He had another look inside the hollow cassette and found what he needed, a small length of inch-wide plastic adhesive tape, black and yellow in color. He spread it out, ripped the protective covering off the sticky part and wound it carefully around the circumference of the melon, binding the two halves together. The words around the melon now read SOUTH CHINA FRUIT.
He repacked the parts of the cassette player into its original box, and with the melon in a separate plastic bag, he slipped out of the office, told Suzie he would be gone for less than 30 minutes, and headed for the elevators. On the way, he dumped the box down the incinerator.
Once outside he moved fast, walking quickly between the skyscrapers, and then heading into more intimate streets, toward the market stalls down between the teeming shoppers in Li Yuen and Wing Sing streets. It took him 10 minutes to find the stall he wanted, Jian Shuai Fruit and Vegetables, which comprised three long barrows, containing every possible kind of produce. At one end was a pile of melons, several of them bound with the black and yellow plastic tape of the South China Fruit Corporation.
Mr. Jian himself came toward him. “Good morning, Mr. White. Hold open bag, please,” he said, picking up two of the melons and placing them carefully inside. Even Rick hardly noticed him remove the other one and deposit it back next to the till, so swiftly did the fruit seller operate. Then he came forward with a handful of Hong Kong dollars. “Your change, Mr. White, thank you…thank you very much…next, please…you like some snow peas, madame?…ah…good choice.”
Rick White vanished into the crowd, heading back through the streets into the skyscrapers. Back on the sixteenth floor he made Suzie a gift of the two new melons and settled down to work, his task on behalf of his government now complete.
Back in the narrow throughway off Li Yuen Street, Jian Shuai temporarily handed over the fruit-selling operation to his wife and daughters. Then he packed a box full of mixed produce, cherries, snow peas, peppers, rice, lichees, spinach, broccoli and one melon. Still wearing his white apron, he stopped a passing taxi at the end of the street and had the driver take him down to Aberdeen Harbor, a couple of miles away on the southwestern coast.
The sheer impossibility of finding anyone here in the crowded madness of this waterborne community, where 80,000 people make their homes on floating sampans, did not daunt Shuai. And he hurried through the insane commerce of the place, past the floating restaurants, looking out at the gentle chaos of the East Lamma Channel, dodging trucks and delivery boys, searching for the big fruit and vegetable junk owned by his friends Quinlei Zhao and Kexiong Gao.
These two were familiar traders on these waters, buying fruit from all of the remote farmers on the fertile islands in the area. Their boat was a big heavy-sailed 40-footer, and with a decent quartering wind they could slice along at 10 knots. They were expert seamen, and careful buyers of the best produce. They had also worked for the CIA for years, yet still moved busily through the trading channels, no suspicion of any kind attached to either one of them. Zhao and Gao, both fortyish, were the consummate field operators in an area swarming with Chinese spies.
And now they waited, scanning the dockside for the sight of Shuai, carrying his box along the waterfront, watching for the familiar figure of the CIA’s most successful messenger. Gao saw him first, and stood up, yelling, “Over here, you idiot…you’re late and we’re in a hurry…SHUAI! OVER HERE!”
In the frantic race for sales that kept Aberdeen Harbor in a daylong turmoil, this was normal banter between traders. Perfectly normal. Just the way Zhao and Gao liked it.
Shuai came on over, carrying his box, and handed it over, shouting, “All right! All right! Who you think you’re yelling at, hah! You don’t order till yesterday — you think you own my company? Here, take it…and mind you pay on time, for a change.”
And with that he disappeared back into the throng, Gao yelling behind him, “You don’t get a move on, we don’t order no more…you hear me?”
He took the box of produce and placed it in the middle of another pile. Then he began to cast the lines and pull up the big gaff-rigged sail. Within moments they had caught the nice southwest monsoon breeze, which drove them out into the Pearl River Delta, where they headed the junk northwest, up around Lan Tau Island, and then on upstream toward Canton.
These were treacherous waters for all but Chinese nationals. Heavily patrolled by the coast guard, the seaways through the Delta are not open to foreign shipping. The Chinese authorities have ruled that the Lema Channel, which is, effectively, the southern approach to the Pearl River, is closed to all non-Chinese vessels. This widespread paranoia by successive governments reached back to the Opium Wars with Great Britain 150 years previous.
If you want to sail upriver to Canton you have to be Chinese, in a Chinese boat, with a special permit to navigate the waters. And even then you may well be stopped and questioned. Only the trading regulars, local men, well known to patrolling customs and river police, were never harassed. Which was why Zhao and Gao rode the southwesterly without a care in the world, for hour after hour, selecting a course up the center, staying clear of the shoals along the left bank where two major rivers split into a thousand tributaries and then meander across green wetlands, only about a foot above sea level for almost 50 miles.
As the sun set, the breeze dropped slightly. The vegetable junk had been running since midday, averaging nine knots, which now put them in the vicinity of the city. When the river split 12 miles downstream from the center, Gao steered for the north fork, keeping to the right in a line of other small boats heading into the wharves of Canton.
And for the next mile they were just another trading junk, bringing the freshest produce from the lower Delta up to the hotel and wholesale agents who awaited them each evening. But now Zhao for the first time switched off his navigation lights and left the convoy, sliding into the shadows, not yet lit by the rising moon. The little sonar sounder soon showed them in less than five feet of water, and Zhao brought the junk about, heading back along the shore, below the industrial suburb of Huangpu.
It was lonely along here, out of the main north fork throughway, but it required a lifetime of knowledge to avoid running aground, even in a skiff that drew no more than two feet fully loaded. The warm, light breeze hissed through the miles of bullrushes off their port beam, and Gao watched the sounder, edging along through the dark shallow water. Every time it showed only four feet below the keel, he told Zhao to “pull,” nosing the boat to starboard into a fractionally deeper channel.
And now they could see a familiar clump of willow trees hanging almost above them, and Zhao pulled in the sail, cutting the speed to only two knots, and they drifted quietly in toward the land. Up ahead was another boat, and Gao picked up three quick flashes of light. “That’s him,” he hissed. “We’re right on target.”
And now they could hear the splash of oars as the little rowboat made its way toward them. “Dong! You there?”
“Okay, Zhao…I’m coming alongside.”
The two boats bumped together. They shook hands, and the box of fruit with the single melon was handed over. “Hurry now, Zhao…you go quick…go now…there’s patrols everywhere.”
“Good-bye, little brother…take care now.”
Zhao laid the big junk onto a southwest course, and the light breeze gusted now over his port bow. The sail was already tight and he kept it there, heading the boat up, steering out into the channel, switching the navigation lights on again.