Cole stood behind the desk now, looked into each face. “There’s a crowd gathering in front of the Bank of the Orient this morning,” he said without preliminaries. “Tang and the army will probably run them off before long.”
No one disputed that assessment.
“I want to know what’s going on in City Hall.”
“We have some excellent sources there, sir,” Bubba Lee began, but Cole waved him into silence.
“They are marvelously corrupt — I know that. The problem is our whisperers are too low on the totem pole. I want to know what Beijing is telling Governor Sun and General Tang and what those two are telling Beijing, and I want to know it now, in real time.”
Lee took a deep breath and said, “The only way we can get that information, sir, is to tap the telephones.”
“While you are at it, bug Sun’s office. Do it today.” Cole nodded curtly at Lee, then seated himself in the chair behind his desk and picked up the top document in his in-basket.
Apparently the spooks had been dismissed. Lee turned without a word and led his colleagues from the room.
Out in the hallway with the doorway closed, Lee faced them. “You heard him. He’s the most garrulous man I ever met.”
“A dangerous blabbermouth,” Carson Eisenberg agreed.
“Nevertheless, he’s given us our marching orders, so let’s dive in. Carmellini, your star is rising.”
As they walked toward the CIA office, Carmellini said, “Can anyone get us a couple of telephone company trucks and some uniforms?”
“Tommy, you are in a city where money doesn’t just talk, it sings like Pavarotti. You can get anything in Hong Kong; the only question is the price.”
“We need a floor plan of City Hall. Blueprints would be better.”
“Blueprints, yes,” said George Wang. “We bought them from a butler when the British were still in residence.” He waggled his eyebrows at Kerry Kent, who stayed deadpan.
“Okay,” said Tommy Carmellini, “this is how we’re going to do it …”
Rip Buckingham was in his office on the second floor of the newspaper, closeted with the newspaper’s headline writer, when he heard a commotion on the stairs. By the time he got to the door the policemen were up the stairs and shouting fiercely at two reporters who were trying to keep them from coming in. One of the policemen, a sergeant, tired of a zealous reporter’s interference and threatened to chop him in the side of the neck.
“Ng Yuan Lee, what are you doing?” Rip shouted in Cantonese, which froze the sergeant. He snarled at the reporter, who drew back.
“Rip Buckingham, I have a warrant.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No,” the sergeant said, extracting a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘They have issued a warrant for your arrest, signed by the chief judge. The governor demanded it.”
Rip Buckingham threw up his hands in resignation. He didn’t, however, argue with the sergeant and his colleague, who were merely doing their jobs.
“I’m sorry, Rip,” Marcus Hallaby, the headline writer, told him from the office door. “God, I’m sorry! I just didn’t think the headline was that big a deal, and…” Marcus was crying. He was also half soused, precisely the same condition he had been in yesterday afternoon when he wrote the massacre headline, precisely the same condition he had been in for the last ten years. He covered his face with his hands and sagged against the wall.
“Hey, Marcus, it wasn’t your fault,” Rip said, trying to sound like he meant it. After all, he had been the one who always refused to fire Marcus when headlines irritated people he couldn’t afford to irritate. These little storms blew in several times a year. For a day or two there was lightning and thunder, then the sky would clear and Marcus would still be there, contrite, apologetic, slightly drunk … The damn guy just couldn’t handle life sober and Rip had never been able to condemn him for that.
“It was the story,” he told Marcus. “And the governor…”
“We must shut down the newspaper, Buckingham,” the sergeant said gently. “We have our orders. Everyone must leave the building. We will put a guard on the doors.”
“Who gave these orders?”
“Governor Sun Siu Ki.”
“May I see the paper, please?”
The order was in Chinese. Buckingham read it while the sergeant wiped his hatband and ran his hand through his hair. He ignored the curious staffers standing nearby and turned his back on Marcus, who was sobbing audibly. Rip folded the document and handed it back to the officer.
“Perhaps it will help if I tell all the staff in English what they must do.” He said it easily, without even a hint of temper, and the sergeant agreed again. As a very young man touring China, Buckingham had learned the fine art of self-control.
Some of the staffers wanted to argue with the officers, but Buckingham wouldn’t permit it. With sour looks, muttered oaths, and tears, the staffers — two-thirds of whom were Chinese — turned off the computers and office equipment and vacated the building. Buckingham remained the epitome of gracious affability, so he was given permission to have a private conversation with an assistant before the policemen took him away. Most of the staff milled helplessly on the sidewalk as the police car disappeared into traffic.
Jail held no terrors for Rip Buckingham. He had been incarcerated on several occasions in his footloose past when local policemen didn’t know quite what to make of a six-foot-three Australian bicycling through forbidden areas, that is, areas in China off the beaten track, in which tourists were not permitted. He usually talked his way out of their clutches, but now and then he spent a few nights in the local can.
Fortunately his gastrointestinal tract was as impervious to bacteria as PVC pipe. Had his GI tract been more normal, one suspects he would not have strayed so far from tap water. He would probably be in Sydney now, married to one of the local sheilas, with one and a half blond kids, holding down some make-work position in his father’s worldwide newspaper empire while the old man groomed him to follow in his footsteps, et cetera, et cetera.
As he rode through the streets of Hong Kong in the police car, wedged in the backseat between Sergeant Ng and his colleague, Rip Buckingham thought about the et ceteras. He also thought about his father, Richard Buckingham, and what he would say when he heard the news. Not the news his son had been arrested, but that the paper had been shut down.
Amazingly, for a man who owned fifty-two newspapers located in six countries, his father never really understood the romance of the printed word. Richard Buckingham saw newspapers as very profitable businesses with enviable cash flows. “Newspapers,” he liked to say, “are machines for turning ink and paper into money.”
Measured on Richard’s criteria, the China Post had once been one of his best. B.C. Before the Communists.
Strange, Rip thought. He was thinking about the paper as if it would never publish again. Well, perhaps its day was over. For that matter, perhaps Hong Kong’s day was over.
The Brits just turned over the keys and walked away. They went home to their unimpressive little island on the other side of the world and pretended Hong Kong never happened.
Maybe that was the wise thing to do.
Rip Buckingham shook his head, angry at himself. He was becoming demoralized. This was his city, his and Sue Lin’s. She was born in Hong Kong, grew up here; he had adopted it.
Sue Lin loved Hong Kong.
Well, he thought defensively, he did, too. The city belonged to everyone who loved her. God knows, there were millions of people who did.
Despite his best efforts at keeping his spirits up, he was glum when the police car rolled through the gate of the city prison.