Hong Kong (32 page)

Behind Jake he heard an elderly British male voice say with more than a trace of satisfaction, "Bloody place is falling apart.
Knew
it would! Wasn't like this in the old days, I can tell you."

In the corner an American college student was trying to comfort his girlfriend. In the snippet he heard, Jake gathered that the girl was worried that her parents would be worried.

Jake waited until the manager made his escape from the unhappy Germans, then waylaid him. He told him his name, reminded him of the trashed room, wanted to know where his luggage was.

The manager signaled for a bellhop, then spoke to the uniformed man in Chinese.

Jake was escorted to the elevator and taken to the top floor of the building. They had laid out his and Callie's luggage in a three-room suite, the best in the house, probably. The sitting room and bedroom both had balconies.

The crowd was so dense it intimidated Lin Pe, and she had lived in dense Chinese cities much of her life. There was an intensity, an anticipation, that seemed to energize the people.

She fought against the flow of people and managed to get aboard a ferry to Kowloon, as it turned out the last one, because the authorities demanded that the Star line stop carrying demonstrators to Victoria and forced the crews off the boats.

In Kowloon Lin Pe began walking. On Nathan Road she caught a bus and rode it north for several miles, then transferred to a bus going

to K.am Shan, near loio narrx>r. one got orr tne dus ai oiiaim anu walked a quarter of a mile through town. Shatin was huge, with more than a half million people living there now. Lin Pe remembered when it was just a small town, not many years ago.

She stopped at a small corner grocery where she knew the proprietor. After the usual polite greetings, she found a seat on an empty orange crate under a sign advertising scribe services. The letter writer would not be here for hours, but people with little to do often passed the time by sitting here, so no one would say anything.

From her perch on the orange crate she could see the entrance to the main PLA base in the New Territories. Nothing much seemed to be happening on the base, which was good.

From her bag Lin Pe extracted her WB telephone. She turned it on, then called in and reported that she was in position. Then she turned the phone off to save the battery.

Jake Grafton took a shower, shaved, and put on clean clothes that fit; Cole's were too large. He strapped the Smith & Wesson to his right ankle and put on the shoulder holster containing the Model 1911 Colt .45 automatic he had requisitioned from the marines at the consulate. Over this he donned a clean sports jacket. He put a hand grenade in each pocket. Just another happy tourist ready for a day of fun and games in good ol' Hong Kong.

He checked with the hotel operator to see if he had any messages. Yes, a voice mail. He listened as the senior military adviser on the National Security staff told him that his mission was canceled, he could come home anytime.

He tried to return the call and got as far as the hotel operator. All lines overseas were out of service. So sorry.

So Tiger Cole and the Scarlet Team had isolated the place.

He turned on the television. Only one channel was still on the air— the others were showing test patterns or blank screens.

Oooh boy!

Jake Grafton went out on the bedroom balcony, which also overlooked the police station. Not many troops on the lawn. He could hear a helicopter circling overhead, though he couldn't see it.

Itiere was a division ot troops in Hong Kong, Tiger said, China's best.. . with tanks, artillery, and twelve thousand combat-ready soldiers.

Jake's attention was drawn to the street in front of the hotel, eight stories below him. A convoy of trucks had pulled up alongside the hill and wall of the police station, and people were streaming from every truck.

In thirty seconds the street was a sea of people. A van-type truck was sitting at the main gate, the driver talking to the guard.

On the street the people were removing ladders from the trucks. My God! They were armed. Assault rifles, it looked like.

The ladders went against the wall, people swarmed up them.

As they reached the top of the wall, they got off the ladders, walked along the wall. There must be interior ladders or stairs, Jake thought.

The driver was out of the truck at the gate, holding a pistol on the guard. People ran by the truck into the compound.

Jake had a grandstand seat. In less than a minute, several hundred armed civilians were running through the compound.

Shots! He could hear shots! Some of the soldiers were shooting! And being shot at!

The reports rose into a ragged fusillade, then slowed to sporadic popping.

A dozen or so soldiers wearing green uniforms lay where they had fallen.

Now a convoy of trucks came streaming through the main gate.

In two minutes all the shooting stopped, even the occasional shot from inside the administration building. Several of the trucks were backed up to a loading dock, and a small human chain began passing weapons out of the building. As fast as one truck was loaded, it pulled out and another took its place.

Jake Grafton looked at his watch. The time was 8:33 A.M.

Welcome to the revolution!

He had to get to Victoria while he still could. Cole had said the Scarlet Team intended to confront the People's Liberation Army with Sergeant Yorks. That would be the acid test. Either the Yorks could stand up to trained troops or the revolution would be over before lunch.

But all those people heading for the Central District—Grafton won-

dered it he had what it taKes to sacrince innocent people ror tne greater good. He thought of Callie and concluded that he didn't.

The New China News Agency censor assigned to Jimmy Lee's radio station listened to the Wu Tai Kwong cassette tape with a growing sense of horror. Jimmy Lee was sitting on a nearby stool near collapse— the producer had taken his place at the microphone. The tape sounded authentic. Any doubts the censor had were wiped away by the conviction in that taped voice ... and the call for people to kill PLA soldiers who refused to surrender their arms.

The censor called his superior officer on the telephone, but no one answered. Too early. His superior wouldn't come to work for another hour yet, and with the subway out, maybe not then. The man lived way up north in the New Territories.

The censor swallowed hard and telephoned City Hall.

He ended up with an aide to Governor Sun and began telling him of the tape and the upcoming battle in the streets.

Callie Grafton awoke stiff and sore from her beating the previous evening. Places on her face were blue and yellow, and one side of her face was severely swollen. Sometime during the night she stopped shivering ... thankfully, but her ordeal had drained her.

Still, she was in better shape than she thought she would be. When those thugs were pounding on her she thought she might die.

She had awakened on and off during the night, waited fearfully for the men to return, to drag her off for another interrogation or session in the meat locker, but it didn't happen.

Perhaps this morning.

She tried to recall everything she could remember about the Vietnam prisoners of war she had met or read about. The men she had known were ordinary men who had endured torture, starvation, and beatings for years and somehow survived. One looked at them expecting them to be different somehow—and no doubt they were on the inside—but the difference didn't show in the facade they presented to the world. They looked ordinary in every respect.

remaps tne lesson was that they were ordinary yet had somehow found extraordinary courage. Or maybe that courage is in all of us and we just don't know it. Or need it.

I am as tough as those guys, she told herself, thinking of the POWs. She wanted to believe that even though she didn't.

"He wants me to implicate Cole in murder," she told Wu Tai Kwong.

He nodded.

"What does he want from you?"

"A confession that he can give to the Communists, one that he can use to justify a fat reward for my capture."

"He will turn you over to the government?"

"I'll be dead by then. He'll give them my corpse and demand a huge reward. The confession will be the... how do you say it? The sauce upon the cake?"

"Icing on the cake."

"Knowing Sonny," Wu continued, "he has demanded money from everyone, Cole, the government, everyone. He keeps me alive so he can prove that I am alive, should that become necessary. Then he will kill me and sell my corpse."

"Do you really believe that?"

"He cannot set me free. I have many friends. I will find him and kill him, no matter where on earth he goes to hide. He knows that. He will kill me."

"Are you frightened?"

"Of what? Death?"

"Dying."

"Yes."

"But not of death?"

"I have achieved my dream. The revolution has begun. The regime is crumbling and the revolution will speed its collapse. Sonny Wong can do nothing to stop it. The government can fight, delaying the day of its doom, but it cannot prevent the inevitable."

A terrible smile spread across the face of Wu Tai Kwong. "I have won," he whispered. "I have undermined the levee—the sea
will
come in."

Despite the fact that she was no longer cold, Callie Grafton shivered. "When the regime collapses, what will happen then?" she asked.

"1 he people will execute the communists, i nat is inevitaDie. Ana fitting. That is the fate of all dynasties when they fall. The Communists will go like the others."

Jake Grafton went out the main door of the hotel and turned right, headed for Nathan Road and the ferry landing. Two men who had been lounging against the wall followed him.

He glanced back just before he turned the corner—they were keeping their distance.

Rounding the corner, another man stepped away from the wall with a pistol in his hand. It must have been in his pocket.

Jake didn't think, he merely reacted. He dove for the pistol, seizing it and wrenching it away from the man.

No doubt Grafton's sudden appearance had startled the man, who must have thought that the sight of the weapon would freeze Grafton, make him stand still in the hope of not being shot. In any event, the American's move was so unexpected that it succeeded.

Jake Grafton's adrenaline was flowing nicely. With his assailant's pistol in his left hand, he hit him with all his might in the throat and dropped the man to the sidewalk, gagging.

Now he ran, fighting the crowd, toward the waterfront.

Soldiers were spread across the pier in front of the ferry landing.

They've stopped the ferries!

Jake veered right, toward the small basin beside the huge shopping mall for cruise ship passengers. In this basin small boats normally took on and discharged passengers for harbor tours.

There were a handful of tour boats tied to the pier, all of them sporting little blue-and-white awnings to keep off the sun and rain. Jake ran along the pier until he saw a man working on one. The engine was running, although the boat was still securely moored.

By now Jake had the pistol in his pocket that he had taken off the man in the street. He was going to have a nice collection of these things if he lived long enough.

He looked behind him. The people who had been following were apparently lost in the crowd, which filled most of the street.

He pulled out his wallet, took out a handful of bills, replaced the

wallet in his hip pocket. He jumped down into the boat and waved the bills at the boatman, who was in his early thirties, with long hair that hung across his face.

The boatman said something in Chinese. Jake gestured toward Victoria. "Over there," he said and offered the money again.

The boatman ignored the money. He pointed back toward the soldiers and shook his head.

Okay.

Jake looked at the boat's controls as the boatman showered him with Chinese. The throttle was there, a wheel, a stick shift for a forward-reverse transmission ... the boat was idling.

"Out. Get out!" Jake pulled the pistol just far enough from his pocket for the boatman to see it, then pointed toward the pier.

Frightened, the boatman went. As he did, Jake Grafton jammed the money he had offered into the man's shirt pocket. Must be my genial expression, Jake thought as he ran forward to untie the rope on the pier bollard.

With it free, he made his way aft as quickly as he could.

Where are the men who were following me? Did they lose me in the crowd?

That must be it. They're probably searching frantically right this minute.

With the bow and stern lines loose, Jake scrambled back to the tiny cockpit and spun the wheel while he jammed the throttle forward. The boat surged ahead, caroming off the boat moored in front of it.

He didn't waste time but headed for the entrance to the basin.