Year of the Dragon (36 page)

When he had the dossier in his hand, Worthington consented to read Carol certain facts from it: Koy’s date and place of birth, date of appointment to the force, commendations won, dates of promotions, date of resignation.

“All this is immaterial,” said Worthington. “The man has been absent from the Colony for five years.”

“He’s here right now,” said Carol.

Worthington only stared at her, but the stare had a different quality to it. It contained surprise, and Carol felt for the first time that she had impressed him.

He had closed Koy’s dossier and was tapping it with his finger. He looked thoughtful.

“Will you read me those same details on camera?” asked Carol.

“Mind you,” said Worthington, “I shan’t denounce the fellow. We have laws against that here. The enquiry into his official conduct was not pursued. As far as the Hong Kong authorities are concerned, he can go and come as he likes.”

“I’m not asking you to denounce him,” said Carol. “I’m asking you to repeat on camera all that you have just told me.”

Once again their eyes met, only this time Worthington’s right cheek twitched. It was almost a smile. It was an admission that a kind of armed truce existed between them. It meant, Carol felt, that she had won his respect, and she didn’t know why she should care, but she did care. She was thrilled. It meant also that she would leave this office with almost exactly the footage she had hoped for, footage that meant good television, and this was a second thrill. Twice thrilled was perhaps the maximum allowed one human being in one afternoon, and she could hardly wait to meet Powers and tell him what a triumph she had had. They would have dinner together. And then?

She smiled to herself, feeling suddenly thoroughly confident, thoroughly happy. The night might prove lovelier than the day.

IT WAS past 8 P.M. before Chan dropped her off in front of the Mandarin. Powers had not yet come in. She left him a message that stuck half out of his box. It gave the number of her suite, but not her name. It was signed “An old friend.” She did not mean to be coy, but rather wanted to surprise him. She wanted to hear the gladness in his voice, see it on his face. She didn’t want it wasted on a piece of paper.

Upstairs she luxuriated in another hot bath, replaying in her head today’s footage. She would not see it until she got back to New York, but did not need to. In addition to her interview with the police commissioner she was covered as far as intros and wrap-ups were concerned. She had filmed various versions of each in a number of scenic parts of the city, including one sequence in Koy’s old red-light district, and another aboard the ferry boat traveling from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon.

Although she was very pleased with herself, this pleasure began to cool at about the same rate as the water in which she lay, for her phone still did not ring. Soon the bath was almost cold. Should she add more hot? Her toes curled over the faucet - she would not even have to sit up. With an abrupt movement she erupted from the tub, water sluicing off her. By 9:30, dressed, she was irritably pacing the sitting room of her suite, and growing increasingly hungry. She ordered a meal sent up: minute steak, salad, yogurt. When it came, she signed for it, wolfed it down, and resumed pacing, her irritation rising. Crossing to the phone she checked one last time with the front desk, and was told that her message was still in Powers’ box. He had still not come in. Furious, she ordered her message yanked.

In the bathroom she stared again at her face, seeking additional reassurance, but not finding it. She was like a man checking the contents of his wallet. How much was left? How much longer did it have to last? She was really showing her exhaustion now, she decided. Which was normal - she had run the marathon today. It was just as well she wouldn’t be seeing Powers tonight. Swallowing two sleeping pills, she went to bed, and slept until 10 o’clock the next morning when she was awakened by Austin Chan’s phone call. He was waiting downstairs with the crew. Carol phoned Powers’ room, but he had already gone out. The day had just started and she was angry at him already. Don’t be such a bitch, she told herself. It’s not his fault.

She took her time dressing. Chan and the crew could wait. That’s what they were being paid for.

It was Saturday, and she accompanied her crew throughout the Colony filming more scenery: the exterior of a police station, the border with China, the exterior of banks. When she would put the piece together in New York, this scenic footage would run beneath voiceover commentary as she described parts of her story for which no accompanying footage existed - the history of the Triads, for instance, or the structure of youth gangs.

It was an enjoyable enough day, and a profitable one, and it was dusk when Chan again dropped her at the Mandarin. Expectant and excited, she hurried inside, and again phoned Powers’ room. He was again absent. This time she left a message that gave not only her room number, but also her name, and when she had mounted to her suite, and had begun once more to pace her room, her eyes filled up with tears of frustration. She did not know how much longer she could stay in this place, nor how long he could. But time was certainly short. Minutes, hours, more than a whole day had been wasted so far. Time continued to be wasted that could never be replaced.

POWERS, meanwhile, had driven with Sir David up into the New Territories to a country restaurant. They stood now in a second-floor office overlooking an outdoor patio where a banquet was in progress. Illumination came from candles burning inside lanterns that hung in the trees. About forty men, all Chinese, sat around a horseshoe-shaped table gorging themselves on delicacies. There had been nine different dishes so far - Powers had counted them - and, as waiters moved forward with the tenth, the man who occupied the place of honor at the head of the horseshoe – Koy - rose to his feet to propose still another round of toasts. From the office, watching and listening through cracks in drawn blinds, they could hear the toast and also understand it, for Koy spoke in English. He spoke too loudly, and with the excessive care of the man who knows his wits are addled. He was so drunk he could barely stand up.

“With true friends,” he said, having raised his cup, “even water is sweet enough.” Everybody was laughing. “And this is not water.” In Cantonese, Koy added the simplest of all Chinese toasts: “Dry cup.”

Peering through the blinds, Sir David said, “Our man does not look much like a master criminal at the moment, does he, what?”

“What are they drinking?” asked Powers.

“Probably Moi Tai. It’s a distilled spirit. It’s almost pure alcohol. Those men down there are old police cronies of Koy’s. You’re looking at a drunken police reunion. Ever seen one before?”

“A few,” said Powers.

“The Chinese say that when a man is drunk his spirit is calm.” But the party itself was not calm. Below them was much boisterousness and hilarity, as each man in turn rose to offer a toast. They were drinking from small lacquered cups. After each toast the cups were emptied, and then were refilled for the next one, as the toast made its way around the table.

“We have no way of knowing what may be going on down there,” said Powers, presently. It had become impossible for him to keep the urgency out of his voice. Two days of tailing Koy everywhere, two days of tailing the other ex-sergeants also, had produced neither evidence nor information. Conversations over the tapped telephone lines had been so innocuous and so brief that it was impossible to tell even why Koy had come back here, much less to determine what his future plans might be.

“They could be setting up deals down there,” said Powers. “We wouldn’t even know about it.”

“Try to be a bit less anxious, Captain,” advised Sir David. “The Chinese never talk business while eating. Gastronomy is as important to them as to Frenchmen. It’s sacrilege to talk business while eating. I have men moving among the waiters, and we’ll get their reports later. But I doubt we’ll learn very much. What we are looking at is neither more nor less than what it appears to be, what? Same type reunion you have in New York, I expect.”

“Police reunions are scary, aren’t they?”

“Indeed they are.”

“Cops are scary. They all have guns, and they get so drunk.”

Koy had risen late each of the two mornings. Coming out of his house with his wife about noon, he had seemed to notice the surveillance trucks - a telephone truck the first day, and a moving van the second - for he had studied them closely, as if aware of what their function might be. However, each time his wife had distracted him, taking his arm and dragging him toward the limousine. The limousine had taken them no place suspicious - to restaurants, to shops, to a cemetery where they left offerings and bits of torn colored paper on the graves of ancestors, and finally to the American consulate on Garden Road where Koy entered alone and where, Sir David was able to learn, he applied for a visa for his son.

Neither Sir David nor Powers had considered this detail significant. Plenty of Hong Kong kids of college age went to college in America.

As for the other former sergeants, all three had moved about the city from bank to bank carrying attaché cases, and it was presumed that they were either depositing or withdrawing cash, presumably the latter. One imagined they were about to buy something, but who knew what. Without knowledge of the total sums withdrawn, one could not even guess. Their business could be completely legitimate. Hong Kong banking laws were strict, Sir David said. Not only was it impossible to learn more without a court order, but such orders were extremely difficult to get.

“Even if you get one,” snorted Sir David, “it wouldn’t do you much good.”

Hong Kong had no currency controls of any kind, he explained. The Colony was blessed with over 900 branches of 105 different banks, whose cashiers cashed drafts for $100,000, or more several times every day in the ordinary course of business, and never looked up. Southeast Asia, according to Sir David, was a cash society. Enormous amounts of cash money were always moving around. The Chinese - who were the preeminent businessmen of Southeast Asia - had not in the past trusted checks. If you wanted to do business, whether to hire a cargo ship, or build an apartment complex, or buy a factory, you most likely arrived with the cash in an attaché case under your arm. It made money impossible to track. It made the job of the police, and especially the job of Sir David’s Corruption Commission, extremely difficult.

Powers lifted one slat of the blinds with his forefinger. The flickering lanterns below lit the sweating drunken faces. The men looked as garish as circus clowns, as feverish as men terminally ill. “We are not getting anywhere,” Powers said.

“Patience, Captain,” said Sir David. “Try to emulate the Chinese a bit, what? Try to be a bit more patient.”

Powers said nothing. It was very hard to be patient when his career, and to some extent his life, rode on whatever game certain of those men down there might be playing - a game whose object was to him impenetrable, whose outcome he seemed unable to influence in any way.

“It’s getting close to midnight, Captain. Shall I run you back to your hotel?”

The ride back was via super highway, much of it elevated. Sir David sat in his corner, a reading light drooping over his shoulder, thumbing through memos and reports that had piled up during the day, while Powers stared into ten miles of third-floor windows, into small rooms crowded with large Chinese families and much hanging wash.

At the reception desk he was handed Carol’s message. It was then midnight. He studied the message and at first did not comprehend it - he thought she must have phoned, which was not so surprising. Then he realized she was here - here in Hong Kong - which was more than surprising. It was astonishing. It was electrifying. His heart began pumping hard, and his hands turned moist, symptoms, he realized, that were more associated with fear than with elation. Did this mean he was afraid of her? Or merely shocked, and after a long day, both tired out and somewhat bewildered. If she was here, what did this mean?

He studied the message again, and did not know what to do about it. He knew he was preoccupied by Koy and the investigation, and thought he wished to remain that way. Carol was a separate problem, one he would have to cope with, obviously, as soon as he returned to New York. But not before. Not here in Hong Kong. Not now. Not right this minute.

And yet he wanted to see her. He could, if he wished, be in her presence in a matter of seconds, and in bed with her, most likely, shortly after that, a prospect that presented itself almost unexpectedly, and left him feeling not only slightly breathless, but also with a sense of wearing too-tight trousers. When he glanced at his watch a second time the hour still read midnight. Carrying key and message toward the elevator bank, he pondered this new equation, this new strain on his life. He should not be surprised that Carol had come to Hong Kong. She was rich, self-indulgent and capricious. She could afford to come here on a whim, and had done so, just to see him, he supposed. What other reason could she have? She wanted him, or said she did. And not just casually - she wished to take him away from his wife, or said she did. What did he mean to do about that?

Powers rode the elevator up and when it reached Carol’s floor he stepped out into the hallway. As he walked along searching in the dim light for the correct door number, he was at the same time searching in his heart for a correct course of conduct. He either loved Carol or was infatuated with her - even at forty-six the two emotions were too close together to tell apart - but he had not come to Hong Kong for that, and believed it would be better for them both if he stayed away from her. Since any big decision seemed too big to make right now, he decided on a small one instead. He would rap softly on her door one time, and once only. If she answered, this would mean that their meeting tonight was meant to be. He would not fight what was foreordained. If she did not answer then he would go down two flights to his own room and go to bed. It was the type of game he had sometimes played as a child: he would let God decide.