The Last Six Million Seconds

by John Burdett

  He searched down the length of the dockside where the past waited. Most of the fishing fleet was out; only a half dozen of the trawlers were anchored near to the market; the old ladies in the sampans who brought vegetables, duck and pork to the boat wives were plying between the high green walls of the trawlers that had remained behind, each twisting a long single paddle at the back of the curved sterns, where they stood bow-legged and imperturbable. From the distance he saw they still had permanent hairdos and smiles full of gold.

  He walked the length of the pier to where a small police launch was waiting.

  He nodded to the captain, stepped on board, immediately fell into discussion with the English senior inspector, who was stationed at an outpost in Mirs Bay. They had always made a point of putting an Englishman into this post, the closest to the Chinese coast.

  Higgins showed Chan a marine department map.

  “Just here.” He stabbed the map at a point near the line that divided the PRC from Hong Kong. “Pure coincidence, a couple of police diving enthusiasts were near there over the weekend, trying out their ultrabig underwater spearguns, not to mention their Gucci colored wetsuits and their accurate-to-a-thousand-feet underwater Seikos. Youngsters, not long out of training. Sharp, though. They saw extra marine life a little further to the north, and although they weren’t supposed to go so close to the border, they did, hoping to find something bigger to shoot than prawns. The fish were feeding out of what looked like a large industrial mincer. Got a bit closer, and Bob’s your uncle; it was a large industrial mincer. One of them remembered that you were looking for one such, so they contacted me as the officer on the spot. I sent a couple of chaps down to take a look, and the sighting was confirmed. I thought you might like a day on the water to supervise the salvage operation.”

  “How big? How old? The mincer, I mean.”

  Higgins shrugged. “Not clear. But if fish were finding food in it, I would say it hadn’t been down that long.”

  Chan lit another Benson, ignored Higgins’s frown.

  “Thought you might be interested in the positioning,” Higgins said.

  “I am.”

  “Bit of an odd coincidence, seems to me.”

  “What is?”

  “Well, you find a bagful of heads in the sea at the extreme west of the territory; now you find the mincer at the extreme northeast. Both right next to the PRC border.”

  Chan didn’t want to talk about that to an Englishman. “Just a coincidence, I expect.”

  Higgins shook his head. “Well, if I were investigating, I would consider it a lead worth following.”

  On an inhalation Chan took in Higgins. After four hundred years of empire the British bred Englishmen who would not feel at home unless in a colony organizing the natives. Where would they all go in two months’ time?

  “Thanks for the tip. How are you organizing the salvage? Divers to hook it up, gantry, all that?”

  Chan counted five emphatic nods from Higgins. “Exactly that. Small floating gantry towed out of Tolo Harbor by a tug we borrowed from the marine department. Couple of police divers on board. We estimate it at about a hundred and twenty feet, so it’s not a problem for the divers. Don’t even need to worry about decompression apparently.”

  “That’s right. You ascend slowly after the dive and wait at certain depths. Probably it’s enough to spend twenty minutes waiting at about fifteen feet. Look, I’d like to go down with them; they’re bound to have a spare kit, it’s standard procedure.”

  “Go down? You?” Higgins surveyed Chan, the twitch, the cigarette. “I’m not sure-”

  “I have a certificate. It’s my hobby. Look.”

  Chan took his Advanced Open Water certificate out of his wallet. Higgins inspected it.

  “I see. Any particular reason for you to go down? I mean, these men are perfectly competent, you know.”

  It’s my case, Chan almost said. Then he remembered the English Way. “Just thought I’d use the opportunity to get in a free dive, I’ve missed it every weekend this month cooped up in Mongkok. And it’s so fucking hot.”

  “Ah!” Higgins smiled for the first time. “What a wonderful idea! You know, I’d go down myself, I think, if I wasn’t scared to death.” He laughed. Chan laughed back. You had to if you were following the English Way.

  The launch had already backed away from the pier as they were talking and was now clearing the harbor. Chan walked to the rail at the bows, gazed through sunglasses at the green archipelago that surrounded them. Fishing villages older than Britain huddled against the sun, a blinding white hole in an azure sky.

  They had chosen the launch because it was the fastest available. The captain eased it up to about twenty knots.

  Higgins came to stand by him. “That’s improved the air conditioning.”

  The breeze raised the Englishman’s thin straw hair, revealed the bald pink patch at the top. He had plastered his nose and hairline with white zinc.

  Chan undid most of the buttons on his shirt, let the wind blow between his skin and the cotton. He never admitted how guilty he felt about his smoking. Fresh air around the chest gave the illusion of cleansing the lungs. He breathed in as far as his abdomen, let the air out slowly, held back a cough under Higgins’s gaze.

  There was a laugh from the crew on the bridge. Chan looked up and shared a smile with a square-set Cantonese constable in long blue shorts, bare feet.

  He was excited about the dive; it was going to be a long day. He wondered what Moira was doing. He would be lucky to be back for dinner, although he’d promised to try. What did she look like in daylight? Was the Bronx near the sea? Did men his age love women her age? If they were liars, crooks, alcoholics? Who cared? She would be gone in two days. They had discussed that at least.

  The wind blew her away.

  Chan turned his attention back to Higgins. “Good launch-we must be doing about twenty knots?”

  The Englishman gave his brisk, short nods. “Maybe a little more. About twenty-eight is tops, but fuel efficiency goes right down. We’ve a fair way to go. The snakeheads do it in about two hours, of course-all the way to China, I mean.”

  “Still a lot of smuggling?”

  “Are you kidding? After nightfall it’s like the Santa Monica Freeway here. The latest wheeze is to build hulls that are molded around the car of your choice-or rather your customer’s choice. Literally, the fiberglass is built up around a specific model car so it fits perfectly and doesn’t move around when the boat hits the high speeds. No extra packing required, saves crucial minutes.”

  “No chance of catching them at sea?”

  “With boats like this? Compared to them, this is a barge, a joke. Their boats can be seventy feet long with four three-hundred-horsepower outboards on the back giving twelve hundred horsepower total. Those babies can reach ninety miles an hour. We have nothing like that. Of course, if they’d let us use force, that would be different. At ninety just forcing them to swerve would sink them. But then you kill the smugglers, write off the car and risk the lives of the cops involved, just to save a rich man’s car. It’s politically unacceptable.”

  Chan had heard the complaint before. In the old days the British would have stopped the traffic no matter how many Chinamen they killed. All of a sudden everyone had become so delicate-apart from the crooks and the party cadres who employed them.

  “You can see the attraction, though, to a young desperado. Flying across the water at night to China at ninety miles an hour with a stolen BMW in the back, cradling an AK-forty-seven. I bet they queue up to join the gangs.”

  Higgins grinned. “You know, if I wasn’t a cop…”

  Chan smiled. Despite his bald patch, Higgins was young, maybe under thirty. He was a cop now, but in two months he’d be another expatriate bum with nowhere to go. Nobody was rushing to employ ex-Hong Kong policemen. And it was funny how they never wanted to go home, to the Land of the Setting Sun.

  Higgins left him as they were passing Big Wave Bay o
n the left. Chan turned to rest his backside against the rail and watch the rhythm of the water. I dreamed I was a butterfly. Or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man? He’d read that somewhere. He could see the vertical characters floating on a slow wave toward China. He’d hardly slept the night before.

  He made his way to the lower deck and lay down on some cushions in the back cabin. I am a butterfly dreaming I am a man. In seconds he was asleep. He awoke to Higgins shaking him.

  “We’re coming up to the site now.”

  21

  Chan shook himself, walked to the foredeck holding on to railings, stood next to Higgins at the bows.

  The floating gantry was in place; the tug was letting go of the ropes as they approached. The Hong Kong coast was perhaps a mile to the west; the coast of China about the same distance to the north. The political frontier was closer, though, just a few hundred yards. Apart from the gantry, the tug and the launch there was no sign of man at all.

  As the launch slowed only the diminished chug of its diesel interrupted the primeval silence. They were just thirty miles from Hong Kong Island, but there was no real estate here that anyone wanted to develop, no mineral wealth, no highway to somewhere important. Except at night.

  The launch slowed to a bare half knot, gliding through clear blue liquid that lapped the sides. The temptation to dive in, naked, was almost irresistible. He remembered a skinny Eurasian boy and his sister, not a stitch on, diving for clams every morning and evening throughout one long hot summer, their mother’s cries echoing in his ears all the way from China, all the way underwater.

  “So, here we are.” Higgins beamed.

  This was what gweilos joined the force for, an adventure on some foreign shore under a tropical sun. No doubt that’s why Paddy had come east thirty-six years ago. Thirty-six? He must be the same age now that his father had been when he deserted Mai-mai and them, a careless Irishman running from responsibility. Dirty Paddy.

  On the gantry platform police divers were assembling air tanks. Chan was glad to see they had brought plenty. At 120 feet one tank didn’t last long.

  He jumped from the launch onto the platform, introduced himself to the two Chinese divers. They nodded respectfully to the chief inspector.

  “How many regulators did you bring?” Chan asked.

  “Four, one each, one for the kit we leave under the gantry, one spare.”

  That was correct procedure, Chan remembered. If you dived more than thirty feet down, it was always a good idea to pause at fifteen feet to allow the nitrogen to evaporate from the blood before proceeding to the surface. But waiting for ten or more minutes at fifteen feet could be a problem after a deep dive when you wanted to use up every last ounce of air on the bottom. So good divers always left a tank rigged up with a regulator and a weight hanging from the bottom of the dive boat at about sixteen feet. That way two or more divers could hang there, sharing the air from the safety tank, for as long as the computer on your wrist required you to wait.

  “I do a little diving myself.” Chan took out the laminated certificate. The two divers, professionals, exchanged glances.

  “You coming down?”

  “It’s up to you. Underwater you’re the bosses-that’s the rule. But if you don’t mind.”

  They exchanged glances again. “It’s deep-about hundred and twenty. You been down that far before?”

  “Sure.” Once, when he was training for the certificate. You had to do one deep dive. He hadn’t enjoyed it. Nor had his body.

  The two divers were unsure. How to say no to a chief inspector?

  “See, I’m looking at it as if it were scene of crime. I’d like to look around.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  The Chinese Way was opposite to the English Way. Work justified everything.

  ***

  Higgins watched from the deck of the launch and listened. After five years his Cantonese was good even if his accent was imperfect. It was what he would take away with him when he left, fluency in a Pacific tongue. Someone would hire him for something. But not yet. He wasn’t leaving until June 30, until he’d sucked every last glorious moment out of the place. With eight weeks to go he didn’t need a chief inspector drowning on his watch.

  He’d heard of Charlie Chan; everyone had: a Eurasian, said to be a fanatic. If it hadn’t been for an antisocial tendency and a slight problem with authority, he’d be a superintendent by now. Even so, it was odd for a detective to assist in the retrieval of evidence under the sea. Men were trained for exactly that purpose.

  Chan looked up at him, caught his stare. “A straight line, you said, due north?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The smugglers’ route. I guess this would be in their normal lane on the way to the PRC?”

  Higgins was impressed. “Yes, that’s right. They generally fly past about a mile from the coast. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Chan raised an arm, held it out straight at eye level, pointed at China.

  “They wouldn’t have been doing ninety, of course. Nothing like it. To raise something that heavy and chuck it overboard, they would have had to slow to five or less. That’s assuming they were using a snakehead in the first place. Obviously they wanted to be as near to the PRC as possible, but not actually in the PRC. Probably they would throw the most important items last-to be nearer China and less liable to detection.”

  “Other items?”

  “The scene of the crime in Mongkok was strangely bare. They tortured to death three adults, but there were no ropes, no handcuffs, no signs of struggle at all. Just a vat full of minced remains in the middle of an empty warehouse. No prints on the vat, of course. As a matter of fact, if someone hadn’t bungled by putting those heads in a polythene bag to float in the sea, it would have been pretty much a perfect crime. Impossible to identify the bodies without those heads. Forensic took a while to be sure there were three victims rather than two or four.”

  “I see.”

  Higgins raised his face to the sun. How could anyone worry about a few little murders on a day like this?

  The divers lent Chan a wet suit and a full scuba kit, including buoyancy jacket, mask and fins. There was no spare diving computer; Chan would have to stay close to the others.

  While they were attaching the regulators to the tanks, Chan strapped the compass to his left arm, held it out in front of him, grasping his left wrist firmly in his right hand. A direct line to the PRC beaches at the other end of Mirs Bay would be north six degrees east. He put on the wet suit, sat on a bench at the side of the gantry raft while one of the crew from the launch helped him on with the tank. He watched while the other two placed hands over mask and mouthpiece, leaned backward on the bench and splashed into the sea. Chan put the mouthpiece in his mouth, commenced breathing the pressurized air from the tank at the same time as he leaned back.

  He tore through cooling strands of translucent silk. Free-falling was a pleasure in slow motion. Below him the other divers were already near the bottom. Their shapes were vague in the distance, but the dual sets of air bubbles racing to the surface provided an easy trail. Every third breath he pinched his nostrils, used his lungs to push air through the ganglia of nasal and sinal tubes that connected his nose to his ears and throat. Pressure increased by the equivalent of one atmosphere every thirty-three feet. If a diver did not perpetually equalize, his lungs would crumple like a paper bag. Chan forced a path through the tar from a thousand cigarettes. In truth it had been more than a year since his last dive.

  At fifty feet the sea was cooler, the pressure of the column of water overhead more tangible. Slightly more effort was required to suck air from the mouthpiece; limbs felt heavier.

  At eighty it was colder. Joints compressed under ten thousand tons of water; nitrogen was squeezed from his blood into muscles, joints, bones. There was no pain; you just knew that the body was never designed to spend time down here.

  At 120 he needed the flashlight. Sunlight still penetrated, but it
was attenuated, dim, alien in this other world of the deep. Checking his pressure gauge, he saw he was using up air ten times faster than in shallower water because the air compressed too. The volume that would fill your lungs at the surface was crushed to the size of a golf ball at this depth.

  Using the light to illuminate the air bubbles that rose like crystal branches from their mouths, he swam toward the other divers. Drawing closer, he saw the silhouette of something unnaturally regular near where they hung in the water. From it rose a single orange line from the marker buoy that the young police divers had rigged up after they had stumbled across it.

  Refraction made everything look bigger than it was, but it would be big anyway, even on the surface. He’d checked with brochures; a four-horsepower electric motor was needed to crush bones the size of the human pelvis, and the funnel that fed them to the grinding wheels had to be over twelve inches in diameter at the narrowest point. With a heavy motor and a large funnel, a cast-iron base to tolerate the vibration and a wide aperture near the bottom out of which the mince poured, the machine stood over four feet off the ground and weighed more than four hundred pounds. Lying diagonally in the gravel, it loomed out of the seabed with the two divers hanging near it. The funnel doubled the height of the machine.

  The divers held index fingers against thumbs, questioning. Chan made the same sign back: I’m okay. He swam to the funnel, looked in. All the fish were gone, having feasted on whatever had remained in the machine. He tapped the funnel. The steel gave off a watery echo. Something moved. An eel shot out of the funnel, flashed toward Chan’s face; a miniature monster with silent screaming jaws, it diverted at the last instant. Chan’s heart raced, using precious air. He caught the concerned look behind the masks of his two colleagues. He showed an index finger against a thumb again. They nodded slowly.