Beijing Smog

by Ian Williams

  Liu burrowed deeper into his share trading account. From time to time he banged his fist on the table beside his laptop and emitted a deep groan, which sounded to Wang like a distressed donkey. It so terrified Lily that she almost dropped a tray of small jugs, each containing a single leaf, which she was distributing around tables.

  Wang picked one up. The leaf was a sorry-looking specimen, and he began to ask whether it had been breathing too much Beijing air. Lily cut him short and said she thought they were cool, that she’d got the idea from a lifestyle magazine story about New York cafés and didn’t really care what Wang thought.

  “Wang’s going to study in New York,” said Liu.

  “Really?” said Lily, perking up, and thinking that if Wang could afford to study abroad, he might soon be able to pay off his tab. “In New York City?”

  “Well, Iowa,” Wang said.

  “Iowa, New York. Nice,” Lily said before moving on to the next table.

  Zhang’s science fiction programme came to an end, and he said, “You know Wang’s got a point. The money would be useful, from the other business.”

  Liu said sure, he couldn’t argue with that. It would be useful. His share trading losses were hurting. Their landlord was chasing them for months of back-rent. But all the same the other business was too much of a risk right now. And he’d promised his father.

  “Don’t you guys realise, we could have been kicked out of university, arrested even?” he said.

  Wang said he doubted it would have come to that.

  “We might even have got a job out of it, I mean a proper well-paid job with the Government or a big company. That’s how people get noticed. Everyone’s trying to break into everyone else’s computer these days. There’s a lot of opportunity out there.”

  But he agreed that things could have been a whole lot nastier if Liu’s father hadn’t pulled strings on his son’s behalf.

  The other business was what the three roommates called a computer consultancy, offering advice to companies on tightening up their online security.

  They offered to help fix computer flaws, but with a twist. The offer of help came only after they’d broken into a company’s system or website in order to expose the flaw they then offered to fix.

  Though all three were studying computer science, their security business didn’t really have much to do with skills they’d picked up in the lecture halls.

  They used simple hacking tools, easily and cheaply bought online, and more than enough to crack poorly defended websites. They targeted smaller companies, since they usually paid up, no questions asked, to get their websites back and for a dubious package of security software.

  The roommates had quickly discovered that computer security at most Chinese companies sucked. A majority used pirated software, which didn’t even get basic security upgrades or patches. The smaller ones were the worst.

  “They’re sitting ducks. Sitting ducks,” Wang had said. And for a while their business went well. It was a competitive business, but they didn’t charge a lot, were always polite, tried to sound constructive, and after the initial anger at getting hacked, most of their targets were prepared to chat and eventually pay up, realising that this kind of thing was best kept secret, because what would customers think if they knew your computer systems were full of holes?

  Wang would remind them about that. He liked to think that everybody won.

  Sometimes it even led to extra business, like when a company they’d just hacked thought, hey, we could use these guys, and asked them to hack the computers of a rival company, to create a few problems for them, maybe see what they’re up to.

  The roommates’ problems had started when they hacked the website of a stock brokerage company based in Shenzhen, right beside Hong Kong. It was small, but making money because the stock market then was still booming.

  The way Wang saw it, that was a time you could probably have sold shares in Lily’s dead leaves in The Moment On Time.

  He had made the initial hack, and defaced the company’s home page with their signature banner of big characters saying “You’ve Got a Problem” next to an image of a bug with a speech bubble saying they needed better security. They usually provided an anonymous chat address. Though sometimes they’d leave that out, and make contact themselves by phone, using the details on the hacked website.

  Occasionally Wang liked to customise the message with a little cartoon, and the Shenzhen broker when he opened his hijacked website was confronted with the banner, the bug and a drawing of a fat guy crying over his steaming laptop. For good measure, Wang defaced a home page picture of the head broker by drawing on it a pair of glasses and a big moustache.

  He had this idea that all brokers were fat.

  Fat or not, the broker refused to pay and got really mad. He accused Wang of extortion and went to the local police. Though the cops knew nothing about computers and cared even less, they had their own investments to protect, most of them made through that very brokerage.

  The head broker also offered the police a bounty for tracking the extortionists, which they did.

  That’s when in a panic the roommates turned to Liu’s dad, whose influence more than trumped that of the fat broker, who called off the police after a visit from the Shenzhen market regulator, who said he was investigating complaints about illegal share dealings.

  “No way can we get back into that right now,” Liu said. “Best wait for the dust to settle.”

  Which surprised Wang because Liu was usually the gung-ho one among the roommates. But he just sat there fixated on the screen showing his share trading account.

  “Did it bounce back?” Zhang said.

  And when Liu ignored him, Wang said, “The money, Liu, did you make it back?”

  Liu was watching the lights flashing on the screen of his laptop as share prices swung violently, though the trend was mostly in one miserable direction. Down. Liu had invested cash the roommates had borrowed to pay Fatso for the first batch of Star Wars caps, which is why they were taking a closer interest than usual.

  He’d invested it all in a company that was about to win a big government deal. Another tip from his father, who’d even put some of his own cash his son’s way. But the deal hadn’t happened. And that was strange.

  “Sounds like a scam,” said Zhang.

  Liu shrugged. The whole market was a scam. That wasn’t the point.

  “The market will bounce back,” he said with no great conviction. “The Government will step in again. They don’t want investors getting angry.”

  Wang hacked at the birthday cake, offering another slice to his roommates. Neither took one. They both looked worried. While their businesses had always struggled to make money, he couldn’t remember a rough patch quite as bad as this.

  But where Liu and Zhang saw pending disaster, Wang saw hope. As he saw it, there might be a silver lining to his friend’s stock market agonies. Bad might turn out to be good and very bad might be very good if that’s what it took to convince Liu that it was time to get back into the other business.

  – 23 –

  Dipsy

  It was always nice to be back in Hong Kong, and when Morgan woke, the sun was rising over a hazy Hong Kong harbour. He pulled back his curtains, giving him a grandstand view of the Star Ferry ploughing back and forth to Kowloon.

  He ate breakfast in his hotel room before showering and getting dressed, looking at himself in the full-length mirror and thinking he really did look ridiculous. But hey, it was the Rugby Sevens weekend.

  He took the lift downstairs and crossed the lobby. Anthony Morgan the Roman Centurion, wearing tall gold boots, a short crimson tunic and robe, all topped with a gold helmet with a red plume. He was carrying a small shield. He’d get over the embarrassment after the first glass or two of champagne. It was getting to the stadi
um that was the awkward bit. It always was.

  He walked just about as fast as the boots would allow, out to the taxi line, where the concierge greeted him, deadpan.

  “Hong Kong stadium, sir?”

  It was early, but the concierge had already sent a caveman, ironman and two lobsters in that direction so far that morning.

  His red taxi took the familiar route onto Harbour Road, then followed the waterfront into Causeway Bay, where an elevated highway lined with towering office blocks and hotels swept inland towards Happy Valley.

  Which is when his iPhone rang. He pulled it from a small pouch in the belt of his tunic. It was Cindy Wu telling him that Robert was there and wanting to speak to him.

  Morgan felt enormous relief, but at first Robert said nothing.

  “Hey Robert, you there?”

  “Yes,” his son said eventually.

  “So how are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Well, that’s great. So good to know. I’m really looking forward to seeing you in Shanghai.”

  And Robert just said, “Yes. I’m fine.” And then, “Here’s Mum.”

  Morgan thought he heard other voices, a heavy door swinging closed. But he couldn’t tell for sure. There was a lot of noise on the street outside the taxi.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “At home,” said Cindy Wu.

  “Robert’s not very talkative.”

  “He’s a teenager,” she said. “That’s how they talk. If you found the time to speak to him more often, then you’d know.”

  Then she said, “About Drayton, has he asked you to do anything else for him, apart from the research on the Colonel and his son?”

  Morgan said there was another project, but he was deliberately vague with his wife, preferring to keep the Fang business to himself. He said he’d be seeing the American at the rugby.

  “To give him the files?”

  “That’s what he’s asked,” said Morgan, and he told her about their arrangement, what Drayton had told him to do.

  “That’s a really strange arrangement,” she said.

  And Morgan said, “Yeah, I guess. But he’s a strange guy.”

  She told him to take care and then hung up.

  Morgan looked out of the taxi window as they got closer to the stadium: at the rundown tenement blocks, washing hanging from windows, a jumble of shops lining the streets beneath them. He felt uneasy about the call, the stilted conversation with his son.

  And about Drayton.

  He didn’t need his wife to tell him that the Drayton stuff was strange. And he did have a plan. The memory stick was in his pouch beside his phone. He’d deliver it as they’d arranged and then later, when Drayton had seen what was on the stick, he’d confront the American, demand to know what he was getting into. What he was really getting into.

  When he arrived at the stadium, ticket touts were already out in force.

  “Tickets, mate? Buy, sell?” in heavy London accents.

  A group of tourists from mainland China were there too, near the gates, on the lookout for ridiculous costumes with which to grab a selfie. They stopped Morgan, but then almost immediately deserted him for a group of big unshaven men in drag, possibly the pop group, Abba. It was hard to say.

  Morgan dug out a pass from beneath his tunic and entered the stadium, which was already filling at nine in the morning. Some qualifying games had started. He took a long escalator to the executive floor of the west stand, a wide orange-panelled corridor hung with photographs of some of the ageing stadium’s finer sporting moments.

  The corridor was lined with corporate boxes, a roll-call of Hong Kong’s elite companies, for whom the Sevens was a must-do networking weekend, a chance to entertain clients and staff.

  Each box reflected the personality of the company. Some were austere, all business; others had a theme. The MacMaster and Brown box was squeezed between those of a Hong Kong investment bank that was so drab Morgan wondered why they’d bothered, and a fashion house, which was hosting a beach party.

  The MacMaster and Brown theme was Roman, and there were two slaves at the door, a huge muscular Chinese man and an impossibly thin young woman, both from a local model agency. Geraldine MacMaster, who greeted Morgan just inside the door, thrusting into his hand a much-needed glass of champagne, had personally vetoed initial plans for two women as inappropriate.

  MacMaster, the company’s chairman, was fresh in from New York for their annual strategy meeting, which they always timed to coincide with the rugby, one of the biggest weekends in the city’s social calendar. It had become a tradition.

  She was dressed in a blue silk knee-length tunic, tied over one shoulder, a broad silver sash around her waist and silver sandals. She had a crescent-moon circlet around her head, and on her back was a quiver of arrows.

  “Artemis!” she said, before Morgan could ask. “Goddess of the wilderness, mistress of the moon, symbol of untrammelled womanhood.”

  “Isn’t she Greek?” asked Morgan, and MacMaster shrugged, seeing that as a minor point of detail. “You know Mr Yang? We’ve just promoted him. Deputy Head of China Research, based here in Hong Kong.”

  Morgan shook the hand of a young, pale Chinese boy, who looked fresh out of college, and was dressed in what seemed to Morgan like a designer gladiator outfit. All it needed was a Gucci label.

  “Tony Morgan. I run the Shanghai office.”

  “I know.”

  Which pretty much killed the conversation, until MacMaster said, “Mr Morgan is one of our company’s real treasures. He has been the backbone of our China business for years.”

  By which time Yang had been distracted by something more interesting on his smartphone, and moved to another part of the room, which was already beginning to fill, some spilling out from the main enclosed reception area to the open seats in front, where at some point they might get to watch a bit of rugby.

  “He’s working out, then?” said Morgan.

  “Well, yes, so I’m told. He’s quite a find, pulling in the business, at least for now, if that’s what you mean,” said MacMaster. “Though I personally find him hopeless at his research job and insufferably arrogant.”

  Yang Xinmai, who’d adopted the name Donald, had been employed under what the company called its Sons and Daughters Programme. His overriding asset was his family connections. He was the son of the head of one of China’s most influential economic think tanks, close to the Finance Minister himself. And in the year since he joined, MacMaster and Brown had won a series of lucrative contracts to advise leading state-owned companies on overseas asset purchases.

  And Morgan knew that if you walked into most of the boxes lining the executive floor you’d find many other versions of Mr Yang. They were rarely popular among their colleagues, but regarded as necessary for doing business in China.

  Or at least they used to be. Morgan had his private and growing doubts. With the corruption crackdown proceeding with all the subtlety of the big Fijian prop forward who’d just that moment floored a tiny Portuguese winger, he knew that today’s asset could easily become tomorrow’s liability.

  But he said to MacMaster, “There’s an intern I’d like us to take on here in Hong Kong in the summer. He’s the son of Liu Fangu, a top economic official in Beijing, part of the Prime Minister’s inner-circle.”

  “Well, if we must,” MacMaster said, with no great enthusiasm.

  “He’s studying computer science at a top Beijing university. Sounds smart. And I think it will help us in the current environment.”

  And MacMaster said, “We have to talk about that environment, Tony. I’m looking forward to your presentation.”

  Morgan looked at his watch. It was al
most one o’clock. And following Drayton’s instructions, he left the box and took the escalator back down to the ground floor near the entrance, which was now heaving. He headed to a Cathay Pacific Airways stand where flight attendants wearing different uniforms from over the years were posing for photographs.

  The big yellow Tellytubby was standing with its back to Morgan, curly antenna on its head, watching a game. Morgan tapped it on the shoulder and as agreed slipped the memory stick into a small pouch-like pocket in the left side of the costume. The Tellytubby disappeared into the crowd without turning or saying a word.

  Morgan returned to the box, and another glass of champagne. He walked out to the seating area, to watch the second half of a game between England and Wales. England were winning ten points to five, but there’d been a lot of silly mistakes by the English.

  It was a beautiful day. Not too hot, not too cold. And the air had cleared. A cloudless blue sky above the tree-clad hills behind the stadium, pockmarked with soaring apartment blocks. The higher up, the more expensive to live in.

  He was relaxing now, moving on to a gin and tonic, settling into the game, when his iPhone rang, vibrating in the pouch on his belt. It was Chuck Drayton.

  “Where the fuck were you?”

  “What?” replied Morgan, almost choking on the lemon in his gin and tonic. “I was there, one o’clock as agreed. The memory stick’s in your pocket.”

  “I am here now, Tony, waiting. One ugly green Tellytubby standing beside some gorgeous Cathay Pacific trolley-dollies. And I have nothing in my pocket.”

  “Green? You were yellow. I mean I gave it to a yellow Tellytubby.”

  For a moment there was silence at the other end of the phone, then a sharp intake of breath.

  “Tony, I’m Dipsy. The green fucker. You gave it to La-La.”