“And single, too.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“I don’t recall mentioning my marital status before.”
“You didn’t. Your reputation preceded you. Tommy Carmellini, unmarried burglar, thief, second-story man…”
“And all-around good egg.”
“James Bond without the dash and panache.”
“Don’t knock the recipe until you’ve tried it.”
“You’ll have to sell me.”
“I’m willing to give it a go, as you Brits say.”
“Tell me about the Internet pornography. Little details like that spice up action reports, make them interesting.”
The consulate pool car pulled to a stop in front of them, and the valet got out. “I was saving that morsel for later,” Carmellini said as he tipped the man and accepted the keys. “After all, the night is young.”
CHAPTER TWO
The morning sun shone full on the balcony of the fifth-floor hotel room when Jake Grafton opened the sliding glass door. The bustle and roar from the streets below assailed him, but he grinned and seated himself at the small, round glass table. As he sipped at a cup of coffee he sampled the smells, sights, and sounds of Hong Kong.
His wife, Callie, stepped out on the balcony. She was dressed to the nines, wearing only a subtle hint of makeup, with her purse over her shoulder and her attaché case in her left hand.
As she bent to kiss Jake he got a faint whiff of scent. “You smell delicious this morning, Mrs. Grafton.”
She paused at the door. A furrow appeared between her eyebrows. “What are you going to do today?” she asked.
“Loaf, read the morning paper, cash some traveler’s checks, and meet you for lunch.”
“When are you going to start on your assignment?”
“I’m working on it this very minute. I know it doesn’t look like it, but the wheels are turning.”
Today was the third day of the conference, an intense seven-day immersion in Western culture for Chinese college students. Callie was one of the faculty.
“I’m soaking up atmosphere,” Jake added. “This trip was billed as my vacation, as you will recall.”
Perhaps it was the rare sight of her husband in pajamas at eight on a weekday morning that bothered her. She smiled, nodded, and said good-bye.
As Jake worked on the coffee he surveyed the old police barracks immediately across the road from the hotel. The barracks was surrounded by a ten-foot-high brick wall, which hid it from people on the street. Three stories high, it was constructed of whitewashed brick or masonry in the shape of a T. The windows in the base of the T, which was parallel to Jake, revealed rooms with bunks, lockers, showers, laundry rooms, and a kitchen and dining hall, all set in from outside balconies that ran the length of each floor, much like an American motel. The top of the T was an administration building, apparently full of offices. Police cars filled the parking spaces around the building.
The lawn, however, was a military encampment, covered with troops, tents, fires, and cooking pots. Here at least five hundred People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, troops were bivouacked, covering almost every square yard of greenery. Pencil-thin columns of smoke from the fires rose into the still morning air.
In colonial days the Royal Hong Kong police force must have been a nice life for single British men who wanted to do something exotic with their lives, or at least live their mundane lives in an exotic locale and make a very nice living in the process. Like most colonial police forces, the Royal Hong Kong force was famously corrupt, had been since the first Brit donned a uniform and strolled the streets.
Today Chinese policemen and soldiers scurried to and fro like so many ants. Jake wondered if there were any British policemen still wearing the Hong Kong uniform.
Jake Grafton drained his coffee cup and turned his attention to the English-language newspaper, the China Post, which had been slid under the door of the room early this morning.
The financial crisis in Japan was the lead article on the front page, which contained lengthy pronouncements from the Chinese government in Beijing. The article also contained a quote from the American consul general, Virgil Cole.
Jake read the name with interest and shook his head. He had flown with Cole on his last cruise during the Vietnam War, and the two of them had survived a shootdown. And he hadn’t seen the man since. Oh, they corresponded routinely for years after Cole left the navy, but finally in one move or other the Graftons lost Cole’s address, and the Christmas cards stopped. That was ten or so years ago.
Tiger Cole. After his broken back healed, he had gotten out of the navy and gone to grad school, then got into the high-tech business world in Silicon Valley. When he was named consul general to Hong Kong two years ago, Fortune magazine said he was worth more than a billion dollars. Of course, he was also a generous donor to political causes.
Maybe he should call Tiger, ask him out to dinner. Then again… He decided to wait another day. If Tiger didn’t call, he would call him.
On the second page of the paper was a column devoted to a murder that apparently happened last night. The body was discovered just before press time. Jake recognized the victim’s name — China Bob Chan — and read the article with a sinking feeling. As the key figure in a campaign finance scandal in Washington, China Bob had been getting a lot of press in the United States of late, most of it the kind of coverage that an honest man could do without. Chan’s untimely demise due to lead poisoning was going to go over like a lead brick on Capitol Hill.
On the first page of the second section of the newspaper Jake was pleasantly surprised to find a photo of Callie with two of the other Americans on the seminar faculty, along with a three-paragraph write-up. Amazingly, the reporter even spelled Callie’s name correctly. He carefully folded that page to keep.
All in all, Jake thought, the newspaper looked exactly like what it was, a news sheet published under the watchful eye of a totalitarian government intolerant of criticism or dissent. Not a word about why the PLA troops were choking the streets, standing at every street corner, every shop entrance, every public facility, nothing but the bare facts about China Bob’s murder, not even an op-ed piece about the implications of his death vis-à-vis Chinese-U.S. relations.
Jake’s attention was captured by several columns of foreign sports scores on the next-to-the-last page. Australian football received more column inches than the American professional teams did, Jake noted, grinning.
He tossed the paper down and stretched. Ahhhhh…
Someone was knocking on the door to the room.
“Just a minute!”
Jake checked his reflection in the mirror over the dresser — no need to scandalize the maid — then opened the door a crack.
A man in a business suit stood there, a westerner… Tommy Carmellini.
“Come in.” Jake held the door open. “I’m not going very fast this morning, I’m afraid.”
“Have you seen the morning paper?”
“China Bob?”
“Yes.”
“I saw the story.”
“It’s true. Chan’s as dead as a man can get.”
“Let me take a shower, then we’ll go downstairs for some breakfast.”
“Okay.” Tommy Carmellini sat down in the only chair and opened his attaché case.
When Jake came out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, Carmellini was repacking his sweep gear in the attaché case. “No bugs,” he told Jake.
“The phone?”
“Impossible to say. I have no idea how much impedance and resistance on the line are normal.”
“Okay.”
“How did you know the story was true?”
“Alas, I met China Bob last night a minute or two after he had joined the ranks of the recently departed. He was warm as toast and the hole in his head was brand-new. There was a spent 7.65-millimeter cartridge under a table a few feet away.”