Zero Minus Ten

the day of my ‘disappearance,’ I simply got out of the limo when the vehicle was shielded by a large lorry that pulled up beside it. I jumped on to the side of the lorry and rode with it up the street. A man I’d hired then threw the bomb into the car. It was quite spectacular, if I do say so myself. I understand you had something to do with the man’s demise?”

Of course, Bond thought. He should have known it had been a magician’s illusion. It just proved the old adage that the hand really was quicker than the eye.

“Very clever, Thackeray,” Bond said. “But why? I know all about the contract between your great-great- grandfather and Li Xu Nan’s great-great-grandfather. But why disappear? Unless it was simply to escape being arrested as a drug-smuggler?”

“Yes, well, the contract …” Thackeray suddenly seemed lost in thought. “It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? My father had told me about the agreement, and I thought it had been lost forever. Li Xu Nan hated me on principle. He thought my family had cheated his family. But we didn’t lose the contract. The Thackerays had nothing to do with his family’s exile from China. Yet he blamed me for some reason.” Thackeray chuckled. “It didn’t stop him from doing business with me!”

“And then General Wong came to see you …”

Thackeray nodded. “Yes. A black day, to be sure. General Wong came to see me in, what year was it … ? 1985. At first I couldn’t believe he could get away with what he told me. I was determined to find a legal defence against him. At the same time, though, I had to keep silent. I couldn’t put the company’s market value in jeopardy. If the news that EurAsia Enterprises was going to change ‘management’ in 1997 had been made public then, I could not have conducted business. There are plenty of big corporations that have pulled out of Hong Kong in the last ten years. I was stuck, so I had to make it work until that fateful day.”

Thackeray stood and began to walk around the room as he spoke. He took a bottle of vodka, poured some into a glass, and drank it quickly. For the next half hour, he continued to refill the glass regularly. His address slowly became a rant, as if he was justifying himself to the gods rather than talking to people in the same room as him.

“I had to live with it for ten years!” he said. “Ten … bloody … years … Imagine it! Imagine knowing that everything your family had built was going to vanish in one swift blow, and there wasn’t a damned thing you could do about it! I alone carried that weight on my shoulders. My solicitor knew of course but he was helpless as well. So, about a year ago, I finally knew what I had to do. I would get everything I could out of the company, escape, and then wreak havoc on the society that had destroyed five generations of wealth and success.”

He sat down again and faced Bond and the girl. His face was flushed and he was now beginning to lose his composure. “I hate the Chinese. I hate the two-faced bastards! They smile to your face, eager-to-please, but behind your back they have nothing but contempt for you. And you know something? The British are no better! I hate them as well! What idiots! They agreed to hand over the wealthiest city-state in Asia to the yellow bastards, and it was rightfully theirs!”

So, Bond thought, not only was Thackeray a raving madman, he was a racist as well. “There are many who would argue with you, Thackeray,” he said. “It was the Chinese who got the unfair deal back in the nineteenth century. The land was originally theirs. Hong Kong was won only because of the greed and opportunism of opium traders. That was the reasoning behind the treaty Britain signed with China in 1984. China has lived with what they felt was shame and humiliation that England has nurtured one of her children. Hong Kong is a part of China, Thackeray. You cannot refute that.”

“Balls!” Thackeray shouted. “Don’t speak to me about opium traders! My great-great-grandfather was a pioneer, and if it weren’t for men like him there wouldn’t be a Hong Kong! Do you think the territory would have flourished the way it did if it had been under Chinese rule all this time? It might never have been developed at all! No, Bond, I don’t buy that argument. You think Britain is selling out because she feels guilty? If that is the truth, then it’s a stupid reason to hand over a gold mine to a country full of ignorant people who will most likely run it into the ground!”

“Mr. Thackeray,” Bond said evenly, “China is full of people who have worked and sweated all their lives just to have a piece of land on which to build a home. They have a heritage of defending themselves against all manner of threats. Their country has been conquered and restructured countless times over the centuries. They have learned that not everything in life is about wealth. You know as well as anyone how important maijiang is in the East. If Britain decided to hand over Hong Kong, it was because she felt it was the honourable thing to do. She had to save face.”

“Don’t talk to me of honour, Bond. It was a business transaction. Nothing more.”

“I’m afraid there are a lot of people who don’t see it that way.”

“And after July the first, will those people still see it as an act of honour? When six million people suddenly find themselves living under communist rule, they will come to the realization that they were the pawns in a business transaction gone wrong. They were betrayed. I think they’d rather be dead.”

“What are you saying, Thackeray?” Bond was now beginning to lose his temper, too. “What is it you’re planning to do? I know you have a bomb down there in your mine. It was you who tested a device in the outback a few weeks ago, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, that was me. I had to make sure my little home-made toy worked before I exacted my revenge on those who have done me wrong.”

“And who might they be?”

“Don’t you see?” Thackeray pounded the table. “If I can’t have my company, no one is going to have it! If Britain can’t have Hong Kong, then no one is going to inhabit it! The world has to be taught a lesson.”

The magnitude of what Thackeray was implying hit Bond with great force. “You were responsible for all those terrorist acts, weren’t you! You’ve been intentionally trying to start a conflict between Britain and China!”

“Bravo, Mr. Bond, bravo!” he said with sarcasm. “Yes, I was behind it all. I decided that if my plan was going to be a success, I had to build up to it. I had to plant the seeds in everyone’s minds that China and Britain were at each other’s throats.”

“What the hell is your plan?”

“Why, the culmination of a hundred and fifty years of lies, betrayal, and pretension,” Thackeray said. “No more kowtowing on either side. No more speculation about what will happen to Hong Kong in the future. At exactly one minute after midnight on July the first, that bomb will detonate somewhere in the Hong Kong territory— successfully wiping out the entire legacy.”

This time it was Sunni who cried out. “No! You’re a madman! Why do you want to kill six million innocent people? You’re a child having a tantrum! Someone’s taken away your toy and now you want to get even! You’re pathetic!”

There was silence for a moment as Thackeray stared at her. Bond finally said, “I couldn’t have said it better.”

Thackeray stood again and began to pace the room. He was trembling with rage. The alcohol was starting to get to him, too. He was displaying the same signs of recklessness he had shown in Macau. It was not even mid- morning, and already the man was drunk on his feet. “You don’t know the half of it. Starting about a month ago, I slowly began to transfer EurAsia holdings into a private Swiss bank account, a little at a time. I had to be careful, for there were many people in the organization who could have found me out. First I had to get rid of my solicitor, Gregory Donaldson. He knew too much. At the same time, I could get at that bastard General Wong. I was going to make sure he wouldn’t get EurAsia! I made Donaldson’s death look like Wong’s work. Once that was done, I thought that Britain would reciprocate. When nothing happened, I had my aide Simon Sinclair assassinate the two officials from Beijing. I later got rid of him for that very reason. You were present at his demise, Bond.”

“The massacre in Macau? You staged that?”

“Of course I staged it! I wanted it to look like a Triad hit. The Chang brothers here hired some men to do the dirty work. You and your friend Woo should have been killed that night, too, but it didn’t work out that way.”

“What about the floating restaurant? You killed your entire Board of Directors?”

Thackeray nodded, his eyes wide. As he stared into space, he involuntarily brought his hand up and pulled on the left side of his face. Bond thought he resembled the famous detail in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting in which a condemned sinner suddenly realizes that his soul is damned forever.