Year of the Dragon (32 page)

Sir David, stroking his muttonchops with both hands, was grinning. Did the grin mean something or not? What might it mean?

Suddenly it vanished. Sir David jumped up and began to march up and down behind his desk, from wall to wall. He marched to a soldier’s cadence only he heard, and snapped into each turn with an abrupt about-face. As he marched he did deep-breathing exercises.

Observing such conduct, being now utterly and totally dependent on what this man might decide to do, Powers felt close to tears.

Sir David stopped in his tracks. He fixed Powers with a hard eye. “I had a look at the fellow’s dossier while you were on your way over here, what? Just to refresh myself. I helped set this corruption commission up some years ago. His case was one of the first to come to my attention. I must confess that I took a personal interest in it at the time. Not a good idea for an administrator, what? Nonetheless, I did.” Sir David nodded his head vigorously up and down.

Powers was like a man falling through space. He lunged for the one dangling life line within reach.

“Could I possibly see that dossier?”

“Can’t show you the dossier. Crown property, what? Confidentiality and all that. Not a shred of proof in it anyway. Fellow could sue us for libel if I showed it around. How much do you know about him, anyway?”

“Not very much. I was told in New York that he left here with five hundred million dollars.”

“Nonsense,” said Sir David. He gave an exaggerated guffaw. “What rot! He left with maybe twenty million. Thirty million tops. Still a lot of money, of course. All those station sergeants made fantastic amounts of money, and Koy made rather more than the others because he organized it all. But not five hundred million.”

Sir David began marching again, taking more deep breaths. “But I just don’t see,” said Powers, “how that much money could be available to a cop. In New York, gamblers used to put cops on pads at a thousand dollars a month and that was considered big money.”

“Humph,” grunted Sir David. “You don’t know the Chinese, what? Ever hear of the Triads?”

“The Chinese Mafia.”

“The Black Societies, so the Chinese call them. The British call them Triads because in their nomenclature and ritual they accord magical properties to the number three and to certain multiples of three. Gangs of vicious criminals are what they are. In Hong Kong we’re blessed with about forty different Triad gangs, maybe eighty thousand members in all. Organized crime here is highly organized indeed. The Triads control all gambling, prostitution, pornography, drugs, loan-sharking, extortion, street gangs. Even the bank robberies. If you want to knock over a bank you have to get permission from your Triad, and afterwards you have to share the loot. Triad groups are always fighting for territory against one another, pitched battles with two-handed meat cleavers, usually. There was a fight the other night, as a matter of fact. The police got there too late. Found blood on the ground, and a human arm severed just above the elbow, and a cleaver lying next to its outstretched fingers. Ordinary people are terrified of the Triads, of the very name. They don’t want to hear the word.”

Sir David resumed his marching, but went on talking. In Hong Kong, it was a criminal offense to be a Triad or claim to be, or to attend a Triad meeting, or possess Triad books, accounts, writings, seals, or insignia, or give any aid or comfort to any Triad society. The origins of the Black Societies, Sir David said, went far back into early Chinese history. With the passage of years they had become more and more criminal, and more and more sinister. Their initiation ritual involved the drawing and drinking of blood to signify blood brotherhood, and the swearing of the thirty-six oaths of membership.

“The usual claptrap,” said Sir David. “The thirteenth oath reads something like this: if I should change my mind and deny my membership in the family, I will be killed by a myriad of swords.”

The new member was given the rank of soldier, was equipped with secret codes and hand signs for recognizing other members, and was obliged to prove himself. “They give him some obscene act,” said Sir David, “and he performs it. Beat up some merchant, execute an informer - they hang informer chaps up by the thumbs and make knife cuts all over him - the myriad of swords. Lovely people, these Triads, what?”

Sir David went behind his desk, sat bolt-upright in his swivel chair, and stared at Powers. “Your man Koy was a Triad. He was the son of a banker in Canton. Came here when he was about fifteen years old. His father enrolled him in the King George the Fifth school. Very posh school, what? Same school British civil servants sent their sons to. Don’t know how Koy ever got in. The British didn’t mingle much with the Chinese at the time, called them wogs, don’t you know. The father must have pulled hell’s own strings. Of course the boy was an extremely bright student. That’s not speculation. We checked on that.”

Most of what happened next was entirely speculation, however. Sir David couldn’t document any of it. Apparently Koy joined the Hung Pang Triad, a Hakka group. All the Triad ranks were numbers, not names, except that the top man was called the Cho Kun. Koy moved up in rank. He started as a 432, then became a 426 - the strong-arm man in a Triad group.

“You might call it the first of the gazetted ranks,” said Sir David.

Very quickly Koy became a 5, the idea man or counselor, and then a 2, the underboss. Then he was the Cho Kun.

“He may have been only twenty years old at the time,” said Sir David. “We have no way of knowing exactly. Then he joined the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, and the cops and the criminals became one, and the sky became almost literally the limit.”

“I still don’t see how he came to amass so much money,” said Powers.

“Got in on the ground floor, what?” said Sir David.

When the war ended the population of Hong Kong was about 600,000. About three quarters of a million refugees came in during 1949 and the spring of 1950 alone. After that the refugees only kept coming, until today Hong Kong held over five million people. When Koy was a young constable the police department was expanding fast, meaning that he quickly got promoted to sergeant and then station sergeant, the key rank, with command of a district vice squad. He didn’t want any promotions after that. The economy was expanding fast. Koy saw the opportunity, and went after it.

“He seemed to be quite a remarkable individual,” mused Sir David. “Intelligent, multi-lingual, and absolutely arrogant. I suppose it was the arrogance that caught my eye when his dossier finally reached my desk. According to our information, he conducted his affairs quite openly. Openly enough to stick in any law officer’s craw. Corruption is a way of life in the Orient. Bribery, kickbacks, extortion - they’re all time-honored to the Chinese. The drug trade is time-honored too. Drugs have been a way of life since the first opium dens nearly two centuries ago. Your man was no ordinary corrupt officer. He commanded his vice squad in Wanchai, the red light district here, and he taxed every bit of vice that went on in his district, what? Taxed perfectly legitimate businesses as well.”

The population of Hong Kong went over two million, over three million, over four million. Koy set up syndicates not only in his own district but in four others as well, each of them run by a station sergeant who was known to him. All were Hakkas.

“Say you wanted to start a vice operation somewhere,” said Sir David. “Gambling, prostitution, an opium divan, whatever. Well, you first had to buy an unofficial license from the district sergeant, plus you had to pay regular weekly fees. It was all beautifully regulated.” The chief collector in each district was a Triad and a civilian. He used sub-collectors. The chief collector kept the books. Whichever policeman would come by to inspect the books and collect the money was called the caterer, and he would distribute the money to all the other policemen via sub-caterers. The station sergeants got the most money, each receiving about $40,000 a month on the average.

Powers hearing this, gave a long low whistle.

The divisional superintendent, who was the gazetted officer supervising the station sergeants, and who usually was British, got much less, about $16,000 a month.

Sir David said, “When I say Koy and his station sergeants taxed everybody, I mean everybody. Street hawkers had to pay forty cents a day or the police would not allow them to operate. Perhaps that doesn’t sound like much, but there are eighty thousand street hawkers in Hong Kong, and the income from that scam alone amounted to thirty-two thousand dollars a day.”

These station sergeants had all grown up in the job, as Koy had, and their income only expanded as Hong Kong expanded. Drug importers had to pay licensing fees, loan sharks had to pay, and loan sharking was a very serious business because of the gambling. If one borrowed money from loan sharks to cover gambling losses, interest rates were ten percent per day - and the station sergeants all got a cut of that. As the new public housing complexes went up, bus companies came into existence to transport the residents into the city. The police would demand a fee for allowing the buses to operate. The housing estates had to be decorated by contractors. The police would charge the contractors a fee for allowing them to work in the buildings.

“And so it went,” said Sir David. “It wasn’t all bad of course. The police were so tightly tied in with the Triads and with vice that whenever a particularly heinous crime occurred they could solve it very quickly. A Chinese who commits a crime wants three things afterwards; he wants a woman, he wants to smoke some opium and he wants to gamble. The police would go to their contacts in the brothels, the opium divans and the gambling halls, and they’d come up with the chap immediately.”

Being a policeman in Hong Kong was so lucrative that very soon most British gazetted officers were corrupt as well. In desperation, a number of new ordinances were passed. One brought into existence the Independent Commission Against Corruption, and another made it a crime to possess assets beyond what could be explained by a man’s ordinary source of income.

“That was the key law for us,” said Sir David. “We were able to go after the station sergeants, and we nailed many of them, although none of the Dragons. The usual sentence was two years in prison, plus monetary fines based on how much it was estimated the fellow had stolen during his police career. Some of these fines totaled almost a million dollars, which the ex-sergeant in question usually paid in cash immediately. Of course a number of cases never came to trial. Fellow committed suicide as soon as he realized he’d been caught, what?”

After a short pause, Sir David added: “Terrific loss of face involved with getting caught. A man’s most precious possession is his sense of shame, the Chinese feel. It’s what distinguishes him from the animals. So these fellows shot themselves. Very Chinese, what?”

“It’s very cop, as well.”

“I beg you pardon?”

“What you’re talking about is part of the police psyche, not just the Chinese psyche. American cops are always killing themselves when caught, too. I’ve known several personally. Cops, even corrupt cops, can’t cope with guilt, for some reason.”

“I see, yes. Well, we went after your man Koy too, of course,” continued Sir David. “I directed the inquiry myself. Shouldn’t have. It was not particularly difficult to develop additional information against him. The trouble was that potential witnesses were terrified of him. Nobody would give evidence. We were able to learn that he had a net worth running into the many millions of dollars. But the money was not here in Hong Kong, and we were unable to discover precisely where it had gone. It was like trying to prove murder without a corpse. Meanwhile, the police force was extremely resistant to this Commission, as you can imagine. There were covert meetings, and then a huge outdoor rally in the stadium in Kowloon. Good deal of muck was thrown at us and our efforts. There was a protest march on police headquarters, followed by a police strike and the threat of violence. The governor was obliged to declare a partial amnesty for offenses committed before that day. Your man Koy was one of those who benefited from the amnesty. Our case against him at the moment is closed.

“Can you reopen it again?”

“Negative. Amnesty is amnesty. And in any case I’m left with still another problem, I’m charged to focus on official corruption and your man is no longer a Hong Kong official, what?”

The two men stared at each other. After a moment, Powers said, “If he’s come here to set up narcotics shipments through Hong Kong, then you can bet that he will make use of former police cronies. At least one of these former cronies must still be a police constable or sergeant. There’s your hook, if you want to use it. That’s official corruption, isn’t it?”

Sir David, looking thoughtful, almost troubled, was again stroking his muttonchops with both hands. Suddenly he began to grin, so that Powers thought with elation: I’ve got him, he’s going to help me after all.

Sir David stood up. “I’ve taken a personal interest in this man, as I’ve said. Not the proper attitude for an administrator, but there it is. When is he due in?”

“We had his flight number leaving New York, but we lost him in London. However, according to our wiretap information, he arrives in Hong Kong today on Pan Am flight sixty-six at ten minutes after three.”

“Probably coming from Bangkok,” said Sir David, reaching towards his intercom. “Let me make some arrangements here, and then let’s go out to the airport and have a look at him, shall we?”

WHEN KOY deplaned in Hong Kong that afternoon he was watched from an office whose window looked down on the customs area. The lights were out in the office, and the watchers, Powers and Sir David, stood well back from the glass. Koy proceeded normally through customs. They saw him present an American passport - at this Sir David’s eyebrows rose - and his one small bag was not opened. As he passed out of customs, they were able to continue to observe him by crossing the upstairs corridor into a second office whose window looked down into the main arrivals hall.

They saw him met by one woman and three men, all approximately his own age, all extremely respectful. There were smiles enough to light up the hall, and much bowing, as if he were a visiting dignitary or politician, much honored but unknown to them personally. There were no kisses, touches or handshakes. One of the men did relieve Koy of his satchel; the man holding it stood rocking back and forth on his heels, beaming with pleasure.