The Last Six Million Seconds (46 page)

“But Communists, ma’am—Neanderthals, primitives, cavemen, power freaks,
criminals
, pure and simple. It was a business deal like any other. A certain figure prominent in the People’s Liberation Army required a certain commodity for his purposes. Not having immediate access to that commodity myself, I contacted my good friend and business associate Mario Coletti. He in turn worked his contacts until that commodity could be located, its price verified according to the market, freight, forwarding and profit margin added, a certain sum for risk included, and a deal was struck. A deal, ma’am, is sacred. When we cease to honor deals, civilization will fail; we’ll be back to bows and arrows. Now the nature of this
particular commodity is such that we would not trust it to our usual couriers.

“Three of our best people were chosen, two from my firm, one from Mr. Coletti’s: your daughter, Clare, courageous, beautiful, a trailblazer in her own right. All is going well. The commodity, together with certain sample items that we feel may be of interest to the purchaser, arrives safely at its destination. Handover is days away,
days away.
Then what happens? Tell Clare’s mother, Mario. I’m ashamed of the primitive side of my own race and pray for the day when they shall be raised from out of their ignorance.”

Moira closed her eyes while the two men shared the pleasure of explaining their scam in detail, down to the miniature camera used to photograph the victims’ mouths and the sample bites in gum that the local mob dentist had insisted on. The dentist was an artist, they said. They were talking about lives, heroin, weapons-grade uranium, but the minds behind the words were adolescent;
My ex-husband has about five days left on earth, and dear God, he still hasn’t grown up.

When they had finished, Moira forced a smile. “That’s brilliant. Thank you for telling me. The general, he doesn’t know you diced up his own men?”

“Of course not, ma’am. He may suspect, and he may better understand that international commercial organizations such as ours are not to be trifled with, but of course he will never be sure. The possibility will be there, goading him like a thorn—and perhaps leading him eventually to the light. I’m pretty confident he will see the error of his ways, if he hasn’t done so already. It may seem cruel to you, Mrs. Coletti, but in our business credibility—
face
, as we Chinese say—is everything.” Chow looked at Mario with an indulgent smile. “I think it’s safe to say we increased our credibility in the international community quite a bit. It was David and Goliath, and David won again.”

“Unless Clare and the others are found,” Moira said. “I guess the general will want to close the credibility gap if that happens.”

Chow smiled benevolently. “We are a powerful, rich and well-connected
organization, Mrs. Coletti. You have my word, that will never happen. We know he watches the airport, which is why we are keeping them safely for the time being in Hong Kong. They are being given plastic surgery. At an appropriate moment they will be brought back to this country and given new identities.”

Moira nodded, stared at the floor for a moment, then put a hand on Mario’s arm. “You did well, honey. You came up trumps.”

The face on the pillow smiled gratefully.

54

D
ear Charlie,

It’s not the way you think. Read this fax. You can be wrong too, you know.

These are strange times. I wept real tears that day in your apartment because I didn’t know anything except I was supposed to save Clare’s life by delivering phony dental records to you. I still don’t know how you guessed I was part of the scam, you really are one smart cop. But I knew next to nothing. All they told me was that she had to get a new identity real fast and those records were the only way to do it. I wept because she was the one caused suffering to three others, and because even if she lived, I knew that I’d lost her.

Take a moment to hear me out, Charlie. All that stuff you say about China raping its people—you think it doesn’t apply to Americans too? Our system rapes; it just uses different concepts to do it. I spent my life patrolling the streets of this city, and it took everything I had, my husband, my daughter and even my good character. When I met you, she was all I had in the world. Nothing to be proud of, God knows, but she called me Mom. What would you have done for your flesh and blood? I think you would have held the world ransom if you’d had to.

I don’t know. Bad as she was, she was more flake than sadist. Heroin, you know, makes monsters.

There I go, blowing the punch line and leaving out the details. I got it all written down. Mario and some Chinese triad boss told me
everything. Soon as I got home I typed out all I could remember, which is most of it. It goes like this:

That stuff he told you about Clare convincing the mob to develop the relationship with China was mostly BS. Ever since the Sicilians multiplied their operation by opening up the Russia market, the New York boys have been looking for a way into China. It’s a policy that comes from high up. They got lucky when the 14K asked them to look for best-quality uranium to supply to Xian. Apparently Xian’s been trading with the 14K for a while, mostly supplying heroin. The Mob and the 14K sent a party over with the uranium and some stuff they thought might interest him—free gifts, samples, treasures to the Great Khan, whatever.…

Chan read on quickly to the last lines:

Why did we let these subhuman mutants get so powerful?

God help me, I love you. Whether you forgive me or not, I’m coming over on the first flight I can get tourist class. Take extraspecial care of yourself. There’s more to this. I got a feeling there’s something really bad—I mean, even worse—about to go down. Whatever you think of me, don’t die.

Moira

P.S. How did you know that I was conning you with those records? I could have been an innocent courier.

Chan crushed the fax into a ball, threw it in the waste bin in his kitchen. Then he took it out again, reread it. On a sheet of A4 paper he wrote: “Chinese intuition.” He slipped the page into the fax machine; then, softening again, he took it out and added: “You were too good a cop not to know.” It took only seconds to transmit to America.

•  •  •

In his office Chan took out the Sony Dictaphone, walked up and down the length of his office while Aston watched and listened.

“File one-two-eight/mgk/HOM/STC status report continued.

I must reluctantly conclude that the overzealous action of the SAS officers stated above has made it difficult, if not impossible, to proceed with the investigation into an elaborate criminal plot of international dimensions that is almost certainly related to the discovery of weapons-grade uranium at Mirs Bay (see related subfile A).”

He stopped under the weight of Aston’s misery.

“You didn’t kill her, did you, Chief?”

“No.”

“So who did?”

“It’s classified.”

At his desk in Queen’s Building Jonathan Wong opened a new black fiberglass briefcase with a centralized combination lock. He rotated the dials until he aligned three eights and the case snapped open. Three eights was not exactly good security, but there was a balance to be struck: Eight was a lucky number in Cantonese.

From inside the case he extracted an envelope with forty-four color pictures. Each photograph measured eight inches by ten inches, and each was a close-up. After examining a few of them with an expression of frozen disgust, he replaced them in the envelope. Taking a slip of paper that bore his name and the name and address of his firm, he wrote: “Mr. Chow, please be so kind as to telephone me on receipt of this package.” He slipped the note into the envelope and resealed it.

Lifting his telephone, he pressed a button and asked his secretary to call a clerk who was to bring a Federal Express package and waybill. While the clerk waited, Wong filled out the waybill, giving the destination of the package with the photographs as “Stocklaw Trading Company, 220 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019, Strictly Confidential, Personal Attention only: Mr. Daniel
Chow, President.” After slipping the original envelope inside the FedEx cardboard package, Wong nodded to the clerk, who took it away. It was eleven in the morning; the package would be on an afternoon flight to New York and would arrive within three working days.

55

C
han classified his unsolved cases into two groups: where the identity of the perpetrator was unknown and he had no leads and where he knew who had done it but lacked crucial evidence. With regard to the second category, in his opinion it was a mistake for the perpetrator to antagonize the investigator to the point where the latter is driven to unlawful means. Emily had been murdered by whoever had framed him. Would Xian have used a Chanel belt?

Behind a banyan tree near the drive at the entrance to Beauchamp Villas, his service revolver in an arm holster, Chan waited for two evenings for the green Jaguar to leave. On the third evening he watched from the shadows while the diplomat drove away at his usual speed at about eight in the evening. He was wearing a dinner jacket and black bow tie. With the Jag’s sun roof open Chan could hear the chants of Gregorian monks fade quickly away. He emerged from behind the tree and walked up the drive. The heat was opressive. By the end of the short walk he was sweating and out of breath, but not only from the heat. Did everyone suffer from molten bowels on his first major crime?

He used his identity card to pass the security at the gate. On the fifth floor he took thin cotton gloves from his pocket and slipped them on; his hands shook as he used a skeleton key for the deadlock and a piece of flat plastic on the Yale.
I am committing the first burglary of my career.

Apart from dim light that filtered through from the public lamps on the sidewalk, the apartment was unlit, empty. Closing the door
behind him, he breathed in the delicious cool from the silent air-conditioning unit. Sweat cooled on his face and arms. The luxury of space calmed his nerves a little. He took out a small flashlight. He had stopped shaking, but he noted a profound division in his policeman’s psyche: He was an outlaw in another man’s home at night.

He framed me.

What to look for and where to start? His flashlight picked out the priceless carpets and the antique rifle on the wall. The collection of opium pipes in their glass case looked as untouched as a museum piece. Where does a scholar keep his secrets? He padded softly down the hall to the library.

On the lectern facing the window an open volume of poems in Chinese waited. The Englishman had made notes and produced one full translation:

Blue, blue is the grass about the river
And the willows have overfilled the close garden
And within, the mistress, in the midmost of her youth,
White, white of face, hesitates, passing the door.
Slender, she puts forth a slender hand;

And she was a courtesan in the old days,
And she has married a sot,
Who now goes drunkenly out
And leaves her too much alone.

Chan paused over the poem. Over the top of the page Cuthbert had scrawled the single word “Emily.” Flicking through the notes, Chan found some instructions the diplomat had given himself:

“Tell Hill fix mold on trees. Service car before end month. Change for Nepal (plus get visa). Cash to safe.”

Safe? His spirits fell. The ability to break into a flat or house was a skill a detective picked up during the course of business. Safecracking was an exotic specialization involving welding equipment, etc. Homicide didn’t do safes.

He found it behind a false facade in a corner of the room. It was about four feet high, two feet thick and two and a half feet wide—and locked. He was sitting on the floor in front of it, feeling futile and foolish, when the door opened and a light flicked on.

Cuthbert’s bow tie was undone and lay across the ruffs of his dress shirt. In his hand he held the largest revolver Chan had ever seen. The diplomat’s face was ashen.

“I thought you’d try the library first.” He strode further into the room. “You’ve been by the banyan tree for the past two evenings. I saw you. Telescope. You’ve deduced that I killed her and think perhaps I kept that tape recording.” Cuthbert raised the huge revolver, pointed it vaguely in Chan’s direction. “I feel as if I’ve been trying to get rid of you forever.”

“I finally noticed,” Chan said. “Big gun.”

Cuthbert grunted. Keeping the gun pointed in Chan’s direction, he walked over to the chesterfield, sat and emitted a long sigh. After a moment he raised the gun again, pointed it at Chan’s head. “Well, this is the moment of truth. If I killed her, I would have no choice but to kill you, would I? I could say you burgled me, which is true, and I fired in self-defense. I assume that bulge under your jacket is a service revolver.”

Chan closed his eyes. He heard Cuthbert pull the trigger. Chan was still shuddering seconds after the hammer clicked on the empty chamber.

Cuthbert threw the gun onto the carpet. “You really are the most unbelievable pain in the arse. And for a homicide detective, pretty damned ignorant about firearms. No ammunition has been available for the Civil War LeMat in over fifty years.”

“I’m sorry,” Chan said in Cantonese. “Your erudition is truly masterful. I am overwhelmed.” In English he added: “Even if you didn’t kill her, you framed me.” He was still twitching.