Hong Kong

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“We need to talk,” Jake said to Tiger Cole. He and Carmellini had just gotten through two circles of armed guards around the museum exhibit trailer and had been allowed to enter. Cole was watching the video from the York units, which were being positioned in preselected hiding places in Kowloon. Kent was at the main control panel. Beside her sat a Chinese student from Hong Kong University whom Cole thought brilliant.

“Give me two more minutes,” Cole said.

“Where are you putting those things?”

Cole kept his eyes on the computer monitors. “In shops and basements, just getting them out of sight.”

“This will be the acid test, huh?”

“They were designed for night fighting in urban areas. The official designation is AVSPU, for Assault Vehicle, Self-Propelled, Urban. The army put them in a class with hummers and armored personnel carriers.”

When the last York was in place, Cole turned to Jake. “What can I do you for?”

“A short talk with you and Ms. Kent. Got a private place?”

“There’s a tiny office at the end of this trailer.”

“That’ll do.”

Cole spoke to Kent, and she got up from the control panel and followed Cole and Jake. Carmellini hung back, then followed her.

She glanced around at him, didn’t say anything. She was wearing tennis shoes, jeans, and a pullover today; Carmellini had never seen her in anything but a dress or skirt. Her abundant hair was pulled back in a ponytail, making her look like the girl next door.

The office was small, with just a desk and two chairs. Jake snagged one and motioned Kent into the other. Cole stood. Carmellini waited until the door closed on the three of them, then went looking for Kent’s purse.

Jake laid the passport on the small desk. “Explain this,” he said to Kerry Kent.

She didn’t reach for it. Jake passed it to Cole, who opened it, flipped through it, then tossed it back on the desk.

She nipped on her lower lip, but not a trace of emotion showed on her face.

After about ten seconds, she reached for the passport. She spent at least half a minute examining it, then laid it back on the desk.

“I never saw it before,” she said.

“Wrong answer,” Jake Grafton said sourly. “I know a lot and can guess at a lot more. Believe me, your future depends on how clean you come, right now.”

“I’m a British citizen. I work for the SIS. I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“Another wrong answer,” Jake said.

They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Cole opened it and Carmellini passed in a shoulder purse. Cole made room for him.

With another glance at Kent, Jake opened the purse, looked in. “Aha.” From its depths he removed a Derringer, a small two-barrel single-action .22 caliber. “Would you look at this.”

He opened the action. Loaded. Snapped it shut and passed it to Cole.

“Want to talk now?”

“Why?” she said. “You don’t know anything.”

“You should have gotten rid of the gun. Do the British still hang people?”

“It was given to me.”

“By whom?”

“Wu Tai Kwong.”

“Wrong answer again. How about Sonny Wong?”

She leaned back in her chair and looked in every face. “You don’t have proof of anything,” she said. “Carmellini must have planted that gun in my purse.”

Jake stood. “Tommy, stay here with Ms. Kent. Don’t let her touch anything, call anyone, speak to anyone. We’ll be back.”

He walked through the door and Cole followed him.

“What was it about the pistol?” Cole asked as they walked to the York control console.

“Wasn’t that CIA agent, Harold Barnes, shot with a twenty-two?”

A look of surprise crossed Cole’s face. “I can’t recall.”

“I can,” Jake Grafton said. He paused behind the York master control panel. “I read the report. Twenty-two slug at point-blank range above the right ear. The Hong Kong police turned the bullet over to the FBI.”

“Kent?” He sounded skeptical.

“Perhaps. I’m guessing, but it fits. Now tell me, what would happen if someone changed some of the lines of the code that the Yorks use to separate the good guys from the bad guys?”

Cole pursed his lips thoughtfully. He went over to the keyboard and began typing. He spent two minutes studying lines of software code. “Looks okay,” he muttered and came back to the control menu.

“But if one of the Yorks started shooting our guys, I would see it. I’m right here.”

“That problem could be easily solved with a bullet.”

“We’ve got to trust people,” Cole responded. “There’s no other way to do it.”

“Wake up, Tiger. Kerry Kent and Sonny Wong aren’t on the same sheet of music that you and Wu have been singing from. A wise man surrounds himself with people he trusts and checks on ‘em constantly.”

“You’re right, of course.”

“Where’s your television helicopter?” Jake asked. “You and I need to take a ride.”

“It’s back at the TV station. The PLA would gladly pot it over Kowloon tonight.”

“Call the station and have the pilot fly it down here. You and I need to borrow it.”

“Want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Not yet. Like she said, we need some proof. Call the station and get us a chopper.”

The helicopter, a Bell 206 JetRanger, landed in the street. The pilot was a small man in his mid-twenties. As the chopper was making its approach, Jake turned to Tiger Cole and said, “We better take assault rifles, just in case.”

“Okay.” He borrowed rifles from two of the men guarding the trailer.

The pilot flew the helicopter between the office towers of Victoria, then dropped to fifteen feet above the waters of the strait. They flew over the trucks and armed rebels who were guarding the tunnel and kept going. Cole pointed to a building, and the pilot slowed to a hover over the street in front of it. He let the chopper descend straight down, cushioning it at the bottom, until the skids kissed. Cole got out and led the way.

They were in front of a laundry. Not many civilians around, although heads peered out windows all along the block. With Cole leading, the two men went through the laundry, out the back, and down an alley. Forty feet or so down the alley, they knocked on a back door. It opened a crack.

Cole said something in Chinese, and the door opened.

A York unit, Alvin, stood near the front of the building, which was a shoe shop. A curtain hung between it and the shop door. It stood facing the curtain, a belt-fed machine gun in its hands and an electric cord hanging from its back. “We’re charging the battery,” Cole explained, gesturing at the cord.

“Yeah. Are there any access panels on this thing?”

“Yes. Three, actually. One in his abdomen under the UWB radar, one in his back above the electrical socket, and one in the back of his head.”

“Open ‘em up. Let’s take a look.”

Cole didn’t hesitate. From a trouser pocket he produced a small cloth bundle. He unrolled it, revealing four tools. One looked to Jake like a plain Phillips screwdriver. Cole used it to open the panels.

From his shirt pocket he produced a penlight. “This is a regular flashlight or a red-light laser. I use it to check the sensors. Use the white light.” He showed Jake the control.

Jake peered into the back of Alvin’s head. It was full of wires, contacts, and component connections. “Take a look,” Jake told Cole and held the penlight for him.

“What are we looking for?”

“Anything that isn’t supposed to be there.”

“Looks okay to me.”

“Next panel.”

Of course, they found what they were looking for in the last panel, the one on the abdomen. Cole almost missed it. A tiny bare wire, no more than an inch long, protruded from the top of a solid black plug-in component.

Cole used his fingers to remove the connection, then began tugging on the bare wire. It turned out to be six inches long, a small antenna, and was connected to a small radio receiver, a AAA battery, and a blasting cap buried in about three ounces of malleable plastique explosive.

“A bomb.”

“If it went off, what would it do?”

“Destroy the main power supply. The York will just stop, wherever it is. Think Kent did this?”

“She had access and motive.”

“How did you know it was here?”

“Someone paid Kent a lot of money in the last four months,” Jake replied. “A million and a half pounds. I’m betting it was Sonny Wong. He then kidnapped Wu and Callie and demanded fifty million American from you and ten from Rip, Wu’s brother-in-law. He’s your security chief, and he’s dirty.”

Cole used a pocketknife to cut the wires leading to the head of the blasting cap, which protruded from the plastique.

Jake continued. “Either Sonny Wong is going to kill you, Wu Tai Kwong, and the folks loyal to Wu, then take over the rebellion and lead it himself, or he sold the rebellion to the Communists. They pay him, he wipes out the rebel leadership — at a profit, which he pockets — and disables the Yorks. The PLA defeats the rebel army and hangs a couple hundred traitors as an example to everyone. Voila! everything is once again copacetic in Communist heaven.”

“We’ve kept a tight rein on everything.”

“You’re planning a goddamn revolution involving hundreds — for all I know thousands, maybe tens of thousands — of people all over China and you think the Communist leadership didn’t get wind of it? Maybe in Oz, baby, but not in the real world. Hell, man, the folks in Silicon Valley are selling high-tech secrets to anyone with money. You know that! Cash is king! Sonny Wong may be a patriot, but he can be bought. Kent’s a chippie; you could buy her for pocket change.”

“Okay, okay.” Cole shook his head. “Yeah. Okay.”

“You better visit all these Yorks and see what Ms. Kent was up to in her spare time. I’ll take the chopper back to the barn and have a little chat with our lady friend from SIS.”

“Okay,” Cole said. “Send the chopper back for me. I’ll meet him where it is.”

“Give me the bomb.” Jake held out his hand. Cole handed it to him. “When you get back, Carmellini and I are going to need some weapons. What have you guys got in inventory?”

“A little bit of everything for the Yorks.”

“I need two silenced submachine guns, a couple of silenced pistols, and two fighting knives.”

“You going to get Kent to tell you where Callie is?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

“I intend to get my wife back alive,” Jake Grafton said. “Whatever happens to anybody who gets in the way is their tough luck.”

Tommy Carmellini and Kerry Kent were still seated in the small office at the end of the museum exhibit trailer. “Any problem?” Jake asked.

“She offered me some money.”

Kent was staring at a spot on the wall, her face a mask.

“Anybody talk to her, she talk to anybody?”

“No, sir.”

Carmellini got out of the chair and Jake sat. “I don’t have a lot of time,” he said to Kent. “I’m not going to fool around. I want the truth and I want it now.”

She didn’t say a word.

“You understand that you’re never going to see a dollar of that money. It’s history. Forget about it. The SIS will confiscate the account. What we’re talking about now is your life.”

Jake Grafton leaned forward and stared across the desk into Kerry Kent’s eyes. In spite of herself, she found she couldn’t look away. “Tell me where my wife is. If I get her back safe and sound, you live. If I don’t, you die. It’s that simple.”

She said nothing.

“Carmellini,” Jake said. “Get me a roll of duct tape.”

The CIA officer went through the door.

Almost too quickly for the eye to follow, Kent lashed out at Jake Grafton’s throat with the cutting edge of her hand. Jake took the blow on his forehead and went for her with both hands. He got his left hand around her neck, his thumb on her windpipe, and squeezed for all he was worth while he used his right to pop her hard in the nose.

Cartilage shattered and blood spattered everywhere.

The fight went out of her. Grafton released his grip.

She sat dazed, bleeding freely, then her eyes focused again.

She held her shirttail to her nose, exposing her bra. Jake didn’t take his eyes off her. Amazingly, he felt better.

“Asshole,” she hissed. “Hitting a woman.”

Carmellini opened the door, then paused. Jake stood up and took the tape.

“We’ll tape her to this chair. Put her in it.”

That didn’t take much wrestling. Jake began wrapping tape around her. “Put her hands behind her.”

“What about her nose?”

“Never heard of anyone dying of nosebleed. If she croaks we’ll put her in the medical textbooks.”

Kent screamed. Jake punched her again, medium hard, and she stopped.

“One more time,” he told her. “I enjoyed that.”

He used almost the whole roll of tape on her. “Now,” he said, removing the bomb that had been in Alvin York from his pocket. “Here’s how we’re going to do this. You are going to tell me where my wife is, and Mr. Carmellini and I will go get her. If we return with Mrs. Grafton, we’ll come in here and disarm this bomb. If we don’t return… well, I guess you’ll die when Sonny pushes the button to pop the Sergeant Yorks.”

Carefully, with her watching, he twisted the wires that ran to the blasting cap back together. “There.”

“You’re an American naval officer,” she whispered. “You can’t do this to me.”

“Everyone keeps telling me that. Actually, I was thinking of taping this bomb to your head. What do you think, Tommy?”

“Asshole,” she hissed. The blood covered her mouth and shirt. She was a hell of a mess.

“Get the WB phone out of her bag.”

Carmellini did as he was told.

“I doubt if she memorized the phone number. Look for something with phone numbers written on it, a little pad, her checkbook, anything.”

Kent’s eyes widened.

“You were supposed to blow the Yorks with the cell phone, weren’t you?”

She lost control of her face.

Jake continued. “We’ll just tape the bomb to your head. If anything happens to Callie, I’ll call you. How’s that?”

Her eyes narrowed. She wiped the blood on her mouth off onto her shoulder.

“She doesn’t think you’ll really kill her,” Carmellini said.

“I won’t have to,” Jake told him. “All I have to do is tell these people how she betrayed Wu and them. If Wu dies, she won’t live another ten minutes. They’ll kill her with their bare hands.”

Her head was down now. Blood still flowed from her nose.

“He’s holding them on a yacht, the China Rose.” Her voice was a husky whisper. “It’s at the Kowloon docks.”

Jake Grafton lifted her head. He looked straight into her eyes. “You’d better pray we find them alive and get back here. Without me you’re dead. Understand?”

They put tape over her mouth and punched a small hole in it so she could breathe. Then they left her, locking the door behind them.

“Sorry about that,” Jake said to Tommy Carmellini as he used a rag to wipe blood from his hands. “When you left the room she turned wildcat, so I punched her in the nose.”

“Glad it was you and not me. I knew Harold Barnes. He didn’t deserve what he got.”

“Cole is going to give me some weapons. I don’t know what is on that ship. Maybe two people, maybe fifty. You want to come along?”

“Yeah.”

“Ain’t in your job description. When you’re dead the story is all over; the movie ends right there. If you’ve got a woman somewhere and big plans, I understand.”

Carmellini shrugged. “Going places people don’t want me to go is what I do.”

Jake tossed the bloody rag in a corner. “I’m going to kill anybody who gets in my way,” he said. “No questions asked, no hesitation.”

Carmellini glanced at the closed office door. “And Kerry Kent gets off with a busted nose.”

“Oh, I doubt it,” Jake said, sighing. He gestured to the people conferring in front of the map and checking the computer monitors. “She betrayed these people. If they don’t kill her, Wu Tai Kwong will.”

When the helo brought Tiger Cole back from Kowloon, he had five more small bombs with him. “Okay,” he told Jake Grafton, “you’ve convinced me. She sold us out. There was a radio-controlled bomb in every one of the Yorks.”

“Only one?”

“God, I hope so. I inspected them as carefully as I could. We could take them out of service for a week or so and disassemble each of them into a pile of parts and check every goddamn nut, bolt, and screw, but…”

“She says Callie and Wu are being held in a yacht tied up at the Kowloon docks.”

“She being cooperative now?”

“That’s probably not an accurate statement.”

Cole snarled, “By God, I have a few things I’d like to ask her.”

“Hey, she isn’t going to tell you anything you don’t already know. She did it for the money.”

Virgil Cole shook his head, rubbed his eyes. “I just don’t understand people like that. Maybe I’ve had too much money for too long …”

“You were never that poor, believe me,” Jake said. He handed Cole the sixth bomb.

“You said you wanted weapons?”

“And the use of your helicopter. I want to find this yacht before the light fades.”

“Wong has a yacht?”

“Kent says he does. China Rose.”

Cole’s eyes lit up. “I’ve seen it! An older ship, steel, about two hundred and fifty, maybe three hundred feet long, with a little bridge and a massive salon aft. White with red trim.” He looked at his watch. “The sun sets in about ten minutes. Go find that thing while I round up some weapons and clothes.”

“Black.”

“Today’s your lucky day. Black is our uniform. I’ve got a truckful of black shirts and trousers. I’m trying to convince my friends that night is the time to fight.”

Jake settled into the copilot’s seat of the Bell and the pilot immediately lifted it into a hover. When he was above the power lines, the pilot eased the nose over and let the machine fly between the buildings toward the harbor.

They stayed low, the skids almost in the dark water, as they worked their way northwest up the Kowloon docks. Scanning the ships with binoculars, Jake fought down the sense of panic that welled up within him as the sun dipped below the horizon. Time was running out.

Coasters, tankers, container ships, tramps, fiber-optic cable layers… ships of every kind and description. They were Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, American, and flag-of-convenience ships from all over the globe. Grafton hunted through them as the light faded slowly, inexorably.

Lin Pe worked her way along the nearly deserted streets of Kowloon. She was very tired and her feet dragged.

Unable to go farther, she sat on the sidewalk against a building, her bag clutched in her hand.

She had never seen the streets this empty. Those people who were out walked purposefully, determined, with quick glances up and down the street.

There were soldiers, of course. PLA trucks drove along the streets with soldiers sitting on the fenders, rifles in hand. At street corners soldiers directed traffic, waving civilian cars off the streets to make way for trucks.

And tanks.

Three tanks rumbled by Lin Pe, huge beasts with long, clumsy barrels protruding from their turrets. Their treads chewed up the pavement.

She got up and followed them, walking as quickly as she could. The tanks were faster than she was, but they didn’t disappear from sight.

The three of them came to a halt at the intersection of Nathan and Waterloo roads. The intersection was about a mile north of the southern tip of the peninsula. One tank went through the intersection, then turned in the street. Gingerly the drivers maneuvered. One tank came to rest in the intersection, its nose and the cannon pointed south. One tank was parked on each side of the intersection, slightly back. The tankers on each flank pushed the barrels of their cannons through the glass windows of the corner buildings so they could also command the street and remain half hidden by the buildings. Two trucks stopped to discharge soldiers, who took up positions behind the tanks and the parked cars that lined the side streets.

Owners of parked cars came pouring from adjacent buildings. They scrambled to move their vehicles, some of which were already blocked in by the tanks. Shouting and pleading with the soldiers did no good. One officer pointed his rifle at several civilians and ordered them to leave. In seconds the last car that could be moved was gone, and the sidewalks were empty.

Lin Pe walked another block and found a store whose owner had yet to lock the door. He protested as she entered, but she insisted, talking loudly, refusing to leave. When the owner went back in the store to summon his wife, Lin Pe took out her WB cell phone and dialed the number she had memorized. It took her but thirty seconds to report the location of the tanks.

“Climb,” Jake said to the helicopter pilot. He was desperate. There was little light left, and the China Rose was eluding him.

“If we climb the PLA may knock us out of the sky.”

“Climb,” Jake repeated, his voice hard and urgent.

The pilot hoisted the collective and the helo bounced upward; Jake fought against the downward G-force to hold the binoculars steady. The pilot leveled at a thousand feet above the water. “Fly the whole waterfront again,” Jake Grafton ordered, “especially the area by the amusement park.”

But China Rose wasn’t there. The haystack contained no needle.

Just when he was ready to admit defeat, he saw it.

“There!” He pointed. “Closer. Go closer.”

The pilot turned the Bell and closed the distance.

Yes. There was just enough light to see the red trim, the small bridge, and the windows of the salon. A small boat hung on davits behind the stack. The yacht’s name… he couldn’t make it out. It must be China Rose!

The yacht — actually a small ship — was moored to a pier, the last of three large yachts on the north side. Three more were moored against the south side of the pier, which was at least two hundred yards long.

At the head of the pier stood a wire fence with a closed gate. On the quay itself were pallets of boxes, some Dumpsters, stacks of fifty-five-gallon drums, forklifts, trucks, some people walking… Ocean-going general cargo ships were berthed at piers to the north and south.

“Over the quay.” Grafton pointed out the direction he wanted to the pilot. He had to see how he was going to get onto the quay from the street.

In the last of the light he got his landmarks.

It was completely dark when he tapped the pilot on the shoulder and jerked a thumb toward Victoria. The helo turned and dropped the nose and accelerated out over the harbor. The pilot didn’t turn on the exterior lights until he was approaching the shoreline of Hong Kong Island.

“Where did you see China Rose!” Jake Grafton asked Tiger Cole as they hunted through the clothes littering the floor of the truck for a pair of pants that might fit him.

“At a pier in Kowloon. Across from the yacht of a friend of mine, the Barbary Coast”

“For Christ’s sake, why didn’t you say so two hours ago? I damned near didn’t find it before the light faded.”

“It just slipped my mind, until you asked. I saw it but paid little attention.”

“Well, it’s still there, on the end of a pier. If we had the time we could get a delivery truck, fake up some invoices, drive through the gate at the head of the pier and motor right up to Wong’s gangway. No time, though. We gotta go as fast as we can get there.”

“Why don’t you land on my friend’s yacht? Nikko Schoenauer. He’s right across the pier. Has a helo pad on top of the salon.”

“This guy German?”

“American as a hot dog.”

“It must be nice having all these filthy rich friends.”

“Nikko Schoenauer flew A-4s in Vietnam. He told me that he decided to get into a business that would always be popular, didn’t pollute or use up scarce resources, with a product that people paid for with discretionary income, something nice to have but not necessary. His yacht’s a whorehouse. He fills it with Japanese businessmen and sails off for week-long parties and writes a fat check to a bank on the first of every month.”

Jake glanced at Cole, who looked absolutely serious. “Whores ‘n’ More, eh? Tiger, you never cease to surprise me.

Jake pulled the shoulder holster containing the Colt on over the black shirt. Tommy Carmellini was waiting outside the truck with two silenced submachine guns and five magazines of ammo for each. He also produced a couple of marine fighting knives, one for each of them, and two sets of night-vision goggles. “First-class stuff,” Jake said to Cole after he gave them a quick brief on the goggles.

Jake and Tommy put on the goggles, turned on the power. Idly Jake asked Tiger, “So you were visiting Schoenauer last week?”

“Yeah. The girls are kinda cute.”

“I thought you were dating China Bob’s sister?”

“Naw! China Bob was a snob. He wanted his sister married off to a decent husband. I was just another dude he was doing business with.”

“Schoenauer’s got a floating whorehouse, huh?” Carmellini asked. He had been standing outside the truck listening to Grafton and Cole.

“California girls mostly,” Cole said. “They come and go. Refugees from suburbia and bad marriages. When they’ve gotten their batteries recharged, off they go back across the pond.”

“Live in a yacht at the side of the road and be a friend of man.”

“Something like that.”

“We’ll land on his boat and troop across the pier,” Jake said, “if you don’t think we’ll be interrupting anything.”

“I’m sure he won’t mind,” Tiger rejoined. “He can’t get underway until he gets another load of clients, which won’t happen until the airport reopens. Tell him I sent you.”

Jake Grafton looked at his watch. “You ready?” he asked Tommy Carmellini.

“Yes, sir. Let’s do it.”

They stowed the weapons, ammo, and night-vision goggles in a drawstring bag, which they slung over their shoulders.

“When does the war start?” Jake asked Cole.

“In about two hours,” Tiger replied, “unless the PLA kicks off the ball sooner.”

“We’ll be back by then,” Jake muttered.

“Or dead,” Carmellini added.

“You still got a handle on the electrical grid?”

“Yep.”

“How about killing all power to that pier, or that area, in twenty minutes?”

“Sure. Hang tough, shipmate.” Cole shook both their hands, then went back into the museum exhibit trailer.

“You scared?” Carmellini asked Jake as they walked to the helicopter, which was sitting in the street with the engine off.

“Hell, yes, I’m scared,” Jake shot back. “That’s a fool question. Why’d you ask it?”

“I wanted to make sure I wasn’t the only one.”

The helo pilot made sure both men were strapped in, then he pushed the starter, and the Bell’s engine wound up with a whine.

Jake lied to Carmellini; he wasn’t scared. He had been too busy worrying about Callie to be scared.

“Rip, Mother isn’t here.”

Rip Buckingham looked up from his PC. He was doing an in-depth piece on the revolution for the Buckingham Sunday editions.

“The maid said she left this morning and hasn’t come back,” Sue Lin said.

“Maybe she’s at the cookie company.”

“I called there. No one answers.”

“Well…”

“Rip! She could be killed out there. If the government finds out she is Wu’s mother, they’ll throw her in prison. She’d die there. Rip!”

“For God’s sake, Sue Lin, she’s a grown woman, this is her town. She can take care of herself.”

“But she can’t!” Sue Lin sagged into a sitting position and began weeping. First her brother, now her mother. She was trying to be brave, but she just couldn’t.

Rip cradled her head in his hands. “Sue Lin, your mother wanted to help. She wanted to be a part of what was happening.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you say no?”

“What right did I have to tell her no? She’s Chinese — this is her country. These are her people.”

“I’m your wife.” She struck his hands away.

“Indeed. And it’s time you realized that the future of China is more important than we are.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean it’s time you realized that your happiness is not the most important thing in your mother’s or brother’s life.”

“Is it the most important thing in your life, Rip? Answer me that.”

“Don’t ask me a foolish question, woman. You may not like the answer.”

She rose from the floor and walked to the window. With her back to Rip she said, “You had no right to let her go without telling me.”

“You would have said no. She wanted to go. What would you have me do?”

“If you love me, you will find my mother and bring her home.”

He turned off the computer and stood. “You don’t under-stand what love is. You think it is possessive, and it isn’t. Sometimes you have to let go of the things you love the most.”

He took a few steps toward her, then changed his mind. “I will try to find Lin Pe and help her do the job she volunteered to do. When it’s over, if we’re alive I’ll bring her here.”

Sue Lin didn’t turn around.

He walked from the room and headed for the stairs.

This, Governor Sun Siu Ki thought, was without a doubt the worst afternoon of his life. His friends in Beijing had shouted, sworn, second-guessed, cajoled, and threatened him. He had been accused of being a dupe, a fool, a liar, and an incompetent imbecile. He tried to explain that the afternoon debacle was the fault of General Tang, now dead, and General Moon Hok, now a prisoner, but to no avail. The truth was that if those two soldiers had obeyed his orders to vigorously enforce the law and lay the wood to the outlaws, these riots would not have gotten out of control. They were afraid to use the military power the nation gave them. They were cowards.

Then the television showed the mob beating government officials to death. If that wasn’t bad enough, the ministry in Beijing said that treasonous criminal spectacle had been seen by a large percentage of the urban population of China. It had even run on a television station in Beijing, the outraged minister told him, as if the failure of the media officials was Sun’s fault.

So when his aide passed him a note saying Sonny Wong was on the phone, Sun Siu Ki was in a savage mood.

“Carrion-eater. Double-crosser. Traitor.” He used all three of these phrases on Sonny when he picked up the telephone.

“Whoa, Governor. I know you’re having a bad day, but there is a way out. I’ve told you that. I couldn’t single handedly stop these criminal combinations, but I can save the day.”

“For money?”

“Of course, for money. I have a large organization that I support at my own expense, and we have done what the government could not — we have penetrated the rebel organization. Pay me the money and I will give you their heads.”

“Beijing has not authorized the payment,” Sun protested.

“I find their attitude beyond understanding. They are faced with a genuine rebellion that is getting worldwide press and inciting treason throughout China. The rebels are waging cyberwar against the nation. Government officials are being beaten to death by mobs, a spectacle played on every television on the planet”—this was only a small exaggeration—“and the government dithers over whether or not to pay me one hundred million American dollars to put a stop to all this. What are you people thinking?”

“Beijing has faith in the PLA,” Sun explained. “Beijing is a long way from Hong Kong; from there they see the backs of ten million soldiers. Ten million soldiers are ten million soldiers. These traitors are causing huge problems, of course, but no ragtag mob is going to crush the PLA.”

“You saw the robots on television today. Those robots are not a ragtag mob.”

“Beijing was not impressed. You cannot extort money from them with movie props.”

“Sun, you are as stupid as a snail. Wait until tonight. Tonight the robots will be in action. Tonight is the Battle of Hong Kong. When the PLA is losing, think of me. You know the telephone number.” And Sonny hung up.