He was hungry but checked the remainder of the rooms before heading for the fridge, hoping that Rupert had left something in the freezer. He had, complete with a note to himself not to binge, saying fat fat fat! Quayle smiled and helped himself to what looked like a TV lasagne. Only the microwave would know. Rupert wasn’t a fussy eater by the look of things.
Settling back in of the chairs, he wondered how Steve was getting on. Anyone who had made it like Fung Wa had made enemies along the way. Steve would have to find them, find people who would talk. Find men who had waited years for the opportunity to play some small part in his downfall. He considered the watchers. They had only had him for five minutes along one of the busy Wanchai streets. They could not have confirmed his identity in that time, even working from photographs. It was pure bad luck. There was a time, long ago, that he would have let them follow, drawing them in, leaving them secure that they weren’t blown, waiting for their move. But that was for networks and teams, not a man on his own, not a man who was the target. With a little luck, they wouldn’t even report the incident, mindful of their masters’ wrath. If they did, then Fung Wa’s machine would begin to turn and security would be tightened immediately. They would know he was coming to take back what was his, to come for the bait. Fung Wa would be worried. He would have made commitments to others, he would have made assurances that he could deal with the problem, assurances to Broken Square. Together they would keep it from the Chinese. There was too much to risk in allowing shy paranoid xenophobic Beijing know that there was a loose cannon on the deck. Fung Wa couldn’t afford a battle on the streets, not with Beijing watching so closely, not with a political career in the offing, not having spent years going legitimate in preparation for the handover of the colony to the Peoples Republic of China. Fung Wa was risking everything on one magnificent gamble. The tightrope walk between Broken Square and the Chinese could bear staggering fortunes.
Quayle walked to the windows, gazing down over the layers of light that was Happy Valley at night. It was still too simple. Broken Square, whoever they were, was big. So big as to include the minutemen and nachtwatch and exert some control over even Fung Wa’s organisation and all he could muster. So why become the hired gun, even if it achieved their own ends? He toyed with the words for a minute, looking for a relationship between Tiananmen Square and Teddy Morton’s file name, but it was all hollow. Teddy was dead long before the massacre in Tiananmen signalled the end of reform on the mainland, long before the old party hard-line Marxists crushed their own bright future beneath the tracks of their tanks.
Had Teddy foreseen it? Was that his warning, woven through the words of Newbolt? No, Quayle thought. His warning was not the broad screech of the tabloid press crying yellow peril. It was something more esoteric and infinitely more evil. It was deeper and closer and with more at stake than the possession of an island half a world away.
Through Fung Wa, Beijing had made an offer with ironic timing, like offering a nymphomaniac a million dollars to go to bed with a super stud. The minutemen and the nachtwatch were going to do it anyway; Beijing had simply offered a convenient scapegoat, and Fung Wa and his associates a substantial war chest.
If they put up any less than a billion dollars for the expenses they had gotten away lightly. Somewhere out there was the real threat. If Nachtwatch and the minutemen provided the soldiers and the infrastructure, then someone else had provided the strategy. Who? Talk to me Teddy. You either knew or you were close. Close enough that you lost at chess. Cclose enough that they could peer over your shoulder…
The phone rang, a cricket warble loud across his thoughts. It stopped after one ring, then rang again and stopped after two.
Cockburn.
Quayle crossed the floor in three strides and picked it up on the first ring of the next attempt.
“Got someone who wants a word with you here,” Cockburn said dryly.
“Put him on.” Quayle said pleased. Only Steve could have gotten Cockburn irritated so fast.
“Little bird?”
“Mmmm.”
“Remember where we met and ate noodles last time?”
“Yes… you wanted a Budweiser.”
“Correct. One hour. OK?”
“One hour,” Quayle confirmed.
Almost as soon as he hung up, he was on the move. The noodle place Steve had mentioned was over in Kowloon. He quickly scrounged through the wardrobes in the master bedroom until he found a jacket that fit. Pulling it on, he went straight to lifts. Once outside, he walked four blocks before hailing a cab and had it take him across the harbour in the tunnel, then drop him at the cultural centre. From here he walked up to the Regency Hotel and took a limousine to the airport, and from there a another taxi to the rendezvous.
It was a cheap eating house with Formica-topped tables, neon lights and incongruous calendar prints of the European Alps upon the walls. Sitting just inside the kitchen was Steve Chung. He nodded to Quayle and stepped out , leading him directly through
