by James Adams
“You may be right,” he responded, inserting another helping of fish into his already bulging mouth. “But my people have picked up nothing about any activity by Dai Choi or the White Lotus in Europe. As far as I know, that territory has been left to the Italians and more recently the Columbians. I would have thought our friend Stanley may be getting a little over-ambitious. Anyway, even if it’s true, I’m not sure what I can do.”
“Oh, come on, Lin,” Jonny interrupted. “You and I both know that you have an extensive network in Britain. If what I hear is right, it’s one of your main sources of economic intelligence and you use it as a gateway to and from America. If you get some of your assets working on the problem, you’ll come up with something.”
Lin Yung nodded, acknowledging the accuracy of Jonny’s description. “That’s as may be, but you’re asking me to expose my people for something that might or might not be true and might or might not have any advantage to me. Why should I go to the trouble?”
“First because it is in your interests to try and break the White Lotus. If we get Dai Choi then we may also get Stanley Kung and that would be a kick in the balls for your friend Li Chuwen and the Gonganbu. If this works out, you might even have your position secured here after the handover.”
“That’s fine if it works,” Lin Yung replied sceptically. “But what if I expose my people and Dai Choi is actually going to Britain on holiday and there’s no drug shipment? Then British intelligence will have seen some of what we have and it could blow whole networks there. Then where will my career be? In the shit.
“I need something now if I’m to take the kind of risk you want.”
Jonny hated this part of the deal; the trade where he had to decide the value of one operation against the price of compromising another. Lin Yung always demanded a price and Jonny had come prepared. He justified the reality of betrayal as “operational necessity”. He found this cynicism in himself vaguely disgusting, but the price would be worth it if he could break that bastard Dai Choi.
“You know the Triads have been infiltrating the Chek Lap Kok project?” he asked. Lin Yung nodded, aware that since the start of building work for the new airport in 1992, the Triads had got involved in everything from supplying the cement to the security guards at the site off Lantau Island. “Well, we’ve learned that they have developed an interesting new wrinkle on the old suitcase scam. Instead of bribing a baggage loader to select the expensive cases and siphon them off so that their contents can be stolen, the White Lotus have gone high-tech. The X-ray machines that all the airlines use are being duplicated by the Triads with one of their own which works like a mass spectrometer and is able to distinguish between different heavy metals and composites. So any suitcase with some decent gold jewellery in it can be siphoned off for examination.”
“I’m sure that’s a scandal, Jonny, but it’s your problem not mine. I can’t see its relevance to China.”
“Ah. Well, that’s where they’ve been really smart. The intention is not just to steal on the way out but to smuggle on the way in as well. So they’ll extract goods on the Hong Kong side and then insert goods for extraction on the Chinese side. I reckon they’ll have a handy business in cash, gold, diamonds and information. Of course, it will all change from your point of view after the handover but between now and then you’re going to have a big problem on your hands.”
Jonny was ashamed to note that he had to sit back now that the information had been passed. He had leaned forward across the food as if betrayal were diminished by the distance the words had to travel.
Lin Yung’s swift mind was already questing for the hidden advantage behind the obvious benefits. Now he realized that where the Hong Kong police saw smuggling that they would probably be unable to control, he could see an opportunity. If his people could infiltrate and control the Chinese end of the operation then it would be their information going out, their information being dispersed while the British and their American allies thought it was only the crooked Triads. And even when they discovered the truth the Guojia anquanbu would see the compromise and know that they knew. Therein lay the real advantage in the mirrored world in which he lived.
“Again, that’s not of much interest to me,” he lied. “But I’m sure that my colleagues will be grateful for the information.” He smiled slightly. “Perhaps I will be able to gain something from this.”
Lin Yung dabbed gently at the corners of his mouth, the delicacy of the movement contrasting with the ill-mannered performance of a few minutes earlier.
“Very well, Jonny. Let us agree a way forward. I will speak to my people in London and see if they can provide any information that will shed some light on Dai Choi’s plans. How shall we keep in touch?”
“That may not be so easy,” Jonny replied. “I think I will be better placed going to England myself. I’m not sure the Brits are really equipped to deal with the likes of Dai Choi and I would prefer to be on the spot.
“Anyway, it’s time I went back. Once you lot come in here, my time will be up. Unlike my richer colleagues up on the Peak, I don’t have a little thatched cottage to return to and I’d better start making some plans. I can take my wife and we’ll see if there’s anything left of the England I remember.”
“Let me know where you’ll be staying and I’ll see if we have anyone over there who could liaise with you,” offered Lin Yung.
Five minutes away from the Yung Kee restaurant is another part of Hong Kong; this one hidden from the tourists and beyond the reach of all but a very few of the residents. The China Club was founded in 1990 by David Tang, the grandson of one of Hong Kong’s greatest merchants.
Tang would be what the Blacks in America describe as an Oreo, after the biscuit, which is black on the outside and white on the inside. Always immaculately turned out in his London suit and Harvie & Hudson shirts, he has one of those braying, fruity English voices which used to be common among chinless members of the British upper classes in the 1930s. Today, only rich colonialists with a public school education or very rich heirs to a colonial fortune like David Tang can afford such an affectation.
To emulate the privilege of Brooks’ or Boodle’s in St James’s in London, Tang had decided to create his own exclusive men’s club in Hong Kong. It was to be, he decreed, a haven for all civilized Hong Kong men (and occasionally women) to go for gossip and the odd bit of very discreet business.
He had found the perfect spot on the thirteenth floor of the old Bank of China building in Bank Street. The building had been constructed in the 1920s and had a view of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters across the road. This stunning building, designed by the British architect Norman Foster, looks like a series of giant coat hangers piled one on top of the other to hang enormous plates of glass reaching to the heavens. For those members who value their history, the club and the building opposite are a ready reminder of the colony’s rich past, its prosperous present and its uncertain future.
In recent months, the China Club had become the focus for the anxieties of the Chinese community in the colony. With common fears, the Chinese aristocracy found a ready audience with each other, their voices becoming an echo of the paranoia that was beginning to infect the colony as the Chinese dragon loomed. Today, they could almost feel its hot breath.
Today, too, there was none of the mad optimism that seemed to drive the Hong Kong business community whatever else might be happening in the world. Over the years, the small community had developed an insular view of life. The few did business with the few and, in an orderly existence where the rules were clearly understood, there was ample profit for all. Even at the beginning of the 1990s there had been no lessening of the rush to destroy, develop and build as the local rule of thumb that a profit on any development could be made inside ten years still left enough time to make the money and run before the Chinese arrived.
Now those recent days seemed a distant and prosperous memory. Building work had virtually ceased; no developer was prep
ared to risk cash when the future was uncertain and the profits problematic. The collapse of building, for generations a mainstay of the economy, had caused a colony-wide depression. Unemployment was up from under one per cent to seven per cent, an unheard-of level for the country. There had been demonstrations which had been dealt with by the police without recourse to the British Army but everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before things turned very ugly.
Today the talk at the club (in English, of course) was the same as it had been for months: the collapse of the economy and the imminent arrival of the Chinese. Above all, the talk was of escape.
The first table on the left of the dining room is the power table and it was here that Dame Mary Cheong was reporting back the results of her recent trip to Britain. Her failure to move Douglas Hurd made an already gloomy gathering deeply depressed.
“Doesn’t the bloody man understand that everything is going to hell here?” asked Chung Shang Hot, the owner of a conglomerate that included the colony’s most important quarry. He also had a monopoly on the import of dynamite, a licence which rumour suggested he had expanded to include arms which were smuggled to China, a business which would be ended by the arrival of the Chinese.
“It’s not as simple as that, I’m afraid, CS,” said Mary. “From Hurd’s point of view he has nothing left to bargain. The Chinese have pushed them into a corner and they gave away whatever hope they had of moving them along in 1984 when they agreed to hand us over in ‘97.
“Anyway,” she continued. “The argument is different now. The Chinese are coming and there’s nothing we can do about it. What matters is getting passports and somewhere to live for all our people who have served the British so faithfully all these years.”
“Faith. Faith. They don’t know the meaning of the word,” interrupted Stanley Kung. A pillar in the financial community, he was a regular at the club. Like many other members, his financial clout and not his business dealings were what mattered. Everyone around the table had some secret and so they all maintained the fiction that they were who they pretended to be — successful, honest businessmen.
“If the British had any decency, any principles at all, then they would give our people passports and offer them a home. As it is they don’t even bother with promises any more. They’ve abandoned us and we just have to live with the consequences.”
A huge fat man sitting facing Mary Cheong interrupted. Despite his bulk, he had a high, almost girlish voice which rose even higher when he was excited and had given him the nickname Sing Sing. The name was an in-joke appreciated only by the few. His real name was Lai Ching Heen and his grandfather had indeed spent some time in Sing Sing in the 1920s. Now Lai Ching Heen was the eminently respectable chairman of Hong Kong Enterprises. His sideline in the import of young boys for those of a similar sexual inclination as himself was never mentioned. Neither was his role as Shan Chu or Leader of the Green Pang Triad which controlled the lives of some 100,000 Shanghainese exiles in Hong Kong.
“I have heard that Vancouver is now known as Little Hong Kong, so many of our people have found sanctuary there.” There were a few smiles around the table but no laughter. “I have heard too that some of the people are planning a mass exodus. They will take boats and head south for Australia. It will be a migration just like the eighties when the Vietnamese came here. It will be a humiliation for the British and for the Chinese and many of our people will die or be homeless.”
Sing Sing spoke the language of concern, but the subtext of this conversation and many others like it in town that day was really about business. To those around the table a passport and somewhere to live was not a problem. Under the British quota system they were rich enough to buy a passport and find a home abroad. But without their employees all would be faced with starting again. They would have to find people they could trust, men and women who would not reveal the secret world in which they all lived, who understood the value of loyalty and the price of betrayal.
Mary Cheong sipped slowly at her cup of Yin Yan, a traditional drink which was half tea and half coffee, usually served to coolies in China to give them the caffeine they needed to keep going. She still drank it in preference to the fine wines and Scotch that sat in front of the other guests. The harsh, bitter taste was a ready reminder of her roots and her loyalties. The difference was that today the drink came not in a chipped china bowl but in a glass cup resting in a silver container.
“It’s still too soon to say that we have lost the political fight,” she corrected Sing Sing. “Until now the British have paid no real price for their treachery. Each time we push them the Chinese push a little harder and it has been more expedient for the Foreign Office to bend Beijing’s way. It may be that as the deadline draws closer and the British begin to suffer some pain here in Hong Kong they might change their view.”
“But by the time people really begin to panic it will be too late,” protested Sing Sing. “We need time to get our people out and to start up elsewhere. If there are riots when the Chinese are just about to come over the border it won’t help. By that time, the British will have written the problem off.”
“So the key is to try and make sure the pressure comes early enough to make the British change their position,” replied Mary.
It was a discussion they had had many times before over the past few months. Each time “pressure” and “movement” were the words that everybody agreed on. And each time the conversation ended with agreement in principle but no plan. To the other guests, this meeting was no different from all those that had gone before. Stanley Kung, however, knew that this time, it was going to be different.
CHAPTER VII
It was the darkness Rita always remembered most. It would sweep over her, an enormous enveloping cloud that would reach from her toes to the top of her head; dark, rich and so comforting. As she allowed its embrace to smother her she knew that again there was to be a respite from the pain, the cramps and, above all, the hunger that turned her stomach to knots, the acid eating into her very heart and the ache of her bones as they too cried out for succour.
In the darkness there were always the dreams. They were an ache, a reaching out for the solace of a youth that was filled with family, opportunity and hope for the future. Strangely, the scenes of her childhood in Green-castle outside Belfast, the picnics along the banks of the River Lagan, were always accompanied by music; not the rock of her childhood but the soaring thrill of orchestras. She later learned the music was Sibelius’s Finlandia, and although she never understood how her mind could recall notes so clearly when she could never remember hearing them, from then on she would always weep when the music played.
As reality and weight vanished in equal measure, she began to imagine her body as something almost infinitely pliable. As the fantasies consumed her she became certain that some malevolent being — a being with definite substance but no coherent form — had a tight grip of the flesh in the centre of her back and was pulling her inexorably to a hole in the floor of her cell. She knew that with just one final tug her body would be sucked downwards, her wasted frame collapsing inwards so that feet and arms would vanish together. She would fight against the nightmare and drag herself back from the brink of oblivion to wake with screams echoing through her head. Her will was still strong enough to hold on to what was left of her life but she was no longer able to give voice to her fears.
But when she awoke, he was there, offering a sip of water and words of comfort. He had first come a week after the hunger strike had begun; a small, rather rumpled man who favoured brown suits and the kind of nubby woollen ties you could buy at the mill shops on the west coast. He was a Brit, of course. He hadn’t tried to disguise the fact, hadn’t even pretended to the soft Irish brogue that the Brits learned at the training school at Ashford but which always marked them out as a spy.
This one spoke with the long vowels and shortened consonants of a man from the Yorkshire Dales. He said his name was Kevin. Later, when they kne
w each other better, he would tell her that he actually came from Hampshire and his name was Bryan with a Y. He had adopted his northern persona as he thought it more classless and therefore less likely to offend. He didn’t say then but she understood now that from the beginning he was planning, scheming to draw her into his little circle. But by the time she had realized what was afoot, it was too late.
The strike had begun on the morning of December 1, 1980 and she had been selected with Mairead Nugent and Mairead Farrell, the officer commanding the IRA volunteers in Armagh women’s prison. The decision marked the culmination of almost a year of protest which had begun with a refusal to cooperate with the prison authorities and escalated through a “no wash” phase where they refused to bathe and smeared the walls of their cells with excrement. The protests were designed to force the authorities to recognize the political status of IRA prisoners and the women were acting in sympathy with the men who were carrying out their own protests at Long Kesh.
For the first day of the strike they had been allowed to stay together. This was a mistake on the part of the authorities because they had drawn comfort from each other and gained strength from ridiculing their captors. They had all agreed they would take water and began taking salt tablets. To wear down their resistance, the prison guards brought in mounded plates of hot food — bacon, eggs, sausage and tomatoes for breakfast, fish and chips for dinner — so that the pungent smell would waft round the cell. Their bodies reacted automatically to the smell and they had been appalled to find themselves sitting on their cots actually watching the drool fall from their mouths to the floor. Then they had laughed and it had been all right again.
But once they had been separated each woman had had to deal with her terrors alone. There were no visitors, no shared moments to unite Us against Them. Only hour after hour of loneliness that swiftly degenerated into horror as death approached.
