The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  Lewis took the books and flicked through the pages. “Workshop manuals,” he said. “They’re all here: Operators Manual, Airframe Manual, Parts Manual, and Engine Manual. The full set. Terrific.”

  “I thought they’d make your day,” said Tyler. “Look, will you show Mr Tsao around. There’s a cot for him in the office next to mine.”

  “He’s sleeping here?” said Lewis.

  “It’s the best way to maintain security,” said Tyler. “He lives in Shatin but he’s told his family he’s working on a contract over the border. He’s being well paid and he comes highly recommended by one of my contacts here in Hong Kong.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” said Lewis.

  “Just don’t forget what I said about talking in front of him,” warned Tyler. “The less he knows about what we’re doing, the better.”

  “Understood, Colonel.”

  Tsao stood at the side of the Huey, gently stroking the war machine, wonder in his watery eyes.

  Michael Wong put his knife and fork together on the empty plate and patted his stomach. “An excellent meal, Anthony. Truly excellent.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it,” said Chung, dabbing at his lips with a starched white napkin.

  A waiter appeared as if by magic and whisked away both plates. “Have you noticed how much better food tastes when you don’t have to pick up the check?” Wong asked.

  Chung grinned. “Not recently, no.”

  Wong laughed good-naturedly. He was about five years older than Chung, and looked more like a successful businessman than a triad leader, or Dragon Head. His hair, like Chung’s, was expensively cut, and he wore spectacles with Yves Saint Laurent frames. His face was squarish and he had a prominent dimple in the centre of his chin. The one clue to his violent background was a small raised scar which ran for about two inches down the side of his chin but he always held his head so that it couldn’t be seen. Chung knew that under the light blue suit there were worse scars, laying testament to an attack on his life ten years earlier when Michael Wong was a simple triad foot-soldier, a Red Pole. Wong had taken Chung to a high-class Chinese-only sauna in Wan Chai and as they’d sat together in the steam he’d seen Wong’s scars stay white as the rest of his skin went pink. They were wicked wounds, hatchet cuts that ran from his neck to his waist, criss-crossing like the tramlines at Kennedy Town tram terminal. Michael Wong was lucky to be alive, and he lived life to the full, as if every day was his last.

  “Dessert?” offered Chung as the waiter pushed over the sweet trolley.

  Wong patted his trim waistline. “Got to keep my figure, Anthony,” he said. “Amy won’t let me into the bed if my waist is an inch over thirty-three.”

  Wong had been happily married for almost fifteen years and had three children, all girls. He doted on them all.

  “Coffee then?” asked Chung, waving away the trolley.

  “Coffee would be good,” said Wong.

  Chung nodded at a waiter who was hovering with a silver coffee pot and he stepped smoothly forward and began pouring. They waited until he’d finished before continuing their conversation, which up to that point had been about the forthcoming races at Shatin, the relative merits of Taiwanese girls compared with Japanese, and whether Wong’s daughters should go to school in the UK or the States.

  “So, Anthony, how is everything going?”

  Chung nodded and smiled. “Very smoothly,” he said. “This man Tyler is a true professional. I must confess to having some misgivings when you suggested that we use a gweilo, but he is every bit as good as you said. His idea of using the helicopter was genius, sheer genius. And the team he has put together, it’s perfect, absolutely perfect. I tell you, Michael, if you really wanted to mount a raid on the Happy Valley racetrack, Tyler would pull it off. He really would. Your man Tsao has started working with them, and the helicopter will be ready in plenty of time.”

  “Good,” said Wong, stirring his coffee. “You have the names for me?”

  Chung slipped a folded piece of paper across the table and Wong pocketed it, unread. “There are five,” said Chung.

  “I shall make enquiries,” said Wong. “You had a good look at the security arrangements?”

  “You should have been there,” said Chung, leaning back in his chair and toying with his saucer. “Their head of security is a racist gweilo. He was an arrogant pig who was more than happy to lord it over an ignorant Chink. He told me more than he should.”

  “They do love to underestimate us, don’t they?” mused Wong. “I’ll arrange for my man Lee to come round and talk to you. He is an alarms specialist, and he can brief my men. But you envisage no problems?”

  “None at all,” said Chung. He waved at a waiter to attract his attention and made a quick scribbling motion with his hand. The waiter rushed off to get the bill. “I already have eight drivers lined up. I am going to meet another right now. What about the vehicles?”

  “I have nine so far,” said Wong as the waiter arrived with the bill. Chung took it off the silver plate, scanned it, and put it back with his gold American Express card. “I should have the last one within a day or two. Five are already modified, the rest will be completed well in time.”

  “All Mercs?”

  “We thought it best. They are the most reliable, and the easiest to modify.”

  “Excellent,” said Chung, dropping his napkin on the table and getting to his feet. “No,” he protested as Wong made to leave. “You stay and finish your coffee.”

  Wong reached up and shook hands with Chung and wished him luck.

  “You make your own luck, Michael,” said Chung, patting him on the back. “You know that.”

  On Chung’s way out the captain approached him and handed him a small leather holdall. Chung took the bag and smoothly slipped a banknote into the captain’s waiting hand.

  Uncle Fung took his cloth and carefully polished the chrome tap, taking extra care where the metal joined the sparkling white marble. That was where a dirty crust sometimes built up. He’d seen it in other, less well-tended, men’s rooms, but it would never be allowed to develop in his. When he was satisfied that the tap was as clean as it could be, he lined up the hairbrushes on the marble shelf in front of the mirror so that they were all exactly one inch away from the glass and perpendicular to it, before straightening the bottles of aftershave so that their labels faced ahead. There were small drops of water on the floor below one of the wash-basins and he knelt down to mop them up. When he straightened up he saw the door open and a well-dressed Chinese man in his thirties came in, carrying a black leather holdall. Uncle Fung’s eyes remained downcast but he quickly scrutinised the man. A pale green suit, well tailored, either French or Italian, and good quality tan shoes which were definitely Italian. As the man walked by him to one of the cubicles, the one he’d most recently cleaned, Uncle Fung thought happily, he noticed the man’s expensive haircut and caught the fragrance of an expensive aftershave, all suggesting that a good tip would be forthcoming.

  As the cubicle door closed, Uncle Fung checked that the urinals were sparkling clean and that there were plenty of clean white hand towels by the door. Uncle Fung took pride in his work, a pride which his wife always said bordered on obsession. She now lived in Canada, in a luxury apartment in Vancouver overlooking the Strait of Georgia, with their four children. The apartment was full of expensive antiques which he and his wife had collected over their forty years together and was twice the size of the one they used to share in Causeway Bay. It was stunning, but Uncle Fung had never actually seen it, only Polaroid photographs sent along with letters from his family. He would join his wife and children before 1997, that had already been decided. Until then, there was still much money to be made.

  Uncle Fung had worked as a toilet attendant in the hotel for the past twenty years, and it had been profitable work. Very profitable. At a conservative estimate he was worth almost two million dollars. Two million American dollars, most of which was in Canadian bank
deposit accounts, and all of which he’d earned as a result of his diligence in the hotel’s washroom. The hotel was close to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and its restaurants and coffee shops were well frequented by the colony’s stockbrokers and share analysts. Barely a day went by without Uncle Fung picking up some useful titbit of gossip or other as brokers relieved themselves at the urinals or washed their hands at the basins. In the men’s room, Uncle Fung was invisible. Occasionally he would overhear inside information, news of a forthcoming takeover or deal which wasn’t common knowledge, and he would use the information to good effect, buying and selling shares and always making a good profit. Life had been good to Uncle Fung, and in many ways he regretted not being able to pass the post on to one of his sons, but the forthcoming communist takeover made that impossible. Uncle Fung had escaped over the border in 1956, his wife a year later, and he could not take the risk of living under Chinese rule again. They had long memories, the communists.

  He heard the rustle of toilet paper in the cubicle and put a hand on one of the taps. As he heard the toilet flush he turned the tap on so that the water would be hot when its occupant emerged. Uncle Fung averted his eyes as the door opened. He’d discovered long ago that the more subservient he appeared, the bigger the tip that was proffered. His eyes widened when he saw the cheap, grubby training shoes that were on the feet that emerged from the cubicle. Above them were blue jeans, torn in several places, the sort worn by street vendors. Uncle Fung could not keep his eyes averted any longer. The figure was carrying the same black bag but now it was being held by a young man with unruly hair, a stained T-shirt and a denim jacket that was as scruffy as the jeans. There was a streak of oil on the man’s left cheek. He nodded at Uncle Fung and leant towards the mirror to check his appearance. He reached up to smudge the oil on his face and Uncle Fung noticed for the first time that there was dirt under the man’s fingernails. He hadn’t seen it when the man had entered the washroom, if indeed it was the same man. The man ruffled his hair so that it looked even more untidy, smiled at Uncle Fung, and headed for the door, swinging the holdall. Uncle Fung was so staggered by the transformation that he completely forgot to open the door. He stood in the centre of the washroom, shaking his head. After a minute or so he walked slowly over to the cubicle and looked apprehensively around the door, half expecting to see the man in the pale green suit dead on the floor. It was empty, of course, and Uncle Fung scratched his head. Maybe now was the time to go to Canada, he thought. Life in Hong Kong was becoming far too complex.

  Lehman stretched his back and groaned. It had been a long time since he had done any physical work, and refurbishing the Huey was proving to be laborious. He went over to the workbenches, where Lewis was tinkering with the radio which he had removed from the Huey. Bits of it were spread all over a wooden bench.

  “No joy?” asked Lehman, looking over his shoulder.

  “The colonel says we don’t need the radio but I’d feel safer if we had it working,” said Lewis. “We could listen for other aircraft, maybe pick up air traffic control when we’re airborne. It’d let you know if we had to face anything unexpected.”

  Lehman nodded. “It’d be useful, all right. We could call ATIS and get a weather report from Kai Tak, too.”

  “ATIS?”

  “Automatic Terminal Information Service. It’s a recording of weather and runway information, it goes out on VHF. But are you saying you can’t fix it?”

  “Not a hope. Mr Tsao’s had a look at it as well, but he’s not really an electronics expert. I think the crystals have given out, but I’m not really an electronics expert either, not at that level anyway. In Nam if it stopped working, we just slotted in a new one. And besides, these things were tuned to individual pre-set frequencies before each mission. It’s unlikely that they’d correspond to any frequencies that are used here.”

  “So?”

  Lewis looked up, a red-handled screwdriver poised above the electrical parts. “Well, I reckon we could buy a scanner here and patch it into the Huey’s aerial and the intercom system. I could mount it in the roof, no problem.”

  “Let’s do it then,” replied Lehman. “Do you want to go into Tsim Sha Tsui and pick one up? I’ll drive.”

  “Sure. You think we should tell the colonel? He went out an hour or so ago.”

  “I don’t see why,” said Lehman. “The guys have got plenty of work to do, they won’t miss us. We can be there and back in an hour.”

  Lehman drove the Wrangler Jeep to the main shopping area of Tsim Sha Tsui and parked in a multi-storey car park. The shops selling electrical equipment all followed the same format: big colourful signs bearing the names of the big Japanese manufacturers, window displays of the latest products, mostly from Japan, and inside were counters set up in a U-shape behind which sat earnest young men wearing short-sleeved shirts and gold-rimmed spectacles who kept their eyes trained on the entrance to their domains like hawks searching for pigeons.

  The two men stood for a while looking into the window of one of the larger shops. Black shelves were lined with every conceivable sort of consumer electrical equipment: hand-held computer games; cameras; camcorders; digital tape recorders; walkie-talkies; computer notebooks; miniature television sets; short-wave radios. Not one had a price tag or any indication of how much they would be expected to pay. The sales assistants inside perked up, scenting prey.

  They walked out of the bright sunshine and into the air-conditioned shop. Other than two middle-aged men examining a Hitachi camcorder while their stomachs hung over their too-tight shorts, they were the only customers.

  “Yes, can I help you?” asked a sales assistant who looked about fifteen years old. He motioned for them to sit on high stools on their side of the counter.

  “We’re looking for a radio receiver. A scanner,” said Lewis. “Something that can pick up aircraft transmissions, police, emergency services, stuff like that.”

  “No problem. For America or for Australia?”

  Lehman and Lewis looked at each other. Lehman thought of lying but quickly realised that then they might end up with unsuitable equipment. He turned back to the salesman who was looking at the digital watch on his wrist as if he had better things to do than waste his time serving customers.

  “For use here,” said Lehman. “In Hong Kong.”

  The salesman sucked air in through his teeth. “Cannot,” he said.

  “Why not?” asked Lehman.

  “For export only,” the salesman said. “Cannot use in Hong Kong.”

  Lewis frowned. “But these new scanners can pick up almost everything. They should work here same as anywhere.”

  “Need licence to use in Hong Kong. For export only.”

  Comprehension dawned. “Ah, you mean we mustn’t use them in Hong Kong. They do work here but we’re not allowed to use them. Right?”

  The salesman nodded and smiled as if a particularly stupid child had just told him that two times two was four. “Right,” he said. “Need a licence from the post office.”

  “Okay,” said Lehman. “What we want is a scanner that will work in Hong Kong. But we won’t use it here. We’ll be taking it to the States with us.”

  The salesman grinned. “I have several that will do,” he said. He slid back a glass panel and brought three different models from out of the window display. He demonstrated all three to the Americans with casual familiarity. All seemed to be able to monitor the same frequencies, the only difference being size and range.

  Lehman haggled for a while over the cost of the biggest and managed to get the price down by almost thirty per cent. Before he handed the money over to the young salesman he asked him if he could supply a list of frequencies of local radio users, the police and such like.

  “You must not listen to police broadcasts,” the man said. “I already told you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. But if I promise not to listen, could you give me a list?”

  “How do I know you’re not police yourself?” />
  “How many Americans are there in the Hong Kong police?” replied Lehman.

  The salesman thought for a minute and then nodded. “Okay, okay, I’ll see what I can do.” He took the money from Lehman and shouted over to one of his colleagues in Cantonese who disappeared into a back room. He came back a few minutes later with a sheet of paper which he gave to Lehman without saying a word. “That has most of the frequencies,” explained the salesman as he detached the flexible antenna from the scanner and put them both into a box. “But don’t say where you got them from. Or this. Don’t tell anybody you buy here, okay? This for export only.”

  “I understand,” said Lehman. He gave the list a quick look. It appeared to be a computer print-out composed of two long columns. The left was a list of police stations, divided into Kowloon, Hong Kong, New Territories and Marine Police and consisting mainly of names that Lehman couldn’t even begin to pronounce. Some were obvious though, like Emergency Unit East Kowloon, Airport, and Traffic. The numbers all appeared to be six-digit VHF frequencies.

  “Okay,” said the salesman impatiently. “You want batteries?”

  “Doesn’t it come with batteries?” asked Lehman.

  “No. Or a case. You want a case?”

  “No, no case. But I’ll take a set of batteries.”

  “What about a mains adaptor?”

  Lehman looked at Lewis. “What do you think, Bart?”

  Lewis shook his head. “Batteries will be fine. I might patch it into the electrical system, but it’s not vital. It won’t use that much power, the length of time we have it on.”

  Lehman paid for the batteries, slipped the list of frequencies into his back pocket and walked with Lewis back to the car park. On the way they walked past a McDonald’s. Lehman looked over at Lewis, his eyebrows arched.