John Burdett - The Last Six Million Seconds

“No,” Chan said, but he spoke into a void.

He shook himself again, only half believing. It took minutes for the mind to catch up: I have been mugged by China. He walked around the cabin toward the stern of the boat.

On the rear deck where they had eaten dinner he saw a single red glow move in an arc toward the deck, flicker, then rise again. Cuthbert didn’t get up from the chair next to the rails or turn his head, even though Chan exaggerated the noise of his bare feet on the deck. He stood by the rail, not far from the diplomat.

“Welcome,” Cuthbert finally said. “Won’t you sit down?”

Chan drew up a white plastic chair. It occurred to him that voices from the swimming deck would carry this far without serious diminution in volume.

“Have you been here long?” Chan said.

“Only just arrived. Couldn’t sleep.”

But when the Englishman lowered his cigarette again to knock it out on an ashtray, Chan saw a small mountain of stubs. He knew that some kind of small talk was in order, but there was no point in pretending to a skill so alien to his personality.

“Why did you say that earlier? About not letting her seduce me?”

Cuthbert drew slowly on his cigarette, then took out the case and offered one to Chan without looking at him. Chan took it, lit up and waited. The extreme languor of the diplomat’s movements was unusual, even for an upper-class Englishman.

“She hasn’t slept with you yet. She’s intrigued by most men under forty with whom she hasn’t slept-not that there are too many left in Hong Kong. If I were you, I’d keep her intrigued-follow?”

Diplomats were worse than lawyers in their effortless capacity to irritate. “What do you care? What are you doing here anyway?”

Cuthbert paused on an exhalation, nodded slowly, then continued to breathe out smoke. “Emily’s an interesting girl.”

“You know a lot about her?”

Cuthbert seemed on the point of saying something about their hostess, then changed his mind. He sighed, then stretched out a hand in a gesture that could only be described as theatrical. “Tell me, my friend, isn’t it just incredibly wonderful?”

“What?”

“To be here, at this moment, in this tropical night, ensnared by this Chinese intrigue that will outlive both of us?”

“Is that why Englishmen like you come to Southeast Asia-for Chinese intrigue?”

“I can’t speak for anyone else. After my year in China perfecting the language, I took up an appointment at Magdalen. I didn’t last very long. China had bitten me. I wanted the feeling of being at that point on the earth’s crust where the tectonic plates are crashing together. I was in love. I even wanted more of Mao’s poems, would you believe? In 1964 he published something called ‘Snow,’ which I learned by heart, in Mandarin, of course. I still remember the last line-”

“ ‘For truly great men, look to this age alone,’ ” Chan quoted. “I never learned it in Mandarin, only in the English translation.”

Cuthbert paused with his cigarette twelve inches from his lips. “Correct. And you are indeed a surprising man, as the truly intelligent must always be.” He paused, then sighed. “But when Mao talked about great men, he was talking about Asians.”

Chan let a beat pass. “With regard to the Chinese intrigue, I have some information you might be interested in.”

“Please go on.”

“Xian probably didn’t kill those three in Mongkok. Isn’t that what you’re so afraid of, that I’ll discover he’s the culprit?”

In a tone that showed only mild interest Cuthbert said, “Perhaps. But what has caused you to form this view?”

“Ten minutes ago he offered me an apartment building if I would tell him who did, when I found out. At least I think that’s what he meant.”

“You didn’t accept this substantial offer?”

“No.”

“Why ever not?”

“I’m half Chinese.”

“Meaning?”

“I was waiting for him to offer me two apartment buildings.”

Cuthbert threw his head back. In the dim illumination from the anchor lights Chan saw that he was laughing. Silently, like a good diplomat.

Chan returned to his cabin slightly ashamed. English humor: It was a disease. No matter how you fought against it, you ended by making the same silly jokes as they did.

He awoke to an almost gentle knocking on his door. Light streamed through the porthole. He dragged on a pair of shorts.

Emily was already in her dive suit; purple and green neoprene with a band of Day-Glo yellow crossing from right shoulder to left hip was unzipped to an inch above the navel. Flaps covered her breasts. Hanging on to the door, Chan blinked.

Emily smiled.

There was a relationship between confidence and wealth; which came first?

“The tanks are set up on the swimming platform. I’ve found you a buoyancy jacket. There’s coffee in the galley.”

Chan scratched his head, his shoulders, then, defiantly, his testicles. “What about the others?”

She put a hand to his cheek. “They’re all asleep, Chief Inspector; there’s only you and me.”

He yawned, looked back into the cabin where The Travels of Marco Polo lay on a table illuminated by a tunnel of blinding sunshine. As sleep fell away, he allowed his features to harden into dislike. First thing in the morning it was difficult not to bristle.

“Did anyone ever tell you-”

She placed a single hand on her chest and almost succeeded in looking vulnerable. “Stop! I know, I’m being pushy. It’s unforgivable at this time in the morning. I’m sorry, I have a lifelong problem with impatience. Let me try again.” She lowered her head, looked up at him with big eyes and spoke in a little-girl voice. “I’ve been awake for over an hour just dying to get in the water and unable to think of anyone to be my scuba buddy except that gorgeous chief inspector of police in the cabin down the way, and the anticipation seems to have got the better of my manners, but please don’t take it amiss, and if there’s anything I can do to persuade you to please come play with me-”

Chan put up a hand. “Okay, okay.”

“It’s worse when I’m trying to soft-soap, isn’t it?”

He let a grin grow slowly while his eyes locked with hers. “It’s charming to be able to laugh at oneself.”

“I copied it from the English. It’s a lot easier than genuine self-reform.” She fluttered her eyelashes; that really was rather funny.

He closed the door, changed from cotton shorts to swimming shorts, brushed his teeth, omitted to shave, stepped out onto the foredeck.

With the engines off and the anchor line pinning the boat to a deserted spot on the surface of the Pacific Ocean the true identity of the 120-foot luxury cruiser was unmasked: a plastic toy in the hands of Ocean, the monster god. Water stretched in every direction like a lesson in infinity. Acid light poured over the decks, the paint, the fantasies of night. At dawn the sky was too hot to contemplate, the sun a whiteness too powerful to squint at. On a gleaming white life ring in its stainless steel housing Chan read the word EMILY, etched in blue.

The air was certainly cleaner than Mongkok; too clean-he needed a cigarette. He returned to his cabin, took a pack to the galley, where the cook had left a glass jug under a dripping coffee-maker. He filled a mug, added three sugars and milk, took the coffee out to the stern deck. On the swimming platform Emily screwed regulators into air tanks. From above he watched her breasts fall forward almost out of the neoprene as she bent over the steel cylinders. She was big-boned for a Chinese, but there was no extra flesh. Hers was an athlete’s body, full of health and appetites. Don’t let her seduce you , Cuthbert had said.