John Burdett - The Last Six Million Seconds

Cuthbert gave no sign of incredulity. “I know. That’s exactly why I might be of use to you. At any rate, there’s no need for us to be enemies. Not on a glorious day like this on the best boat in the fleet. Life is short.”

“It was for three people in Mongkok.”

Chan took a long draw. An interesting cigarette; it was probably how tobacco was intended to taste.

Cuthbert leaned over the rail next to Chan, pointed to something near the floating restaurants, spoke in a whisper. “Take it or leave it, my friend, but I wouldn’t let her seduce you. Not this trip.” He raised his voice. “Just there, that’s where the fire was, burned for three days. D’you remember when the floating restaurant caught fire, Emily?”

Cuthbert’s antennae were better than Chan’s. He hadn’t heard her come on deck. Yet she was not the sort of woman to make a silent entrance.

“Mmm, I was a kid.” She looked slowly over the marina, then up at the club terraces.

Cuthbert said: “We have an admiring audience. Charlie and I were just talking about it.”

Emily’s smile flashed. “Oh, yes, they all stare when we go out. They think it’s the governor’s boat. Of course his is much grander. Isn’t it, Milton?”

“It’s a lot older. Last time I was on it we were still using a sextant.”

Emily laughed, turned to Charlie. “Aren’t the British cute? And smart. You can hide anything behind self-mockery.”

She stood beside him at the rail so that he was caught between them. Through the deck Chan felt an increase in engine revolutions. The view was changing swiftly as they approached the harbor walls.

Cuthbert offered Emily a cigarette, which she refused. He replaced the silver case in his pocket.

“Come now, no one has mastered false modesty better than the Chinese. The first time I went to Beijing there were still restaurants calling themselves the Worst Restaurant on Earth. That was before the party purged Confucius, of course.”

“But that’s the point,” Emily said. “It was too obvious; it didn’t work. But you, you ran the largest empire in history on bluff, paternalism… and phony self-effacement.”

“And the Maxim gun. We started giving the colonies back when everyone else got one.”

The harbor walls curved around in two scythes with a gap between them toward which every boat was racing. On either side green hills plunged down to a sea choppy from conflicting bow waves. Once past the harbor walls the boat picked up speed. Chan could hear the beginnings of a turbo whine behind the roar of the diesels.

“Just out of interest, how far could you travel on a boat like this?” Chan asked. He saw Cuthbert frown.

“You’d have to ask the captain for an accurate estimate,” Emily said. “Most places on the South China seaboard anyway.”

“D’you take it to China much?” Chan felt in his shorts for a pack.

Emily was staring at a large two-masted yacht that was in the process of raising a mainsail. As the crew winched in the sail, the boat heeled and shot forward, a gull racing over the waves.

She looked up at Chan. “Uh-huh. Now and then. By the way, you left your cigarettes on the bridge. I brought them for you.”

She took the pack from her pocket, smiled. “You don’t have to worry, we’re not headed for China today. We’re going the other way, about fifty miles due south in the direction of the Philippines. There’s a reef. It’s not Palawan or Phuket, but the diving’s pretty good. Milton dives, so it’ll be the three of us. Jenny won’t be allowed in her condition.”

Chan stood at the bows when the crew dropped anchor. It was almost night in the middle of nowhere. The galvanized scoop-shaped anchor plunged into the blackening sea, drawing a trail like a falling jet until it disappeared. The captain reversed the engines to ensure that the anchor caught on the seabed, then stilled them. Silence.

Emily’s voice came over a loudspeaker. “Sorry to do this, but everyone’s all over the place. Rumor has it that we’re all hungry, including me. So I thought we’d eat early. Like in twenty minutes on the upper rear deck?”

She repeated the sentence in Mandarin.

The crew folded the awning away from the upper rear deck, unwrapping the first stars. Chan watched Emily light candles along the center of the table. She used a gas cigarette lighter, which illuminated her features from a different angle at each candle. Chan saw the determined jaw, tired eyes, the beginnings of age, flashes of incandescent energy, the pursed lips of regret, raw lust. Before each small explosion of light she paused to make sure he was watching.

The others drifted up from the berths below to take their places under Emily’s direction. Xian sat at one end next to the stern; Emily sat at the other. Chan found himself sitting opposite Jenny, who avoided his eyes. The Sri Lankan cook arrived with the hors d’oeuvres, climbing silently up the stairs, her face so black it was invisible against the night except for her wide white eyes.

Xian cleared his throat, said something in Mandarin.

“Mr. Xian is going to say a few words,” Emily translated.

“Thanks to the gods China is rising. It is my opinion that with China, the world also will rise. China is the world’s new destiny. I am glad that all of you from different countries are here with me tonight to celebrate this new destiny.”

“Here, here,” Cuthbert said, before Emily had finished translating.

“Here, here,” Jonathan repeated loudly, apparently to please Xian and Emily. Jenny also repeated the phrase, without conviction.

“I’ll drink to that.” Emily let a beat pass to see if Chan was going to speak, then: “To China.”

Chan nodded. “To China.” From the corner of his eye he saw the old man look at him and smile. He leaned over toward Emily. “Did he really say, ‘Thanks to the gods’?”

Emily hesitated. “Yes, that’s what he said.” She held up a hand. “I know, that phrase was banned during the Cultural Revolution. Let’s not push the point. He didn’t say, ‘Thanks to the Revolution.’ Can we leave it at that?”

Xian spoke again. Emily translated into Mandarin.

“He understood what you said. He says, when he said, ‘Thanks to the gods,’ that’s what he meant.”

Chan looked at Cuthbert, who sat quietly, smiling.

Jonathan cleared his throat. “Just think, how international everyone is these days. Any one of us could be in a different country this time tomorrow. Take me, five days ago I was in Beijing.”

Emily translated into Mandarin, listened to Xian’s reply, then laughed.

“Mr. Xian says that there may not be national boundaries in the future, but there will always be China. China was there at the beginning and will be at the end. Didn’t you feel so very Chinese when you visited Beijing?”

“Definitely, it was like a spiritual homecoming.” Catching the sneer on his wife’s face, Jonathan looked down.

Chan cleared his throat. “The only time I went to Beijing I felt very Chinese.”

“Oh, yes?” Emily sounded surprised.

“Yes. It was late autumn. The peasants had brought all the cabbages in from the countryside. Everywhere you looked, all around Tiananmen Square: cabbages. All along Wangfujing you saw barricades and even mountains of what they were calling aiguo cai -‘national vegetable.’ It was that dark ugly green cabbage that they use for bitter soup. All over the city stalls were selling bitter soup. Even the rich were drinking it, as a kind of fashion. The party said it should remind people of the bitter years before communism. But it was nearly fifty years after the Communist Revolution, and almost everyone still had to drink this bitter soup for the vitamin C. Of course I had to have some. It was really the most bitter thing I’ve ever tasted. I’ve never felt so Chinese.”