Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER SIX

Court walked the streets for hours on a surveillance detection route, which in most any other city in the world would have been a breeze at this time of night, because it’s no great trick to detect surveillance when there are few people out and about. In Hong Kong, however, Court found himself constantly double-checking the faces of those around him, so thick were the sidewalks with pedestrians, even in the early-morning hours.

He stopped for a snack in a street stall, then wandered through a maze of kiosks selling cheap housewares and knock-off jewelry, still open at two a.m. He kept his eyes out for anyone who could have possibly followed him from the Peninsula hotel, but he saw no hint of a tail, and two hours before first light he found himself in the gritty Kowloon district of Mongkok, well north of Tsim Sha Tsui.

He stepped into an all-night market and pharmacy — it seemed just about every business down at street level stayed open twenty-four hours a day — and he bought two bags full of supplies, all of which he managed to cram into his backpack and roll-aboard.

Now that Court had picked up the items he needed and put some distance between himself and the crime scene he’d left to the south, he set off on the hunt for an out-of-the-way guesthouse. He realized Mongkok was the right neighborhood to find one, because there were, without exaggeration, tens of thousands of rooms for rent in the endless streets lined with skyscrapers.

The main drags here in Mongkok were still awash with the glow of neon, but this part of the city was nothing like down near the harbor where, even on the side streets and in the alleyways, the lights shone bright twenty-four hours a day. Once he got a couple of blocks off the major streets, he found less commercial glitz and more poverty-level residential buildings. Many of these structures were thirty, forty, even sixty stories tall, but still they had grungy unkempt facades and simple signs out front declaring what sorts of commercial and residential properties could be found inside.

On Ki Lung Street he found himself drawn to a gaudy glow of pink neon around a side door of an otherwise gray and poorly lit building. He stood in the dark across the quiet street and looked at the facade, noticing a small hand-painted sign under the neon promoting the “Pleasant Southeast Orchid Guesthouse.” From the sign he learned the establishment occupied the first and third floors of the building, with a connecting business that offered “All-day, all-night foot massage” on the second floor. Even at this hour it was open and active, with an all-male clientele. He stood in the alcove of a building across the street and watched the place for a while longer, trying to decide if the guesthouse would suit his needs. Court didn’t know if the foot massage locale was a legitimate business or if more was on offer, but from the steady flotsam and jetsam of men entering and exiting the front door of the building, he guessed there was something going on other than foot rubs.

This was about as far removed as one could possibly get from the five-star hotel he’d checked into the day before. The guesthouse wasn’t low profile or secure, but he thought this place to be as off grid as he could possibly manage in the middle of an urban sprawl where he had no friends or contacts to draw from.

He assumed the rooms of the guesthouse would be seedy and nasty, but the low-rent nature of the place meant they wouldn’t care about seeing a passport or doing anything to alert authorities to his presence, and above all he had a good deal of confidence that anyone looking for a man who had disappeared out of the Peninsula would not look here first.

He figured he might end up with contact dermatitis staying at the Pleasant Southeast Orchid, but he probably wouldn’t get a bullet to the head by an MSS hitter, so he decided this looked like it had the potential to be his new home.

Court crossed the dark street, anxious for a few hours’ sleep but ready to turn away if he saw anything he didn’t like.

The check-in process to the guesthouse was a little more complicated than he’d anticipated, but only because the old guy behind the counter couldn’t understand why the foreigner wanted a room here in the first place, why he was booking for two whole days, and why he hadn’t brought a prostitute with him. There was suspicion in the man’s eyes, disbelief that this guy was actually here seeking accommodations.

Court thought he could have walked in with a goat under his arm or a cavalcade of circus freaks in tow and gotten his room quicker and with fewer sideways glances.

He considered turning on his heels and going somewhere else, but the overall squalidness of the place made him feel confident that his secrets, despite whatever the old-timer behind the desk guessed they were, were probably safe here.

He paid in HK dollars that had been left by the CIA in a money belt in the backpack he’d found on the aircraft, then took the stairs out of the lobby and up to the first landing. Here he passed the door that simply read “Happy Foot Massage” with the outline of a foot in front of an outline of the sun, and he turned to take the staircase up to his floor. As he passed the door to the massage location, it opened and a pair of Asian men left together, heading down the stairs without even glancing at Court.

Nice, Court thought. He’d suspected the clientele here might avert their eyes from the other guests, and it was good to see he’d assessed the situation correctly.

If there was one thing in this world Court knew, it was shitty hotels.

He found his little room, and immediately it looked to him like the Pleasant Southeast Orchid Guesthouse had employed the same architect that designed cells in supermax prisons. There was no window in the eight-by-ten-foot box and the ceiling was just six feet above the floor, which added to the claustrophobic feel. The walls were white-painted cinder block that had chipped and yellowed over time, and the ceiling was unpainted particleboard with black mold around the edges.

Court dropped his pack and his roll-aboard in the corner of the room next to the open plastic garbage can and sat down on the dirty bed. Facing forward, he found he could reach out and touch the rust-stained sink, even lean forward and wash his hands if he so desired, though he worried about the color and quality of the water he would find coming out of the faucet.

His gaze settled upon his own face in the little mirror above the basin. He looked exhausted and stressed. He’d killed two men hours earlier, and he’d come a hairsbreadth from dying himself. This had been a decidedly bad opening day, and his face showed the strain of every minute of it.

But Court was just getting started. He knew it was time to shake off the initial setbacks and to go on offense. He’d begin his operation here in Hong Kong, right here, and right now. He’d prep for tomorrow’s action first; then he’d get a few hours’ sleep.

He reached into his backpack, pulled out the plastic bag of items he’d purchased at the pharmacy, and got to work.

Gentry left his low-rent guesthouse at nine a.m., slipping down the stairs and passing through the tiny lobby without the clerk noticing him at all. As he emerged from the dark and dank building out into the already hot morning air, he sported a completely new look. His beard was gone and he’d cut the hair on his head short. Gone, too, were his eyeglasses and his dress clothes, and instead this morning he wore lightweight cargo pants and an adventure-wear short-sleeve shirt designed for warm climates. He donned a burgundy ball cap and sunglasses and had another ball cap — this one faded and gray — folded in his pants between his waistband and his skin.

He didn’t have a backpack or any other luggage with him; just a wallet, a cell phone, a money belt, and a few odds and ends in his pockets.

He descended into Hong Kong’s impossibly clean and organized subway system, called the MTR. He climbed on and off four trains, switched out his ball cap, then finally reemerged at street level on Nathan Road, back in Tsim Sha Tsui, just a few blocks away from the Peninsula.

He didn’t particularly want to come back here, but he had no choice, because his orders from CIA involved speaking with a man who lived in the neighborhood.

Chungking Mansions was one of the most famous buildings in Hong Kong. Virtually a city unto itself, it housed thousands of residences, over one hundred private businesses, and seventeen stories of accommodations ranging from budget at one end of the spectrum to very, very low budget at the other.

Court passed through the wide entrance of the building along with dozens of other people and immediately realized this place wasn’t exactly what he was expecting. Though he’d never been here himself, he’d heard about the building over the years, and he knew it used to be something out of a dystopian novel. For decades criminal activity had run rampant in the filthy dark halls, gangs ruled individual floors, and an almost anarchist society had raged inside the various blocks of the sprawling structure.

But as he walked the halls now, he saw that the famous address was relatively clean, reasonably well organized and run, and, for Hong Kong anyway, quiet and even boring.

It was less like the house of horrors he’d expected and more like a large and run-down shopping mall.

Court had been told in his brief from the Agency that he could find a man in a little office at Chungking Mansions who, it was known by the local CIA shop, had his finger on the pulse of everything that happened here in HK. He’d been a police detective back when the city was a British protectorate, and then after independence he’d switched over to private investigations. His official job now was as the owner of a security consultancy, but the simple truth was that next to nothing went down in Hong Kong without Wu getting wind of it.

The place was full of commerce of all types; the hallways were crammed with impromptu markets and kiosks, many run by African and Middle Eastern businessmen who also rented rooms in the buildings. They were street salesmen back home, here in China to buy wares to restock their home operations. Enough of these travelers had set up kiosks to sell to one another here in the building that Court imagined some of their number never did make it back home; they just spent their time buying crap from low-end Chinese factories and selling crap to other street merchants from afar.

There was a prevalent smell in the building Court could not identify, but it wasn’t pleasant. There was fry grease in the mix, to be sure, but competing incense burners and the body odor of thousands of residents packed tight in a can with limited plumbing options also led to the thick, stifling odor.

Court found all the elevators in this block to be out of order, a significant pain in the ass in a building seventeen stories tall, so he began climbing. Every few floors he looked out the glass door of the stairwell and into the halls of the floor, and he saw mostly residences, some no more than simple affairs separated from one another by curtains.

As was the case in many buildings around here, things got weirder as you went higher. He passed large restaurants and crowded markets and hookah bars, but he kept climbing, all the way to the sixteenth floor. Here he left the stairwell and began reading the little signs on the walls of the offices here.

Many were printed in both English and Mandarin, and Court saw that there were a large number of attorneys, customs agents, and freight forwarders on this level. But down at the last door at the end of a long hallway he came to his destination. The English words on the door plaque read: “Wu K. K. Consultant.”

He knocked on the door and was immediately buzzed in.

He explained to a seventy-something female secretary that he did not have an appointment but needed quick information from Mr. Wu. She asked the American for his business card, and he shrugged, said he would be paying for information but not giving much of any himself. When she inquired where he’d heard about Wu’s consultancy, Court made up a name, saying the man was an attorney from London.

The secretary just nodded and stepped alone through a doorway.

A minute later she opened the door and showed the American in.

Wu appeared to be around eighty years old, but he seemed in reasonably good health. He sat behind his desk with a can of orange soda in front of him and a suspicious look in his eyes.

Wu spoke good English, a result of living in a British protectorate for the majority of his life. He asked Court what he wanted, and Court sat down in the one chair in front of the desk. “Same as anyone who comes through that door. A little information.”

“The lawyer in London you mentioned does not exist. So… how do you really know about me?”

“I give you money, you tell me things. Isn’t that the way it works?”

Wu smiled a little more. “You are American?”

Court lied; second nature. “Canadian.”

Wu gave Court a wink. “Canadian. Very good. What do you want?”

“I want to know the whereabouts of someone here in the city. A prominent person from abroad, who arrived recently. How much will that cost me?”

“You give me the name. If I know nothing, it costs nothing. If I know something, it costs what it costs for what I know.”

“Right,” Court said, “I am looking for a British national who is visiting Hong Kong.”

“Name?”

“His name is Sir Donald Fitzroy.”

Wu did not hide his recognition of the name. “Sir Donald. Here? In Hong Kong? Why? Is there someone here who needs to die?”

Court heaved a big sigh and stood up. “Obviously I know more about this than you. Good-bye.”

Wu held a hand up. “Five thousand Hong Kong dollars.”

“For what?”

“I know Sir Donald is here, and I know where he is. Not exactly where, but what district. Maybe a little more about what is going on than this.” He repeated his price. “Five thousand.”

Court pulled a thick envelope of bills from his money belt, but he just held it up. “I pay for what I receive, not what you tell me I will receive. If I’m satisfied, really satisfied, I’ll give you three thousand.”

It was clear on Wu’s face that he both had expected to bargain and felt pleased with his powers of negotiation. Whatever he had, he would have probably let it go for one thousand.

Wu said, “Okay. He’s somewhere in the Peak.”

Court knew this was a district on Hong Kong Island, up in the hills south of the harbor. “What’s he doing there?”

“He is under the protection of the authorities.”

“The… protection?”

Wu shrugged but didn’t elaborate directly. He just said, “For what reason, I do not know. What I do know is Fitzroy’s men came to me last week, and they wanted information about a crime gang here in HK.”

Court wanted to ask more about Fitzroy’s men, and he especially wanted to know what they were looking for. But he refrained. That would not be in keeping with his secondary cover, so he just pressed for information about Fitzroy’s physical location.

“You said officials. Are you talking about security officials?”

“Maybe you give me other two thousand, and I give you more information.”

“Fine,” Court said. It wasn’t his money, anyway.

“These are men from the mainland. The Ministry of State Security. They are all over Hong Kong. Usually they are very quiet. A man here, a man there. Starting last week, they are everywhere. They even came to see Wu.”

“What were they looking for?”

“One of the Triad groups. This is the same group Fitzroy’s people were looking for. Days later I heard Fitzroy was taken from his hotel and up to the Peak by mainland security men. Maybe I can get you the address… for another five thousand. I’ll need two thousand in advance.”

Court wasn’t surprised Wu was trying to put him on the hook for another two Gs, but he knew he wouldn’t get, nor would he need, the address from Wu. Still, Court had a plan, and to see it through he agreed to the terms.

Court said, “I’m staying at the Pleasant Southeast Orchid Guesthouse at sixty-three Ki Lung Street. When you find out where Fitzroy is, you can reach me there. I’ll give you the extra five thousand then. Nothing in advance.”

Wu scrunched up his white eyebrows in confusion. Not many of his drop-in clients offered up their physical location — it wasn’t the best move from a tradecraft standpoint — but the Chinese man only said, “I will try to find out more.”

Court thanked the man and left the office, then made his way through the labyrinthine halls and stairwells of Chungking Mansions back down to street level.

He headed back in the direction of his windowless room in Mongkok, traveling directly, with no attempt at an SDR. His only side trip on the way home was stopping at a dim sum restaurant half a block from his building for lunch. It was the noon hour, the place was slammed, and Court ate his meal standing out front to avoid the congestion.

When he was finished with his lunch, he stepped over to a garbage can. Carefully he took the envelope in his money belt containing several thousand HK dollars, pulled a few bills out, and crammed them in his pocket, then took the nearly full envelope, folded it up with the paper plate and napkins from his lunch, and shoved it in the can.

Court was just about broke now, but it was part of his plan for the next phase of his operation.

He returned to his guesthouse, climbing the stairs past men waiting in line for a lunchtime “foot massage.”

Back in his hot cell of a room he took off his hat, but he kept his phone and his wallet in his pocket. He flipped on the overhead light, then lay down, fully clothed on the little bed, his body above the sheets. He was careful to keep his hands to his sides, away from his body. He felt this would present the most nonthreatening posture to the men who would soon kick in his door to kidnap him.

Court’s entire objective at the office of Wu K. K. Consultancy today was to give China’s Ministry of State Security the impression that a lone American had come to town looking for a British subject named Sir Donald Fitzroy. Fitzroy was Court Gentry’s former employer, and the Chinese would know this, and even if they did not, they would have reasons to be very interested in any strangers in town looking for Fitzroy.

He felt sure they would have been listening in to the goings-on in Wu’s office, and that meant they’d probably come for him soon.

That had been the CIA’s plan, anyway.

Of course this all would have been better if Court hadn’t climbed out of a CIA aircraft yesterday and killed two MSS goons at the Peninsula hotel; because of this incident MSS would already be aware that a new American who worked in the intelligence field was here in town, so Court had to somehow convince them he wasn’t that guy.

It would be tough to pull off, but Court Gentry had developed into one hell of an actor over the years.

And he felt certain he’d have to deliver an Oscar-worthy performance in the next few hours to stay alive.

Yeah, Court knew what was coming and he wasn’t looking forward to it one bit. He had a wound to his ribs from a recent mission that hurt when he moved in the wrong direction, and he was supremely confident that the jackasses who were about to kidnap him would move him in all the wrong directions.

This was going to suck, he told himself, and then he closed his eyes, hoping for a little sleep before it all went to hell.

Two hours later he woke to movement close to him. Rough hands grabbed him and rolled him onto his stomach. No one spoke, which meant these guys were pros.

Someone ripped his shoes off, and this pissed Court off greatly. He wasn’t particularly mad at the man who did it; rather, he was angry at himself. He should have assumed they would take off his shoes, and he would have enjoyed his nap a little more comfortably if he’d been sleeping barefoot all along.

A bag was pushed over his head — there was always a bag with these things, and Court wondered if this bag had been washed since they’d bagged their last victim.

He told himself not to think about it.

He was yanked into a standing position, swiveled around towards the door, and guided forward with multiple pairs of strong hands holding his arms on his left and right. Still no one had spoken, and this continued to impress Court.

He was dealing with well-trained individuals. They were still goons, to be sure, but they’d clearly graduated with honors from a top-flight goon school.

They guided him down the stairs; he assumed he was moving past the massage parlor, but none of the men in line there spoke, nor did he hear anything from behind the counter in the lobby as he was pushed along at the bottom of the stairs.

Court hadn’t seen uniforms on these men before they’d hooded him; he guessed either this crew was brandishing weapons or badges, or else they just carried themselves in that special way only secret police in a semi — police state carried themselves. While Hong Kong was supposed to be a separate entity of China still, the civilians in view of this spectacle would have no trouble guessing who was orchestrating this operation.

Either an organized crime group of some sort, or a government entity of some sort.

And either way, the civilians would do well to keep their mouths shut and their eyes averted.

Court was tossed flat in the back of a vehicle, which made the wound in his side ache. Three doors shut, almost all at once. Assuming the driver had already been at the wheel, this meant there were at least four in the vehicle with him now, although there could have been more than that.

Two pairs of feet settled on top of him: one on the back of his thighs, and another on the back of his head.

Court was utterly helpless. The men over him could stick a syringe in his butt or a knife in his spine or, at any moment, he might feel the cold steel of a silencer pressed against the back of his neck. They could take him out to a field and bury him alive, or they could torture him with battery acid to find out what he knew about their operation.

And there wasn’t a damn thing Court could do about it.

Being the Gray Man didn’t mean being in control at all times. Sometimes it meant relinquishing all control, playing the game, and dealing with fucking bullshit like some asshole standing on the back of your head.

Court told himself not to worry; he’d figure out his situation soon enough, and then he would adapt and overcome. In the meantime, he closed his eyes and did his best to enjoy the ride.