The Code War (48 page)

'Jenny, something happened tonight.
Something bad. I need to tell you.'

Then Jenny roused herself from her dream
of bright futures and dingy pasts, of families and feasts, of
fortunes and cookies and sat up there in a shabby dormitory of the
lowest form of business life, a girly gambling den, the cockroach
of commerce and took the hand of her friend and listened and became
in that moment the stepping stone that Nancy needed to continue her
walk of life and not slip and fall and finish it far from friends
and home. So Nancy did not come to The End. Not then anyway. No
razor skated her ivory wrists that night leaving its violent red
tail disgorging into a basin. She went on the way she was meant to
simply because one woman chose her friend above her comfort and in
such small, huge gestures are heroines made and heroes saved and
empires lost and won.

Chopper Kwok's
Apartment, Ho Tin Girl Friend Bar and Film Club, Yaumati,
Kowloon

Chopper Kwok dug his fingers into a bowl
of peanuts beside his bed and forced some into his mouth. His other
hand held a phone to his ear. Beside him naked on the bed lay two
girls, sisters, who had been lent to him by Wonton Chiang.

The sisters, Mei-Lien and Mei-Xhen
had travelled from cold Harbin province, further north even than
Russian Vladivostok, to try their luck in the prosperous British
colony of Hong Kong where legend said all rice bowls magically
refilled themselves three times a day and even the poor lived in
sun-sparkling penthouses high above the earth.

They had journeyed more than 18 months
through China, dodging corrupt police, people traffickers and
prostitute traders. They had slept in old buses, disused factories
and occasional warm barns. Frequently they had slept with the
policemen who arrested them for vagrancy in order to win their
release. For several months they had worked the grim drinking sheds
of Beijing where soot-faced pottery workers paid for sex with a
half bowl of rice.

Through it all the teenage sisters
had encouraged each other with stories of happy faces, full wage
packets, considerate bosses, prosperity, boyfriends, husbands and a
life of plenty different from that of their parents who had died of
hunger during the disturbances after Chairman Mao's death in 1976
and the rise of the Gang of Four soon after.

They finally crossed over the
border into Hong Kong one summer night, evading the patrols of
British army gurkhas who could hide motionless for hours waiting
for transients whose fung shui meters were on empty. Once past the
border guards, Mei-Lien and Mei-Xhen hugged each other and swore
they were now on the road to happiness. No more hunger, they said
to each other, no more abuse, no more fear.

In Kowloon the next night, near the Star
Ferry Terminal, they came across a kindly man handing out soup and
bread to the hungry. Noticing their look of yearning, a look he had
seen many times on the faces of those who had gone without
nourishment for several days, the man called to them.

'Come and be saved,' said he 'and while
your souls are being rescued come and eat for free. Fill up and be
glad for the Lord has poured his bounty upon the Earth and I am his
humble servant.'

The sisters nodded to each other
and agreed that this did indeed sound like a good idea. They sat at
the man's stall and took his bowls of Cantonese broth and listened
to his stories about a certain carpenter who lived long ago in a
far-off town.

'And that's why I provide food for
the homeless,' said Wonton Chiang looking the young women up and
down. 'Are you homeless, by the way? Do you need a place to stay?
Just for a few nights of course.'

But when the sisters arrived at
Wonton's apartment, the mood changed. There's no such thing as a
free meal, Wonton said, why, I have to pay for the food. How can I
do that on my worker's salary? You must work for me to repay what
you owed me when you ate without paying at my stall. What, you are
in Hong Kong illegally? Then you must work twice as hard, so I can
bribe the police to leave you alone. Not speak Cantonese? Then
there are only certain types of work open to you. Luckily, neither
of you is too brute ugly for the type of work I have in mind. Just
work for me for a year, maybe two and then you will have paid my
price and may have your freedom. The carpenter I told you about?
Look, I am sentimental sometimes and my good heart gets the better
of me. But such stories are for children and the weak-headed. Do
not be fooled. You can only save yourself through hard work. You're
not afraid of hard work are you? Good. Then knuckle down, do the
work that your youth and gender has prepared you for and celebrate
the day you met me. Welcome to Hong Kong, Mei-Lien and Mei-Xhen.
Your abundant future has begun. Now, please to transport
yourselves, with alacrity, into my sleeping quarters two steps
hence. Unbutton your blouses, undo your zips and allow me to test
the product that I'm going to sell.

Chopper grunted down the phone several
times, listening to the flow of only slightly-accented Cantonese
that made its way to his ear.

'We'll keep an eye out for him,' Chopper
said between nut crunches when there was a pause. 'Dan Kelly you
say his name is?'

He listened again.

'No problem. I will have one of my boys
take a photo of him and then send it to the rest of my team,' he
said. 'Once we know what he looks like it will be easier to keep
out of his way.'

A pause while the volume from the other
speaker increased.

'It's all right, we won't hurt him
unless we have to. I know he's your friend,' said Chopper,
reassuringly. 'And don't worry, your next payment is on its way.
Your information is important. Thank you Pete.'

Chopper Kwok replaced the receiver and
turned to look at his two skinny sleeping companions. Wonton had
stumbled over a good idea, he thought. What a way to find recruits.
A charity food stall. Brilliant. But Wonton was weak. Good ideas,
but no ambition. Wonton didn't know how to scale up an operation.
For that you needed someone with vision. Someone who understood
business. Someone like me. Not that soft idiot Fatty Lo and his
ignorant English girl. Fatty belongs to a past age, a frightened
age, an age when honourable brothers were scared to take on the
police. That age is over.

He rolled towards the nearest sister and
pushed his knee between her legs. 'Wake up,' he said. 'I'm
horny.'

Golden Luck
Casino

For three days Nancy did not
venture out of her room. The story of her kidnapping and gang rape
was quickly relayed by Jenny Ling to Fatty Lo and verified by
contact with the men who had taken part in it. These all pleaded
innocence, or at least to knowledge of who Nancy really was. Many
of them now went to ground in fear of their lives, hoping to hide
until the anger abated.

The bodies of Monkey and Chu were
identified by many and added authenticity to Nancy's story. Outrage
built throughout the criminal community of Kowloon.

Fatty Lo came to visit Nancy. He bore
gifts of money and jewellery and asked for forgiveness. He had no
idea that he was placing her at risk, he pleaded.

But it was against Fatty Lo himself that
much of the anger was directed. He had been foolish to hire an
unknown 'gwai poh' and put her into such a senior position so soon,
many argued. And it was his misjudgement of the Golden Horse
takeover and Monkey's loss of face in that operation that had
allowed not just Nancy to be raped, but all of Brother to be
humiliated in the process.

Chopper Kwok, the organisation's
second-in-command, made no effort to slow these accusations or
mitigate them in any way. Instead he allowed them to build knowing
that they were contributing to his game plan to discredit Fatty
completely and take over Brother.

But another contender for the
title of Brother of Brothers now emerged. This was Frenchy who had
compèred the cockfight in the Blue Diamond Warehouse & Godown
many nights before. Frenchy was neither as cunning as Fatty Lo nor
as ruthless as Chopper Kwok but for those who thought the latter
was just too aggressive, Frenchy represented a middle of the road
option. He held out the prospect of stability and continuity, at
least until a better contender for the leadership came
along.

With Fatty's continued tenure as
leader of Brother seemingly more and more doomed as the hours and
days went by, Frenchy and Chopper campaigned and politicked for
support amongst both the opinion leaders and the rank and
file.

Outside of Brother, the story of Nancy's
rape and the uncertainty surrounding Brother's leadership had
radiated out to all compass points of Kowloon and Hong Kong. The
situation has to be resolved quickly, said many within the
fraternity. If we're going to have a new leader we need him soon,
otherwise we'll have defections to the 14K, the Wo Shing Wo, the
Daai Huen and many other triads.

Dan Kelly also learnt of the
horrific rape and the effect it was having on Brother. He continued
to write up his crime reports and send them to Kowloon Police
headquarters in the routine way. But he worried at Pete Richards'
lack of return contact. Surely, with something as big as this, Pete
would be in touch? Apparently not.

Members of the Golden Horse who had
taken part in Nancy's rape were gradually hunted down by Brother.
They were taken from their families in San Po Kong and held
prisoner at the Blue Diamond Warehouse & Godown in Yaumati.
Sure, Nancy had been personally violated. But the whole Brother
organisation had been made to look inept. If a provincial triad
gang like Golden Horse could abuse a senior Brother girl and get
away with it - regardless of whether her high position was
justified or not - it would be open season on all members. Attacks
and defections would increase.

There needed to be some kind of
response. But nobody was quite sure what it should be. A massacre
of the guilty along St Valentine's Day lines was mooted by some.
But that would be messy and invite massive police retaliation.
There would be an outcry from the whole population of the
Colony.

Release them, they didn't know what they
were doing, said others. But that seemed insufficient.

Eventually there was a groundswell of
opinion among all levels of Brother about the right approach. This
new consensus even had the agreement of out-of-favour head Fatty Lo
as well as new leadership contenders Frenchy and Chopper Kwok. It
only needed one other person to agree. Nancy.

The feeling among all was that as Nancy
had been violated and had suffered the most, she should be closely
involved in determining the fate of those who had hurt her. The
scene was set and on the fourth night after the events in San Po
Kong, amidst utmost secrecy, almost the entire membership of
Brother, as well as the twenty or so members of Golden Horse who
were there on that fateful night, were gathered in the Blue
Diamond.

Yaumati Police
Station

'I'd happily swap my revolver for a
decent typewriter,' said Dan as he hit the 'line feed' lever on the
machine in front of him for the second time and nothing happened.
Fishing out his pocketknife he probed the mechanism with the small
blade and emerged with a bit of ink tape that had ravelled itself
around a cog wheel.

Dan glanced at the clock. 'Liu Jai, it's
8.30 pm. Know what time that is?'

'Yes sir.'

'What time is it?'

'It's time for your beer, sir.'

'Wrong, Liu Jai, it's two
hours
after
beer start time. And you know how I hate to be
late for an appointment. In fact, Happy Hour has already finished.
I'll have to go to that sordid topless bar in Shan Tung Street in
Mong Kok to get a cheap beer at this hour, that's how desperate
things have got.'

'Do you mean the bar you took me to last
week where you fell asleep drunk while talking to a girl? Monica I
think her name was, and I got a taxi to take you home?'

'I remember a girl, Liu Jai, and I
remember talking to her about the impact of the English industrial
revolution on farm wages..'

'That was me, sir.'

'Huh?'

'You were talking to me about the
industrial revolution. When I woke you up with a coffee after
Monica left. And very interesting it was too. I was telling my
family all about it at my grandmother's birthday party at the
weekend and they all agreed..'

'Liu Jai, sarcasm does not become
you.'

'Pardon, sir?'

'I mean, sarcasm is not a Chinese
trait. There is no need to get sarcastic just to make me feel a
little more at home.'

'Sorry sir, I just thought it might
help…'

'Let me be clear Liu Jai. We
western people, we do the sarcasm. You lot do the food. That's how
we get along.'

'Sorry sir.
I'll make a note.'

'So, what was I talking to Monica about,
if not the industrial revolution?'

'Oh, you were being very funny sir.'

'I was?'

'Yes, sir. Monica was laughing a great
deal. And the more she laughed the more you liked her and the more
drinks you bought her.'

'Are you telling me I fell for the old
trick, Liu Jai?'

'No sir. I would never tell my boss that
he got suckered by the oldest trick in the book. Or that he spent
most of the evening looking at a woman's chest instead of her face.
I have more tact than that sir.'

'Well that's good Liu Jai, tact is
very..'

Policewoman
Hui Fen burst into the room.