John Burdett - The Last Six Million Seconds

Chan had tried to explain it to his politically correct English wife, when he’d had one: In Hong Kong nothing one race said about the other could dent that other race’s conviction of unassailable superiority. To weep over the nasty things the two nations sometimes said about each other was like feeling sorry for Everest because K2 called it a dwarf-or vice versa.

One frequent observation made by the Chinese about the English, though, was neutral in character and endured in the mythology of the Raj because it was true. While the Chinese only collected information that could be used in the pursuit of commerce or malice, the English compiled records for the sake of it.

As he had risen through the ranks of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force Chan had become increasingly aware of this quirk. Often it seemed to him that 90 percent of what they knew was not made available even to senior police officers, yet someone somewhere possessed and leaked information on a need-to-know basis.

Chan had personal experience of this Whispering Wall school of administration through the more important cases he had been given to solve. He had noticed that when failure to catch the perpetrator of a crime was particularly embarrassing to the government-a spectacular kidnapping and murder of a famous billionaire by a renegade Communist group, for example-leads and background detail fell from some exalted but invisible source with obscene plenitude. Investigations into atrocities that failed to attract publicity or lacked political overtones had to limp on without such executive-level support. It was difficult, in the end, to resist the conclusion that a small group of men at the top of government had access to a database so extensive that they knew almost everything about the six million official inhabitants of Hong Kong and used this knowledge in accordance with a logical but restrictive policy. And who more likely to control such a committee than the political adviser? So why had Chan not yet confronted the great mandarin to demand a sharing of this secret knowledge? Chan knew why.

Irrational terror of authority was not merely a Confucian virtue; it was the bones of the Master’s system that had molded the Han mind since 500 B.C. Only one administrative tool had held together the imperial system with its nine grades of mandarin, its eighteen ranks of civil and military officials, its rules of precedence for princes of the blood, wives, concubines and pirates: paranoia. It was the flaw in Sino psychology.

Chan remembered a trial of thirty counts of rape on separate women by a slim Chinese man about five four with the physical presence of a twig. His MO was simple. He obtained the names of housewives from the telephone directory: “Good morning, Mrs. Wong, I’m from the government medical department, and I have reason to believe you are having trouble with your marriage. I would like to visit you at a convenient time to perform a medical examination…” When he arrived, he always closed the curtains and turned out the lights. Rape without violence. Only thirty of more than a hundred victims would give evidence. More than half didn’t know that they had been raped. Put another way, what was the difference? The Chinese had been raped by Authority for five thousand years. K’ung Fu-tse-Confucius, as the West called him-was an anal retentive who had a lot to answer for.

That’s why it took me so long to get to this point, Chan muttered to himself as he was shown into the commissioner’s office.

Chan smiled after he had presented his request, added: “Confucius stole my nerve.”

Tsui shook his head. “Slowed you down, perhaps. Well, you’re here now.”

“Every facility,” Chan said, still cursing his own timidity. “That fax you showed me in your car after the meeting with Cuthbert and the others said every facility. ”

The commissioner leaned back in his chair, gazed at the chief inspector.

“You’d better tell me what you know-just so that we’re sure we’re talking about the same thing.”

“Everyone knows. The British love information. In Hong Kong there’s hardly a pig roasted without the British knowing about it.”

“And you think that will help your inquiry, knowing the rate of pig mortality?”

Chan thanked his Chinese genes for a condition of implacable stubbornness that turned him into rock from time to time. “Every facility. That’s what the fax said.”

Still half astonished at his own temerity, half ashamed at his earlier timidity, Chan lit a cigarette without asking permission.

Tsui scratched his head. “I wasn’t supposed to show it to you, though. The fax, I mean.” He thought for a moment, then picked up a telephone. “Get me the political adviser, please.” When he had arranged a meeting with Cuthbert, Tsui looked at Chan and smiled.

At the long table in the anteroom to Cuthbert’s office, Chan waited patiently for the political adviser to deny everything he had just said and was even prepared to relish the elegance of the diplomat’s lie. On instructions from Tsui, Chan had not mentioned the top secret fax the commissioner had shown him.

Cuthbert tapped the table, turned to Tsui, the only other person in the room.

“What d’you say, Ronny?”

“Nothing,” Tsui said.

Cuthbert pursed his lips. “Yes, I thought you’d say that.” He gave the appearance of thinking hard for a moment. He turned to Chan. “Well, I know when I’m beat. I may as well face it, you’ve just about cornered me.” He tapped his nose and winked. “Of course you realize that everything you’ve just told us, this fantastic notion of some sort of systematic invasion of privacy by Big Brother, is just so much nonsense?”

“Of course,” Chan said, surprised. He liked the British principle of magnanimity in victory.

“It’s close to lunchtime,” Cuthbert said. “If you’d allow me?” He raised eyebrows at Tsui. “Ronny-”

“I’m afraid I have a lunch appointment,” Tsui said, taking Cuthbert’s hint. “I’ll leave you two to talk.” At the door the commissioner grimaced, like one who has reluctantly delivered a lamb to a tiger.

Chan was not surprised that Cuthbert led him to the car park of the government building, where he expected the political adviser to summon one of the chauffeur-driven white Toyotas that were a privilege of the most senior ranks in government. The Englishman, though, led him to a vintage Jaguar XJ6 in English racing green with properly scuffed leather upholstery and a sun roof. After opening the front passenger door for Chan, Cuthbert slipped into the driving seat with a soft aspiration of pleasure.

They were screeching around a bend on the way to the Peak when Cuthbert turned on the CD player. Male voices unaccompanied by instruments chanted through the speakers in Latin. Chan guessed it would be to a speeding green XJ6 filled with Gregorian chants that upper-class English bachelors would graduate when they died. Cuthbert, as usual, was one jump ahead.

Near the top of the mountain, above the level where Chan and Moira had once sat, exclusive settlements of low-rise, low-density, high-value apartments with spectacular views accommodated the great and the rich. About half were owned by government. Cuthbert stopped in the outdoor car park to Beauchamp Villas, led Chan to a lift that waited with open doors. On a brass plate with the list of floors the word PENTHOUSE appeared next to the number 5. Cuthbert pressed 5.

The diplomat’s penthouse flat was to light, air and space what Chan’s was to darkness, asphyxiation and cramp. A huge sitting room with bay windows gave views over every part of Hong Kong Island. Orchids pressed against the inside glass; bougainvillaea cascaded over wrought-iron balcony railings; hibiscus tongues licked more orchids in window boxes; frangipani danced in the sunlight. On a tripod by a window a nautical brass telescope cocked a single eye at the sky.