General Tang climbed out of the public address van and stood staring uncomprehendingly at the human wreckage. He hadn’t recognized the muffled pops as shots since the public address system was so loud, and he was initially pleased when the people he could see from the van began to move. Alas, by then the situation was out of control. Surprised by the panic evident among the civilians he could see through the van’s windshield, Tang stopped speaking and heard, for the first time, the shooting, the shouting, and the screaming.
Staring now at the people lying in the otherwise empty street, he became aware that several officers were beside him, shouting questions.
The thought that ran through the general’s head was that the crowd should not have run. It was their fault, really. He certainly hadn’t given orders for the soldiers to shoot.
“Pick them up,” he said and gestured toward the dead and wounded. The officers beside him looked puzzled.
“Pick them up,” General Tang repeated. “Take them to the hospital. Clear the street.”
When the first shot was fired, a nervous Jake Grafton raked two old ladies from their perch on the retaining wall and shoved them onto the ground. Then he threw himself on top of them.
He didn’t move until the shooting was completely over and most of the people on their feet had fled. Only then did he stand and look about him at the bodies, at people bleeding, at people like himself who had taken what cover they could find.
He helped the two old women to their feet. Neither was hurt. They looked about them with wide, fearful eyes. Without a word they walked away, away from the bank and the soldiers and the gunshot victims.
Jake Grafton lingered a moment, watching the soldiers check the people lying on the concrete. Then, with his hands in his pockets, he walked through the troops and along the street away from the square.
The soldier who fired the first shot was from a fishing village on the northern Chinese coast. Eighteen years old, he had been in the army for nearly two years. He had been in Hong Kong for two weeks and two days — he was counting the days so he could accurately report to his family when he next sat down with a scribe to dictate a letter. His name was Ng Choy, and now he was crying.
Sitting on the hard, clean, bloody pavement of the bank square, he couldn’t stop the tears. The body of the man he had shot was lying beside him. In his panic Ng had triggered a burst of seven shots, all of which hit this middle-aged man in the chest. By some fluke, after the man was shot his heart continued beating for almost half a minute, pumping a prodigious quantity of blood out the bullet holes. The sticky mess was congealing now and turning dark.
Ng Choy didn’t understand any of it. He didn’t understand why he was here, what everyone had been shouting about, what the sergeant had wanted him to do, why this man had tried to wrestle him out of the way, and he didn’t understand why he had shot him.
So he sat there, crying uncontrollably, while his fellow soldiers walked around him, carrying away the wounded and the dead.
Finally two soldiers picked up the corpse beside Ng, leaving him on the cold pavement with his rifle and the pool of sticky blood.
Rip Buckingham cradled the telephone automatically between his cheek and shoulder. “How many dead?” he asked the reporter on the line.
“Fifteen, the soldiers say. One woman died as they loaded her into the ambulance. At least forty more were injured by bullets. I estimate a dozen or two were trampled — it will be impossible to get an accurate count of the injured.”
“Get to the bank officials. Find out why they wouldn’t open the doors of the bank.”
The story would be front-page news around the world, with a big, bold headline: 15 KILLED IN HONG KONG BY PLA TROOPS. The teaser under the main headline would read, Crowd at Japanese Bank Fired Upon.
Ten minutes later Rip was told, “I talked to a cashier. The officers of the bank are in a meeting and unavailable. The bank is insolvent. Tokyo refused to loan it any more money.”
“What?”
“Yes. The Japanese are letting the bank fail. The word is Tokyo already poured twenty billion yen into it. Apparently that’s the limit.”
This story is growing by leaps and bounds, Rip thought.
He called a man he knew on a Japanese newspaper and asked for help. In twenty minutes the Tokyo newsman called back with confirmation from the Finance Ministry. The government of Japan had decided not to save the Bank of the Orient, a Japanese-owned bank headquartered in Hong Kong. After consultations with Finance Ministry officials, the Chinese authorities had elected not to intervene.
Rip looked at his watch. There was still time. He grabbed a notebook and his sports coat and headed for the door.
The army was cleaning up the mess in front of the Bank of the Orient, loading bodies in ambulances and the backs of army trucks. Rip stood watching for several minutes. There were few onlookers; the soldiers standing around didn’t seem in the mood for gawkers. Yet because he wasn’t Chinese, it was several minutes before the nearest soldier gestured for him to move on.
Rip went to the office tower entrance of the bank building and showed his press pass to the security guard. It took some talking and several hundred Hong Kong dollars, but eventually he managed to get into the executive suite on the fourth floor.
He explained to the receptionist that he wanted to talk to the president of the bank. He gave her his card: “Rip Buckingham, Managing Editor, China Post,” with the China Post lettering in the company’s trademarked style.
The receptionist told him to take a seat.
He looked at the art on the walls and at the magazines on the table. He really didn’t expect to see any bank officer. He thought it would be helpful to see the street in front of the bank again, see it knowing it was an important place, so he could visualize the scene the reporters were describing to him. And he had the time before deadline. So he was surprised when the receptionist appeared in the doorway and said, “Mr. Genda has a few minutes. Come this way, please.”
Saburo Genda had a corner office. Through the window Rip caught a glimpse of the last army truck leaving. Except for a few police guards, the square was empty.
Genda was slumped in a large stuffed chair beside the desk with his back to the square. He didn’t look up as Rip entered, didn’t pay any attention to him until the Australian was seated across from him. He had Rip’s card in his hand. He glanced at it.
“So, Mr. Buckingham,” Genda said in accented English, “ask your questions.”
The Japanese executive looked, Rip thought, like he had slept in his clothes. He had the fashionably gray hair, the dark power suit and tie, the trim waistline… and he looked exhausted, worn out.
“What happened, Mr. Genda?”
“They killed the bank.”
“They? Who is they?” Rip asked as he wrote down the previous reply in shorthand.
“The Finance Ministry. They seized our assets in Japan. They refused to let us draw on those assets for the cash we need to operate on a daily basis. The news leaked out, there was a run on the bank… We are out of business, insolvent. The bank has,” Genda took a deep breath and exhaled, “collapsed.” He raised his arms and let them fall to the arms of the chair. He looked at his hands as if he had never seen them before.
“You are saying the Finance Ministry chose to put you out of business?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know why?”