The Last Six Million Seconds (6 page)

“Good night, Ronny.” Cuthbert was able to sound cheerful, as if there had been no disagreement at all.

Tsui paused at the door. He seemed about to say something, then thought better of it and left. Cuthbert and Smith exchanged glances, like two men who after a long wait could finally get down to business.

6

“H
e’s a terrific chap, Ronny. I’m really very fond of him, you know,” Cuthbert said.

“And so am I, Milton. I’m afraid your ruse didn’t work. It was you alerted the Commie coastguards, I take it?”

“My people were listening to Chan’s radio. It seemed like a chance worth taking. Without those heads the investigation would have ground to a halt. Now …” He raised his arms, let them drop, shook his head. “Damn and blast!”

“Those Red coastguards have always been the lowest of the low. They’re all as bent as a two-bob watch. Look, I hope you didn’t think I went too far tonight, playing devil’s advocate?”

“Certainly not. You summoned exactly the right amount of verisimilitude. We can’t have them thinking we’re ganging up on them at this stage.”

“Quite.”

“This Charlie Chan—a problem?”

Cuthbert shrugged. “I really don’t know. He sounds too good for what we want. And then there was a little thing Ronny conveniently left out. You remember that old chap who’s trying to raise awareness about
laogai
? The one we were thinking of deporting last year, until the press got hold of the story and some damned busybody MP threatened to ask a question in Parliament?”

“Matter of fact I do.”

“Chan vouched for him. The old man instructed lawyers, and the lawyers obtained an affidavit from Chan, who swore he’d known the old man for years and could vouch for his character. My chaps
were furious, but Ronny protected his man. Chan hates the Reds all right. Very telling for Ronny to leave it out of Chan’s curriculum vitae.”

“So you do know all about Chan?”

Cuthbert’s eyes darted. “Yes, I do. I didn’t want Ronny to know how closely I’ve been watching him. It seemed important to act ignorant.”

They sat in silence for a minute.

Smith tapped the table. “Just out of curiosity, Milton, how did you swing it with those coastguards?”

“I rang their headquarters, told them to watch out for a Hong Kong police launch chasing a plastic bag.” He smiled. “Piece of cake.”

“Impersonating?”

Cuthbert took out an old silver cigarette case, selected a Turkish cigarette, lit it with a silver butane lighter. In doing so, he illuminated his long face, aquiline nose, case-hardened eyes: the disdainful features of an eagle.

“General Xian. I was phoning from Hong Kong after all. It had to be someone very senior who was based here.”

He produced a long phrase in Mandarin that Caxton Smith didn’t understand. The rough accent of an aging Chinese peasant general was instantly recognizable, however.

Smith shook his head. Ever since the beginning of the nineteenth century when the Great Game of intelligence and counterintelligence operations on the borders between the British Empire and Russia and China had begun, the Oriental Department of the Foreign Office had attracted the brightest and the best—and the most eccentric, men with double firsts from Oxford or Cambridge who behaved as if it were still 1897.

“You’re a damned clever chap, Milton. Damned clever. Of course it was you tapped Chan’s telephone and copied his files?”

Cuthbert inhaled on the fine Turkish tobacco, looked away. “Not clever enough, it seems.” Caxton Smith raised his eyebrows.

With his free hand Cuthbert pinched the narrow bridge of his
nose. “I’ve been stalking or shadowing Xian, whichever way you want to put it, for more than half my career. I’ve got taps on his telephones and electronic surveillance to cover him twenty-four hours a day. I was convinced that the general couldn’t eat a spring roll without my knowing about it. But I’m damned if I understand what he’s up to this time.”

“You’re totally convinced he ordered these murders?”

Cuthbert dropped his hand. “No, I’m not. At first I thought that must be the reason he’s so obsessed with Chan’s investigation. Then I began to wonder. What does he care if he gets found out? Nobody’s going to prosecute
him.
So why the interest in the case? The old boy’s in a frenzy about it. Acting purely on instinct, I’m trying to block the investigation because after thirty years in diplomacy I can smell a scandal when it’s creeping down the Yangtze, and this one is big, whatever it is. In diplomacy, Caxton, a scandal is worse than a holocaust. One hint in the press of what Xian is really doing in Hong Kong, and there’ll be the biggest imaginable row. Can you imagine,
eight weeks before handover
?”

“Ah! Yes, that would land us in a bit of a pickle. And might one ask, strictly off the record, what exactly Xian
is
doing in Hong Kong? I think I’ve been wanting to ask you that question for as long as I can remember.”

Cuthbert studied the end of his cigarette. “Off the record, Caxton, he’s taking over whether anyone approves or not, and the West can shove its democracy up its arse. That’s a very rough translation from the Mandarin.” He put the cigarette to his lips and inhaled reflectively. “I couldn’t tell you the precise moment when my career became devoted to the study of General Xian. China was my business, with particular reference to Hong Kong. At first all one did was watch Beijing and read all the diplomatic dispatches. Then things began to fall apart, Chinese style. That is to say, you wouldn’t have known they were falling apart except for the subtlest signals that China watchers look for. Little by little Beijing was less powerful; there were centers of power elsewhere in the country; people began to talk about a return to the old warlord system. Xian is an
extremely secretive man. By the time it became clear that he was a major player, he was already in control of most of southern China. Not officially in control, of course, but he more or less runs the place. All the senior cadres answer to him, and in a fight his troops would side with him against Beijing—which is why Beijing leaves him alone. China wasn’t my business anymore, he was.”

7

W
hen Chan emerged from Central underground station that same evening in response to Tsui’s summons, Typhoon Alan had meandered a hundred miles closer. The wind had freshened, and the meteorological office had issued a Typhoon Signal Number Three. Although it was now past eleven o’clock in the evening, workmen were fitting vertical wooden slats to protect the plate glass windows of the shops all along Queen’s Road. Planters, portable advertising signs, anything unable to resist hundred-mile-an-hour gusts had already disappeared from the streets.

Chan walked up the slope under the Hong Kong Bank, crossed the street, took the stairs by the side of the branch post office to the officers’ mess, where Tsui liked to hold informal meetings. The commissioner was standing at the bar talking to the Chinese barman when Chan entered. After ordering a pint of lager for Chan, Tsui led the way to a small table far from the bar. He carried his own glass to which a cardboard beer mat had attached itself.

“Quite an adventure you had today,” Tsui said.

Chan twitched. “Mind if I smoke?” He lit a Benson & Hedges. “Scared me.”

Tsui watched Chan closely. “You know, you have quite a reputation.”

“Me? What for?”

“Fanaticism. Is that what possessed you to go into Chinese waters today?”

“I wasn’t checking our position. It could only have been a few yards. We needed that bag for the investigation.”

Tsui’s frown conflicted with the pride in his eyes. “But you could have got yourself killed. You know what they’re like.”

Chan swallowed the first inch of the lager, was about to put it back on the table, then gulped another inch. “Look, you tell me to stop the investigation, I’ll stop. Until then—I mean, I’m not going to be the one to give in to them. The British can, you can, but I won’t.” Under the commissioner’s gaze he added reluctantly, “Unless ordered, of course.”

Of course
obedience was a Confucian virtue. During the siege of Nanking, Chan had read, Japanese machine gunners had fired down narrow streets into charging Chinese soldiers until the roads were blocked with mountains of bodies like sandbags and some of the guns had melted. Any other race would have taken cover after the first casualties, but the Chinese kept coming. Why? Because they had been ordered to. It was this self-obliterating obedience the British would rely on when they turned six million free people over to the criminal regime in Beijing. Anywhere else the riots would have started long ago.

Tsui dropped the frown. He smiled. Chan wondered if the tiny diamonds in his eyes were the beginning of tears. “You have my support—and my blessing. But please remember, we are a small tribe.”

“Chinese?”

“No—free Chinese. And I’m afraid there’s a compromise that has to be made.” Chan swallowed more beer. “If the case is allowed to go ahead, you’ll have to work more closely with Riley.”

Chan used a Cantonese word. It was identical to the one Tsui had recently translated in his head. Tsui laughed.

When they left each other on Queen’s Road, Central was deserted. Chan walked aimlessly down the main street in a western direction. It was fear, not the time of night, that had cleared the city of people: The tropical storm had intensified, and there was a rumor that it would go up to eight during the night. Even though the wind was not yet at typhoon level, it pulled at Chan’s hair, and he leaned into it as he pressed on all alone with his thoughts. Arabs feared the sun, Russians the cold, Californians earthquakes; in
Southeast Asia wind could become a ferocious beast stronger than buildings. He had read a contemporary Chinese poem in which wind was a billion invisible people in a stampede, smashing everything in their path. The poet had not needed to stress the point: In ancient mythology wind was a manifestation of the Dragon; the Dragon Throne had belonged to the emperor of China.

Tonight, though, Chan had a feeling that Alan had changed course, as typhoons often did, leaving him the freedom of the streets. He could not remember the last time he had experienced space to spare. It was an eerie sensation, as if the lights of the city had been left on exclusively for him. A chrome-plated pillar on Connaught Road curved the light streaming from an empty Pekinese restaurant; in the bright pillar five hundred fragmented and windblown Chans populated a town full of lurid lights, small restaurant tables and the illuminated Chinese character for Beijing, repeated to infinity.

8

T
wo hours later Milton Cuthbert had composed and sent a fax to the Foreign Office in London over a secure telephone line. The fax recommended that the FO take the unusual step of ordering the governor to order the commissioner of police to take Chan off the case. Without an explanation the FO, Cuthbert knew, would have trouble believing that a Hong Kong policeman of any race could pose a threat to international relations.

Cuthbert admired the chief inspector’s tenacity. Indeed the commissioner of police had not done the Eurasian detective full justice in his short résumé. Cuthbert had discovered that Chan achieved a 90 percent success rate in the detection of serious crime. It was said that in regard to the remaining 10 percent Chan usually identified the culprits but lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute. Chan was a brilliant policeman or a dangerous fanatic, depending on what desk you sat at.

The diplomat was renowned for his ability to express on a half sheet of paper the essence of any problem no matter how subtle and complex, and it was the exercise of this gift that had taken up the bulk of his concentration since the meeting with Tsui and Caxton Smith. It was only after he had sent the fax and was relaxing in his apartment with a glass of cognac that he began to question his fundamental assumption during the meeting. There was absolutely no way that London wanted to risk public exposure of what was well known in all diplomatic circles where the Far East was discussed: The army of the People’s Republic of China, the PLA, was the largest criminal organization in the history of the world.

If that news emerged from an official source—a medium-ranking Hong Kong policeman would do—even at this eleventh hour Britain might be expected to do something to protect the six million people who lived in Hong Kong from the predators over the border. But London wanted most not to have to do anything at all until the colony had been safely handed over to Beijing at midnight on June 30. After that the UK could deplore the growth of corruption and the likely loss of human rights in its ex-colony from a position of zero responsibility. At present any crime in which General Xian was interested was, by definition, a source of concern because detection would likely lead to revelations about his extensive criminal connections both in and beyond Hong Kong. With Cuthbert’s guidance that was the line London would take.

Or would it? Over the past year the influence of General Xian had increased to extraordinary levels. A hundred subtle clues had forced Cuthbert to entertain an almost unthinkable possibility: Xian possessed the means to go over his head to his masters in Whitehall, and Xian, more than anyone, wanted Chan to complete his investigation for reasons Cuthbert could only guess at.

The answer came sooner than expected. When he returned to his office at eight-thirty the next morning, a top secret fax was waiting to be signed for. It read: “In the view of the Service, Chief Inspector Chan is eminently qualified for the investigation in question. We see no reason to alter our policy of noninterference in internal policing matters. Your recommendation is rejected.”

Cuthbert pondered the fax for a long moment. He had been too long in the Foreign Office to regard such an instruction as final. The hierarchical structure of the FO was Hindu in its gradations of seniority, its shades of status, its jealous retention of caste distinctions. The writer of the message, he noted, was of exactly the same rank as himself. As an experienced paper warrior Cuthbert quietly decided to take the matter higher with arguments that would appeal to the Brahmins at the top of the tree. He had not intended that the removal of Chief Inspector Chan, for whom he had the highest regard, should become a mission, but in diplomacy as in life it was not always possible to choose one’s enemies. In any event, it could
only be for the chief inspector’s own good. After June, Hong Kong would not be an ideal refuge for a man who knew too much.