The Last Six Million Seconds

as if they were pictures. On the opposite wall in what may have been the place of honor, a nineteenth-century long-barreled rifle with its worn and torn canvas case and another, slimmer brass telescope. Cuthbert returned in an open-neck shirt and slacks, pointed to one of the rugs.

“Kansu saddle rug with fret and floral medallion, cloud band border. I imagine it on the back of a bandit’s horse somewhere along the silk route between Samarkand and Beijing.”

He led Chan into an annex off the sitting room where a small Italian marble table was laid for lunch. Surrounding the table were huge terra-cotta pots from which small rubber, coffee, caocao, teak and mahogany trees grew. As he sat down at the table, Chan supposed the humidity in the room was deliberate. It was like picnicking with the viceroy of India, somewhere between Maharbellapuram and Kashmir.

Hill appeared. Unlike Emily, the Englishman did not require his servants to wear uniforms. The Filipino wore jeans, an open-neck short-sleeved shirt.

“Been with me years,” Cuthbert said when Hill was out of earshot. “Damned fine chap. Half Chinese, from Luzon, up in the north somewhere. Lives with his wife just down the road where she’s a maid with a Chinese family. Perfect arrangement. I get Hill all day; I’m alone at night.” He smiled.

This was a different Cuthbert. From the moment they had entered the apartment the diplomat’s manner had subtly changed. A new kindness, an attentiveness to his guest, a commitment to some lost tradition of hospitality soothed even Chan’s nerves. He agreed to a gin and tonic, along with Cuthbert.

“Emily. Smart girl,” Cuthbert said suddenly, as if in answer to a question. He proceeded to butter a roll. “Of course, trying to talk to her about anything other than money is like trying to get an orangutang to play the sitar. Firmly believes she’s Chinese. I keep telling her, ‘You’re not Chinese, dear; you’re Hong Kong.’ And she is. She simply couldn’t have been produced anywhere else in the world. D’you know she’d made four million American dollars profit by the time she was twenty-six? On a single transaction at that.”

Cuthbert sipped his gin and tonic, stared at the stem of his rubber tree. “Damn, fungus. I just don’t know how we manage it, Hill. It never bothered the planters in Malaysia, I know because I once asked one. We must be doing something wrong.”

Chan watched Hill cross the room with the same smile on his face. With a tolerant “yes, sir,” like a batman to an officer, he placed a small earthenware hot plate filled with glowing charcoals on the table and left the room.

Chan replaced his glass on the table. “What kind of transaction?”

Cuthbert stood up, bent over another of the trees for a moment, then sat down again. “We’ll have to back up a little. Emily’s family, the Pings, they’ve been helping us for decades. Her father fled Shanghai in ’49 but kept his connections there. During the sixties Beijing wasn’t officially talking to us at all. To do business, we had to use go- betweens. Nothing unusual about that, the Chinese invented the go-between system-like everything else. Emily’s an only child. Old Man Ping coached her to take over from him. When I was posted here twelve years ago, I gave her her first job: Xian. I knew I had to get in with him on the ground floor or the whole process of handover would be in jeopardy, and Emily seemed like a good choice. She knew Shanghainese, Xian’s mother tongue, was well connected in southern China and already respected in Hong Kong.” Cuthbert sipped his gin and tonic reflectively. “Women. Doesn’t matter if it’s business or bed, there’s always a complication. Where’s Hill?”

The Englishman’s mind, Chan realized, raced at the same dangerous speed as his Jag. The diplomat left the room while he tried to catch up. Chan acknowledged that Cuthbert was answering a question: Chan’s. Back in Cuthbert’s office Chan had asked generally about the availability of top secret information for his inquiry; Cuthbert had commenced providing that information, using his own “need to know” criterion. Emily, it seemed, was a part of the answer.

Chan stood up to look for a bathroom. In the hall he glimpsed Cuthbert’s library. Not for him a few dozen paperbacks rotting in a cupboard. Not even the cultivated man’s set of bookshelves. It was a real library with shelves from floor to ceiling, a small oak stepladder, an oak lectern in front of a window for a man who liked to read standing up. Next to the lectern an ashtray on a pedestal. At another window a cigar-colored leather chesterfield awaited a reader’s pleasure.

Cuthbert was back when Chan returned to the table. He resumed before Chan had sat down. Hill appeared at the same time with a wok of stewed lamb with dry bean curd, which he placed on the hot plate.

“The complication was her greed. She saw an opportunity. She’d bought the lease to a two-story Chinese house in Central out of her own money, but she didn’t have the funds to redevelop. Banks weren’t going to lend a twenty- six-year-old girl twenty million to build a high-rise, and her old man, being Chinese, wasn’t either unless he owned a majority of the shares in the company. Spirited girl, can’t deny it. Xian was only too pleased to help. He loaned her the money; she built her office block, made her four million profit-and discovered with a jolt that Xian owned her. The old devil had found the ideal way of laundering his ill-gotten gains; Hong Kong real estate. And Emily was the perfect front. Xian’s not the kind of chap you say no to, not if you want to live in this part of the world. The next time he needed to find a home for a few hundred million, he used Emily. Gave her all the status, all the face, all the profit she wanted. But she wasn’t free. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to talk her out of a suicidal depression. Lamb?”

“Emily depressed?”

Cuthbert used a large wooden spoon to serve the lamb. “Mmm. Wouldn’t believe it, would you? But you see, Xian is a life sentence. Even when he dies, she’ll never be free; there’s a whole army standing in line behind him. It’s not that easy to live with, if you’re the independent type. Of course, I couldn’t use her again for anything delicate. It’s part of my job to keep the lines open with Xian, though. It didn’t much matter. Xian and I reached a kind of modus vivendi. We talk almost every day. There’s a lot to do when you’re delivering six million people to someone else for safekeeping.” The Englishman studied Chan for a moment. “I believe you know quite a lot about laogai?”

“I have a friend who does.”

“I know, that tiresome old man in Wanchai.”

“Who spent most of his life as a slave in the laogaidui.”

“Quite. Then you’ll understand Emily’s self-disgust. She launders money for an organization that derives much of its profit from the use of slaves. Slaves to grow the opium, hump the guns, cook the morphine. Chinese slaves, just like in the Middle Ages. Poor girl, there is absolutely no way out for her. She really is a divided soul. Tough as nails on the outside, riddled with self-loathing on the inside. Difficult to live with.”

Sometimes Chan couldn’t believe how stupid he was. He should have seen it on the boat, should have caught the subtle clues in tones and eye contact, should have guessed, at least, when Cuthbert had warned him not to sleep with Emily. It was his job, after all, to detect.

He’d been misled, largely, by the Englishman’s personality. One pictured him so much more easily with a cricket bat or a rifle or a leather-bound tome than a woman. The phrase “talk her out of a suicidal depression” echoed in his mind. An ex-lover’s phrase; the sort of duty a gentleman acknowledges toward a woman he’s dropped. Chan saw Emily, ten years younger, less promiscuous, more of a prudish Chinese girl perhaps, wandering through this bachelor’s flat, trying to follow Cuthbert’s encyclopedic conversation. Their arguments would have been worth listening to.

Cuthbert’s revelations about Emily were fascinating but, on reflection, failed to carry the investigation any further.

“Mr. Cuthbert, I don’t understand.”

“Oh?”

Under the diplomat’s raised eyebrows, Chan flustered. He sensed that he was being manipulated with a finesse that produced a twinge of nostalgia for the rough killers of Mongkok. He felt his chin jutting, along with other symptoms of a vulgar belligerence.

“Perhaps you’re trying to help me by supplying this information about Emily Ping. But I don’t see how it fits.”

Cuthbert leaned back in his chair, smiled. “But surely that’s your job, old chap?”

Chan felt his tongue start to trip on a stutter. “I-I-I thought, in fact I’m sure, there’s information somewhere, secret, in a computer… You know? All these people, Xian, Emily Ping, Clare Coletti-they must be known to M16. I thought you would persuade the committee to give me access. I thought that’s why I was invited here to lunch, to discuss it further.”