Marine G SBS

by David Monnery

  ‘And they did?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  ‘You haven’t fallen in love with anyone else?’

  ‘Nope. How about you?’

  ‘I wasn’t in love with anyone.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I’ve been too busy to fall in love,’ she said, getting up to visit the ladies’ room.

  The conversation was going in the wrong direction, Marker thought, as he watched her disappear through the beaded curtain at the far end of the room. He didn’t want to re-create the relationship they had had before, one of confidants who stared in at each other’s lives from outside. But did he want anything else, and if so, what? He smiled to himself. He knew one thing he wanted.

  It had been so simple in the old days, before Penny. If he fancied someone he had done his best to get them into bed, and only after that had been accomplished would he start wondering if there was anything else he wanted from the woman. Usually the answer had been nothing.

  With Rosalie though, he knew there was something else he wanted. He liked her, liked just being in her company. What he didn’t know was how it would work out. In the old days he would have just pushed ahead and seen which way the dice would fall, but now . . .

  In the ladies’ room Rosalie was leaning against the basin and staring at herself in the mirror. It would be so easy to take him home, to feel the warmth of another human being. It had been a long time since she had made love with a man – almost three years – and she knew that on that occasion she had been seeking some sort of compensation for the non-consummation of her friendship with the recently departed Marker.

  They could consummate it now. What did she have to lose? A friendship? Two days ago she had never expected to see him again.

  But . . .

  She smiled wryly at herself. This would not be a casual thing, not for her at any rate. And not, she suspected and hoped, for him either. And if it wasn’t a casual thing then there was something to lose.

  A picture of Dr Chen’s body flickered across her mind, both unbidden and unwelcome. It was too soon, or she was too tired, or something.

  She walked back to the table, noted the look of uncertainty on his face. ‘Do you know how long you are going to be here?’ she asked.

  ‘No. A few days at least.’

  A few days, she thought. Enough time to turn each other upside down, but not enough to put each other right side up again. ‘So will you come for a meal then?’ she heard herself ask. When was the last time she had cooked anything?

  ‘I’d love to,’ he said. ‘When?’

  ‘That depends on work. I’ll call you. I’m sorry,’ she added, ‘I’m really tired tonight.’

  He nodded, feeling both relieved and disappointed. ‘Car or tube?’ he asked.

  ‘The tube,’ she echoed, and laughed.

  ‘Whatever you call it. Can I walk you to the station?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Outside she slipped her arm inside his, and they walked back down the hill, turning right on Hennessy Road. At the entrance to the Wan Chai station she reached up and kissed him lightly on the lips, and then was gone, down the escalator, leaving him with the neon-drenched street, the roar of traffic and a hint of Shalimar.

  ‘I want you,’ he murmured to himself. It was a feeling that didn’t fade as he walked back through the city centre to the Star Ferry.

  By nine the following morning he was flying at five thousand feet over the South China Sea. They had long since left the small coastal islands behind, and only the faint line of Hainan’s coast on the distant western horizon challenged the ubiquity of blue-green ocean and blue-white sky.

  The density of boating had also dropped with every mile from Hong Kong, but there was still no shortage of shipping scattered across the waters below. At this particular moment Marker could see a couple of oil-tankers, a bulk carrier, two short-sea traders, a large junk and a Chinese warship. The latter, which looked like a Huangfen Fast-Attack Missile Boat, was heading south, probably bound for the disputed Spratly Islands and a spot of gunboat diplomacy.

  The South China Sea had always meant trouble for someone, what with opium wars and Vietnamese boat people and seventeenth-century pirates attacking Spanish galleons from the Philippines. No doubt Rob Cafell could give a lecture on the subject, Marker reflected. In fact, with a week to spare on a container ship, he had probably already given it, with Finn the captive audience.

  Still, the young Londoner was not short of retaliatory weapons. He had taken a pocket encyclopaedia to Florida the previous year, and bombarded the team with useless facts. Marker himself was still wasting brain cells holding on to the knowledge that the microwave had been invented in 1947.

  He tried to refocus his concentration on the sea below. If the container ship was headed in this direction – and he didn’t like thinking about the possibility that it wasn’t – then it couldn’t be that far away.

  Another oil-tanker swam serenely into view. It was probably out of the Gulf, bound for Taiwan or Japan. Even from this height it was clear how low the ship sat in the water.

  Had he done the right thing the previous evening? Marker asked himself for the tenth time that morning. Maybe she had wanted some clarity from him, some open declaration of something . . .

  ‘Is that it?’ the pilot’s voice asked on the intercom.

  The familiar green funnel was passing beneath them. The uneven arrangement of containers on the starboard side was as he remembered it from the Indonesian sea channel. Marker felt a leap of joy in his heart.

  ‘Do you want to go in closer?’ the pilot asked.

  ‘No. Just get an accurate fix, and then keep on the same course until we’re out of sight. I don’t want to give them the idea they’re being watched.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’

  Marker squirmed round in his seat to keep the container ship in view, hoping to God that Cafell and Finn were still alive, free and on board.

  Cafell heard the plane before it appeared in their rectangle of sky. It was a small plane, flying high enough for reconnaissance, with a familiar silhouette. But he was damned if he could remember the type. Neither could Finn. ‘They all look alike to me,’ he said. ‘Like women in the dark.’

  ‘No wonder you’re single,’ Cafell said, unfolding his map. ‘I reckon we’re only about twelve hours from the mouth of the Pearl,’ he said, tapping the damp paper with his pen. ‘I think it’s time we did a little contingency planning.’

  ‘OK. What are the contingencies?’

  ‘There seem to be two. We’re either headed for Hong Kong or somewhere else in the Pearl estuary, most likely Canton.’

  ‘It’s called Guangzhou these days,’ Finn said.

  Cafell resisted the temptation to hit him. ‘If it’s Hong Kong . . .’

  ‘Then they’ll have fallen into our trap,’ Finn said triumphantly.

  ‘If it’s Hong Kong we can just wait for a good opportunity to go ashore,’ Cafell said. ‘If it’s Canton – sorry, Guangzhou – we have to decide whether to go the whole distance. Do we want to end up in Red China?’

  ‘Not particularly. Is there anywhere we can get off?’

  ‘The gap between Hong Kong and Macau is about twenty miles,’ Cafell said, pointing at the relevant spot, ‘so we wouldn’t have to swim more than ten.’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘There’s plenty of small islands we could break our journey on, but there’s a slight problem there – they belong to the Chinese.’

  ‘That’s a slight problem?’

  ‘The good news,’ Cafell added, ploughing on relentlessly, ‘is that I reckon the boss was in that plane, and that we’ll be picked up before we’ve swum a mile.’

  Finn sighed. ‘Just supposing for one mad moment that I buy into this plan – how do you intend to get off without being seen?’

  ‘At this speed we’ll get there a couple of hours after sunset.’

  ‘Oh I see, you want us
to swim ten miles in the dark. That makes sense. And don’t think for a minute that I’m against the idea, but aren’t we supposed to follow the ship to its destination? I mean, look here’ – Finn tapped the map – ‘there are quite a few ports between Canton and the sea. Don’t we need to know which one we’re headed for?’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Cafell agreed. ‘But it’s only worth going in for the information if we think we can get back out again.’

  ‘I like those odds better than your ten-mile swim through shark-infested seas.’

  ‘They’re not shark-infested.’

  ‘Well, they sure as hell aren’t full of kippers.’

  As usual Rosalie had to fight her way off the train at Wan Chai, and as usual the invisible hands scrambled to get a feel of her breasts. It would almost be worth wearing a couple of mousetraps, she thought as the escalator carried her up to the street, and caught a glimpse of her own smiling face in a glass reflection. She felt good this morning. Alive.

  A few minutes later she was walking through the doors of the RHKP building, and hoping that her mood would survive the day’s work. The inquest on Dr Chen was scheduled for that afternoon, which didn’t exactly bode well.

  She would invite Marker for dinner the next day, she decided, stepping out of the lift on the OSCG floor.

  There was a message from Li on their desk – his wife had come down with the flu, and he would be an hour or so late. He was probably taking his two daughters to school, Rosalie thought.

  She angrily shook away the mental picture of her father, collected a cup of coffee from the machine, and started going through the reports of the surveillance team. Shu Zhi-fang, the Dragon Head, hardly ever seemed to go out, and when he did it was only to play golf with other old men at the Royal Hong Kong Golf Course a few miles up the winding coastal road from his home.

  He was like a corporate boss, she thought – a long way above the fray. If anyone was to lead them anywhere useful it would have to be Lu Zhen.

  The Blue Dragons’ Red Pole at least moved around. He had spent most of the previous evening travelling to and from Macau, spending only half an hour in the colony, and most of that in the offices of the Casino Jai-Pek. The Blue Dragons probably had a controlling interest in the place.

  There was one photograph of the Red Pole sitting on the hydrofoil, another of him emerging from the casino.

  Returning to Kowloon around ten, he had not gone home to Mongkok – where, to Rosalie’s surprise, he still lived – but to a woman’s apartment in upmarket Kowloon Tong, where he had stayed the night.

  There was a photograph of the apartment block.

  So what had he done the previous afternoon? she asked herself, rummaging through the reports for the missing page.

  He had come across to Hong Kong Island for a haircut. A place in Hollywood Road – photograph supplied – which looked fashionably expensive. Then he had taken the Star Ferry back to Kowloon.

  She looked at the photograph, the two men sitting a foot or so apart on the seat, the newspaper between them. It was like a scene from a spy movie.

  She smiled to herself and reached for the coffee. She was being ridiculous.

  But why take the ferry? an inner voice asked. The man had a chauffeured limousine, or he could have taken a taxi. She studied the faces in the photograph, and made a mental note to talk to the officer who had taken it.

  The other man’s face was familiar, she realized.

  Excited now, she racked her brain for an identity. Where had she seen this man before?

  She got up from her seat and abruptly sat down again. For reasons of its own, her unconscious seemed reluctant to take the picture round the office. She scribbled a note to Li, cut the photo in two and put the unknown man’s half in her bag, and took the lift down to the street. The offices of the South China Morning Post were only a short walk way.

  Her old friend in the picture library had a desk covered with pictures of Deng Xiao-ping.

  ‘He hasn’t died, has he?’ Rosalie asked.

  Gu Yao-bang looked up with a smile. ‘Just getting ready,’ he said with an impish smile. ‘How have you been?’

  After they had swapped news for a few minutes, Rosalie brought out the photograph and showed it to Gu.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked.

  ‘Who is it?’

  He clucked his disapproval. ‘No wonder Hong Kong is going to the dogs,’ he said. ‘No one seems to have a clue what’s going on. This man’s had his picture in the Post nearly every week for the last six months.’

  ‘So who is it?’ she almost shouted in frustration.

  ‘His name’s Wang Xiao-bo, and officially he’s a junior member of the team Beijing sent to scrutinize the run-up to ’97. But everyone knows he’s the PSB’s man.’

  Marker found Dubery waiting in the RHKP lobby for their noon meeting with Ormond. On the way up in the lift he passed on the news of the ship’s sighting, and for the first time in several days saw a genuine smile break out across the young Scot’s face.

  Ormond was alone at his desk in shirtsleeves. A red tie hung loose around his neck. He seemed surprised to see them, but quickly made up for the lapse in memory, ushering the SBS men into two of a dozen seats left over from a recent team meeting. ‘Some progress,’ he announced, leaning back in his chair. ‘We’ve pinpointed the Triad Bellamy did most of his dealings with. They’re called the Blue Dragons.’

  It was the same one Rosalie had mentioned in connection with her investigation, Marker remembered. He was wondering whether to say so when one of Ormond’s team, a plump young Chinese, broke into the conversation.

  ‘Boss, we’ve run into a snag. The Blue Dragon principals are already under surveillance.’

  Ormond’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who the fuck by? Anyone dealing with the Triads knows they have to clear it with this office.’

  ‘It’s the baby-smuggling team,’ the subordinate said, almost apologetically.

  ‘Shit!’ Ormond said vehemently, his head swinging round in the direction of Rosalie’s desk, just in time to catch her framed in the opening lift doors. She looked happy, Marker noticed, and he found himself hoping that her raised spirits had something to do with him.

  ‘Go and get her over here,’ Ormond said brusquely.

  Rosalie came back with the subordinate, her lithe walk making his seem like an awkward waddle. The smile didn’t disappear when she saw Marker, which he supposed was something.

  Ormond didn’t offer her a seat, but she sat down anyway. He started a sentence, then stopped, as if the memory of seeing Marker at her desk forty-eight hours earlier had suddenly surfaced. ‘Am I missing something here?’ he asked.

  She looked at him blankly, but Marker realized what was happening. ‘We’re old friends,’ he explained. ‘If these two cases are connected neither of us was aware of it until now.’

  ‘I’m still not aware of it,’ she said. ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘I’ve just been told you have the Blue Dragon principals under surveillance,’ Ormond said. ‘Why?’

  She shook her head. ‘Our investigation is on a need-to-know basis – you know that.’

  ‘If I didn’t need to know I wouldn’t be asking,’ Ormond said.

  ‘Why? What’s your interest?’ she asked, not giving an inch.

  Ormond opened his mouth to say something, but then appeared to think better of it.

  ‘Look,’ Marker said. ‘It seems obvious that these two investigations are linked, if only by the Blue Dragon Triad. They seem to be heavily involved in the organized piracy, and’ – he turned to Rosalie – ‘I gather that they could be behind the baby-smuggling?’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ Rosalie said.

  ‘But the Blue Dragons’ reach doesn’t seem to stretch beyond Hong Kong,’ Marker persisted. ‘They must have other partners as far as the piracy is concerned, and they can’t be organizing the buying of babies on the mainland, can they?’

  He looked at Rosalie, w
ho turned to Ormond. ‘Can we spread the need-to-know net across both teams?’ she asked.

  Ormond looked hard at each of them in turn. ‘OK,’ he simply said.

  Rosalie took the photo from her bag. ‘I think this is the other partner,’ she said.

  Ormond took one look and closed his eyes.

  ‘Who is he?’ Marker asked.

  ‘The Chinese Public Security Bureau’s man in Hong Kong,’ Ormond said slowly. ‘Which means three things. One, someone on the other side of the border – a Party chief, police chief, economic chief, you name it – is up to his ears in both babies and piracy. Two, at least one Triad has found a way of dealing with the Communists, which means Hong Kong will have to deal with both sets of bastards after ’97.’ He grunted in disgust.

  ‘And three?’ Marker prompted.

  ‘It means we haven’t got a hope in hell of stopping whoever it is, because Whitehall would rather sell the Governor’s daughters into white slavery than risk offending Beijing.’

  ‘He’s probably right,’ Rosalie told Marker and Dubery over lunch in the RHKP canteen. ‘But it’s not just Government House – there are about five million people out there who either want to stay or have no way of getting out, and none of them want to tangle with their future masters. And that includes most of the police. By going into business with the Communists the Blue Dragons have bought themselves the best protection they could hope for.’

  ‘But only if their Communist friends are influential ones,’ Marker said hopefully.

  ‘They will be. And if those piracy figures of yours are accurate they’ll soon have enough money to buy off any potential threats. These days, money is about the only thing that counts in China.’

  ‘What’s the situation like now?’ Dubery asked, partly because he was interested, partly because he felt more like a gooseberry if he kept silent. The boss certainly seemed interested in this woman, and he could see why.

  ‘It’s chaos,’ Rosalie replied. ‘There’s this frenzy to get rich. Some people say it’s like the Cultural Revolution, and it is . . . It’s the same collective obsession with a single goal, and the same indifference to the damage that’s being done to people in the process. I used to listen to escaped dissidents telling me how wonderful it was to be free. Nowadays the dissidents I meet are mostly Communists who’ve been locked up for opposing corruption in the Party.’