John Burdett - The Last Six Million Seconds

© 1997

THE SECOND TREATY of Peking of 1898 was one of the more bizarre treaties of the British colonial era. The British had already occupied Hong Kong, a small island off the south coast of Canton in southern China, by 1841, and extended their occupation to a small part of mainland Canton, known as Kowloon, by 1860. The purpose of the occupations, which were carried out by force of arms, was to establish a base from which to continue the sale of opium to the Chinese mainland, in the teeth of opposition from the emperor of China. The trade had grown so successful by the 1890s (twenty million Chinese were addicted to opium) that the British required more land, principally to ensure that Hong Kong and Kowloon could be defended in case of attack. What they extracted, more or less at gunpoint, in the Second Treaty of Peking was a lease of a larger area of land contiguous with Kowloon and stretching thirty miles north into mainland China. Although the newly acquired territory included some of the more ancient cultivated lands in the world, the British named them the New Territories. The lease of the New Territories was dated July 1, 1898, with an expiration date ninety-nine years hence: June 30, 1997.

By 1982 Hong Kong, as the entire territory was known, had become a financial miracle. The infrastructure had developed in such a way that Hong Kong Island and Kowloon could not survive without the New Territories. The prime minister of Great Britain at the time, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, was therefore forced to negotiate the return of the entire territory of Hong Kong at midnight on June 30, 1997, by means of a document known as the Joint Declaration of 1984.

ANY DISCUSSION OF Laogai probably begins with Hongda Harry Wu’s fine and courageous book of the same name (Westview Press). My own certainly did. In addition, I thank John Carroll for telling me more about the RHKPF and Mongkok Police Station than I had found out in twelve years in Hong Kong; H. K. Law was a mine of information on all aspects of Cantonese culture; and Kay Mitchell told me how laser fingerprinting works in practice. If any of the help I received is not accurately represented in the text, it is my fault.

Special thanks too to Jane Gelfman for selling the book and to Ron Bernstein for selling the film rights almost as soon as there was a book.

HONG KONG IS A SMALL PLACE. There is but one governor, one political adviser, one chief secretary, only a handful of international law firms of any size and, I daresay, not very many Eurasian chief inspectors of police. To make matters worse for a writer earnestly trying to avoid defaming anyone, the manner in which Cantonese surnames are translated into English results in a narrow selection of single syllables: Wong, Chan, Lau, Kan, etc. In such circumstances one is left with no resource other than to state with even more emphasis than usual that this is a work of fiction and that no character depicted herein bears any relation to a living person.

It is not possible to write about Hong Kong without using the word gweilo . Literally translated from the Cantonese, it means “foreign devil” or “foreign ghost.” These days it is used in a nonpejorative sense to describe all Westerners.

It is frequently used by expatriates living in Hong Kong to refer to themselves.

An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer

China ’crost the Bay!

– RUDYARD KIPLING, “MANDALAY”

Typhoons-“big winds” in Cantonese-start to gouge holes in the South China Sea in early April and are well into their stride by the end of the month, when the sea is already the temperature of bathwater and humidity runs at between 90 and 100 percent. Everyone avoids the water during typhoon warnings. Except fools, Chan thought.

He looked at his watch, a fake gold Rolex flaking at the edges: 3:30 P.M. Ayya ! What had started as a search and recovery operation expected to last no more than a couple of hours had turned into a dangerous drift toward Chinese waters that was taking all afternoon.

Standing at the bows of Police 66 , a fast motor launch belonging to the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, he moved his eyes in an arc from the sea to the sky. Darkness piling upon darkness. Sometimes the turbulence could be five hundred miles away yet drag down local clouds so dark that visibility disappeared in the middle of the day. Clouds like solar eclipses, except they lasted longer and fascinated no one.

By his side Inspector Richard Aston, twenty-four years of age, blond, imitated his movements.

“Not looking good, Chief.”

“Not good,” Chan agreed.

Ignoring the best principles of leadership, Chan failed to disguise from the young recruit that he was nervous and unsure what to do next. Alan, a tightening whorl of trapped wind spinning around a dead eye, had been more than four hundred nautical miles to the southeast when they had started out and tottering toward Taiwan. If it kept its present course, it would miss Hong Kong by a safe margin, but name a typhoon that was predictable. Name too a typhoon that did not kill at least a few people, especially at sea.

The wind was freshening. The first whitecaps were dancing on top of stubby waves. Small whitecaps for the moment, but that could change. Chan yelled in Cantonese to the captain up in the wheelhouse. Aston smirked.

Chan glanced at him. “You understand that?”

“You said, ‘Slow the fucking boat down. Can’t you see it’s as black as a Chinese vagina?’ ”

Chan nodded. It was typical of a young English cop that he would know the word for the female part; it was what they learned after “please” and “thank you.” But Cantonese was rich in double meanings and the captain had understood a slightly different message: Don’t get us trapped in the crotch of China. Chan knew six million people who would say amen to that.

“Better go back,” he said without conviction.

“Yes, we better. Could get blown halfway up the Pearl River if we hang around here.”

“Don’t say that.” Chan’s hand shook as he lit another cigarette. “You see it anywhere?” Smoke and words tumbled from his mouth in a rush.

Aston gazed into the gloom. “To be honest, Chief, I can’t see a bloody thing.”

Chan grimaced. “It’s there, though.” He turned to the bridge, shouted in Cantonese: “Where are we now?”

“Due north of the Soko Islands, heading west at three knots.”

All aboard understood the tension in the captain’s voice. Every map of Hong Kong shows that the territorial waters belonging to the People’s Republic of China begin very close to the western end of the Soko Islands. Private and commercial craft from Hong Kong passed regularly across the invisible line in the sea, usually on their way to Macao, but it was forbidden for officials in uniform to do so, especially aboard craft bearing the queen’s arms. The Chinese Navy, always sensitive to foreign incursions, had never forgiven the theft of Hong Kong by bullies in British uniforms more than a hundred years before.

“A clear plastic bag, very large and of industrial quality, with apparently gruesome content,” the tourist had said. American tourists gave the most precise reports to police. They had more practice.

“Gruesome”? Neither Chan nor Aston had taken the report. The message had been redirected by the local Lantau police station to the RHKPF’s headquarters in Arsenal Street on Hong Kong Island and then on to Chan’s desk at Mongkok. It had been his first break in a triple murder inquiry with which Chan had conspicuously made no progress for over a week. With a disposition like Chan’s frustration was hard to disguise, and the nature of the crimes did not help his state of mind. “Atrocities” was the word English journalists were using.