Yuan leads Zak and Kim away from Chin’s office, back through the shiny black and gold lobby and over to the hotel. They run down a long hallway of rooms on the first floor. At the end, Yuan slides a plastic card through a keypad and opens a fire door to the outside, leading them into the small space between buildings that fire protection requires for minimum distance between adjacent structures. Given the reason for the space requirement, there are no windows in this space, only blank concrete walls that rise up over a hundred feet to the nearest rooftop, making the tiny space they are standing in but a tiny crevice among urban cliffs.
Yet it can rain into this space and there is a small grate in the middle to carry the rainwater away to the City storm system. At the edge of the grate is a small latch intended for pulling the grate away to clean. Yuan reaches down and pulls on it, but the grate doesn’t move. Instead, the latch pulls up a small section of the cheaply tiled flooring, revealing a neatly disguised trap door and beneath it a wood staircase covered in dust.
Zak can’t help it. He gives Kim an amused look.
“Really?” she asks in return.
Yuan gets it.
“Don’t worry. There is a foil waiting to take us to the airport,” Yuan says.
“I suppose a cab was out of the question?” Kim asks.
“It takes us to Hong Kong International Airport. That’s on Lantau Island,” the anything but loquacious Yuan replies.
Kim is not exactly sure, but she takes the reference to an island to mean that the airport is principally surrounded by water.
“This is the fastest way to get there from Macau,” Zak says.
“Then why aren’t we going to the Ferry Terminal?” Kim queries.
“Mr. Chin has arranged a private foil,” asserts Yuan. “I am taking you right to it.”
Zak shrugs.
“We’ve come this far,” he says.
Kim gives in. She turns around, grabbing Zak’s arm to support herself, and steps backward down the stairs.
“Somebody forgot to install some lighting,” she states, looking up at them.
Then a moment later she calls out, “Geez! How far down does this thing go?”
Kim moves quickly and soon disappears. As Zak and Yuan are looking a light comes on and she comes back into view. She shines it up at them and they can see that it’s her phone that she is brandishing like a flashlight.
“I wish I hadn’t forgotten my shots. No telling what all’s down here. Hey, are you guys coming or what?”
Zak says to Yuan, “You might want to take the lead.”
Yuan laughs.
“You think?”
They descend about twenty feet. The oversized storm drain flattens out and becomes more cavernous. It’s made of poured and reinforced concrete walls, but it is still tiny, barely big enough to permit them to stand.
“How old is this?” asks Zak.
“I don’t know. It was probably built about the time that the Lisboa was built. A way for VIP’s to come and go without generally being seen would have been useful, even then.”
Kim has gone ahead. They can see her phone light bobbing and illuminating the way as she takes on the role of intrepid explorer.
“Hey guys! This thing just keeps going. And it’s heading down. I thought we already were in China!”
“Where are we going?” asks Zak. He is holding up his lighted phone to check out the ceiling. Every now and then he sees a vent. He puts his hand near one and feels forced air.
“It’s a short way,” is all Yuan says.
Zak judges the distance they’ve come at well over fifteen hundred feet. They reach a small construction area filled with a miscellany of equipment. At the end is a pressure sealed door and next to it a card key. Yuan swipes the device with his card, upon which the steel door loudly unlocks with a rush of air.
“I’m afraid,” he says, “there are quite a few stairs.”
Yuan takes care to re-seal the door shut behind them, and Zak looks up to see a standard set of concrete fire stairs, twisting itself as far upward as he can see.
“Yo,” exclaims Kim, “they forgot the elevator.”
The stairs are monotonous and tiring. The three all slow down. Zak starts counting floors. Talking becomes an effort. They listen to each other’s hard breathing as they climb.
Humidity increases and they begin to sweat profusely.
A door finally appears at the top. Once again, Yuan swipes his card on a key mechanism in order for the door to open. They hear water slapping as they walk into a small cave, massive rounded blocks of granite hanging low just over their heads. It is dark except for small electric wall sconces that appear to light their way around the corner. The stone floor is polished to a high sheen.
They step around to where the rock ceiling drops over a set of polished steps cut into the granite. The treads of the steps are individually lit and lead down to a rock platform at the edge of Nam Van Lake, which empties into the South China Sea. The cavern waters open onto the Lake and the last rays of the late afternoon sun.
Two men are waiting for them on the platform, standing before a large jet foil that bobs in the water. Yuan immediately greets them, speaking in Chinese. The men welcome him in return.
“Where the hell are we?” asks Kim.
“This must be an island in the middle of the lake,” answers Zak, careful of his footing on the damp steps.
They step down and get a full view of the boat.
“This is a foil?” Kim asks.
“Jet-foil. A boat on rockets. It rises onto skids and skims the water,” Zak points out.
“Sounds really safe.” Kim is not at all certain about it.
“It is,” he says.
“Does somebody have to have a special license to drive it?”
Zak laughs.
“Let’s hope so.”
Seatbelts are optional, but Kim and Zak put theirs on as the boat pulls out of the cave. They find themselves surrounded by Macau at night. The cave disappears behind them, hidden beneath the lush greenery of a small island. Nam Van Lake’s placid waters are mirror like and reflect the showy casinos and hi-rises along its shores.
Yuan sits nearby. He points to the very long bridge ahead that runs to the South end of the Lake, its lights a ribbon of white pearls strung along the elevated highway and the Lake’s edge.
“It’s called the Ponte Carvalho.”
They can see that the bridge stretches south to Sun Yat-sen Avenue, a shorter stretch of elevated highway that connects the outer circle of land hemming in Nam Van Lake at the point where the lake empties into the South China Sea. Carvalho soars high over the top of Sun Yat-sen Avenue, going South across the Outer Harbor of Macau to Tapai Island two miles away.
Their foil passes underneath Carvalho. On the shore nearest to them is the Wynn Casino, yellow horizontal stripes following its curvilinear form. To the west of it is the old Lisboa casino and hotel that they just left, iris blue curlicues running up and down the rectangular hotel and its round tower. The Grand Lisboa’s massive lotus shape is outlined in lights, standing above everything else in terms of sheer scale and brilliance. Next to it is the blue Bank of China and then the hulking subdued residential tower of Lakeview with its futuristically curved roof. The buildings reflect themselves in the dark waters of the Lake and colorfully light up the night sky above Macau, their last view of the city skyline.
The boat turns south to head out of the Lake, passing One Central Macau, a 40 story complex of blue hi rises on the shore not far from the Wynn. After that they pass the even bigger, very angular slab of the Mandarin Oriental. The Mandarin sits at the end of the island promontory, the highest point of the building jutting skyward to the south, pointed toward the Island of Taipa. Three pylon road bridges cross the miles of water between Macau and Taipa. Their hydrofoil is nearest to the middle of these bridges, the Carvalho, as they head South, reaching the mouth of the Lake. To the West is Sai Van bri
dge and to the East is Amizade, which comes all the way down from the Ferry Terminal on the East side of Macau. Brightly lit by highway lighting, the three bridges stand out against the dark sea and the black sky.
As the hydrofoil reaches the mouth of the Lake it has to pass under Sun Yat-sen highway to reach the sea. On its western approach Sun Yat-sen Avenue comes back onto land, just below Macau Tower, a bright beacon and sentinel to those visiting Macau. The passengers on board find their attention is drawn to the Tower.
“Macau Tower is the only structure taller than the Grand Lisboa in Macau. It was originally commissioned by Stanley Ho,” remarks Yuan proudly, handing them each a pair of sound killing ear muffs.
The foil’s engines start to cut in, growling, the boat rising, climbing onto its skids, accelerating, the boat’s occupants largely protected from the noise by the soundproofing of the cabin housing.
Zak and Kim can’t really hear anything but Yuan is pointing toward Taipa and they can just barely hear him say, “Cotai, the big casinos.”
Zak, who has forgone the sound muffs, nods.
Kim, wearing her muffs, just stares, banished to her own silence,
“You talking to me? You talking to me?” she jokes.
The foil’s running lights spear ahead of them, piercing the night. The boat’s path describes an arc northeast toward Lantau Island. The pilot lets the jet turbines’ whine become a roar.
Not long afterward, Zak and Kim begin to see the sky glowing over the airport in the distance. Passenger jets are circling overhead, landing and taking off. They strobe white anti-collision lights that make them easy to see in the night sky, even this far out from the airport.
The hydrofoil brings them closer to Lantau and Zak and Kim can now make out the various white fuselage and wing tip lights as well as the alternating red and green wing lights on the aircraft. The sky has become a dark blue, almost purple, bathing the sea and the airport. The main building of the airport has bright white light spilling from the lines of windows beneath an endless curved roof. Harsh pole lighting glares at them from the airplane gates. The glare falls into the ocean and stretches toward them across the water.
Finally the foil reaches the island and races alongside the north airport runways. The commercial airplanes that taxi in are now close and big, their beams sharp and intense. Runway and taxiway ground lights, yellow, red and orange, line the geometry of paved surfaces that run in every direction. The lights zigzag across the huge landing field toward the airport’s main building, creating a monolithic game board out of the airport’s manmade island.
The jet-foil rounds the East end of the airport, begins to slow, turns, and aims for a small set of lighted piers. The airport is most commonly reached by a highway running over water from the adjacent Lantau Island and Lantau Island is in turn connected by a highway over water to the island of Hong Kong.
Yuan helps them off the boat and they walk a short distance into an adjacent building that looks somewhat temporary. Here they are surprised to be greeted by a row of airline counters, each counter having an orderly queue of waiting passengers. Yuan hands them e-sheets with their flight details for flights he had booked days before. He had also texted ahead as they were arriving to confirm. There are two counters open nearby, ready for them to check in immediately.
“What happens now?” Zak asks Yuan.
“You stay alive.”
“That’s all?”
“You get out of here. Both of you.”
“How do we ever thank you? We’ll never be able to come back.”
“Someday you will.”
“How? Nothing will change,” says Zak.
“You are wrong. Chin thinks you will change many things.”
“So! Chin knows everything?” asks Kim.
“Of course.”
Yuan laughs at his own joke.
Zak and Kim take turns giving Yuan a hug, each saying an individual goodbye. The two students step to the counters, remove their bulky packs, and prepare to check in. They turn one last time.
To say goodbye.
But Yuan is gone.
Chapter 27
On Fire Page 26