by James Adams
The small side door to the left of the large wooden doors opened and Stanley Kung ducked his head and strode into the garages dressed for a day at the Happy Valley racecourse. He was wearing a perfectly cut pale grey suit with the distinctive slight sheen of silk. A pale yellow shirt with wide blue stripes that spoke of Jermyn Street and his brightly patterned Hermes tie were framed by the Burberry, flung loosely but with great care over his shoulders. It was a style that sophisticated Chinese thought was European but in fact was a distinctive fashion all their own. Dai Choi thought such a stylized image in such a place looked faintly ridiculous. But he masked his opinion behind the deference Kung both expected and deserved. He bobbed his head in a half bow, acknowledging Kung’s arrival.
Kung moved his head in a cold, angry jerk signalling Dai Choi to step away from the group for a private conversation.
“I am very disappointed with the way this operation has gone so far,” said Kung, his voice low, the menace clear. “You arrive in this country and, instead of carrying out a discreet movement of goods from the sea to the shore, you engage in a gun battle with the British and kill their Customs people. If that wasn’t bad enough, I hear you were recognized by this man Turnbull.
“And then you appear to have allowed your personal feelings to dictate your actions. To order Turnbull’s execution was the act of an inexperienced soldier and not what I would expect from my right hand.
“Finally, to allow the job to be done by such amateurs in a way that does everything to attract attention to us is folly. The whole operation has been put in jeopardy by your stupidity.”
Part of Triad tradition is to bear setbacks and criticism with fortitude. Dai Choi could do nothing but accept
Kung’s attack, to explain or complain would be seen as an effort to evade his responsibility. He bowed again, “I accept what you say. However, this man Turnbull remains a problem. I am concerned that he knows about the operation and that he may have alerted the British authorities. If that is so, they may be waiting for us to make a move.”
“I, too, am concerned about the mission being compromised. But there are ways of dealing with this problem other than gunning down half of the British security forces. You must learn, Dai Choi, that the key to successful leadership is the correct application of force and intelligence. In this case we need information and so we need to use force, but with some subtlety. That way we will get precisely what we want and can then plan accordingly.”
“So what do you want me to do?” Dai Choi asked, eager to recover some face.
“Nothing,” Kung replied. “The key to situations like this is to find a weak point and then exploit it. I know Turnbull’s weak spot and I intend to make use of it. Within two days we will have all the information we want.”
Sally Peters had passed the time since she had first gone into Sean Thomas’s bedroom in a haze of lust and excitement that she was sure was true love. After that first morning they had met at night, rendezvoused in the park and stolen secret moments when her parents were out or asleep. The thrill of the danger had propelled her into a relationship that she had convinced herself she wanted to last. She wanted Sean to stay alive, stay around, stay in her life.
At first the secret of their relationship had been part of the excitement. Each time she thought about it, a frisson went through her. She knew something that nobody else knew. But as time passed, the urge to tell somebody became almost irresistible. It wasn’t that she wanted to betray Sean; quite the reverse, she would do anything to protect him. But she needed to talk about her feelings, to share the thrill of the sex and the danger. It had become a compulsion that obsessed her but she had managed to restrain herself until this evening.
Her parents had gone to the cinema and she and Sean had been alone. He had gone to take a shower and after he had entered the stall she had taken her clothes off and sneaked in behind him, put her hands over his eyes and then pushed him to his knees. With the water streaming down between them she had circled him, the hair of her pubic mound brushing against his shoulder, his ear, his nose. She watched his nostrils flare as he took in the rich smell of her sex, but each time he tried to bring his hands up to draw her to him, she forced them back down again.
Then she tired of the game and stopped in front of him, her vagina in front of his face, the folds parting in invitation. His tongue bridged the gap to caress her lips, sliding into the valleys and over the ridges. She took her nipples in her hands, squeezing them between thumb and forefinger, sliding her hands over the swelling, amplifying the sensation between her legs. Then she half turned towards the shower, pushing her breasts into the spray, the needles feeling like hundreds of tiny blades against her breasts, the pain absolute pleasure, the excitement intense.
His tongue became more urgent, searching inside her and then moving up to circle her clitoris before flicking gently over its rounded tip. Looking down, she could see his erection straining up towards her, knew that in a moment he could be inside her and she could have her legs wrapped around his driving hips. But she wanted that anticipation, found it exciting to deny herself that final pleasure, wanted to keep him at bay.
He played her game, a hand joining his tongue, one finger and then two slipping inside her, reaching to touch her innermost walls. Moaning now, she dropped one hand back to the wall to support herself as she pushed her hips forward, thrusting to meet his tongue as it moved faster across her clitoris, his lips coming together to envelop her with his mouth, the inside of his lips contrasting with the roughness of his tongue, driving her to moan encouragement to him.
Unlike their other orgasms together, this one seemed to stretch out on a long plateau of pleasure. She wanted him to go on and on and on but she could sense he was tiring and that brought her down.
Her hand ran through his hair. “And what about you, my love,” she asked, eyeing his erection.
His hands reached out for her buttocks, drawing her to him, and he rested his cheek on her stomach. “I’m fine. I don’t need to come every time, you know. Sometimes giving you pleasure is enough. We can come back later and start again.”
They had parted, he to do business he refused to describe and she to meet June Douglas, her best friend, for a drink at the Texas Bowl, a bowling alley on the Western Esplanade.
Walking along the street she recalled their lovemaking and Sean’s final remark and wanted to cry again. No boy had ever shown her that kindness. It had always been an animal act which she sometimes enjoyed and sometimes did not. But whatever happened, ejaculation always seemed to be part of the bargain. And now here was this man thinking only of her.
The two girls had become friends in part because of an attraction of opposites. Sally was open, enthusiastic and precocious, with little enthusiasm for school and no apparent ambition. June, on the other hand, worked hard, was expected to go to university and was determined to become an environmental biologist. June was still unsure around men and had not welcomed the attentions of the boys who asked her out. The intimate details of Sally’s love life both appalled and fascinated her. Sally enjoyed shocking her friend but welcomed her sober advice, though she did not act on it very often.
It had been difficult for her not to tell June about her new adventure. She had always shared her secrets with June, and now as she became more involved with Sean she desperately needed someone to talk to.
June had noticed the change in her friend’s behaviour and knew from past experience that it was probably a new lover in her life. But it was unusual that she wouldn’t talk about it and June assumed that she was involved with a married man. Over Cokes and a burger, the truth came out.
As the story unfolded, June was at first excited and enthusiastic for her friend, but as the full dimensions of the relationship emerged she was horrified. “Are you telling me that you’re sleeping with a terrorist?”
“It’s not like that,” Sally replied. “He’s a kind, gentle man who treats me with respect. He’d never hurt me and I don’t believe hal
f the stuff that the papers have been saying about him.”
“But, Sally, this man kills people. He’s a member of the IRA. If he gets tired of you he’ll kill you too.”
“No. He won’t,” Sally said, her voice rising with the frustration of trying to communicate the feelings she had for Sean. “You don’t understand. We love each other. This time it’s different, really different.”
Sally had hoped that her friend would appreciate this secret as she had so many others, but she could see that June just didn’t understand the beauty of it, the intensity of having a man who took the time to love. Where she had expected the laughter of a shared confidence, she had seen first horror and then revulsion in her friend’s face. Tears of disappointment welled and she sprang up from the table.
“God, I hate you, June Douglas. I hate you. You just don’t understand,” she cried, and half ran, half walked out of the building.
Walking home, two conflicting emotions ran through Sally’s mind. She was angry at June for not giving her the unstinting support that true friendship demands. She was also furious at herself for giving up the secret that she had held so close to get so little in return. Somehow her relationship with Sean seemed diminished.
June sat in the cafe, stunned. She couldn’t begin to understand what could have made her best friend do such a thing. She had no doubt that whatever happened, Sally would come out of the deal badly. Before, June had been around to help pick up the pieces, but this time she feared that might not be possible. Desperate, she did the only thing she could think of. She went to her mum.
Returning from the north-east, Jonny met with a different reception. The killings in the North Sea and then the attack at the Metrocentre had given impetus to the investigation by New Scotland Yard. He had been embraced into the inquiries, no longer an outsider but a prime source. They all knew the case had moved on from a simple drug bust. It was a race in which, if Jonny lost, he would be dead.
The difficulty was a shortage of information on which to act. Sources in the drug business had been tapped; snitches brought in and questioned; money from the contingency fund spread around liberally, but the net had come back empty. The story everywhere was the same. Sure, the Triads were into drugs, but that had been so for years. The only new supplies coming in were from the former Communist countries in Eastern Europe which the Colombians had infiltrated and were using as a new source of supply and distribution. There was no word on the street of a new drugs shipment from the Far East and prices for heroin, cocaine and crack were stable.
For lack of anywhere to go, the investigation was essentially spinning on itself. Jonny was spending longer and longer hours in S09”s offices on the fifth floor of the Yard. He trawled through transcripts of interrogations and computer printouts that attempted to discern a pattern where there was none; chatted with the drugs squad specialists in the canteen and in their offices. He was driven not only by his obsession to find Dai Choi but by a growing paranoia about his own security.
Inevitably, he had spent more time away from home and away from Lisu. They had returned to the rented apartment in Sloane Avenue with Lisu swathed in bandages, in some pain but out of danger. The doctors said the wounds would heal within two weeks and there would be no scar tissue. She had been lucky, they said.
For her the trip to England had been a disaster. She had hoped that it would present another opportunity for her and Jonny to start again. He needed something to help him overcome the bitterness she had watched seep into his soul over the past few years. But the image Jonny had conjured up for her was an England stuck in the time warp of his memory. The green and pleasant land she had expected was unfriendly and cold. She did not believe she could make this place her home.
And even here the spectre of Dai Choi hovered over everything, just as it did in Hong Kong. She, too, had been devastated by the death of her son. But in her village in China death had been a part of growing up and she was no stranger to loss. If only Jonny would have more children, she was sure the hurt would heal. Instead, he remained totally focused on revenge. And now the trip to England had turned into another chapter in a saga that seemed to have no end.
To add to her insecurity, Jonny had been spending time with Julie Cohen, the woman who had rescued them from the attack. He had insisted that the relationship was all professional but he was there so much. Jealousy was fuelling her paranoia.
This evening, like so many others since her arrival in England, she was on her own, stuck in the flat in a building that seemed to be filled either with prostitutes, who thought she was one of them, or older couples, who seemed shocked to have a Chinese person as a neighbour. The one advantage to the location of their flat was that Zen, one of London’s better Chinese restaurants, was across the road. She had come to an arrangement with the manager and had taken to ordering a dinner which she then carried back to the flat. She was about to take her first bite of the Szechwan spicy ducks’ tongues when the doorbell rang.
Peering through the spyglass in the door, Lisu could see the clean-shaven face of a man of Chinese extraction. She could see a striped shirt and a tie which probably placed him outside the class of casual mugger. She opened the door, keeping it on the safety chain.
“Yes?” she queried.
“Lisu Siao-Ling?” the pleasant voice asked.
She sagged against the door, unable to restrain a small moan of horror. It was a name she had not used since leaving China, a name that had not passed her lips for more than twenty years. The mere utterance of it flooded her mind with memories that had been suppressed for years, blocked out in case an inadvertent remark might betray her.
“May I come in?” the voice continued.
Moving slowly as if being dragged unwillingly forward, her hand unlatched the door and it swung open under the pressure of her visitor’s hand.
He pushed past her into the hallway and, after a brief pause to absorb his surroundings, turned right and went into the small sitting room. She followed and watched as he sat down, crossed his legs, lit a cigarette and drew deeply. As he exhaled his eyes met hers.
She knew the type, had met them often in China and had seen them enough in Hong Kong. They were the elite, the rich and the powerful. The people to whom people like her were a troublesome detail to be dealt with and disposed of. Under his steady gaze, she could feel all the years of anonymity and confidence-building as the respected wife of a gweilo fall away so that she was once again the terrified student she thought she had left behind.
“Lisu, my name is Stanley Kung,” the stranger said. “Ah, I see you know who I am,” he continued as her eyes widened in recognition of the name. “That makes things much easier. I won’t have to go into the reasons for my presence here as I am sure you already know all about your husband’s search for Dai Choi and his colleagues.”
He paused, drawing again on his cigarette. It was a full minute before he spoke again.
“Incidentally, I am sorry about that business in the north of England. I can assure you that was not done on my orders. Indeed, the reason for my little visit is to try and avoid any further unpleasantness.”
“What do you want?” She was ashamed to note that her voice came out as a small whisper, her fear quite apparent.
“I’m looking for just a small piece of information.” He held up his thumb and forefinger and brought them together to show just how little he really wanted.
“But I know nothing! What information could I possibly have that would be of use to you?” she protested.
“Well, we shall see about that. But first, I would just like to make sure we understand one another.”
He picked a black leather briefcase up off the floor and placed it on the table in front of him. There was a brief pause while he worked the combination locks and then he flicked the catches and levered it open. He reached inside and brought out a bunch of papers, held together by a single piece of green string threaded through a hole in the corner of each sheet.
“Ah
, I see you still recognise a ren shi dang an from the
Ministry of Public Security,” he said with a satisfied smile.
The Chinese government runs what is without doubt the most comprehensive system in the world to keep track of every individual in its country. Each person has their own file, known as a ren shi dang an, which is kept by the danwei, units that keep a record of a citizen’s passage through life from cradle to grave. These units report to the Ministry of Public Security who use the files to suppress dissidents and to control the movement of individuals from one job to another, from one town to the next and even a person’s right to drive a car.
The Chinese Communists put the system into place after they seized power in 1949 but the government claims it was only formalizing a long Chinese tradition dating back to the Han Dynasty in 206 BC when the first Han emperor based promotions and awards on a person’s written record of enemy soldiers killed.
Today, the files pervade all aspects of Chinese life in a way that would be totally unthinkable in any democratic society. It would even have outraged Soviet citizens before the collapse of the Union. The fact that her visitor had her file, a document she had not seen since she had fled China, showed he had immense power and that the Chinese were taking an unhealthily close interest in her.
“I received a call from my old friend Li Chuwen, who, as I am sure you know, heads the Ministry’s activities in Hong Kong. He had heard that I might be coming over and he had also heard that his old adversary Lin Yung, the head of the Guojia anquanbu, is taking a close interest in the matter. He seems to think I might be able to be of some assistance to him in giving Lin Yung a bloody nose. He also thought that this file might be of some help to me in that regard. I do believe he is right.”
Kung began to flick through the pages. As he read Lisu’s mind went back to those terrible days of Mao Tse Tung’s Cultural Revolution in 1968. Never had a period of social change been so badly named. Young men and women had formed into bands, known as Red Guards, and roamed the country destroying books, art treasures and buildings. In the space of a few months China’s cultural heritage, stretching back over thousands of years, had been destroyed. A country renowned for its civilization became a byword for barbarism.
