The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers) (27 page)

“As you said, there is no prize for coming second,” said Chung, watching the winner being lowered to the ground. The girl in the red dress put her arms around him and kissed him full on the lips. “Winner takes all,” said Chung.

“Ah, Winnie Lo. Yes, she is attracted only to winners. Perhaps one day you will win her favours.”

Chung laughed sourly. “It isn’t a girl I want to win. It’s a race.”

“And the money,” said the bald man.

“And the money,” agreed Chung. “Next time I hope you won’t expect a double stake from me.”

“Indeed not,” said the bald man. “If you wish to race again, I will contact you before the next one. You will give me your telephone number?”

Chung gave the man his number. “Tell me,” he said, nodding over in the direction of the winner, who was still being embraced by Winnie Lo, “who is he?”

“Ah, he is Simon Li. He has won the last two races. An independent.”

“Independent?”

“He has no one backing him. Some of the racers belong to triads, others have wealthy sponsors. A few fund their own cars. Which category do you fall into, Mr Chung?”

“The latter. I can pay my own way.” He smiled. “Though not if I continue to lose.”

“For a first performance you did admirably.”

“Thank you,” said Chung. “I had a run-in with a black BMW. He tried to force me off the road.”

The bald man laughed dryly. “That is the cut and thrust of racing, I’m afraid,” he said.

“I’ll know next time,” said Chung. “Who was the driver?”

“Ricky Leung, a veteran of many races. He was one of tonight’s favourites.”

“A sore loser,” said Chung. “He had a terrific car, though. Who was his sponsor?”

The bald man wiped his forehead. “I was,” he said. “But no longer.” He smiled at Chung’s obvious embarrassment. “Do not worry, Mr Chung. I am not a sore loser. I will find another driver. Once I have repaired my car.”

The intercom on William Fielding’s large oak desk buzzed, catching him by surprise. He had been so engrossed with the computer print-out in front of him that the rest of the building might as well not have existed.

“Yes, Faith,” he said.

“It’s Charles Devlin,” said his senior secretary.

“Send him in, please, Faith,” said Fielding, concertinaing the print-out and pushing it to the left side of the desk next to a rosewood-framed photograph of Anne and Debbie, taken a year earlier. He stood up and walked around his desk as Devlin came in. The two men shook hands warmly. They had worked together for almost twenty years, though Fielding had joined the bank ten years before Devlin. Devlin was in his mid-forties and was the bank’s head of corporate finance. He had been appointed by Fielding and it was an open secret that he was to be his successor when he retired in two years.

Both men were Scots and had a love for single malt whiskies and as it was early afternoon Fielding asked Devlin if he wanted a drink.

“I could be tempted to a small one,” said Devlin, a knowing smile on his lips. Devlin had the rugged looks of an amateur rugby player, which he had been in his younger days. He had played for the bank in his early years in Hong Kong but had switched to golf when he’d discovered that most members of the bank’s board were scratch golfers. He’d worked his handicap down to five and regularly played with Fielding.

Fielding poured two measures of an Islay malt that he was especially fond of. He held out a glass to Devlin and motioned to the two grey leather sofas in the corner of the office. He put his own glass on the black wooden coffee table in front of the sofa and sat down.

He waited until Devlin was also seated before asking him how his trip to Bonn had gone.

“Not as well as we’d hoped, William,” said Devlin, and Fielding’s heart sank.

Devlin had spent three days in Germany meeting with leading bankers in an attempt to initiate merger talks. It was the latest in a series of exploratory talks which had taken Devlin to London, New York and Tokyo, so far with little or no success. “They made encouraging noises, but the general drift was that they’re too tied up with the opening up of Eastern Europe to get involved in the Far East right now. In five years, maybe ten …”

“Blast them!” said Fielding. “They know that it’ll be too late then. They know as well as we do that we need a merger to protect ourselves. If we thought we could survive on our own for the next five years we wouldn’t need a partner.”

“All four of the banks showed me figures to back up what they were saying, William. It’s going to take billions of Deutschmarks to stabilise East Germany, never mind the rest of the countries that Russia has let go. The Germans are scared stiff that if they don’t help them modernise they’ll be faced with immigration on an unimaginable scale, a flood of economic migrants that will swamp the developed countries. All the EC countries are pouring money into Eastern Europe, partly because it’ll create a huge market for their own goods, but also to safeguard their own standards of living. They just don’t have money to spare to invest in Asia. Not right now.”

“You didn’t get the feeling that they were just trying to talk the price down?” asked Fielding as he swirled the glass of whisky between the palms of his hands. “Or that they are just waiting for our share price to fall?”

Devlin shook his head. “Frankly, William, we never got round to talking about money. They don’t appear to be interested at any price. I’ll prepare a full report for the board, but that’s the gist of it. One of the Munich think-tanks has come out with a report which suggests that one in four Soviet citizens would rather live in Germany. Another survey says that more than two million Turks want to emigrate to the West. The Germans are having to deal with hundreds of thousands of would-be immigrants each year. They’ve got their own version of our Snakeheads, gangsters who smuggle people from Bulgaria and Romania into West Germany, just as ours sneak mainland Chinese over the border. It’s amusing in a way. They’re having to face what we in Hong Kong have had to deal with for years. We were condemned by everybody for sending Vietnamese boat people back to Vietnam because they were economic and not political refugees. Now the Germans are sending back more than ninety per cent of their refugees. It’s ironic, really.”

“It’s ironic, but it doesn’t help us with our problem,” said Fielding.

The two men sat in silence and drank their whisky. Devlin looked at the large screen television in the corner of Fielding’s office. On top of it was a video recorder and several video cassettes labelled with various advertising campaigns. The bank had been trying to restore confidence with a series of optimistic television commercials, but market research showed that they just weren’t working.

Fielding looked out of the huge window which ran the full length of his office. It offered one of the best views in Hong Kong, the Star Ferry terminal with its green and cream-coloured ferries plying their trade across the ship-packed harbour, the glitzy hotels and shops of Tsim Sha Tsui across the water, and the hills of Kowloon beyond. And behind the hills, less than twenty-five kilometres away, was communist China, patiently watching and waiting to take back the colony and its six million inhabitants. Fielding saw a Cathay Pacific 747 begin its final approach over the Kowloon tower blocks, dipping its right wing and swooping so low that it seemed sure to crash, then levelling out and heading for the single finger of runway which poked out into the harbour.

“Are those the projections?” asked Devlin, pointing to the print-out on Fielding’s desk.

“Yes, and damn depressing reading it is, too.”

“Still bad?”

Fielding snorted at the understatement. “We’ve lost about ten per cent of our customer base over the past three years, and the rate of lost accounts is accelerating. Our industrial loan book is in a steady decline because no one wants to buy new plant or buildings. Home ownership is in a tailspin, and prices are down. The only people buying property in Hong Kong are the mainland Chinese, and they’re funding their purchases through the Seven Sisters. None of their business is coming our way. The only section that’s on the up is our gold bullion business and our foreign exchange accounts. The Kowloon depository is pretty much full to capacity. I tell you, Charlie, it’s as clear as the nose on your face what’s happening. Our customers are either putting their money overseas or they’re switching into gold or foreign currency, and they’re sticking that in our vaults in preparation for the day when they leave. And when they go, they’ll take their gold with them. It’s the old refugee mentality, I’m afraid. They have no faith in the banking system. You know what section of the retail sector is showing the best return at the moment?”

Devlin shook his head.

“Luxury boats,” said Fielding. “Big ones. Fifty-footers and longer. And you know why? Because a boat offers escape. I tell you, Charlie, the world is going to have to deal with another type of boat person in a few years. And they’re not going to be so easy to turn away.”

“That’s the impression they have in Europe,” agreed Devlin. “All they read in the press there is the fact that Hong Kong is the Jittery City: the city that’s living on borrowed time. And they don’t want to take the risk of investing here. They want to know what it’s like under Chinese rule. If the Chinese make a success of it, they’ll invest here. But with everything they have on their plates at the moment, they’re not prepared to risk their capital.”

“And who can blame them?” said Fielding. He drank his whisky and placed his empty glass on the table. “If we had any confidence in the Chinese we wouldn’t be going around Europe, cap in hand.”

“It’s a safety net, William, that’s all. If we show the world that we have a safety net they’ll be more confident of our prospects.”

“Aye, Charlie. And I still believe in Father Christmas.”

A young Thai boy in a white uniform walked up to the poolside loungers and asked the Americans what they wanted to drink.

“Four beers,” said Carmody. The poolboy giggled and went back to the bar, returning a while later with four glasses and four opened bottles which were beaded with condensation. He poured each one, giving each glass a thick, frothy head, and after placing them on the tables adjacent to the loungers held the bill out for Carmody to sign, which he did with a flourish. The boy looked at his claw with open curiosity as Carmody used it to hold the pad.

“Pretty, isn’t he?” he said as the boy walked away.

“Yeah, they’re very feminine, the boys,” agreed Lehman.

“Real pretty,” said Horvitz.

“Hey, I didn’t mean that I was attracted to him, or anything like that!” said Carmody, holding his glass away from his lips.

“Didn’t mean to imply you were, Larry,” said Lehman. “Just stating a fact.”

“Yeah. Well they’re not as pretty as the girls here, that’s for sure,” said Carmody. He took a deep drink of his beer and smacked his lips greedily. “Mind you, I reckon they’re better looking than those German women over there. Hell, Lewis there has got more going for him than the German bitches.”

They both looked at the near-comatose Lewis, his broad, black back rising and falling in time with his laboured breathing.

“You think he’s having a wet dream?” said Carmody, and he cackled like an old witch.

Lehman didn’t think so. Lewis’s face was turned towards him and away from Carmody, and if Carmody had been able to see the expression he wore, Lehman knew he wouldn’t have made a joke about it. His eyes were screwed up tight as if he were in pain and his lips were moving, though it was impossible to hear anything intelligible. His head was resting on his folded arms and Lehman could only see one of his big, square hands but it was clenched tight as if he was preparing to strike someone. His left leg twitched and Lehman could see that his toes were drawn back, the tendons in his heel stretched taut.

Lewis began to grind his teeth and a vein pulsed in his forehead. Lehman wanted to wake him, but knew it was better not to, that if he were to awake mid-dream it could be traumatic. Lehman still suffered from his own night-mares and flashbacks, and they were almost a thousand times more vivid and painful if they weren’t allowed to work through to their own conclusion. By far the worst was when somebody woke him up. His two ex-wives had both learned the hard way and had accepted that no matter how much he ranted and raved in his sleep it was better to leave him be, but casual girlfriends had often left his apartment in tears after trying to wake him up. It wasn’t that he wanted to hurt them, it was just that he often came out of the dreams fighting. And it wasn’t as if he could explain in advance, because he couldn’t imagine anything less romantic than a warning that there was a good chance that he’d lash out in his sleep. Lewis’s hand remained locked into a fist and Lehman didn’t relish the idea of fending off the big man.

It was their second day back in Bangkok after being seen off in Saigon by a stony-faced Judy. She had clearly been glad to be rid of them. There had been no conversation from her in the coach and no goodbye speech at the airport, though several of the Americans had tipped her and Hung with American dollars. Lehman himself had given them both ten dollar bills, though all they’d got from Carmody and Horvitz was a scowl. What had surprised Lehman was seeing Tyler slip Judy an envelope, which he guessed contained money. It had been as they were about to go through immigration. Tyler had held back so that he was last and it was only because Lehman was idly looking around while a pretty Customs girl went through his passport page by page that he saw the envelope and Tyler’s smile and nod of thanks.