Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Court could have done without the four assholes trailing him from the hotel this morning.

Shortly after beginning the operation on his second day in Hong Kong he’d performed a quick SDR: entering and exiting a few electronics shops along the way, looking out into the street through the store windows. He bought a couple of items — Court was a kid in a candy store with all the low-cost and high-tech gadgetry on offer — but mainly he was in countersurveillance mode.

He picked up the tail quickly, cussing under his breath as he made them.

The men tracking him up the road traveled in a pair of small four-door sedans, and he assumed they were MSS. With just a quick evaluation of their procedures he could tell they were cut from the same cloth as the two men he’d killed at the Peninsula, and a similar ilk to many he’d seen at Dai’s safe house the day before.

Court stepped back out of an electronics shop with his purchases in his cargo pockets. In his hand he held a new mobile phone, and as he started walking north he dialed Dai’s number.

The call was unencrypted, but Dai didn’t seem to give a damn. “Yes?”

“It’s me,” Court replied.

“What is this phone you are calling me from?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s a burner. I’ll be using a different number each time we talk.”

The PLA colonel answered, “Suit yourself. What have you learned so far?”

“Only that you are not a trusting guy.”

“What does that mean?”

“Four guys on my tail. Two vehicles. Do you have more ready to follow me into the MTR, or will the passengers in these two cars have to bolt out and catch up if I go down an escalator?”

Dai did not reply to this.

Court said, “I work alone. I can shake these guys, or you can call them off. It’s up to you.”

Dai said, “I am impressed with your abilities. I will recall my surveillance team.”

“If you send others, I’ll see them, too. But if I see them, it might mean the people holding Fan see them, and I don’t think that’s what you want.”

“No one wants that. Remember, Sir Donald’s life depends on your success.”

“I’m here for the payday, Dai. Not for the old British guy. I’ll kill Fan Jiang for you, as long as I’m not the front end of a block-long parade of mainland Chinese gunmen.”

Court hung up and kept walking towards the Prince Edward Metro station and then, as he began to take the stairs down, he turned and looked behind him. The two vehicles had peeled off somewhere in the past block, and he saw no one on foot who looked overly suspicious, although there were easily three hundred people moving along with him here on the wide sidewalks on Prince Edward Road, so it was impossible to be sure.

Satisfied he had done all he could do to ID any persistent surveillance on him, he descended into the MTR station, keeping his eyes peeled at all times for anyone who seemed interested in his movements.

After a thirty-minute transit across waters almost as crowded with maritime traffic as the sidewalks of Hong Kong had been with foot traffic, passengers on the Stanley — Po Toi ferry disembarked at the public pier on the southwestern side of the little island. Court Gentry moved down the boat ramp along with a mix of tourists, fishermen, and trinket merchants, then lagged back on the dock, letting everyone continue on ahead of him.

Court had spent some time looking over every cove of Po Toi on Google Earth, and to him it didn’t appear like there was much of anything going on anywhere else on the scrub-covered rock other than here, in the little bay in view from the pier. His research convinced him he was right; the total population of this island was only two hundred.

He gazed out across the placid water of the bay as the other passengers kept walking. Ahead on his right was an open-air seafood restaurant with a wooden roof; in front of that, men who rented kayaks and boats sat in the sand next to their little vessels, looking expectantly but with noticeable frustration at the small number of tourists disembarking from the ferry and moving in their direction.

Court noticed a few buildings along a poorly maintained road that ran near the beach. On the far end of the bay, on the opposite side of the water from Court, a footpath ran along the waterline, past a smaller restaurant/bar that looked derelict and closed. It was open-air, as well, with a tin roof and a deck that hung out over the water’s edge. Shacks ran up the steep hill above the bar, and the path continued to the left where, out of Court’s sight at the end of the trail, he knew a Buddhist temple sat alone on a little cliff over the water’s edge. He’d read that tourists visited the temple not because it was all that special in itself, but rather because of the nice pictures one could take of the ancient site in the foreground, and the turquoise water of the South China Sea in the background, along with tiny rocky islands jutting up in the distance.

Court pulled his binos out of his cargo shorts and focused them on the derelict building on the far side of the little bay from the public pier. The walls were open so he could look all the way into the dark dive, and he didn’t see anyone at the tables inside. Panning up, he noticed the sign was in Hanzi, standard Chinese lettering. There was no attempt to draw tourists to the establishment, and it was half covered in scaffolding made of bamboo lashed together with rope. Initially it seemed like the place was closed, but now he noticed smoke from the kitchen rising out of the chimney and hanging over the shacks above it on the hill. The place looked like a dump; most anywhere else, even in Hong Kong proper, it would probably be condemned, but despite its outward appearance, it seemed to be open for business.

Court walked down the pier towards the beach road, trying to put himself inside the heads of Fitzroy’s three men who had come here four days earlier. What were they looking for? And who would they go to in order to find it?

Fitz had written in his notes that his three operators reported following a speedboat full of Wo Shing Wo men here from the Kowloon Peninsula, but they didn’t know if Fan was with them or what the Triads were doing here on the island. It had been eleven at night when Fitz got the call from them, so Court surmised Fitz’s men hadn’t taken the ferry, and this meant they must have had a boat of their own. The public pier was really the only place to dock on the island that he had seen from Google, although without knowing how large Fitzroy’s men’s boat was, it was hard to know if they’d just driven right up on some stretch of beach and landed themselves, or even anchored offshore somewhere.

The British ex-spymaster had relayed that it sounded like they were calling from a bar, so with little else to go on, Court decided he’d ask around at the bars here in the bay to see if anyone remembered the three Englishmen.

A few minutes later Court stepped up to the door to the Ming Kee Seafood Restaurant, right on the beach next to the kayak renters. Bright English signage welcomed tourists, and Court planned on entering right behind a group of Austrians from the ferry, but he stopped abruptly at the door when he noticed the hours of operation posted there. He saw that the place closed at nine p.m., just before the last tourist ferry left the island.

If Fitz’s boys didn’t make contact with him until eleven p.m., and they did so from a bar, this seemed like the wrong place to ask around about the three Englishmen.

Court decided to go to the more rustic establishment on the far side of the bay, thinking it might cater to anyone who lived in the shacks and any boaters anchored overnight nearby.

It was just a five-minute walk around the water to the footpath that led to the restaurant. The sun’s heat scorched his arms and lower legs, but his ball cap shielded his face. He walked just behind a few tourists from the UK heading to the temple, and he listened in while they considered dropping into the restaurant ahead for a beer before continuing their walk.

As a group they decided against it as they got closer; the place really was a ramshackle and unwelcoming hole-in-the-wall.

Court saw no English-language writing anywhere on the small sign in front of the little establishment, but he did see from the hours posted on the door that the place was open till midnight each evening. If Fitz’s men had been here following Triads, and if no other part of the island was built up, then it was quite possible, likely even, that Fitz’s men had come to this bar.

As he entered the corrugated tin — roofed building, he expected to be the only Western face in the place, so he was surprised to see a pair of young Caucasian girls sitting at a table along the railing, looking over the side, down to the water ten feet below. Each of them had a bottle of Tsingtao beer resting on the railing in front of them. Other than the two young women, a man behind the bar sitting on a stool and playing a game on his phone, and a mature woman at a table reading a newspaper, the dark little establishment was empty.

Court scanned for security cameras as he moved along the chipboard-and-plastic-sheeting walls of the dive and towards the bar, and he decided quickly that the proprietors of this joint had spent the full measure of their technology budget on the three bug zappers hanging from the ceiling; certainly not on any sort of a CCTV security system.

Court sat quietly at a stool at the bar for thirty seconds, just feet from the bartender, but the young man remained huddled over his phone. Moving purposefully low profile around the world meant sometimes Court didn’t get the best service, but he took advantage of the moment to continue checking out the facility: a couple dozen plastic tables surrounded by three or four dozen plastic chairs, some sturdier aluminum bar stools around the cheaply made wooden-topped bar with a warped surface that indicated it had seen a lot of spilled beers in its time, and likely some monsoon rains dripping down from the bad roof, as well.

Court was certain the builders of this place had violated every single building code known to man. There was some concrete-block construction in the corners here and there, but the overwhelming majority of this little dump seemed like it could have been built in a day by Boy Scouts rushing through the obligations of their woodworking badges. It looked to the American like a firetrap, a collapse risk, and a germ haven all in one.

Court eyed the two Caucasian women again, checking them as potential threats — not out of any real suspicion, rather simply a force of habit. One of the two was tall and thin, with white-blond hair in long braided pigtails and tattoos on both arms; her large backpack was on the floor next to her. She wore a cutoff Bob Marley T-shirt over a black tank top and worn-looking capri pants.

The other woman was of average height and had an athletic build, and she wore big black sunglasses. Her dirty brown hair was rolled into braids and wrapped in a simple leather headband, and she had a tie-dyed T-shirt and baggy pants rolled up to her shins. Her hemp sandals were cinched around her calves with leather ties.

Court put them in their late teens or early twenties, and Western European, for sure.

Neither girl had even glanced up at Court since he’d entered; they just gazed out at the water as they chatted and laughed, enjoying the view and their beers.

Court looked back to the bartender, a young Chinese man of no more than twenty-five, with a round face and thinning hair. The man noticed Court finally and put his phone down.

“Tsingtao, please.” Court said it with a British accent.

When the man returned with the beer, Court kept up the ruse that he was a Brit. “Is it always so slow around here?”

The bartender chuckled, completely at ease. “Yeah, man. During the day it is. At night the boats in the marina and the bay come in, gets kind of busy. Usually it’s just my mom here during the day.” He nodded over to the middle-aged woman reading the paper at the table across the room.

Court hadn’t seen much of a marina here, but he had seen a few slips near the pier, all of them empty.

The bartender started to turn back around to the cash register to ring up Court’s beer, but Court spoke.

“Any chance you were here Sunday night?”

The man cocked his head, surprised at the question, then thought back. His expression seemed to darken somewhat. “Yeah. Till close. Why?”

Court pulled out five hundred Hong Kong dollars, the equivalent of a little more than sixty U.S. He said, “I had some mates here on Sunday, around eleven. Two white, one black. British. They would have been together. See anyone like that?”

The man looked at the money on the bar for several seconds, then back up at the American offering it. Court detected a slight twitch, a microexpression, on the man’s face. “We don’t get many Westerners here.”

Court looked back to the white girls, then down at himself.

The bartender said, “At night, I mean. They all go back up to HK with the last ferry. Try the Ming Kee. You passed it coming from the ferry dock.”

Court replied, “I tried the other place. But the Ming Kee was closed at eleven p.m.”

The bartender nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“I was supposed to meet my friends here, but I didn’t make it. Having a hard time running them down since then.”

The man shook his head and glanced up and to his right. “No, I don’t remember them. Sorry.”

Court affected nonchalance to the man’s answers, but he was well trained to scan for clues of deception. While Court’s easy smile did not waver, he noticed the fidgeting nature of the bartender; his hands played with the bottle opener now, turning it over and over, and he shifted a little from one foot to the other. Court had established a baseline for the man’s mannerisms during their earlier conversation, just so he could pick out any changes when he began his interrogation. When he’d spoken about how slow the restaurant was and how it picked up at night, he’d not been fidgeting at all.

The Chinese man turned away quickly and rang up the beer, then put the tab in front of Court.

“Sorry I can’t help you.”

“Not so sure that you can’t, mate. Anyone else working I can ask? Was your mom here then?”

Court saw the man glance a second time out to his right, not to his mother, who was sitting back over his shoulder, but to a point in the distance. Court knew eyes tended to flitter during deception, but it almost looked to Court as if the man was fixing his gaze to a specific point both times. A spot out in the bay? Court had seen a few fishing boats out there when he arrived on the ferry, but he hadn’t paid much attention to them. Now he would have given anything to turn around and scan the exact area the man had looked off to.

But Court remained disciplined. He didn’t want to let on that he’d picked up the subtle tell.

“No. She doesn’t work at night. We get a rough crowd. Just booze. No food.”

Court pulled out another five hundred HK dollars. “All right, mate, here’s the deal. I was on holiday with these three blokes from London, renting a flat in the Mid-Levels. Two bloody weeks. The fuckers ran out on me a day before we had to pay the balance. They owe me a lot of money, and I’d quite like to have a chat with them about that.”

The American had designed his explanation to calm the bartender, to give a credible reason why a man might offer up over a hundred U.S. dollars’ worth of local currency to find three other men. But the bartender didn’t seem to relax at all; if anything, Court felt like the man’s defenses rose even more. He stopped squirming but became ramrod still. His body and his hands seemed to clench a little.

Court knew what this was. The man had told his lie, and now he realized his lie wasn’t believed. Liars often go on guard to defend themselves, and sometimes they give out physical cues about this change in tactic.

But while the man’s body remained still, his eyes flicked a third time out to the bay.

Court thought he understood now. A boat. The bartender was thinking back to Sunday night subconsciously. He had seen Fitzroy’s men, and they’d had some involvement with a boat, right out there.

But if the bartender had watched the three Brits take a tender out to a boat, why wouldn’t he just take the money and give up the information? What was he hiding?

The bartender showed his nerves now. “I told you, man. I didn’t see anybody.”

Just as Court was about to press once more, on his left one of the hippie girls from the table by the railing leaned against the bar and caught the bartender’s eye. Court saw that the man was relieved to be rescued. While the girl with the big sunglasses and the headband ordered another beer for herself and her companion in Scottish-accented English, Court sat patiently, waiting for another crack at the bartender.

He took the opportunity to fake a slow neck roll, and to use the movement to look out to the spot the man kept eyeing. A few fishing boats lulled around in other areas in the calm water, but that part, out past the mouth of the bay, was empty. Whatever boat this man was picturing in his mind’s eye was long gone now.

The girl returned to her table with her beers, and the bartender went out of his way to disappear from the American holding the two five-hundred-HK-dollar bills. He moved back into the little kitchen accessible from behind the bar, threw some noodles into a large fryer, and began turning them over and over with a strainer.

Court slipped the money back in his pocket and continued drinking his beer.

He decided he’d wait a few minutes, but then he’d take off. As far as Court was concerned, the bartender had told him plenty without saying much of anything. Fitzroy’s men had been at this bar, they’d gone out to a boat in the bay, and there was some reason the bartender didn’t want to talk about it.

Over Court’s left shoulder the Scottish girl looked out at the water while her tablemate gulped her fresh beer and talked on and on in English, but in a heavy German accent. The brunette with the braids and the leather headband pretended to listen to the blonde from Hanover for a few minutes more while she glanced out to the bay, then back to the man at the bar who’d spoken with a British accent. She’d heard a slight twanging of his a’s when he said the words “have” and “that” to the bartender, and to her that sounded like American English. The girl knew languages, accents, and dialects, so she looked at the man again and decided after a time that he was, in fact, American.

Her head turned back to the water.

Now, the blond German began wondering aloud how hard it would be to score some Ecstasy back at her youth hostel, and the Scottish brunette across the little table just ignored her, shifting her eyes up to the green and brown hills of Po Toi Island.

What the hell is going on? she asked herself.

The Scottish brunette wasn’t really Scottish, and the blonde wasn’t really her friend. The blonde was just like the braids, the tie-dyed T-shirt, and the headband: part of the brunette’s disguise. The two had met on the ferry when the brunette had sat down next to the blonde and introduced herself as Lilly, then struck up a conversation with Katrin from Hanover about the Buddhist temple on Po Toi. Since they both said they were vagabonding alone around Asia, they decided they’d go see the temple together once they got off the ferry.

But on the walk around the bay, Lilly offered to buy beers at the less expensive-looking of two bars on the path to the temple. Katrin had to make her money last for this trip, so just about any time anyone offered to buy her a drink she was up for it, and this was no exception. Plus, Lilly had cool hair and cool sandals so, Katrin figured, she was probably a cool chick.

Now Katrin talked recreational drugs while the Scottish girl who wasn’t really Scottish looked back to the British man at the bar who wasn’t really British, wondering how long he’d been sitting there before she’d noticed him and, even more importantly, how the fuck the Central Intelligence Agency had learned that the Triads had delivered Fan Jiang to the cargo ship here at Po Toi Island.