The Clown Prince of Kowloon

by James Dudley

  Sheng motioned to one of the assistants. “Show General Kharlamov to his quarters.”

  The assistant led Kharlamov into the house and Sheng fell in behind them. The recreational part of the day was over, and now it was time for the work to begin. Sheng passed through the cavernous foyer up a marble staircase, and down a long corridor decorated with tapestries and suits of armor dating back to the Han Dynasty. Finally, he arrived at his quarters, where he showered, performed some stretches, and changed into a freshly pressed pair of trousers and a tan Nehru jacket. Kharlamov met him back down in the foyer, also wearing a Nehru jacket, as if they had coordinated their outfits.

  Sheng led the way as they walked down two more sets of stairs to the cavernous basement level, where Sheng had set up his command center. There was a long conference table in the center of the room, the front wall was covered in maps and charts, and the walls contained the massive water tanks of General Sheng’s rapidly growing aquarium collection.

  “Look, today’s catch has already been added," Sheng pointed out.

  “And a fine catch it is,” Kharlamov said.

  The shark glided through the water, casting a menacing presence over the room. Its smooth and controlled motions were a sharp contrast to its earlier flopping and flailing on the deck of the boat. The two generals continued walking past the next section of the tank.

  “The puffer fish, it looks like a normal fish until it inflates itself. It’s also very poisonous,” said Sheng. They walked past a few more tanks of colorful but harmless fish until they paused at the last one. Camouflaged against a coral reef, one of eight tentacles betrayed its position by moving ever so slightly. “The pride and joy of my collection,” he said. “The blue-ringed octopus- it is one of the deadliest creatures in the world.”

  Kharlamov silently nodded in appreciation as they concluded the brief tour of the aquarium and sat down to confer at the table.

  “Thus far it appears everything is proceeding according to plan,” Sheng said.

  “Yes, it does. As we discussed, I have sent word to colleagues of like mind throughout the Soviet bloc intelligence services. If you are unsatisfied with the direction of current leadership, if you consider yourself to be on the true path of communism, then come here and join our revolution within the revolution. I expect that many of them will be arriving shortly,” Kharlamov said.

  “And I have passed similar word to my end of the bloc. But, of course, we must first ensure that the economic preparations for our plan are in place.” Sheng reached under the table to press a button that sounded a buzzer, and moments later, Peng Zhou and Erich Schumacher were escorted into the room.

  “Are there any updates on your most recent report?” Sheng asked.

  “We have found buyers for the weapons we have, and we have prepared to acquire more weapons from various sources. The following buyers have agreed to our arrangements,” Sheng explained as he handed over a list of names.

  Sheng held the paper up and scanned the list, seeing mostly what he expected to see. “Were there any potential complications?”

  “Well, it’s probably nothing,” Schumacher said, “But when we visited Chao Hung, he had a man waiting outside that seemed like he was there to do business, and, well, I could have sworn it was Tommy Malloy, the actor.”

  “And why should this concern me?”

  Schumacher shrugged. “It probably doesn’t, but it just seemed a little out of place is all.”

  Kharlamov leaned forward and spoke in a hushed tone. “Actually, Tommy Malloy has worked for the western intelligence services before. There could possibly be something to this.”

  Sheng nodded, taking in these new developments, and then waved his hand to summon one of his assistants. “Bingwen, see to it that Tommy Malloy does not interfere in our plans, and please be discreet about it.”

  His instructions clear, Bingwen marched out of the room and began to assemble his team. So far, everything was falling into place more or less the way Sheng expected it to.

  Chapter 10

  Millie Covington’s office was tucked away in a secluded wing of Government House, well beyond the usual paths of any visitors. It was a cozy room, with an oriental rug covering most of the hardwood floor, and a combination of traditional Chinese and French Impressionist prints decorating the walls. There was a small tea cart pushed against the wall underneath the window, home to a ceramic teapot that was usually full, along with a matching set of cups and saucers and a serving plate that was usually full of biscuits. Under the watchful eyes of a black-and-white photograph of the Queen, Millie sat behind the wooden desk, pouring over an increasingly tall stack of papers, trying to make sense of it all.

  First, there were Richard Boothwyn’s reports from Singapore. British weapons were being stolen and trafficked, and it appeared that Chinese intelligence was behind it. The motor vessel Mandalay was carrying the weapons, and American and British naval assets in the region had been assigned to track it. Then, there was the report of Tommy Malloy’s meeting with Chao Hung, where it was revealed that the mobster was going to be purchasing some of those weapons and was uninterested in taking on other projects.

  Then, there were the rest of Tommy’s reports, which all told a similar story; every potential trafficker or smuggler he approached was unwilling to transport or sell the bootleg films. They all seemed to be fully wrapped up in other projects, and none of them fully revealed what exactly those other projects were.

  Finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate, Millie stood up to stretch, her legs and neck feeling incredibly stiff after hours of sitting still and looking down. She walked over to the window, poured herself a cup of tea, and decided to indulge in a few shortbread biscuits. As she alternatively blew on and took tiny sips from the scalding hot tea, she stared out the window and watched as the day’s last rays of sunlight disappeared over Victoria Peak and reflected off the water. There was a strange and mysterious beauty to Hong Kong that she never grew tired of, no matter how long she spent in the colony.

  Though she was English by birth and blood, Millie had long been at home at Hong Kong. She was part of one of the last in a long line of generations of imperial children who were raised many miles away from Britannia’s shores in the far-flung outposts of the Empire. She was born in London, where her father had started his career as a banker after returning from the First World War. A few years later, he was transferred to his bank’s Hong Kong office and set sail for the Far East with his young family in tow.

  The Covingtons moved into a neighborhood that was primarily populated with British expats, but they still tried to immerse themselves in the local culture as much as they could. Thanks to their tutoring from an early age, Millie and her younger sister Edith grew to be fluent in Cantonese, and thanks to their constant quest for playful adventures, they grew to learn every street corner and alleyway of the city, even the ones they probably shouldn’t have. As her father rose through the ranks of the bank, their social standing and standard of living slowly and steadily improved. For the most part, it was a fun and carefree way to grow up, until the war came that is.

  Millie had just turned sixteen in 1940, when British women and children were ordered to evacuate from Hong Kong in advance of a seemingly imminent Japanese invasion. While many expats pulled enough strings to keep their families close, Rupert Covington heeded the order and sent his wife and daughters on the next ship back to England. Like many British children of the time, Millie and Edith were sent to live with distant relatives in the countryside while their mother worked as a nurse and maintained the family property in London.

  Their escape from Hong Kong was timely. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the American Navy at Pearl Harbor, and proceeded to invade British and American territories throughout the Pacific shortly thereafter. On Christmas day of that year, Hong Kong formally surrendered, and British civilians were detained in an internment camp at Stanley for the remainder of the war. As a prominent bank
er, Rupert Covington was permitted to remain outside the camp as his expertise was required to assist in running the colony. However, the closely supervised barracks in which the bankers lived and worked was not much better than the camp.

  Meanwhile back in England, the girls had to keep attending school as usual, and Millie was pleasantly surprised to earn admission to Cambridge after being forced to forego her longstanding plans to attend the University of Hong Kong. While studying there, her Cantonese fluency and thorough knowledge of who’s who in Hong Kong caught the attention of one of her professors, who recommended her for a job interview with a man from the Foreign Office, who, as it turned out, didn’t actually work for the Foreign Office at all.

  By the end of the war, Millie was firmly ensconced in the intelligence community. Her duties included translating documents, identifying local assets, and providing valuable briefings and debriefings for agents slipping into and out of the occupied territory. After Japan finally surrendered, the Covington family was able to reunite once more. Millie opted to remain in the Secret Intelligence Service, and was posted back home to play an instrumental role in getting the Hong Kong branch up and running again with the restore of British rule.

  When the Second World War gave way to the Cold War, Hong Kong’s strategic position became even more magnified. It was a small western outpost underneath the massive shadow of the Eastern bloc, making it a prime location for all sorts of intrigue, subterfuge, and double dealings. Millie played her role in this game with her own unique angle, convincing the public that she was nothing more than a typical expat socialite so that they would underestimate her hidden cunning.

  As Millie walked back to her desk, she paused to glance at a chart where she had mapped out everything MI6 had been able to learn of the complex and secretive organizational structure of Hong Kong’s triads. At the very top of the pyramid was a man named Walter Wong. Millie had a longstanding goal of meeting him one day, but the fact was that few people ever had. The notorious recluse was so elusive that some were prone to speculate as to whether or not he even existed at all. Below him, the middle to upper management levels were a tangled mess, but she had still managed to fill in quite a few names on the list. One of them was Chao Hung, who Tommy Malloy was not likely to visit again anytime soon. Another name on the chart was Henry Ho, the man who had been the source for providing most of the other names.

  Millie had first encountered Henry Ho early on in their respective careers, when he was attempting to establish his local fiefdom by overthrowing a notoriously brutal crime lord. British authorities had wanted to be rid of that particular crime lord for quite some time, but never could quite gather enough evidence to bring any formal charges. Operating outside of the bounds of law enforcement, Millie secretly provided Henry with vital information that greatly assisted him in his violent overthrow. Under the terms of their unlikely alliance, British authorities agreed to look the other way at most of his less-than-legal business ventures, as long as he agreed to tone down the violence and periodically provide them with information. This arrangement had suited both parties just fine, and this information was what Millie was going to need a lot more of to get to the bottom of whatever was going on.

  Using a circuitous route to ensure that was not being followed on what would otherwise be a quick journey, Millie walked the several blocks from Government House to Central, stopping in a phone booth along the way to put on a hat and sweater and change her gait ever so slightly. Satisfied that nobody had tracked her, she turned down a side street and ducked inside a dimly lit hole-in-the-wall bar.

  It was nearly empty inside, and the bartender, who knew perfectly well who she was and why she was there, gave her a silent glance of acknowledgement as she slipped through a backdoor and up a stairwell to a small private room. Inside the room, Henry Ho was sitting on a floor cushion in front of a low table as he sipped a cup of tea. He poured a cup for Millie as she took a seat across the table on another cushion.

  “I’ve been expecting you, Miss Covington. I’m actually quite surprised it took you this long to come,” he said.

  Millie had no time to spare for the usual pleasantries. “Well in that case, you must know what I’m here to ask you about. Why is every triad suddenly going off the market? And what do these stolen weapons have to do with it?”

  “The game we all play has taken a strange new turn. I was recently approached by operatives of Chinese intelligence with an offer to purchase stolen British weapons. It was a high quality product, much better than anything else I normally sell, so naturally I accepted. My sources inform me that many others in my line of work across the Colony were offered similar deals- some were offered weapons, some counterfeit goods, and others the highest quality opium. But all of these offers came with one major catch; we were expected to enter into an agreement of exclusivity under which we could only work with them and not take on any new clients.”

  Millie nearly dropped her teacup as the full magnitude of what she was up against began to hit her. “So Chinese intelligence is building an exclusive relationship with the triads? What could they possibly be trying to do with that?”

  Henry shrugged. “I leave those problems to the professionals like yourself. In the meantime, I am content to receive their merchandise.”

  The wheels turned in Millie’s head as she began to formulate a plan. “Have you received the weapons yet?”

  “No, but I expect to very soon.”

  “And then what?”

  “Some I may keep for my own use, but you did not hear me say that, of course. The rest, I have been given clear instructions on how to sell and who to sell it to. In fact, Peng Zhou has already selected the buyer, allowing me to be the middle man, at great profit to myself. I do not know who the buyer is, but I have been given instructions on how to meet him. I am to provide the first payment this weekend at the opera.”

  Millie took a sip from her tea and mulled over this new information. Before she could ask further questions, the bartender from downstairs came up and interrupted them. “Mr. Ho, Peng Zhou is here to see you to complete the deal. He is waiting downstairs.”

  Henry Ho swore under his breath as he sprang up from his seat. “That fool needs to learn better manners, always barging in on me like this. Stall him as long as you can. A lengthy wait shall be the price of his insolence.” He walked over the window and pried it open. “Well, Miss Covington, I do not believe that you will want to be present for this meeting, so it would seem that this is your only exit.”

  Wasting no time, Millie climbed out the window and jumped down onto the top platform of the fire escape. “Thank you for the information. We’ll be in touch.”

  Henry closed the window behind her, and she turned to walk down the questionably stable staircase. It was now dark outside, with the only light coming from the moon and the neon glow of the city. As she reached the street level on the deserted back alley that the escape led down to, she was startled by the sudden motion of a scurrying rat. Snakes, spiders, and even mice were acceptable in her book, but she harbored an intense loathing of rats.

  Just when she had regained her composure, she was startled once more by the appearance of a male shadow about to turn the corner into the alley. The possibilities raced through her head; it may be Peng, she may have been betrayed, or he may just be searching the premises out of paranoia, or it could always be just a customer or random bystander. Unwilling to take any chances, she reached for a small knife that she kept in her clutch and crouched against the wall in wait. When the man turned the corner and his silhouette appeared, she sprang, taking him to the ground with a quick series of blows and raising the knife to his throat as she prepared to question him.

  “Why yes, ma’am, I would like a shave to go with my haircut,” he said nonchalantly.

  It was only when Millie recognized the familiar Welsh accent that she began to relax. “Hello, Millicent. It’s been far too long, and that was quite the welcome. Where did you ever learn to do tha
t?”

  Millie laughed as she helped Richard Boothwyn to his feet. “Welcome to Hong Kong, and please don’t call me Millicent.”

  Chapter 11

  The final day of shooting for any film was always a bittersweet occasion, and it so it was with a wide range of emotions that the cast and crew of Hong Kong Harry assembled for their final day of work together. Louis Poutine had an extra spring in his step as he set up the shoot. A film this ambitious was a massive undertaking for a sixty year old director, and the travel combined with the long working hours had drained a lot of his energy. But now that the end was in sight, he had found his second wind. A project years in the making was finally nearing its close.

  As for Tommy Malloy, it was a very exciting feeling to be putting on the vintage sailor costume for the last time, knowing that he was about to complete the biggest role of his career to date. But what was even more exciting was that after a string of rejections, he had finally found his smuggler under the most unlikely circumstances. It now appeared that his covert mission may actually be able to make some difference for his country, however small it may be.

  The final scene of the filming schedule was a musical number that was set outdoors in a botanical garden and only featured the movie’s three principal stars. At this point in the plot, Tommy and Tony’s characters were vying for the affections of the pirate queen, both trying to one-up each other in their quests to become true princes of piracy. The song was predominantly a duet between Tony and Donna, who were actually good at singing, while Tommy mostly played a ukulele in the background and then cut in with humorously rhyming one-liners at the end of each stanza. Despite Tony’s superior musical abilities, the screenplay ultimately called for Donna to pick Tommy, as he was, of course, the main character.