The Code War (35 page)

'I hate to take the air from your sail,
Jabez,' put in Ruth, 'but I'm not really sure it's such a great
idea. I think the risks, frankly, are too great and we'd be better
working more closely together from Paradise. In fact, if y'all want
to come and move into my place there's plenty of space here. Then
we can work from the side of the pool.'

'Ruth, that's very generous of you, and
I may well take you up on your offer. Though I'm not sure too much
comfort and easy living will help us focus better on the task. But
I think I will go ahead and spec out Hong Kong myself to begin
with. I want to get a feel for the place. I've only viewed the
twentieth century from Paradise before. I've never been there. And
this mission needs wings on the ground. I'll be undercover of
course, for the most part. No-one'll know I'm there.'

'
They'll
know,' said
Agatha.

'Yes,
they
will,' agreed Jabez.
'Though humans won't notice me. But maybe it'll be a good thing
if
they
do see me. It might slow them down a bit. Make them more
cautious and wary.'

'Or it might make them more careful and
more effective,' said Luke. 'Look, I agree you should go. But you
should go in the Fundial lightcraft and keep it close by you. Just
in case you need a quick exit.'

'Thanks Luke,' said Jabez. 'I appreciate
the vote of approval.'

'Can you use chopsticks?' asked Agatha,
supportively.

'I need to practice,' admitted Jabez.
'But first I need to brush up my Cantonese tones, I'm a bit rusty
on those.'

'Jan hai la' - Definitely - agreed Luke
in perfect sing-song Cantonese dialect.

'Yes. Jan hai. Quite right. I'll
be in touch as soon as I know more and I've found more places to
put the 1.11 code in front of Nancy's eyes. Agatha, that was a
touch of genius placing it on that sail.'

'Thank you,' said Agatha. 'I can't wait
until the moment of Nancy's revelation, when she learns what it
means. But she will need to see it many more times before then so
that it really sinks in. We've got our work cut out to increase its
visibility.'

'Ah'm inclined to agree,' cut in
Ruth, her Texan tones acrobatting through the air like cowboys on
mustangs. 'The enemy has got a clever code, but we've got somethin'
better. Next time we speak I hope to be able to tell you what I
think they were doing in the nineteenth century with Nancy's
ancestor. I have my suspicions and if they're true Nancy's havin' a
powerful time-trick played on her. It's what they used to call a
spell long ago but these days we just call it a dirt extraction.
It's legal by the rules we all play by, but it's mean. And if they
pull it off, all the bats of hell will be loosed on Earth. We're
gonna need that friend of ours in Hong Kong that Agatha talked
about. And he's gonna need us.'

Yaumati
Pol
ice Station, Kowloon, Hong
Kong

The dragon's head surged into the
upper corner of the CID room, pulled back, surged again, waved its
huge colourful head side to side and dived back towards the centre.
Then it reared up and surged again at another corner to frighten
away the terrified evil spirits who had taken refuge there. Cymbals
clashed and drums bashed at all sides making a cacophony of joyful
noise. Underneath the dragon three pairs of scuffed shoes could be
seen kicking out to the side while its long body trailed nearly
twenty feet behind it.

At the long table in
the centre of the room, a detective was trying
to take a statement from a robbery victim while around him DCs and
English-speaking Junior Investigators were putting out beer and
Chinese tea. To a rousing cheer, two young waiters from the Gam
Jeung restaurant, both with cigarettes protruding from their lips,
man-handled a large salver bearing a just-sliced whole roast
suckling pig into the room. Smaller plates bore shiny-skinned
Peking ducks and cold roast chickens. Moon cakes were piled high on
a filing cabinet.

Dan Kelly, CID duty inspector,
strode into the room and stood just inside the door. Dan was fond
of suckling pig. But he was also fond of a beer and he made no
effort to decline when Detective Sergeant Tung grabbed a bottle of
San Miguel and poured some into a glass. 'Daai Lo' - 'Sir'- he
saluted Dan with the respectful title and offered him the
glass.

'Thanks Tung,' said Dan, speaking
in Cantonese. 'Have we got the witnesses coming back for
questioning about that serious wounding? And what about the two
guys who were caught with 6 packets of heroin in their car and each
blamed the other?'

'All delayed for one hour until festival
over,' declared Tung confidently.

'I'm glad we have our work priorities
the right way round,' said Dan swigging his beer.

The drums and cymbals rose to a
crescendo. The dragon's movements became ever more exaggerated and
sharp, looking suddenly behind to the left, behind to the right,
up, down, under the table, behind the window blinds. Around it,
detectives were smiling and clapping. A few members of the public
who were sitting at various side benches looked on with detached
interest. Whatever serious matter had brought them to the squad
room was not going to be blanked out of their minds by a mere
dragon dance.

Finally the dragon leapt up high
and then collapsed on the floor to a roar of applause, its six
trousered legs sticking out at various angles. Three new volunteers
rushed to take the places of the exhausted crew who staggered out
grinning and smiling to their mates. The cymbals and drums started
up again and the dragon concertina'd out of the room and into the
corridor to chase the evil spirits out of the rest of the station.
Locusts with side arms under their shirts now descended on the
food. Ribs, wings, thighs, feet and even heads were all picked
clean and washed down by gallons of tea, lemonade and beer. The
squad rooms were now ritually clean and happy
. Fung shui had been restored. Life could go on.

In his office opposite the big CID squad
room, Dan finished writing up his case reports, in English. His
English-speaking junior investigator Liu Jai would later load eight
pieces of white A4 paper interspersed with 7 pieces of carbon paper
into his typewriter and bash out multiple copies of the report of
the day's crimes for dissemination to a host of senior officers at
Kowloon Police Headquarters.

Dan sat back and folded his hands
together behind his head. 'I have to go to the Magistrates Court to
get that warrant signed, Liu Jai,' he said. 'Tell Ah Tung to meet
me here tonight at 10pm with two of the squad and we'll go and
check out that 'hotel' in Ho Lo Gai Street.'

'Yes, sir,' replied Liu Jai. 'But even
though we know it's really a brothel, it will still be hard to find
evidence.'

'Well, we can but try,' Dan was speaking
English now. He didn't need to, he was fluent in Cantonese. But Liu
Jai wanted the practice before his next police language exams. 'We
might get lucky and find a customer who'll spill the beans.'

'Spill the beans?'

'Yes, it means tell the truth, sometimes
without intending to do so.'

'Oh,' said Liu Jai, thinking. 'You mean
like you do when you have several beer?'

'Cheeky monkey, get out of here.'
A
nd Dan sprang at Liu Jai who was too
quick for him and jumped back laughing. At the door, Liu Jai
turned, 'Good luck with warrant.'

'Thanks. I hope I see the nice Mr
Wong and not Bruce 'the Australian strangler' Wangler,' said
Dan.

Liu Jai smiled. He couldn't help
looking down at Dan's chest where his neck chain lay over the top
button of his shirt. Liu Jai had noticed the chain before and the
unusual pendant it held. But he hadn't got around to asking about
it.

The pendant
was a small silver ingot bearing an engraved number.
1.11

Shanghai Mansions,
Yaumati District, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Nancy looked across the desk at
the portly Chinese man sitting opposite her. He wore several gold
rings, a gold bracelet
and an
expensive-looking starched shirt. They called him 'Fatty' in both
English and Chinese. How come he was comfortable with
that?

In the few hours she had been in
Hong Kong, Nancy had already learnt that she was a
'gwai lo' woman. An old ghost. She was certainly
the 'gwai' bit of gwai lo, she thought, her complexion was quite
pale. Compared to the tanned Chinese, anyway. As for the 'lo' well,
she clearly wasn't old. She was a young ghost then.

She knew she presented a nice
image. Slender, medium height, long brown hair. Pretty enough, but
not too beautiful. That was a good thing, she hoped. Beautiful
people were too easily noticed and remembered. Not good in a crime
organisation. And anyway she wanted to be treated seriously, not
taken for a bimbo.

Fatty's assistant, Ko-yee, was
sitting on a sofa
behind her. Ready to
protect his master in case she attacked him. Well, if you're a
crime boss you can't be too careful.

'Habby speak very highly of you.'
Pretty good English.

'Habby? Oh, you mean Habib. Yes.'

'So. W
hat you want, Nancy?'

Nancy was ready for this. 'Well, I
enjoyed working for Habib in Africa. I thought I did a very good
job there in difficult circumstances.'

'You killed one of my men.' Fatty wasn't
going to make it too easy.

'No, actually,' Nancy bridled. 'He
killed himself with his own stupidity. And he was cheating you by
running his own operation on the side.'

The glean of a smile
lightened up Fatty's face. He liked
that.

'But you not speak Cantonese. What good
you to me?'

'No.' This was proving harder than she
thought. Had they flown her from Israel to Hong Kong just to turn
her down flat after five minutes? 'But I speak perfect English and
this is a colony with an English-speaking government, right? And
English laws? And where a lot of important business is done in
English?'

'So? I not need English people in
my company so far. Why I need you now?'

This was going badly. She needed to
break out of her defensiveness, take the initiative.

'I am good at organising things. Getting
things done.' Damn, she thought, what have I really done except
talk my way across a border and run into the sea? 'Look, give me
something to do. You must have a challenging problem right now that
no-one else can fix.' Shot in the dark. 'Put me in charge of
something. I can learn Cantonese as I go. I'm best when I'm dropped
into something, at the deep end.'

Fatty frowned. 'At the deep
end?'

'Yes, it means without warning. Without
preparation.'

'Hmm. You not look like member of
Brother. You look too… innocent.'

'Oh? You just told me I killed
someone.'

Fatty grunted again and looked at
Ko-yee. Did he like that too?

'What you know about…eh…newspapers,
television. I mean about talking to newspapers, what you call
that?'

'Oh, do you mean PR?'

'Yes. PR.'

'Not very much. But I'm good with
customers. I'm good at selling. I could learn on the job. Give me a
try.'

Fatty
turned to Ko-yee and spoke to him in Cantonese. 'You know
we talked about how Brother is growing up. Maybe we need someone to
be our face to the rest of the world. We need to be international
like a proper corporation. We'd set ourselves apart from other
triads. What do you think?'

Ko-yee was hesitant. 'She's never run a
brothel, or a casino. What does she know about heroin? Is she going
to run to the police when she wakes up to what we're doing? We
don't know anything about her, Fatty.'

'Hmm.' Fatty thought for a minute. He
turned back to Nancy and spoke in English.

'Here's what I think. Maybe we
could use an English girl. Or maybe not. But first, we need to see
you how you work. Stand up.' Nancy stood. 'Now turn around.' Nancy
did as she was told. Fatty leaned forward over his desk and
scrutinised her body all over as if he was looking at a horse.
Nancy wondered if he was going to come over and put his hand in her
mouth and inspect her teeth. He turned to Ko-yee.

'Get her fitted with a cheung sam.
And nice shoes. And get Ah Mui to put some make-up on her.' He
turned back to Nancy. 'Tonight you work in my Golden Luck casino.
Hostess. Greet customers and make sure they spend money. Show you
can sell. We see if you like Brother. We see if Brother like you.
Find out very quick.'

Oblivion Bar, Naxela's
Squawhouse, Inferno

Bezejel slapped Kodrob so hard on
the back that it nearly broke his spine. His nitro-top benzene went
flying across the bar, some of it splashing into a Poseidon's
trident of burning torches. A flaming whoosh went up to the top of
the ceiling cone.

A loud cheer came
in response from all the squaws and demons
present who had joined in Bezejel's celebration. She was buying the
drinks to mark a significant moment in the progress of the Nancy
project. Two drums boomed in the background in time with each
other.

Kodrob
recovered his composure and watched his boss with some
concern. It was an incongruous sight. Bezejel the siren princess,
confidante of the Leader, elegantly coiffured in her dazzling red
dress and high heels amidst a throng of beery, leery cut-throats in
drab uniforms who would husk each other for a snoutful of
grog.