Marine G SBS

by David Monnery

  ‘Was it on a river or the sea?’

  ‘It was both. It looked like a river but the water was salt.’

  More questions failed to elicit any other useful information. As she travelled back to Wan Chai on the MRT Rosalie came to the reluctant conclusion that a trip across the border was her only way forward. Reading his interview with Immigration, she had been struck by Lin Chun’s obvious intelligence. And who knew, maybe he was also one of the human race’s more observant members.

  Through the hours of morning, as the rain beat down out of a leaden sky, Cafell and Dubery took turns keeping watch on the port below. The coming of daylight had brought little activity, and not much changed in the hours thereafter. An occasional figure scurried between buildings, but the jetties remained empty, and no ship hove into view across the rain-swept sea.

  They made notes of every movement, drawing lines on Cafell’s map like cricket scorers plotting the record of a batsman’s innings. It was boring, Cafell thought. Anticlimactic. Frustrating. If they’d only had the camcorder with them on their last visit . . .

  Still, he supposed he should be happy. The chances of their being caught seemed about a million to one. The Chinese were apparently every bit as arrogant as everyone said they were – the possibility of intruders on their soil didn’t seem to have occurred to them.

  At noon he woke Marker and Finn and told them the bad news. ‘There’s only about fifteen men down there. And one old woman, who washed the clothes you can see on that line.’ He pointed towards the palm grove beyond the line of cabins. ‘There’s a regular two-man patrol which leaves the building down there on the hour. They walk down to the end of the main jetty and back, come up to inspect the washing – or maybe the cabins – and then go back to where they started. I can’t imagine why they bother.’

  ‘People with things to guard always like security systems,’ Marker said, ‘but if they don’t really expect any intruders they can never work up the energy to care whether the system works or not. It’s classic.’ He smiled. ‘And very convenient.’

  Cafell sighed. ‘I had a horrible feeling you wouldn’t be happy just watching from a distance.’

  * * *

  It was mid-afternoon when Rosalie finally set off, taking the MRT to Kowloon Tong and there changing to a Kowloon–Canton Railway train for the forty-minute trip to the border. Several years had passed since her last visit to the People’s Republic, and she was shocked by how much of the New Territories’ countryside had disappeared beneath a succession of ugly new towns and the new motorway. For a moment she felt almost nostalgic for a rural China she had only ever known in pictures and films, and then shook her head at her own absurdity.

  At the border she stuck close to a group of Americans, presented the tourist visa which she had acquired not two hours before, and passed inspection without any problem. The train inched forward across the river bridge and into Shenzhen Station. She joined the scrum heading for the exit and managed to commandeer a cab on Jianshe Road. The fare negotiations took almost as long as the train ride, but only because she was reluctant to bankrupt the RHKP.

  It was about a four-mile ride, and not particularly scenic. Shenzhen looked like a poor cousin of Hong Kong, which she supposed was a fair description in more ways than one. The block of flats in which Lin Chun and his family lived had that old-before-its-time look of shoddy construction work.

  At least the lift worked. She went up to the fourth floor and threaded her way through children and mothers to the Lins’ door, conscious of the stares examining her clothes and unusual face. In the background she could hear the familiar voices of a well-known Hong Kong soap.

  Lin Na-wen opened the door, her young daughter just behind her. ‘He is not here,’ she said immediately.

  Rosalie did her best to seem vulnerable. ‘I’d like to wait,’ she said. ‘I have had a long journey,’ she added, not very truthfully. It had taken all of an hour to get from Kowloon Tong to this door.

  Lin Na-wen sighed, and opened the door. ‘You must have some tea before you go back,’ she said.

  The Lins’ kitchen was as badly stocked as hers, and she doubted whether they ate out all the time. From the glimpses she had of the other room, they seemed to have precious few material possessions and, one shelf of books excepted, only each other for entertainment. She couldn’t see even a radio, let alone a television, and this was Shenzhen.

  ‘He will not speak to outsiders,’ Lin Na-wen said, pouring the tea from a cracked porcelain pot. She didn’t add ‘and especially not half-gweilos’, but then she didn’t have to.

  Rosalie sat there, conscious of the daughter’s stare. ‘You love your daughter, don’t you?’ she asked Lin Na-wen.

  ‘Of course!’ the woman said, uncertain whether to be surprised or angry.

  Rosalie told her about the baby-smuggling, about the ones found suffocated in the boats, the one thrown overboard, the ones left dead on hospital steps in Hong Kong. ‘They are brought from somewhere in Shenzhen,’ she concluded, ‘and I think it is the port where your husband worked as a political prisoner. I just want to ask him where that was.’

  Lin Na-wen examined the surface of the table for several moments and then raised her eyes. There were traces of tears, Rosalie noticed. ‘You can wait here for my husband to come home,’ she said.

  By six-thirty night had fallen on Chuntao. The brisk wind had swept the clouds into the east, leaving a clear, star-laden sky above, and as Dubery crouched on the hillside with a sandwich in one hand and the nightscope in the other, his three comrades were sharing a communal supper inside the hide.

  ‘Know what I could do with?’ Finn asked. ‘Egg, bacon, sausage, chips, beans, mushrooms and a couple of fried slices,’ he answered before anyone else could. ‘Followed by a full trough of my mum’s strawberry trifle.’

  ‘And washed down with what?’ Cafell enquired. ‘A pint of crème de menthe?’

  ‘I was thinking of an Australian Semillon Chardonnay,’ Finn articulated with exaggerated precision. ‘Eighty-five was a good year, I believe.’

  ‘Not for me – I got married,’ Marker said, and instantly wished he hadn’t. Why had he said that? At the time he couldn’t have been happier. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘since we’ve come this far, I’d like to take a closer look at what they have down there.’ He grinned. ‘And like any reporter, I need my trusty cameraman. Finn, you’re volunteered.’

  Finn waved his sandwich in the air. ‘Suits me. When do we leave?’

  ‘I’d say midnight. That should give us time to have a good look, and still get back to the Kleppers by three at the latest. I’d like to be well outside Chinese waters when the sun comes up.’

  ‘I’ll second that,’ Cafell muttered.

  ‘You and Ian can follow us with the nightscope,’ Marker continued. He went through the itinerary he planned to follow. ‘If we run into any trouble we’ll head straight for the boats, and meet you there. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Cafell agreed, just as Dubery’s head appeared in the gap beneath the raised corner of the tarpaulin. ‘Boat coming in, boss,’ he whispered, and disappeared again.

  The other three slipped out on to the dark slope and watched the large sampan as it rounded the near end of the main jetty and headed slowly in towards the smaller wooden quay. Through the nightscope Marker could make out a foredeck crowded with passengers, all of whom seemed strangely silent. If it hadn’t been for the gentle swish of the waves on the shore below and the steady put-put of the boat’s engine they might have been watching a silent film.

  As soon as the sampan was berthed, a single voice did ring out, and as if in response the passengers streamed on to the jetty. There were women as well as men, Marker realized.

  Cafell tapped him on the shoulder and pointed a finger in the direction of the cabins below. More people were emerging from these, and walking down the path towards the small bay. Marker counted fourteen of them, and something like twenty-five more on the jetty. This latter group was now be
ing divided between the waiting speedboats.

  ‘Illegals,’ Finn murmured unnecessarily, readjusting the quietly whirring camcorder on his shoulder.

  Five minutes later the first twin outboards sprang into life, shattering the relative calm, and the first boat accelerated away past the empty main jetty. ‘I’m going to arrange a reception committee,’ Marker told Cafell. He went back into the hide for the PRC-319 satellite radio, and carried it across the brow of the headland to the open expanse of rocky ground he had noticed on their way in. Another speedboat burst noisily into action as he set up the tuning antennae and sorted out the correct frequency. He unfolded the keypad, typed out his identification code, and sent it. Liquid-crystal letters flowed across the tiny screen, acknowledging him. ‘Five bandits carrying approx forty illegals leaving Chuntao nineteen-twenty hours. Route unknown. Out.’

  He repacked the radio and sat there for a moment, listening to the sound of the speedboats fading into the distance. He had never felt good in the role of a border guard; it was the sort of job which seemed much more reasonable in theory than in practice. During his last stint in Hong Kong he had been present at several intercepts, and each time he had been left with the feeling that an Englishman could never begin to understand what drove people like that to leave behind the only country they had ever known.

  He walked back through the trees to the other side of the hill. The port below was as empty of activity as it had been half an hour earlier – it was like one of those memory games where you had to point out what had changed. Plus one sampan, minus five speedboats, Marker muttered to himself.

  Lin Chun arrived home shortly after half-past eight, a thin man with intelligent eyes and too many worry lines for his age. He took one look at Rosalie and said: ‘I do not give interviews to journalists.’

  ‘I am a police officer, not a journalist.’

  He grunted in surprise. ‘And I certainly do not give interviews to foreign police officers.’

  Rosalie looked beseechingly at his wife.

  ‘She has only one question,’ Lin Na-wen said.

  He said nothing.

  ‘Before you came to Hong Kong you worked on a dock construction project,’ Rosalie said quietly. ‘I just need to know exactly where this was.’

  She had at least piqued his curiosity, she thought. But whether that would be enough . . . He was living on bitterness, and she supposed she could understand why. The idealistic Communism which he had embraced as a young man had made him an enemy in his own country and an unacceptable risk in others.

  ‘Why?’ he asked, the single syllable hanging in the air.

  She went through the history of her investigation for the second time.

  He shook his head. ‘No one would build a large dock just for that.’

  ‘It wasn’t just for that.’ She told him about the piracy angle, and the suspicion that stolen cargoes were being brought back to Shenzhen for resale.

  That made him laugh. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, sounding anything but. ‘You have taught us too well.’ He laughed again.

  ‘My father once told me unregulated capitalism and organized crime were pretty much the same thing.’

  He liked that. ‘Was your father a policeman too?’

  ‘Yes. An English policeman.’

  ‘Ah.’ He regarded her almost with pity, and for a moment there was silence in the room. Through the open window they could hear the children at play below. ‘I will tell you,’ he said at last, nodding to himself. He stood and pulled down a map from the bookshelf. It showed Shenzhen County in its entirety: the southern portion designated as the Special Economic Zone and the northern portion across the electrified fence in still officially socialist Guangdong.

  ‘Our camp was here,’ he said, indicating a spot some ten miles into the latter. ‘And each day we drove along this road’ – he followed it with his fingertip – ‘to the zone border just here. Then we took this road to the coast. We built the dock near the mouth of this little estuary. It was only about a mile from Nantou, but in a military area.’

  She took down the names and did her best to memorize the map. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘I never heard any babies crying,’ he said.

  She nodded and got up to go. ‘How can I get a taxi back to the border?’ she asked.

  ‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘They won’t come out here this late in the evening. But you can get a bus on Hongling Road.’

  ‘Which way is that?’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ he said.

  It was not much past nine o’clock but the walkways outside were deserted, the street below eerily empty of traffic. He walked her to the intersection with Hongling Road, pointed out the concrete shelter where the bus stopped, and looked briefly into her eyes before turning back towards his home and family. She walked across to the stop, where two teenage girls were bitterly lamenting their parents’ archaic attitudes towards make-up.

  The bus arrived about twenty minutes later, by which time a small crowd had gathered to squeeze aboard. The four-mile trip back to the city centre took another half an hour, which gave the other passengers ample opportunity to study every aspect of Rosalie’s face, figure and clothing. She couldn’t remember ever feeling more conscious of her bi-racial heritage. Post-1997 Hong Kong was going to be like a zoo, she thought: the pure Chinese would come and gawk at how their genes had been corrupted.

  At the central bus station her heart sank with the discovery that the border had already been closed for half an hour. Look on the bright side, she told herself – at least the Blue Dragons would have trouble finding her.

  She walked back out on to Jianshe Road and in through the doors of the first hotel she came to. The price of a room was staggering, but she was past caring. Her credit card would cover the cost for now, and with any luck she could convince the OSCG Accounts Department that it had been a necessary expense.

  The room was at least comfortable. She took a shower, going back over what Lin Chun had told her as the water washed off Shenzhen’s patina of dust.

  Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. The noisy hotel bar charged almost as much for a snack as it did for a room, so she went back out, and walked up the brightly lit Jianshe Road in search of a restaurant that was both cheap and lacking a karaoke machine. Eventually she found one which offered Hong Kong-style fast food in exchange for Hong Kong dollars.

  On the way back to the hotel a crawling sensation in her back made her wonder whether she was being followed, but after a rigorous programme of checks she decided she was simply being stared at. Back in her hotel room, with the door wedged firmly shut, she wondered how Marker and his friends were doing. They would be back before her, she realized, and if he tried to contact her . . .

  She reached for the phone, thought for a moment, then took her hand away again. Shenzhen might have two McDonald’s and International Direct Dialling but it was still part of the People’s Republic. If the PSB were listening in, a call to a British military base would ring all sorts of alarm bells. And whomever she talked to, she would have to be careful what she said.

  Li would be best, she decided. A message for him on their work number.

  She dialled, listened to her own voice answer, and said: ‘Li, this is Rosalie. It’s ten o’clock on Monday evening and I’m in Shenzhen, staying at the Shangri-La Hotel. I should be back by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.’

  She hung up, thinking that the message would offer a modicum of insurance. If something went badly wrong, and she couldn’t make it back to Hong Kong, then at least the search party would have somewhere to start.

  It was twenty minutes past midnight when Marker and Finn started down the slope towards the nearest of the cabins below. Both men were carrying silenced MP5s, and Finn also had the camcorder. The two-man patrols had continued in their set pattern all evening, and the latest had just returned to the usual building, which was the only one still showing a light. It would be forty minute
s before another patrol set out.

  The cabins were all in darkness, and all the doors seemed to be hanging open. Marker went into the first two, and found them bare but for a carpeting of tattered mattresses. It was a way-station for illegals.

  The next few cabins were the same, and he was halfway to assuming that they all were when a different arrangement caught his eye. Two rows of cheap tables lined either side of the penultimate cabin, and on each row there was a line of cardboard boxes. A faint smell of shit and vomit hung in the air. It was a cut-price crèche. Built by cutthroats.

  ‘Jesus,’ Finn murmured as the camcorder whirred.

  The door to the last cabin was shut, but they could hear snoring inside. It was a woman, presumably the old one they had seen doing the laundry. Finn had a mental picture of her at the Social Security office, explaining that her last job had been as a day-care attendant in a pirates’ crèche. ‘And why did you leave that job?’ the man behind the glass screen would ask.

  They moved on through the grove of palms, and crouched for a couple of minutes in the shadow of a ruined watch-tower. Satisfied that there was no movement among the buildings a hundred yards ahead, they continued advancing until they reached the corner of the first building. A glance through the window showed it was empty, and had been for years.

  Marker led the way round the back of the other old buildings, and from the corner of the last they could see in through the lighted window of the new structure beside the small modern warehouses. Two Chinese men were facing each other across a table, playing some sort of game. Both were smoking cigarettes and the cloud hanging between them looked almost poisonous in the yellow light.

  The SBS men slipped across the gap, and Marker risked a quick glance through one of the side windows. He saw nothing to indicate the keeping of records. There was no telephone, let alone a fax machine. The communications radio which sat on a wooden table had been manufactured long before the days of miniaturization.

  The other permanent staff were presumably asleep in the back.