Pinnacle Event

24

“You should let me win once in a while. Maybe you would get promoted, Richard,” Stephen Cheung joked as they walked toward the clubhouse.

“I don’t think I am ever being promoted again, Commissioner,” Richard Taylor laughed. “There is a glass ceiling for people with English surnames and I have hit it. So, after thirty years on the force here, I take my little satisfactions where I can.”

“You must be our guest for drinks,” Commissioner Cheung said, looking up at Raymond Bowman, standing on the steps of the clubhouse. “This is Assistant Commissioner Richard Taylor, Crime and Security. We have reserved a private room. Follow me, if you would.” The threesome walked past portraits of English military officers and colonial officials from earlier centuries, up a narrow back stair to a perch atop the clubhouse, looking out and down on a city in the distance, in the smog.

“We know who you are Mr. Bowman. The American Consulate has explained who you report to,” Commissioner Cheung began. “My predecessor, Peter Wong, recalls you fondly from his year at the Kennedy School. He sends you his best. I did not get to go to Harvard. My year it was the Royal College of Defense Studies, which made my wife happy. You see we met twenty-two years ago when I was a bobby for two years in Scotland Yard. She still loves London.”

The Assistant Commissioner was mixing two gin and tonics at a drinks dolly. “Will you join us in a G and T?” Taylor asked. “Can I make a third?” Bowman nodded agreement.

The Commissioner waved Bowman out on to the small balcony. “Don’t let all this British atmosphere fool you, Mr. Bowman. We are ruled by Beijing. Our semiautonomous stature goes only so far. That city in the distance is in China.”

“You seem rather unlike the People’s Armed Police,” Bowman replied.

“Very unlike them, yes,” Richard Taylor agreed, joining them on the balcony. “Hong Kong Police are independent. We get no help from the mainland. We have to have our own little navy of boats and our own little air force of helicopters to secure one of the most densely populated cities in the world and its many islands. But the Ministry of State Security and the People’s Liberation Army stay in their compound in Central, where the British Army used to be. Beijing knows what goes on here, although not always in real time.”

“So it is I who will decide whether to assist you, not Beijing,” the Commissioner asserted. “Tell me why I should.”

“No city anywhere in the world has been destroyed by a nuclear weapon in over seventy years. That may be about to change,” Bowman began. He told the two Hong Kong policemen most of what he knew. “What I am asking your help with is surveilling the new Trustees and their meeting.”

The two Hong Kong officers looked at each other in a way that said they were used to being told bizarre stories that were unfortunately true. “Do you know where they are now?” Commissioner Cheung asked.

“I know where their mobile phones are. All at the Upper House, the five-star hotel owned by Robert Coetzee, one of the new Trustees. They are waiting for the last Trustee to arrive and she gets in late tonight. Their meeting is scheduled for tomorrow morning.”

The Assistant Commissioner laughed, “You just want us to get into Mr. Coetzee’s hotel tonight and bug the conference room he plans to hold his secret meeting in tomorrow morning. Is that all?”

“Yes, and we need to get a man into the hotel’s server and telco room,” Bowman replied. “And you always have two off-duty officers working security at the hotel at night. Naturally, we will pay them for their cooperation.”

“Naturally, you will not,” Cheung shot back. “This is not Shanghai. We are a clean police force. No bribes. They will help you because I will order them to help you.”

“Thank you, Commissioner,” Ray said.

“You want them all under physical surveillance when they leave the hotel?” Taylor asked.

“Yes, if possible. Three men, two women. But we have a few of our own people who have been picking them up at the airport and following them to the hotel.”

“CIA men stand out in Hong Kong,” Taylor observed.

“But the people they hire do not. And six South Africans flew in to help.”

“Blacks will stand out even more,” Cheung laughed.

“Yes, sir, but they are not black, although they work for a black woman. I think you might like to meet her and I know she would like to meet you. She is the Director of their Special Security Services. Right now she is running a little ops room we have set up.”

“At the American Consulate?” Taylor asked.

“Ah, no,” Bowman admitted. “We are using a company in a high-rise in Central.”

“We will pretend we don’t know that,” Commissioner Cheung said. “Now Richard will help you get all of this in place and will get you some bodyguards, while I go home to see the grandchildren before they go to bed.”

“Bodyguards?” Ray protested.

“Mr. Bowman, you just told us they have tried to kill you in two countries. Third time may be the charm. They, these unknown bad guys, must be here, too, and they may eventually kill you, but they will not do so in my city. I like to keep my murder statistics low.” With that, Cheung left the two men to their nightwork.