The Last Six Million Seconds

comment to make at this time”), and following his discovery that his telephone had been tapped and case files tampered with, he had been ordered to bypass the command line at Mongkok and report directly to Riley. He decided to walk to the complex of buildings that constituted headquarters for the Royal Hong Kong Police.

Edinburgh Place, City Hall, Murray Road, Queensway: British names whose sell-by date was fast approaching. Queensway Plaza was an air-conditioned Oriental shopping mall crammed with Chinese tailors, Chinese takeouts, Chinese computer stores, Chinese jewelry shops and Chinese pedestrians. People moved in tidal waves in both directions. As Chan allowed himself to be carried forward into the mall, the cool from the air conditioning froze the rain and sweat on his body. He could smell on himself and everyone near him the musty odor of tropical damp as it cooled.

In their rush to escape the wet and hurry home, people pressed against him and closed off all movement to the left or right. If he had wished to enter one of the shops, it would have required an extreme and antisocial effort of will. There was a hard knot of people who weren’t moving, though, immediately in front of Wong’s Watches. Chan allowed himself to be deposited on the outside of this crowd, where he paused for a moment. The fashion for countdowns had started in Beijing some years before; now almost every street in the territory had at least one large digital clock recording how many days, hours, seconds until midnight June 30, 1997. Wong’s was extralarge, filling half his shopwindow. Chan realized why everyone had stopped when he saw the “seconds” panel: six million and twenty seconds. The woman next to Chan started counting down in Cantonese: nineteen, eighteen, seventeen. When the panel registered a clear six million, a small cheer went up, and the woman turned to Chan: “One second for each of us-and disappearing.” Chan broke away as the crowd dispersed.

On the other side of the twin office towers called United Center the walkway toward Arsenal Street lost a little of its human density. Chan thought about how to handle the chief superintendent, who would surely be alarmed by the problem with the coastguards. Riley? Chan had known him on and off for ten years, had watched him grow and change in the manner of gweilos since he first stepped off the plane at Kai Tak. His nickname in Cantonese could be translated as “rubber spine.” A permanent condition of self-doubt made him especially sensitive to political sea changes, which was why he was appointed to supervise delicate investigations. Not so much a willow bending in the breeze, this Riley, as an artifact of empire broken by the storms of change. Chan didn’t hold it against him; there was a disease that went with expatriation and grew worse as the years passed: schizophrenia.

“You went into Chinese waters?” Riley said when Chan had finished.

“It was a mistake.”

Chan watched the Englishman try out various responses: a blink; a frown; a sedate placing of the hands together in prayer; a muted thump on the table.

Finally Riley bit his lower lip. “But they were expecting you, you’re sure?”

“Someone must have been listening in to our ship-to-shore and given orders to those coastguards to take the bag from us. I told you, this isn’t an ordinary investigation. Last week someone bugged my phone, and they’ve been in my files; today they listened to the ship-to-shore. As it happened, the coastguards were just dumb thugs.”

“But they didn’t seem to know what was in the bag?”

Chan shook his head. “They asked me several times. When I told them, they laughed as if I was joking.”

Riley stared at the wall, then back to Chan, then back to the wall. Chan watched Riley. Taoism posited a center of energy in the human body called chi. Riley’s chi was like a Ping-Pong ball bouncing between two identities: master race/indentured servant.

“You were incredibly brave. Or incredibly stupid. Time will tell.” He drummed on his desk. “I have to say it does make my blood boil, though. What business do those Communist bastards have interfering in my investigation? Excuse me, our investigation-well, yours really. Five years ago I would have been behind you all the way. Even twelve months ago I would have supported you.” Riley’s eyes were more pleading than annoyed. “But we’ve only got two months left, Charlie. The Commies practically run the place already! Now they could have my arse for this-well, yours really. I’ll have to see the commissioner. Please stay home tonight, in case someone wants to see you.”

When Chan had gone, Riley sought and obtained an immediate interview with Ronald Tsui, Hong Kong’s first Chinese commissioner of police.

Half an hour later Riley was sitting at a huge desk in the largest office on the fifth floor of Caine House, the most prestigious building in the Arsenal Street complex. On the other side Commissioner Tsui sat in a leather chair under an oil painting of the queen of England in full ceremonial dress. Tsui, who had been educated in England, spoke in that language to Riley.

“And you say that these coastguards had orders to intercept this bag with its incriminating contents?”

“Yes, sir.”

“A bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? I mean, Chief Inspector Chan just happens to follow a lead that just happens to take him toward the Sokos at the same time that these chaps just happen to be in the area?”

Riley looked at the desk, then up at the commissioner. The game they were playing was a kind of double bluff that penetrated every aspect of life in government. Tsui knew that the coastguards had deliberately intercepted Chan’s search, but he wanted to report the allegation as Riley’s, not his own. Riley wanted to report it as Chan’s, not his.

“I believe I told you, Commissioner, according to Chan, there have been a number of other attempts by an outside agency to monitor the investigation into these murders.”

Tsui nodded. “Yes, you did. At least you convinced me that he convinced you that someone had tapped his office telephone and copied some of the confidential files related to the case.”

“Well, if this other agency went so far as to tap one of our phones as he alleges, which presents some logistical problems for them, it’s not farfetched to imagine they were intercepting ship-to-shore radio reports that Chan was issuing every half hour from the time he left Queen’s Pier. After all, ship-to-shore can be monitored by just about anyone with the right frequency on their radio.”

Tsui nodded. “So?”

“I think you see the point, sir. If his radio reports were being intercepted, it would be a simple matter for them to issue instructions to the nearest Communist coastguards to keep an eye out and to be especially interested in anything he salvaged from the sea.”

“That’s how you see it?”

“That’s how Chan sees it.”

Tsui looked as if he were considering the possibility for the first time. “I think I follow you so far, Chief Superintendent. But one thing still puzzles me. If the coastguards had been given such instructions, why did they let him go?”

“Firstly, they weren’t sure whose waters they were in, ours or theirs. He managed to bluff them. Secondly, and most important, these were not high-flying cadres with a passionate concern with national security. Chan describes them as the usual bunch of yobs in uniform who could be persuaded to betray just about anything for the right price.”

The commissioner sighed. “This will have to go higher. The political adviser will have to be informed.”

Riley saw that the interview was over. He stood up. “Yes, sir,” he said in English, repeated the same words in Cantonese, turned smartly and left.

After he had gone, the commissioner sat for a moment. He tapped the government-issue blotting pad with his forefinger, then lifted the telephone.

“Get me the commissioner for security. When I’ve done with him, I’ll need to speak to the political adviser. And I’ll need a summary of Chief Inspector S. K. Chan’s personal file, please.”

4

Arsenal Street Police Headquarters was only a short walk from Wanchai, where Chan had trained as a cadet. On the surface the area was a red-light district of international renown, but Chan was intimate with its other features. He liked the old-style low-rise apartment blocks in the narrow back streets with their external chaos of air-conditioning units, hanging gardens, illegal balconies, chicken-wire aviaries and satellite dishes. In a side alley