by Ian Williams
They sat mostly in silence. Drayton tried to read his newspaper, but every time he opened it the wind gusted and he almost lost it over the side. He gave up.
The ferry hugged the coast of Hong Kong Island, heading west along a wall of tall office buildings and scrappy ramshackle apartment blocks, a mountain rising behind.
“Don’t know how they do that,” Drayton said, pointing at an impossibly narrow building, clad in bamboo, that was under construction, squeezed into the wall.
Once out of the harbour and into open water the ferry wove between cargo ships at anchor, then juddered and bounced as it hit the wake of ships on the move, Lamma Island lying ahead of them, three tall chimneys of a power station towering over its main village.
They left the ferry down a wind-swept pier and along the village’s narrow main street, lined with restaurants and small shops, before turning inland onto a steep path towards the centre of the island.
Drayton said a friend of his had moved to the island to be closer to nature.
“Nice apartment, with a bird’s eye view of the power station,” he said. “Sits around all day drinking beer and smoking weed from what I can make out. Calls himself a writer.”
Morgan said he could see the appeal of the place, power station aside.
After fifteen minutes they reached a sandy cove where they took a table in a largely empty open-air restaurant and ordered two cold beers.
“So, you’ve become a porn star? Cheers!”
“I really can’t see anything funny in this, Chuck.”
“Can I see?”
Morgan gave Drayton his iPhone, and Drayton then watched the grainy action unfold, zooming in and telling Morgan he thought the woman was cute and what was her name?
“Mimi, at least that’s what she calls herself.”
“A regular?”
“Sort of.”
“Which means?”
“Three or four times, I guess.”
“And the name of the place where it’s at?” said Drayton, asking him to write it down on a napkin.
“No threats? No demands?”
“Nothing.”
“Not the best customer service. Any idea what was so important on the phone?”
“She said it was her sister coming to town, that she was arranging to meet her.”
Drayton then took from his back pocket a silver slab of something. It was his iPhone wrapped in several layers of kitchen foil, which he carefully opened. He transferred the video to his phone using Bluetooth, wrapped it again and put it back in his pocket.
Then he pulled out a very old Nokia on which he made a call, very brief, passing on the name and location of the massage place. Nothing more, not even a greeting, and hung up.
They left the restaurant and continued on a path that now rose steeply to a lookout area close to a temple. There was a small drinks stall and Morgan suggested they get some water. Drayton said that was a good idea and ordered two more beers.
They sat on a wooden bench with a panoramic view of the power station.
Drayton asked whether he had the documents with him and Morgan said no, he wanted to talk first. He said he was worried, and so was his wife. That they wanted an explanation. He said the people Drayton had asked about, the Shanghai guy with the Ferrari-driving son, the Shenzhen syndicate too, these were very powerful people.
“What are we getting into here, Chuck?”
“We’re just trying to protect American investors,” Drayton said. “And we appreciate your help. And we’re paying you well, and into whatever dodgy account you name, Tony.”
“Which I appreciate. But that’s not really the point.”
“So what’s the point?”
“The point,” said Morgan, “is that this could be dangerous for us, for our business. These people are well connected. It was tough to get the information. The Shanghai guy, he’s military, top military, with some special unit, but also has a lot of other stuff going on, investments in China and abroad, all channelled through his son to keep it clean.”
“Tony, I’ll level with you. There is a bigger picture here, which I can’t really explain right now. I just need you to trust me. Your name, your wife’s name will be fully protected.”
Drayton said they really needed to talk about security. The mess up in Shenzhen, that stuff with La-La at the rugby, it really wasn’t cool. He said he’d come up with a more secure way of communicating and gave Morgan a business card.
Morgan looked at the card.
“Shanghai TT Logistics. I thought you worked for the embassy.”
“I do, Tony. Think of it as a sort of subsidiary, an affiliate. The important thing is it provides us with a better way of communicating.”
“What does the TT stand for?”
“Nothing in particular, but if it makes you feel better you can think of it as Tellytubbies.”
Drayton told him there was a web address on the card and once he’d got to the website he should log in.
“The login is ‘login’, the password is ‘pa55word’, using the figure 5 instead of s. You think you can remember that?”
Morgan said he thought he could.
“Once you’re logged in you can upload the documents to the site. You can also write emails to me, only don’t send them.”
“Don’t send them?”
“No, save them as drafts. I have access to the same site, so can pick up the drafts, as well as the documents. It’s more secure.”
They walked on, then stopped, breathless, leaning against an information board beside the path, the “Bugs of Lamma Island”, listing all the creepy-crawlies you were likely to come across on a hike.
“Look at this. They trying to drive people away?” said Drayton.
“Chuck, I do need to know more.”
“It’s all here, man. The ones you tread on, the ones that bite you. Maybe we should have bought some spray.”
Then he said, “Everything’s cool. Let’s go and get ourselves some seafood.”
They entered another village of seafood restaurants lined with tanks and buckets overflowing with live shellfish, crabs and swimming fish of all shapes and sizes, though they didn’t strike Drayton as being in the best of health.
“What’s the name of that big fish at the top that’s got the tank to itself, the one with the pout, the big lips, looks like it’s been clonked on the head?” Drayton asked.
Morgan said it was called a Humphead Wrasse.
“Beautiful fish. Elegant, stately. And endangered,” he said.
“Tasty too. I imagine,” Drayton said. “Maybe the Communist Party will come to its rescue.”
“How’s that?”
“Haven’t you heard? The Party’s already saving the sharks.”
Drayton said he’d read it in that morning’s newspaper. Shark fin sales in Hong Kong had collapsed, and Hong Kong was where most of the trade happened.
“You know why?”
“Tell me,” said Morgan.
“It’s the corruption crackdown. Shark fin soup is off the menu. No more big banquets for the comrades, chomping on endangered species. Bad for the comrades, but good for the planet’s wildlife.”
They looked for the quietest restaurant, where a server recommended the Grouper, saying they were wild and tasted better than the farmed fish.
There were two in one small tank and one was lying motionless on its side.
“Is that live fish still a live fish?” asked Drayton. “Or maybe it’s sleeping.”
The server poked it with her net and it twitched. It was still a live fish. Drayton said they’d take the other one, which had a few more vital signs. The server fished it out with her net, but as Drayton and Morgan headed to a table by the water, she dropped it back i
n the tank and quickly scooped out the one with the twitch.
Morgan took the farthest seat, his back to the water, and Drayton asked him to swap.
“You don’t want the sea view?” said Morgan.
“I want the restaurant view, Tony.”
Drayton’s old Nokia rang, and he took the call. Just listening, not saying a word. Then he hung up.
“Your massage parlour, it’s closed. Boarded up. Neighbouring noodle place says the police closed it down two days ago. Nobody’s heard of a Mimi.”
Morgan said he wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.
“Might mean nothing. There’s a big crackdown on that kinda service right now. But anybody contacts you, you tell me, man.”
Morgan said he would, and then asked Drayton, “What’s with the phones?”
Drayton put the iPhone wrapped in kitchen foil and the ancient Nokia side by side on the table. “Smartphone, dumb phone. You’re in China. It’s good to have one of each, Tony. My iPhone has State Department encryption for what that’s worth. The kitchen foil’s a bit of extra defence, blocks radio signals, so you can’t be tracked.”
He tapped the old Nokia.
“And this, this is the one I love best. Makes calls, messages if you’re lucky. Nothing else. Pre-paid card. Anonymous.”
They stopped talking as the server came to the table with the fish, steamed in soy sauce, together with a bowl of fried rice and two more beers. She told them not to forget to eat the meat in the cheeks of the fish because it tasted special.
Once she’d gone, Drayton said he was still worried about La-La, that fucking Tellytubby. But they just had to hope that inside the outfit was some drunken Aussie rugby fan who, even if he’d found the memory stick, wouldn’t be able to understand the stuff anyway.”
“Well, that’s the thing,” said Morgan.
“What’s the thing?”
“That information, about the military guy and his son, about the syndicate, it wasn’t on the memory stick.”
“It wasn’t on the memory stick?”
“No, I wanted to talk to you first. I was worried. My wife was worried.”
“So what was on the memory stick?”
“Well,” said Morgan, “it was the full technical specification for the Automatic Sperm Extractor – Mark 2. I think you’re already familiar with it.”
Drayton started to laugh.
“So La-La has the hand-job machine.”
Morgan nodded, and Drayton said, “Tony, I love you.”
*
The first thing Morgan did when he got back to his Hong Kong hotel was to scan the documents using an app on his iPhone. He called them The Colonel and Mr Fang, and then uploaded both to the Shanghai TT Logistics website, following Drayton’s instructions. It was surprisingly straightforward.
Once the upload was complete he felt an enormous sense of relief. He’d done what he’d been commissioned to do. He’d fulfilled his side of their contract and would be in no hurry to do any more business with Drayton. It was as if a burden had been lifted.
Then his phone rang, Sam Ching’s name on the screen.
“Hello Sam. What’s up?” he said.
But it wasn’t Sam. It was Sam’s wife, Su.
“He’s gone, Tony. They took him away.”
She was sobbing and garbling her words. Morgan told her to calm down, slow down, take a deep breath, and tell him what happened.
She said she’d been visiting Sam in Shenzhen. Then she started crying again.
She was from Hong Kong, like her husband, and Morgan knew she hated the mainland, but felt she had to go from time to time to keep tabs on Sam, not trusting him with the factory girls. She had good reason for that, and Morgan’s initial thought was that she’d caught her husband doing something he shouldn’t.
She said they’d been woken before dawn by banging on the door, so hard she thought they were trying to knock it down.
“I opened it slightly, with the chain on, and they just pushed their way in,” she said. “Snapped the chain, and pushed me aside, Tony. Demanded to see Sam.”
“Who are they, Su?”
“Wouldn’t say. Refused to give IDs. But one guy was in uniform. Police. The others were in plain clothes, big guys.”
She said they sat Sam at the dining table, one of them on each side, two opposite, another two looking around the apartment like they owned the place, picking up photos, books and stuff. Throwing things around. No respect.
“What did they want, Su?”
“They told me to stay in the bedroom, but the door was open a little, and I could see they had some papers, drawings and pictures mostly, and they kept waving them around in front of Sam, asking what it was. What it really was.”
“What did Sam say?”
“I think he thought it was some sort of anti-counterfeit operation, you know, that maybe they were investigating fakes. Maybe looking for a bribe. He kept telling them that it wasn’t a copy, that it was his design. He said that if there was a problem they could sort it out in a friendly manner.”
“Since when have the police been bothered about fakes?” said Morgan.
“That’s what I thought. Made no sense. And, anyway, they ignored that and just kept on at him, getting angry, asking what is it?”
“Did you see the drawings?”
“I didn’t get a real good look, but it looked like some sort of vacuum cleaner on short legs, with a funny hole in the front.”
“Oh,” said Morgan.
“You okay, Tony?”
“Yes, sorry, Su. Lost the signal then. What did they say next?”
“Just kept banging on and on, getting angry, demanding to know what it did.”
She stopped, sobbing again.
“Then… then Sam got really mad. He just snapped.”
“What happened?”
“He yelled at them, Tony. You know what he’s like when he loses his temper.”
Morgan said he did.
“What did he yell, Su?”
“He said, ‘It jerks you off, you fucking moron’.”
“Oh.”
“And then they hit him so hard, Tony. Cut his face and mouth, a lot of blood. He fell on the floor and they kicked him. Then they grabbed him by the arms, one big guy on either side, locked his arms behind his back, hurting him, and they took him out to one of two black Audis.”
She said Sam was barely conscious.
“What did you do?”
“What could I do? I was so frightened I couldn’t speak. I was shaking, couldn’t get no words out. Just stayed, frozen, in the bedroom.”
She said that as soon as they’d gone she headed straight for the crossing to Hong Kong. Wasn’t going to spend another fucking minute in that place.
Morgan asked her if she’d reported it to the authorities.
“Tony, they are the fucking authorities.”
Morgan told her it must be some sort of horrible misunderstanding, you know how things are sometimes in China, that he’d sort it out.
And she told him he was a good man, that she really appreciated that.
But he had no idea where to start, what to do. He suddenly felt very sick.
After they’d hung up, he just sat staring out of the window, towards the main highway through Central, where the protesting lawyers and judges were still marching. Crowds along the roadside were applauding as they passed. Which is when Morgan noticed that at the front of their march they were carrying a single large picture, like sometimes happens at funerals. Only this one was a picture of a stick alien.
He took out his iPhone and photographed the passing protest, zooming in on the alien. He opened his Twitter app and went to upload the photo to @Beijing_smog. It was then he saw t
hat he had a Twitter message, a private message. The first surprise was that it addressed him personally. The account was supposed to be anonymous. The second shock was that it was from Cindy Wu. He’d never told her about the account.
The biggest shock was what it said.
Stay in Hong Kong. Do not come back, and do not try and contact me or Robert. Robert should be fine. My parents are helping. Cindy
– 26 –
The Hack
It was hard to say what finally brought Liu around. He’d been sitting at their usual table at The Moment On Time, staring out of the window at a dirty grey nothingness, smog so thick it had again gone off the index and was no longer registering on their smartphone apps.
“Let’s get back into the other business,” he said.
Wang wasn’t sure he’d heard him right, and said, “Which other business?”
“The computer security business. You guys are right. Let’s get back into it.”
Possibly it was their worsening debts and the sorry state of their other business ventures. Maybe it was the stock market, which was now so bad Liu had completely stopped looking at his trading account. Though Wang suspected Liu’s change of heart had more to do with what had happened to his father. The big-shot official who advised the Prime Minister was now an ex-big-shot official. He’d been suspended from his job.
Liu was shocked when he heard. They all were. But his father had calmed him down, saying that it wasn’t a big deal, calling it a misunderstanding. That he’d be fine, saying there were many things going on in China right now. Things he couldn’t talk about.
Liu didn’t quite get that.
Liu worried about the internship his father had arranged for him, thinking the company might change its mind now that his father was no longer pulling strings in Beijing. The job was with an international finance outfit called MacMaster and Brown, which he’d never heard of, but which looked like it had a lot going on. He’d only just received the formal offer in a personal letter from their China Director, a man called Morgan. He wasn’t sure exactly what he’d be doing for them, since nobody had ever asked about his skills or qualifications and there’d been no interview, but the post was in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong was ideal.