Heaven's Light

by Hurley, Graham

  This conclusion, Ellis had explained in a dry aside, accounted for Zhu’s instant elevation to CIP status. Commercially Important People held the keys to doors that the UK couldn’t afford to ignore. No one was getting silly over forty-seven million quid’s worth of batons and hand-held radios but what really mattered, what really revved up Ellis’s superiors at the DTI, was the prospect of what might happen after that. The UK had already grabbed a big chunk of world defence sales. Given a step or two towards democracy, there wasn’t anything we wouldn’t flog our Far Eastern brothers.

  Louise smiled. She liked Ellis’s turn of phrase. Not just the pithiness and the cynicism but the fact that he trusted her enough to lower his guard like this, discarding the flannel that usually wrapped inter-agency reports. In another footnote, he’d briefly described his attempts to host Zhu around the standard CIP circuit. Visits to factories in the Midlands and the North had been a waste of time. Ditto the offer of an after-hours tour of the Tower of London and the chance to share dinner with minor royalty. None of these bonbons had made the slightest impression on the man. All he’d politely requested was the chance to conduct normal commercial negotiations face to face with the firms responsible for the tenders. Beyond that, in Ellis’s phrase, he’d slipped the leash and disappeared.

  There was a knock at the door. Louise got up and opened it. Ellis’s raincoat was dripping on the carpet. She hung it on the hat-stand beside the photocopier before sitting down again behind the desk. At once, Ellis saw the open file, his own signature scrawled over the bottom of the report’s final page.

  ‘Six seem to think he’s clean,’ he said at once.

  Louise permitted herself a smile. MI6’s brief confined the agency to gathering intelligence overseas but the end of the Cold War had forced them to revise their operational remit. Nowadays they spent more time chasing commercial intelligence than military or state secrets.

  ‘Clean?’ she enquired. ‘What exactly would that mean?’

  Ellis was eyeing her empty plate. For a man in his early thirties, he was already carrying a good deal of bulk. ‘It means they buy him as a businessman. They’ve been nosing around in Singapore and it all seems to check out.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. It seems he went into construction in the early seventies after we buggered off and left them to it. Celestial was his holding company from the start. He got his hands on some of those housing projects and he never looked back.’

  Louise pulled a pad from a drawer and began to scribble notes. She’d been to Singapore a couple of years back, after a quiet invitation from the people in the Ministry of Home Affairs responsible for the island’s internal security. One of the non-stop drizzle of introductory statistics that had stuck in her memory was the sheer pace of the building programme: one apartment completed every fifteen minutes.

  She looked up, her pen poised.

  ‘And after construction? He spread his wings?’

  ‘Yes, related industries first. Heavy plant, air-conditioning systems, big chain of wholesale carpet and furniture outlets. Stuff that would end up in the projects. That took him to the end of the seventies. The eighties, he got bolder. Ship repair. Then container leasing. And hotels, of course.’

  Louise nodded, making a separate note in the file. To date, Zhu’s only confirmed UK acquisition had been a rundown hotel on the south coast. She turned a page, looking for the name.

  ‘The Imperial,’ Ellis said helpfully.

  Louise glanced up. She’d noticed how intuitive Ellis could be, how he liked to gamble on private hunches. More often than not, she concluded thoughtfully, the gamble paid off.

  ‘Bournemouth, wasn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Southsea.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘It’s part of Portsmouth. The posh bit, by the seaside.’

  ‘So where might that fit in our friend’s little portfolio?’

  ‘God knows. I asked the blokes at Six but they’d got no further than logging the bank transfer. Zhu seems to have got the place for a song. They’re saying a hundred and ten thousand.’

  ‘What about the hotels in Singapore?’

  ‘They’re all conversions. Apparently that’s quite unusual out there but Six tell me he’s made himself a tidy little niche. Big emphasis on Chinese food and décor. Specially reserved suites for visiting businessmen.’

  ‘What kind of businessmen?’

  ‘All sorts.’ For the first time, Ellis consulted a small notebook. ‘Japanese. Taiwanese. Hong Kong.’

  ‘Mainly Asians?’

  ‘Yes, that seems to be his line. The odd Westerner, but not too many.’ Ellis was peering at the note book. ‘Guanxi,’ he said at last.

  ‘Guanxi?’

  ‘It means family ties. One of the guys who briefed me at Six speaks Cantonese. He says this guanxi’s the key to it all. The Chinese are locked into clan networks. Zhu would be typical.’

  ‘They know where he’s come from?’

  ‘Seems so.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They’re saying Fukien. That’s one of the southern mainland provinces. Lots of merchants and traders.’

  ‘But isn’t that what he’s put in his passport?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have they looked any further?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  Louise leaned back in her chair, amused. Back in June last year, immigration officials at Heathrow had discreetly photocopied Zhu’s Republic of Singapore passport and Ellis had faxed her the results. Against ‘Birthplace’, Zhu had entered the city of Amoy, capital of Fukien province.

  Louise reached for the phone at last and enquired about the tea trolley. It seemed that several portions of gateau were unsold. She passed on the news, drawing a broad smile from Ellis. Then she consulted the file again.

  ‘This equipment deal,’ she said. ‘Have you licensed it yet?’

  ‘No, the FCO are hiding behind Six. They want to know where the stuff’s going.’

  ‘So what’s Zhu’s line? About the end-user?’

  ‘He’s saying Singapore. Like they all do.’

  ‘Singapore?’ Louise laughed, consulting Zhu’s shopping list. ‘Fifty thousand batons? Half a million CS canisters? I thought the place was well behaved. Crime free.’

  ‘Singapore’s a fiction. You know it and I know it. But that’s not the point. Someone has to sell the stuff. Why not us?’

  ‘Why not, indeed?’

  Louise extracted a slim brown envelope from the file and emptied the photographs inside onto the desk. They were telephoto shots of Zhu, acquired before Christmas. He’d spent several days in central London, visiting estate agents, and the photos showed him crossing a series of busy pavements. In his long shapeless overcoat and his peaked leather cap, Zhu looked unworldly and out of place, as if he’d just parachuted in from another planet. Louise had never seen a businessman quite like him. She slid one of the photos across the desk. The estate agency in the background was Knight, Frank and Rutley.

  ‘He’s been looking for somewhere to live.’ She smiled. ‘Properties around one and a half million.’

  Ellis briefly studied the photo. ‘Anything take his fancy?’

  ‘Yes,’ Louise struggled to her feet, hearing the clatter of the tea trolley in the corridor outside, ‘though I understand he’s just left for Singapore again.’ She paused by the door. ‘Did he ever mention the name Hayden Barnaby?’

  It was nearly midnight, local time, when the little private jet swooped down into Singapore’s Changi International Airport. The sudden rumble of wheels woke Barnaby and he pulled himself upright, tightening the seat-belt, trying to make sense of the runway lights racing past the window. Across the narrow aisle, Zhu sat in one of the rearward-facing seats, eyes closed, hands carefully composed in his lap. The last time they’d talked was hours ago, somewhere over the Bay of Bengal.

  The aircraft taxied to a corner of the apron and nestled amongst a line of parked jumbos. The pilot opened the do
or, and by the time Barnaby stepped down into the sticky midnight heat a uniformed official was already bowing respectfully to Zhu. Inside the enormous terminal building, it was cooler, acres of gleaming floor broken by the bent shadows of hurrying passengers. Barnaby stopped to adjust the strap on his shoulder-bag, overwhelmed by the almost clinical sense of order. Airports were generally chaotic, even at midnight, but this one felt like a tomb.

  The trip east had been at Zhu’s suggestion. Delighted by the winter’s progress on the Imperial, he’d invited Barnaby to spend a day or two looking round the city he called home. Singapore, he said, had come a long way in no time at all, and the lessons of progress might repay a little exploration. Barnaby had scribbled the phrase on the pad he kept on his desk and, after Zhu had hung up, he’d spent several minutes wondering what the other man had meant. Supervising the rebuild on the Imperial had occupied more time than he’d ever imagined possible, but his working relationship with Zhu had been a fairy-tale – every query promptly answered, no decision ducked, even the biggest invoices paid scrupulously within ten working days – and by early spring he’d been able to welcome his new client back to the hotel in time to see the scaffolding come down after completion of the exterior works. For once, Zhu had allowed himself a broad smile, standing on the Common, gazing up at the newly painted stucco, and afterwards, over sandwiches in the newly restored dining room, he’d congratulated Barnaby on the fine job he’d done. He’d been told, he’d said, to expect the best. And he hadn’t been disappointed.

  Now, in the front of the speeding limousine, Zhu half turned, gesturing through the windscreen at the distant blaze of high-rise buildings that was the heart of downtown Singapore. After the war, he said, the place had been a mosquito-infested swamp, dotted with pig farms and tin huts. Now, just forty years later, it had become the world’s fourth biggest foreign exchange centre, third busiest oil-refining centre, second largest port. Not bad, he added pointedly, for a speck of land scarcely bigger than the Isle of Wight.

  Barnaby smiled at that. Zhu rarely betrayed emotion but the last couple of months, in his more recent trips to Portsmouth, Barnaby had begun to detect in him an almost fatherly pride in the city. It didn’t begin to measure up to what he so obviously felt for Singapore, but on two afternoons he’d politely asked for a guided tour and both had turned into an unexpected pleasure. The man’s curiosity was boundless. In Old Portsmouth, he’d wanted to understand exactly how the first settlement had expanded, insisting on walking up and down the fortified walls until the plan was clear in his head, and later, when Barnaby had sat next to Mr Hua in the Daimler, directing him around the city’s rougher areas, Zhu’s interest had been no less acute.

  The heart of Portsmouth was ringed by high-rise council blocks, brutal neo-Stalinist relics from the sixties, and Barnaby had done his best to explain how these bleak urban landscapes had become breeding grounds for poverty and petty crime. Zhu had listened to Barnaby’s careful analysis and later, at the foot of a particularly ravaged tower block, he’d told Mr Hua to stop the car while he went for a walk. Barnaby had got out too, offering to accompany him, but Zhu had insisted on going alone, shuffling away through the litter of abandoned shopping trolleys and drifts of broken glass, ignoring the cold stares of nearby youths. He’d returned ten minutes or so later, looking strangely troubled. Back in the office, when he’d enquired about the state of the city’s schools, Barnaby had been glad to oblige with a brisk dissertation on the workings of the education system. People with money, he’d explained, could buy their kids a proper schooling with well-paid teachers and decent facilities while the other seven million took their chances with what was left. The result, predictably, was an early division into the haves and have-nots, with the lucky few making sure they repeated the trick with their own kids, thus widening the chasm even further. Zhu had listened to Barnaby with total incomprehension. For once, quite genuinely, he’d failed to understand.

  The limousine was approaching downtown Singapore, the night sky hung with flashing Chinese characters, the air thick with the smell of garlic and frying pork. They paused at an intersection and Barnaby gazed out of the window, craning his neck, trying to count the floors on a soaring pagoda-shaped hotel. He’d got to sixteen, less than halfway up, when the traffic signals changed, and the limo surged forward again. Even at one in the morning, there were people everywhere, milling around the roadside stalls, and the place reminded him a little of New York. He voiced the comparison aloud but Zhu dismissed it with a shake of his head. Other cities, he said, were dangerous. Everyone knew it. New York had become a jungle, and even in London a sensible man stayed behind closed doors after midnight.

  A mile and a half later, the limo pulled into the forecourt of a big hotel. Zhu muttered something to Mr Hua and motioned for Barnaby to get out. A uniformed concierge was already waiting on the pavement and greeted Barnaby by name, reaching for his bag. Barnaby followed Zhu and the other man into the hotel. The atrium took his breath away. Glass elevators glided from floor to floor and, looking up, Barnaby could see tier after tier of balconies, each one stepped inward.

  He joined Zhu in the waiting elevator. On the fourth floor, at the reception desk, an exquisite Singaporean girl had his room pass and security key ready. There were no forms to fill in, no passport to deposit, simply a succession of deferential smiles and murmured words of welcome. The concierge was back beside the elevator, holding open the door for Barnaby. Zhu was still at the reception desk, leafing through a copy of the Straits Times.

  Barnaby touched his arm. ‘Are you booking in as well?’

  Zhu shook his head. He would be staying elsewhere. He’d only thought to provide a room for Barnaby. After a wash or a shower perhaps he’d like to join Zhu for a meal. The hotel had an excellent restaurant called the Cherry Garden. After all, UK time, it was only six in the evening.

  Barnaby rode the elevator with the concierge. His suite was on the nineteenth floor. An elegant sitting room was decorated in soft peach colours, and the walls were hung with beautifully framed paintings of old Singapore. Barnaby paused by the bathroom door, peeling his jacket and loosening his tie. Beside him was a print of a British man-of-war. Officers stood in groups on the quarterdeck, peering upwards, while the rigging swarmed with matelots. In the foreground, a native stood in a long canoe, his raised arm pointing to the distant hump of a tropical island.

  Barnaby studied the print a moment or two longer, dazed by the way the sheer opulence of the place had softened his own landfall. He was no stranger to good hotels but nothing in his experience had readied him for this and the impact was all the greater because it was so closely associated with Zhu, a man for whom the trappings of material wealth seemed to have absolutely no importance.

  Barnaby remembered the meal they’d shared aboard the chartered executive jet. In the tiny on-board galley, Barnaby had found caviar and hot blinis, and a delicious julienne of lightly smoked goose breast. There was more than enough for two but Zhu had made do with a couple of bread rolls, thinly spread with what looked like fish paste. The rolls had lasted him most of the leg from Zurich to Abu Dhabi, and he’d washed them down with half a bottle of Evian water, carefully storing the rest in the holder attached to his seat arm.

  Barnaby stepped into the bathroom. The floor was paved in Italian marble and a television screen was inset into the tiled wall at the foot of the huge bath. The shower was separate and there were enough toiletries on the shelves around the sink to open a small pharmacy. Barnaby started to undress, reaching for the terrycloth bathrobe on the gold-plated hook behind the heavy teak door. As he did so, a phone began to warble. An extension stood on a plinth beside the shower. It was an old man’s voice.

  ‘I’ve invited a guest to join us for dinner,’ Zhu was saying. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

  The Cherry Garden restaurant was at the back of the hotel. A wood-roofed pavilion with walls of antique Chinese brick enclosed a landscaped courtyard, and tiny alcoves in the brickwork
housed carefully chosen works of art. Making his way towards Zhu’s table, Barnaby felt he’d stepped, yet again, into another world. He settled beside Zhu’s guest, who asked him how he felt after the journey.

  He tried to make a joke of it. ‘I’m still dizzy,’ he said, making a corkscrew motion with his hand, ‘but it’ll pass.’

  The woman’s name was Flora Li. She was young, no more than twenty-five, and wore an elegantly tailored two-piece trouser suit in soft blue leather. She had dark waist-length hair and the loveliest hands Barnaby had ever seen. She said she worked for the Ministry of Home Affairs. She’d evidently known Zhu for some time.

  Food arrived at the table. Barnaby couldn’t remember ordering but the usual protocols didn’t seem to matter. For the time being, he decided, the real world had made way for a series of delicious experiences, each episode dissolving seamlessly into the next. Quite what he’d done to deserve such treatment he neither knew nor cared, and he bent over his bowl of minced-pigeon broth, picking out the tiny glistening scallops, following Flora’s account of her week in the government service. As far as Barnaby could judge, she helped front the PR set-up, organizing briefing sessions for visiting businessmen. Investment was pouring into Singapore and the last year or so she’d been working flat out.

  She talked quickly, in a light American accent, using her hands a great deal, and Zhu followed the torrent of gossip with his usual grave attention. When, for the second time, she used the word ‘kiasu’, he stopped her in mid-sentence.

  ‘Kiasu means winning,’ he explained to Barnaby. ‘Very important.’

  ‘Winning?’

  Zhu nodded, gesturing round. ‘All this,’ he said. ‘The things we’ve done to this island of ours. The things we mean to do.’ He nodded again. ‘Kiasu.’

  Barnaby was looking at Flora. She’d abandoned her soup for what looked like mounds of fresh crab heaped in a basket of sliced yams.

  She smiled at the expression on his face. ‘From Hong Kong this morning,’ she said, offering him a shred of crab-meat pincered between the ends of her chopsticks. ‘Delicious.’