The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers) (48 page)

“This one has time locks as well?” asked Chung as they walked through it into the vault.

“Just like the one below,” said Ballantine. “This one is monitored, too, and there are alarms connected to the control room.”

The walls of the vault were lined with thousands of safe-deposit boxes, varying in size from small ones a few inches square; which could contain nothing bigger than a few papers, to ones on the lower levels which were the size of large cabin trunks. Each box had two locks. Ballantine walked over to one wall and showed the locks to Chung. “When you rent a box, we give you one key, and we keep the other,” he explained. “When you come to open your box we match your signature against our records and we use our key and yours to open the box. That way no one else can open your box.”

“What if I lose the key?” said Chung.

“We do have a way of opening the boxes if absolutely necessary, Mr Chung, but people rarely lose their keys. And if they do, the signature is an extra safety check.”

Chung turned around and looked at the open vault door. “Upstairs, you mentioned that the door was mainly for show,” he said.

“Perhaps I was being over-simplistic,” said Ballantine. “What I meant was that any robber worth his salt wouldn’t try to get into a vault through the door. He’d come in through the floor or ceiling, or the walls. They tend to be the points of least resistance. Though in the case of our vaults, we have incorporated extra features which will make entry there next to impossible.”

“Really?” said Chung.

Ballantine nodded. “There are sensors inside both vaults which pick up any movement. The smallest movement will set them off. There are also temperature sensors which monitor any change in temperature.”

“Impressive,” said Chung.

“But before they can even get inside the vault to set off the sensors, they’d have to get through the outer walls which are a combination of reinforced steel and concrete. On the outside we have the entire vault covered with a network of thin wires through which we pass electricity. Any breakage of the wires sets off an alarm in the control room.”

“And you said the control room is manned twenty-four hours a day?”

“Even on Chinese holidays,” said Ballantine. “I’ll take you up and show you round.”

They went back to the elevator, Chung giving up his badge and receiving another warm smile in return, and Ballantine pressed the top button. On the way up he explained how the bank ran most of its security operations, including fraud investigations, from the building, and that most of the upper floors were used by administrative staff.

To get to the control room they had to pass through two security doors, both of which were monitored by security cameras and which Ballantine opened by swiping a magnetic card through a reader. “This is the nerve-centre of the depository,” he explained as he led Chung down a carpeted corridor to a third door which was composed entirely of glass on which was stencilled “control room”.

“Bullet-proof glass,” said Ballantine. “Totally unbreakable.” He waved at the uniformed man sitting at a console behind the door and the door opened. There were five men, all in light blue uniforms with the bank’s insignia over their breast pockets. Chung took the trouble to introduce himself to all five of the men as he toured the control room, and he looked at the identity card each man had clipped to his chest, memorising their names as he shook their hands. The men studied ranks of television screens, some black and white and some colour. Some of the screens showed a constant picture, such as the ones covering the corridors, but others were continually moving and changing their viewpoint. Others clicked from view to view every few seconds. Ballantine had one of the men demonstrate how a picture on one of the small black and white screens could be called up on one of the big colour screens if there was something they wanted to see in more detail. Some of the cameras could be moved by operating tiny joysticks on the console.

“Very impressive,” said Chung. On the wall behind the men were half a dozen shotguns in a cabinet. “Very impressive indeed.”

“We don’t expect the men here ever to use the shotguns, of course,” said Ballantine, seeing Chung’s interest in the weapons. “The telephones over there are direct lines to the police station, and to a private security firm.”

“A private firm?” said Chung. “Why is that necessary?”

Ballantine smiled. “The police are stretched to breaking-point these days,” he said. “We can’t depend on them always responding as quickly as they used to, so to be on the safe side we have a private firm on hand. Just as a precaution.”

“Are the alarms linked directly to the police?” asked Chung.

“Yes. And to the security firm. If the alarms go off here they also go off there. Our staff here call them either to confirm there is an emergency or to tell them it’s just a test. The function of the men in this room is to bring in outside help, not to protect the vaults themselves. They do not leave their posts during their shift. They even set the electric time locks on the vault doors from here.”

“It seems a faultless system,” said Chung.

“It is, Mr Chung. It is. Now, let me take you back to my office and I’ll give you an application form and some leaflets.”

Chung spent ten minutes in Ballantine’s office listening to his views on bank security and drinking his awful coffee before thanking him and leaving. On the way to his car, Chung removed a gold pen from his inside jacket pocket and on the back of Ballantine’s business card he wrote down the names of the men he’d seen in the bank’s control room.

Neil Coleman took the lift to the floor which housed Terry McNeil’s office in Special Branch. McNeil was sitting hunched over a computer terminal. By his side was a red and gold-patterned mug with a lid on it. When McNeil saw Coleman he switched off his screen and sat back in his chair. He lifted the lid off his mug and the fragrance of jasmine filled the small office. Unlike Coleman, McNeil was not required to share office space. He had personalised it with several tall green plants and a variegated spider plant which tumbled either side of his computer screen and there was a large parchment scroll behind his desk on which was a vertical line of Chinese characters. On a table behind the chair on which Coleman sat was a Pioneer portable television and underneath it, on the floor, a video recorder of the same make.

“Pull up a pew, Neil,” said McNeil. “And close the door, would you?”

Coleman pushed the door to and sat down. He envied McNeil his privacy and his plush office with its view of the bustling harbour, and the fact that he worked for the one area of the police where expats were still top dogs; with the family connections which all local Chinese had on the mainland, there was no way they could be trusted to handle the sensitive intelligence information which passed across the desks of Special Branch every day.

“Anthony Chung took some tracing, I can tell you,” said McNeil. He took a sip of hot tea and Coleman got the feeling that he was being strung along, that McNeil was taking a perverse pleasure in making him wait. “Do you want tea? Or a Coke or something?”

“I’m fine, Terry. I had a coffee just before you called.”

McNeil put the lid back on his mug.

“It’s unusual for a Chinese not to have a Hong King identity card,” said McNeil. “Even the ones who emigrate must have had a card, and the ones who come back usually get one once they arrive. It makes travel in and out much easier, both here and in China. That and the French passport gave me the clue.”

“Clue?” said Coleman.

“Yeah. You said you thought Chung was part of a car ring?”

Coleman had decided not to tell McNeil the truth, not the whole truth anyway. “I saw him driving a Ferrari, an F40. I thought it was worth checking him out.”

“But the F40 was leased, right?”

“Yeah. But then I found he had a French passport and thought maybe there was a European link.”

“You thought he was smuggling cars from Hong Kong to France? Give me a break, Neil.”

“I’m not sure what I thought. I just wanted to check him out, that’s all.”

McNeil looked thoughtfully at Coleman and chewed the inside of his lip. Coleman cursed Donaldson for suggesting he try Special Branch for information on Anthony Chung, and for recommending Terry McNeil. McNeil was the same age as Donaldson and Coleman but looked five years younger. He had curly brown hair and light green eyes and spoke with an Irish accent that was beginning to irritate the hell out of Coleman.

“You see, Neil, Anthony Chung shouldn’t be in Hong Kong,” said McNeil. “If he had any sense at all he’d be in France, keeping his head down, the lowest of low profiles. He’s risking his life being this close to China.”

Coleman leaned forward in his seat, his hands on his knees. He rubbed the sweat from his palms on to the grey material of his suit.

“It was the French passport that provided the clue,” continued McNeil. “It’s not the normal place where Hong Kong Chinese try to emigrate. France doesn’t really have any attraction for them. The Vietnamese go there because Vietnam used to be under French control, but not Hong Kong Chinese.”

“Too close to Britain,” said Coleman, smiling.

“Maybe,” said McNeil. “But there is one group of Chinese who are very keen to move to France. Chinese dissidents.”

“Dissidents?” said Coleman, bewildered.

“France has always been prepared to offer sanctuary to people persecuted for their beliefs, more so than Britain or Germany. Remember Tiananmen Square?”

“Sure.” Images flashed through Coleman’s mind. The earnest student demonstrations in the Chinese capital. The peaceful marches, the speeches delivered by young men and women who wanted to taste democracy for the first time, the warnings from the old men in power, and then the tanks. Hundreds of unarmed protesters were machine-gunned or crushed to death as the uprising was put down by the army, and for months afterwards news of executions and long prison sentences continued to reach Hong Kong. Yes, Neil Coleman remembered Tiananmen Square. Nobody who had been in Hong Kong on the night of June 4, 1989, would ever forget.

“Afterwards it was the French who did most to get the ringleaders out. Their embassy in Beijing helped smuggle them out and gave them sanctuary. Many still live in Paris.”

“And you’re saying that Anthony Chung was one of the dissidents?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

Coleman wanted to reach across the desk, grab McNeil by the throat and squeeze the information out of him. Instead he smiled and raised his eyebrows.

“But he was smuggled out of China by the French and given French citizenship. Not because of what he’d done, but because of his father.”

“His father?”

“Zhong Ziming. Zhong was one of the top men, an aide to Deng Xiaoping for many years and a close associate of Zhao Ziyang, the former Communist Party General Secretary. Switch the TV and the video on and hit the ‘play’ button, will you?”

Coleman turned in his chair and did as McNeil asked. The recording was from a television news broadcast, clearly taken a few days before the army was sent into Tiananmen Square. It showed a balding, bespectacled old man moving through the crowds of smiling students, shaking hands and patting them on the back. The voice-over was a woman with an American accent saying that the presence of the Communist Party General Secretary in the square was being taken as a sign that the party leadership was giving tacit support to the calls for more democracy.

“Hit the pause button, will you?” asked McNeil.

Coleman did as he’d been asked and the picture froze. Zhao was standing with his hand outstretched, about to greet a tall young man with fiery eyes and a white scarf tied around his head. The scarf had Chinese characters written on them in bold, black strokes. There were two old men behind Zhao, men in dark blue Mao-style suits, who were watching Zhao and smiling.

“See the old guy on the left?” said McNeil.

Coleman pointed to a bald man, fairly stout with a thick, bull neck and wide shoulders, a man who could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy years old so featureless was his face. “Him?”

McNeil nodded. “That’s Zhong Ziming. He made several appearances in the square before June 4, both with Zhao and on his own. He made several speeches in support of the democracy movement.”

“What happened to him? Executed?”

McNeil shook his head. “Zhao Ziyang was removed from power, but he had too many friends to be punished. Zhong Ziming wasn’t as well connected, and Zhao wasn’t able to protect him. The last we heard was that he is being held in solitary confinement, but that was twelve months ago. There were a number of unidentified executions of dissidents just before Christmas and there is a chance he was killed then.”

“Okay, but I’m not getting this, Terry. That guy’s name is Zhong Ziming. I asked you to check out an Anthony Chung. What makes you think they’re related?”

“That’s easy. Zhong is the Mandarin Chinese version of Chung. Zhong’s son is Zhong Juntao, but he took the name Anthony when he went to Paris to study. It’s not unusual for Chinese to use Anglicised names, nor for them to use the Cantonese version of their family names. Zhong Juntao. Anthony Chung. They’re one and the same, Neil.”

“And you’re saying that Chung was given French citizenship after Tiananmen?”