“We were told Hennessy was a last-minute addition to the trip,” Wai Fung said. “His officemates were surprised Curtis took him.”
George said, “All right. So the question is where in Taiwan are they and what are they doing there.”
“It is complicated,” Wai Fung said. “Mr. Bennett, arriving at Taipei, did not go through immigration, but transferred directly to a charter plane with a flight plan to Okinawa. But,” he said, raising a hand to forestall Manville’s interrupting, “in fact the flight did not go to Okinawa, it went to Kaohsiung instead, at the southern end of the island.”
Fairchild said, “Still in Taiwan, in other words.”
“Yes. The charter pilot has been located by the Taiwanese police and has confessed his part in the deception. Richard Curtis and Mark Hennessy took the exact same route today, with the same false flight plan to Okinawa. What happened when they reached Kaohsiung, we don’t know.”
George said, “He took a ship. The three of them took a ship.”
Wai Fung looked interested. “You seem very sure of that,” he said.
“From Kaohsiung,” George told him, “it’s four hundred miles across the South China Sea to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is the place he blames for his troubles. He says he’s going to get gold, and the banks of Hong Kong are full of Chinese gold. I don’t know how he’s going to do it, but somehow he’s going to use the soliton in Hong Kong. To create a great deal of destruction and make off with at least some of that gold.”
Kim said, “The fax. Remember, Luther? Mark told us a fax had come to Curtis from a man in Hong Kong— Luther? What did he call him?”
“A labor thug,” Luther said. His voice was low and measured and emotionless. It was terrible to hear. “Named Jackie Tian.”
“Tian visited Curtis here, very recently,” Kim told them. “And then he sent a fax from Hong Kong, saying they were going to have to find another diver, because their diver had been arrested on smuggling charges.”
“A diver,” George said. “So it is Hong Kong, and it is the soliton, and it’s going to be very soon.”
Four
1
Martin Ha loved his daily commute. There were times when he thought it was the best part of his job, particularly on the bad days, which were fortunately rare. But on all days, in all weather, he loved his commute.
For one thing, he began it later than most other workers, not having to be in his office until ten in the morning, Monday through Saturday. And for another thing, he could be leisurely, traveling by bicycle and ferry, not crowded into a tram or a careening bus or stuck in traffic jams. And finally, he could commute in casual clothes, and change into his uniform when he got to work.
And so it was this Monday morning, a sunny day, moderately humid, the moisture in the air somewhat muffling the perpetual clack of mahjong tiles from every balcony, every side street, every cafe. Dressed in tan canvas shoes and white knee socks and tan shorts and a white short-sleeved dress shirt, his cellphone hooked to his belt, Ha kissed his wife Nancy, wheeled his bicycle out of the apartment, and took the elevator down to the street.
Martin Ha lived on a comparatively quiet side street in the middle-class neighborhood called Hung Horn, southeast of Chatham Road, an area heavily populated by the city’s Chinese civil servants, in which group, dressed for his commute, he seemed barely likely to belong. Mounted on his bicycle, teetering slightly as he made the turn onto Ma Tau Wai Road, this slender knobby-kneed serious-expressioned man of about 40 looked as though he might be a rickshaw driver on his day off. He didn’t look like anybody important at all.
Ha rode his bike down Ma Tau Wai Road and right onto Wuhu Street and then left onto Gilles Avenue, all the while ignoring the usual press of traffic that raced and squealed and struggled all around him, the other bicyclists, the hurrying pedestrians, the taxis and trucks and double-decker buses and even, though this was off their normal grounds, the occasional bewildered tourist. Gilles Avenue led him at last to the new Hung Horn ferry pier. Until just a few years ago, where he now stood had been Hung Horn Bay, next to the main railway terminal, but the bay had been filled in just recently, to make more precious land, on which had been built the opulent new Harbour Plaza Hotel, five minutes from the railroad terminal and even closer to the ferry pier.
The ferry ran every ten minutes or so, and took only fifteen minutes to cross the harbor, and this was what Martin Ha loved. The view from the ferry. Out in front of him, across the sparkling water, Hong Kong Island gleamed and blazed in the sunshine, its glittering towers bunched together like the crowded upraised lancetips of some buried army. Behind him, almost as huge, almost as modern, almost as gleaming and sleek and new, clustered Kowloon, Hong Kong’s mainland extension, the gateway to China. In the old days, you could take the train from that railway terminal beside the ferry dock on Kowloon and travel all the way across Czarist Russia and all of Europe to Calais in France, and then board one more ferry, and be in England. The jet plane had changed all that, of course, but the sense of it was still there, the ribbon that tied two worlds together.
Off to his right, as he stood against the side rail of the ferry, holding his bicycle with one hand and watching the great glorious harbor around him, Ha could see other ferries at work, particularly the green-and-white boats of the Star Ferry, the ferry the tourists rode, a trip half as long and half as glorious as this voyage Ha took twelve times a week.
At Wan Chai Perry Pier, Ha mounted his bike again for the short ride down Harbour Road and Fenwick Pier Street and the pedestrian walkway over broad and busy Harcourt Road down to Queensway Plaza, behind police headquarters. As he approached the building, the salutes began.
Three minutes to ten. In his blue uniform of a full Inspector in the Hong Kong Island Police, formerly the Royal Hong Kong Police, Martin Ha settled himself at his desk by the windows overlooking Arsenal Street and looked at the various papers that had been placed here by Min and Qi, his assistants. There were the overnight reports of crimes in the various districts, the reports of undercover agents, and messages from those who felt they needed to speak directly with the inspector.
The last twenty-four hours had not been bad in Hong Kong, Ha was happy to see. Pocketpicking was still the most persistent and irritating crime in the city. The Big Circle gang had not been heard from, not for several weeks now; good.
The Big Circle was a very loose association of mainland criminals, some of them former Red Army soldiers, who would sneak across the border from time to time to pull off usually pretty spectacular robberies, mostly of banks and jewelry stores. Their raids generally seemed to have been scripted by the same people who made Hong Kong’s action movies, with plenty of high-speed car chases and flying bullets. Now that Hong Kong was Chinese, the mainland authorities were making more serious efforts to capture or at least control the members of the Big Circle, so that particular crime wave might be at last ebbing.
Ha got to his phone messages last, and among them was surprised to see one from Inspector Wai Fung of Singapore. Ha had never met Wai Fung in the flesh, but they had spoken a number of times on the phone and communicated even more by fax, and their departments had cooperated in a number of smuggling cases.
Was this more smuggling? Intrigued, Ha intercommed to Min to return the call from Singapore, and three minutes later he was put through.
“I apologize for having to ruffle your day,” Wai Fung said.
Ha was aware that an unruffled day was Inspector Wai Fung’s dearest wish in life, but he himself didn’t mind a little excitement from time to time, so long as he could win at the end. He said, “Smuggling?”