Thai Horse

What the hell could all this be about?

To Hatcher, the Peninsula Hotel defined Hong Kong. It stood like a beacon on the tip of Kowloon, facing the Star Ferry that carried passengers to the Central District on Hong Kong island. Rolls-Royce limos for the guests lined up at the door in front of rickshaws. The desk manager was a short, sleek Oriental in a dark double- breasted suit; the ancient concierge wore a traditional silk brocaded cheongsam. In a corner of the lobby a blond woman who looked Swedish played Chinese melodies on a Swiss harp for those who came in late or rose early. It was truly where East and West came together and was one of the finest hotels in the world. Guests were treated like royalty.

It was raining when he got to his room. The bellhop hung up his suit bag, turned on the ceiling fan and the television, vanished for a minute or two and returned with a bucket of ice.

‘Mm goi,’ Hatcher said, thanking him and tucking a Hong Kong five in his hand.

When the bellman was gone, Hatcher flicked off the TV, opened the sliding door and went out on the balcony. He had slept little for the past three days, and he let the rain-cooled breeze refresh him as he watched the rising sun chase the storm across the bay. It had already passed over the island, leaving behind a glittering jewel of skyscrapers and glass towers below the towering peak of Victoria Mountain.

He ordered breakfast and had the waiter set up the table on his balcony. While he ate he watched the riverboats moving in and out of the harbor, the Star Ferry streaking toward the island, the Peak Train gliding up the side of the mountain.

He began to doze. Jet lag was catching up to him, and for reasons he did not immediately understand, Hatcher’s mind slipped back to a dark night ten years before. To the tram rising up in darkness, through the banyan trees, past the rich houses. The dark figure of Harline waiting at the top, a cigarette glowing between his smiling lips. Hatcher leading him around to the cliffs of the overlook and Harline holding out his hand eagerly, almost salivating, his effete British accent in the darkness — ‘Good to do business with people you can trust, chum’ — and Hatcher dropping the envelope, leaning down to pick it up, grabbing the Britisher around the knees as if he were tackling him, vaulting the slender man backward, down into four hundred feet of emptiness, his terrified scream fading into the darkness.

Hatcher jerked awake and sat staring out at Victoria Peak. Ten years. Where in hell did that come from? Yesterday was history, you never looked back, never thought back, never went back unless the job required it, and when it did, you dealt with it with the old clicks, your subconscious providing whatever background was necessary to stay alive. Now, suddenly, here it was, hunched on the rim of the alpha zone, dogging him. Suddenly he found himself wondering for what purpose he had killed Harline. Sloan had never told him and he had not asked.

‘It’s a sanction. You’re a soldier doing what soldiers do. Soldiers don’t ask.’ Sloan had said that the first time he ever asked why. And now, for the first time since he met Sloan, Hatcher thought, A soldier without uniform, without identification, without credentials or identity. What the hell kind of soldier was that? And now here he was, back again, and the doubts about Sloan gnawed at him.

Out on the island, black-eared kites, who had rushed to the sanctuary of the trees to escape the rain, spread their two-foot wings and soared over the island. For centuries they had shared the lofty aerie with rich taipans, the business rulers whose homes dotted the precipitous face of the mountain like small forts. Below them spread the Central District, the business heart of Hong Kong, where Chinese gangsters cavorted with British bankers and taipans, where dynasties were created and empires won and lost, gold was king, and where the binding ethic was money.

An island founded by smugglers and pirates, thought Hatcher. The only thing that changes here is time.

And thinking of pirates, Hatchers mind slipped again, this time to Cohen, and another memory crowded his brain. This time it was a happy one.

Thinking of Cohen made Hatcher feel good, for Rob Cohen was one of those characters who made the Orient the Orient, a man of mystery, an American expatriate who had become a Hong Kong legend. Hatcher was one of the few people who knew the whole scenario. They were close and trusting friends, though they had neither seen nor talked to each other for several years.

Ten years before, when they first met, Cohen was known as king of the Macao Runs, arid an unlikely king he was, buying contraband merchandise with the skill of a Rothschild and smuggling boatloads past the Hong Kong customs several times a week with the adroitness of a Chinese warlord.

By then Cohen was known as the white Tsu Fi of the river, although it was a while before Hatcher understood what that meant. All Hatcher knew was if you wanted to know the back-room secrets of Hong Kong, this short, wiry Jew with the Boston accent and the scraggly beard, who wore Chinese clothes, spoke three different dialects, had a lock on the river trade, and had become one of Hong Kong’s most mysterious and feared characters, was your man.

Before they met, Hatcher had heard many stories about Cohen — rumors, tall tales, lies — all slanderous, and all, to one extent or another true. But the real truth was far stranger than any fiction Cohen’s detractors and enemies could have invented. Through the years as Cohen and Hatcher progressed from being cautious adversaries to becoming close friends, Hatcher grew to trust the legendary schemer. And in time he had gradually pieced the story together.

Back in 1975, Cohen’s office was a dismal, dusty, two-room closet over an acupuncture parlor on crowded Cat Street, which was just a small anteroom with two uncomfortable chairs. And it was lot. There was no air conditioning and the ceiling fan looked as if it had been out of order since the second dynasty.

‘Mr. Hatcher? Come on in,’ Chen said in an accent that was part Boston, part British and part singsong Chinese.

To see him, Hatcher had to squint through dancing motes of dust spotlighted by the sun that streamed through the windows. Cohen was sitting in a straight- backed chair framed by the sunlight. Then, suddenly, Hatcher remembered him.

‘We’ve met before,’ he said, extending his hand.

‘Right,’ Cohen said, returning a hearty handshake, ‘two years ago, up the Beijiang in Chin Chin land.’

‘Sam-Sam Sam and his crew,’ Hatcher said with a nod.

And Cohen laughed and nodded. ‘Right, a true shit if there ever was one. He’ll steal your eyeballs and screw your French poodle while you’re holding the leash. You’ve got a good memory there, gwai-lo.’

‘Yours ain’t too bad either.’