Tempest
Page 1
TEMPEST
A Beatrix Rose Novel
Mark Dawson
Contents
Prologue
I. Hong Kong
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
II. Miami
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
III. Havana
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
IV. Santiago de Cuba
Chapter 108
V. Cienfuegos
Chapter 109
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About the Author
Prologue
The Consulate General of the United States for Hong Kong and Macau was on Garden Road in Central. It was an ugly four-storey concrete box with neatly regulated rows of windows, small and mean, all of them obscured by privacy glass. The building was shielded behind a wall and a metal fence, with additional bollards and barriers separating it from the street in an attempt to offer additional protection from anyone of a mind to drive a vehicle at those queuing to go inside.
Danny Wu approached the guard post, which was staffed by two Marines. The men were dressed in khaki shirts and neckties, the caps of their dress shoes were polished to a high sheen, and both of them had holstered pistols attached to their belts. Danny stepped through the X-ray scanner and then allowed himself to be quickly and expertly frisked.
“Thank you, sir,” the man said. “Over there, please.”
Danny moved forward, taking his place in the line of people who were waiting to speak to the stony-eyed clerks behind glass screens. The couple at the window moved away with a sheaf of freshly issued paperwork, and the elderly man in front of Danny stepped up and exchanged a few sentences with the clerk. Danny overheard the gist of it: he needed a visa to visit his family, and what did he have to do to get one?
Danny smiled. Family. That was the reason for his visit, too. He was making preparations to go home. It would be the first time that he had left Hong Kong in forty years. He had long since assumed that he would never leave, that he would pass the rest of his days here. That was before the nonsense with Michael and before he had discovered that he had family, when, for so long, he had assumed that he did not. And now, to his surprise and pleasure, he was making arrangements to go and see them.
The elderly man left the window and walked over to a nearby counter to fill out his forms.
“Next.”
The clerk did not make eye contact as Danny approached the window. She just tapped the scooped metal tray beneath the bulletproof glass.
“Passport, please,” she said, her voice tinny and artificial through the speaker.
“I need to talk to somebody about—”
The clerk cut him off. “May I see your passport, please?”
Danny shook his head. “I don’t have one. That’s why I’m here.”
“Your expired passport, then?”
Danny sighed. “I’m sorry, it’s all a bit… complicated.”
She stared at him.
“I’m an American citizen,” he explained. “I’ve been here for a long time. My passport expired years ago, and then I lost it.”
“You’ll need to speak to someone in American Citizen Services.” There was a keyboard on the desk, and she tapped one of the keys and glanced up at her screen. “I can make you an appointment. Your name, please?”
“Daniel Nakamura,” he said. The name was unfamiliar on his tongue.
“And your city of birth, Mr. Nakamura?”
“Los Angeles, California.”
“Date of birth?”
He told her.
The clerk handed him a slip of paper. “You’re on the list, but there are a few in front of you. There’s a waiting room down there.” She pointed down a long hallway. “Go take a seat. Someone will see you as soon as they can.”
Danny turned away from the counter, then moved awkwardly aside as the woman who had been waiting behind him made her way to the window.
Danny stood at the entrance to the waiting area and stared down it. He saw the neat rows of chairs arranged on either side; he saw the people sitting and waiting; he saw the glare of artificial light from the rectangular panels in the ceiling and the glare of the reflections on the polished floor. There were six others waiting for their appointments: the elderly couple from before, a mother with a young baby, and a man in a green and khaki Marine Corps battle dress uniform. There was an empty seat next to the Marine. Danny took it.
The Marine looked over at Danny. “Good afternoon.”
Danny looked at the name tape above the man’s breast pocket and the insignia on his shoulder. His name was Martinez and he was a sergeant.
“Pacific Fleet?” Danny asked.
“That’s right.”
“Pendleton or Okinawa?”
“Pendleton,” Martinez said, “but I’ve spent plenty of time in Japan.”
“Thank you for your service,” Danny said.
Martinez smiled and nodded. “Thank you. You serve, too?”
“Is it that obvious?” Danny said.
“There’s a look, right? You can never wash it off.”
“I guess you can’t,” Danny said. “Long time ago for me, though.”
“Vietnam?”
“That’s right.”
A woman emerged from a side room. She was holding a piece of paper and, as she looked down at it, she called out a name. The mother got up, hoisted her child into her arms, and went over to the woman. They went into the room and the door was closed after them.
Martinez crossed his legs and brushed a spot of fluff from his tan suede boots.
“What are you doing here?” Danny asked him.
“Came to collect a deserter.”
“Really?”
“That’s right. It’s a crazy one. This guy—I won’t name him, but he made corporal before he bugged out—he had a cushy job at Pendleton, fixing broken vehicles in the motor pool they got there. He got married, had a kid, and decided that he wasn’t making the money that he thought he ought to be making. So he hauled ass. Probably thought that’d be the end of it.”
“When was this?”
“That’s the thing of it. He deserted in eighty-five. He disappeared—no one had the first clue where he was. Turns out the woman he married was Chinese and she had the urge to come back home to Hong Kong. He went with her. Thing is, the two of them got divorced last year and, from what I can make out, it was messy. She called the consulate and snitched him off. They found he had a warrant out for unauthorised absence and sent a couple of men to pick him up. He’s been in confinement for five days. I’m here to take him back for his court martial.”
Danny felt cold. “Eighty-five,” he said. “They still chase guys from that far back?”
“Buddy, we got names going all the way back to World War Two. Korea, Vietnam—there’s still plenty of guys who owe the military. Why—you think the charges just go away?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Never really crossed my mind. I guess I thought that they’d become less important.”
“It’s the example it sets,” Martinez said. “We’re fighting in some shitty places right now. The last thing we need is for soldiers to think walking away is an option. They got to know there’ll be consequences, that they’ll always have to be looking over their shoulders for guys like me. Last year, one of my buddies went to Seoul and picked up this sergeant who’d deserted in fifty-two. They brought him back to the States in chains and he got eighteen months in the brig.”
Danny’s mouth was dry.
“You see any action?” Martinez asked him.
Danny had not thought of Vietnam for years, but now the memories came back in a flood. He thought of what he had done, and knew, with horrible certainty, that he couldn’t go through with what he had planned. Eighteen months in the brig? He didn’t have eighteen months to spare.
“Sir?”
“Sorry,” Danny said. “Million miles away.”
The Marine smiled indulgently. “I was asking if you saw any action.”
“It was Vietnam,” Danny said. “I saw plenty.”
“Look at me, rambling on. All I do is chase down cowards. You did it for real. It’s me who ought to be thanking you.”
The man reached out his hand and Danny took it, aware that his fingers were trembling.
He got up.
“Daniel Nakamura?”
Danny looked up and saw that a member of the consulate staff had emerged from a side room. The woman had a clipboard; she looked down at the sheet of paper that was attached to it and called his name again.
“Nice to meet you,” Danny said to Martinez. “Good luck with… you know.”
The Marine looked at the staffer, then back to Danny, but didn’t say anything. Danny turned away from him and set off back to the lobby. The guards watched him as he retraced his steps, pushing through the heavy steel-and-glass door and back out into the Hong Kong sunshine beyond.
Part I
Hong Kong
1
“Wake up.”
Beatrix Rose squeezed her eyes tight. The world was still swaying, rocking back and forth.
“Wake up.”
Someone was leaning over her. She thought she could hear a voice. She felt a moment of hope, the suggestion that the last year and a half had been a cruel dream.
Lucas?
There was something… She tried to reach back into the fog. There was something she had to ask him about.
She remembered.
Where is Isabella?
She reached up for her husband and laid her hand against his cheek. He smiled at her; she saw the single bullet wound in his forehead.
“It’s me, Beatrix.”
The voice did not belong to Lucas. He was dead and Isabella was gone, taken from her by the people who had murdered him. The dream disappeared, tendrils of smoke blown apart by the wind. The vision disappeared, leaving a ghostly after-image that flickered against her eyelids before even that, too, was gone.
She opened her eyes and squinted. Danny Wu came into focus. The lined face that looked down upon her was elderly, but he was strong and wiry, his skin weathered from years of living in the harbour under the hot sun. Her hand rested against his withered cheek. He was smiling down at her.
She brought her hand back down and exhaled, concentrating on bringing her breath under control. She glanced around and saw mahogany and teak and brass. She knew where she was: they were in the cabin of Danny’s motor junk, the Constance. He kept the boat at anchor in the floating village, the community of sampans, junks, barges and fishing boats that was found in the Aberdeen South Typhoon Shelter.
Beatrix tried to sit. That was a bad idea. Waves of nausea hit her again and she put her head back down onto the pillow.
“Take it easy.”
Danny reached a hand beneath her head and raised it up just enough so that she could drink from the glass of water that he held to her lips. She sipped. The water was warm, with just a touch of saltiness.
“How do you feel?”
“Awful.”
“You’re on the boat,” he said.
“I can see that.”
“You’re safe.”
“Feel like shit.”
“Look like shit, too. No idea why that could be.”
She raised her head a little more so that she could look down her body. She was slender, thinner than she had been for a while, and she felt weak.
“Drink,” he said, pressing the glass to her lips again. “Get it out of your system.”
She drank again, a careful sip, not too much.
“How did I get here?”
“Drink,” he said.
She sipped at the liquid again. “There,” she said. “Happy? How did I get here?”
“I got a call.”
“The Indian?”
He nodded.
“Again? Why can’t he just let me get on with it?”
“He doesn’t want anyone dying.”
“Doesn’t strike me as the compassionate type.”
“He’s not. It’s bad for business.”
“In there?” she said sourly. “I doubt anyone would notice.”
“I pay him to let me know if you need help. And you definitely did.”
“Not that I’d want you to think that I care, but do you think he would’ve told Michael?”
“I pay him not to do that, too,” Danny said. “But you know how it is. Everything gets to Michael in the end.”
Beatrix had been going to the same den for months now, ever since she had started with opium. The place was owned by the Wo Shun Wo and run for them by a wizened old man from Kerala. He allocated the spaces on the floor and, for a little extra, would prepare the pipes for the smokers who came inside to lose their minds for a day or two. Danny had found her there the first time, sent as Michael Yeung’s emissary to make her an offer of employment. Since then, he had r
eturned on subsequent occasions to pick her up and take her away, to do what she could not and save her from herself. This was not the first time that she had woken up on his boat.
Beatrix forced herself to focus enough so that she could read Danny’s face. “How long?”
“Two days this time.”
“Two days?”
He nodded.
“What day is it?”
“Saturday. What’s the last thing you remember?”
She closed her eyes. The memory was instant and intense: the fetid room at the bottom of the steep, dark steps; the carpet of torpid bodies; the red glow from the pipe bowls. She remembered the sweet spiced smell of the opium fog and then… nothing, just the blank oblivion that she cherished.