“Sometimes.”
“Well, that sailor has some stroke, or thinks he has.”
“Thinks he has, yeah.”
“Do you buy it about Sonny Wong? Does a snatch sound like something he would do?”
“Never can tell, man. Things are getting twangy tight around this town. Riots, people shot in the streets, power off half the night…”
“Did you hear about the airport?” Was that Bubba Lee? “The computers out there rolled over and died. People trapped on the concourses, no water in the fountains or toilets, flights canceled. I heard someone went crazy and threw a chair though a plate-glass window.”
“Whole goddamn town is falling apart.”
“Hey, the whole goddamn country is falling apart, if you ask me.”
There was more of it, thirty minutes or so. At some point Carmellini realized that there were only two men talking. Eisenberg had been silent a long time, as had Kerry Kent. Maybe they were no longer in the room.
Didn’t Cole say Eisenberg knew the woman in the passport office?
Carmellini flipped to that microphone. A loud conversation in Chinese drowned out everything else in the room.
Disgusted, Tommy Carmellini turned the selector to listen to the mike in the consul general’s office.
Yep, there was Kent.
“—might kill him. I’ve been saying for months that he should have an armed bodyguard around the clock. Does anyone pay any attention to the fears of a woman? What does she know? What could she possibly contribute to this—”
“He didn’t want a bodyguard! You know that. Stop this goddamn whining.”
“Whining? They may kill him!”
“Indeed. He’s been a fugitive for a dozen years, with his life hanging by a thread. The revolution continues regardless. The world keeps turning, the tide is coming in… at last!”
“What are you doing to get him back alive?”
“I’m paying the damned ransom.”
“What else?”
“What else do you think I should do?”
“I don’t know!” she moaned. “I only know that I want him alive! I need him, China needs him—everything depends on him. Everything!”
“Tell me some more about Sonny Wong,” Jake Grafton said to Rip Buckingham, “everything you can remember.” They were still in Rip’s kitchen, seated in front of the window. The rain had stopped and the fog was lifting, revealing the skyscrapers of the Central District.
“Sonny’s the head of the last of the old-line Hong Kong criminal gangs, or tongs,” Rip told the American. “He’s sort of an anachronism, a fossil from the wilder days.”
“Kidnapping isn’t anything new,” Jake said sourly.
“No,” Rip admitted. “I thought Sonny was above poopy little capers like this, but apparently not.”
“I want to know everything, who his associates are, what he does for money, where he lives, what he eats, his habits — vices, women, kids, everything.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“I want my wife back.”
“That may be impossible.”
Jake Grafton gripped the edge of the table and squeezed as hard as he could. All these years, ups and downs and ins and outs, good times and hard times, the tiny triumphs and disasters and little victories that fill our days… to have her life end here, now, snuffed out by a criminal psychopath who wants money?
When his muscles began quivering from the exertion, Jake Grafton released the table. He rubbed his hands together, thought about Callie, about their adopted daughter, Amy. “Let’s hope not,” he said to Rip, so softly that the Australian almost missed the response.
CHAPTER TEN
British consul general Sir Robert MacDonald spent a long afternoon with his staff writing a situation report for the Foreign Office. While so engaged he received a telephone call from the foreign minister in London, who was worried.
‘The PM wants to know what in the world is going on out there,” the foreign minister said after the usual pleasantries.
“The authorities are having some public relations difficulties,” replied Sir Robert, never one to overlook the obvious. He had gone to school with the PM, who loathed him. Forced to accept Sir Robert into the government, the PM had sent him as far from London as he possibly could. “A few technical problems too, I’m afraid,” the consul general continued. “Rather inconvenient when the power goes off at odd hours.”
“The Buckingham newspapers published a provocative piece in today’s U.K. and American editions,” the foreign minister informed Her Majesty’s Hong Kong representative. “I wonder if you’ve seen it?”
“Afraid not. The locals shut down the China Post, which was Buckingham’s little rag hereabouts. Of course, they shut down all the newspapers — I’m sure my staff sent you that information in the morning report.”
“Richard Buckingham signed this piece himself. He says that a revolution is about to sweep China, one that will overthrow the Communists.”
“His son was the editor of the China Post,” Sir Robert replied. Rip had been a thorn in MacDonald’s side since the day the man arrived from London. “Governor Sun tossed him in jail,” he said, unable to keep the satisfaction completely out of his voice. “He’s out now, of course. Perhaps he had something to do with the article.”
“I see,” the FM said slowly.
“It’s always a mistake to quarrel with a man who buys ink by the barrel,” Sir Robert continued, repeating a comment his wife had made to him on several occasions when he took offense at China Post editorials. “Richard Buckingham can say anything he wants in his newspapers and there’s jolly little the Chinks can do about it. But talk of revolution is rot, pure rot. The Communists are firmly in control. They have a division of troops in the colony.”
Sir Robert still referred to Hong Kong as a colony, which it had ceased to be in 1997, even though his staff and the Foreign Office had repeatedly requested him not to.
“The Orient Bank fiasco was very poorly handled,” the consul general told the foreign minister now. “I expressed our dismay at the senseless loss of life. Appalling. I told Sun that myself. Still, the Chinese brook no nonsense from dissenters.” That was a serious understatement. The authorities were positively paranoid about dissenters, which caused them diplomatic problems throughout the Western world, including the U.K.
The FM was not so sure about the Communists’ control of the political situation. “The world turns,” he said. “I seem to recall that a few years ago everyone thought that the Communists in Russia had a firm grip—”
“China is not Russia,” Sir Robert shot back, quite sure he was on solid ground. “The conditions are completely different.”
“I’ll convey your views to the PM,” the foreign minister said wearily.
“Do that,” Sir Robert said. “Good-bye.”
He was amazed at the credulity of the people in London. Of course, they were eight thousand miles from the scene of the crime, but still… a revolution? Here? Because Richard Buckingham said so in his newspapers?
Governor Sun also had a busy afternoon. Between calls from Beijing demanding detailed facts he didn’t have and issuing directives that made little sense, Sun huddled with key members of his staff, who were trying desperately to establish why the electrical power had failed last night throughout the
S.A.R. and why so many of the computers that controlled critical government functions were on the blink.
“Could it be sabotage?” Sun demanded. Like so many of the bureaucrats in Beijing, he had a healthy respect for the unvoiced anger of the people. Baldly, he feared the people he ruled. Repeatedly throughout Chinese history rioting mobs had overthrown dynasties and warlords. Anger and frustration could transform peasants into fierce giants capable of slaying dragons, and Sun well knew it.