So here they were in suites, the inspector in one, Luther and George and Kim in another, across the hall. Brevizin was covering the cost of the inspector’s suite, while Luther had made one more international phone call and then told George and Kim, “It’s all right. My father will pay.” George had tried to argue, but Luther had smiled his now-sad smile and said, “No, don’t worry. It’s good for him sometimes to pay.”
Their suites were in the new tall addition, so they had views out over the nearby buildings. Inspector Fairchild had what was considered the better view, south toward Hong Kong Island across the harbor, but Kim found the northern view over Kowloon and the New Territories endlessly fascinating, a colorful gaudy jumble like a really complex jigsaw puzzle in which you had to study every piece for a good long time.
When, that is, she could bear to look away from the suite itself. The wide central room was luxuriously furnished in deep blue, gold and ivory, and contained a full bar. One part of the room was a kind of office, with a fax machine and an elaborately furnished desk. Chinese prints on the walls and some Chinese pieces of furniture reminded you where you were. Off the main room, to left and right, were large bedrooms, also with spectacular views, and marble bathrooms with Jacuzzis. Kim moved between these rooms in a happy daze. She was a long way from Planetwatch III.
Luther’s father, whether he knew it or not, had also treated them all to a wonderful dinner last night, downstairs at Gaddi’s, one of the hotel’s three terrific restaurants, and she and George had then slept in cool quiet on their giant bed, the jeweled lights of Kowloon outside making a muted rainbow of the room, and they inside it. Her ribs felt almost healed by now; making love was no longer a problem in engineering.
When the phone rang, the ornate clock over the bar in the living room read exactly one o’clock. “He’s prompt, this inspector,” George said.
The three of them had been sitting here in the living room waiting, George reading another of his paperback thrillers, Kim looking out at the colorful city below, Luther just staring at his hands and quietly thinking.
And then the phone rang. Luther answered, murmured a bit, then hung up and said, “It’s time.”
Kim had decided to dress for maturity at this meeting, so this morning she’d gone to one of the hotel shops and bought a very plain just-above-the-knee dark blue skirt, black pumps, and a short-sleeved white blouse with a ruffle at the throat, charging it all to the room, which was to say, Luther’s father once more. She felt more than her usual self-confidence as the three of them trooped across the hall to the other suite. They had invited the inspector to meet them here to avoid the distractions and lack of security of a restaurant and also to emphasize the luxury just a bit.
Hotel staff had set up an elaborate round table for them by the windows, with Hong Kong Island gleaming over there like cutlery in a drainboard. The table was covered in white linen, the service was all white and gold, and two white-uniformed, white-gloved waiters seated them, with Inspector Ha facing the view most directly.
The inspector was a little man who seemed to Kim quite wrong for the part. Inside a very serious and distinguished dark blue uniform decorated with much insignia and braid was someone who looked like he might be a messenger or a pushcart vendor. I wonder, Kim thought, if he can see past our appearances, our uniforms. And whether he’ll see past Richard Curtis’s.
Wine was poured, sparkling water was poured, small plates of delicious food were presented, and the two waiters retired behind the bar, handy if needed but out of earshot of the conversation at the table.
Inspector Ha said, “My friend Wai Fung in Singapore tells me you intend to alarm me.”
Fairchild said, “It seems only fair. You shouldn’t be the only one in the room not alarmed. The danger is to your city, after all.”
Inspector Ha said, “Wai Fung was vague about the threat, but promised you would all be more specific.”
Fairchild said, “You explain it, George,” and George did, describing briefly the work he’d done for Richard Curtis on Kanowit Island, and that Curtis had told George he would be using the method, the soliton, again in a larger way, in a dangerous and illegal way, and that he would get a lot of gold by doing it. When he finished, Fairchild said, “We don’t know exactly where he intends to pull this off, but when last heard from, he seemed to be headed in this direction.”
“There’s no record of his having entered Hong Kong recently,” Inspector Ha said, “I checked on that this morning.”
Luther said, “There wouldn’t be. He’s trying to keep his skirts clean.”
With a gesture at the windows, Fairchild said, “We think he’s probably on one of those boats out there. One yacht out of a hundred, five hundred.”
George said, “As for where he’ll do it, this is a very specific technique, it isn’t something that can be done just anywhere. It needs a combination of landfill and tunnels.”
Inspector Ha put down his fork and leaned back in his chair. To Kim, he looked grayer.
Fairchild said, “You know his target.”
Inspector Ha nodded at the windows. “Hong Kong Island has been added to and added to. The island used to end far back at Queens Road. Just about everything you’re looking at on the flats is reclaimed land.”
They all looked at the gleaming towers, and Kim remembered the great bruise of water thundering at her from Kanowit. She suddenly felt cold.
George said, very quietly, “Inspector, you’re using the wrong word.”
“What word?”
“Reclaimed,” George said. “Everyone likes to talk about reclaimed land. ‘The new airport is on reclaimed land.’ It’s a wonderfully solid word, but it is a distraction.”
Ha said, “From what?”
“The Dutch reclaim land,” George said. “They build dikes, and force the sea back, and the lands they find are called polders. They’re solid and real, the same lands they always were except they used to have water on them.”
He waved a hand toward the window. “That isn’t reclaimed. It’s landfill.”
Inspector Ha said, “Reclaimed is more... dignified.”
“But landfill is what it is,” George insisted. “Inherently unstable, never quite solid. And now I suppose you’ll tell me there are tunnels under there.”
“Yes, of course,” the inspector said.
Fairchild said, “What are they? A subway line, something like that?”
“No no,” Inspector Ha said, “many tunnels. In Hong Kong, as you know, air-conditioning is a necessity. The most efficient and inexpensive way to cool those buildings over there is with water from the harbor. There’s a tunnel from the seawall in to almost every one of those buildings. The longest is to the Bank of Hong Kong, at three hundred yards.”
“Three football fields,” George said. “But those would be pipes, not tunnels.”
“Pipes in tunnels,” Inspector Ha said. “The pipes have to be maintained. There are design differences from building to building, but the basic structure is a tunnel of concrete ten to fifteen feet in diameter, with three separate foot-wide pipes in it, one to bring water in, one to bring it out, and the third as standby.” Frowning at George, he said, “But you suggested these tunnels, for this soliton thing to work, have to be interconnected. The air-conditioning tunnels are sealed from one another, going only from the seawall to one specific building.”
“But,” George said, “they won’t be far from one another. At night, a crew could make side tunnels, and then conceal them again.”