The Code War (38 page)

Gradually all the others did the same
until there were only two left, Liu Jai and Hui Fen, the only
female member of the team.

'What are you two doing here, haven't
you got homes?' asked Dan miserably.

Liu Jai and Hui Fen sat quietly
for a moment, looking around. Hui Fen sipped some tea. 'My brother
was attacked by a triad gang ten years ago' she said eventually.
'Hurt very bad. He is afraid to leave the house now. He never goes
out.' She paused before looking Dan directly in the eye. 'I will
help you.' Then without further ado she picked up her bag, stood up
and left.

Dan looked at Liu Jai. Eventually
the junior cop spoke up.
'You're not safe
around here either, sir. Despite what you say. In fact it can be
dangerous for you to cross the street, even in daylight.' He waited
for a few seconds. 'Especially when you're drunk.'

Dan was used to
a modicum of insubordination. And it was a standing joke
that he liked a cold beer to wash down his lunchtime noodles. But
Liu Jai didn't disappoint him. 'So I had better be part of the
Brother squad too. Someone has to make sure you don't fall over in
the road while you're fighting the biggest triad society in Hong
Kong.'

Dan saw a passing waitress and
called for the bill. She walked past him and went to another table.
'I'm very glad that I've spent so much time encouraging and
supporting you in your career, Liu Jai. I can see that it's
appreciated.'

Liu Jai got up, tapped Dan on the
shoulder and left.

Dan drank the last of his tea and tried
again to get the waitress's attention. She ignored him.

Golden Luck Casino,
Yaumati, Kowloon

'So
,
Kowloon means 'nine dragons'.' Nancy was polishing her nails while
listening to Jenny who was perched on her bed in the dormitory she
shared with Nancy and two other Brother women. 'Gau means nine.
Lung means dragon. Put them together and you have gau lung which
the English speak Kowloon.'

'And
did
these nine dragons once blow flame and smoke all over the people of
this part of China and turn them into fire cakes?' asked Nancy who
was also cross-legged on her bed and still in her
pyjamas.

'No, they are still here. They not go
away. The nine dragons are the nine hills that Kowloon is built on.
The dragons went to sleep and people built houses and roads on
them, that's all.'

She threw a pillow at Nancy's head.

'What if they wake up?' asked Nancy. 'If
they're Chinese dragons they're going to be very, very hungry. How
will we feed them?'

She t
hrew the pillow back at Jenny. Then she threw two more at
her for luck.

Jenny caught the pillows and
stacked them on her lap.
'True. We
definitely will need more food for them. Chinese dragon eat all day
long. Maybe we ask America. Or the UN.'

Lorry in the night. Tabards. Life belt.
Lafi and his gun. Three boys. O my goodness, I never told Ealing
I'm not coming back.

'What's the matter, Nancy? Why so many
shock?'

'Oh, just something I meant to do.
That's all. Listen Jenny, continue my education. How do I say in
Cantonese 'may I use the phone to call England?''

'You can not use any phone to call
England. So I not teach you that phrase. Ordinary phones only use
for call people in Hong Kong. You must go to Star Ferry Terminal.
Find Cable and Wireless building. Call international from
there.'

'OK thanks. I'll do that.' She
hesitated. 'Fancy breakfast?'

'Sure,' replied Jenny cheerfully.
'Always fancy breakfast. Any time of day fancy breakfast. Got
hunger like dragon.'

Nancy had not seen any strange letters
or numbers since she arrived in Hong Kong. She had forgotten about
them completely, so much had happened.

But when she and Jenny arrived down on
the street all of that changed. A student's back pack in front of
her bore the inscription 'Any time is 1.11 time'. When they sat
down in the restaurant and looked at the menu Nancy saw that the
inside left page was numbered 1. and the opposite page was 11. Two
Filipino men came in wearing Liverpool football shirts, one of them
bearing 1. on the back and the other 11.

Just co-incidence, thought Nancy. It's
obviously on my mind again, that's all.

Jenny was determined to help Nancy
blend in. 'You order the food, Nancy. I tell you the words. You not
look Chinese but you can sound Chinese.' And while they ate their
congee soup together, Jenny gave Nancy the most intensive language
lesson she had ever undergone. She learnt how to cut off her
Cantonese consonants like a native, how to sing-song her way
through each delicious word, how a change in tone could be the
difference between life and death and how in Chinese conversation
food was the new weather and money was the new sex.

Two hours later, exhausted and crammed,
Nancy stood up, hugged her new best friend Jenny and exclaimed in
perfect Cantonese, 'Now I go out and forget all.'

'No,' laughed the exuberant Jenny.
'You remember all. Got good memory, you. And especially when you
become rich and powerful in Brother you remember all your friends
and me too. Not forget us.'

And when Nancy looked at her
doubtfully Jenny went on, 'You going high, I can see that. You got
talent. You got the talent that Brother like.' And this time Nancy
didn't try to look doubtful and didn't argue with Jenny because
already in the depths of her being she knew that Jenny was right
and although she did
n't have the ambition
to go to the top, she knew she had taken to Brother like a Peking
duck to water. She was fitting in to the triad society's
centuries-old culture just as neatly as she had fitted into her
elegant cheung sam and zipped it up tight at the first
try.

Then she went up to the counter
and paid for their meal and picked up her dollar and eleven cents
change, put it in her pocket, took Jenny by the arm and returned
with her to the Golden Luck, chattering non-stop as they went to
prepare for another slow midday opening, a long afternoon and a
frenetic evening that wouldn't finish till two in the morning and
all the while wondering was it one eleven, or one two, or one one
one, or three, and how long was this going to go on and whoever
they were why wouldn't they just leave her alone and let her go on
finding herself, becoming the person she was always meant to be and
building a solid, worthwhile career in one of Asia's foremost
criminal organisations.

Yaumati, Kowloon, Tai
O Factory Building

Zhivkin stared down into the
street from his hidden vantage point in the Tai O building.
His
private meeting with Bezejel and
Kodrob had gone well. He had outlined his plan to deal a sizzling
blow to the angels supporting Nancy. At first they challenged it
and rejected it. Then, after a rethink they called him back and
refined it. Finally they approved it.

Bezejel had even gone so far as to
hint that during their 'rethink' she had taken the plan to very
high levels within Inferno to gain approval. Maybe even the Leader
himself. Clearly there could be political repercussions of the
highest magnitude if anything went wrong and so the Inferno
leadership team had to give consent.

Zhivkin was now feeling extremely
nervous. With the level of visibility his plan now had, he was
either going to zoom to the top of inferno's management cadre if
the plan was successful or suffer consequences of extraordinary
pain and duration if not.

But Zhivkin was a gambler and he
played for high stakes. He had brought down the Russian aircraft
taking off from the Crimea and stolen its fuel from the bottom of
the Black Sea. He had even covered his tracks from the thieving
hands of the Confiscations Unit.

Through that little escapade he
had won notoriety and
managed to talk his
way into Kodrob's squad. No mean feat, that. Now he was on another
mission but this time it was to bring down, not an inanimate
aeroplane, but a very animate angel. An angel by the name of Jabez.
Zhivkin had been watching days before, unknown and unseen, when
Jabez had been walking the streets of Yaumati.

Unlike Lafarge, that useless
French bourgeois ladies' man with the silken tongue and the
permanent thirst, Zhivkin had not taken his eye off Jabez
for a moment. Indeed he had watched in amazement
as the angel disappeared from the middle of a Hong Kong street as
though plucked from above by giant chopsticks. Supernaturals
visiting Earth did not just appear and disappear in an instant. The
transfer to the Fourth Dimension was a process that required
preparation. Whether angels or demons, both had to seek a quiet
place completely secure from accidental discovery where they could
pass through a gateway between the Fourth and the Fifth. But Jabez
had disappeared in a location where Zhivkin was sure there was no
such gateway. He had disappeared in the middle of the street and
that could only mean that he had some sort of invisible astracraft.
Zhivkin wanted that craft. It would be his passport to a blazing
career in Inferno with as much nitro as he could drink and
top-caste, classy squaws every day. As many as he
wanted.

Zhivkin opened the
window blind just a tad further to increase the
distance his eyes could sweep. There was Holzman, oblivious to his
presence. Holzman was a typical demon duffer. No imagination and no
ambition. Well, that was fine. Holzman was useful right now. He
just had to do his job - which was to notice nothing - and all
would be fine.

Zhivkin continued scanning the
street. He would wait as long as it took. He would not blink. He
would spot that smug, smiling angel without being spotted back.
Then he would strike.

Blue Diamond Warehouse
& Godown

Fatty Lo pointed to the huge gantry that
spanned the warehouse from side to side twenty feet above the
ground.

'During the day,' he told Nancy, 'this
warehouse use for import cotton. Use crane and pulley for move
heavy bags from side to side and up and down. But night time we use
equipment for add excitement to cockfight.'

Nancy was on sensory overload from
the smell of forty sweaty male bodies as attractive as swamps to
the squadrons of circulating mosquitoes. From forty hoarse throats
shouting, negotiating and laughing in discordant unison. From forty
pairs of eyes furtively scanning her face, body and hemline. And
from the proprietorial touch of a single podgy arm draped casually
around her shoulders, property of one extremely contented triad
society leader at the peak of his powers.

Fatty's moll
du jour
, the forty
pairs of eyes read back to her. His bit of exotic fancy. A
pale-faced courtesan to show off his cosmopolitan modern
manners.

But Nancy was enjoying every bit of the
attention, even the many lustful glances that came her way like
panting dogs. Men gave themselves away at times like this, betrayed
their power or lack of it. She read each face in an instant and
knew who mattered, who counted, who was on the rise and who were
just the placemen. She folded her hands delicately in her lap and
surveyed the raucous assembly with calm interest, neither approving
nor judging, just absorbing.

Fogies were busily removing dozens of
thick oak planks from the floor. These revealed a circular,
brick-lined pit under the gantry's path. Around this, other junior
gangsters were piling bales of sheet cotton in tiers to make a
grandstand.

'Down there is where the action,'
explained Fatty unnecessarily. Only he and Nancy had chairs, placed
in prime position near the edge of the pit to watch the upcoming
avian battle. The rest would stand. He pointed to a metal grille
set into the pit's brick wall, a small one-metre deep recess behind
it. 'Challenger come from there, champion come from up there. Meet
in pit and decide who live and who die,' he laughed.

Nancy saw the hoist attached to
the gantry. A square metal pallet dangled below it.

Clap-clap-clap. A dapper gentleman
with a wide, pointed moustache brought the meeting to order. He had
slicked back grey hair and wore a satin waistcoat under a blazer
with a carnation in the buttonhole.

'Frenchy,' Nancy heard many of the
gangsters mutter in muted respect.

'Faithful leader, Devoted Encourager,
Brother of Brothers,' began Frenchy. 'We salute you and thank you
for your leadership and for the gift of tonight's entertainment.' A
murmur of approval rippled around.

'First, we salute you,' he held up his
glass and looked directly at Fatty. 'Drink to victory.'

'Victory,' shouted the hoarse throng
through a thick cigarette smoke haze as forty Adam's apples
protruded at once, flushing down cold beer and finest XO cognac.
Grateful mosquitoes joined in, buzzing their way through the pall
and drinking from their steaming human tankards.

Somewhere an air conditioner could
be heard fighting the ferocious heat. It was no match for the
task.

Fatty Lo acknowledged the toast
with an imperious wave of his hand. 'Enjoy, enjoy,' he shouted. The
forty hoodlums raised their glasses to him again before continuing
with their drinking and smoking. 'Maybe I Rome emperor in previous
life,' Fatty laughed to Nancy. 'The Fat Caesar. What you think?'
Fatty's hand was now firmly clasped on her shoulder, his thumb
casually brushing her skin.