The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  “I’m expecting a guest,” he explained in fluent French. “An old man. When he arrives, would it be possible to bring him a pot of tea made from this? It’s jasmine tea, his favourite.”

  The waiter, a greying man with a paunch and jowls like a bloodhound, sniffed and shrugged and began to protest that such a thing would not be possible, that if Chung would prefer a thé citron it could be easily provided but his eyes widened when Chung produced a 200 franc note.

  “It would please an old man,” Chung explained.

  The waiter’s protests vanished as quickly as the banknote and he took the tin box to the kitchen. That was one of the many things Chung liked about the French. Their flexibility.

  He looked at his watch again and felt a tremble of anticipation in his stomach. Six years in solitary confinement. Could Anthony Chung himself have survived such an ordeal? Did he have the inner resources? He doubted it. But his father, he was different. His father had survived the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, emerged unscathed from the purging of the Gang of Four and had thrived during the opening up of China during the early eighties. Anyone who could tread such a dangerous path should have been able to take imprisonment in his stride, Chung told himself. His father’s only mistake had been to align himself with Zhao Ziyang, the former Communist Party General Secretary who had led the students to think that China was ready for democracy. When Zhao was toppled, his father was put under house arrest. The apartment in Beijing was comfortable, and he had been allowed his own food and books, but six years without being able to talk to your friends? Could he have coped without losing his mind for six long years? And what of the last twelve months? His confinement had originally been in the relative comfort of his Beijing apartment, albeit guarded night and day by the Public Security Bureau, until Anthony Chung had approached a leading member of the Chinese government with his audacious plan. Once he’d persuaded the old men in Beijing that he was serious and he’d assured them that it would work, at no risk to themselves, then they decided to raise the stakes by moving his father to Beijing’s Qincheng maximum security prison. There were no comforts there, Chung knew. Some of the cells had neither doors nor windows, just a trapdoor in a ceiling so low that standing upright was impossible, and he had often cursed himself for being responsible for his father’s change in circumstances. There were times when he’d woken up in the middle of the night sweating and panting and wondering if in fact he would end up being the death of his father rather than his rescuer. All those fears were behind him now. He finished his chocolate and ordered another.

  Chung was sure his father would like Paris. In many ways the French were similar to the Chinese, with their love of history, good food, and children. He’d feel at home in the crowds, too. The language was going to be a problem because his father’s knowledge of French was patchy to say the least, but his English would be good enough for him to get by until he picked up the basics. Chung had made a room ready in his apartment and his father would live there until he felt settled in the city and then they’d decide together where he should live. There were many areas of the city where there were enclaves of Chinese, especially in the 13th arrondissement, where perhaps he’d feel more at home, but that was for the future. There was plenty of time.

  The door opened and a waiter stepped to the side, obscuring Chung’s view, then he moved and his father was there, slightly stooped, looking to the right and left like a child frightened to cross the road. Chung stood up and raised his right hand in greeting, but his father didn’t seem to see him as he peered around. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, Chung saw, and he wondered for how long the old man had been without them. Probably from the first day he was arrested. The Chinese authorities were like that, heaping every indignity they could upon those they wanted to break.

  The old man screwed up his eyes and looked in Chung’s direction. Chung moved towards his father, a smile breaking out as he got closer, then, when he was just six feet away, his father saw him and he smiled too and reached to hold him, not seeing the sling and pressing his son to his chest. The pain ripped through Chung’s arm but he barely felt it. He held his father with his good arm and rested his forehead on the old man’s shoulder, using the material of his jacket to wipe the tears from his cheeks. They stood together for many minutes, not speaking, and they attracted several glances from those sitting at the tables, but there were smiles, too, from those who guessed that something special was happening in the restaurant, that the meeting held some significance, the nature of which they’d never know but which none the less made them feel somehow warm. Chung kept wanting to say something but each time he tried to form words the tears flowed again and something swelled in his throat and all he could do was to swallow and hold his father.

  It was Zhong Ziming who spoke first. “Merci, mon fils,” he whispered. The accent was atrocious but Chung laughed and cried at the same time, knowing that the old man must have asked someone how to thank his son in French. It was a sign, too, that he had retained his sense of humour, despite all he’d been through.

  “I never thought I’d see you again,” whispered Chung, speaking in Mandarin Chinese.

  Zhong Ziming took half a step back and put his hands on his son’s shoulders. He looked up at his son. “I never had any doubt,” he replied fiercely. “Never.” For the first time he saw the sling and he frowned. “What happened?” he asked.

  “A small accident,” said Chung. “It’s nothing. Really.” He nodded towards the table. “Come sit with me,” he said.

  As the two men sat at the table the waiter came over and placed a small white teapot and a cup and saucer in front of Zhong Ziming. He slowly poured jasmine tea into the cup and Zhong Ziming looked at it, and then at his son, with obvious surprise.

  “Jasmine tea!” he said, and again Chung felt the sting of tears. Zhong Ziming lifted the cup almost reverently to his lips, sniffed it, and then sipped, his eyes closed. When he opened them again it was with a smile of complete contentment on his face.

  “Your flight was good?” Chung asked.

  “Everything has been good,” his father answered. “From the moment I left Beijing, everything has been perfect. The man Wong went to a lot of trouble for me. As did your friends in the French embassy. I cannot believe it. Yesterday I was Chinese. Today I am a Frenchman.” He took the slim European-style passport from his jacket and put it on the table in front of him, by the side of the teapot. “I do not feel French,” he said.

  “You never will,” said Chung. “We will always be Chinese. Always.”

  The old man nodded and sipped his hot tea again. “It is true,” he said, almost to himself. “No matter what they do to us, we will always be Chinese. No matter how long we stay away, no matter what passport we carry or which language we speak, we can never be anything else.” He shook himself as if waking from a dream, and then smiled at his son. “Still,” he said, “I will become as French as is possible.” The smile became a mischievous grin. “Though no matter how long I live here, my son, I doubt if I will ever get used to a tie such as that. Is that the fashion in France? Is that what the young men wear here?”

  Chung shook his head and the two men laughed, though both still had damp eyes. When the laughter died down the two men sat in silence for a while. Occasionally Zhong Ziming would reach over and gently touch his son’s arm, as if to prove to himself that he was really there. Chung drank his chocolate and the old man savoured his jasmine tea.

  It was Chung who broke the silence first. “How much did they tell you of what I had planned?” he asked quietly.

  Zhong Ziming shook his head slowly. “Almost nothing until I was freed. I knew something was happening when they came to take me from my home, but the guards refused to speak to me. A friend got a message to me in prison but it told me little more than that you were trying to secure my freedom. It was only when they allowed me to leave China that I found out exactly what you had done. Such an audacious plan. I still find it difficult to belie
ve that you succeeded.”

  “I had help,” said Chung.

  “The man in Hong Kong, Michael Wong? He seems to be a good man. A good friend.”

  “No, not a friend,” answered Chung. “He is a criminal, a leader of one of Hong Kong’s triad organisations.”

  “So why did he help?”

  “He got to keep a substantial portion of the money which we took from the Kowloon and Canton Bank. And he obtained certain – how should I describe them – guarantees from the Chinese government. It will not be an easy time for the triads after 1997, but Michael Wong’s triad will, I believe, be finding it somewhat easier than the rest to adapt to life in the Special Administrative Region. He now has some friends in high places in Beijing.”

  “As do you, Juntao,” said the old man.

  Chung shook his head fiercely. “No,” he said. “No father, you must never think that. They did not release you because I won their friendship. I gave them two things they have long coveted. I gave them control of a Western bank, and I showed the world that the British cannot maintain order in Hong Kong. As far as the world is concerned, it was only China’s intervention which prevented the collapse of law and order in the colony. It will do much to wipe out the memory of what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989. They become saviours rather than killers. It’s part of the whitewash. But do not be fooled, Father. The cat might have changed colour, but it is still the same cat, and as Deng Xiaoping said, it can still catch mice. We have no friends in Beijing. None.”

  The old man reached over and put his hand on top of his son’s. “I will not forget,” he said.

  Chung looked at him earnestly. “And, Father, do not think for one minute that you can continue the fight for democracy from here, that you can join the dissidents in Paris. You are in exile, but it must be a silent exile. My role in the events of the last six months must never be revealed, and your voice must never again be heard in criticism of the Chinese government. That is the deal I made. Do you understand?”

  Zhong Ziming considered carefully what his son had said. It seemed to the old man that their roles had suddenly been reversed: that the son had become the father and the father, the son. He was being lectured by his own child, and it was not a pleasant experience. But he knew too that what his son said was the truth. The men in Beijing had a long reach, and even longer memories. He nodded slowly and squeezed his son’s hand.

  “I understand.” He sighed. “I understand, and I agree.” He looked around the crowded café and lifted the cup to his lips. “There are, I suppose, worse places to spend the winter.”

  The sound of laughing children echoed around the cobbled courtyard. A door was flung open and a line of youngsters filed out in pairs, little hands holding tight to other little hands, squinting in the beams of sunlight that streamed down into the corridor like spotlamps on a stage. The children skipped and ran down the stone stairs to the kitchen where they picked up large white plates and queued in front of an old wooden table where two nuns spooned fish stew and rice from steaming cauldrons. In the hospital wards other nuns in white habits wheeled trolleys and served lunch to the patients who were bedridden. Brand-new floor-mounted fans blew cooling breezes through the freshly painted wards and there was a lingering smell of disinfectant in the air.

  The children in the refectory took their heaped-up plates and put them down on the long dining tables before sitting on wooden benches, their hands in their laps. When they were all seated an elderly nun led them in prayers, the children with their eyes tightly closed, mouths watering. The word “amen” had barely finished echoing around the large dining hall than the children were eating.

  Sister Marie smiled at the happy children, and she was still smiling as she walked down the stone-flagged corridor to a section of the orphanage which the nuns used as administrative offices. There was more laughter coming from the main room there, deep-throated and hearty, the laughter of men.

  Inside the room was a large, circular table, and on it a pile of money and cards. Around the table sat Lehman, Horvitz, Carmody and Doherty, cans of beer at their elbows as they studied their poker hands.

  They looked up as they heard Sister Marie enter the room. “Can I be getting you gentlemen anything?” she asked in her soft Irish brogue.

  “No, we’re fine, Sister Marie,” said Lehman. “How is lunch going?”

  “The children have never seen so much food,” said the nun. “And our larders have never been so well stocked. If I didn’t know it was you gentlemen behind it, I’m sure I’d be thinking it was a miracle.”

  “Maybe it was,” said Lehman.

  “If you ask me, it was a miracle that Dan and Chuck managed to get our slick down on to that freighter,” said Carmody. “I didn’t even see it.”

  “I saw it,” said Doherty, “but I never thought we’d reach it. It was an amazing piece of flying, Dan.”

  “It took two of us to land it,” said Lehman.

  “A slick?” said Sister Marie, frowning.

  “A helicopter,” explained Lehman. “We nearly crashed at sea. It was a close thing.” He studied his cards, three tens and a pair of aces. It had been damned close, he’d never in his life been so close to death. The controls had fought and kicked all the way down, and the Huey was still spinning when it smashed into the crates on the deck of the freighter. Lehman had almost passed out, from the pain and from the loss of blood. The ship had a small crew of Filipino sailors and had been on its way to Thailand with a consignment of VCRs. They had more than enough money to bribe them to keep their mouths shut and to get ashore. The sailors had even helped to push the Huey overboard, once the vets had unloaded the gold and cash. Later, below decks, they’d counted out the loot. Five million dollars. “One million each,” Lehman had said, and there had been no argument over Lewis’s claim to a share. They’d travelled to Bangkok and Lehman had tracked down Josh and negotiated a new set of passports and papers for them all. Josh had heard about Tyler’s grisly fate on the road to the coast, but he was prepared to work for anyone who could meet his prices. Lehman had told the rest of the vets that Lewis wanted his money to go to his son, and to help the orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, and he’d been pleasantly surprised when they’d all agreed to go with him.

  The Americans had decided that Vietnam was a good place to wait while the furore caused by the bank heist died down, and the nuns had been more than happy to offer them a place to stay, partly as a gesture of thanks for the half a million dollars they’d given them, and partly because the men had been keen to offer their time, mending the leaking roof, replacing broken windows and painting the walls.

  Carmody studied his hand, the cards clipped between the prongs of his claw. The eight, ten, jack, queen and king of hearts. He had told everyone he planned to go to California eventually and open a bar.

  Doherty threw a hundred dollar bill into the centre of the table. He had decided to go back to Thailand, but was happy hanging around with the Americans for the time being.

  Horvitz had a straight, and he saw Doherty and raised him another hundred dollars. He’d told Doherty he wanted to spend some time in Thailand, the Land of Smiles, but he’d been hatching several business plans with Carmody and it was looking increasingly like he’d be ending up in California.

  It was Lehman’s turn to bet, and he threw 200 dollars into the pot. Lehman wasn’t sure yet what he intended to do. He knew one thing for sure: first he had to fly back to the States to talk to a small boy, and there was a college fund to be set up. Then he’d come back to Vietnam, for a while at least. He had things to do here, things that Bart would have wanted done if he’d been alive. He flicked the corners of his cards. He was looking forward to helping the nuns and their children. For the first time in a long while, he felt lucky.

 

 

  hive.