FEARLESS FINN'S MURDEROUS ADVENTURE (14 page)

———

The Sun Yat Sun has not had political ambitions for many years, but the Triads, Yakuza and Mafia all began with political ambitions. They built armies, made intelligence connections, and ruined the reputations of those they chose not to support. With the passing of time, the early political ambitions of the Triads were achieved. The landowners no longer treated the peasants as serfs, and the crooked tax collectors were too afraid of the consequences to demand levies from the tradesmen and shopkeepers.

We still had growing organisations to maintain, however, and we had to find ways to raise funds. So we offered shelter to those who could not seek protection from the police, the judiciary or the public representatives. In return, they invited us to become both their protectors and their partners. And it is only right that the people living under our protection contribute to our expenses.

The Hong Kong and Macau Administrations left the Sun Yat Sun to conduct our business in peace, and we left the Administrations in peace…to rob their own people with levies and taxes. For a very long time we had exclusive control over extortion, prostitution, gambling, money laundering, people-trafficking, smuggling, drug manufacturing and distribution, arms supply, fraud, and all manner of commercial crime.

It was a sad day for the Royal Hong Kong Police, and all Triads, when the Independent Commission Against Corruption got under way. After many years of an easy life, things became complicated. The business owners stopped coming to me in the police station with their complaints; they began to go directly to the offices of the ICAC. I could no longer arrange suitable responses to deal with these selfish people – unhappy with the protection they were enjoying at the hands of my Triad.

Little by little the ICAC dogs whittled away our control over much of the drug trafficking, contract killing, gambling, prostitution, protection rackets, and extortion rings. We had no choice but to move into more complicated crimes – money laundering, banking, financial services, bootleg tobacco and alcohol, and counterfeit electronics, clothing and CDs. Our friends in Taiwan have become experts in counterfeiting parts for aircraft, surgical instruments, medicines, publications, and even cars. And in Japan the Yakuza control the stock exchange and foreign exchange markets…they have not even lost control of the fish markets.

I have found that I prefer banking. It appeals to my sense of justice that we should control the money that the imperialist
gweilos
make on the sweat and toil of the downtrodden Chinese. But my background as a simple policeman had not equipped me for such activity, so I have been forced to turn to Americans, Canadians, Australians, and now an Irishman. These
gweilos
can never be my brothers, but together we can increase the wealth and influence of my beloved Sun Yat Sun…and me, of course.

I respect the ambitions of the world’s new players who seek, through the power of religion and terror, to control whole countries. The Koran-thumping Muslims are making great progress, but ETA, the Muslim Brotherhood, and even the Provisional Irish Republican Army have all followed in our footsteps. They too have wet their beaks in the golden pond of corruption, and they are now involved in drugs, fraud, bank robbery and protection rackets. Soon, they will be invited to become partners in the sex industry. And just like us, they will forget their political ambitions and join the criminal world as full-time participants. After all, we are all organisations happy to operate in the dark underbelly of society, where the rich and poor crawl to get their kicks, satisfy their vile appetites, and pay us our due.

———

Mountain Master Fu in Belfast, Northern Ireland is under pressure from the Protestants – the Red Hand of Ulster and the UFF – so he has been building bridges between the Sun Yat Sun and PIRA. He believes PIRA will eventually succeed in their struggle because they have a more disciplined force. He also believes they will either offer him protection at a reasonable price, or join forces with him in the gambling and sex businesses.

The Chief of PIRA told Master Fu that one of his best men needed somewhere to disappear for a while. He asked if Master Fu could arrange for this Irish terrorist to take refuge in Asia. Of course Master Fu said he would do what he could, and that is how he came to ask for my help. Master Fu is related by marriage to the training instructor who initiated me into the Triad, so when he asked me to put a
gweilo
under my wing I could not refuse his request.

I made my own enquiries about Finn Flynn, of course. He was described to me as a revolutionary, bank robber, killer, womaniser, and chameleon. My source – a Chinese ear, nose and throat specialist from Penang – at the College of Surgeons in Dublin knows Flynn vaguely; he recommended that Finn Flynn would make a good front man in financial circles. He said Flynn’s intelligent facial features mean that he does not actually look like a traditional revolutionary terrorist – apart from his size, long hair and beard. After further digging, my source reported that Flynn had a good education with the De La Salle Brothers, and he was taken on by a company in the City of London before returning to Dublin to attend Trinity College.

I agree that Finn Flynn will make a good lead man in financial circles. Since his arrival in Hong Kong, he has made all the right moves and met the right people – some of them without any help from me. And fortunately for all of us, he has done nothing to embarrass my beloved Triad.

However, I remain a little sceptical about Finn Flynn. He wears the cloak of the revolutionary and he has the cunning of a villain. But I am sorry to say, he also appears to have the heart of a saint – so typically Irish! He beat a Dublin pimp to death just for slapping one of his own girls. That is a little too chivalrous for my tastes, but in his favour, he has killed many British soldiers and tortured a man from MI6. I heard Finn Flynn kills with his bare hands, and if he were Chinese I would initiate him into the Sun Yat Sun. But unlike other Triads, we can not accept a
gweilo
.

I am told Finn Flynn is not expendable under any circumstances. But we shall just have to see about that. It has always been my conclusion that everyone is expendable…everyone that is, except me.

Finn Flynn’s two hundred thousand US dollars reached the hands of Khin Da in Cambodia, but he has sent nothing in return. I may have to call upon Khin Da to honour his agreement to send two hundred kilos of ninety-eight per cent pure heroin to Europe.

Our old comrade has become a fair-weather friend. He can not be relied upon to assist with the gathering of the opium poppy, or the processing of the opium paste into heroin…so beloved of the American Negro. The Burmese, Thai and Laotian generals wish to remove Khin Da from the Golden Triangle, and to put their people to work processing the opium paste.

At one time Khin Da ran his own army of ten thousand soldiers armed with American weapons. That was when his Shan nationalists supplied China white heroin to the CIA. The CIA flew it to South Vietnam on American Airlines and passed it to people in the South Vietnamese government, and they sold it on to the American GI soldiers. But the Americans do not need Khin Da anymore. They have left Vietnam and now concentrate on South America – the source of the cocaine that is sweeping across the United States…and that makes those pigs in Colombia rich as princes. Those American politicians are either short-sighted or just plain stupid. They made the Mafias strong by prohibiting alcohol. Forty years later they helped the warlords of the Golden Triangle flood their country with heroin. And now, with money from the CIA, the South Americans are doing the same thing with their cocaine.

Khin Da has guns, soldiers and a vast amount of cash money. Perhaps banking is what he needs now? I shall send my code 438, my Deputy Mountain Master, to Khin Da. He will enquire what services we might provide…now that the Americans have abandoned their old friend.

HONG KONG

I’ve been leafing
through the tourist literature in my suite to kill time, and I like the look of Stanley Village. They have a market that claims to sell bargains for the ‘cost-conscious follower of fashion’. If ‘cost-conscious’ means cheap, then it’s my kind of place.

I decided against using a hotel limousine to go shopping at the bargain market. I’ll slip out the back of the hotel and flag down a taxi.

On the road to Stanley we passed Aberdeen Fishing Village. Its colossal Jumbo Kingdom floating restaurant attracts thousands of tourists, but very few locals. And there are hundreds of junks, sampans and small fishing boats bobbing in the wakes of high-powered cruisers making their way to and from the posh Aberdeen Marina Club.

I can’t help but notice there are families living in cardboard boxes clinging to the hillside – facing the millionaires’ yachts in the marina club. Seeing these
homes
makes me weep in my heart, and encourages me to ask the taxi driver how he came to Hong Kong.

“Excuse me sir, you sure you want to hear about me and my family?” he sighed.

“Yes.”

“There’s nothing special about us…we fled to Hong Kong during Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution. My family was hungry, ’cuz no money coming any more from our cousin in Beijing. He was a school teacher…he was beaten by his students for translating passages from an American arts magazine and reading them out. He was given no medical treatment and lost his eye and his job.

“Two of our uncles died in a car crash, and their younger brother was left a small fishing boat. He was a kindly man and agreed to carry my grandmother, her two sisters, his mother and father, four older brothers, three sisters, my mother and father, my brothers and sisters, and me to Hong Kong. We also had two baskets of ducks and a lazy cat with us.

“When we reached Hong Kong waters we were arrested by a police patrol boat, towed to Aberdeen Harbour and tied up with hundreds of other fishing boats from China. No one was allowed to step off the boat and walk on land. They warned us that we’d be arrested as illegal immigrants, imprisoned, fined, returned across the border to China, and the boat would be towed out to sea and sunk.”

“Where is your family now?”

“All the old people died without ever putting a foot on dry land in Hong Kong. My mother, father and two younger brothers still live on boats in Aberdeen; my sisters and elder brothers married other boat people and returned to China. The uncle who carried us to Hong Kong sneaked ashore, was caught, locked up, and then sent to prison back in China. We ate the ducks, except the one that jumped overboard and escaped. The cat lived to a ripe old age by eating mice.

“I am the only member of my family granted leave to live on land. I have a shelter facing the Aberdeen Marina, but I hope to save enough money driving this taxi to put a deposit on an apartment. K.S. Li is building many apartments on land he bought from the Hong Kong Electric Company. Mister Li is a very clever man. His family came from Fukien, the same province as my family, but we are a poor family and they are rich. I hope he will sell me one of his apartments.”

I listened to his story with a mixture of sadness and awe. My head is full of new images of the cruelty of confining families to a forty foot by twelve foot boat where they can see, smell and almost taste the freedom they’ve risked their lives to reach.
Bastard Brits
are the words on the tip of my tongue, but that’s not what I said to this brave wee man.

“
Beannacht Dé ort agus go bfhaighidh tú an mead atá á lorg leat
. It’s an Irish blessing from an Irishman.”

He looked puzzled, and why not? He wouldn’t have many Irish Gaelic speakers in his taxi. “Let God bless you and find what you look for,” I translated, and watched a grin appear on his face.

Getting out of the taxi at the entrance to Stanley Market, I made what I hope is a helpful contribution to his dream. The fifty dollars I gave him is probably equal to two days’ pay – just a little something to help him on his way. He blessed me in Fukienese – at least I hope it was a blessing, not a curse – and drove away with a beep of his horn and a wave of his hand out the driver’s window.

“There goes the spirit of Hong Kong,” I muttered. “Nothing’s ever going to get that wee man down. Good luck to him.”

I made my way inside the market and went to the stall selling Levi’s jeans, shirts and jackets. After checking out a few nearby stalls I bought a Burberry golf jacket, two Fred Perry shirts and a pair of Timberland shoes for thirty dollars. It’s no wonder people choose to shop here, it’s ridiculously cheap. The clothes are the genuine articles, and I calculated that I’ve paid less than five per cent of what I’d pay back home. Within an hour I was loaded down with bags of clothing, hats and shoes.

Needing a break from the relentless heat and humidity, I headed to a Scottish pub close by the market. I’m surrounded by off-duty British soldiers from the nearby Stanley Fort barracks. I feel a strong sense of déjà vu sitting in this Scottish bar on the other side of the world. During my first year as a volunteer I’d been ordered to drink in pubs popular with off-duty soldiers in Northern Ireland – due to the remnants of my English accent. I was to report back any snippets of information I heard to our intelligence officer.