McNeil was the same age as Donaldson and Coleman but looked five years younger. He had curly brown hair and light green eyes and spoke with an Irish accent that was beginning to irritate the hell out of Coleman.
“You see, Neil, Anthony Chung shouldn’t be in Hong Kong,” said McNeil. “If he had any sense at all he’d be in France, keeping his head down, the lowest of low profiles. He’s risking his life being this close to China.”
Coleman leaned forward in his seat, his hands on his knees. He rubbed the sweat from his palms on to the grey material of his suit.
“It was the French passport that provided the clue,” continued McNeil. “It’s not the normal place where Hong Kong Chinese try to emigrate. France doesn’t really have any attraction for them. The Vietnamese go there because Vietnam used to be under French control, but not Hong Kong Chinese.”
“Too close to Britain,” said Coleman, smiling.
“Maybe,” said McNeil. “But there is one group of Chinese who are very keen to move to France. Chinese dissidents.”
“Dissidents?” said Coleman, bewildered.
“France has always been prepared to offer sanctuary to people persecuted for their beliefs, more so than Britain or Germany. Remember Tiananmen Square?”
“Sure.” Images flashed through Coleman’s mind. The earnest student demonstrations in the Chinese capital. The peaceful marches, the speeches delivered by young men and women who wanted to taste democracy for the first time, the warnings from the old men in power, and then the tanks. Hundreds of unarmed protesters were machine-gunned or crushed to death as the uprising was put down by the army, and for months afterwards news of executions and long prison sentences continued to reach Hong Kong. Yes, Neil Coleman remembered Tiananmen Square. Nobody who had been in Hong Kong on the night of June 4, 1989, would ever forget.
“Afterwards it was the French who did most to get the ringleaders out. Their embassy in Beijing helped smuggle them out and gave them sanctuary. Many still live in Paris.”
“And you’re saying that Anthony Chung was one of the dissidents?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
Coleman wanted to reach across the desk, grab McNeil by the throat and squeeze the information out of him. Instead he smiled and raised his eyebrows.
“But he was smuggled out of China by the French and given French citizenship. Not because of what he’d done, but because of his father.”
“His father?”
“Zhong Ziming. Zhong was one of the top men, an aide to Deng Xiaoping for many years and a close associate of Zhao Ziyang, the former Communist Party General Secretary. Switch the TV and the video on and hit the ‘play’ button, will you?”
Coleman turned in his chair and did as McNeil asked. The recording was from a television news broadcast, clearly taken a few days before the army was sent into Tiananmen Square. It showed a balding, bespectacled old man moving through the crowds of smiling students, shaking hands and patting them on the back. The voice-over was a woman with an American accent saying that the presence of the Communist Party General Secretary in the square was being taken as a sign that the party leadership was giving tacit support to the calls for more democracy.
“Hit the pause button, will you?” asked McNeil.
Coleman did as he’d been asked and the picture froze. Zhao was standing with his hand outstretched, about to greet a tall young man with fiery eyes and a white scarf tied around his head. The scarf had Chinese characters written on them in bold, black strokes. There were two old men behind Zhao, men in dark blue Mao-style suits, who were watching Zhao and smiling.
“See the old guy on the left?” said McNeil.
Coleman pointed to a bald man, fairly stout with a thick, bull neck and wide shoulders, a man who could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy years old so featureless was his face. “Him?”
McNeil nodded. “That’s Zhong Ziming. He made several appearances in the square before June 4, both with Zhao and on his own. He made several speeches in support of the democracy movement.”
“What happened to him? Executed?”
McNeil shook his head. “Zhao Ziyang was removed from power, but he had too many friends to be punished. Zhong Ziming wasn’t as well connected, and Zhao wasn’t able to protect him. The last we heard was that he is being held in solitary confinement, but that was twelve months ago. There were a number of unidentified executions of dissidents just before Christmas and there is a chance he was killed then.”
“Okay, but I’m not getting this, Terry. That guy’s name is Zhong Ziming. I asked you to check out an Anthony Chung. What makes you think they’re related?”
“That’s easy. Zhong is the Mandarin Chinese version of Chung. Zhong’s son is Zhong Juntao, but he took the name Anthony when he went to Paris to study. It’s not unusual for Chinese to use Anglicised names, nor for them to use the Cantonese version of their family names. Zhong Juntao. Anthony Chung. They’re one and the same, Neil.”
“And you’re saying that Chung was given French citizenship after Tiananmen?”
“Chung, that’s Chung the son, was in Beijing for several months before the demonstrations, though we have no evidence that he was one of the ringleaders. He went into hiding on the day the troops opened fire and it appears that the French got him out two months later. His father was arrested on June 6.”
Coleman put his head in his hands and tried to come to grips with what McNeil had told him. As McNeil had said, Hong Kong was the last place Chung should be. The Chinese secret police would have no qualms about grabbing Chung and taking him back over the border if they located him.
“Thing is, Neil, he’s not exactly your run-of-the-mill car thief, is he, this Anthony Chung? He’s political rather than a law-breaker. Is there any other reason you’re suspicious about him? Anything I should know about?”
Coleman cursed himself for having raised the subject of Chung with Special Branch. There was no way he could tell McNeil or anyone else that he’d been using police time to investig
ate a rival for his girlfriend’s affections.
“No, I just saw him in the Ferrari, that’s all,” said Coleman. “It was the car rather than the man. Maybe he’s just here on holiday or something.”
“Possible,” said McNeil, not convinced.
“Maybe he’s got friends in Hong Kong.”
“That’s likely,” said McNeil.
Coleman got to his feet. “Anyway, I’m going to drop it right here,” he said, hoping that McNeil would do the same. “As you say, he’s not a car thief. I’ll leave it.”
“I guess so,” said McNeil, looking at the frozen television picture. His head jerked up as if he’d just thought of something. “Hey, good bust by the way. That car smuggling gang was a good one.”
“Thanks. I was pleased with the way it went,” said Coleman as he opened the door.
“Didn’t see you at the press conference, though,” added McNeil, but Coleman had already left.
Tyler’s portable telephone bleeped and he answered, speaking quietly with his back to the rest of the vets. When he finished the call he turned round, a wide smile on his face.
“The Huey will be here in less than an hour,” he said. “The container has just been cleared from the Kwai Chung container terminal, unopened.”
“Great!” said Lewis. He gave Lehman a high five.
“I’m gonna make coffee while we wait,” said Carmody. He threw away the old grounds and replenished the filter machine. When the coffee had brewed he filled mugs and handed them out and they drank as they waited. Forty-five minutes after Tyler had taken the phone call they heard a horn sound outside.
“Okay, that’ll be it,” said Tyler. “Bart, Dan, open the sliding door, we’re going to back the container right inside. I don’t want the delivery men to know what they’re delivering. Eric, Larry, can you drive the cars out? We’ll park them outside until we’ve got ourselves organised.”
Tyler went through the small door and walked over to unlock the gate while Lewis and Lehman pushed the sliding door back. A large truck with three men in the cab was waiting by the gate, a long, red container on its back. The driver waved at Tyler and he waved back before unlocking the padlock and slipping the chain. He pulled the gate open and held it back as the truck slowly turned in and drove towards the warehouse.
Once the rear of the truck had passed through the gate, Tyler closed it and jogged after it. He flagged it down and explained to the driver that he wanted him to reverse the truck so that the rear half was inside the building. The man wasn’t wearing a shirt and he had a huge tattoo of a tiger across his chest, its claws out, ready to strike. He grinned and told Tyler he understood. He carefully steered the truck and backed the container through the open door. The driver and his two companions made to get out of the cab but Tyler told them to stay where they were.
“We could use their help, Colonel,” said Lewis. “It’s going to be heavy.”
Tyler shook his head. “No, it’s enough that they know we’re here. I don’t want them to know about the Huey. I’m told they can be trusted, they’re triads and have sworn an oath of secrecy, but I don’t want to take any risks.”
“Okay, Colonel, it’s your call.”
“Besides, Josh had the skids removed and the Huey mounted on trolleys, as you suggested. He slid it in and all we have to do is to slide it out. Bring over some ropes while I open up the container.”
Tyler took a pair of pliers and cut the metal seals around the padlocks. He fished his set of keys from the pocket of his trousers and unlocked the padlocks one by one. “Josh gave me a duplicate set of keys before I left Bangkok,” he explained. Once he’d removed the locks he pulled open the rear of the container to reveal the cockpit of the Huey, staring out at them like an insect emerging from a chrysalis.
“That’s one hell of a tight fit,” said Lewis, scratching his head.
“Flashlights, Larry,” said Tyler.
Carmody went over to one of the workbenches and returned with two flashlights. He turned them on and handed one to Tyler. The other he gave to Lewis who had already climbed into the back of the container and was carefully squeezing alongside the helicopter.
“They had to take the tail assembly off, like I thought, Colonel,” said Lewis, his voice echoing inside the metal box. “Skids are off too and it’s on flat trolleys. The wheels on the trolleys have been locked so that they wouldn’t move while the container was in transit. The rotors are off, we should unpack them first.” They heard the crash of metal and after a few seconds Lewis emerged from the container. “The main rotor mast has been taken out, and there’s a bag in the pilot’s station which I guess contains all the bolts and things. They’ve done a good job taking her apart. There are reinforced metal sheets on the side which must be what they used to slide the Huey in. We can use them as a ramp to get it out,” he said.
“Josh thinks of everything,” said Tyler. “Let’s do it.
“Dan, can you pull the slide out of the other side? I’ll get this one.”
“Sure,” said Lehman. He scrambled up into the container and, while Tyler directed the beam of his torch down the length of the container, pulled on a long, thin metal sheet, about three feet wide and twenty feet long. “No way, Bart. It’s going to take two of us to handle one of these.”
Lewis clambered down to the rear of the Huey, ducked under the tail, and helped Lehman manhandle the heavy metal sheet out. Once the end of the sheet projected out of the container Horvitz and Doherty helped slide it. They leaned it so that it sloped from the edge of the container down to the concrete floor.
When he was satisfied, Lewis had Lehman help him manoeuvre the sheet on the other side of the container. They were all sweating by the time the two lengths of steel were in position.
“I think we should clear the rest of the stuff out first, the rotors and the skids,” said Lewis.
The vets pulled out the main rotors, the rotor mast and the tail rotors and the metal skids and put them carefully on the ground by the workbenches. The tail assembly was locked behind the main fuselage and would have to be taken out last. When they’d cleared the floor of the container Lewis instructed the vets to tie the ropes to the Huey, looping them around the cockpit and through the cabin.
“Now what?” said Carmody.
“I’ll unlock the brakes on the trolleys, then Chuck and Larry can go to the rear of the fuselage and push. The colonel and Eric can push the middle and hold on the rope through the cabin, Dan and I will take the front and hold the ropes around the cockpit. As soon as it gets to the top of the ramps we stop pushing and put all our weight on the ropes. It’ll have more than enough momentum to keep it moving; all we’ll be able to do is to slow it. Watch out for rope burns, don’t let it slide through your hands.’
The men took their positions. Lewis released the brakes and at his command they began straining against the helicopter. The wheels grated and gradually the Huey began to move, the trolleys rattling against the metal floor of the container.
“Careful, we’re almost there,” said Lewis. The trolleys banged against the steel ramps and for a moment it looked as if they’d stick there but the small wheels rolled over the join and the front of the Huey began to dip down. “The ropes!” shouted Lewis. “Hold the ropes. She’s going.”
All of them stopped pushing and pulled back on the ropes as if they were in a tug-of-war contest. Horvitz grunted and wound his end of the ropes around his waist. Lehman could feel the rope slide through his hands and he gripped it tighter. The Huey picked up speed and Lewis shouted for them all to pull harder. The wheels began to skid on the ramp and Lehman strained against the load.
Tyler’s feet began to slide along the metal floor and Lehman could feel his own begin to lose traction. He bent at the knees and tried to push back with all his might. The rear of the Huey bobbed up as the nose dipped down and it banged against the roof of the container before it slid out. Lehman was pulled to the edge of the container and he released his hold on the rope as t
he Huey reached the bottom of the ramp; he watched as the two trolleys supporting the helicopter rolled on to the concrete floor. The stub of tail section scraped along the ramp in a shower of sparks as the Huey levelled off and then it was clear and the helicopter came to a halt under the overhead fluorescent lights.
The six men stood at the open end of the container and looked down at the helicopter.
“Looks really bizarre without its tail,” said Carmody. “It really just fixes on with four bolts?”
“That’s all,” said Lewis. “Come on, let’s get the tail section out.”
The tail assembly was surprisingly light and the men carried it easily out of the container and down the ramp. Lehman had both hands on the stinger at the rear, the long metal spike which prevented the tail rotor from chopping into the ground. They placed the tail section carefully on the floor next to the rotors.
“Now the hard work starts,” said Tyler. He walked down the ramp and the others followed him. They all pulled the ramps clear of the container and Tyler relocked the door. He went round to the front of the truck where the three Chinese men sat talking and smoking. He told them they could go. The driver scratched the mouth of his tiger tattoo and put the truck into gear. It lurched out of the warehouse and out of the main gate as Lewis and Lehman rolled the huge sliding door shut.
“Now, push the Huey to the back so that we can drive the cars in as well,” said Tyler.
All six of the men pushed the helicopter on its two trolleys until it was just ten feet away from the offices, leaving more than enough room for the Toyota and the Jeep. Carmody and Horvitz drove the two vehicles inside and parked them just inside the warehouse.
The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers) Page 37