by Andy McNab
The flight from Frankfurt had taken most of the night, and the cabin staff handed out hot towels to help wipe the sleep out of our eyes. It didn’t work for me: sleep was one luxury I couldn’t afford right now. I was fucked: the thick wad of printouts about chronic kidney disease had taken me for ever to memorize – but I needed to convince ‘Soapy’ I was a serious buyer; I had to learn as much as I could about the organ-donor process, and the illness that had given me and my Hispanic partner such grief. I couldn’t think of a better route to the people holding Katya; the people who’d suddenly invaded my life.
I pulled up the blind and looked out. The sky wasn’t the electric blue of the tourist posters, it was dark and moody. But at least we were on time, and I could see shafts of sunlight bouncing off the South China Sea thousands of feet below, where they’d managed to pierce the handful of gaps in the cloud. Hundreds of black dots speckled the surface of the water, white wakes streaming behind them like con trails.
My first time in Hong Kong had been as a young rifleman during the illegal-immigrant drama in the 1980s. The Brits were still the controlling power, and whole families of illegal immigrants from mainland China had started jumping over the fence in search of a better life. The Cantonese-speaking locals didn’t like their Mandarin neighbours breathing their oxygen, and the People’s Republic of China’s Communists weren’t impressed that their comrades thought the grass was greener in the decadent West. Over-excited squaddies like me were sent out to stem the tide.
I’ll never forget the night we arrived at Kai Tak. In those days approaching aircraft had to pull an impossibly steep turn, then fly in between the skyscrapers. People’s apartments were so close to the wingtips I could see them sitting down to bowls of chicken and rice; I could almost read the messages in their fortune cookies.
We bunked down at a camp near the airport. It was the first experience I’d had of a senior officer handing me cash. They weren’t going to feed us until we were deployed north so we were given a ration allowance. It was supposed to guarantee our five-a-day but, of course, it paid for nights on the town instead, with just enough left over for a bag of something deep-fried on the way home.
Hong Kong was one of the places I’d heard about from the old and the bold, but never thought I’d see up close. New York might call itself the city that never sleeps, but Hong Kong seized the day – and the night – with a can of Red Bull up each nostril. The place never seemed to slow down, let alone stop. It teemed with neon, food stalls and mad, dense 24/7 traffic. I’d felt like I was living in the middle of a James Bond movie.
We spent two weeks at a stretch manning OPs along the border and running up and down hills to catch the IIs – illegal immigrants – when we spotted them cutting or climbing the border fence and making a run for it through the dense vegetation. I felt sorry for them: most were in shit state. The women had babies strapped to their backs with tea towels; the men had one small carrier bag containing the whole family’s worldly possessions.
Their only consolation was to have been caught by us and not the Gurkhas. The IIs were shit-scared of them because the Chinese government’s spin doctors had spread the rumour that if they nicked you they’d take your head off with a single swing of a kukri.
Of course that never happened; instead of them losing their heads we’d kiss goodbye to our rations. The Brits and the Gurkhas used to hand over their hard-earned boiled sweets and chocolate because most of the poor fuckers hadn’t eaten for days.
But that was where the good news ended. We’d round them up and hand them over to the Royal Hong Kong Police, who’d hand them over to the People’s Republic’s Finest, and who knows what happened to them after that?
After a fortnight on the border we’d mince around Hong Kong Island for a week of sun and fun. We’d steer clear of the resort areas. A lot of IIs tried to do a runner via the South China Sea, and by the time they’d fucked up and drowned and spent a day or two floating around in the water, their corpses were bloated like puffer fish. Having a couple wash up next to your beach towel could put you right off your tofu.
I clipped on my seat belt as we cruised over the vast concrete and glass jungle. The border that I’d patrolled was still in place up in the New Territories. Since the transfer of sovereignty to the PRC in 1997, Hong Kong had become its first Special Administrative Region – which meant that it was still the high-rise land of opportunity, even by the standards of its booming mother country. This place was as awash with money as it had ever been, and as devoted to the task of making more.
2
The new airport offered a gentler approach than the old one. You no longer needed the brown trousers and bicycle clips that Kai Tak demanded, and you no longer had a ringside seat at other people’s dinners. The Brits had built it outside the city, as part of the handover deal.
When the seat-belt sign was extinguished, I retrieved the small blue foldaway bag I’d bought at Frankfurt and ambled towards the door. The punters in economy were held back as us business and first-class types were fast-tracked to Baggage Reclaim and Immigration. The looks they gave us said it all – they were the same as I normally gave to the guys up-front in Gucci-land as I tried to unfold myself after eleven hours in a space the size of a small coffin.
The moment I passed through the door I collided with the damp, heavy heat and the smell of South East Asia, but as soon as we were on the walkway, the air-con took over. I followed the signs down an escalator towards an underground train. I was in a world of glass and polished concrete, and it looked like all its inhabitants were trying to board my carriage at once. It was worse than rush-hour in Tokyo.
Above the platform, an LED message board ticker-taped: Relax! There will be another train in 2 minutes. Relax! That was what I decided to do. I stood back and watched as two small locals in jeans and leather jackets joined the crowd. These guys weren’t passengers. They’d been at the airport all day. They were wearing jackets to keep them warm from the air-con, and to conceal the pistols at their belts. The taller one came up to my chest and couldn’t stop pulling down the hem of his jacket and patting the hardware underneath it. The crowd he was scanning included the three girls who’d boarded ahead of me in Moldova.
The next nice cold tram arrived exactly two minutes later and took me at warp speed to Immigration. I was issued with a 180-day visa without a second glance. This place welcomed people who were here to make or spend money. Hong Kong had one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, and the more the merrier.
The carousel at Baggage Reclaim had already swung into action. I waited for the girls to appear. They huddled together, checking their tickets and the sheets of A4 the old man must have given them. They hadn’t a clue what they were doing. They clearly couldn’t speak or read a word of English, let alone Cantonese.
The two security guys had followed the crowd, but they weren’t interested in the girls. They probably had bigger fish to fry. As soon as three luminous green cases appeared on the conveyor-belt I left them to it, followed the herd towards Customs and passed through unchallenged. It’s not like you need to smuggle anything into Hong Kong: they have more than enough of everything there already. Good stuff, bad stuff, and stuff you didn’t even know existed.
3
The quiet, efficient, space-age atmosphere airside was shattered as soon as the automatic doors opened onto the arrivals hall. An excited crowd jostled with drivers for the prime positions behind a stainless-steel barrier. I scanned the cards they were holding for any sign of a Natasha, a Tanya – anything that sounded vaguely female and Eastern European.
I spotted one way down to the left that consisted of a lot of Us and Ns, held by a tanned woman in her late thirties with a little too much make-up. She was too well dressed – in beige linen trousers and a cream silk shirt – to join the scrum, but waited quietly at the end of the barrier, confident that her new arrivals would turn left and come her way. I walked past her and waited beside a mum who was too busy monstering two
small boys with tear-stains down their chubby cheeks to pay me any attention. Cantonese is a fast and furious language at the best of times – even a polite ‘hello’ sounds like a major-league bollocking – and this little dynamo sounded like a whole herd of cats in a cage fight; the poor kids didn’t stand a chance.
It was a couple of minutes before the Moldovan girls emerged through the sliding doors, eyes wide, huddled together like frightened sheep. As waves of other new arrivals washed past them, they moved slowly along the barrier, checking each taxi card for a hint of anything familiar.
Madam Beige waved and smiled, beckoning them over. Her teeth were Hollywood white. They scared the shit out of me, but the girls looked pleased. Their new guardian produced three bottles of mineral water as a little welcome, then flicked her dyed blonde hair behind her ears and kissed each of them on both cheeks. It was clear they didn’t know her, but were mightily relieved to see her.
I edged closer, as if I was looking for someone, and caught an Aussie twang.
‘Ladies, I need your passports.’
More Oscar-winning smiles; the overhead lighting glinted on her dental work. Mesmerized, the girls did nothing.
‘Passports? Pasaport?’
The girls conferred and finally produced the bright blue booklets. They went straight into the Australian’s handbag.
‘Welcome, ladies. Welcome …’ She treated them to so many flutterings of the hand and pats on the shoulder that even I felt pleased to see her. She started herding them towards the exit, smiling fit to bust, doing her best to ignore the slightly haunted look in their eyes.
I followed them towards short-term parking. As soon as I stepped outside, the heat swept over me, damp and heavy. I liked it, and always had. It reminded me of my first experience of being in an exotic location as a young squaddie, of fulfilling what I thought the army dream was all about.
I watched the girls take off their sweaters before climbing into a Toyota people-carrier. They’d probably put them straight back on once their new best friend got the air-con going. As the Toyota headed for the exit, I noticed that its badge was obscured by a sticker emblazoned with the PRC flag. I’d read about Japanese cars getting kicked in by the Chinese locals because of the ongoing dispute over who owned the Diaoyu Islands; maybe the PRC sticker was the riot of Beige’s attempt to lessen the risk of having to bother the meerkats with an insurance claim.
I slid the camera app on my iPhone to video, turned the side of my head towards the wagon as it slowly negotiated the ticket barrier, and pretended I was making a call.
As it disappeared from view I headed back to Arrivals to stock up on Hong Kong dollars, a fistful of SIM cards and maybe a can of Fanta.
4
Blue cabs stopped on Lantau Island, the other side of the Tsing Ma Bridge. Green ones peeled off for the New Territories once they’d crossed the next bridge onto the Kowloon Peninsula. I’d selected a red one, which headed for Hong Kong Island.
One of the throwbacks to Brit rule was that, unlike mainland China, Hong Kong drove on the left, but it didn’t seem to make the traffic move any quicker. We ground our way forwards in bumper-to-bumper chaos until we got within reach of the tunnel under the sea.
In any other circumstances, I’d have taken the high-speed Airport Express and got to Central in twenty-four minutes, changed to the subway for a one-stop ride to Admiralty and a short walk to the hotel. But I doubted anyone turned up on foot when they stayed at Upper House, the swanky five-star that Anna’s ops room had booked me into.
I activated the SIM card and texted her.
On way to hotel Xx
It was strange leaving kisses. We never had, but it was part of my cover story. I’d explain when I spoke to her.
I leafed through the information sheets again, as any caring partner would. I had to know everything about my loved one’s condition. I needed to sound convincing enough to have travelled halfway round the world to find a way to save her.
Anna was going to be Hispanic, a racial grouping that suffered an unusually high incidence of chronic kidney disease – in the US, as many as one in eight – perhaps linked to diabetes and high blood pressure. I figured that the closer we could make the connection with Katya, the better.
The most important factors I needed to get my head around were blood matching, tissue matching and cross-matching.
Matching blood groups during transfusions had been known about for donkey’s years, and was as important when transplanting kidneys as hearts. If the blood types of donor and recipient don’t match, the resident antibodies attack the aliens and don’t take any prisoners.
There also had to be a tissue match. A perfect one would only happen between twins or immediate family, but there were other acceptable levels of compatibility.
Finally, cross-matching was required to identify the presence of certain antibodies in the recipient that might cause rejection of the organ. A sample of the recipient’s blood was mixed with cells from the donor. If the cells were killed, then the antibodies were present, armed and dangerous.
Convincing the fixers I could afford the operation would be the easy part; I’d have to pump in this kind of detail if I was to look the real deal.
We crept through the automated tollgate and into the tunnel, emerging soon afterwards into a sea of bright lights and huge cars. When I was here as a squaddie, I was told that Hong Kong had the highest concentration of Rolls-Royces on the planet. It looked like the only thing that had changed was the manufacturers’ badges. I felt like some sort of futuristic City boy on his way to the trading floor to make a million or two.
The skyline had changed, of course, but that happened most days. Seven million inhabitants were crammed into an area three times the size of the Isle of Wight, and they had to go somewhere – and that meant somewhere vertical. All the skyscrapers looked brand new; anything more than fifty years old in this city was considered a national monument.
Hong Kong Island is one big hill, and light rain began to fall as we started to climb it. I turned in my seat for a glimpse of HMS Tamar, the Royal Navy shore station on the northern edge of the island – or, rather, the place it had once been. Back in the day, it was a boring, rectangular, grubby cream slab of an admin building with a weirdo high-rise supported by a triangular plinth on the roof. The base was just a glorified parking lot for warships, but had the best barber’s shop in the known universe.
Samurai Sam looked old enough to have been giving out short-back-and-sides since the First Opium War in the 1800s, but he hadn’t lost his touch: a few quick strokes of a cut-throat was all he needed. I guess he’d joined the Great Hairdresser in the Sky long ago – unless they’d buried him and his kit under the massive conference centre that now sat on the latest stretch of reclaimed land. If they carried on like this, they’d soon be able to swing a footbridge across to the mainland.
The street names were still refreshingly familiar. We drove along Gloucester Road and up Queensway, climbing past yet more high-rises. The Upper House was perched above a shopping and business complex in Admiralty District. It looked every bit as swanky and expensive as it sounded – very much the sort of place a man who had the cash to splash on a designer kidney would hang out. I’d taken Frank’s philosophy of going to the garbage dump to look for garbage and turned it on its head.
The doorman’s welcome was more Melbourne than Macau. He ushered me from the cab into an open-plan lobby that was so minimalist I felt I was cluttering up the place just by being there. I’d certainly have to up my clothing game if I was going to hang around here for any length of time. The dress code was international urban chic; everyone was dressed in neutral linens, with an extra colonial flourish of blazer and shiny shoes for the men.
The receptionist handed me my room card and asked when my bags would arrive. Her eyebrow arched a fraction when I said they wouldn’t, but only for a split second.
I took the lift to the fourteenth floor and walked into a Sunday-supplement double-pa
ge spread. It was the most over-the-top suite I’d ever set eyes on, let alone stayed in. The floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the bridge and harbour. The whole place was a shrine to bamboo, limestone, linen and giant cushions. There was a walk-in wardrobe and a bathroom big enough to sleep in, a rain shower and a giant tub complete with TV concealed behind a mirror. The blinds were remote-controlled. If I hadn’t quite been in a Bond movie as a squaddie, I certainly was now.
It made me realize I’d come a long way since then. Hong Kong hadn’t just been my first exotic trip: it had also been the first time I was inside an adult gaol.
Ned Kelly’s Last Stand in Ashley Road on the mainland, the Kowloon Peninsula, was almost a rite of passage for squaddies. It was a small bar, all dark wood and dusty floors, with a stage for live acts that seemed to take up half the floor space. As you pushed past its Wild West-style swing doors, you really did feel you were on the set of High Noon. And, as in any self-respecting saloon, the night always ended with a fight.
I was there with a few mates late one Friday, trading banter with some sailors, and the banter turned into a brawl. Some of us who didn’t run fast enough got lifted by the Royal Hong Kong Police, and even that felt exotic: cops with pressed khaki shorts and peaked caps.
Military prisoners were normally taken to Kowloon Police HQ, flung into the cells, and the MPs would come and collect them in the morning to be dealt with by their own units. You’d be marched double-time in front of the CO without your stable belt and beret; you were about to be charged, so had to be ritually stripped of identity and protection.
The usual defence was that the fight had started because someone had brought the battalion into disrepute. That covered a whole shitload of options: taking the piss out of the cap badge, calling the colonel a wanker, saying you’d like to shag the brigadier’s daughter. If it was the navy or the RAF you were beasting – or, better still, somebody else’s – you claimed that they’d taken the piss out of the British Army. That was normally enough to get away with a fine or restriction of privileges. You were given your belt and beret back and, most importantly, got to turn your offence into a badge of honour.
