The Code War (50 page)

It was a bold move. Not only did
Frenchy in his immaculately tailored outfit look the part, but in
one instant he had both shown himself as a rival for the crown of
leadership with Fatty Lo and also gone one up on his rival Chopper
Kwok. The Golden Horse men looked at each other, all of them asking
the same question with their eyes, 'are you staying or leaving?'
The same answer came back, spoken through their body language. None
of them made for the door. They were Brother.

There was general, though unspoken,
agreement that Frenchy had made the right call. Nancy's performance
and Frenchy's short speech had done what had seemed impossible only
an hour before. Brother was healed and was back on track. In fact,
Brother was bigger than before with two dozen more willing workers
swelling its ranks. There was a mood to lighten the atmosphere and
some men went to bring crates of beer.

But there was one notable
absence
. Chopper Kwok was no longer in
the building. He had left the party early.

Kodrob's Squadroom,
Pentacurse, Inferno

Kodrob watched Zhivkin leave the room
and followed him with his eyes until he was out of sight. Then he
listened by the door for another minute until he was sure the
Russian devil would not return.

'Pu,' he shouted without turning his
head. The little imp appeared by his side a moment later. 'Take
off,' Kodrob growled, 'I'll watch the prisoner.'

Pu Gash gave a sideways look at
his embattled boss and hesitated for a moment. Kodrob raised his
voice a notch. 'That's not a request'.

As the little demon trotted off, casting
doubtful glances over his shoulder, Kodrob crossed the squadroom
slowly to Pu Gash's petrol station.

He poured himself a thick tarsand,
lit it with a black Lucifer and dropped into a skinbone chair
opposite the wheezing Jabez.

'Thirsty?' asked Kodrob. He expected and
got no answer. Jabez watched as Kodrob reached into an inner pocket
and removed a bottle. He threw it to the angel who caught it
cleanly.

'Drink it,' ordered Kodrob. 'It's what
you think it is.'

Jabez removed the top with one hand and
sniffed it. 'Water?'

'The purest,' replied the demon captain.
'We keep it for interrogations. It frightens the hell out of
defiant demons. Burns them too if we have to go that far.'

Jabez sipped the fluid suspiciously,
swilled it round his mouth and swallowed some. He waited a few
moments for ill-effects, searching Kodrob's face while he did
so.

'Why have you given me this? What do you
want?'

'To keep you alive, and, nothing.'

Jabez drank half the water and tried to
sit up straight. 'That is good, really good.'

'I'm pleased. Just don't give me all
that blessing bit. It's a little late for all that around
here.'

'How did you end up here?'

Kodrob smiled. 'In Inferno?'

'Yes.'

'I killed a few people and took their
horses. Burned their tents too. Apparently it's frowned upon by
your lot. That's why they wouldn't let me in.'

'You didn't know that killing people was
wrong?'

'Where I come from in Assyria it
was virtuous to kill people. It's what they taught in all the best
schools. You passed out top of your class and had your pick of
slaves if you mastered the Fifteen Unarmed Ways to Kill and could
arrow-split a walnut at 25 paces. And when you brought home your
first three enemy heads they gave you land. Killing Assyria's
enemies was honourable, noble even. I thought I was heading for
Warriors' Paradise.'

Jabez drank another gulp.

'What will they do if they know you gave
me water?'

'Husk me.'

'Huh?'

'It means kill me a little. I will come
back as a diminished demon, a lower rank. Less intelligent, less
strong, less able. A step towards the final end.'

'And you don't mind that?'

'Of course I mind. I cling on to
existence even though here there's not much existence to cling
onto. I have to serve deadly directors like Bezejel and Hideki from
time to time. So far I've survived. Maybe this time I won't. In the
meantime I just do my job. I take my pay. I go to the squawhouse
and then I come back the next day and do it all over
again.'

'So if you don't mind me asking
again, why did you give me water?'

'I don't know. Honestly, I don't
know.' Kodrob laughed, stirred his burning tarsand with his thumb
and sucked it.

'I heard you and the other demon plan to
torture me tomorrow.'

'He's planning to torture you, yes.'

'And you?'

Kodrob was silent and looked down
at his drink. 'It wasn't my plan,' he said eventually, 'Zhiv is
cruel. That's his way. His need to watch others suffer overrides
his common sense, even his own self-preservation. That's why he's
dangerous. And he's got me naked against the whipping wall. If I
try to stop him, he'll mouth off to Bezejel and the others that I'm
soft. Then I'll get husked.'

Both of them drank. And waited.

Pearl River
Wholesalers, Block 17, Wong Tai Sin
Lower Estate, Kowloon

Inside the sparse plain-fronted
building, Nescafé Mao and two of his henchmen, father and son Chen
Shou-shan and Chen Wu-zhou were gathered around crates of sugar,
flour, noodles, rice, tea and coffee.

'I shouldn't have to come out and
supervise this myself, Ah Shou,' said Nescafé Mao crossly to the
older man. 'It's time you did this yourself.'

'But sir, I was never taught to write. I
can hardly read. My Shan Tung parents were very poor and could not
afford to send me to school. And my son Ah Wu is too weak in the
head to learn. We cannot label the boxes and jars ourselves.'

'What did Fang say?'

'Sir, he said his father suffered a
heart attack and he had to go to Fanling in the New Territories
urgently.'

'That's what he told me too,' said
Nescafé, resignedly. 'I still don't believe him, slippery
bastard.'

'Right, let's set up a production
line and get this done quickly,' went on Nescafé. 'Wu, you open the
containers with the jemmy and pass one jar from each container to
your dad. Shou, you unscrew the jars, empty out some coffee and
shove a packet of red chicken heroin into each, making sure the
packet is not visible from the outside. I'll write out the 'Special
Offer' labels and stick them on the jars and put them back in the
containers. We should be done in an hour. Then we'll lock up and
clear off and the delivery boys will distribute them in the
morning. Got it?'

'Yes sir. Thank you sir. Sorry sir,'
shouted father and son together.

Outside, in a street around the
corner, ten police officers, some of them in uniform, alighted from
their vehicles. They split into three groups and approached Block
17 from different directions. The 'tin man toi' look-out that
Nescafé had posted outside the metal-shuttered door was smoking a
cigarette and looking up and down the street.

It was the first cold night of the year
and his thin jacket was barely keeping him warm. He paced up and
down to keep his blood pumping and pulled his collar about him for
warmth. The tin man toi straightened up when he saw two uniformed
police officers walking towards him. They were chatting in a
relaxed fashion and seemed to be out on patrol. Nothing wrong with
that. If he rapped on the door now they'd see his alarm and be
suspicious. Let them pass. He scrutinised them up and down without
trying to look too obvious. Hang on, he thought, looking at their
gaiters and long batons, they're Emergency Unit, riot police.
They're not local. There's something wrong.

A hand grabbed his arm from behind
and wrenched him away from the steel door. The tin man toi tried to
kick the shutter in warning but he had been hauled too far away
from it. Another hand clamped over his mouth while a second
officer, in plain clothes, stepped in front of him holding a
revolver aimed at his chest with a remarkably steady pair of
hands.

'Quiet now,' said Dan in Cantonese. The
lookout calculated his chances and realised he had few options. His
body sagged in submission and one of the uniforms hauled him off to
the Land Rover.

Dan and his team regrouped and
scanned the building's defences. The steel shutter was clearly too
strong to bust open. But there was a side door.

A telephone rang inside.

'They must have had a second tin
man toi somewhere else,' hissed Dan. He looked up at Block 22
opposite. Nothing. If someone had seen them and was making the
call, they'd be indoors now anyway. 'Let's go.' Two uniforms struck
at the lock of the side door with a six foot crow bar. The door
held fast. The forced entry could take minutes and that was too
long. Shouts inside. As the uniforms pulled back for another
assault, Liu Jai stepped forward, reached for the door handle and
pulled it down. It was unlocked and the door flew open. The nine
officers almost crushed each other in their efforts to get through
the narrow door. As they burst in there were shouts of, 'Don't move
or I'll shoot', 'You're under arrest' and 'Stay where you are'. The
floor of the building was strewn with spilled coffee jars, coffee
granules, jemmies, plastic bags and half-drunk beer bottles. Three
men were tearing open plastic bags containing coffee-like granules
and rushing in relays to the toilet.

Within seconds two of them were on
the ground with their hands behind their heads, several revolvers
pointing down at them. There was still a lot of shouting as
adrenalin worked its way through the police officers' fast-pumping
bloodstreams. Nescafé Mao held out the longest. Inspector Cheng
seized his arm in the dirty one-room toilet closet where he was
desperately disposing of heroin granules into the sewer system.
Cheng wrenched his fingers from the handle on the cistern then
hauled him backwards till Nescafé came unstuck like a limpet off a
rock. He span back into the warehouse sending a hail of granules
over everyone in the room and knocking over several sacks of rice.
Tripping over the edge of a pallet, he lay where he fell, staring
up into the barrels of two Colt .38 snub noses. These weapons were
not known for their accuracy or firepower. But at four feet they
would easily take the back off his head and make the cleaner's job
a lot messier. Nescafé shrugged. Brother could afford good
lawyers.

The night was a long one.
Detective support teams were called away from their families and
beds to gather evidence that would later be produced in court.
Phot
ographers positioned tripods that
flashed like starshells in a night battle. Uniforms with braid on
their caps came out of nowhere to be snapped at the scene and take
the credit. Police were sent door to door in the heavily populated
neighbourhood to find out who knew what about Pearl River
Wholesalers and take statements from anyone foolish enough to admit
they knew something. TV journalists were briefed, blocked, escorted
away, schmoozed and generally neutralised as far as possible.
Evidence bags were stuffed, labelled, inventoried, classified,
cross-referenced and taken away to a secure store. Finally, Dan
made sure that everyone involved in the raid spent several hours
writing complete statements listing every moment, every thought and
every action of the night in infinitesimal detail. By the time all
of these were translated into English, typed, checked, copied
fifteen times on carbon paper and disseminated to every senior
officer in Kowloon who wanted to be in on a successful swoop, the
sun was well into its new arc and restaurants in Yaumati were
already opening their doors for early dim summers.

Dan was exhausted as he left the office
and walked down the street to stretch his legs. He would be home
soon and able to have a shower, put his gun away and crash out for
a few hours in readiness for the follow-up and the fall-out.

Traffic was already grid-locking in
Nathan Road, lorries blocked lanes insouciantly as their human
parasites offloaded scaffolding into building sites and taxis were
parping horns to show their fares they were doing something about
the delays. I love the smell of diesel in the morning, thought
Dan.

Beside the door of a restaurant, a
beggar, an old lady with sapphire blue eyes and a shawl over her
hunched back, held out her hand to him. 'Sir, can you spare a
little change? I'm hungry.'

Women's Dormitory,
Sixth Floor, Golden Luck Casino

An eye for an eye. Nancy's face
was half buried in the pillow as the memory of her sex slavery came
back into her head, forcing out sleep. Her mind would play the
awful scene again and again just like a horror blockbuster. She
opened one eye and looked across to the next bed. Jenny was lying
on her side, one eye visible, looking back at her. Both eyes
blinked, out of sync. The blinks turned to winks as the game began.
Eyelids became shutters on morse lanterns beaming out
unintelligible sequences. A sound track was added as giggles
accompanied the light show. The winks became grimaces as cheeks
pulled sideways and noses turned upwards. The grimace race
continued as heads began to move and expressions contorted like
children competing at a Hallowe'en party. Peace couldn't last.
Physical violence was inevitable and soon the first sock was thrown
as the confrontation burst out into open laughter and both women
launched ballistic pillow attacks on the other's position. Slipper
mortars rained down to devastating concussive effect while paper
aeroplanes, rapidly manufactured on a war footing, zoomed across
nearly two feet of no man's land taking no prisoners, strafing
remorselessly and ending up all too often crashed and buckled under
a bed. The women took turns to emulate the dead pilots'
heart-rending bravery as they tried to exit their burning craft and
perished, half in and half out of their cockpits. The UN made no
effort to separate the bitter protagonists and it was only an
eleventh hour show of statesmanship and an appeal to decency by
Jenny that eventually allowed a shaky truce and cease-fire. 'Nancy,
look at the time, let's go down to a stall for breakfast and get
some noodles.' The world looked on and saluted this extraordinary
and courageous suggestion but it was met with equal wisdom by the
other belligerent. 'Race you to the shower,' replied Nancy and
World War III was averted while the two friends splashed, scrubbed,
washed, brushed, dressed, shoed, ear-ringed, blushed, mascaraed and
exited in less time than it takes to say Treaty of
Kowloon.