Black was not an easy colour to spot in a crowd. The bank was fairly busy, as it was near closing time. There was no sign of the assassin. Bond looked up to the fifth level and thought he saw a man in black moving along the right side of the atrium towards the west side of the building. He quickly ran up the next escalator to the fifth level.
Attempting to look inconspicuous, Bond stepped up to a long counter where bank customers filled out forms and deposit slips. He surveyed the large room and found his prey. The assassin was moving towards a bank of lifts on the west side of the building. He was looking around, trying to determine if he was being followed. Bond kept moving towards him, picking up his pace.
By now, police cars and a fire engine had arrived outside. Many of the bank’s employees were looking out of the south-side windows at the chaos in the street below. A security guard who usually blocked access to the lifts was also curious and had wandered over to the windows. The assassin reached the lift lobby and pressed a button. Then he saw Bond moving towards him, and a look of panic crossed his face.
Bond started to run. There was a good eighty metres between them. The lift door opened and the assassin stepped inside quickly. Damn! Now Bond didn’t care who saw him. He ran full speed to the bank of lifts and pressed the “UP” button. He watched the numbers on the assassin’s lift, noting that it stopped on twelve. Bond’s lift came and he got inside, just as he heard the security guard shout at him to stop.
Level twelve was the top of the atrium. One could look out and survey all the public areas from this impressive vantage point. Access to the higher floors was restricted to bank personnel only. A security guard stood by the lifts to prevent people from wandering up. Bond’s lift door opened just in time for him to see the assassin club the guard on the back of his head. The guard fell and the assassin ran to the left towards a stairwell enclosed in glass.
“Stop!” Bond shouted. He hesitated to draw his Walther PPK—he didn’t want to start a panic inside the bank. But then the assassin opened the door to the stairwell and an alarm sounded, alerting everyone in the building to their presence.
The assassin began to run up the zigzagging flights of stairs. Bond followed him into the stairwell, and took the steps two at a time. Three guards had joined the chase, and the police were most likely on their way. They entered the stairwell after Bond had climbed two flights and shouted “Stop!” in Cantonese. One of the men then shouted the word in English.
Bond called down to them. “The man who blew up the car outside is running up the stairs! He’s dressed in black!” Then he continued the chase.
Who could the assassin be? Was he Triad? Was he part of the Dragon Wing? Why was Guy Thackeray killed? Had he been the target of the floating restaurant disaster after all, and was this a second attempt on his life? Was this some kind of vendetta? Perhaps someone in the organization knew of his intention to sell the company’s stock to China and wanted to stop him. It was possible that the Triad wasn’t involved at all. The puzzle was certainly becoming more convoluted. Bond wondered how he would get to the bottom of any of this now that Thackeray was dead.
He heard a door slam above him. The assassin had left the stairwell. Thanks to Bond’s acute sense of hearing, he estimated that the sound couldn’t have been more than fifty metres above him. Bond stepped on to the next landing and was met by the rattle of gunfire. The assassin had shot a security guard in the doorway of the twentieth floor. Normally there was no exit from the stairwell without a card key. The guard must have opened the door from the inside, hoping to intercept the killer. Now his body was lying in the doorway, jamming it open. Bond leaped over the body and bolted through the door in pursuit.
He saw the killer running towards an open-plan area full of desks and office staff. The employees were cowering against the windows. The assassin leaped on to a desk, turned, and fired an automatic pistol at Bond, who dived for the floor just in time. Then, throwing caution to the wind, he drew his Walther, but the man had already leaped to another desk and was no longer a good target.
“Everyone get down!” Bond shouted. People did as they were told, some of them translating Bond’s orders into Cantonese for those who needed it.
The assassin jumped from desk to desk, flinging files and papers into the air, until he reached the other end of the floor. He ran through a door and into another office space leading back in the direction of the lifts and stairwell. Bond decided not to follow him through there, but instead to go back the way he had come in the hope of meeting him in the stairwell. The three security guards in pursuit burst into the room with their guns drawn. They shouted at Bond to halt.
“I’m a British policeman!” he shouted. “I’m not the man you’re after, he’s coming round through the room next-door!” The guards looked confused, unsure whether to believe him or not. Suddenly, the assassin ran into the lift area. He had a frightened Chinese woman with him, a bank employee, and his gun was to her head.
He shouted in Cantonese. Bond didn’t have to translate his words. The guards froze, as did Bond. Bond said in his best Cantonese, “You won’t get away with this.”
An empty lift opened behind the assassin, and he took the opportunity to step inside, taking the woman with him. The door closed and the lift started moving up towards the top of the building. Bond immediately pressed the “UP” button and waited for another lift. One guard was speaking in Cantonese into a walkie-talkie, informing other men where the assassin was headed. They had obviously decided to believe that Bond was on their side.
Just as another lift arrived, Bond noted that the assassin’s lift had stopped on level forty-two. Bond and the guards took the lift up to the same level and stepped out. It was a large executive conference room with a bar along one side.
“Oh, no,” a guard muttered. He pointed towards an exit leading outside.
They could see the assassin on a catwalk on the other side of the window. He was inching his way along with the woman in tow. He looked as frightened as she did.
“What the hell does he think he’s doing?” Bond asked. “He can’t escape now!”
A guard said, “He could get on one of our hydraulic lifts on the extension. There is a ladder there he can use to climb down to another floor.”
Bond could see what the guard meant. Extended on an aluminium-clad structure was a box-like “cherry picker” which apparently could move up and down the building and was used to clean the windows. Sure enough, the assassin began to force the woman towards the box. She was too terrified to move. The man pointed his gun at her, shouting at her, but this only made her terror worse.
“I’m going out there,” Bond said, and moved towards the emergency exit. The killer, meanwhile, had abandoned the woman and was making his way towards the box alone. Bond stepped on to the catwalk and was surprised by the force of the wind. He didn’t want to look down, for he would surely have difficulty maintaining his balance. All of Hong Kong lay before him. If it had not been from such a precarious perch, it would have been a spectacular view.
The woman was clutching a round beam that formed part of the extension, holding on for dear life. Bond reached out to her. “Give me your hand!” he shouted. The woman cried, but wouldn’t move. “Please! He’s gone!” Bond said. “The man is gone! Give me your hand and I’ll help you get back inside!”
The woman looked at him through her tears. She was about forty, and very, very frightened. She said something in Cantonese that Bond didn’t understand, but he kept his hand outstretched. He smiled at her and nodded encouragingly. Finally, she nervously extended her arm and clutched Bond’s hand. She was trembling furiously.