The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  The man with the American accent did most of the talking, but it was clear he was deferring to the two older men. He explained that they had come to offer their support during the Kowloon and Canton Bank’s period of uncertainty. Fielding asked if they wished to address the whole board but he was told that this was a personal offer and they wished to speak only with him.

  Fielding showed them into his office while Faith arranged three high-backed chairs in front of Fielding’s desk. Faith offered the men refreshments but they all shook their heads. She closed the door quietly behind her as Fielding took his seat. He linked the fingers of his well-manicured hands across his blotter and looked at his three visitors expectantly. The man with the American accent looked to his left and to his right and received almost imperceptible nods from both his companions.

  “Mr Fielding, we are here to make you an offer which will maintain the integrity of the Kowloon and Canton Bank, and which will ensure there is no slump in confidence in the territory’s ability to function as a world financial centre. The Cathay Bank is prepared to make a substantial injection of cash into the bank, within the hour, and we will announce that we are prepared to honour all the bank’s commitments. Your customers will be able, if they wish, to use their cards at our ATMs and withdraw cash from our branches with their cheques and passbooks. Once such an arrangement becomes public, the panic will be over. The people will know that you have the resources of one of the biggest banking groups in the world behind you.”

  Fielding said nothing, but his interlinked fingers tightened on the blotter. He knew that so far he had heard only half of the deal the visitors had in mind.

  The spokesman looked to the men on either side of him to check that he had their approval to continue. Again, the slight inclinations of the heads were barely noticeable. “In return the Kowloon and Canton Bank will become a member of the Cathay Bank Group.”

  Fielding smiled and shook his head. He fingered his wedding ring as he phrased his thoughts. “I am of course most grateful for your interest in our short-term problems,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “But I can assure you the problems are short term. We hope to have lines of credit in place before our branches open for business. I can assure you, this will all blow over.”

  “I think you are mistaken,” said the spokesman. “The Banking Commissioner has decided it would be unwise to use the exchange fund for such a purpose.”

  “How do you know that?” snapped Fielding.

  “It is known,” said the man with an easy smile. “We also know that help will not be forthcoming from the British banks. Nor will any of the American banks intervene.”

  “There are other options,” said Fielding.

  “I think you will find that any Hong Kong parties who were thinking about making a takeover bid for the bank’s stock have now reconsidered their position,” the man said, his dark brown eyes fixed on Fielding’s. “When the stock market commences trading, your share price will collapse, causing you further liquidity problems. We offer you a way to save the situation. It is your only solution, I am afraid.”

  Fielding put up his hands, palms outwards, and shook his head vigorously. “No, it is out of the question,” he said. “Even if I were to agree, even if the board were to accept your proposal, then it would have to go before the shareholders. And I am certain they would refuse to allow the bank to be taken over by the Cathay Bank.”

  The man in the Mao suit whispered into the younger man’s ear and he nodded. “What we propose, Mr Fielding, is that the Cathay Bank will make a reasonable offer for the shares, or at least for a controlling percentage, based on its net assets rather than the share price. That would guarantee that the shareholders receive a fair price, certainly a much better price than they will be able to obtain in the market if you open for business the way things are. We would intend to keep the bank’s listing on the Stock Exchange here, and to go for parallel listings in Tokyo and London. The shares will become more marketable as a result, and shareholders will have the option of selling to us or in the market if they are unhappy with them as an investment. No one will put a gun to their heads.”

  “The bank has always been independent,” protested Fielding.

  “By independent, you mean out of China’s control,” said the spokesman, coldly. “You have been perfectly willing, some might say eager, to sell your independence to a European group.”

  “That may be,” said Fielding, “but there can be no question of the board recommending a takeover by the Cathay Bank.”

  “If you personally were to recommend it, I think you would have no problem persuading the rest of the directors,” said the spokesman. “And the shareholders, like your customers, are so panic-stricken that they will clutch at any straw. I might add, Mr Fielding, that we do not anticipate any objections from the Banking Commissioner. In fact, we expect our initiative, and your acceptance of it, to be warmly welcomed by the Hong Kong administration.”

  Fielding felt as if the three men were inexorably forcing him into a corner.

  “I have no desire to recommend your proposal be accepted by the board,” he said patiently.

  “We are confident that we can change your mind,” said the spokesman.

  Fielding snorted and leaned back in his chair. He looked pointedly at his watch, not caring if his visitors were offended by the gesture. He wanted to get back to the board meeting.

  “Let us explain what we have in mind,” said the spokesman. “We would be content with sixty per cent of the bank’s share capital, either through a rights issue or by us buying in the market, or through a limited offer. In the meantime we would offer our unconditional support to the bank. We would expect you to stay on as chairman at an increased salary, though the day-to-day running of the bank will come under Beijing’s control. The Cathay Bank will have enough directors to maintain control of the board, but you will be free to nominate several existing directors to keep their positions. We will waive the bank’s traditional rules on retirement, and you will be guaranteed the chair for so long as you want it. We in China do not believe as you Westerners seem to that a man’s qualities become useless after a certain age. We take the view that wisdom comes with maturity, Mr Fielding, and you may hold the post until you are ninety if you wish.”

  For the first time Fielding was tempted, knowing that even if the bank were to be saved by any other means, his retirement date had been set and whatever happened he would be leaving under a cloud. But he despised the way the Cathay Bank representatives were so keen to take advantage of his bank’s misfortunes, and he had no wish to become a lackey of Beijing, no matter how high the salary.

  “I am afraid I cannot recommend your proposal to the board,” he said finally.

  The spokesman whispered to the man in the Mao suit, and then to the man with the gold tooth. All three whispered in Mandarin, and then as one they stood up, extending their hands. Fielding shook hands with them all and wished them goodbye. The spokesman placed his briefcase on the desk and clicked open the locks. He opened the case and took out a video cassette, which he handed to Fielding. His two companions had already reached the door and were leaving the office.

  “I will go back to my office; you can reach me at the number on my card,” said the spokesman. “All I need is a phone call from you and we will make the announcement. You have heard everything we have to offer you. After viewing this, you will understand what you have to lose if you refuse us. In Hong Kong, a man’s reputation, his face, is his most important asset, Mr Fielding. I need say no more. I am sorry it has come to this.” He closed his case and lifted it off the desk, nodded curtly, and followed his companions out of the office.

  Faith stood at the door, wearing a look of concern.

  “William, are you all right?” she asked, wringing her hands like an old Chinese amah.

  “Everything is fine, Faith,” he said. “I just need a few minutes alone. Don’t put any calls through.”

  She nodded, unconvinced,
looked as if she wanted to say something, but closed the door.

  Fielding walked slowly to the video recorder and slotted the cassette in. He switched on the recorder and the television set and stood in front of the screen, his arms folded across his chest, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. The screen was filled with black and white static and then a picture flickered up, two figures on a bed, a man and a woman. The man was in the shadows, his back to the camera, but Fielding could see he was well muscled and had jet black hair. The woman was Anne, naked on the bed, her nails scratching the man’s back as she gasped and cried out. Fielding watched as his eyes filled with tears. He kept repeating his wife’s name in a soft whisper, over and over.

  The announcement of the takeover bid for the Kowloon and Canton Bank came thirty minutes before the bank’s branches were due to open, along with details of the cash injection from the Cathay Bank. Police vans toured Hong Kong, broadcasting the details through loudspeaker vans, and Cathay Bank press releases were faxed to the local radio stations. Bank managers began hurriedly pinning notices up in the windows of their branches. Those at the front of the lines were unwilling to leave their places, sensing a trick, but others rushed to Cathay Bank branches and came back to confirm that the rival bank was indeed honouring all transactions. By the time the doors opened for business the queues had all but vanished and the riot police were standing around in small groups, their helmets off, their stun guns and batons holstered.

  The stock market opened quietly. There was a flurry of selling in the first half hour, but it was mainly from orders faxed to stockbrokers overnight and the shares were snapped up by institutions. Shares in Kowloon and Canton Bank did especially well, rising ten cents by lunchtime. The announcement that the Cathay Bank was supporting the Kowloon and Canton Bank was taken as a show of Beijing’s support for the whole of Hong Kong and not just the beleaguered financial institution. The Financial Secretary and the Banking Commissioner had both issued statements of support for the merger, saying that it heralded a new era of Anglo-Sino co-operation that boded well for post-1997 relations. By early afternoon Neil Coleman was back at his desk, feet up, picking his teeth with a plastic paperclip and deliberating whether or not to call Debbie Fielding and ask her how she was.

  There was no need for Anthony Chung to delay the meeting. He could just as easily have gone out to the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport, which was only sixteen miles or so to the north of Paris, to greet the old man. But he knew the airport was a soulless place, clinical and cold and not worthy of such a momentous occasion. The moment had to be savoured, to be tasted and enjoyed to the full. It had been a long time coming, and Chung did not want it to be spoiled by screaming children, bad-tempered departing tourists and businessmen rushing for taxis or the RER trains. No, there had to be a touch of theatre about the meeting, and once Chung had given it some serious thought it was obvious where it should be: the place where it all began just six months earlier, when Chung had first set the wheels in motion and handed over the envelope to the now deceased Colonel Tyler.

  He stepped out of the Métro station in the Champs-Elysées and sniffed the summer air like a mole emerging from its underground lair, blinking in the bright sunlight. His left arm was still in plaster and supported by a sling. Wong’s bullet had taken a piece out of Chung’s elbow and the doctors had told him that even when it had healed he’d never be able to extend it fully and it would probably give him pain for the rest of his life, especially during damp and cold weather. Chung was not bitter; it was a small price to pay for his father’s freedom. And it went a long way to persuading the Hong Kong police that he had been an innocent bystander caught up in the bank robbery.

  The thoroughfare was thronged with tourists: Germans, British, Japanese, and the hawkers were doing a brisk trade in cheap sunglasses and badges. There were few signs that only days earlier the avenue had witnessed the finish of the Tour de France after three gruelling weeks. The French street-cleaning system was nothing if not efficient.

  The forecast for the day had been sunny with temperatures in the low seventies, and the view from his apartment in the Rue de Sèvres had borne out the meteorological forecast, so Chung had chosen a lightweight blue linen suit, a white shirt and a flowery-patterned Kenzo tie that he knew would raise his father’s eyebrows if not a smile.

  There was a spring in his step as he walked down the Champs-Elysées towards Fouquet’s because up until he’d received the telephone call from Hong Kong he’d never quite believed that they’d let him go, that even at this late stage the old men in Beijing would go back on their word even though Chung had delivered everything as promised. It wouldn’t have been the first time that they’d lied. The four a.m. phone call had dragged him from a deep dreamless sleep and there had been a moment’s confusion before he realised he was being addressed in Cantonese and not in French. It was Michael Wong calling to say that the old man had arrived on a CAAC jet from Beijing, that he was as fit and well as could be expected and that he was now somewhere high above Vietnam in an Air France 747 heading towards Paris.

  “First class?” Chung had asked and Wong had snorted and laughed. Of course.

  Chung looked at his watch, which he’d transferred to his right wrist, for the thousandth time since the early morning phone call. He’d arranged for a Mercedes with a Chinese driver to be at the airport to collect his father and to bring him to Fouquet’s, and before he’d left the apartment he’d called the airline to check that the flight would be in on time. The plane had landed twenty minutes earlier, the old man would have had only the luggage he had carried on with him, and there would be no problems with the immigration officials; the French diplomats in Beijing had had all the paperwork ready for some time. Assuming the traffic wasn’t any worse than usual, he should arrive at Fouquet’s within half an hour, probably a good deal sooner.

  He looked down the avenue towards Place de la Concorde. Place de la Révolution it had been called a little over 200 years ago, when the French people overthrew their cruel aristocracy and they’d killed more than 1,300 over thirteen months of terror during which the smell of blood hung like a cloud over the centre of Paris. Thirteen hundred victims in thirteen months. That had been just about the rate of killings in China in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Chung thought grimly. Most of them a single rifle bullet in the back of the neck, with the relatives of the victims being made to pay for the ammunition and the kidneys of the executed sold for transplants. The Chinese had a saying which went back centuries: Kill one, educate one hundred. The old men in Beijing had no qualms about killing as a warning. What was the population of China? One billion? So how many would have to be killed to warn them all? Ten million? Would the old men in Beijing do it? Chung snorted to himself. Without doubt, they would. They’d already killed more than one million Tibetans during their forty-year rule there. The only reason Zhong Ziming hadn’t been put to death, he was sure, was because he still had friends at the top, friends who, while they weren’t prepared to speak up for him, were able to wield enough influence to keep him alive.

  The French had chosen the right time to overthrow their masters, Chung thought ruefully. The French aristocracy had no tanks to send into Place de la Concorde, no battalions of the People’s Army to open fire on students and peasants, no media to manipulate to tell the masses of the population that what was happening was nothing more than a “counter-revolutionary rebellion”. Chung wondered how the French Revolution would have fared in the twentieth century. Probably would have ended up the same as the Pro-Democracy Movement had at Tiananmen Square: mown down by submachine-guns, crushed by tanks, the bodies piled up by bulldozers and burnt in petrol-soaked pyres. Followed by secret trials without appeal and long prison sentences and executions. The French didn’t appreciate how lucky they were. Or maybe they did, thought Chung. Why else would the French authorities be so keen to offer sanctuary to Chinese dissidents who feared to return to China? And it was an open secret that it was French
diplomats who were responsible for getting many of the leaders of the dissident movement out of Beijing after the June 4 massacre in 1989. The French had proven themselves good friends to the Chinese dissidents, which is more than could be said for the British and Americans who paid lip service but little else.

  He pushed open the door with his good arm and allowed a bow-tied waiter to lead him to a corner table where he chose a chair which allowed him to see the entrance. He ordered a chocolate. There was more than a touch of theatre about this, he knew, but he’d spent a good deal of the past six months playing one part or another and he figured that he deserved this one curtain call. He wondered how his father would look after almost six years in virtual solitary confinement. He would be over sixty now, though to be honest the old man had never really come clean about exactly how old he was. He’d been born in a small village in northern China, he claimed, but he’d been vague about most of the details of his early life, including the date of his birth. Zhong Ziming had survived as long as he had by bending with the political winds, and his lack of roots had been a valuable survival mechanism, even though it often drove Chung to distraction when all his searching questions went unanswered with a dismissive wave of a hand. Dates, names, specifics – at times it seemed as if it would be easier for Zhong Ziming to grasp mercury than to keep a firm grip on a single fact of his life.

  Chung took a small tin from the pocket of his suit and winced as the movement sent a spasm of pain through his injured elbow. It was painted a glossy black with a pattern of red and gold flowers and dark green leaves. He rolled it in his hand. It contained jasmine tea, from China, and it was his father’s favourite. He’d discovered it a week earlier in a gourmet food shop in the street where he lived. The chocolate arrived. Chung showed the tin to the waiter.