John Burdett - The Last Six Million Seconds

The single-syllable words were difficult to memorize, but with effort she built a modest vocabulary. Where she suspected failure was in the rising and falling tones. The textbook warned that the same word could mean “mother,” “box,” “opium” or something even more controversial, depending on the tone you used and whether you ended on an up beat or a down beat. Even after hours of practice she found it hard to hear the tones when the instructor used them. She doubted she was reproducing them with any accuracy.

Since returning from Hong Kong, she had installed a fax machine in her small apartment. She typed out her answers to Chan’s questions, reread them before transmitting to Mongkok Police Station.

STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

attn Chief Inspector S. K. Chan

Criminal Investigation Department (Homicide)

Mongkok Police Station

Dear Charlie ,

Got your fax. Using your numbering, the answers to your questions are:

1. Yes, Mario came to see me when he got back. He’s pretty sick; in fact he had to spend a couple of days in the hospital.

2. I’m sending some books by air that explain a lot of what I’ve been telling you about the expansion of organized crime and deals between the various mobs. You’ll see that the Russian Mafia has done some important business with our local boys since the fall of the Soviet Union (it all started a bit before that, under Brezhnev as a matter of fact). I’m also including a report from some UN committee that sort of puts it in a nutshell.

3. Yes, uranium and other valuable radioactive metals are part of a black market run by American and Sicilian Mafia (mostly the Sicilians). Enriched uranium of the sort needed to build an atomic bomb has turned up in various places in Europe, including in the trunk of someone’s car. It’s been in all the main English-language newspapers. A couple of crooks nearly died of radiation poisoning a few years ago because they didn’t know what they were handling. Unenriched uranium is more common.

4. Mario is right when he says that Clare was a fantasist. Even as a kid she lived in a world of her own, but she was also very smart. She was able to get people to do what she wanted most of the time. She had brains (from me - ha-ha!).

5. I don’t know anything about the relationship between the local Mafia and the Chinese triads, but you’ll see from the books I’m sending that there seems to be something going on.

Moira Coletti

P.S. I’m learning Cantonese. I don’t need to tell you why. I’d like to see you again. It’s all right if you don’t want to, though.

In his office Chan reread the fax, then turned to the UN report (Special Commission Report to the United Nations Assembly, March 20, 1990): “International criminal organizations have reached agreements and understandings to divide up geographical areas, develop new market strategies, work out forms of mutual assistance and the settlement of conflicts… and this on a planetary level.

“We are faced with a genuine criminal counter-power, capable of imposing its will on legitimate states, of undermining institutions and forces of law and order, of upsetting delicate economic and financial equilibrium and destroying democratic life.”

“What d’you think, Chief?” Aston said when he’d read the fax.

Chan gazed out of his office window. It gave an unobstructed view of some of the dirtiest air conditioners he’d ever seen on the other side of the street. It didn’t stop the amahs from hanging washing out on long colored bamboo poles, though.

“I think this is getting too big for us. Much too big.”

“Too big?”

“Think about it.”

Chan left Aston alone in his office while he went to buy cigarettes. Fighting through the crowds to cross Prince Edward Road, he thought: “Too big” is not quite the phrase. Too delicate? Put another way, why hadn’t he been stopped yet? The date on Moira’s fax was two days ago. Everyone would have read it before it was passed on: the commissioner, the security chiefs, Cuthbert, everyone. And it was all there: the direction of his inquiry; the implications for the present and future governments of Hong Kong; the unspoken aspersions on the conduct of the People’s Liberation Army over the border. The spade was under the rock. Did Cuthbert really want that? Did the commissioner? Xian? Chan promised himself a private fax machine installed at home as soon as he got the chance.

On the other side of the street an old lady a little under five feet tall sold every internationally known brand of cigarette from shelves in a steel frame set against the wall. It was a corner where addicts gathered, sure of being able to find a clean nicotine fix. Gitanes noires, Gitanes blondes, Camel, every Philip Morris, every Players, Italian cigarettes with unpronounceable names, Turkish, Russian. For those who preferred roll-ups there was Dutch Drum tobacco. For joints there were giant cigarette papers. The little old lady knew her clients and her business.

“You have Long March? Imperial Palace?” Chan said.

She glared, spit contemptuously. “Go back where you came from. I don’t serve Communists.” She turned her back.

“Okay, okay, just testing. Benson. Two packs.”

He paid, opened a pack, took a few steps into the crowd surging toward the underground. Stop on any corner, look in any window, there was someone who had been maimed in body or soul by the Chinese Communist party. And that was when they were honest. Xian: Where did he get his Imperial Palace? By the truckload from across the border?

Mongkok may be the best place in the world to lose a tail, even if the tail in question is British-trained in the best Le Carré tradition. Granted they had the sense to use four Chinese, one woman and three men, and they were following all the rules. Two trailed behind, two in front with frequent excuses for halts and backward glances: shopwindows, shoelaces, something fallen out of a pocket, spectacles needing wiping. Chan was no spy, but he’d served time on the streets. He had a patrolman’s eye. If one person in a thousand didn’t fit, the fact nagged at his mind until he understood. At first he’d thought they were a gang of robbers assessing a future opportunity. It was only when he reached Nathan Road, turned to look in a window, walked on, turned back to look in the window again, drifted along with the crowd as far as the underground, then a third time turned back to the same window that he was sure that he was the object of their attention. They were discreet, professional, but when the mark goes back to the same spot three times, it’s difficult to keep the cover.

Chan made a point of looking directly into the face of the woman, then of her male companion. He turned abruptly, looked at the other two. Cuthbert, he thought.

He returned to the underground, bought a ticket, passed through the barrier, then walked the length of the underpass to exit on the other side of Nathan Road. He merged into the mass of people struggling to step around the beggars stretched out on the pavement. Nobody wanted to have to touch the leper with his sores helpfully highlighted in orange lotion. Or the old man with his trouser rolled up to expose his stump.

Near the back of the police station he lit a cigarette, paused to think. What was it the Tibetans had said when the British invaded after hundreds of years of Chinese rule? When you have known the scorpion, you’re not afraid of the toad? Probably he shouldn’t have embarrassed the watchers by exposing them. It was bad form, another faux pas. Cuthbert would be hurt.

Chan was not going to stop, though. Not without a direct order. Or a bullet. Indeed he expected the next day to receive the developed photographs from the film he had retrieved from the warehouse.