Year of the Dragon

by Robert Daley

  “Captain Powers,” murmured Koy, and a Chinese proverb came to mind: He who stands on tiptoe does not stand on firm ground. Which seemed to describe Powers’ situation in Hong Kong exactly.

  Koy now asked a number of brief questions. Where was Powers staying? Where was the woman staying? What was her name? What was the relationship between them? When Carol’s name was given him, Koy recognized it, and was both surprised and impressed. The relationship between them, he was told, was exactly what one would expect. Good, thought Koy, that could be useful. But he had been surprised a second time.

  Having stepped back into the room, he found his briefcase, and withdrew a sheaf of bills. Returning to the door, he handed the money to the older constable. He was again paying in advance. “Stand by the phone number we gave you,” he said. “You will receive your instructions.” After dismissing them, he advanced on the luncheon table.

  “What was that?” asked former Sergeant Li.

  But Koy did not answer. He thought he saw what must be done, but it was best to think it out a short time longer, because the cautious, as Confucius had taught, seldom err. Meanwhile Koy had begun stirring through the tureens with his chopsticks, through the bowls of rice, and he knew what he was looking for. It was also Confucius who had described the most admirable man as the one fond of adjusting his plans. Koy would have to adjust his own. By now he was down on his knees peering under the table. After a moment he reached in underneath it, and his hand came out holding Sir David’s bug. He held it gingerly between thumb and forefinger as if it was something foul, something contaminated. The other three men stared from the bug to Koy, who wore an expression of extreme disgust, and who dropped the bug like a dead frog into the tureen of sweet and sour pork, allowing it to sink amid the mushrooms and water chestnuts that floated in the sauce. Death would be from drowning, but it would take too long. Impatient, Koy took up a bowl of rice, and upended it on top of the bug, mashing it down, and the bug died, killed in the landslide.

  The other ex-sergeants had risen to their feet. In silence all four men put their suit coats back on, clipped their briefcases shut, and trooped out of the room. Koy closed the outer door as soundlessly as possible, and they virtually tiptoed down the hall to the elevator.

  IN SIR DAVID’S command post three doors away, there was consternation. Powers, Sir David and all the listening detectives had crowded around the console.

  The technician took his earphones off and looked up. “The bug has gone dead.”

  “Did they find it, or what?” asked Sir David.

  “I don’t know, sir,” said the technician. “We may have lost power for a moment. I suppose there’s a chance it may come back on.”

  Across the room the phone rang. Sir David went to it. As he listened, his face darkened. “I see,” he said, and replaced the instrument in its cradle. Turning to the other men, he said: “All four of our Dragons have just left the hotel. They went across the street to the Peak Tram. They’re now on their way up the mountain. I guess we can pack it in here.”

  “This proves it, doesn’t it?” cried the anguished Powers. “This was the important meeting. This is what all of them came to Hong Kong for. We had our chance to find out what was going on, and we blew it.”

  DURING THE first part of the ride up the mountain, Koy was silent, and the other three ex-sergeants did not disturb him. The car rose up above the great white palace that was the governor’s mansion, and entered the steeply pitched forest that covered the mountain like a fur coat. The terminal building, with its tiers of restaurants, stuck out at the top like a bald head. The heavy grinding noise of the climbing tram seemed to submerge not only conversation, but also thought, but presently Koy turned to the other three men. It seemed obvious to him, he said, that the investigation was focused on him personally. It was certainly not any concerted action by several branches of law enforcement grouped together. The Royal Hong Kong Police Force had known nothing about it. Customs did not appear to be involved. There was no sign of the American drug agency. It would appear to be the work of only one man, and on a kind of free-lance basis. It would appear that this Captain Powers had managed to interest the Corruption Commission in Koy’s activities, but no one else. And the commission did not even have jurisdiction over Koy here in Hong Kong, much less any chance of pursuing the case abroad. This being the case, they should proceed with their plans, and as the tram continued to mount they discussed the allocation of capital expenses, the division of profits, and ironed out other final business details.

  At the Peak they disembarked. A series of trails led out along the ridge line, from which splendid views spilled downhill in all directions. The four men walked along one of these trails and conversed in Hakka in low voices, the Chinese tones rising and falling. Powers, on the other hand, seemed a serious problem, Koy said. If allowed to return to Chinatown, might he not continue the investigation that had brought him this far? If so, perhaps it was best if he did not leave Hong Kong. Perhaps his investigation should be brought to an end here and now, and Captain Powers with it. The television woman should perhaps accompany him on his brief final journey, suggested Koy, as otherwise she might raise too strident an alarm. If both vanished there might be no alarm at all for some time. Even then nobody could be sure what had happened to them. It would seem to many that perhaps the lovers had run off together to Tibet or the French Riviera.

  This last was no facetious remark. Koy was not trying to be funny, and no one laughed. The others were in agreement with his reasoning and they began to consider how to implement it.

  “It must be done quietly and efficiently,” said Koy. “There must be no struggle, nothing to attract the eye of witnesses. We are not trying to start an investigation, but to end one. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Very,” said Sergeant Lao, and the other men also nodded.

  Discussion lasted some time longer. There were a number of possible roads to the same goal.

  “I wish Hung were here,” said Sergeant Woo, and he sighed almost wistfully. “Hung had a real gift for this type of thing.”

  “I regret having to do this,” said Koy.

  All four sergeants would fly out of Hong Kong that afternoon, Koy decided, and the job would be done that night, after they had gone. He charged Sergeant Lao with transmitting the orders. The two police constables who had brought news of Powers to the hotel room were standing by, and could be relied upon. He suggested using the sampan of a man named Hsiang Yu, who had done such work before, and was reliable also.

  The trail they were walking on ended in forest. They had come to the end of it, and as they turned and started back Koy commented thoughtfully that one other change in plans seemed mandated. The first shipment of merchandise had best be expedited. Fifty kilos of bricks should come into Hong Kong in tomorrow’s mail bags. It should be converted immediately in an improvised laboratory set up somewhere in the New Territories, and the merchandise should go out by air to Sergeant Hung in Amsterdam as soon as possible after that, mixed into whatever innocuous cargo came to hand. Koy paused, thinking it out. Hung would keep some for distribution in Europe. He would split the rest into packages and forward them separately to each of the others. Koy’s own portion, being much the biggest, would have to travel by ship the rest of the way - four or five days. He wanted it in New York within ten days at the most.

  Former Sergeant Li was shaking his head negatively - there was no mailbag scam set up to protect the merchandise after Hong Kong, he said. To move it to Amsterdam by air was far more risky than by sea.

  Koy overruled him. Their various investors were getting impatient, he said. His own were. He assumed theirs were too. And now the imminent disappearance of Captain Powers would present new problems. It would cause a commotion. It would probably be necessary to suspend all operations for as long as this commotion lasted; if they did not want trouble from their investors, they had best distribute some profits before the commotion started.

  Koy glanced aroun
d, meeting the eyes of each of them. No one spoke. There were no dissenting votes. The motion had carried unanimously.

  “Good,” said Koy.

  The four men returned to the cable car and started down the mountain.

  POWERS SAT with Carol at a window table in the restaurant on the roof of the Mandarin Hotel. The view, like most Hong Kong views, was lovely - the blaze of lights in Kowloon across the harbor - but Powers had his back to it, and his gaze was turned inward anyway. He saw very little except himself at the moment.

  Carol put her hand over his. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  After hesitating, Powers said, “Koy flew out of here this afternoon.” The other three sergeants had flown out also, according to Sir David. The summit conference was over. Since Carol knew nothing about any summit conference, he kept these details to himself.

  “What does that mean to you?” she asked. Studying his face, she answered her own question. “Not good, eh?”

  Powers, who had scarcely eaten, stared into his plate. “No, not good.”

  “You come all this way, and you’ve got nothing to show for it. Nothing to take back with you.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I at least go back with some film.”

  Powers did not respond. He had only a few items of information that he saw no way to use, and that would not impress Duncan or the PC at all. “You ought to quit that police department,” said Carol after a moment. “You’re not appreciated there.”

  “Quit? And do what?”

  “You’re a lawyer. With twenty-three years police experience. There’s a law firm somewhere that would love to have you. Probably more than one. And they’d pay you two or three times what the police department pays you. You could get six figures easy.”

  Instead of considering this idea, Powers decided to try a joke. “When I report back to headquarters, they’ll ask me what I accomplished in Hong Kong, and I’ll say: ‘I certainly learned to use chopsticks better.’” Forcing a smile, he waved the chopsticks in his hand. “I’ve become a real artist with chopsticks, don’t you think?”

  “I really could go for you,” Carol said, and he looked across into her fond and loving smile.

  He did not respond to this remark either, but stirred his food around, at last lifting a shrimp to his mouth, and chewing it silently.

  “When will you go home?” Carol asked.

  “Tomorrow, I guess. There’s no point staying around here. Time to go back and take my medicine.”

  Carol said tentatively, “Why don’t we stop in Hawaii? We could spend a couple of days on Maui. Have you ever been to Maui? Maui is beautiful.”

  They gazed at each other.

  “Come to Maui with me,” said Carol. She put her hand over his again. “I’ll sleep with you there.”

  Powers removed, his hand and took a sip of tea. “Well, that certainly is a very tempting offer.”

  “How about it?”

  He avoided having to answer by signaling the waiter for the check. “I’m so totally depressed at the moment-”

  He led her out through the restaurant, past the bar, and into the corridor outside, and there a man waited for them - he approached with deference and flashed his credentials: Detective somebody. A Chinese name that meant nothing to Powers. He wanted to take Powers somewhere. He looked like what he claimed to be, a used-up, middle-aged detective, a messenger. A Chinese version of Detective Kelly. The New York Police Department was full of detectives just like him. That is, his type rang true to Powers, even though his message did not - or at least not entirely. But Powers was no longer on his guard, no longer alert, only tired, frustrated, depressed.

  The middle-aged detective spoke English, sort of. It was possible to make out his meaning, more or less. Police Commissioner Worthington was meeting with Sir David at this very moment, and wished Powers to attend. They had sent the detective to fetch him. The detective had also been asked to invite Mrs. Cone to this same meeting, if he could find her. He was told at the hotel desk he might find her in the company of Captain Powers. Was this lady here by any chance Mrs. Cone, and did she wish to attend the meeting?

  The detective didn’t seem to care whether Carol accepted the invitation or not, and this rang true to Powers also, putting him further off guard. The detective’s job was only to deliver the message.

  “Do you mind?” asked Carol. For the sake of her story she was eager to attend this meeting, to learn something more. Powers saw this, though he could not imagine what more there was to learn. At the same time she was pretending to be nice to him. She was pretending that if he wished to go alone she would accept his decision.

  “All right,” Powers said. “Let’s go.”

  The detective led them downstairs and out through the hotel. In front waited a car with a chauffeur behind the wheel. The car looked like a possible police vehicle to Powers. That is, it looked like a cheap car. It was without ornamentation. He did not really know what Hong Kong police vehicles looked like. In New York he would have been able to read this vehicle - and this detective as well - much more accurately.

  He did not like the idea of stepping into a car at night in Hong Kong with two men he did not know. On the other hand, the danger was over, was it not? Koy was gone. The other three sergeants were gone. And he had learned nothing with which he could hurt any of them. If he was not a threat to them, then how could they be a threat to him?

  He and Carol slid into the back seat. The detective sat beside the chauffeur up front, and began to converse with him in Chinese in a low voice. There was no sign of tension demonstrated by either. Powers sat back in his corner. Carol took his hand and held it, and he let her. They drove through streets less crowded now than in daytime, though not much. They were driving along the rim of Hong Kong island, with the lights of Kowloon across the harbor, and were proceeding, Powers knew, in the opposite direction from police headquarters. But this did not alarm him either for it was a one-way street. The driver had no choice. Doubtless he was looking for a place to turn and start back.

  But instead the car veered inland, and began to climb up over the top of the island toward the opposite side, and Powers felt the first faint twinges of fear, as faint as music from across a lake, as vague as guilt. He tapped the detective on the shoulder and stated firmly, “This is not the way to police headquarters.”

  The detective, having turned, flashed him a mouthful of grinning teeth. “Not police headquarters,” he said. “House. Commissioner Worthington house.”

  “I see,” said Powers, and he sank back into his place, apparently mollified, and hoped he looked relaxed, but his whole body had stiffened, and he watched carefully for whatever would happen next.

  When they were quite high, the lights of Aberdeen appeared below. The car began to descend in spirals like an airplane.

  “This is the town where the floating restaurants are,” said Powers to Carol. His voice sounded normal, he believed. Since no alarm had been given to him, he wished to give none to them. “This is where the boat people live also. Look.”

  He leaned across her, pointing down on acres and acres of rotting junks moored hull to hull. There was enough light from the sky, enough points of light burning on decks, to show that nearly all were crowded with life. The junks to Powers were the equivalent of Harlem or the South Bronx. They constituted Hong Kong’s principal slum. There would be big crime problems in there.

  The car had slowed, causing Powers to glance forward - he found himself looking into the same mouthful of teeth as before, except that, even as he watched, the middle-aged detective lifted a steel cigar to his lips. Except it wasn’t a cigar, but the barrel of what appeared to be a Webley revolver.

  Powers’ heart began to pound. Extricating his hand from Carol’s he began to flex and unflex his fingers. Her attention was still fixed on the passing junks out the window, and Powers hoped it would remain so a moment longer, giving him time to think out what this meant, or even to form, perhaps, a pl
an.

  They had passed through Aberdeen, and out the other side, and were nearing the end of the acres of boat people as well. The car was slowing. It turned into a lot where a building or buildings had been razed, and it was hidden from the town behind them by a mound of rubble. Powers’ options, and there weren’t many, flipped through his brain like file cards. Could he push open the door, push Carol out, jump, run? He could, but... He scanned each card, and flipped on. After the first few cards, all the rest were blank. It immobilized him. He was as fixed in space as the gun in front of his nose, and likely to remain so. His own guns were thirteen thousand miles away. He was the sheriff, but would not beat anyone to the draw tonight. He felt as dull as a caveman, as unsophisticated. In the face of thousands of years of civilization he had only his hands and feet as tools, but civilization’s bullets moved faster and their work was irreversible. He thought of what bullets looked like nose-up in a box, or upended on a table, as rounded, as smooth, as women’s breasts though harder of course, faintly oily, objects of terrible potency and therefore masculine in nature, not feminine, more potent than any woman, more deadly than an epidemic. He thought of what bullets looked like when they had been dug out of somebody - out of the two men he had killed. He had seen his own bullets, what was left of them, shaken out of small brown envelopes in the ballistics lab, their heads flattened, still with bits of meat and blood attached. The human body was solid and ruined bullets - it was mutual. Would his body ruin the bullets in that gun? Would Carol’s? But the gun he was looking into had a higher muzzle velocity than either of his police .38s, he believed. And the range was shorter - would be shorter. Presumably its bullets would go right through him, never to be seen again. They would not nail him to the seat. An arrow would nail him to the seat. Arrows had more penetration power than bullets, a detail that had always surprised him. Arrows, after all, could be seen in flight, whereas bullets could not. He had seen corpses killed with arrows. In New York City, of all places. He had seen all kinds of corpses, and might see Carol’s next. Or she, his. Arrows went right through you and came out the other side, which bullets rarely did. Unless fired at ranges as point-blank as now.