The skyline was dominated by the massive brooding hulk of Mount Austin or The peak as it was known locally.
But the view had little to do with why Tai leased the ultra-expensive office space on the 100th floor of the International Commerce Centre in Kowloon. He was there for other reasons. It was the tallest building in Hong Kong and it shared its address with prestigious firms like Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. Highly respected international companies that Tai Zeng felt himself to be on a par with.
Also the floors 102 - 118 were leased by the 5 star Hong Kong Ritz Carlton hotel in which Tai has a permanent three bedroom suite at a cost of five thousand dollars a night. Although that was his permanent residence he also had a 120 foot Sunseeker yacht berthed at The Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, one of the cities most exclusive clubs. That was another accoutrement that he had acquired more because he thought that it was the correct thing to do rather than any love for the water or for seagoing dwellings.
Mingyu entered through the main office door and closed it behind her. Barely topping four feet in height she was like a person in miniature. A neat boyish figure and short black bob. She wore no makeup save for a thick line of kohl around her large brown eyes. Her lightweight cotton dress reached just below her knees, loose fitting and plain. No jewellery.
'Mingyu. I need you to book me a flight to Vietnam. Next week. Two day stay. Same hotel as always. Also, set up a meeting with the Police Commissioner as soon as. Mutual ground. Perhaps one of the restaurants in the hotel. I need to speak to colonel Long sometime this afternoon, check out the time difference between here and Zimbabwe and place the call around four o'clock our time.'
Tai droned on, dictating a long list of tasks for his tiny assistant. She took no notes but simply nodded at the end of each command to show that she had taken it in.
While Tai talked he slowly stripped off. Peeling his sweat-wet training clothes from his body until he was completely naked. Then he grabbed the diminutive Mingyu, bent her over the desk and pulled her dress up around her waist. She wore no underwear. He entered her roughly, grunting with the effort as he continued to dictate his seemingly endless list of tasks.
Mingyu didn't react at all, save to keep nodding at the appropriate times.
When he was finished he withdrew, wiped himself off with his discarded shirt and waved a dismissal to Mingyu.
She bowed once and left the room, her dark eyes expressionless. Her face a mask of blank submissiveness. All feelings buried deep by the large monthly check that she received combined with the knowledge that people did not resign from the employ of Tai Zeng. You worked for him until he retired you.
And one did not want to be retired by mister Zeng.
Tai crossed the office to his built in closet and selected a traditional black silk Zhongshan Zhuang or Chinese Tunic Suit, as favoured by Chairman Mao. He slipped his feet into a pair of silk slippers and then poured himself a drink. Two fingers of the ubiquitous Johnnie Walker King George V that was so popular amongst the Hong Kong elite. No ice.
He sat at his desk and savoured the smoky taste. It hadn't been so long ago when his entire months earnings didn't come close to being enough to afford a single bottle of the premium spirits. Growing up in Kwun Tong along with over half a million other dispossessed people, crammed into an area hardly capable of supporting even a tenth of that number.
He remembered well those first days in the gangs. Barely a teenager he had been accepted as a Blue Lantern in the local Triads. An uninitiated member, lowest of the low. Called on to do all of the worst jobs. But he worked hard and soon became known as a youngster to rely on. An up and coming member who refused no task no matter how dangerous or humiliating.
He had been promoted to the level of a 49'er before anyone else that had joined with him and, as an initiated Triad member, was exposed to his first tastes of both power and privilege.
Within a few short years he achieved the rank of Enforcer, a rank on a par with a White Paper Fan administrator or a Straw Sandal liaison officer. It was at this stage that Tai decided to branch out on his own. The Triad system, unlike the Italian Cosa Nostra, is more than happy for its members to go their own way as long as they retain a loose affiliation to the Triad structure and pay their dues every month.
Now Tai ran his own empire and. Even though his rank in the Triads had never officially been raised, he was considered by all to be at least on a level with a Vanguard or Operations officer and perhaps even as high as the Deputy Mountain Master who was second in charge.
Tai's main strength was his innate ability to plan for the future. He played the long game in a structure that so often looked for the quick profit. The big score. As such he had used his growing influence to inveigle his way into the new Red Chinese government structure that now controlled Hong Kong, sowing his seeds and laying his lines of influence and power in all aspects from customs and excise to police and military envoys.
As a result, when China had started their big military push into Africa; Tai Zeng had been there, riding on the coat tails of the Peoples Army.
Now he owned, to all intents and purposes, his own crack military team that he used to control his substantial interests in the region.
Officially the team was actually a part of the people Army and was ostensibly under the control of Colonel Jin Chang.
The colonel had been transferred to Zimbabwe along with his assistant, Master Sergeant Lu Feng and a detachment of thirty two Nanjing Flying Tiger special forces troops as a roving fast reaction squad to provide security and advice to the Zimbabwean army.
In reality colonel Chang and his detachment were simply another cog in the mechanism that made up Tai Zeng's criminal engine. And Tai ensured Chang's loyalty by paying him vast amounts of money and allowing him to pursue his own private business ventures as well.
And although Tai had his fingers in may pies including illicit diamond buying, drugs, ivory and prostitution his main income was generated through the illegal poaching and distribution of Rhino horn.
He had teamed up with a Ukrainian gangster by the name of Viktor Hubenko and, together, they were responsible for the deaths of around ten rhinos a week. At the going price of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars per horn this equated to six million dollars a month or seventy two million a year. This, combined with his other criminal pursuits grossed over one hundred million dollars per anum.
But the money was not that important to Tai. Even though he lived a relatively lavish lifestyle he found it hard, if not impossible, to spend more than ten million a year. The rest of his income was a mere set numbers on a scorecard. A handicap level at golf, a social ranking.
A way to distance himself from the poor shoeless orphan from the slums of Kwun Tong.
Chapter 3
Garrett had been the game warden on the laird's estate for over five years now. But he had known the laird for most of his life and he owed him more than he could ever repay. He had taken Garret in when his parents had died, leaving him an orphan at the age of ten. The laird had sent Garrett to the same boarding school that his sons had attended and h had supported Garrett's decision to join the British army.
There had been a long period, a few years, when he had lost touch with the young soldier. It was during this time, when Garrett had had retired from the army and had pursued far more lucrative work as a private contactor or mercenary soldier fighting mainly in Africa, a continent that was rife with constant conflict.
The lifestyle had not been good to Garrett, driving him deep into the black heart of war, stripping him to the bone and exposing his dark inner core. Unleashing a violence that ran fast and furious through his soul. Releasing a Beast that found itself capable of the most violent of deeds and actions.
Finally Garrett had escaped from Africa. Running from his own lack of humanity. Hiding from The Beast.
The laird had taken him in given him a job as his gamekeeper. He had sensed that Garrett needed help but he had never questioned him. Never pus
hed him. He had simply allowed him free rein.
Garrett soon discovered that The Beast was an integral part of him and you could not run from yourself. So he locked it up in a cage and refused to feed it. And he lived alone. Not lonely but singularly, at one with the Highveld. The outdoors.
There were still times when The Beast crashed through the bars and came out into the light.
Bad times.
Garrett tried to avoid them.
But sometimes they were thrust upon him.
That morning his laird had come to him. His niece had gone missing. She had been incommunicado for almost a month now. There was no huge panic on. It was suspected that she was with her boyfriend, a ne'er-do-well that she had met during after she had dropped out of university. A small time drug dealer and even smaller time artist some twelve years her senior.
Garrett had never met him but he knew Alicia well. A product of the most expensive private schools combined with almost unlimited access to wealth. Her parents would describe her, if they bothered, as willful, fiery and possessed of her own mind.
Garrett, on the other hand, would describe her as a stone cold, spoiled brat.
The laird doted on her and, in all fairness, he was the only human being that she treated with anything approaching respect.
Regardless, the laird had asked Garrett to track her down and there was no way that he would ever refuse him.
He had been provided with Alicia's cell number - it went straight through to messages - and the last known address of her waster boyfriend, Rafe Hinds.
Garrett was currently heading for that current address, driving the estate Defender Land Rover. He had been on the road for over three hours, driving through the lashing rain, the skies a gray as the Atlantic Ocean, visibility less than fifty yards and the merest hint of sun, so weak as to necessitate the use of headlamps even during the day.
He was using a satellite navigation system and it informed him that he was nearing his destination. A road in the notorious East End area of Glasgow.
Garrett had never been there before but he did remember hearing that a man born in that deprived area had a life expectancy some nine years less than a man born in rural India.
The area itself was a depressing mélange of old and new and completely fucked up. Crumbling tenement blocks next to unfinished new builds and dilapidated Victorian houses. He drove past a building that looked derelict but, as he got closer, he saw a hand painted sign, lit up by a red spotlight. The sign said, "Adult Fun".
A monstrous doorman stood outside the rotting wooden front door, rain sluicing off his black mackintosh. Shining off his shaven head. Dripping unheeded from his broken nose. He stared as Garrett drove by. Eyes two pebbles in a mountain of flesh. Gorilla in the mist.
Three hundred yards further on he reached his destination. A row of seedy Victorian houses. Red brick and broken sash windows. Tottering chimneys. Front doors scabbed by peeling paint. Drifts of refuse. Milk cartons, crisp packets, newspapers, used condoms. Needles.
Garrett felt his first niggles of worry. He had known that Alicia had fallen in with a less than salubrious bunch but he had always understood it to be an upper-class dalliance with the lower middle classes. Nothing too rough or untoward. A childish poke in the eye or middle finger to parents considered to cold or distant or remote.
A callow cry for attention.
But this area and the vista that presented itself to him at the moment smacked of something deeper. People who lived in places like this did not do so through choice or through rebellion. People who lived in a shithole like this did so because they had nowhere else to go.
They had no further to fall.
Garrett pulled up against the sidewalk, stepped out, locked the door behind him and headed to the second house along. Number 223.
The door, at one stage, had been red. Now it was a pale pink. A badly painted anarchy sign had been scrawled across it and, under that, a swastika.
The swastika had been painted incorrectly so that the arms went the wrong way.
A billboard to both ignorance and stupidity.
He thought about knocking but then decided against it and simply tried the door. It was open, the lock long since smashed and hanging free. He pushed it and walked in.
The building stank of damp and sweat and urine. And something else. Some sweet undefined stench. Heady yet, at the same time, nauseating. Garrett was not familiar with it.
He walked carefully through the ground floor, opening doors and peering into rooms. Three rooms downstairs, all uninhabited.
There was also a kitchen. An old ceramic sink, cracked, half full of an unidentifiable black oily substance. A few broken cupboards. An old refrigerator. The door open. Bizarrely, the internal fridge light still worked and it shone brightly from inside the white, glossy interior. A pathway to another world.
There was a bathroom. The bath had been removed. If it had been an old cast iron one then it had most probably been sold for scrap. There was also a toilet. Water ran from the top of the cistern, the flow mechanism long since broken and the plumbing continued to attempt to fill an already overfull tank. The toilet itself was blocked with an old T-shirt that had obviously been used when toilet paper had run out. Garrett grimaced at the smell and left the room, heading for the stairs.
He climbed the creaking staircase and started to search the next floor. The first room, like the ones below, was empty.
When he entered the next room he almost didn't recognize her.
She sat crossed legged on the floor. Her long blonde hair had been hacked short and her eyes were sunken into their sockets. A lava lamp bubbled away in the corner, distorting the shadows and painting all in the hues of a nightmare. Blood red and frozen blue.
The floor was slick with vomit, the stench sweet and rotten at the same time. Garrett had seen this before. It was a fairly common side effect from injecting heroin. But to the user, the minor inconvenience of throwing up all over yourself was inconsequential compared to the resultant high.
There were two other people in the room. Both men. They sat together on a single bed, passing a joint between them.
'Who the fuck are you?' One asked.
Garrett ignored him completely.
'Alicia,' he said. His voice low. Non threatening. 'Your grandfather is worried about you. He's been trying to call.'
The young girl stared at him for a while. 'Where's he?'
'He's at home,' answered Garrett. 'He asked me to find you. To take you home.'
She shook her head. 'Not going home.'
'I think that you should, Alicia. Just to show him that you're okay. You don't have to stay.'
Again she shook her head. 'No. Stay here.'
'You heard her,' said one of the men from the bed. 'So fuck off now, why don't you?'
Once again Garrett merely ignored him. ''Come on, Alicia. You can't stay here. It's not good. Come back with me. Speak to the laird. No worries. Things will be alright.'
The man who had been talking to Garret stood up off the bed, walked over and grabbed him by the shoulder.
'Look, mate. Fuck off before I make you fuck off.'
Garrett didn't bother to even look at the man. He simply backhanded him across his face. Blood sprayed from the man's smashed nose as the blow lifted him up and deposited him back on the bed. Unconscious.
Alicia screamed. The other man jumped off the bed and ran from the room.
'You hit Rafe,' shouted Alicia.
She jumped up and ran over to the prostrate man, patting ineffectually at his face in an attempt to revive him, tears welling from her eyes.
'He's hurt. You hurt him.'
She attacked Garrett, both hands swinging at him, pummeling him in the chest and shoulders.
Garrett stood and accepted the abuse. Eventually she ran out of energy and slumped down onto the bed.
'Sorry,' said Garrett. 'He'll be fine. Alicia, you need to come back with me.'
'Fuck you.'
Garret shook his head. 'Afraid not, my girl. Now look, I don't want to get all demanding and asshole about the whole thing but the laird asked me to get you home so there is no longer any choice in the matter. You are coming back with me. Accept it, embrace it, argue with your grandfather. I am simply the messenger.'
'You can't tell me what to do,' she hissed at him. 'You're just the hired help. A jumped up gardener. Fuck you, you servant.'
Garrett nodded. 'hat's correct. I am a servant. But I am not your servant, Alicia. I serve your grandfather. So pack your shit, or don't, we are leaving.'
As Garrett finished speaking the bedroom door crashed open. The runner and four more men walked in. The runner had obviously called in reinforcements. And Garrett could see instantly that the four newcomers were a different breed. True bottom feeders. These were not artists experimenting with different levels of consciousness. Nor were they upper-class brats falling off the rails.
These were the real deal. Men who had grown up hard and gotten harder. Tempered through poverty and prison. Through gang wars and institutional violence. Urban hyenas.
And even lions are wary of hyenas.
Garrett stepped back, placing his back into a corner. Cutting down their field of attack.
'Who the fuck do you think that you are?' Shouted one of the newcomers. Shaven headed, sleeve tattoos. Enough metal in his face to satiate an inner city scrap merchant. 'You can't come in here and harass my peeps. You made yourself a big mistake.'
Garrett held up his hands. 'Look, mate. I'm sorry. Didn't mean to offend. I've simply come to pick up Alicia. We'll go, no more trouble. Okay?'
The man shook his head. 'No. Not okay. Firstly, you disrespect my peeps, you disrespect me and my boys. And if you disrespect me and my boys then we gotta teach you a lesson.'
As he spoke he drew a knife from his belt, flicking it open with a well-practiced movement. Behind him his boys also drew their knives.
'Listen, Aaron,' said Alicia. 'He's just a fucking moron. He works for my grandfather. Let him go. He won't come back.'
Aaron looked at Alicia and smiled. 'You're too soft heated, babe,' he said. 'You don't understand the rules. He dissed us so he gotta pay.'
Garrett & Petrus- The Complete Series Page 44
