by Mark Dawson
Never mind.
The shorter man grinned and made his move. He was better than she had expected, but not nearly as good as he needed to be. His choreography was sloppy, his movements too broad. He was focusing on his knife instead of what she was doing.
Big mistake.
Fatal.
She feinted toward his knife hand, knowing that he would move to block her. He did, his other arm flung backward to counterbalance. He left himself wide open as she kicked him in the chest, sending him stumbling back, and then flicked her wrist to send the balisong in a straight arc that landed, blade first, in his throat.
She watched his eyes widen as he realised what had just happened, but by then it was too late. It had taken no longer than a few seconds. Beatrix didn’t pause to admire her handiwork, and, using the man’s body as a means of blocking the corridor, she stepped up and disarmed him, taking his knife and then pushing him against the wall to the side. He bounced off the wall and slid to the floor.
The big man with the cleaver took a step back.
“I’ll give you one chance,” Beatrix said. “Put it down and you can walk.”
The man sneered at her and held up the cleaver, perhaps comparing it to the size of her knife.
“Tell him in Cantonese,” Beatrix said to Danny.
The man didn’t wait for the translation. He came forward and waved the cleaver, a few exploratory swishes to keep her at arm’s length. It was a frightening weapon, but that was based on what it looked like it might be capable of doing, rather than how easy it might be to use. It was not a precision instrument. The man would have to get in closer, and, if he did that, he would render himself vulnerable.
His face was blank as he advanced. She could see that he wasn’t going to fall for her tricks. His strategy was clear: get as close as possible so she would be unable to throw the knife. He wanted her to use it hand-to-hand.
The man swung the cleaver in a vicious backhand swipe, straight at her head. She twisted out of the way, the edge whistling past her nose. It was a wild swing, reckless, an urge to end her with a single stroke. But it was too wild, and now the man was unable to control his body. The force of the swipe unbalanced him and he took a half step to his right to compensate.
Beatrix hopped up close and stabbed him three times: left breast, gut, and—as he turned away in an attempt to protect himself—right kidney. None of the blows landed deep, but, in fast combination, their effect was immediate. He staggered away from her until he was up against the wall; Beatrix followed and drove the blade into his undefended stomach.
The cleaver fell from his fingers and clattered against the floor. He slid down the wall, his face still registering surprise that Beatrix could move so fast.
“Time to go,” Beatrix said.
21
Beatrix went into her room and grabbed her go-bag. She had stowed it inside her pillowcase and it didn’t look as if the triads had found it. She collected Danny’s things, too, and came back outside. There was a door at the end of the corridor that led to a fire escape. Beatrix pushed the kick plate and held it open for Danny. He went through and she followed, shutting the door behind her.
“You’ve been hurt,” he said as they started down the steep flight of stairs together.
She looked down and saw that she had been nicked somewhere on the left-hand side of her body. It was a surface wound, but there was still quite a lot of blood. She took a hoodie from her bag and put it on. She would deal with the wound when she had Danny safely out of the way.
They emerged from the building into the alley that separated it from the Holiday Inn to the north and made their way east until they reached Minden Row, where they entered the throng of slow-moving pedestrians. Beatrix led the way to the south; they passed the Hong Kong Space Museum and Salisbury Garden and then reached the luxury hotels that overlooked the harbour. The street level was given over to high-end boutiques and restaurants. Beatrix stopped in a branch of Gap and bought a new T-shirt, then bought a bottle of antiseptic cream, a bag of disposable razors, a can of shaving foam and a box of dressings from the pharmacy next door. She led Danny to a coffee shop. There was a table at the back, and they took it.
“Get me a coffee and something to eat,” she said. “Then get a table and face away from the door.”
The ladies’ room was at the back of the coffee shop. She stepped in, locked the door, took off her hoodie and looked down at her shirt; it had been liberally soaked with blood. She opened the bin, took off the shirt and dropped it inside, covering it from view with a handful of paper towels. She angled herself so that she could check the damage; the knife or the cleaver had carved a shallow horizontal stripe just below her ribcage. It was nothing, just a nick. Beatrix took a paper towel, soaked it in warm water and used it to clean the wound. She squeezed out a liberal measure of antiseptic cream and slathered it across the cut, then covered it over with a dressing.
She had been lucky. She never used to have to rely on luck. She had to be more careful. She could’ve been killed without ever seeing Isabella again, without Isabella ever knowing how hard her mother had tried to find her, without ever knowing how much she was loved.
She pulled on the clean T-shirt and then the hoodie and made her way back to the table.
Danny had bought two strong coffees and a selection of pastries. Her adrenaline rush was beginning to ebb, and she knew that she was headed for a crash.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
“I’m fine.” She buttered a toasted teacake loaded with sultanas and currants.
“Sorry. I—”
She spoke over him. “When I told you to stay in the building, I meant for you to stay in the building.”
“I’m sorry—”
She regretted her tone at once and lowered her voice. “Wang will have people everywhere. You know that. You can’t act as if nothing has happened. He wants you dead. That’s twice he’s tried now.”
“I know,” he said. “You’re right.”
Beatrix looked at him. Her parents had always been fit and well and had maintained their acuity until the end, but her paternal grandfather had become confused toward the end of his life. Dementia wasn’t so readily diagnosed in those days; forgetfulness was often seen as the simple by-product of age. There had been lapses of memory, particularly when it came to remembering names and choosing words. Appointments would be missed, and, eventually, the crosswords that she remembered him doing every day at the kitchen table went unfinished. There had been one occasion when he had gone missing for several hours; he was eventually picked up by the police outside the first house that he had bought with his wife years earlier, long since sold.
She tapped her head. “Have you been to the doctor?”
“What’s the point? What are they going to do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they could help?”
“There’s no treatment,” he said. “You just have to deal with it until…” He let the sentence drift.
“This from someone who tells me that I need to look after myself,” she said as she ate the teacake.
“I just forget things,” he protested. “That’s all it is. My thoughts drift away onto something else, and then the thing that I was trying to remember slips away.”
She didn’t want to upset him, but she knew that his frailty was something that she was going to have to keep in mind. She took the other half of the teacake and buttered it, letting the subject drop.
“What do we do now?” he said. “We can’t go back there.”
“No,” she said. “We can’t.”
“The boat?”
“Definitely not. They’ll be watching it.” She finished the teacake and wiped the crumbs from her fingers. “I know you aren’t going to like this, but I don’t think you have any other options. You need to speak to Michael.”
“I told you—I can’t.”
“We’re at a disadvantage. He’s the only one who can help.”
Danny shook his
head. “I can’t,” he repeated. “Me and him—we’re finished. He made it clear as day that he never wants to speak to me again.”
“In that case, we need to find somewhere to lie low while we wait for your passport. If you can’t go to him, we’re going to have to find somewhere else. A hotel. Somewhere away from the city.”
Danny paused and scratched his head. “Maybe not. I have a better idea.”
22
Danny took out his phone. He explained that the man to whom he wanted to speak was George Soto, an old acquaintance from the Walled City who had gone on to forge an impressive career in finance. He looked to Beatrix as if for her approval that calling Soto was a good idea; Beatrix shrugged. They needed somewhere to go, and Danny said that Soto would be able to help.
Danny dialled and put the call on speaker so Beatrix could hear what was being said. It was obvious that the two men had not spoken for some time, but they evidently had much in common and a lot to catch up on. They chatted happily for a few minutes about their time in the Walled City and caught each other up on what had happened in their lives over the past few years, but it was evident that Soto was wondering why Danny had called him out of the blue.
“So,” Soto finally ventured, “this is nice, but…”
“It’s not just a social call?”
“Well…”
“Am I that obvious?” Danny said.
“What can I do for you?”
“The last time we met—you said your place had a cottage for vacations?”
“It does.”
“I was wondering if I could borrow it for a few days. I’ve got a friend over to visit from England. She was staying on my junk, but I just found out that the electrics are fried. It’s not safe until I get it fixed. It’d just be for a few days. A week at the outside.”
Soto answered enthusiastically. “Of course—it would be a pleasure. You remember where I am? Repulse Bay?”
“I do. We’ll pay, obviously.”
“No, you won’t. It’ll be good to have you. We can catch up properly.”
Danny ended the call, and, before he could object, Beatrix picked the phone up from the table.
“What are you doing?”
She held the button to power down the phone. She waited until the screen winked out and then gave it back to him. “You can’t use this anymore. We’ll get you a burner.”
She told him to go into the bathroom and shave off his beard and whiskers. They didn’t have the time to dye his hair, so she popped out to one of the stallholders in the street and bought a New York Mets cap. There was a hole-in-the-wall store selling phones. Beatrix used some of the funds that she had received from Michael to buy two, together with unlimited SIMs.
She went back to the bathroom and knocked on the door. Danny opened it. He was holding a wad of toilet paper against his cheek as he tried to staunch the flow of blood from a nick.
“I hate shaving,” he said.
“Stop moaning,” she said. “Besides, it takes years off.”
He put on the glasses and the cap.
“Well?”
“You look like a new man,” she said.
23
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok airport. The local time is half past six in the evening, and the temperature is a balmy eighty-five degrees. On behalf of the crew, I’d like to thank you for flying United, and we hope to see you again soon.”
William Logan had managed to grab a little bit of sleep on the flight between Chicago and Hong Kong, and, as the air bridge was pushed up to the 777, he was pleased to find that he didn’t feel as fatigued as he had worried that he might. He had taken an Ambien with a whiskey and it had helped usher him to sleep. He grabbed his carry-on from the overhead bin and made his way to the cabin door. He smiled his thanks to the hostess and disembarked, the humidity washing over him as soon as he left the cool of the cabin.
There was a line for immigration. Logan took out his phone, waited to get a signal and then downloaded his email. There was one from Phillips, the analyst he had tasked to pull anything they had on Vietnam-era soldiers named Nakamura who were wanted for desertion. She reported that she had found a record for Daniel Lee Nakamura, a United States Marine Corps Private First Class who had been transferred to a CIA unit that was operating in the Dak Son area. The unit had been involved in a bilateral operation with the Vietnamese and had run agents into areas that were controlled by the Viet Cong. One operation—dubbed LINEBACKER—was concerned with recruiting local assets from the Montagnard in the Central Highlands.
Nakamura’s case officer was listed as Dwight Lincoln.
“Excuse me,” a voice said from behind him.
Logan looked up and saw that the line had shuffled forward. He apologised and moved up, then looked back down at his phone again.
He went back to the document. He expected to see more, but there was nothing else of note. He tapped back to the email that Phillips had sent along with the documents and saw, to his surprise, that she was reporting that Nakamura’s file had been sealed. That was extremely odd. The OMPF—the Official Military Personnel File—included paperwork setting out a soldier’s duties, assignments, promotions, awards, and commendations; a breakdown of the units to which he had been assigned; discharge documents; and more besides. Nakamura’s had been restricted to prevent public access under the Freedom of Information Act, but it was still available to those with the relevant security clearances.
“Sir?”
Logan scrolled back and saw that there was a second email from Phillips that included everything that she could find from Nakamura’s file. There was a lot of information; he had some reading to do.
“Sir?”
Logan was at the front of the line, and the man behind him was impatiently tapping him on the shoulder.
“Sorry,” he said, putting his phone away and making his way up to the counter.
Logan called Phillips from the taxi. Washington was twelve hours behind Hong Kong, but Phillips was an early riser, and he knew that she would already be at her desk.
She picked up right away. “Hello, sir.”
“Thanks for the emails.”
“Useful?”
“Very,” Logan said. “There’s a couple of extra things I need you to do.”
“Of course.”
“Nakamura’s file is sealed.”
“Yes, sir. I saw.”
“Find out who sealed it.”
“Yes, sir. What else?”
“I asked you to contact the consulate. Has anyone named Nakamura tried to get a passport recently?”
“They just replied to my email,” she said. “I was about to forward it to you. They had a Daniel Lee Nakamura come in six weeks ago. He made an appointment with American Citizen Services for passport renewal, but he never kept it. I’ve pulled the CCTV footage. I’ll go through it and see if I can pick him out.”
“Well done.”
“There’s something else that I just noticed,” she said. “A coincidence, maybe. Other than when it was sealed, the Nakamura file hasn’t been touched for more than forty years. But then it was—it was pulled by the Hong Kong DCoS.”
“When?”
“Yesterday,” she said.
24
Danny looked different in the light disguise, but Beatrix wasn’t foolish enough to think that it was particularly effective. She was cautious as they stepped out onto the street, watching for any sign that they were being watched, and then looking for anyone who might be following them as they started to the south. She didn’t see anything that tripped her attention, and, satisfied, she flagged down a passing taxi.
They were travelling light. Danny had insisted on taking his laptop, if for no other reason than to be able to reply to Melissa if she decided to email him, and, although Beatrix would have preferred to sever all traceable ties, she could not bring herself to stop him.
They took the cab to Tsim Sha Tsui Station and then rode the MTR to
Admiralty Station. They changed onto the Island Line and rode to Causeway Bay Station, then took the number forty bus south to Repulse Bay. An hour had passed when they finally disembarked at South Bay Road and flagged down a cab for the final mile to their destination.
One hundred ten Repulse Bay Road was accessed via a cobbled driveway that bent sharply off the two-lane road carving its way around the steep decline that marked this part of the island. The driver edged up to a pair of ornate gates.
“Have you been here before?” Beatrix asked Danny.
“No,” he said. “He’d just moved in the last time I saw him.”
They got out. Danny pressed the buzzer and stepped back as the gates slid open. They walked through them, following the drive as it descended the steep terrain. They turned a corner and the whole of the estate became visible. George Soto’s home was more of a compound. The property was spread out across a slope that overlooked the bay. The vista was breathtaking: the sea was a rich turquoise, the blue interrupted only by the emerald green of Middle Island.
“Working in a bank?” Beatrix said. “Looks like he might own the bank.”
The main house itself was just below the crest of the hill, a large two-storey construction built out of marble with a black slate roof. They followed the drive down the slope to where a man was waiting for them by the front door. Danny had said that he and Soto were around the same age, but, if this was their potential host, he looked years younger. His skin was smooth—perhaps a little too smooth, Beatrix noted, suggesting surgical interference—and he had a full head of rich, brown hair. His teeth looked as if they might have been whitened, and his clothes were tastefully understated.
