David Rotenberg - The Hamlet Murders

They’d reached a turn in the tunnel. To their right the tunnel widened and headed toward the river. Directly in front of them was an almost sheer wall of rock. Chen put his fingers to his lips, looked at the blip then signalled that he was confused. Fong looked at the screen. It indicated straight ahead – somehow on the other side of the rock face, not down the tunnel. Fong was about to cuss all technology when he saw a wet sheen on the rock face. A sheen he recognized all too well. He reached up and touched the sticky slickness of fresh blood.

The two Beijing men stood in the darkness of the tunnel and took out their firearms. Modern, German, lethal.

Li Chou got the “In place!” from the last of his men. He took a breath. Referred one last time to the laptop. The blip had not moved. He counted to ten then yelled, “Now.”

Climbing the rock face proved easier than it looked. Well-concealed but numerous handholds and footholds had been cut into the rock at appropriate intervals. This was evidently a much-travelled route. At the very top of the rock face was a small opening. Fong led; Joan and Chen followed. The opening narrowed so that even someone as slender as Fong had to squeeze to get through. But once through, a large tunnel travelled for ten yards then opened into a substantial cave. Along the walls of the cave were dozens of large barrels. Chen consulted the PalmPilot then pointed to a large barrel stencilled in white paint with: TO BE DELIVERED TO HU FAT CHOI SPADINA ROAD TORONTO CANADA.

The raid on the Park Regent Hotel’s coffee shop went off like clockwork. Li Chou’s men scared the shit out of all eight customers, the two cooks and the young skimpily clad waitress. Li Chou then consulted his laptop and pointed beneath a table at the far side of the restaurant. When he threw back the white tablecloth, the man beneath yelped a complaint.

Chen pried the barrel’s upper ring loose and all the slats fell to the floor, revealing the calmly seated figure of Xi Luan Tu.

Li Chou lifted Shrug and Knock in one angry sweep from beneath the table, then shook him. The electronic button that fell from his coat hit the table then bounced to the floor and rolled into a corner. On Li Chou’s laptop the street map overlay moved ever so slightly to indicate the movement.

Li Chou’s face was hot, angry and naturally, fat.

Fong held out a hand to Xi Luan Tu. The man took it and rose to his full height. Fong locked eyes with him.

“Take your hands off him, Traitor Zhong!”

Fong turned. There in the mouth of the cave stood the younger Beijing man, his gun pointed right at Xi Luan Tu’s head.

Joan took a step in front of Xi Luan Tu.

“Bad move, peasant girl,” said the younger Beijing man, cocked his gun and pulled the trigger.

Fong threw himself at Joan and covered her prone body with his.

The sound of the gunshot in the cave was incredibly loud. Joan let out a small whimper. The echo of the shot slowly faded and faded and faded until all that remained was a profound silence.

One by one, Fong, Joan and Chen lifted their heads, then stared at the mouth of the cave. The younger Beijing man’s body slumped against the wall, a large exit wound in his forehead. Slowly, from the tunnel darkness, the elder Beijing man emerged with a firearm in his hand. He looked at the body of the younger Beijing man then turned to Fong, “We need to talk.”

Twenty minutes later, they were in a safe house just across the Huangpo River. It was the same safe house where the elder Beijing man conducted the counterterrorism seminar on the night that Geoffrey Hyland had been murdered.

“So who goes first?” asked Fong.

“Goes?” the older Beijing man asked.

“Yes. Who explains their actions first?”

“You, Fong,” said the older Beijing man.

“Sure,” said Fong noting there was none of that Traitor Zhong stuff. “I figured out that Geoff had more information.”

“As I hoped you would.”

“Fine. It led me to a cell phone that I was to deliver to a contact that would bring it to Xi Luan Tu. I bugged the phone and followed it.”

“Why?”

Fong lied smoothly, “To find out if any of this bullshit has anything to do with Mr. Hyland’s murder.”

“Ah,” said the older Beijing man.

“Yeah, ah. Your turn now,” said Fong. The older Beijing man nodded. “Start with how you managed to follow me?”

“We knew you were a talent, Detective Zhong. We assumed you would succeed. We put you under surveillance. It took sixteen watchers but was simple really. Does that answer your question?”

Fong didn’t know if that answer was okay or not, but before he could ask another question the older Beijing man turned to Joan, “How about you, young lady? Why are you in Shanghai?”

Joan took a moment, reached up to straighten her hair only to realize that she no longer had enough hair to need straightening and said, “Beijing needs to be kept in check. There is no opposition in this country now that Hong Kong has been taken over. Only Dalong Fada can offer that opposition.”

To Fong’s surprise, the older Beijing man slowly nodded his agreement. Then he sat heavily and began to talk.

Fong usually had little time or sympathy for the views from the past. The mantle of righteousness taken on by the elders of China had deeply soured his response to them. But this was different. This man had clearly crossed the line. And what came out of his mouth was as revolutionary as Fong had heard in some time. The man laid out the need for a countervailing force to the power of Beijing, which was, like Joan, what he saw in Dalong Fada. He then said, “I think the religious side of Dalong Fada is stupid and potentially, like all religious movements, dangerous. But better a Chinese solution than a foreign one because, make no mistake, the West is anxious to put a stop to any recklessness coming out of China. But you must also understand that there will never be democracy in this country.” He looked to Fong, then to Chen, then to Joan and finally to Xi Luan Tu. No one deigned to respond to that. “It’s really quite simple. At base level this is all about survival. We need to assure the steady supply of food for our people. In a city like Shanghai where there are eighteen million people and little or no refrigeration. The very task of getting food, before it spoils, to the people is daunting. Any disruption would cause chaos. And we all know that chaos must be avoided at all cost.” This last met with at least some acceptance in the room.

“So you saved Xi Luan Tu to guarantee a real opposition to the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party?” asked Fong.

The man nodded. “Twenty-five-million followers of Dalong Fada qualify as a real opposition, wouldn’t you say?”

Joan watched the man with the basic wariness that all Hong Kong residents felt toward the powers in Beijing.

“But it’s the only form of democracy we’re ready for in the Middle Kingdom at this time. It’s a crucial small step, like opening some free markets and allowing freedom of movement for most people within the country. Both freedoms are much more widespread than they were only ten years ago, but they aren’t absolute. How could they be and have us avoid chaos? Can you imagine the eighteen million people in this city suddenly all forced to pay for the spaces that they live in? Can you imagine them trying to reshuffle almost sixty years of price control into a completely open market?”

Fong nodded, thinking back to the insider’s offer sheet in his desk in his bedroom.

The elderly Beijing man coughed into his hand then continued, “It would lead to riots and then would come Revolution. And make no mistake, before that Revolution came to a conclusion, millions of Chinese would lose their lives, most from starvation. I needn’t add that outsiders would soon take advantage of our weakness and we would be back where we were at the beginning of the twentieth century with foreigners controlling our country.”