‘You are right, of course,’ said Ng. ‘Besides, the gweilo is unlikely to be keeping Sophie so close to where he killed my brother.’
The two men stood together, looking at the mist-shrouded hills of Kowloon. To their left a peacock shrieked as if in pain.
‘You must tell your father, Kin-ming.’
‘I know, Master Cheng, I know. I will also go and tell Jill. She will not take it well.’
‘Neither of them will take it well. Your father is at your mother’s grave,’ said Cheng, and walked back into the house. The phone rang again.
Ng slowly climbed the eighty-eight steps up to where his father was, his hands dead at his side. The old man was sitting on one of the stools under the pagoda where they had sat together the previous day. This time, however, he had his back to the harbour and his eyes were on the stone dome. He turned to look at Ng as he reached the top and stood there, breathing heavily and not just because of the climb. Their eyes met and the old man knew at once.
‘He is dead?’ he said quietly.
‘He is dead,’ repeated Ng, tears stinging his eyes. ‘Father, we must get the man who did it. We must, we must, we must.’ The words degenerated into a series of sobs as the tears spilled down his cheeks.
‘We will, Kin-ming. I promise you we will. Come and sit with me.’ His voice was unsteady and he held out his hand towards Ng, palm upward like a beggar pleading for change.
‘At least the budget runs to separate rooms,’ said Edmunds. He was standing in Feinberg’s room in the Victoria Hotel watching a hydrofoil set out for Macau.
‘Too right – sleeping with you would cramp my style a bit,’ said Feinberg as he flicked through the television channels. ‘You hungry?’
‘I guess so.’
‘We might as well hit one of the hotel restaurants. It’s what, four o’clock now? I say we shower, eat, and then hit the bars. We’d better change our money here, and for God’s sake keep the receipts. Hamilton said he’d reimburse us but it’s not to be done through official channels. And we’re not to make contact with the local office.’
‘No back up? No support? And our handler eight thousand miles away? It doesn’t feel right, Rick.’
‘Piece of cake,’ said Feinberg. ‘And Greg Hamilton is a good guy to keep in with. He’s on the fast track and I could go a long way with him.’
Edmunds noticed how the young agent had slipped from the plural into the singular but he was past the stage of being annoyed by petty politics. If Feinberg wanted to jump a few rungs on his career ladder that was up to him. As for Edmunds, he’d long ago resigned himself to not going any higher within the CIA. He hadn’t kissed the right arses and he’d been involved in too many dirty operations to ever be allowed a high-powered administrative position. In fact, during his more morose moods he sometimes worried about exactly what would happen to him, whether or not the CIA would actually allow him to retire and collect his pension. He knew where too many bodies were buried. He’d started taking precautions about five years earlier and compiled a diary of some of the murkier episodes of his career on a Macintosh computer and given three floppy disks to his younger brother in Chicago and sworn him to secrecy. Edmunds wasn’t sure if it would do him any good, or if it was paranoia in the first place, but it made him feel a little more secure. He knew plenty of CIA operatives who’d taken early retirement and joined private detective agencies or joined law firms or even just opened a bar, but he was also aware of a few who had disappeared on missions that were, as Feinberg would have described them, pieces of cake. Edmunds had only three years to go before he could retire on full pension and spend more time with his wife and he was determined to make it. Like the short-timers in Vietnam he was starting to count the days before he would be back in The World, and that, he knew, made him vulnerable.
Feinberg sat on the bed and opened the telephone book. ‘Police,’ he said in reply to his partner’s raised eyebrows.
Feinberg identified himself as a reporter with the
International Herald Tribune
and asked for the duty officer, eventually got through to someone who could speak English and again said he was a reporter.
‘Anything new on the double murder at the Hilton?’ he asked and was told there wasn’t. ‘What about the Brit who was shot? Has he turned up yet?’ Again he was told no. Feinberg thanked the officer and hung up.
‘Power of the Press,’ he said. ‘Howells is still on the loose. If he was in hospital they’d have him now. I feel lucky about this. Which side of the harbour do you want, Kowloon or Wan Chai?’
Edmunds shrugged. ‘I’m easy.’
‘OK, I’ll take Kowloon. It’s been a few years since I’ve been to Red Lips and Bottoms Up.’ He passed the faxed picture of Howells over to Edmunds and said: ‘Can you get a decent photocopy of that? It’s pretty sharp so it should reproduce OK. I’m going to take a shower; I’ll meet you downstairs in the lobby in half an hour.’
Edmunds agreed, though he was far from happy.
Dugan grabbed at the door handle of the taxi a second before the leather-jacketed Chinese youth who had raced across the road in an attempt to beat him to it. When Dugan pulled the door open the guy tried to slip into the back seat but Dugan side-stepped to block his way.
‘Fuck your mother, gweilo pig,’ the man cursed in Cantonese.
Dugan grinned at him as he got into the cab. ‘Your mother was too ugly but your sister screwed like a rabbit,’ Dugan shouted back in Chinese and slammed the door shut.
‘Wah! Good Cantonese,’ said the driver in admiration as he slammed the taxi into gear and drove off. ‘Where to?’
When Dugan told him that they were going to the New Territories the driver began to whine. The tunnel traffic was too heavy at this time of night, it’d take almost an hour to get across the harbour and then he’d have to come back and he was supposed to be finishing his shift soon and had to hand the cab over to his replacement in Tin Hau. Please would the honourable gentleman mind switching over to a Kowloon taxi?
Dugan was too tired to argue, and it was such a long trip there was no point in going with an unenthusiastic driver. There were several unofficial ranks on the island where taxis from Kowloon waited to pick up passengers who wanted to cross the harbour. The driver took Dugan to a petrol station opposite the Excelsior Hotel where there were three taxis waiting, their roof lights on but with red cards covering the meter flags bearing the two Chinese characters Gow Lung, meaning Nine Dragons, the Cantonese name for the area which the British had transliterated to Kowloon.
The driver thanked Dugan profusely and drove off into the dusk. Dugan got into one of the Kowloon taxis and this time he met with no resistance when he said he wanted to go to the New Territories. They pulled out of the garage forecourt and forced their way into the queue of traffic edging its way to the tunnel entrance.
Dugan sat back and closed his eyes, massaging his temples with the palms of his hands. During the course of the afternoon he’d tried several times to get through to Jill, but without success, and he’d decided that the only way to find out for sure what was going on was to go round in person. It was a bitch of a taxi journey but the MTR didn’t go anywhere near Ng’s house and Dugan’s salary barely covered his mortgage payments, never mind a car. They crawled along for the best part of half an hour before Dugan saw the tunnel mouth. They picked up speed once they were under the bright fluorescent lights and the tyres were singing on the road surface. The cars erupted from the end of the tunnel like water from a shower head, spraying out to pay their tolls at the line of booths where the money collectors were wearing white surgical masks to filter out the worst of the exhaust fumes, and then accelerating again, the harbour at their backs.
Dugan still wasn’t sure what he’d say to Jill, or to Simon Ng if he was there. He would protect Petal, of that he was certain, but he would have to warn his brother-in-law that his life was in danger. He could tell them about the gweilo who had been attacked in the Hilton Hotel and tell Ng that the police had learnt that the man had been planning to attack him. He’d just have to be vague about the whys and wherefores and hope that the fact that the family would be on guard would keep them immune from harm. Assuming that is that they hadn’t been harmed already. What was it Petal had said? She was to be the back-up, the second line of attack if the first failed, and that she thought that maybe the man Howells was the real assassin. He could tell them about Howells, but Petal’s involvement would remain a secret.
He was so busy rehearsing in his mind what he was going to say that he missed the turn-off to the Ng compound and he leant forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder.
‘We have to go back,’ he said, and gestured the way they’d come.
‘OK, OK,’ said the driver, and he slowed the taxi and did a reasonable approximation of a three-point turn. Dugan pointed at the side-road which angled off into the woods and the driver headed up it, switching his headlights on for the first time. He drove at full pelt up the track and had to slam on the brakes when he saw the barrier and its warning sign. The tyres squealed angrily and two men came out of the gatehouse before the car had even stopped. Dugan didn’t recognize them but they were typical Red Pole thugs, wide shoulders, casual clothes and expensive jewellery; they were chewing gum and their hands swung at their sides as they walked. One of them approached Dugan’s window and he wound it down, allowing the hot evening air to balloon into the cab. He could feel beads of sweat forming on his forehead almost immediately.
‘Private road. You must go back,’ the man said in English. He had a portable phone in his hand. His partner kept some distance away from the car and seemed to put a lot of effort into adjusting the buttons of his cotton jacket. There was probably a gun under it but Dugan wasn’t on official business and under the circumstances he wasn’t going to make an issue of it.
In Cantonese Dugan explained that he was Simon Ng’s brother-in-law and that he wanted to go up to the house. The guard shook his head emphatically.
‘Nobody home. You must go,’ he said, still in English. He turned to the driver and switched to Cantonese, saying: ‘Take the gweilo prick to wherever he came from or it will be the worse for you.’ The driver grunted and put the taxi into reverse. Dugan flung the door open and got one foot on to the ground before the guard put his weight against it and tried to slam it shut on Dugan’s leg. Dugan resisted and kicked it open with his other leg, knocking the guard off balance. Dugan grabbed him by the neck of his shirt and pushed him against a tree.
‘Listen, you prick, don’t you dare threaten me again or I’ll stuff your balls down your throat. Understand?’ He edged his forearm up under the man’s chin and forced his head back so that it scraped against the bark. He tried to nod but the pressure on his throat stopped him so he groaned and blinked. The second guard began shouting at Dugan in English. ‘Let him go! Let him go!’ Dugan swung round, keeping his grip on the first guard so that he formed a barrier between them.
‘Keep your fucking hands away from your jacket or I’ll break this pig’s neck,’ Dugan warned and tightened his grip. The second guard looked confused, reached his hands up and then dropped them, then took a step forward.
‘And don’t move, just listen,’ shouted Dugan. The taxi driver had stopped to watch, but he had a pretty good idea what was going on and didn’t want to be around when this stupid gweilo got the shit kicked out of him so he began reversing down the track.
The second guard reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gun and held it unsteadily with his right hand, trying to aim at Dugan’s head. Dugan kept moving from side to side, keeping his captive in front of him. He squeezed his neck tighter, wanting to keep him quiet but not so much that he’d pass out. He was fairly stocky and Dugan doubted if he could hold him up if the guard’s legs collapsed.
‘Listen to me,’ said Dugan, speaking in Cantonese but speaking slowly, not because he wasn’t fluent but because most Chinese couldn’t get used to the fact that he could speak it; they just saw his white face and assumed that whatever language came out of his mouth would be English. ‘I am Simon Ng’s brother-in-law. Jill Ng is my sister. It is important that I speak to him.’
The guard with the gun kept it pointing at Dugan’s head. ‘We tell you already, he not here,’ he said in halting English, refusing to acknowledge that Dugan spoke Cantonese.
‘Can you reach him?’ Dugan began backing away, step by step, trying to get a tree in between them. His prisoner’s chest began to heave in spasms so he released the pressure, just a fraction.
The man shook his head.
‘Look, I’m with the police. And I’m a good friend of Simon Ng’s. That’s two fucking good reasons why you can’t shoot me. You put the gun away and I’ll let go of your friend. Deal?’
‘You let go first, then I put gun away,’ said the guard. Dugan didn’t trust him one bit, and he guessed that it was mutual.
He pressed his mouth close to his prisoner’s ear. ‘Throw him the phone,’ he hissed. He did as he was told and it fell on the grass by the guard’s feet. ‘OK, listen to this. Call Simon Ng now and tell him I want to speak to him.’
Dugan could see by the confusion on the man’s face that something was wrong and he realized suddenly what it was. Ng was already dead. Oh sweet Jesus, what about Jill?
‘Where is my sister?’ he yelled.
The guard pointed the gun up at the compound. ‘She is in the house,’ he admitted.
Dugan thought frantically. ‘Who is the Dragon Head now?’ he asked. The man remained stubbornly silent and aimed the gun at Dugan again.
Dugan was half-hidden by the tree now, and he leant against it for support. His prisoner wriggled but he swiftly yanked his arm tighter round his neck and the movement stopped. Dugan’s arm was starting to throb and his elbow screamed in pain.
‘Call Thomas Ng,’ Dugan shouted. ‘Tell him Pat Dugan is here and that I want to talk to him.’